Translator: Ricardo Recluso – Page 3

‘Che’ and Fidel, Two of the Poor People Who Attend the Food Kitchen of the Catholic Church in Santa Clara

Dozens of people come to the old garage opposite the cathedral every Sunday, to be given food

The humanitarian association Cáritas supports help programmes in Cuba, such as nurseries, food kitchens and refuges / Cáritas Santa Clara

14ymedio, Santa Clara, 19 September 2024 – For five months, a garage opposite the Santa Clara cathedral has filled up with people in need of food. In two rooms inside the old ’storage’ – the name [in English] by which these old installations owned by the Catholic church are known by everyone in the city – a dinner is served up, comprising whatever is available. A layered salchichon sausage with salad, picadillo with mushrooms or olives or rice. The place is soon buzzing with activity. Everyone begins to chat. It happens each Sunday.

Cáritas, the Catholic humanitarian association, provides the food. It’s paid for by donations which “appear”, coming mostly from the German association Help for the Church in Need. It’s open to anyone, in theory, and in practice there are dozens who turn up – 60 or 70 people for whom the State has many names but few solutions: vagrants, the vulnerable, beggars. “They come here principally in search of food, but we also chat with them and make them feel welcomed”, a priest from the diocese tells 14ymedio.

A few diners have become celebrities in their own right, like “el Che”, a beggar who dresses in a military jacket and beret and sports a beard, and who, not infrequently, is the centre of attention, says the priest. “He gets together with two brothers”, he says, not without irony, “who, it just so happens, are called Fidel and Raúl”. There is limited space in the concrete garage, but generally there is a warm atmosphere at the dining tables.

Feeding the poor of Santa Clara isn’t a new project for the city’s Catholic church.

Feeding the poor of Santa Clara isn’t a new project for the city’s Catholic continue reading

church. There have been many initiatives, all of them looked down upon by the local authorities. “It began when a number of young people from the diocese went out into the city giving out food bags but it didn’t please the authorities and ended up being suspended. Now this is being done again, thanks to various donations to Cáritas, but on the condition that it’s done with as little publicity as possible”, says the cleric.

In fact there is little of this activity to be seen on social media. Any image, in the hands of the authorities, could be used to monitor or even obstruct the project. The church, he says, continues to be closely watched by State Security, which, in an already familiar practice, “seems” to have informers in the parish, in cultural centres and in the diocese Training Centre, where courses on the margin of official indoctrination are still being taught.

Just like the country as a whole, the diocese’s humanitarian work is going through difficult times. Ever since the government’s Tarea Ordenamiento (’Ordering Task’) law, the church’s purchasing power has suffered an almost mortal blow and cutbacks have been very noticeable. Nevertheless, charity continues to be a priority and its assistance programmes – the already known distribution of basic supplies that they carry out in no small number of parishes, as well as the food kitchens and the nurseries – have not ceased to function.

Just like the country as a whole, the diocese’s humanitarian work is going through difficult times

In other scenarios, such as in the refuges and clinics, run by Corazón Solidario (Caring Heart) in Santa Clara, where they give out prescription medicines to those in need of them, the administering is adequate but also they have to rely upon Cáritas.

Cuban bishops brought this to attention in a letter written at the beginning of September in which they asked for help and support from Spanish catholics. “The situation”, they said, “is worse than that which we saw in the 90’s, in the so-called Special Period“. Emilio Aranguren, president of the Bishops’ Forum, explained that there is a “huge scarcity of basic produce that can only be obtained at exorbitant prices”. There’s also the lack of medical supplies, which causes “the sick to be very much in distress and makes their lives and the lives of the people around them very difficult”.

Nor are there priests available to travel to the island – whose national clergy is in itself already depleted – a lack of which, in practice, means not being able to count upon enough reliable administrators for ecclesiastical projects and pastoral work.

This shortage of clergy is one of the problems which — according to Aranguren, the source interviewed by this newspaper, and two other prelates, Arturo González, vice president of Conference, and the Jesuit priest Juan de Dios Hernández, secretary general — was put to Pope Francis during their visit to the Vatican on 16 September.

The bishops confirmed that they did talk to the Pope about “the difficult reality” in the country

The three bishops have been extremely cautious about discussing the details of that meeting, but in brief announcements to ecclesiastical media they have confirmed that they did talk to the Pope about “the difficult reality” in the country, about which Francis – who has visited Cuba on a number of occasions – has been reluctant to make critical pronouncements.

The Episcopal Conference will hold elections in November and, despite the advanced age of the bishops (almost all being of retirement age and with no youthful replacements in sight) it’s hoped that Aranguren, who has occupied, since 2017, a post that has been in no small way delicate, will not return to the presidency. Nevertheless, the cleric told us in our interview that when it comes to Cuba it’s not impossible that he will have to continue in office.

In search of an official assessment of the Episcopal Conference’s view of the outlook for Cuba, 14ymedio has tried a number of times to contact its executive secretary, the cleric Ariel Suárez. Our calls have, however, not been answered.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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The Cafeteria Hamburgo – a State-Run ‘Microwave Oven’ to Torment Havanans

Hamburgo suffers from every possible problem that a state run cafeteria could have / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodriguez, Havana, 20 September 2024 – Going from hell to heaven – or at least to purgatory – is a question of temperature. This is well know by the habaneros who go from the state run cafeteria Hamburgo to its neighbour, Fress. At the former, customers are welcomed by a massive wave of heat; in the independent establishment the air conditioning is working and the atmosphere is pleasant. This is just one of the many differences between the two premises in Plaza de Carlos III in central Havana.

Hamburgo suffers from every possible problem that a state run cafeteria could have, but its central location and its overheated atmosphere make the ordeal of eating there even more noticeable. In the words of the waitresses – whose ill-humour is even more of a fixture than the daily menu – it’s not that the air conditioning is switched off, but that “it’s on so low that it’s more like a gasp, it’s nothing”. Customers leave the place convinced that even a gasp would be more refreshing than the actual steam that the cooling system puts out.

Fress honours its name, which sort of sounds like the English ’fresh’. The place has fallen on its feet after many ups and downs since it started out, and now it puts Hamburgo in the shade. The bright red decor in the latter contributes to the feeling of being inside a “microwave oven”, as one diner put it. continue reading

The menu’s star attraction, the hamburger, couldn’t look more different from how it appears in the marketing / 14ymedio

Up there in the corner of the ceiling, the air conditioning contributes to the noise in the cafeteria. At the tables closest to it you can hear the machine spluttering. It’s using up electricity and the idea of keeping it turned down low is supposedly to save power, but it’s pointless, that doesn’t work.

It’s clear that the air conditioning is “dragging” electricity out of the place: more than a few of the lights are blinking – an effect that gives the whole scene the feeling of a horror movie. Apart from that, there are inattentive and irritated staff, tasteless and sugarless fruit juices – “they’re diet drinks!”, jokes one customer – and the menu’s star attraction, the hamburger, couldn’t look more different from how it appears in the marketing. On the poster, the disc of ground meat is juicy and greasy; in the actual item, a squalid sheet of protein is all you get under the bread.

