Translating Cuba

The opening of diplomatic ties (with Cuba) is the culmination of our efforts to expand our diplomacy to nations that have been part of the socialist bloc

The official – who spoke on condition of anonymity – reported that President Yoon Suk Yeol “has worked actively to establish relations with Cuba, but Cuba had reservations at first due to its ties with North Korea.” The United States, he explained, was informed by Seoul “in advance” of the approach.

“The opening of diplomatic ties (with Cuba) is the culmination of our efforts to expand our diplomacy to nations that have been part of the socialist bloc, including countries that have been friendly with North Korea. It clearly shows where the mainstream is in the flow of history, and also who participates in that mainstream,” the official added.

On Wednesday, Seoul restored its diplomatic relations with Havana, broken since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. A brief statement from the Cuban Foreign Ministry announced the “exchange of diplomatic notes” of both nations before the United Nations, in New York.

“The establishment of official relations between the two countries was carried out in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, International Law and in accordance with the spirit and standards established in the Vienna Convention for Diplomatic Relations of April 18, 1961,” said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The world press has described the event as a “historic step” between the two countries. BBC reported that Havana and Seoul had only enjoyed ten years of diplomatic relations, since 1949. The “communist bastion” that the Island became since Castro’s arrival made the country an ideal ally for North Korea.

BBC interviewed a South Korean diplomat who, under condition of anonymity, revealed that Havana was pressured by the North Korean Government, which tried to slow down the rapprochement, as well as by “high Cuban leaders of the old guard,” who do not welcome the reconnection.

“Cuba has a very great symbolic importance for North Korea because it is its base of operations in America, and that is why it has always pressured the Cuban government to stay away from Seoul,” he added. “It is a geographically strategic country, attached to the United States, and positioning ourselves there is important in the long term.”

“It seems that there was some kind of commitment dating from the time of Fidel Castro and Kim Il-sung not to take that step,” a former Cuban official told the BBC, who did not identify himself.

It seems that there was some kind of commitment that dated back to the time of Fidel Castro and Kim Il-sung not to take that step

The North Korean Embassy in Havana, according to the British media, is the nerve center of North Korean diplomacy and espionage in the region, in addition to being the largest in the Americas. However, trade and economic relations between the two countries are “practically non-existent,” unlike what happens between Seoul and Havana.

In 2022, for example, according to data provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of South Korea, the country exported goods to Cuba for a value of 14 million dollars and imported goods for seven million. In addition, the “daily life of the Island,” explains BBC, is full of Korean equipment such as Samsung and LG phones, and Hyundai and Kia brand cars.

There was a South Korean stand at the Havana International Fair and Kotra, the state trade body, has served as an embassy on the Island, especially for economic exchanges. Also, among young Cubans, there are thousands of fans of Korean culture, who listen to their music and watch their soap operas. According to the BBC, the Korean fan club in the country exceeds 10,000 members.

Sangmi Han, a journalist with the Korean Service of the BBC, also offered his diagnosis: “The fact that Cuba, North Korea’s sister country, has established diplomatic relations with South Korea in extreme secret without Pyongyang knowing will be a huge wound, difficult for North Koreans to accept.”

On the Island, there is confusion about the change in the Chancellery’s roadmap. In the announcement, published in Cubadebate, dozens of readers gave their opinion on the approach. The stupor is summed up in a question: “North or South?”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cited by the WSJ, diplomat Ruslan Spirin, Ukraine’s representative in Latin America and the Caribbean, estimates that there are 400 Cuban soldiers in the service of Russia. “We take that matter very seriously,” Spirin said. Other sources, the newspaper points out, calculate higher numbers. One who does so is the Ukrainian deputy Maryan Zablotskyi, who places the number between 1,500 and 3,000.

In addition, there are mercenaries from the Central African Republic, Serbia, Nepal and Syria and volunteers – although their number is plummeting – and from other countries, including the United States. The WSJ explains that the Cuban contingent is one of the most numerous and that the economic debacle of the Island makes it easier for more and more young people to want to try their luck on the combat front. If they survive, they have their hopes set on Moscow’s reward.

