Translating Cuba – Page 134 – English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island

Justicia 11J Confirms That 554 Demonstrators From the 2021 Protests in Cuba Are Still in Prison

The NGO documented that there were a total of 173 protests on the island between July 2023 and July 2024.

A police patrol guarding a protest in Santiago de Cuba on July 11, 2021 / 14ymedio

EFE (via 14ymedio), Mexico City, 28 November 2024 — The organization Justicia 11J reported Wednesday that 554 Cubans remain imprisoned for participating in the July 2021 anti-government protests, the largest in decades on the island.

In its annual report Otro año sin justicia (Another Year Without Justice), presented Wednesday afternoon, the NGO warned that “repression on the island, by state authorities, is systemic and structural” and stressed that “Cuba’s repressive context has become more complex”.

Similarly, Justicia 11J assured that the 554 demonstrators still in Cuban jails represent 35% of the 1,580 people who have been detained since the July 11, 2021 (11J) demonstrations. The prison sentences are up to more than 20 years.

Also, the organization emphasized in the document that 93% of the 554 inmates are men. continue reading

In addition, 12 of them are between 20 and 21 years old -they were arrested when they were 17 and 18-; 383 are between 22 and 45 years old; 92 are between 46 and 59 years old; and 13 are 60 or older.

Justice 11J documented that between July 2023 and July 2024, there were 173 protests in Cuba. Within that period, “at least 35 people” were arrested, of which “27 are still in detention.”

Justicia 11 J criticized the fact that “the Cuban State” has “continued to manipulate the dialogue with international actors to project a false image of commitment to civil society and citizens.

In this regard, Camila Rodríguez, founder and director of the organization, stated during the online presentation of the report that the protests on the island “will continue to happen”, so “there is no turning back”.

Johanna Cilano, a researcher with Amnesty International (AI) for the Caribbean, regretted that “there is no civic space and freedom of association” in the country. She also reiterated AI’s concern for the case of opposition leader José Daniel Ferrer, imprisoned since 2021.

Last week, family members, human rights NGOs and Cuban dissident organizations denounced that Ferrer, considered a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, was hospitalized after being “brutally beaten” by prison staff.

Neither the Cuban government nor the official press has reported on the matter. A minority pro-government media outlet assured that the reports of the beating “are unfounded” and that Ferrer was in a “favorable” state.

In its annual report, Justice 11J criticized the fact that “the Cuban state” has “continued to manipulate dialogue with international actors to project a false image of engagement with civil society and citizens. Its interactions with UN and EU representatives show an official willingness to maintain diplomatic relations while dodging its responsibilities”.

Translated by LAR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Translated by Regina Anavy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Translated by Regina Anavy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Translated by Regina Anavy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Translated by Regina Anavy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Relevance of a Dialogue Today in Cuba

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Medical Services Lead Export Sales from Ciego De Ávila, Cuba

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Translated by Regina Anavy

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About 1,300 Holguin Residents Cannot Leave Cuba Because of Debts to the State

In the eastern province, 97% of the 314 MSMEs did not pay tax, for a total of 50.3 million pesos

So far this year, 24 suspected cases were reported in the Havana National Office of Tax Administration (Onat), of which nine ended in complaints / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Madrid, November 27, 2024 — Although non-compliance with tax obligations in Cuba is well known, the high figures in Holguín, disseminated this Wednesday by the provincial director of the National Office of Tax Administration (Onat), Jorge Félix Pérez Marrero, are still surprising. The official places at 1,300 the number of Cubans in Holguin who cannot leave the country because of their debts to the State. There are fewer in Sancti Spíritus, only 200 according to the official newspaper Escambray.

The numbers are heartbreaking in the eastern province, where 97% of the 314 businesses obliged to pay evaded taxes, a total of 50.3 million pesos that did not end up in a timely manner in State coffers. In the same situation are the self-employed workers, who presently owe 31.5 million. In total, there are 38,302 self-employed workers of whom 8,120 were inspected: 97.7% of them had defrauded the State, although Onat makes it clear that when a tax investigation is opened it is because there are already indications, based mainly on the cross-checking of data.

