Translating Cuba – Page 47 – English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island

Hurricane Melissa Challenges “The Entire Value Chain of Cuba’s Energy Logistics System”

Not only is power generation hanging in the balance as the powerful hurricane approaches: the fuel storage network is at risk, an expert warns.

Workers at the Hermanos Díaz refinery carried out hurricane preparation tasks on Monday, Cupet said. / Cupet

14ymedio, Madrid, October 28, 2025 / Hurricane Melissa was approaching Kingston, Jamaica early this morning as a powerful hurricane, with sustained winds of 280 kilometers per hour and gusts exceeding 300 kilometers per hour, including one of 388 kilometers per hour recorded by a U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration aircraft. Although it is expected to weaken slightly as it leaves Jamaica, forecasts indicate it will regain strength before reaching Cuba early Wednesday morning.

The greatest concern is the storm surges it will prompt on the coasts of Granma, Santiago de Cuba, and Guantánamo, which will cause flooding in low-lying areas, as well as the heavy rains expected throughout the eastern part of the country, which are dangerous in mountainous areas due to the risk of river flooding and landslides. The risk is such that the official newspaper Granma newspaper has not minced words.

“Melissa will hit with great power and cause great concern about what it could destroy in its path. But let it not be lives that are left vulnerable,” the newspaper warns. It states that, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of evacuees, “no time has been wasted in planning and implementing evacuation plans for those at risk, safeguarding resources, securing health institutions, providing rescue equipment, and updating waterworks.”

But if there is one infrastructure in serious danger, it is precisely the weakest: the national electricity system (SEN). Jorge Piñón, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, warned this newspaper that the risks go far beyond power generation—which will have to be halted at thermoelectric plants in affected areas when the time comes, according to the official press—and even extend to logistical capacities. continue reading

“The impact of Hurricane Melissa, a Category 5 storm, could not only be devastating for the Antonio Maceo and Renté thermoelectric plants in Santiago de Cuba, and the Lidio Ramón and Felton plants in Holguín. It could also affect 26% of the country’s power plants, with an installed capacity of 813 GW in the five eastern provinces, representing 31% of the national total,” the specialist says, citing official data.

Although the government announced this Sunday that lineworkers from across the country were already en route to the eastern region to prepare—and recover—the infrastructure, Piñón points out that there will be “thousands of kilometers of electrical transmission and distribution lines, along with their substations,” crisscrossing the areas that are expected to be hardest hit by Melissa.

The photovoltaic panels, towers, and generators at La Herradura wind farm in Holguín are also exposed. The Electric Union and the official provincial press have explained that the panels at all solar farms have been protected with strong straps tied to the foundations of the wind turbines, although the omen is not good. César Luis Sarmiento Ávila, head of investment at the Holguín Electric Company, indicated that, according to the design, the support can withstand winds of up to 200 kilometers per hour, which is 80 kilometers per hour less than the current speed of the hurricane as it is passing through Jamaica.

“But Melissa’s impact could go far beyond electricity generation. The entire energy logistics system value chain in the eastern provinces could be seriously compromised,” warns Piñón. “The Hermanos Díaz refinery, with an installed capacity of 30,000 barrels per day and an extensive fuel storage network, constitutes a strategic hub for the supply of refined products, lubricants, and liquefied gas cylinders to this region of the country,” he explains.

Furthermore, all of Cuba-Petroleo’s (CUPET) territorial marketing terminals have dozens of fuel and liquefied petroleum gas storage tanks that are “vital to the national economy,” and it will be essential for tanker trucks to be able to access the roads to supply generators, gas stations, and industries. “Yes, electricity is crucial, but logistics—the backbone of fuel supply—will also be put to the test in the coming weeks,” the specialist concludes.

In homes, there continues to be concern about blackouts lasting longer than 24 hours, and although applications that don’t require an internet connection have been activated and amateur radio emergency networks are operating to access hurricane information, a large part of the population lives in anguish over the disconnection.

“My mother spends more time without electricity than with it,” X, originally from Santiago, tells this newspaper. “She only told me that at the llega y pon [informal settlement] with my house, they came with several buses and took everyone away. They’ve moved everyone who might be in bad shape, that’s what she told me.” Since her house is in good condition and has sufficient food, “she’s more worried about the viruses than the cyclone,” she adds.

The arbovirus infections that have been ravaging the country for weeks face another test of fire with the hurricane, where everything could get worse. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has sent a donation that includes, among other things, hygiene kits and water treatment plants. “The goal is to support national efforts for early recovery and reduce the suffering of affected families,” a spokesperson reported Monday.

The donation includes 4,000 tarps for temporary roof coverings, seven electric generators, six chainsaws, 259 specialized and basic tool kits for roof repair, and more than 2,000 single-person mattresses. The United Nations also announced it has activated its Anticipatory Action mechanism, through which it plans to distribute more than 100 tons of rice and emergency supplies.

The gap between what is reported in the official press and what citizens report on social media is total. The government maintains that all preventive measures have been taken and now calls for individual discipline and responsibility to avoid any tragedy, while social media messages claim that the conditions under which this hurricane arrives are so deplorable that even the best forecasts cannot mitigate its effects.

But authorities consider the accusations a “smear campaign.” “A failed state could do everything we were doing before the cyclone, nor can it organize all the efforts being made to confront this situation and recover from it,” President Miguel Díaz-Canel said yesterday.

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A New Card and the Same Trick: Cuban Doctors in Angola Still Can’t Collect Their Pay in Dollars

The authorities advance a new payment mechanism to settle complaints, but the doctors still demand payment in dollars

Cuban doctors in Angola say the authorities have held onto their dollars for years / Cubadebate

14ymedio, Havana. Natalia López Moya, October 28, 2025 — “We are somewhat resigned, but not at all in agreement,” said Héctor, a Cuban doctor in Angola who participated in the meeting on October 23 between health workers and representatives of Antex, the Cuban company that manages the missions in the African country. The meeting, held in Luanda, served to announce a new payment mechanism through the Classic card, which maintains restrictions on access to dollars and thwarts the hopes of health workers to be able to recover their money in that currency.

The meeting took place in a tense atmosphere, albeit with fewer complaints than on previous occasions. “It’s not that we have given up, but people have now realized that these officials aren’t going to do anything; it’s like talking to a wall,”explains the doctor, using a pseudonym for fear of reprisals. According to his statement, the document read during the meeting had already been leaked days before, so the attendees arrived “more than informed.”

The official text stated that, beginning October 20, Cuban professionals in Angola and Algeria can transfer the savings accumulated in their accounts in freely convertible currency (MLC) to a Classic card, with which they will be able to buy in dollar stores, acquire a car and pay for fuel at foreign currency gas stations.

The change does not solve the main problem: the impossibility of withdrawing dollars in cash from Cuba

However, the change does not solve the main problem: the impossibility of withdrawing dollars in cash from Cuba. “This has changed nothing,” says Hector. The availability of dollars still depends on the bank, and the answer is always the same: we don’t have any.” continue reading

The measure was to be implemented in January 2026, but it was brought forward by growing unrest among the health workers, tired of collecting pay in a devalued currency. “All this prevents us from making plans for housing, investment or migration,” laments Héctor, who is about to finish his mission after more than three years. “The MLC is worth much less than the dollar, and the balance in a Classic card is also below. In the end we lose money on every transaction.”

The currency gap is confirmed by the informal market: while the dollar is quoted this Tuesday at 485 Cuban pesos, the MLC barely reaches 200, and the money in a Classic card equals 446. “We can forget about a part of our savings; that money evaporates in the many deals we have to do to get the cash,” he concludes.

For months, a number of health workers had been confident that the authorities would allow direct payment in dollars or kwanzas (Angolan currency), to later buy dollars in the local market. But the decision of the Cuban government, advanced this week, fell like “a bucket of cold water” on these expectations.

