Category: Translator: LAR

The official press tried to calm the waters on Wednesday. Lazaro Guerra Hernandez, UNE’s technical director, assured that the “synchronization” of several thermoelectric units to the SEN “in the coming days” would reduce blackouts.

Specifically, the official referred to unit 6 of the Nuevitas plant, one that “should follow” unit 1 of Felton and “the combined cycle” of Energas Varadero. Then, unit 3 of Santa Cruz del Norte, and, “towards the end of the week,” unit 5 of Mariel. In total, there will be an additional 500 to 550 MW, promised Guerra, who acknowledged that “the situation during Monday and Tuesday has been very complex, given the impossibility of meeting the demand and the exit from service due to breakdowns in three units.

One of the most dramatic scenarios was in Sancti Spíritus, where they could not even comply with the agreed blackout schedule this Tuesday

“We can’t comply with the usual schedule, since the deficit exceeds what was expected in each block” was how the UNE’s division in that territory apologized, while at the same time warning that power from one of the blocks would be cut off for six hours (during peak hours, from 4 pm to 10 pm).

The worst is not only the heat but also the mosquitoes; because the fans can’t work, the rooms are filled with them. Hence the almost surreal scenes that the inhabitants of the Island share on social media, like people sleeping outdoors covered by a mosquito net.

Visiting Havana from Sancti Spíritus, Alicia shares with this newspaper an eloquent anecdote. “I’m overwhelmed by the blackouts. Here in Havana, I wake up at dawn exactly the same time as the power goes off. It sounds funny but it’s not. ”

Translated by LAR

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

The document also reveals other data, such as the heavy weight of private construction in the total and the falling supply of almost all the necessary materials in the last year.

According to the document, 16,065 homes were built in 2023, compared to 20,232 the previous year, 20.5% fewer. Of these, most were built by their owners by hiring specialists, 61.4% (9,869), while state companies took over 38.6% (6,205), a drop not only in their amount but also in their percentage compared to 2022 when they built 40.1% (8,103).

In 2023, 16,065 homes were built, compared to 20,232 the previous year, 20.5% fewer

The numbers increase if we look at the ones that are currently underway. Some 97,164 homes are being built by their owners and only 4,733 by the state. There are also 40,274 works at a standstill, all belonging to the do-it-yourself category, predictably (although not indicated) due to bureaucratic reasons.

Province-wise, only three improved their data on finished homes compared to the previous year, most notably Pinar del Río, with an increase of 25%. Hurricane Ian, which hit hard in September 2022, may be one of the factors that stimulated activity, although it is precisely this territory where the figures remained constant during the last three years. In any case, compared to 2019, fewer than half of the 3,006 houses built that year were completed in the westernmost province of Cuba.

In Havana, in a five-year span, the numbers went from 10,280 properties in 2019 to just 1,394 in 2023

Holguín, with 12.5% more finished homes than in 2022, and Isla de la Juventud (2%) complete the list of those that improved on this indicator. On the other hand, the eastern provinces of Santiago de Cuba and Granma finished 30% fewer buildings than the previous year and Havana sank to almost 52% fewer, with 1,394 compared to 2,875 in 2022, a number that was already close to half of those that were finished in 2021. Its sustained drop is also consistent with the rise in the number of people leaving the Capital during the last two years, whereas the population of the provinces tends to emigrate less.

The document also highlights the shortage of construction materials, which is in turn a decisive factor in the decline in work completion, which explains the high number of units still under construction. Crushed stone and corrugated iron bars are the only materials whose production remained stable (0.3% growth for the former) or increased (17.3% for the latter).

There is a shortage of construction materials, which is a decisive factor leading to the decrease in the completion of the works

The rest of the raw materials suffer significant drops in production, the most serious being ready-mix concrete (30%), concrete blocks (26%) and grey cement (24.5%). The scarcity of these materials has led the Government to insist since last year on “taking advantage of the potential” of the territory and building with mud and clay.

