Translating Cuba

Six Private Businesses in Cienfuegos Closed and Twenty Forced to Sell Their Inventories

The provincial government has issued fines totaling a million pesos

Private business owners are incensed over recently adopted price control measures / Beatriz Pérez/ 5 de Septiembre

14ymedio, Havana, 3 September 2024 — The price controls that took effect on July 8 have forced six privately owned businesses in Cienfuegos to close and led to the cancellation of thirty employment projects nationwide. In what it calls “forced sales,” the government is also requiring more than twenty companies to sell food products and other essential merchandise now being stored in their warehouses if they want to avoid being slapped with price controls.

According to Alexander Brito Brito, the provincial government’s Coordinator of Programs and Objectives, a total of 862 inspections were conducted, which resulted in 590 fines.

Brito did not indicate when the most recent “price control actions” had been carried out but said 630 violations of price control regulations had been uncovered. The regulations cap prices for chicken, cooking oil, powdered milk, pasta, sausages and laundry detergent. The provincial newspaper 5 de Septiembre stated that the measures, which apply only to private businesses, are intended to “provide some degree of economic relief to [Cuban] families.” continue reading

Provincial officials carried out 862 inspections and issued 590 fines

“Provide economic relief to families? What planet are these fine-levying legislators living on? They live in a bubble of manipulation. I’m going to Cienfuegos in two weeks. We’ll see how things really are and just how relieved families there are feeling,” replied one angry reader on Cubadebate, which reposted the 5 de Septiembre article on Monday.

Brito estimated that the provincial government’s actions have generated one million pesos in fines. Businesses were penalized not not only for violating this rule but also for violating Decree #30, a 2021 law that allows prices to be capped based on the needs of each jurisdiction. “We received and responded to five reports and fifty-six citizen complaints,” he is quoted as saying. “There were also actions taken to address illegal activities. In several jurisdictions we found minors engaged in self-employment.”

On a positive note, he adds that increased use and acceptance of digital payment systems was observed in business that were inspected. He points out, however, that many companies are skirting the law. “In an alarming trend, some decided to close up shop during normal business hours.” At no point, however, does he mention the problem of internet connectivity, which is one of the main reasons many Cuban businesses do not use electronic payment systems.

The price control measures adopted in July — presumably through an agreement with some businesspeople in exchange for an exemption from import duties — have incensed private business owners. “I ended up having to liquidate my inventory of powdered milk. Since I can’t make a profit on it, I won’t be carrying it anymore. From here on out, people will have to buy it on the black market for a very high price because a lot of us can’t afford to make bad deals,” said Ramón, a vendor at Cienfuegos’ Yarda market, last month.

Internet connectivity problems are one of the main reasons many Cuban businesses do not use electronic payment systems

He claims that, though the measure has been well received by the public, private businesses have reported losses of over a million pesos in less than a month. Having to sell off their inventories for less than what they paid for them means businesses have been unable to turn a profit.

The opinions expressed by readers of state media outlets such as Cubadebate to the news from Cienfuegos suggest a certain level of public approval of the price controls though some people appear to have reservations. Many view these measures as just the latest iteration of a policy that has been tried the island for more than sixty years to no effect. “These attempts to curtail illegality and control prices are nothing new. It’s like pouring rainwater on wet ground. It does not solve the problem,” reads one post.

Along with a group of skeptics — along those who believe these measures do nothing but push consumer products onto the much more expensive informal market — there is a large cohort demanding that officials adopt the same policy for state-run stores which, until now, have been oblivious to the situation. “Is there any information on price controls in hard-currency stores?” asks one. “Or perhaps in the online Cuban peso stores run by Cimex and Tiendas Caribe?” asks another.

In several jurisdictions minors were found to be engaging in self-employment

“Very good, excellent news. By the way, may I ask why are prices not being regulated in state-owned establishments such as hard currency stores or the National Bread Chain? Or is it that these places do not sell basic necessities?” asks one reader. The question is rhetorical but the answer for many is simple: state-run stores stopped satisfying the public’s needs long ago.

Meanwhile, another reader warns of consequences if businesses continue to close. “The state will have a problem if [private companies] sell off their inventory, collect the money and shut down. There will be two problems. First, nearly a million unemployed people will be looking for work. Secondly, these people will not have food to eat or money to pay taxes. Where will tax revenue come from if most of them are closed?”

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Black Beans Disappeared, the ‘Porotos’ and ‘Alubias’ Arrived

This week, in the market of 19 and B in El Vedado, black beans reappeared after being absent for days from the stalls

Sale of black beans at the 19th and B agromarket in Havana / 14ymedio — Sale of black beans in the agromarket of 19 and B in Havana / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 3 September 2024 — She has never left Cuba, but the crisis has forced her to learn the names of some basic products from other countries. Janet now knows that corn is also called ‘choclo,’ that avocado is called ‘palta‘ in some parts of Latin America and that lemon is the sonorous ‘lima persa‘ (Persian lime) in other places. But it’s the beans that are known by the most names. Faced with the fall in national production, this 42-year-old from Havana has to buy imported beans that say ‘porotos‘ or ‘alubias‘ rather than ‘habichuelas‘ on the package.

“At first I often made a fool of myself by asking the MSME on the corner if what is called ‘caraota’ is cooked in the same way as our beans,” the woman recalls. “In my house I had never bought anything foreign; what we did all our lives was go to the agromarket and choose between the Creole products, which we liked the most.” But the plummeting of national production, the high prices of the legume that comes out of the Cuban fields and the presentation, many times, in packages of poor quality with split beans or stones included, have pushed Cuban diners to prefer the imported beans .

“If he were alive now and saw that we prefer the alubias and imported caraotas, he would have a heart attack and die again “

“I don’t know how they do it, if it’s with a machine or manually, but you don’t have to pick through the beans that come from outside to cook them: they arrive clean, without dirt, without pieces of branches, without different colors,” explains the woman. A one-kilogram package of black beans in a private store in her neighborhood of Cayo Hueso costs between 700 and 800 pesos depending on the quality and the brand. “They say ‘porotos‘ on the package, but now I know it’s the same bean with another name.” continue reading

This week in El Vedado’s 19th and B market, black beans reappeared after being absent for days from the stalls. A pound can go up to 300 pesos, but Janet prefers to “pay more for a package from Argentina or the United States, which arrives cleaner and with beans that get soft when cooked.” The woman regrets that this preference has also been extended to other families she knows. “My grandfather was from Abreus, in Cienfuegos, and he was devoted to planting beans. If he were alive now and saw that we prefer the alubias and the imported caraotas, he would have a heart attack and die again.”

In the province of Cienfuegos, the harvest of black beans planned for 2024 is 1,300 tons, below that of five years ago, when, according to official data, at least 1,500 tons were produced and the trend was to increase each year by 7.8%. At the national level, the numbers also plummeted. In 2018, Cuba reached 161,513 tons of this food, but in 2020 production decreased to 65,779, and in 2021 it was 57,642 tons.

If the Cuban fields are still so depressed, Janet may have to start calling the watermelon ‘sandía,’ the cabbage ‘col‘ or ‘repollo,’ and the cassava ‘mandioca.’

