Cuba’s bloggers are as sharp abroad as at home

Until a few days ago it seemed that the authoritarian choreography of May Day was going to happen, despite the deep crisis we are experiencing. (14ymedio/Archive)
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 25 April 2023 — Perhaps the demand began at a bus stop when someone compared the lack of buses with the line of buses that would be seen on May 1st. Then the demand jumped to the patient who waited for hours for an ambulance but in the hospital he heard the call to fill the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana on Workers’ Day. Then he infected that retiree who spent half his pension on a taxi to deal with getting some paperwork notarized. The chorus became almost unanimous: “How are they going to have a parade if there isn’t even gasoline for the hearses!”

Showing that there is the convening power and political muscle to transport thousands of people is one thing, but materializing this multitudinous horde implies complex logistics: the little revolutionary enthusiasm that remains among Cuban workers must be stirred up, along with the fuel necessary to carry them to the main squares of each province and to deploy a propaganda apparatus that brings everyone from camera operators to announcers to those places, all of them thirsty for water, snacks, minutes on their mobile phones and some other perks.
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The man, who stands out for his leadership, lists the reasons that have led them to the protest and adds: “From this moment on, I declare myself an opponent.” (Yosmany Mayeta Labrada-Facebook)
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 8 May 2023 — Shirtless, with his arm raised and making the victory sign with his fingers, we see one of the protesters who on Saturday took to the streets of Caimanera, in Guantanamo.

The man, who stands out for his leadership, lists the reasons that have led them to the protest and adds: “From this moment on, I declare myself an opponent.” Pronouncing that phrase takes twice as much courage in one of the most closely watched municipalities in Cuba.

Accustomed to living under permanent observation, the residents of Caimanera reached a degree of indignation that made them leap over the fear with which they have lived for decades. A municipality adjacent to the Guantánamo US Naval Base, where the electrified fences, the uniformed men everywhere and the large mined area that borders the military site have become part of the daily life of its inhabitants.

In addition to the continuous controls on the local population, those who want to visit Caimanera must request advance authorization from the Ministry of the Interior. To obtain permission, a compelling reason is needed and the outsider is only allowed to spend a limited time – and supervised – with his hosts. Militarization extends to all aspects of life, from the limitations on fishing on its coasts to the suffocation of the informal market, essential on the Island.

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Cuba, a Country in Miraculous Static – Translating Cuba

A Cuban flag “propped up” on D’Strampes street, in the Havana neighborhood of La Víbora. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 22 June 2023 — The stalls were full of colorful magazines. To my childish mind, the Soviet Union was that place of intense colors, steaming bowls of soup, and smiling peasants seen in the photos of the many publications that came to Cuba in the 1980s. But beyond the propaganda, Moscow was , in fact, like a huge bear that held up the Island. It hugged us roughly: it controlled and propped up the whole country.

Cuban sovereignty has always been the preferred theme of patriotic speeches and the justification for refusing aid, rapprochement and dialogue, but there are few nations on the planet as in need of external support and foreign support as this one. Even the “golden age” of our insular socialism was nothing more than a period of time in which the Russian subsidy made it possible to supply the markets, build schools and finance all the nonsense that Fidel Castro came up with. The Kremlin paid for a showcase in our territory to attract the unsuspecting who believed that this false bonanza was the fruit of the development achieved from the chosen political system.
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14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 20 July 2023 — They breakdown the data. All negative. The sugar harvest plunges, food production declines and money to import basic products is scarce. Right now, in Cuba’s National Assembly in the Palace of Conventions in Havana, standing in all its immensity between the seats and the raised hands of the parliamentarians, is the elephant of the urgency of a change in the system. Everyone feels its presence and prominence, but no one dares to mention it.