Univision explained that Palacio was contacted by a Russian woman, who paid for the trip and offered him 200,000 rubles, the equivalent of $2,200. They promised him this money in exchange for construction work, but, according to the family, they had actually deceived him and sent him to the front line.

In addition, there are mercenaries from the Central African Republic, Serbia, Nepal and Syria, and volunteers from other countries

“Those people are scamming us. We thought one thing, and it turned out to be another,” Palacio Rivera said in an audio to his wife. “We were told that we were going to war, but that we were not going to fight. It was just to dig trenches.”

The couple has two girls, one of them newborn, whom their father will never know. The family resides in precarious conditions in the municipality of Songo la Maya, in Santiago de Cuba.

“I want to know where they have my son, when I can have him, because they told me that they were going to send me the body, that they were going to contact the Cuban Embassy in Russia and the Russian Embassy here. We haven’t heard anything,” said the young man’s mother.

Danelia Herrera showed Univision the message received by another young man named Gilberto Herrera Shuman last Saturday: “With immense pain I must inform you that today they brought us the news that Raibel was hit by a drone resulting in his death. My deepest condolences and that of all the colleagues who are here.” On his social networks, Herrera Shuman says that he is a Cuban from Havana and lives in the city of Vysókoye, in southern Russia.

On January 9, YouTuber Alain Paparazzi said that Yansiel Morejón, a former boxer from Santa Clara, had died at the age of 26, also at the front. The young man’s relatives did not respond to this newspaper, but another relative explained via social networks that the “official” version is that he died “of a heart attack,” although “he really died in the war.”

Palacio’s trip, in November, came two months after the Cuban regime detained 17 people for belonging to a “human trafficking network,” thus trying to detach itself from the recruitment of nationals to fight on the Russian side in the war in Ukraine.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (@CubaMINREX) posted this notice today on X (formerly Twitter): In recent hours, unofficial sources have reported the death in a bombing last Thursday, February 15, of the Cuban doctors, Dr. Assel Herrera Correa and Dr. Landy Rodríguez Hernández, kidnapped in the community of Mandera, Kenya, on April 12, 2019.

Rodríguez and Herrera Correa were kidnapped on April 12, 2019 in the Kenyan city of Mandera, bordering Somalia and the target of jihadist attacks in the past. That day, the two doctors were traveling, as was their custom, in a convoy to the Mandera hospital, protected by armed escorts, when they were intercepted after a shooting in which one of the police officers guarding them was killed.

Until 2022, the Government of Kenya always stated that steps were being made to rescue the doctors, efforts that, to date, have been unsuccessful. Since the arrival of William Ruto to the Kenyan Presidency in September of that year, the Executive has not publicly pronounced on the case. Official silence has also prevailed in neighboring Somalia, where the two doctors supposedly remain captive.

“Nobody knows the current whereabouts of the two Cuban doctors. We also do not have up-to-date information about the current state of their well-being,” a source from the Somali National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) told EFE in April 2023, on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

“It is believed that they are still held somewhere in an Al Shabab bastion since their kidnapping,” the source said. “We don’t have any more details at the moment,” he insisted, “and nothing new has emerged in the last two years.”

Herrera and Rodríguez were part of a contingent of 100 Cuban professionals who arrived in Kenya in 2018

In May 2019, traditional leaders from Kenya and Somalia who traveled to the Somali region of Jubaland, controlled by Al Shabab, to negotiate in favor of the doctors, claimed to have seen the doctors providing medical assistance to the local population. According to the mediators, the kidnappers went so far as to demand 1.5 million dollars as a condition for their release, the Kenyan press reported at the time.

Herrera Correa and Rodríguez were part of a contingent of 100 Cuban professionals who arrived in Kenya in 2018, as part of a bilateral agreement to improve access to specialized health services in the African country.

