Translating Cuba – Page 102 – English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island

‘Let There Be Light!: And the Light… (Went Out)’

The Garden of Passions, a museum of odds and ends created by a Cuban barber turned diplomat and spy

Wise sayings, reflections, commentary, fragments, doubts: all written upon a sheet of tin. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, José Lassa/Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 29 March 2025 – “An interesting and different kind of museum, created from throwaway objects transformed into beautiful sculptures that transmit messages full of moral lessons”. EcuRed’s [’Cuba’s Wikipedia’] perhaps rather simple definition, is, in a way, less eloquent than the unofficial names for the place it describes: The Museum of Junk, or Garden of the Passions. Also, we have: The Scrap Metal Gallery, or Gallo’s [’Cockerel’s’] Henhouse, along with many other variations on the name for the place created by Héctor Pascual Gallo, in the Alamar neighbourhood of Havana.

What’s significant is that EcuRed doesn’t even tell its readers who Gallo was – they have deleted the page which described the man who informed Fidel Castro – or at least so the legend goes – where Cuban exiles were going to land during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Born in eastern Havana in 1924, he was a barber, a diplomat, a spy and an artist, and he died in 2020.

After a whole lifetime – or several lifetimes, as he used to say – Gallo turned up in Alamar and began, aged over 80, a career in culture. One enormous and somewhat ghostly portrait of him is hung above the terrace inside the Garden. Another, signed by the Belgian artist Denis Meyer in 2019, is similarly fantasmagorical. Both represent Gallo as a sort of god of the place. And, in effect, it is his moral lessons – his passions – which populate the place.

A portrait signed by Belgian artist Denis Meyer in 2019 decorates the entrance. / 14ymedio

“I love white coffee more than anything else. Anything? Yes!”, says one of his commandments. “It’s good to know how to, and to be able to feed yourself”; “With time, beauty fades, but charm is accentuated”; “Putting something off doesn’t resolve it”; “Doing silly things doesn’t make you silly, unless it’s for more than 24 times a second (I was free for a minute)”. Wisdom, reflections, commentary, fragments, doubts: all written on bits of tin or wood and accompanied by arrows to keep you reading.

The most important thing about the Garden, however, is that it has the power to silence. In the land of rubbish tips, Gallo is the great organiser of rubbish, to which he attributes meaning, and history. The history of Cuba, no less. A mountain of cash registers, destroyed by rust, is the best symbol of the economic sinking of the country. A kind of Nganga cauldron, complete with forks and shells, recalls the incurable hunger of the Cuban people. One sign reads: “A verb most often used: resolve it. An expression most often heard: it’s not easy”.

A mountain of cash registers, destroyed by rust, is the best symbol of the economic sinking of the country. / 14ymedio

Picturesque and with an overall rusty brown hue, the Garden bursts its way into the daily life of Alamar. It’s impossible not to see it or hold an opinion about Gallo and his legend. No one knows exactly what to call the place, says Gertrudis, who lives close to the building with the giant portrait of the artist.

“They used to call it the Park of Junk. Perhaps it was after Gallo died that they named it Garden of the Passions. People know this street as Junk Street and everyone knows where it is”, she explains.

Ricardo, another person who grew up amongst Gallo’s trash, confirmed Gertrudis’s geographic reference: “Yes, they’d say ’Junk Street’. It’s part of his garden, where he turned all of his rubbish into a kind of love. Rubbish into Art. His granddaughter was at school with me actually. This part here is the old stock. Then it gets more organised as more objects were found. He was a journalist as well. A supercool old guy”.

’Brut Art’ by Cubans such as Gallo is currently on exhibition in a museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. / 14ymedio

For Gertrudis, a teacher who has lived in Alamar for years but has never actually been inside the Garden, the installation is connected with the so-called ’brut’ or ’deviant’ art movement. In fact, a number of works by Cubans who identify themselves as practitioners of this movement (one which might be defined as art created by people who aren’t, strictly speaking, artists), among them various works by Gallo, are being shown in Lausanne, Switzerland, this month.

“I find this kind of art quite interesting”, says Gertrudis. “I don’t know to what extent the people who create it have any artistic training, but yeah, it seems a pretty genuine movement to me. The materials they use are almost always re-used or recycled”.

On the question of what the Garden actually represents, its neighbours sum it up in one expression: “Daily objects which hold in themselves a sense of art”. / 14ymedio

On the question of what the Garden actually represents, Gertrudis sums it up in one expression: “Daily objects which hold in themselves a sense of art”. “Gallo transformed a space which, in itself, is quite boring. Alamar as a place is rather monotonous at times, and the idea of breaking with this physicality, with this architecturally ordered space – where, above all, there aren’t even any parks or other outstanding places either – is a great proposition, and its courage is rooted precisely in this”.

“Let there be light!: And the light… (went out)”, wrote Gallo on a signboard from 1993. More than 30 years have passed and the work appears just as fresh now as it did in the Special Period. At that time, forgotten by the regime which he had served, and apparently under Castro’s radar, Gallo made a place of creation out of poverty itself.

The goal is: to survive in this life, and in the next. “The difference between Goya and Gallo is just spelling”, says one of his aphorisms. “One is immortal, and the other is unmortal”.

Forgotten by the regime which he had served, and apparently under Castro’s radar, Gallo made a place of creation out of poverty itself. / 14ymedio

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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The Garbage Has Destroyed Guanabacoa’s Great Treasure, Its Waters and Springs

In the midst of disaster and plague, a graffiti: “I am Fidel. Thank you for the country you left us.”

The scene of the garbage is so depressing that Yuliet prefers to keep the window closed, day and night. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, José Lassa / Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 6 April 2025 — What appeared first? The “I am Fidel” sign on a battered wall in Guanabacoa or the garbage dump located next to it? The hand that painted the slogan, popularized by the regime after the leader’s death in 2016, perhaps didn’t suspect that a rubbish pile and Castro could converge on that corner of the Havana municipality. Blurry, another message completes the irony: “Thank you for the country you left us.”

Guanabacoa is full of such signs, next to a pile of garbage or a sewage ditch. In some scenes, the vultures—with their wings spread out in a cross, like a child’s game—are exploring the waste or pecking at cans in the stream.

“Please dispose of waste in the water,” reads another sign near the Santa Rita Baths, once one of Havana’s most popular spas. One wonders whether such an absurd request had actually been erased by the damp on the wall. Thirty-nine-year-old Yuliet’s window overlooks one of the tributaries that lead to the place. The stench, at any time of day, is unbearable.

Graffiti — “I Am Fidel” — and trash in Guanabacoa, Havana. / 14ymedio

It’s enough to glance over it to see how the vultures and rats scratch among the puddles. The panorama is so depressing that Yuliet prefers to keep the window closed, day and night. “I keep it closed not only because of the smell, which in the end we get used to, but because the mosquitos are coming out of the toilet.”

Water, once clean and abundant, characterized Guanabacoa since time immemorial. Both the native people who gave the settlement its name and the settlers who arrived later decided that its baths and streams were the area’s greatest treasure. Before the Revolution, 11 of Cuba’s 27 water continue reading

bottling plants were located in Guanabacoa.

With its main resource contaminated beyond words, what was once its strength is now its weakness. Every stream, every well, every creek is an existing or potential source of disease. Garbage is taking over the land from Loma de la Cruz to Baños de Santa Rita, from the fields to the very center of the city.