Hamburgo sells Parranda beer for 180 pesos and an imported one (oddly) for five pesos less. Juices and soft drinks cost between 90 and 100; the Super Hamburger – pork and beef, ham and vegetables – costs 550. Cheaper ones cost between 275 and 300 pesos. Ham is often unavailable.

The bill for two people can reach up to 1,500 pesos, but in Cuba no one is startled any more by inflation, which – unlike the hamburger – is solid and you feel it in your stomach. Sweating and fed up with it all, the customers take their last bites of Hamburgo’s star attraction and leave. Nearby there’s a perfume shop, where it’s the air conditioning, at midday, that attracts more customers than the eau de cologne.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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The Basic Ration Basket is Reduced and Arrives Late in Cienfuegos Stores

The provincial government claims there is enough food to go around but the ration stores beg to differ

A Cienfuegos bodega selling rationed products /14ymedio

14ymedio, Julio César Contreras, Cienfuegos, 18 September 2024 – The flies circulating around the counter of the Calle Gloria bodega — the ration store — are witnesses to the fact that the regulated family ration basket has not yet arrived. September is nearly over and although the province’s interior commerce authorities give assurances that there are enough stocks to ensure distribution, in the actual ration shops themselves it’s the opposite that is obviously the case.

Alfredo, retired, 68, asks if anything has arrived yet, knowing full well in advance what the shop’s answer will be. “I don’t know what these people are thinking. It’s not enough for them that they remove some of the products from the baskets, but then they only distribute them when and if they can be bothered. Obviously, none of those bosses need a ration book to survive”, he says. But his experience is very different because he only gets 1,800 pesos in his pension each month.

There’s room in the shop to store what has been announced – for each person 7 pounds of rice, 2 pounds of sugar, 10 ounces of peas, 4 boxes of cigars and tobacco – none of which anyone believes can be maintained in the months to come. “Especially for those of us at the bottom who have to put up with hunger. When I finally actually see the two tins of sardines that they promised us over-65’s, then I’ll believe it”, Alfredo adds.

“The basic basket hardly lasts a week, so what happens then?”

The pensioner refers to the new free food batch which the government has promised for the vulnerable – the elderly, pregnant women, under-weight people – who, apart from receiving sardines will get rice and peas. “They’re laughing in our faces, because actually most of the population are ’vulnerable’. The basic ration hardly lasts you a week, so what happens then?”, he says. In his opinion, these freebies only go to turn the distributors, warehouses, and others charged with delivery, automatically into retailers, making money on the back of everyone’s current misery. continue reading

The empty shelves are confirmation that any “glory” only exists in the actual name of the street – Calle Gloria – in which the shop sits, because the place itself is practically in ruins. “The shelving is full of termites and the roof leaks whenever it rains, but no one in power seems to care anything about the decline that’s happening everywhere”, says Xiomara, who hears that her son’s yoghurt will arrive after 2pm.

“The other problem is that there’s no guarantee about the quality or the stability of the foodstuffs. We’re still waiting for the July, August and September salt supplies. They tell us that they won’t remove that like they did with the cooking oil, eggs and coffee. The administration of this nation has no respect for its people, but tells us we live in a socialist country. And the worst thing is that as they keep crushing us with shortages of every possible kind we keep on playing their game of keeping our mouths shut”, the Cienfuegera adds.

On the store’s counter, sits a filthy box with a QR code, the only evidence of banking activity in the place. “They can’t provide a petty cash service, because, as there are no products to sell, they don’t actually have any cash. And until recently, there were difficulties with the automated system so they didn’t accept payment by bank transfer either”, says Xiomara.

“It won’t be long before the ration books disappear. We shan’t miss them too much because they’re already impractical”, says Alfredo, expressing a fear that is becoming more and more common in Cuba.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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Lunch or Dinner, the Daily Dilemma for Cubans in the Face of High Prices and Shortages

“Our diet is terrible, we eat whatever we can get hold of and not what our bodies need”

People searching the streets of Cienfuegos for some affordable food / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Julio César Contreras, Cienfuegos, 15 September 2024 – When the midday sun heats up the streets of the city, dozens of Cienfuegueros go in search of something light to eat, for the lowest possible cost, to help them “endure” the rest of the day until their evening meal. Others don’t even have this possibility, because of the restrictions of their meagre income. And some even have to resort to begging in order to feed themselves. Still others hardly even manage to get a soft drink or a little water at lunchtime in order to hydrate themselves in the intense heat.

“Until last year, you could get a pizza in that place for 60 pesos. But a private owner took over and now the cheapest one costs 150 pesos”, says Arelis, 54, who has just walked past the pizzeria on Calle 37 in the city centre Prado district. “How many of them can I eat in a month if I earn 2,800 pesos? And in the bar next door a croquette roll costs 80 pesos and no one is buying”, she says.

The woman says she’s tired of having to eat pizza all her life. “The average Cuban’s diet is terrible. We eat whatever we can get hold of and not what our bodies need. At home we spend the whole month stretching out a bit of rice, or beans, or chickpeas, or whatever turns up”, she says. Like her, the majority of Cienfuegueros who spoke to us told us that they always have to make a choice between lunch or dinner, whether it’s because they can’t afford both or because the food isn’t available.

Some people are even seen to have to resort to begging in order to feed themselves

Until recently, Arelis’s mother sorted out her lunch in a social security canteen but the establishment shut some months ago for repairs and there’s no date given for its reopening. “I live very near to the ring road and work in the centre near Martí Park, which means that although I would like to, I can’t go home for lunch”, Arelis explains. “So I have to eat whatever I can find, as long as it’s not beyond what I can afford”.

Several people pass down Calle 54, hoping to find something affordable to eat. “The only thing I had this morning, before I left the house, was a sip of coffee. I have two children and what little there is has to go to them, including their snacks now that school has started”, says Nora, a well known university professor who, nonetheless, confesses to 14ymedio that she has to go hungry and forego all kinds of necessities. Her salary isn’t enough, but she’s not allowed to teach private lessons.

At lunchtime some people only have a soft drink or some water, to at least hydrate themselves in the intense heat / 14ymedio

“I come every day from Lajas to work. I leave at five in the morning, most of the time without breakfast. Throughout the day all I’ll have is some bread with some kind of filling, or an ice cream cone. By seven in the evening I’m exhausted”, says Jorge, who’s about to retire. “I never thought that after sacrificing so much I’d be seeing myself in this situation. And what’s worse is that they keep on asking me for more sacrifice. How long can this go on?”

Many Cienfuegueros go to work in the mornings most of the time without breakfast

“Until a few years ago I could go out to eat with my family. Sometimes we used to go to La Covadonga, over there in La Punta, and we had a lovely time. All that’s gone now”, says the man. And he adds that on an average salary he can only afford to buy the basics for a week or two at most. “And what then? Where will the meat and veg come from, as well as the other basic things? No one can survive like this”.