Al Shabab, affiliated with the Al Qaeda terrorist network since 2012, carries out frequent attacks to overthrow the Somali Government – supported by the international community – and establish an ultra-conservative Islamic State. The jihadist group controls rural areas of central and southern Somalia and also attacks neighboring countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia.

Somalia has been living in a state of war and chaos since 1991, when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown, which left the country without effective government and at the mercy of Islamist militias and warlords.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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dozen people linked to the case, including agents, former CIA agents, friends and partners of Rocha, to try to understand how the case of the greatest infiltration in the U.S. Government known so far could happen. The former diplomat, who this Wednesday pleaded not guilty to the 15 charges against him, will be tried on March 25.

But the great unknown, which according to AP may take years to uncover, is what the Cuban regime was able to have access to thanks to Rocha. The former officials interviewed agreed that the CIA had known since at least 1987, that Castro had a high-level infiltrator – “super mole” – in the U.S. Government and that the former diplomat, of Colombian origin, was probably on a list delivered to the FBI of alleged spies in high foreign policy positions.

Peter Romero, former Undersecretary of State for Latin America and Rocha’s colleague, does not hesitate to admit that the error was “monumental.” “We are all doing a huge examination of conscience, and no one can think of anything. He did an incredible job of covering his tracks.”

AP reconstructs Rocha’s biography, which he told to those who met him. His first years in the country, at the age of 10, were hard, they say, but his intelligence gave him access to a scholarship for minorities with which he could study in an elite school. “Taft was the best thing that happened to me in my life,” he said in an alumni magazine of that boarding school in Connecticut in 2004.

That life had a dark side. Rocha was discriminated against because of his origin – poor and immigrant – by the other students. Some say that in those episodes – which he himself defined as devastating and during which he even thought of committing suicide – is the germ that led him to sympathize with the Cuban Revolution.

As was already known, the former diplomat studied at Yale, Harvard and Georgetown. In those years some of his contacts with Cuba begin, the first in 1973 during a trip to Chile where he met agents of the General Directorate of Intelligence (DGI) deployed in that country in the time of Salvador Allende, according to recordings of the FBI’s covert operation. He married a Colombian woman, who is being investigated for possible links with Cuba and whom AP was unable to locate.

Rocha then worked at the United States Interests Section in Havana, where he was when the MiGs of the Cuban Air Forces shot down, in February 1996, the civilian planes of Brothers to the Rescue

In 1981 he entered the U.S. Foreign Service and was sent to Honduras where his task was to advise the contras fighting against the Sandinista Government of Nicaragua, supported by Cuba. His first relevant stop was in 1994, when he arrived at the White House as director of Inter-American Affairs in the National Security Council with responsibility for Cuba. From that position he wrote a memorandum urging Bill Clinton to dismantle the main sanctions against the Island, an idea that could not prosper since in 1996, the Republicans took control of Congress, and the policy towards Cuba hardened.

Rocha then worked at the United States Interests Section in Havana, where he was when the MiGs of the Cuban Air Force shot down, in February 1996, the civilian planes of Brothers to the Rescue.

The AP article reviews what is known as Rocha’s greatest favor to Cuba, when he was ambassador to Bolivia. He said during a conference that voting for a drug trafficker – alluding to the candidate and coca leader Evo Morales – would make the United States cut off foreign aid. Liliana Ayalde, also a diplomat, tells the agency that she felt very uncomfortable. “I told him that it was not appropriate for the ambassador to make those statements when the elections were just around the corner.”

“Now that I see it in retrospect, it was all part of a plan,” Ayalde considers. After those statements, which were considered an act of interference, Morales was catapulted into the presidential race. Although he didn’t win on that occasion, years later he did, calling Rocha his “best campaign manager.”

Cuban agent Florentino Aspillaga, who defected when he headed the DGI office in Bratislava (present-day Slovakia), was the first to speak to the CIA, in the mid-1980s, about the spies infiltrated into the United States. According to his statements, four dozen Cubans recruited by the CIA were double agents carefully selected by the DGI to penetrate the United States Government.

