Translator: Regina Anavy – Page 78

The ‘Grocery’ Arrives in Cuba, with French Milk at 500 Pesos and Dog Food at 20,000

The answer of “500 pesos each” was enough for a murmur of indignation to run through the line. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 6 February 2023 — On the facade the English word “Grocery” is printed, and the line extends to the area outside the small private market recently opened on the ground floor of the Miramar Trade Center in Havana. Among airline offices, foreign companies and bank branches, the Pelegrin store, managed by a small business, had more curious than potential customers this Monday.

“And that milk? How much is it?” a woman asked a young man who left the premises with two packages of the product that carried a seal with the colors of the French flag and the clarification “Whole.” The answer of “500 pesos each” was enough for a murmur of indignation to run through the crowd. Despite the high price, no one moved from the line until they were able to access the market.

“I found out because I read on the internet that this store had opened,” a woman who bought some sweet vanilla cookies explained to 14ymedio. “They told me that it was only an assortment but it’s not that bad. There is more than in state stores in Cuban pesos, but it’s not a wonder either. I think they’ve made a mistake with the zeros on the right,” she said about the prices. continue reading

Small private companies engaged in the sale of imported food have been noticed in recent months in Cuba. (14ymedio)

Small private companies engaged in the sale of imported food have been noticed in recent months in Cuba with goods that they bring from countries in the region, such as Panama, Colombia, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. Given the low productivity of the national industry, beer, malt, soft drinks and sweets with foreign brands cross the path of private trade.

The phenomenon has not escaped the popular humor that has already reinterpreted the acronyms that make up micro, small and medium-sized enterprises [mipyme (or SMEs)] with the acronym of import markets at high prices manicheados [managed] by the State. So far, the new form of management, which is presented in the official discourse as the key to getting out of the crisis, seems to be more for resale than for production of goods.

Hence, no one seemed surprised this Monday in Pelegrin that the 10-ounce packages of soda cookies cost 335 pesos. The price did not cause a great fuss because “the self-employed businesses are more expensive,” said a man who calculated that each one contains 15 sachets with three cookies inside, at “22 pesos per package and 7 per cookie.”

The store has a small area to serve customers, but behind the windows you can see a large warehouse where they accumulate the merchandise. (14ymedio)

The store has a small area to serve customers, but behind the windows you can see a large warehouse where they accumulate the merchandise they sell. “The cafeteria on the ground floor of my house in Centro Habana is better stocked but it’s true that it is a little cheaper here, but getting to this place costs the difference,” stressed a man who was “by chance” at the Miramar Trade Center looking for a plane ticket to Panama.

Among Pelegrin’s most expensive products, a 35-pound bag of dry dog food stands out, a mixture of salmon and potato, for a whopping 20,600 pesos. The product, of the Kirkland brand marketed by the international chain of Costco supermarkets, has the “Made in USA” letterhead. It has been imported to a country where official stores, specialized in the sector, have not sold pet food for more than a year.

This morning, the Siberian husky printed on the package seemed to look with some arrogance at the customers who let their jaws drop in front of the market counter when they heard the price, more than three times what it costs in the stores of the American chain, if calculated at the official rate of the dollar exchange in Cuba. “This is animalistic, for sure,” concluded an old woman.

“My dog doesn’t look like that, and I’m not going to spend half a year’s salary buying that food for him. Mine will keep eating leftovers and whatever else appears,” said another customer who, in the end, only bought a can of imported Coca Cola for 155 pesos. “I think they put ’Grocery’ outside so that people won’t confuse it with a state store,” he added before leaving the premises.

Among Pelegrin’s most expensive products, a 35-pound sack of dry dog food stands out, a mixture of salmon and potato, for a whopping 20,600 pesos. (14ymedio)The use of the word in English, instead of its Hispanic variants of “food store” or “ration store” is not accidental. Both Spanish terms are marked on the Island by the negative shadow that more than 60 years of rationed markets and centralism have projected on trade. The foreign term could seek to move away from the known and evoke another type of more assorted and efficient bazaar.

But whatever it is called and in whatever language, Pelegrin has prices that are triple that of a box of milk in Madrid or of pet food in Miami. Like other stores managed by SMEs, it seems to be oriented to a social class with enough money to spend 180 pesos on a tiny glass container of yogurt, the daily salary of an engineer.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuban Leonardo Padura Wins the Pepe Carvalho Prize for Crime Novels

Leonardo Padura expressed his joy at having received live news from his Argentine colleague and friend Claudia Piñeiro. (EFE)

EUROPA PRESS (via 14ymedio), Barcelona, 6 February 2023 — Cuban crime novel writer Leonardo Padura, creator of the policeman Mario Conde series, has won the Pepe Carvalho 2023 Prize in recognition of his career. The prize is awarded within the framework of the BCNegra festival.

It was announced by the writer and winner of the award in 2019, Claudia Piñeiro, at the opening ceremony at El Molino of the BCNegra festival, which will last until February 12.

The jury, composed of Carlos Zanón, Anna Abella, Lilian Neuman, Esteve Riambau, Rosa Ribas and Daniel Vázquez Sallés, awarded the prize to Padura for being “one of the most prominent voices in current Latin American literature” and for being committed to literature and to Cuba, the great protagonist of his works.

The jury considered that the protagonist of up to nine Padura novels, the charismatic Mario Conde, is “heir, or even the Caribbean brother” of the character of Carvalho, created by Vázquez Montalbán.

Padura (b. Havana, 1955) was happy to receive the award and highlighted the “close and friendly” relationship he had with the writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. He pointed out that three years ago he received the Barcino Prize for a historical novel, where his literature was then compared to that of Montalbán. continue reading

The Cuban writer, who recalled a photograph that was taken with Vázquez Montalbán and his Cuban friends when the Barcelona writer was documented for the book y Dios entró en La Habana [And God Entered Havana], regretted his “irreplaceable absence in the culture of this country.”

Padura said in his thank-you speech for the award, which will be presented on Thursday, that he is grateful for the memory of “two very significant people for BCNegra and police literature”: Vázquez Montalbán and bookseller Paco Camarasa, the promoter of the festival.

The director of the festival, Carlos Zanón, stressed that the BCNegra wanted to begin with this edition, and the deputy mayor of Culture of the Barcelona City Council, Jordi Martí, said that Padura joins a “spectacular” list of Pepe Carvalho winners.

Leonardo Padura has a long career, recognized with numerous awards for his work, including the 2015 Princess of Asturias Award for Letters, the Café Gijón and the Dashiell Hammet awards, among others.

Among his works are those starring Mario Conde, including: Pasado perfecto, Vientos de cuaresma, Paisaje de otoño, La niebla de ayer and Personas docentes [Past Perfect, Winds of Lent, Autumn Landscape, Yesterday’s Mist and Teachers]; but also others such as El hombre que amaba los perros, Herejes, Como polvo en el viento and Agua por todas partes. [The Man Who Loved Dogs, Heretics, Like Dust in the Wind and Water Everywhere].

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Mario Vargas Llosa: ‘Socialism is Dead. No One Can Believe in it After Cuba’

Mario Vargas Llosa in the library of his house in Madrid. (José Aymá, El Mundo)

14ymedio, Maite Rico, Madrid, 5 February 2023 — At age 86, Mario Vargas Llosa (b. Arequipa, 1936) faces a new stage in his life. He has returned to his apartment in the center of Madrid, after ending his relationship with Isabel Preysler. Also, surrounded by his collection of hippos, he has finished his novel about Peruvian music, which will be released in autumn. These days are frantic with preparations for his entry, on February 9, into the Académie Française, the house of The Immortals, founded in 1633. His joining is the culmination of an intense relationship with France, which defined his literary vocation, gave him his first recognition and nourished him intellectually, as detailed in his imminent book Un bárbaro en París [A Barbarian in Paris]. The writer is happy. He radiates energy and sprinkles the interview with loud laughter.

Maite Rico. You are the first author to enter the Academy without having written directly in French, something historic.

