Eggs, Meat and Sugar: Cuban Rationing Tightens, People Suffer

 

Cuba to widen food rationing as supply crisis bites

Havana says it will extend the rationing of food and other products in the face of hardened US sanctions. The political and economic crisis in Venezuela is also partially to blame.

The Cuban government will widen the wholesale rationing of staple food items and other basic products in the face of a grave supply crisis, Commerce Minister Betsy Diaz Velazquez said Friday.
She said some items, such as chicken, would be limited to a fixed amount per purchase or per customer.
Other items, including eggs, rice, beans and sausages, would only be available to buy with a ration card, and would be limited to a maximum monthly amount.

Read more: New US policy on seized property in Cuba threatens EU ties

Cuba, which imports 60% to 70% of its food, already has a system of rationing, but additional amounts are available at higher "liberated" prices. The new rules would ensure that all those foods would be rationed.
"Selling limited quantities will lead to equal distribution, so that the greatest number of people can buy the product, and we can avoid hoarding," Diaz said. Many of the products included have become increasingly scarce, with long queues forming when they become available.
Increasingly hard to source supplies
Urging calm, Diaz said that importing food from the US had become more complicated under President Donald Trump because of tighter sanctions. That, she said, had forced Cuba to search for products that were more expensive and difficult to import.
However, Cuba has also suffered from a halving of oil deliveries from economically and politically stricken Venezuela. The island nation trades the work of Cuban doctors sent to Venezuela for oil that it then resells to other countries in return for foreign currency.
Friday's announcement is a setback for the Cuban government, which had aimed to end the rationing system established after the 1959 revolution.
rc/amp (AP, dpa, Reuters)

For Cubans, the struggle to supplement meagre rations is a consuming obsession

A vendor sets out pork to sell on a street in Havana. Asked for beef, one butcher replied: ‘I’ve forgotten what it tastes like.’

Photograph: Enrique de la Osa/Reuters

The trials of food shopping in a land of inefficient agriculture and a US embargo, where travellers stuff suitcases with powdered milk and eggs are elusive

Joe Lamar in Havana

As a percussionist with one of Havana’s oldest and best known bands, Orlando Ramos has toured the world, attended dozens of international festivals and collaborated with a host of stars ranging from Billy Joel to Silvio Rodríguez.

But while musicians from other countries might return from such trips with fine wines, aged whiskies or perhaps even exotic drugs, Ramos’s first priority when packing his bags to go home is something far more fundamental: milk.

Regular shortages of milk and other such basic goods underscore the many problems facing Cuba’s centrally planned and US-embargoed economy.

This makes a shopping trip an onerous and often disappointing task – even for those like Ramos who have a little spare cash.

“The hardest thing to find here is milk,” says the 75-year-old, who has played for more than 40 years with Manguaré. “Whenever I travel, my suitcases are full of powdered milk when I return.”

Millions of Cubans have faced similar – or worse – problems for decades, but President Raúl Castro has moved in recent years to change the system with a series of modest market reforms. The recent rapprochement with the US – which was the island’s main trading partner before the cold war – is also a source of hope for fuller shop shelves.

After the 1959 revolution, Cuba adopted a socialist food production and distribution system that ensured a survival level of heavily subsidised food for everyone. With extra rations for children and the elderly, it helps to account for the country’s impressive levels of longevity and low infant mortality.

A man sells roast chickens along a highway near Artemisa, some 80km (50 miles) west of Havana. Photograph: Desmond Boylan/Reuters

The system continues today. Every Cuban family registers with a local supply store, where they can use a libreta or ration book. This typically provides about 10kg (22lb) of rice, 6kg of white sugar, 2kg of brown sugar, 250 millilitres (1 cup) of cooking oil, five eggs and a packet of coffee per person per month, along with 2kg of meat (usually chicken) every 10 days, a bun every day and a bag of salt every three months. Milk is provided for pregnant women and children under seven years of age.

The basic libreta products are guaranteed, but they are not enough – so people often have to travel to several places on several different days to make up the shortfall. Where to find eggs is a common subject of discussion.

“The rations are enough for rice and sugar, but for other products, they only last five or six days so you have to buy extra. You have to spend a lot of time before you can get everything you need,” said one of the more affluent families in the Náutico district of the city. “We hire a messenger to do the shopping for us.”

A farmer sells his produce out of the boot of his car at a market in the village of Sagua La Grande in central Cuba. Photograph: Desmond Boylan/Reuters

For decades, many items have effectively been off-limits to those who could only pay in pesos. At a farmers’ market near Miramar, the sign outside a butcher’s stall offers only three cuts of pork. Asked for beef, the butcher scoffs. “I’ve forgotten what it tastes like,” he jokes. “I haven’t had it since I was a child.”

To buy scarcer items, Cubans used to need the currency used by tourists – the CUC (Convertible Unit of Currency), which can be used at “dollar stores” which offer a far wider variety of goods. Partly for this reason, many skilled engineers and doctors found part-time jobs as taxi drivers or hotel staff to add a CUC income to their meagre peso salaries.

This is starting to change. Items on the shelves at the Centro Comercial Náutico – a fairly large dollar store in the suburbs of Havana – are priced in both pesos and CUCs as a step towards the currency integration promised by the government. But they remain expensive relative to incomes. A kilo of milk powder costs almost a third of the monthly salary of 500 pesos (about £14/$21). A steak dinner can cost a family half this income.

Even at these prices, the shop has run out of butter, ketchup and short pasta. The black market partially fills the vacuum. On roadsides further out of town, unauthorised hawkers tout bags of sausages, crackers, potatoes and other products that are scarce or only supposed to be available through the state system.

With money, it is possible to eat well in Havana. One result of reform has been an explosion of private restaurants – known as paladares – which have given those who can afford it a choice of Italian, Spanish and French cuisine, including lobster, steak, shrimps and even crocodile meat.

But for most people, the basics are often hard to come by. The 1960 US embargo is part of the problem as was the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, but Cuba’s inefficient farming system is also to blame. Although agriculture is supposed to be at the forefront of reforms, the changes have been patchy and the results so far unimpressive.

Tourists eat at a paladar or home restaurant in the town of Cienfuegos. Photograph: Desmond Boylan/Reuters

Less than an hour’s drive outside Havana are Cuba’s most productive pastures and croplands, but the country still needs to import about 80% of its food. To boost domestic production, government reforms have created a wholesale market for agricultural goods, leased millions of acres of idle state land to individual farmers and relaxed the old requirement that 70% of farm produce must be sold to the state at below-market prices.

The declared aim of the reforms is to update the socialist model rather than to replace it. Raúl Castro, who has promised to step aside in 2018, has said his motto is “slowly but without pause”. But stuck in transition, older farmers say the new incentives have not made up for the loss of subsidies.

Dairy herders Julia Menéndez and her husband are struggling to make ends meet for the first time in decades. An increase in fodder prices means it now costs more to feed their nine cows than they get from the state for their milk, which sells at a controlled price of 1 peso (less than three pence, or five cents) a litre. The elderly couple are exhausted cutting sugarcane every day as an alternative food for their cattle.

“I’ve been a farmer all my life and this is the hardest it has ever been,” said Menéndez, whose name has been changed. “We want to sell up and move.”

Her son, who has a bigger cattle ranch, is doing better. But his herd has suffered from the pressures of excess demand. A few months ago, he woke to find one of his cows had been butchered in its shed. The rustlers had used the cover of a rainstorm to sneak in, inject the animal with a tranquilliser and then remove its legs, rump and other prime cuts.

It was a high-risk crime. Cuba’s criminal code has also been distorted by economic controls. The maximum penalty for illegally slaughtering a cow and selling the meat is 18 years in prison. “You can get a lighter sentence for killing a person,” exclaims Noriel Menéndez, the nephew of the farmers. And the stiff punishment is not just for steak thieves: last month, a dozen people were sentenced to between five and 15 years for conspiring to divert millions of eggs – another scarce commodity – to the black market.

Closer ties with the US may ease such pressures. Currently, Cuba imports about $2bn a year of food. It is costly because of the distances involved. Most of the rice, for example, comes from Vietnam.

A family of farmers selling mangoes wait for customers at the side of a road on the outskirts of Havana. Photograph: Desmond Boylan/Reuters/Corbis

 

The US is only 90 miles away but it supplied just 15% of the island’s agricultural imports last year. Although the US embargo theoretically allows sales of food and medicine to the island, it also includes restrictions on credit and shipping that make such trade prohibitively complicated and expensive.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, the powerful US farm lobby is one of the biggest advocates of ending sanctions and was among the first to send a delegation to Cuba after Castro and Barack Obama announced plans to strengthen ties on 17 December.

Although food shortages are nothing new, they are among several factors behind Havana’s recent engagement with Washington.

“Cuba’s agricultural sector is in dire straits. Raúl Castro is trying to deal with the crisis but reforms put in place have had limited effect. He is trying to pursue other options, including opening with the US,” said Michael Shifter, president of Inter-American Dialogue, a US-based thinktank.

“Perhaps ironically, the most intense efforts to address Cuba’s troubles of shortages and high prices on goods are coming from US agricultural business interests keen to lift the embargo. They see an attractive untapped market in Cuba.”

Hopes for greater improvements are growing. But until now, neither diplomatic initiatives nor economic reforms have made a noticeable difference to the empty shelves and high prices of Havana’s shops.

So the coping mechanisms continue – extra jobs, remittances from overseas, chickens in the back yard and luggage full of groceries.

“When I come back, I’ll bring milk, cheese and other stuff,” the musician Ramos says ahead of his band’s latest two-month tour of the US. “I’m thinking of buying a really big box for it all – big enough for a cow.”
 https://www.theguardian.com

 Cuba to increase rationing amid shortages

Cuba has announced rationing of more products amid shortages it blames on the US trade embargo and hoarders.

There have been hours-long queues for basic foodstuffs in recent weeks on the Caribbean island.
People have posted photos of long waits at the supermarket under the hashtag #lacolachallenge, meaning queue challenge.
A universal rationing system was introduced on the island just after the revolution in 1959.
In 2017 US President Donald Trump reimposed some trade and travel restrictions lifted by his predecessor Barack Obama, although he kept the embassy open in Havana and did not end flights to the country.

• Four takeaways from Trump's Cuba policy
•  
• Trump's plans for Cuba: What's at stake?

But less aid from ally Venezuela has also led to shortages of essentials - as has a drop in exports - leaving the Communist-run island struggling to pay for imports.
Cuba brings in up to 70% of its food from abroad. Numerous agricultural reforms in recent years have failed to boost production.
Commerce Minister Betsy Díaz said supermarkets will now restrict how much people can buy of certain products like chicken and soap, while other items - including rice, beans, eggs and sausage - will only be available on the ration card, and limited to a monthly amount.
"Our mission is to fracture all the measures the US government imposes, and today we are setting priorities," she said.
But Ms Díaz also blamed Cubans who hoard products for the shortages, saying some people kept items they felt might disappear from the shops while others resold goods on the black market.
Journalist Yoani Sánchez tweeted that what was once of the best-stocked shops in the city had "turned into a battlefield to get a kilogram of frozen chicken".

In April, 91-year-old Cuban revolutionary Guillermo García Frías suggested Cubans could eat ostriches, crocodile and edible rodents known as jutía amid the shortages, prompting a flood of memes mocking the commander's suggestion. 

https://www.bbc.com

 Cuba Implements Food Rationing as Its Economy Enters Crisis Mode

It’s clear that price controls are in the Cuban state’s toolbox of economic tricks and won’t be going away anytime soon.

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Image Credit: dassel from Pixabay | Pixabay License (https://pixabay.com/service/license/)

José Niño

Economics Cuba Food Rationing Economic Crisis Communism Economic Sanctions

While it is fashionable to talk about Venezuela and its notorious shortage of basic goods such as toilet paper, flour, and milk, Cuba is now implementing a rationing program to combat its very own shortages of basic goods. A CBC report indicates this program would cover basic items such as chicken, eggs, rice, beans, and soap.
The lowest common denominator in the Cuban economy during the past five decades is excessive government control.
What has caused these shortages has been a subject of debate. Cuban Minister of Commerce Betsy Diaz Velazquez blames the Trump administration’s stiffening of the trade embargo with the island nation. Others contend that decreasing aid from Venezuela has contributed to Cuba’s newly emerging rationing dilemma. Over the past few years, Venezuela has provided Cuba with subsidized fuel and other forms of aid in order to keep its basic infrastructure intact.
Although these explanations do have validity and will be touched upon later, there is another factor that is not being considered. The lowest common denominator in the Cuban economy during the past five decades is excessive government control.

Cuba: The Western Hemisphere’s Longest-Lasting Socialist Experiment

When Fidel Castro took control of Cuba in 1959, the Cuban state maintained an iron grip on the economy. For decades, the country has been a communist garrison state with very little respect for property rights and civil liberties such as free speech. More than 140,000 Cubans perished under the Castro regime, according to certain estimates, while millions of Cubans fled to the United States to start a new life.
Alvarez also notes that even with the Soviet Union effectively serving as Cuba’s sugar daddy, the country still had to ration goods and services.
During this timespan, economic stability was never really an option in Cuba. Because of the economic dislocations caused by state control of many industries, the government has had to provide citizens with Libretas de Abastecimiento (supply booklets) to ration out basic goods like rice, sugar, and matches. This system was established in 1962 in response to the economic sanctions the American government placed on Cuba which caused shortages of food, medicines, and supplies. From a free-market perspective, these sanctions should be condemned. They not only infringe on the rights of Americans who wish to do commerce and travel to Cuba, but they also do very little to topple tyrannical regimes.
But in the case of Cuba’s economic problems, there is a reason to believe they go beyond America’s embargo on the country. Jose Alvarez of the University of Florida does initially concede that “Cuba was forced to establish a rationing system for basic food and industrial products. This has brought serious limitations to consumers and their choice availability” after the initial blockade by the U.S. government.
However, Alvarez adds that solely pinning the blame on sanctions is misguided:

To blame US economic sanctions for the existence of a rationing system of basic food products is not a very sound argument to justify Cuba's socialist system. It is an admission that Cubans cannot even produce what grows very easily on Cuban soil. If one lists the food products that have been rationed since 1962, it becomes evident that almost all of them were in abundance before the 1959 revolution and were produced domestically.

Alvarez also notes that even with the Soviet Union effectively serving as Cuba’s sugar daddy, the country still had to ration goods and services:

It is interesting to recall that, when the Soviet bloc was subsidizing the Cuban economy to the tune of five billion dollars per year, food was still rationed in Cuba.