Instead of the courageous gesture of acknowledging that the country took the wrong course six decades ago and that imposing a centralized model led us to the abyss we are now in, the delegates continue to insist on recommending measures, adjustments and more controls to get out of the crisis. But with each intervention and each new figure announced, the X-ray of that terminal patient that is the Cuban economy becomes clearer. It is also becoming clear that the model decreed by the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) leads only to failure and that the authorities do not have the audacity or the capacity to improve our lives.
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14ymedio, Generation Y, Havana, 5 August 2023 — Some were in rags, others wore masks. Some were screaming to get on a boat in Havana Bay and emigrate, others took to the streets throughout the entire island to try to change the country so as not to have to head somewhere else. In the 27 years that elapsed between the popular protest of the Maleconazo, on 5 August 1994, and the massive demonstrations of 11 July 2021 (11J), Cubans went from civic childhood to maturity. One only has to review the images of both moments to notice the tremendous change that took place in our society.

While on that morning in August the trigger was the cancellation of the trips on the Regla ferry and the impulse was given by the desire to escape the country, on 11J the cry of the streets was clearly libertarian, anti-government and socially fed up with the political and economic model imposed six decades ago. Better structured, with more consensual slogans and a democratic spirit, the protesters of two years ago were also the children and grandchildren of those who previously taken to the Malecón avenue and were beaten by the Rapid Response Brigades and by the builders of the Blas Roca contingent.

Dispersed, without leadership and overwhelmed by hunger, those who led that initial social explosion were undoubtedly more than brave. It was the first public revolt against the Cuban regime in a long time and it seemed that the indoctrination machinery and the political police had already managed to eradicate all civility from the people on this Island. It was a revolt of despair, chaotic and doomed to failure due to its lack of organization and the mousetrap that the coastline became when the shock troops advanced on the crowd. They couldn’t do better. They didn’t know how to do better.

Despite the many differences, several common threads unite both moments. Repression was the response in both cases. While in that distant summer the oppressors disguised themselves in civilian clothes, on 11J they left modesty aside and went out to beat and arrest with all their paraphernalia of uniforms, shields and weapons. While in that cry in the middle of the Special Period it was Fidel Castro who led the crushing of citizen discontent, and only approached the Malecón when they had already managed to control the situation; In 2021, that disgraceful role fell to Miguel Díaz-Canel, who gave the “combat order” from an office and behind a desk, and unleashed the hunt for the protesters.

However, the main connection between the Maleconazo and the 11J protests is neither the behavior of the regime nor the fact that neither of the two explosions achieved democratic change on the island. Both dates are linked by something deeper and more decisive. Not only did they show Cubans’ rejection of the system, but they also evidenced the evolution of a society whose desire for freedom has not been curtailed.

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14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 26 September 2023 — “From a clove of garlic,” says the poster that has been placed on the ground floor of our building in Havana to call for donations of resources for the celebration of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR). The parapolice organization, which is experiencing its lowest moments, plans to celebrate its 63rd anniversary in the midst of a deep crisis that especially affects access to the most basic foods. The commemoration of its birth also comes accompanied by its tenth congress, which will be held starting this Wednesday despite the red numbers of the Cuban economy.

While measures are dictated to shorten working hours, disconnect refrigerators and air conditioning devices during certain hours of the day, the CDR spares no resources to bring together its managers, show off its political muscle and celebrate birthdays and a congress in the same week. It would be very annoying if it weren’t for the fact that the organization that was created to monitor and control Cubans at the neighborhood level does not enjoy any popularity these days and few give it even a thought. Like an unburied corpse, it stumbles around waiting for the last shovelfuls of dirt to be thrown on it from above.
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Two factors have accentuated the decline of the place: the poor quality of the materials with which it was built and the proximity of the coast and the salt air. (14ymedio)
4ymedio, Nelson García, Havana, 30 September 2023 — Three decades of abandonment weigh on the Pan American Stadium in Havana. The cornerstone of a pharaonic sports complex built by Fidel Castro in 1991, after fulfilling its initial purpose – to demonstrate to the world that socialist Cuba was capable of organizing a high-caliber event – now its decline has been unstoppable.

The logistical deployment for the XI Pan American Games, far beyond the Island’s possibilities, and the fall of the socialist camp months after the event was held, accelerated the arrival of the so-called Special Period. Since then, as a kind of symbol of the debacle, the stadium has reflected the country’s historical ups and downs.

