Translating Cuba – Page 122 – English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island

The Energy Collapse in Cuba Has Its Origin in Fidel Castro’s Commitment to Generators

The same mistake is now being made with Chinese photovoltaic parks, which are doomed to failure.

14ymedio, Especialista Zea, Havana, 13 January 2025 — When the Island was plunged into the first total blackout last year on October 17, both the population and the technicians of the National Electric Union (SEN) wondered if the collapse could have been avoided. The negative answer, after decades of technological carelessness, has its roots in the so-called Energy Revolution, whose promises of stability were never fulfilled.

In obedience to the penultimate utopian idea of an elderly Fidel Castro, the country was “remotorized” in 2006. The generators, newly installed to cover the demand, briefly supported the National Electrical System (SEN). This solution lasted five years, the same time period as the warranties on the equipment.

One by one, the generators began to present problems. The collapse was coming, and for anyone who had technical knowledge of the matter, it was more than predictable. It was a support technology for a system that – mortally wounded after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Special Period – entered the new century in conditions of maximum precariousness.

The SEN already operated with less than half of its total generation capacity, and the authorities, against all logic, made the generators assume much of the country’s consumption needs. Once the warranties on the equipment expired, without economic means to buy new parts or carry out the essential maintenance, the Energy Revolution followed the same path of failures and improvisations as the other Revolution. continue reading

The obsolescence of many generators and the total loss of others caused the greatest alarm in the western region, the one with the highest demand

All equipment suffers wear and tear. Without maintenance and with sustained operation, any system goes down. While the generators were carrying national demand, the thermoelectric plants – whose condition can be followed every day in the UNE reports – also deteriorated more and more.

The obsolescence of many and the total loss of others caused the greatest alarm in the western region, the one with the highest demand. The typical example is the Otto Parellada, known as Tallapiedra, although the breakdown of the Antonio Guiteras power plant in Matanzas has also been emblematic and was the official cause of the collapse of the SEN in October.

Faced with the debacle of its two energy pillars, the authorities created the illusion that the problem – a daily deficit that exceeds 1,000 megawatts (MW) – could be solved by installing solar panels supplied by China. As in 2006, it was possible to predict that the generators would not last long without maintenance or spare parts, and we can now see the failure of the photovoltaic parks coming.

To generate a single MW, between 3,000 and 4,000 optimal quality solar panels are needed. It would be necessary to cover 20,000 square meters of surface to reach that figure and have battery banks – an additional cost that Cuba has not mentioned – so that the stored energy is usable when the hours of sunshine pass, which coincide with those of higher consumption. In the current economic conditions of the country, a project of that caliber is not viable.

It is true that photovoltaic energy is ecological and does not depend on the use of fossil fuels, but it involves constant maintenance of the sites, which the Cuban authorities have shown, historically, unable to sustain.

Improvisation and the lack of long-term planning remain the slogan, despite the fact that without a stable SEN Cuba will not have a functional industry or a break from the blackouts. While the Energy and Mines authorities always allude to a strategy to get out of the quagmire, the reality speaks for itself.

On January 7, for example, the State newspaper Granma announced that China had come to the rescue of 38 diesel generators by sending “aid” in the form of spare parts: “radiators, motors and other necessary components to be able to recover the equipment that is damaged.” However, the repair will not be effective until February, nor will it provide the 58 MW that, in theory, it is capable of generating.

The only possible truce does not come from the Ministry of Energy and Mines, but from the climate, more benevolent in these first two months of the year

The shipment was not enough for all the provinces. Ciego de Ávila, Artemisa and Mayabeque will have to wait for the next aid package to repair their generators. Hua Xin, China’s ambassador to the Island and architect of the rapprochement between the two countries in recent months, assured that his country’s goal is for the SEN to “recover” the 400 MW lost from the deterioration of the equipment.

To what extent does this “aid” solve the Cuban energy problem? Will it end the blackouts? The answer is again negative. The country needs 3,000 MW per day to meet its demand, avoid collapse and put an end to the blackouts. The only possible truce does not come from the Ministry of Energy and Mines, but from the climate, more benevolent in these first two months of the year.

When this period of low temperatures ends and the tropical heat returns, the use of air conditioners and fans will again cause blackouts. The SEN needs fuel and spare parts, two pending issues that the Government has not resolved. The generators that run on fuel oil could also be reactivated and recovered, but everything has a high economic cost that the authorities are not willing to pay.

There is light at the end of the tunnel, but to turn on that light it is necessary for the country to manage to sustain 50% of its generation capacity, while recovering – with maintenance and new equipment – the other half of the SEN.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Leaving Prison in Cuba Does Not Mean Being Free

“They have left the small prison to enter the big prison,” said an elderly woman on Thursday

Dariel Cruz García, with his mother, Yaquelín Cruz García, this Wednesday, after his release from prison 1580 in Havana. / EFE/ Ernesto Mastrascusa

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 17 January 2025 — In the last few hours, more than thirty Cuban political prisoners have been released. The number is just a small part of the 553 people who will be released from their cells after the agreement between the Havana regime and the Vatican which led to the United States removing the island from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism. On this side of the bars, the prisoners are awaited by their families but also by a country where dissent continues to be a crime.

Among those who have left the cells are internationally recognized opponents such as José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, citizens who only protested peacefully in the streets such as Luis Robles, known as “the young man with the placard,” and very poor people from the Havana neighborhood of La Güinera who on 11 July 2021 (11J) demonstrated demanding change and chanting the word “freedom.” It is expected that in the coming days more locks will be removed and other dungeons will be opened.

The joy, however, has been dampened. Organizations that have been working for years on a database of political prisoners warn that there are more than a thousand people convicted of these crimes on the island. To these alarming numbers we must add that the current releases are not full freedoms but a partial measure with serious limitations on rights. If those who benefit from this decision incur in any “indiscipline,” they can be returned to prison. Hanging over their heads is the return to the locked cells, the meager rations of food and the mistreatment of the guards. continue reading

For those less known and therefore barely protected by international visibility, everything will be more difficult.

The lives of these prisoners will also be very difficult in a nation that has experienced an intensification of controls and official intolerance in recent years. With an economic crisis that seems to have no end, a mass exodus that also does not stop and a ruling elite anchored to ideological continuity, walking through Cuban streets is not very different from spending the days in a prison. “They have left the small prison to enter the big prison,” said an elderly woman on Thursday standing in one of those endless lines to buy food. The rest of those waiting in line nodded in silence.

For those less known and, therefore, barely protected by international visibility, everything will be more difficult. For example, Yaquelín Cruz García, mother of Dariel Cruz García aged 23, told me this Thursday how she experienced the first 24 hours after the release of the young man, convicted for the 11J protests. The woman says that she is happy to finally have El Bolo, as his friends also know him, at her side, although she fears that “something will happen and they will want to put him back in jail.”

Cruz García feels that the anxiety continues. “He is under a conditional release regime and he has to follow the rules imposed on him,” explains the mother. “If my son had been given total freedom and could leave the country, I would do everything possible to get him out of Cuba as soon as possible, even if it were to go to Haiti,” she says. Her fear is not exaggerated. An invisible shackle surrounds the ankle of all the released prisoners.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Deutsche Welle in Spanish.

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Of the 127 Prisoners Released by the Cuban Authorities, Only About 50 Are Political Prisoners

Sosa Ravelo clarified last Wednesday that the measure is neither an amnesty nor a pardon / Televisión Cubana

14ymedio, Havana, 17 January 2025 — The Cuban government has so far released 127 prisoners of the 553 who, after a negotiation with the Vatican, they promised to release on January 14. The number was provided by Maricela Sosa Ravelo, vice president of the Supreme Court, to the spokesman for the regime, Humberto López, and is much higher than the 50 political prisoners registered up to Friday by the Prisoners Defenders organization. It is expected that there will be a significant number of common prisoners who have been discreet with the news of their release.

Interviewed at the Court’s headquarters, Sosa Ravelo explained that, of the 127 released between Wednesday and Thursday, 121 are on conditional release and six have extracriminal leave. The former are subjected to “a trial period” in which former inmates must meet certain conditions, maintain “good behavior” and be linked to a workplace or school, until the time of the sanction ends.

The six extracriminal licenses, on the other hand, were granted “for illness” and other reasons that prevent the inmate from staying in prison, although Sosa Ravelo did not give more details about the cases.