The largest volume of debts – 70 million – corresponds to a small group of 36 taxpayers, who have “high import volumes.” The supervision work achieved the collection of 79 million pesos, obtained from “firm actions on 745 debtors,” while more than 100 fines of 615,900 pesos were imposed after carrying out checks on 239 taxpayers with irregularities in their tax bank accounts. continue reading

Most of that extra collection is due to the end of the tax exemption for newly created ’MSMEs’

Despite these data, Holguín has raised significantly more than what was planned, since the goal was to contribute 3.5 billion pesos to the State budget at the end of October, and the amount is already 826 above, that is, 4,326. Most of that extra collection is due to the end of the tax exemption for newly created MSMEs*.

The measure was advanced in December 2023, when the Government – seeking to increase collection to reduce the deficit and increase income – talked about approving a package that included the elimination of the exemption from the 10% tax on wholesale marketing for MSMEs. The realization came in August, with the group of 19 rules that added another tax requirement to the previous one: private individuals would no longer be exempt from paying personal income tax for the dividends from their first year of operations.

As a result, 543 MSMEs have begun to pay taxes in Holguín, totaling 609 million pesos. They are joined by the 162 who already paid, from the total of 256 unpaid that were detected in the Onat inspections.

The province’s fiscal deficit is above 2.6 billion pesos, so officials consider that any effort is small when it comes to raising as much as possible. “The confrontation with tax evasion and the under-declaration of income goes beyond an obligation. It is a necessity, not only because of the financial resources that are rescued and put in function of social expenses, but because it slows down the environment of impunity and disorder that some try to impose,” Pérez Marrero told the official press.

Yosvanis Meneses Torres, the Onat manager interviewed, stated that tax evasion can lead to penalties of deprivation of liberty, as is the case for two men who are awaiting trial and a third who has already been sentenced to three years of correctional work with internment. In addition, according to the specialist, there are six other cases in the hands of the Prosecutor’s Office for “ignoring” their tax obligations. In Holguín there are 66,000 registered taxpayers.

Meneses Torres explained to the State newspaper Granma that when starting a proceeding three circumstances can occur: that the information is “defining,” that it is necessary to talk to the taxpayer to clarify the accounts, or that a third party is required to clarify a certain situation. “For example, this is done when State entities, for services provided or assets created, pay high sums to private individuals, but with indications that they contributed below what corresponded to them.”

The manager points out that they have detected that some companies declare stable sales at the same time that imports increase

The manager points out that they have detected that some companies declare stable sales at the same time that imports increase. “It may be that prices increase and demand decreases, but this is not presently the case. Even with a price increase, food maintains demand, and that gives a higher level of income,” he explains, in reference to one of Onat’s alarm signals.

The director confirms that in the context of inspections, private individuals have appeared who declare a loss. When asked if this situation can be interpreted as a camouflage to evade tax, he says it is being closely followed.

Meneses Torres also explains that some MSMEs declare losses during inspections but denies that it is necessarily due to attempts to evade tax. “Many MSMEs and self-employed workers have not done a correct study of suppliers and buyers. Perhaps initially, some of these economic actors will register losses by combining the effect of the acquisition of goods with the creation of infrastructures,” he concedes.

Granma’s article addresses with Dayamí Roger Hernández, first deputy director of the Holguin Onat, the differences among the defaulters who comply within the same month, although not voluntarily, and the debtors who do not pay at the end of the term and are penalized with a fine and surcharge. To the latter, in a new policy that has turned out to be “necessary” due to the increase in MSMEs (currently 560 in the province), a preventive embargo can be applied until they comply. So far this year, that decision has affected 150 taxpayers.

The penalty for evaders can entail five years of deprivation of liberty, which is extended to between seven and 15 years in the most serious cases, when there are additional crimes such as belonging to an organized network. In these cases, where there have been fraudulent actions to evade payments, paying off the debt does not exempt them from the criminal process.

“It cannot be overlooked that in the context of imposing order and ending illegality, the purpose of educating people in the fulfillment of duties and, with it, making them grow in civility is always present,” the article concludes. It does not address, however, a problem that is the root cause alleged by many Cubans when it comes to tax evasion.

