Category: Translator: LAR

careful, either you are with my way of thinking or you are not going to do well here.” So we started that conversation. The Cuban personality is a great contrast to the “Patria o muerte” slogan, I told him. And also, what a pity, because what a country should advocate is for life, that you have a homeland and have a dignified life.

We also pointed out the difference between the O [or] and the Y [and]. Yotuel says the O is egocentric, either you or me, and that Y is inclusive: you and me, your thought and mine, your sex and mine, your race and mine. Suddenly we said “patria y vida,” we went to the piano we have in the living room and started to create this song. We have always been very concerned, as artists, about adding, the exercise of bringing together, because I believe that the strategy that has worked best for the regime has been to divide and conquer, a very old war strategy.

This was the idea: a united vision of art that broke that dynamic of “divide and conquer”

Inviting Maykel Osorbo, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and El Funky, we also did this exercise, as well as Descemer Bueno and Gente de Zona, who have a very loud voice in the world. Although they are from very different genres, we felt it was important to have a single voice, that of the Cubans. And this was the idea: a united vision of art that broke that dynamic of “divide and conquer”.

14ymedio: A friend who participated in the 11 July 2021 [Island-wide protests] asks me to ask him if they imagined that this song would “ pump up the blood in our veins in such a way that we all took to the streets and ate our fear”. Did they ever think this would become an anthem?

Beatriz Luengo: We never imagined this would happen, because Yotuel had so many protest songs and nothing happened…. He was always releasing songs for Cuba, along with the songs he was releasing with his team, and his team didn’t even put them on the agenda. But Yotuel said: I’m going to keep making songs for Cuba; the day I don’t make a song for Cuba, I won’t be myself. The documentary tells of this twofold difficulty: the issue of Cuba and what the regime is and the difficulty within the industry. It is very important to know this: you get to a platform and say “I have this song with these artists” and they tell you – Yotuel’s manager says it in the documentary and I was very grateful that he was sincere – well, you are going to make a collaboration with some guys who do not have a profile on Spotify, a song about Cuba, a minor tune, a protest rap song, there is no playlist, no streaming platform is going to support us.

If we had been told that Patria y Vida was going to be a viral phenomenon on TikTok, we would have laughed. When it started to go viral on TikTok, we couldn’t believe it. The same platforms that one day rejected us, began to pay attention to us. People can see how we have also confronted an industry that has stopped looking at this kind of subject matter since the numerical algorithm came into existence. Because in the last century, there was more room for songs with a social topic. Sam Cooke with Martin Luther King, Billy Holliday with Strange Fruit, or Scorpions with the fall of the Berlin Wall, Bob Marley, John Lennon…

In the documentary, there is an image that makes people cry. On the day of the release of the song, only the very brave YouTubers wanted to cover the release of the song, and you see the guys connected to a live stream, like any kid anywhere in the world, and suddenly the electricity is cut in the whole island and the internet is cut. On the screen you see the whole of Havana going dark. The people in the cinema at that moment say: “ Holy shit.” It’s something you can’t expect. When the power comes back on, you see Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara in the neighborhood of San Isidro, on a corner with people singing the song loudly.

Not a day goes by that I don’t cry about 11 July in the documentary, because the whole room cries, because everyone sees the freedom, they feel part of it

That image reminds me of Yotuel crying at three in the morning. At that time I was in the last days of my pregnancy, I wake up feeling sick and I find Yotuel crying like a child on the couch, “Look, mami, look!” We were petrified, we didn’t even know what to say. Already on 11 July, I don’t want to tell you, it’s something that still freezes my blood with shock. Imagine how many times I have seen the documentary, because there is not a day that I don’t cry about 11 July, because the whole room cries, because everyone sees the freedom, they feel part of it. That is the magic of the documentary. I didn’t want to tell a point of view. I want people to ride on that emotion. You are not seeing an external feeling and analyzing it from the outside; you are inside, with the Cubans, in the demonstration, you are with that lady in Old Havana who pulls down her mask and says “patria y vida.”

14ymedio: Before 11 July, what was the realization of what that song meant, they saw some power in it, and they immediately started a pathetic war of songs. How did you live those months before 11 July?

Beatriz Luengo: Well, the first thing that was very crazy was Díaz-Canel posting “patria y vida.”

14ymedio: They said it was a phrase pronounced by Fidel Castro.

Beatriz Luengo: There were two or three tweets by Díaz-Canel, with the hashtag #PatriayVida. As if trying to make the song their own, it was very surreal. Then, of course, they realized that there was no way. Then came the 62,000 millennials, then a song of some policemen rapping, and then they included some children. This was also sad. When I saw those children, like attacking, I felt very sorry for them, because in the end children are the great victims of all this suffering.