In any given cafeteria, whether it be on Calle San Carlos, Calle Santa Clara or on Calle Industria, a sandwich can cost at least 150 pesos and it doesn’t matter the type of place that sells it, or the quality of the product. “I feel sorry for my kids because they arrive home from school desperate to eat something and I have to throw something together from the manky bread that we get with the rations and add some filling to last them until dinner time with at least something in their stomachs”, Nora explains.

She and her family have been forced to stop using dairy milk because they can’t pay the price charged at the independent shops. “It’s criminal what we’re going through. I feel like we’re slowly dying”, says the professor as she watches a group of foreign tourists having lunch in Hotel La Unión, part of the Spanish Meliá chain. “At this time my kids have to have just a small yogurt and some yellow rice left over from last night. I think there are no words that can express this”, she says.

The food crisis in Cienfuegos doesn’t discriminate among people, says Arelis: “Hunger doesn’t care about the colour of your skin here, nor about the level of your intellect. You’ll see well dressed people that haven’t had a bite to eat all day”. In Cienfuegos it’s common to see independent restaurants open at all hours with doormen who wait in vain for consumers to walk in. Whilst the menus display attractive dishes with eye-watering prices, people pass by at a distance wondering what they might be able to concoct for their dinner.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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The Actor Carlos Massola, Critic of the Cuban Regime, has Died in Havana

Hypovolemic shock was the cause of death at the age of 62, according to the death certificate.

Massola appeared in many TV series and soaps in Cuban Television / Facebook / Carlos Mazzola

14ymedio, Havana, 3 July 2024 – Cuban actor Carlos Massola died on Wednesday in Havana, aged 62. The news was announced by friends on social media, and, although some publications suggest that the artiste “had not been well” for the last few days, the cause of death has not been clarified.

The news was originally spread on social media by his friends and the cause of death was confirmed this Thursday by the Cubanet portal as hypovolemic shock after having access to his death certificate. Hypovolemic shock causes the heart to be unable to pump enough blood to the body, which can lead to different organs ceasing to function properly.

Later, according to Cubanet, the actor’s body was cremated in the Berroa Incinerator, located in the capital, as was his last wish. Prior to that, some officials of Havana’s Necrological Services had denied the family’s wish to cremate him, justifying it by declaring the dimensions of the coffin were too large.

“Carlos Massola has died. It was a pleasure to direct him in Blue Heart (2021), his last film project. He always contributed so much: he loved to improvise – something which Cuban TV didn’t allow!”, director Miguel Coyula wrote on his Facebook page.

Besides his numerous television appearances in Cuba – mainly as a supporting actor in soaps and police dramas – Massola was also known, during recent years, for his opposition to the regime and for his support for political prisoners. continue reading

In October 2023, the actor posted on Facebook Live a video in which he questioned Miguel Díaz-Canel

In October 2023, the actor posted on Facebook Live a video in which he questioned Miguel Díaz-Canel about political prisoners on the island and asked for their release: “Tell me, Diaz-Canel, if you’ve got everything solved for yourself and your fridge is full, what is this morbid interest of yours in making political prisoners and their families suffer?”

In this way the actor and humourist was criticising the leader’s management skills, alluding to the Cuban people’s difficulties in getting hold of basic food and necessities, as well as to the obstacles that he is imposing on private businesses.

Massola also met up with political prisoners, activists and their families on numerous occasions, to express his support. He also denounced “State Security harassment” a number of times in his public declarations.

In a 2023 interview with CubaNet, the actor called on other artistes to “get on the people’s side”

In a 2023 interview with CubaNet, the actor called on other artistes to “get on the people’s side” and to stop endorsing the regime’s repression. He also mentioned his relationship with his cousin, the television presenter Edith Massola, with whom he confirmed he’d broken all contact. A number of rumours have been linked to the presenter-actor and her family – in particular her daughter Paula – about high positions of power in the regime’s military.

In the same interview Massola said he had been waiting since the previous year for a permit to emigrate to the United States. The actor has appeared in films such as Juan de los muertos (2011), Pata negra (2001) and El Benny (2006), as well as numerous soap operas and series, funded by the Ministry of the Interior, such as Tras la Huella and Día y noche.

At the time of his death Massola was living with his mother, an elderly lady in need of medical support and for whom he was acting as principal carer.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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Fifteen Years Waiting For A Food Store In Cayo de Mayabe

This July 26th the residents of the ceramicists’ community of Holguín didn’t have their dream fulfilled

Weeds and scrub have begun to grow around the structure / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Miguel García, Holguín, 27 July 2024 – The residents of Cayo de Mayabe, a village in the district of Holguín, have spent more than 20 years asking for the construction of a food store that would allow them to get their groceries locally without having to traipse to the main town four kilometres away. This year, with the characteristic slowness of all state projects, the first bricks were finally laid, but at this point the residents are already expecting that the whole thing will be of no use to them at all.

“We’ve been begging for a long time for a food shop and when they do finally get round to it there’s no food to sell”, complains one woman from the village. With the walls now built and temporary zinc roofing in place, the structure, however, seems to be taking one step forward and two steps back. “They had put in some aluminium doors and doorframes but after a short while they got stolen. They haven’t been back to start the joinery”, she says.

According to the residents of Cayo de Mayabe, they had expected that the building would include not only space for the market but also for a pharmacy. The project would be a big help for the hundreds of locals who have to travel frequently to the Pueblo Nuevo district of Holguín where they are registered for food rations. continue reading

They had expected that the building would include not only space for the market but also for a pharmacy

However, the slow pace of construction of the mixed premises is driving the neighbours to despair, having seen five months pass without anything more than the foundations and the walls being built.

The skeleton of the building has now even become filled with weeds, shrub and cacti, which wouldn’t survive if the cement or lime work were carried out at a proper, constant pace.

The residents of Cayo Mayabe – a community made up principally of ceramicists, who make bricks and tiles – were hoping that by this 26th of July (the date when the regime insists on renovating towns to simulate a festive atmosphere) the shop would already be selling vegetables and other foodstuffs.

However, the construction continues to be stalled, running the risk that, if the authorities keep letting time pass, the building will become weakened or will collapse and will need to be restarted from scratch. Many have even given up hope of having a functional food store: “If they didn’t open it 15 years ago when things were going better, then I don’t believe they’ll finish it now, when there’s nothing to build it with nor anything with which to stock it”.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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Ruin and Neglect, the Latest Images of Havana Provoke Pity Rather Than Pride

Images collected by 14ymedio show a capital city that is filthy and full of beggars

A building in Calle Águila, in the capital, shows serious deterioration in its facade / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 26 August 2024 – Much has changed in Havana since, in 1837, the French painter Federico Mialhe arrived in Cuba to make his fortune with his brushes. A prosperous and vibrant city, the prints he left, collected in multiple engravings, contrast with those collected by 14ymedio reporters: a capital city that is in ruins, filthy and full of beggars.

