The third case of monkey pox is a 27-year-old woman from Cienfuegos province. (General Hospital Calixto García/Facebook)
EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 25 September 2022 — The Ministry of Public Health confirmed this Saturday the third case of monkey pox in Cuba in a 27-year-old woman who is hospitalized, isolated and under medical care.
The patient, a Cuban resident in the central province of Cienfuegos, has no connection with the other two cases confirmed in August, the institution reported. They were a 60-year-old Cuban resident in the United States and a 50-year-old Italian tourist, who died days after testing positive for the disease, according to the Cuban government.
Regarding this third case, health authorities indicated that it was through contact with a Cuban citizen residing in the United States who had suspicious symptoms of the disease.
He “arrived in Cuba on September 3 of this year and returned on the 13th of the same month,” they added. The diagnosed young woman started with symptoms on September 15, went to the doctor a week later, and the next day the infection was confirmed. continue reading
“The established focus control actions and epidemiological surveillance are being carried out,” said the Ministry of Health. “In relation to the contacts of the previously reported cases, they are already discharged, and there is no transmission of the disease in the focus checks,” the source added.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared this disease — also called “simian smallpox” — a “global health emergency” on July 23, when more than 16,000 infections had been reported in 75 countries.
The disease is caused by a virus and can be transmitted from animals to humans or through direct contact with people who have the symptoms, according to specialists.
WHO reports that the symptoms include fever, headache, muscle pain, low energy, inflammation of the lymph nodes and rashes or lesions on the skin.
Patients can spread the disease to other people while they have symptoms, and the virus is transmitted through body fluids (pus or blood from skin lesions), scabs and objects used by the sick.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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.
Image of the interior of the José Lezama Lima House Museum, located at 160-162 Trocadero Street, in Central Havana. (José Lezama House Museum)
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 25 September 2022 — Although we are wandering creatures, we are always looking for a home. For no one is a house enough; we must affirm our domain with small ornaments, paintings, touches, ashtrays, scratches on the wall, even breaks. That’s why hotels — no matter how luxurious they are — have something sterile and prostibulary that expel us to welcome the next one.
The trip exists to get home, no matter if it’s real or imaginary. The young people make lists and draw maps, and symbolically anticipate that coming home through small talismans: a lamp, a portrait, a book to which they cling. If these objects represent anything, it is loyalty to ourselves, the confidence that there will be a future and it will be — even in poverty — warm and welcoming.
Nothing is frivolous inside a house; everything has its meaning. Cuban mothers — for whom all junk is a treasure — were enraged when, carelessly, we broke a plate. Or if the cat we raised with care and civility knocked down a vase with its tail.
The secret space between the wall and the door was the favorite hiding place of childhood, as was the interior of the closets, where the jackets and ties of the old people made us sneeze. On the hallway boards, my brother and I marked our height with pencil: our whole life is contained in those lines of graphite, year by year, inch by inch, until we stop growing. continue reading
Inside the home there are free spaces and forbidden regions. The first time I opened a drawer, I did it with fear. The wardrobe, formidable, threatening, had three doors. I took hold of the handle and looked, on tiptoe, at the contents of the drawer.
There is no way to list what I saw — what we all saw at some point — because already the memory, treacherous as it is, populated it with false artifacts, invented by me. However, the only thing I clearly distinguish is a pair of gold-mounted mirrors, which belonged to a deceased relative.
Even now I remember the effect they caused on me, when I put them in front of my face: vertigo, dizziness, the terror of looking with the eyes of the deceased. From then on I was more suspicious of drawers.
“The dead should die with their things,” García Márquez wrote with disgust. Nothing worse than looting the memory of those who left. One feels — and rightly so — that he is disrupting the portion of existence that it took others a lifetime to accumulate. However, it’s natural that books, statuettes and lead soldiers don’t hinder the flow of the lives to come. We have to make room for them.
Sentimentality leads me to make only one exception: libraries.
Every reader of Lezama has embarked on the pilgrimage to the house at Trocadero 162, in Havana. There, library and home are one thing. The forgetfulness of the bureaucrats has been good for the place. They haven’t removed the figures that he had on his shelves and that acquire so much meaning in his work. Their gravity remains in the pictures and seats, and it could not be destroyed even by the cyclone that flooded the house a few years ago.
His friends, who still live and remember him, return to that time and to that library. Dislocating the showcases and disrupting the order of the specimens would mean, in a way, burning a fragment of their legacy.
Libraries, therefore, have to survive us.
The last station in the home, the one we have left when we have left or are far away, is the void. It was the master of Trocadero himself, heir to the Chinese dragons and the Japanese sages, who taught us how to taste it. The word is tokonoma, the empty creator of the house, a refuge made of nothing and silence where we can enter and rest.
The emptiness is the “unsurpassed company, the conversation in a corner of Alexandria,” which “surrounds our whole body with a silence full of lights.” There is nothing abstract about this. In fact, it is the only real thing when — in the cold and waiting for the train at the station — we look for the lukewarm interior of our pockets. In the background, intact as a ghost, is the promise of home.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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.
Cuba holds a referendum on September 25 to approve the new Family Code. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez and Herodes Díaz, Havana/Santiago de Cuba, 25 September 2022 — In the early hours of this Sunday morning there was a notably small turnout in the voting centers for the referendum on the Family Code, and the majority of the voters were elderly, according to 14ymedio reporters in Havana and Santiago de Cuba.
