Translating Cuba – Page 127 – English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island

San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba, From ‘Humor’ to ‘Horror’

The passage of Hurricane Rafael through Artemisa and other western provinces fueled the desperation of Cubans where the ’11J’ protests broke out in 2021

The shortage of liquefied gas, prolonged power outages and a considerable increase in the cost of living are the problems that most torment the people of Ariguana. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Yankiel Gutierrez Faife, San Antonio de Los Baños, 8 December 2024 — The protest of 11 July 2021 is still fresh in the memory of San Antonio de los Baños, in the province of Artemisa. It was a desperate cry in the face of an accumulation of problems that still remain unresolved. The inhabitants of what was once the “Villa del Humor” – the title is no small thing in such a guarachero country – can now only list their sorrows.

Founded by emigrants from the Canary Islands, San Antonio was home to or exhibited the work of cartoonists such as Eduardo Abela and René de la Nuez. The Museo del Humor Gráfico, founded in 1948, a Biennial of Humor held since 1979, and the Escuela de Cine y Televisión, which still enjoys a certain prestige abroad, bear witness to better times.

Real life, however, is different. The 50,000 or so Ariguanabenses who still live there have ridiculed the old name and replaced it with a new one, Villa del Horror, more in keeping with the ruined buildings, the deserted streets and the mournful expression of its inhabitants.

In the markets of San Antonio, the price of food has skyrocketed, reaching figures that some consider unthinkable. / 14ymedio

Tania, a teacher from the village, has put together a brief chronology of the disaster: during the Special Period, conditions were very difficult, between blackouts and the cessation of nightlife and culture; from the year 2000 there was a truce; but after the pandemic we have “seen and experienced things like never before.”

These are not problems that the rest of Cuba is unaware of, but the passage of Hurricane Rafael through Artemisa and other western provinces has fueled the desperation of the people in the town. The cyclone ripped off roofs, left streets flooded and many facilities in disrepair. Many homes have hit rock bottom.

Delia, a 52-year-old housewife, knows this well. She sees a procession of neighbours carrying buckets of water from the Ariguanabo River every day. “Getting a water truck costs 2,500* pesos, and I don’t have the money to continue reading

buy two trucks a week. So, when there’s no other option, I go to wash clothes in the river too,” she says, pointing to the series of wet clothes hanging from a clothesline in her yard.

The nearly 50,000 Ariguanabenses who live there have still ridiculed the old title and replaced it with a new one, Villa del Horror. / 14ymedio

Delia has been hunting for a gas cylinder for four months. She is on an endless list whose basic characteristic is always having more applicants than cylinders. There is the black market, where a tank costs around 32,000 pesos or – if the metal container is provided – around 12,000. “There are other alternatives that are just as bad for the pocket: oil and coal stoves. Getting one is, in addition to being expensive, an odyssey,” she says.

Delia’s father listens to the conversation. In the past, the woman liked to cook the old man’s favourite dishes without worrying about the cost of the food and its preparation. The father’s meager pension allows him to buy “some fuel.” “Sometimes I just can’t cook,” she exclaims, making sure that two neighbors passing by her door can hear her.

Her mornings have become a search for coal, which has become unaffordable. “At the La Salud store, my husband got it a little cheaper, but even so, 1,000 pesos is a lot when the rest of the food is also so expensive,” she confesses.

Luisa, a single mother of two, divides her time between looking after her family and looking for some gas to cook with. “Sometimes, when I feel cornered, I have had to turn to my neighbors to be able to prepare food for my children,” complains Luisa. “The neighbor has often given me some coal that they buy, and with that I have been able to cook when I don’t have time to get ahead and the electricity is cut off.”

“The sick need a special diet and children need adequate food,” lament the residents of San Antonio. / 14ymedio

“The sick need a special diet and the children need the right food for their growth and development. I can’t give them that,” she adds. “Sometimes I can only offer them rice with some broth because we can’t eat beans every day. I can barely find legumes, everything has gone up in price and I don’t have money to buy more,” she laments, while her children play in the street.

In the markets of San Antonio, the price of food has skyrocketed, reaching figures that some consider unthinkable. “Rice is 180 pesos per pound; beans are 300; a pound of malanga is 120; a pound of tomatoes is 1,000 pesos. A liter of milk is 150; sugar is 500. I can only buy the basics and sometimes I find myself in a tight spot,” says Luisa, who leaves her house with a small gas canister in a small cart.

As if the desperation were not enough, the long blackouts add insult to injury. “There are five hours without electricity and then five with electricity. During that time, life here stops. The shop assistants take their chairs out to the entrance and the bank workers go for a walk and chat in the park. People are out on the streets, but there is no joy, only frustration,” explains Jorge, a young man who used to work in commerce. Now he sits with his friends in any public space and, to mitigate the desolation, they tell jokes.

Like any town in Cuba, the migratory stampede is also part of the landscape.

“A sack of coal has come to cost up to 2,000 pesos and there are days when one of those trucks enters the town loaded with coal and, in just 30 minutes, everything is sold. This cannot be sustained,” says Pedro, 68 years old.

Like any town in Cuba, the migratory stampede is also part of the landscape. “My brother left for the United States six months ago and, although he tries to help us from there, the situation here gets worse every day,” says Ana, who, tired of waiting for the electricity to come on, sits outside the Credit and Commerce Bank – still closed – to see if she can get the 3,000 pesos that they allow tp be withdrawn.

Around Ana, several women comment on how things are still the same three years after the protests. Blackouts, misery, people who have left the country, families that have been divided in search of a better future. “People took to the streets because this is not the country we want,” says Dariana, a young student. As things stand in San Antonio de los Baños, another ’11J’ could happen tomorrow.

*Translator’s note: Minimum and average salaries in Cuba fluctuate and accurate current data is hard to come by. One set of reference numbers for 2024 is presented here.

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One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Not Released in Macondo

The Cuba of flesh and blood is very far from what Carpentier called the “real maravilloso”

Presentation of the series in the Taganana room of the Hotel Nacional de Cuba. / Capture

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 8 December 2024 — The Cuban bureaucracy has celebrated with great fanfare that the adaptation of García Márquez’s masterpiece had its “world premiere” in Havana, before it was on Netflix. Perhaps the ICAIC [Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry] officials did not get the producers’ sarcasm. It sounded great, from the point of view of capitalist marketing, to announce that this audiovisual product had its premiere in the most absurd and dystopian place on the continent. Cuba is the Latin American country where, many years later, people still run the risk of ending up in front of a firing squad. Cuba is the dark corner of the world where children may no longer know what ice is, due to perpetual blackouts.

However, the premiere was not in Havana. On December 4, Brussels had already witnessed a special screening of the first chapter and a discussion. Two days earlier, in Mexico City, a similar event had taken place with a cocktail party, panels and talks. Anyone who knows Alexis Triana, the current president of the ICAIC, knows well that he would be capable of disguising some filmmaker as an Eskimo to inflate his festivals and announce the presence of Inuit cinema on the Island.