The six extracriminal licenses were granted “for illness” and other reasons

There have been releases “in all Cuban provinces,” López said. Each person has had a meeting with an enforcement judge who has explained their legal situation during their “trial period.” “The process will continue in the coming days,” López said. The Prosecutor’s Office will have to offer its opinion on each case raised, said Sosa Ravelo, “and it can be favorable or unfavorable.”

Some organizations, such as Justice 11J, doubt the “relatively high number of people” that the Supreme Court claims to have released. The NGO claims that it has documented 39 releases, “all political prisoners.” continue reading

Sosa Ravelo was interviewed for the first time last Wednesday by López himself about the implementation of the measure. In her speech she clarified that it is not an amnesty nor a pardon, since they “entail the total extinction of the sanction,” which will not happen in these cases. If they don’t meet their “obligations,” she warned, they could go back to prison.

Those on the list were prosecuted for “dissimilar” crimes

Those on the list were prosecuted for “dissimilar” crimes. These, she said, are “real crimes such as theft and robbery with force. There are threats, there are injuries, there are disorders. There are also some people who were punished for sedition, but sedition is not a political crime.”

Among those released this Thursday was José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), locked up in the Mar Verde prison, in Santiago de Cuba, since the day of the nationwide protests on 11 July 2021.

Ferrer, in his first speeches, said that he refused to sign a document that was presented to him before his release: “I was kicked out of prison because I do not accept conditional release.” In addition, he said that he would not accept impositions of any kind by the regime, and said he felt “embarrassed for other people” about the agreements that allowed the prisoners to leave.

Another of the most anticipated releases was that of Luis Robles Elizastigui, known as “the young man with the placard” for having protested with a sign on the Havana boulevard of San Rafael, in December 2020. Robles, 20, was serving his sentence in the maximum security prison of the Combinado del Este, in Havana, and he received a brief pass in February last year.

Dariel Cruz García, 23 years old, is on conditional release for participating in the La Güinera protest on July 12, 2021

Dariel Cruz García, 23 years old, is on conditional release for participating in the La Güinera protest on July 12, 2021, and his mother told 14ymedio that she fears for her son’s future: “In this neighborhood anything can happen, because here in Cuba the situation is very bad and they want to put him in jail again.” “If my son had been given total freedom and could leave the country, I would do everything possible to get him out of Cuba as soon as possible, even if it is for Haiti,” she added.

Only through the interviews with Sosa Ravelo has the Cuban regime given the little official information that exists about the released. Humberto López, in fact, has downplayed the impact of the issue and has said that the releases occurred “systematically” in Cuba and that this process is “one more.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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José Daniel Ferrer Challenges His Jailers: ‘You Will Be Prosecuted in the Future’

José Daniel Ferrer, after his release, with his family: his wife, Nelva Ortega, and his children Daniel José and Fátima. / 14ymedio/Courtesy

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 17 January 2025 — The phone has not stopped ringing all afternoon. Yesterday, José Daniel Ferrer was released from the Mar Verde prison in Santiago de Cuba, and he has not stopped giving interviews. Finally, I hear his voice on the other end of the line. He has the same firm and kind tone that I remember. Dungeons and mistreatment do not seem to have taken away either his energy or his sanity. We started talking as if just yesterday we had to pause this conversation that I now share with you.

“Right now I feel a bit sad because I have not been able to attend to everybody who has wanted to talk to me,” he acknowledges, overcome by the many phone calls. Leaving prison is an overwhelming experience. The sounds cease to be just the squeaks of the bars and begin to be familiar voices. The light changes and thee are no longer shadows but blinding flashes of light, and one’s body still does not know how to move, although the space is as small your own house. The veteran opponent has experienced those sensations many times, but they still affect him.

Ferrer has been welcomed not only by his relatives and neighbors but also by the blackout. “Now I have a rechargeable lamp because shortly after I arrived the electric power went out.” The Cuba that he has found on this side of the prison walls is a much more economically deteriorated country with fewer hours of electricity. “Even so, despite everything, I have already been able to hug some brothers in the struggle, physically and virtually, through the internet,” says the untiring leader of Unpacu. continue reading

Although the days in captivity were full of bad moments, Ferrer also tells how humor served him to deal with his jailers

Although the days in captivity were full of bad moments, Ferrer also tells how humor served him to deal with his jailers. “I once heard on the Round Table [State TV program] that the Minister of Agriculture wanted to improve egg production with more political and ideological work for the workers in the sector.” When the guards approached him that day, he could not miss the opportunity: ’By now you’ve heard that the chickens have to understand that they must work harder to lay eggs.’ They didn’t even crack a smile.

Every moment of this conversation, the voice of a small child is heard on the other side of the phone. Ferrer’s son, Daniel José, demands the attention of a father with whom he has spent very little time due to the rigors of prison and the isolation to which the political prisoner was subjected. “I’m coming now,” the father tells him, continuing to intersperse sentences about his time behind bars while attending to the little one’s demands. You can imagine him with the cell phone in one hand and a toy in the other, trying to distract his son.

His daughter Fátima, 20 years old, has also arrived from the community of Palmarito to see her father. He has been able to speak with part of his family exiled in the United States and talked to his sister Ana Belkis Ferrer, who during this time kept an updated report on what Ferrer was going through in prison, the denied family visits and the deterioration of his health. “I still need to talk to my brother, my mother and my other children, but I’ll do it, I’ll do it,” he says.

“When I got home I had such a rush of adrenaline that I felt I was 18 years old”

“When I got home I had such a rush of adrenaline that I felt I was 18 years old,” he admits, although he also remembers that he must avoid those bursts of enthusiasm because he has problems with blood pressure and needs to medicate himself with Enalapril to keep it from rising. “The adrenaline has already returned to its place and I’m 54 years old again,” he says. His body, suffering from the confinement, poor diet and lack of sunlight, now sets the tone, marks the pace.

In the book that Commander Huber Matos wrote after leaving prison, where he spent 20 years denouncing the communist drift of the Fidel Castro regime, he describes a scene in which he got up to go to the bathroom and came across, for the first time in two decades, a mirror that showed him his full body. In the pages of Cómo llegó la noche [How the Night Came], the former political prisoner described the surprise of seeing a graying and aged man who looked into his eyes. Ferrer also is now rediscovering his image, specifying the contours that the dungeon blurred, visually recomposing his anatomy.

Despite the mistreatment, for his jailers he had words loaded with future projections on his last day in prison. “The democratization of Cuba is also good for you,” he told them before leaving, with a knowing and ironic wink that the guards did not expect: “Vote for me for the presidency because I know that your salary is not enough and you are going through hard times.”

“I know that you have to deal ‘on the left’ in order to survive,” the opponent continued to explain to them

“I know that you have to deal ’on the left’ in order to survive,” the opponent continued to explain to them, while making with his hand the gesture that in the Cuban streets is used for the act of stealing and diverting resources from the State. In a prison, the boss, the jailers and even the workers lower on the scale take home food and other resources intended for the prisoners in order to support themselves day to day. That truth, as big and solid as the walls of a prison, cannot be denied, so there was a prolonged silence after Ferrer’s words.

“Just go home,” the officers almost begged him before the dissident’s diatribe. An annoying prisoner must be worse than a stone in the shoe for some guards who are not used to being warned that the regime they defend with their weapons and uniforms can fall like a fragile house of cards at any time. The henchmen must believe that their impunity is eternal, because imagining a future in which they are accountable puts them in front of another mirror, that of responsibility.

“The days they were going to beat me up, they took the highest-ranking officer of Mar Verde out of the environment, so that later I could not say that he was aware of that mistreatment,” he recalls. “Yesterday he told me to just go home to my wife and son and stop protesting.” But Ferrer took it calmly and wanted to make it clear that he did not accept any blackmail linked to the release of political prisoners after the talks between the Cuban regime and the Vatican, in parallel with the announcement made by the Biden Administration to remove Cuba from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism.

“I want my things, my books, my writings, my verses,” the prisoner claimed. “I was writing quatrains. A few days ago I finished the first part of one that was about braggarts, those people who claim to have a courage that they don’t have: ’Juan, in a bar in Havana / under the effect of rum / without a weapon, kills a lion / on the African savannah’.” The night before the release Ferrer had finished the last verse: “Juan, without the drunkenness / just by seeing a mouse / his heart stirs / and the whole of Havana runs.”