Vargas Llosa. It never crossed my mind to apply to the Academy. But on a recent trip to Paris, on the occasion of the release of my last novel, Daniel Rondeau, whom I met in my Parisian era and one of the first discoverers of the Latin American novel, calls me, as if appearing out of the depth of time. We have coffee, and I learn that he is a member of the Academy, and to my surprise he tells me to apply to be a candidate myself. “We have taken a vote, there have been no votes against, only two abstentions. There is a magnificent atmosphere and tomorrow the secrétaire perpétuelle [perpetual secretary] is inviting you to lunch.” Perpetual no less!

Q. …the historian Hélène Carrère d’Encausse.

A. Yes. She has a beautiful apartment on the Seine. She is an expert on Russia, and she told me, by the way, that the Russians had banned her books because she had criticized the invasion of Ukraine. The fact is that she already had my written candidacy letter, and she told me: “you have to decide now.” And that’s how overnight I became a member of the French Academy.

Q. You are also the first foreigner to enter the Pléiade library.

A. I said that entering the Pleiade was more important to me than the Nobel Prize, and it’s the truth. When I was young, when I lived in Paris, I bought a copy of the Pleiade editions once a year, and my dream was to be able to enter that collection one day. When Carmen Balcells showed me at her house the letter from Antoine Gallimard [her editor], which said: “It’s time for us to bring Mario to the Pléiade,” I was amazed.

Q. And are you going to have the time to polish and give splendor to the French language, as you do with Spanish?

A. The two academies meet on Thursdays. The Spanish was founded in imitation of the French, three years later. My idea is to divide the month and attend two Thursdays there and two Thursdays here. You can actually miss it whenever you want: there are many academics who don’t go, because they are old.

Q. Your first contacts with French culture date back to your youth, in Lima.

A. Yes. As a teenager, I read Dumas, Jules Verne, Victor Hugo… French culture predominated then in practically all Latin American countries. And I had the idea of being a French writer. At that time there were no publishers in Lima. The poets in fashion were lawyers who worked from Monday to Saturday and wrote on Sunday. It seemed impossible to be a writer in such a country. And I got into the Alliance Française, a small place on Wilson Avenue.

Q. Your teacher, Madame del Solar, whom you remember so fondly, would be proud today.

A. She was a lovely French girl, married to a Peruvian, who helped me a lot. When I enrolled in the Alliance there were ten girls, all of them nice, a boy who studied architecture and I. The other boy only lasted six months, because the girls were killers and laughed at our pronunciation. In the end I adapted to them and spent four years there, but I started to read French after six months.

Q. And your first trip to France was in 1958, at the age of 22, with an award in a short story contest at the Revue Française.

A. In the Revue, yes. I had a wonderful month in Paris. Then I returned after completing my doctorate in Madrid. The very night I arrived in Paris, I bought a copy of Madame Bovary at La Joie de Lire [The Joy of Reading], a bookstore in the Latin Quarter. Listen, I spent the whole night reading. That book really dazzled me… continue reading

so much so that I became a frenetic fan of Flaubert. And then I decided to be a writer. I decided that in France. Flaubert confirmed to me that literature was a way of life.

Q. Neither Flaubert’s father nor yours wanted their sons to be writers.

A. My father was an enemy of literature, and I think he put me in the Military College with the idea that the military was going to free me from my vocation. But the funny thing is that I became a professional writer, because I wrote letters to my classmates.

Q. Did anyone keep any? Because they’re valuable now.

A. I haven’t seen any, ha, ha, ha. Flaubert’s father was an engineer, and he didn’t want him to dedicate himself to literature either. I think Flaubert’s epilepsy was actually his invention. Overnight he faints and begins to see lights. Don’t tell me it’s not suspicious. Then, the father, afraid that his son, whom he loves very much, could die, sends him to the countryside, to Croisset, and there he can now dedicate himself to writing.

Q. Balzac’s father didn’t want him to write either. And Balzac had another illness…

A. They invented illnesses to convince the family and then the family went along with it. At that time there was no copyright law, ha, ha, ha.

Q. France confirms your literary vocation and you discover the confrontation of ideas. It can be said that French culture laid the foundations of your intellectual formation.

A. Absolutely. For always. Look, I spent a year in the Communist Party in Peru. The communist parties were absolutely totalitarian. And what saved me from sectarianism was reading Sartre, who wrote some essays in which he attacked Stalin a lot. With the poor amount I earned while I was at university, I subscribed to two French magazines: Les Temps Modernes [Modern Times], by Sartre, and Les Lettres Nouvelles [New Letters] by Maurice Nadeau, and I could more or less follow French literary news. It’s funny because in all the controversies I agreed with Sartre.

Q. Then came the disappointment.

A. What broke my relationship with Sartre is an interview in which he is asked about two African writers, and he says that they must first make the revolution to create a country where literature is possible. I felt enormously frustrated. Sartre had taught us that you could be a writer anywhere and denounce the horrors of the Third World, and now it turns out that you had to make the revolution first to be a writer. I was already too far advanced in my literary vocation to believe him.

Q. But Sartre never got committed at the moment of truth. In the war he kept a low profile, while Albert Camus and André Malraux risked their lives in the Resistance.

A. It’s said that Sartre occupied the academic seat of a Jew who had been expelled from a high school. I don’t know if it was true. But Sartre didn’t believe in politics. He focused on philosophical studies. And at the age of 50 he entered in a very militant way and was already an exclusively political man, and he dedicated himself to writing those essays… Le communiste et la paix [The Communist and Peace]. Camus was less flighty than Sartre. He was more realistic, more grounded, and we identified more with him. Sartre essentially doesn’t create literature. He begins novels that remain unfinished. He said that he was going to write a fourth novel that he never wrote, and then he said that he was going to write an essay on morality that he never wrote. He always left his projects incomplete.

Q. After dismissing the theory of commitment, do you still believe that literature can change life? Do you still consider it as an act of rebellion?

A. Yes, I think so. I believe that literature is an invention of human beings to defend themselves from death. It’s a way to, let’s say, hide. That’s why it’s going to survive. Literature is a defense against death. There, in the novel, you find an eternity that is fictitious, but that allows us to protect ourselves from what we are very afraid of, especially when we are old, which is the proximity of death.

Q. In addition to Flaubert, Sartre and Camus, Malraux influenced you…

A. Malraux was the only writer who spoke as well as he wrote. His speeches were wonderful. I remember what he said in 1964 when the ashes of Jean Moulin, the head of the Resistance, were transferred to the Pantheon. De Gaulle was there, but only Malraux spoke. The French cried when they heard it. I had to cover the event. What a beautiful thing. He was an extraordinary speaker. And a great writer.

Q. And then Raymond Aron and Jean-François Revel.

A. At first I bought Le Figaro on Saturdays, which was when Raymond Aron wrote, and I hid. Ha, ha, ha. I was embarrassed to buy it. But I read it because I thought it was incredible that he defended liberalism so much. He was a complete loner. And Revel, I think he is the Frenchman who knew Latin America best. His essays on Argentina and Mexico are brilliant.

Q. Like you, he evolved from Marxism to liberalism.

A. He was a liberal. He was a close friend of Sartre at the university. Look, now I was reading Hayek and he says that when they appear in England the first liberals use words that did not exist in the political world, such as progressive or universalism. And the left appropriates all that and completely distorts it to defend socialism. Well, socialism is dead. No one can believe in it after Cuba.

Q. Your literary bond with France is double. On the one hand, you discover French literature, and, on the other, France discovers Latin American literature. France reaffirms your vocation as a writer and then recognizes it as such.

A. Absolutely. I publish my first two novels in France, I write a lot of articles, novels, stories… a lot. My big surprise was the success of La ciudad y los perros [The City and the Dogs]. What I have never known is if it was because of the novel itself or because it was burned by the military at my school in Lima.

Q. That they burned it I’m sure helped its success, but I guess some merit would have… You have said that the way in which you exercise your freedom as a writer comes from Flaubert.

A. Of course, Flaubert invents that figure of the invisible narrator, who is like a God who is not seen, who leaves apparent freedom to his characters, without showing himself.

Q. The opposite of Victor Hugo’s omniscient narrator.

A. Victor Hugo is the opposite. Now, Les Misérables is a great novel, the last classic novel. And then comes Madame Bovary, which is the first modern novel. Flaubert was not aware of the importance of his invention, of that figure that narrates from silence, from invisibility. It was the great revolution in the novel. [The writer gets up and brings an old book from his library]. Look how beautiful. The first edition of Madame Bovary. Some friends have given it to me.