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Cuban Church Asks Spanish Catholics for Help in the Face of Difficulties on the Island

A campaign is launched to collect donations to “support priests and the religious”

The bishop of Holguín, Emilio Aranguren, and Pope Francis, during the latter’s visit to Cuba in 2015 /Holguín Católico/Archive

EFE/14ymedio, Madrid, 5 September 2024 — The power cuts and the shortage of fuel, medicines and other basic goods hinder the work of the Catholic Church in Cuba, according to the bishop of Holguín, Emilio Aranguren, who this Thursday asked for help from Spanish Catholics to face “the worst moment” of the many experienced in his long pastoral life. “The current situation is worse than the one we saw in the 90s, in the so-called Special Period,” the 74-year-old said. “There is a great shortage of basic necessities that are only available at exorbitant prices.”

“The issue of medicines is very serious,” he added. “For example, there are many problems to find the necessary drug in case of dementia and that makes the patients very upset and makes their lives and those around them very difficult.”

Faced with this situation, Aranguren connected this Thursday by videoconference with Spanish journalists to support the campaign “The Church in Cuba, where nothing is impossible,” promoted in Spain by the pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).

The purpose of the campaign is to collect donations to “support the priests and religious in their survival” and to provide “material means so that they can exercise their pastoral and evangelical work,” said the director of ACN Spain, José María Gallardo.

“Cubans are experiencing many difficulties and need the comfort offered by priests,” said Aranguren, who recalled that Cuba has “very few priests,” and they have to travel great distances to be able to attend to all their parishioners. continue reading

“The Cuban Church is poor. It is a Church that does not generate income and has only what the faithful contribute”

“The Cuban Church is poor. It is a Church that does not generate income and has only what the faithful contribute, which in the current economic situation is very limited,” he stressed.

The Cuban Church has 374 priests, leaving Cuba with the highest ratio of Catholics per priest in the world: 20,872 faithful per priest.

In addition, the other religious – 490 nuns and 173 monks – are mostly foreigners, and there are only 27 seminarians throughout the country. Thus, “the cornerstone” of the Cuban Church are the 3,699 lay people who sometimes offer their own houses to install small chapels to celebrate the Eucharist.

The lack of priests has its origin, among other factors, in the secularist policies promoted by Fidel Castro after the Revolution

According to Aranguren, the relationship of the Catholic Church with the communist authorities has improved in recent years, and he pointed out that “attitudes against religious expression on the part of officials, teachers and authorities has decreased, although there are some specific cases.” The prelate did not give details about any of the priests who have been critical of the regime and have received pressure for it, such as Leandro Naún, Alberto Reyes and Lester Zayas. Last April, sources from the Cuban Catholic Church told this newspaper that relations with the Government, precisely, “are going through their worst moment.”

Without referring to it, Aranguren insisted: “There has been a process of learning and understanding of what a Church means within a secular State, and lately the authorities have even sometimes positively valued the actions of the Church .”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Fifteen Years Waiting For A Food Store In Cayo de Mayabe

This July 26th the residents of the ceramicists’ community of Holguín didn’t have their dream fulfilled

Weeds and scrub have begun to grow around the structure / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Miguel García, Holguín, 27 July 2024 – The residents of Cayo de Mayabe, a village in the district of Holguín, have spent more than 20 years asking for the construction of a food store that would allow them to get their groceries locally without having to traipse to the main town four kilometres away. This year, with the characteristic slowness of all state projects, the first bricks were finally laid, but at this point the residents are already expecting that the whole thing will be of no use to them at all.

“We’ve been begging for a long time for a food shop and when they do finally get round to it there’s no food to sell”, complains one woman from the village. With the walls now built and temporary zinc roofing in place, the structure, however, seems to be taking one step forward and two steps back. “They had put in some aluminium doors and doorframes but after a short while they got stolen. They haven’t been back to start the joinery”, she says.

According to the residents of Cayo de Mayabe, they had expected that the building would include not only space for the market but also for a pharmacy. The project would be a big help for the hundreds of locals who have to travel frequently to the Pueblo Nuevo district of Holguín where they are registered for food rations. continue reading

They had expected that the building would include not only space for the market but also for a pharmacy

However, the slow pace of construction of the mixed premises is driving the neighbours to despair, having seen five months pass without anything more than the foundations and the walls being built.

The skeleton of the building has now even become filled with weeds, shrub and cacti, which wouldn’t survive if the cement or lime work were carried out at a proper, constant pace.

The residents of Cayo Mayabe – a community made up principally of ceramicists, who make bricks and tiles – were hoping that by this 26th of July (the date when the regime insists on renovating towns to simulate a festive atmosphere) the shop would already be selling vegetables and other foodstuffs.

However, the construction continues to be stalled, running the risk that, if the authorities keep letting time pass, the building will become weakened or will collapse and will need to be restarted from scratch. Many have even given up hope of having a functional food store: “If they didn’t open it 15 years ago when things were going better, then I don’t believe they’ll finish it now, when there’s nothing to build it with nor anything with which to stock it”.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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A Man Denouncing the Sale of Drugs in Old Havana Is Fined for “Public Disorder”

“The ‘chemical’ is cheaper than a soft drink,” says Alberto Turis Betancourt, outraged

Alberto Turis Betancourt, during his protest this Wednesday in Havana / creen Capture/Facebook

14ymedio, Havana, 5 September 2024 — Activist Alberto Turis Betancourt Pérez was arrested this Wednesday for taking to the streets to protest against the sale of drugs in his neighborhood, Jesús María, in Old Havana. Carrying two large handwritten signs, the man let himself be recorded while walking. He denounced that on Gloria Street, between Carmen and Rastro, narcotics are being sold – the “so-called ‘chemical’, crack and heroin” – with total impunity.

“A chemical is cheaper than a soft drink; they take drugs every day, they live for that,” Betancourt shouts in the video on his Facebook page. Meanwhile, “the police don’t act, mothers are tired of having their things stolen, the people are dying and no one is interested.” In addition, he warns: “I want you to know that my life can be in danger because I am no longer just talking about the regime, but about all criminals who sell drugs without any kind of punishment.”

Questioned by 14ymedio, Betancourt says that after his demonstration he was fined “by Section 21 for public disorder.” He posted on Facebook that “they sent a patrol car and took me to Dragones [Police Station]; they fined me and threatened me. None of this intimidated me; on the contrary, it gave me more strength to continue.” He says that he has spoken to the authorities and has even filed formal complaints, but nothing changes: “The traffickers continue to operate as if nothing had happened.” continue reading

The activist does not know the origin, but he does know “the more than ten who sell the drugs without fear of being arrested

“The drugs are brought in by motorcycle, and the neighbors of the block sell them,” he explains to this newspaper. The activist does not know the origin, but he does know “the more than ten who sell the drugs without fear of being arrested,” alluding to the complicity of the authorities.

Just a few weeks ago, in a segment on State TV’s Round Table program about the subject, the special guest, Juan Carlos Poey, head of the anti-drug body of the Ministry of the Interior, insisted that the source of the narcotics that enter Cuba is “90 miles away.” Several times he repeated that it is Cuban emigrants who bring ‘the chemical’ from the United States, a “synthetic cannabinoid,” with 45 variants that come “in powder, in liquid, mixed with acetone, impregnated in paper or cut with vegetables.”

He did recognize, however, the seriousness of the problem, calling it “complex,” and he emphasized that it is young people and adolescents who consume the most and increasingly at younger ages, a fact that he had already warned about in previous reports. “There is now consumption, holding and selling among young people; even teenagers between 16 and 19 years old get involved as sellers,” he said.