“Yesterday he told me to just go home to my wife and son and stop protesting “

“When I got up this Thursday, one of my sources inside the prison warned me that Mar Verde was full of officials from all over Santiago de Cuba. ’There are also some from State Security, and it is being said that you are going free, that they are making preparations’.” Shortly after they informed him that it was a “conditional freedom,” which Ferrer refused: “I do not accept conditions; they can give me all the warnings they want but I’m not complying with them.”

The prisoner sent them a defiant message: “You will be prosecuted in the future and you will be convicted of all this, but I can assure you that you will not have to face the hunger, bedbugs or tuberculosis that we political prisoners have to suffer in Cuba.” Finally “they threw me out of there. They didn’t let me pick up my toothbrush, family photos or my books, nothing.”

Outside, his wife Nelva Ortega Tamayo and their little son were waiting for him. For her he has only words of gratitude. “She has gone through very difficult times while I was in prison: she lost her mother and recently her grandmother also died,” Ferrer adds. “It’s one of the hardest things about being in prison, that helplessness of not being able to be there for loved ones in the most complicated moments to encourage and support them.”

Now, Ferrer plans a visit to Havana, where he has a daughter he hasn’t seen since before the pandemic. The last part of the conversation is to remember our time of meeting as friends. A pizza eaten in company, a hug given in a hurry, a few laughs between personal testimonies. “See you, my brother,” he says in closing, as if we had paused our conversation a few hours before and only resumed it to catch up with the latest details: the news to which anecdotes, future projects and even verses are always added.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Opposition Leader José Daniel Ferrer Released From Prison After Negotiations Between the Cuban Regime and the Vatican

José Daniel Ferrer’s release from prison, like that of Luis Robles, was one of the most anticipated since the Cuban regime’s announcement on Tuesday

The opponent José Daniel Ferrer, in an image shared this Thursday, the day of his release, on social networks. / X/@jdanielferrer

14ymedio, Havana, 16 January 2025 — José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), was released from prison this Thursday. “I don’t know the conditions, if it was under extracriminal license, if it was parole, I don’t know, but they say he’s going home,” Carlos Amel Oliva reported in a video broadcast by the Prisoners Defenders organization, and confirmed by the opponent’s sister, Ana Belkis Ferrer.

The dissident’s wife, Nelva Ortega, had been called the day before by the authorities to appear this morning at the Mar Verde prison, in Santiago de Cuba, where the opponent had been imprisoned since July 11, 2021.

In his first statements after his release, to Martí Noticias, Ferrer said: “I was kicked out of prison because I don’t accept conditional release.” The authorities, in any case, warned him that “if he does not comply with the rules of socialist society” they will “try him in court again.

I was kicked out of prison because I don’t accept conditional release”

The leader of Unpacu said that, although he has health problems, none affects his “desire to continue fighting for democracy and human rights.” “I’m ready, I’m going to continue doing what I’ve always done,” he said, while asking the opposition to “be more united than ever.”

In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, Ferrer said he felt “embarrassed over this agreement, for the way in which the Biden administration and the Vatican have handled it.” And he continued: “According to the terms of the statement published by the regime, it seems that they have just defeated them in three rounds, as if by chance they decided to give freedom to the 553 prisoners.”

“If Biden and the Vatican don’t deny this, they are playing the game of a bully similar to Pablo Escobar, who does what he wants, an ally of Nicolás Maduro and Vladimir Putin. They [the Regime] boast that both Washington and the Pope have done what they wanted. They have no respect.”

In the same way, he estimated: “If the regime has not eliminated me like Oswaldo Payá, it is thanks to the solidarity of the European members of Parliament and the good press of the free world.” continue reading

For its part, the Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba, of which Ferrer is president, celebrated this Thursday, in a statement, the release of the opponent, and “deeply thank the role of the Vatican in its mediation for this important step.” However, it clarified that other prisoners, such as Félix Navarro, 71, should also be released.

“The current releases are no more than a form of imprisonment without bars”

“We reiterate our urgent call for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners and the decriminalization of dissent in Cuba,” they insist in their text. “Freedom cannot be conditioned. The current releases are nothing more than a form of imprisonment without bars, where rules of ‘good behavior’ are imposed.” “In reality, this means that anyone who exercises their right to freedom of expression will be sent back to prison to serve the rest of their sentence.”

In any case, the release of Ferrer, like that of Luis Robles Elizastigui, also this Thursday, was one of the most anticipated since the Cuban regime announced, on Tuesday night, that 553 people would be released from prison as part of a negotiation with the Vatican.

An hour earlier, President Joe Biden’s order to remove Cuba from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism had been made public, in addition to other measures, which the Island has done everything possible to dissociate from the release of prisoners.

Ferrer had been locked up in Mar Verde prison, without trial, since 11 July 2021, when he was arrested before being able to join the massive demonstrations of that day. His situation in prison, subjected to all kinds of abuse and harassment, has been denounced on numerous occasions not only by his family and by non-profit organizations such as Amnesty International and Prisoners Defenders, but also by international governments, including the United States and the European Union.

On November 18, the opponent had to be admitted to the hospital of the Santiago de Boniato prison after being beaten in Mar Verde

On November 18, the opponent had to be admitted to the hospital of the Santiago de Boniato prison after being beaten in Mar Verde by prison staff. His wife, Nelva Ortega, was able to see him in early December, for the first time in more than 20 months, during which he had been systematically denied a marital visit.

However, they did not give him access to the food that his family had brought, and he declared a hunger strike.

The dissident leader, part of the group of prisoners of the Black Spring of 2003, with a death sentence commuted to 25 years in prison, was released after eight years thanks to the efforts of the Vatican and the mediation of Spain. Since then, he never left his dissident work at the head of the Unpacu or, as a consequence, stopped being harassed by State Security.

For his part, Luis Robles Elizastigui, called the “young man with the placard” and arrested for holding up a sign on the central Boulevard San Rafael in December 2020 calling for the release of rapper Denis Solís, was serving a five-year sentence in the Combinado del Este maximum security prison, in Havana.

The 30-year-old activist has suffered several health problems since he entered the prison.

His mother, Yindra Elizastigui, one of the most active in demanding the freedom of her son and all political prisoners, expressed her bittersweet feelings on her social networks. “Today inside, from the sadness and consternation that my family is experiencing, taking into account the unjust confinement that my son Lester and my son-in-law Alejaime Lambert Reyes are still suffering, and the hospitalization of the father of my children, who is in intensive care due to a cerebral infarction, a ray of light has come to us,” she wrote about the release of Robles. She indicated “that he is only four months and days away from his total release” and apologized for not being “as expressive as usual.” “I need you to understand our pain,” she explained.

Just in February of last year, long after what he was due, Robles received his first prison pass and was able to return home to visit his family. The 30-year-old activist has suffered several health problems since he entered the prison, which have been reported by his mother, in addition to mistreatment, and ophthalmological and gastric complications. He has also been denied appropriate medical assistance.

#ExcarcelacionesCuba Luis Robles Elizastigui, llamado el “joven de la pancarta”, cumplía una condena de cinco años en la prisión de máxima seguridad Combinado del Este. En este video reflexiona sobre la forma en que fue excarcelado👇🏼 Crédito: Martí Noticias-Facebook pic.twitter.com/Bk4lds6qWx

— 14ymedio (@14ymedio) January 17, 2025

Little by little, without much official information and through, above all, social networks, the names of those released from prison have come to light. The Cuban government did not give further details about them, nor for what crimes they were convicted, nor if they are, effectively, political prisoners.

Dariel Cruz García, another of those released from prison on Wednesday, belongs to the latter group. His mother, Yaquelín Cruz García, tells 14ymedio how he has spent these first 24 hours in freedom. The woman says that she feels “good and happy” to finally have El Bolo by her side, as he is known in the neighborhood, although she fears that “anything can happen, because here in Cuba the situation is very bad and they want to put him back in jail.”

The anxiety over her son continues. “He is on probation and has to follow the rules imposed on him,” she explains. “If my son had been given total freedom and could leave the country, I would do everything I could to get him out of Cuba as soon as possible, even if he goes to Haiti,” she says. “Today they already summoned him to the police station, and until the moment his sanction ends, he has to walk the line so they don’t put him back in prison.”