One of the attendees at the Havana screening, according to Radio Rebelde, said excitedly upon leaving the Yara cinema: “I was left wanting more, I have to look for the rest of the series.” Obviously he was not referring to looking for it on the famous streaming service, since only a tiny minority of Cubans have the luxury of accessing that platform. He was surely referring to getting a pirated copy on El Paquete [’The Packet’], our local Netflix. The advertising spot itself for this 45th International Festival of New Latin American Cinema pays a very unsubtle tribute to piracy, saturated with what Abel Prieto calls “cultural colonization.”

García Márquez’s novel is one of the best examples of magical realism, without a doubt.

García Márquez’s novel is one of the best examples of magical realism, without a doubt. But the Cuba of flesh and blood is very far from what Carpentier called the ‘real maravilloso’. It is rather a reality that frightens, horrifies, disillusions, depresses. One would have to be very sick to continue continue reading

romanticizing the misery and oppression suffered by the overwhelming majority of Cubans. One would have to make a very toxic reading of love, to continue believing that in Cuba the ones who govern are “those who love and build” or that “the country advances.” That land, (beautiful, yes) where many of us were born, but from which millions of us had to escape, suffers the plagues of insomnia and oblivion in a more brutal way than those suffered by the people of Macondo. And still no alchemist has appeared who can find a remedy.

In the Macondo-like Cuba, the government is not governed by a Buendía*, but by a puppet with the last name Díaz-Canel. This reserve lieutenant colonel, who achieved his military ranks God knows how, is far from possessing the gift of clairvoyance. On the contrary, the subject is the favorite son of impudence and bad luck. He is also the most gifted student in the subject of “making a mistake” that is effusively taught in the Party school. We also do not know if he has a pig’s tail, we are not interested in investigating those parts. What we do know is that there are many other characteristics that he shares with the quadruped to which his loyal singers of Buena Fe awarded the title of “national mammal.”

The oldest dictatorship on the continent has already existed for more than half a century, although we hope it does not reach 100.

The oldest dictatorship on the continent has already existed for more than half a century, although we hope it does not reach 100 years… of solitude. According to the saying, there is no evil that can last so long. Borges’ anecdote is well-known when he said that García Márquez’s novel was good, but that fifty years would have been enough.

On the other hand, the novel that Fidel Castro imposed on us as reality has become a soap opera that is impossible to praise, unless bad taste dominates us. It has already been more than six decades of crisis, exoduses, prisons, mediocrity and death. The thread of blood that the patriarch left us runs through, not just a town, but an entire country, and extends beyond borders. The crazed old man ended his days tied to a chestnut tree, in the courtyard of history, reflecting with the ghosts of his enemies.

Rivers of ink will flow talking, good or bad, about the Netflix series. Although it is very likely that it will not satisfy a good part of the general public. Gabo himself refused during his lifetime to have the apple of his eye adapted to the cinema. He himself said: “I prefer that my readers continue to imagine my characters as their uncles and my friends, and not that they remain totally conditioned by what they saw on screen.” Beyond the possible success or failure of the Netflix series, what no one doubts is the desperation of a regime that is dying, capable of inventing premieres to raise the morale of the troops and elevate the chauvinist ego. The Castro apparatus should read the end of Gabo’s novel very carefully, to understand how the lineages condemned to a hundred years of solitude end up.

*Translator’s note: The Buendía family are the fictional founders of Macondo, the South American town that is the setting of the novel ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’.

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Cuba’s Pre-University Students Are Mobilized To Detect ‘Illegalities in the Self-Employed Sector’

Police found 168 boxes of Occidental Rum, from a state-owned company, diverted to the black market

The young people accompany the inspectors who control the prices. / X/GladysLaCubana

14ymedio, Havana, 6 December 2024 — Private businesses are the main target of the persecution by inspectors in the “national exercise against crime and illegalities,” but they also do not escape cases of corruption in state entities, such as the Occidental Rum, in Havana, where several employees ended up “sanctioned” and “removed from the center.”

According to the Cuban Television news program, which offers only superficial information, it was discovered that “the alleged perpetrators” were diverting bottles of rum, marking them as waste in the registers. “Days ago, the authorities seized 168 boxes of Legendario rum in a house in San Miguel del Padrón. Destination: the black market,” the media explains.

From that point on, the information lacks relevant details, such as the positions held by those involved or what kind of measures will be taken against them. “In addition to being under police investigation, those involved received heavy administrative sanctions including dismissal from the center,” is all that is clarified.

The “control” has not gone down well with citizens, even less with those who have businesses and investments to protect.

The rest is the usual voluntarism* approach of state entities, which is based solely on the time and disposition of workers: strengthening “the workers’ guard,” applying “surprise checks” or improving “the prevention plan.” In an attempt to clean up their reputation, the authorities of the rum factory also promised to “produce a bottle of refined rum for each of the more than 700,000 Havana families by the end of the year.” continue reading

The “control” has not gone down well with citizens, and even less with those who have businesses and investments to protect, who are increasingly surrounded by laws and distrust of the government. At the end of the year, the authorities have launched a campaign to collect millions of pesos in fines and hold exemplary trials such as the one last Wednesday in Guantanamo, where four state workers were sentenced to one year in prison for diverting food.

In Ciego de Ávila, students from three pre-university schools and other higher institutes were even called upon. They are divided into groups made up of inspectors and students and are in charge of verifying that the merchants have their prices up to date and within the legal limits. According to the applause of the provincial media Invasor, which forgets that the students are close to midterm exams, the group of adolescents contributes “to confronting speculative prices and other illegalities detected in the self-employed sector.”

The authorities have also carried out nightly “operations” in “specific food trafficking scenarios in the territory.” In one raid alone on 15 food stalls in the early hours of Wednesday morning, 72,000 pesos were collected in fines.

This week, inspectors sanctioned many of the informal vendors who proliferate in the EJT [Youth Labor Army] market. / 14ymedio

According to 14ymedio, a similar operation took place this week at the Youth Labor Army market on Tulipán Street in Nuevo Vedado (Havana). The hunt ended with the authorities sanctioning many of the informal vendors who proliferate outside the market and sell everything from matchsticks and bags to onions and eggs.

In contrast, in Sancti Spíritus, where this newspaper reported the closure of several private businesses due to the persecution of inspectors, the leaders are not satisfied. “Even though there are tangible results in confronting negative behavior, we are still far from what we should achieve,” concluded Deivy Pérez Martín, first secretary of the Communist Party in the province.

The principle problem in the territory, however, is not the illegalities. “Sancti Spíritus shows a deficit of 150 million pesos, which are needed to close the year with a surplus. Although the Onat [National Tax Administration Office] has managed to collect some 30 million pesos from taxpayers, there are still another 35 million waiting for defaulters to pay their debts at the corresponding bank branches,” explains Escambray.