In a key part of this documentary entitled “The true story, not the one incorrectly told,” Jade, Maykel’s daughter, appears. And starting with Jade, people get emotional and get goosebumps, especially when she sings: “The chicks say ’peep peep peep peep’ when they are hungry when they are cold.” She sang it as just another little girl who sings that song, as we have all sung it, but it makes people cry because when you come from where you come from, from the images you see, and that little girl sings that, the song takes on a different meaning and brings tears to your eyes.

A beautiful, brave girl, whose father is imprisoned, a man who has done nothing criminal, that the International Courts have already said the trial of Luis Manuel and Maykel makes no sense, they were sentenced without a defense lawyer, without witnesses, they are in maximum security prisons. This week we visited Father Angel, trying through the Church to send food and toiletries for Maykel and Luis Manuel, and the Church cannot help us either.

14ymedio: Why can’t it help them?

Beatriz Luengo: They have told us that they cannot help, that it is a sensitive issue. That is what we have been told.

14ymedio: Another who also immediately used Patria y Vida as a slogan was José Daniel Ferrer, also in jail and without a trial.

Beatriz Luengo: It is terrible what happened to José Daniel, he is also in the documentary. He is a brave man and he alone deserves a documentary.

14ymedio: Why do you think that after so many years, with so much information available, the reality of Cuba is still distorted, especially in Spain?

Beatriz Luengo: Look, I am glad you asked me this question. The reason why we decided to premiere here, which is the most difficult country, is because it was necessary so that the media would have the opportunity to see what is happening on the island, to publicize it. What is going to change the context of the island is the people making noise. On Monday the media already covered us, in about eight newspapers, because the news was the surprise of the Spanish film Patria y Vida because nobody believed in us.

Every person who decides to go to the cinema is a contribution to something that has to make noise because that is our purpose. That is, to cover not just us, but also what is happening in Cuba from different points of view, because in the end it is always the same, it comes down to repression. This is the first thing. Indeed, here people are looking the other way because Cuba was romanticized at a certain moment and people live in that romanticization.

The other day a person said to Yotuel, and I am sure that the person was not saying it to offend him: “I went to Cuba and it was amazing, it’s like traveling to the past,” and Yotuel said: “Cubans don’t want to live in the past, Cubans want to live in the present.” That bothers Yotuel a lot, as it bothers him to see actors who go and take a picture riding in an almendrón (vintage American car) with a mojito, or singers, and say how beautiful Cuba is, how beautiful the people are, getting into a car which ordinary Cubans have no access to and drinking a mojito that is worth a doctor’s salary.

14ymedio: What was your first contact with Cuba?

Beatriz Luengo: As soon as I arrived with Yotuel in Havana, at the airport. I was carrying several suitcases because I was bringing gifts for Yotuel’s family. It was the first time I was going to see them, I was going to meet them, I had about three suitcases and two of them were little things for the people. And Yotuel was carrying a suitcase. Just passing through the police checkpoint, how they treated me, how they let my suitcases through with absolutely no problem, “Welcome to Cuba,” and how they mistreated Yotuel… As soon as we got in, they put him in the police area, they held him for an hour, they opened his suitcase.

What do the people of Cuba not see and what does the documentary show? That in one day the whole world talked about them and that if they had stayed in the streets, today we would be talking about freedom

14ymedio: Knowing who he was, that is, recognizing him?

Beatriz Luengo: Yes, Yotuel, as the film also shows, started rapping in the 90’s. He went to Paris, founded Orishas and Orishas was very successful.  Then the government wanted Orishas to do concerts and they refused to sing for the dictatorship, so they were banned in Cuba. Yotuel also here, in the media, always said “Freedom for Cuba,” “Cuba needs a democracy,” so he was not welcome. Yotuel, who is an only child, had his mother, who was not allowed to leave Cuba. One of the times we managed to get my mother-in-law to come, but not my father-in-law. Whenever I have gone to Cuba it has been to see his family, which we could not bring with us.

We would arrive and all the time the feeling was “You are not welcome here.” They put people to watch us, they would come everywhere with us and it was very uncomfortable to feel that we had people watching us.

14ymedio: Luis Manuel in jail, Maykel in jail, José Daniel in jail. Is there any hope? How do you see the future of Cuba? What has to happen? It seemed that 11 July was it, and suddenly all that vanished with repression and fear.