“He is on probation and has to follow the rules imposed on him”

Cruz García, now 23 years old, was arrested on July 16, 2021, after participating on July 12 in the demonstrations that took place in La Güinera, in the Havana municipality of Arroyo Naranjo, where the only death of the 11J recognized by the authorities, Diubis Laurencio Tejada, took place at the hands of the police, who went unpunished. With a prosecutor’s request for 15 years in prison for sedition, he was sentenced to 8 years in prison, and managed, through a cassation trial, to be temporarily released with a change of sanction to correctional work with internment. Finally, he received a sentence of 5 years of correctional work with internment.

On Wednesday, the vice president of the People’s Supreme Court, Maricela Sosa Ravelo, clarified on state television that the measure is not an amnesty or a pardon, words that, in fact, do not appear in the statement issued on Tuesday by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to the official’s explanation, amnesty and pardon “entail the total extinction of the sanction,” something that does not happen in these cases.

In an interview with the spokesman for the regime, Humberto López, Ravelo said that, on the contrary, these prisoners have been given “benefits from early release.” If they do not fulfill the “obligations,” he warned, they could go back to prison. Those on the list were prosecuted for “dissimilar” crimes, which he listed: “Historic crimes such as theft, robbery with force. There are threats, there are injuries, there are disorders. There are also some people who were punished for sedition, but sedition is not a political crime.”

The crime of sedition, for example, was the one charged against the 11J demonstrators who received the highest sentences, up to 20 years in prison (later reduced in some cases).

Los excarcelados conocidos hasta el momento son:

The released prisoners, as of now, are:

Reyna Yacnara Barreto Batista
Lisdani Rodríguez Isaac
Mailene Noguera Santiesteban
Yessica Coimbra Noriega
Rowland Jesús Castillo Castro
Dariel Cruz García
Donaida Pérez Paseiro
Liván Hernández Sosa
Katia Beirut Rodríguez
José Miguel Gómez Mondeja
Jorge Gabriel Arruebarruena León
Magdiel Rodríguez García
Rogelio Lázaro Domínguez Pérez
César Adrián Delgado Correa
Liliana Oropesa Ferrer
Endris Fuentes Zamora
Javier González Fernández
Arturo Valentín Rivero
Randy Arteaga Rivero
Luis Robles Elizastigui
José Daniel Ferrer García
Jorge Luis Salazar Brioso
Lisdiany Rodríguez Isaac
Orlando Pineda Martínez
Marlon Brando Díaz Oliva
Ciro Alexis Casanova Pérez
Juan Yanier Antomarchi Núñez
Frank Daniel Roig Sotolongo
Yandier García Labrada
Eduin Rodríguez Fonseca
Andro Ledesma Prieto
Iris Belkis Oduardo Rodríguez
Carlos Manuel Pupo Rodríguez
Yunior Rodríguez Rivero

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Venezuela: Democracy Versus Dictatorship

Maduro and his criminal associates are aware of the wide popular support that González and Machado have earned with their perseverance, boldness and decorum.

Nicolás Maduro during his swearing-in as president of Venezuela on January 10, 2024 / @DiazCanelB/X

14ymedio, Pedro Corzo, Miami, 12 January 2024 — January 10 was a turning point for Venezuela. Regardless of the results of that day, the country will not be the same. The victory of democracy would be an invaluable benefit for everyone, but even if this does not take place, the constant effort and willingness to risk both life and freedom for a just cause are signs of an edifying patriotism.

In the face of an eventual triumph of democracy, which will be an uphill battle, the supporters of the dictatorship will create chaos. Castrochavism does not rest, unless it is absolutely defeated.

The display of dignity and courage of President-elect Edmundo González, María Corina Machado and their allies give impetus to their supporters and makes their enemies tremble. They demonstrate that it is possible to resist and get close to victory, an example that must reinvigorate those of us who suffer from these dictatorships.

Venezuela has historically been one of the protagonists of the continent since the time of the Liberator

After January 10, it is expected that the contenders will assume roles that are even more antagonistic. The confrontation between repression and resistance will become more acute, and I do not think, to the detriment of the country, that the hostility will be switched off and extinguished. continue reading

Both the autocracy led by Nicolas Maduro and Diosdado Cabello, and the democratic proposal of elected-president González and María Corina Machado mean that Venezuela is at an unprecedented crossroads for the country itself and for the hemisphere. The country has historically been one of the protagonists of the continent since the time of Simón Bolívar, the Liberator.

The situation of Venezuela is unique. It suffers from a dictatorship that calls for elections, loses them for not having the support of the people and, despite controlling the electoral machinery, cannot appropriate the voting records. Meanwhile, they face an opposition capable of resurrection after being practically deceased, thanks to the electoral feat of González and Machado, who restored the hope of change in the people, a feat almost as important as the restoration of democracy.

All Venezuelans – the opposition, the Government and people in general – are risking their future. The parties have a great responsibility, which is why we must all take sides in the trench we have chosen. We must fight hard; concessions cannot be made, and the factions in conflict must be convinced that there is no second chance.

González and María Corina Machado must be strong in their proposals. There is no room for hesitation or concessions to the enemy. The fight will be very difficult, and they must be prepared to confront the evil of Castrochavism, which, with the loss of power at risk, can resort to its entire criminal arsenal.

Maduro and his criminal associates are aware of the broad popular support that González and Machado have earned with their perseverance, boldness and decorum. They know that if they respect the popular will they must leave the Government, whatever the consequences.

The people elected González and repudiated the continuity of Castrochavism, which has caused vast and profound destruction Venezuela

There is no doubt that González has justice on his side. The people elected him and repudiated the continuity of Castrochavism, which has caused vast and profound destruction in Venezuela, but we should all be aware that good intentions by themselves do not lead to the materialization of our ideals. Many tools are needed, and González has shown he is alert by sending a message to members of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, asking them to comply with their constitutional duty and reject any attempt at usurpation of power by the dictator, Nicolás Maduro, alluding to the 1999 Constitution, promoted by the autocrat Hugo Chávez Frías.

Edmundo González has completed an international journey of awareness in democratic countries. He has met with many other leaders who will hopefully tell their diplomatic representatives accredited in Venezuela to accompany him in the presidential ceremony, while María Corina Machado and her supporters have mobilized the people so that they can ratify the vote they cast on July 28.

However, we know that Maduro will not lack puppets, that he will have anti-democratic allies from Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Colombia, Brazil, Honduras and Mexico, among others, which is why freedom is in danger.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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‘I Breathe Through Memory’, Gastón Baquero’s Letters to Lydia Cabrera

The poet went into exile in the Spanish capital, and Cabrera in the United States. Both were part of a Republic that had gone down the drain.

’Slave Ship’, by Manuel Mendive (1976). / National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 28 December 2024 – How could Lydia Cabrera and Gastón Baquero speak to each other except as two Napoleonic marshals after Waterloo, or as two old gods banished by new gods? Reconstructing at least a segment of this conversation, as Ernesto Hernández Busto has done for the publishing house Betania, is not just philology: it is a profession of faith.

The presence of the exile in any era is silent. One wants to exist quietly and not attract attention. Baquero broke that myth with his correspondence and with the Creole lunches that he presided over in Madrid – “topped off with a tamarind drink” – which ended up becoming a tradition for his disciples.

The poet went into exile in the Spanish capital; and Cabrera in the United States (“a country she never really liked”). Both were part of a Republic that had gone down the drain, not only as a political project but also as a possibility. For Hernández Busto, Cabrera is “the great loner of Cuban literature.” A staunch anti-communist, what place could she have in Castro’s new order? She survived thanks to the jewels she had taken out of Cuba. continue reading

“Both lived long lives, with somewhat sad old ages, which revolved around those two poles of Cuban exile: Madrid and Miami”

“Both lived long lives, with somewhat sad old ages, which revolved around those two poles of Cuban exile: Madrid and Miami,” Hernández Busto sums up in his prologue. The originals of the Letters are among the Lydia Cabrera Papers of the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami library. The book is available for free download at this link.

In the first letter, which Hernández Busto estimates was sent around 1978, Baquero comments on the literary “perversity” that Alejo Carpentier’s The Rite of Spring represents for him . “It is the book that Castro had been demanding for a long time to consider it complete,” he says.