U.S. sanctions on Cuba have generally allowed exemptions for humanitarian aid and basic products. The Trade Sanction Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 permitted the sale of certain foods and medicine, albeit to a limited extent. Even with sanctions in place, Cubans have found ways to bring goods to the market, but the Cuban state has remained an obstacle.
This was most clear during Cuba’s Special Period when the country could no longer rely on Soviet Union aid to prop it up. The country began to open up its markets to a limited degree by trading with other countries and making lukewarm attempts towards privatization. However, the government still stood in the way of allowing Cuba to have a functioning market, which Alvarez also points out:

Granted, some Cubans have been unable to consume a wide variety of food products because of the high prices under the rationing system, but there have been periods in which the abundance of several products have demonstrated the feasibility of returning to a stable and ample food supply. Examples include the proliferation of FrutiCuba (a chain of government stores) which was devoted exclusively to selling fruits and vegetables in the mid-1960s, free farmers' markets in the 1980s, the free agricultural markets after 1994, and the new food outlets. These testify to the ability of Cuban farmers to produce abundant food supplies despite US economic sanctions, that could do away with the food rationing system.

The embargo on Cuba only affects current trade relations with America and the island nation. Cuba can still trade with other countries to acquire some of the rationed products. Indeed, Cuba does have a track record of not making debt payments. And when it’s no longer receiving aid from Moscow or Caracas, Cuba’s economic flaws stick out like a sore thumb, which generally makes it an unattractive trading partner.

In the 21st Century, Cuba Insists on Central Planning

Cuba’s recent political behavior indicates that the country’s leadership still does not get basic economics. In the midst of Hurricanes Gustave and Ike in 2008, the Cuban government responded with price controls. On top of the damage that the hurricanes dealt with Cuba, these price controls created even larger shortages than expected according to Reuters.
But Cuba’s price control forays did not end there. According to Agencia EFE, Cuba enacted price controls in May 2016 with the aim of increasing the stockpile and sale of highly demanded agricultural products. It’s clear that price controls are in the Cuban state’s toolbox of economic tricks and likely won’t be going away anytime soon.
Food staples such as plantains, beans, and mangos were covered under these price ceilings. Basic economics demonstrates that price controls cause shortages. When a price ceiling below the market rate is imposed, artificial demand ensues. In turn, suppliers, who look at the government-imposed price, act accordingly by not supplying as many goods to the market, which often causes shortages. Based on its most recent actions, it’s clear that price controls are in the Cuban state’s toolbox of economic tricks and likely won’t be going away anytime soon. The Cuban people will continue to suffer as a result.

Why U.S. Sanctions Won’t Work

The Cuban’s regime despotism is well-documented and merits private condemnation. However, this does not mean that top-down regime change nor sanctions are the best means of getting Cuba on the path towards markets.
Although Cuba’s economic ills are largely self-inflicted, U.S. sanctions aren’t making things better. There are some caveats to consider. Broad-based sanctions like the ones the U.S. has imposed on Cuba provide the regime political cover. They can now scapegoat the U.S. government for all of its problems. Ryan McMaken notes in an article dealing with Venezuela, that non-interventionism, both in terms of military action and economic sanctions, is the best approach to take for enhancing freedom. The same logic applies to Cuba. More meddling will embolden radicals within the regime and give them another boogieman to scapegoat.
Cuba will have to learn that it needs to stick to the basic economic principles if it wants to break free from its long-standing cycle of poverty.
When sanctions are taken out of the equation, it becomes clear to the populace and reform-minded figures within the government that their economic malaise is home-brewed. Even China, which featured one of the most heinous cases of democide under Communism, made a decent transition to a nominally capitalist economy in the 1980s under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping. However, this would have never started if it wasn’t for Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, which normalized trade and diplomatic relations between the two nations.
America can have a role to play in Cuba’s economic revival, but it will do so by removing sanctions. This will remove any doubt as to whether it’s the U.S.’s punitive economic policies that are making the island nation more impoverished. Getting rid of this confounding variable is key for the country to move forward. More punitive measures, like the “highest level” sanctions that Trump promised to impose on Cuba in April, will reduce the influence of reform-minded individuals within the regime. It’s simply too easy for demagogic leaders to turn to radicals within a government who are eager to scapegoat foreign countries and stoke up the nationalistic sentiment against America.
However, the ball is still in Cuba’s court. After more than 50 years of embracing socialist governance, Cuba will have to learn that it needs to stick to the basic economic principles if it wants to break free from its long-standing cycle of poverty.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Mises Institute.

https://fee.org

   Dividing the pie: Cuba's ration system after 50 years

GettyImages

(Note: this article is republished from Telesur.)

La libreta, the Cuba ration booklet, encapsulates the debate about Cuba’s socialist experiment. Detractors say that the fact that food is still rationed after 50 years, and that over 60 percent of the island’s food is still imported, proves the failure of a bureaucratic, state-run economy sapping the entrepreneurial spirit of workers and farmers. Supporters say the ration book exemplifies the Cuban government’s commitment to the health and welfare of its people in the face of a relentless US blockade. They say that thanks to Cuba’s guaranteed food basket and free healthcare, the poor island nation has one of the lowest infant mortality rates and highest life expectancy rates in the world.

Both are right.

I lived in Cuba during the early 1980s, when the Soviet Union still existed and was subsidizing the Cuban economy to the tune of $4-6 billion a year. In those days, eating was an egalitarian exercise. The ration every family received for a small fee was enough to last all month and guaranteed everyone a decent diet. It included rice, beans, lentils, milk, coffee, weekly portions of chicken and hamburger meat, occasional fish and pork.

When the weekly chicken ration arrived at the market, you could smell chicken cooking in every kitchen in the neighborhood--fried chicken, soups, stews. As a nutritionist who had worked with starving children in Africa, I delighted in the knowledge that every family would be enjoying a good dinner. Sure, Cubans complained that they often couldn’t get the onion, garlic or tomatoes to cook the food to their taste, but the basics were always there.

Not today. The ration booklet has been shrinking over the decades. This would be fine if it reflected abundance, but it doesn’t. The worst period was right after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, when Cuba’s ability to import food dropped by 75%. During the terrible next decade, which the government dubbed the “Special Period” and people called “el tiempo de los flacos” (the skinny period), the rations fell by half, the average Cuban lost 20 pounds, and persistent hunger—something not seen since before the revolution—became a daily reality.

The Cuban economy has improved considerably since then, thanks in part to the rise in tourism dollars and to Venezuela’s subsidized oil. Still, the monthly ration is just enough to keep people from starving but not enough for a good diet, much less a satisfying one.

Each Cuban receives a monthly ration of seven pounds of rice, a pound of beans, half a bottle of cooking oil, one bread roll per day, plus small quantities of eggs, chicken or fish, spaghetti, and sugar. There are items for special occasions — cakes for birthdays, rum and beer for weddings—and “vulnerable people” get extra rations. Children get a liter of milk and some yogurt. People with health problems, like diabetics, get extra rations.

Ninety-year-old Aleida Fernandez told me that when she developed high blood pressure, her doctor gave her a note that added three fish a month to her ration. “This way the government guarantees I get enough protein,” said a grateful Fernandez, who lives on a pension of $15 a month but has free healthcare and like most Cubans, pays no rent. 

Cubans pay less than $2 for their monthly rations, which is an estimated 12 percent of the food’s real value. It’s a lifesaver for the poor but it leaves the government subsidizing every man, woman and child, regardless of income. With a price tag of over $1 billion annually, it’s clear why reform-minded President Raul Castro would like to see la libretadisappear.

In 2011 Castro said the ration system distributes food at “laughable prices” and that a system introduced in a time of shortages has turned into “an unbearable burden for the economy and a disincentive to work.”

But his proposal to eliminate the ration was scrapped when met with fierce opposition, particularly from low-wage state workers and retirees struggling to get by on $15 a month. “I can’t imagine how I’d survive if I had to buy my food on the open market,” complained retiree Ophelia Muñoz. “The market prices are so high that I can barely afford potatoes and boniato, much less beans or chicken.”

It’s a different story for Cubans who work in the tourist sector or receive remittances from their families abroad. With access to hard currency, they can afford market prices and they can supplement their diets with restaurant meals.

But the best food is reserved for tourists. Gourmet meals are offered in private restaurants called paladares that have cropped up all over the island. Poor Cubans can now see the sumptuous fare offered to tourists—lobster, shrimp, pork, steak—and they are left wondering why they are stuck with rice and chickpeas. “We’re not starving like people in Haiti,” said Berta Fernandez, a clerk who lives on a salary of $20 a month. “But we smell the pork roasting in the restaurant down the block and we’re left with this craving.”

The unequal access to food is just one reflection of what is becoming more and more of a two-tiered economy, with one group scraping by on national pesos and the other benefitting from access to hard currency. The revolution wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.

At an elementary school we visited in Havana, teacher Olivia Gonzalez said they don’t allow students to bring their lunches from home. Why? Because some students would bring coveted items like meat and soda while poorer students would have simpler fare. “We want the children to all have the same opportunities and not grow up with a sense of inferiority,” Gonzalez explained. “So it’s better for them all to eat the same.” To cut down on costs and provide healthy meals, many schools are trying to grow as much of their own food as they can. 

Raul Castro is trying to find a middle way, stimulating the economy while preserving revolutionary gains like free healthcare and education. His market-oriented reforms include cutting back on subsidies, slashing bloated state payrolls and encouraging more private enterprise—especially for farmers. 

The historic opening with the US has ignited hopes that the US will stop sabotaging Cuba, and that greater tourism and trade will help the economy grow. Even before the opening, Cuba was buying $500 million worth of agricultural goods from the United States. Food sales were an exception to the embargo but sales had to be made in cash. The new rules that allow Cuba to use US banks and obtain loans will lead to more imports—a win for both countries.

Many worry that the US opening, accompanied by a flood of tourists and US corporate investments, will be a recipe for an even greater gap between the haves and have-nots. Certainly the days are gone when Cubans eat the same meals at the same time, and perhaps the universal libreta will be replaced by a food stamp system based on need. But in Cuba, food is still considered a basic human right. As the economy expands, the hope is that Cubans across the island will have access to a more varied diet. In a world where so many people still go hungry, Cuba could become a model of how to grow the pie—and make sure that everyone gets a piece. 

https://www.codepink.org

Cuba's ration book stages comeback due to coronavirus pandemic

CGTN

A woman shows her ration book to buy goods in a subsidized state store amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Havana, April 22, 2020. /Reuters

Cuba's decades-old rationing system, once slated for elimination, is staging a comeback during the coronavirus pandemic in a bid to prevent Cubans from exposing themselves to the novel virus by going on frantic shopping hunts.
Last month, the island nation closed its borders to travelers, shuttered schools and ordered the use of face masks in a bid to contain the novel virus, sending doctors and medical students to monitor the population.
However, hours-long queues outside Cuban supermarkets due to widespread shortages of basic goods risk undermining the country's response to the spread of the virus, resulting in potential hotbeds of infection.
To combat that, authorities this month added more products to Cubans' monthly ration book – known locally as the "libreta" – and started experimenting with online commerce and delivery options.
Meanwhile, Cuban authorities shut down some of the biggest supermarkets and suspended public transport.
"Just as it seemed like it was dying out, the libreta has managed to take a new breath of air," said Cuban economist Omar Everleny.

A man uses a ration book to buy goods in a subsidized state store amid the coronavirus disease outbreak in Havana, April 22, 2020. /Reuters

Introduced in late 1950s, the "libreta" was called outdated by Raul Castro, who became the president of Cuba in 2008 and went about cutting the number of items that were rationed.
Panic shopping in view of the pandemic has forced supermarkets worldwide including in some U.S. cities to introduce their own informal rationing by putting limits on the amount of basic supplies like toilet paper and hand sanitizer that shoppers can buy in one trip.
In Cuba, some products such as laundry soap and washing-up liquid are being added back on to the government-issued ration book albeit at market rather than subsidized prices while people are now allowed more rations of chicken.
"This chicken means we don't have to go to stand in enormous queues," said Havana resident Margarita Morejon, cutting up chicken in her kitchen. "It's not much but it helps us get by."
Cubans complain the rations are still insufficient and the state has started opening some virtual stores as another alternative.
Moreover, not all Cubans have a device or the money to access the internet, especially those relying on measly state pensions or wages, like Havana resident Esperanza Moreno, 68, whose pension is equivalent to around 15 U.S. dollars per month.
She said the old-fashioned libreta is "like a lifeline in these times of virus."

Source(s): Reuters

Cuba is slowly losing a lifeline as Venezuela collapses

Car drivers line up to get their tanks filled at a gas station in Havana on Sept. 19.

(Yamil Lage / AFP / Getty Images)

By Mimi Whitefield

Oct. 3, 2019

3 AM

HAVANA — 

In Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet Union — and the end of its generous subsidies — fuel was so scarce that many people stopped driving and the government imported thousands of Chinese bicycles.
The crisis trickled down to nearly every aspect of life, bringing blackouts, food shortages, even a vitamin deficiency thought to be the cause of a mysterious neurological condition that struck more than 50,000 people.
Known as the Special Period, that era of hardship and severe rationing began in 1991. It finally came to a close at the end of the decade, in large part because oil-rich Venezuela and its leftist leadership came to the rescue.
That lifeline has been severely pinched over the last several years as Venezuela sinks deeper into economic and political chaos, leaving many Cubans wondering whether the dark days of the 1990s could return.
“I had to wait an hour and 25 minutes to get a taxi this week,” said Camilo Condis, an advocate for small businesses. “There’s a lot of worry about fuel. We don’t know what’s going to happen.
“We’ve really been affected — from students to workers who depend on transportation,” the Havana resident said. “Some of the universities are only offering classes two to three days a week now.”
With fuel shipments dwindling, long lines at gas stations have been a fact of life for most of the summer, and in recent days they have become a fixture at bus stops because routes have been suspended to conserve diesel.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel appeared on state television last month to announce austerity and energy-saving measures in the face of what he called “temporary” shortages.
Mining operations and other projects that consume large amounts of energy have been temporarily halted. Work hours have been adjusted to reduce the need for air conditioning and lights. More people have been allowed to work from home.
Diaz-Canel said that “constant negotiations” with unnamed entities to boost fuel supplies failed last month.
He said domestic oil production covers about 40% of the country’s energy needs — enough to keep the lights on.
Historically, the rest has come through a barter arrangement in which Cuba sends doctors, teachers and military advisors to Venezuela in exchange for oil. But daily oil shipments have been cut roughly in half as the Venezuelan economy has collapsed, said Jorge Piñón, director of the Latin American Energy Program at the University of Texas at Austin.
A single oil tanker arrived in Cuba on Sept. 14. Diaz-Canel said that October deliveries were “guaranteed.”
He promised that if blackouts become necessary, they wouldn’t be of the “intensity” of the 1990s.
“We are not in a Special Period,” the president said.
He blamed the fuel shortages on sanctions imposed by the Trump administration this year to pressure Cuba to back off its support for Venezuela.

Drivers line up around the block to get their tanks filled at a gas station in Havana on Sept. 19.