Brian Latell, a former CIA analyst, said that Aspillaga mentioned “two highly productive spies within the State Department” and that “Fidel Castro himself played a key role as the leader of Cuba’s spies.”

He claimed to have seen documents marked as secrets “so valuable that they were sent directly to Castro’s residence without going through the Minister of the Interior

Another deserter of the Cuban DGI consulted by AP, Enrique García, said he also had known about the Island’s espionage network since the 90s, and he claimed to have seen documents marked as secrets “so valuable that they were sent directly to Castro’s residence without going through the Minister of the Interior. “I have no doubt that [Rocha] was part of that network,” he says.

He has also talked about the case of Peter Lapp, an FBI agent who supervised, among others, the case of Ana Belén Montes, although he did not know if Rocha was at some point under suspicion, as Jim Popkin, author of a book about Montes, argues. He was forceful when evaluating the risk that Cuba poses to national security and said that it is usually underestimated, unlike Russia or China.

“It is a country that we ignore at our own risk. Cubans are not only really good at human intelligence, but they are also experts in brokering information to some of our greatest adversaries,” says Lapp.

Rocha, who in 2002 retired from public service and switched to private enterprise, dedicated himself to trying to influence the embargo by buying goods confiscated by the Revolution. He boasted about his contacts: “I have access to almost all the countries in the region or I know how to get it,” he told the Miami Herald in 2006.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

The document indicates that on 6 May 2023 Daniel Álvarez González and Luis Miguel Alarcón Martínez began to shout slogans such as “Abajo Díaz-Canel“, “Abajo la Revolución“, with signs of having consumed “alcoholic beverages” and in order to “promote chaos.” Their calls incited other neighbors to accompany them, according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which affirms that they came to try to impose themselves on law enforcement to avoid arrests.

The Prosecutor’s Office accuses several of the protesters of having “unadjusted behavior” and not participating in “activities guided by political and mass organizations.” In his opinion, the defendants maintain “reprehensible” behaviors, including games such as la bolita (a lottery) and dog fights, in addition to being unemployed. However, none of them have a criminal record.

Victoria Martínez Valdivia, mother of two of the accused, told Martí Noticias that the only one who had received the file was Yandri Pelier, while at home they were still waiting for the document. Her son Luis Miguel is in prison awaiting trial, while Felipe Octavio was released on bail.

“I expected it for Luis Miguel, because he did protest himself peacefully. Yes, he did, and he says he won’t regret it. He affirms that he simply asked for freedom and food for his family and his people. But Felipe Octavio Correa Martínez, what they have said about him is a lie, because the boy was not even at the demonstration. Felipe’s participation was when the abusers, those criminals, left him upstairs to kill his brother, and he hugged his brother. Felipe says: ’Mom, I don’t regret it, because I will guard my little brother so that they wouldn’t give him more blows,’” he said this Sunday in the middle of Miami.

Correa Martínez was released from pre-trial detention with Pelier Matos in June, after spending a month in detention. Two months later, in August, they also left jail after paying bail Rodolfo Álvarez González and Freddy Sarquiz González.

Luis Miguel Alarcón Martínez and Daniel Álvarez González, accused of instigating the protest, have since been in the Combinado de Guantánamo prison, where they have had to suffer the diseases derived from the poor living conditions that occur in the prisons of the Island.

“I expected it for Luis Miguel, because he did protest himself peacefully. Yes, he did, and he says he won’t regret it. He affirms that he simply asked for freedom and food for his family and his people”  

The protests in Caimanera, the emblematic municipality known for its proximity to the US naval base of Guantánamo, took place on the night of Saturday, May 6 of last year and were the most important after those of 11 July 2021, known as ’11J’, and those sparked by the power outages that splashed in the summer of 2022. Around a hundred people participated in them and they were repressed with blows and arrests.

The official press quickly launched a campaign to label the protest as counter-revolutionary and point it out as an action of the “hybrid war” against the Government. Cubadebate released an extensive article entitled Caymanera: What it was and what they tried to be in which it described what happened as an “unusual demonstration” of a few dozen people “initiated by an incident with a small group in a state of drunkenness” and taken advantage of in Miami to “try to give the image of a rebellious country and encourage the uncautious who believed it.”

