Translator: Regina Anavy – Page 66

Spanish Director Benito Zambrano Supports the New Cuban Independent Cinema in Havana

Benito Zambrano in Havana, during the International Film Festival, which ends this Sunday. / EFE

EFE, Laura Bécquer (via 14ymedio), Havana, 12 December 2024 — /Spanish filmmaker Benito Zambrano defended in an interview with EFE the new generation of young independent filmmakers that has emerged in Cuba, a collective favored, in his opinion, by the arrival of new technologies.

“There is a whole group of filmmakers very well-trained and capable of creating and making cinema without the need for Cuban television or the Icaic (Cuban State Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry),” said the Sevillian director, after giving a talk in the context of the New Latin American Film Festival of Havana.

The winner of several Goya awards for the films Solas and Intemperie pointed out that “the Cuba of Habana Blues (his second film project and a great success on the Island and in Spain) of the years 2003-2004 is not the same, cinematographically speaking.”

“The technology has allowed many more people to make movies and to be creatively more daring,” said Zambrano, who came to Cuba this time invited by the Transculture Program of UNESCO and the European Union to participate in meetings at the International School of Film and Television (Eictv), the Higher Institute of Art and the Havana Film Festival.

The Spanish filmmaker, who premiered his latest film El Salto in April of this year, also acknowledged that “it is not easy to raise a (cinematographic) project from here (in Cuba),” especially because “the Cuban film industry is very small and dependent on money and external financing”

The director of other films such as La voz dormida, Padre coraje and Pan de limón con semillas de poppy, also confessed his close relationship with the Island, where he grew up as a filmmaker. “Cuba is always part of me,” he confessed.

Zambrano was trained at Eictv, a multinational project created in 1986 and supported by figures such as the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez. The Island has been a constant in his artistic creation, as he has stated on several occasions.

The 45th edition of the New Latin American Cinema Festival of Havana, which began on December 5 and lasts until this Sunday, has 110 films in competition – 89 fewer than last year – from 42 countries, among which Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina and Spain stand out.

Titles such as Ella se queda (Mexico), Fenómenos naturales (Cuba, Argentina and France) and Los capítulos perdidos (Venezuela) are part of the selection within fiction feature films.

However, media attention has focused this year on the international premiere of the first two chapters of the new Netflix series, based on the famous novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by the Colombian Nobel Gabriel García Márquez.

The names of the winners of the Coral awards are scheduled to be announced this Friday.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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A Baseball Team in Havana is Denounced for Abandoning Its Coach ‘For Being a Woman’

Baseball players of the Marianao team / Cubadebate

14ymedio/Swing Completo, Havana, 10 December 10, 2024 — The more than twenty players of the Marianao team from Havana abandoned their coach, Annie Fonseca, by failing to show up for the game they had this Monday. The club, which is in last place in the Provincial Series, forfeited the game to Plaza by “not being present” in an act that the Facebook page Por La Goma described as “detestable” and “macho.”

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According to the same publication, the team has a “miserable” attitude by “questioning the ability of a coach just because she is a woman.” It also highlighted Jordan William Bustamante, Daniel Yanes, Pedro Remolar, Yankiel Hernández, Kevin González, Rayco Víctores, Daniel Escalona and Dayron Miranda (injured), the only players from Marianao who did show up for the game.

Por La Goma reported that in the series there are teams like El Cotorro, which is also lagging behind but does not question its coaches. “You can have problems and situations, you can have difficulties and differences, but the pledged word cannot be ’prostituted’ with abandonment; that is not for good men, that is not correct.”

The position of the players generated other reactions. The women’s magazine Alas Tensas interpreted the athletes’ decision “as an act of rejection towards the female figure in command, which has ignited the debate on gender equality in Cuban sport.”

Annie Fonseca won the national softball championship in Guantánamo (1998) with Havana / Facebook/Fidel Ramírez Coll

Annie Fonseca, who was chosen this year to take charge of Marianao in the 64th edition of the Provincial Series of Havana, is not an ’improvised’ coach. As a player, she won the national softball championship in Guantánamo (1998) with Havana. She is currently in the fifth year of a degree in Physical Culture, Sport and Recreation at the University of Sports.

Last year, when Marianao became the runner-up, Fonseca was a bench coach. In November, in a chat with Swing Completo, she accepted that running the club would be a challenge because sexist beliefs still persist. However, she took on the challenge. “I firmly believe that women also have the right to earn respect within the field of baseball. We’re here to build and help the sport that we all love,” she declared.

“I was born a baseball player, and I’m a woman,” the coach said. “I can’t be more woman. Everything is in the person.” Fonseca has relied on elite players such as Dayron Miranda and Jordan William Bustamante.

This Tuesday Por La Goma considered that the sports authorities of Havana should “reformulate their strategies, allowing women who have talent and dedication to represent themselves.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Breakdowns and Lack of Fuel Are Ending the Service of the ‘Gazelles’ in Havana

There is fuel for only 60% of the capital’s microtaxis, says the Minister of Transport

A ’gazelle’ taxi stand in Havana / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Havana, 5 December 2024 — The catastrophic energy situation, which in the early hours of Wednesday caused the third collapse of the national electricity system in less than two months, is once again seriously affecting transport. Havana now has a limit of 9,800 liters of diesel per day for the service of the microtaxis, known as “gazelles.” As recognized by the Minister of Transport, Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila, “this does not cover the demand for the service, nor is it enough to supply the entire fleet.”

The fuel allows service for only between 225 and 228 microtaxis, just over 60% of the 435 vehicles. Assigning only one is not enough on the longest routes of between 24 and 26 kilometers, which affects the last laps,” the minister explains.

Out of the total number of vehicles, on the other hand, there are “80 that are paralyzed in the long term,” the official also reported. And more: “an average” of between 40 and 45 gazelles break down and don’t complete the maintenance service “to solve the different problems.” That is, only about 300 vehicles are operating regularly.

There are other problems such as “detachment of the side doors, broken windows and seats” and “social indisciplines”

“Gazelle minibuses are in intense overexploitation in their two work systems (day and night),” says Rodríguez Dávila, who summarized the 23 routes in more than 600,000 kilometers in the capital.

In addition to the lack of fuel and the “technical shutdowns in the workshop and eventualities due to lack of parts, pieces and accessories,” there are other problems such as “detachment of the side doors, breakage of continue reading

windows and seats” and “social indisciplines.” These do not allude only to travelers who don’t pay for the ticket – which has a cost of 5 pesos – but also to “public altercations or manifestations of aggression to drivers.”

To alleviate the problems, the company in charge of the service, Metrotaxis, has implemented a series of measures listed by Rodríguez Dávila, although it is not clear that they are effective. For example, the “redistribution by routes for the supply of fuel at bus terminals, with six points in different locations in the city, as well as the extension of the supply hours until two in the morning,” for “greater effectiveness and better use of fuel.”

Controls have also increased, he says, which have made it possible to discover “undue charges, route diversions, route openings and closings outside the established hours, non-compliance with trips and overstay in the taxi stands.” Since September, “199 violations have been detected,” which have led to 66 fines of between 1,250 and 3,750 pesos each, in addition to “10 closures of definitive leases and four temporary lease closures, 34 warning acts, 79 private warnings, three public warnings and three stimulation discounts.”