(Yamil Lage / AFP / Getty Images)

Some companies have decided to stop carrying Venezuelan oil to the island rather than risk the freezing of any assets under U.S. jurisdiction.
The sanctions follow a series of U.S. measures — including business and travel restrictions targeting Cuba’s tourism industry and foreign investment — that reversed Obama administration policies aimed at improving relations between the two countries.
“Cubans were overly optimistic during the Obama opening,” said Zoila Aviles, a freelance tour guide. “Now with Trump, people are sad.”
There are many other reasons the Cuban economy is in trouble.
Last winter’s sugar harvest was disappointing, prices for Cuban nickel and cobalt exports have been low, and late last year Cuba lost a significant source of revenue when it pulled more than 8,000 doctors and other medical personnel from Brazil.
Cuba was reacting to criticism from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who said it is unfair that the Cuban government keeps the bulk of the salaries of the health workers it sends around the world.
“This is the worst economic situation for Cuba since the 1990s,” Carmelo Mesa-Lago, an economist and professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, said recently in Miami at a conference about the Cuban economy.
But at this point economists don’t expect Cuba to sink to the depths of the Special Period.
A main reason is the expansion of Cuba’s private sector, which now includes about 600,000 self-employed workers. Another is the massive growth of the tourism sector since the 1990s.
Diaz-Canel said Cuba still hopes to see some economic growth in 2019. Earlier this year, it set a growth target of 1.5%.
During the summer, the government announced a strategy that includes boosting exports and food production, emphasizing import substitution and trying to make state-run businesses more efficient.
To ease some of the pain, the Cuban government also has raised public salaries and pensions for more than 2 million people, which the government said will be financed -- at least in part -- by budget cuts it has not specified.
The average monthly salary went up to 1,067 pesos, only about $40 a month, although Cuban salaries are supplemented by free education, subsidized medical care and subsidies for some food items.
The government also has imposed price controls that limit certain price hikes. But Richard Feinberg, an economist at UC San Diego, said unless Cuba manages to reverse a decline in production of food and consumer products, prices are likely to rise anyway as more goods are funneled into the black market.
The Cuban people, however, are nothing if not resilient. They are used to doing whatever it takes to get by during hard times, whether it’s working two or three jobs or traveling to Mexico or Panama to buy air conditioners, electric scooters and other high-demand items to resell in Cuba.
Emilio Garcia, a graphic designer, said he is feeling the economic slowdown. He recently shut down his side business of providing arts-related walking tours because of a shortage of tourists.
Still, he remains optimistic for his country. He was just a kid during the Special Period. He remembers his family cooking outside with charcoal because there was no gas for the stove.
“It’s kind of ancient history,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll ever return to that.”
Whitefield is a special correspondent.

https://www.latimes.com

Eggs, Meat and Sugar: Cuban Rationing Tightens, People Suffer

By Aaron Lee

How much meat do you eat in a year?
How many eggs do you eat a year? How much rice? How much sugar? If you’re the “average” American, those questions have answers that would leave even the hungriest person satisfied. But if you live in Cuba, the answer is wildly different.

A History of Hardship

In 1960, the United States began a stranglehold embargo on the small island nation which receives 70% of its food through trade, dropping it into chaos. What was once available and easily obtainable became growingly scarce, until the local supplies ran out completely. Chaos and an unstable food supply rendered the country all but helpless. And like many countries facing such a crisis, in 1962, Cuba instituted mandatory rationing.
And this helped the problem. Rationing is a sound practice after all, and the United States has used it itself from time to time, the idea being to insure equal distribution of goods, so no one hoards, and so no one goes hungry. This system worked relatively well, with varying degrees of success until 1991. In 1991 the Soviet Union, Cuba’s main trade partner fell, and the trade path of supplies slowed, and eventually stopped which made the already isolated country even more friendless, and further limited the availability of goods.
As the Union fell, and as supplies and trade ceased, Cuba entered a period known as the Período especial, or the Special Period in Time of Peace. During this time, the average Cuban citizen lost around twenty pounds, and goods became even more scarce, while a widespread famine gripped the island. The period lasted around nine years, and by the year 2000, Venezuela and Russia began active trading with the island, and normalcy was largely reestablished, although rationing remained a part of everyday life.
Fourteen years of growing success and stabilization began a slow decline around 2014, when Venezuela began to destabilize. Venezuela’s struggle has been a culmination of years of hyperinflation, shortages of food and medicine, and other humanitarian crises, dramatically lowering the countries ability to maintain it’s own population, let alone provide support for another country. Over the past five years, supplies, including vital crude oil used to power most of the island have slowly stopped, leaving Russia as the one of the only main trade suppliers of Cuba.
Although the country has enjoyed warming relations with the United States, these events have worsened the situation on the island, and beginning in May, 2019, stricter rationing protocols where put in place to combat the long-term shortages and to attempt to insure continuity of services.

Rationing in Today’s Cuba

I asked, in the beginning of the article, if you knew how much meat you eat in a year. The answer, may surprise you: If you are the average American, the answer is around 222 lbs (100.7 kilos) or a little more than half a pound a day. We also tend to enjoy a variable smorgasbord of meats, from beef, to pig, to chicken, to fish. If you where living in Cuba, and where somehow managing to receive the full ration assigned to you (a rarity)  you would eat around 160 lbs (73 Kilos) of mostly chicken per year, on it’s face, a 27% reduction, and a major protein change.
In Cuba, meat is scarce and supplied sporadically and randomly, meaning you rarely get your 2 Kilogram’s of meat as allowed for every ten days. Instead, you perhaps enjoy the occasional chicken when the carniceria you are assigned to finally receives the shipment that was due days ago.
While meat rationing may sound extreme, the rationing of eggs is even stricter. Assuming, once again that you are the average American, every year you consume somewhere around 280 eggs, for many American’s, that number is dramatically higher. In Cuba, when eggs are available, you may receive your allotted five eggs for a month. Enough for two omelettes, or perhaps a cake. In the all but fictional scenario where one receives their full years ration, you would receive at most 60 eggs. As with meat, eggs are a highly sought after commodity, and the scarcity and limitations of supplies make this allotment of sixty annually unlikely at very best. In fact, most Cubans don’t see eggs for large portions of the year.
The rations include other allotments for things like rice, sugar, cooking oil, and a daily bread roll, and all in all, If rations where dispersed in full, every Cuban would be able to receive at absolute most 2829 calories per day. Now, on first bluster, this number seems to fall well within daily nutritional requirements. After-all, 2000 is what our own Department of Agriculture recommends, but even this is 700 calories below what the average American consumes. The problem comes from the distribution of the goods.
Across the nation many of these shipments fail to arrive, or arrive in smaller than anticipated proportions, on schedules unknown and unpredictable. For thousands of Cubans, this means that every day is lived in a kind of scarcity Americans never have to worry about.
The numbers quoted in this article are what the ration’s where before the new wave of restrictions, and it can only be guessed at what the new numbers will bring. Regardless of the severity of the changes, they are sure to injure those most venerable, the Cuban people. I quote above pure science, calculations and mathematics that illustrate what a human being can physically survive on, but that also leaves a hole in the soul.

Food: The Fundamental Unionizer

Food is the fundamental unionizer. From when we crawled from the primordial ooze and struck rock on rock and harnessed fire, the hearth is where we go to eat, and to share, and to be protected. It is a family affair, it is the way we retain sanity, it is the way we embody our ancestors through recipes and traditions, and it is a fundamental right for every human being.
Yet still, in a day you eat more variety than the average Cuban can expect to see in a month. You enjoy foods that will never be available for them, and we cannot take for granted the luck we have for the abundance which we enjoy. Far to often, in battles of kings, presidents, and emperors, in public debates and publications, we forget the humanitarian cost of our actions.
The people, who go without because of our very real decisions, decisions that seem so far removed from the spectrum of reality, are affected by our choices. So the next time that you eat a meal, or go shopping, remember that you don’t have to wait weeks for fresh meat, or months for eggs. Remember that our prosperity is a product of our countries work and diplomacy, and remember the Cuban farmer, who is trying to feed his family on less than $20 a month, and would love to eat the beef in your fridge.

Published in Breaking, Food, Industry Commentary and News

Aaron Lee

Aaron Lee is a staff writer at Grit Daily. An activist, a foodie, and an author, he does a little bit of everything. Based in Milwaukee, Aaron is in a prime culinary epicenter, where the best and the brightest come to shine. Also a master of small space cooking, he once cooked a 14 pound turkey in a college dorm room.
https://gritdaily.com

Cuban government announces it will ration food and everyday goods amid 'grave economic crisis'after Venezuela was forced to cut its aid to the communist-run island

• Cuba is facing food shortages on basic items due to low production and imports 
• Chicken, eggs, rice, beans, soap and other household items will now be rationed
• The country's commerce minister blames the announcement on U.S. trade policy
• Many economists attribute the food shortages to large aid cuts from Venezuela 

By Stefan Boscia For Mailonline

 

Published: 18:17 EDT, 10 May 2019 | Updated: 18:09 EDT, 11 May 2019

The Cuban government will implement increased rationing of staple grocery items in the face of extensive food shortages, which the government blame on Donald Trump's trade sanctions. 

The country's Commerce Minister Betsy Díaz Velázquez announced on Friday that chicken, eggs, rice, beans, soap and other basic products will all be rationed in the communist country. 

She outlined the grave food situation in Cuba in an interview with the state-run Cuban News Agency, saying the country had produced 900,000 fewer eggs than the 5.7 million needed daily to satisfy national demand.

The country has also failed to meet its production of pork by hundreds of tonnes, according to the Commerce Minister. 

The Cuban government will implement widespread rationing of staple grocery items in the face of extensive food shortages

Cubans waiting in line to buy chicken at a government-run grocery store in Havana, Cuba last month

'We're calling for calm,' Velázquez said.

She tried to reassure citizens in some fashion by reiterating there would be no rationing of cooking oil. 

She said: 'It's not a product that will be absent from the market in any way.'    

Velázquez blamed increased U.S. trade sanctions under Donald Trump for the country's current inability to make up for the country's shortfall in food production, however many economists place a greater amount of blame on decreased aid from Venezuela.

The collapse of Venezuela's state oil company has led to a two-thirds cut in subsidised fuel shipments to Cuba, which the country uses as a commodity to facilitate international trade.  

The country's government blames U.S. trade sanctions for the increased rationing, however some economists say it is due to decreased aid from Venezuela

People shop for food in Havana shortly after increased rationing was announced on basic goods

Cuba imports about two-thirds of its food at a cost of more than £1.5 billion, with shortages quickly causing long supermarket lines. 

In recent months, a growing number of products have started to go missing for days or weeks at a time, and long lines have sprung up within minutes of the appearance of scarce products like chicken or flour. 

Many shoppers find themselves still standing in line when the products run out, a problem the government has been blaming on 'hoarders.'

Havana shopping centres have been given orders by the country's government to limit powdered milk to four packets per person, sausages to four packs per person and peas to five packets per person. 

The Cuban government often blames hoarding for the country's intermittent food shortages  

Havana shopping centres have been given orders by the country's government to limit powdered milk to four packets per person, sausages to four packs per person and peas to five packets per person

Chicken will now be sold in limited quantities in every type of store - with cheaper chicken limited to 11 pounds per purchase and the more expensive variety capped at two packages per purchase.

Low-priced soap, rice, bean, peas and eggs will now only be sold in limited quantities per person and controlled through the national system of ration books. 

One shopper at a Havana super market said the rations were the correct decision by the government. 

'The country's going through a tough moment,' 56-year-old tobacco-factory worker Lazara García said.  

In this Oct. 9, 2009 file photo, an employee works in a government food store with empty shelves in Havana, Cuba

'This is the right response - without this, there'll be hoarders. 

'I just got out of work and I was able to buy hot dogs.' 

However, business owner Manuel Ordoñez, 43, said the measures would do little to solve the country's problems.  

'What the country needs to do is produce,' he said.

'Sufficient merchandise is what will lead to shorter lines.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk

 Cuba uses the coronavirus crisis to continue to harass, imprison religious leaders | Opinion

By Teo Babun

May 27, 2020 06:30 PM

To prevent hoarding during the pandemic, a soldier in Havana, Cuba, patrols outside a government-run food store where shoppers wait in line. Ramon Espinosa AP

In early March, responsible governments around the world closed borders to protect public health. But not Cuba. Instead, the cash-strapped government proclaimed: Visit Cuba for a safe vacation! By late March, officials reported a rise in COVID-19 infections, predominantly among Italian and Spanish tourists. The government currently reports 1,900 cases, but Cuba’s Institute of Tropical Medicine counted almost half a million cases of acute respiratory illness from March 15 to April 4 — most presumably COVID-19.This is an especially vulnerable time for Cuba. Prior to the pandemic, Cuba was experiencing a foreign-exchange crisis, coupled with chronic shortages of food, fuel, medicine and hygiene supplies; inadequate, overcrowded housing; weak medical infrastructure and insufficient healthcare workers; and growing discontent with leaders’ lavish lifestyles while people wait in long lines for scarce food and soap. 

Totalitarian governments such as China, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba follow a common playbook: They are underreporting infections and deaths, expanding invasive surveillance, hoarding medical resources, and quickly disposing of victims through mass burials and cremations. They are further eroding basic rights by taking advantage of a distracted international community and exploiting fear, grief and chaos.
Erik Jennische, of Civil Rights Defenders, says that 96 percent of Cubans surveyed are reporting an increase in human-rights violations during the pandemic. State security agents accused the evangelical independent journalist Yoe Suárez of “dissidence” and “disseminating enemy propaganda.” Suárez has been harassed four times so far during the lockdown, interrogated and threatened with imprisonment and repercussions for his family.

In these times, detention can be a death sentence. Religious leaders and other good Samaritans are being jailed simply for assisting elders and providing mutual aid to neighbors. Apostolic leader Yilber Durand Domínguez and Christian artist José Acebo Hidalgo were detained when they resisted letting government officials into their homes during quarantine — an unnecessary risk for their families. Domínguez was held in a large facility, and Acebo, who is visually impaired, faces prison for “disobedience” and other spurious charges.
Alaín Toledano, a church leader and regular government target, was detained and charged with “spreading epidemics” and “illicit enrichment” ostensibly related to church activities. Yoel Demetrio, president of the Missionary Church of Cuba, was arbitrarily confined in an overcrowded prison for two days.
The regime routinely prohibits evangelical leaders from broadcasting on TV and radio. Christian lawyer and activist Miguel Porres, featured in Cubadentro videos on Freedom of Religious Belief (FoRB), was detained and interrogated for two hours. In April, authorities betrayed the Evangelical Alliance by granting them the “privilege” of addressing the entire nation for Holy Week, then censoring their videos. National television broadcast a meeting of the Cuban Council of Churches (CCC), an institution many evangelicals do not trust because it answers directly to the Office of Religious Affairs (ORA). The faith community expressed discontent via social media.
The Cuban regime is weaponizing human suffering to escalate its regional power and destabilization efforts. Courageous Cubans who dare criticize the government are systematically deprived of their livelihoods and access to food and medicine. Such tactics lead to extreme levels of food insecurity and social disenfranchisement designed to silence advocates for justice and human rights.
This is a time of deep sadness. We are turning inward and asking how we can best take care of our neighbors, both on our street and on our planet. We must commit to refusing to turn a blind eye to repression worldwide, to calling out lies, cruelty and exploitation. We must stand with our brothers and sisters in Cuba and support them as they continue to affirm their basic human rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

 
Teo Babun is president and CEO of Outreach Aid to the Americas, Inc., also known as EchoCuba.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article243037981.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article243037981.html#storylink=cpy

https://www.miamiherald.com

 Cuba’s liquidity crisis: Will Covid force reform or further repression?