In September, the professionals received only half their monthly payment in kwanzas, about $200

The discomfort is aggravated by other failures. In September, professionals received only half their monthly payment in kwanzas -about $200- and in October the disbursement was further delayed. Some doctors have not yet been paid. ” People are demoralized, but also scared,” says another health worker in Luanda. “They have tried to divide us and scare us so that no one protests.”

The clearest warning came a few days ago from Cuba’s Ministry of Public Health, which officially called the doctors who criticize the system or report irregularities “ingrates and traitors.” It was like a direct message, says the doctor. Anyone who complains risks being sent back to Cuba and losing their savings.”

The discontent had reached such a point that a group of collaborators drafted a letter to the Cuban Public Prosecutor’s Office, on behalf of all, demanding payment in foreign currency and better working conditions. At the center of their complaints is Antex, a subsidiary of the military conglomerate Gaesa, sanctioned by the US Office for Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Antex manages a wide range of businesses in Angola, from road construction, airfield repairs and travel agencies to managing medical missions.

The discontent had reached such a point that a group of collaborators wrote a letter to the Cuban Public Prosecutor’s Office

In July, the professionals also sent a letter to Miguel Díaz-Canel, denouncing “non-compliance with the form of payment established in the contract” and demanding access to their funds in dollars deposited on the island. There was no response. Instead of rectifying, says another doctor, “what they have done is give us another plastic card but no cash dollars, nothing.”

Most of them have lost hope of a change. “They don’t want to give up the money, says Héctor. They have kept our currency for years and will not return it, even if that costs them more complaints in the meetings.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuban Roel Santos Dreams of Seeing the Island Play With Its MLB Stars

“It’s a topic that has caused a lot of controversy,” the Granma native acknowledges.

Santos has been selected for both World Baseball Classics, in 2017 and 2023. / ‘Cubadebate’

14ymedio/SwingCompleto, Havana, Ocotber 27, 2025 / Cuban baseball player Roel Santos, who has represented Team Cuba in various international tournaments, called for Major League Baseball players to be part of the team’s roster for the VI World Baseball Classic – if Cuba finally receives permission to participate – which will take place in 2026 in the United States, Japan and Puerto Rico.

The outfielder, who plays in the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League with the Bravos de Margarita club, said in an interview with Swing Completo that he hoped Cuba “has the good fortune that its MLB players can say yes and that their teams can give them the nod. It would be a very good thing. I would love it if this could be achieved someday. That the best players in the world can participate. It will be good for both baseball and the fans, who also want that.”

The Granma native acknowledged that “it’s a topic that has caused a lot of controversy,” but that a good result for the island only depends on adding MLB players. “It’s the best event, and honestly, who doesn’t want to be in a World Baseball Classic? Being able to have major league players in a Classic is a great prospect, because the best players in the world will be facing each other,” he remarked.

“For the 2026 World Classic, if Cuba receives permission, we haven’t made the call yet.”

However, Roel Santos’s ambition seems unlikely due to the political differences between the Cuban government and the main Cuban stars playing in the MLB—like Aroldis Chapman—although he hasn’t lost hope that, at some point, this barrier will be broken: “I would like everyone to participate. There are many legends I played with on the national team, and they could participate now. It would be a very good thing for the country.” continue reading

The baseball player, who is on Team Cuba’s pre-roster for the Copa América, which will be played from November 12 to 22 in Panama, has been selected for both editions of the World Baseball Classic, in 2017 and 2023, the latter when the island reached the semifinals, where it lost to the United States.

A player who played for the Houston Astros, pitcher Julio Robaina, was recently contacted by the Cuban Baseball Federation to represent Team Cuba in the upcoming World Baseball Classic. The pitcher appears to have said yes.

However, Cuba is currently waiting for confirmation to compete in the tournament, which, as of October 22, had not arrived. Germán Mesa, who will lead Team Cuba in the Copa América, reported that “for the 2026 World Classic, if Cuba receives permission, we have not yet made the call.”

Even so, for the tournament scheduled for next March, although there’s no official confirmation, tickets are already on sale for the games in which the Cuban team will participate. The online platform Gotickets offers tickets for up to $1,345 to watch Team Asere ‘s match against Colombia in Box B of Hiram Bithorn Stadium, Puerto Rico.

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Foreign Ministry Data Reveals There Are 3,650 Cuban Doctors Hired by Mexico

A report details that in the last seven years, 288,073 tourist, humanitarian and temporary residence visas have been granted to people from the Island.

A group of Cuban specialists is in Hermosillo, in the state of Sonora (Mexico). / Facebook

14ymedio, Mexico City, October 27, 2025 — In the last seven years the Mexican government has granted temporary visas to 3,650 Cuban healthcare workers. The figure provided by the Foreign Ministry to the newspaper El Sol de México reveals that during Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration, which began in October 2024, another 549 specialists have arrived, but no date or location has been set for their integration into the country.

During Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration (2018-2024), an agreement was reached with Cuba to provide 3,101 health workers to provide medical care in remote, high-risk areas of the country. The pact was successful despite numerous complaints, such as one made by the Prisoners Defenders association, which stated that Mexico “is allowing slavery” and “financing” the Cuban regime.

Between July 2022 and 2023, the Health Services Department of the Mexican Social Security Institute for Welfare signed three agreements with Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos SA de CV, a Cuban company internationally accused of human trafficking. The program received 1,177,300 euros monthly, totaling 23,227,156 euros for 610 specialists.

During the term of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024), an agreement was reached with Cuba for the arrival of 3,101 health workers to provide medical care in remote areas of the country.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has defended the hiring of physicians. Last June, she emphasized that “it is not forced labor” and the relationship with the island is “legal and open.” But the president did not report on a new agreement. However, 14ymedio confirmed that 20 family continue reading

medicine specialists from the municipalities of Guane, Mantua, and Sandino were at the Ernesto Guevara polyclinic in the municipality of Sandino, Pinar del Río, last September, awaiting their trip to Mexico.

The Foreign Ministry’s information also indicates that during López Obrador’s term and during Sheinbaum’s administration, 288,073 tourist, humanitarian, and temporary residence visas have been granted to Cubans. The number of permits doubled compared to the 122,713 registered during Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration (2012-2018).

During López Obrador’s term and during Sheinbaum’s term, 288,073 tourist, humanitarian, and temporary residence visas have been granted to Cubans.

“The number of visas granted to the island even exceeds that issued to other countries in the region such as Colombia, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina,” reported El Sol de México .

Among the beneficiaries of temporary visas are 100 Cuban professors from various medical sciences educational centers on the island who arrived in 2023 to teach at 50 municipal schools of the Benito Juárez Universities for Well-being, located in the state of Michoacán.

Regarding humanitarian visas, in the first half of this year, the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR) has issued a total of 3,342 cards. Attorney José Luis Pérez asserts that the figures correspond to the number of applications processed, but in reality, there are more than 20,000 Cubans seeking to regularize their status in order to settle in the country.

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Matanzas Resident Pavel Torres Rodríguez Is Released After a Year in Prison at Combinado Del Sur

He was arrested for “propaganda against the constitutional order,” but the Prosecutor’s Office substituted the crime for “resisting arrest.”

“I will continue to think freely, without inciting violence, but being critical of the country’s path,” he told this newspaper. / Facebook

14ymedio, Pablo Padilla Cruz, Matanzas, August 22, 2025 — Matanzas resident Pavel Torres Rodríguez was released last Tuesday, October 21, after spending a year in the Combinado del Sur prison, initially accused of “propaganda against the constitutional order.” His release came after a change of sentence in which the Prosecutor’s Office dismissed the original case and replaced it with a new, fabricated crime: “resisting arrest,” punishable by up to one year in prison, exactly the same amount of time the activist had already served.

