Translating Cuba – Page 108 – English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island

The Intangible Damages of Castroism

These damages are as or more destructive than the others that make up Castroism’s tragic legacy.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo (center) died while on a hunger strike in 2010 to demand his rights; pictured receiving medical care. / UEPPC

14ymedio, Pedro Corzo, Havana, 20 April 2025 — A few days ago, in a conversation with friends, we discussed how regimes of force, particularly those of a totalitarian or messianic nature, cause numerous and different types of harm to society.

We talked about those executed and killed in combat in the struggle for democracy. The hundreds of thousands who spent long years in prison, the economic destruction of our country, the general deterioration of buildings, and the millions who were forced into exile or decided to emigrate due to the catastrophic situation the dictatorship has created.

We were immersed in these aspects when my wife mentioned that, like most observers and analysts, we were referring to the human and material damage, overlooking the intangible, ignoring the fact that each of the people whose lives were changed or ended by the regime could have contributed many positive things to Cuba.

We also thought about the contributions to the Republic of the hundreds of thousands who were imprisoned and are still in Cuba.

This observation led us to address issues that some of us had never considered or had only vaguely addressed, such as the contributions to a democratic Cuba of student leaders such as Pedro Luis Boitel, who died on a hunger strike in 1972, and Porfirio Ramírez, who was shot along with four comrades in October 1960, and the civil rights activist Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who also died on a hunger strike in 2010 demanding his rights. continue reading

We also thought about the contributions to the Republic made by the hundreds of thousands who served time in political prison and are still in Cuba, such as former prisoners Guillermo Fariñas, Félix Navarro, and José Daniel Ferrer, and the many female political prisoners, such as Sayli Navarro and María Cristina Garrido, if only human dignity were fully respected in our country.

Immediately afterward, the conversation turned to the exile, the professional success of tens of thousands of compatriots, and the economic success of many more. The numerous university professors and those at other levels of education, as well as the large number of workers who perform important functions in all sectors of society, such as communications, industry, construction, and services in general.

Of course, the discussion took us to politics and the Cuban politicians involved in that activity in the United States and other countries, the numerous congressmen of Cuban origin who have served and are serving in the House of Representatives and those who have been members of the exclusive club of 100 in the United States Senate, in addition to the two Cubans who actively participated in a presidential campaign, including one who is now Secretary of State, the most important unelected position in this great country.

Speaking of the deceased, Daniel Pedreira remembered another great Cuban in American politics, Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who recently passed away.

The conversation was enriched by the mention of politicians when Luz Martínez, my wife, and Jose Antonio Albertini mentioned the recently deceased Miami City Commissioner, Manolo Reyes. We all fell silent, paying a modest tribute to a person who had earned our respect for his actions and simplicity.

Manolo Reyes was a respectable man. Cordial and sincere, and we all agree that in a “Cuba for all and for the good of all,” he would have been a very valuable source of talent for the republic. Manolo would have made an excellent public servant in any Cuban institution, and we have no doubt he would have been an invaluable mayor for the city of Miami.

Speaking of the deceased, Daniel Pedreira remembered another great Cuban figure in American politics, Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who recently passed away. A man who, like Reyes, felt a deep passion for Cuba and felt obligated to serve it in any capacity where he could develop his talents.

Unfortunately, Castro’s totalitarianism made it impossible for these two honest, hardworking men, along with others deeply committed to the community, who also disappeared, on the island or abroad, to contribute their talent and dedication to the Cuban nation. These intangible damages of Castroism are as destructive, if not more so, than the other consequences of its tragic legacy.

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The Sun of Austerlitz

Literature is duplicity: one cannot write without conversing with the evil twin, the hypothetical, the quantum double.

Star Wars mercenary Boba Fett next to a lead Napoleon, in the author’s library. / Elena Nazco

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 6 April 2025 — In Spain, I gorge myself on the childhood I had in Cuba, but especially the one I didn’t have. Tintin, Corto Maltese, The Rabbi’s Cat, tin soldiers, drawing—now with prodigious Staedtler pens that I gazed at in catalogs from the 1980s—pencils the same dark green as a figurine of Boba Fett, the intergalactic mercenary, all of that on the desk. Toys, Toblerone bars, books. It’s still a sad obsession, but how can I live without it?

In the end, we are vain, diverse, and fluctuating animals, Montaigne would say. I get excited and spend hours in toy stores, stationery stores, browsing the shelves of an antique dealer. I recognize myself in all of this, even though I never possessed it. Did its absence shape me? I wouldn’t be surprised. There are Cubans who become true Malaysian tigers when faced with a beef tenderloin, and others who would stab Willy Wonka to keep his chocolate factory. Why give up the harmless, less expensive world of paper?

I reconstruct, for my own good and that of my novels, the child I was and the one I wasn’t. Literature is duplicity. You can’t write without conversing with the evil twin, the hypothetical, the quantum double, the one waiting for us on the other side of the Time Machine. And if this reconstruction can have an anesthetic effect along the way, so much the better. continue reading

Who can forget their toys, or the things that served as toys?

Who can forget their toys, or the things that served as toys? A cigar box from which I cut out an entire paper city, which I assembled and disassembled in my living room. Some plastic soldiers from World War II—they appeared under my bed one Three Kings’ Day, a tradition that communism failed to eradicate—with binoculars and flags, rampant or rolling in the trench, belonging to imaginary states.

A pair of astronauts, with their spacecraft, armed with detectors for lunar dust, who I now remember as the forerunners of Daft Punk. (Much later, on the beaches of Valencia, I saw dozens of searchers moving their instruments on the sand, like those little figures in spacesuits.) I also had a crossbow, a bow that shot arrows, coloring books—one of them only had the frustrating silhouette of Lassie, the collie—light swords made from radio antennas, magic wands.

There were toys left behind in Cuba that I should have brought. Toys that were so old they were considered relics. An American wooden box with ten miniature bowling pins, which one could knock down with a ball hanging from a pole. The Lone Ranger, whose hat eventually became toasted in the tropical heat, harder than the Western one. To keep it covered, I put a bottle cap on it: it looked like a horseman with his charro or an Arab with his fez.

George Washington, in a blue jacket and tricorn hat—that one survived—was his unlikely expedition companion, both on horseback. There was also a clarinet, made of fine black plastic, with a small notebook of melodies. Almost everything else was lost.

At least once a year, my entire town allowed itself to indulge in toys and imaginary life.

At least once a year, my entire town indulged in toys and imaginary life. It was the month of revelry, March, although in some years it was held in August. I hated and still hate that atmosphere. At seven in the morning, the hammering and welding began. The sparks from the tips of the rods crackled on the iron frames. When everyone left, I went out to play in that rusty fortress, on top of which the carriage was built.

In none of my novels have I recreated that world, which has brought so much money to the cheap folklorists who proliferate like midges in that place. Everything frightened me. The crush of people, the glitter, the makeup, the immobility of the characters in the wings.

There were always half-naked girls – often classmates, the only incentive to go and see the float – and a voice- over narrating some corny legend: Troy: Blood and Fire, The Sun of Austerlitz, Sissi Empress, Prayer in the Desert, The King and I, Beyond the Sea , A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a thousand silly things, all financed by the exiles.

I didn’t like going out but staying in my room, knowing that all the houses in the town were going to be empty at that moment.

I didn’t like going out, but rather staying in my room, knowing that every house in town would be empty at that moment. What a wonderful feeling. I’d take out my toys, my books, whatever, and start inventing that phrase whose wickedness only a Cuban can accurately gauge. Then the firecrackers would explode, rise into the night sky, and descend like kamikazes onto the rooftops. Scared to death. My cats would protest. The neighbors’ dogs would howl.

Five in the morning. Total drunkenness, trash, urine. Toy enthusiasts—and sometimes me too—scaled and looted the float. They stole cranes, cobras, monkeys, tea and smoking tables, marvelous lamps, thrones, and dragons. Everything stuffed with Styrofoam, an entire world of Styrofoam. Everything designed to shine once and die, like naked girls, like flying cars, like the child one once was.