A glance is enough to see how the vultures and rats dig through the puddles. / 14ymedio

“I love you, Yanisleidy,” reads the umpteenth graffiti next to a garbage dump. Fidel isn’t immune to the stench, but neither are declarations of love. The dump doesn’t believe in ideologies or feelings, and moves along with the increasingly turbid current that surrounds the hamlets and hills.

“People here don’t just go out and throw out the trash,” laments Juan, who arrived in the Mambí neighborhood from Las Tunas a decade ago. “They throw bags or whatever out the window, and it accumulates there until a good rain falls and washes away all the garbage.”

It’s a macabre sport that, with each “throw,” costs the city what little sanitation it has left. In defense of the residents, Juan claims the nearest trash container is six blocks away. “I used to use it,” he corrects himself: “It’s not there anymore. One day the Municipal Police came and took it away.”

In the residents’ minds there are two option: burn the trash or throw it in the stream, with the second considered ‘more hygienic.’ A cloudburst is the city’s only remaining ‘cleaning agent.’ When the rains come, the vultures hide under the trees, the rats drown or find a crack, and the trash floats away.

Guanabacoa is full of signs like this — ‘Please don’t throw the trash in the water’ — next to a pile of garbage or a sewage ditch. / 14ymedio

Caridad knows better than anyone that the downpour can wash away debris, but it’s deadly for those with low-lying yards. Less than a meter above the river level, the back of her house becomes a pool of rot when the current overflows. “It’s impossible to explain everything to my husband and I had to take out the patio,” she says.

“Some doctors came here to the neighborhood once, tested a couple of families, and left. No one else has come to check on our hygiene,” she says. Throughout the city, the feeling of helplessness is similar, fueled by the problems of drinking water shortages affecting all of Cuba.

The stench, at any time, is unbearable. / 14ymedio

A zinc sheet acts as a dike against the river. It doesn’t stop the dirty water or the diseases it brings, but at least it prevents the stink bombs from crossing the line into Caridad’s house.

When the rain subsides, she and her husband pile up the waste that has washed up on the patio. Loose or in bags, like the “paper boat” the children also play with, they throw all the rotten stuff back into the river. It’s a vicious cycle and also, the woman admits, a kind of revenge against the trash. Now it’ll be someone else’s problem.

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Forced Into Exile, Luz, Carolina, Yanelys, Anamelys and Katia Reinvent Themselves Outside of Cuba

Interrogations, threats, arbitrary arrests, internet shutdowns and police repression were the price they paid for their criticism.

Escobar was warned that she could not return frequently, only if it was “very urgently needed.” / Luz Escobar

EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 5 April 2025 — Carolina, Yanelys, Luz, Anamelys, and Katia are just five names on the list of Cuban women forced into exile in recent years for their dissent, from mere criticism to political activism to independent journalism.

“I didn’t leave Cuba of my own free will, they sent me out,” says art historian and activist Carolina Barrero, who tells EFE that “the repression intensified throughout 2021,” following the ’27N’ demonstration on November 27 of the previous year in front of the Ministry of Culture demanding freedom of expression and work.

“The surveillance was constant: I lived under constant suspicion, in a state of constant harassment. They charged me with criminal offenses for exercising fundamental rights,” recalls Barrero, who now heads the NGO Ciudadanía y Libertad.

“The surveillance was constant: I lived under constant suspicion, in a state of constant harassment.”

She insists she suffered “systematic persecution by State Security,” intelligence, and domestic counterintelligence. “I was detained multiple times, subjected to prolonged house arrest without a court order, and threatened with imprisonment if I continued my work of reporting and organizing peaceful demonstrations,” she says.

In February 2022, she says, she received the “ultimatum”: “Leave the country or face criminal prosecution, with the explicit threat of extending reprisals to third parties such as mothers of political prisoners, fellow activists…”

Another woman, curator Yanelys Núñez tells EFE that the “institutional violence” against her began in 2016, when she was expelled from her job for creating the work The Museum of Dissidence in Cuba with the artist and dissident Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, currently in prison for insulting the symbols of the homeland, contempt, and public disorder.

The situation worsened two years later, due to the promotion of the dissident artist group the San Isidro Movement, explains Núñez from continue reading

Madrid, where she arrived in 2019. She recalls “threats to family and friends, arbitrary arrests, police and telephone surveillance, the ban on cultural events,” as well as “physical, verbal, and psychological harassment and violence.”

“The experience of being politically persecuted simply for defending your right to exist, for defending human rights, is terrible,” laments Núñez, who currently coordinates the independent Observatory of Gender Alas Tensas.

“The motive for the persecution I suffered is that Cuba has been under a dictatorship for more than 60 years, and all defenders are criminalized.”

“The motive for the persecution I suffered is that Cuba has been under a dictatorship for more than 60 years, and all defenders are criminalized,” says Núñez, adding: “I am not the first to have suffered this political violence in the country for wanting to participate in public and political life.”

Journalist Luz Escobar decided to work outside the official media. Because she worked at 14ymedio, “State Security put all the pressure they could on me to leave journalism in Cuba. But when they implicated my daughters in the repressive scheme, I decided to go into exile,” she told EFE.

“At first, they summoned me to the police, where they interrogated me to stop working. They insisted, but when I told them no, they changed their tactics and the tone of their threats: ’You’re doing things wrong, and if you continue, you’ll go to jail.’ All because reporting is a crime in Cuba,” she explains.

“After November 27th (27N), they saw me as an activist, and the repression multiplied: interrogations, threats, arbitrary arrests, internet shutdowns—all of this happened weekly,” she says. Escobar, whose father is also a freelance journalist, adds that even the day she was at the airport about to leave for Spain, she was warned that she couldn’t return frequently, only if it was “very urgent.”

“I spent weeks without being able to leave the house because security and the police were always downstairs trying to arrest me.”

Curator Anamelys Ramos, a member of the San Isidro Movement, did not leave Cuba due to pressure, although she admits she was “under brutal harassment.” “I spent weeks without being able to leave the house because security and the police were always downstairs trying to arrest me,” she told EFE.

After the Island-wide July 11 protests, the largest anti-government demonstrations in decades, she left for Mexico to study for a doctorate in Anthropology. In February 2022, when she tried to return, the “biggest outrage” occurred. “They wouldn’t even let me board the American Airlines plane because Cuba sent a notification to the airline that I wouldn’t be admitted into the country. By not letting me return, I was left in legal limbo and without a home or job,” she laments.

“I’ve always been in the spotlight of State Security,” communicator Katia Sánchez tells EFE. More than five years ago, she created La Penúltima Casa, the country’s first digital communication blog to help people use online platforms professionally.

She then created the El Pitch podcast, for entrepreneurs, in a country where the communications sector is restricted for the self-employed. As the project grew, so did the harassment from State Security, she laments. At first, it was “friendly,” with questions about her contacts and sources of funding, but it ended with “interrogations and threats that led to the closure of the project in Cuba.”

This communicator spent years “looking for loopholes to break through” to keep her project going, but “all of that ends up being bigger than starting a business.” Moving to the United States was the solution she found to keep her project afloat.

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ICE Detains in the US a ‘Marielito’ Who Fled Cuba 45 Years Ago

José Francisco García had been trying to obtain US citizenship for a decade.

The shrimp boat El Dorado arriving in Key West loaded with marielitos, in April 1980. / Florida Memory

14ymedio, Havana, 4 April 2025 — José Francisco García Rodríguez, 73, who arrived in the United States during the Mariel boatlift—the seaborne stampede of more than 125,000 Cubans in 1980—has been detained since March 31 at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing center in Pine Prairie, Louisiana. His family fears the deportation of a man who fled Fidel Castro nearly half a century ago.