However, those who walk through the streets of the city often encounter unusual sights. If, in the nineteenth century, Mialhe captured the moment in which a quitrin carriage carried three refined young men near the Fuente de la India – today in the Paseo del Prado – this paper witnessed a similar scene on Tuesday. Exhausted in the August heat, a family of habaneros in teeshirts and flip flops were enjoying a similar outing.

A family of habaneros passes by in a quitrin carriage on Monday / 14ymedio

Federico Mialhe, ‘El quitrín’, 1853 / Mialhe’s Colonial Cuba

In the background, however, it wasn’t royal palm trees or neoclassical sculptures that were in view, but the outline of a collapsing building and the corrugated iron fencing that contains the debris. The horse itself also didn’t resemble the French one, well harnessed and erect; the twenty first century one has more in common with Don Quijote’s worn out and lean Rocinante.

Even the beggars have changed, although Havana has never been short of them

In Mialhe’s Havana – where his pictures were collected and made public by the exiled collector Emilio Cueto – there were magnificent railings and stained glass windows; in Miguel Díaz-Canel’s Havana the railings are for keeping the burglars out and the windows usually have broken shutters. In place of wide open plazas with habaneros walking out every Sunday, there are deserted streets and rubbish. Rather than looking like a capital city, more than a few areas of Havana feel like a village of the dead.

Even the beggars have changed, although Havana has never been short of them. A famous collection such as the Californian Album, printed in 1850, pictured them in typical creole fashion, smoking tobacco or examining the fruit in the market. At that time, dressed in out-of-fashion dress coats and with long cigars and flasks of rum they were a laughing stock for the continue reading

painter.

A beggar’s hand-truck got stuck in an uncovered drain hole on a Havana street on Monday / 14ymedio

The print “A Defender of the Arts”, from the ’Californian Album’, printed in 1850 / Imprenta de Marquier

‘The Only Thing Moving On Wheels in the Cienfuegos Terminal is the Inefficiency’

Those who did not manage to board during the day are condemned to sleep in the facility.

After 5pm it’s very difficult to travel to Cienfuegos’s municipalities / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Julio César Contreras, Cienfuegos, 17 August 2024 – It’s after 8pm in the only bus terminal in Cienfuegos and despite the fact that dozens of people are gathered at the departure gates or are sleeping on the benches in the waiting room, the route board is not displaying a single destination. Anyone who didn’t manage to travel during the day is condemned to sleep in the building, along with those who, on a waiting list, are trying to travel to other provinces of the country. Outside, the private taxis hawk their services but the waiting passengers don’t listen to – or don’t want to hear – the price they’d have to pay for an almendrón shared taxi ride.

On the second floor of the terminal, in the gloom, there are only two lights working, beneath which sits one of the few employees – with a pile of crumpled papers – who are still in the station at this time to keep a note of the names of passengers. The darkness attracts people who, being exhausted, resign themselves to sleep in the corners or on the benches. “I’ve been sleeping here for three nights, trying to get to Holguín”, Nereida tells 14ymedio – a health worker whose salary won’t stretch to a more expensive means of transport.

According to her, having options available but no money to pay for them is what keeps her tied to the terminal: “If you speak to the duty manager he’ll get you on the first bus that arrives but that conversation will cost you between 1,500 and 3,000 pesos, on top of what you’ll have to pay later to the driver”, she says. continue reading

The room for those on the waiting list is in half-darkness with people asleep on the benches / 14ymedio

Spending time in the way that she has until now in this terminal has not exactly been comfortable either. She and Ana, who lives with her four-year-old daughter in San Fernando de Camarones, Palmira, have decided to join forces to look after each other and each others’ luggage. The young mother has only spent one night in the terminal but the abandonment that she’s made to feel, especially having to carry her child around on piggyback, is very real.

“I have to visit my sick mother in Gibara and I don’t have anyone I can leave the child with. We have to stay in here until we can depart”, she says. Ana explains that it was impossible for her to book a ticket on the Viajando app because, “when there’s no capacity it doesn’t allow you to buy a ticket for a minor; or you find the connection with the server is down”, she complains.

“Its lucky that I brought a little bit of lunch and dinner for us. The only thing that they had in the cafeteria today was instant hot drinks and pasta with stale bread. To top it off, when I went past there at four o’clock in the afternoon it was already closed”, she adds with disgust. What’s on offer in the private shops opposite the station is also inaccessible for most of the travellers: the cheapest, a sandwich, is 150 pesos and a simple shared meal 1,000 pesos.

The majority of inter-municipal routes are cancelled due to lack of vehicles or fuel / 14ymedio

With her daughter asleep in her arms, Ana laments the poor state that the terminal is in, and that the authorities’ lack of concern, and necessity, have attracted a number of beggars, who are sleeping in the building long term. The semi-darkness doesn’t help the situation either, she says. “It doesn’t even matter if there’s a power cut, ’cos you can’t see anything anyway”, she adds sarcastically.

On a board with various crossings-out you can read the origin, destination and time of departure for all of the different bus routes to the municipalities of the province. “That board is just there for decoration, because almost none of the routes are operating and those that are don’t leave at the time advertised”, she says, pointing to the black notice board fixed to the wall. Apart from Havana and Santa Clara, it’s rare for a bus to have a daily departure to other destinations, so that the number of travellers can build up easily at any hour of the day.

“At this hour the terminal appears quieter, but the reality is that everyone is outside to escape the heat. As soon as a bus arrives it’s full in here”, she explains.

People gather when they see a bus arriving, hoping it will take them home / 14ymedio

Inside the hall, a group of men, women and children who are sitting on the broken metal benches jump up like coil springs when they see a vehicle appear – and bring them back some hope. “Here there are people who are travelling to any municipality, like Cartagena or Abreus, but at this hour it’s unlikely that anything will arrive”, comments Nereida, noting that the 9.30 Lajas bus is “running late or won’t arrive at all”.

She explains that some time ago she gave up trying to get any information about the bus timetables. “No one’s able to give any information to anyone who is desperate to get home. Some employees even get shirty if you ask them for the schedule, or whether the bus you’re waiting for is operating”, she adds.

The poor level of hygiene in the toilets, the careless and unreliable treatment of passengers’ belongings – “they don’t even put labels on the suitcases”, she says – all make the whole travel experience a real ordeal. Nereida’s and Ana’s opinion, like every other passenger’s opinion of the level of service in the terminal, is solemn: “The only thing moving on wheels here… is the Inefficiency”

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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‘Killing Castro’: Getting Inside the Skin of the Dictator

The actor Diego Boneta watched every existing video that showed the tyrant in his youth and looked through dozens of photos and testimonies

Promotional poster for the film ’Killing Castro’ directed by Eif Rivera / Imdb

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 27 August 2024 – Last year a young and very talented Mexican actor invited me to dinner in Madrid. He was Diego Boneta, known mainly for bringing Luis Miguel to life in the successful biographical series, although he had also worked with Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger on Hollywood productions. The motive for his invitation was to talk about Fidel Castro. He was interested in my take on him as dramatist and actor, but also as an opponent of the regime. Diego was facing the most difficult role of his career to date: to play the Cuban dictator.