As for the Jesús María neighborhood, it is one of the most miserable in the capital, despite belonging to Old Havana, whose center, largely rehabilitated with foreign donations, receives a large influx of tourists. In it, crime, in fact, seems to be rampant. It is, according to one of its inhabitants, an 80-year-old man, “a place forgotten by God.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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For the United States, Cuba ‘Is Not a Strategic Issue,’ but It Bets on Its ‘Implosion’

Former Cuban ambassador to Washington, José Ramón Cabañas, describes the relationship between the two countries as “a war scenario”

The director of the Foreign Policy Research Center (CIPI) of Cuba, Ramón Cabañas, during an interview with EFE in Havana / EFE/Ernesto Mastrascusa

EFE/Juan Palop (via 14ymedio), Havana, August 26, 2024 — Cuba is used to “sailing in turbulent waters,” says José Ramón Cabañas, director of the official Center for Foreign Policy Research (CIPI) of Cuba, when asked in an interview with EFE about the potential expansion of the international context for the island.

The possibility of Donald Trump returning to the White House, the instability in Caracas after the elections, the change in the presidency of Mexico and the turn to the right in the European institutions after the last elections are elements that can affect Cuba, in itself in a deep crisis.

“Cuba has been able to navigate in very turbulent waters,” answered Cabañas, who was ambassador in Washington during the bilateral approach known as the ’thaw’.”

He recognizes that the tightening of the policies of the United States and the European Union towards Cuba, as well as the distancing of some regional partners, “can be one of the possibilities” in the “immediate future.” continue reading

In his opinion, the US sanctions against the Island have “exactly” the same effects “from an economic” and “social” point of view as an armed conflict

However, he adds that the Island is “a country of struggle and winning,” and its diplomacy “has experience” in adverse contexts. “In one way or another we have been at war since 1959,” he says in reference to the triumph of the Revolution led by Fidel Castro.

In his opinion, the US sanctions against the island have “exactly” the same effects “from the economic” and “social” point of view as an armed conflict. Then there is what he calls a cultural and media battle, which contribute to generating a “state of tension” equivalent to “a war scenario.”

On whether this situation justifies limitations on fundamental rights, he asks that Cuba not be asked “questions that are not news elsewhere,” and he points to the recent trials of violent far-right demonstrators in the United Kingdom.

According to independent records, in Cuba there are more than a thousand prisoners for political reasons, most of them arrested after the anti-government protests of July 11, 2021. Havana says that they were tried following due process.

Cabañas argues that American foreign policy will not be changed “dramatically” by the Democrat Kamala Harris or the Republican Donald Trump. “Biden has not been diametrically different from Trump,” he adds.

He believes that their positions with respect to Israel, Ukraine, China and Venezuela will remain the same. Cuba, he continues, “is not a strategic issue” for the United States, although it is part of “that great equation.” The Island is “fundamental” only on the issue of migration.

In Washington, he says, there is a “bet” on the “implosion” of Cuba, although there are also sectors that propose another approach.

Cabañas denies that there are Chinese espionage bases and that the recent visit of a Russian flotilla called into question his defense that Latin America and the Caribbean are “zones of peace.”

On this point, Cabañas disdains “the human rights argument” to maintain the sanctions: “They keep this handy when there is no other reason.” The key, he says, is that there be a “political decision” in the White House to talk and cooperate, despite the differences, as happened during the thaw.

With regard to Europe, he regrets that it always seeks “the reflection of the US” in its relationship with Cuba, when he believes that it would be more advantageous to “think in terms of the benefit of the EU as a group of countries, even in its relationship with Latin America.”

Asked if Cuba’s economic and energy needs generate decompensated relations that Moscow or Beijing take advantage of for their geopolitical revenue, Cabañas answered that the commercial relationship of an “underdeveloped” country with a power “is always asymmetrical.”

However, he defends independence from Cuban foreign policy: he denies that there are Chinese espionage bases on the Island and that the recent visit of a Russian war flotilla to Havana called into question his defense that Latin America and the Caribbean are “zones of peace.”

He also denies that Havana has followed the Russian argument in the war in Ukraine. “Cuba believes that the differences between states must be resolved peacefully,” says Cabañas, who asks not to forget the record and the role of NATO.

Despite the combined effect of the country’s dollarization, food insecurity and external economic and energy dependence, the director of the CIPI maintains that Cuban national sovereignty has not been eroded.

In his opinion, the Cuban crisis is the product of the “blockade,” an “imposed scenario,” although he recognizes that it is also due to Cuba’s own decisions, referring to the failed monetary reform of the Ordering Task, and he states that issues such as agricultural decline are within their “capabilities.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cubans in San Miguel Del Padrón Take to the Streets After Being Without Water for 16 Days

The authorities recognize that there are 600,000 people in Cuba with “affectations” in the supply of water

Dozens of people gathered and stopped traffic on the Calzada de Güines, after being 16 days without water / La Tijera/Facebook

14ymedio, Havana, 4 September 2024 — Desperate over being without water for more than two weeks, the residents of the La Rosita neighborhood, in the Havana municipality of San Miguel del Padrón, took to the streets Tuesday night to protest. As seen in images shared by La Tijera on Facebook, dozens of people gathered and stopped traffic on the Calzada de Güines, after being 16 days without water. According to the text that accompanies the photos, the population also demonstrated over the lack of milk for children.

It is the most recent of the protests for this basic service, increasingly frequent on the Island. On August 25, the residents of the San Francisco de Paula neighborhood took to the streets in a “cacerolazo” — a protest consisting of banging on pots and pans — shouting “water”! They demanded the restoration of the service. Something similar was experienced a few weeks earlier, with demonstrations in Central Havana, Old Havana and Luyanó, where the protestors succeeded in restoring the supply.

The authorities acknowledged on Tuesday that currently more than 600,000 people in the country are affected by the lack of water. In a note published by the official newspaper Granma, the number of people who lack adequate access to water in Cuba has increased to 7%, according to the official report. In November of last year, the regime recognized that there were 450,000 people affected throughout the country, and by April the number was already around 500,000. However, according to other official data released last April, at the end of 2022 there were 5,689,476 Cubans who did not have “dignified access to water”; that is, half of the population. continue reading

In Cuba, half of the population does not have ’dignified access to water’

In a press conference held this Tuesday, hours before the protests in San Miguel del Padrón, José Antonio Hernández Álvarez, President of the Water and Sanitation Business Group – belonging to the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources – detailed that of the 600,000 affected and recognized by the regime, at least 27% are concentrated in the west of the Island, the most populated area. Provinces such as Pinar del Río and Artemisa each have 30,000 customers without service, and Havana, by itself, exceeds 130,000. In the center and east of the country things are not improving, and provinces such as Santiago de Cuba, Granma, Villa Clara, Cienfuegos and Holguín add up to 150,000 affected.

According to Hernández Álvarez, the damage to the water infrastructure in the Cuban capital began, on a date that he did not determine exactly, due to breakdowns in a group of important devices in the South Basin, which supplies the municipalities of Plaza de la Revolución, Centro Habana, Habana Vieja, Diez de Octubre and a part of Boyeros.

“However, after the gradual improvement in that area, now the greatest difficulties are moving to the west of the city,” he said. In that sense, Hernández Álvarez ventured a possible explanation about the 16 days that the residents of San Miguel de Padrón have been without a drop of water. According to what the official told the press, the supply to the municipality operated for a long time with only three, or even two, of its four pumps, “but all are now restored.” In addition, “a driver repair, last Friday, made it possible to recover pressure and flow,” he said, although these repairs do not seem to be reflected yet, because the protests occurred during the night, hours after the conference.