About eight and a half million Cubans have been called to participate in this referendum, the third that is being held under the current political system. The referendum will approve or reject a text that in recent months has generated intense controversy about equal marriage, adoption by homosexual couples and surrogacy.
According to the National Electoral Council (CEN), at 11:40 in the morning, almost five hours after the opening of the polls, 37.03% of registered voters had gone to vote.
Voters are divided among more than 24,000 polling stations, which will be open from 7:00 am to 4:00 pm on this day, a Sunday of uncertainty with the advance of Tropical Storm Ian that is expected to reach the status of hurricane in the coming hours and to hit western Cuba.
The proximity of the storm has launched Cubans into the streets in search of canned food, bread, cookies, candles and other products that will allow them to handle confinement in their homes when the winds and rains become stronger. However, shortages have worsened in recent hours, causing longer lines in front of bakeries and markets. continue reading
“It’s very early Sunday and on the eve of a hurricane, said the official in charge of reviewing the voters’ identity cards, trying to justify the low turnout. Voters were picking up their ballots at a school polling place in the neighborhood of Cayo Hueso in Havana. A few meters away, a line to buy bread summoned more people than the referendum for the Family Code.
“I came early so I could leave,” said Missy, a 28-year-old who cast her vote in a school in the Pueblo Nuevo neighborhood. “My daughter is in elementary school and for a few days she was called on to take care of the polls. She didn’t want to come, but the teacher told her that even if it was two hours, she had to fulfill that commitment.”
“It was early and she came back done in. She told me that very few people had gone to vote so far and that the snack they gave to the students who guard the ballot boxes is terrible: a cold roll with bad picadillo and a bag of hot Coral soda,” the mother complains.
At Missy’s same school, her mother and grandmother voted. “Even if they don’t believe me, they marked the yes and I marked the no,” the young woman explains. “Because they are immersed in Party militancy, but although I’m a lesbian and the issue of equal marriage suits me, I prefer to wait to have other rights first.”
Nearby, in Los Sitios, Dalmar and Julito have been placing the multicolored flag that identifies the LGBT+ community on their balcony for days. This Sunday they went to vote early and both marked yes. “We want to get married as soon as possible and appeal to solidarity motherhood to be able to have a child together,” they tell this newspaper. “We have struggled a lot to get here, and although it’s not an ideal situation, our rights cannot continue to be postponed.”
“Between the dead and those who have emigrated, we have 54 people on the registry who aren’t going to come to vote,” one of the organizers of a school in Cerro, near Ayestarán Avenue, explained loudly, through the telephone line. “When we’re done, we’ll know how many people are no longer in Cuba,” he said.
The exodus of recent months, the largest that the Island has suffered in its entire history, estimated to be close to 200,000 people, has taken away part of the electorally active population. So emigration also marks an election where the expectation of leaving the country soon has made many desist from approaching the polls.
“Why should I go, if I plan to leave this country?” explained a 19-year-old boy this Sunday morning on an improvised basketball court located in an open field in Nuevo Vedado. “Let those who stay decide. When I take the plane, I will no longer have to be governed by any of these laws; I will already have those of the country wherever I go.”
Along with him, other young people of similar ages repeat a similar speech. “I already have everything to leave for Nicaragua, so it’s like I’m not here,” adds another of the players, who from early morning preferred scoring a basket to dropping a ballot in a box.
“I haven’t seen young people,” emphasizes Manuel, a man from Havana who went to vote early and marked the no box. “When I entered school, it was around nine in the morning and there was only one old man. Then I took a tour of other schools in my neighborhood and only saw other elderly people.”
The presence in the early hours of voters over 60 years old may be due not only to the fact that among young people sleeping on Sunday morning is a more widespread habit, but also that the militants of the Communist Party and active members of organizations such as the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution are mostly people who exceed five or six decades of life.
One person who did arrive with the first light of Sunday and was surrounded by cameras and microphones at his polling place in the municipality of Playa was Miguel Díaz-Canel. The ruler took advantage of the moment to qualify the enthusiasm he had shown in previous days: “The expectation is not that it will be a unanimous vote, but I do believe that it will be a majority on the part of our people.”
According to the official press, Díaz-Canel assured that “against the Code there is a whole platform that starts from the demonization and discrediting of the Cuban Revolution,” and described the call for a referendum as courageous “in the conditions that the country is going through: shortages, blackouts, scarcity, with an important part of the economy paralyzed.”
Even Díaz-Canel didn’t rule out that there could be a “protest vote” and explained that, “in such complex issues where there is a diversity of opinion and in the midst of a difficult situation there can even be people who vote in order to protest.”
The official press also showed the former Cuban ruler Raúl Castro in the moment of voting, although his presence in the official campaign to promote the yes vote for the Family Code was very scarce.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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 Cuban Government is facing the closest vote in its history. (Granma)
14ymedio, Havana, 22 September 2022 — The Cuban government has called on the population to vote yes in the referendum on the Family Code held this Sunday. Far from the monolithic opinion that has been imposed in the official discourse — and maybe in private — voting is like a Russian doll for those who are outside the institutional fold. Pluralism, rich in nuances and diverse, is immersed in the middle of debate. Going to vote or not? And, in that case, yes or no?
The Spanish politician and professor of Constitutional Law, Diego López Garrido, warned years ago of the risks involved in some referendums: “People, many times, don’t respond to the issue in question, but to who makes it or how they do it,” he commented on the relevance of this type of voting. The expert agreed with the opinion of many political scientists who point out the dangers of minorities being unprotected by a referendum. “The issues that concern individual rights or rights that affect a minority are legislated, but they are never decided with a popular consultation,” he said.