I was really surprised by how much he had already researched his role. He’d watched every existing video that showed the tyrant during his youth, and had looked through dozens of photos and testimonies. But beyond mastering the voice and the gestures of his character, Boneta wanted to understand his soul, his ambitions, doubts, weaknesses and frustrations. And he’d already begun to grab that by the balls. When I asked him, ’what do you think was his ideology during the period of time covered by the film?’, he replied, ’his only ideology, at that point and, I believe, until the end of his life… was power’.

The most interesting thing, for me, wasn’t the disastrous planning and execution of the event but rather the reactions to it

Firstly, we talked about the letter that an adolescent Fidel wrote in English to President Roosevelt in 1940. In the missive he addressed the most powerful man in the world as “my good friend”. He wrote that he was willing to reveal the location of the best iron ore mines in the country for a payment of ten dollars. But also, he lied about his age, saying he was 12 when in fact he was 14. continue reading

The second theme was the attack on the Moncada Barracks. The most interesting thing, for me, wasn’t the disastrous planning and execution of the event but rather the reactions to it. Because, for a narcisist like Fidel Castro Ruz, the most important thing wasn’t the action itself but the high profile impact that it created. Actual communists at the (New York) Daily Worker condemned the action, branding it a putsch committed by bourgeois gangs. And they wrote off the so called gangs’ leader as a mere irresponsible adventurer. To top it all, an ultra-left Chilean newspaper even declared that it was the CIA that was behind the events of 26 July in Cuba.

Much has already been speculated about what was Castro’s ideology during those years. His first speeches and writings would seem to indicate that he’d read more fascists and falangists than Marx or Lenin. Also, his declarations, in English and in Spanish, denying any link between the Revolution and Marxist ideas, are very well known. “A despicable campaign” was how the emerging dictator described accusations that he was a communist.

Nikita Kruschev himself consulted with the socialists in Havana, interested in the bearded one’s ideology. But the people of the Cuban PSP (People’s Socialist Party) at that time considered him a simple nationalist petit bourgeois. The big question is: ’was he deceiving everyone?’ If we are to be guided by that letter, written when he was 14, pretending to be 12, we could presume that yes, the guy was an uncontrollably compulsive liar. But if one delves a little further into his narcissism and his obsession with power, we could say that he was ready to adopt any ideology that would guarantee his clinging onto that power. And in this, the United States was the key.

His first speeches and writings would seem to indicate that he’d read more fascists and falangists than Marx or Lenin

The biggest blow to his ego came about in Washington. His April 1959 visit there was marked by various gaffes of protocol. First, he’d travelled without invitation from the White House. As a result, President Eisenhower refused to see him, excusing himself with a game of golf. Castro explained that he hadn’t come to beg for anything, although fifteen days later he would send an emissary to do just that. Then vice President Nixon agreed to meet him for two and a half hours. But Nixon too was inept. During their meeting he took it upon himself to make the bearded one see that he had no idea about economics and that he was naive about the USSR. Fidel returned from that visit humiliated. And Soviet analysts took note, drawing up a plan that would attract Cuba, inevitably, into their orbit.

Castro’s following visit to the country to the north was already on the agendas of both the KGB and the CIA. And it is precisely this visit upon which the plot of ’Killing Castro’ is based. The film is now complete and will be released at some point this year. Also in the cast is Al Pacino, as well as the virtuoso Cuban actor Héctor Medina. We await the film’s premiere. I’m sure it’s going to generate much debate, most of all amongst Cubans.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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Titivillus In culpa Est (It Was All Titivilo’s Fault!)

Most people who dedicate themselves to being an editor do it to earn a living and not as a vocation, but how could paranoia be a vocation anyway?

The devil with an ice cream cone, in Salamanca cathedral – an anachronistic figure added during the 1991 restauration / Xavier Carbonell

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 30 June 2024 – Burgos, the city where El Cid and Miguelón are buried, is two and a half hours by train from Salamanca. It’s a cold place. To enjoy it well you should eat some hot beans in one of the taverns on Calle San Lorenzo, but not before devouring at top speed a couple of cojonudas – bread, sausage, peppers and quail’s eggs. Then, all prepared and wearing a scarf, one should head for the Museum of Human Evolution, where there are human remains more than 400,000 years old. It can change your life seeing the sharpened stone axe which they’ve named ’Excalibur’, or the ’pelvis Elvis’ (bones), both thousands of years old.

Having completed this part of the journey, one follows the course of the river Arlanzón as far as Las Huelgas monastery. There have been nuns living there since the eleventh century. Very powerful nuns actually, who used to own a large part of the land surrounding the convent. The king had to travel to one of their chapels, where a strange automaton that represented the apostle Saint James brandished a sword and declared him a knight.

To earn some income the nuns opened up part of the monastery to visitors. The floor is solid oak, the tombs are white and in one room hangs an enormous Muslim banner – supposedly used by the Arabs in the battle of the Tolosa flatlands in 1212. And in one of the galleries, under very dim light, hangs the picture of … the character I’m looking for. continue reading

You have to imagine Titivilo as a cat which prowls around the scriptorium, wets his paws in ink and climbs up onto the desk where the monks are working

Black and furry paws, tight pants, hunched, shirtless, a bundle of books on his back, he doesn’t have wings but he does still have his horns. He’s a bignose, he smiles – or grimaces. This is Titivilo, the patron demon of editors, writers, librarians and others whose business is in paper. Next to him is a devil with miniature wings attached to his arms, which gives him the airs of a reveller. Both are trying to torment the nuns and the royal family, protected by the Virgin’s cloak. It’s one of the few times that Titivilo, invisible lowlife bastard, has let himself be caught.

You have to imagine Titivilo as a cat which prowls around the scriptorium, wets his paws in ink and climbs up onto the desk where the monks are working. Today, the same mischievous animal trips over ballpoint pens and two-tone pencils – crucifixes against errors – and passes his tail over the keyboard, introducing malware into the autocorrect of the computer. ’Titivillus in culpa est!’ pleaded the monk when his manuscript contained errors. And the excuse has passed from generation to generation, right down to today’s editors.

One will never have enough indulgence in that profession. An editor is payed – almost always badly – to develop textual paranoia to pathological limits. Victims of professional deformation, they look for ’erratas’ in the TV’s scrolling-news summary, in the adverts, in the words of politicians – those producers of verbal inanity – and they can’t bear to be around when a child is speaking.

The Academy defines ’errata’ as ’material equivocation in the final print or in the manuscript’. Nothing more than that. An ’errata’, for the obsessive editor, is a mental sin whose echo goes on multiplying in the walls of the brain. ’Errata’ is the title of George Steiner’s wonderful autobiography, and also the name of an odd Spanish publisher. There are ’erratas’ that are notorious milestones among the editors of our language [Spanish] – ’el coño fruncido’ (the furrowed pussy – ’coño’ instead of ’ceño’, ie ’brow’), ’the fire behind’, ’the multiplication of penises and fish’ – traumatic erratas, erratas of ETA, bitch erratas, of burials, of thieves.