In the official press, notices of repairs of the hydraulic network in Havana have become common, which also affect the roads in some areas. This is what happened this week at the intersection of 23rd street and A in the municipality of Plaza de la Revolución.

In addition to the constant breakdowns in the island’s hydraulic networks, there is rampant drought

While attempting to argue before the press about Cuba’s complex situation with water, Hernández Álvarez appealed on Tuesday to the old excuse about the breakdowns in a significant number of pumping stations and the situation of the National Electroenergetic System (SEN).

Regarding the energy crisis throughout the Island, the official reiterated that, “sometimes the availability of the generation or the instability of the SEN prevents the protection of the circuits that house the supply teams. In addition, sudden starts and stops, as well as voltage and frequency variations of energy systems, produce collateral breakdowns,” he added.

The publication of the official newspaper emphasizes that the strategy to “reverse this reality involves attention to priorities, in accordance with the amount of population in places with broken equipment.”

To the constant breakdowns in the hydraulic networks of the Island is added the galloping drought caused by the lack of rain in recent months, which has led Cuban reservoirs to dry up. A clear example is that of the Zaza dam, located in Sancti Spíritus, which is so thirsty that where before the fishermen snuck in to get some tilapia, now there are cows grazing on the grass.

To try to alleviate the “complex” situation, the government has come up with no better remedy than to promise a series of investments, which to date have not been reflected in any benefit to the population. Among the government measures announced for this year is the execution of 206 hydraulic works, including investments and maintenance actions, as well as the acquisition of some 1,390 pieces of pumping equipment.

A worker of Aguas de la Habana reveals to 14ymedio that in the capital, all the repairs that are being carried out on the hydraulic network are very late because there is not enough budget to pay for them. This has forced the workers to reduce their activities to a few jobs on foot, with days of only three hours.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuba’s Minister of Transport Announces a Reduction From $50,000 to $15,900 for Low-End Cars

A person or a company will be able to import up to six vehicles by paying higher taxes

Cuban Minister of Transport Rodríguez Dávila announced that individuals can now import vehicles at the same price as companies / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Madrid, 4 September 2024 — The activity on the networks of Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila, Minister of Transport, is frantic. He posts on Facebook several times a day, either about new train journeys, the fortunes and misadventures of Regla’s boat or the repair of potholes in the roads, in a communicative style that contrasts with the usual opacity of the Cuban Government. He has spoken at length in the last month about the new rules for vehicles, but this Tuesday he returned to conventional television, in case there remained something more to say.

There was nothing new except some colorful note in his speech highlighting the savings that the new regulations will allow individuals who want to buy a vehicle abroad. According to the minister, Cubans will pay up to $30,000 less thanks to the reform. “If one vehicle has a dealer value of $10,000, the sales price to the buyer will be about $15,900. However, that same vehicle under the current price formulation rules would cost more than $50,000,” he explained.

Rodríguez Dávila said that individuals can now import vehicles at the same price as companies, in exchange for taxes paid in dollars. continue reading

“That same vehicle under the current pricing rules would cost more than 50,000 dollars”

The minister reviewed the current “pricing rules” mechanism, with a margin that “is around 350%-500%, of which 30% is the commercial margin of the marketer and the rest forms a special tax.” For companies, however, the price is the cost of acquisition or import, plus a commercial margin of up to 30%.

With the new rules, the price will be the import cost, the tariffs, the commercial margin (which drops to 20%) and a special tax that varies depending on the vehicle. The most preferred, by virtue of promoting the change of energy matrix, will be the electric ones, which are exempt – “to bring us closer to the way the world works on this issue,” although there is no infrastructure in Cuba – while the high-end ones will reach 35%.

The money collected, as had already been highlighted at the end of July in the announcement of the news, will serve to create “the necessary infrastructure in the country to meet the growth of the fleet,” stressed the minister, as well as the updating of public transport, “which is very deteriorated.” Until now, Rodríguez Dávila said, the fund has existed, but in national currency.

“This policy will allow the creation of a new fund in convertible currencies, which will be allocated to concrete projects to restore the infrastructure of our country, although the needs are in the billions,” he said.

“The Ministry will issue recommendations to suppliers so that they know which brands to import”

Individuals who want to import a car can resort to the marketers Imperexport and Cimex, but a new one is also incorporated, the mixed company MCV Comercial, which has been working on the Island since 1995 as an authorized distributor mainly of Mercedes Benz. In this sense, there is doubt about which brands the authorities will recommend importing, since Rodríguez Dávila said yesterday that there would be guidelines. “The Ministry will issue recommendations to suppliers so that they know which brands to import,” he said, and it will depend on the “optimal operating conditions in terms of the fuel they need or the condition of the roads.”

Last July, the Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero, said that the painful state of road infrastructure in Cuba and the low quality of fuel are capable of “melting” some of the best cars, and he also said that the entry of luxury vehicles would be controlled. “There are some cars that are coming in that are not really compatible with our society and are not necessary,” he said.

Rodríguez Dávila also mentioned the possibility of “receiving international manufacturers to associate and establish their network of services in the country,” although, in an allusion to the US embargo, “not all suppliers will jeopardize a large market for a small one in Cuba.”

Regarding the number of vehicles allowed, the minister said that a person or a company has a limit of six, increasing with the tax burden. For the second car it will be 25%; for the third, 50%; for the fourth, 75%; and for the fifth and sixth, 100%.

Rodríguez Dávila had time for other clarifications, such as the rules affecting motorcycles, the new import formulas for those who fulfill missions abroad or the transmission of ownership. In addition, he said that the vehicles of the tourism sector that have concluded their lifespans and have passed, in priority, to foreign exchange sales, are now excluded from that network and will pass, directly, to the replacement of taxis, patrol cars, state entities and “as incentives for doctors and athletes.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Seven Years Later, Russia Resurrects Its Plan To Modernize the Railway in Cuba

The renovation of the tracks would reduce the travel time from Havana to Santiago from 20 to 12 hours

The train that connects Havana and Santiago de Cuba currently takes 20 hours / Beatriz Pérez/ 5 de septiembre

14ymedio, Madrid, 3 September 2024 — The Russian Union of Railways (RZD) has dusted off its railway renovation agreement with Cuba, neither more nor less than seven years behind schedule. Serguei Pavlov, deputy director of RZD, said this Tuesday at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok that he plans to sign a contract this year for the modernization of the railway infrastructure in Cuba. The most obvious omission was, precisely, any news about what happened with the previous project.

The plan remains unchanged despite the technological advances that can be expected after all these years. Pavlov told the main Russian press agencies that the company began working on the project after the Russian Council of Ministers published in March a document on cooperation agreements with Cuba, which included the modernization of the railway.

It didn’t take much work for RZD to develop the proposal, since the highlights of the agreement are the remodeling and modernization of the central Havana-Santiago de Cuba line, whose extension is 835 kilometers; the south line 19 de Noviembre-Navajas station, including the Havana node and the Montalvo branch – 166 kilometers; and the Cienfuegos line – Santa Clara and Refinery branch – 77.4 kilometers. In total there are just over a thousand kilometers of infrastructure renovation, of the 12,000 that the Island has, which were already in the original plan. continue reading

Time does not seem to have passed for a plan that remains unchanged despite the technological advances that can be expected in all these years

Although the highlight, for novelty, seems to be the shortening of the travel time between Havana and Santiago de Cuba, which, if fulfilled, would go from 20 hours to 12, the truth is that the 2017 plan already contemplated it, since the peak speed of 120 kilometers per hour (km/h.) was planned.