DemDigest    July 31, 2020   

Now that the combined efforts of Nicolas Maduro and the Cuban communist economic advisors have destroyed the wealth of Venezuela, it is affecting Cuba profoundly, according to Ambassador Michael Kozak, Acting U.S. Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs.“Note that even as Venezuelans face extreme shortages at home, they continue to ship oil, diesel, gasoline, food, and medicine to Cuba,” he said in a briefing this week.

 
Kozak warned against consuming Cuban rum and cigars, claiming that two of the island’s most iconic products help finance the country’s Communist “dictatorship,” AFP adds.
“The #Castro economy relies on the theft of private property and the repression of the people. Regime-made Cuban rum and cigars are luxuries that are not worth the human cost,” he tweeted on Monday (above). “The #Castro regime has aged badly. Cuba‘s rum was legendary, before the regime stole it to finance their repression,” he added. 
The Cuban economy is being hard-hit by both Venezuela’s economic crisis, which has reduced Venezuela’s support for Cuba, increased U.S. economic sanctions, and the economic shutdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, says a recent report from the Congressional Research Service. Before COVID-19, the Economist Intelligence Unit estimated the Cuban economy would contract 0.7% in 2020; it is now projecting an 8.3% decline. The global contraction in economic growth, trade, foreign investment, and tourism likely will slow Cuba’s post-COVID-19 economic recovery.
Cuba’s communist leaders have been promising for years to ease restrictions on their tightly controlled economy. Now the pandemic may be forcing them to actually do that. The regime has dropped a 10% tax on dollar transactions to encourage Cubans to give up their stashes of dollars mostly sent from family abroad, NPR’s Carrie Kahn reports.

 
They have a liquidity crisis, said Ted Henken of Baruch College in New York. This is a quick way that they can transfer the money that’s in the pockets of Cuban citizens and/or their relatives abroad to fill up its empty coffers so that it can buy things abroad.
Progressive foreign policy groups are forming a new Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect, or ACERE – to push for better relations with Cuba, after an attempt to roll back the Trump administration’s economic sanctions on the island nation failed in the House of Representatives, writes Matthew Petti, a national security reporter at the National Interest.  

But Rep. Karen Bass, the five-term House lawmaker and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, has shed any illusions she ever had about the regime. In an interview on MSNBC, she walked back a years-old characterization of the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro as “Comandante en Jefe,” Politico reports.

“I have talked to my colleagues in the House about that, and it’s certainly something that I would not say again,” Bass said.

“I happen to believe that sometimes the best way to change a regime is through having relations versus not,” she added, calling the Castro regime’s legacy “very troubling” and citing her work with the National Endowment for Democracy — the nongovernmental organization that promotes democratic reforms in Cuba and elsewhere abroad.
Cuba’s authorities committed numerous rights violations in June 2020 against people organizing a protest over police violence, effectively suppressing the demonstration, according to Human Rights Watch:

 
Many Cubans planned to gather in Havana and other parts of Cuba on June 30 to protest the June 24 killing by police officers of 27-year-old Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano in Havana. Cuban authorities said that policemen found Hernández Galiano stealing and shot him as he was fleeing and throwing stones at the police. Ahead of the planned protest, Cuban authorities harassed and detained scores of people, and accused some of the crime of “spreading an epidemic.” Some dissidents reported that their cellphone data and phone service were interrupted beginning on the morning of June 30, in what appeared to be targeted restrictions. The protest was effectively suppressed and did not take place.
“Arbitrarily detaining people to prevent them from demonstrating peacefully shows what the Cuban government is willing to do to stop critical voices from being heard,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “This is part of a broader pattern in which Cuban authorities will find any excuse – in this case, the pandemic – to treat dissent as a crime, instead of establishing ways to allow peaceful protests to occur safely.

https://www.demdigest.org

Cuba 2019

A year after President Díaz-Canel took office, the authorities continued to employ long-standing mechanisms of control to silence critical voices. The Cuban authorities continued to arbitrarily detain and imprison independent artists and journalists, and members of the political opposition. During the year, Amnesty International named six people prisoners of conscience, representing only a fraction of those likely to be detained solely because of the peaceful expression of their opinions or beliefs. The island remained mostly closed to independent human rights monitors.

Background

Cuba’s new administration failed to ratify key international human rights treaties and refused to strengthen the independence of the judiciary or to bring Cuba’s criminal laws into line with international human rights law and standards.
In February, Cuba approved a new Constitution which, among other things, commits the country to confronting climate change. After initial text recognizing same-sex unions, the relevant provision was removed from the approved text following opposition from churches.
In May, the government cancelled the official annual parade against homophobia and arrested activists who participated in an alternative march, according to media reports.
The US government continued to revert to Cold War rhetoric and tighten the decades-old embargo, which undermines economic and social rights in Cuba.

International scrutiny

Cuba remained the only country in the Americas that Amnesty International and most other independent human rights monitors were not allowed to visit to carry out human rights monitoring.

Repression of dissent

Cuba’s new administration continued to use a range of different mechanisms of control to repress critical voices and dissent.[1]
In February, according to the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), the Cuban authorities blocked several independent media websites during the constitutional referendum and began to use more sophisticated online censorship techniques.
In September, according to news reports, Twitter temporarily suspended the accounts of several state officials, including that of former president Raúl Castro, and other state-run media outlets. While the Cuban authorities accused Twitter of censorship, Twitter pointed to its rules that prohibit the amplification or disruption of (online) conversations using multiple accounts. The move came amid ongoing reports by independent Cuban bloggers and media that the Cuban authorities utilize fake accounts and bots to control online debates.
While independent media projects continued to operate, those working at alternative online news sources were at risk of harassment and arbitrary detention. In October, over a dozen independent Cuban media sites issued a statement calling for an end to a “wave of repression” against the independent press.
Meanwhile, throughout the year, the authorities harassed and detained independent artists opposing Decree 349, a dystopian law approved in April 2018 that requires artists to seek prior approval to carry out their work.
In October, José Daniel Ferrer García, leader of the unofficial political opposition group Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) was detained and remained in prison at the end of the year, provoking international criticism.[2]

Prisoners of conscience

Just over a year after President Miguel Díaz-Canel assumed office, the NGO Cuban Prisoners Defenders, which has connections to UNPACU, claimed that at least 71 people were imprisoned on politically motivated charges.
In August, after reviewing just a handful those cases, Amnesty International named five people prisoners of conscience detained solely for their participation in political opposition groups not recognized by the authorities. They were all charged with offences that are not internationally recognizable – such as “contempt” or “dangerousness” – or which have been used for decades in Cuba to silence critical voices.[3]
In September, Roberto Quiñones Haces, a journalist with the independent newspaper Cubanet, was convicted of resistance and disobedience and sentenced to one year in prison. He is a prisoner of conscience detained solely for exercising his right to freedom of expression[4]. The Committee to Protect Journalists and the human rights organization Article 19 also condemned his imprisonment.

Economic, social and cultural rights

Against this backdrop of repression, and in the context of the Trump administration’s renewed tightening of the US economic embargo, coupled with reduced financial aid from Cuba’s key ally Venezuela, economic hardship on the island intensified, according to media reports.
By the end of the year, Cubans were living with scarcity of food, medicines and fuel. Many commentators compared the situation to the economic crisis referred to as the “Special Period” of the 1990s, which coincided with the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

---

[1] ‘We are continuity’: What the president’s hashtag tells us about human rights in Cuba today (News story, 14 August 2019).
[2] Cuba: Opposition leader detained (AMR 25/1163/2019)
[3] Cuba: A snapshot of prisoners of conscience under the government of President Miguel Diaz-Canel (AMR 25/0936/2019)
[4] Cuba: Independent Journalist Arrested (AMR 25/1047/2019)
 https://www.amnesty.org

 La Lucha: The Human Cost of Economic Repression in Cuba

Cubans Struggle to Make Ends Meet as They Wait for Change

Monday, May 1, 2000

Patricia Linderman

Politics Communism Taxation Poverty

 

Patricia Linderman is a writer and translator currently living in Leipzig, Germany.

As I opened the gate of the high security fence around my yard in Havana, a black woman in her 30s glanced left and right and quickly wheeled her rusty Chinese bicycle inside. Her name was Marta, and she was wearing a pair of my shorts, which I had once traded her for a small watermelon. This time she had pineapples in the plastic milk crate attached behind the seat of her bike. I handed her a dollar for two pineapples, then poked my head out into the street to make sure the coast was clear before Marta pedaled away.

Luckily, there were no police officers stationed on the corner of my street that day. Although farmers and gardeners have been permitted since 1994 to sell excess produce, they must do so personally, in an approved market stall, paying high license fees and taxes. Marta’s little enterprise, buying and reselling fruit, vegetables, and used clothing, put her into one of the Cuban government’s most reviled categories: she was a “speculator.” If caught, she would be charged a huge fine, maybe even sentenced to jail. Furthermore, the Cuban Ministry of Finance could confiscate everything she owned, without a hearing, for the crime of “profiteering.”
Surely Marta’s visits to my door had not escaped the notice of the neighborhood watch, the local Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. A few subtle gifts of clothing or scarce vegetables probably kept my neighbors quiet. But if Marta offended them in any way, or if they thought she was getting too rich or too friendly with foreigners like me, they could simply do their duty and turn her in. They had her, in fact, right where they wanted her.
I lived in Havana from 1995 to 1998, when my husband, a Foreign Service officer, was assigned to the U.S. Interests Section there. Since Cuba and the United States do not have formal diplomatic relations, the Interests Section is officially part of the Swiss Embassy. Yet it has its own large building on Havana’s waterfront and carries out most of the usual functions of an embassy, including processing the 20,000 Cuban immigrants the United States takes in each year.
Political repression in Cuba is the subject of much international attention. Cuban elections are neither free nor fair. The media are controlled by the state and permit no alternative views; antennas and satellite dishes to bring in U.S. television are banned (although foreigners and tourist hotels may use them). Dissidents are regularly jailed on vague charges such as “dangerousness.”

GO TO PAGE # 38

The Pandemic in Cuba – Q&A with Normando Hernandez

Former Cuban political prisoner Normando Hernandez talks to the Bush Institute's Lindsay Lloyd about life in Cuba during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Article by Lindsay Lloyd April 23, 2020 //

Normando Hernandez is a former Cuban political prisoner and the Director General of ICLEP, the Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and the Press, based in Hialeah, Florida. 
He is an independent journalist who has dedicated his career to providing alternative sources of news and information in Cuba. In 1999, he co-founded the Cuban Foundation for Human Rights, and in 2000, he established the Camaguey Association of Journalists, the first independent organization in Camaguey province since 1959. Declared a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International following Cuba’s “Black Spring” (2003–2010), during which dozens of dissidents and journalists were imprisoned for their activism, Mr. Hernandez was exiled to Spain in 2010 and has since resettled in the United States.
Hernandez is the author of numerous articles and publications, including the book El Arte de la Tortura: Memorias de un Ex Prisionero de Conciencia Cubano (The Art of Torture: Memories of a Former Cuban Prisoner of Conscience, 2010).  He has received several journalism and human rights awards, including the Norwegian Writers Association’s Freedom of Expression Award (2009), the PEN American Center’s PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award (2007), and a special mention by the Inter-American Press Association for excellence in journalism (2003). He also served as a Fellow in Human Freedom at the George W. Bush Institute.

This interview was conducted via email on April 20.

Lindsay Lloyd:  What’s the current situation with the virus in Cuba?  How many cases are there?  How many have died?
Normando Hernandez: The Cuban people are struggling between catching the virus or starving to death. Hunger is a bad motivator, so regardless of the consequences, people do not respect social isolation and crowd in endless lines to buy a minimum of groceries to bring a plate of food to their children. Cuban families do not even have enough soap to wash their hands. The shortages are alarming. It's very sad how the Cuban people are suffering at the moment.
According to the regime’s statistics, as of April 19, there are 1,087 confirmed cases, 3,232 admitted to hospitals, and 36 deaths.
LL: Can we be confident that the Cuban government is accurately reporting these statistics?
NH: Let us not forget that a totalitarian single-party regime rules in Cuba and, as we all know, these types of regimes are experts in lying. What we can be sure of is that the Cuban regime lies regarding to statistics.
Proof of this is the mathematical model that Antonio Rodiles, an opposition figure and a doctor in physics and mathematics, has developed, where he compares the statistics of Cuban regime with the statistics of other countries. In his April 17 report, when the Cuban regime reported 968 infected people, Dr. Rodiles projected an estimated 4,598 were infected, more than four times the number reported by the state.
LL: Tourism is a huge source of revenue for the government.  With international travel essentially halted for the foreseeable future, what is the impact on the economy?
NH: The Cuban economy is starving  Not only will it be affected by less tourism, it will also be hit by less foreign investment and fewer family remittances from abroad.  And if the state continues to close private businesses, there will be a decrease in consumption, investment, and the production of goods and services, leading to an increase in unemployment. You won’t have to wait long for the recession.
LL:  Can Cuba’s health care system adequately respond to the pandemic?
NH: The Cuban health system collapsed many years ago.  It was not responding adequately before the pandemic.  Nor does it respond adequately during the pandemic.  And after the pandemic, it will continue to not respond adequately to the needs of the population. The Cuban health system is only official propaganda.
It is a system that is created and functions to enrich those who rule Cuba.
Let's not forget that the regime exports a massive number of doctors and medical personnel to work abroad and then withholds around 75 percent of what the recipient countries pay in wages for the work of those health professionals. Many experts on the subject consider this a form of modern slavery or forced labor.
LL: There are quite a few observers of Cuba in the U.S. and elsewhere that laud Cuba’s health care system.  What’s the situation like for the average Cuban?
NH: I could describe in detail the situation of the average Cuban within the Cuban health system, but I can simply summarize it in three fundamental aspects:
1. Poor hygiene;
2. Poor nutrition; and
3. Shortages of medicines and supplies of all kinds.
Any health system with these serious issues elicits criticism from the community rather than praise. When you force people into a health system that does not allow private clinics or any other alternatives so that there is adequate care, it creates discontentment, helplessness, a lack of hope and much more.
LL: Some governments, like Hungary and Turkey, are using the pandemic to enhance their powers and restrict the opposition.  Is anything like this happening in Cuba?
NH: Currently, the streets of Cuba are under the control of the repressive forces of the regime, including the paramilitary Rapid Response Brigades. Cuba is subject to the military. In such a scenario, the opposition is faced with all kinds of restrictions, ranging from self-censorship to the threat of being sanctioned for the alleged crime of “Propagation of the Epidemic.”
The regime, regardless of the spread of the coronavirus, continues to cite, interrogate, threaten prison terms, and fine independent journalists simply for publishing information on the real situation in Cuba in the days of COVID-19, whether on social networks or in any other media. Many in the opposition fear that the regime will kill them by infecting them with the virus.
https://www.bushcenter.org