García Rodríguez was detained while at a Circle K store. Two weeks earlier, according to his stepdaughter, Christian Cooper Riggs, the Cuban expressed concern about being arrested and sent to Cuba. However, she did not specify whether the migrant had a green card.

In a video posted on social media, Riggs criticized the fact that immigration in the US “is a problem that can be solved with a scalpel. Not a machete.” She emphasized that the arrest of an elderly man with a heart condition, who is also the primary caregiver for his wife, who suffers from dementia, is not a solution to anything.

“I understand we have an immigration problem. I really do,” the woman acknowledged, also admitting that the country “can’t accommodate all the people who cross its borders and that there are some really bad people who have to be confronted.”

Riggs said García Rodríguez arrived in the US like thousands of migrants, with only the clothes on his back and no English. “He fought, made mistakes, and paid for them.” For 43 years, he has been an exemplary father and has worked between 40 and 60 hours a week. “He pays taxes and contributes to Social Security, which he has never collected,” she argued. continue reading

He tried for a decade to obtain citizenship, but gave up three years ago when lawyers suggested it was better to keep a low profile.

He tried for a decade to obtain citizenship, but gave up three years ago when lawyers suggested it was better to keep a low profile.

ICE detention centers are operating at capacity. According to the agency’s most recent data, updated as of March 27, there were 47,304 people in custody in federal, state, and private facilities. The system’s capacity has been strained by the increase in raids and targeted operations.

President Donald Trump’s plan for mass deportations has been joined by a new approach that will require greater collaboration from the state prison system to locate and detain immigrants on parole, even for minor offenses.

In an interview with EFE, immigration attorneys in Utah denounced the poor practices of ICE in that state since last December, when parole officers began directly arresting immigrants as they showed up for their scheduled appointments, even for minor offenses.

“The practice is dishonest,” attorney Adam Crayk told the Salt Lake Tribune, alleging that officers “ask immigrants to report, and then ICE detains them.”

For their part, attorneys Chris Keen and Orlando Luna stated that this situation has undermined the confidence of both immigrants and their legal advocates in the U.S. judicial system.

https://www.facebook.com/23443429/videos/1763270351233043/?ref=embed_video&t=0

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A Cuban-American Congressman Asks That Remittances and All Trips to the Island Be Banned

“China is prepared to capitalize on its diplomatic, economic, and military initiatives with Cuba’s support,” says the head of the Southern Command.

Republican Congressman for Florida Carlos Giménez / EFE

14ymedio, Madrid, 3 April 2025 — Cuba-born US congressman Carlos Giménez sent a letter to Donald Trump’s government on Wednesday to formally request that all trips to the Island be banned and all remittances be eliminated, with humanitarian exceptions approved by the State Department. “I have sent the formal request to the White House to eliminate all remittances and all flights to the murderous dictatorship in Cuba,” the politician, a Republican member of the House of Representatives for Florida, wrote on his social networks.

And he argued: “President Trump has been the best ally that the people of Cuba have had, and now it is time to eliminate all the channels of income that the regime has to continue repressing and massacring our people.” In his letter, addressed to the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, Giménez states that the Cuban regime “is listed as a state sponsor of terrorism, shelters fugitive criminals from US justice and represents a clear threat to the security of the United States and our citizens.”

This, he explains, is “of great importance” for the Cuban-American community, which, he says, received the tightening of restrictions on travel and remittances during Donald Trump’s first term as “a very necessary measure to limit the regime’s access to resources and foreign exchange to continue exploiting and oppressing the Cuban people.” continue reading

“President Trump has been the best ally that the people of Cuba have had, and now it is time to eliminate all the income channels of the regime”

The congressman also applauds the recent measures of “prohibiting the arrival of boats from Cuba,” although what was approved consists of enabling the Coast Guard to inspect any ship that reaches the US coast that had the Island as one of its last five destinations. And he urges the secretary: “we need to do more.”

Since Trump assumed the presidency two and a half months ago, Giménez has shown himself to be one of the most active supporters of tightening the policy towards the Island. On March 20, he sent the Department of Internal Security a list with the names of more than 100 people whom he asked to investigate and deport for having alleged links to the Castro regime.

Giménez represents a district with a large Cuban population in particular and Hispanic in general in South Florida and was mayor of Miami-Dade County between 2011 and 2020. He concluded his message this Thursday with a warning to the regime: “The time has come. You have little left.”

Also this Thursday, Martí Noticias reported Giménez’s speech in a
hearing before the Armed Services Committee of the House of Representatives in which national security challenges were evaluated. To the Republican’s question of whether Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua were a threat to the security of the United States and, if so, how serious it would be, the head of the Southern Command, Alvin Holsey, replied that the Island remains a “very challenging” threat, but that they have aircraft and ships to “block those maneuvers.”

The congressman also asked him if he considered Cuba to be “the head of the snake,” by facilitating the presence of Russia, Iran and China in Latin America, to which the officer replied in the affirmative.

“The time has come. You have little left”

“Instead of addressing the economic disaster that [Cuba] created with its failed policies, it is strengthening its ties with US adversaries,” said Holsey: “Cuba’s evil actions weaken our relations in the region, encourage irregular migration and threaten the security of the United States.”

Likewise, he said that “China is prepared to capitalize on its diplomatic, economic and military initiatives with the support of Cuba” and added that Havana receives telecommunications infrastructure built by Huawei, TP-Link and ZTE, “used to spy on its population and discourage political dissent.”

Cuba serves, he said, as a place “for the collection of intelligence and the deployment of force by our adversaries, which is particularly worrying given its proximity to the United States.”

In the same hearing, Republican Congressman Joe Wilson referred to Vladimir Putin’s “resurrection of the failed Soviet Union,” which includes “maintaining the few murderous allies they have in the world,” starting with Cuba.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Cuban Regime Celebrates That Trump Has Not Included It on the List of Global Tariffs

Russia, North Korea and Greenland are also not included, while the rest will be charged between 10% and 54%, although Mexico and Canada will have special treatment.

Experts predict a significant disruption in the global economy / EFE

14ymedio, Havana, 3 April 2025 — “This time Cuba is not on the list of countries penalized by the United States. It is perhaps the only punitive list of the imperial government which doesn’t include Cuba. Is this a miracle?” Cubadebate wonders this Thursday, in a celebratory tone, in the face of the news that the Island – along with Russia, Belarus and North Korea – will not be affected by the imposition of Donald Trump’s tariffs on almost all countries of the globe.

At the moment, no senior Cuban official – including Miguel Díaz-Canel and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez – has reacted to the news.

According to a senior White House official interviewed anonymously by The New York Times, the regimes excluded by Trump already have “extremely high tariffs,” which are a death blow for any “significant” commercial possibility.

This Wednesday, Trump held up a poster with a list of countries and announced global tariffs of 10% to 49%, as reciprocity for countries that, he considers, pose a trade obstacle for American products.

The highest tariffs are for Vietnam and China – the economic enemy par excellence of the United States – with 46% and 34%, respectively, followed by India, with 26%, and the European Union, with 20%. Vietnam, where continue reading

Chinese factories moved to avoid U.S. tariffs, was only surpassed in the region by Cambodia (49%) and Laos (48%). The three are key partners of China.