Those 12 hours that, in the best case scenario, would separate the primary two cities of the Island, are just under the 14 hours that it takes to travel the 1,145 kilometers between Barcelona and Vigo by conventional route; that is, in the few long-distance trains left in Spain that travel at 130 km/h instead of the majority high-speed ones, which connect the main cities at 300 km/h.

Pavlov spoke on Tuesday of an integrated plan that includes the creation of a unified traffic control center and staff training facility, but, once again, these aspects appeared in the 2017 project, which can still be seen on the outdated RZD website.

The Russian state company said it was in contact with the Cuban side and the financial institutions of its country for the allocation of a specific export credit for this project but did not want to give figures. In the previous project, signed in 2019, the amount totaled 1.88 billion euros, but it is expected that the amount will be raised, due to the logical price increase in recent years.

Among the improvements planned by the company is an increase in cargo transport capacity, which would go from 14.7 to 21.6 million tons, while the passenger capacity will grow from 7.8 to 24.3 million people.

It remains to be seen whether or not the project comes to fruition once and for all. The agreement adopted in 2017 and signed in 2019 between the two parties was shipwrecked in 2020, when RZD chose to suspend it.

“Regrettably, we have had to suspend our project of comprehensive modernization of the Cuban railway infrastructure due to economic difficulties and quarantine restrictions on the Island, but we hope to resume the work after the situation has stabilized,” Pavlov himself said in October 2020.

The news came a few days after the executive secretary of the Russian-Cuban Intergovernmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation, Oleg Kucheriáviy, hinted at a massive cancellation of investments in Cuba due to non-compliance by Havana.

The agreement adopted in 2017 and signed in 2019 between the two parties was shipwrecked in 2020, when RZD chose to suspend it

The official told the Russian press that, of the 60 joint projects, only ten were being carried out, and he mentioned at a meeting of the Senate International Affairs Committee that the last session of the intergovernmental commission, which was to be held on the Island, was canceled due to the “silence” and “delay” of the Cuban authorities.

It wasn’t the first bucket of cold water thrown on the project by the Russians. Yuri Borisov, then deputy prime minister of Russia and in charge of economic relations with Cuba – he is currently responsible for the space agency – said after a trip to the Island that Cuban officials had a “Cold War mentality that in post-Soviet Russia” was out of place. “They are complicated businessmen, I’m not going to hide it; the mentality of the past weighs on them constantly. During the negotiations, in the positions they hold, it always appears that they are an outpost of the world revolution and we simply have to help them,” he said.

In this impasse, China arrived to fill the gap left by Russia. In 2022, the Union of Railways of Cuba (UFC) and Beijing Fanglian Technology signed “two letters of intent for the gradual recovery of part of the railway infrastructure.” Among the agreements, a recovery of railway workshops was planned that is being carried out, also with French investment.

Both China and Russia have continued to cooperate with Cuba in respect to rail transport, in particular by sending locomotives. But the new scenario after the invasion of Ukraine, which has relaunched relations between the Kremlin and the Regime, has led to reopening the drawer of lost projects. And the ancient Cuban train continues to chug along.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Political Prisoners Sissi Abascal and Sayli Navarro, Excluded From the ‘Pass’ for 11J Prisoners

Temporary passes are increasingly frequent in Cuban prisons due to the shortage of food, explains Martha Beatriz Roque

The political prisoners Sissi Abascal and Sayli Navarro / Collage/Cortesía

14ymedio, Havana, September 2, 2024 — Political prisoners Sissi Abascal and Sayli Navarro were not included in the pass received this Monday by five other women convicted of demonstrating on 11 July 2021, who are serving their sentence in La Bellotex prison, in Matanzas. The activists did not benefit from the possibility of visiting their homes for four days, denounces oppositionist Martha Beatriz Roque.

“Today they gave a pass to five of the women convicted on 11J, but two of them were excluded,” the director of the Cuban Center for Human Rights told 14ymedio. “They have never been given a pass, so it is an absolutely discriminatory exclusion” against Abascal and Navarro, who are also part of the Ladies in White Movement.

The reasons for not being on the list of prisoners who can spend a few days in their homes, in this case from today until Thursday, point to the activism of both women and their membership in several dissident organizations. Also, their constant denunciations and statements from prison could have contributed to not being granted that benefit. Last July, the two opponents held a fast in commemoration of the third anniversary of the 11J demonstrations. continue reading

“They have never been given a pass, so it is an absolutely discriminatory exclusion”

“The events of 11 July 2021 left a trail of those who were arrested, beaten and finally sentenced to years in prison,” Sayli Navarro said in an audio sent to Martí Noticias. The daughter of political prisoner Félix Navarro was sentenced to eight years of deprivation of liberty for the alleged crimes of attack and public disorder. Abascal, for her part, is serving a six-year sentence.

Roque adds that “temporary passes have become increasingly frequent in Cuban prisons.” The reason that the prison authorities grant these passes points to the serious economic crisis that the Island is going through. “In prisons there is less and less food; sometimes the only thing they have throughout the day is a little rice.”

Other reports compiled by 14ymedio show that the supply crisis is more crudely acute in prisons, where prisoners are increasingly dependent on the food that their relatives bring them during visits. Without what is popularly known as “la jaba (the bag),” inmates depend exclusively on the meager standard ration that each time is smaller and of poorer quality .

“When prisoners go out on pass there are fewer mouths to feed,” explains Roque, convicted during the Black Spring of 2003 and currently
on parole. The activist, who is “regulated” and cannot leave the country, warns about the extreme situation experienced by common prisoners and, more seriously, by political prisoners.

“In prisons there is less and less food; sometimes the only thing they have throughout the day is a little rice”

The relief experienced by the authorities for not having to supply a plate of food has not weighed as much, in the case of Abascal and Navarro, as the reprisals against two of the most internationally known prisoners of 11J. In September 2023, the authorities denied Abascal a transfer from a maximum security prison to one of minimum security. Prison managers alleged “indiscipline” and “negativity” on the part of the prisoner.

In conversation with this newspaper, Annia Zamora, Abascal’s mother, said that although a judge is the one who should ultimately approve her transfer to minimum security, the report issued by the prison has a remarkable weight on the decision. “Sissi is currently in a prison uniform in a high security cell. They should have already put her in minimum security in another section of the prison, where the prisoners are in civilian clothes with other benefits, and receive passes every month to go home,” she said.

However, the prison authorities refused to grant the transfer to Abascal, alleging indiscipline: “Lieutenant Colonel Marta Cristina, director of La Bellotex, called Sissi to tell her that they would not change her situation because of her ’negative attitude’ and because she is not participating in political acts or shouting slogans.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Due to Emigration, Havana Has Lost 15 Percent of Its Population in the Last Three Years

The population flight is increasing the number of homes for sale, but almost no one wants to buy / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Madrid, 4 September 2024 — The data of the collapse of the population in Cuba does not give a break. Almost two months after it became known that at the end of 2023 there were 10,055,968 residents on the Island, detailed statistics reveal that Havana lost 15% of its inhabitants in three years and already has fewer than two million residents, a figure it hasn’t had since at least the 1990s. In addition, the other two provinces that exceeded one million inhabitants in 2020, Santiago de Cuba and Holguín, no longer reach that number.

