The house has become a greyish shell that the municipal museum, which is in charge of the building, watches over with suspicion.
The house is located on the corner of Máximo Gómez and Versalles streets / 14ymedio
14ymedio, José Lassa, Havana, 2 February 2025 — The state of the house where Bola de Nieve, author of the most melancholic lyrics in Cuban music, was born provides enough to write a heartbreaking bolero. Located on the corner of Máximo Gómez and Versalles streets, in Guanabacoa, Havana, the house has become a grayish shell that the municipal museum, in charge of the property, watches over with suspicion.
What is left standing are walls that mark the perimeter of the house and several columns that support the structure of the porch, topped with floral ornaments that simulate the frames remaining in the windows. The roof has long since collapsed. From the remains of the building, one can guess the dimensions of a republican manor house that once occupied the entire street corner and now remains “ boarded up” to prevent unwanted tenants from sneaking in.
Like the bolero by the Cuban artist Es tan difícil (It’s so difficult), it has become an impossible mission for the Guanabacoa museum to take care of the house and rescue it “There was a project to restore it, but it never came to fruition. In the end, they boarded it up because people were constantly coming in to sleep or live there, and that was the solution: to seal it,” a museum worker told 14ymedio. continue reading
In 2011, on the 100th anniversary of Bola’s birth, the municipal museum put up a plaque commemorating the musician’s birthday, but soon after removed it.
As explained, the house belonged to Ignacio Jacinto Villa Fernandez’s family – who gave himself the ironic artistic name of Bola de Nieve (Snowball) – but the musician moved his relatives to another house in the same municipality, located on the corner of Nazareno and Maceo streets. “His brother’s descendants did not keep the house, so they exchanged it. It was for a time a”cuartería”(similar to a tenement house) where several families lived,” the employee explains.
The republican-style building retains its walls and has long since lost its roof.
While people were living in the house, the museum could not restore it, but nor it did not allow the tenants to make major changes, since the building is considered a heritage site. When it was finally vacant, another place having been given to those who lived there, the museum could “get its hands on it” without obstacles. Then, there were no more resources or intentions to repair the house.
“There has been talk of restoration projects and some have even been submitted, but nothing is being done. There are many heritage sites in Guanabacoa with restoration projects submitted, but the problem is that there is no money,” the worker says. When the Guanabacoa museum itself “needs repairing,” the future of the manor house is clear: “it is going to be lost.”
Translated by LAR
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The athlete has another establishment in Havana, Bar 2.45, which has been closed since last year.
Sotomayor and his brother opened a pizzeria at the Matanzas airport in 2024. / D’Soto/Facebook
14ymedio, Havana, 2 February 2025 — The fall into disgrace of the D’Soto MSME* private company, run by the brother of Cuban athlete Javier Sotomayor in Matanzas, has aroused all kinds of opinions in social networks among those who are surprised by the penalization of a “protected” business. The company, which advertises itself as a pizzeria with home deliveries, was recently audited by the National Tax Administration Office (ONAT), which determined that D’Soto owes 8,632,820.88 pesos to the State.
The debt is for “damages caused to public funds. The same public funds that were benefited by more than 10,000,000 with the payment of all taxes, with the efforts of a work group,” says a text posted on Facebook by Dariel Sotomayor Rivero, brother of the sports laureate, in which he expressed his annoyance at the resolution of the ONAT.
However, the MSME’s manager avoids pointing fingers at a state agency. “We talk all the time about the blockade, Trump and the problems of humanity, and never about the crap we do internally. The harm we are doing ourselves: more laws and less work, more problems and less dignity,” denounced the young entrepreneur in the post before concluding: “Neither [is guilty] the system, nor the Government. The issue is the people and, above all, oneself, who decides what to do and where he wants to be.” There was no mention of a fine or other sanction imposed on D’Soto or its administrators other than paying the millions owed to ONAT. continue reading
There was no mention of a fine or other sanction imposed on D’Soto or its administrators
Users were quick to respond to the post with both supportive and denouncing comments. “That has only one solution. Leave that country. When you get to know how the world works outside that bubble you will realize that they have been deceiving you for 37 years,” recommended an Internet user with a practical approach, to which another replied: ”He is the brother of one of Cuba’s millionaires. Why is he going to leave? Here they live and enjoy the system’s delicacies.”
D’Soto is a pizzeria founded in 2022, presumably under the ownership of high jump world record holder Javier Sotomayor. Although it started with the sale and delivery of pizzas, the MSME has been incorporating services such as an online marketplace in foreign currency – and which can accept payments from abroad – where it sells everything from pork legs, vegetable oil and beer, to vehicle maintenance items.
Among its suppliers are other private businesses in Matanzas province and the flow of capital even allowed D’Soto to offer a remittance service to Cuba.
In 2023 they were able to obtain a lease from Cimex for the property where El Bodegón, a location belonging to the state-owned El Rápido chain in downtown Matanzas, was situated. After remodeling the store, D’Soto Pizzas opened in February 2024.
In 2023 they were able to obtain a lease from Cimex for the property where El Bodegón, a location belonging to the state-owned El Rápido chain in downtown Matanzas, was situated.
In May of that same year, the MSME obtained permission to open another location at the Juan Gualberto Gómez International Airport. “Our young group, led by Dariel Sotomayor Rivero, offers a wide range of products with the principle of providing a service at your level. With the support of Javier Sotomayor, high jump world record holder, the inauguration of this space, located in the cab parking area, took place,” celebrated a company publication at the time.
The athlete owns another famed venue in Havana, Bar 2.45, named after his world record in the high jump and located on 5th Avenue, in Miramar. In 2024, in a cryptic publication on social media in which neither causes nor reasons were mentioned, the administration announced that the place had suffered a temporary closure that rumors soon associated with drug use and prostitution.
To date, the place has not reopened, but its reputation as an exclusive place for the elite remains.
*MSME: “Micro, Small, Medium Enterprise” (mipyme in Cuba). The expectation is that it is also privately managed, but in Cuba this may include owners/managers who are connected to the government.
Translated by LAR
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Ortiz was one of the founders of the group Los Hepáticos in 1987. / Jorge Fernández Era/14ymedio
14ymedio, Jorge Fernández Era, Havana, 25 January 2025 — If any beginning of a comedy show can be considered a classic of stage humor, it is what happened more than thirty years ago when Otto Ortiz and Omar Franco walked through the audience at the Carlos Marx in what seems to be a violent argument between the two characters.
Both have become legends, in Otto’s case for more than one reason. That the National State-owned Insurance Company (ESEN in Spanish) owes a car is not news, but that the affected person roasting them about it on social media, is. And that Otto Lugar (Otto’s Place) is not the name of one of his shows, but the name of a pizza place, is also news. So, I go in, sit down and ask the waitress to call the manager immediately.
14ymedio/Jorge Fernández Era. In 1987 you were the founder of the group Los Hepáticos. (The Livers). Thirty-eight years later, how’s that bile?