The media believes that, “even if it is a bit too finalistic,” it is necessary to provide solutions to the “irregularities” detected. “Therefore, the authorities and the organizations involved, all of them, together with the people, have to take part not only for one week but every day of the year in the fight against crimes, corruption, illegalities and social indiscipline,” which, in the words of Escambray, “is a lot to cover.”

*Translator’s note: Relying on voluntary action.

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Opposition Leader Manuel Cuesta Morúa Released in Cuba After Seven Hours of Arrest

Cuesta Morúa had alerted his closest circle the day before that State Security was watching outside his home

The opposition is an uncomfortable figure for the regime because of his method of dissenting through official channels. / EFE

EFE (via 14ymedio), Madrid, 1 December 2024 — Cuban opposition leader Manuel Cuesta Morúa was released on Saturday in Havana after being detained for about seven hours. The arrest took place mid-morning in the vicinity of his home and after the dissident alerted his closest circle that he had been under surveillance outside his home by Cuban security forces since the day before.

Several human rights organizations and NGOs had denounced the arrest and said they were unaware of the motive – although it could be a “preventive” arrest prior to December 10, Human Rights Day – or the whereabouts of Cuesta Morúa. Dissident sources said, however, that they had no record of other arrests in the diminished opposition group on the island.

The NGO Cubalex, for its part, “called on the international community to keep its attention on human rights violations in Cuba” by denouncing the dissident’s arrest. continue reading

Cuesta Morúa recently filed an appeal with the Supreme Court to request the release of José Daniel Ferrer

Cuesta Morúa recently filed a habeas corpus petition with the Cuban Supreme Court to request the immediate release of opposition leader José Daniel Ferrer, an initiative that has so far received no official response. The appeal was filed shortly after Ferrer’s family reported that the prisoner held for political reasons had received a “brutal beating” from staff at the Mar Verde prison (Santiago de Cuba), where he has been held since July 11, 2021.

Cuesta Morúa is an uncomfortable figure for the regime because of his method of dissenting through official channels. At the beginning of the year, Parliament rejected a petition to process an amnesty law that was promoted by dozens of relatives of political prisoners. From that request, which the National Assembly classified as “inappropriate,” a broad debate arose on the relevance or not of appealing to the Cuban regime’s own laws to promote change on the Island. In an interview given to 14ymedio, the activist said that “dictatorships are possible only if they institutionalize all social life. They are also obliged to incorporate the language and certain democratic tools,” which citizens must take advantage of.

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Lines, Curiosity and Even Tears: Cubans Experience the Series ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’

The audience was mostly Cuban and foreign university students.

The initial episodes of the miniseries were shown at 8:00 and 10:00 p.m. / 14ymedio

14ymedio/EFE, Havana, 7 December 2024 — For one night, Havana stopped being a city of old people and beggars to show off its youth. The reason: the screening, this Friday, of the first two episodes of One Hundred Years of Solitude, the miniseries recently produced by Netflix based on the novel by Gabriel García Márquez. To watch, dozens of young Cubans and foreigners came to the Yara cinema.

Amidst the sea of people, Sofia Morales, a medical student from Valle del Cauca, Colombia, waits as she weaves through the crowd and anxiously asks how she can get a ticket to see the screening. The young woman has arrived too early. The first showing, at 8:00 p.m., is intended for movie-goers with invitations to the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana, which runs from Thursday through December 15. A much later showing, at 10:00 p.m., has been reserved for the general public.

Morales, who has been in Cuba for two years now, is willing to do anything to watch on the screen one of the books that left the greatest impression on her. “Either I dare to let my imagination run wild with everything I read in the book or I dare to watch the series and have it change my view of everything García Márquez wrote,” she says.

Like her, most of the audience are university students, whether Latin American, African or from other continents; or from the Island, like Adiel and her friends, who test the atmosphere to try to get in. “We found out later that it was by invitation, but we are just curious,” she says.

Minutes later, Morales, against all odds, finds a seat in the first showing with her Palestinian-American boyfriend, with whom she wants to share García Márquez’s work because “it expresses everything that Colombia is: the classes, the people, but in a different way.” continue reading

The lights go out in the room and there is total silence. It is at that moment that a phrase resounds, causing more than one person to stop solemnly and applaud, while others simply shed tears: “Many years later, facing the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

Outside, in the theater’s entrance, many people wait until the 10:00 screening begins, and the crowd contrasts with the empty lobby of a few hours earlier, when people were gathered in lines at the cashiers at 23rd and N. Two puny palm trees wrapped in garlands try to give a Christmas atmosphere to the Yara, which, along with the rest of the venues designated for the Festival’s activities, is an oasis of light in a country besieged by blackouts.

Dozens of people went to the cinema to try to see ’One Hundred Years of Solitude’. / 14ymedio

The premiere of the One Hundred Years of Solitude series was the main event of the second day of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana. Netflix, whose products reach Cubans mainly through pirated films, plans to premiere this miniseries worldwide on December 9 in Bogotá.

García Márquez (1927-2014) was a figure closely linked to Cuba and its cinema for years. Among other things, he presided over the New Latin American Cinema Foundation, an organization based in Havana. His friendship with Fidel Castro, of whom he was a staunch supporter, put him at the center of dozens of controversies.

On Belascoaín Street, between Malecón San and Lázaro, the film ’The Horn of Plenty’ is being screened. A few spectators gather around, attracted by the tables and a food stand. / 14ymedio

The writer played an important diplomatic role in the service of the regime and was a key figure in the exchange of prisoners and people of interest to Castroism. Despite this, finding his books in recent editions is an impossible task in the country where, for decades, he had a protocol mansion assigned to his family.

The main movie theaters in the Cuban capital will screen the 110 films – 89 fewer than last year – in competition for ten days from 42 countries such as Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, Spain and the Island itself. The Havana Festival was founded on 3 December 1979, conceived in imitation of the festivals of Viña del Mar (1967 and 1969), Mérida (1968 and 1977) and Caracas (1974).

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Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Eliminates the Exception That Allowed Cubans To Return to the Country With an Expired Passport

From April 1, 2025, Cubans returning to the island will need to have the updated document

The cost of the passport is 2,500 pesos in the offices of the Island / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Havana, 6 December 2024 — Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported on Friday that, starting April 1 of next year, Cubans living abroad will need a valid passport to enter the country, thus eliminating an exceptional measure in force since the coronavirus pandemic that allowed entry even with an outdated document.

The statement, signed by the Director General of Consular Affairs and Assistance to Cubans Living Abroad, Ana Teresita González, clarifies that entry with an expired passport may be made until the last day of March.

The text states that consular offices abroad “are fully prepared and capable of providing this service, with the speed required, so that Cubans can enter the country with their valid passport as of April 1, 2025.”