The detailed figures appear in the report “Demographic Indicators of Cuba and its Territories,” whose general features were presented in August by the National Bureau of Statistics and Information (Onei) and were published in full this Tuesday on the institution’s website. In the absence of the repeatedly postponed census, Onei experts proposed a model to approach the “effective population” that is based on the accumulation of at least 180 days of stay in the national territory, both for newborns, deceased and, most importantly, migrants.

The result could not be more discouraging. Each and every one of the Cuban municipalities lost population between the end of 2020 and the end of 2023, bringing the total number of residents on the Island to figures that have not been seen since 1983, when Cuba reached 9,984,591. A year later, it already had 9,571 more inhabitants than at the end of last year. continue reading

Each and every one of the Cuban municipalities lost population between the end of 2020 and the end of 2023

In detail, the general panorama confirms that the western provinces lost the highest percentage of population compared to the eastern ones, predictably because the purchasing power – very necessary to emigrate – is lower in the latter. This means that there are fewer family members and acquaintances abroad, decreasing contacts for leaving and the possibilities of obtaining the required sponsorship from family members in the United States to qualify for humanitarian parole.

Despite this, the decline in population is not a minor thing. Between the dates compared (from the end of 2020 to 2023, although there are data corresponding to each of the intermediate years), Guantánamo lost 5.3% of its population, going from 505,606 to 478,328 inhabitants, the province with the smallest decrease. It is closely followed by Santiago de Cuba, falling from 1,045,631 to 988,655. The decrease is 5.4%, although the fall to less than one million inhabitants has a strong symbolic effect.

The same thing happens with Holguín, which is in fourth position; Granma, with 6%, has the third smallest loss of population; Las Tunas lost 8.1%, and it loses its quality of a province with more than one million residents (1,021,591 in 2020) and remains at only 938,744.

The special municipality of Isla de la Juventud, which at the end of 2020 had a small population of 83,625, has lost 8.9% of its population in these three years, ending up with 76,154 residents.

The middle area of the table, with a population loss of 9.2% and 9.5% respectively, is occupied by the westernmost provinces, Pinar del Río and Artemisa, which currently have around 500,000 inhabitants.

Meanwhile, the group of central provinces loses about 10% of its population. Among them are Camagüey and Matanzas (10.9%) and Villa Clara (11.5%)), which, to a greater or lesser extent, exceeded 700,000 in 2020 and is now well below that figure. Sancti Spíritus (10.3%), Ciego de Ávila (10.4%) and Mayabeque (11.1%) range from 415,714 for the first to 341,568 for the latter. Cienfuegos, which fell from 406,244 to 356,641 residents, is the second Cuban province that has suffered the most demographically.

But nothing compares to Havana, which went from 2,132,183 at the end of 2020 to 1,814,207 three years later, a loss of 15.3%. To put it into perspective, the population of Ukraine fell by 16.6% between 2022 and 2024 as a result of a brutal war. In Havana, the average loss in each municipality is about 20,000 inhabitants, except for those with the smallest number of residents (Old Havana, Regla and Cotorro).

In 2020, the average age of Cubans was 41.4, compared to the current 42.2, while the most common age has risen from 42.8 to 44.1

The analysis of the Onei includes, also with year-to-year tables by municipality, the demographic rates, with the data of births and deaths, which have a much smaller impact than emigration in the final balance sheet. In addition, figures of internal migrations appear, as well as the few foreign immigrants who arrived on the Island in recent years.

Another table gives the distribution of urban and rural population in each of the provinces and municipalities as well, while the last one has the data disaggregated by sex. The last tables of the document are dedicated to analyzing the average age of the population, as well as the median.

As expected, since emigration is higher among young people, the population has aged in these three years. In 2020, the average age of Cubans was 41.4, compared to the current 42.2, while the most common age has risen from 42.8 to 44.1.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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A Dozen Cuban Political Prisoners Are at Risk of Suicide

After Yosandri Mulet Almarales’ death, NGOs warn of the risk this kind of prisoner is facing in the island’s prisons

Fray Pascual Claro Valladares attempted suicide last April, after being sentenced to 10 years in prison for demonstrating in Nuevitas, Camagüey. / Documentation Center of Cuban Prisons

14ymedio, Madrid, 3 September 2024 — Three “suicidal ideation events”, three self-harming events and six attempts to take one’s own life have been registered by the Cuban Prison Documentation Center (CDPC in Spanish) since January 1, 2024, by 10 Cuban political prisoners (seven men and three women). In a statement issued together with Justicia 11J – both now part of the Initiative for Research and Incidence – following the suicide committed by Yosandri Mulet Almarales, the programs warn of the special risk posed by these prisoners.

The Mexico-based organization recalls that, before Mulet Almarales’ death, “presumably from injuries sustained after a suicide attempt on August 22,” it says in the report, it had already alerted to his situation. Sentenced to 10 years for participating in the July 11 and 12, 2021 demonstrations in La Güinera, Havana (11J), the 37-year-old had already attempted suicide before, in June 2022, in the maximum security prison Combinado del Este.

On August 22, while on leave from the penitentiary center where he was doing forced labor, he threw himself from the Calabazar bridge, in the capital, and on August 26, his family was told the news. The Initiative quotes activist Marcel Valdés, who said that it is not clear how many days he was in the Julio Trigo hospital, where he was taken “apparently alive”, because “the military authorities took over the place”.

For the NGO, in any case, his death “confirms the need to heed the warnings” it has issued “about suicidal ideation, self-harm and attempts to take one’s own life by Cuban political prisoners”. continue reading

Machado Conde, sentenced to 9 years for the 11J, “has been subjected to multiple cases of abuse in prison,” says the NGO, and has attempted suicide several times.

Other prisoners of conscience at risk of suicide listed in the statement are the men Abel Lázaro Machado Conde, Ismael Rodríguez González, Yasmany González Valdés, Fray Pascual Claro Valladares, Daiver Leyva Vélez, Omar Ortega, and the women Mayelín Rodríguez Prado, Yanet Pérez Quevedo and Lizandra Góngora.

Machado Conde, sentenced to 9 years for 11J, “has been subjected to multiple instances of abuse in prison,” says the NGO, and has attempted suicide several times. In May 2023, after one of these attempts, the authorities of Quivicán prison, in Mayabeque province, where he is serving his sentence, “handcuffed him all night by his hands and feet in a corridor”, and last March, he sewed his mouth shut after a beating and several days in a punishment cell.

For Ismael Rodriguez Gonzalez, the CDPC has registered three “suicidal ideation events”. Sentenced to 7 years for the July 11 demonstrations, he also does not have access to his medication in prison, despite having a diagnosis of intellectual disability, suicidal risk and personality disorder.

Meanwhile, last February, Yasmany González Valdés, sentenced to four years for painting anti-government posters on walls in Havana, told his wife that he had thought of taking his own life, after months of abuse in Cuban prisons and the judicial limbo he was going through at the time.

Another person sentenced for the Nuevitas protests, Daiver Leyva Vélez, sentenced to 10 years for sedition, has tried to hang himself on two occasions.

They also documented that Mayelín Rodríguez Prado and Yanet Pérez Quevedo, political prisoners at the Kilo 5 prison in Camagüey province, attempted to take their own lives “in protest against mistreatment” by prison authorities.