Between anecdotes and gossip about friends and enemies, Baquero outlines several ideas about the past. The first, about the demonization of the Republic promoted by Castroism, is precisely what Carpentier’s book does not forgive. “Scoundrelisms like this one by Alejo help Castro a lot, who justifies all his crimes by painting a country that, according to that painting, deserved to be destroyed,” he writes.

The cult of the frustrated nation takes on, in the letters, an almost religious flight

The cult of the frustrated nation takes on an almost religious dimension in the letters. “Lidia: you did very well to be born on May 20,” he says in 1982. “You are prenatal ready. You were born on the day of the birth of the Republic, and you and I know how marvelous the word Republic tastes, the Republic.”

Another idea is the distinction between the exile and the dissident. “A dissident is, for example, Carlos Franqui, he of Revolución,” he tells Cabrera that same year. “I don’t know how I would feel in that meeting with people, compatriots yes, but at a distance, who are here in Madrid and we have never met. They consider themselves the great democrats, betrayed (very late, in some cases, by the way) by the bonísimo fidelito.”

Years and years of correspondence leave unforgettable scenes and comments. Lydia and Eugenio Florit dancing a danzón; more of Carpentier’s mischief; Lorenzo García Vega’s “son of a bitch”; Nicolás Guillén’s “comemierdería*”; mutual friends, lost, quarreled or dead.

In 1978, Baquero had been in Madrid for almost 20 years, an exile that had not extinguished his “creoleness,” he warned his correspondent. That year he obtained Spanish citizenship, but he remained in the imaginary territory of the Island: “I live in memory, I breathe through memory.”

*Translator’s note: comemierdería: literally (one could say), shit-eating-ness. The dictionary offers: mediocrity, pedantry, stupidity, dipshit.

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In Sancti Spíritus, Cuba, Private Sector Proposals To Restore a 19th Century Hotel Are Rejected

The Colonial Hotel is on the verge of collapse due to local authorities

Neighbors are concerned about the poor condition of the hostel. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 28 December 2024 — With a board advertising scarce products and a table with wonky legs to sell food, the El Colonial hotel in Sancti Spíritus has more of the air of a wine cellar than a hostel. The old house, built in the 19th century, is barely standing and, although they no longer let passersby in to look at the architecture of the time, the neighbors know well what happens inside the walls: “at any moment it will collapse.”

According to Yasmany, a resident of the Parque popular council, where the building is located, the building has a long history. It went from being a residence to a secondary school, then a law firm and even a mechanic’s workshop that included a gas station. Converted into a hotel, it received thousands of clients until the 1970s, when, with the construction of the Zaza dam, the authorities decided that it would be the shelter for the workers on the construction site. It was not until the project was finished, years later, that El Colonial reopened to the public.

“Since then, the building has not recovered, either as a property of historical value or as a hostel,” explains Yasmany. Having lived near the house for thirty years, the man from Sancti Spiritus remembers the numerous times that attempts were made to give it a new lease of life. “I myself went to several gatherings that were organized, but the investment and the scope were never large enough to revive the clientele.”

“You only have to walk around the block to see the peeling back walls of the hotel.” / 14ymedio

In recent years, local authorities have lost interest in the building despite its incalculable heritage value, criticize the neighbor. “The last thing Deivy Pérez Martín, the provincial secretary of the Communist Party, did was to continue reading

order the façade to be painted when Sancti Spíritus won the venue for the 26th of July events this year,” he says.

Only a few months have passed and the building, a garish yet faded blue, looks as if it hasn’t been touched up for years. “The façade isn’t that bad, but you only have to walk around the block to see the back walls of the hotel, peeling and about to fall down. The neighbors are nervous because they know that one of these days there will be a collapse,” he says.

Yasmany laments the local government’s lack of will to preserve the building and, he claims, they will end up losing the roof and the classic structure of a house in the colony, which are very valuable. “I know at least two businessmen who have presented projects to the government to take over the house and to restore it. One of them, a friend of mine, even told me that he could take charge of all the repairs to turn it into a bar-restaurant if the State assured him that it would not be taken away from him afterwards,” he says.

The businessman even handed over the plan to the authorities, “but everything was left up in the air,” Yasmany explains. “It seems that they do not have the means to repair El Colonial, but they nor are they interested in giving it to someone who can save it.”

The establishment has been relegated to selling melted cheese and rum by the ounce. / 14ymedio

In mid-2023, the establishment received an investment to rescue the restaurant and bar areas, two of the most iconic areas of the building, but “that never bore fruit.”

As he lived in the city itself, the man from Sancti Spiritus never stayed at the hotel, but that doesn’t stop him from saying that the clientele has decreased in recent years. “Before, around this time, when the Lunas de Invierno street art and theatre festival starts, people came from other municipalities and stayed at El Colonial. It wasn’t the best in the world, but it was an affordable and comfortable hotel,” Yasmany adds. Now, as things are, almost no one rents rooms at the place.

The establishment has been relegated to selling melted cheese and rum by the ounce. “They sell other products too, depending on what they have, on a table they put at one of the gates.” Of the old El Colonial hotel, only a few doors eaten away by termites, some peeling walls and a crooked sign remain.

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Cuba Has the Third Highest Rate of Femicides in Latin America

ECLAC gives, for the first time, figures of femicides on the Island, but they are much lower than those reported by independent sources

“Violence leaves marks, ignoring them leaves femicides.” At least 3,897 women were victims of Femicides in the region in 2023 / YoSíTeCreo en Cuba

14ymedio, Havana, 22 November 2024 — The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has included Cuba for the first time in its annual report on femicides in the region. The study, published Friday, indicates that the island registered 60 murders due to male violence in 2023.

The figure, however, from “records provided by the official agencies of each country,” is much lower than those compiled by NGOs and independent media. This newspaper, in particular, reported 87 femicides in 2023, 45% more than the official figure. In any case, they are a novelty, since the Cuban government had not provided information on femicides to ECLAC until now.

With the 60 gender-based, man-committed murders reported by ECLAC, the rate of femicides per 100,000 women is 1.1 (taking into account that the commission uses 6,000,000 women to calculate the number of femicides). However, if we take the 87 verified by 14ymedio and a population, more adjusted to the latest official figures, of 5,000,000 women, the rate rises to 1.74. This is the third highest rate in the region, behind Honduras (7.2) and the Dominican Republic (2.4).

This newspaper, in particular, reported 87 femicides in 2023, 45% more than the official figure.

At a regional level, ECLAC reported that at least 3,897 women were victims of femicide in the region last year, which represents “at least 11 violent gender-related deaths every day.”

The commission explains that the majority of these deaths occurred in the context of current or terminated relationships. Out of 10 countries and continue reading

territories in Latin America and the Caribbean that provided information on the existing links between the victim and the perpetrator, it was more than 60% in eight of those countries. In the case of the island, it reported 83.3%.

Most of the victims (56.4%, that is, 404 cases) were between 30 and 59 years old; 20.3% (145 cases) were young women between 15 and 29 years old, while 3.4% (24 cases) were girls 14 years old or younger.

Likewise, seven countries – including Cuba, according to the report – also provided information on indirect victims, “defined as sons, daughters and other dependents of women victims of femicide.” A total of 488 were recorded; of these, 38 are from the island, below Argentina (205), the Dominican Republic (93), Paraguay (71) and Chile (45).

In the report, ECLAC offers comparative data for each country since 2015, except for Cuba because there are no recorded data since officially femicide did not exist in Cuba. In fact, to date, it has not been classified as a specific crime.

There are “low percentages of victims of this type of violations of rights who resort to public authorities, as well as of those who lodge complaints to have access to justice.”

In this regard, ECLAC showed that there are eight countries, besides the island, that lack systems to measure crimes of gender violence. The organization pointed out that these countries “are working on the coordination and capacity building necessary to implement integrated or single systems of administrative records for cases of gender-based violence.”

Although the commission sees “progress” in public policies to “confront the global pandemic of violence against women and girls,” it points out that “there is a large gap between the severity and persistence of the problem and the quality of the public response. It adds that there are “low percentages of victims of this type of rights violations who turn to public authorities, as well as of those who lodge complaints to access justice.”In this area, there is no data on the island.