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Businessman Mike Fernández Questions the Silence of Cuban-American Leaders About Trump’s Immigration Policy

The Cuban-American believes that silence in the face of this situation “is not neutrality or ignorance, it is complicity and cowardice.”

Earlier this month, an unequivocal sign of this discontent surprised drivers passing under the billboard on the Palmetto Expressway in Miami. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Havana, 20 April 2025 — “Immigration policy must reflect the same compassion for those in need today that we received,” Cuban-American businessman Miguel Mike B. Fernández stated in a letter dated April 14. The pharmaceutical magnate sent the letter, criticizing Donald Trump’s immigration policy, to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Florida Congressmembers Mario Díaz-Balart, Carlos Giménez, and María Elvira Salazar.

The article, published by El Nuevo Herald, emphasizes what Fernández calls “the silence of our own leaders” in the face of Washington’s “cruel stance toward immigrants.” The businessman, president of MBF Healthcare Partners, believes that the silence of Cuban-American politicians in the face of this situation “is not neutrality or ignorance, it is complicity and cowardice.”

Fernández, who has supported Rubio and Salazar in previous campaigns, believes that the attitude of Republican leaders, who are themselves children of Cuban exiles, has caused “real fear and harm to many in our community, in your districts.” Trump has adopted “a cruel stance toward immigrants that falls short of the values this country has always promised,” he emphasizes. continue reading

He warns that “revoking protected status for Venezuelan and Cuban immigrants, many of whom fled oppression just like our families, is not just policy, it’s hypocrisy.”

Mike’s family, born in Manzanillo, was forced to leave the island in 1964 and went into exile in Mexico. Shortly after, he moved to the United States with his parents and sister, where he began an impressive career in the health insurance sector. The philanthropist has become a much-talked-about voice in South Florida in recent decades. Now, in his letter, he warns that “revoking protected status for Venezuelan and Cuban immigrants, many of whom fled oppression just like our families once did, is not just a policy, it’s hypocrisy.”

Fernández also wrote about former co-finance director of Florida Governor Rick Scott’s 2014 reelection campaign, stating “When USAID funding, which directly supports efforts to foster political and social change in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and throughout the region, is eliminated overnight, it is a betrayal.” He also has made a harsh allusion to the cuts suffered by Radio and TV Martí in recent weeks.

The multimillionaire believes that Cuban-American leaders “must focus on addressing the needs of our neighbors throughout Miami-Dade County: immigrants, workers, families struggling with housing, healthcare, and opportunities.” This requires “a new strategy, one built on courage and centered on the people of South Florida, the people who elected you to represent them,” he warns Rubio, Díaz-Balart, Giménez, and Salazar.

“For decades, I have stood by you, defending the freedoms we hold dear—those denied us in the country of our birth and found in the grace of this one.”

In the statement, he also maintains his criticism of the Cuban regime: “For decades, I have stood by you, defending the freedoms we hold so dear, those denied to us in the country of our birth and found in the grace of this one.” According to the businessman, the priority of Cuban-American representatives must be, among other things, “defending human rights, condemning authoritarianism wherever it arises, whether in Havana, Caracas, Managua, Moscow, or Washington, D.C.”

“In the end, we are not measured by loyalty to a party or a president, but by loyalty to the Constitution and our principles, even when it costs us something,” he adds, but clarifies that he is not writing the letter “with anger, but with urgency, alarm, and purpose.” His letter goes beyond a public questioning of the politicians’ attitudes and assures that he will seek to enlist more people to join his petition and speak out.

“I intend to use my efforts and to ask other voices to join us in elevating this crisis in our community that cannot be ignored,” he warns. “These are the voices of mothers and grandmothers, fathers and grandfathers, students, workers, and Dreamers , all crying out for dignity, for safety, and for leadership that remembers their roots.”

Fernández recaps that Cuban-American leaders were elected thanks to the votes of the island’s exile community: “Remember, public trust is not guaranteed; it is earned and maintained,” the text emphasizes.

“I intend to use my efforts and ask other voices to join in raising this crisis in our community that cannot be ignored.”

The questioning of Cuban-American politicians has escalated in recent weeks. Earlier this month, an unequivocal sign of this discontent surprised drivers passing under the billboard on the Palmetto Expressway in Miami. “Traitors: To the immigrants, to Miami-Dade, to the American dream,” read a sign in white on red, alongside the faces of Rubio, Salazar, Giménez, and Díaz-Balart.

“Protect TPS (Temporary Protected Status),” added a smaller sign, accompanied by the Venezuelan flag. The billboard, an illuminated sign alternating with other advertisements, located in the parking lot of the Palmetto Metro station on the outskirts of the city, was funded by the Miami-Dade County Democratic Hispanic Caucus, an organization linked to the Democratic Party. Salazar, speaking to El Nuevo Herald, called the sign “cheap Castro-style propaganda.”

A few days later, the sign received a response. “We must be grateful,” read a new billboard, featuring portraits of Fidel and Raúl Castro, Miguel Díaz-Canel, Hugo Chávez, Daniel Ortega, and Nicolás Maduro. They are “the true traitors,” reads the text accompanying the images, “to freedom, to their people, to human rights.”

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Mario Vargas Llosa, an Essential and Vital Writer

The Peruvian writer contributed like few others to the universal expansion of Latin America.

Peruvian writer and Nobel Prize winner for Literature Mario Vargas Llosa, in a file photo. / EFE/EPA/Teresa Suárez

14ymedio, Federico Hernández Aguilar, San Salvador, 20 April 2025 — With Mario Vargas Llosa’s passing (1936-2025) the last great exponent of the so-called Latin American boom died, an extraordinary creative and editorial phenomenon that, strictly speaking, should be called the boom of the Spanish-American novel. All of its members were primarily novelists and none were originally from Brazil, Quebec or the French-speaking Caribbean, nor did they write their works in any language other than Spanish, although Julio Cortázar, who was born by chance in Belgium, wrote Les discours du Pince-Gueule (1966) in French, which was later translated into Spanish as Los discursos del Pinchajeta.

With the passing of Vargas Llosa, who died at the height of his fame, the life cycle of a host of writers who enriched the world’s literary landscape comes to an end, as their names moved from editorial obscurity to mass circulation, the thunder of advertising, critical acclaim, awards, and international tours. The protagonists themselves, however, more than once confessed their personal skepticism about the boom.

Cortázar was uncomfortable with such an onomatopoeic term in English, Gabriel García Márquez barely referred to it, and Carlos Fuentes, the only one to dedicate a book to the subject, preferred the title The New Hispanic American Novel (1969). All of them, however, left abundant testimony to the implications of the phenomenon: a break with previous language, an avant-garde update of the reality-fiction binomial, and a clear political (not merely aesthetic) commitment to the historical changes then taking place in the subcontinent.

The Peruvian, in fact, would be the first and the only one who would clamorously disenchant himself from the Cuban revolution with open criticism of the philosophical and anthropological foundations of socialism.

In 1971, Vargas Llosa commented: “What is called the boom, and which no one knows exactly what it is—I personally don’t—is a group of writers—no one knows exactly who either, since each has their own list—who, more or less simultaneously in time, acquired a certain amount of dissemination, a continue reading

certain recognition from the public and critics. This can perhaps be called a historical accident. However, it was never a literary movement linked by an aesthetic, political, or moral ideology. As such, that phenomenon has passed.”

The Peruvian, in fact, would be the first and only to become blatantly disenchanted with the Cuban revolution, openly criticizing the philosophical and anthropological foundations of socialism, an aspect that would bring him numerous ideological and even personal attacks. His editor at Alfaguara, Juan Cruz, maintains that “creating misunderstandings about Vargas Llosa has always been an international sport.”