The announcement revokes a temporary measure taken in 2020, in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The announcement revokes a temporary measure taken in 2020, in the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic, which allowed Cubans residing in other countries to enter the island with their expired passports. The exception included extending the time Cuban citizens could stay abroad beyond the 24 months officially provided for by law, without losing their residency in Cuba. continue reading

The measure announced on Friday comes just a few months after the approval of the new Immigration Law , a law that – together with the Immigration and Citizenship Laws – aims to “design procedures” for Cubans leaving the Island and also to control the “increase in the number and diversity of migratory irregularities involving foreigners.”

The measure announced this Friday comes a few months after the approval of the new Migration Law.

The law also provides that Cubans living abroad can keep their properties on the island, even if they have spent more than two years away. Those who spend more than 24 consecutive months without returning to Cuba will no longer be called “emigrants,” and those who spend “most of their time in the national territory” will be called “effective residents.”

The Cuban passport, one of the most expensive in the world at a cost of 180 dollars or euros when issued abroad and 2,500 pesos in the island’s offices, will be valid for 10 years, instead of the previous six years as of July 1, 2023. At that time, the need to extend the validity of the document every two years was also suspended, and the cost of issuing it – which previously varied depending on the country where it was requested – was fixed.

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Villa Clara’s Farmers Refuse to Deliver Milk to the Cuban State Because of the ‘Worst Contracts’

The annual plan, which was at 57% until the beginning of November, will not be fulfilled in 2024

The government blames the ranchers for the non-compliance. / Cubadebate

14ymedio, Havana, 6 December 2024 — Milk production in Villa Clara remains at rock bottom. From January to mid-November of this year, the industry in the province barely reached 57% of the annual plan, some 19,687,000 liters. The deficit is an amount “difficult to overcome in the remainder of the year,” says an article in the local newspaper Vanguardia, which blames the low production on the cattle breeders.

As has become customary for the government, the newspaper attacks producers, accusing them of seeking higher profits in the informal market, undermining state production. It also points out that “many breeders aim to exceed their sales commitments, while others violate them. There are plenty of examples.”

“There are producers who have accumulated months without daily deliveries to meet the contracted plans,” explains Vanguardia, which insists that many cattle farmers “blame administrative mismanagement, even poor contracts and even inefficient calculations of lactation periods” to justify low production. continue reading

“There are producers with accumulated months without daily collections to meet the contracted schedules”

Other secondary causes, the newspaper says, are “fines, forced purchases, termination of usufruct [contracts] in areas under exploitation, confiscations, administrative measures and cold periods in which cows give less milk,” as well as the diversion of feed to the informal market.

Regarding the storage of milk in some areas of the province, 14ymedio published last October that in the municipality of Camajuaní an old house was used to refrigerate the product. The measure, which on paper seems positive to help the cattle farmers, actually seeks to prevent the illegal sale of the product in Villa Clara. To delay the delivery of the milk in that town, the farmers claimed that there were no appropriate conditions for preservation, since they had to transport the milk more than four kilometers to take it to a cooling chamber.

Producers, however, know that they can make more profits ‘on the left’ [under the table], even if that means risking fines or losing their animals. The maximum the state pays is 38 pesos for each litre of milk in excess of the basic plan, while on the informal market it reaches 80 pesos.

Vanguardia, with a sense of hope, highlights that, on the other hand, “there are municipalities where ranchers show their faces to display their smiles.”

Last year the province failed to collect 21 million liters

“After fulfilling their annual contracts, and despite late payments due to exceeding compliance, [those ranchers] still continue with habitual milk collections,” says the media, which just a few lines below returns to the attack against the “other” producers: “Some, after reaching their commitment, even without achieving it, turn a blind eye and put up objections… There are always those ones and the others…” it assures.

The weak milk supply in Villa Clara is nothing new. Last year, the province lost 21 million liters.

As if that were not enough, the figures are plummeting. Last October, 60,000 liters of milk were collected daily in Villa Clara, just 40% of what was collected a year earlier, when the average was 150,000. According to the State, the cattle farmers had accumulated a debt of more than 10 million liters last month, an amount that continued to increase, according to official journalist Jesús Álvarez López, reporter for the provincial radio station CMHW, which – in an article titled ‘Merchants of disorder’ also in the milk – attacked the producers and those who participate in the informal market.

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As of September, Cuba Has Invested Much More in Hotels Than in Agriculture, Education and Health

The budget for hotel construction is a subject of controversy in Cuba due to the serious crisis on the island

Several workers carry out construction work at a hotel on Aguacate and O’Reilly in Old Havana / 14ymedio

EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 7 December 2024 — Between January and September Cuba invested 4.6 times more in business services, real estate and rental activities – which includes the construction of hotels – than in the total for Agriculture, Education and Health, according to the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) published this Friday and reviewed by EFE.

If investments are divided by segments, the Business Services, Real Estate and Rental Activities section accounted for 26.6% of the total investment executed from January to September, which reached 64,973.3 million pesos (2.707 billion dollars, at the official exchange rate for the State).

The budget allocated to hotel construction is a subject of controversy in Cuba due to the serious crisis that the island is experiencing and the difficulties that the tourism sector is facing in recovering the pre-pandemic visitor levels.

As of October, Cuba had received 1.8 million international travelers, 6.5% less than in the same period in 2023. In 2018 and 2019, the annual figure ranged between 4.2 and 4.6 million foreign tourists. continue reading

As of September, the Island allocated a total of 17.311.4 billion pesos to the section of Business Services, Real Estate and Rental Activities

Independent economists, most of whom live abroad, have criticized the high level of state investment in the hotel sector to the detriment of other strategic areas, such as agriculture, where production is at a minimum.

The Cuban government, however, continues to bet on tourism as the driving force of the country’s economy. In previous years, it had been one of the main sources of income and foreign currency, along with professional services and remittances.

In 2023, Cuba’s gross domestic product (GDP) registered a fall of 1.9%, according to official data, and the Cuban government has already announced that the national economy will also fail to grow this year.

In absolute terms, the island allocated a total of 17.311 billion pesos (about 721.3 million dollars) to the business services, real estate and rental activities section as of September.

This figure contrasts with the 1.829 billion pesos (76 million dollars) in Agriculture; the 1.205 billion pesos (50.2 million dollars) in Public Health and the 671.3 million (27.9 million dollars) in Education. Relative to these areas, the expenditures on tourism were 9, 14 and 26 times higher, respectively.

In the first half of the year, Cuba increased investment in hotels and restaurants by 112% annually – more than doubling the previous figure – while it decreased investments by more than 20% in education, construction and public administration, according to Onei.

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With No Elevators Serving Its Seventeen Floors, the Girón Building Has Become a Prison for Its Occupants

The 132-apartment colossus was a symbol of modernity when it opened in 1967 on Havana’s seafront

The Girón Building sits next to the luxurious Grand Aston Hotel in Havana’s Vedado District. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Pedro Espinosa, Havana, 2 December 2024 — With ocean views and one of the best locations Havana’s Vedado district — the luxurious Grand Aston hotel sits beside it — the Girón Building might seem like a dream home. However, the two-block, seventeen-floor building is more like a run-down tenement where residents worry about a dilapidated staircase, broken elevators and a deteriorating infrastructure.