“I was always seen as an instigator of public disorder,” Torres told 14ymedio. “State Security tried to link me to dissident figures and groups inside and outside of Cuba. They mentioned names like Dr. Alina Hernández, José Daniel Ferrer, and UNPACU (the Patriotic Union of Cuba). I responded that I admire those Cubans, that they influence my critical thinking, but I’m not affiliated with any political party.”

The only “crime” committed by this resident of the Versalles neighborhood in Matanzas was to speak out fearlessly , openly criticizing the country’s economic situation and the performance of its leaders, whom he accused of having forgotten the people. He also didn’t hesitate to call them “thieves” in his social media posts.

“I went from a normal life with my family to being confined to a breeding ground for bedbugs and disease.”

On October 11, 2024, after “letting loose with a barbarity” in the doorway of his house, following a power outage—according to Margarita Rodríguez, his mother—a patrol car arrived and took him into custody. “The rest is continue reading

history,” the woman added, “two weeks in the Técnico and since then in Combinado del Sur.”

Until then, Torres had been working at a neighborhood guarapera [sugarcane juice stand] and was fond of underwater fishing, but two years ago he suffered a heart attack that left him with lasting effects. “I’m afraid for him,” Margarita confessed, “because I’ve heard rumors of prisoners who have died at Combinado del Sur. I’ve already lost a daughter to COVID-19; I couldn’t bear to lose another child.”

During his incarceration, he lived with common-law prisoners in conditions he described as “inhumane.” “I went from a normal life with my family to being confined in a breeding ground for bedbugs and disease,” he recalls. “Despite everything, I tried to remain calm. Some prisoners ended up being like family to me.”

“The hardest part of unjust imprisonment isn’t getting there, but surviving the cycle of new difficulties that begins from day one,” the Matanzas native confesses. He was overwhelmed by the uncertainty of not knowing where his criminal proceedings would lead, even though he hadn’t committed a crime, “at the mercy of a situation, real or fabricated by the authorities,” that would jeopardize both his physical and emotional safety.

“I know they can invent a new cause and repeat the cycle.”

Torres asserts that his faith in God was what kept him steadfast during the months of confinement. “I will continue to think freely, without inciting violence, but being critical of the country’s path,” he tells this newspaper. “Even though a semi-illiterate officer can destroy your life with a signature, I believe the day will come when that same oppressive power will have the opportunity to redeem itself in a Cuba for all and for the good of all, as the Apostle [José Martí] said.”

Despite his release, the 46-year-old Matanzas native considers himself on “conditional release.” Both he and his family fear continued surveillance by State Security agencies, often carried out by neighbors sympathetic to the regime. “I know they can invent a new case and repeat the cycle,” he warns.

With uncertainty as his companion, Torres Rodríguez says he walks “with God, his homeland, and freedom in his heart,” determined to continue being useful on the path toward a more just Cuba.

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Silent Hostility: The Price of Anti-Castro Exile

Immigration policy has oscillated between privilege and punishment

Hostility toward the anti-Castro exile isn’t always expressed through shouting. / Pedro Pan Group Archive

14ymedio, Rafael Bordao, Miami, 27 October 2025 — There is no exile without loss, but the anti-Castro Cuban exile has also carried a more subtle and corrosive form of loss: that of recognition. From the first days after the triumph of the Revolution, those who dared to dissent and leave the island were marked not only by the pain of separation, but by a persistent hostility disguised as indifference, suspicion, and silence.

Castro’s skillful and tenacious propaganda has managed to infiltrate the most intimate fabric of cultural and academic life in the United States, Latin America, and Europe. In universities, at film festivals, in publishing houses, and in the media, the official narrative has been repeated so effectively that the anti-Castro exile appears as an uncomfortable, almost anachronistic figure: the “worm,” the reactionary, those nostalgic for a past that, we are told, deserved to die.

In Spain, where the cultural left has embraced a romantic vision of the Cuban Revolution for decades, exiles have been received coldly, if not with outright animosity. They have been denied the right to complexity, to contradiction, to plural memory. But something is changing. The growing presence of Cubans in Spanish territory has begun to erode this monolithic narrative. Direct experience, human closeness, and the voice of those who have experienced repression and scarcity are opening cracks in the wall of propaganda.

Exile is not just a wound: it is also a form of resistance.

In the United States, paradoxically, where many exiles found refuge, they have also faced the weight of suspicion. Immigration policy has oscillated between privilege and punishment, and new exiles, especially those who continue reading

arrive after denouncing the regime, face a system that demands proof of suffering while denying them empathy.

Hostility toward the anti-Castro exile isn’t always expressed in shouts. Sometimes it is omission from textbooks, exclusion from academic panels, mockery in intellectual circles. It is the silence surrounding their testimonies, the discomfort their presence provokes.

But exile is not just a wound: it is also a form of resistance. Every voice that rises against the single narrative, every story told from a fractured perspective, every gesture of memory that defies propaganda, is an act of dignity. And that dignity, though often ignored, is what sustains the truth in the face of oblivion.

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Almost 650,000 Cubans Await Evacuation Due to Category 5 Hurricane Melissa

Insmet forecasts that the storm will hit the eastern part of the island on Tuesday night.

Evacuations in eastern Cuba to address the threat of Melissa. / Facebook

Nearly 650,000 people in eastern Cuba must be prepared to evacuate or protect themselves from the upcoming impact of Hurricane Melissa -which this Monday rose to Category 5, the highest on the Saffir-scaleSimpson-, reported Miguel Díaz-Canel this Sunday after an expanded meeting of the National Defense Council. He stressed that “the main goal is to protect the population” and ordered “the evacuation of all people who are downstream from the dams, reservoirs and all flood zones.”

“We are working intensively for the rest of Sunday and Monday, ensuring peace of mind for the worst possible situation. This event will come at night or in the early hours, and what we don’t do now will be lost later,” he said. He also called for “special attention” to the most vulnerable population and to securing primary health services and the epidemiological surveillance system.

Díaz-Canel asked the population to maintain “constant communication” with neighbors, using “all possible ways, especially in the midst of the country’s electrical situation.” Many citizens live almost on the fringes of what is to come, going days without electricity, especially in the eastern zone where Melissa will land, which prevents them from watching continue reading

television or having access to other sources of news.

Many citizens live almost on the fringes of what is to come, going days without electricity, especially in the eastern zone where Melissa will land, which prevents them from watching television or having access to other sources of news.

The Institute of Meteorology (Insmet) predicts that the hurricane will hit Cuban soil on Tuesday night and transit from south to north across the island for 12 hours, keeping the whole area on alert.

Since this Monday, classes have been suspended throughout the east, as announced in an official note by the Ministry of Education. The measure affects all types and levels of education, whereas in Ciego de Avila, Sancti Spíritus, Cienfuegos and Villa Clara, teaching activities are being gradually discontinued only in internal schools, while the other educational levels remain under observation.

In the west, from Matanzas to Pinar del Río, including Isla de la Juventud, classes will be held normally, although they could be canceled according to the evolution of the hurricane. The Ministry called on the population to maintain “prudence, solidarity and responsibility” in the care of children and teenagers.

In addition, as of yesterday, departures of major national trains and all local and interprovincial services from Las Tunas to Guantánamo were canceled,

In addition, since yesterday, the departures of the main national trains and all local and interprovincial services from Las Tunas to Guantánamo have been canceled, which implies the total disconnection of the eastern region by rail. As for road transport, since 1:00 pm on Monday they have not suspended national bus services, including those of Viazul, from and to the eastern provinces.

in the complete disconnection of rail services to the eastern region. Regarding road transport, as of 1:00 p.m. this Monday, all national bus services, including those operated by Viazul, to and from the eastern provinces are suspended.

Domestic and international flights to and from Santiago and Holguín scheduled for October 28 and 29 are canceled, as is the Batabanó maritime transport in Nueva Gerona and Cayo Largo del Sur.