Curiously, among such numerous detractors, it is rare to find one with sufficient theoretical capacity to refute him in the realm of ideas, either because they ignore or dismiss the ideas from the outset, or because they find it difficult to contradict him based on the knowledge of liberal authors that this requires. (I will address this topic in another column.)

The fact is that Mario Vargas Llosa became, above the rest of his colleagues of the boom, the writer who would exercise the greatest influence as a media personality, from frequent guest appearances on interview programs to prestigious international columnist, passing through theater actor, sports columnist, failed film director, member of official commissions – such as the one he presided over in 1983 to investigate the massacre of journalists in Uchuraccay, (Ayacucho) – and even a jury member of the Miss Universe pageant, on whose panel he was joined, in 1982, by the actor Franco Nero and the illusionist David Copperfield.

The fact is that Mario Vargas Llosa became, above the rest of his colleagues of the boom, the writer who would exercise the greatest influence as a media personality.

The world of show business followed the Nobel Prize winner until his final years, when he made the unexpected, autumnal decision to share a pillow with socialite Isabel Preysler, a star of Spanish celebrity gossip magazines with two divorces under her belt, the mother of five children, and the widow of former minister Miguel Boyer. After this strange relationship broke up in 2022, Vargas Llosa returned to the same house with his wife, Patricia, who was by his side when he died on April 13 in Lima.

The author of The Feast of the Goat, as we know, also lived and suffered the harshness not only of political activism but of active politics. In his youth, following Jean-Paul Sartre’s postulates regarding “commitment,” he seriously adhered to the idea—”persuasive and exhilarating,” he would later say—that the world could be radically improved through empowered humanism and that literature had the obligation to contribute to this process.

In 1966, he stated: “The raison d’être of literature is protest, contradiction, and criticism. The writer has been, is, and will continue to be a malcontent. No one who agrees with the reality in which they live would undertake such a misguided and ambitious enterprise: the invention of verbal realities.” But as early as 1967, in a Letter to the Spokesperson of the Peruvian Communist Party, he argued that if a writer is “deeply committed to his vocation, he will love literature above all else.”

“The reason for literature’s existence is protest, contradiction, and criticism.”

And although between 1987 and 1990 Vargas Llosa worked diligently on a presidential candidacy that ended in a frustrating defeat, we must remember something he had written in 1983 when he published Contra viento y marea (Against Wind and Tide), his first collection of journalistic articles: “Literature, in the end, is more important than politics, which every writer should approach only to block its path, remind it of its place, and counteract its missteps.”

In short, as an imaginative and persevering builder of new realities, that is, as an essential and vital writer, Mario Vargas Llosa contributed like few others to the universal expansion of Latin America, in an unequivocal commitment to that art in which everything can be created “from the truths and lies that constitute the ambiguous human totality.”

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Berta Soler and Ángel Moya Denounce the Access of State Security to Their Mobile Phones

Soler and Moya together with the head of the US Embassy in Cuba, Mike Hammer

14ymedio, Havana, 20 April 2025 — The police operation set up around the headquarters of the Ladies in White and the home of opponents Berta Soler and Angel Moya, this Sunday, were confirmed by them in a call to 14ymedio. However, this Sunday’s siege, Moya notes, is similar to the one they usually suffer on weekends to prevent them from attending church. Saturday, on the other hand, was enormous. “They are on both corners with tremendous impunity because we cannot directly publish anything of what they are doing to us because we do not have phones, Moya confirmed yesterday to this newspaper.

“Several of our neighbors have told us that there is also a large operation on Porvenir Avenue,” said the former prisoner of the Black Spring who, along with his wife, activist Berta Soler, was arrested last Thursday and had their phones confiscated by State Security. He added that their legal status, at this time, is that both are “under a precautionary measure of house arrest for the alleged crime of violating the established constitutional order.”

Both Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, and Moya are under house arrest for 48 days and cannot leave their homes because, among other charges, they “violate the country’s independence and sovereignty” due to their recent meeting with the head of the US Embassy in Cuba, Mike Hammer.

Hammer accompanied Soler on April 13, Palm Sunday, to the church of Santa Rita, in the Havana neighborhood of Miramar. He escorted her to the parish after several Sundays in which a large police operation prevented her from leaving her home. Subsequently, last Thursday, both opponents were arrested around 2:00 pm in the area of the Virgen del Camino, in Havana, as reported by the organization Cubalex. continue reading

Moya clarifies that although they have not yet been formally charged, they are “under investigation”

Moya clarifies that although they have not yet been formally charged, they are “under investigation.” During the arrest, Soler and Moya’s mobile phones were seized by State Security, a concern for both. ” They are the cell phones that we use to connect to social networks and were switched off when we handed them over. They asked us for our passwords and we refused to tell them.” The political police officers warned them that despite this they were going to “open and technically check” the devices.

The opponent warns: “if our social networks and our private channels contain confusing and biased messages then it is State Security that is writing them.”

The activists have tried to spread the word about their situation through various channels despite being under house arrest. This Sunday, Moya and Soler managed to appear on social networks and said that they would go out on the street after 12 noon. “The house is not a dungeon,” argued Soler. Moya explained that after the arrest they had been taken to different police units -Soler to the station of Cotorro and he to Guanabacoa – where they stayed for more than 24 hours. After returning to their home, they were cut off from internet access.

The US Embassy in Havana shared on Saturday a publication from the Office of Western Hemisphere Affairs expressing its “outrage” at the repression against the dissidents. “This further demonstrates the regime’s ruthless disregard for religious freedom and once again exposes the brutal ill-treatment that the regime inflicts on its own people by attempting, as it admits, to intimidate US diplomats,” the Office denounced.

It added that the Embassy “will continue to meet with Cubans from all walks of life, particularly those who defend human rights, fundamental freedoms and human dignity.”

The previous arrest of both dissidents occurred on Sunday, April 6, when they tried to attend mass

The previous arrest of both dissidents occurred on Sunday, April 6, when they tried to attend mass. In recent years, Berta Soler has reported multiple temporary arrests of her and members of the organization she leads, mostly on Sundays when they are preparing to go to church and are prevented by the police.

The Ladies in White movement was born on the initiative of a group of women relatives of the 75 dissidents and independent journalists arrested in March 2003 and sentenced to long prison sentences during the so-called Black Spring. From then on, the wives, mothers and other relatives of those prisoners identified themselves as always dressed in white and, after attending mass in a Catholic church, began to hold Sunday marches to ask for their release.

In 2005, the Ladies in White received the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought

This beginning of the year has been active for the repressive apparatus of the regime. In parallel with the release of 230 political prisoners through the Vatican, the Island’s government has intensified its persecution of activists and relatives of detainees.

Last Wednesday, the writer and collaborator of 14ymedio, Jorge Fernández Era, was arrested for more than 10 hours after he tried to demonstrate in Havana in solidarity with the protests that teacher Alina Bárbara López carries out every 18th day of the month. Another colleague of the scholar, Jenny Pantoja, who also wanted to support López, was forced to stay in her home by State Security.

Two other 14ymedio collaborators are currently imprisoned: Yadiel Hernández Hernández, known as Kakashi, in Matanzas, since late January, when he was investigating drug trafficking and consumption at a school in the city. The other is José Gabriel Barrenechea, who has been in prison for five months, awaiting trial, for participating in the protests against the blackouts on 8 November at Encrucijada, Villa Clara.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Conspirators

Street sign dedicated to Oswaldo Payá in Madrid / Facebook/Oswaldo Payá

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 20April 2025 — Oswaldo Payá died on July 22, 2012, when I was 17 years old and people were expecting the end of the world. Did I have what you’d call a political stance back then? I suppose so, not only because at 17 one is pretty clear on who’s who, but also because of my irritation every time Fidel Castro appeared on television.

Nevertheless, I’ve always associated Payá’s death with the awakening of something visceral, something bilious and profound, which I’ve carried as a moral compass ever since. Payá was killed by Cuban State Security, no matter how, although every effort was made to reconstruct a false scenario, animated by some Pixar fanatic in Villa Marista.