Anyone entering the enormous building, located on the Malecón between E and F streets, will quickly realize that its problems are much more than skin deep. The stairway’s rusted handrails offer a hint of what’s to come. “Don’t touch that!” a woman warns an absent-minded boy who had been holding onto the fragile railing.

Climbing each floor takes courage. As one begins ascending block 2, steel rebars become visible through the stair’s broken concrete, which has been battered by the salty sea air. Reaching the landing does not calm the nerves. If anything, it makes them worse. Instead of discreetly located teller windows with electronic cash registers, one finds square openings blackened by soot, the traces of a recent fire.

In June, a fire in an apartment on one of the upper floors affected the building’s electrical system. / 14ymedio

The flames, which began in an apartment on one of the upper floors, affected the building’s electrical system. Since then, the only elevator that was still working has been out of service. “From that day on, my mother has not been able to go outside,” says a young man carrying a bag full of yucca and pumpkins as he paused to catch his breath on the sixth floor before continuing on to the eleventh.

“I think they’re waiting for the whole thing to fall down and bury us all so they can build a hotel on the site,” said a man who, along with other building residents, has been complaining non-stop about the modern ruin that has become what was once a daring architectural project and a social experiment built according to futuristic, communist city planning principles. continue reading

“I was born here so this is what I know,” says one resident who has watched his neighbors leave. “Some people realized what was to come before it was too late, left in the 1990s and moved to other neighborhoods. There were those who took longer but, when home sales became legal, left their apartments before they collapsed on top of them. Then, of course, there are the nitwits like us who stayed.”

Since then, the only elevator that was still working has been out of service. / 14ymedio

For decades, as the crumbled and the iconic parasols surrounding the structure cracked on all sides, many of the original residents held out hope that the state would implement a comprehensive repair program. “Letters were mailed and letters came back. We became experts at writing to ministries, officials and the National Assembly, but it was all just for fun,” he says.

Alongside the staircase, residents have nailed boards over narrow columns that once allowed the sea breezes to pass through the building. But with chunks of them falling off, they now pose a danger to small children and pets, who could slip through the spaces between them. “You don’t have to be very thin to fall through because the gaps are getting wider and wider,” the young man points out.

The 132 apartments have been depreciating in value as the building that houses them becomes ever more uninhabitable. What little light illuminating the stairway at night comes from an open doorway. Early in the evening, residents lock themselves behind metal bars. “Anything could happen,” says Raiza of the common areas. She moved to the building as a child when her father, a high-ranking official, was given a home in “El Girón.”

“You don’t have to be very thin to fall through because the gaps are getting wider and wider”. / 14ymedio

“I remember how it was back then. Everything was new; everything was beautiful. When I told my friends from Cerro — the neighborhood where I was born — where I was living, they were drooling,” she says, recalling the early days after the building first opened in 1967. Designed by Cuban architect Antonio Quintana, it was built using a the sliding mold system. It was seen as a precursor of the bright future that was to fill Cuban cities with skyscrapers, bridges and modernity.

“The first residents formed a tight-knit community. The CDR* folks were here every day. Volunteer work was organized and families themselves kept things looking nice,” Raiza says beaming. She believes that the building’s abrupt decline was due to the lack of resources brought on by the Special Period. “It needed a helping hand because it was already more than twenty years old when that crisis began. But what happened in the 1990s was the final blow.”

“People started cooking with wood, even in the stairways. There wasn’t a single lightbulb in the hallways because they had all been stolen,” Raiza says, adding that pigs squealing inside the apartments became part of the building’s soundtrack. Efforts to obtain building materials or find a government work crew to make repairs ran headlong into the reality that subsidies from the Soviet Union had been cut off.

Residents have nailed boards over narrow columns that once allowed the sea breezes to pass through the building but which now pose a threat to small children and pets. / 14ymedio

“We should have moved somewhere else back then but my father was very fond of this place and the truth is the view of the sea is very nice from our apartment on the twelfth floor” she admits. “It’s the only thing we have, seeing the horizon morning, noon and night, because right now my father can’t go anywhere. He’s locked up here because there are no elevators.”

In a desperate attempt to garner attention, resident sent another complaint to Facebook administrators this week about the poor condition of the building and its broken elevators. Within minutes, hundreds of users commented the post, adding more details of the drama that is taking place within the walls of this former jewel of revolutionary architecture. But no description can capture the fear that comes from climbing the stairs, listening to the anecdotes of its residents and peering into the abyss between the gaps in the façade.

“For sale” signs have been taped to some of the doors of the 132 apartments that make up the two blocks of the giant edifice. Those who manage to get far enough inside to read one of them know they are not looking at an attractive home in the centrally located neighborhood of Vedado, situated just a few yards from the sea waves. What they will will find, if anything, is a property whose lifespan may be shorter than that of Cuban communism’s New Man, whom the Girón Building was built to house.

*Translator’s note: Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, a network of neighborhood committees across Cuba described as the “eyes and ears of the Revolution.” Their intended purpose was to support local communities and report on “counter-revolutionary” activity.

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To Have Internet Despite Etecsa, Cubans Need a Bamboo Cane and 10 Meters of Cable

Cuban antennas are made of aluminum and plastic, and have become the queens of rooftops.

Next to one of Etecsa’s tower-antennas, the homemade devices look a bit pathetic.

14ymedio, Miguel García, Holguín, 3 December 2024. At first glance, they look like gadgets from a science fiction movie. Made from aluminum and plastic pieces and perched on top of a long bamboo pole, these antennas for amplifying 4G signal have become the queens of the rooftops in Cuba. Born of scarcity and ingenuity, they are the stars of the latest chapter in the Cuban fight against Etecsa, the communications monopoly on the Island.

Walking around Holguin in search of an antenna can, in fact, become a plot out of Star Wars or Dune. The setting is a planet in ruins: ramshackle buildings, oppressive heat and unfriendly faces. When you finally get – by way of acquaintances and contacts – the details of an “inventor”, you have to pay between 4,500 and 5,000 pesos to take home the gadget along with its cable.

You have no choice. No antenna means no internet, and no internet means no entertainment. The weight of reality without that little six-inch screen – a portal to entire galaxies of escape – is too suffocating. If the antenna is effective, the mental anesthesia is greater.