The presidents of the provincial Defense Councils declared themselves to be on “alert” in a videoconference about their work to protect people and vital resources, the development of evacuation centers and food processing, as well as multi-channel communication. The fear, in the midst of a very precarious situation for Cuba, is enormous.

In the provinces of Santiago de Cuba and Las Tunas, protection is provided for 258,579 and 72,000 persons respectively. In addition, 110,000 residents will be evacuated in Granma, 69,000 in Holguín and 139,914 in Guantánamo. In total, about 7% of the Cuban population is on alert because of Melissa, according to official figures.

The director of Insmet, Celso Pazos, specified that Melissa is a hurricane of “great intensity,” accompanied by winds exceeding 124 mph and intense rains that represent one of the most “dangerous” factors of this system, which will generate floods upon its arrival on the southeastern coast of Cuba.

The accumulation of rain is estimated to be between 10 and 15 inches over 34 or 48 hours and will be higher in mountainous areas. Sea penetrations are also expected on the south coast, at its entrance, and in the north, at its exit, with coastal flooding.

General Ramón Pardo Guerra, head of the National Civil Defense Staff, reported that several hundred people, including tourists, will be evacuated due to the rains that are already occurring. “It is a situation that will continue to become more complex due to the saturation of soils,” he said.

The foreseeable threat of Melissa to Cuba has Imelda as its closest antecedent, the tropical storm that hit eastern Cuba at the end of last September with heavy rains. It left two dead, several thousand displaced, flooding, landslides, overflowing rivers and house collapses, among other damage.

In Granma province, Yudelkis Ortiz Barceló, first secretary of the provincial committee of the Communist Party, said the territory has been preparing for a week, with 98 critical areas identified and 224 evacuation centers prepared. Food processing sites have also been set up. The official said that sanitation and clearing, the pruning of branches and other cleaning activities have also been carried out.

Fifteen percent of the population in Granma is on alert, including 470 pregnant women who have been admitted to shelters because they live in vulnerable areas or are at some kind of risk. In addition, there are 116 families being protected, and yesterday, Sunday, most of the evacuations began and were carried out with “rigor and discipline,” according to Ortiz.

In addition, there are 116 protected families, and yesterday, Sunday, most of the evacuations began and were carried out with “rigor and discipline,” according to Ortiz

Beatriz Johnson Urrutia, the party’s first secretary in Santiago de Cuba, used the same words. There, nine municipal defense councils and the 126 area-level defense councils have been activated. Twenty-five percent (258,573 people) are in protection plans while the water in the most important reservoirs has been released. The official said that special attention is being paid to the coffee harvest, “since there is enough ripe coffee for 49,000 cans.”

In Holguín, there are plans to evacuate 305,530 people to the 151 available centers. Joel Queipo Ruiz, first secretary of the provincial committee of the Party, said that they are “preparing for the worst scenario, so that nothing surprises us.”

Meanwhile, Yoel Pérez, his counterpart in Guantánamo, said that 30% of the population, some 140,000 people, are on alert, and 108 centers are available. Las Tunas has 113 shelters for the 72,000 people whose evacuation is planned, said Osbel Lorenzo Rodríguez, first secretary of the provincial committee.

Cuban meteorologists have warned that the current hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, which runs from June 1 to November 30, will be “very active, “with the possible formation of eight hurricanes.

According to their forecasts, the probability that at least one hurricane will originate and intensify in the Caribbean is high (75%), while it is 50% for one from the Atlantic to penetrate the Caribbean Sea and affect Cuba.

In the 2024 season, two hurricanes hit the island. The first was Oscar, a category 1, which struck the east of Cuba. A month later came Rafael, category 3, which punished the west and caused the total collapse of the national electrical system.

In its passage through Haiti, Melissa remains a threat and has left three dead and 16 wounded, as well as 10 houses damaged and 450 flooded

In its passage through Haiti, Melissa remains a threat and has left three dead and 16 wounded, as well as 10 houses damaged and 450 flooded, according to the latest assessment of the Directorate of Civil Protection. “Given the amount of rain falling, there are risks of flooding and landslides, as the soil is saturated with water,” said the authorities.

For his part, the president of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, called this Sunday to move towards “normality” after several days with most of the provinces on red alert and the working day suspended.

The Dominican Emergency Operations Center (COE) yesterday decided to reduce the alert level for four provinces in the southwest of the country, while 13 others are on yellow and the same amount are on green.

So far, Melissa has caused one death and flooding in Dominican territory, and the COE indicated that there are “735 damaged houses, 3,765 displaced persons, four active shelters, with 77 people housed and 48 communities incommunicado.”

The forecast is that Melissa will hit Jamaica as a hurricane on Monday and Cuba on Tuesday or Wednesday, in addition to causing rain in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, where one million people were left without water.

The National Hurricane Center warns the people of Jamaica not to leave shelter, since there is a high risk of flash floods and catastrophic landslides up to Tuesday morning.

In addition, it reminds people that destructive winds, especially in mountainous areas, will begin tonight and could cause serious damage to infrastructure, power outages and long-term communications, leaving communities isolated.

Translated by Regina Anavy

Cuban Doctor Arrested in South Africa for Medicine Theft

The doctor has also been part of medical brigades in Venezuela, Pakistan and Brazil

A routine check found “unauthorized” drugs in her bag and office / Screen capture

14ymedio, Havana, 26 October 2025 — Cuban doctor Yamilet Castañeda was arrested for stealing medications in South Africa. According to a report published this Saturday by the Police Service of that country, the event occurred on September 2, when the 54-year-old woman was checked by a guard at the hospital where she practices in Thabazimbi, in the province of Limpopo, in the north of the country. During the “routine” check, “unauthorized” drugs were found in her bag, so she was taken to her office, where another search turned up more drugs.

According to the report, the woman, born in Camagüey according to her Facebook profile, was accused by the police, and more than a month and a half later, “after the investigation, the suspect was apprehended upon her return to South Africa from Cuba on October22.”

One day later, Yamilet Castañeda appeared before the Thabazimbi Magistrate’s Court and was subsequently released “with a warning,” as the investigation continues. The case was postponed until October 28 “for further presentation of evidence.”

The police report states that she was subsequently released “with a warning”

The doctor, very active on social networks, posted photographs of her workplace and pointed out that she has been part of medical brigades in Venezuela, Pakistan and Brazil, as well as South Africa, “countries that have allowed me to grow professionally and personally.”

She also said that the medical profession chose “to bully” her because “I had no vocation for it, and those who know me know that I prefer the arts.” She even said that she did some “group B and C entrance tests. My first continue reading

choice was Journalism, but they chose Medicine for me.* Otherwise I would be who knows where and writing who knows what.”

She also praised South Africa, “which has made me fall in love with my profession and taken me to the limit, but with effort I have managed, although I know that I still have a long way to go.”

Some South Africans have reacted to the news on social media. South Africa Vibes reports that the arrest “has sparked public outrage and rekindled debate about why the South African government continues to hire foreign doctors, especially Cubans, while hundreds of South African medical school graduates remain unemployed.”

The arrest “has sparked public outrage and rekindled debate on why the South African government continues to hire foreign doctors”

The message adds that “for years, government officials have defended the controversial medical cooperation program between Cuba and South Africa, arguing that it covers the shortage of qualified professionals in rural hospitals. However, critics argue that it is an insult to local talent, and now incidents like this raise questions about accountability, background checks and fairness in public health recruitment.”

At the beginning of 2024, South Africa estimated that nearly 700 national doctors were unable to find employment in the public sector, a figure which the government said was better than last year’s figure of 800.

“It is simply strange that we spend so much money on training local doctors and that so many of them are unemployed,” said Jack Bloom, a local politician and member of the Democratic Alliance, who has been monitoring and denouncing the hiring of doctors from Havana for years.