The bright blue Hyundai describes an improbable parabola until its rear end crashes into a tree. The junction between metal and wood is ghostly. The curve, impossible. It all happened on one of those eastern roads that look, curiously, like something out of the American West.

I don’t know how long the regime waited to give its version. Those were different times, and information spread at a different pace, especially in a town in central Cuba where very few people signed the Varela Project. I remember the television report, in which the living—the Spaniard Ángel Carromero and the Swede Jens Aron Modig—appeared, and the dead, both continue reading

Cubans, were defamed.

The second one who died was Harold Cepero and I will never forget the devastation his death caused in the circles in which I moved

The second death was Harold Cepero, and I’ll never forget the devastation his death caused in the circles I moved in. Harold had studied to be a priest, a term that carries with it an ethical and cultural background. He had dropped out of the seminary, found a girlfriend, and I think he raised pigs—a detail that touched me, I don’t know why—and all his friends remembered him as a lovely man.

Payá and Harold, Harold and Payá. How many times have I heard their names without having seen their faces, which the news was careful not to publish. Religious magazines, on the other hand, published photos and testimonies from Harold’s former seminary classmates, heart-wrenching testimonies, and I am still friends with those who offered them.

With one of those friends, a close friend of mine, I got in a car headed for Remedios. I’ve always had an irrational fear of any means of transportation other than the train. Later that year, and with the rumor that the political police had “cut the wires” of Payá’s Hyundai, the tension escalated to its peak. My destination was the Remedios Parish Church.

That is where the Franciscans lived, who, in some ways, shaped part of my sentimental upbringing. They were Mexican, but completely overwhelmed. My friend and I would meet one of them for lunch. In fact, my entire circle began holding these “chance” Masonic meetings, of the third kind, to talk about Payá. No one would have trusted a landline—those in churches are tapped: the ABC of caution—so we had to travel and whisper.

It was a conspiracy, and I was involved in it. I knew it, I accepted it, I savored it. Thanks to the priests and nuns, when I was 14, I heard Dagoberto Valdés and witnessed a human rights protest in Placetas. I’ll never forget the priest, steadfast and in his white cassock. I wondered which policeman would have the courage to remove him from the scene to search for those who had taken refuge in the church.

During the after-dinner conversation in Remedios, over coffee, my friend and the friar began to talk in code

Over coffee at the Remedios table, my friend and the friar began to talk in code. At 17 and coming from where I came from, I was above suspicion, but even I had to learn to speak that way. And I did.

“What did you think of that man?” the priest said. “Terrifying,” my friend said. “Did you turn on the television last night?” “Yes, for a while,” the other replied, “no one believes those little cartoons.” “It seems they’re scared.” “Yes, scared, very, very scared.” “And with the sick old man, even more so.” “And that wasn’t all,” the friar theorized, “an order in extremis from you know who?” “I couldn’t believe it,” my friend replied.

But it didn’t end there, in that easy-to-decipher dialogue. Payá’s death, at the heights of politics, had consequences at every level. What’s above, so it is below. “And our friend?” my friend asked with a small smile. “He hasn’t reacted,” the priest replied, “he knows how to pretend very well, he’s intelligent.” Our friend was one of the agents that Security had infiltrated into the Franciscan ranks. They’ve done the same with the Jesuits and the Dominicans and every religious order that has passed through that country.

What was expected of our friend—I learned from that conversation—was a flash of conscience, a turmoil that would make him confess, feel guilty, and die of shame for Payá and Harold, whom he surely knew. The human improvement, no less, of the unbeatable New Man!

The human improvement, no less, of the unbeatable New Man!

But the epiphany never came, it never would, and that was the second lesson I learned in Remedios, after the coded language. As Creole wisdom warns, the snitch is the most vile animal of the tropical fauna; and as Dr. House emphasizes, people don’t change.

I think of Payá and my humble beginnings as a conspirator, in that time that seemed so full of possibilities, to console myself for the mediocrity in which we live. When everything falls apart, who will I vote for? When there are political parties, what will the options be? When there is freedom, what quality will conversation have? What privileges will those who struggle today, those in exile, those in prison, demand? What country is this, that the closer it gets, the more frightening it becomes?

I think that with that blue Hyundai, raising a cloud of yellowish dust in the East, many answers were lost.

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The first 100 days of Maduro’s Controversial Third Term, in Eight Points

EFE (via 14ymedio), Carlos Seijas Meneses, Caracas, 20 April 2025 — Nicolás Maduro reached the first 100 days of his controversial third term in Venezuela this Sunday, marked by questions about his legitimacy, sanctions and the return of more than 2,500 migrants, mostly deported by the United States.

The following are the eight events that have marked the Chavista’s management since his inauguration on January 10:

Proclaimed winner by the National Electoral Council (CNE), which is linked to the Chavista regime, Maduro advances in his third term without, almost nine months later, disaggregated results being known -contrary to the established official schedule- which led the Carter Center, which was an observer, to conclude in February that these elections “cannot be considered democratic.”

The largest opposition coalition, the Unitary Democratic Platform (PUD), denounced the consummation of a “coup,” insisting that the winner was Edmundo González Urrutia.

Washington tightened sanctions against Caracas after Donald Trump’s return to the White House

Maduro is backed by countries such as Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, Qatar, Belarus, Serbia, Equatorial Guinea, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Honduras, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

By contrast, the US, Canada, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, the continue reading

Dominican Republic, Uruguay, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Germany, Italy and Japan have questioned his legitimacy.

Washington tightened sanctions against Caracas following the return of Donald Trump to the White House, ending oil licenses and imposing 25% tariffs on Venezuelan crude buyers, as well as 15% tariffs on products from the Caribbean nation, whom the Republican accuses of having sent “tens of thousands of criminals” to the United States, which rejects Chavism.

Maduro insists that “there is no threat in the world that can intimidate” his country, and this month he decreed an economic state of emergency in response to Washington’s measures. Caracas also issued a “travel alert” about “risks” in the United States.

Since February, according to official figures, 2,559 Venezuelans have returned to their country – most of them from the United States- on 13 flights, three of them American planes, as part of an agreement reached during a visit to Caracas by Richard Grenell, special representative of Trump, in January.

Since February, according to official figures, 2,559 Venezuelans have returned to their country, mostly from the United States, on 13 flights

On April 9, Maduro denounced a “civilizing aggression” against migrants in the United States, which in March deported more than 200 people to El Salvador, accused of allegedly belonging to the criminal gang of Venezuelan origin Tren de Aragua, designated as terrorist by Washington and condemned by the Maduro administration.

Maduro assured that this year there will be at least a dozen elections, including regional and parliamentary ones, to be held on 25 May. This has created divisions within the opposition between those who call for voting and those who do not.

Maduro also plans to submit for consultation a draft constitutional reform that is being prepared by a commission headed by the attorney general, Tarek William Saab, to be presented in May, when the 90-day deadline given by Maduro in February expires.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Another Day With Long Blackouts in Cuba: “It Was the Lord’s Turn To Rise From the Darkness”

14ymedio, Havana, 20 April 2025 — For Cubans, Lent does not end at the same time as in the rest of the world. Especially when it comes to energy, the Island’s electricity never arrives on Easter, and the resurrections promised by the Government for the national electricity system (SEN) never take place: for this Sunday the deficit forecast is 1,766 megawatts (MW), 52% of national demand.

“It was the Lord’s turn to rise again in the dark,” says Rubén, a resident of the Luyanó neighborhood in Havana, who has been suffering a blackout since midday, less than 24 hours after the previous one ended. “And I even live in the hospital circuit.” He, like all Cubans, has learned to live with the cuts, reconnections and shortages of the SEN and has memorized the geography and nomenclature of the thermoelectric power plants.

If the more than 1,700 MW of deficit this Sunday do not surprise Rubén, he explains, it is because since Saturday he knew about the departure from the system of unit 1 of the Felton, in Holguín.

