English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
On Sunday morning the health of several of the hunger strikers showed serious symptoms of deterioration. The number of activists now refusing food has risen to 27 people throughout Cuba, according to the group’s spokesperson Idania Yáñez. The principal demand of the strike is the immediate release of Jorge Vázquez Chaviano, a dissident condemned for … Continue reading “Health of Cuban Hunger Strikers Deteriorates / Yoani Sanchez”
This Monday several Cuban dissidents started a hunger strike which has already been joined by 25 people throughout the country. At a press conference, Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello explained that that the strikers are demanding the immediate release of Jorge Vázquez Chaviano, age 42. In 2011 this activist was sentenced for the supposed crime of … Continue reading “25 Cuban Dissidents on Hunger Strike / Yoani Sanchez”
Tuesday 9 May, on listening to the reading, on the National Television News, of the official daily press note from Granma, the official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba, I remembered the old joke about Napoleon, Granma and the Battle of Waterloo: “If Napoleon had had a newspaper like Granma nobody would know, yet, … Continue reading “Granma, Napoleon and the Insurgents / Miguel Iturria Savón”
DEATH IN MAY Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo It begins happening more every day. First as an accident, then as business-as-usual. The despicable childishness of the police beating innocents (in the street and in prison) is also a sinister little game, eventually an assassination. As the pyramid of governability disintegrates in Cuba, as the budget for … Continue reading “DEATH, DEATH AND MORE DEATH / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
More than 50 dissidents and activists were arrested on December 10 in Cuba by the combined forces of the National Police and State Security for attempting to mark the International Day of Human Rights, according to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation led by Elizardo Sánchez Santacruz. The Universal Declaration of Human … Continue reading “Cuba: More than 50 Opponents Arrested on Human Rights Day / Iván García”
There is no doubt the dissidence on the island is looking for a space. The document: A Future for Cuba. Issued on December 2, it is counter-proposals to the government’s measures — a balanced document that fits this time in Cuba — from a group of ten people, among them the economist Martha Beatriz Roque … Continue reading “The Time of the Cuban Opposition / Iván García”
He arrived home on Saturday. After 7 years and 8 months behind the bars of a cell and the creaking of locks, the dissident economist Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique, 68, at 6:30 in the morning of his first Sunday in freedom, sat in the park facing the modest apartment where he lives in the neighborhood of … Continue reading “Who is Arnaldo Ramos? / Iván García”
When I first went to his home, what struck me most was an old glass cabinet. Inside, sorted by date, were national newspapers from at least ten years before. Lacking a computer and Internet, this had been the main source of information for Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique (b. Havana, 1942), an economist who believed in the revolution while he worked in … Continue reading “An Economist Behind Bars”
The academic was detained by two patrol cars on the Pinar del Río highway when he returned from Havana 14ymedio, Havana, May 1, 2024 — Cuban academic Dagoberto Valdés was detained this Tuesday night by State Security agents during a trip from Havana to Pinar del Río, where he lives. Valdés, the director of the … Continue reading “Cuban Political Police Interrogate Dagoberto Valdés About an Alleged ‘Operation’ Against the Regime”
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 30 July 2023 — I met Vladimiro Roca in mid-1963. At that time I was a student-soldier at the San Julián Base located in the westernmost part of Pinar del Río. Vladimiro was a MIG pilot who filled us with admiration with his stunts in the skies of Cuba. Then he … Continue reading “The Vladimiro Roca I Knew”
14ymedio, Havana, 30 July 2023 — The Cuban opponent Vladimiro Roca Antúnez has died this Sunday afternoon in Havana at the age of 80. Doyen of dissidence on the Island, the economist and Social Democratic politician had been suffering from diabetes and Alzheimer’s for some time, according to sources close to the family. Born in … Continue reading “Vladimiro Roca, Doyen of the Cuban Opposition, Dies at 80”
14ymedio, Havana, 4 May 2023 — “The situation is critical, a kind of perfect storm between government repression and famine.” The assertion is from the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH), which hopes for “the intermediation of the Cuban Catholic Church” for “the release of political prisoners, the end of repression and changes that the … Continue reading “An NGO Hopes for the ‘Intermediation’ of the Church for the Release of Cuban Political Prisoners”
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 13 June 2022 — Amelia Calzadilla, the Cuban mother who, with her videos on social media, became a symbol of discontent in Cuba, is at home after spending three hours in the offices of the municipal government of Cerro, in Havana. Around five in the afternoon, the young woman herself published a … Continue reading “Cuban Amelia Calzadilla Thanks Those Who Made Her Feel She is Not Alone”
Ivan García, Desde La Habana, May 2022 — For the act of writing this article, the regime – were they to deem it pertinent to do so – could prosecute me and slap me with up to twenty years in prison, according to the current Law 88 which was approved in February, 1999. For collecting … Continue reading “The Ordeal of Cuban Dissidents / Ivan Garcia”
14ymedio, Havana, 27 December 2021 — Lady in White, Sissi Abascal, who participated in the July 11th protests in Cuba was transferred to prison on Monday, after a failed appeal of her six-year jail sentence. Annia Zamora, the activist’s mother, suffered “severe chest pain” at the Jovellanos Tribunal in Matanzas, where the sentence was ratified, … Continue reading “Cuban Sissi Abascal’s Appeal is Denied and Her Six-Year Prison Sentence is Confirmed”