“It’s simply strange that we spend so much money on training local doctors and that so many of them are unemployed”

In 1996, South Africa and Cuba signed a bilateral agreement to launch the Nelson Mandela/Fidel Castro Medical Collaboration Program. The agreement seeks to address “the excessive concentration of health personnel in urban areas and the exclusionary private sector, as well as to increase the number of qualified health professionals,” said the then Minister for International Relations and Cooperation, Naledi Pandor, during a parliamentary debate about Cuba.

The Cuba-South Africa relationship has since left controversial episodes, such as the payment of $225,000 during one year to seven Cuban doctors who worked in that country, out of a group of 28 hired in 2020, to help at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic but had already returned to the Island by that time, or the disbursement of $750,000 from South Africa annually for 11 Cuban doctors.

*Translator’s note: Cubans cannot choose their own vocation; they go “where the Revolution needs” them.

Translated by Regina Anavy

US Thanks Cuba for Its ‘Valuable Collaboration’ in the Extradition of Chinese Drug Lord Brother Wang

This Thursday, Havana returned Zhi Dong Zhang to Mexico, and he is now in the Washington

Zhi Dong Zhang was extradited by Cuba to Mexico, which handed him over to the US immediately. / Omar H Garcia Harfuch

14ymedio, Madrid, October 24, 2025 — The capo of fentanyl, “Brother Wang,” is now in the US. Zhi Dong Zhang, a Chinese national, first left Havana, where he had been arrested on 31 July 2025, according to a statement made public yesterday by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The authorities spoke for the first time about the arrest and extradition of the drug trafficker, returned to Mexico at the request of that country and “by decision of the Cuban government,” says the statement.

The brief communication also states that Zhi “was arrested for offenses committed in the national territory of document forgery and human trafficking, as provided for in the Cuban Penal Code, and he was under provisional detention. Since July 2025 he has been a fugitive from the Mexican authorities, a country where he was serving a sentence for crimes associated with international drug trafficking.”

Shortly thereafter, Mexican Security Secretary, Omar García Harfuch, confirmed his surrender to Washington, which had him targeted as a priority because of his international criminal drug trafficking network, which cooperated with the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels.

Washington had Zhi targeted as a priority because of his international criminal drug trafficking network, which cooperated with the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels

Harfuch made the result public through his X account with an unusual gesture: he thanked Cuba “for its valuable collaboration.” “As a result of investigations, international cooperation and coordination, on October 30, 2024, the Mexican authorities of the Security Cabinet of the Government of Mexico arrested in Mexico City Zhi Dong “N,” identified as responsible for international drug trafficking, money laundering and alliances with criminal groups present in the Americas, Europe and Asia, and who has a Red Notice from Interpol,” he explained.

“On July 11, 2025, he escaped from the authorities after a judge granted him house arrest, so a search operation was implemented and international bodies were alerted. He was arrested in Cuba on July 31, along with two other persons, and today he has been handed over to US authorities as a result of efforts made by the Office of the Attorney-General of the Republic of Mexico,” he adds, listing all the Mexican security forces that participated in the operation, as well as the institutions.

Zhi has at least one case pending in Georgia — the charges were upheld by a federal court six days after his escape — which accuses him of having laundered at least 20 million dollars in the country through 150 shell companies and 170 bank accounts between 2020 and 2021. The arrest of one of his partners, Ruipeng Li, made it possible to determine how Zhi operated the criminal network and collected money through it from the sale of the drug and laundered it in China.

The arrest of one of his partners, Ruipeng Li, made it possible to determine how he operated the criminal network through which Zhi, inside a Mexican cell, collected money from the sale of fentanyl and laundered it in China

At this point in the investigation, they knew how the money transfers were made and what the products were called — “coffee” was fentanyl and “food” was cocaine — and that 2,000 kilos of the first and 1,000 of the second had been moved.

Zhi was arrested in Mexico in October 2024 and placed in a maximum security prison, but a judge decided to grant him house arrest under military custody, a measure that ended up favoring his escape on July 11, 2025. According to the Mexican press, while the precautionary measure was being applied for, his partners tunneled into the house and, once granted, the authorities did not properly review the conditions of the property.

Brother Wang, also known as El Chino, Tocayo, Pancho and Nelson Mandela, had several false identities and tried to reach Russia with a fake passport but failed. He then went to the Island in the same way, but there he was arrested and taken into custody. According to some Mexican analysts, the Island could have used Zhi to get some diplomatic oxygen at a very delicate geopolitical moment, when its biggest allies on the continent are being besieged by the US.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Matanzas, Cuba, Tries to Move With Electric Tricycles, But the Blackouts Slow the Route

The new fleet of vehicles partially alleviates urban transport, but the lack of electricity and inefficient journeys frustrate drivers and passengers.

Electrical cars are not charging, and gasoline cars are not refueling,” comment Matanzas residents. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Matanzas, Pablo Padilla Cruz, October 26, 2025 — The improvised stop in front of the pre-university school in Matanzas fills up quickly. A group of passengers are waiting their turn for one of the new electric tricycles that cross the city. Some watch the corner where the vehicles should appear; others comment that “they come when they want to.” The scene is repeated every morning since the 15 vehicles assigned to the provincial capital arrived as part of the plan to relieve urban transport.

“Almost none of them go all the way to the Faustino Pérez hospital,” complains Indira, her backpack resting on her knees. “At the beginning of the month I had to take a sick family member there, and neither the electric cars nor the gas cars go that far up. Private motorcycles ask for 400 pesos during the day and whatever they can get at night, up to 800. There is no pocket that can stretch that far.” She sighs and adds: “Luckily, the wide guaguas [buses] still save us for 20 pesos.”

One of the tricycle drivers, Ricardo, defends his reasons for avoiding that route. “These bikes are electric, and going up to the hospital consumes a lot of battery. If we reach the limit, we have to go back to the base to recharge, and that makes us waste time and money. We pay to rent the tricycles and also for fixing them when they break. Right now there are three tricycles out of use, and all indications are that their repair will come out of the pockets of those who rent them.”

He says that the problem is not exclusive to the electric ones. “It also takes more gas to go up there, and without a monthly quota, we can’t afford it. continue reading

That is why many drivers prefer to take short routes or charge more to go up there.”

Three months after the arrival of the tricycles, transportation officials acknowledge that “they don’t solve the underlying problem.” / 14ymedio

The Faustino Perez hospital, built on the outskirts of the city under an old development plan that never prospered, has become a hard-to-reach site. Its isolation is compounded by the prolonged blackouts, affecting both medical services and the transport system. When electricity is lacking, charging tricycles becomes a headache, a problem that 14ymedio has also documented in provinces such as Havana, Holguín, Villa Clara and Las Tunas.

In Matanzas, the arrival of tricycles was received with anticipation. But three months later, transport officials admit that they “do not solve the underlying problem.” In addition to the difficulties of getting to the hospital, residents question why the city received only 15 vehicles while Cárdenas, much smaller, got 10. “The routes to the bus terminal are also interrupted,” explains a sector employee. “Until the repair of the building is completed and the terminal returns to its original location, the Terminal-Pre route will not be able to operate.”

The Minister of Transport, Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila, admitted earlier this month that the project faces “concrete limitations that condition coverage and frequency.” According to the official, who is the most active on social networks of the entire Cabinet, the city’s slopes use up the battery charges, forcing some vehicles to return before noon to the charging base.

“The electric cars are not charged, and the gasoline cars are not fueled.”

Despite the justifications, the people of Matanzas agree that the State’s tricycle system barely alleviates the transport shortage. In a city where traditional bus routes are a thing of the past, the workers’ buses from the Varadero beach resort have also been reduced, due to the tourism crisis. “The new tricycles are not so new anymore,”says a neighbor, observing the traffic. ” Sometimes you see them outside the service hours, going empty, at the service of their drivers but not the people.”