Otto Ortiz. That bile, as you say, is at its best, more critical and elaborated. I started in the group Los Hepáticos doing very basic humor. With time, with knowledge, with the internet and access to humorists from different countries, we humorists have been looking for our own space, our own way of saying and doing things.
In the beginning, we worked together with Nos y Otros (Us and Others). We didn’t understand their humor much, but today we have followed their line
In the beginning, we worked together with Nos y Otros (Us and Others). We didn’t understand their humor, but today, I guess because of our maturity, we have followed their line.
I don’t just use stage humor. Three decades ago we were terrified of cabarets and nightclubs. Not now, and we have even ventured into social media, with a distant but active audience.
Cuban humor has always enjoyed good health. What is lacking, if anything, is humorists, we have been losing them. continue reading
14ymedio/Jorge Fernández Era. Let’s say ESEN gives you a tourism cab, broken-down and worn-out like you. Would you leave the pizzeria and become a cab driver?
Otto Ortiz. The National State-owned Insurance Company has been a part of my life for five years. I have five children: four real ones, and ESEN, which should be my mother, my father, but it is like a child to whom I allow everything until one day it does something good. I don’t know if he will give me an old and bad car like me, but as long as it fulfills its social role I will be happy. After that, I don’t know what I will do with the car.
I don’t think I’d leave the pizzeria. People know me for three things. The third one is as a humorist. The second one is for ESEN. The first one is for my pizzas. Those are three things that mark who I am. The public Otto is a mix of a pizzeria, state-owned insurance and humor. When ESEN gives me the car, I’ll put in a good word for them. People will say, “Look at this scoundrel.” But I’ve grown fond of them.
14ymedio/Jorge Fernández Era. It seems that your obsession with ESEN is a way to erase the bad memory of the baseball fuel shortage you had in the nineties to defeat Nos y Otros.
Otto Ortiz. Between 1988 and 1990, with Los Hepáticos, I did several seasons at the Carlos Marx, directed by Virulo. Nos y Otros were there too. We organized a four-team tournament. They say they won, we say the opposite, the dispute is still going on. Six top intellectuals like Nos y Otros can’t beat four or five pure “costumbristas” who were Los Hepáticos. I don’t believe that arts can prevail over people from Marianao, Mantilla, La Palma… Edit it however you want to, the paper can stand it.
14ymedio/Jorge Fernández Era. Tell me about Malas Compañías (Bad Company), the ones on the web and the ones you’ve had in your life.
Otto Ortiz.Malas Compañías is a YouTube series that I have the honor of sharing with the people of Punto y Coma (Semicolon),Visti Cárdenas and Iván Salgado. It has to do with relationships between individuals with different sexual orientations: acceptance, acknowledgement, and respect. El Nene (The Baby) who is me, is an old macho and homophobic man who for some reason lives with a gay man. We are already sixteen episodes in, we have addressed different topics, always from a humorous point of view. Behind an apparently simple script, there are messages, especially stories that you laugh about and enjoy. At this point it is very difficult for things not to have a meaning, to “say something.” We try to make people think, to make them grow.
Personally, bad company is left behind. I don’t have many friends and I don’t bother the ones I have. When I love someone I don’t bother him, neither does he, but we are there for each other. We don’t have to say what we are or draw attention to ourselves. The key is to be there at the right time.
I must also talk about good company. I have very few, but the good ones fill the gap in my chest. You and I, for example, have had a working relationship for years, and I have been there for you too, in a relationship of great respect, of love. The simple fact of supporting you (a comment, a timely visit…) speaks of our friendship.
The bad company I discard, the good company I take care of.
14ymedio/Jorge Fernández Era. It is remarkable your insistence on keeping a deep, analytical and critical humor. Aren’t you afraid that the censorship will try to “fry” you in a different kettle of fish… at Otto’s Place?
Otto Ortiz. My humor is more analytical than critical, more analytical than deep. When you go too deep, you can go too far. The subject of ESEN has helped me to criticize from a joking point of view, but without reaching the point of excessive mockery. It’s a good way to joke, but always rubbing salt in the wound with. As Martí puts it: bells on the end, but with a whip.
I have not had the pressure of censorship. I’m not from the media, which is where there can be more fear
I have not had the pressure of censorship. I am not from the media, which is where there can be more fear, because people are officially working and with many criteria. On social media, I do more critical humor, with a certain dose of sarcasm, and people like it. I’ve been lucky with that, without a Torquemada or censor. That’s good, isn’t it?
I joke a lot with the current situation, I try not to miss anything. We live in a society that changes daily, you can’t wait until tomorrow for a joke, because it’s gone. I try to give it a humorous twist while still criticizing, but at the same time I try not to stop suggesting, sometimes just for fun, but it’s there.
I just made a joke about how they were giving candies instead of coins for change (in the store) on the corner of 3rd and 70th. Those kinds of clips don’t last a minute, people consume them well. I also do a repertoire that goes beyond criticism, with the theme of Cubanism, father-son, husband-wife relationships. But criticism must always be present in humor. If we criticized more, it would be better for us, for the country, for society. That’s why I’ll be there, even if I am “fried” in a different kettle of fish… or “baked” at Otto’s Place.
Translated by LAR
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“Those children were ordered to be killed because the correct thing to do is to evacuate immediately” in the face of the risk of explosion
A still from a documentary for Russian television about the underground facilities of the Armed Forces. / Screenshot/Zvezda
14ymedio, Miguel García, Holguin, 25 January 2025 — Of the Cuban Army arsenal that exploded in Melones, Holguin, on January 7, only a few structures remain standing. The shock wave and the fire consumed everything, from the barracks to the war material whose detonation caused the death of 13 soldiers, nine of them young recruits. The conclusion is clear: “Protocols were violated there.”
Speaking is a retired captain of the Armed Forces, interviewed on condition of anonymity by 14ymedio. His assessment of the case, as a former officer and in charge of weaponry in an Eastern Army unit, is that Melones is one of the most costly recent episodes of negligence for the Cuban people.
“The officers who lost their lives there knew the risk they were running; the soldiers did not,” the military man assures, categorically. “They knew what kind of military equipment was in there and how highly explosive it was.”
When the captain refers to “in there,” he refers to the labyrinth of underground tunnels that the arsenal consisted of. Cubans, accustomed to suspecting that “the mountains are hollow” due to the work and grace of the Army, cannot imagine the attention and resources that have been devoted to the construction of those warehouses, always adjacent to military units, which this newspaper’s source now describes in great detail. continue reading
The door of the Melones tunnels, and those of all the magazines in Cuba, are huge
“The door of the Melones tunnels, and those of all the magazines in Cuba, are huge,” he says. “It’s a big cement arch, an entrance where you can fit up to two war tanks, side by side. The doors are made of a special material, a mixture of lead, sand, iron and concrete.”
In Cuban military jargon, this combination of construction materials has a name that is reminiscent of the most thrilling years of the Cold War: the “anti-atomic league.”
The Melones tragedy took place in this scenario. Explosions screams, commands – negligent and carelessly issued in the heat of the moment, the captain says – and the recruits operating without understanding the caliber of the equipment. “Those kids were ordered to die,” he insists. “The correct protocol is immediate evacuation.”