Getting the device in parts is another adventure. The coaxial cable costs 110 pesos a meter and it takes quite a bit of height -about 10 meters, if you add a house and the almost three meters of the rod- to get an improved signal. The pole, a long bamboo cane or a branch similar to the one used to cut guavas in backyards, can be obtained in one of the fields near the city. continue reading

Coaxial cable costs 110 pesos a meter and it takes a lot of height to get a better signal / 14ymedio

Next to one of Etecsa’s antenna-towers, the home-made devices look a little pitiful. But what they lack in technology they make up in numbers: most neighbourhoods have two or three of these stakes, with the device on top: a shaft with small circular brass attachments, pointing to the source of the signal. In theory, although antenna manufacturing is not an exact science, it works.

The Cubans raising their antennas today are the successors of those who, until very recently, painstakingly sanded aluminum tubes, made a booster and hoisted heavy devices to pick up U.S. television. Many did not even understand English, but that succession of commercials, talk shows and car dealership ads was enough to thrill anyone who looked at the Panda’s screen.

There were plenty of “radio aficionado” groups, who took advantage of a kind of state-sanctioned loophole to traffic in cables and parts under the guise of being radio enthusiasts. Adapted to the times they live in, Cubans now form “antenna groups” on WhatsApp or Facebook, where, like in space taverns, they share ideas and tricks to perfect their inventions.

What happens in Holguín happens everywhere in Cuba. Even if the coverage is on the ground, if you place the phone on the attachment connected to the antenna -a rustic base with a small metal contact-the cell phone acquires superpowers. Or at least the Cuban equivalent of a superpower: having Internet despite Etecsa.

Translated by GH

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Censorship Erases the Desire for Freedom Written by Cubans in the Work of the German Martin Steinert

A hand has crossed out “Long live Cuba without communism” on the monumental ’Wooden Cloud’ installed in the Plaza Vieja in Havana

The lower and middle part of the cloud is almost entirely painted with anxieties and expectations. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Pedro Espinosa, Havana, 23 November 2024 — At first glance it looks like a nest, from other angles it resembles an ark and there are those who see it as a mass of boards taken from the many supports that prop up the city’s doorways and balconies. The installation Nube de madera [Wooden Cloud], by the German sculptor Martin Steinert, is currently erected in Havana’s Plaza Vieja and has become an improvised wall of lamentations and dreams of Cubans, but also of the erasures of intolerance.

The piece, which its creator has built in more than 35 locations in nine countries, has landed at the Havana Biennial in the middle of one of its most grey and questioned editions. But unlike other works, finished or hidden on the walls of galleries, Nube de madera includes interaction with the public, whose writings on the planks contribute to give meaning to the structure. So in just over a week since its inauguration, the piece reveals the desire for freedom and its counterpart: the brushstrokes of the censors.

Where a few days ago someone had written “Long live Cuba without communism” the hand of political correctness has now crossed out a word and stated “Long live Cuba without Yankeeism.” The same fate has befallen the last word of the phrase “Viva Cuba libre,” deleted with such cruelty that the goop that hides it looks darker than the power cuts in the early morning and more sinister than the Morro lighthouse without light. The rewriting and erasure of the phrases spontaneously left by passersby warn that not even in the realm of artistic play is there room for individual freedom.

But the censors have not yet been able to cover up all the dreams that bother them. A desperate “May I get out so I can be with my family,” written in green marker, has still been exposed to passing glances. In the chest that carries the desires of Cubans, two dreams stand out: freedom and escape, or perhaps both share the same genetics on an Island where to be free you have to leave, one way or another, the national borders. continue reading

There is not enough wood to receive the complaints and expectations of Cubans. / 14ymedio

However, there is not enough wood to receive the complaints and expectations of a people who have learned, after decades of fear and denunciations, to skillfully put on a mask to evade surveillance. Urged by Steinert to put their aspirations in writing, the lower and middle part of the cloud is almost completely painted with yearnings and expectations. Those who arrive from now on will have to stretch out their arms, stand on their toes and place their efforts even higher.

Rewriting and erasure warn that even in the realm of artistic play there is no room for individual freedom. / 14ymedio

They will also have to avoid those who cross out and rearrange uncomfortable phrases. Instead of the dialogue that the German artist was looking for, the ball of props has mutated into an object that shows the rewriting of present history. An Orwellian ship, it gives the impression that the order to amend and retouch the words has been given. This Saturday, a man with a severe look inspected each phrase in detail, moving very slowly around. Did he want to leave his own dream or recompose the others? Was he someone who needed to shout even through an installation of ephemeral life or a censor in search of his prey?

Martin Steinert cannot imagine what he has unleashed, but most of those who pass by know how the installation will end: the deletions and amendments will bury, under layers of ink and anger, a good part of the Cubans’ desire for freedom.

In the ark that carries the desires of Cubans, two dreams stand out: freedom and escape. / 14ymedio

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The Murder in Prison of Manuel de Jesus Guillen Esplugas, Sentenced for 11J, is Denounced

The activist Cosme Damian Domínguez Peñalver accuses State Security of encouraging a scuffle between him and the family of the deceased at the funeral home

Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas was 30 years old and lived in Old Havana until his arrest. / Cosme Damian Domínguez Peñalver./ Facebook

14ymedio, Madrid, 2 December 2024 — Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas, imprisoned in Combinado del Este Prison after having been involved in the Island-wide protests on 11 July 2021 [’11J’], died on Saturday from a beating he received in prison, according to reports by Justicia 11J and Cuba Decide, of which he was a promoter. An activist of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), Guillén was serving six years in prison for having filmed and distributed videos of the anti-government marches of more than three years ago.

“We denounce with profound indignation the vile murder of Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas, political prisoner, member of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), promoter of Cuba Decide and protester of 11 July. Manuel was beaten to death by hitmen of the Castro regime in the Combinado del Este prison,” denounced the platform, led by Rosa María Payá, from its Facebook account.

The message emphasized that Guillén was a “brave activist [who] raised his voice against oppression, confronting the regime with determination and courage,” and calls on democratic governments and the international community to condemn the crime and prevent it from going unpunished. “Manuel’s murder not only exposes the brutality of the Díaz-Canel and Raúl Castro regime, but is part of a systematic pattern of repression, torture and murder against those who fight for freedom in Cuba,” the statement argues.

Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas, preso en el Combinado del Este tras haberse manifestado el 11 de julio de 2021, falleció el sábado por una golpiza que le propinaron en la cárcel, según denunciaron Justicia 11J y Cuba Decide https://t.co/sbAmF2F7jp pic.twitter.com/plypfqiEd6

— 14ymedio (@14ymedio) December 2, 2024

Dania María Esplugas, the young man’s mother, who lived in Old Havana until his arrest, denounced the violence of his death in front of her son’s body in a video that has circulated on social media, presumably taken in the Zanja funeral home in Centro Habana. “They beat him to death, the bastards of this country! But this is not going to stay like this,” cries the woman who, however, had an incident with the UNPACU activist Cosme Damian Domínguez Peñalver. continue reading

According to the opposition member, this Sunday he went to the funeral home “which was under the control of State Security.” “I was surprised that I was not bothered and much less arrested,” he said on his Facebook account. “Three minutes after being there I was surprised by Manuel de Jesús’ sister and family, when they told me that the State Security officer Adrián did not want me there and they shouted to me that I was responsible for Manuel being where he is today, because I had brought him into the opposition group UNPACU and sent him to carry out counterrevolutionary acts. I responded, only out of respect, and I left the funeral home, without being bothered by State Security, who was there, because their strategy worked and perhaps they even filmed videos of this regrettable and shameful event,” he says.