Behind the lack of citizens’ conscience when it comes to complying with the State are the distrust in institutions, the lack of transparency when explaining what public money is used for – the authorities limit themselves to offering percentages of the large budget items, without breaking it down by ministries – and the discomfort generated by the high amounts that are allocated to activities that are currently unproductive, such as the construction of hotels, among others.

*MSMEs – Micro, Small, Medium Enterprises (’mipymes’ in Spanish)

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Pharaoh’s Tragic Legacy

They do not accept rivalries, they reject dialogue or debate, force is the main argument in promoting the political model they defend.

Unfortunately for the Cuban people, Castro had a long and unproductive life, making his legacy even more pathetic. / Silvio Rodríguez/Cubadebate

14ymedio, Pedro Corzo, Miami, November 24, 2024 — Though eight years have passed since his death, we must acknowledge that his ill-fated legacy remains. The totalitarian regime that Fidel Castro built has fulfilled his sole purpose in life: to seize and preserve absolute power.

The Cuban dictator ruled like an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, with overwhelming power. He controlled the lives and properties of his subjects, projected an imperialist attitude and expected submission from his neighbors.

The totalitarian constitution of 1976 was drafted to institutionalize his will. This became all too obvious when the Castro legislators, on orders from their sovereign Fidel, decided to amend the constitution in reaction to the threat posed by Oswaldo Paya’s reform initiative, the Varela Project. They declared that socialism — meaning totalitarianism — was irrevocable.

Unfortunately for the Cuban people, Castro had a long and unproductive life, making his legacy even more pathetic. Totalitarianism has survived because it has been able to pass on to his followers the malevolence and inefficiency that characterized his life.

The totalitarian constitution of 1976 was drafted to institutionalize Castro’s will

Sadly for us, Fidel Castro has subjugated the country and its people for more than six and a half decades. His supreme mandate lasted forty-nine years, making him the longest-serving ruler of the 20th and 21st centuries.

It is true that the system’s never-ending state of decline has gotten so bad that it seems irreversible. Though the end may be in sight, the prolonged agony will make things even more disastrous for the Cuban people.

Perhaps the dictator-designate, Miguel Díaz-Canel, will be its gravedigger. Hopefully, the system and its fugitives will be buried together. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the fact that the nation’s future is seriously threatened by the corrosive teachings and practices of totalitarianism. continue reading

Cuban totalitarianism gave itself new laws. Its parodies of legal proceedings allowed for public murders. Shootings were carried out in parks, cemeteries and schoolyards. Society was militarized. Terror took root. A framework that promoted hatred was adopted. Machine guns were used to resolve differences. The cultural and moral foundations of the nation — part of the National Plan, which sought to recreate civic awareness — were broken in order to introduce new values and dogmas that have left many without ethical principles, forcing them into moral bankruptcy.

Cuba’s crisis of civility runs very deep. Norms of coexistence, respect for differences and even common courtesy have been trampled by the government for more than six decades, a situation that can be seen in how large segments of the population are treated, including some of those who reject the regime.

Fidel Castro’s legacy is one long criminal rap sheet

Education was largely replaced by the culture of the barracks. Whoever had the biggest stick was right. The regime announced it intended to create a “New Man.” It denied parents the right to participate in the education of their children. It combined school with work, creating dysfunction in the family.

The consequences of an exclusionary system like the one imposed in Cuba are very pernicious. The island’s civil rights lawyers have a huge job ahead of them. They will have to work very hard to change the mentality of a large portion of the population, to make sure that citizens are aware of their rights and responsibilities.

Many Cubans, especially those who identify with the dictatorship, tend to react violently to those with different points of view. They are intolerant of rivals. They reject dialogue and debate. Force is their main tool for promoting the political system they are defending. This has led to a rise in crime which, despite brutal repression, is still not under control.

Castro’s supporters act as if they were defending a religion. The writer José Antonio Albertini was correct when he described the Cuban regime as more genuinely autocratic than that of Iran because it had a living god in the person of Fidel Castro and a high priest in the person of his brother Raúl.

Fidel Castro’s legacy is one long criminal rap sheet. His violent crimes are many but the most devastating, as Dagoberto Valdés has noted, are those that have caused human damage to young generations of Cubans.