“The Armed Forces have specialists in weaponry and explosives control, they even have technical forces trained in firefighting. They are what people call ’FAR firefighters,’” he explains. “People were not supposed to go in there, and the order that should have been given was to evacuate the facility and notify the right authorities.”
“Those tunnels were hermetically sealed. When there is a fire, if you open the mouth of the tunnel, you are oxygenating the fire.”
The military staff did just the opposite. “Those tunnels were hermetically sealed. When there is a fire, if you open the mouth of the tunnel – that huge, heavy door – you are oxygenating the fire. They opened the mouth of the tunnel and went in carelessly.” According to some of his former colleagues who were aware of other details of the explosion, with whom he has discussed the case, toxic gases were already coming out of the Melones tunnel.
“They went in there and then the oxygen fueled the flames,” he continues. “There were two soldiers who tried to get in. One came out coughing, asphyxiated by the fumes and smoke. The other was the one who didn’t want to go in and said he would rather go to prison than die. A few minutes later, the tunnels exploded”.
The case is reminiscent of the 2020 explosion in the military unit of La Púa, in the town of Velasco -just 50 kilometers from Melones. What exploded then was also an ammunition warehouse “in poor condition.” Silos with bullets, rifles, various types of machinery. The mushroom of yellowish smoke that rose over the arsenal, photographed by the villagers, was almost identical to that of Melones.
The big difference, the former officer stresses, was that in La Púa the 1,245 inhabitants of the village were evacuated quickly and that, as the official note on the explosion stated, “there was no loss of human lives.” Besides, “that unit had less explosive material than the magazine of Melones.”
The Ministry of the Armed Forces will keep secret how much equipment exploded in Melones and what operation was being carried out there
There are other recent cases, all similar, that point to the obsoleteness of the equipment stored in the subway magazines of the Armed Forces. Almost everything dates back to the Soviet era when Fidel Castro intended to arm the country to the teeth. In 2017, a silo exploded in Songo-La Maya, Santiago de Cuba; in 2011, an ammunition depot exploded in Boyeros, Havana; in 2000, another warehouse blew up 20 kilometers from Matanzas.
Cubans know that, despite the death of the 13 soldiers, the Ministry of the Armed Forces will keep secret how much equipment exploded in Melones and exactly what operation was being carried out in the unit before the incident. “There are still sporadic explosions there,” confirms the former captain interviewed by 14ymedio.
“The government will never admit it, but there was negligence,” he insists. “There would have been material damage, of course, but all those lives could have been saved. Not one would have been lost.”
Translated by LAR
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This Caribbean island offers the discretion they need to protect themselves from Helms-Burton
Energas facilities in Boca de Jaruco / Cubadebate
14ymedio, Havana, 23 January 2025 — To sustain business with the Cuban regime, the Canadian mining giant Sherritt International uses multiple ways to evade Washington’s sanctions. With real business acrobatics performed from Switzerland to the Cayman Islands, the company protects itself from the Helms-Burton Law, the U.S. tool of choice to hinder Havana’s financial movements.
Registered in Barbados, the subsidiary company known under the acronym Sicog (Sherritt International Cuba Oil & Gases Limited) is one of the tools used by both parties to preserve the secrecy of their transactions, as businessman William Pitt explains to 14ymedio. Pitt is an observer of the regime’s mining businesses, whose family was expropriated multiple properties of oil value in 1960.
The Official Gazette published on October 25, 2023, referred to Sicog as a “Barbadian company.” Sherritt’s name is omitted in all the articles of the section, which renewed the authorization for the company to remain registered in the National Registry of Foreign Commercial Representations.
The text also defined – with great ambiguity – Sicog’s competencies: “the commercialization and exploitation of oil in Cuba, as well as the management of investments in the areas of oil, nickel, tourism, agriculture, sugar and financing, practically all the areas that bring hard currency to Cuba, except the commercialization of medical services. continue reading
The regime does not allow Sicog to “import and export directly on a commercial basis…”
The regime does not allow Sicog to “import and export directly on a commercial basis, nor to distribute and transport goods within the national territory.”
Although Sherritt is not mentioned in the section dedicated to Sicog, in the same Gazette authorization is granted to another subsidiary of the Canadian company: Sherritt International Investments Limited, also based in Barbados.
According to the Gazette, Sherritt International Investments Limited has similar powers to those of Sicog: “to attend to investments in Cuba in the areas of oil, nickel and electricity.” However, it is prohibited from importing and exporting, as well as “issuing commercial invoices.”
“Barbados is a tax haven,” notes Pitt, although the country has recently amended its legislation with the creation of a corporate tax – very low, with a maximum of 5.5% – seeking its exclusion from the tax haven blacklist. “In that country, there are no requirements for an annual general meeting, no reporting, accounting or auditing requirements for companies. All that is required is a shareholder and a director who don’t even have to be residents. In fact, they can be the same person or entity.”
Although Sherritt is obliged – by Canadian stock exchange regulations – to report certain data, companies like Sicog contribute to the mining giant limiting its public disclosures and operating with little transparency.
The advantageous discreetness offered by Barbados to the regime and Sherritt is unparalleled. “All private information, such as the register of directors and offices, or the register of shareholders, is kept away from the public. Corporate documents related to the company can be stored anywhere in the world,” adds the businessman.
Sicog has only one shareholder, which, according to Pitt, entitled the company “not to conduct any work or annual meetings.
Sicog has only one shareholder, which Pitt says entitled the company “not to conduct work or annual meetings. It can also easily change its name, another mechanism to avoid sanctions, without consulting other parties.
Sherritt is interested in three types of business with Cuba: energy, oil and gas, and mining, Pitt lists. The company has been withdrawing from other sectors in which it used to have interest, such as hotels and other tourist centers. The island has millions in debt to the Canadian giant that is paid through the so-called “cobalt swap” of 2022, which allows it to exploit this mineral in its plants in Moa (Holguín).
Sherritt built the Varadero, Boca de Jaruco and Puerto Escondido power plants – three jewels in the energy crown in western Cuba – in which it has a 33% share in partnership with state-owned Energas.
In Varadero, Pitt explains, Sherritt and Energas operate a plant connected to an electricity substation with a capacity of 173 megawatts (MW). “The plant has two mutually integrated facilities that process gas obtained from oil wells near the plant into clean, dry gas that is used to fuel the turbines.”
Puerto Escondido, on the other hand, consists of “two crude gas processing plants, a gas turbine, and electric generator with a power capacity of 20 MW.” Finally, Boca de Jaruco, 50 kilometers from Havana, is the largest of the three facilities and the plant that produces the fifth most electricity in Cuba. Its structure is similar to Varadero’s and its capacity is 313 MW. “This plant sends natural gas produced by the wells through pipelines to Havana to supply the natural gas used as fuel for cooking by more than 280,000 families and restaurants in the Cuban capital”.
Puerto Escondido, on the other hand, consists of “two crude gas processing plants, gas turbine, and electric generator.
Despite Sherritt’s efforts to keep its interests afloat in Cuba, the island has proven to be a difficult and fruitless project.