How does one learn to edit? There isn’t a school for it, although someone did charge for teaching the craft in my university faculty

How does one learn to edit? There isn’t a school for it, although someone did charge for teaching the craft in my university faculty. The classes turned into a delicious war against time, because there was no way to fill up the term time exhausting variations on one single theme: make sure the other guy writes well, be your brother’s guardian or they’ll punish you. The other, second patron demon of editors, after Titivilo, is the author himself.

There are so few authors who deliver their manuscript with even the minimum of honesty, that, for the reader, there will always remain some suspicion about who is the real, true person responsible for the book. Herralde or Bolaño? Divinski or Quino? De Maura or Kundera? ’Paradiso’ is famous for its linguistic bloopers (it actually starts with “Paradiso 1″ instead of “Chapter 1”!) and, in his copy, Cortázar noted: “Why so many errors, Lezama?” Critical editions usually print photographs of the original manuscript, in which the reader comes to realise with horror that the majority of novelists know nothing about punctuation, ignore accents (on letters), confuse meanings and mess up the rhythm. Not to mention bad handwriting or the celebrated joke made by García Márquez, who said “ditch the proper-spelling thing”.

There have been many chasers-down of bloopers among Cubans – from José Zacarías Tallet to Fernando Carr Parúas. Books about language, such as
’The Dart in the Word’ by Fernando Lázaro Carreter, or the most recent ’Measure The Words’ by the lovely Pedro Álvarez de Miranda, were the best preventative exorcism against Titivilo. Among the current members of the Cuban Language Academy there are few who have the capacity to write text at the level of their predecessors. I’ve just looked at the list and was only impressed by Margarita Mateo.

My ideas for a personal catalogue are so chaotic that they will never find any finance, unless I provide it myself.

Editing is a thankless business. The majority of those who do it, do so only to earn money and don’t do it as a vocation. But how could paranoia be a vocation anyway? Another thing – and this really is a profession that is becoming more and more rare – is ’editor as cultural thinker’, such as one who selects catalogues, or is advisor to an author and a craftsperson of books, whose presentation, obviously, he will have to look after, without this being the core of his work. I’ve known very few editors who were like that – four or five? – and I don’t even dare to say how many of them were Cubans.

For my part, I’m not an editor, although I do edit almost every day. My ideas for a personal catalogue are so chaotic that they will never find any finance, unless I provide it myself. I detest looking for funding, I prefer to produce it myself.

I’ve come to experience true depression when someone else’s text is badly written. It hurts to read a book rotting away with errors, but it hurts more if I’m the one who has to correct them. Life is cruel, we live under the implacable fire of Titivilo and we don’t always have some of those cojonudas to lift our spirits. As enemies of the literary devil, we are also poor devils ourselves.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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Deterioration of the Esplanade in Cienfuegos – Another Sign of this Magnificent Town’s Decay

The holes that are now expanding aggressively across the bay’s promenade are not just a problem for pedestrians, they’re a symbol of the city’s decay.

On Calle 37, opposite the radio station, lies one of the most dangerous holes / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Julio César Contreras, Ciénfuegos, 26 July 2024 – The collision of the sea against the Ciénfuegos esplanade, along with too many years of neglect, has resulted in the continuing appearance of new holes in the surface of the promenade, as confirmed by 14ymedio this Thursday. The official press informed of this with alarm on Wednesday, by explaining that the sea has begun to “take back” its territory in Jagua Bay.

Built in the nineteenth century and based on the Havana Malecón model, the Ciénfuegos malecón (esplanade/promenade) lived through the town’s magnificent years which advanced with gigantic economical steps and Ciénfuegos was on the point of becoming one of the most beautiful and cosmopolitan cities in Cuba – if it hadn’t been for the sudden emergency stop that came about in the middle of the twentieth century, with the triumph of the Revolution.

The holes that are now expanding aggressively across the bay’s promenade are not just a problem for pedestrians, they’re a symbol of the city’s decay, and this is the manner in which the residents experience it – residents who have witnessed how, with the discontinuance of pavement-repairs, the potholes have begun to fill up with soft-drink and beer cans, along with other rubbish.

The holes in the pavement get filled with soft-drink and beer cans thrown away by pedestrians / 5 Septiembre

“This stretch of the esplanade has deteriorated a lot. People have complained to the government many times but they haven’t solved the problem, which gets worse over time and with the moisture and the rubbish which accumulates”, explains Orlando to 14ymedio – a health worker who passes this deteriorated part of Calle 37 opposite Radio Ciudad del Mar twice every day on his route to and from work.

“Those holes are dangerous, especially at night-time during the weekend when the promenade is full of youngsters. The street lighting isn’t good and continue reading

anyone could trip up or fall into one of the cracks”. The official press agrees with Orlando and recognises that the night-time lighting is “rather precarious at present”.

“Even the candy sellers that pass by have their own rechargeable lamps, it’s so dark round here”, says the Cienfuegero. The drainage in the area, which gets constant impact from the sea, as well as downpours and storms, even that isn’t in the best condition. “If we get just a couple of drops of rain here, everything is flooded”, he says.

Despite the fact that “the location isn’t for parties”, says Orlando, when school term ended the promenade regained a bit of life and the kids of the city got together to listen to music or have a drink – despite the prices – in the nearby cafés, such as La Criollita, La Sureñita, or El Rápido.

The esplanade has lost some of its social life in recent years and what’s on offer in local bars has gone up in price / 14ymedio

“That’s why it’s so sad that the footpath on the promenade is in this condition because the majority of city life revolves around it”, adds Orlando, though he accepts that the solution is not a simple one. “It’s normal for the sea and salt to deteriorate structures, that’s why they need to have constant maintenance. However, it’s many years since there was even the smallest amount of maintenance work carried out, so now, if they’re going to do anything they’ll have to do it properly, because if they don’t, in a few months it will be just the same or even worse than it is now”, he concludes.

The promenade has not only lost bits of its actual structure, but also its life. Nancy, another Cienfuegera and a housewife, remembers the days when the fishermen, who were an emblematic image of life in the bay, would sit and wait for a fish to take the bait on their lines. “Not only is the water really dirty but the poor anglers have had to leave this area because of the new fishing regulations. Many have moved to other parts to avoid the fines and the inspectors”, she grumbles.

Also, the increased price of refreshments in local establishments has made them inaccessible. “You need to be carrying at least a thousand pesos to be able to sit in a bar and have a drink, or spend some time with your partner”, she says.

For Nancy, to watch how this area is dying – an area which so many Cienfuegeros have passed through, which has been for generations a place of meeting and of celebration, where years ago she herself had her first date – it’s to watch a part of her own memory disappear. “Every crack in the esplanade is a crack in the very identity of the Cienfuegeros themselves”.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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La Gran Via, Once the Best Confectionary Store in Cuba, now Converted into a Clandestine Refuge

The calamitous state of the building has been pointed out many times by local residents.