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In Florida, Agencies That Ship to Cuba Fill Up With Customers ‘Before Trump Arrives’

Alarm spreads among Cuban migrants due to the unfounded fear that the president-elect will restrict parcels

“It looked like a line in Havana, with people waiting inside and outside, standing and sitting on the sidewalk,” outside the Cubamax agency / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Alejandro Mena Ortiz, Miami, November 27, 2024 — Ramón had to wait more than four hours this Tuesday before being able to send a package to his family in Cuba from the Cubamax office in Miramar, in Broward, Florida. “It’s on fire, down hill without brakes,” he heard someone say after two hours. “It was the first time I saw it like that. It looked like a line in Havana, with people waiting inside and outside, standing and sitting on the sidewalk,” the young man, who emigrated to the United States three years ago via Nicaragua, explains to 14ymedio.

“There were people coming from other neighborhoods,” he continues. “A lady, for example, arrived from Miami Lakes, because, she argued, “the Cubamax of Hialeah can’t cope and the lines are worse than those here.” Inside the office, the space was large – 12 chairs plus the three customers who could be served at the same time. There was, Ramón continues, “a real mountain of packages everywhere. They filled the waiting room, because there was no more place to put them.”

It is common that every year at this time agencies such as Cubamax, Cuballama and Cuba Encarga have more customers, because Christmas is approaching. However, the reason in Broward this Tuesday was different. When Ramón was finally able to ask the employees, they replied: “Many people come and say that they have to take advantage now, because when Trump arrives in January, he will surely remove the shipments of packages and foreign exchange to Cuba.” continue reading

“The packages filled the waiting room, because there was no more place to put them”

The workers were somewhat outraged by this false news, the young man says. It is true that the president-elect has promised to tighten migration policies from the first day of his mandate on January 20, but he has said nothing about shipments. “People are very sick in the head, letting themselves be guided by TikTok videos,” said one of the employees. “Trump is not going to take anything away, and if he restricts packages, they’ll find a way to send them through a third country, even if it’s more expensive.”

On the other hand, one item is beginning to have success in these offices: power generators. In Cubamax, for example, they have an offer of 99 cents a pound when sending this type of device, only on Wednesdays. “I don’t understand how people keep sending them when it’s a hassle in Cuba to find fuel to get them going,” said María, a Cuban from Pinar del Río.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Ciego De Ávila, Cuba, Foresees the Fiasco of the Present Sugar Harvest and Anticipates Future Failure

The province has planted only 24% of the planned amount of land

Ciego de Ávila planned to produce 30,500 tons of sugar / Invasor

14ymedio, Havana, 28 November 2024 — With a run-down and ancient group of 15 sugar mills at their disposal, the Cuban authorities declared last Monday the start of the 2024-2025 milling throughout the country. In Ciego de Ávila, however, it is not the present sugar campaign that worries the workers, who already foresee the failure of the future harvest. According to the local press, there has been a delay in the planting, and the amount of land worked is minimal. Of the 7,541 hectares projected, only 24%, or 1,801, have been planted.

“The lack of diesel has been the fundamental cause” for the delay, Cuban Vice President Salvador Valdés Mesa told Invasor, after visiting the region. According to the newspaper, the next few weeks will be “vital,” but the figures are too similar to the 23% of the October campaign.

The numbers — “lean” as the newspaper describes them — do not promise the glorious recovery of the sugar industry that the State has been announcing for years. On the contrary, the debacle seems more irreversible than ever.

“It was impossible to take advantage of the Ciro Redondo Sugar Company land. The raw material for the mill, the “Colossus,” inactive in the last campaign, along with the continual lack of fuel and organizational problems in the Enrique Varona,* also threatened the success,” says Invasor. continue reading

At the moment the province is focusing on quickly planting 180 hectares in the final stretch of the year

At the moment, says the media, the province is focusing on quickly planting 180 hectares in the final stretch of the year, 50 of them for the Ciro Redondo mill, the only one that joined the Avila campaign this year.

Invasor has been announcing the slow pace of the expected Ciego de Ávila harvest for months. For the production of molasses, for example, which should have begun 15 days before the harvest, the sugar factories had not yet finished creating “the conditions.”