Scheduled to start on Saturday, the Felton was stopped by an “unexpected” break. As explained by the authorities, a leak in the boiler that had not been detected before by the steam caused the disconnection. The plant had been running for a little over a month since its last failure in early March, which kept it out of action for four days. continue reading

This weekend there was also the breakdown of unit 5 of Nuevitas, in Camagüey, which, according to the Electric Union has contributed to the deficit being “higher than planned.” However, the deficit on Saturday, which peaked at 1,678 MW, remains scandalous.

The company also explained that there are 79 MW affected by the output of electric generation engines due to lack of diesel or fuel oil, in addition to another 77 generators for the same reason.

This year, the capital repair of the largest power plant on the Island, the Antonio Guiteras de Matanzas, has also been scheduled. According to the Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, the intervention could last between eight and ten months.

“The Guiteras rotors have not worked since that breakdown in 2004. So do the math. Since 2004 it should have had two capital repairs, and not one was done,” he said weeks ago about the calamitous state of the only thermoelectric plant of French technology, which is also the one with the most power in the country.

Other interventions are also planned, for about six months, in East Havana 2, Santa Cruz del Norte (Mayabeque), and in Rent 5, Santiago de Cuba. In addition, Felton 2, lost “completely” after the fire of 2022, has begun its comprehensive rehabilitation, “a gigantic engineering project” that will last two years. The clock began running long ago, although the minister did not clarify when.

With only two of the eight Turkish patanas [floating power plants] generating power in its waters and its largest plant out of service, the Government is betting everything on the solar parks that it has begun to build throughout the country, with financial and technical support from China.

Translated by Regina Anavy

Note to readers: Technical issues are preventing the normal formatting of this article’s image and text.

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Mexican Immigration Rescues Nine Cuban Women Who Were Working as Prostitutes in a Bar

Migrants from Venezuela, Colombia and Jamaica were also working in the bar.

Navy personnel supervising the sealing of the King Bar, where prostitution was practiced. / Quintana Roo Federal Government

14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico City, 14 April 2025 — Immigration authorities in the state of Quintana Roo are reviewing the status of nine Cuban women, two Venezuelan women, two Colombian women, and one Jamaican woman who were rescued last Saturday by Navy personnel from the King bar, located on Bonampak Avenue in the Benito Juárez municipality of Cancún, where they were engaged in prostitution and offered escort services to clients.

“The crime of human trafficking is being investigated,” an official who requested anonymity told 14ymedio. According to official data, 31 cases for this crime were opened in the first two months of the year. So far in April, 72 searches have been carried out. “None of the women stated they were being held there against their will, although there is one anonymous complaint, so the investigation is ongoing.”

Initial investigations confirmed that prostitution was taking place there. “The women were offered like fruit in the market. Entry to a private establishment cost 5,000 pesos ($248), and the fee for a single encounter reached 15,000 pesos ($745). A quarter of that was given to the migrants,” the police officer said.

The place was promoted near Bonampak Avenue near Superblock 6 as “a VIP place to enjoy drinks for discerning palates,” the source told this newspaper.

The women who weren’t in the private rooms “signed up (escorted customers at tables). The cheapest drink in the place cost 500 pesos, according to one of the migrants; they were given half of the customer’s bill. A bucket (of beer) was sold for 600 pesos.”

There is additional information about the place, such as that “the migrants had to offer dances to clients in exchange for 250 pesos, which was continue reading

obviously a lure to get the subjects to consume drinks and, already intoxicated by alcohol, end up in the private rooms.”

Interior of the King Bar, where 16 women were present, nine of them of Cuban origin. / Quintana Roo Federal Government

“The end of the American dream—this is important to emphasize—without money or papers, job opportunities are minimal. Desperation has led many migrants to seek work in beer halls, bars, and cantinas, and in these places they are targets for trafficking networks.”

Activist María Ángel Vielma explained that another way women are lured to Mexico is with the promise of jobs and other false promises. “The abuser sees what their needs are and manipulates them. It’s bait disguised as love,” she said.

This was the modus operandi of Cuban-Mexican Cristóbal Paulino Fernández Viamonte, who was extradited to the country last March, where he faces charges of human trafficking and sexual exploitation.

Fernández Viamonte was arrested by Interpol last July in Medellín, where he presented himself as a successful businessman. The investigation indicated that the detainee led a network based in the state of Yucatán (Mexico).

Those close to the Cuban-Mexican would “cast the bait” to young women—mainly from Cali, Medellín, and Bogotá—and offer them jobs as waitresses in Cancún and Mérida, where the Cuban-Mexican is listed as the owner of supposed entertainment establishments.

Behind that facade were the Candela, Bandidas, and Tropicana Angus nightclubs, which were raided by Mexican authorities last July, resulting in the rescue of eight Colombian victims. In one of these operations, Soledad “A,” alias La Capitana, who operated the trafficker’s illicit businesses, was arrested.

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The Long-Awaited Official Record of Gender-Based Violence in Cuba Will Not Be Made Public

Prosecutors have discussed the aggravating factors of gender-based violence, which include punishments such as the removal of parental rights. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Madrid, 8 April 2025 — The doubts expressed last July by the feminist organization Alas Tensas have materialized. The announced “administrative, computerized, and interoperable registry” approved and announced with great fanfare by the Cuban government to monitor gender-based violence will not be made public. In a note signed by two Cuban prosecutors and published Tuesday in the State newspaper Granma, the officials review the legislation applicable to cases of gender-based violence and settle the issue: the indicators will remain hidden from the public.

“At these moments, a multidisciplinary team of experts from the Attorney General’s Office, the Ministry of the Interior, the Supreme People’s Court, and the University of Computer Sciences is developing a computerized and interoperable Administrative Registry, which is not public, on the violent deaths of women and girls due to gender-based reasons,” the notice reads.

Paradoxically, the paragraph follows one that notes the importance of “commitment to the Transparency Law and access to public information” which demands that statistical data be available and of high quality. The prosecutors maintain that these figures will help address the causes and consequences of this type of violence, identify the profiles of victims, and develop prevention strategies.

However, the note suggests—without any criticism—that the information will only be accessible exclusively to the regime, including the government run Federation of Cuban Women, which it expressly mentions, and which has not been known for its demands on the government regarding the problem: that of gender-based violence, with increasing visibility on the island. continue reading

The information will only be accessible exclusively to the regime, including the government run Federation of Cuban Women, which it expressly mentions, and which has not been known for its demands on the government regarding the problem

In July 2024, when the official press announced the creation of the registry, Alas Tensas expressed fear that it would not be open to the public. “Transparency and access to statistics on gender-based violence has been a priority for several years for the gender observatories of Ogat (Alas Tensas Gender Observatory ) and YSTCC (Yo Sí Te Creo en Cuba), organizations that have been underreporting femicides in Cuba since 2019, under the regime’s criminalization,” they note in a statement welcoming the census, although they emphasized that it was not clear whether it would be public.

The Cuban regime has closely guarded data on gender-based violence, even in recent years, when it has begun to address the issue more openly. In August 2024, the Cuban Observatory on Gender Equality, part of the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), published what was the first update since the organization’s launch in June 2023. Its website includes data on cases prosecuted for the murder of women, without specifying the dates of the murders.

The website still only contains this data, covering two years ago. Feminist organizations and the independent press are the only ones reporting on cases of gender-based violence, with severe limitations. Only deaths reported on social media are included, while those that were never revealed, much less attacks or complaints, are also not included. Furthermore, some of these organizations have been in serious trouble since the Trump administration decided to end the financial aid they received, and their work is being compromised.

The prosecutors’ statement in Granma maintains that Cuban women have been “dignified by the Revolution,” but questions why “despite the revolutionary work, manifestations of gender-based violence and violence in the family persist.” Although the answer, they assert, is transversal, “the country has a modern and guaranteeing regulatory system, based on equal rights and responsibilities between women and men in the economic, political, cultural, labor, social, and family spheres, supported by the Constitution of the Republic.”