Washington’s allies are not spared either, since Taiwan is punished with 32%, South Korea with 25%, Japan with 24% and Israel with 17%. The Taiwanese Government described the new tariffs on Thursday as “deeply irrational” and stated that it will present a formal protest to Washington.

On the other hand, Latin Americans are saved with 10%, except Venezuela (15%) and Nicaragua (18%). This Saturday the base tariff of 10% will come into force, and, on April 9, the additional tariffs by country.

According to Trump, these restrictions will pressure companies to move their factories to the United States

According to Trump, these restrictions will pressure companies to move their factories to the United States and will generate jobs. For the experts and the affected governments, however, the news could not be more catastrophic, and they foresee a significant disruption in the world economy.

Reactions across the planet have been virtually unanimous. China declared its “firm opposition” to Trump and promised reprisals. “The encumbrances ignore the rules of international trade and seriously undermine the rights and legitimate interests of the parties involved,” said a trade official. The country already had tariffs of 20%, so that imports from China will total 54% from this month.

Beijing declared that the White House violates the “balance of interests” in which both countries have been working for decades and described the measure as “intimidation.” At the beginning of March, China responded to the United States with reciprocal tariffs on its agricultural products.

Japan reacted similarly, and its Minister of Economy warned that the interest of Japanese investors in the US will fall after Trump’s announcement. Yoji Muto stated that the North American country will be the first loser in this scenario, since Tokyo is one of its main business partners and thousands of Americans are employees of Japanese companies, especially in the manufacturing sector.

Europe claims to have prepared a “solid plan of firm countermeasures.” The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, stressed that the bloc is interested in a “negotiated solution,” but said that Washington had left no other option to the European Union. “Today, no one needs this: neither the United States nor Europe,” she said.

“Tariffs are taxes that will be paid by the people. Food and medications will be more expensive for Americans. Tariffs will only boost inflation. Exactly the opposite of what we want to achieve. American factories will pay more for components produced in Europe. This will cost jobs,” she added.

Central America, a region that exports bananas, coffee, tobacco, textiles and other goods to the United States, will receive tariffs of 10%, except Nicaragua, which will have an 18% tariff. These governments have reacted cautiously and asked for “more information” before giving an opinion, although Guatemala considers the measure a violation of its rights.

The reactions in South America have varied in their criticism of Washington. Brazil – with exports to the US of 40 billion dollars in oil, planes and coffee – for example, has already approved a trade retaliation bill, while other governments “are studying” the impact that tariffs will have on their economy.

Gustavo Petro, president of Colombia, said that Trump had made “a big mistake for believing that raising tariffs on imports in general can increase U.S. production, wealth and employment.” As for Chile, its president, Gabriel Boric, celebrated the fact that its main exportable product – copper – is exempt from tariffs.

Venezuela has mocked the news, despite the fact that it will have tariffs of 15% imposed, the highest in the region after Nicaragua and Guyana

Venezuela has mocked the news, despite the fact that it will have tariffs of 15% imposed – the highest in the region after Nicaragua and Guyana (37%) – and the president of its Parliament, Diosdado Cabello, said that Trump intended to impose tariffs “even on Mars.”

In the US business sector itself, there are reactions of concern and uncertainty. The Business Round Table, which brings together executive directors of large companies, said that the measures will have a direct impact on factories and their employees. “The damage to the U.S. economy will increase the longer tariffs are maintained and could be exacerbated by retaliatory measures,” they added. They also foresee a significant increase in prices.

The two great absentees from Trump’s list – in addition to the authoritarian regimes – have been Mexico and Canada, neighbors of the United States with whom the Republican has maintained a commercial tension since the beginning of his mandate. Nor does Greenland appear, an autonomous territory that is part of Denmark and which Trump intends to annex to the United States.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she had met with her cabinet to reinforce the Mexico Plan, an initiative for the economic restructuring of the country. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the tariffs preserve “important elements” of the bilateral relationship. However, he promised to be on guard against tariffs on steel, aluminum and other metals.

One of the mining giants of that country, Sherritt International, has a close relationship with Cuba, where it exploits nickel and cobalt deposits.

Copper and gold, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, wooden articles, energy and minerals not available in the United States are excluded from the tariffs, along with other products subject to the trade treaty with Canada and Mexico. These exclusions are based on a section of U.S. federal law for cases of war and national defense, and the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which empowers federal departments and agencies to request the Department of Commerce to investigate the national security implications of certain imports.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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‘We’re Going To Be More Surgical, More Effective’ To Bring About Change in Cuba, Says Trump’s Envoy

Mauricio Claver-Carone believes that banning travel and remittances are “old tools.”

Mauricio Claver-Carone, during the conversation this Thursday at Miami-Dade College. / Screenshot

14ymedio, Madrid, 4 April 2025 — The United States special envoy for Latin America, Mauricio Claver-Carone, stated this Thursday that the Donald Trump administration will exert more pressure on the Cuban military and intelligence apparatus, and estimated that the economic pressure applied to date on the island’s regime has been insufficient. “We are going to be more surgical, more effective,” he said at an event in Spanish, held at Miami-Dade College alongside Aaron Rosen, president of the Miami Global Affairs Council, and reported by local media.

Asked about the letter sent to the White House by Republican Congressman Carlos Giménez, in which he called for a ban on travel and remittances to the island, Claver-Carone opined that, while it’s a proposal that “comes from a very good place,” it involves “old tools.” “I think we can be more creative,” he affirmed, insisting that “the Cuban government must understand that our tools and President Trump’s willingness in this regard are different from what they’ve seen in the past.”

“The sanctions themselves are based on old laws that sometimes have no side effects,” he explained, unlike in Venezuela, where “the instruments are much more targeted, effective, have side effects, and are therefore more powerful.”

There is, he said, “a historic opportunity for political opening, for a transition.”

During the current president’s first term (2016-2020), he stated, “we ran out of time to focus on the economic pillars, particularly the regime’s military and intelligence services.” The first objective, he asserted, was “to repair the damage left by the Biden administration.”

He declined to comment, however, on the draft measure, revealed by The New York Times on March 14, to include Cuba on a red list of whose citizens would be banned from entering the United States. “I neither affirm nor deny,” he said, “that’s still being discussed, I have nothing to add.”

During the conversation, the official unreservedly defended the current president’s tightening of immigration policy, whose intentions, he asserted, differ from those of previous administrations. There is, he said, “a historic opportunity for political openness, for a transition.”

He especially supported the deportation of members of the Tren de Aragua criminal group to Venezuela, as part of a “broader strategy” to pressure Nicolás Maduro’s regime. He compared the latter’s strategy to that of Fidel Castro in 1980, when he released criminals from Cuban prisons, who were among the 125,000 Cubans who reached the shores of Florida during the Mariel boatlift. He added that unlike other presidents, who weren’t decisive enough to expel them, “President Trump is decisive.”

Trump, despite ongoing global crises such as the war in Ukraine, “remains very focused on Venezuela.”

Regarding criticism of widespread deportations and the equating of all Venezuelan migrants with criminals, he stated: “We understand that there are challenges, and it’s painful. There is short-term pain.” Expanding, he argued that “another thing that all these regimes and dictators have also learned, starting with Cuba, is that the easiest way to achieve totalitarian control is if you don’t like it, you leave.” It happened in Venezuela and it’s happening in Nicaragua, he said.

Claver-Carone noted that Trump, despite ongoing global crises such as the war in Ukraine, “remains very focused on Venezuela” and that they will work toward the goal of making it a democratic country.