Organizations such as Amnesty International have reacted against the arrests in Caimanera by telling the Government that the response to a protest could never be state violence.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

“We want to move the country forward, and in that purpose doing everything we can for ourselves is vital,” Díaz-Canel said to the farmers, to whom it was clear that, contrary to what the president said, they must find “alternatives” on their own.

The terrible situation of milk delivery also forced the Minister of Internal Trade, Betsy Díaz Velázquez, to appear on Cuban Television on Thursday. At first, she alluded to the purchase of powdered milk abroad, which has presented “difficulties” in recent months.

As she explained, of the 2,200 tons that the Island needs, much of it is acquired in “distant markets, which makes the price more expensive and the arrival more delayed.” The current distribution of this product to children between birth and seven years old is made from the country’s reserves, “the valuable contribution of the World Food Program with donations and from economic actors (private companies) with contractual loans.”

As for liquid milk, Díaz clarified that due to the drought that affects Cuban livestock, deliveries have been delayed, so the ministry tries to “commit the producers more” and “avoid detours (…) to other destinations that are not those of the regulated family basket and social consumption.” The financial constraints of the State and the U.S.embargo were other trite reasons that the minister used to explain the milk crisis.

“Not all the inventories are in the provinces; therefore, transfers must be made in the midst of limitations with fuel and logistics, but from today, a distribution system begins that will allow children from zero to six months to be covered for 10 days, from February 25 to March 5,” said the official.

Also, milk will also be delivered for 10 days, from February 15 to 25, to children from six months to two years old, who have not received it since the 5th. Those from two to seven years old, however, will only receive it for five days. Children with chronic diseases will be given half of the quota they currently receive, while medical and pregnant diets “are still pending.”

In recent months, the official press, ahead of the Ministry of Internal Trade, has reported on the milk situation in each province

In recent months the official press, ahead of the Ministry of Internal Trade, has reported on the milk situation in each province, especially in the largest producers – Camagüey, Sancti Spíritus and Villa Clara. This Thursday, Invasor, the newspaper of Ciego de Ávila, did its part: “Delays in the arrival in Cuba of powdered milk contracted to maintain the continuity of the productive flow in the months of February and March require the adoption of temporary measures to rationally take advantage of the reserves and protect the most vulnerable sectors.”

In addition to the well-known economic crisis, those responsible for the shortage are, the newspaper points out, the farmers, who breach the contracts and do not deliver the milk on time or in the agreed quantities. As a result, Invasor insists, children from “three to six years, 11 months and 29 days, will receive 17 ounces of milk and will also be assigned an amount of instant vitamin soda, currently in production, to compensate for the equivalent of the milk they will stop receiving in the month.”

Weeks earlier, in January, the Camagüeyan press also announced the collapse of milk production in the largest producing province. Of the 18 million gallons of milk planned in Camagüey for 2023, only 11 million were produced. The situation is similar in Sancti Spíritus, where of the 11 million gallons committed to the State for last year, only 8 million were delivered, according to Escambray. The culprits, once again, were the farmers.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Others even went a step further, and asked why the regime does not open up to Israel or Taiwan if, in short, links are maintained with South Korea’s main “sponsors,” the United States and the United Kingdom.

The diplomatic link between Seoul and Havana was interrupted in 1959 after the arrival of Fidel Castro, who never resumed relations with the Asian country. As for North Korea, just a year later, in 1960, both countries exchanged ambassadors.

Despite the fact that diplomatic relations were suspended, the rapprochement between Cuba and South Korea coincided, in 2015, with the thaw between Washington and Havana, when several economic exchanges in technological and energy matters began, which were limited by the lack of a favorable diplomatic scenario.

In 2022, for example, according to data provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of South Korea, the country exported goods to Cuba for a value of 14 million dollars and imported goods for 7 million. Likewise, before the pandemic, about 14,000 South Korean citizens traveled to the Island every year, and another 1,100 descendants of Koreans who migrated during the Japanese occupation (1910-1945) reside there. All of them, the Ministry explained, need “systematic consular assistance.”