Some Cubans agree with this, such as the journalist Reinaldo Escobar, from this newspaper. “Rights, no matter how long they have been violated, should not be submitted to a referendum. Neither the abolition of slavery nor the vote for women nor the use of public services without racial discrimination, to give just three examples, have had to wait for to be approved at the polls.” continue reading
“This Code recognizes rights that we Cubans have and cannot enjoy until today. That, for me, is more than enough.” / “If they’re putting the Family Code to the vote, why not take multiparty free elections to the vote?”
In a similar sense, although more clearly in favor of abstention, the Cuban artist and co-author of the popular song Patria y Vida, Yotuel Romero expressed himself on Tuesday. “If you can’t elect your president, how can you expose your children to a Family Code chosen by someone you didn’t vote for? If they’re putting the Family Code to the vote, why not take multiparty free elections to the vote?” he said on his social networks.
The DemoAmlat organization, which has promoted the vote of the diaspora — deprived of this right despite having Cuban citizenship in perpetuity — through an electronic voting platform, doesn’t hesitate to describe the operation of a referendum on the Family Code as “pinkwashing, after decades of repression and forced labor as a state policy against the LGBTIQ+ community.”
“If the project means an extension of rights, and there is no provision that obliges a totalitarian regime like Cuba to consult with citizens, why submit it to a referendum?” asks this institution.
The playwright Yunior García Aguilera has also unequivocally expressed his opinion against submitting an issue like this to consultation while everything else is imposed from the leadership of the Communist Party. “The embarrassing thing here is having to submit common sense to a referendum, after we were impaled by the worst Penal Code on the continent, without consulting anyone.” However, he also points out that rejecting the dictatorship doesn’t mean “putting anyone’s rights on hold.”
Among those who consider that voting and doing it in a positive way is the least of all evils in this context is the independent journalist Mario Luis Reyes. “This Code recognizes rights that we Cubans have and cannot enjoy until today. That, for me, is more than enough,” he admits with sadness, adding: “I understand that the rejection of the dictatorship causes many people, out of pure reaction, to want to vote no so that the regime suffers a symbolic ’defeat,’ but if the ’no’ wins, the most defeated ones will be ourselves.”
Also from activism, Manuel de la Cruz, a member of the San Isidro Movement and a former political prisoner, promotes the positive vote and asks those who think differently that abstaining or rejecting the Family Code will not bring any democratic improvement. “To the people who will vote no so that their children aren’t taken away, come up with a strategy that includes more than that, because under the old code, they will also be able to take children away,” he says.
Few surprises exist in the religious sphere, where the opening of marriage, gender self-determination or surrogate wombs are enough to raise hives. The clergy has demonstrated in all countries of the world in which similar rules have been approved and have raised their voices with all the means at their disposal, managing to mobilize many from the temples. Although their room for maneuver in Cuba is more limited, they have not had any problems circulating their clear commitment to voting, but in a negative direction. “We see with disappointment that these and other proposals that were notoriously questioned by society are still intact in the Code that is now presented for a referendum,” the Cuban bishops said in an institutional statement.
Far from the voices of the Government or the communicators and intellectuals with greater capacity to raise their message, popular opinion is more divided than ever. People aren’t afraid to express the meaning of their vote, even if it’s not the one promoted by the ruling party, and the Government could see its strategy of closing ranks endangered.
The content of the Family Code is prolific and extensive. It addresses some of the topics that have generated the most controversy, from the issues of equal marriage and adoption by people of the same sex, “solidarity management” or parental authority, to other less commented ones that entail guaranteed and important improvements: the end of child marriage, care of the elderly, care of children, the right to an economic regime for both parties in marriage and the fight against domestic violence.
In these last issues, very diverse organizations from the Church to YoSíTeCreo in Cuba agree that it’s already late for the assumption of rights that are more than consolidated in many parts of the planet, and that they can be derailed because they’re included in the same legal corpus as other issues that generate a notable dissent, in addition to punishing the regime by a predictably high abstention as a method of protest.
Four days from the referendum, the Government is facing the first election that it may lose but, as some analysts point out, even that has been guaranteed “life insurance.” Suffice it to say that reactionary, conservative and counterrevolutionary ideas will win. Even if that means admitting that the Government’s power has decreased.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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.
Schoolchildren concentrated in La Piragua, in Havana, for the official concert in favor of the yes on the Family Code referendum. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 23 September 2022 — In its desperate struggle for the yes to win in the referendum on the Family Code this Sunday, the Cuban Government has mobilized not only workplaces but also schools.
Barely thirty kids, from nearby schools, arrived this Friday at the corner of G and Malecón, in El Vedado, Havana, where a march was called for 3 pm that would be enlivened, as they pompously announced, with “dancing and congas.”
Dragging their feet, accompanied by teachers who walked with the same reluctant step, they received a cap and fans, all made of cardboard, with the colors of the rainbow and the slogan “Code Yes” from the hands of officials stationed in front of a car of the Union of Young Communists (UJC).
Some of them, after receiving these, didn’t hesitate to flee the place. “We’re going to stop by — there’s a camera — so they know we were there,” a teacher told a group of teenagers while they deserted the activity before it even started. continue reading
Another group followed in the footsteps of a UJC official who harangued them with a whistle, to walk to the next point of call, La Piragua. This esplanade, located on the Malecón at the heights of the National Hotel, has recently moved to the Anti-imperialist Tribune, in front of the United States Embassy and a few feet from there, as the center of propaganda events organized by the Communist Party of Cuba.