Nothing new under the sun, otherwise. The lack of diesel has only aggravated a service that was implemented with great success five years ago but that has been in frank decline for months. So much so that the gazelles are being replaced by private vehicles, increasingly present in the streets of Havana.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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With the Increase in Violence, Cubans Lock Themselves In Their Homes

“Fear on the buses, in lonely streets, empty parks at night, windows and doors secured before dark,” lists the official magazine ‘Bohemia’

In a few years, argues the magazine Bohemia, the rise in crime in Cuba has been directly proportional to the deterioration of life / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Havana, 30 November 2024 — A short time ago, the digital magazine Bohemia presented a meticulous report about the rise of violence in Cuba. Interspersed between minor works, the text provides desolate figures – and many testimonies – from a survey whose scope was not revealed. Some 92.3% of those interviewed consider that crime has increased a lot, and 48.9% have been a direct victim in the last six months or know a victim. One-third do not trust the authorities to report the crime, and of those who did, 73.4% “did not see a solution to their complaint.”

In addition, after “various interviews conducted, and sociological, criminal and anthropological studies consulted,” they conclude that almost half of Cubans can list 10 or more violent crimes that occurred in the last semester. Eighty-three percent have completely changed their routines and have developed strategies to stay safe.

In a few years, argues Bohemia, the rise in crime in Cuba has been directly proportional to the deterioration of life, the “loss of values,” the increasingly massive “vulnerabilities” and the debacle of the “solution mechanisms” of conflicts by the Police. The magazine resorts to euphemisms and asks to consult the official data; it has no choice but to admit that the authorities usually have their lips sealed in this regard.

The magazine resorts to euphemisms and asks to consult the official data; it has no choice but to admit that the authorities usually have their lips sealed

“However,” they ironize, “comparative statistical sites such as Infobae and Numbeo report that Cuba is among the countries with the lowest crime rates in America.”

Although banditry and crimes of gender violence in rural areas are undeniable, it is in municipal capitals and large towns where the increase in crime is perceived with particular intensity. “There is fear on the buses, in lonely dark streets and empty parks, and windows and doors are secured before dark,” says Bohemia.

In Guantánamo, the magazine reports, the official announcer David Alexis González, who was sleeping, was stabbed to death in continue reading

his own house by robbers. The authorities of the Ministry of the Interior took three months to provide an official version, and only after they had captured the alleged murderers.

Providing information, Bohemia regrets, is “a rare practice” in the Police and is almost always done late, despite the fact that the “unofficial media and Facebook profiles” had already offered details of the case.

The “alternative media” are the evidence, the magazine reasons, that there is “a need for information that is still unsatisfied, due to the lack of official spaces that clarify and provide figures on this type of event. That insufficiency does not disappear; it is redirected to various alternative channels of communication.”

The “alternative media” are the evidence, the magazine reasons, that there is “a still-unsatisfied need for information”

Bohemia distinguishes a spectrum of independent media from those that have “sensationalist traits” and “lack rigor and professionalism” to those that, they recognize, are serious, but “intend to sell Cuba as an unsafe country.” “But the truth is that yes, on the networks there are also complaints of real events. Some of them increase popular interest, causing a response, generally late, from the state media.”

“Yesterday they stole a propane tank from a doctor who lives from hand to mouth, and last week they tried to enter a garage near the nursing home. A neighbor woke up, turned on the light, and that’s why they left. I bolt my door with a Yale lock, latch the windows and put sticks and stones behind the door. If someone breaks in, at least it will make noise and wake me up.” This is how a woman of 50 years old interviewed by Bohemia expressed herself, “almost paranoid,” during a nocturnal conversation with her daughter.

Cuban houses are “a Sing Sing prison,” the woman joked, with a nervous laugh. Her fear is not based on what she reads on social networks, the magazine narrows down, but on her own experiences and on what she reads in the newspapers, “official or not.”

Another statement, from Elizabeth Bello – a girl from Havana – tells the story of the theft of her cell phone. When she took out her phone on Belascoaín Street at three in the afternoon, “two teenagers punched her in the neck, which made her fall to the ground, and they wrenched her cell phone away from her.” Bello attributed the robbery to the fact that she had been mistaken “for a foreigner.” “I immediately made the complaint. I was in the Police Unit until two in the morning, almost 12 hours!”

Daily life in Cuba is rapidly deteriorating, and the Criminal Law, Bohemia regrets, “is not an instrument of change”

Daily life in Cuba is rapidly deteriorating, and the Criminal Law, Bohemia regrets, “is not an instrument of change.” Crime cannot be eradicated without an improvement in living conditions. “Legal sector managers link the significant increase in crime in our nation to the scarcity of resources, goods and food and high inflation.” The response of the Prosecutor’s Office, they point out, has been to judge “property crime with greater rigor.”

On the other hand, there are more and more ex-convicts who commit crimes again because “it is difficult for them to find work and even be received by their families.” The stigmatization and the fact that they return to the same environment of poverty from which they came “are stimuli to recidivism.”

The buses and their stops – especially in the capital – are an environment of frequent crimes. Leonardo Rodríguez, waiting to board a P6 to Mantilla, saw two young people brandishing knives at each other, each belonging to different gangs – with members of both sexes – who looked at them from afar, armed with knives and machetes. The stop was in the middle of the “battlefield” that, with stones, was then formed. There were women and children. “That’s normal here; it happens almost every day,” Rodríguez said.

In this type of neighborhood, life is characterized by “the loss of values and the educational crisis, laziness and the delegitimization of work as a source of income, machismo and violence,” lists Bohemia.

Gender violence is separate issue, and Bohemia is scandalized that the most complete data offered by the Government are from a date as far away as 2016. Femicides are the “most followed” cases due to their importance. For researchers, the absence of official information leaves a “bad taste” since they cannot determine if there is really an increase in cases or “if in reality there was always a similar number of cases that were not classified as such.”

Women who suffer sexist violence clash with the “insensitivity of officials”

Women who suffer sexist violence clash with the “insensitivity of officials,” the magazine insists. “Questioning the victims when making the complaint, dismissal of danger or the seriousness that the situation implies, delays in taking statements in the PNR [National Revolutionary Police] Units or in the collection of evidence at the scene, exposure of the victims to the reconstruction of the story too many times”: everything influences the “loss of confidence” in the Police that is currently confirmed.

In this sense, they emphasize “a detail”: “The police forces are also affected by the prevailing socioeconomic panorama, which causes a decrease in police personnel in charge of attending, processing and solving crimes. In the end, neither victims nor perpetrators nor executors escape the context.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Many Private Merchants Close Their Premises in the Face of the State Offensive Against Illegalities

Inspectors confiscate the merchandise or fine sellers who do not put price labels on their products

Many individuals have stopped selling for fear of fines / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 5 December 2024 — With December came a new wave of persecutions of self-employed sellers throughout Cuba. The so-called “national exercise against crime and illegalities,” which the official press defends as “necessary” and “timely,” has not only put in check the self-employed, who have had to close their shops or pay fines, but also the families of the Island, who at the end of the year have run out of places to buy food.

“This week I went out to buy some items to repair my burner and some oil-based paint, but I had to go around the city a lot because all the private shops for these items were closed,” Roberto, a resident of Sancti Spíritus, tells 14ymedio. “The few vendors I was able to talk to told me that there’s a state offensive going on against the private sector. Apparently, there are many inspectors visiting the private businesses one by one.”