The report calls on the governments of the region to “ double their efforts to improve recording and information systems, to increase budgetary resources to design public policies that respond comprehensively to victims and survivors, and to invest in the effective prevention of gender-based violence”.

So far in 2024, 45 femicides have been recorded in Cuba, according to the count carried out by this media. Of these, at least 37 were committed by a partner or ex-partner. Last October was the month with the highest number of cases, with seven, surpassing the number in January, when six cases were verified.

Translated by LAR

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While the Cuban Regime Announces the Release of 553 Prisoners, Sentences for Crimes of Opinion Continue

Prisoners Defenders fears that these are actually releases, but without cancellation of the sentences

Three mothers of 11J prisoners demanding their release. / Facebook

14ymedio, Madrid, 15 January 2025 — All eyes are watching to see who will be the 553 prisoners on the island who will benefit from the agreement between the Cuban regime and the Vatican to obtain, in exchange, the removal of Cuba from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism dictated by the president of the United States, Joe Biden. There is no clue as to their names for now, but neither is there any clue as to another, no less important issue: the conditions under which they will leave prison.

The organization Prisoners Defenders (PD) warns that the ambiguous vocabulary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs invites fears that there will be no liberations, but rather releases, two words that appear to be used as synonyms in the government statement, without being so. “If this were confirmed, the news would not be as positive as the Cuban regime wants to make it seem. To release, in Cuba, is not to free. In that case, some would obtain conditional freedom, others perhaps extra-penal licenses, and others a series of subsidies of sentence, including forced labor without confinement,” says a text released by the NGO after the news became known.

PD celebrates, in any case, the future release of these prisoners, but notes that this December alone there were 16 new political prisoners, as well as 58 in the last quarter, for a total of 1,801 since July 1, 2021, for a total of 880 at this time. “A total of 1,219 political prisoners have been on the list in the last 12 months, all of them tortured,” underlines the document, which regrets at the same time that, even in the impossible case that all the beneficiaries of the agreement were prisoners for political reasons, “hundreds of people would remain behind bars, imprisoned only for expressing their opinion or demonstrating.”

“A total of 1,219 political prisoners have been on the list in the last 12 months, all of them tortured”

Just hours before the agreements were made public, a new and severe sentence was announced for two young Cubans who received four and five years in prison respectively for calling on social media for a protest against the government that never even took place, but which the Santiago de Cuba court considered a crime of “propaganda against the constitutional order.” continue reading

Felix Daniel Pérez Ruiz received the longest sentence for a post on the social network Facebook in which he said – using “rude words,” according to the sentence – that he was “fed up” with the Government and called for a “demonstration against the Cuban political system.” Cristhian De Jesús Peña Aguilera shared his friend’s call on social media and will now have to serve four years in prison, while two others investigated for the same activities were acquitted.

The sentence was condemned by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, which stressed that the regime is “on the hunt for any dissent.” Its executive director, Alejandro González Raga, who was exiled to Spain in 2008 after almost five years in prison, has called for all political prisoners to be “released immediately, without any conditions of any kind and without the obligation to leave the country.”

Justicia 11J also reacted to the announcement of the releases with fear, given the doubt that they will be forced to leave the country, as happened with the majority of those belonging to the group of 75, imprisoned during the Black Spring. In that case, also mediated by the Vatican and Spain, all those who agreed to leave Cuba in 2010 were released, and a year later those who refused to leave were also released.

“We denounce the Cuban regime’s inhumane practice of using people’s bodies and dignity to obtain political and economic concessions,” wrote the NGO, which noted that the benefit obtained in exchange for Cuba’s removal from the US blacklist represents “just relief for prisoners and their families,” but does not diminish “the repressive nature of the Cuban regime, which has often re-imprisoned dissidents who do not submit to it.”

“We denounce the Cuban regime’s inhuman practice of using people’s bodies and dignity to obtain political and economic concessions”

For its part, the Council for the Democratic Transition of Cuba welcomed the release of those who “should never have been in prison,” but regretted that the human rights agenda is being subordinated “to the foreign policy of the United States.” The group advocates a general amnesty and that the “conflict” returns to its “main origin, that which exists between the Cuban government and its society.”

The Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and the Press (ICLEP) also spoke out on the matter, flatly rejecting the fact that the regime did not mention in its announcement of the releases the obvious link with the removal from the US blacklist. The NGO considers the regime’s discourse to be an “insult when presenting the gradual release of 553 political prisoners as part of the just and humanitarian nature of Cuba’s penal and penitentiary systems, when thousands of families have been separated for the simple fact of thinking differently and physical and psychological repression, lack of medical attention and murder are common in prisons.”

Specifically with regards to Biden’s decision, and on a personal level, there is division among some well-known opponents of the regime. Radically opposed points of view are held by Guillermo Coco Fariñas, who has described the measure as “a betrayal of the Cuban people and the freedom of all peoples of the world,” and Alina Bárbara López, who sees it as correct — if the releases do not translate into forced exiles — although incoherent. “If there were no reasons to include it, why was it there? The sanctions have affected the entire Cuban society, not just those responsible,” she points out in a Facebook post in which she also considers the suspension of Chapter III of the Helms-Burton Act to be positive, although she finds it “inexplicable that those people and institutions directly responsible for repression of Cuban citizens are not sanctioned.”

“It is inexplicable that those individuals and institutions directly responsible for repression of Cuban citizens are not punished.”

’11J’ prisoner Angélica Garrido, released in 2024 and with her sister Cristina still in prison, welcomed the possible releases “but they are negotiated for something that the world knows, that Cuba not only sponsors terrorism, but that Cuba exercises state terrorism against its own people.”

Ángel Moya, a former prisoner of the Black Spring and, therefore, affected by a release similar to this, also gave his opinion on both the announced releases and on Biden’s measure. “The communist regime of Cuba obtains a temporary certificate of good conduct with benefits included,” he said in conclusion. The husband of the Lady in White Berta Soler made it clear that the regime has always “taken advantage of Cuban political prisoners by using them as bargaining chips and achieving benefits.” However, he added: “except in the previous four years of the Trump government, neither the embargo nor any other measure to strengthen it worked. And if they have ever worked, it is at half speed, there are plenty of examples.”

The families of some of the prisoners most in the spotlight, such as Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, Maykel Osorbo Castillo, the father and daughter duo Felix and Saily Navarro and José Daniel Ferrer, are keeping quiet for now. Meanwhile, on social media, a group of activists has launched a campaign to accompany the publication of a photograph of a political prisoner with the hashtag #todos to promote the fact that no political prisoners remain in Cuban prisons.

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The Collision of Two Buses Leaves Three Dead and 60 Injured in the Cuban Province of Camagüey

Among the injured are seven children who were transferred to the Pediatric Hospital in the province

One of the buses was carrying workers / Television Camagüey

14ymedio/EFE, Havana, 11 January 2025 — The collision of two buses on a road in the Cuban province of Camagüey left three dead and 60 injured this Friday, according to state media reports. Among the injured were seven minors who received care in a pediatric hospital, five in the operating room and two in intermediate therapy, while the adults were attended in the provincial hospital of Camagüey, according to the local station Radio Cadena Agramonte.

Of the five adult patients initially reported as critical, one woman died in the early hours of Saturday, after emergency surgery. Georgina Barrero Gutiérrez, 49 years old, lived in the municipality of Pilón in the province of Granma, according to Dr. Rodolfo Emilio Domínguez Rosabal, director of the care center. Damaris Reyes Rodríguez, 49, from Bayamo in Granma, died later in the morning. Julio Idóneo Torres Reyes, from Havana, 56 years old, died at the scene of the accident.

“The buses involved in the accident were a Transmetro, coming from Songo La Maya, and another bus that was transporting workers,” Televisión Camagüey said on social networks. The first vehicle had left Manzanillo, in Granma, while the other was transporting employees from the keys in Camagüey. According to the preliminary analysis, the workers’ bus violated the right of way of the Transmetro bus. So far, no other details of this massive accident have been revealed, the second of its kind recorded in Camagüey since the beginning of 2025.

On January 2, another accident occurred that caused the death of one person and injured 63 others. A truck driver lost control of the vehicle when traveling on a road towards Santa Cruz del Sur, a town in the province of Camaguey. continue reading

Accidents on Cuban roads decreased by 13% in the first half of 2024

According to data published by the Island’s traffic authorities, accidents on Cuban roads decreased in the first half of 2024 by 13% (543 fewer) compared to the same period last year. The number of deaths and injuries fell by 23% and 5%, respectively.