Among the tools available to the justice system, officials cite the Family Code and state that cases of “discrimination and violence within the family require urgent protection.” Furthermore, there is also the new Criminal Code, with “accessory sanctions for the protection of the victim, such as prohibition of contact with the victim, their family members, and close associates, and deprivation or suspension of parental responsibility, removal of guardianship, and revocation of support for persons with disabilities.”

Among the tools available to the Justice system, officials cite the Family Code and affirm that cases of “discrimination and violence in the family environment require urgent protection.”

They also point out that there are aggravating and mitigating factors in these types of crimes, as well as the impossibility of withdrawing a complaint when it is evident that it is the result of the usual pressures that usually occur in these cases.

Feminist organizations have been calling for a comprehensive law against gender-based violence for years, which the government maintains is planned for at least 2026. They have also requested that the crime of femicide be classified, a crime that does not exist, for example, in Spain. In the European country, there were 57 femicides in total in 2024, two fewer than those recorded in Cuba during the same period, although the island has a population one-fifth the size.

So far this year, nine women have been murdered by their partners or ex-partners in Cuba, according to records kept by 14ymedio.

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‘Che’ Guevara Was Not at the Bay of Pigs and Nor Was Kennedy

The Argentine was injured in a strange incident in Pinar del Río, and the US president rejected the CIA’s plans.

A group of Cuban air defense soldiers. / Cubadebate

14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 19 April 2025 — The Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 is celebrated with reluctance on one side and remembered with disappointment on the other. This year has been an exception. Several events—the most powerful of which was the declassification of the “JFK Papers” in the Unites States—have fueled rumors about what really happened during those days when, for many, Fidel Castro consolidated his absolute authority.

Old historical issues have returned to public conversation: the strange absence of Ernesto Che Guevara in the defense against the 2506 Assault Brigade; the degree of responsibility of John F. Kennedy in the defeat of the invaders, who still call him a “traitor” to the Cuban cause; the initial disagreements and disputes within the regime’s high command; and, finally, the campaign of interference —discreet, though not secret—carried out by Castro in the region.

Luis Hernández Serrano, a heavyweight in pro-government journalism, came out this week to defend the official explanation for Guevara’s absence at Girón. The story couldn’t be more far-fetched, but it appears in several Cuban and foreign biographies, such as that of American Jon Lee Anderson.

Supposedly, Che Guevara shot himself accidentally on the eve of the attack, using his Soviet Stechkin pistol. The bullet hit him in the face. “I don’t know how it happened, but I dropped the pistol and it went off, that’s the absolute truth,” he explained to the surgeon who treated him, Orlando Fernández. continue reading

The fact that José Arigbay, the second-in-command in Pinar del Río, gave the doctors the news suggests that the incident took place somewhere in that province. According to Hernández Serrano, the emergency operation was also performed at the provincial hospital in Pinar del Río.

“The lead entered through his left cheek. They were going to examine the wound with a scalpel to determine its possible trajectory,” the surgeon said at the time. “There is no paralysis. There are no signs of neurological disorders. Nor has the duct that carries saliva from the parotid gland to the mouth been injured; not even the jawbone has been touched. The lead traveled the small stretch inside his face.”

Guevara in 1966, completely shaved, before traveling clandestinely to Bolivia. / Cubadebate

A 1966 photograph of Guevara, completely shaved, shows that if the shot actually occurred, it barely grazed him. The portrait suggests a wound, which is inconsistent with Hernández Serrano’s account of the gunshot wound. Anderson confirms that the incident took place, although he emphasizes that the real damage was not caused by the bullet, but by an antihistamine injection that caused toxic shock.

Hernández Serrano argues that this story should be retold because “false arguments have been said, written, and published on the subject, out of ignorance or malicious intent.” In reality, no one has published anything about it in recent weeks. The Bay of Pigs received extensive but chaotic media coverage, and even the surviving photos of the Cuban leadership barely show who is there and who is missing.

However, the author reacts against the “enemies of our socialist process” who claim that it was some kind of dispute with Fidel or Raúl Castro that caused Guevara, in a fit of anger, to disappear from the scene.

Artificial intelligence has its own explanation for the incident. When this newspaper asked Hernández Serrano the same question as the GPT Chat—”Why didn’t Che fight at Girón?”—it was clearer than the journalist.

“At that time, Che Guevara was in the Pinar del Río area, in western Cuba, leading a diversionary operation following a false landing warning in that region. During that deployment, there was an accident involving a Cuban patrol, in which several men were killed by friendly fire, an incident he later regretted.”

Needless to say, Hernández Serrano never alludes to this hunt for this “false lead” or to the accident in western Cuba. It wasn’t until April 20, when the fighting was already over, that Che went to the Bay of Pigs. Why? The official response is another reduction to absurdity: “He traveled to the arenas of combat just because.”

Using the guerrilla fighter who died in 1967 as a myth of the perfect revolutionary has been a constant practice, despite the ambiguity and confusion that characterize these “anecdotes.” The circumstances of the supposed discovery of his remains in Bolivia, for example, provide many reasons to doubt that the bones buried in the Santa Clara mausoleum are actually Guevara’s.

Several independent media outlets have taken the opportunity to return to another classic topic when discussing the Bay of Pigs: Kennedy’s “betrayal.”

But the anniversary hasn’t only been a topic of discussion on the island. Several independent media outlets have taken the opportunity to return to another classic topic when discussing the Bay of Pigs: Kennedy’s “betrayal” of the exiles.

The Democrat’s pusillanimity and his “manifest lack of audacity and leadership”—in the words of an exiled Cuban historian—have been the standard opinion of Kennedy among veterans of the invasion. However, a memo from presidential advisor Arthur Schlesinger, dated June 30, 1961, and published as part of the “Papers,” blames the CIA for the failure.

In 17 pages, Schlesinger offers a picture of the disorganization and failures of the military operation, denounces its complete lack of coordination with Washington’s policies, and urgently demands that its agents be called to account. These factors fatally damaged the invasion, since the CIA’s vision of the plan—excessively influenced by the opinions of the exiles—differed from that of the White House.

The agency claimed that Cuban support for Castro was low and that it would not be difficult to provoke an internal uprising. History proved them wrong, as at that time the leader’s popularity was at its highest.

“We have become prisoners of our own agents,” Schlesinger lamented.

“We have become prisoners of our own agents,” Schlesinger lamented, referring to the CIA’s pressure to get Washington to authorize its plans, despite disagreeing with them. Furthermore, while praising its top brass, he described its agents in the field—specifically those in contact with the invasion organizers—as “rough and even vicious” men whose actions provoked diplomatic consequences at the highest levels.

Cuba’s history took a radical turn in April 1961. Kennedy was assassinated two years later in Texas; Guevara was killed in Bolivia six years after that, thanks in part to the abandonment of Havana. It was just the beginning of an era in which Fidel Castro cleared his path of friends and enemies in his quest to become one of the most powerful men on the continent.

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Official Data on the Average Cuban Salary Hide a Huge Decline in Purchasing Power

Real wages in Cuba today are barely two-thirds of the average salary in 1989.

The wage increase is no match for inflation, which has devalued the peso to alarming levels / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Havana, 18 April 2025 — The report published this Friday by Cuba’s National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) is more than a summary of the “evolution” of the average Cuban salary until 2024, it is the umpteenth expression—in numbers and graphs—of Cuba’s economic debacle. The figures broken down by the entity become even more serious when compared to their equivalent in dollars, an essential translation for understanding the the island’s households’ decline in purchasing power.

In 2024, the average monthly salary of state workers—the majority, comprising 64% of the workforce—was 5,839 pesos, an increase of 25.4% (approximately 1,185 pesos) compared to the previous year, and 750% compared to 2015, when Cubans earned an average of 687 pesos.