According to Roberto, the witch hunt has already fined several owners, many of them for “nonsense.” “They gave a saleswoman a 5,000-peso fine because the wind had blown off a price tag, and it was on the ground. Another, whose product did not show the price anywhere, was fined 80,000 pesos,” he says.

After giving up buying the tools he needed, Roberto decided to go to the place where he usually buys paint

After giving up buying the tools he needed, Roberto decided to go to the place where he usually buys oil-based paint. “I arrived, and the saleswoman, who knows me, opened her eyes wide and pointed to three inspectors who were in the store. One was looking at the list to see if the prices were right and two others were verifying that the QR codes to pay were functional. She made signs that she had paint but couldn’t sell it,” he explains. continue reading

He wasn’t doing well in the search for food either. “I went to the Kilo 12 market and the stalls were also closed. Some people there told me that a cart had stopped with bags of coal at 1,100 pesos, and the authorities had confiscated all the merchandise,” says Roberto, who adds: “All the other stalls closed out of fear.”

Stories like these continue to circulate on the streets of the city, Roberto admits. “They also told me that a man who was selling a pot of chili for 70 pesos was fined 7,000 pesos because it is not the agreed price for that product. There are even some inspectors from Havana who have been brought in for this control exercise.”

Frustrated with the impossibility of finding what he was looking for, Roberto decided to try his luck for the last time before returning home empty-handed. “I finally found some cucumbers in a place that, at first glance, seemed to be closed. All the people were scattered throughout the street and when someone arrived he would discreetly ask who was the last in line. They kept going in one by one,” he said.

Roberto recognizes that prices are high, but doubts that a “wave of fines left and right” is the solution

Roberto recognizes that food prices are high, but doubts that a “wave of fines left and right” is the solution. On the contrary, he reflects, the authorities are pushing sellers into smuggling when they also depend on the prices demanded by their suppliers. “As a result, almost everyone has closed because they are afraid of being fined. They say that until the wave of inspectors passes, they will not reopen.”

The case of Sancti Spíritus has been repeated throughout the country since the control began last Monday. According to images released on social networks, in a market in Santiago de Cuba, inspectors confiscated the products of some sellers, which provoked complaints from other self-employed and customers. “They are struggling and have small children,” someone is heard screaming in the recording while some police officers and others in civilian clothes grapple with the sellers who try to prevent them from confiscating a wheelbarrow.

The government of Havana has also left on its social networks the traces of the inspection of forklift drivers and small vendors. “In the tour of the Palatine Council, the marketing of agricultural products with no visible price is detected,” warns the publication, which announces a fine of 5,000 pesos for the infraction and another 2,000 for “not presenting commercial authorization.”

In November, 3,402 inspections were carried out that resulted in 2,783 fines totalling more than 8 million pesos

In Camagüey, an article published this Thursday by the official press says that this December the control is carried out with greater emphasis because “confronting abusive prices” is a State priority. According to the data published by Adelante, in November 3,402 inspections were carried out that resulted in 2,783 fines totalling more than 8 million pesos. “These coordinated actions were implemented last July with an amount that exceeds 39 million, including November,” the newspaper concludes.

Despite the obvious discontent of the self-employed and the customers, who have suddenly seen the shops where they usually buy closed, the Government has defended the measure, which will last until Saturday, December 7. “It is a comprehensive exercise, with participation and popular control, which strengthens the unity of our people and is oriented above all to confront manifestations of corruption,” Miguel Díaz-Canel said last Monday, when he gave the starting point to the army of inspectors.

However, the president acknowledged that the problems identified by the “exercise” cannot be “confronted in one day, in two, in a week, in a certain time,” something evident if we take into account that the Regime has launched similar offensives in past months – the last of them this summer – without result

This December, Cubans will once again desist from the holidays, the roasted piglet and the traditional family reunion at the end of the year. Instead, they will have the concern of looking for what to eat if, due to state “control,” “the platforms are stripped.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuba’s Official Press Hides Crimes Until They Are Solved by the Police

’Cubadebate’ did not inform its readers of the murder of a child by his father, but it does publish an official statement about the arrest of the murderer

The authorities want to generate a perception of security / La Hora de Cuba

14ymedio, Madrid, 3 December 2024 — The official press announced this Tuesday the murder of Edgar Aliesky Martínez Torres, the five-year-old boy whose violent death was denounced by independent media and feminist organizations last week. As usual in state media, they point out the crime when it is already solved and do not give a single detail about the circumstances of the violent event.

Avoiding the impact of the case, Cubadebate reports the arrest of the perpetrator of violent acts against children and pregnant women in Minas, Camagüey. The article goes further in concealing the facts and indicates that “the occurrence of an unusual event against the life of a child under five years of age was learned,” without explaining at any time that the victim was murdered.

Something new is revealed: the man “in the course of his flight sexually assaulted a woman who is eight months pregnant,” which is simply a statement from the Ministry of the Interior incomprehensible to anyone who had no knowledge of the events.

The events occurred on November 26 and were broadcast two days later by the Alas Tensas platform, which already said that it was a case of vicarious violence, in which the murderer was the father of the minor. “The aggressor kills a third person, children or other relatives, to make the victim suffer,” the organization reported on its social networks, which attached a list of seven more children killed continue reading

by their parents or the partners of their mothers. “We have a debt towards Edgar Aliesky and all the boys and girls who have suffered the most terrible of deaths,” it added.

The version circulating in Camagüey indicates that Edgar Aliesky was with his maternal grandmother when his father arrived

The version circulating in Camagüey indicates that Edgar Aliesky was with his maternal grandmother when his father arrived without anything indicating, apparently, his intentions, even despite the fact that the child’s mother, Keilyn Torres Varela, was being threatened by her son’s father for wanting to leave the relationship. Since the murder was committed, Torres Varela has been guarded by the Police, since she was the main target.

After strangling the child, the alleged murderer ran away and came across the pregnant woman, who was on her way to a medical check-up. He hit her, raped her and stole her cell phone. According to a nurse at the maternal and child hospital Ana Betancourt De Mora, “the pregnant woman is stable and maintains her pregnancy.”

The police information validates the identity of the alleged murderer, although without granting him the right to the presumption of innocence, as befits an official body until the trial. “In the course of the investigation it is known that the author of these facts is the citizen Alieski Martínez Ferrer, father of the aforementioned minor,” the statement continues, without revealing more facts than the sexual assault on the pregnant woman.

Comments on social networks and in ’Cubadebate’ have been filled with requests for justice

Comments on social networks and in Cubadebate have been filled with requests for justice, including the death penalty for the murderer.

The way the official press proceeds follows the usual pattern of announcing violent events only after the criminal has been arrested, as happened days ago with the case of an alleged murderer of two custodians in Santiago de Cuba. The purpose is to generate a feeling of tranquility and crime control that, despite the Regime’s efforts, does not resonate with the population.

In a survey prepared by Bohemia magazine a year ago, 92.4% of participants considered that violence has increased a lot in Cuba, 42% said they had been aware of 10 or more violent crimes in the last six months, and almost half said that a direct family member or close person was a victim of one of these events. In addition, 84% of those who responded have changed their routines for fear of the insecurity they perceive, including modifications in their daily routes, hiding their valuables and avoiding carrying cash with them.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuba’s Official Journalism Regrets the Desertion of Young People and the Empty Newsrooms

The Cuban Union of Journalists questions military service for future students

Third Plenary of the UPEC National Committee on Saturday / Cubadebate

14ymedio, Havana, 2 December 2024 — The figures provided in the III Plenary of the National Committee of the Cuban Union of Journalists (UPEC), held on Saturday in Havana, clarify the decline in the career of journalism, once coveted by students with better grades. So much so, that university enrollments are not enough to meet the demand of the existing media.