The picture is aggravated by both the fuel and electricity crises. “The electric cars are not charged, and the ones that use gasoline do not have fuel,” summarizes Indira, as she finally climbs onto one of the tricycles that arrives at the stop just as rush hour begins and anxiety is at its peak.

The vehicle starts up with a slight hum and moves slowly down the avenue. Behind is the sidewalk, full of distressed passengers who have the feeling that, in Matanzas, every solution depends on the next cut off of the electricity.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuba: How Long Will This Suffering Last?

It is not the virus that is making Cubans sick, it’s the system

[In a country with no drinking water, no electricity, no garbage collection, no medicine or hospitals that work, everything is possible except for a life of dignity. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Madrid, Eugenia Gutiérrez, October 26, 2025 — A few days ago, Cuba’s Minister of Public Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda, was obligated to break his silence in the face of what could be the biggest epidemiological crisis that the Island has experienced in recent times.

Specifically, he said: “The situation is under control,” and “we have to convey to people that we know we have problems, but we are doing everything to save their lives.” With these words, the minister broke the silence, yes, but remained in denial, the usual practice of a regime that avoids accountability by any means. If the magnitude of the tragedy is denied, scrutiny is reduced.

Today in Cuba there are three viruses circulating simultaneously: dengue, chikungunya and oropouche, along with nine respiratory viruses, as well as an alarming increase in acute diarrhoeal diseases and cases of hepatitis A. This means entire families are infected, from children to the elderly, without adequate resources or assistance.

Of the country’s 15 provinces, these viruses are present in 12, as recently recognized by Doctor Francisco Duran Garcia, national director of Epidemiology, a face known to Cubans since the covid-19 pandemic. As a result, according to official data, 80 per cent of the national territory is continue reading

currently affected.

This systematic denial once again breaks the hearts of Cubans

As for the number of deaths, Doctor Duran himself stated on October 8 that there were not 11 deaths a day, as was being said, nor were the hospitals collapsed. Again the discourse of denial, and the opacity and lies that no one believes anymore.

This systematic denial once again breaks the hearts of Cubans who suffer from these diseases themselves. Many report the lack of reagents to identify the viruses, a shortage of serums and medicines, and the collapse of hospitals.

In the absence of official transparency and the silence of the authorities, it has been the citizens themselves who have taken on the role of warning, denouncing and telling the truth about what is happening. They are victims of the abandonment of a regime that, instead of taking responsibility, shifts the burden to the people, requiring them to implement impossible measures in the midst of endless blackouts, lack of water and the accumulation of garbage on every corner.

Cuba needs a change of system, not palliatives and empty promises

Cubans once again are depending on aid from the exile community, which the regime itself is forced to accept but never acknowledges

The health crisis is not an isolated fact: it is the reflection of a failed state, a structural and multidimensional crisis that has only one possible exit. It’s not the virus that is making Cubans sick, it’s the system. In a country with no drinking water, no electricity, no garbage collection, no medicines and no functioning hospitals, everything is possible except for a life of dignity.

How long will this suffering last? How long will there be this official resistance, for which the Cuban people themselves pay? Cuba needs a change in the system, not palliatives or empty promises, because only when the system changes can lives be saved.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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“The Situation Is More Critical Than During the Special Period,” Warns Cuban Economist Pedro Monreal

Cuba is suffering from shortages, prolonged daily blackouts, high inflation, recession, dollarization, mass migration, and an accelerated deterioration of living conditions.

After five years of deep crisis on the island, the “decline is more sustained and there is no way out in sight.” / 14ymedio

EFE (via 14ymedia), Havana, 25 October 2025 — The Cuban crisis is “systemic” and its planned economic model has likely reached “its limits,” said renowned Cuban economist Pedro Monreal in an interview with EFE. He emphasized that the first step in economic reform must always be “political.”

“The current situation is very critical, more critical than during the Special Period, between 1990 and 1993,” he said, referring to Cuba’s worst crisis to date, which followed the collapse of the Soviet bloc in Europe.

This doctor in Economics from the University of Havana, who has taught and researched for decades in his country and abroad, currently resides in Madrid and is a leading figure for his social media analysis of current Cuban events.

He explains that the economic contraction was greater during the Special Period, but that now, after five years of deep crisis on the island, the “decline is more sustained and there is no way out in sight.”

Cuba is suffering from shortages of basic necessities (food, medicine, fuel), prolonged daily blackouts, high inflation, recession, growing dollarization, mass migration, and a rapid deterioration of living conditions.

“I believe the limits of a centralized planning system’s ability to adjust have been reached,” Monreal analyzes, adding that “after successive modifications that haven’t eliminated the country’s structural problems—but only some of their consequences—the measures adopted by the government have had “decreasing effects.” continue reading

“The economy continues to decline, and the crisis has no way out; it can’t be resolved. What is being done is having no result.”

“The economy continues to decline, and the crisis has no way out; it can’t be resolved. What is being done is having no result. Are we at the end of a nearly 60-year-old regulatory model? It is likely,” he replies.

Monreal paints an alarming picture. He highlights the “completely collapsed levels” of agricultural production, which “continue to plummet from the peaks of 2016-2018,” and warns of a “very, very serious” food security crisis.

He also warns about the energy situation, with repeated breakdowns at obsolete thermoelectric plants; the budget deficit; the loss of the driving capacity of the tourism sector; the lack of “productive support” for the Cuban peso; and the 30% collapse in the purchasing power of wages in just four years due to inflation.

In his opinion, Cuba is experiencing a “systemic crisis,” “a profound and protracted alteration of the matrix” of the economic model that affects its foundations. “It’s the type of crisis from which a country cannot recover from within the framework of the system,” he says, lamenting that the country’s leadership does not seem willing to embrace the “radical” nature of the necessary changes.

“Every economic reform is a political act,” emphasizes this economist, who insists that maintaining the planned economy in Cuba “has more to do with political persistence, not so much economic.”

The lack of political action in this area, in his opinion, can only be explained by two reasons. First, the attempt to “preserve power” by the government and the Cuban Communist Party (PCC, the only legal party) because, as in almost all other socialist economies, these needs “dictate the pace and direction of reforms.”

The second, he points out, is the fear that economic changes could modify “institutional functioning,” diversify the interests of elites, and subsequently “fragment” the country’s leadership.

In his opinion, the “calculation” of these elites is that “it is preferable to assume the risk of economic disintegration,” trying to prop up only “the most critical elements,” than to launch “more radical reforms that could completely disrupt” the power structure.

“In Cuba, there is obviously a very high risk that the loss of economic dynamism could drag the population into a social crisis that could turn into a political one, of which there have been glimpses.”

“In Cuba, there is obviously a very high risk that the loss of economic dynamism could drag the population into a social crisis that could turn into a political one, of which there have been glimpses,” Monreal notes.

With respect to the government’s program to correct distortions and boost the economy, which has been implemented piecemeal for almost two years, Monreal points out inconsistencies: “It is an attempt to resolve a structural crisis without substantially changing the framework.”

He believes the program, which primarily included budget adjustment measures and the partial dollarization of the economy, has no chance of achieving its objectives because “it continues to maintain the idea that the system can be rebuilt through modifications—I would say— that are cosmetic.”

One of the measures contemplated in this plan is a reform of the monetary system, which has been deeply strained by the so-called Ordering Task of 2021, a failed attempt by the Cuban government to remove the dollar from the local economy. “It’s a disaster, something that has turned the Cuban economy upside down more than anything else,” Monreal believes.

However, any action in this area now is also complex, he acknowledges. The economist doesn’t believe the government will unify the exchange rates (currently two official ones, both very far from the informal one) or that it could establish a new rate based on fundamentals because it would “starve the country.”

Regarding whether it would be a floating exchange rate, as the government announced at the end of last year, Monreal also has doubts. A “dirty float” between two bands would be more likely, although that would require the central bank to hold foreign currency to defend the rate.