Everything would indicate that it’s been empty for a long time, but the neighbours hint at something distinctly different happening / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez / Olea Gallardo, 18 August 2024 – From outside, La Gran Via, the once dazzling confectionary outlet owned by Santos Suárez, in Havana’s Diez de Octubre district, appears to be just as abandoned as it’s been for years. The front of the building with its peeling red columns and the faded blue lettering on its signage, no longer even sports the brightly lit “Sylvain For You” sign which inducated the name of the national chain which was its last owner. On the other side of the glass everything appears dark and still, although you can see a line of chairs facing inwards right next to the large window, and you can just make out a few empty tin cans.

Everything would indicate that it’s been empty for a long time, but the neighbours hint at something distinctly different happening: “They’re using it for accommodation, there’s a whole bunch of people in there”. That there could be a considerable number of people occupying the place wouldn’t be surprising, considering the huge size of all of its rooms.

Some Habaneros can still remember the time when the venue sold its famous cream cakes at 3.50 pesos each. “Oh! And with chocolate and everything! Exquisite!” – one resident recalls, almost licking her lips as she lists all the different types of sweet that were to be found in the place: guava tarts, señoritas, montecristos, capitolios, torrejitas, and, of course freshly baked breads. “My grandma was crazy about their cream cakes – I remember how my mum often used to buy one for her birthday, though we kids didn’t like them much because we found them a bit salty”, explains Luisa, from El Vedado, with nostalgia. continue reading

That there could be a considerable number of people occupying the place wouldn’t be surprising, considering the huge size of all of its rooms.

Those times are not so long ago. “Even during the Special Period we used to buy cream cakes”, recalls María, a woman in her forties from the centre of Havana. In spite of the suffering of the terrible 90’s – after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Soviet subsidies – La Gran Via still conserved some traces of its former splendour.

María also recounts how one of their employees helped her family to survive the food shortages of that time: “An elderly black skinny guy, who’d previously worked for a funeral car company, kept for us the offcuts of the panetelas and cakes that were made at Gran Via. They toasted them in the ovens and gave them to us in distinct little sizes that looked a lot like espondrus (’sponge rusk’). Those irregular shaped little pieces, discarded during the making of cakes and other confectionary, helped us a lot to get by from day to day”.

They baked all kinds of sweets: guava cakes, señoritas, montecristos, capitolios, torrejitas and, of course, fresh bread / 14ymedio

If La Gran Via was the best confectioners in Havana during Cuba’s worst economic crisis, you can imagine what it must have been like in its best years. Defined as “real pride for Cuban industry”, in the illustrated encyclopaedia ’Book of Cuba’ in 1953, it had been founded in Güines by three Spaniards from Toledo (a city celebrated for its almond-based sweets, such as marzipan). These were the three brothers, José, Valentín y Pedro García Moyano.

Their business and their fame prospered and in the nineteen forties they made the leap over to Havana, to where the same Santos Suárez ruin remains today. According to a former employee, Bartolo Roque, speaking to Maite Rico and Bertrand de la Grange in a report published in 2009 in the Mexican magazine Letras Libres, the confectioners eventually employed 120 people.

In the good times the confectioner employed 120 people

Here is how the reporters described the black and white photos that Roque showed them (he was 78 at the time, but only an adolescent when he was originally hired by La Gran Via): “A dazzling new confectioners. The kitchens and the ovens. Five elegant young ladies busy taking telephone orders. A fleet of delivery vehicles with their uniformed drivers. Bartolo making a cake. And in another photo, 37 workers and assistants all wearing long aprons and white caps pose in front of innumerable cream cakes”.

A group of telephone operators took orders which were then dispatched to customers / 14ymedio

A fleet of delivery vehicles with their uniformed drivers.

The old man also spoke of how “they brought milk in pitchers to make the cream” for the cakes that were the house speciality.

All that began to change after the Revolution’s triumph, when the business, like all private businesses on the island, was seized. The García Moyano brothers fled into exile – in their case to Puerto Rico – and with them a number of master cake makers; but those that stayed, like Bartolo Roque, helped the company’s legacy to avoid disappearing entirely. “We can’t do what we want to do because we lack the raw materials”, said the elderly confectioner in 2009, blaming the “embargo” and praising the spirit which guided the company: “Whether a cake cost 1.5 pesos or 500, they were all of the finest quality. The same quality went to the houses of the rich and high society folks as went to the more modest and humble”.

All that began to change after the Revolution’s triumph, when the business, like all private businesses on the island, was seized

It’s unlikely that Roque is still alive today. One could have said the same thing for years about La Gran Via. Its sorry state has been flagged up by locals on many occasions via photos on social media.

On 29 June, Yoel Tamayo Valdés posted on Facebook a denunciation of “the current total abandonment by the authorities and by its owner Sylvain” of what “was once the best and the most technically advanced and equipped confectioners around”. He said that enormous efforts had been made by private individuals to rent out the property and exploit it, but no one took any notice. “I know an excellent cake-maker friend who had lined up an investor with over a million pesos, about two years ago, but after kicking the idea around, and with the director of Sylvain not even showing his face to offer any information or start up any negotiations, it was never given any proper attention so obviously the opportunity ended up being lost”, said Tamayo Valdés.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Soviet subsidies, La Gran Via still conserved some traces of its former splendour

Valdés also expressed his disgust at the fact that the place had become occupied by squatters. “How is it possible that they’ve never bothered to find a solution for La Gran Via, but then along comes a family, breaks down the door and starts living there with total impunity?”. And his diatribe continues: “Why don’t they put an end to this kind of piracy?!”

However, any evidence that there is actually anyone living inside La Gran Via is no more than just words. The glass doors are locked, the air-con unit outside is switched off. “There are also two wooden doors, perhaps for the offices, or the stores”, said one passer-by who was selling small birds. Asked for more details, he didn’t want to talk anymore and continued on his way, with his birdcage on his back.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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In Cienfuegos, Motor Scooter and Tricycle Owners Take Advantage Of The Lack Of Public Transport

For those living in the surrounding areas, managing to get into the city for work or for running errands is an Odyssey

14ymedio, Julio César Contreras, Cienfuegos, 3 August 2024 – Climbing with difficulty onto a horsedrawn cart, cramming inside an electric tricycle or paying more than 100 pesos for a motor scooter are the transport options that Lidia has to shuffle every morning when she sets out for work in Cienfuegos. For a bus to actually arrive, or for some Lada driver* to decide to give her a lift, these are no more than “miracles” which happen with less and less frequency since the start of the fuel shortage and the lack of public transport vehicles. If you want to move about, private vehicles are the only option.

“It’s useless to wait at a bus stop”, the 65 year old Cienfuegera told 14ymedio. Private transport is usually more efficient and more readily available she says, but it’s the prices which stop people from using these vehicles.

“From the entrance to Calle Industria to Paseo del Prado, a horse drawn cart ride costs between 15 and 20 pesos, but that zone is always full of people due to its proximity to the provincial hospital so it’s difficult to get a lift around there at peak times. If you need transport quickly, or you need to go a longer distance, the motor scooters can cost you up to 500 pesos for just a few kilometres”, says Lidia.