With two hurricanes and a comprehensive crisis that affected the entire industry, 2024 was a catastrophic year for the facilities operated by the Canadian giant in Cuba. With constant outages already happening since the beginning of the year – the expected deficit for this Wednesday was 1,270 MW – it does not look like 2025 is going to be much different.
Translated by LAR
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ECLAC gives, for the first time, figures of femicides on the Island, but they are much lower than those reported by independent sources
“Violence leaves marks, ignoring them leaves femicides.” At least 3,897 women were victims of Femicides in the region in 2023 / YoSíTeCreo en Cuba
14ymedio, Havana, 22 November 2024 — The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has included Cuba for the first time in its annual report on femicides in the region. The study, published Friday, indicates that the island registered 60 murders due to male violence in 2023.
The figure, however, from “records provided by the official agencies of each country,” is much lower than those compiled by NGOs and independent media. This newspaper, in particular, reported 87 femicides in 2023, 45% more than the official figure. In any case, they are a novelty, since the Cuban government had not provided information on femicides to ECLAC until now.
With the 60 gender-based, man-committed murders reported by ECLAC, the rate of femicides per 100,000 women is 1.1 (taking into account that the commission uses 6,000,000 women to calculate the number of femicides). However, if we take the 87 verified by 14ymedio and a population, more adjusted to the latest official figures, of 5,000,000 women, the rate rises to 1.74. This is the third highest rate in the region, behind Honduras (7.2) and the Dominican Republic (2.4).
This newspaper, in particular, reported 87 femicides in 2023, 45% more than the official figure.
At a regional level, ECLAC reported that at least 3,897 women were victims of femicide in the region last year, which represents “at least 11 violent gender-related deaths every day.”
The commission explains that the majority of these deaths occurred in the context of current or terminated relationships. Out of 10 countries and continue reading
territories in Latin America and the Caribbean that provided information on the existing links between the victim and the perpetrator, it was more than 60% in eight of those countries. In the case of the island, it reported 83.3%.
Most of the victims (56.4%, that is, 404 cases) were between 30 and 59 years old; 20.3% (145 cases) were young women between 15 and 29 years old, while 3.4% (24 cases) were girls 14 years old or younger.
Likewise, seven countries – including Cuba, according to the report – also provided information on indirect victims, “defined as sons, daughters and other dependents of women victims of femicide.” A total of 488 were recorded; of these, 38 are from the island, below Argentina (205), the Dominican Republic (93), Paraguay (71) and Chile (45).
In the report, ECLAC offers comparative data for each country since 2015, except for Cuba because there are no recorded data since officially femicide did not exist in Cuba. In fact, to date, it has not been classified as a specific crime.
There are “low percentages of victims of this type of violations of rights who resort to public authorities, as well as of those who lodge complaints to have access to justice.”
In this regard, ECLAC showed that there are eight countries, besides the island, that lack systems to measure crimes of gender violence. The organization pointed out that these countries “are working on the coordination and capacity building necessary to implement integrated or single systems of administrative records for cases of gender-based violence.”
Although the commission sees “progress” in public policies to “confront the global pandemic of violence against women and girls,” it points out that “there is a large gap between the severity and persistence of the problem and the quality of the public response. It adds that there are “low percentages of victims of this type of rights violations who turn to public authorities, as well as of those who lodge complaints to access justice.”In this area, there is no data on the island.
The report calls on the governments of the region to “ double their efforts to improve recording and information systems, to increase budgetary resources to design public policies that respond comprehensively to victims and survivors, and to invest in the effective prevention of gender-based violence”.
So far in 2024, 45 femicides have been recorded in Cuba, according to the count carried out by this media. Of these, at least 37 were committed by a partner or ex-partner. Last October was the month with the highest number of cases, with seven, surpassing the number in January, when six cases were verified.
Translated by LAR
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The “Explosion process” at Melones is still “active” and “it is still not possible to go in,” according to the authorities.
The government reported that it has “protected” several hundred people residing in the vicinity of the facility / Facebook/Joel Queipo Ruiz
14ymedio, Miguel García, Holguín, 10 January 2025 — The obsolete weapons stored in the military warehouse that exploded on January 7 in Melones, in the municipality of Rafael Freyre in Holguín, are still in the “process of explosions” and the experts have not yet been able to reach the site. Three days after the first detonation and with 13 people missing – most of them military service conscripts – the despair of the families is increasing.
“There are several mothers with nervous breakdowns because they are only told to be calm, but they do not make any progress in the search,” a relative of the family of one of the young soldiers told 14ymedio. “The mother of one of the boys from the military service who is missing is my friend and she is devastated. Yesterday she tried to go out on her own to the military base to look for her son and we had to stop her, but the lack of response is enormous, they only tell us that we have to wait.”
According to the head of the Communist Party in the province and member of the Central Committee, Joel Queipo Ruiz, the security forces have authorized the return of some displaced persons to houses “located at a radius distance that no longer poses any danger.” As for the “specialized actions, they continue to be carried out within the limits of a certain radius outward from the center of the place.”
Queipo, who referred to the warehouse as a “wrecked facility,” did not give a date for the search of the missing people, he said he is in contact with their relatives. The area is still dangerous for the “physical safety of any continue reading
human action,” he said. “As soon as conditions permit, the site will be accessed with all the established protective measures.”
“We are also afraid,” adds the source interviewed by 14ymedio, “because we have been told that we cannot talk about this with anyone or post anything on social media because enemies are taking advantage of what has happened to harm the country. I have my WhatsApp full of messages from our relatives who live in other parts of Holguín and I am afraid to answer them because I don’t know if something will happen to me.”
According to the source, “the officers’ families are handling this differently because many of them are very involved people, people from the government, and they know that their husband or son had chosen a job that involves risks. But the conscripts’s parents do not have that strength because they were not there because they wanted to be, they were forced. My friend’s son sometimes said that they were forced to move ammunition, but he talked about it as if everything was under control as if there was no danger.
Several accounts of failed attempts to approach the area have circulated in the official press
“I haven’t said anything to him, but I already have set up a little altar in my house with his picture and a candle. It’s not because I think he’s dead, but if he’s alive he’s also going to need that to get out of there.” She says there are two nerve-wracking issues: “not knowing if he is alive or dead and thinking, about what he could have suffered if he died and if perhaps he was trapped and it was something very painful and long.”
The official press has circulated several stories of failed attempts to approach the area. One of them, published in the State newspaper Granma, was about the president of the Municipal Assembly of People’s Power of Rafael Freyre, Alexis Driggs Gómez. The leader, according to the newspaper, “bears on his forehead, between his eyes, the mark of the impact of a shard of glass from the first big explosion that occurred in the Military Unit.”
Driggs was in the area with a group of military personnel at 2 a.m. when the shock wave from one of the detonations threw them to the ground, “amid a cloud of particles, dirt and dust flying in all directions.”
Authorities have not said much about the details of the accident itself, although it is estimated that there have been at least two separate explosions on the first day, and many more in the following days. Without information on how much military material was stored at Melones it is impossible to get an accurate idea of how much more ammunition will blow up in the area.