Similarly, Fray Pascual Claro Valladares attempted suicide after learning, last April, of his 10-year sentence for peacefully demonstrating in Nuevitas, Camagüey, in August 2022. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), in fact, granted him precautionary measures in July and denounced that “his suicide attempt was handled with negligence, without receiving the necessary psychiatric care and being punished with isolation”.

Another person sentenced for the Nuevitas protests, Daiver Leyva Vélez, sentenced to 10 years for the crime of sedition, has tried to hang himself on two occasions. Both Omar Ortega, imprisoned in Morón, Ciego de Ávila, and Lizandra Góngora, in Los Colonos, Isla de la Juventud, have told their families of their intention to attempt to kill themselves.

On the other hand, Yosandry Mulet Almarales is the second 11J prisoner to die, according to the organization. Last November, Luis Barrios Díaz, also 37 years old, died after “respiratory complications aggravated by the decision of the authorities not to keep him in a Havana hospital,” according to the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights. The State granted Barrios Díaz an out-of-prison leave of absence only when it considered his death imminent, the Initiative denounces.

Translated by LAR

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”Maximum Severity,’ the Key Word of the Cuban Judicial System for Any Crime

Exemplary trials have become a new tool of repression

Yudiel Tomé, criminal case investigator / Capture / Canal Caribe

14ymedio, Havana, August 31, 2024 — With a soundtrack worthy of police cinema, Cuban Television presented this week the results of an investigation that led to the arrest of 10 members of a “crime chain” in Matanzas. Aimed at warning the population and using all kinds of narrative resources, the report revolves around a kind of hero of the Ministry of the Interior: Major Yudiel Tomé, criminal investigator of the case.

In the first images, Tomé appears on his desk examining the evidence of the case: photos of several paddocks located in Colón, Los Arabos and Calimete, where the Police have already found several clues: a machete, a rope, a farmer’s boot footprint. “Those involved used weapons and exercised violence on the victims, and also slaughtered animals,” the investigator summarizes.

An officer of the Ministry takes note of what Tomé comes up with, after reviewing the files of the detainees. “But the investigation continues,” he warns. Tomé is not a great speaker and explains the case in front of the cameras with great difficulty. He warned that with the clues uncovered on the ground, the Prosecutor’s Office was asked to issue an arrest warrant against a dozen people involved. They are already in “provisional prison,” the policeman said, “according to their aggressiveness and the seriousness of the facts.” continue reading

Yulelkis Hernández, provincial prosecutor, was much more eloquent about the case and fulfilled one of the functions of these reports: their exemplary character. Hernández said that pre-trial detention was an extraordinary measure, but that the authorities had all the power in the world to apply it, especially if it was requested by the police. The key words, frequent in the official press, is “maximum severity.”

Without explaining the reasons, halfway through the report, Televisión Cubana forgets the case that Tomé is investigating and offers details of another crime: the assault by two young people in the Matanzas Viaduct. “They told us to give them all the valuable belongings we had, they took away our phone, watch, wallets,” says one of the victims, while an officer explains that they immediately “detected” the two suspects, who started running.

Hours later, the victims recognized the robbers in a group of four suspects. They were tried this week, and without revealing their faces, some images of the trial are transmitted. “You can’t lose the citizen tranquility that has been prevalent in this country for years,” Hernández says. “All people who commit these types of crimes will find a severe criminal response,” including life imprisonment.

Exemplary trials have become a new repressive tool in Cuba, although the word that Cuban Television prefers is “preventive.” On August 20, information was published about four trials held in the municipal court of Songo-La Maya, in Santiago de Cuba. The press did not reveal details about the cases, but it did underline its warning character.

“When we make exemplary judgments, we enhance communication so that the message we want to transmit reaches certain recipients,” said Geovanis Mestre, one of the judges of the provincial court of Santiago, interviewed by Sierra Maestra. It is essential, he argued, that criminals learn that the authorities have the livestock in their sights and that the punishments will be severe.

These trials were not chosen “at random,” Mestre said, but because of the “repetition” of the theft and slaughter of cattle in several areas of the country

These trials were not chosen “at random,” Mestre said, but because of the “repetition” of the theft and slaughter of cattle in several areas of the country such as Santiago and Matanzas. At a time when these crimes have been “calling the attention” of the Police, the court decided to turn them into a “behavior of priority in criminal legal confrontation.”

From the massive criminal proceedings of 1959 – not infrequently resolved with the death penalty – to the famous case of Arnaldo Ochoa in 1989, this practice has not lost its validity in Cuba. During the coronavirus pandemic, the Government also held many exemplary trials.

According to the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, in June 2020 the Police carried out “at least 67 arbitrary arrests,” especially in the provinces of Havana, Santiago de Cuba and Villa Clara, and 74 “repressive actions of another type,” in particular, harassment through police summons.

These arrests were followed by a “wave of exemplary trials” to “intimidate the population affected by the country’s poor economic situation. Several of these processes have been aired by the official media, so that citizens can see how relentless the system can be,” denounced the organization, based in Spain.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Closed for Months, the Coppelia in Cienfuegos Is Now Open a Few Hours a Day, Until the Ice Cream Runs Out

“They limit you to one flavor option and the portion sizes keep getting smaller”

The quality of service at the state-owned ice cream parlor as well as the quality of the ice cream itself leave much to be desired / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Julio César Contreras, Cienfuegos, 31 August 2024 — Cuba’s Coppelia ice cream parlors are a stark reminder of country’s current economic crisis. Created shortly after Revolution to provide a sense of prosperity and abundance, the outlets, which can be found in many provincial capitals, used to be sources of entertainment for locals. In the midst of today’s financial difficulties, however, when there is no guarantee that even basic foodstuffs will be available, ice cream has become a luxury. Coppelia’s branches now open only intermittently and, when they are open, offer few options. The Cienfuegos location is no exception.

For months, Coppelia’s metal chairs lay in disarray and its tables sat empty. At the beginning of the year, city officials promised that it would reopen by summer. But June and July came and went without a single scoop being sold. Many lost hope of ever again enjoying a “copa Lolita” (flan with two scoops of ice cream) or an “ice cream salad” (an ice cream sundae).

This week, to the surprise of many, Coppelia reopened its doors. But customers who had hoped service would be as it had been in the past were visibly disappointed. At noon on Saturday, the line of customers waiting to get inside included dozens of people who sought shade in the adjacent covered walkways.

“I’ve been waiting for months to have have chocolate ice cream. We’ll see if that happens. Someone just came out and said the supply is getting low,” reports a tired and hot Yaíma, who is carrying her two-year-old son in her continue reading

arms. She has spent more than an hour in line. Frustrated with the slow service and with people cutting in line, she has several times considered giving up on the idea of a enjoying a cold dessert.

From outside, Yaíma keeps an eye on the waiters, who move from one side of the establishment to the other carrying glasses and bowls of ice cream in their hands. This provides the young mother with valuable information such as which flavors are still on the menu, which have already run out and how agile the waiters are. “They limit you to one flavor option and the portion sizes keep getting smaller,” she observes. “It’s true that each scoop only costs 12 pesos but that doesn’t mean it should be no bigger than a tablespoon.”

When asked about the scoop size, one of the employees replies bluntly, “Each tub generates a minimum of 500 pesos. The more you stretch it, the more money you make.” Ice cream, like so many other products from state-owned establishments, also generates income for the workers. “That man who just left with two plastic buckets is my neighbor. If I can’t buy ice cream for my child here, I’m going to have to pay him 60 pesos for a cone big enough to satisfy our craving,” Yaíma says.