However, between 2015 and 2022, the consumer price index increased 24-fold, and real wages (purchasing power) fell by 96%, according to a study published by Columbia Law School. The current average real wage is barely two-thirds of what it was in 1989, stated Ricardo Torres, Cuban economist and professor at American University in Washington, in May 2024.

The average monthly salary for 2024, published by Onei, is equivalent to $16.

The average monthly salary in 2024 was equivalent to $16, barely enough to buy four bottles of oil or two and a half cartons of 30 eggs in any small or medium-size business. continue reading

Onei specifies that the average salary does not include “either the profits or foreign currency earnings” received by some workers in the tourism, construction, port, and other sectors.

By sector, the highest paid workers are those in electricity, gas, and water services, with an average monthly salary of 9,317 pesos, about $25 at the current informal exchange rate. They are followed on the list by construction workers with 8,538 pesos ($23.50) and employees dedicated to mining and quarrying with 8,253 pesos ($22.70). Aside from these, no other sector on the list earns more than 8,000 pesos.

The lowest paid workers are no surprise. Leading the way are community services (cleaning, garbage collection, and maintenance) with 4,033 pesos, just $11 at Thursday’s informal exchange rate. This sector’s decline is reflected in the appalling state of unsanitary conditions in cities and the appearance of hundreds of ‘informal’ piles of garbage in the cities and countryside.

Making slightly higher wages are workers in commerce and personal effects repair, such as appliance technicians at state-owned workshops known as consolidated repair shops. Their average salary is just 4,240 pesos, or $11.60. In third place from the bottom is culture and sports , where the average salary is 4,840 pesos, the equivalent of $13.30, making this sector one of the lowest paid on the island.

Education and Public Health accounted for barely 3% of the state budget in 2024 , although in the latter sector, health workers earn a salary above the national average of 6,154 pesos (about $17). Teachers, in a historically neglected sector, earn less, with an average of 5,451 pesos ($15).

It is not surprising, in this case, that some 26,871 teaching positions are vacant throughout the country.

It is not surprising, in this case, that some 26,871 teaching positions remain vacant across the country, with employees migrating to the private sector despite having received a salary increase last year.

Another interesting aspect is that of hotel and restaurant workers, who earn an average of 4,962 pesos, about $13.60. It’s worth noting that, in addition to not including profits and payments in foreign currency in the calculation, tourism sector employees receive their pay through a state-run intermediary company that sets the amount independently of what foreign firms that manage hotels on the island pay for their employment.

This category also includes employees of abandoned state-run hotels and restaurants, which have been disappearing due to the government’s lack of interest in domestic tourism.

By province, workers in Artemisa and Havana earn the highest average monthly wages, above 6,000 pesos, about $16.44, while the rest earn below that amount.

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New Revelations About Cuban Interference in Venezuela

According to a former Maduro bodyguard, Havana “eliminates any Venezuelan presence in the immediate surroundings” of the president.

Maduro, following the tradition of Cuban leaders, practices witchcraft rituals. / X/Nicolás Maduro

14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 12 April 2025 — The revelations about Nicolás Maduro’s intimate life revealed this Friday by one of his bodyguards, Gustavo Graterol, are comparable to those published in 2014 by former Cuban military officer Juan Reinaldo Sánchez about Fidel Castro. Luxuries, Santeria practices, secret bunkers, and obsessive surveillance keep the heir to Chavismo alive, all under the diligent control of Havana.

This is what Graterol calls “the role of the Cubans” in Venezuela, referring to the military intelligence corps that monitors every move of Maduro and his lieutenants. The instructions of the Cuban nomenklatura not only guide the dictator’s movements in this world, but also—the former sergeant asserts—in the next.

During an interview with the newspaper El Nacional, Graterol confirmed what other sources had stated. Maduro, following the tradition of Cuban leaders, performs rituals that the former military officer couldn’t define, but which have all the characteristics of Yoruba rituals : “They killed chickens, drank blood, birds, dogs,” he lists.

The “Cuban witch doctors” who work for Caracas are in a computerized “database”

These practices “are common” in Miraflores, Graterol asserts—not without excitement—every Tuesday and Thursday. Maduro, his wife, Cilia Flores, generals, and ministers of the regime participate in them. The “Cuban witch doctors” who work for Caracas are in a computerized “database.” They are, he claims, responsible for removing bones from cemeteries, a requirement of the rituals of Palo Monte, another Afro-Cuban religion. continue reading

But Maduro doesn’t need the orishas that much to maintain his surveillance of Venezuelans. A “secret spy room,” equipped with 20 giant 76-inch screens and a modern communications system, in addition to the human component, keeps an eye on three targets: the Venezuelan people, “suspicious” members of the hierarchy, and Maduro himself.

Graterol defines the place as a “brain,” which is also controlled by Cuban soldiers dressed in Venezuelan uniforms. Also present—with voice but almost no vote—are the Minister of Defense and other members of the Army’s top brass. “They monitor all military and civilian personnel of the State,” he notes.

Cubans dominate Maduro’s inner circle—the successive “rings” of protection are similar to Castro’s—and their surveillance determines “every aspect of his life,” including his diet and sleeping arrangements. His cooks, nurses, and doctors are Cuban, Graterol warns, and “they eliminate any Venezuelan presence in his immediate surroundings.”

“They were put there because they had instructions from Cuba to monitor and spy on people and military personnel who say anything contrary to the government.”

“There is a Cuban official in each general command,” he explains. They are responsible for detecting and silencing high-ranking officials who “mutter” against Maduro. “They were placed there because they have instructions from Cuba to monitor and spy on people and military personnel who say anything against the government,” he summarizes.

The impregnability of Cuban management is even more evident, according to the former bodyguard, at Los Pinos, a secret residence that replaces the traditional presidential mansion. Undetectable, partly underground, surrounded by vegetation and mountains, it is supposedly hidden from any radar or satellite.

“You can search for it on Google and it won’t give you the location because it’s inside a mountain,” the former soldier claims. Six escape tunnels lead from it, with camouflaged entrances from a military hospital, the Bolívar Battalion headquarters, and other exits that no one knows about, “except for the soldiers in the first ring and the Cubans.”

Graterol has promised to continue speaking about Maduro in the future. A previously unknown figure, with an illustrious surname in Venezuela—and one of the oldest in the Americas—he has not revealed, however, how he escaped, and under what conditions, one of the key points of Chavismo’s security.

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French President Macron on Varga Llosa: ‘His Work Stood for Freedom Over Fanatacism’

The writer’s wake is being held at the family home, where Peruvian President Dina Boluarte traveled.

Álvaro Vargas Llosa, Mario Vargas Llosa’s firstborn son, this Monday, at the entrance of the building where the writer lived, in Lima. / Screenshot

EFE (via 14ymedi0), Paris/Lima/Montevideo/Santiago de Chile/ 14 April 2025 — French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute this Monday to Mario Vargas Llosa, who died in Lima this Sunday, and highlighted both the Nobel Prize winner’s membership in the French Academy and the value of his work, “which stood for freedom over fanaticism.”

“Mario Vargas Llosa belonged to France, through the Academy, through his love of our literature and through the universal,” the French president stated on the social network X, where he accompanied his messages, written in French and Spanish, with a photo of the author of La ciudad y los perros dressed in the traditional green livery of the members of the French Academy.

Macron emphasized that, with his work, Vargas Llosa “stood for freedom over fanaticism, irony over dogma, an ironclad ideal in the face of the storms of the century.”

“He leaves behind a monumental and immortal work,” praised French Culture Minister Rachida Dati.

“A tribute to a literary genius who had a home here,” the French president concluded.

In recognition of his ties to France, Vargas Llosa has occupied the 18th seat of the Académie française since February 2023. This prestigious institution, founded in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, oversees the French language and its members are known as “the immortals.”