Translated by LAR
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The artist is being held at the Villa Marista State Security detention center
Fernando Almanares Rivera recently coordinated a group exhibition in Miami called ’Forbidden Art: From Cuba’. / Facebook ’
14ymedio, Havana, 10 January 2025 — This Thursday, the international organization Article 19 demanded the release of rapper Fernando Almenares Rivera, known as Nando OBDC, who was arrested last December 31 at his home in the Havana municipality of La Lisa. The artist, who is being held at the Villa Marista State Security detention center in the Cuban capital, is charged with “terrorism.” On the day of his arrest “there was no opportunity to document or take photographs of the event,” the Arts and Humanities project Fuego contra Fuego [Fire against Fire] said on Facebook, pointing out at the time that the “arrest was arbitrary,” since “it was carried out without a summons or judicial hearing.”
Since his capture, a week passed without his family being able to see or hear from him. His mother, Eva Rivera, was able to visit him last Tuesday. According to Martí Noticias, during the visit, the official in charge of the case told his mother that her son was being linked “to a fire that occurred in Lenin Park on December 30 and that is why he was being detained,” explained Adriana María Machado, the artist’s wife.
Since his arrest, a week passed without his family being able to see or hear from him. His mother, Eva Rivera, was able to visit him last Tuesday
“Initially they were accusing him of having links with people who wanted to carry out acts of terrorism against the Cuban state, and they (the authorities) were still sort of fabricating the charges,” Machado added. In the face of the accusations, “he maintains his innocence,” Machado told ADN Cuba.
Days before the visit, on January 3, agents of the regime searched the rapper’s home. According to the same source, they were looking for a computer or USB memory stick, but they also took photos of the paintings in the house and “they took a Cuban flag that he had.” continue reading
“Nando OBDC is a musician and visual artist with a long trajectory in the Cuban underground, which is commensurate with the intensity of the harassment by the political police,” noted the Observatory for Cultural Rights a day after his arrest.
The 35-year-old artist recently coordinated in Miami a group exhibition called Forbidden Art: From Cuba
The 35-year-old artist recently coordinated a group exhibition in Miami called Forbidden Art: From Cuba. According to the press release, the show featured artists’ work “from Cuba’s vibrant yet restricted art scene.” The invitation to the opening on December 7 even asked for donations such as food or medical supplies for political prisoners on the island. In recent years, the rapper has also collaborated with artists such as Marichal, Maykel Castillo Osorbo, David D Omni and Navy Pro, among others.
That profile has put him in the crosshairs of authorities for some time. In November 2021, Almenares Rivera was summoned to the Seventh Station of the National Revolutionary Police for his publications on social networks. The Navy Pro musician said at the time that, a month earlier, the artist had already been taken “to this same police station where he was threatened with Decree Law 35, and based on it, the officers told the artist that he could be prosecuted for making publications showing the faces of government agents.”
“’We’re going to watch you,’ ’you’re going to have to move from La Lisa,’ were some of the attacks Nando received from the officers, who also suggested putting him in a cell to beat him,” added Navy Pro.
Translated by LAR
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The Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid reports that the number of applications decreased in 2024, with 78,975, including 17,884 citizens from the Island.
In Tapachula, the National Migration Institute set up 12 checkpoints to prevent the nearly 30,000 migrants in the state from moving forward / EFE
14ymedio/EFE, Mexico City, 8 January 2025 — The Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid (Comar in Spanish)) claims that applications from migrants fell by almost 44% in 2024. According to official figures, it served 78,975 migrants that year, or 43.8% less than in 2023, when a total of 140,720 foreigners went to one of the commission’s nine offices.
For many Cubans, however, asylum applications have not really dropped, but rather Mexico is responding negatively to them. Thus, Osiel Rodriguez, reports that the Comar rejected his asylum application just as it did for at least 30 other Cubans the day he went to the office in Tapachula, on the border with Guatemala. The Mexican authorities, he tells 14ymedio, told him that “he was not a politically persecuted person” and considered that he had left the island because of “economic problems.”
Rodriguez was instead granted a safe-conduct with which he can remain in the country for a maximum of 20 days. In his account, the Cuban insists that he left because of the “persecution” he suffered and the “threats of the regime” when he made public his discontent with the situation in the country. “In Cuba, there is no freedom, they put you in jail for thinking differently.”
Osiel Rodriguez is desperate to go to the U.S.: “Whatever it takes, paying a coyote or in a convoy, but I have to be at the border at Piedras Negras on the 16th and be able to cross before Trump is sworn in.”
He said he has not been able to log in to the CBP One application. “It’s crashing, I keep trying, but I don’t know if I will be able to log in.”
Donald Trump warned that he will toughen immigration laws from day one of his term in office. One of the measures is to close the CBP One continue reading
application. Since its implementation, also in January 2023, until last December, more than 904,500 people have been able to schedule their appointments to appear at the border.
In Tapachula, the National Migration Institute set up 12 checkpoints to prevent the nearly 30,000 migrants in the state from moving forward. “They are closing the roads, holding us and returning us to Tapachula,” denounces Guatemalan Tonatiuh Gomez. “They don’t want trouble when Trump becomes president, that’s what the soldiers say.”
Local authorities claim that the concern in Chiapas is to tackle human trafficking networks. This Tuesday 30 video surveillance cameras were uninstalled on the Hidalgo and Suchiate border, which criminal groups used to monitor migrants to “extort and kidnap them,” the state prosecutor’s office said in a brief statement.
Meanwhile, in the United States, civil rights and immigrant organizations criticized the Laken Riley Act, approved Tuesday by the lower chamber of the new Congress, considering that it will facilitate President-elect Donald Trump’s massive deportation plan and eliminate due process for those charged with non-violent crimes.
The initiative, if passed this Friday by the Senate, will strengthen Trump’s position, who takes office this coming January 20, to unleash mass deportations and will allow racial discrimination when it comes to punishing non-violent crimes, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stressed on Wednesday.
The bill requires immigration authorities to detain undocumented migrants accused of committing theft and other non-violent crimes so they can be deported.
Translated by LAR
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A novel by Pavel Giroud, an anthology by storyteller Alberto Garrido and a farewell to Juan Manuel Salvat.
Work ’La cena’, painted by Cuban artist Belkis Ayón / Belkis Ayón Estate
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 30 November 2024 — Marked by borderline figures – she died at the age of 32, one year younger than Christ, in 1999, before the beginning of the millennium – Belkis Ayón created a world no less divided between two dimensions: that of color and that of the spirit. Observing her prints and paintings leaves a metaphysical doubt: if Ayon already shows us the other world, the spiritual plane, why does she give the feeling that there is still much more, hidden behind those Abakuá faces?
Ayón’s suicide – she locked herself in a bathroom and shot herself in the head with her father’s revolver – only reinforces the mystery. Her silence makes one despair. During the Special Period, when the country was plunged into extreme poverty, the artist focused on her black, white and gray works. The themes of loyalty and betrayal, of lost paradise and desire, as well as the Abakuá religious worldview – the sacrifice of the goddess Sikán – surrounded her in her last decade.