He also justified the “pain” the measures could cause to the Cuban and Venezuelan people: “Either it’s short-term pain for long-term benefits, or there will be long-term pain for no benefits. In the short term, there are things that may seem annoying or disruptive. But honestly, if you don’t do them, they don’t work. So we have to go all in, go big, or go home.”

As a member of the Cuban-American community, he urged: “If you don’t want to spend 60 years in exile, then stop that process now, make the short-term sacrifices now, because otherwise, you won’t get anywhere.”

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Transsexuals Aligned With the Cuban Regime Also Suffer Medical and Social Scarcities

They have been led for years by Verde Gil Jiménez, a young trans man from Santa Clara.

Trans people “suffer humiliation in their homes, schools, and workplaces” / Facebook/Cuban Trans Male Group

14ymedio, Havana, 3 April 2025 — A small group of 70 Cuban transgender men has the approval of the government and, more importantly, the protection of Mariela Castro. They have been led for years by Verde Gil Jiménez, a young trans man from Santa Clara who travels to Havana weekly—he doesn’t explain how he navigates the transportation crisis—to organize them, and whose pro-regime activism has opened all doors for him.

Despite this, Gil gave an interview to Alma Mater magazine this Tuesday in which he details the difficulties of the group, which has had to self-organize to solve its problems: the lack of medicines, medical care, and public space. Furthermore, their voice has been “traditionally mediated by institutional policies and cultural taboos.”

The Alma Mater report publishes a series of photos of the “jaba” [bag] given to him by the group members: along with sweaters and stickers, there is also a package of testosterone: 250 grams in five intramuscular injection vials. Boxes of this drug—essential for physical transition—with signs in Portuguese and likely originating in Brazil, were on sale in Revolico last February for $44.

The ‘Alma Mater’ report publishes a series of photos with the “bag” given to him by the members of the group.

Since the coronavirus pandemic, the group hasn’t recovered. At that time, Gil says, not only did they lack specialist consultations—”they were paralyzed”—but “hormones were unavailable in pharmacies, and access to gender-affirming surgeries was practically impossible.” Some also saw their health conditions worsen due to the after-effects of the pandemic itself.

Seeking to gain visibility, the group saw the National Center for Sexual Education (Cenesex), run by Raúl Castro’s daughter, as a way to legitimize their activism. It’s one of the few centers allowed in the country, and not without “mandates” from above. When they wrote to the Ministry of Public Health with their “demands,” they already had Mariela Castro’s approval.

Now, when all initiatives—even those aligned with the regime—are viewed with suspicion, the group is more of a “mutual support” society, both for its more than 70 registered members and for those who prefer to remain discreet and not join the official figure. Registration is done via WhatsApp or Facebook, or by speaking in person with a member.

Gil alludes to “various avenues of aid,” but suggests they rely more on themselves and the support of foreign collaborators than on their allies in the government. In addition to Cenesex and other state entities, they are now working with the Father Félix Varela Cultural Center—run by the Catholic Church—and its Liberating Masculinities initiative.

Gil alludes to “different avenues of aid,” but implies that they depend more on themselves and on the support of foreign collaborators than on their allies in the Government.

Other organizations, such as the Christian Student Movement—a pro-regime movement founded in 1960—and the Metropolitan Community Church, which has played a pivotal role in LGBTI rights in the US, also work with the group, which is “thriving in a resource-constrained environment.”

Despite their frequent trips to the capital, Gil says the fuel crisis is taking its toll. “We’ve designed our activities to be both in-person and virtual, recognizing that many colleagues are from the eastern and central parts of the country and can’t travel to Havana, where most of the meetings take place,” he says.

Larian Arias, who shares the group’s leadership with Gil, believes that in Cuba, transgender people are “constantly rendered invisible” at the institutional level. To the challenges his colleague points out, he adds “access to medication, regular medical care, greater information about trans identities , and more inclusive general education.”

In another article, published in 2023 in the same magazine, Gil warned of other problems facing the trans community. He admitted that he had not personally experienced many “episodes of transphobia,” but asserted that there was “a lot of domestic violence” against transgender people in Cuba. “They suffer humiliation in their homes, in educational and work settings. It’s even difficult for them to find stable work,” he asserted.

Just this week, the Translúcidos group—another support network for the trans community, not supported by the government—reported that the board of directors of Havana’s Napoleonic Museum had canceled several activities they had planned to hold at the institution. They also demanded that they remove “all promotion and association of trans people with the Museum’s name from social media.”

In his 2023 interview, Gil alluded to these kinds of obstacles with state institutions.

“This action is not only disrespectful to the trans community, but also reflects a discriminatory and transphobic attitude that has no place in our Cuban society,” they stated, without detailing the reasons for the cancellation. “We will take all appropriate action to ensure that this act does not go unpunished.”

In his 2023 interview, Gil alluded to these kinds of obstacles with state institutions. However, he focused on the practical side of the group’s problems, although he blamed the blockade for all the problems: “The shortage of medicines interrupts or prevents hormone therapy, and it’s difficult to maintain the transition process without stability. The informal market isn’t an option either; the products are often adulterated and sold at expensive prices. I would have to invest a month’s salary to buy one ampoule, which only covers four weeks, and the treatment is for life.”

If nothing is ordinary in the lives of Cuban trans people, Verde Gil’s life is even less so. A resident of Santa Clara, with a Spanish father and a Cuban mother, he graduated in Social Communication from the Central University of Las Villas. Since then, he has unconditionally supported Miguel Díaz-Canel as an activist and has participated in pro-government sit-ins, such as the 2021 Red Handkerchiefs protest in Havana’s Central Park, in response to the Civic March called by the Archipiélago platform.

Gil then asserted that he wasn’t there “to respond to Yunior [García Aguilera, one of the Archipiélago organizers and forced into exile days later], nor to go to Vedado or the Malecón if he marches there.” The sit-in was followed by a period of repression and exile of opposition activists.

Verde’s father, Mariano Gil, traveled to Cuba in 1994 “for love of the Revolution,” as he has said in several interviews . He won the favor of Fidel Castro by giving him one of his paintings, and in 2015, he opened a tourist establishment next to the Armored Train, derailed by Che Guevara’s guerrillas in Santa Clara and transformed into a monument. Filled with objects related to both the regime and the Republic, and with prices unaffordable for the people of Santa Clara, Gil could not have given the place any other name than Café Revolución.
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A Comrade Has Died

The regime is trying to recuperate painter Hugo Consuegra, a member of the Eleven and a critic of Fidel Castro.

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 29 March 2025 — What happened in Cuba that made Hugo Consuegra have to wait six decades between his last solo exhibition and the one recently organized in Havana? He was 35 then, wore a jacket or a guayabera, perhaps smoked—there is no art without smoke—and hadn’t left the country. Now he’s a ghost, a fairly young ghost because he died in 2003, but no more than that. The specter of an exiled painter, who cultivated abstraction and to whom critics barely dedicate a place in any enumeration.

Thirty-five years passed between this man’s birth in 1929 and his last exhibition in Havana; 60 between that show and the one still housed at the National Museum of Fine Arts; and more than 20 between his death and this page. In those hiatuses, time disrupted everything. A revolution was waged and perverted, millions were exiled, art also experienced its small revolts, but they dissolved. An entire country dissolved.

Consuegra appears in Havana like a ghost among ghosts, to bear witness to that great upheaval.