Beatriz Luengo: I believe that there is a reality that was not told to the 11 July demonstrators. If you go out into the street, they cut off the Internet and all you see is repression against those who demonstrated, you don’t go out again. Now, what did the Cuban people not see and what does the documentary show? That in one day the whole world talked about them and that if they had stayed in the streets, today we would be talking about the freedom of Cuba. Because it is an ideological war. There has been a lot of support for the idea that Cubans are fine, that they are happy, and 11 July broke that idea. We are only artists, musicians, a small contribution, but I do believe that in this ideological war, it is very important that Cubans here make noise to break this attitude in Spain of looking the other way when it comes to Cuba.

When people take to the streets, then the world really starts to watch. I feel that also the people on the island when they see the documentary, will see a side that they did not see before, the international repercussion that their bravery generated. I hope that this will help them to go out to the streets. Because what is true is that everything has to be activated from within. It is the Cubans who have to fight for their own freedom, like any other country; it is they who have to light the fuse.

14ymedio: Would you return to Cuba if freedom were achieved?

Beatriz Luengo: Of course, we would take the first flight. Besides, look, Celia Cruz’s manager, Omer Pardillo, told us that she used to say all the time that she was going to return to a free Cuba and that when she arrived in Havana a double-decker bus would be waiting for her, one of those buses with no roof on top, to go singing her songs from the airport to Havana, that she did not want to waste a second in a car, that she wanted to go singing. I hope we can fulfill Celia’s dream. Then Yotuel pours cold water on my idea and tells me: “Mami, that bus does not exist in Cuba.”

Translated by LAR

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to explain to these people, because every day they take it [the electricity] away”.

Let’s go, gentlemen, let someone come here, let them explain to the people who are here in the street.

Although someone can be heard behind the camera expressing suspicion about “that guy who comes around with a stick in his hand,” no one is seen attacking the group. “As soon as the power was back on, everyone began to disperse.”

The province of Holguin is one of those that suffers most severely from power outages. Its inhabitants are getting used to having up to 15-hour blackouts, that is, only nine hours a day with electricity. “And they take it away at uncomfortable hours, for example from 12 to 3 in the morning, when you go to bed,” laments a Holguin mother. “Then you wake up, or at least I don’t sleep, because I have to get up to remove the battery chargers from the tricycle and other devices, and three hours later, when the electricity comes back on, you have to get up again to plug everything in. It’s a total nuisance.

Due to this energy crisis, food shortages are compounded by the extreme difficulty of cooking food. On Monday, says the same neighbor, they began to sell liquefied gas at the distribution points, “and people are catching their breath a little bit”, this Wednesday the propane cylinder virtual store was expected to be available.

On top of that, says her husband, given that Holguín is a densely populated territory, the “blocks” in which the Electrical Union (UNE) divides the zones to ration energy “are huge”: “If they remove block 1 and block 2 and leave block 3 and 4, half of the province is without power”.
Those who are most affected, he says, are the small municipalities: “Even though they are close to the city, they seem to be far away”.

This Tuesday, the 1,378 megawatts (MW)shortage that UNE (National Electricity Company) predicted for the peak times on the island, which already represented a record since September, ended up being 1,641 MW. It was precisely at the time of highest demand that the residents of Báguanos gathered.

The “planned maintenance” of the Cienfuegos power plant, together with several units of other thermoelectric plants that have broken down, is making the situation more difficult than ever. The scenario does not improve this Wednesday when a maximum deficit of 1,375 MW and a real impact of 1,445 MW is foreseen.

Translated by LAR

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According to sentence 137 of 2021, to which this newspaper had access, the head of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) unit of Caibarién, Ariel López Águila and Yandier Moreno Urbay, a Political Officer of the Ministry of the Interior in the territory, assured the Court that José Rodríguez Herrada, together with activists Carlos Michael Morales and Javier Delgado Torna led a large group of people who “shouted slogans against the Government” and incited other neighbors to join the protest.

Although the three defendants acknowledged their participation in the demonstration, they did not admit to having been the main protagonists. They only “joined a group of young people who had already initiated such acts” but their statements were dismissed.

Last March, the Patmos Institute denounced that Rodriguez Herrada had been denied the right to religious assistance. “This past March 18, a religious service was being held there, which they allow every month, and the chief officer of the correctional officers, Israel Lebrán, rejected José Rodríguez Herrada’s right to participate.”

In recent months, several of those convicted for the 11J protests have been released from prison after serving their sentences. Among them is activist Angélica Garrido, who was released on July 10, one day before the third anniversary of the anti-government protests for which she was imprisoned and after having served her sentence in its entirety. In prison remains her sister, writer María Cristina Garrido, who still has to serve four of the seven years of her sentence.