The activist says that he met Manuel de Jesús when he, who was already a member of UNPACU, was sent to the “cell” that he coordinated, and he regretted that the family members acted in this way, “playing the dictatorship’s game.” For Domínguez, the struggle of the organization he is part of – “and this is what activists are told when they join” – is exclusively peaceful, which is why on ’11J’ Manuel de Jesús “went out onto the streets like many Cubans to express his discontent and made use of his freedom to demonstrate peacefully.”

The activist claims that Guillén Esplugas was accused of public disorder and vandalism “after it was proven that he was involved in breaking the windows of the Municipal Court on Monte Street”

The activist claims that Guillén Esplugas was accused of public disorder and vandalism “after it was proven that he was involved in breaking the windows of the Municipal Court on Monte Street, between Figura Street and Carmen Street, in Old Havana” and that his mother was informed by the top leadership of UNPACU in the capital that if this was the case he would be expelled from the organization.

“Even so, I never left him on his own and I did everything possible to ensure that he and his mother received monetary and food aid. I have a clear conscience. When no one else spoke up, I did it, for him and for all the political prisoners in Cuba,” he says, hurt.

In Guillén’s case, as in so many others linked to the ’11J’ demonstrations, there were several irregularities, the main one being the fact that he remained in provisional prison without a trial date or a request from the prosecution for more than a year and a half. The courts rejected two habeas corpus requests by his lawyer.

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October Tourism Figures Undermine the Cuban Government’s Most Modest Forecasts for 2024

For the seventh consecutive month, fewer visitors arrived than the previous year
Russia and Mexico, the only two markets that had been growing recently, are declining

A group of tourists visiting a bodega in Havana / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Madrid, 22 November 2024 — This Friday, 48 hours after the celebration of Cuban Tourism Day with the image of Fidel Castro in the background, a new bucket of cold water fell on the sector. The National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) has made public the data on international travelers for October, which show a drop of 3.9% so far this year compared to the same period in 2023. In the tenth month of 2024, only 125,772 foreign visitors arrived on the Island, exactly 33,163 fewer than in October of last year, when there were 158,935.

Furthermore, this is the seventh consecutive month in which the number of tourists is lower than that recorded in the same month of the previous year. In fact, the number is very similar to that of 2022, consolidating the downward trend of a sector that not only has not recovered from the pandemic, but has worsened compared to the slightly improved figures it had in the last two years.

With the last two months of the year still to go, months that mark the start of the high season on the island, 1,844,917 tourists have travelled to Cuba, 128,256 fewer than in the same period in 2023. With this figure, the Government is 855,083 travelers short of its most recent forecast for this year, which it made after rectifying the previous one the spur of the moment. At the beginning of 2024, after the failure of the previous year’s objectives – which were set at 3.5 million foreign visitors – the government reduced the expectation to 3.2 million. continue reading

In the tenth month of 2024, only 125,772 foreign visitors arrived on the Island, exactly 33,163 fewer than in October of last yearIn the tenth month of 2024, only 125,772 foreign visitors arrived on the Island, exactly 33,163 fewer than in October of last year

The year did not start off badly, with figures slightly higher than those of the previous year, but in April everything began to go wrong with the number of tourists lower than that recorded in the corresponding month of 2023, a situation that has not been rectified. On the contrary, the gap seems to be widening more and more. In September, the Government announced that the expected drop in the sector would be 16% and reduced the forecast to 2.7 million tourists. To achieve its new objective, it would have to receive almost 900,000 travelers in the last two months of this year, something that seems impossible.

The drama of losses is widespread, as even in countries where the quota of visitors had been improved compared to last year, the percentage is falling. This is the case of Russia, a preferred market for Cuba and one in which it is investing its efforts at full capacity. In September, an accumulated annual increase of 11.9% was recorded from that source, while now it is only 7%.

In total, 156,618 Russians have visited the island so far this year, leaving the target of 200,000 as something unattainable, even further away than could have been foreseen when a few days ago the Minister of Tourism, Juan Carlos García Granda, admitted that the forecast has been postponed to 2025. He did so in statements to the Tass agency in which he announced investments by Russian businessmen in hotels on the island which, in light of the circumstances, it will have to be seen whether they materialize, joining the long list of promises from Moscow that are blown away by the wind.

The drama of losses is widespread, as even from countries where the quota of visitors had been improved compared to last year, the percentage is now falling.

Growth in the Mexican market, one of the few that was on the rise, is also slowing down, but more moderately than the Russian market. The previous month the increase was 5.4% and in October it was 3.7%, a poor result for a clientele that has been given special emphasis, with several campaigns in the country to sell Cuba as a destination.

Argentina, which was also showing growth margins until last month – when it still had an annual increase of 1.4% – has already entered a recession and 38,622 travelers from that country have arrived in Cuba this year as of October 31, compared to 39,668 on the same date in 2023.

In the rest of the markets, the trend remains unchanged. Canada is still far ahead, with 727,261 tourists, but 2.9% less than in 2023. In that country, there is a growing movement of operators who stop recommending Cuba as a destination in light of the lack of quality that Cuban facilities offer as a result of the deep economic crisis. The shortage of electricity, food and drink in both hotels and restaurants, as well as medicines and fuel have become warning indicators for Canadians, who have stopped betting as before on the Island as a star destination in the Caribbean. The most recent blow, of the many coming from the country in the last year, is that of the Sunwing Vacation chain, which has removed 26 Cuban hotels from its catalogue.

German tourism has fallen by 4.8%, French by 9.1% and Italian by 15.6%

Another significant loss coming from North America is that of Americans and Cubans abroad – mostly residents in the US. The former have accounted for 118,038 so far this year, 9.4% less than in 2023; and the latter 244,118, with a sharp drop of 17.8%.

Meanwhile the decline in Spain is getting worse every day. The number of travelers from one of the countries with the strongest cultural and economic ties to the island has decreased by 26.9% compared to the number up to November 2023, from 76,282 to just 55,780. This is the most serious case, in terms of numbers but also historical ties, of a situation that is widespread in the EU. German tourism has fallen by 4.8%, French tourism by 9.1% and Italian tourism by 15.6%.

Ignoring the situation, just two days ago the State newspaper Granma congratulated itself in a note that “during this year, Cuba received several international awards, including the title of Leading Cultural Destination of the Caribbean,” without explaining who awarded it. The government, which needs to justify the excessive investments made in the sector with no success, insists that tourism is the “engine of the economy” and that in 2025 “the digital transformation of the destination will continue to be strengthened, and its infrastructure and qualified personnel for the celebration of cultural, sporting and health events will be maintained.”