Consuegra appears in Havana like a ghost among ghosts, bearing witness to this profound upheaval. The titles of his 41 pieces—15 of them drawings that are almost stains—become echoes of the story he lived and heard from his exile in New York. It is an act of complete sincerity that the exhibition that attempts to recover him is called (Des)Arraigos (Roots ).

Very disturbing was the intervention of the museum’s director, Jorge Fernández, for whom Consuegra is a phenomenon that predates our era: B.C., before Castro. An animal that belongs to the “complex decade” of the 1950s, “which is being revalued.” He claims that two of his works were left out, and one is dying to know why. Fernández is bothered by titles like Bienvenidos al infierno (Welcome to Hell ), with the solidity of a punch, or by his idea of ”protest paintings” in 1966, when he returned to figuration as a warning gesture against the regime. continue reading

In Rey Obsecado [Headstrong King], a small drawing from 1959, a strange figure raises his fists as if on a platform. You don’t have to think long to guess who it is. A Compañero Has Died #1 , from 1962, represents the shadow of a hanged militant. In #2, the deceased is on the ground, and from his chest—or rather, from his entrails—emerges a stain that could be his soul, the soul of a communist terrified by his immortality. And finally… the negation of the negation : the supreme tongue-twister of Marxism completes the theorem.

The artist showed that he wasn’t going to be faithful to any canon. Abstract Expressionism, yes, but in his own way.

Consuegra, of course, is much more complex than his ideology. A member of the “controversial group”—once again, the museum’s political correctness takes over—of Los Once [The Eleven], the artist demonstrated that he wasn’t going to be faithful to any canon. Abstract Expressionism, yes, but in his own way. His autobiography, Elapso tempore [Time Lapse], published by Ediciones Universal in Miami and which Fernández confesses to having read almost secretly, is already quite difficult to obtain.

A native of Havana, trained as an architect and pianist, and recipient of dozens of awards, Consuegra’s works can be found in such unconventional venues as the orthodox Casa de las Américas and the headquarters of the Organization of American States in Washington DC. The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes had quite a few of his pieces in storage, but hadn’t given them prominence—how dare they?—until now, at the initiative of curator Yahima Rodríguez.

“Too many creators have been turned, at best, into non-people on the Island.”

One of the scholars, Armando Álvarez Bravo, summarized the Revolution’s war against Consuegra in an anthology paragraph: “Too many creators have been converted, at best, into non-persons on the Island; they have been erased from official records and, if exiled, have had to suffer, in addition to their expulsion into outer darkness, the antagonistic weight of the complicit academic, cultural, political, and media machinery sympathetic to Castroism or in its service. A machinery that, in addition to denying true values, has exalted too many mediocre people.”

Go see Hugo Consuegra now that you can. I’m not talking to the happy ghosts who, like me, are no longer there, but to those who can afford to pay 30 pesos—a Judas figure!—to see the umpteenth exhumation of a dead comrade take place in Cuba .

’El ahorcado’ is back in town. / Xavier Carbonell

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For a Monthly Salary Equivalent to $15, Díaz-Canel Demands ‘Quality’ From Cuban Teachers

The coverage of teaching positions was at 84.4% in 2024, which represents approximately 26,871 vacant positions throughout the country.

In the midst of the economic crisis, education has become a secondary issue for the government. / Invasor

14ymedio, Havana, 2 April 2025 — Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel wants Cuban teachers to return to school, to be better trained, to learn languages, and to teach “quality” classes. The problem, the same reason teachers fail to meet any of these expectations, is the lack of incentives and a monthly salary of less than 6,000 pesos, about $15. However, the president offered no assistance to teachers, much less the hope of paying them better salaries.

During a working meeting of the Ministry of Education held this Tuesday in Havana, the president praised “the wisdom of Cuban teachers” and asserted that educational institutions and the government are working to ensure that “they participate more in decision-making, so that they feel heard, recognized, and taken into account.”

The praise, however, could not obscure the critical situation of education on the island. According to data presented during the meeting, at the end of 2024 teaching positions were filled at 84.4%. In percentage terms, the number does not seem serious, but in terms of the number of teachers, some 26,871 positions remain vacant nationwide. In pedagogical institutes and vocational pre-university schools for the exact sciences, occupancy is even lower, at 76% and 79%, respectively. continue reading

The praise, however, could not obscure the critical situation of education on the island.

The authorities did note that the state of education is truly precarious, especially in pre-university, junior high, and elementary science schools, although they did not provide specific data. The provinces with the worst teacher coverage rates are Havana, Matanzas, Artemisa, Mayabeque, Sancti Spíritus, Ciego de Ávila, and Holguín.

Education Minister Naima Trujillo Barreto defended certain “discrete advances” in the quality of secondary education and teacher training—some 100,000 teachers took advanced training courses and 5,000 enrolled in English courses. She also said that staff had been rehired, although the method used was to attract retired teachers, not those who had left the classroom to pursue private sector employment.

Thanks to “the measures implemented during 2024,” she said, referring to the salary increases for certain professionals (including teachers) last year, it was also possible to maintain a good portion of the positions that were already filled. Although she acknowledged that “the completion of the workforce and its stability continue to be a concern.”

Regarding plans for 2025, Trujillo asserted that her ministry is focused on “perfecting”—another of the government’s favorite terms—the education system, providing “comprehensive care” to teachers, and ensuring “quality.” Concrete measures to achieve this were overlooked, although she explained that a budget increase is being considered, depending on “the difficult conditions in the country.”

In any case, Díaz-Canel’s request to “improve teacher care, both materially and spiritually” rest on the usual voluntarism.

Prime Minister Manuel Marrero also made a similar statement: “We cannot allow a single child to drop out of school due to financial difficulties or distance from school. This is our responsibility, and local authorities must take responsibility for it,” he emphasized, leaving the responsibility in the hands of the provincial education departments.

“We trust in the creativity and capacity demonstrated by the workers of the Education system to seek new solutions, based on commitment and dedication, to guarantee the training of new generations, which is required for the development of our society,” he concluded.

The concrete measures to achieve this were overlooked, although he explained that a budget increase is being considered.

Identifying students in vulnerable situations, combating drug use in schools, providing care for children without parental support, and promoting the childcare program—”which has had a huge impact on working mothers and fathers”—were other proposals that fell flat.

In the midst of the economic crisis, education has become a secondary issue for the government, which even reduced its investment in the sector by approximately 400 million pesos in 2024 compared to the previous year. Added to the health sector, another supposed “pillar of social justice” of the Revolution—as Díaz-Canel himself defined it at the meeting—investment barely amounts to 3% of the state budget, compared to the 37.4% allocated to the tourism sector.

The lack of state support has resulted in a precarious state of education, which has been constantly interrupted by power outages and crippled by a lack of resources and teachers.

In 2024, the government announced a salary increase for education and public health workers and also improved incentives for seniority and earned degrees. Salaries, which did not increase significantly compared to the real cost of living on the island, were not enough to stem the exodus of professionals to exile or to better-paid sectors, such as the private one.

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‘Collapse,’ the Ubiquitous Sign in Guanabacoa, a Town of Movie Theaters, Patriots, and Santeros

The Carral cinema-theater is one of the buildings that illustrates the town’s decline.