Two factors have accentuated the decline of the premises: the poor quality of the materials with which it was built – fueled by Castro’s haste – and the proximity of the coast and the salt air, which has been wearing down the structure for years. The result, which those who cross the Monumental Road towards Alamar, Cojímar and Guanabo now see, is a unpainted mass, with the stands eaten away by rust and without lights in its tower.
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14ymedio, Havana, 5 October 2023 — The collapse of a building in Old Havana this Wednesday claimed the lives of Yoandra Suárez López, Luis Alejandro Llerena Martínez and Ramón Páez Frometa. Unfortunately, this is not an unusual event in the Cuban capital, which suffers from a more than palpable urban degradation. With hearts still heavy from the tragedy, the comments multiplying on-line echoed the same idea: “How long will they build so many hotels while people lose their lives?”

In June 2021, the Government approved the General Plan for Urban Renewal of Havana for 2030, a document that was published in the Official Gazette along with those for Trinidad, Caibarién, Baracoa and Guantánamo. The news went on tiptoe even for the official press, but the full text gave a detailed account of the painful situation of the capital, proposed a long list of solutions and actions, and ended with impossible budgets. The review, two years and several building collapses later, is interesting.
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14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 26 September 2023 — “From a clove of garlic,” says the poster that has been placed on the ground floor of our building in Havana to call for donations of resources for the celebration of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR). The parapolice organization, which is experiencing its lowest moments,
plans to celebrate its 63rd anniversary in the midst of a deep crisis that especially affects access to the most basic foods. The commemoration of its birth also comes accompanied by its tenth congress, which will be held starting this Wednesday despite the red numbers of the Cuban economy.
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Terminal 3 of the José Martí International Airport in Havana. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 29 November 2023 — Most of them are men, carrying only a small backpack as luggage. The line to check in at the Conviasa counter at Havana’s José Martí airport moves quickly. The flight goes direct to Managua, but the Nicaraguan capital is only the gateway to a route that will reach the southern border of the United States. Despite the recent sanctions imposed by Washington on the owners and executive of airlines that profit from the Cuban immigration drama, the planes continue to take off towards Nicaragua.

A few days ago Marco de Jesús’s world fell apart. With the tickets, for him and his brother, already purchased from the Dominican company Air Century to travel to Managua, a brief email notified them of the cancellation of that connection. It was one of the first companies to react to the new US visa restriction policy aimed at the airline companies that have been selling migrants from the Island tickets to Central America at “extortion” prices.
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14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, 16 December 2023 — This Saturday marks one week since internet service has been cut off on my mobile phone. Coincidentally, it was December, five years ago, when web browsing was allowed for the first time from the cellphones of customers of Cuba’s state telecommunications monopoly, Etecsa. In other words, they implemented the service to later censor it, suspend it and impede its use, in a selective way with obvious political bias.

In these five years, despite the vagaries, infrastructure problems, high prices of recharges and Etecsa’s ‘scissors’, Cuban society has grown thanks to the cracks that have opened in the Communist Party’s wall of information control. Being able to peer into the great Worldwide Web has allowed us to access other voices, stories and testimonies. Now we are less credulous and more demanding as citizens.
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14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 31 December 2023 — In my childhood, letters always began with “I hope upon receipt of this letter.” Now, many Cubans on Facebook warn in their first line: “I am not used to making this kind of publication.” Both formulas introduce a text and seek to create a link between the writer and their reader, but they are separated not only by the distance of decades but also by intentions. One is a mere cliché, the other is evidence of fear.