Barely thirty kids, from nearby schools, arrived this Friday at the corner of G and Malecón, in El Vedado. (14ymedio)
In the evening, a concert will take place, the official press explained. Los Van Van, Haila María Mompié, Arnaldo and his Talisman, the La Colmenita Children’s Theater Company and actors of the Teleseries Calendario will participate.
Around 3:30, La Piragua was observed guarded by a huge police operation, with parked patrols and agents stationed on every corner. Immediately several buses arrived with more students, all dressed in their uniforms.
“We’re going to stop by — there’s a camera — so they know we were there,” a teacher told a group of teenagers while they deserted the activity. (14ymedio)
As part of the event, the authorities established stalls for the sale of handicrafts and food. The prices were high: for example, bread with pork, at 250 pesos, and bread with ham, at 200. To drink, they offered Coca-Cola and Mahou brand beer, something striking if one of the propaganda posters that “decorated” the stalls is taken into account: “Against Spanish Colonialism.”
“In no way is this a voluntary event. It’s a forced concentration of students where they are taking advantage to sell food, drinks and handicrafts at unpayable prices,” lamented a passerby who stopped for a moment hoping to buy something to eat.
As part of the event, the authorities established stalls for the sale of handicrafts and food. (14ymedio)
Around 4:30, many among the crowd of young people began to scurry away, little by little, under a harsh sun and in the face of the impossibility of spending so much on a drink.
The schools in the capital have been wallpapered with posters containing the slogan “Code Yes,” and students have already been warned of the obligation to “take care of the ballot boxes” [i.e. observe the voting in person] on Sunday, “for at least four hours,” according to a high school student from Nuevo Vedado.
To drink, they offered Coca-Cola and Mahou brand beer, something striking if you take into account one of the propaganda posters that “decorated” the stalls reads: “against Spanish colonialism.” (14ymedio)Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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 workers at the Cadeca (currency exchange) on 23rd Street — and at any exchange office in Cuba — have their own business of influence, with family, friends and even coleros [people others pay to stand in line for them]. (14ymedio)14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez /Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 22 September 2022 — “No one cheats on me,” a man grumbles in front of the Cadeca [currency exchange] on 23rd Street in Havana, this Tuesday. “I’m not a fool.” His face is swollen and red; he is sweating and drags a crutch with difficulty. Next to him, a sympathetic mulatto in a T-shirt and with a golden tooth nods. “He walked in front of me and went in; it was that simple,” shouts the man. Several people in the line predict a heart attack if he doesn’t calm down.
Beyond, at the door, a lady demands explanations from the policeman who guards the exchange house: “It’s not the first time this has happened today,” she says. The officer looks at her reluctantly, as if he doesn’t understand, and sends the complaint to the “organizer” of the Cadeca line, who calls the customers according to a list.
Everyone witnessed how an individual arrived at the establishment, advanced, distracted, up the stairs and approached the door, beckoning through the glass. The door opened, and the man managed to slip between the policeman and the organizer, who didn’t say a word.
The eyes of the clients followed the event in detail, but they were silent until the subject entered the Cadeca. First it was a buzz of comments; then someone rebuked the organizer of the line, and finally the man on the crutch exploded, left his place and began to scream. continue reading
In the face of the screams and fingers pointing at him, the policeman remained calm.
“That one had a ’godfather’ inside the Cadeca,” someone theorizes. Sponsorship consists of having a contact within the establishment, a friend or relative who overcomes obstacles and facilitates access to the first place in line.
The customers can withstand the sun, heat and hunger, but never that someone “unrecognized” approaches and, mysteriously, penetrates the building without waiting: it’s intolerable.
The workers at the Cadeca on 23rd — those at any exchange house in Cuba — have their business of influence. The “chosen” are family or friends, and also coleros who accept a payment to guarantee another person a privileged place.
Those who don’t have a “godfather” must submit to the murky system of “lists,” drawn up illegally after the previous night, which pretends to be a spontaneous form of organization in the face of institutional corruption. The lists include solitary buyers, but also the “gangs” of customers, groups of five or ten people who intend to assault the Cadeca.
However, spending the night in the vicinity of an establishment is considered, by the police, a violation. So they’re authorized to fine or arrest the overnight coleros. But it’s a risk that dollar buyers are willing to take, because without the few bills that the Government agrees to sell, it’s impossible to live decently.
So the man with the crutch calms down, goes up to the policeman and calmly says: “Officer, if you want, arrest me, but tonight I’m going to sleep here, to see who is going to take the first place in line away from me tomorrow.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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 U.S. Coast Guard rescued 31 people at the request of the Bahamas. (Twitter/@USCGSoutheast)
14ymedio, Havana, 21 September 2022 — On Tuesday, the U.S. Coast Guard, at the request of the Bahamas authorities, rescued 31 people who were adrift on the high seas. Among them were 28 Cubans, three Chinese, one Jamaican and one Dominican. The migrants were picked up by the ship RobertYered and handed over to the Royal Bahamas Defense Force (RBDF), according to the U.S. Coast Guard on its Twitter account.
The 28 Cubans ’rescued’ on Tuesday are in addition to the six who, on September 6, were arrested and handed over to the RBDF, after the boat in which they were transported to Florida was intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard.