Among the main causes of these crashes, the authorities have pointed out indisciplines such as not respecting the right of way, not keeping a distance, driving while drunk and losing control of the vehicle.

They also recognize that the poor condition of roads, traffic signs and both state and private vehicles are factors that affect accidents.

Cuba’s road network is in a poor state due to the general lack of maintenance – something that affects the pavement, signage and lighting – and most of the vehicles on the road have been in operation for 40 to 70 years.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Devoid of Tourists and Canadian Drilling Operations, Boca de Camarioca Is a Shadow of Its Former Self

Few tourists visit the town and the nearby ocean provides few benefits. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Fabio Aecio Ettore, Boca de Camarioca (Matanzas province), 11 January 2025 — When Cubans think of the town of Boca de Camarioca, what invariably comes to mind is the mass exodus orchestrated in 1965 by Fidel Castro and Lyndon Johnson, the U.S. president at the time. That stampede was the most notable precursor to the 1980 Mariel Boatlift and the 1994 Rafter Crisis that followed in future decades.

“I was very young when that happened. I was living in Camarioca though I was also spending time in Matanzas. I still remember the yachts that showed up, the people making their own boats, the gossip about who was or was not leaving. . . That lasted quite awhile,” says 75-year-old Noemí, many of whose acquaintances left when she was a teenager.

“No one from my family left. My father was in the militia and my mother saw things through his eyes. We supported the Revolution. Fidel said those who left were ’social deviants.’ As time passed, we realized that those who left had their reasons and weren’t wrong to do so,” she says.

In previous decades, its proximity to the resort town of Varadero and the Matanza coast gave Boca a certain economic advantage. Now tourists rarely visit and the ocean provides few benefits. “It isn’t even a shadow of what it used to be,” says Alfredo, whose family has fished these waters for generations. Now, faced the decline of recent years and the country’s current crisis, he has had to abandon the family business in order to survive.

Alfredo left his own boat to his sons and now wears a Cuba Petróleo uniform, working as a mechanic in the company’s nearby oil fields. “There really isn’t much left to fish in this area. And if you do happen to catch something, you have to be careful because inspectors are hiding under every rock. Working for CUPET at least gives me a steady income, though these are not the best of times either. When the Canadian [drilling company] Sherritt was operating here, things were much better for us,” he says. continue reading

In the past, Boca’s proximity to the resort town of Varadero and the Matanza coast gave it a certain economic advantage./ 14ymedio

Though Sherritt International still has the right to explore for oil along the northern coast of Cuba, it has been suspending operations at a number of wells near Camarioca. In 2023, it halted drilling in block 8A — one of the wells it was investigating – as well as in blocks 10 and 6A.

Businessman William Pitt, whose family owned several mines and valuable oil fields before Fidel Castro appropriated them in 1960, believes Sherritt met its exploration objectives in block 10 but chose not to continue working there without a partner to share the risks. In 2017, the Cuban government granted it permission – illegally, Pitt notes — to drill in Block 6A until 2045, though the company has decided not to invest there either.

Pitt points out that the 2023 production contract that Sherritt signed with state-owned Energas to drill in the Puerto Escondido-Yumurí region expired on March 20, 2023. Later that year, the Canadian company found a partner — as yet unknown — and agreed to deliver equipment to resume exploratory drilling at the well site.

The last time the public heard anything about the Camarioca wells was in March 2024, when it was learned that Great Wall, a Chinese company, had worked with Cuban technicians to open a horizontal well — the VDW1012 — that stretched 8,000 meters from land to sea. Sate media described it as a “technological breakthrough for Cuba’s petroleum industry.”

Back when times were good, Camarioca’s entrepreneurs turned their homes into short-term rentals, welcoming the hundreds of foreigners who came to Camarioca. Now, these local businesspeople are not doing well either. Things were “going gangbusters” until 2019, recalls Maite, a local woman who rents out two rooms in her house. “[But] after the pandemic, business collapsed,” she says.

With the economic decline of recent years, there are fewer fishermen to be found on the coast. / 14ymedio

“The power outages prevent us from earning a living. Even seven or eight years ago, the rent wasn’t enough. We have just one guest staying with us this week, a Canadian friend who is one of our most loyal customers. It’s for reasons like this that people sell their homes and leave the country, especially those who were able to rent to foreigners for many years and save money. It’s easier to leave for another country than to go on living with this uncertainty,” she says.

Maite continues to do everything she can to get her business back up and running but says she does not have high hopes. “I feel ashamed when a guest’s power goes out and I can’t provide a backup generator or even a rechargeable fan,” she admits.

However, she has no choice but to keep renting out rooms to whomever happens to show up. “I can’t just go somewhere else and start over from scratch, leaving behind what I spend so much effort on building,” she says.

Maite is aware that her business and others like it are not the only ones affected by Boca de Camarioca’s economic misfortunes. She knows that temporary solutions will not fix the longterm problem. “I don’t know if the townspeople will start working for CUPET or if the government will loosen restrictions on fishing and business will improve,” she says. “Who knows? Maybe even the tourists will come back. In the meantime, we ’ll be here.”

Entrepreneurs who turned their homes into short-term rentals for foreigners are not doing well either. / 14ymedio

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Cuban Activist Jorge Cervantes, Now a Forced Migrant, Is Stranded in Mexico

State Security gave the former Unpacu militant the choice between prison or exile

Cuban activist Jorge Cervantes García was banished by the Cuban regime on September 10 / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico City, 10 January 2025– Cuban activist Jorge Cervantes García, member of the Cuba Primero movement and former militant of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, longs for the Island. From a border point in Mexico, where he has been since the end of last December, he confesses to 14ymedio that he would like to return to his country, but not to “go to a punishment cell simply for the fact of thinking differently and fighting for the freedom of my people.” He misses his children, his wife and his family.

Four months ago, State Security officials went to the punishment cell in the Aguadores prison in Santiago de Cuba, where he had spent six months for an alleged crime classified as “other acts against the security of the State,” to force him into exile, he says. “Cervantes, since what you do on the streets is unbearable, you are going to receive 15 years in prison at the prosecutor’s request,” they told him. Then they gave him the choice between three years in prison or leaving the country.

After consulting with members of his movement, he concluded that “the wisest thing was to accept exile, because very little can be done from a Cuban prison to continue the fight.” The activist was taken out of his cell and escorted to Havana. “They put me on a plane bound for Guyana” on September 10, he says.

His journey, with the United States as the final goal, began in Georgetown. So far, he has crossed 10 countries: Guyana, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, where he is stranded. Despite having an “amparo” [protection], the authorities prevented him from boarding a flight to the U.S. border. The opponent clarifies that he cannot consider himself “a political exile” because he has not yet found a place that will give him refuge and legalize his stay.

The activist was taken out of his cell and escorted to Havana. “I was put on a plane bound for Guyana” on September 10, he says]

Never, in 57 years of life, did Cervantes think he would face migration. He never imagined the long and tiring walks alongside immigrants from China, India, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Africa and Cuba, “people with political, economic and religious motives.” Nor did he imagine the “heartbreaking” stories he would hear in that search for a better future and freedom. continue reading

“Mothers traumatized because their girls or boys were raped in front of them, people who died, elderly people lost in the river currents. I have seen tears in the eyes of doctors and professionals who are part of immigrant caravans and experienced horrors they never imagined,” he says.

From his personal experience, Cervantes says that migration is a phenomenon that “has no solution in sight.” The reality is “that many people are afraid to say that the governments are closely linked to mafias, with criminal organizations engaged in trafficking migrants.”

For the banished opponent, the real mafias, “the most harmful,” are “the government soldiers protected by law who arrest migrants and exploit them, humiliate them, mistreat them and take everything from them to let them pass from one place to another. From country to country you have to pay one, two, three, four times to board a plane, to take a bus. They have all their scams well organized.”

One example is the well-known travel packages advertised online, which offer to “get you out and take you” to any country. “They paint a pretty picture for you to accept and pay. They encourage you to leave by promising a safe way,” but the reality is that they’re going to assault you. “You enter a spider web” where they abandon you, he explains.