You have to walk around with a bag of money to buy food, the streets are destroyed, and the houses are falling to pieces

Carlos Michel Morales Rodríguez, an activist and independent journalist, was released from prison last March after spending two years and ten months behind bars.

Also released from prison in January of this year was political prisoner Yusmely Moreno González, sentenced to three years in prison for also participating in the 11J demonstrations, which in her case took place in the town of Surgidero de Batabanó, in the province of Mayabeque.

“Freedom on completion,” so read the brief document Moreno González received upon her discharge from the Villa Delicia work camp in Havana, where she had been transferred after spending most of her sentence in the Western Women’s Prison, also known as El Guatao.

During the third anniversary of 11J, the Madrid-based NGO Prisoners Defenders used the occasion to detail that in the last three years, they have accounted for a total of 1,728 political prisoners. Of these, “150 were listed as political prisoners at the beginning of July 2021 and 1,578 have been new additions to the list during these three years, while there are 611 among the total monitored by our organization who have since served their sentences in their entirety.”

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.

To be able to subdue him, Barreras Abad decided to move to the back of the vehicle and it was at that moment when the activist allegedly “bit him on his right thumb” and “tore off the button of the right epaulette of the uniform he was wearing, resulting in damage to the epaulette”.

In their testimony, the policemen also state that when they were walking towards the police car, Curuneaux began to shout phrases such as “Down with Fidel” and “Down with Raul”. In addition, the document literally reads, he said: “screw them all and all the police officers who were all bitches, referring directly to the top leaders”.

In addition to the time in prison, he must “compensate his victim,” Officer Urquiza for 54 pesos for the damages caused, the Municipal People’s Criminal Court of Centro Havana ruled.

Curuneaux’s wife, Yurisán Valdés Pedraza, maintains that this is an injustice. “I don’t understand why Adrián is being sentenced to seven years. It is unfair what they are doing to him and I demand his freedom,” she said in a video.

For the organization Cubalex, the conviction of Curuneaux Stivens, vice-president of the “Movimiento Opositores por una Nueva República”, shows that there is a “repressive escalation” against him “ aimed at keeping him in prison as long as possible because of his political activism and his work in defense of human rights”. Moreover, it reflects a repressive pattern of the Cuban State, “which consists of falsely charging or provoking ordinary crimes against activists to cover up politically motivated repression”.

This is not the first time the regime has sentenced the activist who has been in court several times

This is not the first time that the regime has sentenced the activist, originally from Santiago de Cuba, who has a lengthy record before the courts for similar offenses. The list goes back to 1990, when he was fined 200 pesos for disobedience and, in a different criminal case, 300 pesos for theft. Later, in 1996, he was sentenced to three years in prison for assault in the People’s Provincial Court of Santiago de Cuba.

In 2021, he was again charged with assault, in March of that year, for allegedly assaulting a policeman. The regime punished him with one year of limited freedom. A few months later, in May, he was arrested again when he tried to visit Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara in the Calixto García hospital in Havana.

He spent a year and a half detained in Valle Grande prison without a conviction, and in November 2022 he was released pending trial. The trial took place just in July. However, another incident kept him in prison, serving a four-year sentence since April, along with his son, identified as Luis Enrique Fajardo Nápoles, for injuries against a third person.

Besides the four years he is serving in the 1580 penitentiary center in Havana for the crime of injury in the incident with his son, he is serving this last sentence of seven years which was ratified this Sunday. This means he will spend a total of 11 years in prison.

Translated by LAR

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Machado Conde, sentenced to 9 years for the 11J, “has been subjected to multiple cases of abuse in prison,” says the NGO, and has attempted suicide several times.

Other prisoners of conscience at risk of suicide listed in the statement are the men Abel Lázaro Machado Conde, Ismael Rodríguez González, Yasmany González Valdés, Fray Pascual Claro Valladares, Daiver Leyva Vélez, Omar Ortega, and the women Mayelín Rodríguez Prado, Yanet Pérez Quevedo and Lizandra Góngora.

Machado Conde, sentenced to 9 years for 11J, “has been subjected to multiple instances of abuse in prison,” says the NGO, and has attempted suicide several times. In May 2023, after one of these attempts, the authorities of Quivicán prison, in Mayabeque province, where he is serving his sentence, “handcuffed him all night by his hands and feet in a corridor”, and last March, he sewed his mouth shut after a beating and several days in a punishment cell.

For Ismael Rodriguez Gonzalez, the CDPC has registered three “suicidal ideation events”. Sentenced to 7 years for the July 11 demonstrations, he also does not have access to his medication in prison, despite having a diagnosis of intellectual disability, suicidal risk and personality disorder.