Painted green and blue on a lime background, the Carral Theater in Guanabacoa has closed its doors. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo / José Lassa, Havana, 30 March 2024 — Guanabacoa, the Havana town that gave the strongest battle to the English invaders in 1762, has not survived the neglect inflicted by the Revolution or the ravages of time. Home to Santería, famous for its history and its ancient nightlife, and the setting for vibrant, tropical novels, walking its streets today is despairing: the heat and poverty erode every wall.

The Carral cinema/theater is one of the buildings that illustrates the town’s decline. Its striking arches, somewhere between Baroque and Moorish, innocently mimic the grand buildings of the neighboring capital. Now, painted green and blue against a lime background, the building’s doors are closed.

The wide-open balconies on the second floor offer a certain sign of life. Like other buildings, the Carral is prime territory for another invasion, not of the English, but of what the prose of the state newspaper Granma calls “homeless” or “destitute.” Until very recently, however, films were shown inside.

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In front of the facade, Jenny recalls that it had been almost 15 years since she last entered El Carral. It was 2011, and Habanastation was premiering, a film that illustrated the differences between rich and poor Cuban children. The widespread poverty that has engulfed the country has quickly rendered the film outdated. “The theater was packed, and there were even people continue reading

sitting on the floor,” she recalls.

Carral and cinema are synonymous in her head. Jenny saw almost every Cuban film of the last 30 or 40 years there. Entre ciclones [Between Cyclones], Zafiros: locura azul [Zafiros: Blue Madness], El Benny, and Amor Vertical, she lists. And others she can’t even remember, plus clown shows, children’s matinees, and all kinds of screenings. “There were no DVDs back then,” she jokes.

There is a painful memory: the day in 1993 when the usher blocked her and a friend’s entrance. A huge line formed in front of the Carral Theater to see the movie. When it was finally their turn to enter, the man pointed to a sign: “Suitable for those over 16 only.” It was the premiere of Fresa y chocolate [Strawberry and Chocolate].

When it was finally their turn to enter, the man pointed to a sign: “Suitable for those over 16 only.” It was the premiere of Fresa y chocolate [Strawberry and Chocolate].

As a young woman in her twenties, Jenny says, she saw the Carral theater gradually lose its “capacity.” The projector, worn out by the years, began to fail. One day, the air conditioning also broke down. “They gave you a piece of cardboard at the entrance, and people would watch the movie, cooling off with the makeshift fan.”

El Carral is one of many buildings crushed by time. In similar conditions are the Casa de las Cadenas—a miniature of Havana’s mansions; the Fausto Theater, of which only the façade remains; and the Santo Domingo Convent, famous for an 18th-century anecdote: a drunken Englishman, during the invasion, tried to despoil the image of Saint Francis Xavier and steal a gold ring from his hand. He tried to climb onto the altar, but the saint stumbled and fell on the thief. The people of Guanabacoa celebrated his death as divine revenge for the desecration.

The only things that survive in the town are the government headquarters—the old Municipal Palace—the Casa Grande currency exchange store, and a new dollar store belonging to the Caribe chain. Gone are also the days when Guanabacoa was a sort of Vatican for Cuban santeros, like Palmira (Cienfuegos) or Cárdenas (Matanzas). The great Yoruba priests resided there, to whose authority all practitioners on the island submitted.

In 1958, when Fulgencio Batista called upon all human and divine powers to get rid of Fidel Castro, he called for a grand ceremony at the Guanabacoa stadium. His intention: for all the country’s santeros to unite in a common ritual. It was “a great egbó,” Guillermo Cabrera Infante, the best chronicler of this desperate ceremony, would later say. He was there accompanied by filmmaker Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.

“The three dictators that republican Cuba has endured were or are witches,” the novelist commented, referring to Gerardo Machado, Batista, and Castro. It has been the same, with frequent consultations with their “godfathers” in Guanabacoa, for countless Cuban leaders, including the current ones.

But neither the orishas, nor Saint Francis Xavier, nor the mythical Pepe Antonio—an authoritarian leader who resisted the British—have saved Guanabacoa. The most devastating aspect of the site is not the decline of its main buildings, but of the other, no less historic, buildings where the architecture of the 18th and 19th centuries is still visible to Cubans today.

Ruins of the House of Chains, in Guanabacoa, a miniature of Havana’s mansions. / 14ymedio

These mansions, whose walls are now completely gray, covered in mold, scraped by scavengers, covered in graffiti and vines, are the true tragedy of the town. A young José Martí slept in one of them when he worked—unpaid—for the lawyer Miguel Francisco Viondi, who had been mayor of the town in 1879. “Danger,” reads a whitewashed sign next to the doorway which the patriot, exiled shortly after, crossed many times.

Other signs, on dozens of walls, send a message to passersby that could serve the entire city: “Collapse. Do not stand here.”

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An Academic Meeting Will Bring Together More Than 300 Dancers and Experts in Havana

The event, which will be held from April 11 to 20, will be dedicated to Cuban ballet master Ramona de Saá.

Cuban National Ballet, in a file photo. / Cubadebate

EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 1 April 2025 — Nearly 300 teachers, choreographers, critics, and students from dance schools in twelve countries will participate in the 30th International Meeting of Ballet Academies from April 11 to 20 in Havana, its organizers announced Tuesday.

The event, with few international equivalents, seeks to exchange experiences and methodologies among teachers and experts, as well as stimulate the creativity of dancers and choreographers.

The director of Cuba’s National Center for Art Schools, Elizabeth Castro, explained at a press conference that the event will be dedicated to Cuban maestro Ramona de Saá (1939-2024), one of the most notable figures in dance pedagogy in the country.

It will also pay tribute to Cuban filmmaker Alfredo Guevara (1925-2013), who founded and chaired the state-run Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industries (ICAIC) for several years. continue reading

“It will be an opportunity to view the film productions about ballet that are in the ICAIC film archives.”

Castro added that “it will be an opportunity to view the film productions about ballet that are in the ICAIC film archives.”

British choreographer Ben Stevenson is one of the international guests at the event, which aims to be “a continuation of the Cuban ballet school and has also allowed us to develop our school’s potential,” the Cuban official said.

“This will be an ambitious event with multiple venues and events such as workshops, conferences, and cultural galas,” commented Dani Hernández, director of the National Ballet School.

Hernandez, who is also the principal dancer of the Cuban National Ballet (BNC), announced that another goal is to become a “regional benchmark for other ballet academies, as well as to raise the technical and artistic quality of the international competition for ballet students that will also be held.”

The program includes classes, conferences, workshops, courses for teachers, and also competitions in the children’s, youth, and choreography categories, with judges including BNC dancer and director Viengsay Valdés and Lizt Alfonso, leader of the Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba company.

The Cuban ballet school, founded by legendary dancer Alicia Alonso (1920-2019) along with brothers Fernando and Alberto Alonso, has set a standard for style and mastery in ballet and has been internationally recognized for its defined personality and unique characteristics.

The BNC, the island’s most important classical dance company, was declared a National Cultural Heritage in 2018 for being the “highest expression of the Cuban school of ballet.” This status extends to the company’s repertoire, its image archive, and objects and documents related to the institution.

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Since Their ‘Parole’ Is Revoked, Activist Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca and His Wife Will Ask for Asylum in the United States

Both have contacted a law firm to begin the process and have requested the support of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca, upon his arrival at Miami International Airport, last June / Screen capture

EFE (via 14ymedio), Miami, 31 March 2025 — Cuban activists Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca and his wife, Eralidis Frómeta, have initiated asylum application procedures in the United States and have requested the support of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, after the revocation of their Humanitarian Parole.