Cuba Increases Repression Against Dissidence

A Cuban activist runs while waving a U.S. flag in front of a crowd gathered by the government at Revolution Square in Havana, May 1, 2017. (Photo: STR / AFPTV / AFP)

By Julieta Pelcastre / Diálogo
January 08, 2020

The Castro regime spreads terror and combines repression and torture to weaken its opponents.
The nongovernmental organization (NGO) the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, headquartered in Madrid, Spain, reported more than 3,000 arbitrary arrests in Cuba in 2019, in the midst of a defamation campaign led by the government to persecute human rights defenders, social and political leaders, and independent journalists.
Detainees promoted rejecting the new constitution, which the National Assembly of People’s Power passed in a referendum on February 24; or intended to participate in political activities at the headquarters of their organizations, attend religious ceremonies, or travel within the country, said the Observatory. As of December 2019, there were 122 political prisoners.
“The Cuban regime charges activists with common crimes, which are proven false, such as in the case of José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Cuban Patriotic Union [UNPACU, in Spanish], the country’s biggest opposition group, who was arrested by the political police October 1, 2019,” said Prisoners Defenders, a Spanish NGO for legal action and defense.
Ferrer was jailed for the first time after a summary judgment during the Black Spring of 2003, and freed in 2011. Authorities kept him cut off from family and lawyers, and prevented him from receiving medical attention while he was physically tortured the entire time, said the NGO.
Repressive actions against citizens include threats, fines, communications, artistic, and religious restrictions, in addition to surrounding their homes and forbidding them from leaving the country, says the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation, a member of the international group, Human Rights Watch. The government opts for repression with short-term detentions, added the commission.
“The same person can be arbitrarily detained more than 15 consecutive times within a couple of months. Before we would get repressed for a few days and there would be a break, now there are no breaks,” said to Diálogo Laritza Diversent, executive director of the legal information center Cubalex, who is in exile in the United States..
Punishment and exhaustion are common for those who don’t agree with the regime. “The Castro-Miguel Díaz-Canel government combines physical and psychological torture for those who demand basic civil and political rights,” said to Diálogo Cuban activist Luis Enrique Ferrer (brother of Jose Daniel Ferrer), who is in exile in the United States and a foreign representative for UNPACU. “The abuse won’t stop until key opposition figures and human rights defenders are removed, such as my brother, so that they’re no longer in the streets when the people’s spontaneous demonstrations occur.”
On November 22, Amnesty International asked the Cuban government for access, as an observer, of the still unscheduled judicial process of José Daniel Ferrer. Authorities accuse him of kidnapping and participating in a violent incident against another person, according to Cuban state television. “In these cases, international aid is necessary. The human rights outlook on the island is very difficult; we’ve spent decades enduring systematic repression,” Diversent concluded.
 https://dialogo-americas.com

FROM PAGE # 24

La Lucha: The Human Cost of Economic Repression in Cuba

Yet during my time there, I found the Cubans’ lack of economic freedom to be even more injurious to their dignity and aspirations than the denial of their political rights. The Cubans I knew were little preoccupied with obtaining forbidden reading material or joining dissident groups. Instead, economic restrictions forced them to spend each day scrounging to provide a level of subsistence for themselves and their families, often by illicit or illegal means. La lucha, the struggle, they called it—not a revolutionary or even counterrevolutionary struggle, but simply a struggle for survival.
It was all supposed to turn out differently, of course. After the 1959 Cuban Revolution, businesses and farms were nationalized, and housing, utilities, basic foods, and even entertainment were highly subsidized. Education and medical care were free. Salaries were low and their ranges narrow; workers were rewarded with better housing or a new Soviet-made car, rather than a raise. Eventually, material rewards would not be necessary at all, according to the Revolution’s political philosopher, Che Guevara.
Yet this economic system was a house of cards, kept upright through generous trade arrangements with the Soviet Union amounting to a subsidy of some $6 billion per year. It collapsed when its patron did: Cuba’s gross domestic product dropped by 35 percent between 1989 and 1993. The government declared a “Special Period in Peacetime,” an economic state of emergency.
Power outages became more frequent. The government touted the island’s “eco-consciousness” as gasoline supplies dwindled and bicycles replaced cars. Schools remained open, but without paper or pencils (students shouted back lessons recited by the teacher). Health care remained free, but medicine and supplies were scarce: hospital patients had to bring their own sheets, towels, soap, and food. As Havana residents scrambled to produce their own food, the plaintive crowing of roosters became a common sound in the city. “Why do they crow in the middle of the night?” I once complained to a local friend. “They’re hungry,” she explained.

Reina, a tiny woman hugely pregnant with her first baby, worked in a plant nursery. As I picked out some red hibiscus potted in rusty cans, she explained that expectant mothers received a voucher for cloth diapers, which were otherwise unavailable. The voucher could only be redeemed after the eighth month of pregnancy. Reina complained that her doctor was predicting a premature delivery, but the compañeros wouldn’t give her the diapers, since she hadn’t yet completed her eighth month.

The rationing system, which had covered about a quarter of family consumption before 1990, was expanded to nearly all basic goods. Cubans’ ration books, or libretas, now promised them a few pounds of rice and dry beans a month, along with a few other foodstuffs and personal necessities that might or might not be available. Shoes, for example, were supposed to be rationed, but none arrived. Children were entitled to powdered milk only up to the age of seven. The elderly were given Cerelac, a concoction of dried milk and ground soybeans.
As the economy floundered, Cuba desperately needed new sources of hard currency. The promotion of tourism was stepped up, and hard-currency hotels, shops, and restaurants for foreign tourists began to appear. With their bright signs, fresh paint, and well-stocked shelves, they contrasted strikingly with the drab and barren facilities accepting Cuban pesos. Traveling throughout the island, one could apply this simple rule: if it looks good, it’s not for Cubans. The Cuban Revolution had aimed for paradise and achieved, finally, paradox.
Trying to retain control over the flow of money, the government issued colorful “convertible peso” notes, worth exactly one U.S. dollar. Yet the greenback itself quickly became the currency of choice. In 1993, Cuban citizens were granted the right to hold dollars and shop in the tourist stores. The government hoped to gather black-market money into its own pockets and encourage the inflow of cash from family members in the United States. In fact, the latter has been estimated to be Cuba’s single greatest source of hard currency, at more than $600 million a year. A government wall slogan reads: “Hay que tener FE”—“You’ve got to have FAITH.” Cubans quip that FE really means “Familia en el Exterior,” family abroad.
Yet unfortunately for most Cubans, only some 15 percent of the population received dollars from abroad, and very few could earn hard currency in the course of their regular jobs. The vast majority were officially shut out of the expanding dollar economy.

A Cuban professional with a normal salary could not afford a cup of coffee at the Hotel Nacional, Havana’s towering 1930s landmark. “It must be difficult,” I once remarked lamely to a well-educated Cuban. “No,” he said with sadness and disgust, “it is not difficult. It is inconceivable.”

Meanwhile, the government resisted giving up its monopoly on employment, which it saw not only as an instrument of social leveling but as an effective means of control. In 1990, 95 percent of employed Cubans worked for the state; some 80 percent still do. The rest depend on the government as well, for their ration books, their housing, their children’s educations, and even their right to stay out of prison—since nearly all Cubans are breaking the law in some way as they seek to provide for their families.
As the tourist industry and joint ventures with foreign companies flourished, direct hiring of Cuban workers remained forbidden. Labor contracts are handled by a government agency, which charges an average of $400 a month for each worker. In turn, the workers receive some 250 Cuban pesos monthly, or about $12.50, for an effective tax rate of nearly 97 percent.
In spite of the low salary, workers in tourist hotels and joint venture enterprises at least had the chance to receive dollar tips, extra payments under the table, or “bonus” baskets of scarce consumer goods. The country’s incentive scale gradually turned upside down, with hotel maids and valets earning more than doctors, professors, and scientists. Unsurprisingly, university enrollment in Cuba has dropped by half since 1989.

After a prominent pediatrician treated my son at Havana’s leading children’s hospital, he invited me to follow his rattling little car to his nearby home, so I would know where to find him in case of an emergency. His apartment was in a four-story concrete-block building with open stairways and laundry fluttering outside glassless windows. He didn’t even have his own phone; the number he gave me was that of a neighbor down the hall.

A Cuban acquaintance of ours estimated that each person needed about $30 a month, in addition to a peso salary, to procure basic necessities such as soap, toothpaste, and shoes. For many, the black market was the only answer. Cigars were stolen from factories and sold to tourists on the street. Bold black-marketeers rang my doorbell every day, trying to sell stolen bags of coffee or even industrial-sized rolls of lunch meat spirited out of a hotel kitchen.
Even worse, young Cubans quickly discovered the rewards of companionship with tourists. Around five each evening, women and girls start to line up along Havana’s main roads in tight, colorful clothes. Many are daughters of professionals, or even professionals themselves. They see themselves not as prostitutes but simply women on the make, hoping for a decent dinner, a new outfit from a hotel shop, or perhaps, if they are lucky, the greatest prize of all: marriage to a foreigner and a ticket off the island.

On a hot afternoon, I went for a swim at the Hotel Comodoro. Tourists from Europe, Latin America, and Canada lounged by the sparkling pool. A can of Coca-Cola, imported through Mexico in defiance of the U.S. embargo, cost $1.50 at the pool bar. In front of me, an elderly foreign man bobbed in the water, smiling. Two Cuban girls, about 15 years old, floated beside him, whispering in his ears and kissing his sinewy neck.

In September 1993, the Cuban government reluctantly authorized self-employment in more than a hundred occupations, such as taxi driver, electrician, and artist. However, strict rules governed these new professions. The self-employed are strictly forbidden to hire others; only close relatives can assist them. University-educated professionals cannot sell services in their area of training. High monthly license fees are charged, whether or not the enterprise makes any money. The state also takes a large cut of any income received.
Tiny in-home restaurants, called paladares, were authorized by the new rules, yet they can seat only 12 patrons at a time, may use only family members as cooks and waiters, and are forbidden to serve shrimp and lobster, which remain a government monopoly. Many quickly surpassed the state-run tourist restaurants in quality and value. Yet the closure rate remains high, since profits often don’t cover the license fees, and crackdowns are common on those trying to get around the confining rules.

A Cuban-born colleague put us in touch with his uncle who still lived on the island. We invited the uncle, a professional actor, to a gathering at a paladar. We were served a simple but satisfying meal of red snapper, rice, black beans, fried ripe plantains, and salad, finishing up with coconut flan and coffee. After talking animatedly over a beer, our guest polished off his dinner in silence. As we pulled out $50 to pay the bill for five people, amazement and embarrassment showed on his face. “This is like a dream, a dream of the old days,” he said, tears shining in his eyes.

GO TO PAGE #47

 Opinion | Cuba: pandemic, connection and repression

By

Leonardo Abad

-

May 1, 2020

While the world faces COVID-19, in Cuba they repress people who share their perspectives on reality on social networks. The regime, installed in power 60 years ago, seems to fear freedom of expression more than the ravages of a pandemic.
Arrests, summons, interrogations, fines, legal proceedings for false crimes and threats of imprisonment face the reporters who dare to exercise independent journalism. One of them is Yoe Suárez.
Graduated from the University of Havana, Suárez is less than 30 years old, has seven books of his authorship and several national and international awards. They do not reprimand him for a specific event, but for “an accumulation of anger about my work,” he tells Burgeron Report . They repress him for being a journalist with free thought.

REPRESSION FOR BEING

The face of the repression against those who dare to be has Spanish pseudonyms. Captain Jorge, Lieutenant Colonel Alejandro or Officer René represent State Security (SE), the branch of Cuban intelligence in charge of internal affairs. The Ministry of Terror.
Four times so far this year, the last three times during the confinement by COVID-19, SE agents have coerced Suárez into giving up his job. In the last meeting, on April 22, they threatened to fine him. They also quoted him an article in the Penal Code related to “enemy propaganda” for which, they said, they could send him to jail.
Suárez's mother has been summoned twice to increase pressure on her son. The lady, who works as a translator and interpreter for a tourism company, has nothing to do with journalistic practices.
Lee: Cuba elects president for the first time under a new government system [19659002] In the past two years, Suárez has been questioned at the airport about the reasons for his trips and the people with whom he meets. He was detained in Guantánamo, where his phone was confiscated and he was warned that he was prohibited from entering that province. They have threatened him with raids and with taking custody of his son, who is less than two years old.
“Next time we will see an operation that I will direct against you,” said Captain Jorge, angry that Suárez refused to work for they as an “informant” within Diario de Cuba one of the media for which he reports.
Other journalists such as Iliana Hernández, Luz Escobar, Camilia Acosta, Waldo Fernández and Mónica Baró personalize a growing list of communicators besieged by the SE. Some have been prevented from leaving their own homes before the need for social isolation.
Most of them have a prohibition on leaving the country. They are among the 250 Cubans known as “regulated”. The authorities thus suppress the freedom of movement, guaranteed in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which Cuba is a signatory.
Almost eight months in prison is the journalist and lawyer Roberto Quiñones. They fabricated a crime of “disobedience”, but they really condemned him to prevent him from reporting on the case of pastors Ramón Rigal and Ayda Expósito, incarcerated in turn for deciding to educate their children at home.
Being an independent journalist in Cuba requires courage. The 2020 World Ranking of Reporters Without Borders ranks the island 171st out of 180 countries. It is the worst nation in the Americas to practice journalism.

REPRESSION TO SAY

Until the end of April, some twenty Cubans have been fined for telling what they see and saying what they think. They are taxed 3,000 pesos ($ 120) in a country with an average salary of less than 50 dollars. Not only journalists live under repression.
Youtubers, activists, peaceful opponents or ordinary citizens with a cell phone connected to the internet are annoying for authoritarianism. They take pictures of crowds outside a store where they will sell chicken or detergent. They question the epidemiological conditions in their community. They denounce the deterioration of medical centers, the lack of supplies or the insufficient protection of health personnel. They film an abusive police officer or a corrupt official enjoying perks.
The repression is protected this time in Decree-Law 370 of 2018. The communicator José Raúl Gallego warned that the regulation came when “a part of Cuban society is empowered , it summons the authorities through the networks and uses them as instruments for the coordination of claims ”. He also warned that the norm “is dangerously close to China's internet control policies.”
Find out: Opinion | Cuba: between memory and forgiveness
In January 2020 the use of 370 began in its censorship provisions through Article 68, subsection i. The elimination of this section, among other claims, is required in a declaration that houses the Avaaz platform.
A campaign still active in the networks makes the rejection of the decree visible. Dozens of journalists, artists, activists and citizens in general post, as a challenge, their photos with a poster showing the hashtags # NoAlDecreto370, # LibertadDeExpresión, #InternetNoEsTuya.
The Constitution of the Republic of Cuba exhibits in article 54 that the State “recognizes, respects and guarantees people freedom of thought, conscience and expression.” Article 68 of Decree-Law 370 conditions the magna norm.
The mass media, spokespersons for the only legal political party, the communist, brand the independent press as mercenary, paid by the empire (United States) and dishonest . They call enemies, by slandering them, talented and popular communicators.
In an April 24 tweet, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Michael G. Kozak said that Raúl Castro and Díaz-Canel use the Decree-Law 370 “as an excuse to fine and harass journalists, threatening them with jail for trying to keep the Cuban public safe and informed during the crisis.”
More and more people connect to the internet on the island and consume, with different strategies , the sites blocked by authoritarianism. Other perspectives are entering, as antibodies, into the immunodepressed freedom of expression of Cubans.
–
Yaiset Rodríguez Fernández is a Cuban journalist based in the United States. She has worked as a television reporter in Cuba and in media such as El Estornudo. 