However, the population has not used this resource as much as the authorities would like, so much so that last November Cubans earned the scolding of an unbridled deputy prime minister Ramiro Valdés Menéndez. At a sector’s meeting, he raised his voice to demand more results: “There are orders to build the ovens. The plans have been delivered to the territories. Do they carry out the work? They do not. Why don’t they do it? Where is the discipline? Where is the control? There are instructions but they are simply not executed in the territory. ”

Translated by LAR

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“When you chew, you feel a grainy, sandy sensation,” they said in their statement to Periódico 26, although they added that “the flour is being systematically monitored in the mill’s laboratories in Santiago de Cuba; and laboratory tests in Las Tunas’ soil corroborated that it is suitable for human consumption.”

The officials’ words seem to have added yeast to the customers’ dissatisfaction, who do not conceive that a food with such poor quality is marketed. This is made with wheat from Russia “collected on the ground, a waste from the industry destined for animals,” concludes an outraged user who identifies himself as Camilo Agramonte. “It is totally disrespectful, collecting garbage from other countries and distributing it to the Cuban people,” he said to drive home his point.

Along the same lines, there are angry messages from other consumers who have already tried the product.”It is quite unpleasant to eat that bread,” says María Mercedes Peña, who recommends sending the product “to the tourist resorts” to see if the customers in those hotels want to eat the food with a texture that children reject and adults consume because “there is nothing else.”

Other Internet users describe the glossary of problems that the province is going through, such as the long blackouts, the lack of fuel that severely hampers the transport of people and goods, and “now this, bread is no longer bread,” summarizes one of those affected. “It’s better if they don’t sell anything because that bread is bad, it’s humiliating to the people.”

“It is totally disrespectful, collecting garbage from other countries and distributing it to the Cuban people,” he said.

According to Miguel Perez, this happens “because that flour is given away or was bought at animal feed prices. In sum, for us, pigs, anything is good,” an idea that is repeated throughout all the opinions that the text has generated, illustrated with an image of some buns that “do not resemble at all” the product causing the controversy, denounce the Internet users.

Neither the administrators of Periódico 26’s social media nor the managers of the Food Industry have confronted the barrage of criticism. In less than 20 hours, the publication has more than a hundred comments, none of them in support of or with any sign of understanding the sector’s authorities.

The problem seems to have no solution in the short term. The situation of the mills in Cuba is extremely precarious, according to the authorities. Last April they estimated that six million dollars were needed to maintain them. But only 23% of that amount has been secured in the last five years.

Yanet Lomba Estupiñán, Cuban Milling Company’s technical director, said on national television that the technology used is mostly European, without specifying the country – which could be Russia – and that its exploitation is already more than 20 years old. The machinery’s old age is compounded by a lack of funding, resulting in only 700 tons a day being processed, when its actual capacity is 1,000 tons.

Translated by LAR

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Despite having received several blood transfusions, he now needs vitamins, ferrous fumarate and folic acid, which are out of reach due to the shortage of medicines on the island

“Inmates fall ill and have no medicine. I survived, but I could have died and some did not survive because of poor care and poor hygiene,” said Sayú Silva.

Likewise, the doctors who are treating him are investigating if he also has extra-pulmonary tuberculosis, although the tests that were performed on him are not yet ready.

The young man said that in prison 1580 there is an outbreak of that disease and that some companies are in quarantine, and he related the death of his compañero Luis Barrios, who died because of unspecified respiratory problems, which led to advanced pneumonia due to lack of necessary medical attention.

Yoandri Reinier Sayú Silva was arrested after participating in the ’11J’ demonstrations in La Güinera

“The July 11 prisoner who passed away had tuberculosis. He was left for several days. None of the guards gave him medical attention. He got worse and died, but all the prisoners knew that he died of tuberculosis, because that same company had been isolated due to tuberculosis for a few months. I’m sure they told the family something else,” he insisted.

