Providence is on his side
Providence is on his side
Leopoldina Grau Alsina (Pola) received the mission from the CIA to assassinate the Commander in Chief in the 1960s
By LUIS BÁEZ
August 13, 2007
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Considered one of the main agents of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Cuba, Leopoldina Grau Alsina (Pola), was the person who received the death capsules to assassinate Fidel Castro in the 1960s.
LEOPOLDINA GRAU ALSINA.
Arrested in June 1965, she was sentenced by the courts to 30 years in prison.
In the interrogations she revealed how close they had been to carrying out the assassination of the maximum Cuban leader during a visit that he made to the cafeteria of the Habana Libre Hotel, a fact unknown until that moment by the leadership of the Revolution.
In 1978, in the course of the revolutionary government’s dialogue with the Cuban community abroad, she was released. She served 14 years in prison.
Pola, 63, granted me this interview before traveling to the United States. In it, she narrates not only the famous plan of the capsules to assassinate the Commander in Chief, but other aspects of her activity such as the campaign for the Parental Power. A woman of high stature and aristocratic appearance, she unfolded with ease and responded extensively during the course of the conversation, which was recorded with her authorization.
Why did you conspire against the Revolution?
I was anti-Batista. I worked with Carlos Prío. I also worked with Raúl Rodríguez Santos. That led to my having to go into exile in the United States in 1958. When I arrived in Miami I went to live in the house of José Braulio Alemán (Neneíto).
When Fulgencio Batista escaped, I was ready to return to Cuba, but Prío asked me to stay because a coup was being prepared for January 4. With that objective in mind, Tony Varona was already in Havana and Aureliano Sánchez Arango was traveling in a boat to the island with weapons. But Castro beat us to it.
My daughter was studying. I waited for her to finish the course before returning to Cuba.
When did she return?
At the end of May. The news that arrived in Miami stated that the Revolution was red. What I was able to verify upon my return.
I have never been a communist. I was always against the communists. I never sympathized with the communists. I found out that they had taken away my friends’ property, my family’s property. That made me feel bad. I got into a rush, a delusion to overthrow the government. My son had to take me to a psychiatrist.
He found me delirious with guilt. He cured me, but I made him counter-revolutionary and he ended up leaving for the United States.
Already a master of my way of being and thinking, I wanted to find someone with whom to start working against the situation, since I could not do anything on my own. I contacted the person who represented Tony Varona in Cuba, since he had returned to Miami. I’m talking about the second semester of 1960.
Who was that person?
Albertico Cruz, an old friend from Machado’s time, a real front-runner who was acting as the Rescue Coordinator.
I also made contact with former Colonel Manuel Alvarez Margolles, who was the military head of that organization, and we started working together.
What influence did Margolles have on you?
A lot. I was extraordinarily subdued by his way of being. Honestly, anything he told me to do, I would have done.
Were you given any responsibility?
I was appointed as the female coordinator, with Albertina O’Farrill as the person responsible for the asylum.
At that time Tony Varona asked me to send a trusted person to Miami.
Who was chosen?
Rodolfo León Curbelo.
What year was that?
February 1961. Two months before the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Did you know about the invasion?
Leon Curbelo already had instructions about it.
Who informed him?
Tony Varona. He was a member of the Democratic Revolutionary Council. He sent me a letter giving me instructions. The failure of the invasion came and I had to take Mario del Cañal and others into custody.
In which embassy did you isolate them?
In the Venezuelan Embassy.
Did you promote the campaign for the Parental Power?
I spread the rumor that the communist government would put into effect on January 1, 1962 a law whereby all children between the ages of three and ten would be placed in Children’s Circles and would only be allowed to see their parents twice a month.
Those over ten years of age would be transferred to other circles in the provinces and no minor would be allowed to leave Cuba without special permission.
According to this law, the State would be the absolute owner of the children and the parents would lose their rights over the children and many would be sent to Russia. We came to write and print a false law of the revolutionary government in this sense.
Why did you do this?
As a way to destabilize the government and for the people to begin to lose faith in the Revolution.
Quite a cynical attitude.
We were at war with the government. In war everything is allowed.
Who were your collaborators?
My brother Mongo, some sectors of the church and various friends.