Meanwhile, last February, Yasmany González Valdés, sentenced to four years for painting anti-government posters on walls in Havana, told his wife that he had thought of taking his own life, after months of abuse in Cuban prisons and the judicial limbo he was going through at the time.

Another person sentenced for the Nuevitas protests, Daiver Leyva Vélez, sentenced to 10 years for sedition, has tried to hang himself on two occasions.

They also documented that Mayelín Rodríguez Prado and Yanet Pérez Quevedo, political prisoners at the Kilo 5 prison in Camagüey province, attempted to take their own lives “in protest against mistreatment” by prison authorities.

Similarly, Fray Pascual Claro Valladares attempted suicide after learning, last April, of his 10-year sentence for peacefully demonstrating in Nuevitas, Camagüey, in August 2022. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), in fact, granted him precautionary measures in July and denounced that “his suicide attempt was handled with negligence, without receiving the necessary psychiatric care and being punished with isolation”.

Another person sentenced for the Nuevitas protests, Daiver Leyva Vélez, sentenced to 10 years for the crime of sedition, has tried to hang himself on two occasions. Both Omar Ortega, imprisoned in Morón, Ciego de Ávila, and Lizandra Góngora, in Los Colonos, Isla de la Juventud, have told their families of their intention to attempt to kill themselves.

On the other hand, Yosandry Mulet Almarales is the second 11J prisoner to die, according to the organization. Last November, Luis Barrios Díaz, also 37 years old, died after “respiratory complications aggravated by the decision of the authorities not to keep him in a Havana hospital,” according to the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights. The State granted Barrios Díaz an out-of-prison leave of absence only when it considered his death imminent, the Initiative denounces.

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.

None of the Mexican authorities made a statement on the matter or officially announced their meeting with the Cuban envoy.

The arrival of the specialists coincided with the Cuban Minister of Public Health, José Angel Portal Miranda’s visit to Mexico. The official met with his Mexican counterpart, Jorge Alcocer, and although a statement issued by the Cuban ministry reported the meeting, aimed at “strengthening collaboration in health matters”, the Mexican media have not reported the trip.

Alcocer is the highest-ranking official to receive Portal Miranda, albeit in a discreet way, a month before President López Obrador hands over power to Claudia Sheinbaum. He was also received at the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) by Alejandro Calderón Alipi, general director of Health Services of IMSS-Bienestar, which is the institution taking in all the Cuban doctors sent to Mexico from 2022.

None of the Mexican authorities made any statement on the matter or officially announced their meeting with the island’s envoy. On the other hand, the Ministry of Public Health assures in its statement that in the meeting with Alcocer, they evaluated the progress of the collaboration in health matters, “which in the last period of work has been strengthened, consolidated and increased, reaching not only the health care area but also the teaching and regulatory field”.

Portal Miranda’s stay has gone by without raising much attention in the Mexican media.

In the same statement, they brag about the actions they have carried out “jointly”, without mentioning any of them, and assure that “the results that have been achieved” are proof of the will to continue working to “promote cooperation in health in different areas”, in spite of “obstacles and limitations”, which they did not provide in detail either.

Cuba’s ambassador to Mexico, Marcos Rodriguez, also alluded in a tweet to talks on the “cooperation of medical specialists” and the “production of medications and shared interests”.

In other activities, Portal Miranda participated in the XI Pan American Conference for the Harmonization of Pharmaceutical Regulation (CPARF), where he ratified Cuba’s “willingness” to “put at the service of the Pan American Health Organization and all the countries of the region, its technical capabilities and experience in the production of medications, biotechnological products and vaccines”.

In his speech, from the central building of the Mexican Foreign Ministry, which served as the venue for the meeting, Portal Miranda said that on the island “in the face of external limitations”, they have learned that the most secure resources they can have are those they are capable of producing on their own.

Although the Cuban Constitution recognizes respect for the prisoner’s dignity, the Penal Code endorses the sanctions for forced labor

Although the Cuban Constitution recognizes respect for the inmate’s dignity, Article 30.3 of the Penal Code endorses the sanctions for forced labor, emphasizes their obligatory nature and leaves it up to the State to “consider the form of compliance through study or betterment”. Through testimonies collected in the report, PD found that attenuated treatment is more than unusual and that compulsory labor is the norm not only for political prisoners but also for ordinary ones.

In a country where production and workforce are scarcities, the regime has found in prisoners the ideal labor force. Inmates are forced to do work no one else is willing to do. PD’s example is the production of marabú charcoal – which brings large profits to the government by being sold abroad – and cutting sugar cane in its harvest season.