Distributed in the six journalism schools on the Island – Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, Camagüey, Villa Clara and Matanzas – and in the four years of study, there are a total of 498 students. The panorama worsens even more in the next generation, if we take into account that in the university colleges of preparation for the career, existing in those provinces plus Las Tunas – in which this course opened – there are only 108 students.

In the articles published in the official press that mention the plenary, there is no mention of the reduction in young people that the migratory exodus has meant in recent years, nor of the low state salaries compared to the cost of living – 4,800 pesos a month, plus extra depending on the position, the environment (municipal, provincial or national), and whether the journalist is a Party “cadre.” These are probable causes of disenchantment with the journalism career, but the mandatory military service for young people who want to study journalism, launched in this 2024-2025 course, was again questioned. continue reading

At the meeting it was also recognized that the repeated “legitimate demands of the sector” will not be easily resolved

Thus, the head of the Department of Journalism of the Faculty of Communications of the University of Havana, Karla Picart Rodríguez, proposed that the UPEC reduce the internship in Active Military Service (SMA), which right now is one year, “considering that in less time its objectives could be met and that the newsrooms and the media are decapitalized, empty.” The criticism, however, was mild, and the official report stated: “Although in the Plenary it was clear that this is already a firm decision, the young teacher called for defending the emphasis of such transit through units in activities and actions that nourish their perspective as students of media communication.”

Other speakers made proposals for “those future journalists in the military units,” who “can be used to improve the communication processes of the Armed Forces, manage radio bases, become correspondents of the magazine Verde Olivo, nurture knowledge in the staffs and the College of National Defense, and join battles on social networks.”

This is far, therefore, from the voices within the regime, who have warned that military service is a deterrent for potential journalism students. The dean of the Faculty of Communication of the University of Havana, Ariel Terrero, for example, said in the II Plenary of the UPEC that the implementation of that condition was “a failure” and questioned whether it served to “educate and ideologically train these young women.”

On the same Saturday that the III Plenary of the UPEC was held, national television broadcast a long hagiographic report on the SMA for future journalists. It was blatant proof that, despite the arguments against it, the obligation [of military service] will continue for the time being.

Moreover, the meeting also recognized that the repeated “legitimate demands of the sector” will not be easily resolved. “To satisfy them, political will is not always enough, because material and financial resources can be deciding factors,” said the deputy head of the Ideological Department of the Party’s Central Committee, Marydé Fernández López.

“Several organizations try to control information to give the idea that nothing is happening, which leaves the press the sad role of damage control that follows”

UPEC presented “a list of material, logistical, organizational and training vulnerabilities” that the official press does not mention – “it would take a long time to detail here,” they excuse themselves – but which can be summarized in a conclusion: “A good part of what the Social Communication Law establishes is not fulfilled, not even by the media.”

Another slightly critical moment in the plenary was when they talked about how to communicate the recent catastrophes such as hurricanes Oscar and Rafael and the two earthquakes in Granma province. In this regard, Juventud Rebelde journalist José Alejandro Rodríguez said: “Before the current comes, the light of information must arrive,” and another colleague from Las Tunas, István Ojeda Bello, said: “The Social Communication Law goes into crisis because several organizations try to control information to give the idea that nothing is happening, which leaves the press with the sad role of damage control that follows.”

Finally, they also analyzed the change in management models in the state press, which began in August last year. According to the report presented, the results of “the experiment” are “very encouraging in the multi-platforms where they are best applied.” That is, Ideas Multimedios – directed by Randy Alonso and encompassing websites such as Cubadebate and TV programs such as Mesa Redonda, the Cubavisión International channel, the Cuban News Agency and Prensa Latina, as well as the Escambray, Girón, Juventud Rebelde, Periódico 26 and Granma newspapers.

In this aspect, Radio Rebelde, Tele Rebelde and Tele Pinar “began to take off,” and “46 other media have just defended their projects of inclusion in the experiment.” On the other hand, they indicate, the start of the proposal has been “exceedingly” delayed “in media that were expected to be leaders: Radio Sancti Spíritus, Radio Florida and Solvisión.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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A Nurse Questions the Lack of Cuban Doctors in Remote Areas in Mexico When the Arrival of 96 is Announced

A health worker denounces the lack of medicines and specialists in communities in the Mexican state of Sonora

Cuban doctors assigned to the rural community hospital in the Vícam Settlement, in Sonora / Facebook / Salud Servicios IMSS Bienestar

14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico City, 3 December 2024 — The 96 Cuban doctors that the Mexican Government boasts of having incorporated into the Sonora hospitals are not even remotely sufficient to solve the state’s problems. “Neither with the Cubans nor with the announcements of new hospitals have the shortages in the Sonora health services been eradicated,” a nurse, who requested anonymity in the face of possible reprisals, told 14ymedio. “There is a shortage of medical supplies at the IMSS-Bienestar hospital in Nogales. Some of the patients have to buy their own medications,” she says.

The same source reveals that of the 100 Cuban specialists that Gabriela Nucamendi Cervantes, director of Imss-Bienestar, the free health organization created during the Administration of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to replace the Popular Insurance, announced this Sunday, “none has been sent to Etchojoa,” which is considered the poorest municipality in Sonora.

Given the lack of doctors, last February “16 medical interns (students) of medicine were sent to 12 health centers that are in the rural area of the municipality. The boys come from universities in Sonora and Sinaloa,” says the nurse, who wonders why the Cuban doctors were not taken to this site.

Last May, the MegaNoticias portal denounced the backwardness in healthcare in the northern state. In Etchojoa “there is an obvious lag in the issue of health, according to figures from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi). Only 28.6% have a mobile unit for transfer, and there is a 41.9% poverty rate.” continue reading

Health deficiencies also prevail in the Mochipaco ejido* where “for 30 years, a house enabled as a health center has been closed.” In Guaytana, history repeats itself: there are no doctors established to attend to the population.

Cuban doctors sent to the municipality of Átil, in Sonora / Facebook / Administracion Municipal de Atil 2024-2027

On November 27, Mayor Jorge Alberto Elías Retes was elected as vice president of the Health Network to meet the needs in the southern region of the state. “The fight against dengue and the urgent need for doctors for rural health services,” are the two primary considerations of the Government, he emphasized.

In her speech, Gabriela Nucamendi Cervantes recognizes the valuable addition of the Cubans, given the shortage of specialists in several municipalities. “We are fortunate that the Cuban doctors and psychiatrists are here. We just sent two to the mountains and are going to distribute them throughout the state,” she said.

Nucamendi told the newspaper El Sol de Hermosillo that Cuban specialists were helping in the municipalities of “Magdalena, Moctezuma and Álamos, especially in community hospitals that are difficult to cover.” The official said that others are in the Vícam Settlement, located in Yaqui territory in the south of the state, where a $26,014,316 hospital is under construction.

The Cubans are also working in the General Specialties Hospital and the Children’s Hospital in Hermosillo.

Regarding the per diem of Cuban doctors, at the beginning of October it was revealed that the Government of Mexico pays 5,188 dollars a month for salary, transportation, food and lodging for each of the 3,101 Cuban specialists hired to offer services in rural areas.