Until now, explains the Seoul Foreign Affairs statement, Cuba was the only Government of the continent with which they did not maintain links 

Until now, explains the Foreign Affairs statement of Seoul, Cuba was the only Government of the continent with which they did not maintain links despite the fact that “the two countries have expanded cooperation focusing on non-political fields such as culture, human exchange and development cooperation. In particular, it is considered that the dissemination of a friendly awareness between the two peoples through the recent active cultural exchange contributed to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.” This is intended to be maintained, ignoring the uncomfortable neighbor of the north.

Two examples of these relations in “non-political camps” are the purchase by Havana of the Korean ferry Perseverancia, which makes the route between the Isla de la Juventud and Surgidero of Batabanó (Mayabeque), and the aid worth $200,000 in medicine and hygenic material sent by Seoul after the explosion in 2022 of the Matanzas supertanker base.

In this sense, the role of each country is very clear, and the atmosphere during the restoration of relations by the diplomatic missions of Seoul and Havana at the United Nations on February 14, as a Cubadebate commentator assures, “could not be more loving.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

 

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

The lack of makeup is a serious obstacle, he clarifies, because it prevents “disguising a hematoma” and filling “the cavities of the face, ears and nostrils

In vain, the newspaper tries to downplay the conditions of its work. To each idyllic phrase, such as the one that portrays him as an “artisan of the image,” Gómez opposes strong descriptions of his daily routine, which – in the “good” days – consists of trying to return to the deceased “the shape of the face, the faded colors, the physical presence and even the arrangement of the hair.”

The lack of makeup is a serious obstacle, he clarifies, because it prevents “disguising a hematoma” and filling “the cavities of the face, ears and nostrils.” Gómez says that the family usually wants to see the deceased’s face for the last time, which means leaving the body in the most decent state possible. The issue is complicated, however, when it comes to someone who died in an accident.

“Sometimes I receive a corpse of an injured person and, in general, we try to ensure that it can be exposed, but when it is impossible, due to the disfigurement of the face, then we consult the relatives to approve sealing the coffin and having a photo of the deceased,” he says.

After 12 years as a coffin manufacturer, Gómez is not alien to any of the difficulties of the profession and now accepts the most difficult cases, such as preparing a deceased child, with resignation. “It’s something that makes my teeth itch,” he says, “because it’s very hard to see a small body on that cold table and think that the child didn’t manage to live long enough. But this is the job we have, and someone has to do it.”

The work also includes placing the corpse in the casket, transferring it to the funeral chapel and monitoring it, in case the tropical climate and poor-quality makeup present any “difficulty.” Before the burial, he himself seals the coffin. Other services? The “collection at home” and the arrangements of the deceased in the house itself, when the wake is domestic.

The silent debacle of the Cuban Communal Services has its most evident effect on the inability of the company to collect garbage from the streets

The silent debacle of the Cuban Communal Services has its most evident effect on the inability of the company to collect garbage from the Cuban streets, but it also passes the account to the cemeteries – increasingly neglected and exposed to desecration – and funeral homes. The families of the Island must deal with all kinds of difficulties ranging from the confusion of data – and not infrequently of bodies – to the discovery of open tombs, with bones stolen for ritual purposes.

One of the most serious moments of the crisis occurred after the numerous deaths during the coronavirus pandemic. The small capacity of the cemeteries of many municipalities led to extreme measures, such as burials in mass graves. It was the case in Manzanillo, in Granma province, where the gravediggers told this newspaper that in the neighboring cemetery of the batey San Francisco, up to 200 dead were buried in one day.

Overwhelmed by the number of deaths and by the crudeness of their instructions – they had to bury the deceased three hours after death – the testimonies of the Manzanillo gravediggers do not differ much from those of Gómez in Sancti Spíritus. In Cuba, neither respect or rest is found in death.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.