“Cuban charcoal is sold in Spain, Portugal and (the rest of) the European Union,” says PD. It is enough to consult the testimony of the relatives of some political prisoners, such as that of Walnier Luis Aguilar’s father, who has denounced how they cut “marabú trunks with their own hands”, without the use of a “machete or axe saw”—the result: “hands full of blisters”, among other injuries.

There are plenty of videos to make the situation clear, PD stresses. “Living without drinking water, in subhuman conditions, with insufficient and outdated work material (the cost of which is deducted from their meager ‘salary’, which many never receive) and sleeping in the open, the workers are forced to work in inhospitable places under the vilest physical, psychological and judicial threats,” they denounce.

The alarming thing, says the organization, is that the product resulting from this slave labor is consumed all over the world with impunity

The alarming thing, says the organization, is that the product resulting from this slave labor is consumed all over the world with impunity. 24% of the Cuban marabou charcoal ends up in the markets of Spain, 21.5% in Portugal, 12.1% in Italy and 11.6% in Turkey, countries with governments with very different ideological leanings which, nonetheless, buy charcoal from Cuba.

PD unequivocally qualifies them as “involuntary accomplices” of the regime since they purchase a product manufactured at the expense of the “suffering and pain” of Cuban prisoners. However, they admit that “Cuba has been able to conceal for years, although not from Cubans, the slave-like origin of its marabou charcoal production”.

The organization hopes that Obokata’s denunciation at the UN will mark a turning point in the fight against these practices on the island. It is calling on the European Union to inform itself about the charcoal it buys and to demand transparency about its production process. The 27 countries are obliged by law not to do business with countries that promote slave labor, they emphasize.

As for sugarcane, PD describes the scenario as a return to the 19th century, when slavery was the engine of the wealthy “sugarocracy”. The difference, in this case, is that not even with its “endless list of human rights violations” does the regime achieve economic prosperity.

As for the rest, there is nothing more similar to a colonial slave than a political prisoner of Castroism. “In most cases, they do not have working gloves, boots or files, which results in the blades not being sharp enough to do the job efficiently”. Everything points to a sort of “involution to centuries ago” that shows the regression, even on a historical level, of the defense of human rights on the island.

There was a skinny, elderly woman in a wheelchair, with asthma, who could no longer walk, who had to leave for work at six o’clock in the morning

The testimonies provided by PD are enough to assess the situation. “There was a skinny elderly lady, in a wheelchair, with asthma, who could no longer even walk, who had to leave for work at six in the morning, like everyone else. No matter their age, health or anything else. There are no conditions for anyone,” says former political prisoner Yanay Solaya. “We work in the fields, whatever they sent us to do, doing the mowing. We did not get paid for it.”

Refusing to work is costly. This is the case, explains PD, of Taimir Garcia, a prisoner of conscience, who was threatened with the withdrawal of her prison leave and the two-month sentence reduction for each year of her sentence, and with being locked up again in a regime of maximum punishment.

Other aspects of the problem, such as the exploitation of children – some prisoners are minors and are subjected to seven-hour working days – or the lack of contracts, should also be a cause for concern, according to PD. The fact that their report has reached the UN Human Rights Council, they believe, justifies paying the utmost attention to the problem and holding Havana accountable.

Translated by LAR

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The mother breathes a sigh of relief since a change to a more severe regime would mean that her daughter must serve the entire sentence.

Although she considers the measure unjust, her mother breathes a sigh of relief, since a change to a more severe regime would mean that her daughter must serve the entire sentence without the right to an early release. “You don’t win against the dictatorship, but the revocation meant she had to serve the three years,” she said.

Oramas was sentenced to six years in prison for participating in the August 15, 2021 protests in front of the funeral home in the city of Santa Clara, where she lives, to demand better health care amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Her husband, Geobel Manso, was also arrested on that day and is currently incarcerated. The court charged Oramas with the crimes of attack and resistance.

Worse off is the political prisoner Loreto Hernández García – arrested after the protests of 11 July 2021 (11J) in Placetas (Villa Clara) – who is serving his sentence in the men’s prison of Guamajal. According to what his daughter Rosabel Sánchez told Martí Noticias after visiting her father and his wife Donaida Pérez Paseiro – also a prisoner of conscience – Hernández is in a bad physical condition.

“During this visit, we were able to talk, we were able to observe, we were able to visualize for ourselves the situation that my father’s health presents. My father, every time we go to see him, he loses more weight,” Sanchez explained. “He often gets a pain on his left side, a pain that radiates to his left lung. He is getting shortness of breath, his diabetes is unbalanced (…) He explains to us that on several occasions he becomes weak and tired. As for his health, we saw that he has not improved at all, he is getting worse and worse, he is in very bad shape,” she denounced.