The trafficking of migrants by sea has increased in the last month. On Monday, it was reported that Didier Pérez Pérez, Lester Leyniel Soca Díaz and Yoandy Alonso face six charges for transferring Cuban rafters to Florida, kidnapping them in a house in Hialeah, and extorting their relatives, of Cuban origin and residents of Florida, for the sum of $15,000. If found guilty, they will be sentenced to 10 years in prison and will be forced to pay fines of $250,000. continue reading
The U.S. Coast Guard announced on Wednesday that from October 2021 to date, 6,032 rafters have been intercepted and arrested. In addition, 50 more Cubans were repatriated, on board the PabloValent, who were added to the 68 who returned last Tuesday on the PaulClark.
The Cuban exodus has been considered a real “migration catastrophe” by the Cuban virologist based in Brazil, Amílcar Pérez-Riverol. The number of rafters intercepted in their attempt to reach the United States, the scientist says, “exceeds the total of the previous five years.” In 2017, they arrested 1,468; in 2018 there were 259; in 2019, 313; in 2020, 49; and in 2021, 838, according to official figures.
The data are even more alarming if we consider that during this fiscal year 180,000 Cubans have entered the United States by land. And no record takes into account those who have emigrated to Europe and Latin America, which according to Pérez-Riverol’s calculations are equivalent to “1.6% of the population and 2.5% of the entire workforce.”
The flight of Cubans by sea has not diminished despite Hurricane Fiona, which continues its trajectory through the Caribbean islands and the Atlantic Ocean. On Monday, the Florida Border Patrol rescued and “put into custody six rafters that were stranded” in Gaius Marquesas. The head of this police force, Walter Slosar, warned of the dangers of going to sea in a “homemade boat in hurricane season.”
For her part, a Coast Guard non-commissioned officer, Nicole Groll, said in a statement issued on Tuesday that “migration on rustic and improvised boats without safety equipment, such as a life jacket, is dangerous,” and stressed to the rafters that “risking their lives in this way causes their loved ones unnecessary anxiety for not knowing if they are saved or lost at sea.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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.
Lussón Batlle (left) was on the II Frank País García Eastern Front and the Abel Santamaría Front and held the rank of commander. (Granma)
14ymedio, Havana, 22 September 2022 — Major General Antonio Enrique Lussón Batlle died this Wednesday in Havana at the age of 92, according to a note published by the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and released by the official press.
His body will be cremated and his ashes displayed this Friday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. in the Veterans’ Pantheon of the Columbus necropolis. Subsequently, they will be transferred to the Mausoleum of the Second Eastern Front, in Santiago de Cuba, where he was originally from.
Lussón Batlle has been profusely praised by the official press, which highlights that since joining the Castro Army in 1957, he showed “daring and courage in every action and was promoted to the rank of captain and appointed chief of the platoon.” At that time, he was part of the José Tey, René Ramos Latour Column 9, but a year later went to the II Frank País Garía Eastern Front and in a few months to Abel Santamaría, already with the rank of commander. According to the official newspaper Granma, the promotion was due to his “outstanding participation in the fighting, discipline, spirit of sacrifice and courage.” continue reading
His military successes during the Revolution earned him a privileged position, and he was responsible for bringing the so-called Caravan of Victory to Havana.
Lussón Batlle was second head of the Managua military camp, head of the Operations section of the Western Army, head of the Directorate of Operations of the General Staff, head of the Independent Corps of the West, and second head of the Inspection Body of the FAR. He was also twice in the Angolan War, although one of his best-known missions was his performance at the head of a battalion in the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
In addition, between 2000 and 2008 he was head of Special Troops of the FAR.
In the political sphere, Lussón was Minister of Transport, first vice president of the National Institute of the State Reserve, and vice president of the Council of Ministers between 2010 and 2015. In 2016, he returned to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which he had helped form as a founding member. He also held the position of deputy in the National Assembly of People’s Power for several legislatures.
In 2001 he received the medal of Hero of the Republic of Cuba.
In the last 14 months, about twenty senior Army officers have died, almost all of them from the so-called historic generation that participated in the 1959 Revolution.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, United Airlines had seven weekly flights to Havana from its hubs in Houston and Newark. (CC)
14ymedio, Havana, 22 September 2022 — The U.S. company United Airlines announced on Wednesday that it is working to resume its commercial flights to Cuba by the end of 2022, two and a half years after suspending them due to the pandemic.
The airline, based in Chicago, told Reuters news agency that it has been working on the reactivation of its flights to Havana for several months but is facing contract setbacks. It has requested from the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) an extension of 30 days to finish the deadline process, set by the US regulator for October 31.
“United needs to do significant work, including the renegotiation of multiple contracts with service providers that have expired and the construction of the necessary infrastructure in Terminal 3 of the Havana airport, where United is being relocated,” it said.
Before shutting down its operations in March 2020, when countries closed their airspace due to coronavirus restrictions, United had seven weekly flights to Havana from its hubs in Houston and Newark. continue reading
The airline resumed negotiations to return to Cuba after June, when the USDOT lifted the restrictions imposed by former President Donald Trump on commercial flights of American companies to small airports in Cuba outside Havana.
The USDOT agreed on Monday to expand U.S. flights by granting one to JetBlue and 13 to American Airlines, although the latter requested authorization to operate two more daily flights, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, on the route between Miami and Havana, which would have meant an increase of 14 weekly flights.
In this way, American Airlines will add 13 additional routes in December to the seven that are already flying from Miami to the Cuban capital, while JetBlue, a low-cost airline, will have four from Fort Lauderdale.
Even before the Biden Administration lifted the air restrictions, American Airlines requested permission to extend its operations to the Island and, in July, obtained authorization to fly, beginning in November, to Santa Clara, Holguín, Varadero and Santiago de Cuba.