Yoandri Reinier Sayú Silva was arrested after participating in the ’11J’ demonstrations in La Güinera, one of Havana’s neighborhoods against which the regime’s repression was most vicious. The only death recognized by the authorities occurred there on July 12th, when a person was shot in the back by a police officer.

Translated by LAR

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

“Family and friends have little news of him but we know that his detention is political”

He is not, however, the only one who suffers harassment nowadays. 14ymedio’s editorial staff in Havana remains, since this Sunday, with connection problems, and early this Monday a police operation was underway on the ground floor of the building where it is located.

According to various organizations, independent journalist Boris González Arenas and opponents Fernando Palacio and Eroisis Gonzales are also held incommunicado. Dissident Manuel Cuesta Morúa and activists María Elena Mir Marrero and Marthadela Tamayo are in the same situation. Yamilka Lafita, known as Lara Crofs, denounced having a police operation on her doorstep, in the capital.

The repressive deployment by the authorities began yesterday. Activist Agustín López Canino denounced the heavy police operation around his home in the neighborhood of El Globo, in Calabazar, Havana.

The regime has made itself felt with repressive acts days before the 122nd anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Cuba back in 1902. Wilber Aguilar Bravo, father of political prisoner and protester, Walnier Luis Aguilar Rivera, denounced on Saturday the regime’s harassment against him and his family and claimed on his social media platforms: “They say that no one is repressed for thinking differently.”

Similarly, writer and journalist Jorge Fernández Era was harassed by two police officers who took him to a patrol car when he left his house to throw away the garbage, and asked for his ID card to identify him.

“Leo is charged with disobedience after being arbitrarily detained by State Security.”

“I start arguing. They are so dishonest that they do not accept that the target of such a deployment is me. They are just, as they put it with absolute cynicism, ‘doing their job’,” he explained. After the exchange of words, the officers threatened to charge him with contempt and to arrest him with the use of force.

This act of repression is their fear, Fernández Era wrote, “of me calling the president a liar, a president who makes fun of us on TV and calls us ‘vandals’. They are afraid that I will denounce what they are doing to Alina [Bárbara López Hernández], the cowardly and inhuman punishment that my son and my family pay for my actions, that I will demand that they stop the repression against those who oppose so much shit that it does not fit in a garbage container. ”

Translated by LAR

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

An investigation by 14ymedio revealed in February 2023 that the Government of the Island will pocket USD $2,042 per month for each specialist and USD $1,722 for the services of a general practitioner

The Veracruz senator harshly criticized the visit of Zoé Robledo, director of the Mexican Institute of Social Security, to Havana, where on May 13 he held a meeting with President Miguel Díaz-Canel to “strengthen health cooperation.” That commitment is interpreted as an attempt to reach the goal of 1,200 doctors agreed with Havana – 768 Cubans have arrived so far – before the end of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s six-year presidential term in four months.

Rementería expressed his disagreement with this announcement after considering that “they are taking away a salary from Mexican doctors” without, in his opinion, being transparent about the reason for the decision ordered by the nation’s president himself, after making an agreement with the Cuban regime. “There are 51,000 Mexican doctors who are unemployed, and are we going to ask Cuba for doctors?” he reproached.

14ymedio documented last April how Mexican doctors belonging to the Health Institute for Welfare were fired before the arrival of a group of colleagues from Cuba. The island’s health workers were assigned to establish a base on the mountain of Guerrero, which was a stronghold of the guerrillas in the 1970s and currently faces a growing wave of insecurity with cartels, such as the Familia Michoacana or Guerreros Unidos, fighting over drug routes with bloodshed and fire.

Rementería urged López Obrador’s Administration to curb the importing of Cuban doctors, especially because so far neither of the two governments has publicly explained their employment situation. Nor has it responded to accusations of practicing a form of “modern slavery,” according to reports published by several organizations, such as Prisoners Defenders, which point to the withholding by the authorities in Havana of up to 90% of the salaries allegedly paid to its aid workers.