From the entrance to Calle Industria to Paseo del Prado, a horse drawn cart ride costs between 15 and 20 pesos / 14ymedio

For those living in the surrounding areas, managing to get into the city for work or for running errands is an Odyssey. “I live in Pueblo Grifo, on the outskirts, and pay 200 pesos for a motor taxi that takes me from Villuendas Park to the centre”, says Luis, another Cienfueguero, complaining about the few options available and their high costs. continue reading

“Okay if they were fixed prices but the problem is that tomorrow they’ll raise the price by 50 pesos and you’ll still have to pay it without complaining because there’s nothing else available and it’s weeks since I last saw a Diana”, he says, referring to the inter-urban buses that carry that name.

In answer to anyone who might ask what happened to all the inspectors who were supposed to prevent abusive pricing, Luis replies sarcastically: “It would seem they all went off to Venezuela to look for petrol (gasoline)”. The Cienfuegero assures us that in the last few days he’s only seen, sporadically, the official in charge of the Pastorita bus stop. “He works a bit in the mornings with his clipboard under his arm, without getting even the minimum of respect from drivers”, he complains.

It costs 200 pesos for a motor taxi from Villuendas Park to the city centre / 14ymedio

If Cienfuegos’s bus stops seem to be deserted for the major part of the day, it’s not because the transport is efficient and quick but that the passengers know that if they bother to wait around for a bus to arrive, “they’re gonna be there until nightfall”.

It doesn’t bother the private car owners who offer transport to travellers that there aren’t any buses or that the inspectors are disappearing. “At the end of the day that brings us more clientele and more work”, says the driver of one motor scooter. “It’s true that people can’t always pay our tariffs, but the prices aren’t that way because we want them to be but because inflation affects us as well”, he says.

Tyres and wheels, spare parts, petrol, duty payments and maintenance costs, “all that is money which we have to find at the end of the day and we still have to earn enough to live on, because if not then the business can’t be sustained”, he explains. “The passengers are sometimes annoyed or refuse to pay. It’s unfortunate that people treat each other badly when it’s the people higher up that have the solution in their own hands. When someone’s like that with me all I can say to them is ’either get in, or stay where you are’”.

Translator’s note: Government officials who are issued government cars — generally Russian made Ladas — are required to pick up and drop off passengers (at no charge) at designated areas, but commonly fail to do so.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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Yasmany Gonzalez Admitted to Being the Author of Anti-Government and Anti-Communist Party Posters

The activist Yasmany González and his wife, Ilsa Ramos. (Facebook/Ilsa Ramos)

14ymedio, Havana, 14 February 2024 – Ten months after Yasmany González Valdés’s detention – for creating graffiti opposing the government and the Communist Party – this Tuesday saw the conclusion of the trial in which he was charged with the crime of enemy propaganda. The prosecution requested six years imprisonment, two less than the maximum provided for in this offence.

His wife Ilsa Ramos told Martí Noticias that his lawyer tried to get the sentence lowered – by three years – pleading his collaboration during the investigation. “He says that Yasmany shouldn’t have to have a sentence so near to the maximum for this offence, which is eight years, because he admitted to putting up the posters and cooperated in the handwriting checks. Now we have wait for the final sentencing, which could take more than another month”, she explained.

At the trial – which was held at the Tenth of October Municipal Tribunal in Havana – only close family members were permitted to attend: his parents and his wife

At the trial – which was held at the Tenth of October Municipal Tribunal in Havana – only close family members were permitted to attend: his parents and his wife. “It started very late because they didn’t bring in the prisoners (him, and another younger man, also from the Combinado del Este) – both of them charged with “enemy propaganda”, although not part of the same case. The trial scheduled for 9am finally started at 11am”, Ramos added. continue reading

His wife also added that the attorney intervened during the trial in order to add aggravating circumstances, among others propaganda sent via his mobile phone, and incitement to attend demonstrations. “The lawyer defended him, arguing that Yasmany was being judged only for the posters”, she said.

González Valdés, known on social media as Libre Libre, was called in at the beginning of April 2023 by the police, who linked him to the clandestine group known as El Nuevo Directorio (END) – The New Directory – which were named on social media as being responsible for the posters that the activist was accused of. He attended an interrogation, where they conducted graphological tests and they tried to retain him, unsuccessfully, for non payment of fines unrelated to the case.

On 20 and 23 March, two enormous graffitis had been created, saying “No to the PCC” – one of them at the Faculty of Physics and the other in Aguirre Park. But it was the two following ones – on 17 April, at the university stadium and at 7 Calle Humboldt – which provoked a “violent search” of his house by 15 police officers who confiscated a paintbrush, overalls and a phone.

After this operation he was driven to Villa Marista, the headquarters of State Security, and interrogated for a month, after which he was moved to the Combinado del Este

After this operation he was driven to Villa Marista, the headquarters of State Security, and interrogated for a month, after which he was moved to the Combinado del Este.

During his time in prison his family denounced the fact that the activist was subjected to harassment from other prisoners, exposed to infections and accused of trying to form an “opposition movement” inside the prison, for which he spent lengthy periods in a punishment cell.

According to his wife, during the trial the prosecutor reminded the court that the crime for which he was indicted – enemy propaganda – is categorised in “the penal code which has been in force since 2022 and which was approved by more than 79% of the population”. However, this law has not, in fact, been put to any referendum, and neither of the two previous actual referendums – for approving the 2019 Constitution and the 2022 Family Code law – received anywhere near this level of support.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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Cuba and South Korea Establish Diplomatic Relations, Broken Since 1959

Archive image of Park Jin, South Korean Minister for Foreign Affairs. (EFE)

EFE (via 14ymedio), Madrid 14 February 2024 – Cuba’s Minister for Foregn Relations announced on Wednesday the establishment of diplomatic and consular relations with South Korea, broken since 1959.

A brief press release from the Cuban Chancellery noted the establishment of links “via an interchange of Diplomatic Notes between the Permanent Representatives of each country at the United Nations, in New York”.

“The establishment of official relations between both countries was brought about through agreement with the principles and objectives of the United Nations Charter, International Law, and in conformity with the spirit and the standards established in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 18 April 1961”, said the Foreign Affairs Minister. continue reading

South Korea and Cuba took a step towards normalisation of relations in May 2016, when the chambers of commerce of both nations signed a memorandum of understanding

Diplomatic links between South Korea and Cuba were broken in 1959, principally because of the historical, political and ideological alliance that existed between the Havana and the North Korean governments.

South Korea and Cuba took a step towards normalisation of relations in May 2016, when the chambers of commerce of both nations signed a memorandum of understanding for the sharing of information in the business sector, for bringing about an interchange between their respective delegations and for organising joint forums.

As well as South Korea’s interests in the energy sector, the country also considers that “Cuba has potential in both the medical and the tourism markets of the American continent”, said Seoul’s Minister for Strategic Planning and Finance.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso
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