*Translator’s note: An ejido is a tract of land held in common by the inhabitants of a Mexican village and farmed cooperatively or individually.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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A Debate on Cuban TV About the Necessary Collaboration of the Private Sector To Build Socialism

The ideal system will begin when the two economic sectors begin to “link themselves” properly

Cid Ice cream shop in Havana, a private business / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Madrid, 26 November 2024 — Determined to address public-private collaboration, a thorny issue for the economic model that has reigned in Cuba for 65 years, the television program directed by Marxlenin Pérez, Cuadrando la Caja [Squaring the Box], had a surprise. Nothing that Cubans have experienced so far was communism and, if they hurry, not even socialism. Something like this will begin when the two economic sectors begin to properly “link themselves” – as the ruling party calls cooperation – and give way to a “developed” society.

The program turned out to be a recommendation to correct the last 65 years in total, which was not very clear judging by the fancy footwork of Ayuban Gutiérrez Quintanilla, professor at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Havana. The doctor was invited, clearly, to justify the demand from the institutions for public-private collaboration, so present in countries with market economies, including China and Vietnam in their turn to state capitalism.

Marxlenin Pérez repeatedly asked his guest to address the alleged “contradictions” of this type of cooperation with an economic model that for decades denied any private initiative. Then the diatribe began.

“In my studies of Marxism, we think that socialism is the transition to that higher society, which is communism”

“In my studies of Marxism, we believe that socialism is the transition to that higher society, which is communism. I believe there is no contradiction in understanding that, either as the transition to socialism or as socialism [itself], which is that path to a higher society, there is undoubtedly a space in which different forms of property have to coexist,” explained Gutiérrez Quintanilla. continue reading

The professor argued extensively for the beginnings of private property and Lenin’s arguments exactly one hundred years ago, to which Cuba – he pointed out – must adapt the conditions that occur at this historical moment. “Marx and Engels assumed that the transition from developed countries to communism was because there was already a guaranteed material base,” he describes at one point. “It’s interesting, because later they [the Marxists] realized that it didn’t have to be exactly like that in their relationship with the Russian revolutionaries. They realized that it was possible from an underdeveloped country, but then the process is longer, because the material basis for the transition has to be guaranteed.”

At this point, Gutiérrez Quintanilla affirms that Cuba is at that moment “when the State cannot do it on its own,” and that it needs to associate with other forms of private management, both in the country and abroad. It is not clear if the argument says the Marxist theorists of the nineteenth century were right or makes the six decades of Castroism wrong, but it clearly leaves doubt about what has been done since 1959 in Cuba. The system must start from scratch with the help of the now necessary private sector as a preliminary step to restart Cuban socialism.

Without doubt, the professor was admitting that, no matter how much on paper the state sector continues to appear as the engine of the economy, the State imperatively needs the private sector to prosper. Therefore, Gutiérrez Quintanilla called for public policies that regulate relations between both parties “so that these forms of property participate in the achievement of a final objective that is the development of the country, the improvement of well-being and the improvement of living conditions.”

The businessman has been cooperating with the state sector for almost two years thanks to an unusual access to foreign currency, and he did not hide the fact that the Central Bank of Cuba “supports” his company

The speech is not entirely new – already in 1987 the official State newspaper Granma had a headline on the front page: “Now we are going to build socialism”; but Gutiérrez managed to overshadow the presence of Jorge Félix Peraza Noriega, president of Jolyni, an MSME dedicated to making pasta, who came to put some meat on the beautification of private collaboration with the State.

The businessman has been cooperating with the state sector for almost two years thanks to an unusual access to foreign currency, and he did not hide the fact that the Central Bank of Cuba “supports” his company. Jolyni “has not had to go to the informal market to get currency and let’s hope it never happens,” he said.

“Operating with microcredit we achieved a very favorable credit history. We have also benefited from all the possibilities that have been generated for us and from the confidence and seriousness with which we manage our business. We have worked with foreign suppliers who have given us credits, which are still pending and must be honored, but we also count on the seriousness of the financial institutions that support us,” he claimed, a recital of what few can achieve without leaving behind some doubts.

Peraza Noriega, in any case, spelled out the positive nature of his experience, since his company makes the products on the Island, generating value at the national level. “In the end, when we buy a package of spaghetti that was made in Italy we are paying the salary of a worker in Italy. When a Cuban buys a package from Jolyni he is not only paying Jolyni but is also helping to generate a whole process of a salary and a guarantee of consuming a fresh product, a healthy product. That’s one of the things we need to do.”

Retaking the floor, Gutiérrez Quintanilla insisted that it is very positive that the private businesses “align themselves with the country’s development objectives,” but that it is necessary to create the conditions for an alliance favorable to all to be achieved, at which time the capital issue of foreign exchange appeared as directly responsible for public-private collaboration not being able to prosper.

“Today, the private company has to go to a foreign exchange market that we all know has a series of important difficulties, because it is part of the informal market. However, the state-owned company, by its nature, cannot enter an informal market; it would be contradictory. So how do we find a solution? That’s a challenge,” the teacher said. He thus admitted, without saying it expressly, that the Cuban economy has entered a loop impossible to solve, since it is – he said – essential that there is a macroeconomic stabilization that generates confidence and productivity, inviting the private sector to join the State. “It is very difficult for the actors to relate correctly if the rules are not the same,” he concluded.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Lack of Milk and the Import of Gouda Are Burying Cuba’s Own Creole Cheese

At the La Plaza Boulevard market in the city of Sancti Spíritus, a pound of Creole cheese costs 450 pesos this week / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 1 December 2024 –Inseparable companion of the wedge of guava and constant presence in the hands of the sellers who display their merchandise on the sides of the road, white or Creole cheese was so common in our lives that we only knew how to value it when it began to become more expensive and scarcer every day. Now, a wave of synthetic and tasteless products is giving the coup de grace to the cheese of farmers.

“I was born in Sancti Spíritus, a very rural province where we are proud to make one of the best cheeses in Cuba,” recalls Pascual, 81, a resident of Havana for six decades. This week, the old man’s sister visited him from her native Jatibonico. “She managed to bring two pounds of cheese made by our cousin, but she told me to eat it slowly because it is the last production: he is selling the farm.”

Pascual cut a thin slice, sat down in the armchair on the terrace and took the first bite. Suddenly, he remembered his mother’s scream from the courtyard of his childhood telling him not to climb so high in the mango tree. The smell of the mountain flooded everything, and he saw the milkman placing bottles at the doors of the houses with the first rays of the sun. He heard the neighbor’s rooster and the noise that his father made, machete in hand, when he cut the grass that grew at the entrance to their home, made of planks and palm trees.

“I was born in Sancti Spíritus, a very rural province where we are proud to make one of the best cheeses in Cuba”

The second bite took Pascual to the Military Service where that white cheese had killed his hunger many times. “The bread arrived still warm; they gave me a large piece and put a slice inside; if there was a little bit of guava nearby, even better.” When the Rafter Crisis happened in the summer of 1994, his eldest son took to the sea with several friends. They were finally continue reading

intercepted and taken to the Guantánamo Naval Base. He now lives in Tampa.

“The only thing he could carry was some water and a piece of white cheese; eating that for the week they were adrift was how he was saved,” he recalls now. “In Tampa, you can buy all the cheese you want, cheddar and mozzarella mainly, but he tells me that it doesn’t have any taste, nothing like that farmers’ cheese bathed in seawater; there’s nothing like it.” The sour smell spreads over the terrace; an almost blind dog approaches and Pascual gives him a piece. The animal swallows it quickly and begs for more.