The airline has indicated that the flights would improve “service and access between the United States and these points outside Havana, after more than two years during which such operations were suspended.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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 official this Thursday on Obispo Street in Old Havana talking about the Family Code. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 22 September 2022 — A scene this Thursday on Obispo Street, in Old Havana, was enough to show that the opinion of Cubans on the Family Code, whose referendum will be held next Sunday, is far from uniform.
This isn’t what the Government would like, judging by the resources it has been deploying for months to guide the population to vote yes, without giving space to any discordant voice. In addition to the complimentary notes in the official press on the new rule, the final text of which has been available in the OfficialGazette since August 17, are joined, in recent days, acts of propaganda in the streets.
The one on Obispo Street, this Thursday, would have been very difficult at another time, given the obligatory stop for tourists that has always been at that point of Old Havana. This is not the case this month of September, when the volume of foreign travelers still hasn’t rebounded, and the street has only a few passers-by in the hottest hours of the day. continue reading
That’s why it caught the attention of the resident so much that, before noon, there were tables selling handicrafts — decorated with posters containing the slogan “Yes on the Code,” and some officials — wearing T-shirts with the same slogan — with a microphone placed in the middle of the street.
Before the crowd, an official began to explain different aspects of the Family Code, such as the protection it would provide to the elderly. At one point, with pedagogical concession, he asked the people around him what they thought.
“I think this is very bad,” replied an old woman to whom they gave the microphone. “Because I understand that marriage has to be between a man and a woman, not between two men and two women,” the woman said, based on her religious beliefs.
At that moment, without removing the microphone, the music that enlivened the activity through loudspeakers began to sound at full volume, in such a way that it prevented the old woman from being heard. Without being intimidated, the woman raised her voice even more: “I vote no, I vote no!”
In her favor, many of those who had spontaneously gathered to hear the official began to speak up. “This is a lack of respect,” one man protested, defending the old woman. “Don’t ask me my opinion if you’re going to call the police later, because that’s not democracy,” another woman shouted.
One of the summoned officials replied: “This is Revolution, and now it’s more important than ever to vote yes.”
Three days before the plebiscite on the Family Code, the Government hasn’t given up trying to win by all possible means. This Thursday, President Miguel Díaz-Canel will lead a special program on National Television to defend the yes vote.
For tomorrow, Friday, a march has been called in the capital, with the same slogan, “Yes on the Code,” “with the participation of Havana’s youth.” According to a message disseminated through official networks, the event will start at 3:00 pm along G and the Malecón, and there will be “dance troupes and congas.”
Esteban Lazo Hernández, president of the National Assembly of People’s Power, called on Monday to “win the battle of the popular referendum, by a landslide,” in the face of what he calls “maneuvers of the enemies, the haters” alluding to the independent opinions that contradict the official voice.
On Tuesday, it was the Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero, who asserted that the Family Code has served as ” cannon fodder” for the “enemies” of the Revolution, who have carried out a “campaign” of disinformation about the content of the rule.
At the International Nature Tourism Event in Havana, Marrero declared that those who have positioned themselves against it — who in no case have had space in the official media — haven’t spoken “of all the virtues of the code, which identifies and unites the Cuban family.”
The Cuban regime does not appear to have the support it needs for the third referendum called in 63 years, the first one it could lose.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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.
Migrants outside the residence of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington on September 15. (EFE/Jim Lo Scalzo)
EFE (via 14ymedio) Washington, 20 September 2022 — The President of the United States, Joe Biden, said on Tuesday that “it’s not rational” to deport migrants from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, and he’s working with Mexico to stop the flow of these arrivals.
In statements to the press at the White House, Biden said that the situation at the border is “totally different” from that of the previous Donald Trump Administration (2017-2021), since “fewer migrants are coming from Central America and Mexico.”
“Now I’m aware of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. The possibility of sending migrants back to these countries isn’t rational,” said Biden, adding: “We’re working with Mexico and other countries to see if we can stop the (migration) flow.”
Faced with rumors that Republican governors might send undocumented migrants to the state of Delaware, where Biden’s residence is located, the president limited himself to answering, in a mocking tone: “Visit Delaware, it’s beautiful state.” continue reading
Immigration has become a main topic of the November midterm election campaigns following the decision of some Republican governors to send groups of undocumented immigrants to states governed by Democrats, in protest against Biden’s immigration policy.
Since April, the governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, has regularly sent buses with migrants, mostly Venezuelans, to Washington, New York and Chicago, in response to Biden’s attempt to rescind Title 42, a health policy that allowed express deportations of migrants at the border.
Last week, the governor of Florida, also Republican, Ron DeSantis, joined Abbott’s strategy by sending two planes with migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, an exclusive island in the state of Massachusetts.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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.
American Airlines will have 13 more flights between Miami and Havana. (EFE)
14ymedio, Madrid, 20 September 2022 — JetBlue has one of the 14 flights to Cuba, and American Airlines (AA) now has 13. The United States Department of Transportation, which set a limit of 20 daily round trips to Havana, has thus resolved the dispute that occurred between the two companies to make more trips.
AA had six daily flights from Miami to the Cuban capital and in December will expand to 13, while JetBlue adds one more to the three it has from Fort Lauderdale.
Since the Biden government revoked the rule of the Trump administration, which prohibited flights to Cuban cities other than the capital, AA began to request permission to expand operations, and in July obtained authorization to fly, beginning in November, to Santa Clara, Holguín, Varadero and Santiago de Cuba.