According to Sánchez, prison authorities use her father’s poor health condition to coerce him.

According to Sanchez, prison authorities use her father’s poor health condition to coerce him and promise him a transfer to a less severe regime where he can be cared for and serve a shorter sentence. “State Security has approached him and has proposed he take advantage of the benefits to give him the minimum sentence and move him to the camp to start granting him leaves and things like that, and both he and his wife refuse these benefits,” said Sanchez, who assures that the couple “is standing firm.”

Hernández and his wife, at the time of the protests, presided over the Asociación Yorubas Libres de Cuba, in Placetas, and were sentenced to seven and eight years in prison respectively. Organizations and institutions such as Amnesty International, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, the Cuban Prison Documentation Center and Christian Solidarity International, as well as the U.S. State Department, have included them in their reports and records as political prisoners and have demanded the Cuban regime to release them.

Last June, prisoner of conscience Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca arrived in the United States after the authorities forced his departure. He was emaciated and ill as a result of the ill-treatment he suffered at the hands of his jailers. “I have been tortured a lot,” stressed the journalist, who served three years in Havana’s Combinado del Este, the country’s largest prison.

Translated by LAR

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“When we carry out exemplary trials, we enhance communication so that the message we want to convey reaches specific recipients”

Regarding another case linked to illegal slaughter, Sierra Maestra limited itself to saying that the accused had incurred “very repeatedly” in meat trafficking. “It is about a defendant who was caught by the police authorities on the public road in a public transport at the time he was transporting a certain amount of beef,” they explain. There was no information on the other two prosecutions

“When we carry out exemplary trials, we enhance communication so that the message we want to convey reaches certain recipients,” said Geovanis Mestre, one of the judges of the provincial court of Santiago, interviewed by Sierra Maestra. It is essential, he argued, that criminals know that the authorities are targeting illegal cattle slaughtering and that the punishments will be severe.

These trials were not chosen “at random,” said Mestre, but due to the “recurrence” of cattle theft and slaughter in Santiago, a moment that has been “drawing the attention” of the Police, the court decided to make it a “priority behavior in the criminal legal confrontation.”

Mestre invoked Article 29, paragraph 1, of the Criminal Code, which allows for trials guaranteeing “public participation,” as an exercise of “control” over jurisdictions where the crime is repeated. He stated that the ruling is issued “in the name of the Cuban people” so that the authorities can have the population attend the proceedings. It is not a matter of informing – he stressed – but of giving the trial a “preventive” character.

The judge was interested in emphasizing that Justice did not exaggerate the severity of the sentences and that his colleagues acted following the law. The defendants, he said, had “every opportunity to present the evidence they wanted and to make statements on several occasions.” These were ordinary proceedings, whose sentence has not yet been published.

The judge was interested in emphasizing that Justice did not exaggerate the severity of the sentences and that his colleagues acted following the law

From the massive criminal show trials of 1959, at the time of the Revolution – not infrequently resulting in capital punishment – to the famous case of Arnaldo Ochoa in 1989, the practice of the exemplary trial has not lost its validity in Cuba. As Mestre admits, the target of this kind of proceeding is clear: the offender and the entire population as well. That is why many international organizations and Cuban activists, such as Dagoberto Valdés, have harshly criticized the method.

“This is not exemplary because it is not educational, because instead of educating so that the courts exercise their function, they miseducate by using television and networks to take justice into their own hands,” explains Valdés, the founder of the Centro Convivencia, who – contrary to Mestre’s argument – claims that it is not legal, since it goes against human dignity, which, in theory, is guaranteed by the Constitution. “Can there be a decree, a discrete disposition of some entity that can publicly and repeatedly contradict the Law of Laws?”

Although the cattle situation has recently fallen into this category, it is in the opposition to the Government – and the crimes, such as contempt or attempt, attributed to it – where the exemplary trial has enjoyed stellar moments on Cuban Television. Programs such as Hacemos Cuba (We Make Cuba), led by the regime’s spokesman Humberto López, are presented as the media channel of Justice.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the Government also held more than a few exemplary trials. According to the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights, in June 2020 the police carried out “at least 67 arbitrary arrests,” mainly in the provinces of Havana, Santiago de Cuba and Villa Clara, and 74 “repressive actions of other types,” in particular, harassment through police subpoenas.

These arrests were followed by a “wave of exemplary trials” to “intimidate the population affected by the country’s poor economic situation.” “Several of these trials have been broadcast by the official media so that citizens can see how ruthless the system can be,” the Spain-based organization denounced at the time.