Rosa María Payá Acevedo #Forum2000online

May 5, 2020

Cuba needs assistance and calls for help of the international community – the priority should be the Cuban people. The recommendations for hygiene maintenance are not possible for many as the supply of tap water is insufficient and some citizens are not able to wash their hands for seven days in a row. Food shortage is severe and small businesses are subject to persecution, police violence, and high fines. We are convinced that the official numbers are only a small percentage of the total cases, says Rosa María Payá Acevedo, the Cuban democracy activist and the guest of #Forum2000online Chat. Cuba’s economy was already in a crisis before pandemic. The fundamental economic activity of the Cuban dictatorship is of criminal origin, including the so-called medical missions which are form of human trafficking and exploitation of Cuban doctors. If there is something that the world is discovering now, it is the importance of freedom and democracy which allow us to live with dignity. The Cuban dictatorship is a threat which is now being catalysed by the pandemic.
Cuban civil society pushed for a wake-up call and an international call for solidarity. Those interested can find more information here.

While watching the video, you can turn on English subtitles.
Forum 2000 Foundation is online in times of pandemic. What will be the impact of COVID-19 on our society,democracy and economy? How are the governments handling the situation in different countries across the globe? Join our #Forum2000online Chat and listen to the interviews with experts, activists, academics and thinkers who are answering what we all want to know.

#Forum2000online

https://www.forum2000.cz

Humanitarian Aid arrives in Cuba only to be blocked from its rightful owners

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News provided by

Fundación para la Democracia Panamericana

Aug 24, 2020, 16:06 ET

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MIAMI, Aug. 24, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The board of directors of the Fundación para la Democracia Panamericana, together with Rosa María Payá and City of Miami Mayor, Francis Suarez, sent a letter, found below, on Friday, August 14, to twenty-seven members of the United States Congress, including Bernie Sanders and Karen Bass. The letter was written to request their support in obtaining the release of humanitarian aid sent to Cuba, specifically following a letter they sent to Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. The aid has been arbitrarily withheld by the authorities of the Cuban regime on the Island, despite the serious crisis that the country is facing. The letter to the members of Congress is signed by more than 30 citizens, churches and organizations of the United States and Cuba involved in the Solidarity among Brothers effort as organizers or recipients.

https://www.prnewswire.com

Cuban Gov. Rejects Humanitarian Aid from Abroad

August 18, 2020

No political signs were displayed at the humanitarian effort.

By Vicente Morin Aguado
HAVANA TIMES – Born in Miami, the “Solidarity between brothers and sisters” campaign managed to work a miracle. It transported food and personal hygiene items to the international Mariel port, to the west of Havana, destined for 15,000 Cuban families. The government is now facing the challenge of closing its doors or allowing the different religious organizations to distribute this humanitarian aid.
So far there’s only silence from Plaza de la Revolucion in response to a project that sidesteps the State’s power. However, the Council of Christian Churches in Cuba (CIC), took it upon themselves to speak for the Cuban people, God and Fidel Castro. https://consejodeiglesiasdecuba.org/
It was precisely on August 13th, the 94th anniversary of the Comandante’s birthday, that Reverend Antonio Santana, CIC president, felt the need to preach.
“As a Man of God, I feel the need to speak out in the face of an event that is not in keeping with what our country needs.”
Joel Ortega Dopico, the Executive Secretary of the above-mentioned religious association, issued a similar statement. “We believe that the campaign launched by Rosa Maria Paya, from the Cuba Decide project, is an insult to the Cuban people and churches.”
The statement comes four days after Rosa Maria Paya confirmed this news of the aid reaching Cuba, after donations were collected in May. The daughter of Sakharov Prize winner Oswaldo Paya sounded the following alert.
“We are warning Cuban Customs and its director, Cordobes Reyes, to fulfill its obligation of handing over these containers to the churches. They are the legal owners of this freight, so it can be distributed among families most in need.”
The government’s silence contrasts with the cry from the Council of Christian Churches, whose representatives declare the aid is not needed. 
“Cuba doesn’t need aid from those who serve a government [USA] which has wanted to create humanitarian crises with a political and economic agenda for 60 years. Far from seeking dialogue and respect and abiding by international laws, it violates them and holds no regard for diplomatic norms. It turns a deaf ear to the UN, year after year, when nearly all countries approve the Cuban resolution: “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”
This statement seems to be copied straight from the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX). Just like any minister, explaining the system of government they represent, the reformed Presbyterian Church pastor explains to us in another paragraph:
“In our country, civil society, churches and the State interact in harmony, each of them taking on its particular role.”
The Cuban Communist Party (PCC) controls the approved religious institutions which are directly attended to and supervised by its Central Committee’s Office of Religious Affairs.
Regarding the products in port warehouses, the almost unanimous opinion on social media is that this aid should reach its beneficiaries. In the only space for debate outside of government censorship trans actress and TV host Kiriam Gutierrez has spoken out to the CIC’s reverends.
“These five containers of aid were collected by Cubans and US citizens. There, our brothers and sisters, parents, relatives and friends made donations. I need this aid, my mother needs the diapers. Likewise, the medicines that are only found in international drugstores in dollars at exorbitant prices. My mother and I need the free food since you can only buy food in US dollars right now, and I don’t have any.”
Meanwhile, Rosa Maria Paya was cutting and straight to the point. She clarified about the destiny of the humanitarian aid. “The President and Secretary of the Council of Churches DO NOT have to reject anything because this Humanitarian Aid WAS NOT sent to them.”
In Santiago de Cuba, Alain Toledano, of the Sendas de Justicia movement, demonstrates there are other churches who aren’t standing by the Council’s statement.
“We have to let the world know, that this aid belongs to the Cuban people, it doesn’t belong to the State. We won’t accept any trap to try and justify a seizure of what the Cuban people need so desperately today.”
When asked about how feasible it would be to distribute this aid, Toledano said the following,
“We have everything organized on our part: personnel, drop off places, teams lined up to distribute. There is a list which testifies that over 15,000 people or families have asked for aid, we know who they are, their names. We have a well-organized operation, and we would only serve as a bridge, as a channel so that these blessings reach the many families. These include believers and non-believers, because this aid doesn’t discriminate, it’s for the Cuban people.”
In Miami, donors are outraged because the donation drive went on for some weeks, directly and publicly. It took place in the parking lot in front of the Mana Wynwood Convention Center’s warehouses in North Miami, without a single political slogan. The only phrase visible was Solidaridad entre hermanos (Solidarity between brothers/sisters).

Miami resident Nelson Ruiz buying soap and other items for his fellow Cubans.

At 70 years old, Nelson Ruiz gave us a photo after buying the popular bath soap “Irish Spring”, along with other similar items.
He said: “Soap cleans the body, detergent cleans clothes and plates; these are basic human needs, there isn’t any political statement in these containers. We have to ask what the leaders in my country are so ticked off about.”
“Is it that Cubans are coming together everywhere, without asking them for permission, after they have had us in shackles for 61 years?”
“Invoking the blockade is ridiculous because we are sending our aid from the US freely,” an Internet user commented. He ends with: “we are in the shadow of a crisis that has brought the entire world to a standstill.”

"No matter where the help comes from, 

our people need it," 

says a Cuban religious in Miami

United States humanitarian aid                           Foto Face Book

Cuban Ignacio Estrada, a member of the Christian community in Miami, 

was in favor of the humanitarian aid that was sent to Cuba from South Florida 

and that according to its organizers arrived on the island this week.

"Each of the efforts made at this time is valid to calm the hunger, the need and 

the lack of our people, of those people who have absolutely no access to anything 

and often stand in long lines to buy a piece of chicken or buy an article of personal hygiene,

 "said the Cuban religious in exclusive statements to CiberCuba.

The Cuban collaborated selflessly in this help and therefore feels identified with 

what is happening. "I did it with love," he confesses, while expressing his disagreement 

with everything that is happening on both sides of the island, politicizing an issue

 that deep down carries a large dose of altruism and love of neighbor.

"As a church, I believe that it is not time to move to one side or the other of politics, 

I believe that it is time to stand next to the one who suffers, the one who is abandoned, 

that mother who does not have the milk to bring her children. , of that old man 

who does not have the protein, but also of that bedridden person who does 

not have anything to bathe with, "the Cuban told this medium.

He also pointed out that current times, in the midst of the global crisis 

of the new coronavirus and the economic recessions that it has caused in great powers 

such as Europe or the United States, invite us to offer love "in the middle of our own 

deserts."

"I believe that it does not matter where the aid comes from or who raised it, 

the important thing is that the aid exists and that our people need it," Estrada said.

In his dialogue with CiberCuba, he criticized the Christian leaders who oppose, 

from the ruling party and sympathy with the Cuban regime, that aid be distributed 

to at least 15 thousand families, in need, of food and other supplies that from 

good faith they were collected through the effort of the exile community in South Florida.

"Those who obstruct that aid at this time are being participants and accomplices

 of everything that the Cuban people live. It is not time to judge and much less 

to use our pulpits or confessions to increase hatred or division. It is time to give 

relief and confidence to our people and to believe that a better tomorrow is possible, 

"he concluded.

His words take place after the Council of Churches of Cuba showed itself against

 this aid and described as "an offense to the people" the sending of different 

supplies collected by the community of Cubans living in exile.

In recent days, Lutheran leaders in Cuba and ingratiating themselves with the Havana

 regime were against the aid and questioned the intentions of the initiative promoted 

by the Foundation for Pan American Democracy and the Cuba Decide Platform, 

led by Rosa María Payá.

Lazaro Javier Chirino CiberCuba journalist. Degree in Sociocultural Studies 

from the University of the Isle of Youth. Presenter and journalist on radio and television

Lighthouse Publisher Press team translation

Part of the humanitarian aid gathered in Miami that was recently sent to Cuba 

Photo © Facebook / Rosa María Payá 

 

CUBA REJECTS HUMANITARIAN AID TRIP

NANCY SAN MARTIN Staff WriterSUN-SENTINEL

Basta!, the Key West-based humanitarian aid group, had planned to set sail for Havana again this month, but the trip has been rejected by the Cuban government, organizers said on Friday.
John Young, president of the group, said Cuban authorities earlier this week turned down any upcoming trips. In a Havana meeting, Cuban authorities said the trips were being used by the U.S. government to manipulate public opinion about the embargo toward Cuba, Young said.
"Everything was in the works," he said. "We anticipated we would carry 200 tons of supplies. Now we're stuck in the middle just like the Cuban people are. Both governments use us somehow to propagandize."
Cuban officials also cited recent threats to Basta! as a reason for declining the flotilla aid. Basta!, which means "enough!," was among several groups that received a letter in February sent by Alpha 66, an exile paramilitary organization based in Miami, which stated that groups that visit Cuba or support Fidel Castro's regime will be considered military targets.

Alpha 66 representatives in Miami have said the letters were mailed from Cuba."The Cubans just feel there is a likelihood that these fellows would do something that could cause an international situation," Young said. "It looks like Alpha 66 and the Clinton administration have won."Basta! has traveled to Havana three times in the past year carrying tons of food and medicine. The next trip was planned for the end of the month.

 https://www.sun-sentinel.com

 CubaBrief: Cuba, COVID-19, the Castro regime's claims and some of the facts they are trying to hide.

June 11, 2020 

Reuters reported on June 8th that Castro official Miguel Diaz-Canel, this past weekend, claimed that they "could be shortly closing in on the tail end of the pandemic and entering the phase of recovery from COVID.”  It is an interesting coincidence that Diaz-Canel's ideological ally, Communist China, released a report this past weekend defending its COVID-19 response and declaring victory.

On the same day as the Reuters report the US Embassy in Havana announced over Twitter  and through the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC), that the Cuban government would keep their airports shut until August 1st. If Cuba were in reality coming to the end of the COVID-19 pandemic then why would they be sealing off the country from outside travel for another two months? 

Woman wearing face mask amid concerns over COVID-19 coronavirus in Havana June 2, 2020. (Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images)

The answer to this can possibly be found in the June 5th action by Japan that issued a travel alert on Cuba that is "supposed to be applied to areas that have recently seen a rise in coronavirus  infections."

News from Cuba either through official channels or through its official media claims that coronavirus infections are dropping, but cannot be trusted, especially with regards to disease outbreaks.

Ambassador Otto Juan Reich,  Center for a Free Cuba president and Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, PhD, Cuban Democratic Directorate Executive Director have published a commentary titled "Cuba and COVID-19" in The Epoch Times that analyses the Castro regime's response to the pandemic. What they find is a regime whose primary objective is not the well-being of Cubans or visitors to the island but holding on to power and trafficking Cuban healthcare workers overseas, and allies peddling false claims about the Cuban antiviral Interferon Alfa 2B to generate hard currency for regime elites.

Meanwhile Cuban dissidents have been targets of more repression, and in particular anyone departing from the official line on COVID-19 using Decree 370, a new law that prohibits with fines and prison posting critical content on the internet. According to Marti Noticias official data shows that over 1,000 Cubans have been arrested due to pandemic related crimes.

Despite all of this, members of the Cuban resistance according to Ambassador Reich and Dr. Gutierrez-Boronat in The Epoch Times  continue in their efforts using creative means to make their demands for the freedom of all political prisoners known and continuing their struggle for Cuba's freedom.

The Epoch Times,  June 8, 2020

Viewpoints

Cuba and COVID-19

By Otto Juan Reich and Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat,

Commentary

As if the COVID-19 pandemic were not sufficiently destructive, now Cuba, with the help of China, is again attempting to expand its influence abroad and totalitarian control at home by weaponizing it.

The political atmosphere in Cuba before the pandemic was charged with unusually large public protests, creating serious challenges to the police state. Facing disappearing subsidies from the insolvent Maduro regime in Venezuela, and the Trump administration’s targeted sanctions against Cuba’s military, security, and intelligence machinery, the Castro regime was desperate to avoid losing income from the tourism sector.

In his end-of-year speech on Dec. 21, 2019, “President” Miguel Diaz-Canel predictably blamed the United States for his government’s failures before the Cuban National Assembly of People’s Power, the Communist Party’s rubber-stamp legislature: “[I]n our economic results, is the impact that this [United States’] aggression has caused. Virtually every sector was obliged to face interruptions or delays in production.” Days before, the regime had taken small liberalization steps and released a few political prisoners.

When the pandemic struck, the regime pretended it would not affect Cubans or visitors “because of the tropical sun’s warmth.” When the virus became impossible to contain, however, information about it became tightly controlled.