However, the scenario described at the beginning of November was less worrying than now. The authorities then predicted 444,854 tons of milled cane to produce 30,500 tons of sugar, and said that the preparation of the machinery had advanced to a reassuring 75% and transport to 94%. Even in the bioelectric plant, which produces energy from the bagasse derived from the harvest, “Chinese investors” explained that there would be no problems in connecting it to the plant.

The planting, however, was still stagnant at the same 24% that Invasor criticized a few days later. Before, in October, expectations were even higher, and the province expected to plant all the available land with cane before December 31. Since then, only 66 hectares have been planted.

In other provinces the panorama is not very different. In Las Tunas, where the plan is to reach 45,000 tons of sugar, workers have been forced to extend the work “up to 10 and 12 hours a day to meet the repair schedule, affected, among other causes, by the late arrival of some resources, electrical interruptions, the potential threats of Hurricane Oscar and the rains,” explains Periódico 26 in an article published on November 19.

“There we find men who have been working continuously for almost 10 hours”

“There we find men who have been working continuously for almost 10 hours, and their overalls, hands and faces carry stains of grease and sweat as symbols of the arduous day. Stains that do not hide the joy of knowing they are essential,” romanticizes the local newspaper.

At the national level, and based on past campaigns, the authorities do not expect good results either. “A very complex harvest is coming,” William Licourt González, general secretary of the sugar workers’ union, said in October, before calling on the entire sector to work. On that occasion he also announced that 15 mills would be in charge of grinding, compared to 25 a year earlier and the 161 active on the Island in 1959.

The sugar industry, once a jewel in the crown of the regime, this year reached its most critical point. The Government has not only been forced to cease most of its important sugar contracts, such as the one it had with China, but also this 2024, for the first time, the Island imported more sugar than it exported.

At the domestic level, sugar has become priceless for Cubans, who find it increasingly difficult to find and with very high prices. This week, in the Plaza Boulevar market in Sancti Spíritus, a pound reached 550 pesos.

*Translator’s note: The Enrique Varona sugar mill has its own railway transport system.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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One Step Away From Its Worst Record in History, Cuba Drops a Step in the World Baseball Rankings

Cuba is facing a decade with more defeats than victories in international tournaments

Cuba finished with one win and four losses in the last Premier 12 / ’Jit’

14ymedio/Swing Completo, Havana, 28 November 2024 — Team Cuba will close 2024 close to its worst position in history in the international baseball rankings. The island dropped one step in the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) ranking, published this Wednesday, and is in tenth position, just one step away from its worst record – 11th place – in 2021.

The Cuban team generated the fewest points during 2024 within the top 10 of the world ranking. The team could only add 401 points, far from the second worst team in the year, the Dominican Republic, with 760. For the classification, what was achieved in the lower categories is also taken into account, where there were also no great results.

The Cuban team generated the fewest points during 2024 within the top 10 of the world ranking.

Poor performance has also caused Team Cuba to fall even at the regional level, although in 2012 it was the world leader in the rankings. Today it is ranked sixth in the Americas, behind Venezuela, which is now third in the world, with 4,846 points.

Also on the list are Mexico (4,729), the United States (4,691) and Panama (3,334). Japan is firmly at the top of the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, despite losing to Taiwan in the final of the last continue reading

Premier 12. It has 6,866 points, well ahead of the Taiwanese, who are in second place, with 5,489.

Cuba’s poor results in international tournaments have been a constant for a decade. Its record in 2013, after playing in the World Classic, was the last time the team had more wins than losses in a year, winning four games and losing only two.

During the 2015 Premier 12, the Cubans qualified in the second round, where they fell to South Korea. Thus they closed that year with a 3-3 record. Two years later, in 2017, they again played in the World Classic. In that tournament, they reached the second phase of the event, where they fell by a thrashing (14-1) to the Netherlands. With that defeat, their record was 2-4. That has been, so far, the worst performance for Cuba in that tournament; in 2006 they were finalists.

During the 2015 Premier 12, the Cubans qualified in the second round, where they fell to South Korea.