The journey to the past, over a piece of cheese, is over. “I’m going to save what I have left for some spaghetti that I want to make on the weekend,” he explains. Inside the refrigerator, wrapped in a cloth that was once a baby’s diaper, is kept the treasure that has arrived from a farm in Sancti Spíritus, where the arms of his cousin have beaten the milk, sweat has been mixed with the whey, and an improvised press with two boards and a tourniquet has given it form.

A few kilometers from the farm for sale, in the La Plaza Boulevard market in the city of Sancti Spíritus, a pound of Creole cheese costs 450 pesos this week, 100 more than in these days in December last year. But this is not its highest price; it reached 550 last June. However, even with plenty of money in your pocket, it is not so easy to buy a product that has been disappearing from Cuban markets and homes to the same extent that livestock production is sinking, hit by the lack of animal feed, the wave of illegal slaughter that keeps cattle owners without support and the State controls that force farmers to comply with the deliveries of milk agreed with Acopio.

“Making cheese takes time and a lot of work; this is not sewing and singing,” a merchant from La Plaza Boulevard defends himself when a customer complains about the price of the product. Nearby, a private mipyme, full of imported products, offers a pound of Gouda cheese at 2,100 pesos. This cheese has a high demand,” clarifies the smiling employee. “You can buy the entire block that is three and a half kilograms or we can sell it to you by the pound,” he says. The label has the name of the Spanish firm Vima.

Some of the imported cheeses that arrive on the Island are synthetic. These are dairy preparations made from fats, fragments of other cheeses, starches, salts and dyes. These ingredients are ground, mixed and melted. As a general rule they contain a lot of salt. They don’t have the typical holes that fermentation leaves, and they are very caloric, but among Cubans they are surrounded by a halo of healthy and tasty foods.

If you don’t have a lot of money, you will have to settle for a small pizza, about 17 centimeters in diameter, made with farmers’ cheese for 200 pesos

Thankfully it melts; it can stretch and is quite photogenic, but the Gouda cheese that arrives in Cuba absolutely lacks personality. It comes in rectangular bars and without those holes inside that create the action of bacteria during the maturation of the product. With artificial color, wrapped in plastic and odorless, the imported cheese has captivated Cubans and intimidated the local rancher.

That unequal fight is seen everywhere. In a cafeteria located on Zanja Street in Central Havana, the bulletin board shows the superiority that customers give to foreign cheese. If you don’t have a lot of money, you will have to settle for a small pizza, about 17 centimeters in diameter, made with farmers’ cheese for 200 pesos. But if you can spend more and, in addition, want to give an image of solvency, then you will have to pay 350 for a similar product but with Gouda. Almost everyone who arrives asks for this last combination.

However, Pascual has positioned himself in his own way in that encounter between Creole and industrial cheese, with colorful labels in which a chubby cow smiles. Wrapped in a thin fabric, his cheese remans the last piece of a food in the refrigerator that has the ability to transfer him back to his childhood, to the patio with the orange and tamarind trees where he grew up. He chews it calmly and hears the scream of his mother who tells him to get out of there, that the snack is already on the table. A sandwich with a white slice, full of holes, that protrudes on each side of the bread, awaits him.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Hundreds of Cubans Crowd Into Tapachula for the CBP One Program, Wanting To Get to the US Before Trump Takes Over

At least 3,000 migrants, including several Cubans, went to the Migration offices in Tapachula (Chiapas) for CBP One* Program / Facebook / South Border News

14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico City, 26 November 2024 — Cuban Yunier Pérez Valdés is confident of being in the United States before Donald Trump assumes power on January 20 and, as he threatened, starts mass deportations. “I’m against the clock,” he tells 14ymedio. His sister María Elena and her brother-in-law arrived in Tijuana, the border with the United States, and after crossing the San Ysidro checkpoint they turned themselves in last Friday. But he confesses in anguish: “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I stay in Mexico.”

In his first term in the White House (2017-2021), Trump implemented restrictive measures such as the “Stay in Mexico” program, which forced asylum seekers to wait on Mexican territory while their cases were resolved. “If you don’t find a way before Trump, everything will overflow at the border,” estimates Pérez, who is in Tapachula, in the state of Chiapas. “Once again, all Cubans, Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans will look for a way to enter the country illegally.”

The young man, 23 years old and originally from Matanzas, had to sell everything he owned to be able to make the journey. “I have no money, I don’t have a house, I don’t have a family. I tell the agents that in Cuba we are starving and they laugh.”

A policewoman in Tapachula asked him if he was politically persecuted. “They don’t understand that Cubans leave because there are no improvements. There are months of blackouts, without medicines, without work. Where is the humanitarian aid they send for natural disasters? If you protest you are now an enemy and they beat you with sticks,” he laments. continue reading

Several migrants stay overnight in the Plaza de Tapachula while waiting for Migration procedures / EFE

This Monday, some 3,000 migrants arrived at the Migration offices in that same border city, comments Pérez, about 100 Cubans among them, but “the rule,” is to assist 1,000; of those, 700 are there for CBP One Program*. “The rest process documents for their regulation. There are two lines, although there were problems because some Haitians and Colombians wanted their papers immediately.”

The Cuban migrant stays overnight in the Bicentennial Park. There he met the Venezuelan José de Casa, who last October registered through the CBP One application, but the answer has not reached him. “The agents ask me not to despair, but it’s not easy, I’m here without money. The little I brought ended in days and I can’t get out of here (Tapachula),” says the Venezuelan.

They say that they tried to clean windshields on the streets, as other migrants have done, but “there is a mafia that controls them,” denounces the Venezuelan. “From what you earn you must share the money. ’You have to pay for the territory,’ they tell us.”

In that same place Pérez Valdés has met dozens of Cubans. “Many left with the caravan of 1,500 people last Wednesday. “They do it to avoid extortion and kidnappings by coyotes,” he says.

According to official data from the United States authorities, arrests in September for illegally crossing the border from Mexico were at their lowest point in the last four years.

Despite a 76% drop in the daily detention of migrants on the US border since December, according to the Mexican government, irregular migration through this country rose 193% year-on-year to a record of more than 172,000 people, according to the Migration Policy Unit.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Cuban Government Requires Companies by Law To Have Their Own Energy Generation Equipment

“Large consumers” will have to produce 50% of the energy they use as of 2028

An ’MSME’* in Holguín dedicated to the sale of toiletries and food / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Madrid, 27 November 2024 — Cuba’s state-owned companies, private companies and any governmental or foreign dependency must implement a series of measures for energy efficiency. Among them, they must have their own system to supply 50% of the energy they use during peak hours. This will be required from 2028 for “large consumers,” those who need 30 megawatts per hour or 50,000 liters of fuel on average monthly.

This is established by a new law published this Tuesday in the Official Gazette, Decree 110/2024, on “Regulations for the control and efficient use of energy carriers and renewable energy sources.”

The text repeals a 2019 resolution on the subject and has been in the works for at least a year, with recurrent public appearances by the authorities in recent months regarding the unrelenting crisis. The State cannot continue subsidizing electricity to the private sector, and it is imperative to save electricity. The resolution is published in the midst of a fever for renewable energies, specifically solar panels, unleashed on the front pages of the official press for weeks.