Newly appointed Prime Minister Manuel Marrero adopted an unprecedented conciliatory tone in a speech directed at the political opposition, calling for unity “beyond political preferences. …” Repression, however, remains unabated, so the meaning of these words is in doubt.

Internationally, the Castro regime, with Chinese regime support, launched a propaganda campaign touting a Cuban “miracle drug” that could cure COVID-19 patients. On Feb. 7, Diaz-Canel tweeted, “Interferon alpha 2B: Cuban drug used in China against coronavirus. Our support to the Chinese government and people in their efforts to combat the coronavirus.” The claim was false.

Embarrassing Cuban propagandists, on March 18, the international news agency AFP reported: “The Cuban antiviral Interferon Alfa 2B is used in China to treat patients with the new coronavirus, but it is neither a vaccine nor a cure.” Dr. Nils Graber, a biotechnologist and health anthropologist at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, told APF the Cuban drug was a “me too” antiviral, an imitation of existing drugs on the market.

Shifting its disinformation focus back to the island, the regime announced the successful containment of the coronavirus. It also announced sending Cuban medical missions to many countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. In the last two years, however, Cuban medical workers have been expelled from three countries in Latin America, accused of interference in domestic affairs in Bolivia and Ecuador, and “slave labor” practices in Brazil.

Through the government’s exploitation of medical personnel, the missions serve two main regime political purposes: First, they are the largest single source of foreign exchange to Havana, and second, they serve as intelligence and propaganda operatives in the host countries.

One example of the medical missions’ ulterior objectives was revealed by Cuban doctors who defected from Venezuela and informed the New York Times that Cuban officials had ordered them to withhold medical supplies and treatment from a number of impoverished patients until a date closer to the Venezuelan presidential election on May 20, 2018, in order to ensure that patients would vote for Cuban ally Nicolas Maduro.

Months later, in November 2018, Brazilian president-elect Jair Bolsonaro accused Cuba of violating Brazilian law by keeping 75 percent of the doctors’ wages under the medical program Mais Medicos, and forcing them to work under surveillance and in conditions akin to “slave labor.”

In November 2019, the Ecuadorian government ended the Cuban medical program whereby 250 Cubans had traveled to Ecuador during a wave of violent protests a month earlier. The same month, the Bolivian government expelled four Cuban doctors who, according to eye witnesses, were distributing cash among supporters of ousted strongman Evo Morales, attempting to overthrow the new government of Jeanine Áñez.

As of June 7, the Castro regime claims that only 2191 people have been infected and 83 Cubans have died from the virus. The data are difficult to accept, given the long-established regime reputation of manipulating statistics for political objectives, and of no supporting public data or independent auditing.

Dissident sources in Cuba believe that the rate of COVID-19 spread is significantly higher, as illustrated by the regime’s recent reinstitution of draconian food distribution controls, forcing Cubans into ever-longer food lines where social distancing is impossible and compounded by a shortage of face masks.

Independent Cuban sources report regime censorship of COVID-19 outbreaks in Cuban prisons, such as La Pendiente, in the province of Santa Clara, a widely acknowledged virus “hot spot” where prisoners are overcrowded in small cells, with poor hygiene, insufficient food, and constant abuse from guards.

In March, political prisoner Roberto Quiñones denounced conditions in the Provincial Prison of Guantanamo: “Despite reports of the vulnerability of older adults … to COVID-19, many of them are kept in cubicles where they live in overcrowded conditions with almost two dozen people.”

More recently, Jose Daniel Ferrer, one of Cuba’s key opposition leaders, released from Aguadores Prison in Santiago de Cuba as a result of international pressure in April, told the authors that, “COVID-19 is spreading in the population. The statistics provided by the regime can’t be trusted.”

Cuba’s tireless resistance has not ceased its activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through sophisticated underground coordination and support from the exile community, activists continue to attend meetings and access the Internet occasionally to generate prayer circles and virtual “human chains” in an effort to support the release of thousands of Cuban political prisoners.

In 2020, dissidents on the island launched the “Yo los Quiero Libre” (I want them free) campaign demanding the release of political prisoners amid the pandemic. The campaign is an outgrowth of the “Pa la Calle” (to the streets) campaign that saw citizens openly demanding political and social rights.

Many Cubans joined the Yo los Quiero Libre campaign, creating a prayer chain, sharing messages of support, and promoting the plight of political prisoners by posting pictures and videos of Cubans wearing yellow, the color of the Cuban resistance. Given the dangerous conditions imposed by the repressive apparatus, the campaign is more evidence of the people’s will to fight for liberty and freedom.

As a realignment of U.S. foreign policy occurs, given new international realities caused by the pandemic, it is essential to address the continuing danger to this hemisphere of a totalitarian regime in power for over 60 years. In addition to the innumerable lives extinguished, and the destruction of what once was one of the most prosperous economies of Latin America, Cuba’s communist rulers have long used false information to undermine U.S. interests in the region.

Otto Juan Reich is a former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela and former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs.

Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, Ph.D., is an author, educator, and analyst. He is the co-founder and spokesman for the Cuban Democratic Directorate (Directorio).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/cuba-and-covid-19_3378304.html

In Mayarí 'people were sent from the long lines 

 to the Government to claim'

It is unprecedented in this Cuban town that many people marched towards a 

government building to demand their rights.

Osmel Ramírez Álvarez

Holguín 21 Ago 2020 - 15:27 CEST 

  Long line  for chicken in Mayarí, Holguín, which led to the claim before the Government. Mayari.Gob  

A massive queue to buy chicken at the Tienda Variedades, of the Caribe chain, filled at least two blocks from the city of Mayarí, in the eastern province of Cuba. 

The agglomeration occupied Céspedes Street and the surrounding areas, so that traffic was interrupted, a phenomenon that has only been witnessed before "the juncture" in carnival celebrations.  

The slowness in the sale of chicken, having a single point of dispatch, and the massive queue that waited for its turn from early in the morning, under the inclement sun and heat of summer, were the cause of permanent criticism and dissatisfaction. 

But it was only when the store's management announced, with the support of the Police and the anti-coleros brigade, that the sale would cease at five in the afternoon, which is the usual closing time, that spirits began to heat up. more visible way.  

"The murmur was great and many could be heard raising their voices above, complaining about what was happening and encouraging them to do something. Because really very few people had been able to buy because of so much slowness and most would be left without doing it after a day full of sacrifices, standing in the sun, "Yunier, a self-employed person who was in the queue, told DIARIO DE CUBA.  

"The policemen only watched the people as they were getting nervous after the news. And suddenly someone shouted: 'Let's go for the Popular Power or for the Party, and for now the people were sent from the queue to the Government to complain. And it was a good group, "he said. As described by the site of the Municipal Assembly of People's Power, "a group of people decided to evacuate their concerns at the headquarters of the Municipal Assembly of People's Power." And then he explains that "in view of the analysis and the fair exchange (...) the authorities duly acknowledged the proposals and decided to extend the sale until eight at night, an action that satisfied the buyers." However, hours later, in the queue the victory of the lawsuit was commented with joy. 

The testimonies reflected that the leaders had to be shouted to come out to attend to them and that there was an immediate presence of State Security officers in the place. Although the event did not have the connotation of a "popular demonstration", it is an unprecedented event in Mayarí that many people marched together towards a government building to demand rights. Until now it had only happened individually.  

The population was satisfied with what they got: that the sale lasted three more hours, so the majority did not queue in vain. 

But it was only able to ensure compliance with the demand with the opening of more points of sale within the store, for which they managed the collaboration of the Ideal Market (possible thanks to the fact that it remains out of stock), with digital weights and even a tent. Chicken is a product in high demand in the Cuban population and is in deficit, and that is why every time it is offered sporadically, the queues are massive. 

 The Police have been dedicated for months to take care of and organize the queues, for which they now have the support brigades against illegalities (counter-coleros). 

But the truth is that they do very little. And in some moments, in the capital of the country and the provincial capital cities, even members of the Army of the special forces are being used. 

Translate Lighthouse Publisher Press Tean from DIARIO DE CUBA. 

Reports from Cuba: The offensive against ‘hoarders’ comes to hard currency stores

August 24, 2020 by Alberto de la Cruz

14yMedio reports from Havana via Translating Cuba:

The Offensive Against ‘Hoarders’ Comes To The Hard Currency Stores

Line for a hard currency store in Havana

In the middle of the pandemic and the social differences that the hard currency shops generate, a case of corruption related to these State businesses now comes to light.
Several citizens in Guantánamo, in confabulation with workers in the TRD Caribe chain, carried out “illicit actions” to obtain merchandise that later was sold on informal networks, according to the official Agencia Cubana de Noticias [Cuban News Agency].
The Ministry of the Interior (MININT) carried out a raid against several offenses and acts of corruption that occurred in this chain “in the present context of the Covid-19 pandemic”, the agency said.
The investigations discovered that those implicated hoarded articles for resale on the black market or charged exorbitant rates for letting third parties buy with their debit cards in hard currency. So far, the amount of money confiscated is more than 3,300 CUC (roughly 3,300 USD at pre-pandemic exchange rates), 74,500 CUP (roughly 3,00 USD at the same rates), and 150 USD.
The notice says that complaints from the residents of Guantánamo provoked the police operation and the investigation of the accused. During the search of the suspects’ homes, they found home appliances like freezers, scooters, and refrigerators.
Although there is no clear policy that regulates the amount and frequency of buying in these places, in order to avoid the actions of resellers, the Government has implemented mechanisms of control for the sake of eliminating coleros (people who stand in line for others for pay) and hoarders. In most cases in these shops you have to show your identity card, in order to keep the same client from buying several times.
Read more

A journalistic vote before the elections    

By Vicente Morín Aguado Miami 

08/24/2020  

In July 2014, I approached the "park of tears" for the first and only time, congested 

by thousands of compatriots, waiting for the supreme moment of the unpredictable

meeting with the interviewer from the United States embassy in Havana, 

which would be our luck. , to decide if we would cry of helplessness or of joy.  

The worn and unsanitary restrooms at the nearby Caballero funeral home — the original,

 not the one in Miami — were a must-see during long hours of waiting, moving 

from queue to queue, approaching the door of the imposing diplomatic building now 

closed to the public. 

Between the silence and the hubbub, the words of a friend 

resounded in my ears, comforting me before facing fate:"From death and luck there is no 

one who escapes." Escaped from both, I have understood that so many Cubans 

meeting day by day in that park, yearning for the same thing regardless of age, 

skin tones, and even repressed political thoughts, we were there waiting simply 

because we cannot escape from that part of ourselves that it is across the Straits of Florida.  

I therefore encourage a journalistic vote before the elections.  

We witness the media assassination attempt against Donald J. Trump, 

whose first crime is to have invaded the sacrosanct precincts of the White House, 

where he is considered an alien according to the image and conduct that, for the case, 

has sedimented the American political class for decades.A second felony 

is having defeated a candidate believed to be the winner with a large advantage 

before the final fight. 

The underlying guilt, which until today his staunch enemies 

do not dare to reveal, is to proclaim Make America Great Again, when his 

predecessor seemed to ensure with Hillary Clinton, the continuity of a hypothetical 

change that the Americans were waiting for.  

The key is precisely that 

customary Democratic ambiguity when it comes to definitions. 

Whoever proposes changes, in the long term has to show something more substantial 

than histrionic abilities, is forced to explain what, how and why he proposes 

to change things in a country that is a universal symbol of success. It is difficult 

to transcend the rhetoric before the cameras when Michelle Obama has just 

settled on $ 20 million in property, turned into an illustrious daughter of 

American liberalism.As for moving from promises to deeds, 

Biden becomes Batman's Joker mounted on a balloon, handing out greenbacks

 left and right, while passersby go from boredom to animation, disputing the slips 

that fall from above which divine miracle. In the absence of something concrete, 

the Democrats are left with a furious attack, an all-in-one using the smallest adverse 

detail that the clumsiness of the condemned person offers them in the face of the 

almost omnimous powers of digital media, capable of scrutinizing even a slight slippage 

of the hands between Trump and Melania, peering out the door of Air Force One. 

This left of Alaska Smoke Salmon and Chardonnay must allow the excesses 

of the other left, the real one — Black Lives Matter, for example — because only 

in this way can Obama and company become credible. 

However, they are in immense danger of silent complicity with what they obviously 

do not want for themselves. 

Such an attitude is weak when trying to shield durable targets. An unmistakable symptom 

of the Democratic weakness is having taken Sanders out of the race for the nomination. 

The Vermont senator represented the only appreciable sincerity among the candidates. 

The decision was a timid response for a certain sector of the electorate that was 

beginning to show their fists. They haven't let their guard down yet.  

Then the image 

operation reached its climax. The anti Trump began with the coronavirus, 

the motive of widespread sentimental blackmail diluted in the logic of events. 

The facts have demonstrated the validity of the local / state leadership in the face of 

a pandemic that by its nature has challenged the wisdom of experts and governments 

around the planet. 

Today, panic has given way to an obligatory search for  scientific solutions in the medium

 and long term.The current judgment is close

 to the idea that the president would not have done better or worse than his peers, 

nor could he offer a miraculous solution to the disaster. 

The dimension of evil surpasses  any personal criticism. Involved in the media lynching 

with the greatest connotation that history records, the emporiums of 

social communication are losing credibility by hiding large-scale events, minimizing 

other events and manipulating the triviality  turned argument to the point of delirium.  

By appealing to primitive sensory perception,  a counterproductive response arrives. 

Simple people, the majority, end up saturated with such practices. 

The spectators end up putting themselves in the shoes of the guarded, 

despising the vigilantes. 

A current of sympathy is cradling the president despite his angry detractors, because they are offending the intelligence 

of the spectators. For his part, Donald J. has little to say in politics and this is good for him, 

he only proposes to preserve the country as it is, something always well received 

by that silent majority that he intelligently evokes as a factor of success. 

Remembering the farmers, far from the universities and glued to the land that feeds 

everyone, intelligence is not equivalent to titles hanging on the wall.  

Should we believe in polls? 

The polls remind me of the communist education of my youth: the truth 

is not in the facts, the facts have to be accommodated to justify the longed-for "truth." 

However, the latest figures are bringing the percentages closer, foreseeing a technical tie 

that heralds another disaster for the pre-competition favorites. 

By the way, in Cuba such winners are often told: 

"The" cattle "are in the pasture." Governing has its advantages:

 the last presidential signatures are worthy of the best quasi-socialist populism: 

tax exemption, moratorium on evictions and extension of unemployment benefits, 

among other measures that all Latino emigrants in the United States would already 

like in their countries. .  

The economy gives initial signs favorable to the billionaire president.

 I remind those who predict the flood of Louis XIV of France. It is enough that 

the storm takes three months. A hundred days after D-Day, a popular phrase made famous

 by Stephen King comes to mind: When shining, Will shine. 

That is, when it is splendid,

 it will shine. Finally, what do we Cubans paint in this story? 

Our best answer follows  the presidential philosophy, according to the prison we have 

for Isla, somehow extended to exile forced by the world. 

We are unable to exercise the right to vote and every day we add compatriots 

to the imperative of a change in nothing like the electoral posters of Barack Obama. 