The PAN member’s denunciations against the alleged financing of the Cuban regime come just a few days after the opposition candidate for the Presidency, Xóchitl Gálvez, promised to cancel the bilateral agreement should she win the elections on June 2.

Translated by LAR

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Boada’s family, which has described to the independent press the harassment suffered by the boy in prison, also warned that Jorge Luis suffers from epilepsy and requires constant medication, which is hard to sustain in prison, where the regime does not treat inmates appropriately.

In the trial, held last November 2023, two other people were indicted, Luis Andrés Domínguez Sardiñas, 47, and Yohan Carlos Terán Izquierdo, 25.

The Prosecutor’s Office alleged in its indictment that Domínguez intended to create “an environment of destabilization of the internal order and the country’s security”

The Prosecutor’s Office alleged in its indictment that Domínguez intended to create “an environment of destabilization of internal order and the country’s security,” calling for protests after the demonstrations of 11 July 2021.

Meanwhile, two “influential counterrevolutionaries” living abroad allegedly promised Boada and Domínguez to send them “rubber bands” to make slingshots, “alcohol to make incendiary devices,” spray to paint posters and perform other “actions of civil disobedience.”

The letter, to which the Spanish agency EFE had access, did not indicate whether the money and material were sent. During the trial, several neighborhoods in Havana were militarized to prevent popular protests, including Santos Suárez and La Víbora. In addition, other neighborhoods such as Luyanó suffered communication and internet blackouts.

Translated by L.A.R

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

For more than two years he has only been entitled to 12 family visits and 9 marital visits, the woman summarizes

Nor does he have medical or dental care, Ortega Tamayo denounces, and he is exposed – like all prisoners on the island, she emphasizes – to “malnutrition, parasitism, leptospirosis and tuberculosis,” due to coming in contact with “rats, bedbugs, ticks, cockroaches, etc.”

For more than two years she has only been entitled to 12 family visits and 9 marital visits, summarizes the woman, who also complains about Ferrer’s inability to make phone calls. The regime is determined to “slowly bury him alive and make his life miserable,” she says. The family suffers constant frustration and anguish, she explains, and can only wonder “how he is, where he is” or whether he has started a new hunger strike or has been beaten.

“We call on international solidarity to keep supporting my husband and complaining about the abuses suffered by him in prison,” her message concludes, holding Miguel Díaz-Canel and Raúl Castro accountable for Ferrer’s physical and mental integrity. “We fear very much for my husband’s life, so we will continue to demand proof of life and his immediate and unconditional release.”

On April 1, the authorities agreed to allow Ortega Tamayo to visit Ferrer for “two measly minutes.” Until March, the political prisoner had not been able to communicate with his family for a year. “At seven in the morning I was standing in front of the prison, and at 10, in the waiting room, First Lieutenant Iranis Pozo, as he identified himself, showed up and took me to the office where we used to do family visits,” Ortega said. She also pointed out that in the office, guarded by “a female guard” so that her position could not be heard from outside, the agent tried to convince her to abandon her “stand.”

“Realizing that I would stand my ground and that the only way to get me out was in a police car or after allowing me to see my husband, the same officer told me that they would give me two minutes, after talking to the Headquarters and State Security,” she then explained.

Among the few words they exchanged, Ferrer asked her to denounce his situation and that of other prisoners such as Fernando González Vaillant and Roilán Zárraga Ferrer, who have already served their respective sentences – in González’s and Zárraga’s case “months ago”– but remain in prison. “The dictatorship doesn’t want them out on the streets,” Ortega said.

José Daniel Ferrer has been in prison since 2021 before he could join the 11 July 2021 (’11J’) mass protests, although the history of repression against him began much earlier. The opposition leader was part of the group of prisoners of the Black Spring, he was sentenced to death, the conviction was commuted to 25 years in prison and he was released after eight years thanks to the Vatican’s efforts and Spain’s mediation.

Translated by L.A.R

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.