Fundamentally, the decree says that “state and non-state economic actors, foreign investment modalities, representative offices and branches of foreign entities, dependencies or other representations of foreign institutions, as well as associative forms” have to implement “a management system for the control and efficient use of energy carriers and renewable energy sources, in accordance with their corporate purpose, functions and approved mission, in relation to the commercial activities they carry out.” continue reading

Companies that already exist are given a period of three to five years to adhere to the measures

To do this, they must take a series of measures, including establishing a “program for the development, maintenance and sustainability of renewable sources and the efficient use of energy, with a reach of five years.” These should include “the goals that are proposed to be achieved, the necessary financial and human capital” and a plan for electricity consumption during peak hours (daytime, between 11 am and 1 pm, and at night, between 5 pm and 9 pm).

As reported on national television upon giving news of the decree, all economic entities that start new ones must have this plan within their project so that it can be approved by the authorities. For those that already exist, they are given a period of three years from the publication of the law in the Gazette to adhere to the measures.

The law requires that 50% of the electricity of large consumers during daytime peak hours come from “renewable energy sources.” “In cases where for reasons of space or structure of the roof of the installation or building it is not possible to install photovoltaic panels” to reach that 50%, the text continues, “the contracts of installed power in the photovoltaic solar parks must be signed with the Unión Eléctrica, as established in the regulatory provisions dictated by the Minister of Energy and Mines.”

Another of the elements provided for in the decree is a change in tariff. The Electric Union of Cuba will take as a reference “the real cost of diesel generation at the official exchange rate approved by the Central Bank of Cuba for the new companies considered large energy consumers from their start-up.” The Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM) is exempt, however, from this “real-cost tariff,” and “the rates established by the Electric Union” are applied to each one its companies.”

For “new investments that are considered large consumers,” the law requires that 50% of the electricity they consume during daytime peak hours come from “renewable energy sources”

The law lists a series of violations that will entail sanctions, which can include “deducting” 50% of the administrative fuel for a period of three months, the interruption of electricity service up to 72 hours or fines of up to 15,000 pesos. The listed “violations” are numerous and include, for example, “not having an adequate technical and operating state of the facilities and energy-consuming equipment”; “having dirt in the filters, evaporators and condensers in the climate and refrigeration equipment”; “using air conditioning equipment in non-technological premises, at temperatures below 24ºC”; “having refrigeration equipment and non-hermeticized air-conditioned areas”; “failing or not having an electricity consumption plan for the peak hours”; and even “not having the Energy Efficiency Label on the end-use equipment of energy and renewable sources that are marketed in the country.”

Among the infractions there is a whole section referring to fuel, in which sanctions are provided for; for example, “not carrying out periodic analysis of the operations that are executed with prepaid fuel cards,” “failure to comply with the due custody of prepaid fuel cards”and “failure to comply with the fact that the prepaid fuel cards are associated with the vehicles and those responsible.”

All this is planned for a “period of stability of the national electric power system,” since the decree foresees tougher measures – up to 20,000 pesos of fines and other sanctions – in case of “an electrical contingency regime.” This is decreed when “the National Electroenergetic System fails to meet the demand for generation capacity, so it is necessary to affect the electrical service in a planned and sustained manner for more than 72 hours.”

The Government establishes the creation of “energy councils,” which are constituted “at the national, provincial and municipal levels”

To monitor compliance with the new resolutions, the Government establishes the creation of “energy councils,” which are constituted “at the national, provincial and municipal level” with “representatives of political, social and mass organizations of each level” as “permanent members,” and the possibility of inviting, “by own decision or at the proposal of a member,” “representatives of state and non-state economic actors, modalities of foreign investment, as well as associative forms.”

Beyond a brief report on television, the official media have not yet dedicated, as they usually do, a more extensive explanation of the new law, whose wording is more cumbersome than usual. It is striking, for example, that they do not express the obligations with the conditional modal verb “should” but with affirmative verbs. In any case, it looks like it will soon raise indignation, at least from smaller entrepreneurs.

“It’s a direct blow to all these new MSMEs,” says a young baker living in Havana. “How much does an energy system like this cost, 35,000, 40,000 dollars? Who can take on that burden?”

*Micro, Small, Medium Enterprises [mipyme in Spanish]

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuba Receives Help From Japan in Addition to Deliveries From the European Union, Russia, Brazil and the UN

Japan donated mats, water purifiers, tents and blankets to the victims of Artemisa

Reception for the Japanese donation at the José Martí International Airport in Havana / Facebook / Jica

14ymedio, Havana, 30 November 2024 — After two hurricanes, two earthquakes and a long season of blackouts, the Cuban regime has done what it does best: ask for help left and right. The Government’s hand remains open and extended to receive international aid, most recently from Japan.

A publication of the Japanese embassy on the Island announced on November 19 that the country was willing to cooperate with resources for the 114 victims of Artemisa who totally or partially lost their homes after the passage of Rafael. This week, the shipment, with water purifiers, blankets, tents and mats finally arrived on the Island. The shipment was managed by the International Cooperation Agency of Japan (Jica), and its value is about 160,000 dollars.

The shipment was received by a delegation from both countries at the José Martí International Airport in Havana. “During his speech, Ambassador [Kazuhito] Nakamura conveyed his condolences to those affected and said that this aid is a sign of Japan’s solidarity with Cuba, since both countries face natural disasters,” the statement says.

The event was Nakamura’s debut as a diplomat on the Island after presenting his credentials on November 20 to Miguel Díaz-Canel and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez. continue reading

The ambassador also recalled that it is not the first time that Japan has sent donations to Cuba. “Similar actions of the Japanese people and government in disaster situations in Cuba” were carried out after the passage of hurricanes Sandy (2012), Matthew (2016), Irma (2017) and Ian (2022).

Since 2018, Japan also maintains eight large-scale non-refundable financial assistance programs

Since 2018, Japan has also maintained eight large-scale non-reimbursable financial assistance programs on the Island. One of these projects was the one that assisted the residents of Pinar del Río after Ian’s scourge. The donation included “23 water purifiers, 23 tanks to store the liquid, and 50 spools of cables and adapters,” the Japanese authorities then listed.

As former ambassador Kenji Hirata explained at the time, his country’s assistance to the Island focuses mainly on agriculture, energy, the environment and transport. In the latter case, they highlight the donation of 84 Japanese buses in 2022 to the Havana transport company and the 24 garbage trucks delivered in 2019.

Tokyo also grants Havana microcredits of up to $130,000 with an assistance program – which they also do not need to repay – for Human Security, designed for immediate attention to small towns after specific disasters

“For example, in some small towns of Cienfuegos we installed pumping equipment based on renewable energy, and the inhabitants received a more stable water supply. Meanwhile, the Government was able to save money invested in fuel to carry the liquid by pipes,” said the representative.

Through Jica, Japan “boosted” with 20 million dollars last April, on Isla de la Juventud, the installation of photovoltaic parks, following the controversial Cuban energy transition plan. The project also includes batteries with a storage capacity of 10 MW.

Japan “boosted” with 20 million dollars last April the installation of photovoltaic parks

“The experience can be very useful for the megaproject of 2,000 megawatts that would be generated with solar panels, the first phase of an ambitious [Cuban] government project to move the fossil energy matrix to a renewable one,” Hirata said

As for food, up to 2023, Japan had spent 63,400 dollars to supply machinery to several mini industries of fruit and vegetable preserves in Matanzas. The plan then was to collaborate with the failed Food Sovereignty Act.