 Among Cubans, the decision is simple because change means achieving the rule of law

 that most Americans have honored for two centuries. Prisoners, after all, 

whoever helps us break bars, welcome!  

Article published by BaracuteyCubano and translated by Lighthouse Publisher Press team

Kozak: 'There is no embargo on 

humanitarian aid sent to Cuba, 

it is the regime that is blocking'

DDC

Miami 27 Ago 2020 - 11:59 CEST

Religious leaders, supporters and organizers of the Solidarity 

among Brothers initiative demand the "immediate release"

of the cargo held in Mariel. 

 Aid collected in Miami under the 'Solidarity between brothers' campaign. 

R.M.PAYÁ / FACEBOOK

The US Undersecretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Michael Kozak, 

spoke on Wednesday about the retention in the Cuban port of Mariel of humanitarian aid 

sent from Miami under the Solidarity between Brothers initiative.

Kozak wrote on his Twitter account that "for almost 20 days, and even after 

a tropical storm hit Cuba, the regime continues to withhold thousands of pounds 

of urgently needed US-donated humanitarian aid."

"There is no embargo on humanitarian aid: the regime is blocking these necessary supplies, 

not the US," he clarified.

On Wednesday, religious leaders, supporters and organizers of the initiative held an online 

event in which they sent several messages to support the citizen's claim for

 the immediate release of the cargo held since August 10.

Francis Suárez, mayor of Miami, expressed his support for the Cuban people, 

especially the 15,000 families in vulnerable situations who registered to receive the aid.

"I want to thank all those who participate in solidarity among brothers. 

Many opposition and religious leaders on the island are ready to begin 

the distribution and have joined the demand for the release of aid that Cuban citizens 

are leading," he said.

For Ramón Saul Sánchez, a collaborator with Solidaridad entre Hermanos, 

"the regime keeps the burden withheld simply because it belongs to the Cuban exiles."

"The fact that the regime now wants to withhold this aid at the moment 

the people of Cuba need it most does not harm us, it makes them cruel. 

So we demand that the voice of the Cuban people be heard, demanding that aid. he

 needs so much and that the regime denies him, "he added.

The claim was joined by the Reverend Mateusz Wichary, president of the 

Polish Baptist Union, and the Reverend Everton Jackson, director of the 

Comprehensive Mission of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA),

 a network of 147 million Baptists in 126 countries and territories including Cuba. .

"We are aware of the significant challenges Cubans are experiencing due to Covid-19,

" said Jackson.

"During these times of pandemic we urge the governments of the United States and Cuba

 to work together to ensure the release of all humanitarian aid that will undoubtedly 

help alleviate the sufferings of the Cuban people. This is a moment of solidarity 

with the underprivileged. We urge you to all parties involved to adopt a 

common commitment to humanitarian work, "he added.

Rosa María Payá Acevedo, organizer of humanitarian aid, 

clarified that on the part of the US authorities "there is no obstacle to sending aid."

"Immediately release the cargo and do not intervene more in the direct delivery 

of this aid to the most needy families," Paya Acevedo told Cuban customs authorities.

The promoter of the citizen platform Cuba Decide, 

at the head of the initiative that collected the tons of basic necessities 

that are scarce in Cuba, responded to statements by the official 

Council of Churches of Cuba (CIC), which in turn crossed out the shipment as 

"manipulation of false interests ".

Published by DIARIO DE CUBA  and translated by Lighthouse Publisher Press team 

 

An organization asks the US for sanctions for those involved in withholding humanitarian aid in Cuba

For the Global Liberty Alliance, Washington "cannot force the dictatorship to change its ways", but "it can demonstrate its solidarity with the Cuban people."

Volunteers collect aid to send to Cuba as part of the Solidarity between Brothers initiative, in Miami, on May 20. Roberto Koltun

DDC

Washington 03 Sep 2020 - 17:02 CEST

The Global Liberty Alliance (GLA, its acronym in English) denounced in a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the retention by the Cuban regime of several containers of humanitarian aid sent from Miami and asked the US to respond with sanctions in solidarity with those affected, reported Radio Televisión Martí.

"Cubans are facing various crises, including the pandemic, a major food shortage, decades of Communist Party rule, and corruption that has reached the highest levels of the Party, regime agencies, and parts of the military," the signed letter said. by attorney Jason Poblete, GLA Senior Advisor.

Poblete adds that, although Washington "cannot force the dictatorship to change its forms, it can demonstrate its solidarity with the Cuban people" by guaranteeing that those who participate in the persecution and demonization of humanitarian assistance are made known to the world, sanctioned , their assets blocked, and their entry to the US prohibited.

The aid, collected in exile under the coordination of the Cuba Decide platform and the Solidarity between Brothers initiative, and destined for 15,000 Cuban families affected by the Covid-19 crisis, has been held in the port of El Mariel since August 10. , according to its promoters.

As explained by Rosa María Payá, at the head of Cuba Decide, Solidarity among Brothers of the Cuba in Crisis platform made the donation of all the cargo to churches in the US and these in turn made the donation to churches on the island.

"The churches on the island received notification from the shipping company that the cargo had arrived at the port of Mariel. With that notification they went to Customs and requested the release of that cargo. Customs approved it, but then stopped responding. Churches have gone several times to demand the release of this cargo without Customs having given any conclusive response, "the opposition woman said in August.

In the past, the Government has frustrated the delivery of direct humanitarian aid on the Island. In January 2019 when a tornado devastated areas of Havana and similar initiatives wanted to send direct aid, the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment recalled that it was the only body of the Central Administration of the State in charge of coordinating international aid, through "a well-structured process," he added.

Moreover, the GLA letter recalls that the 2020 Annual Report of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended that the US "impose selective sanctions against government agencies and officials responsible for serious violations of religious freedom and rights, including Caridad Diego, director of the ORA (Office of Religious Affairs of the Communist Party of Cuba), and freeze the assets of those people or prohibit their entry into the United States.”

According to the text, information provided to GLA and verified by its work team shows that religious persecution has intensified despite the Covid-19 pandemic. "The regime has tried to exploit this crisis by imposing additional restrictions on independent churches and other places of worship," he said.

Translate Lighthouse Publisher Press Tean from DIARIO DE CUBA.  

FROM PAGE #32

La Lucha: The Human Cost of Economic Repression in Cuba

The regime makes no secret of its reluctant toleration and suspicion of self-employment. Fidel Castro has likened it to “a cancer devouring the revolutionary spirit.” In 1996, a sudden 300 percent jump in license costs and a 650 percent increase in fees led many to relinquish their permits; the total of registered self-employed dropped from over 200,000 to 170,000.
In 1994, however, the Cuban leadership realized that food shortages were threatening the regime’s survival. By June, vegetables had practically disappeared from Havana’s official markets, and the first open demonstrations and riots were taking place. The government announced that surplus agricultural products could be sold at farmers’ markets, under highly controlled conditions, of course.

I stepped under the corrugated roof of the market in my neighborhood. Today there were shriveled green peppers, small onions, and a few piles of seasonal fruit. Off to one side, flies buzzed and circled over a worn wooden counter. Men in dirty aprons stood behind it, each with a single pig carcass. Farmers were required to sell their wares personally and pay high fees for the privilege. There were few buyers. The pork cost 20 pesos a pound. A sugar cane cutter in Cuba earned 107 pesos a month, a doctor about 400. I paid for five green peppers with a ten-peso note, the back of which depicted a sea of uplifted fists clutching machine guns. Tiny background lettering repeated “Patria o Muerte” (Fatherland or Death). The woman selling the peppers would also happily accept U.S. dollars.

For ideological reasons, Cuba refuses to implement further reforms that would unleash the economic vigor of its people. After a strongly worded address by Armed Forces leader and heir apparent Rafil Castro, the Fifth Communist Party Congress in 1997 rejected further liberalization. In a speech to the National Assembly in July 1998, Fidel Castro maintained: “The more contact I have with capitalism, the more revulsion it causes me.”
Meanwhile, Cuba is again becoming a playground for foreign tourists, yet there are no wealthy or even middle-class Cubans this time around. There are simply the poor, who struggle to make ends meet and wait for things to change. After 41 years, many who dream of a better life can only imagine achieving it somewhere else.

As I left the market, I passed a man selling garlic. A four-foot strand of neatly braided bulbs was 20 pesos, or one dollar. “Where are you from?” grinned the gap-toothed, gray-whiskered vendor as I handed him a green back. “United States,” I answered warily, smiling in return. His grin widened. “Will you marry me?” he asked.

https://fee.org

Analysis: Beyond Cuban exceptionalism and toward the 2020 elections

The World

February 05, 2020 · 10:15 PM EST

By Rebecca Bodenheimer
 

Cuban Americans protest Raul Castro leaving office as Cuba's president and Miguel Diaz Canel named as the new president, in Little Havana neighborhood in Miami, Florida, April 19, 2018.

Credit: Javier Galeano/Reuters

Cuban migrants have become one of the largest groups seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border in recent years. But for decades, Cubans in the US have been seen as the exception to the rule of Latinx immigrants.  

With historic access to special programs and paths to citizenship, Cuban Americans outperform other people of Latin American descent in the US — also known as Latinx — in arenas beyond immigrant status, namely in education, wealth, and, most importantly, political influence. It's a status many other Latinx immigrants will now be even harder-pressed to achieve. Just last week, the US Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's “public charge” rule, making it more difficult for poor immigrants to qualify for green cards — one of many crackdowns on immigration from the administration. 

But Cuban American exceptionalism has become outdated and problematic. And as the US approaches the 2020 election, it's time for Cuban Americans — a key constituency in the ever-important swing state of Florida — to eschew the long history of special status and embrace their similarities with the broader US Latinx population.

Cuban exceptionalism dates back to the 1960s. The island's political history — and Cold War ideology — is key to US policies that have given preference to Cuban immigrants. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled to the US after the 1959 revolution ushered in Cuba's socialist regime — led by Fidel Castro for nearly 50 years and still in place today. 

Unlike most other Latinx immigrants, the first waves of Cuban exiles were wealthy and white — many had their homes or businesses expropriated by the Castro regime. These Cubans were treated not as economic migrants, but political refugees fleeing a repressive dictatorship. And they were given special treatment — quickly eligible for green cards and with access to public assistance. The long-running “wet foot, dry foot” policy, in effect from 1995 to 2017, also offered a legal path to citizenship for undocumented Cuban immigrants who were able to step foot on US soil — a pipe dream for many immigrants across the globe. 

And while Cubans have benefited from preferential US policies, many experts agree that since the 1990s, most Cuban immigrants have not been political refugees fleeing repression, but rather economic migrants fleeing first an economic crisis, and then a stagnant economy — just like many Mexicans and Central Americans. 

More recently, Cuban migrants have been trapped in the miasma of the southern border asylum crisis. They too have suffered greatly from the Trump administration’s cruel detention policies, and there has been a noticeable uptick in the deportation of Cubans since 2017. 

But while Cubans are facing struggles similar to Central American asylum-seekers at the border, most don’t face the same threats in their home country that many Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans do. Cuba is one of the least violent countries in the hemisphere. Although Cubans have serious, valid reasons for leaving the island — including politically-motivated harassment or jailing and stagnant state salaries that leave most scrambling to put food on the table every month — most are not literally fleeing for their lives like many Central Americans are.  

Still, many Cuban Americans have positioned themselves in contrast to other Latinx immigrants. 

“Cubans have never been, and have never seen themselves as, 'illegals,' or even, particularly, as a minority group … They have never seen themselves as anything other than added value to this country,” Cuban American sociologist Guillermo Grenier told NPR in 2017, after former President Barack Obama ended the “wet foot, dry foot” policy. 

Indeed, Cuban Americans have often taken anti-immigrant political stances. Around 54% of Cuban Americans voted for US President Donald Trump in the 2016 elections, and some have echoed his xenophobic rhetoric and disdain for asylum-seekers at the US border. This, even though Cubans have themselves been the victim of anti-immigrant propaganda, particularly during the Mariel exodus 40 years ago.

And because Cubans overwhelmingly identify as white, it’s easier for them to view themselves as “better immigrants” within the centuries-old racist criteria that has historically driven immigration policy — a concept that recently resurfaced with Trump’s racist comment about “shithole countries.”

US President Donald Trump receives a kiss from Cuban dissident Cary Roque at an event where he announced his Cuba policy at the Manuel Artime Theater in the Little Havana neighborhood in Miami, Florida, June 16, 2017.

Credit: Joe Skipper/Reuters

Cuban immigrants coming after 1980 have been less white and less wealthy, but decades of preferential treatment has allowed older, hard-line exiles to establish political influence well beyond their population numbers. This is particularly clear in foreign policy related to the US goal of preventing the success of socialist or leftist-leaning governments in Latin America — most recently witnessed in American policy towards Venezuela. 

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the son of Cuban exiles, has become a “virtual secretary of state for Latin America” under Trump, essentially serving as a political mouthpiece for anti-communist Cuban and Venezuelan exiles. 

It is arguably Trump’s desire to “make Rubio happy” (and thus win south Florida in the November election) that explains the Trump administration’s rollbacks of Obama policies that had begun to normalize relations with Cuba. These rollbacks are devastating the Cuban economy, severely limiting travel visas and remittances and drastically cutting commercial and charter flights to the island.

But despite the continuing, outsized influence older Cuban exiles have, there’s evidence that younger Cuban Americans aren’t as myopic as their parents and grandparents: Many long to see the island for themselves, and more recent immigrants still have strong ties to Cuba and travel there frequently. 

This has important implications for the 2020 presidential election: Cuban Americans have traditionally voted Republican, but there’s a generational split. Younger Cubans aged 18-39 who favor engagement with Cuba (65% oppose the 60-year US embargo on Cuba and 85% favor diplomatic relations) — and those who recognize Trump’s rhetoric as racist and xenophobic — have more reason than ever to band together with fellow Latinx, who primarily vote Democrat. 

A survey of Latinx voters released last October by Equis Research further backs up these statistics. Equis found that 53% of Cuban Americans between the ages of 18 and 44 disapprove of Trump’s job performance, as compared to a minority of older Cuban Americans. Some are rallying fellow younger Cuban Americans to reject the president’s nativism, redefine themselves as a blue voting bloc, and recognize Cubans’ common interests with other Latinx. 

The Trump administration’s most recent severe restrictions on traveling to Cuba, coupled with the blatant racism toward and mistreatment of asylum-seekers (many of whom are Cuban), may be the push needed to convince a majority of Cubans to vote Democrat. 

But Democratic candidates also need to put in the work to try and earn the Cuban vote and not just write them off as Trump supporters. Regardless of how Cuban Americans vote, however, it’s time to put the Cuban exceptionalism narrative to rest. 

Rebecca Bodenheimer, PhD, is a freelance writer and Cuba scholar who has been traveling to and conducting research on the island since 2003. Her writing on Cuba has been published by CNN Opinion, Vice, Pacific Standard, Remezcla, and a range of other outlets. She’s also the author of Geographies of Cubanidad: Place, Race, and Musical Performance in Contemporary Cuba.