In 2021, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid dedicated a major retrospective exhibition to her, commissioned by Cristina Vives, her friend. It was the sign that Ayón had awakened the public’s and critics’ interest all over the world. This November, the Spanish publishing house Turner publishes Nkame mafimba, a compelling catalogue raisonné of her work that expands on an earlier version.
Nkame mafimba means “praise, deep conversation.” The phrase synthesizes Ayón’s relationship with her prints and also the ideal reading she demands for her work. With texts in English and Spanish, the book continue reading
explores how the artist delved into the Abakuá universe, the research she conducted and how the symbolic translation of those myths came about.
Ayón was born at the end of a decade of international enthusiasm for Fidel Castro’s Revolution. In 1960, Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir traveled to Havana to see with their own eyes the “hurricane over sugar.” Their impact on the generation of young Cuban intellectuals was enormous. The newspapers of the time were filled with articles about the two visitors.
Sartre and Beauvoir in Cuba. “La luna de miel de la Revolución” (The Revolution’s Honey Moon) (Casa Vacía) reconstructs step by step that visit and the chronology of that decisive year for Castro’s international image. Compiled by Duanel Díaz Infante and Marial Iglesias Utset – author of a fascinating study of the birth of the Republic in 1902, “Las metáforas del cambio en la vida cotidiana”(The Metaphors of Daily Life) – the volume gathers the meaning of the presence of both French intellectuals in a country that, according to Sartre, “had to triumph.”
Filmmaker Pavel Giroud, who was at the center of many controversies last year after the release of “El caso Padilla” (The Padilla Case), makes his debut in novels with Habana Nostra. The story is based on an old script by the director about the gangster Lucky Luciano, a regular in the Cuban capital during the 40’s. Finalist of the Azorín Novel Prize, it was published by Traveler and has already been presented in Spain and the U.S.
An anthology by storyteller Alberto Garrido, “Gritos y susurros” (Cries and Whispers), was published this month by Ilíada Ediciones. Novelist Amir Valle has said of these stories that “they shook in many ways the panorama of national literature. Undoubtedly, pieces of excellence by an authentic Cuban short-story writer on par with Alejo Carpentier, Lino Novás Calvo, Virgilio Piñera and Onelio Jorge Cardoso.”
With the death of Juan Manuel Salvat on November 26, the Cuban exile community lost the man who did the most to bring Cuba’s literary heritage within reach. Born in Sagua la Grande, Villa Clara, he was part of a generation that, without forgetting Cuba, knew how to rebuild his life and think about the future.
El Gordo (The Fat Man), as his friends called him, did not hesitate to take up arms first against Batista and then against Castro. He protested against the visit of Soviet leader Anastas Mikoyan and was expelled from the University of Havana. He left Cuba clandestinely and returned by sea. He was imprisoned. He fled again and went into exile in Miami, where he realized he had to change his strategy.
An exile needs books, and Salvat became not only the rescuer of old authors, who also left the island but also the publisher of new ones. From Lydia Cabrera to Reinaldo Arenas, he nurtured his catalog with names of excellence. Thanks to those books, he told me, he could utter the phrase in which his legacy is summarized: “I have managed to live as a Cuban all my life, even though I have been far from the country.
Translated by LAR
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The Cuban regime has always relied on the 11 principles of the Nazi minister’s propaganda.
The principle of unanimity is based on making people believe that all Cubans are Fidelistas and communists. /CC
14ymedio, Rolando Gallardo, Huesca (Spain), 5 January 2025 — The propaganda machine of the Cuban government is unmistakably inspired by the teachings of the terrible Nazi minister Josef Goebbels. His words echo in my head as a statement of the character of the Cuban Revolution: “The bourgeoisie must yield to the working class…. Whatever is about to fall must be pushed. We are all soldiers of the revolution. We want the victory of the workers over filthy profit. That is socialism” (quoted in Doctor Goebbels: His Life and Death). The slogans of the “Ñico Lopez” Communist Party University are a discursive copy of Goebbels. Goebbels’ contributions in the field of propaganda make Cuban socialism akin to German National Socialism.
It is necessary to review Joseph Goebbels’ 11 principles of propaganda to understand how the Cuban regime uses Nazi mechanisms against the Cuban people and its rebellious freethinkers.
11 Principles for 1 Revolution:
Principles of single enemy and contagion: For the Revolution, there are not numerous adversaries, there is only one that manifests itself in various forms. Imperialism is always linked to dissidents; it does not matter that there is no proof. If you are against it, you are a “gusano” (worm) in the service of imperialism. The image of the Cuban “gusano” is not accidental, it was one of the many used by the Nazis to represent the Jew, depersonalize them and then execute them in mass without remorse. The independent journalist, the sportsman who flees, the doctor who abandons a mission or the citizen who demands humanitarian intervention in times of crisis is just continue reading
as much an enemy of the Revolution. Those who dare to contradict will be in the same bag.
The image of the Cuban “gusano” is not accidental, it was one of the many used by the Nazis to represent the Jews.
Principle of Transposition: Goebbels recalled that for effective propaganda it is necessary “to make the people believe that hunger, thirst, scarcity and disease are the fault of our opponents and to make [the] sympathizers repeat this to themselves at all times…” All the mistakes and negative tendencies of the regime and the failures of past, present and future rearrangements are the fault of imperialism, mafias and traitors. For the propaganda, the corruption, brazenness, incoherence and bad decisions they make daily are not, and cannot be their fault.
Principle of Exaggeration and Disfigurement: To turn any anecdote into a serious threat, no matter how small. The country is falling, garbage is overflowing, and people are starving, but the news in the official media is the invasion attempts on a jet ski of two dangerous counterrevolutionaries who intend to exert terrible actions against Cuba. They have very well-oiled mechanisms for stories of this kind, which must be believed no matter how implausible
Principle of Vulgarization: “All propaganda must be popular” If they are hungry promise lots of chicken and if it is ostrich, so much the better. Say adorable idiocies, the media will put up with everything and the masses will eventually forgive you. Democratizing idiocy is a guarantee of communicative effectiveness, adapting political communication to the least intelligent of the individuals to whom it is addressed. “The larger the mass to be convinced, the smaller the mental effort to be made. The receptive capacity of the masses is limited and their comprehension is scarce; besides, they have a great capacity to forget,” said Goebbels.
Principle of Orchestration: Propaganda should be like a catchy summer song: a few ideas, repeated to exhaustion, from all possible angles, but always aiming at the same conga-style refrain: “Hey I am Fidel,” “We are continuity,” “Cuba advances and that hurts them.” Repeating things with no practical sense but with an air of confidence. This is the origin of the famous phrase: “If a lie is repeated enough, it ends up becoming the truth,” in people’s minds. That is why they insist that the socialism of the PCC (Cuban Communist Party) is viable, only that, of course, they do not let them. How convenient!