Every day since Coppelia reopened, people pass by my house selling five-liter containers of ice cream for 1,300 pesos,” reports Yuri, a Cienfuegos resident who does not believe this is a coincidence. “Besides the price, which is unaffordable for someone with an average salary, it’s obvious that the resellers and pushcart vendors are getting their ice cream from here.”

[[“The private vendors are doing this now because they know that at any moment the factory could have another breakdown]]

“The private vendors are doing this now because they know that at any moment the factory could have another breakdown or it run out of raw materials,” he explains. While ice cream can be purchased around town in bites, scoops or bulk, it is only being enjoyed by those who can afford it. “Both sellers and customers know that it will run out sooner or later so every one tries to take advantage of the situation in his or her own way,” says Yuri.

According to its schedule, Coppelia is supposed to be open from Tuesday to Sunday. “I passed by at 10:00 AM on Wednesday and it was as quiet as a convent,” he notes. “It all depends on how much ice cream they have on any given day. If they don’t have any, they don’t open.”

By 2:00 PM, Coppelia’s employees announce they have run out of stock. Yaíma and her son were among the last customers to be served but had to settle for one of the less popular flavors. Some of the waiters begin to leave, carrying cases and bags bulging with what they were able to “scrape together” from the bottom of the tubs.

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Washing Bottles Instead of Going to Class, the Beginning of the School Year for Many Students in Havana

Child returning from school this Monday on the first day of the 2024-2025 school year / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 2 September 2024 — Not all Cuban children will start classes this Monday, when the 2024-2025 school year has been inaugurated with great fanfare. In Havana, for the next 15 days, some of them will have to work, either in cleaning, or in gardening, or even in other tasks, in a new kind of “school in the countryside,” one of Fidel Castro’s educational projects abandoned with the arrival to power of his brother Raúl, in 2008.

Tomorrow, for example, in a high school south of the capital, eighth-year students will have to go to a private cleaning-products company “to scrub bottles.” “Why does the school send some children to a private MSME and our children have to go clean for some rich people?” asked Daisy, who lives in Regla.

Daisy’s two children are in high school in the municipality of Regla, and today they began the course “incorporated” in the first destination of the “school in the countryside.” continue reading

“Why is the school sending some children to clean for a private ‘MSME’?”

The general director of Education of Havana, Karenia Marrero Arrechea, had already warned, although without giving details, last week on State TV’s Round Table program, when referring to the “change that we have to achieve in the student” to “link study and work.” “We are starting a school in a different field, where the student feels linked to tasks of impact,” she said, specifying that they would “begin” with three grades: eighth, eleventh and the first of Technical and Professional Education (ETP), in “organoponics” in the corresponding municipality and “on plaques and monuments.”

The phrase evoked by the official still causes chills in the generation of many parents who accompanied their children today on the first day of the school year, and who were sent in the eighties to the fields of tobacco, cabbage, banana, garlic, beans and coffee crops, in Pinar del Río or what are now the provinces of Artemisa and Mayabeque.

“I still have scars from that experience,” recalls María, a 45-year-old from Havana. “I had chronic conjunctivitis; they sent me to the infirmary, and the doctor left us locked up from the outside because he went to a party. They had to pass us food through the windows. I left there apparently recovered, but on the first day back in the field I realized that I couldn’t look at the areas illuminated by the sun.”

When she told the man in charge of the agricultural work what was happening to her, he thought she was lying to evade work. “I had to continue weeding in the furrows for two more weeks. When I returned home my eyes were blurry, and I could no longer look at any white or light-gray objects. I was diagnosed with advanced keratitis, an infection of the cornea. I almost lost vision in both eyes, and it still bothers me to look at any light-colored surface.”

The objective of the so-called “school in the countryside” was none other than to indoctrinate the students

The objective of the so-called “country school,”which was chronologically followed by the “school in the countryside,” was none other than to indoctrinate the students, called to become a “productive force.” Established in the seventies, the first such school was for high school students – seventh, eighth and ninth grade – who had to leave the cities to do agricultural work for a period of 45 days. Later, with the crisis, the “program” was reduced to 30 days and only for teenagers from Havana. The second program was for pre-university scholarship holders, in which a half-day was spent in study and the other half in working in the field.

Why are they now resurrecting these projects, whose eradication was precisely one of the most applauded measures of Raulism? The authorities have not explained it, nor did the teachers in the presentation this Monday, and the parents can only guess. “It seems that it’s due to the problem of school supplies, because coincidentally the children who are being sent to those jobs have not been given the materials,” says Ernesto, with suspicion. He is the father of girls in the same high school as Daisy’s children. “My oldest daughter, who is in eighth grade, doesn’t want to go. She thought it was something voluntary.”

The families are extremely upset, because they have spent a lot of money on uniforms and other school supplies, and now they being asked to supply “adequate clothes” for the work.

Moreover, the state of that school – whose name is reserved for fear of reprisals – is painful, they say. “The teachers themselves warned us that they don’t have the equipment for the computer class, that part of the classes have to be given in another secondary school, and, in addition, they don’t have tables or chairs; everything is broken or dilapidated, even Fidel’s portraits,” says Ernesto. “I myself studied here thirty years ago, and today it looks like another planet.”

Next to the dilapidated building of the Modesto Gómez Rubio school, in San Juan y Martínez, a leaning building serves precariously as a bathroom / 14ymedio

Other educational centers in the capital present the same panorama. In the José Miguel Pérez Pre-University, in the municipality of Plaza de la Revolución, they had not even bothered to give a coat of paint to the facade. The wall looked as unpainted as the gigantic flag that heads the morning assembly, and the hubbub was less than other years. It is clear, at a glance, that there is a reduction in the number of students who intend to study a career, another piece of data that the government ignores. The group of teenagers between 14 and 17 years old deployed in the courtyard had to endure the military voice of the director through the bullhorn.

Outside Havana, the situation is even worse. In San Juan and Martínez, Pinar del Río, little has changed since the passage of Hurricane Ian, which destroyed much of the municipal infrastructure two years ago. “Two years after the cyclone and nothing,” a local resident, whose children go to Modesto Gómez Rubio school, tells this newspaper. This one finally has a roof, “but no bathroom,” and it is still “without electricity, without a floor, without anything worthy of the children,” the same source continues. Next to the dilapidated school building, an outhouse leans precariously serving as a bathroom.

“These are the classrooms in which the children of the tobacco mecca are going to start their school year,” the woman says sarcastically, referring to the municipality, cradle of the most precious tobacco that, however, does not see all the capital that is collected in exports and auctions of Cuban cigars going to better classrooms for their children.

None of this is reflected in the front pages of the official press, which proclaims that “Cuba is celebrating” the return to the classrooms. In those images, there are no schools with cracks in the walls, but well painted ones; there are no malnourished students but ones who are proud and smiling, even posing for selfies taken with their cell phones.

Again, the intention to recover one of the traditional crown jewels of Castro’s propaganda is flagrant. This is clear from the words of the Minister of Education, Naima Ariatne Trujillo, who this Monday was one of the authorities who headed the main act of the beginning of the school year in Santa Clara, and who on national television emphasized the “special fact that our educational system is universal, free.”

A single glipse of realism is observed in the provincial newspapers, specifically in El Artemiseño, which uses an infographic to show the deficit of teachers – 1,845 are missing, 24.3% of the necessary total – and, above all, its main cause: emigration.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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