“The Perpetual Secretary and the members of the French Academy are saddened to announce the passing of their colleague, Mario Vargas Llosa, which occurred on April 13, 2025, in Lima (Peru). He was 89 years old. He was elected on November 25, 2021, to occupy the seat of Michel Serres (18th seat),” the institution, located on the Seine River, said in a statement Monday, announcing the death

Vargas Llosa’s election to seat 18 was not without controversy, as although he spent periods of his life in France, he did not write in the language of Molière, something unprecedented for the institution until that time.

“He leaves behind a monumental and immortal work,” praised French Culture Minister Rachida Dati, also on X. The minister also highlighted that Paris left its mark on Vargas Llosa and that “with paradoxical commitments that may have been disconcerting,” he was a “dissident author and a witness of his time.”

Boluarte, dressed entirely in black, entered the house with Prime Minister Gustavo Adrianzén.

Peruvian President Dina Boluarte arrived at the writer’s family home in Lima on Monday, accompanied by several of her ministers.

Boluarte, dressed entirely in black, entered the residence with Prime Minister Gustavo Adrianzén, Foreign Minister Elmer Schialer, and other government representatives.

At the entrance to the building in Lima’s Barranco district, she was greeted by essayist Álvaro Vargas Llosa, the eldest son of the Nobel Prize winner in literature, with whom she shared a warm hug before entering.

Shortly before, Álvaro Vargas Llosa had confirmed that his father is being held in the privacy of his home and that no public ceremony will be held in his honor.

“We’ve agreed to try to grieve privately, so we’re holding a wake for my father at home, rather than in a public place,” he said.

“I have nothing else to say but that Peru has lost one of its best men, and we have lost an infinitely loved person.”

For this reason, he asked the media “to respect that privacy,” which implies that they will “avoid making any further statements” beyond those offered this Monday, out of respect for the media, “the public, and the people who have sent their messages of affection and love.”

“I have nothing else to say but that Peru has lost one of its best men, and we have lost a deeply loved person whom we will miss,” said Álvaro Vargas Llosa at the entrance to the building where his father lived.

He added that they “are comforted not only by the extraordinary father he was, but also by the beautiful legacy he left to Peru and the world.”

He explained that they have received messages of affection and condolences from all over Latin America, the United States, Asia, and Europe, from individuals as well as institutions, organizations, and governments.

“I cannot mention them all because there are too many, but I would like to express the enormous gratitude of my entire family, my mother, Patricia, (my siblings) Gonzalo, Morgana, and my own gratitude,” he concluded.

Shortly before, Prime Minister Adrianzén confirmed on RPP radio that no official posthumous ceremonies will be held in honor of the writer, in compliance with his wishes and those of his family.

“Then comes the Cuban Revolution, the big explosion, the big dream, and then the disappointment.”

He also reported that Boluarte contacted Vargas Llosa’s family after learning of his death and coordinated with them the details of the decree declaring national mourning.

“From the Government, we are simply respecting, first, what was the will of Mario Vargas Llosa himself, and second, this coordination with the family took place yesterday, hence the decree and the provisions that have been issued. But we respect the decision of Vargas Llosa and his family absolutely,” he emphasized.

Former Uruguayan President Julio María Sanguinetti was one of those who spoke out after the writer’s death, describing him as an “enormous creator” and a “citizen of Latin America,” as well as a “fighter for freedom.”

Sanguinetti, who maintained a close friendship with Vargas Llosa, emphasized his position on freedom, “because he comes from a socialist background, which was very common in the era of intellectualism in the 1950s and 1960s. Then came the Cuban Revolution, the big explosion, the great dream, and then the disappointment.”

In turn, he stressed that what will remain of Vargas Llosa will be his letters captured in novels such as Conversation in the Cathedral, The Green House, The City and the Dogs and others, in his opinion, that have been little mentioned, such as Pantaleón and the Visitors, which he described as “brilliant.”

“That’s what will remain in the constellation of artists who are making our golden age right now,” he noted.

“He was also a first-class intellectual, and regardless of whether one agrees with his liberal ideals or not, he was a democrat at all times who deserves our full respect.”

Sanguinetti emphasized that, after years of friendship with the Peruvian Nobel Prize winner for Literature, he sees him as a typical intellectual who had the socialist dream and then realized it had turned into a nightmare and turned to the great Western liberal philosophy of 18th-century thinkers.

“What no one can deny is that he is not only a huge literary figure and a huge creator, but more so a citizen of Latin America, a citizen of culture, of our culture, of our language, of Western culture, with a great independence of judgment,” he noted.

For his part, Chilean President Gabriel Boric, another of those who mourned the death of the Peruvian Nobel Prize winner, emphasized that “he was a giant writer, who described Latin America with a pen of real anguish in a delicate and challenging fiction.”

“He was also a first-class intellectual, and regardless of whether or not you agree with his liberal ideals, he was a true democrat who deserves our full respect,” the Chilean president posted on his social media.

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Las Tunas Teacher is Murdered by Her Partner in the Street

Nancy Levya García, 35, a mother of two, was stabbed to death on April 12 and is the tenth victim of gender-based violence in 2025.

Nancy Leyva García, 35, was a beloved teacher in Las Delicias (Puerto Padre). / Facebook

14ymedio, Madrid 15 April 2025 — Nancy Levya García, a teacher who lived in Las Delicias (Puerto Padre, Las Tunas), was murdered by her partner in the street last Saturday, April 12. The feminist observatories Alas Tensas and Yo Sí Te Creo in Cuba confirmed the femicide on Monday, rumors about which had been circulating over the weekend.

The victim, known as Nancita, was 35 years old and had two children, at least one of whom was school-aged. Her attacker stabbed her near 13th Street and turned himself in to the police after killing her.

Leyva García was very popular as a teacher in the community, and many people on social media have expressed their solidarity and recognized the “very good teacher” they had for their children. There have also been condolences from colleagues who praised her professional qualities.

Her attacker stabbed her near 13th Street and after killing her, he turned himself in to the police.

The murder of Leyva García occurred just one day after the murder of Yunisleidy López Milián , 40, finally came to light. Her partner killed days earlier in their home in Guayos, Cabaiguán (Sancti Spíritus). In that case, the alleged murderer hid the body, reported her missing, and participated “in the searches organized by family members and neighbors during the week she was missing.” continue reading

To date, there have been 10 femicides recorded in Cuba this year, according to this newspaper’s records. Feminist groups have classified the murder of Odalys Bataille , a 53-year-old nurse from East Havana, as gender-based violence. However, it is unknown whether there was any connection between the victim and the assailant, an alleged ex-convict, so this newspaper is recording it as common violence.

Alas Tensas and Yo Sí Te Creo en Cuba also updated, this Monday, the cases of two missing minors they were investigating. The good news is that both were resolved favorably. The first is that of Vanesa Ortega Deliz, a 14-year-old resident of Guanabacoa, Havana, who was located by the police.

In the other case, a minor whose name was not released and who had been missing since February 2, it was learned that she was already at home with her family. “However, two other missing persons alerts from this year remain active and require maximum publicity and support from the public,” the organizations urged.

Two other disappearance alerts that occurred in 2025 remain active and require maximum dissemination and public support.

One of them is Luisa María Martínez Sansaricq, 65, last seen on February 14 in the Antonio Guiteras neighborhood (Bahía), Havana. She suffers from schizophrenia and requires medication. The other is Doraiky Águila Vázquez, who has been missing since March 15 in Lawton, Havana; she was wearing a yellow floral dress. According to some unconfirmed reports, this woman suffered from memory loss.

Feminist organizations, now working with fewer resources following the suspension of some aid from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), are calling for greater citizen collaboration to bring to light femicides, which remain a scourge without and new solutions from the government.

Last week, the government confirmed that the registry it announced in July 2024 to keep track of cases of gender-based violence, including not only deaths but also complaints and profiles of victims and perpetrators, will no longer be public. The gender-based violence law planned to take effect in 2023 will not be announced before 2026.

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