In 2019, in the second edition of the Premier 12, the island was eliminated for the first time in the group stage. It finished in tenth place overall, with one win and two losses. That same year, the team competed in the Pan American Games in Lima, Peru. The competition, which Team Cuba dominated throughout history – with 12 titles, 10 of them consecutive, from 1971 to 2007 – ended with three losses in four matches and the team remained in third-to-last place. At the end of the year, its record was 2-5.

Two years later, the 2021 Pre-Olympic tournament was held, on the way to the Tokyo Games, another event in which the Cuban teams had shown superiority, with three gold medals out of a possible five. Only on a couple of occasions did they have to settle for silver. However, those hopes of recalling old glories did not come true, since they did not get the ticket. That year they won one game and lost two.

The year 2023 was bittersweet. On the one hand, the team reached the semifinals of the World Classic and qualified for the second round of the championship with a 2-2 record. In the quarterfinals, they defeated Australia in a tight match (4-3), but then lost to the United States in the semifinals (14-2). Despite the positive scenario, the record in the tournament was three wins and three losses. That same year, they played in the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games and were eliminated in the first phase. They were only able to win one game out of four to end the year with four wins and six losses.

Finally, in 2024, they played five games, all within the framework of the Premier 12, with one victory and four defeats, leaving a total record of 13 games won and 24 lost in more than a decade.

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The Cuban Government Reacts for the First Time to Trump’s Victory: “The Country Is Prepared”

“For us, the results of these elections are not new. It was an expected scenario,” said Díaz-Canel.

Miguel Diaz-Canel (right, front row) during his visit to Lajas, Cienfuegos. / Perlavisión

EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 27 November 2024 — The Cuban government referred for the first time on Wednesday to Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections 22 days ago and said that the result was within expectations, so “the country is prepared.”

President Miguel Díaz-Canel made these statements during an informal but planned meeting with a group of residents of the municipality of Lajas, in Cienfuegos, during one of his visits to the provinces without international media. His speech was broadcast on state television and on official social media profiles.

“For us, the results of these elections are not new. It was an expected scenario,” said Díaz-Canel, who is also first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC, the only legal party). “It was a probable scenario and we had been preparing for this scenario,” he added.

Díaz-Canel criticized the US sanctions against the island, which he described as “perverse and genocidal.” He recalled that the last series of sanctions was imposed during the first term of the Republican Trump and that the current US president, Democrat Joe Biden, has “maintained the same position of hostility.” continue reading

As usual in his speech, he reiterated that the United States sanctions are the cause of the current crisis that the country is suffering.

The president, who expressed his willingness to engage in dialogue “on equal terms” and “without impositions” with Washington, said that his government will not accept “interference” nor will it renounce its “model of socialist construction.”

As is customary in his discourse, he reiterated that US sanctions are the cause of the current crisis in the country, blaming them for the blackouts and shortages of basic goods such as food and medicine. “It is true that we have suffered,” the president acknowledged.

The serious crisis, which has lasted for five years, has generated growing discontent, visible in the unusual protests that have been recorded in recent years and the unprecedented migratory exodus that the country is experiencing.

Cuba’s gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 1.9% in 2023, according to official figures, and the government has already announced that it does not expect growth in the current year.

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Carlos Aldana, the Ideological Guru of the Party Ousted by Castro During the Special Period, Dies

Known as El Mulato, he had been admitted several weeks ago to the Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital for brain trauma following a fall

Norberto Fuentes (left) with Carlos Aldana (right) in a file photo / Norberto Fuentes

14ymedio, Havana, 28 November 2024 — “Carlos Aldana was the ideological secretary of the Party and a rising star in the Castro firmament.” The phrase, by the writer Norberto Fuentes, was enough in 1989 to define the then third man of the regime, who was ousted by Fidel Castro in 1992 and who died this Wednesday in Havana after pneumonia, at the age of 82.

Known as El Mulato, Aldana had been admitted several weeks ago to the Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital for brain trauma after a fall. He also suffered from Parkinson’s and other ailments related to his age, according to Fuentes speaking to Café Fuerte. The novelist also said that the fall had caused Aldana to have a stroke and that he had undergone surgery.