Frómeta explained this Monday, in statements to EFE, that she and her husband, who worked in Cuba as an independent journalist, have contacted a law firm to start the asylum process to avoid having to return to Cuba, which they left last June.

“We are now in contact with some lawyers and are waiting for them to send us the document that we need to apply for the asylum process. We have to try,” said Frómeta, who added that after almost nine months in the United States they continue to recover “physically and psychologically.” continue reading

The activist explained that they have already contacted “several influential people” to try to generate support in their favor

This weekend the couple received the official communication informing them of the revocation of their humanitarian parole by executive order and their obligation to leave the United States before April 24.

Frómeta indicated that the lawyers were confident that the implementation of the political asylum procedure will suspend the self-deportation order, although she acknowledged that uncertainty is currently high.

The activist explained that they have already contacted “several influential people” to try to generate support for them and that their case has already reached “congressmen and senators,” in addition to the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and the Cuban activist Rosa María Payá, founder of the NGO Cuba Decide.

Valle and Frómeta left Cuba for the United States last June under humanitarian parole. Valle was sentenced to five years in prison in 2022 for contempt and sharing enemy propaganda and was released on the condition that he leave Cuba. His state of health had deteriorated significantly.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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US Deports 60 Irregular Migrants to Cuba

This is the third flight of this type since Donald Trump became president.

Two of the new deportees are in detention / Granma

14ymedio/EFE, Havana, 28 March 2025 — A group of 60 illegal Cuban migrants arrived from the United States on Thursday in Havana in the third deportation operation since President Donald Trump began his second term in office in January.

This return – of 55 men and five women – took place “as part of the bilateral migration agreements” between the governments of Havana and Washington, according to official media.

With this operation, including those carried out from the US on 23 January and 27 February, there have been 13 returns to different countries in the region so far in 2025, with “a total of 367 people”.

With this operation, including those carried out from the USA on 23 January and 27 February, there have been 13 returns to different countries in the region.

Two of the persons included in this new deportation are in detention, one of them “for allegedly committing criminal acts before emigrating” and the other because “he left the country illegally while on parole”.

The authorities stress that they remain “firm” in their commitment to “regular, safe and orderly” migration, while emphasising the danger and life-threatening conditions posed by illegal departures from the country by sea. continue reading

Cuba and the US have a bilateral agreement that all migrants arriving to US territory by sea will be returned to Cuba. For the moment, nothing has changed on the return of such migrants carried out under the previous Joe Biden Democrat administration.

In April 2023, deportation flights resumed, mainly for those deemed “inadmissible” after being held at the US-Mexico border.

According to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, 217,615 Cubans arrived in the United States during the 2024 fiscal period, ending on 30 September.

Likewise, a total of 8,261 Cubans were registered by US border authorities last October, the first month of fiscal year 2025, and, according to the CBP, in the last four years more than 860,000 migrants from the island have entered US territory.

In 2024, 93 returns were carried out to different countries in the region, with a total of 1,384 illegal migrants returned, according to official media.

In 2024, 93 returns were carried out to different countries in the region, with a total of 1,384 irregular migrants returned, according to official media.

With its severe economic crisis, Cuba is experiencing an unprecedented exodus of migrants, with food, medicine and fuel shortages, galloping inflation, frequent and prolonged power cuts and partial dollarisation of the economy.

The situation has depleted the population to such an extent that an independent demographic study by the renowned Cuban economist and demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos concludes that it now stands at just over eight million people, with an accumulated drop of 24% in just four years. Specifically, there are 8,025,624, a lot less than the 9,748,532 in the figures of the National Statistics and Information Office (Onei).

Translated by GH

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Cuban Regime Mounts an Operation Around José Daniel Ferrer’s House in Santiago de Cuba

Political police officers detain an elderly man, steal food from activists, and prevent messenger service.

A traffic police officer with a plainclothes State Security agent near the UNPACU headquarters. / Facebook/José Daniel Ferrer/Screenshot

14ymedio, Madrid, 1 April 2025 — State Security continues its ongoing harassment of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) and its leader, José Daniel Ferrer. The organization’s headquarters in the Altamira neighborhood of Santiago de Cuba was surrounded Tuesday by an operation of plainclothes officers.

“They are arresting collaborators and stealing money and food,” Ferrer warned on social media. “They want to prevent us from feeding the people who the regime is starving. We expect further repressive actions.”

In a first video posted on his Facebook wall, the opposition leader denounced the arrest by the political police of a “social case who went out to buy chili peppers” and the attempted arrest of activist and former political prisoner Fernando González Vaillant.

The Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba (CTDC) confirmed in a statement that the detainee, who “was put in a police patrol car,” is a vulnerable 60-year-old man named Jorge Luis Colá Montané. However, they were unable to take González Vaillant “due to the swift protest and intervention of the president of the CTDC and general coordinator of UNPACU, José Daniel Ferrer.”

“They want to prevent us from feeding the people who the regime is starving. We expect more repressive actions.”

In the middle of the broadcast, the opposition leader shouted at the officers: “Down with Canel, down with tyranny, down with the thieves of the political police,” echoed by other voices present. He also accused the officers of stealing the food they use at the soup kitchen located at the UNPACU headquarters, the home of Ferrer, his wife, Nelva Ortega, and their youngest son.

“Tell him to take a look at that henchman, a thief and a wretch, stealing food meant for the elderly who are starving to death,” he continues shouting. He also points to a group of plainclothes officers on the corner of continue reading

his house: “This is the head of the provincial political police hiding from the camera.”

In another video, Ferrer shows a traffic officer, who the opposition leader claims was “sent” by State Security to “clean up the Altamira motorcycle parking lot, to scare away the motorcyclists who provide the fastest transportation service in this area of the city.”

https://www.facebook.com/100025267088029/videos/1172038174467408/?ref=embed_video&t=57

The activist explains that that UNPACU often uses the motorcycle service to go buy products in other neighborhoods when they can’t find them in their own.

In its statement, the CTDC explains that the “ostentatious police deployment” was led by “the top leaders of the political police”: “the lieutenant colonels who call themselves Lázaro and Bruno, and Major Julio Fonseca.” “Surrounding the [UNPACU] headquarters, they are attempting to prevent access to both the house and the surrounding area. Arrests, intimidation, and threats are part of the process,” the organization continues.

The text defends the work of UNPACU, led by Ferrer and Ortega, who “assumed with determination, sensitivity, and competence a self-imposed mission that the Cuban state, now in a terminal and failed phase, cannot fulfill.” Each day, the CTDC reports, the headquarters receives more than a thousand people and provides medical care to around twenty.

“Surrounding the headquarters, they are trying to prevent access to both the house and the surrounding area.”

They also hold the authorities responsible “for any harm to the safety of those who receive or voluntarily support this immense work of solidarity,” and ask the international community to provide “all possible support for the humanitarian work” of the organization.

The situation Ferrer and his family are experiencing is nothing new. In fact, since his release in early January as part of the negotiations between the US Biden administration and the Cuban regime, mediated by the Vatican, the opposition leader—sentenced to 25 years in prison during the Black Spring of 2003, released in 2011 after negotiations with the Catholic Church, and arrested again on 11 July 2021—has been harassed by State Security.

On February 7, another massive police operation surrounded his home after the UNPACU leader refused to appear before a judge. Harassment of anyone approaching the UNPACU headquarters has included arrests, summons, and threats, both in public and at the police station, and even robberies and sexual harassment.

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