Q. You said that Emma Bovary is the greatest love of your life, that with no person of flesh and blood have you had such a passionate relationship.

A. Ha, ha, ha, it’s true, it’s the pure truth.

Q. You define her as rebellious in the face of the mediocrity that surrounds her, a superior spirit. You’re going to hate me, but she seems to me a disordered obsessive.

A. No, no, a disordered obsessive, no!

Q. She is someone who contains the seed of unhappiness.

A. What happens is that the husband is a poor devil. Completely boring. And then she believes that life is like the novels she reads. And she begins to explore…

Q. But she has unreal aspirations. She pursues a mirage and makes those around her unhappy. And she herself is unhappy.

A. Well, yes, she accumulates a great unhappiness. But her rebellion has to do with love. With love! Not with ideology. It’s a personal ideology, absolutely personal. And it is the defense of love.

Q. Yes, but it’s an ideal love. That’s why all lovers disappoint her.

A. Of course. The lovers are of a frightening mediocrity. And then she looks for someone superior and can’t find him in that little town. When she is completely frustrated, she commits suicide. Madame Bovary’s suicide is one of the most brilliant episodes in literature. There are three pages, in which she swallows arsenic, begins to feel pain and anguish and despair… Terrible. It is written impersonally, because what Flaubert wanted was impersonality. It’s a wonderful description. In the letters to Louise Colet, Flaubert said: I feel the poison in my mouth… Flaubert always looked for the most extraordinary things.

Q. Do you also correct a lot, like him?

A. I correct a lot, I redo, I create a summary diagram. Yes, a lot.

Q. And do you also read aloud?

A. No, not that, because I don’t think music has the last word in the style. Flaubert thought so. Not me. Great writers are not musicians.

Q. I have to ask you about the story Los vientos [The Winds], which was released in October 2021 in the magazine Letras Libres [Free Letters].

A. It went completely unnoticed and now it’s everywhere. The other day, the person who takes care of my books told me: “Suddenly we have begun to receive letters from people who want Los Vientos.” But hey, why is this a story?

Q. Because it’s interpreted to include messages.

A. Absurd and crazy messages. I would never have thought of ridiculing Isabel in my life. At that time I got along very well with her. I don’t even remember when I wrote those episodes that have been released in the newspapers, even in France, in an article in Le Monde!

Q. The story is amusing and at the same time tragic. It’s a very plausible dystopia.

A. It’s a story about old age. I wrote it for Letras Libres, and now it’s coming out as a novella in many countries.

Q. Old age tends to be considered a gray age, immune to experiences, to enjoyment. But you have shown that this is not the case. At work, and in your personal life, you retain a nonconformist spirit.

A. Eighty-six years is old, isn’t it? I work a lot. At this age you have to fight it. We have to try to keep writing until the end. The ideal is to die with a pen in your hand.

Q. You had a very hard experience with COVID.

A. It was horrible. I was working and my legs started shaking. And I had something in my throat and I couldn’t breathe. Isabel called a doctor, and when he arrived I heard him say to her: “His fever is going up a lot. You have to take him to the clinic.” The wait was distressing, I was drowning. They took me from the ambulance directly to a kind of tube with oxygen. Then I started to breathe. I think the most dramatic experience I’ve had has been that lack of oxygen.

Q. Did you start to think that you weren’t going to get through it?

A. Yes, I had the impression that I was dying. I was dying there. Yes.

Q. Your life has always had a public part, which in recent years has intensified. It has been at the epicenter of a bubble that can be unreal. How would you define that experience? Did you feel a little like you were under a microscope?

A. No, no, I was very much in love with Isabel. But let’s say, that world is not my world.

Q. And now you are under siege.

A. At seven in the morning, when I went for a walk, the journalists were already at the door. At seven o’clock!! For a month. They haven’t been there for days now. It’s wonderful.

Q. You’ve been in Peru researching your new novel. Does the departure of Pedro Castillo from the presidency open a door to hope?

A. It’s still complicated. The vice president was brought in by the same forces; she has declared herself a Marxist-Leninist.

Q. Do you have the impression that Peru is now more fucked up?

A. I have the impression that Peru has been fucked up a lot more. Well, Latin America in general. Latin America, with the exception of Uruguay and Ecuador. Brazil, fucked up; Argentina, fucked up; all of Central America, fucked up. And Colombia, with Petro, who has sent a fierce message against Peru, because he says that the right wing has kidnapped Castillo!

Q. And Mexico…

A. López Obrador is a manipulator. He wants to change the Constitution to be president again, but I doubt he will succeed. What a sinister character.

Q. You are Peruvian, and Spanish, and a French academic; Latino and cosmopolitan.. Where do you feel you belong?

A. Well, literature is that, just that. Borders don’t exist for me. Look, I’m in Spain; I read the newspapers and I get terrifyingly irritated, just like in Peru. And I’m in France, and I get irritated just like in Peru. I move around very freely, and wherever I am, I’m interested in what is happening.

Q. But have you imagined a retreat somewhere specific? Have you thought about returning to Peru?

A. No, I think it’s very difficult right now. I feel at home in Spain.

MARIO AND THE CENSOR

After the success of La ciudad y los perros in France, Vargas Llosa sent the book to Carlos Barral. Two months later, the writer and Catalan publisher met in Paris. “He told me that he had really liked my novel and wanted to publish it in Spain.” Then the procedures began with censorship, which lasted for a year. And Barral invited Vargas Llosa to lunch with the person in charge, Manuel Fraga’s brother-in-law.

Q. And how did it go?

A. Well, there was a historian on Latin America there who didn’t understand anything, because he hadn’t read the novel, and he asked: “But what’s going on? What’s going on?” And then the head of censorship tells him: “What’s going on? The cadets are screwing a chicken!” [imitating the accent] Ha, ha, ha. The guy was speechless.

Q. Here we’re more into sheep.

A. Ja, ja, ja. It was wonderful. The head of censorship tells me: “Look. There is only one colonel in your novel. The colonel is the chief of the barracks. So, either you put in more colonels or that colonel can’t be as ridiculous as he appears in your book.” He gave me those arguments! And then I told him, “I don’t agree with that.” In the end, the novel came out with seven changes.

Q. I thought it was with seven colonels!

A. And also the detail of the priest who went to the brothel. The head of censorship tells me: “Look, I know that priests are not always respectful, but there is only one priest in your novel and that priest goes to brothels, so it can’t be that way. Aim for more priests or let’s take out the brothel.” In the second edition, Carlos Barral slipped it into the revised novel. It was a frightening struggle, with Carlos becoming a little more daring in each revision. Well, 20 or 30 years later, I’m giving a lecture and an old man appears… the head of censorship! Who tells me that he has published a book and adds: “In that book I say that thanks to me, La ciudad y los perros was published here!” Ha, ha, ha. That’s nice, isn’t it?

Translated by Regina Anavy

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the cultural magazine LaLectura [Reading] and is reproduced here with the permission of the newspaper El Mundo [The World].

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Cuba Registers a Teenage Pregnancy Rate Close to That of Haiti and El Salvador

Young pregnant women in a maternal hospital in the province of Camagüey, in Cuba. (IPS/File)

14ymedio, Havana, 31 January 2023 — The high rate of teenage pregnancies is not one of the indicators in public health that Cuba can boast about, with fertility among minors under 19 years of age in the range of countries with low educational and health levels in the Americas. The issue was addressed by the official press on Monday, which recognizes that “bad results are ’above’ what is expected and desired.”

Cuba has a teenage fertility rate of 51.10 per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 19, according to 2018 data from the World Health Organization (WHO). Thus, it is in the 16th position of 35 countries on the American continent. Of the statistics available on the institution’s portal, Latin America and the Caribbean have the highest average, of up to 53.2 births per 1,000 women.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Island is very far from the level of 16.70 pregnancies per 1,000 adolescents that the United States has or the 2.0 registered in Sweden. Cuba is approaching the rank of nations such as Haiti, with 54.80, or El Salvador, with 51.80, both immersed in an economic crisis and with low access to education.