The government has indeed been “successful” in reducing inflation and the public deficit, the economist points out, but this has been achieved “basically by impoverishing the country,” due to the decline in the purchasing power of state workers and cuts in services.

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Cuba: Voluntary Work, Compulsory Enthusiasm

How the ideal of the New Man turned into an empty rite that Cubans transformed with humor and resistance

As they used to say, now with resigned insight, voluntary work “builds character.”/ Victoria

14ymedio, Malaga, José A. Adrián Torres, October 25, 2025 — As a child in Spain, in the camps of the Catholic Scout Movement, I remember that there was also something called volunteer work. It was carried out on Saturdays and consisted of performing tasks, which although they appeared to be spontaneous, were actually assigned in advance. Everything had to be done “of its own accord” but under the eyes of the “pack leaders,” referring to the The Jungle Book that was a reference for the Cub Scouts movement.

That routine, a mixture of discipline and fervor, was clothed in a mystique: to serve others joyfully under the motto vale quien sirve, We Serve. Over the years I understood that beyond youthful idealism, it was also a form of directed moral learning, an obedience wrapped in enthusiasm.

In Cuba, that spirit of cheerful discipline and youthful symbolism had its own version: a kind of tropical Baden-Powell Scouts Association

The so-called “voluntary work” was never exactly a practice of solidarity, but rather an ideological tool designed to shape the new citizen: austere, loyal, cooperative, obedient. As a Cuban friend commented to me, “Its value was not productive but formative, to transform the young person into a collective being, to go from the self to the collective.” The goal was not the amount of cane cut, but the reformed soul with revolutionary spirit.

The rituals of the socialist utopia, copied from the Soviet model, met with an obstacle in the Caribbean that was impossible to overcome: the Creole and Hispanic idiosyncrasies of Cervantes

That moral training project also had its class bias: the intended to ‘proletarize’ the remnants of the bourgeoisie, discipline the professional and domesticate the peasant farmers, who were clinging to their land like the wealthy kulaks did to theirs, when Lenin wanted to make an example of them. But the dreamed-of New Man ended up wanting to be a foreigner–and many did–or he merely got old.

In a way, the system of pioneers with red bandanas — copied from the USSR and countries like Romania and East Germany — recalled the Scout movement, although under another banner and another creed: that of the Revolution.

But the result was different. The rituals of the socialist utopia, copied from the Soviet model, met with an obstacle in the Caribbean that was impossible to overcome: the Creole and Hispanic spirit of Cervantes.

The tropical culture did not fit with parades, uniforms or doctrinal solemnity. Where communism called for fervor and discipline, the Cuban responded with a story — a joke, a chiste, we would say in Spain. Where heroism was required, mockery was born.

Popular humor and passive resistance were disguised in Cuba as “revolutionary participation.” Volunteer work was thus transformed into a layperson’s mass in which the faithful feigned devotion while whispering jokes.

Jorge Mañach had accurately described it decades earlier, defining the joking as “a mockery of any non-imperative form of authority, the art of not taking anything seriously. The Spanish chiste had a close relative: the Andalusian guasa, banter, that sarcastic and corrosive irony that — like the choteo — disarms solemnity with a smile, especially in its most popular and festive form: the carnival, with its satirical chirigotas — limericks — and cuplés, couplets.

Voluntary work, conceived as an academy of socialist conscience, turned out to be a masquerade of appearances

Deep down, voluntary work was the apotheosis of that conflict between obedience and humor. It was a faithless liturgy, an obligatory sacrifice to demonstrate ideological purity. And the Cuban, who cannot stand inflated pomp without a nickname or a joke, turned the ideal of the New Man into a tragicomic character: a hero of the sugarcane harvest with a rogue soul of the Golden Age, apparently devoted but a master in the art of escaping with wit.

That attitude, so Cuban, has deeper roots: it is inherited from the Hispanic spirit, that mocking skepticism that runs through Lazarillo and Quixote, where laughter does not destroy but plays down dogma. Cervantes ridiculed chivalrous dreams with the same ingenuity that Cubans parodied revolutionary fervor: both made humor and sarcasm a form of lucidity.

When the communist ideal traveled from the Russian steppes to the Caribbean beaches, it changed its accent and temperature. The parades were filled with music, slogans were made into songs and collectivism became a pretext for excuses, so classic and “evocative” in more than one sense for Cubans in the so-called schools in the countryside.

Communism, when it arrived in Cuba, was tropicalized: it gained rhythm, but lost gravity. And the voluntary work, envisioned as an academy of socialist conscience, ended up being a masquerade of appearances, in which everyone complied so they wouldn’t be reported. They pretended to obey but laughed inside, in order to not surrender.

Perhaps that laugh was the most Cuban of all forms of resistance. It was not epic or head-on, but effective: an intimate resistance, intelligent, like Sancho Panza, against the pomp of power.

As many said — now with resigned lucidity — voluntary work “builds character,” or even that crueler joke, that you would get “a kick in the butt” as a stimulus. In these minimal phrases a whole philosophy was condensed: obey without believing; laugh without ceasing to survive. Voluntary work, in short, did not create the New Man. What it formed was the national vanguard joker, able to feign enthusiasm while mocking, in silence, the solemnity that oppressed him.

Humor has been, for Cubans, their manual of resistance to the bitter drink that the bartender of the country’s history served them… and which history itself will not absolve.

Acknowledmemts:
I would like to thank Jorge Mayor Ríos for his valuable contributions, comments and suggestions to this text, the result of long conversations that over the years helped me better understand the complex contemporary history of revolutionary Cuba and the peculiarities of the Cuban soul. It was also he who, for the first time, put in my hands the essays of Jorge Mañach, the starting point for many of the ideas developed here.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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About to Start School, Amanda Gets Her Life Back in Madrid

Her mother, Milagros Ortiz, hopes to legalize her status so she can bring the other daughter she left in Cuba.

Amanda with her parents, Emmanuel Lemus and Milagros Ortiz, in Madrid, where they live. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Madrid, 20 October 2025 — Amanda Lemus Ortiz looks like a very different girl from the one who left Cuba almost two years ago, accompanied by her parents, Emmanuel and Milagros. Those sad, yellow eyes are now full of life in Spain. Her skin has regained its radiance and cinnamon color.

In a small apartment in Madrid, surrounded by toys her daughter has accumulated during long hospital stays, Milagros Ortiz recounts her journey to save Amanda’s life , undergoing a liver transplant at La Paz Hospital, something she couldn’t receive in Havana. “Now, thank God, Amanda has been accepted into school and will begin her adaptation process on Tuesday,” her mother boasts.

“The only fear I had was that she would die in my arms without having done anything,” she tells 14ymedio firmly. She has faced everything else—the threats, the questions on social media, the precariousness in Cuba, and the leap to an unknown country—with the conviction that being a mother means never giving up. Before Amanda’s condition completely changed their lives, Milagros worked as a designer in Sancti Spíritus, and her husband was a specialist at the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Environment.

The Ministry of Health authorized the transfer to Spain under “an agreement” between hospitals, explains Ortiz, who states that the family left the island with tourist visas.

The story began when Amanda was just a baby and was diagnosed with a rare liver disease, biliary atresia type III, which made a liver transplant vital. From the beginning, Ortiz had to deal with a lack of supplies, late diagnoses, and a healthcare system unable to respond. Between trips to Havana, hospital beds, and a lack of medication, she learned the details of her daughter’s illness, while Amanda’s deterioration became increasingly evident.

Desperate, in early 2024, Ortiz wrote a public letter that went viral on social media and attracted the support of thousands of Cubans continue reading

inside and outside the country. Despite smear campaigns against her and fear of reprisals, the mother clung to the idea of saving Amanda. Social pressure was decisive: donations of food, clothing, diapers, and medicine poured in.