Translated by LAR

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“All persons maintaining their residency in the country since 2013, although they also live abroad, are favored by this law and do not lose any property rights”

This meeting, aimed at explaining the regulations expected to be implemented in 2025 after their approval next July – during the National Assembly of People’s Power session- also addressed an issue that has caused heated reactions in recent days: the deprivation of Cuban nationality. The law grants the President of the Republic and the Minister of the Interior the authority in matters of citizenship, making them competent to resolve the administrative cases regarding its acquisition, loss, deprivation, renunciation and recovery.

That attribution had generated among public opinion the perception that both are empowered to arbitrarily withdraw citizenship status, something that, on paper, is not the case. Both are ultimately responsible for a case initiated by the Prosecutor’s Office which, at least in theory, must comply with the law.

However, the authorities retain power in extremis where arbitrariness is more likely to occur since it is expected that “the requirements and formalities in the processing of the case” can be skipped if it is necessary to withdraw citizenship from those who try to cause “serious damage to the country concerning national security, jeopardize the stability of the State, international relations or the general health of the population.”

It is “extraordinarily exceptional,” the officer stressed, “and we have only applied it exceptionally to the invaders of Girón,” he said to downplay the importance. In general terms, for the deprivation of citizenship, the causes are “to enlist in any type of armed organization aimed at undermining the territorial integrity of the Cuban State, its citizens and other persons residing in the country, or from abroad to carry out acts contrary to the high political, economic and social interests of the Republic of Cuba.”

“The Law specifies that it is to enlist in any type of armed organization with the aim of undermining the territorial integrity of the Cuban State”

That cause does not apply to Cubans fighting in Russia against Ukraine, the official said when asked by a correspondent of France Presse. “The Law specifies that it is to enlist in any type of armed organization aimed at undermining the territorial integrity of the Cuban State,” he explained, making it clear that, even in the case of those who are considered mercenaries according to Cuban legislation, fighting on the Russian side does not affect national interests.

The Associated Press also questioned the officer about the possible arbitrariness that can be committed by taking advantage of legal loopholes and other subterfuges. “The regulations will be consistent with what the Law establishes. There is no cunning, “he said.

The Citizenship Law leaves the thorny issue of statelessness in the air since the draft is clear when it comes to specifying that Cuban nationality cannot be renounced if it is not accredited to have another one (article 46) and Méndez elaborated on this. “We do not accept cases of stateless persons. No one can renounce Cuban citizenship if they don’t have another one, “he said.

However, this specification does not appear when dealing with cases of loss or deprivation of Cuban citizenship. The first one occurs in the event of fraudulent acquisition or non-ratification under Article 25 (you must go to a consulate within three years of leaving the country or a similar period from the last ratification to express the will to maintain it). In no case is it mentioned that having another citizenship is required to avoid its loss.

As for deprivation, the question seems even clearer. Article 55.2 indicates that the case to remove citizenship only ends when the causes are verified “in an undoubted way, the person in question has another citizenship or does not effectively reside in Cuba, and the ordinance is issued.” This makes it clear that the mere fact of being in a foreign country, with or without residency abroad is enough, without it being required to have another nationality.

This makes it clear that the mere fact of being in a foreign country, with or without residency abroad is enough, without it being required to have another nationality

All this contravenes the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, to which 64 countries adhere – neither Cuba nor the United States do -in order to prohibit the stripping of nationality, due to the lack of protection not having a nationality implies. In 2020, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) issued new guidelines to renew this and other international agreements of its kind and reminded countries that there must be “very limited exceptions to this rule, even when nationality has been acquired through misrepresentation or fraud”.

Another issue that worries part of the population, as seen in the press conference, is the possibility of entering the country with a foreign passport while being Cuban. “To enter and leave the country, a Cuban passport is required, that is not negotiable. It is a constitutional and sovereign decision, “said Méndez, who added that in Cuba “all acts carried out with another citizenship to have effect in our country are null and void. ”

Therefore, those who acquired another citizenship – the United States and Spain being the most frequent among those who have dual nationality – must keep their passport in order and enter with it unless they have processed the renunciation of Cuban citizenship.

The changes in the Migration law will affect, the authorities estimate, 1.3 million Cubans, although the set of regulations (which includes five laws, those cited and two more that are not yet known) impact all of society, including foreigners. “Migration rules are incorporated to respond to the challenges of determining the residency of Cubans in Cuba and overseas, and in turn the exercise of rights related to the availability of the national territory’s heritage,” Méndez said.

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.