Principle of Renewal: It is vital to constantly issue new information and arguments at such a pace that, by the time the adversary responds, the public is already interested in something else. The adversary’s responses must never be able to counteract the growing tsunami of accusations. For this, the regime takes permanent measures and countermeasures with the promise that everything will improve, that now they will build what they have never built. And, boy, are they effective: they have been telling the same story for almost seven decades and there are still those who swallow it hook, line and sinker as if it were the first day. It is enough to compare Granma’s slogans of the 60’s and 80’s of the last century with the current ones. It is the same melody, only now with a couple more off-key notes.
Principle of Verisimilitude: To build plots from different sources, through the so-called probe balloons or fragmentary information. They use phrases from their allies in this or that country, from loyal intellectuals, and from media such as Telesur that serve the same political agenda. So, if NTV (National News) quotes a seemingly foreign media, or a foreign friend of the regime’s, or they showcase the increasingly fewer Spanish artists they have on their payroll, everything seems more real and they manage to convince many that the first world is worse off than Cuba and that in the largest Island of the Antilles, there is an oasis of prosperity.
Principle of Silencing: To remain silent on issues for which there are no reasons and to conceal the news that favors the adversary, also by counter-programming with the help of like-minded media. In particular, denying any right to reply and denying access to divergent criteria in the partisan spaces they call public media.
Propaganda always operates based on a pre-existing substratum, be it a national mythology or a complex of traditional hatreds and prejudices.
Principle of Transfusion: As a general rule, propaganda always operates based on a pre-existing substratum, whether it is a national mythology or a complex of traditional hatreds and prejudices; the aim is to disseminate ideas that can take root in primitive attitudes. They set some Cubans against others, manipulate history and take the issue to the confrontational plane between nation and colonialism. On that line, they develop the Castro mythology and his epic fight against an imperialism ready to attack at any moment. Although the Cuban Army does not have the military capacity for a frontal clash with the United States, the technological gap being evident, they still call for ridiculous exercises to keep active the imminence of the myth of the invasion or the idea of a besieged place.
Principle of Unanimity: To convince many people that they think “like everyone else,” creating the impression of unanimity. The false unanimity, the promulgation that all of Cuba is communist, Fidelista, and whoever is not is because he is an ex-Cuban, a non-patriot, a lackey, a mercenary and all the appellatives that the propaganda promotes. And this practice extends to the structures of the State, where it is not necessary to choose a president among several options and projects since ratifying the candidate imposed by the single party is enough. In the same way, laws are passed and, when they fail to be implemented, there is nothing to fear because there are enemies to blame.
Epilogue
Goebbels’ principles have found a natural extension in the Cuban regime. Propaganda is the oxygen of the Revolution, and as long as the slogan that hunger and misery are the enemy’s fault resonates, the spirit of the Nazi minister will continue to walk the streets of Havana. What is the Cuban Revolution if not the most perfect incarnation of Goebbels’ words, sacrificing the self for the whole, dooming entire generations to the service of a lie repeated a thousand times over? While they demand sacrifices from the hungry, they live like kings.
Translated by LAR
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Not even the ice cream shop employees know when it will reopen its doors.
Inside, only a few foreigners, loaded with cameras and lenses, stroll around and take pictures / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 26 December 2024 — Nobody knows when Coppelia will reopen. Cuba’s most famous ice cream parlor, located on the emblematic corner of 23rd and L, in El Vedado, has been closed for months. “The cathedral of ice cream is dead,” was the verdict of a Havana resident when, on Thursday morning, she saw only two employees reluctantly selling cookies.
To 14ymedio’s questions, the workers answered, holding their treats and seated at one of the many entrances of the centrally located establishment: “There is no ice cream and we don’t know when there will be any.”
As the passers-by who walk around the ice cream parlor remind themselves, “Nothing has been sold there since Hurricane Rafael struck,” last November 6.
The crooked sign at the entrance, and the fallen tree trunks and poles, augur that Coppelia’s bad season continues until further notice. / Juan Diego Rodríguez
A month later, at the beginning of December, the Coppelia ice cream factory on Rancho Boyeros Avenue gave the final blow to production after running out of ammonia to refrigerate the product.
The chains that, placed from one fence to another at the entrance, have been blocking the entrance to Coppelia for weeks, are not the only ones that draw the attention of Havana residents. “They also removed the huge continue reading
awnings where the tables were placed for customers to sit and there are many fallen trees.” Even the craftsmen who used to sell their items in front of the establishment have disappeared. “They dismantled all that and we don’t know if the vendors will return, ” another Havana woman admits.
Inside the utopian revolutionary ice cream parlor – created with the idea of giving Cubans a taste of the most exclusive flavors – only a few foreigners, loaded with cameras and lenses, walk around and take pictures after getting the workers’ approval. The crooked sign at the entrance, evoking the legs of a ballerina, and the fallen poles in its gardens, seem to announce the inevitable: after several crises and temporary closures in recent years, Coppelia has finally hit rock bottom.
Translated by LAR
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Spanish National Police during an operation in Malaga. / National Police
14ymedio, Havana, 8 December 2024 – The Spanish National Police on Saturday dismantled a criminal network of 36 members, including ringleaders and coyotes, who illegally transported at least 67 Cubans to Europe with false documentation. The migrants paid up to 10,000 euros for the journey through several European countries, which in some cases included traveling hidden in trunks.
The smugglers operated in Serbia, North Macedonia, Greece and Spain, and recruited the Cubans through the website of an alleged travel agency – the name of which was not disclosed – said the European Police Office (Europol) and the European Union Agency for Criminal Judicial Cooperation (Eurojust).
The migrants were given tickets in Cuba to board flights to Belgrade (Serbia), “normally making a stopover at the airport in Frankfurt (Germany),” the investigation details. Thanks to a visa-free agreement between Serbia and the island, Cubans can travel to the Balkan country as tourists, although they must meet several requirements, such as having a letter of invitation and proving economic solvency.
From Belgrade, they were moved by land “to Greece, passing through North Macedonia, being housed during the journey in the houses of the criminal continue reading
network”, according to data provided by the Spanish authorities.
The Spanish National Police arrested 36 members of the migrant smuggling network. / National Police
The transportation was carried out by coyotes who facilitated the border crossings in a clandestine manner, and “in which on many occasions the lives of the migrants were endangered as it was carried out in the trunks of vehicles circulating at high speed,” stresses the National Police. Once in Greece, the organization gave the Cubans “fake or authentic Spanish documents of people with similar features” – a method known as look-alike – with which they traveled by air from Athens to Spain.
The police had been tracking the traffickers since last January when German authorities alerted about a Cuban traveler with a stolen identity document (DNI). The woman arrived from Belgrade and was bound for Madrid. The Prosecutor’s Office of the Audiencia Nacional opened an investigation and was able to confirm this modus operandi in at least 40 cases.
The Second Central Court of Instruction was in charge of the follow-up of the investigation and this Saturday the arrest of 36 people involved was announced. Among the ringleaders, three were arrested in Alicante and one in Malaga. The rest of the arrests took place in Alicante (7), Barcelona (6), Las Palmas (4), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (4), Guipúzcoa (2), Balearic Islands (2), Madrid (2), Cáceres (1), Segovia (1), Toledo (1), Vizcaya (1) and Zaragoza (1).