The oficial State newspaper Granma summarized the results of the National Program for the Advancement of Women (PAM) shared in a meeting held on Sunday with senior leaders of the Communist Party and the Ministry of Public Health, in which it was concluded that “the high incidence of pregnancy in adolescent ages is an urgent matter.”

The Government says that the percentage fell in the last year from 18.1% to 17.8%. However, four provinces have indices that exceed the national average. Las Tunas has the highest figure, of 22.7%, followed by Holguín (21.3%), Camagüey (20.5%) and Granma (20.3%).

Granma reports that the Government’s proposal is to reduce the fertility rate in adolescence by at least 50%, as well as to ensure 80% coverage and diversity of contraceptive methods. Tania Margarita Cruz Hernández, first deputy minister of Public Health, considered that a solution is to “intensify the work of sex education in schools, in the community and with the family,” and opined that it is time to resume television programs related to the subject.

Teenage pregnancies were a topic of discussion in the provincial press two weeks ago, when an article in El Artemiseño pointed out that of the 4,631 births recorded at the end of 2022 in Artemisa, 16% corresponded to pregnancies of women between 15 and 19 years of age and 31% of births were to women between 20 and 24 years of age. continue reading

The newspaper noted the alarming figures of 2021, when the municipality of Alquízar recorded the highest rate of fertility in adolescents — up to 91.9 births per 1,000 women — according to the National Bureau of Statistics and Information (Onei). Bahía Honda and Güira de Melena also showed scandalous figures, with 65 and 60.6, respectively.

The newspaper cited an interview with Alquízar’s Community Genetics specialist, Lidia Peña Martínez, who said that most teenage pregnancies occur in “dysfunctional families with a low cultural and economic level.”

According to WHO data, Cuba is approaching the rank of nations such as Haiti, with 54.80, or El Salvador, with 51.80. (WHO)

Peña Martínez listed the causes, which, according to her, explain the upsurge of cases: “The increasingly early onset of sexual relations, the inadequate methods to learn about sexuality issues, the concern of women about not being accepted within the social group, immorality without adequate perception of risk and, in recent times, the lack of contraceptive pills and condoms.”

Teenage pregnancies are a public health problem, which has socio-economic consequences. In countries with low social indicators, young women are pressured to get married and have children in the face of a small window to access higher education or to get a decent job. Some, even when they are minors, are forced to marry.

The WHO warns that adolescent mothers are at greater risk of health problems such as eclampsia, puerperal endometritis and systemic infections compared to women between the ages of 20 and 24. Babies can be born underweight, and there is a risk of premature births or even the death of the mother and the newborn.

The disastrous figures are also affected by the shortage of condoms, a recurring issue in Cuban clinics and pharmacies. The consequences are already being experienced, and the health authorities of Guantánamo have confirmed that the province suffered a rebound in sexually transmitted infections (STIs), unwanted pregnancies and abortionss at the end of 2022.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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With the Approval of 4,700 Cubans and 26,000 Venezuelans, Mayorkas Points Out the Success of the ‘Parole’ Program for Migrants

The Secretary of Homeland Security of the United States, Alejandro Mayorkas, at the Cultural Center of Little Haiti in Miami, this Monday. (EFE/Cristobal Herrera)

EFE/14ymedio, Miami/Madrid, 30 January 2023 — The Secretary of National Security of the United States, Alejandro Mayorkas, said on Monday that the humanitarian program for Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians and Nicaraguans applied since the beginning of January has brought down the irregular arrival of those migrants to the country by 90%.

At an event held at Little Haiti Cultural Center in Miami, Mayorkas defended that one must reach the United States “legally and without taking risks,” alluding without specifying the many Cubans and Haitians who go to sea in rudimentary boats headed for the US shores.

“Those who decide to come to the United States illegally should know that we will use all the instruments of the law to expel them,” stressed the secretary, who stressed that the program “is being very successful.”

Born in Havana in 1959, Mayorkas said that the issue of Cuban migration touches him personally, since he and his parents had to leave Cuba in 1960, and stressed that the Biden government wants “a solution” to the problem of immigration,” and spoke about it with his Latin American peers at the last Summit of the Americas.

“Those who come with this program will be able to work, so no resources from the administrations will be used,” said the official.

Mayorkas began his schedule this Monday with a meeting with Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. The mayor, after emphasizing that Miami-Dade “is a community of immigrants,” said that during the meeting she held with Mayorkas they discussed the need for more federal resources for immigrants. continue reading

After the meeting in Little Haiti with the Haitian community, he plans to meet –in an event closed to the press– at the Miami hermitage dedicated to the patron saint of Cuba, the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, with representatives of the Cuban community in Miami, which welcomes most of the migrants from the four countries covered by the program.

Mayorkas also met with congressmen Mario Diaz-Balart, Maria Elvira Salazar, Debbie Wasserman and Carlos Giménez.

The secretary’s visit to this city aims to explain the immigration policy of the government of US President Joe Biden, and the recently approved humanitarian permit known as ‘parole’ for Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans, which expanded the one that already existed since October for Venezuelans.

This program, challenged in the courts by twenty Republican states, allows up to 30,000 of these migrants to enter the country every month since January 6, who must meet certain requirements such as having a “sponsor” who supports them financially and covers their living expenses. health. The permit is for two years and allows them to work.

Those who enter irregularly await deportation, according to this humanitarian program, which takes into account the difficult political and economic situation of the four countries.

As of last Friday, according to CNN with a source in a National Security official, more than 4,700 Cubans had been authorized to travel through the new parole program, along with 2,000 Haitians and 800 Nicaraguans. As for Venezuelans, for whom the program was established in October, 26,000 are approved.

Since January 6, when the program came into force, more than 1,700 people have arrived in the United States under this process from Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cubans Must Pay in Dollars for U.S. Consular Services in Havana

14ymedio, Havana, 31 January 2023 — As of March 1, the U.S. Embassy in Havana will charge all its consular services in US dollars. The diplomatic headquarters has issued a statement on Tuesday in which it announces that it will “no longer accept Cuban pesos” in payment for visas, notarial services or parole.

“The U.S. Embassy does not accept the use of a credit card to pay for its services,” adds the brief note published on the official website of the diplomatic headquarters. The decision leaves aside the national currency, with which, until now, part of the consular procedures could be paid, and obliges payment with dollars in cash.

The measure was coming. The US consulate was closed to the public for three years, including the months after monetary unification, carried out in Cuba in January 2021, which eliminated the convertible peso (CUC) from circulation. After restarting the processing of visas last January, payment was allowed in Cuban pesos or dollars, a duality that many pointed out as unsustainable.

The cost of managing an immigrant visa for family reunification, the type of procedure that since the beginning of this year has been carried out again at the consulate of Havana, rises to $325, while the cost for winners of the Diversity Lottery is $330.

Last June, a resolution of the Central Bank of Cuba entered into force that prevents consulates on the Island from converting their accounts in pesos into foreign currency. The measure caused the paralysis of consular services in several diplomatic headquarters that were forced to choose between collecting their procedures in pesos or in freely convertible currency (MLC).

Consulates that chose to continue operating in Cuban pesos, the favored option of citizens, who more easily have the national currency, can only make bank deposits in that currency and are not allowed to transfer to accounts in MLC or transfer funds abroad.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuba Plans to Activate the New Cable between Cuba and Martinique in April to Improve Connectivity

Orange, through its subsidiary in Martinique, promotes the construction of the Arimao submarine cable. (JR)

14ymedio, Madrid, 1 February 2023 — Cuban authorities plan to have the new underwater internet connection cable running in three months, as announced in an article published by the official press which tries to respond to the multiple complaints of low connectivity in recent weeks through the state telecommunications monopoly Etecsa, the Island’s only gateway to the Internet.

“We hope to launch the Arimao submarine cable in April,” said Tania Velázquez Rodríguez, president of the company, who explains the short circuit in ALBA-1, the connection between Venezuela and Cuba, the was launched in 2013. “The capacities we had in ALBA-1 are saturated, so in those high-speed schedules the demand is not met. The new cable will offer important capabilities for navigation. Likewise, we must increase the capabilities of the software that enables that output so that everything flows correctly,” she adds.