Taking into account that, according to official press reports, the total number of damaged homes in the province was 21,037, Japanese aid to 114 people seems insignificant. However, it frees the Government of the Island from assisting at least a few dozen families until they can recover their homes.

In addition, the resources are added to the many others sent by political allies of Havana, foreign solidarity groups, international agencies – the European Union approved this week an additional 2.7 million euros to support the recovery in Cuba – and to Japan’s own investments accumulated over the years. According to data from the Japanese Embassy in Havana, 203.06 million dollars have been spent in Cuba since 1998.

“The Government of Japan sends experts to Cuba in fields such as the environment, electrification, irrigation, disaster prevention, etc., and receives Cuban interns for training courses,” he explains in a report.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Relevance of a Dialogue Today in Cuba

The “change” will not be fraudulent because it will happen in the light at a negotiation table

Peace talks in 2016 between the Colombian Government and the FARC guerrillas in Havana / EFE

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 29November 2024 — In political terms an initiative can be convenient but inopportune, and vice versa. It must also be viable. The proposal for Cuba for a dialogue between the Government and the opposition fluctuates at these extremes.

Two answers, from opposite sides, are repeated in the face of the proposal for a dialogue:

“It is inadmissible that pro-democracy patriots sit down to talk with the dictators who decreed that ’the combat order be given’ to suppress the popular protests of July 11, 2021.”

“It is inadmissible that the revolutionaries who defend socialism and the sovereignty of the homeland against the aggressions of imperialism sit down to talk to their paid lackeys.”

These negatives have so many supporters on both sides that it is very difficult not to give up, even before developing arguments in favor of a dialogue.

Like swallows or the flu, from time to time these ideas return to the debate stage. Two colleagues from the independent press, Luis Cino and René Gómez Manzano, have recently addressed the issue. Also in an interview published in this newspaper with the Polish journalist and writer Adam Michnik, this controversial matter was raised from the perspective of a man who actively participated in a process of transition to democracy.

For Cino, who recognizes that it is unlikely that the dictatorship will want to sit down and talk with its opponents, “there are risks that, in the absence of other options, are worth running,” with the eventual gain that the regime recognizes the opposition.” He believes that “the dictatorship will see all its possibilities exhausted and face the imminence of a popular outbreak of incalculable magnitude, on top of the particularly hostile Trump continue reading

Administration, with Cuban-American Marco Rubio as Secretary of State.”

These new aspects show the imperative need for “the change” that has to go beyond cosmetic reforms

Cino warns that “the pro-democratic opposition must be clear about the direction, the goals to which it aspires. To do this, rather than with the regime, they must dialogue and agree, at least on their basic points and demands, with all the actors, both in Cuba and in exile.”

For his part, Gómez Manzano believes that Cino is in a hurry and that the moment of dialogue will be more propitious “when, in the ranks of the same single Party, those who are aware of an irrefutable truth become the majority: that the system is unfeasible and unsustainable”; however, at this moment “that essential aspect is not seen in Cuba, not even remotely!”

Manzano thinks it’s a good move to draw attention to “the need to negotiate with the regime, only not now with the one that declares itself to in ’continuity’. It is absolutely immobile and clings to power with an intensity that a limpet would envy.”

Five years ago I published in this newspaper an extensive, detailed (and somewhat pretentious) text on this matter where I warned that “to talk about dialogue, in the context of Cuba in the first decade of the 21st century, you have to steel yourself, replace all the fuses, secure the safety net and, if possible, pay life insurance in advance.”

The only thing that has changed since then is that the dominant historical generation has come closer to its extinction, and the living conditions of the population and the productive capacity of the country have plummeted even more. The demonstrations of 11 July 2021 also entered the equation, and in our neighbor’s house a government team is being installed that will not pull punches with the Cuban dictatorship.

These new aspects show the imperative need for “the change” to finally occur, which must go beyond the “changes” or cosmetic reforms that the regime could bring.

The change is not intended to be fraudulent because its birth will occur at a negotiation table. As we said yesterday, “the alternatives to dialogue are the overthrow of the dictatorship in a violent way (foreign invasion, popular uprising, coup d’état), with its inevitable consequence of death and ruin; the meek acceptance of waiting for the heirs of the heirs, in a remote future, to make some reforms; or, leave this Island forever.”

Mimicking Luis Cino’s arguments today, I think that if these continue being the alternatives, it’s worth running the risk of trying to have a dialogue.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Medical Services Lead Export Sales from Ciego De Ávila, Cuba

This is followed on the list by a music marketing company and the Rensol International Economic Association

Rensol has become one of the most successful companies in Ciego de Ávila / Invasor

14ymedio, Madrid, 27 November 2024 — As of the end of September, Ciego de Ávila had exported goods and services worth 22.3 million dollars at the official exchange rate (1 x 24), 535,112 million pesos. There is satisfaction with the amount, which represents 86.9% of what was expected, since, although no one dares to say that there will be global growth at the end of the year, expectations are more closely met. In November 2023, foreign sales only accounted for 66% of the target.

The provincial newspaper Invasor celebrates this Wednesday the results, in which the sale of medical services and the music marketing company mainly stand out along with the contribution made by the Rensol International Economic Association. The three are the largest contributors to the good figures, although the amount of each one has not been specified.

These items are striking, in a province that five years ago had charcoal, honey, copper scrap and red pepper leading foreign sales.

Rensol, which mainly sells solar heaters, has become one of the most solid companies in Ciego de Avila Province. In fact, it was one of the few that was not in the red in 2022, one year after the pandemic, which was particularly hard for Cuban industries. In November 2023, Rensol signed an agreement with the Panamanian Cuex “for the export of its solar heaters and other equipment to the Caribbean.” continue reading

In November 2023, Rensol signed an agreement with the Panamanian Cuex “for the export of its solar heaters and other equipment to the Caribbean”

On that date, general manager Arley González Escalante said that after years of working in the country assembling hot water installation systems for hotels and companies, the agreement allowed him to expand the market.

“That is not achieved in one day, but we can position ourselves, meet national demand and at the same time export,” he said, although it is not yet known if these plans have already borne fruit or are expected to from now on. At the beginning of November, in a meeting of the Provincial Council, it was mentioned that this company had planned “the export of technical assistance services for renewable energy.”

As for the sale of goods, most of those that stand out are the usual ones, from charcoal of all qualities to bottled rum, cigars, honey and some fish products, such as shrimp and shark fin. They are joined by red pepper and fruit juices and pulp.

The achievements could be greater without the “resurgence of the blockade*,” the authorities maintain, who add other obstacles that supposedly derive from it, such as the lack of fuel and electricity. But they also mention other little-enunciated problems, such as “the network of internal and external obstacles [which] includes low levels of production (…) and difficulties with the release of containers and the movement of shipping companies.”

A not-so-good news that officials warn overshadows the panorama is the “imbalance in the price of coal, unfavorable for the State sector, and the insufficient entrepreneurship of some entities to manage exports.”

*Translator’s note – There is, in fact, no US ‘blockade’ on Cuba, but this continues to be the term the Cuban government prefers to apply to the ongoing US embargo. During the Cuban Missile Crisis the US ordered a Naval blockade (which it called a ‘quarantine’) on Cuba in 1962, between 22 October and 20 November of that year. The blockade was lifted when Russia agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from the Island. The embargo had been imposed earlier in February of the same year, and although modified from time to time, it is still in force.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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