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Raúl Castro meets with China’s Minister of Public Security to Discuss the Fight Against Subversion

The official arrived a few months after The Wall Street Journal reported on the construction of a fourth Chinese spy base in Cuba.

Raúl Castro and Miguel Díaz-Canel meet with the Chinese delegation. / Revolution Studies

14ymedio, Havana, 1 December 2024 — Even if trade relations between Beijing and Havana are in free fall “due to the Cuban leaders’ unwillingness to adopt market-oriented reforms,” collaborations on “cybersecurity” remain in place. This Saturday, Raúl Castro left his retreat, as he does only in exceptional cases, to receive, along with President Miguel Díaz-Canel, China’s Minister of Public Security, Wang Xiaohong.

With a row of Chinese representatives in suits and ties on one side, and, opposite, another row of Cuban military personnel in olive green, Díaz-Canel thanked the visitors for their “support for the confrontation of the policies of cultural colonization, hegemonic and also subversion, that the empire exercises over our nations.”

Castro, for his part, limited himself to noting the friendly relations between the two countries and thanked China for the aid sent after hurricanes Oscar and Rafael.

Although the island’s official press portrays the “working visit” as an innocent meeting between authorities from both countries, the truth is that the presence of Wang and senior officials from the Cuban Ministry of the Interior in the Palace of the Revolution once again focuses attention on the Chinese espionage bases installed on the island. continue reading

The presence of Wang and senior officials from the Ministry of the Interior once again puts the spotlight on Chinese spy bases

Last July, the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal reported that Beijing had increased the capacity of its electronic listening stations in Cuba, using as its source images taken from space by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The photographs apparently show the new base, which is located a few kilometers from the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay.

In June 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported on alleged negotiations between China and Cuba to build a joint spy base and military training facility on the island. Over the years, CSIS has located them in four locations: Bejucal, Calabazar, Wajay and El Salao. The first two, near Havana, have large satellite dishes designed to monitor and communicate with satellites.

The new base would be located in El Salao (Santiago de Cuba). According to the document, construction began in 2021 and appears to be intended to house a group of antennas placed in a circle, which can be used to intercept and locate electronic signals.

At the time, both China and the Cuban regime dismissed the allegations of The Wall Street Journal as a “hoax” and claimed that it was “a campaign of intimidation” by Washington against Havana. The Chinese side even went so far as to describe the bases as a “model of mutual aid between developing nations.”

Etecsa sells landlines, cell phones, routers and other equipment from brands such as Xiaomi or Huawei.

The similarities between the two regimes when it comes to using propaganda and espionage as weapons of repression have also allowed the Asian giant to be an almost exclusive partner of the island in terms of telecommunications. The Cuban Telecommunications Company (Etecsa) sells landlines, cell phones, routers and other equipment from brands such as Huawei – to which Havana owes hundreds of millions of dollars – as well as Xiaomi, ZTE and Vivo.

This weekend, the Higher School of State and Government Officers of Cuba, whose representatives traveled to Hunan to attend the Seminar on Public Administration Management for Latin American Countries, signed several agreements with universities in that Chinese province.

According to Prensa Latina, cooperation in “education, training, academic research and scientific collaboration” was expanded with the schools of Administration, Cities, Railway Vocational, Non-Ferrous Metal Technology and Technology.

Last April, another Cuban delegation traveled to Wuhan to take part in the first Forum on Space Cooperation between China and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). Although the island does not have a space program nor specialists in astrophysics or cosmonautics, it hoped that with its presence at the event, Beijing would offer, among other agreements, the use of its satellite data . On that occasion, the China agreed with CELAC to “support the creation of capacities in the application of satellite communications, navigation technologies and terrestrial observation.”

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A 24-Year-Old Woman is Murdered by Her Ex-Partner in Old Havana

The list of femicide crimes in the country totals 48 during 2024

Naomi Téllez Wilson was 24 years old / Facebook

14ymedio, Havana, 29 November 2024 — The independent platforms Alas Tensas and Yo Sí Te Creo en Cuba are in the process of verifying the murder of Naomi Téllez Wilson, 24, at the hands of her ex-partner on November 20 in Old Havana. The incident was reported on social media that same day by user Niover Licea, although other Facebook posts on Thursday added more details of the crime.

According to Licea, the attack occurred at night in the attacker’s house, located in the Belén neighborhood. The young woman was beaten by her ex-partner and attacked with a knife. The alleged murderer was arrested shortly after the incident.

Téllez’s body was in the Ángel Arturo Aballí Polyclinic, on Sol Street, between Aguacate and Compostela, “for many hours,” awaiting the arrival of experts, Licea’s report added.

Yo Sí Te Creo en Cuba told 14ymedio that it has registered the case and is investigating to confirm it.

A quarter of the feminicides of 2024 occurred between October (seven) and November (five) alone

With this femicide, the list of crimes of gender-based violence in the country totals 48 during 2024, according to the count of this media. A quarter of them occurred just between October (seven) and November (five).

Both organizations denounced this Thursday the murder of five-year-old boy Édgar Aliesky Martínez Torres, in Camagüey. continue reading

In their report, they indicated that the homicide occurred on November 26 in the municipality of Minas and that it was committed by the minor’s father. Both NGOs indicated that it is an act of vicarious violence because “the aggressor kills a third person, children or other relatives, to make the victim suffer.”

In addition to the case of Edgar Aliesky, they reviewed seven previous cases of a similar nature: three in Las Tunas – a five-month-old baby and two girls aged two and five; one in Camagüey – a seven-year-old girl; another in Guantánamo – a one-year-old baby; another in Santiago de Cuba; a one-year-old infant; and another in Villa Clara; a 10-year-old boy. All the attacks were committed by the fathers or stepfathers of the minors.

Of the 48 reported by this media so far this year, at least 39 were committed by the partner or ex-partner of the victims.

In the case of femicides, of the 48 reported by this media so far this year, at least 39 were committed by the victims’ partner or ex-partner, a figure that is in line with what was reported by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ( ECLAC ), which published a report on November 22.

The commission’s document, which included the island for the first time, reports 60 crimes of this nature last year that were reported “by the official agencies of each country.” However, this newspaper reported 87 femicides in 2023, 45% more than the official data provided.

With the 60 crimes 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 make the calculation). However, taking the 87 accredited by 14ymedio and a population, more adjusted to the latest official figures, of 5,000,000 women, the rate rises to 1.74. With these numbers, Cuba has the third highest rate in the region, behind Honduras (7.2) and the Dominican Republic (2.4).

In its report, ECLAC stated that there are nine countries, including Cuba, that lack systems for measuring gender-based crimes of violence. The organization noted that these nations “are working on the coordination and capacity building necessary to implement integrated or single administrative record systems for cases of gender-based violence.”

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