For Jorge Cervantes, the real mafias, “the most harmful,” are “the government soldiers who arrest migrants and exploit them” / 14ymedio

Cervantes remembers that in Panama, “after you pass the town of Bajo Chiquito and cross the Darién jungle, there are people who receive you and give you a little bag of food.” The activist warns that while in one place “they help you, in another they hit you.”

According to the opponent, “there are soldiers who know that you are being assaulted and do nothing, because they live off that.” The migrant is treated as “a commodity,” he says.

In the same way, he regrets that “many people talk about how to solve the problem but they don’t really want to do it,” because it’s a business, which has also brought prosperity to some remote areas.

The Cuban activist says that in Necoclí, a Colombian municipality that was practically abandoned, “there are now more than 500 prosperous businesses” because it’s a mandatory stop for irregular migrants in their transit to the United States. Another “place in the middle of nowhere” is Bajo Chiquito,” which he calls a “lost pueblo” in the Darién jungle, where foreigners “bring life, development and well-being.”

Clothed in the Cuban flag, Cervantes trusts that Donald Trump’s government will maintain a firm stance against the Cuban regime, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

The opponent, in any case, wants for Cuba what many people enjoy in free, democratic countries. “You can express yourself within being beat up or put in prison. Your children can grow up safe and sound, in schools that educate them, not indoctrinate them.” It hurts him to think of his family and fellow fighters in Cuba, who are “going hungry, with repression, harassment and death.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuban Regime Releases 553 Prisoners in Exchange for Its Exclusion From the US List of Sponsors of Terrorism

Biden announced his decision an hour before the Havana declaration, which links the releases to a negotiation with the Vatican

14ymedio, Madrid, 14 January 2025 — Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has informed the Vatican of his decision to release “553 people sanctioned in due process for various crimes contemplated by law,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported on Tuesday an hour after US President Joe Biden announced the exclusion of Cuba from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism. According to Martí Noticias, Washington’s decision was “unilateral,” but was based on the regime’s “promise” made to the Catholic Church to release those imprisoned. The Catholic Church “played an important mediating role,” said Martí Noticias.

In an official statement, the president, who will leave the White House in just six days, justifies the “rescission” of the island’s inclusion on the list based on two points: “the Government of Cuba has not provided any support to international terrorism during the preceding six months” and “has given guarantees that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future.”

The measures also include the suspension of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act and the elimination of a list of Cuban government entities that cannot do business with the United States, including ministries linked to security, companies belonging to the Armed Forces, such as Gaesa or Cimex, and dozens of state-owned hotels. In addition, the limitations on obtaining an ESTA – the tourist entry card to the United States – will no longer be in force for nationals of more than 40 countries who have been in Cuba since 2021.

The Cuban official press, contrary to its custom, has been quick to comment on the announcement. In a note published in Cubadebate, it called the list of countries “that according to them sponsor terrorism” “spurious.” It also confirmed that Biden also suspended “the ability of US citizens to sue in US courts for the expropriation of their properties in Cuba and lifted some continue reading

financial sanctions decreed by the previous Administration.”

The Cuban official press, contrary to its custom, has been quick to comment on the announcement

In any case, the measures could be repealed when Donald Trump takes office on January 20 and Marco Rubio becomes Secretary of State. The Cuban-American politician is expected to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee tomorrow, Wednesday, for his confirmation hearing and to speak about his position toward the island. Both have expressed that they will toughen the measures against Havana if it persists in violating human rights.

The announcement comes just a month after the current government decided to keep Cuba on the aforementioned list for another year, where it shares space with North Korea, Iran and Syria, countries that Washington accuses of “providing repeated support to acts of international terrorism.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken himself then reiterated that he did not foresee any change in Cuba policy before Biden left office.

Cuba was on the list – which carries a series of associated sanctions – between 1982 and 2015, when it was briefly removed by the Barack Obama administration. In 2021, then-President and now President-elect Donald Trump put Cuba back on the list just a week before leaving office.

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Cuban Prisoners Released After Negotiations Between the Regime and the Vatican

The names of those released by the Government from a group of 553 are gradually coming to light

Some of the prisoners released in Cuba on Wednesday, as part of the regime’s agreement with the Vatican. / Collage

14ymedio, Havana, 15 January 2025 — Little by little, without any official information and mainly through social media, the names of prisoners released in Cuba as part of the regime’s agreement with the Vatican that has allowed the United States to lift some of the sanctions against the island are coming to light, including its inclusion on the list of countries sponsoring terrorism , from which it was removed on Tuesday. There are 553 in total, but there are no further details about them , nor for what crimes they were convicted, nor if they are actually political prisoners.

This Wednesday, the vice president of the Supreme People’s Court, Maricela Rosa Rabelo, declared on state television that the “benefits of early release” have been given to those prosecuted for “dissimilar” crimes. She listed: “Property crimes such as theft, robbery with force. There are threats, there are injuries, there are disorders. There are also some people who were sanctioned for sedition, but sedition is not a political crime.”

The crime of sedition, for example, was the one charged to the protesters of 11 July 2021 (11J) who received the highest sentences, up to 20 years in prison (although in some cases it was later reduced).

Here are the released prisoners known so far.

Latest updates as of 15 January 2025

The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH) published a list of the first 14 prisoners released on Wednesday, “without the total magnitude of the operation being known yet,” the Madrid-based organization said. In its statement, the OCDH said that the agreement to release 553 prisoners from prison “apparently also benefits common criminals,” and stressed that the number of those sentenced for political reasons exceeds one thousand.

Some of the released prisoners have “serious health problems that have been ignored for years by the authorities,” the NGO denounces, as is the case of Reyna Yacnara Barreto Batista, released on “extra-penal leave” by the Supreme Court, with a sentence “that admits her psychiatric illness, which was ignored until Havana reached an agreement with the Vatican.”

To the list of those mentioned by this newspaper Reyna Yacnara Barreto Batista, Lisdani Rodríguez Isaac, Mailene Noguera Santiesteban, Yessica Coimbra Noriega and Rowland Castillo Castro, the OCDH adds: Dariel Cruz García , Donaida Pérez Paseiro , Liván Hernández Sosa , Katia Beirut Rodríguez , José Miguel Gómez Mondeja , Jorge Gabriel Arruebarruena León , Magdiel Rodríguez García , Rogelio Lázaro Domínguez Pérez and César Adrián Delgado Correa.

Rowland Castillo Castro. 17 years old at the time of his arrest, on July 16, 2021, for participating in the ’11J’ demonstrations in the Havana municipality of Diez de Octubre, specifically on the corner of Toyo, which gave rise to one of the most emblematic images of that day, the overturned police patrol car and a young man raising the Cuban flag. Tried in February 2022, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but ultimately served 5 years of correctional labor with internment. Both his father, Ángel Rolando Castillo Sánchez, and his mother, Yudinela Castro Pérez, have been harassed and persecuted by State Security for defending their son’s innocence and freedom.

Mailene Noguera Santiesteban and Yessica Coimbra Noriega: delegates of the Movement of Opponents for a New Republic (MONR) and the Democracy Movement (MD), as well as promoters of Cuba Decide, both mothers. Noguera Santiesteban, from Surgidero de Batabanó, Mayabeque. She was forcibly removed from her home on July 17, 2021, and was also subjected to enforced disappearance. She was serving a 6-year sentence in El Guatao, of which she had already served almost 4 years. Cohimbra Noriega was serving a 5-year prison sentence for the crimes of public disorder and two for contempt.

Lisdani Rodríguez Isaac and her sister Lisdiany Rodríguez Isaac: From Placetas, Villa Clara. Arrested on July 18, 2021 for participating in 11J. They were placed in preventive detention and accused of public disorder, contempt, instigation to commit crimes, attack and spreading epidemics. Both were sentenced to 8 years in prison. Lisdiany Rodríguez Isaac gave birth a few months ago in prison and will be released this Thursday.

Reyna Barreto Batista: Arrested at her home in Camagüey by 15 police officers on July 18, 2021, a week after participating in the massive 11J protest in her city. During the demonstration, she was attacked by three men. She was forcibly disappeared. With symptoms of Covid and under investigation, she spent 14 days in isolation. She was later released but continued to be harassed at home, as Cubalex reported at the time. At trial, she was sentenced to 4 years of correctional labor with confinement for the crime of attack and public disorder, which she was serving at the Granja 5 center.

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