Arimao was announced in December, before Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s tour of several Caribbean islands, and foresees the connection from Martinique, deployed by the French Orange company through its subsidiary on this island. The fiber optic cable is 2,500 kilometers long and reaches the Tricontinental Port of Cienfuegos. The maritime installation to Martinique was completed at the beginning of January, when the land connections began. When they have been completed, it will be time to do tests.

In this Wednesday’s note, Velázquez Rodríguez offers figures for the growth in demand for connection in Cuba, which in 2022 increased by more than one million users, reaching a total of 6.7 million customers, most of them 4G. That has caused a 63% increase in traffic volume, from 189,000 terabytes in 2012 to 309,000 in 2022. The average user demand has varied from 5.65 gigabytes to 7.23 in a year.

The infrastructure has not grown, however, which generates the congestion problems detected by users. According to Etecsa data, more than two million people connect simultaneously between eight and ten at night, the busiest time, which saturates the network and results complaints from the population. continue reading

“The growth not only demands investments in the access network, but also forces us to do work on other layers of the network that allows the smooth transit of that mass of data demanded by customers. Likewise, we must take into account the international traffic,” adds the directive, referring to Arimao.

The promotion to quintuple the capacity has been on everyone’s lips when it comes to explaining the problems of access to the network. Velázquez Rodríguez confirms that these offers have effects, although it justifies the urgent need to obtain currency along the way.

“It is an incentive to stimulate recharges from [family and friends] abroad since from the exit of the combined packages there has been a shift towards the consumption of national packages with CUP (Cuban peso) payments, and income from abroad has decreased. We are very pleased to have offers in CUP that please most of our customers, but it is also important to offer alternatives to capture the currencies that allow us to sustain the service and do it with quality,” he says.

The director also talks in the interview about how blackouts have affected navigation and reveals that radio bases have batteries but only 20% of the 5,000 on the Island have energy support, which suspends the connection.

The argument could technically explain the cuts denounced during the long blackouts last summer, which gave rise to a multitude of demonstrations in which the Government was held responsible and the restitution of the current was demanded. However, there is a suspicion among the population that internet cuts were intentional to prevent protests from being disseminated through social networks, with a contagion effect.

The official adds that they have tried to get more batteries, but the cost per unit (about $30,000) prevents them from having enough. “It is satisfactory for our company to show growth in traffic and in the number of subscribers, although we recognize that there is dissatisfaction with quality,” he admits.

Velázquez Rodríguez refers to other areas of telecommunications, such as fixed telephony, which will increase by only 16,000 lines in 2023 because, although he assures that it is still in high demand in Cuba, the priority is the cellular “for its rapid deployment and wide capacity to assimilate customers.” In addition, he has also talked about the slow deployment of wireless networks for the Nauta Hogar [Nauta Home] network or the sale of equipment in pesos, which “will be carried out when economic conditions allow it.”

The frequencies of transmission or the digitization of some services also appear in the interview, in which, as a novelty, the MiTransfer channel (a virtual money account associated with a mobile number) stands out as a preliminary step to the short-term virtual wallet.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Hotel Company Melia Achieves Another Success in its Lawsuit for the Use of Confiscated Land in Cuba

The Sol Río y Luna Mares hotel, in Playa Esmeralda, Holguín, is on land that belonged to the Sánchez-Hill family before 1959.

14ymedio, Madrid, 2 February 2023 — The Spanish court that in May 2021 issued the provisional dismissal of the lawsuit against the hotelier Meliá filed by the Sánchez-Hill family, for the exploitation of its land in Cuba confiscated by the Cuban government, has dismissed the case for the second time.

The head of the Court of First Instance of Palma that heard the case, informed Expansión on Wednesday that it agreed with the Cuban state company Gaviota and declared the lack of jurisdiction of the Spanish courts in this judicial process.

The order, dated January 27 and to which the economic newspaper had access, indicates that the Spanish Justice cannot recognize, in a legal sense, the confiscation, “given that it was a sovereign act carried out by Cuba through its own laws.” The Court does not rule on its international competence since the lack of jurisdiction is sufficient reason for the filing of the procedure, which sets a precedent in other claims based on the Helms-Burton law against Spanish hoteliers.

In 2019, the Sánchez-Hill family sued the Balearic network Meliá for the exploitation of two hotels, Paradisus Río Oro y Sol and Río y Luna Mares, on land that belonged to their family before 1959. On that occasion, the judge already issued the provisional file of the case for the same reasons as now, but the Sánchez-Hill family appealed to the Provincial Court (higher court) upon considering that the company’s tax domicile made the lawsuit possible.

The plaintiffs then extended the complaint to the Cuban State, as the owner of the land, although the State decided not to appear. Instead, Gaviota did, whose allegations were joined by Meliá. continue reading

The state company maintained in its brief that Cuba enjoys immunity from jurisdiction and, since the lawsuit was directed against the Island, the privilege extended to the rest of the defendants. In addition, Gaviota added that meeting the demand meant ruling on goods located within Cuba without extraterritorial effects in Spain, as well as something impossible: ruling on the sovereign acts of a State.

Meliá sources consulted by the Spanish newspaper limited themselves to showing their satisfaction with the dismissal of the case, in which the family claimed at least ten million euros for the “illicit enrichment” of the hotel.

However, the case has generated problems for the chain, including the ban on entry into the United States that hangs over Gabriel Escarrer, executive vice president and CEO of the company, as a result.

The manager, however, said that when he learned about that measure he didn’t “tremble” because of the pressure, and his commitment to Cuba was unconditional. Despite the severe collapse of tourism on the Island, which after the pandemic has failed to recover the past figures and is even below the poorest forecasts, Meliá has not relinquished its expansion strategy.

In addition to the 34 hotels that the Balearic chain manages on the Island, projects are frequently reactivated. The most recent is the December 2021 agreement with the Cuban Medical Services Marketer to include its establishments in the health tourism promoted by the regime, an agreement that is already being implemented, according to the authorities in May 2022, for dialysis patients.

In addition, in the short term Meliá plans to open, although without a specified date, other establishments, such as the Sol Caribe Beach in Varadero and the Meliá Trinidad Peninsula, in Sancti Spíritus. When it has inaugurated these two, it will have 36 hotels, 10% of the total of those in Cuba, and 14,844 rooms, 15.2% of the availability on the Island.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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A Free Homeland to Live In

The filmmaker faced a thousand dangers to leave a memory of the popular rebellion that shook the country in 2018. (fotograma)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 2 February 2023 — I have seen the documentary Nicaragua, patria libre para vivir [Nicaragua, a Free Homeland to Live In], three times, and all three times it has shaken me to the core. Its director, the Andalusian poet and philologist, Daniel Rodríguez Moya, says that you can be born anywhere in the world and love it, but you can also choose a land to love, without necessarily having been born there. And he decided, 20 years ago, to fall in love with Nicaragua.

Daniel sold his poetry publishing company in Granada to finance his film. He went with his camera to the land of volcanoes and faced a thousand dangers to leave a memory of the popular rebellion that shook that country in 2018. Beyond the award at the Invisible Film Festival in Bilbao, what excites the poet is that Nicaraguans have found in his images a bastion against forgetting.

Because they show convulsive times. Sometimes the world prefers to look away and ignore that there are dictatorships in our America, the same or worse than those that stained the Twentieth Century with blood. Sometimes sanctions are not enough to stop those who violate human rights with impunity, trampling on democracy. Sometimes there is an “idiotic left,” as sociologist Sofía Montenegro calls it in the documentary, that continues to support these tyrants in the name of a sick romanticism.

The testimony of someone like Sergio Ramírez, a Cervantes award winner and former vice president of Nicaragua, is overwhelming. Sergio had the moral stature to move away from a revolution that had already lost its course. And after the 2018 protests, Ortega ordered his capture. The novelist had already suffered persecution under Somoza. Now he would be persecuted by his own comrades in the struggle. The founder of the literary festival Centroamérica cuenta, the most important literary festival in the region, recounts how he preferred to be considered a traitor by the beasts, rather than become one of them. continue reading

One shudders to hear the verses of Gioconda Belli, a multi-award-winning writer who has also had to go into exile. The author of La mujer habitada [The Inhabited Woman] would never accept being an accomplice of someone who overthrew Anastasio Somoza to end up becoming another dictator. Nicaragua’s best children have had to leave or are trapped in its dungeons.