As part of the process, three house searches were carried out where the authorities found “7,550 euros in cash and abundant computer material and documentation relevant to the investigation,” which is still ongoing.
Translated by LAR
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The NGO documented that there were a total of 173 protests on the island between July 2023 and July 2024.
A police patrol guarding a protest in Santiago de Cuba on July 11, 2021 / 14ymedio
EFE (via 14ymedio), Mexico City, 28 November 2024 — The organization Justicia 11J reported Wednesday that 554 Cubans remain imprisoned for participating in the July 2021 anti-government protests, the largest in decades on the island.
In its annual report Otro año sin justicia (Another Year Without Justice), presented Wednesday afternoon, the NGO warned that “repression on the island, by state authorities, is systemic and structural” and stressed that “Cuba’s repressive context has become more complex”.
Similarly, Justicia 11J assured that the 554 demonstrators still in Cuban jails represent 35% of the 1,580 people who have been detained since the July 11, 2021 (11J) demonstrations. The prison sentences are up to more than 20 years.
Also, the organization emphasized in the document that 93% of the 554 inmates are men. continue reading
In addition, 12 of them are between 20 and 21 years old -they were arrested when they were 17 and 18-; 383 are between 22 and 45 years old; 92 are between 46 and 59 years old; and 13 are 60 or older.
Justice 11J documented that between July 2023 and July 2024, there were 173 protests in Cuba. Within that period, “at least 35 people” were arrested, of which “27 are still in detention.”
Justicia 11 J criticized the fact that “the Cuban State” has “continued to manipulate the dialogue with international actors to project a false image of commitment to civil society and citizens.
In this regard, Camila Rodríguez, founder and director of the organization, stated during the online presentation of the report that the protests on the island “will continue to happen”, so “there is no turning back”.
Johanna Cilano, a researcher with Amnesty International (AI) for the Caribbean, regretted that “there is no civic space and freedom of association” in the country. She also reiterated AI’s concern for the case of opposition leader José Daniel Ferrer, imprisoned since 2021.
Last week, family members, human rights NGOs and Cuban dissident organizations denounced that Ferrer, considered a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, was hospitalized after being “brutally beaten” by prison staff.
Neither the Cuban government nor the official press has reported on the matter. A minority pro-government media outlet assured that the reports of the beating “are unfounded” and that Ferrer was in a “favorable” state.
In its annual report, Justice 11J criticized the fact that “the Cuban state” has “continued to manipulate dialogue with international actors to project a false image of engagement with civil society and citizens. Its interactions with UN and EU representatives show an official willingness to maintain diplomatic relations while dodging its responsibilities”.
Translated by LAR
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A report by the Spanish newspaper ’El Debate’ points out several findings by the Bolivian Prosecutor’s Office
Morales is being charged with the crimes of statutory rape and human trafficking / EFE
14ymedio, Mexico City, 28 October 2024 — A group of Cubans with diplomatic passports guarded a house in La Paz where former Bolivian President Evo Morales allegedly sexually abused underage girls. This was revealed by El Debate on Monday, in a report presenting several pieces of evidence of the investigation that judicially corners the former president.
According to the Spanish online newspaper, it is a residence where Morales supposedly claimed to have undergone some unspecified medical treatment and that in reality, it was a cover. “The house was guarded by people who claimed to be Cuban doctors”, says El Debate, but, according to the investigation by the Bolivian Prosecutor’s Office, ‘they were Cubans with diplomatic passports who were discharged from the Embassy’ of the island.
Another exclusive of the report is a series of photographs showing Noemí Meneses Chávez, one of the teenagers with whom the former president had relations, crying and with bruises on her body. This would prove, according to the newspaper, that high-ranking police officers stopped an investigation against Morales for physical violence. continue reading
According to the Spanish digital newspaper, it is a residence where Morales allegedly claimed to have undergone some medical treatment
The case of Meneses Chávez, now 23 years old, was discovered by chance in July 2020, during a routine control. The young woman was, together with her sister and a driver, on board an official vehicle of the Government of Cochabamba that had been stolen several years earlier.
They discovered in her phone, seized by the police, messages exchanged with Morales that showed that the two had been in a relationship since she was a minor. In addition to the written material, they also found dozens of photographs where Evo and “La Noe,” as he referred to her in private, pose together in a multitude of everyday situations typical of a couple.
Another case involving Morales being investigated for human trafficking and rape is that of Cindy Sarai Vargas Pozo, who was declared missing last week along with her daughter – allegedly fathered by Evo Morales and now eight years old.
The main evidence in this investigation is the baby’s birth certificate, dated February 8, 2016, at 11:12 a.m. in Yacuiba, southern Bolivia. The document reflects that Juan Evo Morales Ayma, the former president’s full name, acknowledged being the girl’s father.
Vargas Pozo met Morales when she was only 14 years old when she was part of the controversial “youth guard” of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), the former president’s party, consisting only of minors.
In addition to the residence guarded by the Cubans and the presidential plane itself, on occasions the minors were taken to the Mamá Diablo bar
In addition to the residence guarded by the Cubans and the presidential plane itself, the minors were sometimes taken to the Mamá Diablo bar, also in the Bolivian capital, where they were forced to consume alcohol, according to the testimony of a former bodyguard of Morales, reported by El Debate.
This source stated that Morales ordered the bar closed to ensure his privacy and that of his companions, about whom he did not provide their identities or further details. The person in charge of making these arrangements was Patricia Hermoso, who served as Morales’ chief of staff during his last term in office, according to the testimony of the former collaborator of his security team.
Other Bolivian politicians authorities have stated participated in the abuse network led by Morales include former vice-president Álvaro García Linera, former ministers Carlos Romero, and Sacha Llorenti, as well as Andrónico Rodríguez, president of the Senate, and Senator Leonardo Loza.
Since early October, when the Attorney General’s Office announced that it would resume investigations against Evo Morales, his supporters have led more than 20 consecutive days of protests and blockades throughout the country.
The former president was shot at on Sunday, in an incident in which his driver was injured. On Monday, Morales blamed the incident on President Luis Arce and accused him of trying to “eliminate” him to wipe out the MAS.
Meanwhile, the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, expressed her solidarity on Monday with the former Bolivian president. Morales was welcomed as an asylum seeker in 2019 by the government of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, after Morales’s forced resignation due to his involvement in electoral fraud.
“We condemn it, our solidarity with Evo Morales and always a call to avoid violence. Let it be peace and political definition. Our condemnation, our solidarity and always the pursuit of peace and non-violence,” Sheinbaum said at a press conference.
Translated by LAR
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14ymedio, José Lassa, Havana, 2 February 2025 — The state of the house where Bola de Nieve, author of the most melancholic lyrics in Cuban music, was born provides enough to write a heartbreaking bolero. Located on the corner of Máximo Gómez and Versalles streets, in Guanabacoa, Havana, the house has become a grayish shell that the municipal museum, in charge of the property, watches over with suspicion.