In Cuba, those who have expressed themselves freely through social networks have been penalized so much, in one way or another, that the fear of making a complaint visible, requesting medicine or reporting the state’s apathy is enormous. People feel that they have to apologize in advance for exercising their right to spread their opinions or to demand everything, from having food arrive at the ration store to having a hospital bathroom cleaned. The majority feel obliged to offer that disclaimer to make it clear that only in this extreme case are they appealing to make their annoyance or desperation visible.
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14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 12 February 2024— He narrows his eyes, jumps and puts his hands on his chest. He is not in the middle of a mystical ritual but in front of the television cameras that report the visit of Miguel Díaz-Canel to Cauto Cristo, in the province of Granma. “It was as if I had seen the god Fidel,” “I have goose bumps,” exclaimed the lady in a trance. She is followed by another who insists that the arrival of the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba is “a gift” from God and “a blessing” for a municipality forgotten by officials and the national media.

In the images, the Cuban leader is quick to shake hands, always surrounded by a strict security circle, to hug children and to point out that he is on the street at a time when his popularity is measured in very negative numbers, although without reliable surveys that put a figure on disapproval. Díaz-Canel has gone there, to convince the poor residents that with “popular participation” they can seek the solutions that Cubans so urgently need, he is seen saying link in a video.
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14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 12 February 2024— He narrows his eyes, jumps and puts his hands on his chest. He is not in the middle of a mystical ritual but in front of the television cameras that report the visit of Miguel Díaz-Canel to Cauto Cristo, in the province of Granma. “It was as if I had seen the god Fidel,” “I have goose bumps,” exclaimed the lady in a trance. She is followed by another who insists that the arrival of the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba is “a gift” from God and “a blessing” for a municipality forgotten by officials and the national media.

In the images, the Cuban leader is quick to shake hands, always surrounded by a strict security circle, to hug children and to point out that he is on the street at a time when his popularity is measured in very negative numbers, although without reliable surveys that put a figure on disapproval. Díaz-Canel has gone there, to convince the poor residents that with “popular participation” they can seek the solutions that Cubans so urgently need, he is seen saying in a video.
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One of the moments of the protest in Santiago de Cuba, this Sunday, March 17 / Facebook/Rompiendo Cadenas

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 18 March 2024 — When they woke up yesterday — Sunday — none of the Cubans who demonstrated this March 17 imagined that, a few hours later, they would be in the streets shouting Freedom! The morning passed

between blackouts and difficulties finding food, but, by the afternoon, the indignation had escalated to a point that not even the fear of beatings, fines or prison could stop them. In the videos of the protests, they are seen behaving as a single organism in sync.

The popular demonstrations in Santiago de Cuba, El Cobre, Bayamo and Santa Marta show that social fatigue has been more powerful on this Island than the terror caused by the mass arrests and exemplary sentences after 11 July 2021. For the people who he chanted “Electricity and food!” in front of one of the headquarters of the Communist Party in the capital of Santiago, the fear of ending up in a dungeon or with a broken head was not stronger than their rejection of a system that has condemned them to a perpetual crisis.

Cubans took to the squares and streets fed up with a regime that they did not choose and that in more than six decades has shown its incompetence to provide them with a decent life.
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Romanticizing the Electricity Cuts in Cuba, More Than Cynical It Is Offensive – Translating Cuba

Romanticizing a blackout by alluding to the fact that the great classics of universal literature were written by candlelight, surpasses cynicism and becomes an offense / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 18 March 2024 — A ‘snort’ runs through the neighborhood. They have just cut off the electricity service and life is paralyzed until the power returns. The elevator does not work, the elderly residents of the upper floors wait on the ground floor of the building because arthritis and fatigue do not allow them to climb the stairs. The cafeteria on the corner closes to the public since the oven is electric and its main offering is pizzas. The pipes remain dry because the water pump could not complete the rise to the tank and, furthermore, “for two days there has been a break in the Palatino pipeline,” says a neighbor.

There is nothing romantic, beautiful or creative about blackouts. They are not, as official media assures, the opportunity to prepare a candlelit dinner for a couple, to get away from the mobile screen or read a book. Not having power is something much more mundane, irritating and limiting. Bedridden patients are flooded with sweat because the fans no longer work; the little milk that the family saves for the baby spoils due to the lack of refrigeration; the poor young man who earns his living as a bicycle messenger loses his little income. because the shipping application stops working after the telecommunications towers are turned off.
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