I have told Moya that I would love for Cubans to be able to see his movie. It is obvious that the Island’s regime would never allow such a film at its festivals, much less dare to put it on television. But it would be fabulous if it could sneak into the paquete* [“Weekly Packet”] so Cubans could look at themselves in the mirror. There are too many similarities to our own history.

Every time Rosario Murillo, current vice president and wife of Daniel Ortega, mentions the word “love,” one feels nauseated. But in Cuba they also hide behind words such as “solidarity” or “humanism,” while the minions beat our young people in the streets, surveille our poets and condemn an entire country to the most abject poverty.

I have rarely seen an entire audience cry in front of a documentary. And with this one it has happened to me three times. When the father of one of the murdered boys talks about his last meeting with his son, you can’t help but break down. There is too much truth in his words and too much helplessness in his eyes, but not a single trace of hatred. And I think of all the mothers of our boys in Cuba. I think about everything that went through their heads when they saw the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo meet in Argentina with the Cuban dictator who gave the order to fight against our children.

How could those illustrious ladies forget the origin of their causes? How can they put ideological interests before the most elementary sense of justice? I prefer to believe that they are very stunned by the “lobby” and the propaganda displayed by a regime addicted to lies. I prefer to tell our mothers: forgive them, because they know not what they do.

Even the title of this documentary has a close relationship with our reality. The Sandinista revolution has used as its motto a phrase that Augusto César Sandino used as a battle cry in 1927: “A free homeland or death.” And in Cuba, since 1960, Fidel Castro would culminate all his endless speeches with the slogan: “Homeland or Death.” It is no coincidence that both Cubans and Nicaraguans have developed that rejection of the word “death.”

It is time for us, in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, and in every corner where there is a stupid and hypocritical dictatorship, to close ranks. It’s time to replace death with life, and not just in songs.

*Translator’s note: El Paquete Semanal, the weekly package, is a collection of digital material distributed underground.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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In Cuba, Prices Rose by 39 Percent in the Official Economy in 2022 and by 140 Percent in the Informal Economy

Items for sale in a state store in Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 2 February 2023 — Prices in Cuba officially rose by 39% in 2022, a figure that reflects the great deterioration of the population’s economy and mainly affects food, with an increase of 62.9%, as published on Wednesday by the National Office of Information and Statistics (Onei).

The data are much better than those of the previous year, when December closed with a 77.3% increase in the consumer price index (CPI,) dragged down by Transport, which grew by 188%, and Housing, by 153%. That year, food prices increased by 114%. This does not hide the fact that Cubans have spent twice as much as a year ago on eating, accumulating increases. In addition, the authorities themselves are aware that the official calculation is far from reality, since most citizens have to resort to the informal market to find food.

This month’s price increase is more moderate than in the past, although not insignificant. Prices rose by 3.7% in December, somewhat less than in November, when they increased by 4.1%.

Highlights include the increases in very essential products in the daily life of the average Cuban, such as red beans (13%), toilet paper (10.5%) and black beans (10%). Sweets and flour increased by more than 8%. However, in some state markets, tomatoes (-19.8%) and pepper (-5.7%) have gone down.

By sector, Food and Non-alcoholic Beverages are once again taking center stage, rising by 5.6% this December. Here you can also see, once again, the cost of animal protein. Pork (8%), lamb and ham (more than 6%) have gone up, and eggs and rice ((5.4%). The basic accompaniment of dishes in family meals continues to go uo, and in December the price increased by 3.7%.

Restaurants and Hotels is again the sector that closely follows food in its escalation. This December, prices increased by 4.22% and throughout the year it accumulated 55.6%. The rise is in the price of snacks (7.8%), followed by breakfast (4.6%), takeaways (3.5%) and soft drinks (2.5%). continue reading

The third sector that most affects price variation is that of Goods and Services, although its rise is discreet (2.6%). Education is ahead of it, with prices that increased in December by 3.9%. Furniture and Household items increased by 2.7%. However, the top three win, because of how much they impact daily life: the increase in the cost of toilet paper, dye (6.1%), shampoo and perfume (both around 3.8%).

The only sector whose prices fell was that of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco (-0.12%), undoubtedly dragged down by the drop in cigars (-0.8%). However, throughout the year the price variation is more than 25%, remaining globally the third group of products by price increase in all of 2022.

Other lower-impact increases are in Transport (0.3%, although 13.5% per year), Housing (1.2%, but 13.2% in 2022), Recreation and Culture (0.34%) and Clothing and Footwear (0.41%). Much more insignificant is the rise in Health and Communications prices, which, without falling, barely rise by 0.09% and 0.06% respectively.

“The data subscribe to the difficulty of the economic scenario, in which price increases are combined with lower economic growth, which points to a complex situation of stagnation (acceleration of inflation and stagnation of production), whose solution can be much more complex,” the Cuban expert based in Spain, Elías Amor, points out in his blog, Cubaeconomía, and he adds that the authorities of the Island do not seem to be doing much to control the situation.

The American economist Steve Hanke, who makes calculations taking into account the informal economy, put 2022 inflation in Cuba at 140%, more than three times higher than that provided by the Government with official prices; although since the beginning of the year it has reported increases in the environment of 60%, very high again, but considerably lower. In addition, the expert also accounted for the devaluation of the peso, which since January 2022 has fallen by 57.65% against the dollar.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Inflation Wreaks Havoc on the Cuban Economy During 2022

Food prices in Cuban markets and establishments have only risen in the last two years. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 2 February 2023 — It’s the news of the day but let no one look for a single reference to the data in the communist state press. And that, despite its importance and that it has a prominent influence on the living conditions of the population. I am referring to the inflation rate of the Cuban economy in 2022, which has just been published by the National Bureau of Statistics and Information, ONEI.

In fact, the data are not good. In 2022, Cuba closed with a year-on-year inflation rate of 39.07%, one of the highest in the world and with very negative effects that the regime does not seem to know how to control or mitigate. This rate, without going any further, is almost 5 times higher than that recorded in the neighboring Dominican Republic, and almost 4 times higher than that of all Latin American countries.

Inflation also has very negative features if the behavior of the different components is analyzed. Food and non-alcoholic beverage inflation increased to a spectacular year-on-year rate of 62.95%, more than 30 percentage points higher than the average, and that of the Restaurants and Hotels component to 55.64%, another 20 points more.

The two rates have an intense impact on the increases in the index, with Food at 76% and Restaurants at 12%. The rest of the components have a lower weight in the year-on-year rate, and from an objective perspective the regime should know where it has to concentrate its efforts in the fight against inflation, but it does not, or what is worse, it may not know how to do it.

Other equally negative aspects can be pointed out from inflation in 2022. The most worrying was its acceleration throughout the year, which can be measured by the monthly variation rates. In December, the rate for the entire CPI was 3.74% in a single month, but in the case of Food it reached 5.66% and in the Education component (which is a public service of the state) the price increase in the month was 3.96%. continue reading

The upward profile of inflation throughout the year is detected when it is found that the monthly increases were smaller at the beginning of the year, growing continuously from the second half of the year. This is a direct consequence, not only of the shortage of supply of goods and services that it has been planning all year round about price tension, but also of the effect of greater public spending that increases as the year progresses, generating the problems of lack of monetary control that feed inflation.

But, in addition, inflation in Cuba over the last two years has broken the foundations of the functioning of the economy in a very prominent way. In 2021, the year-on-year rate was 77.3% as a result of the impact of the Ordering Task.* In 2022, it grew by 39.07%, as mentioned above.

To know the impact of this rise in inflation in two consecutive years, let’s think of a salary of 3,000 pesos on January 1, 2021. Its purchasing power at that time was equivalent to 3,000 pesos, but with inflation of 77% in 2021, that purchasing power in December was equivalent to 690 pesos.

Throughout 2022, with inflation of 39.07%, those 690 pesos would have become 420 pesos. In other words, the 3,000 pesos of January 1, 2021 would have an equivalent purchasing power of 420 pesos on December 31, 2022. The accumulated loss would be 86%. The purchasing capacity of Cubans, with the average index, decreased by 86% since January 1, 2021, but obviously it would be much greater if the data of the Food and non-alcoholic beverages component are taken into account. However, economists measure purchasing power with the general index, which has caused that erosion of 86% in salary, or pension.