Finally, the Ministry of Health authorized the transfer to Spain under “an agreement” between hospitals, explains Ortiz, who claims the family left the island on tourist visas. “I didn’t believe anything until I was on the plane,” she says, referring to the comments she received from doctors in Cuba, State Security, and the slanderers on social media: “They said everything to me, but I wasn’t with anyone but my daughter. For her, for Amanda, I held on.”

On March 3, 2024, Amanda landed in Madrid and was immediately transferred to La Paz University Hospital. The contrast with what she experienced in Cuba still moves her mother. There, she slept on a hard chair; here, she was given a comfortable bed. There, she had to wait days for a clean sheet for her daughter; here, they change them daily. And most importantly, “here, they explain everything to you transparently.”

Just twelve days later, the little girl underwent a liver transplant. The donor was her own father. “He left the room first, pale, but alive. And then Amanda came in. When she left at six in the evening, I felt like we had all been given life back.”

The recovery was slow, with weeks in intensive care, but surrounded by care unimaginable in Cuba: constant monitoring, psychological care, even visits from clowns and volunteers who gave away toys. “And the best part: all within the public system, without owing a cent to anyone.”

Returning to the island is not an option: “Amanda can’t go to Cuba. With the medications she needs, it would be a disaster.

Today, Amanda, about to turn four, walks, eats well, and receives speech therapy to stimulate her speech. “The only thing missing is for her to start speaking more clearly, but everything else is going very well. The doctors are happy with her,” says her mother, who never leaves her side for a second.

With the help of activist Yamilka Lafita—the “Lara Crofs” of so many charitable cases—the family managed to raise funds on GoFundMe to start a new life in Madrid. That money covered the first few months’ rent, while the father and an uncle found work in workshops. Amanda, who already has Spanish nationality through her father, is starting school, and her mother hopes to legalize her status so she can bring the other daughter she left behind in Cuba.

Returning to the island is not an option: “Amanda can’t go to Cuba. With the medications she needs, it would be a disaster. Here is her life, here is her future.”

At the end of the conversation, the woman insists that her actions weren’t heroic: “I don’t feel like I did anything incredible. What I did was what I had to do as a mother.” And she leaves a message for those going through similar situations in Cuba: “You can’t be afraid. They depend on you, on no one else. If you let fear paralyze you, your child will die. Being a mother is already being brave: just as you push to give birth, you have to push to save your child’s life.”

Ortiz looks to the future with hope. She trusts that Amanda will be stronger and healthier, that everyone will be able to work and live in peace, with the family reunited and grateful. “We just want to live and enjoy our daughters,” she says. “I know everything will turn out well, because they are wonderful with children here.”

Amanda plays on the floor while her mother talks. The little girl, who was on the brink of death, smiles. And in that smile, Milagros Ortiz finds proof that all the pain and effort were worth it.

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Prison Sentences of up to Six Years in Cuba for Demanding Electricity in an “Orwellian” Ruling

Those convicted are protesters from Manicaragua who were protesting the lack of electricity.
A report claims that 60 people lost their lives in state custody in Cuba in one year.

Demonstration in Manicaragua, Villa Clara, on October 20, 2024. / Facebook/Screenshot

14ymedio, Madrid, October 24, 2025 / The October 20, 2024 protests in Manicaragua, Villa Clara, over the power outage resulted in severe prison sentences of five and six years for six demonstrators. The sentence was issued just one year after the protest, during which 23 people were arrested. The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH) has had access to it and denounces the document’s “Orwellian narrative.”

Those sentenced to six years are José Águila Ruiz, for the crime of propaganda against the constitutional order, and Raymond Martínez Colina and Carlos Hurtado Rodríguez, both for public disorder. Meanwhile, Osvaldo Agüero Gutiérrez, Narbiel Torres López, and Yoan Pérez Gómez all received five-year prison sentences for public disorder.

The Provincial Court of Villa Clara considers that all of them were among the 100 people who marched on the headquarters of the Municipal Assembly of People’s Power in the town on October 20th, demanding an end to the blackouts. During the event, the ruling indicates, they resorted to “banging pots and other metal objects” that “disrupted public peace” and interrupted traffic while shouting “we want electricity.”

During the event, the sentence indicates, they resorted to “banging on pots and other metal objects” that “disrupted public peace” and interrupted traffic while shouting “we want electricity.”

The text details that “the accused Narbiel honked a type of horn that incited the noise; the accused Raymond wore a metal object around his waist that he banged, and the accused Carlos made similar noises,” while two others complained “with shouts and gestures,” making it difficult, according to the document, to which the OCDH had access, for the authorities to verbally communicate with the citizens to explain the situation. The objective, the court determined, was “to overwhelm the officials.” continue reading

José Águila Ruiz, convicted of “propaganda against the constitutional order,” was charged with that crime for having filmed and disseminated the demonstration in real time on social media “with the aim of discrediting the Cuban social system.”

In the protests of those days, which, as the ruling recognizes, dissolved peacefully when the power was restored, 23 people were arrested, with the largest group being those arrested in the neighboring Encrucijada. Among them was independent journalist José Gabriel Barrenechea, for whom a seven-year prison sentence was sought in a trial held at the end of September against the defendants from that town.

The OCDH considers the Manicaragua ruling to be a typical one and constitutes “a fraud whose sole purpose is to criminalize civic protest, serving as an instrument of repression and the abrogation of human rights,” in addition to being handed down “in a context of increasing repression as the only response to serious social problems.”

The organization insists that there are no guarantees in the island’s judicial processes and that the principle of legality is being overridden by condemning actions that are not defined crimes, although it does not specify which of the acts it refers to. “The absence of a duly proven crime should have resulted in the acquittal of the accused and their immediate release, given that they have been illegally deprived of their liberty since October 2024,” it adds.

Among the many details the organization questions is the fact that, in its view, the witnesses’ testimony is unreliable, as they “indistinctly” identified the defendants from a group of at least 100 people. “As is customary, the court automatically gives full weight to the testimony of officials from the Ministry of the Interior and local government, which is incompatible with judicial impartiality,” it argues.

Furthermore, it argues, there was a lack of logical reasoning, since the court fails to explain “the causal link between the individual actions and the impact on public order, nor does it define the threshold that distinguishes a legitimate protest from a criminal act.” Furthermore, the court uses “politically sectarian language, such as ‘people opposed to the revolution’ or ‘enemy media,’ [which] seriously compromises the court’s objectivity and blurs the legal analysis.”

The decision was announced on the same day that the Cuban Prison Documentation Center (CDPC) publicly denounced the situation of prisoners in Cuba, 60 of whom it estimates have died in state custody.

The facts are collected in a report that runs from March 2024 to the same month in 2025, a period in which “1,858 events related to persons deprived of liberty in Cuba” were recorded.

The events are described in a report covering the period from March 2024 to the same month in 2025, during which “1,858 incidents involving persons deprived of liberty in Cuba were recorded. Of these, 1,330 constituted human rights violations, revealing a pattern of institutional violence and a critical deterioration of prison conditions.”

The document, titled What the Numbers Tell, specifies that of the 60 deaths, 47 were related to the victims’ physical and mental health, as well as lack of care. Another seven were due to direct physical violence, while the remaining six are unspecified.

The most common acts of violence in prisons are repression and harassment, followed by inadequate medical care, poor living conditions, and inadequate food. There is also a “persistent” use of actions that violate human rights, ranging from isolation and transfers as punishment to practices bordering on torture, such as the Turkish bed (immobilization of prisoners) or the bicycle (which involves throwing handcuffed inmates from the top of stairs).

Common-law and political prisoners are subjected to these practices, which are compounded by overcrowding and unsanitary conditions. The latter constitute 329 of the 545 identified as affected. The CDPC urges the international community to monitor and promote oversight mechanisms for these practices, which also result in total impunity for officials. “The Cuban prison system is today a space of human degradation and political repression. These are not isolated failures, but rather a structural policy of punishment and silence that requires a firm international response,” they warn.
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