The airline said that the flights would improve “service and access between the United States and these points outside Havana, after more than two years during which such operations were suspended.” continue reading
In August, the Fort Worth-based company submitted a request to increase the route between Miami and Havana by two more daily flights, one morning and one afternoon, which meant 14 flights.
At that time, JetBlue decided to enter into dispute alleging that AA was taking a dominant position. “There is no justification in the public interest to grant additional U.S. flights as long as there is such a competitive imbalance,” argued the New York-based company, which was requesting a Saturday flight.
“Of all U.S. airlines, JetBlue has the least options to offer low-cost flights between South Florida and Havana on Saturdays, one of the most important days for travel in the Caribbean,” it added in its letter to the Department of Transportation.
American Airlines, however, argued that the additional flights “would maximize the benefits, by increasing capacity at the gateway with the increased demand for travel between the United States and Havana, while improving connectivity using American’s leading network in Miami.”
JetBlue, finally, has received what it wanted, although it benefits both airlines since they are in a merger process under the name of “Northeast Alliance,” which depends on the decision of a federal court.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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.
Foreign medical students during an event at the University of Medical Sciences of Ciego de Ávila. (Facebook)
14ymedio, Havana, 20 September 2022 — The National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) will award 1,500 euros as “additional one-time support” to Mexican medical students who accept controversial scholarships to study a specialty in Cuba.
According to the report, which doesn’t specify the number of beneficiaries, the support is to encourage “permanence in their academic programs,” given desertions and refusals to agree to study on the Island. The money will be deposited with the Banco Popular de Ahorro, which is the Cuban entity that manages these scholarships from the Mexican Government.
In the first year of the program, which began in 2020, of 1,600 spaces planned to study a specialty in Cuba, only 172 were filled. For these residents, the Government of Mexico gave $1,501,766 to Cuba. The transaction was made by CONACYT to the Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos, S.A., the Cuban company that has been accused on countless occasions of promoting “human trafficking and forced labor.” continue reading
A graduate of medicine at the Autonomous University of Mexico, Luz Elena Rodríguez, rules out traveling to the Island to study a specialty in pulmonology. “I’m not convinced by the curriculum, and because of the experiences shared with me by some Mexican doctors who have been to Cuba, I prefer to do the specialty in Mexico.”
Rodríguez told 14ymedio that the theoretical part “is acceptable, but in practice it appears to be elementary” in hospitals. “Last year a friend applied for a scholarship abroad, but the only option was Cuba,” she says.
A group of 172 Mexican medical students arrived in Cuba two years ago to study a specialty. (Capture)
She also says that what ended up discouraging her friend were several reports that began to come out, in which “the shortage of medicines and the lack of supplies were denounced.” That isn’t frightening, she says, because “in Mexico it exists in rural areas, but why go to another country, if the conditions here seem to be much better to continue specializing?”
There is total secrecy about the second generation of scholarship students on the Island who were selected last January, which suggests that perhaps, again, the call for students is once again received tepidly.
In a March post on his social networks, the consultant for health issues, Xavier Tello, pointed out that “out of the 995 places for medical residences that CONACYT conjured up, only five were occupied.” Because of this disinterest, “doctors are now accused of being selfish and only wanting scholarships in the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany.”
In addition to the controversial scholarship program, the Government of Mexico hired 641 Cuban doctors to serve in marginalized areas. These supposed health workers were denounced by the president of the Prisoners Defenders association, Javier Larrondo, who said that they didn’t have any specialty and that among the group were State Security agents.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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.
A Cuban farmer plants rice in Pinar del Río, about 75 miles west of Havana. (EFE/File)
14ymedio, Havana, 20 September 2022 — The discomfort of Cubans due to the lack of basic necessities and food in the face of the unbridled pace of construction and renovation of hotels is not just a mere perception. Official figures show that divestment in agriculture is a reality that coexists with wasted investment for tourism.
According to data published by the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) last Friday, of the 31,673 million pesos invested by the Government between January and June of this year, 10,692 were dedicated to “business services, real estate and rental activities,” the heading that covers most of the investment in hotels and tourism. This accounts for a third of all state investment.
At the same time, the numbers reveal that only 830 million pesos were dedicated to agriculture, livestock and forestry, and 225 million were dedicated to fishing. continue reading
But these figures are even more astonishing in perspective, as can be seen in the graphs prepared by the Cuban economist Pedro Monreal from the history of production in the last nine years. Between 2013 and 2021, the tons of rice generated by the country fell by -66.4% while hotel rooms grew by 125%. Food also shows a strong reduction compared to tourism, although its decrease is smaller, with -5.7%.
However, rice is not the only crop in collapse: beans, another basic product of accompaniment in Cuban cuisine, also fell by -55.5% this year, compared to 2013. Vegetables also lost, with -28.8%.
“Cuba’s distorted investment priorities are reflected in disparate results: the 10.7% increase in hotel rooms in 2022 compared to 2017, when 4.6 million visitors were welcomed with far fewer rooms, coexists with a deep agricultural crisis,” Monreal points out, comparing the last five-year period.
That year was the golden moment of the tourism sector, and the Island received 4,689,898 visitors. Since then, with the tightening of the embargo, the pandemic and the poor market recovery, the data have been falling. For this year, the authorities maintain their target of 2.5 million tourists, but during the first half of the year, 682,297 travelers arrived, almost 500% more than in 2021, which is no relief, since in 2019 by this time, 2.6 million people had arrived in Cuba for vacation.