This erosion of the purchasing power of nominal incomes also hits bank deposits and any other asset that Cubans possess, because inflation is an unfair, asymmetric tax, which hits the most disadvantaged groups more intensely, as is happening in Cuba. You have to imagine the distortion that requires business accounting to continually update income and costs so as not to lose competitiveness. A true chaos.

In addition, analyzing the individual behavior of the prices that make up the “basket” that defines Cuba’s CPI, surprising results are obtained. The products that see prices rise the most intensely are the basic foods red and black beans (13% and 10%, respectively), and toilet paper, 10.65%, another product of necessity.

Inflation falls harshly on the most disadvantaged groups, whose incomes and pensions are lower, to cope with these uncontrolled prices. ONEI emphasizes that tomatoes with a drop of 18% or peppers, with 5.8%, were the products that experienced the greatest price declines.

There is then miscellaneous data on price increases during the month of December for other products, such as pork, 8.1%, ham, 6.3%, snacks 7.8%, breakfast, 4.68%; in addition to the toilet paper already indicated is the application of dyes at 6.1%.

The data underpin the difficulty of the economic scenario, in which price increases are combined with lower economic growth, which points to a complex situation of stagnation, for which the solution can be much more complex. There is the sense that communist leaders are being condescending with the evolution of inflation and aren’t seriously engaged in fighting against a serious evil that distorts prices and wages, the value of assets — in short, the functioning of the economy.

*Translator’s note: The “Ordering Task” is a collection of measures that include eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency, which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and a broad range of other measures targeted to different elements of the Cuban economy.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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A ‘Mule’ is Punished for Trying to Send a Toy Helicopter to Cuba

On another previous occasion, Carlos had sent a remote-controlled toy helicopter to Cuba. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Miami, 31 January 2023 — One of the few consolations of Carlos (fictitious name), who left Cuba last year for Nicaragua, desperate like so many other Cubans to seek a better life in the United States, is that at least now his children and nephews, who were left on the Island, could have decent toys for birthdays or Christmas.

Carlos buys them in a department store in Miami, at the good prices allowed by competition from the free market, and sends them to Cuba through an agency. He uses Fe, located in Hialeah. He has also sent remittances for his family through that agency.

He never had any problems. In these months in the United States, he has sent, for example, probes for his father (sick with cancer in Havana), gloves for his mother, seasonings and coffee for his wife, a robot for his eldest son, and a stuffed unicorn for his little daughter. On one occasion, he even sent a remote-controlled helicopter for his son’s birthday. Barely 8 inches long, the object was light, barely weighing 5 ounces.

The problem arose when he sent, for Three Kings Day, another one for his stepson. When inspecting the shipment, as they usually do in this type of agency, he got the first disappointment. “To begin with, this time they wanted to charge me a fee [an extra fee] for the helicopter,” Carlos tells this newspaper, and says that he reminded the employee who attended him: “How are you going to charge me a fee, if the other time I already sent a helicopter with you and I didn’t have to pay?” After claiming that he was sending a large package, and even $300 in remittances, the girl kindly agreed not to charge him the fee. continue reading

Days later, he had another surprise: “On the day the arrival of the package was scheduled, they called me from the agency to inform me that they had seized the helicopter at Cuban Customs.”

The explanation they gave to Carlos is that “the ban on the entry of drones now applies to anything that flies a little and has remote control.” Indeed, in June 2021, the Cuban government issued a law that regulated “unmanned aircraft,” with the intention of restricting the use of drones for model aircraft purposes or specific aerial work and always under the supervision of a state entity.

Carlos doesn’t understand how, on the one hand, the first helicopter did pass and, on the other, how that rule can affect a simple toy of just over 20 dollars, “which only flies for seven minutes per charge, a very short distance and at very low altitude.”

His stepson didn’t understood either and spent days crying. “I think it’s a huge lack of respect!” denounces Carlos.

The agency only had an answer for the first question: the other time they simply didn’t open the suitcase of the man to whom they sent things. “These types of agencies work with mules,” Carlos explains. “The mule sells his pounds to the agency and it resells them to the customer for 7 dollars a pound of medicine, food and toiletries and 9 dollars for the rest.”

When the man handed over the rest of the package to the family, he complained: “That helicopter caused me a tremendous mess in Customs. I’ll never bring anything that flies again!”

Carlos had the consolation that when the mule returned, the helicopter would be returned to Customs and, one day, when his family met with him in Miami, his stepson would finally have it in his hands. But that wasn’t the case. “The agents told him that Customs was equipped with cameras and were like ‘border guards.’ Not only did they not return the helicopter to the man, but they also they gave him a warning [an alert], ‘and he is marked from now on.’ In other words, every time he travels to Cuba, they will open his suitcase to check his luggage.”

Even then, the young employee who had taken care of him offered him hope: “The girl asked me for the purchase receipt, for the man to show at Customs, to see if they return the helicopter and remove the warning.” He wasn’t very optimistic: “I don’t know why, but it seems to me that that toy already has an owner in Cuba.”

There was still one last episode, weeks later, with the owner of the agency, who called him a few days ago about the bad outcome, to inform him that he had fired the employee.

“For a moment I thought I had returned to Cuba and was talking to an Etecsa* official, who thinks you are a servant instead of a client,” says Carlos, who conveyed his surprise at the firing of the girl. “That’s my problem, not yours!” the lady screamed at him.

In the middle of the harsh words and the untimely treatment, Carlos knew what really happened at Customs: “The woman told me that the man at Customs, when he went to get the helicopter back, they asked him for money, a tax in dollars, but he refused to pay it, and then they said that the helicopter had lights and a camera and was a coastguard.” Definitely, the innocent toy had found an owner other than his stepson, who still angrily remembers the Three Kings’ gift that he did not receive.

*Translator’s note: Etecsa is the Cuban state telecommunications company, and is notoriously difficult to deal with.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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‘Here We Do Not Receive a Salary, Only a Stipend’, Admits a Cuban Doctor in Mexico

Part of a group of 13 Cuban specialists who are in the Mexican state of Michoacán. (Government of Michoacán)

14ymedio, Mexico, February 2, 2023 — The 620 Cuban doctors who have been in Mexico since January 27 receive from the Government of Cuba “a stipend for their needs.” With those words spoken in an improvised interview, uploaded to YouTube by the newspaper Reforma, the Cuban geriatrician Juan Andrés Echemendía, stressed: “We do not receive a salary here.”

“Our salary is in our country, in Cuba,” insisted this specialist, who affirms that they still do not have “the certainty” of how much the stipend will be. According to the legal agreement collected and announced in August last year by Prisoners Defenders, the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) Bienestar will give the Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos de Cuba, S.A. up to 1,283,728 dollars per month (more than 15 million dollars a year).

La Comercializadora, identified by human rights organizations, agreed with Mexico in May of last year to hire 641 specialists. An official who opts for anonymity revealed to 14ymedio that for each specialist the Government of the Island will pocket 2,042 dollars per month and for the services of a general practitioner 1,722 dollars.

Echemendía is one of the Cuban doctors who was received last Sunday by the Morelos authorities at the IMSS Bienestar hospital in Temixco María de la Luz Delgado Morales. He arrived in Mexico two days earlier along with a group of 68 health workers.

The general director of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS), Zoé Robledo, said that 10 specialists in geriatrics and gerontology arrived, 9 in dermatology, 7 in allergies, 6 in physical medicine and rehabilitation, 6 in ophthalmology, 4 in general surgery, 3 in cardiology, 3 in internal medicine and another 20 undefined.

According to Robledo, these health workers will provide service after receiving introductory courses in the states of Colima (11), Guerrero (11), Michoacán (8), Morelos (8), Tlaxcala (8), Oaxaca (5), Veracruz (5), Baja California Sur (3), Campeche (3), Nayarit (3), Zacatecas (2) and Sonora (1).