Born in Camagüey in 1942, Aldana held various positions in the regime’s nomenklatura and was a protégé of Raúl Castro. In his chronicle of the high political and military spheres of the regime, Dulces guerreros cubanos, Fuentes – who was a friend – describes him as the Castros’ right-hand man in a decade that ended with the execution of high-ranking Army officials and the announcement that the Soviet Union was about to fall.

Like two of those sentenced to death – General Arnaldo Ochoa and Tony de La Guardia – Aldana was one of the regime’s key men in Africa. He acted as negotiator and spokesman for Cuba in Angola and Namibia. After his dismissal, he was erased from the official account and his name only appears once in the Ecured encyclopedia: where it is misplaced in the list of participants in the Third Congress of the Communist Party.

In 1992, at the age of 50 and with an extensive record of service in the Central Committee, Aldana was ousted for “serious defects in the performance of his duties” and his “serious personal errors,” two accusations that the regime continues to use as an alibi to cover up the real causes of its “movements of cadres.” In addition, he was accused of corruption for his links with Eberto López, manager of the importing company Caribbean Audiovisuales, who ended up being sentenced to 15 continue reading

years in prison for fraud.

After his dismissal, he was erased from the official account and his name only appears once in the ’Ecured’ encyclopedia.

Abroad, Aldana was regarded as a sort of reformer and natural successor to the so-called historic generation. He had met privately with Mikhail Gorbachev and was considered open to the changes proposed by the Russian leader. But Castro, faced with the dissolution of Soviet communism and an international environment against which he preferred to entrench himself, dismissed El Mulato, replacing him with José Ramón Balaguer, the former ambassador to Moscow.

By this time, Aldana was the one who had the last word in the Party in terms of ideology, international relations and education, an accumulation of powers that Castro could not tolerate in the hands of any party leader other than himself.

Castro and Aldana had also had a high tension episode when, in 1987, El Mulato organized a meeting with journalism students from the University of Havana. The exchange failed, since the leader interpreted the critical comments about the island’s press and the management of the staff as out of place. It was Aldana who, on Castro’s orders, purged the Faculty and recalibrated teaching and communications, and also extended the purge to the editorial offices of the official media where Glasnost was beginning to take hold.

His ouster was followed by three decades of ostracism and silence, which he broke only once, when the newspaper El Sol de México interviewed him about his departure from office. Not deviating one iota from the official version, he attributed his departure to his “mistakes” and “carelessness,” and declared his loyalty to Fidel. He had been sent to work in tourism, in a minor management position, in Topes de Collantes, Trinidad.

In Dulces guerreros cubanos, Fuentes offers a detailed portrait of Aldana. He describes him as an official who was “weak in contradicting the Commander.” He recounts his meetings with Raúl Castro, of whom he was a confidant and companion in his almost daily drunken binges, and he assesses his role in the investigations that led Ochoa to the firing squad.

The most recent information about Aldana’s activities which 14ymedio had access to dates back to a few years before the Covid-19 pandemic when he worked as a professor of Marxism and political economy in a classroom for senior citizens located in the facilities of the Parque Zoológico on 26th Street in Havana. His students were mostly disillusioned former Communist Party militants and disgraced former officials.

Not deviating one iota from the official version, he attributed his departure to his “mistakes” and “carelessness,” and declared his loyalty to Fidel.

Aldana’s dismissal was one of many that Castro carried out to cut off the succession of the historic generation by those who grew up with the Revolution. Seven years later, another “rising star” of the nomenklatura, Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina, also fell. Personally protected by Fidel, he was expelled from the Party in 2001 and ended up dedicating himself to art.

He was succeeded by Felipe Pérez Roque, who along with Carlos Lage, vice president between 1993 and 2009, was also removed from office. “The honey of the power for which they had known no sacrifice awoke in them ambitions that led them to an unworthy role,” Castro wrote at the time.

As with Aldana, at that time Raúl Castro washed his hands of the matter. He argued that it was not he who had chosen that series of leaders about whom “the enemy was filled with illusions.” There was not going to be a substitution of “Fidel’s men” by “Raúl’s men.” However, power – at least virtually – did eventually remain with one of Raúl Castro’s favorites.

With Miguel Díaz-Canel, a mediocre survivor of the purges of his generation, the regime found the longed-for “continuity” without reform that it failed to achieve with El Mulato Aldana.

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