Monreal also notes that the weight of investment in “business services, real estate and rental activities” was even greater in 2020, when it took 45.6% of the total allocated. “But it’s still irrational in the context of food insecurity, with agriculture receiving only 2.6%,” he emphasizes.
Now the imbalance is even greater, since in 2020 almost 6% was invested in agriculture, with 7.7 times more investment in real estate. At present, the percentage is 13 times higher than for farming. “The overcoming of the food insecurity crisis in Cuba requires that, at a minimum, 8% of total national investment be devoted to agriculture — especially the private sector — which would be equivalent to approximately 5,000 to 6,000 million pesos per year,” says the economist.
Despite having the precise data of negligible investment dedicated to the countryside, the Government ventures to ask in public what is happening so that Cubans don’t manage to produce. This Monday, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel visited Camajuaní, in Villa Clara, and went to the estate of Yusdany Rojas Pérez, belonging to the Juan Verdecia cooperative. The young man is successfully dedicated, according to the account of the presidency and the official press, “to pig breeding, the planting of crops as the main source of animal food, shade-grown tobacco and the planting of cane.”
“If he can do it, why can’t others?” the president asked. A question shamelessly copied by the official newspaper Granma to present Rojas Pérez as an example to the detriment of thousands of farmers who aren’t mentioned in daily reports.
“When I ask him about the keys to his success in the company where he works,” says the State newspaper, “he doesn’t hesitate for a moment to say: ’I’m not someone who starts crying in the face of problems; I always see the positive side of things and try to look for options to get afloat.’”
Granma, which ends up giving some advice to the farmers to increase production, considers this a success story, and “evidence (…) that despite the difficulties the country is going through, if someone works with passion and without fear of facing obstacles and problems, results can happen.” The fact that the Government invests less than a billion for the population to eat doesn’t seem to be newsworthy to the official press.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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 authorities admit that they have failed in the fight against dengue fever. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Havana, 20 September 2022 — The risk of getting sick from dengue fever is high throughout the country. This comes from the Minister of Public Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda, who signed a statement released this Monday by his department to warn of the worrying situation.
“The rates of infestation caused by AedesAegypti, the [mosquito] transmitting agent of dengue, continue to be high in Cuba. Even though in the last five weeks there has been a decrease in the rate of transmission of the virus — with very similar figures — the risk of getting sick is high throughout the country,” says the minister, who is also a doctor, without giving any of those figures that allow a full understating of the extent of the situation.
Ten days ago, health authorities went on the State TV Roundtable television program in order to provide extensive information, they said, on the evolution of the virus, but they refused to detail once again how many cases there are currently on the Island and limited themselves to pointing out that the situation is similar to that of Latin America, which has reported an increase of 300% in the first 32 weeks of the year, and of 165% in comparison with all of 2021.
Since the number of infections in that year is not known either, it’s impossible to know the real dimension of the problem, although the number of known patients is a warning symptom. continue reading
In addition, the authorities specified that 60% of the cases are of type 3, the most serious, although the four variants of the disease currently coexist.
According to Portal Miranda, Santiago de Cuba, Havana, Guantánamo, Las Tunas, Matanzas, Mayabeque and Isla de la Juventud are the provinces with the highest incidence rates of the disease, although, once again, the rate is unknown.
The minister places the beginning of the “current cycle of focal treatment” on September 5, at which time the greatest presence of mosquitoes was detected in Santiago de Cuba, Havana, Camagüey, Holguín, Matanzas, Villa Clara and Pinar del Río, with water tanks, once again, as the main place of concentration of the AedesAegypti mosquito.
Portal Miranda adds that in 43.1% of the blocks in which the presence of the mosquito was detected, the problem persists, and that although the rate of growth is contained, “it’s still impossible to stop the transmission or increase in the incidence rate of suspected cases” of the disease.
The minister’s message is addressed to the population to become aware and avoid contagion or worsening in the case of getting sick. “We cannot leave that responsibility alone to the workers of the vector campaign,” says Portal Miranda.
The official reminds people of the symptoms and also insists that they don’t have to wait for bleeding to take action, because sometimes abdominal pain, vomiting, fluid accumulation, bleeding from the mucosa, irritability, drowsiness or fainting are already a warning that the disease is entering a critical phase.”
One of the problems faced by the Ministry of Public Health in the face of the spread of dengue is the lack of diagnostic methods, which is why Portal Miranda indicates in his statement that action be taken even without the appropriate confirmation. “The first thing we should always think about in any of these symptoms is dengue, until the opposite is proven,” he said, immediately warning of the dangers of a delay.
The problems in obtaining diagnoses, medicines and good hospital care are a blow in the face of the current epidemic. Many Cubans refuse to be admitted due to the poor condition of the facilities and prefer to stay at home, potentially multiplying the chances of contagion.
The difficulties in carrying out the campaign against dengue have been another factor that have contributed to the worsening of the situation this year. The lack of workers and, above all, material and fuel to fumigate have been the norm, to the point that the Deputy Minister of Health, Carilda Peña García, warned last week that the blame this time fell to the Government. “[The population] has worked to eliminate the foci of the vector in their homes. We know that we have responsibility for the issue and that it didn’t go as it should have,” he said, although there are many people who are reluctant to fumigate their homes.
The authorities have also acknowledged that dengue is causing deaths in Cuba, but they haven’t dared to give a figure. Just last week, two health workers died from virus.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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.
EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 25 September 2022 — The Ministry of Public Health confirmed this Saturday the third case of monkey pox in Cuba in a 27-year-old woman who is hospitalized, isolated and under medical care.