The authorities did not offer details about whether the hospitals in which the specialists will be located are in remote areas, which is supposedly why they were hired by the Administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The Cuban dermatologist Ramón González Rodríguez, who proclaimed that they are there “voluntarily” and at the request of the Mexican government, announced that an anesthesiologist, a geriatrician and a dermatologist would stay at the Temixco hospital, but he did not know the fate of the other 5 health workers.

As usual, the accommodation, food and transport of the specialists will be covered by the state governments.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Trial on Cuba’s Sovereign Debt in London, in Five Questions

Demonstration of opponents of the Cuban regime, in front of the Rolls Building, headquarters of the commercial division of the High Court of London. (EFE/Judith Mora)

EFE (via 14ymedio), London, February 3, 2023 — The trial in London of the claim for non-payment of the CRF I investment fund to the National Bank of Cuba (BNC) and the Republic of Cuba for 72 million euros (78 million dollars) of public debt went to trial on Thursday.

1. What will be decided in this trial?

The trial before the commercial division of the London High Court of Justice seeks to establish whether CRF is a legitimate creditor of Cuba — if it has the right to claim the payment of sovereign debt from Havana — and whether this court has jurisdiction over the issue. After the end of the public part, it will be weeks, even months, before the court issues a judgment. The court does not have to publish it, and its dissemination may depend on the parties. In addition, the ruling will not be final, so it could be appealed, prolonging the process. As for the substance of the issue, experts agree in pointing out the significance of the ruling for Cuba, which is going through a very delicate financial situation after more than two years of serious economic crisis.

2. Who are the plaintiffs and the defendants?

The lawsuit was filed by the CRF I irrigation capital fund, founded in 2009 and based in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven. According to different sources, it is Cuba’s largest sovereign debt holder and holds bonds of 1.2 billion euros (1.3 billion dollars).

The BNC is a Cuban state bank with commercial powers, but until 1997 it also served as a central bank. In that year, the Cuban Government created the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC) and limited the functions of the BNC to commercial ones. However, it continued to take responsibility for the registration, control and service of the debt it had placed. This means that the BNC would be the entity that would respond in the first place to the debt. That’s why CRF I also sued the Republic of Cuba. In the event that it wins, it can also claim from the Cuban State the satisfaction of the debt with its funds and assets.

3. Where does this debt come from?

The debt originated as a result of two loans that Cuba closed in 1984 with two European banks, the French Crédit Lyonnais and the Italian L’Instituto Bancario Italiano, with the BNC as guarantor. Three years later, then Cuban president Fidel Castro declared his country’s debt — and in general that of all the ex-colonies — “unpayable,” and the Island ceased to comply with its creditors.

The situation changed with the arrival of his brother Raúl Castro to the presidency in 2006, as he tried to reopen the door of international financial markets as part of the economic reforms he launched.

Cuba renegotiated its debt with the Paris Club (where the main creditor nations are located) in 2015 and again in 2021. As did Russia, which forgave Cuba much of the credits granted during the Soviet era and improved conditions again in 2022.

But Havana did not negotiate with the London Club (where private creditors are grouped). CFR I says that it contacted Cuba on several occasions to reach an agreement, but that in seven years it did not get a response. In February 2020, CFR I filed the complaint that led to this trial.

4. What have been the arguments of the plaintiff and the defendant?

Cuba has reiterated that CFR I is not a legitimate creditor. Its argument has three fundamental points:

– That the fund took over this debt illegally, bribing an employee of the BNC. About this, the former worker himself, convicted of bribery, has testified electronically from a prison on the Island.

– That the procedures for the acquisition of this debt were not complied with: the two relevant signatures were not obtained, nor was government authorization received.

– That CFR I is a “vulture fund” that only seeks litigation and does not act as a “responsible” creditor.

CFR I, which denies being a “vulture fund,” assures that it did not bribe any employee and has questioned the veracity of the testimony of official in prison, claiming that he could have been pressured by the Cuban government. CFR I also states that it acquired the debt correctly and is, therefore, a legitimate creditor.

5. What could be the consequences of the trial?

The court has to decide whether CFR I is a legitimate creditor and, more importantly, whether the court has jurisdiction over this issue.

On the first point, it could decide either way, and that would mainly affect CFR I and whether or not it could claim the debt.

But the fundamental thing, as Cuban-American lawyer Luis Carlos Battista explained to EFE, is whether the court “decides that there is jurisdiction,” because new lawsuits from other creditors could arrive. There are billions of dollars at stake.

They would claim the debt from Havana and even try to satisfy it with state assets abroad, where Cuba has a network of companies, including banks. Many of them belong to Gaesa, the business conglomerate of Cuba’s Ministry of Defense, which controls telecommunications, remittances, imports and tourism on the Island, among other sectors of the economy.

For this, another trial would be necessary, in which the creditors — on whom the burden of proof would fall — would have to ask the court to lift the corporate veil of Gaesa and its subsidiaries.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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A Brazilian Court Orders the Rehiring of the 1,789 Cuban Health Workers Who Were Dismissed

In the five years that the Mais Medicos program lasted in Brazil, Cuban health workers occupied 18,240 places. (Granma)

14ymedio, Havana, 31 January 2023 — The Federal Justice of Brazil authorized the reinstatement of 1,789 Cuban health workers from the controversial Mais Medicos [More Doctors] program, which was canceled in 2018 by then-President Jair Bolsonaro, who considered it a way of injecting money into the Island regime in exchange for doctors who, sometimes, lacked a specialty.

Rafael Matos Medina, with professional studies at the Medical University of Camagüey and currently residing in Espírito Santo (Brazil), told the local media Seculo Diario that the judicial decision was given 11 months after the group appealed to the Federal Court of Brasilia arguing that their contract was not renewed during the Médicos por Brasil [Doctors for Brazil] program, created during the Bolsonaro Government and which replaced Mais Medicos.

Represented by the National Association of Medical Professionals Graduates in Foreign Institutions and Exchange Students (Aspromed), health workers were informed last Friday that they were favored by the ruling of Judge Carlos Augusto Pires Brandão.

BOA NOTÍCIA! Justiça Federal determina recontratação de cubanos do ‘Mais Médicos’. Decisão do TRF1 determina recontratação imedidata de 1.789 médicos da 20ª turma do programa, que foram embora em 2018.

— Helder Salomão (@heldersalomao) January 28, 2023

Translation: GOOD NEWS! Federal Court determines rehiring of Cubans from ’Mais Médicos’. TRF1 decision determines immediate rehiring of 1,789 doctors from the 20th class of the program, who left in 2018. — Helder Salomão (@heldersalomao) January 28, 2023

“The failure of the legitimate expectation of these doctors is evident. Most of them have already formed families on Brazilian soil,” Pires Brandão said. “They rescheduled their lives according to the expectations formed from these hirings, and it seems fair to recognize that they now intend to remain in Brazil,” the judge concluded.

Although it is not specified, these doctors are part of the 2,000 Cubans who decided not to return to the Island after the cancellation of the program created in 2013 by then-President Dilma Rousseff with the aim of attracting professionals to rural areas that suffered from a lack of medical assistance.

In the first week of January, Brazil announced its intention to resume Mais Medicos, without confirming Cuba’s participation. The Secretary of Primary Care of the Ministry of Health, Nésio Fernandes, reiterated on January 26 that priority will be given to Brazilian professionals.

According to the new scheme, the first stage would be the hiring of doctors registered in Brazil or foreigners with an approved revalidation exam. In the second stage, Brazilians trained abroad without revalidation would be hired. The third stage, if there is a quota, with foreigners without the Revalida, which is the validation exam of the degrees issued by a foreign higher education institution.

The redesign of Mais Medicos promoted by the Government of Lula da Silva does not convince the doctors. The president of the Federal Council of Medicine José Hiran Gallo warned that there would be “front-line assistance in large capitals and second-line assistance in small towns in the interior or on the periphery of large settlements, where there may be people without recognized training,” published the newspaper Estado de Minas.

In 2018, the National Bureau of Statistics and Information revealed that with Mais Medicos the Government of the Island pocketed 6.4 billion dollars for the sale of health services. Cuba kept 75% of the $3,300 of the monthly salary of professionals, a common practice that has been described by different international organizations as a form of modern slavery.

In five years of the program, Cuban health workers filled 18,240 positions, and treated 113.3 million Brazilian patients, according to official data.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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