Who was involved in sending the children to Miami?
My brother Mongo and I.
What name did you give to that operation?
Pedro Pan (Peter Pan). A fairy tale in which Pedro Pan took the children on a flight to achieve a better way of life.
When did the operation begin?
In the first months of 1961. My brother Mongo received a letter from the Catholic Welfare Bureau in Miami in which they proposed a plan to get children out of Cuba by providing passports and special visa waivers, taking them on commercial airplanes to the United States.
Who supported her?
Beatriz (Betty) Pérez López, Hilda Feo, Alicia Thomas, Marie Boisssevant, wife of the Dutch ambassador; Father Raúl Martínez, parish priest of Santa María del Rosario Church; Wanda Foschini, assistant to the Italian ambassador; the German ambassador, Karl Von Spretti. In the airlines we had Ulises de la Vega from KLM and Julio Bravo from the Pan American. The person in charge of stamping the false visas in the passports was Borico Padilla. The most important of all the collaborators was Penny Powers.
Who was Penny?
A British intelligence agent who served as our liaison with the British Embassy. Through her we sent and received communications with Monsignor Walsh through the diplomatic bag of the British. It had the code name “Kilito”.
What was the mechanism like?
In order to leave Cuba, children needed passports with valid visas or special visas. Since there were no diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba, it was practically impossible to obtain visas.
The State Department contacted my brother Mongo and told him that they had appointed Irish Catholic priest Bryan O. Walsh, director of the Catholic Diocese of Miami, as the coordinator of the program in the United States and he was authorized to sign the visa waivers.
How did the visas enter Cuba?
Through diplomatic contacts.
How did they know their numbers?
We received all the passport and visa numbers from the United States by radio. We would tune the radio on the modulated frequency and listen to a coded song.
What song?
If they played Granada, it meant that there was no message, but if we listened to Jascha Heifetz’s violin solo, it meant that a voice was coming up counting from one to ten, then it gave a long series of number combinations that we decoded the same Mongo as I did from a secret book containing the keys. Ivan Ledo, a person we trusted, sometimes intervened in this operation.
With the visas in his possession, what did they do?
Once we received them, we attached them to the passport. This work was done between noon and three o’clock in the afternoon on the porch of the residence of my uncle -Ramón Grau San Martín- on Fifth Avenue and 14th Street, in Miramar.
Through individuals we trusted, we sent the passports to another person in the distribution chain who in turn passed them on to another intermediary. There were five or six steps for distributing the passports. You could only meet one person at each level.
Did the Americans have any records?
When people arrived in Miami they would ask, “did they charge you or didn’t they? If they said that the visa had cost them some money, they would inform us. We confirmed. The person who had applied for the visa the most would never have the problem solved again. We would close the doors on them.
What other contact did you have in the United States?
For the mail, it was Margarita de la Riva, on Calatrava Street and Coral Gables, a suburb of Miami.
Did they receive financial assistance?
Father Walsh sent us funds through money orders that were wrapped in cellophane to look like a package of playing cards.
How long did it last?
Until 1962. When the Rocket Crisis occurred in October, the US government cancelled all flights from Cuba.
How many children were taken out of the country?
About 14,000.
How old were they?
All of them under 18 years old.
Did the parents leave with the children?
They were sent out alone.
To relatives?
Most had no relatives in the United States.
Under what protection?
They were placed in foster homes and camps throughout the United States, under the sponsorship of the American Catholic community.
How did the CIA recruit you?
Through Norberto Martinez. Not only me, but also my brother Mongo. This happened in the first weeks of 1962.
Who is this gentleman?
A doctor. He had been the director of the Mazorra hospital in my uncle Grau’s government. He had worked in Pinar del Río during the electoral campaigns. He was married to a relative of Juan Antonio Rubio Padilla, who were like my brothers.
Norberto entered Cuba clandestinely from the United States. He was in trouble. His brother Israel, who was in prison and left recently, told me about Norberto’s presence and the need to hide him. And I hid him.
In what place?
In the back of the house, where Mongo had the dairy business. In that place we had silverware and other valuable belongings that my friends left behind when they left Cuba to be kept until the Revolution fell.
Was Norberto’s mission successful?
It failed. They arrested two of his companions and occupied the weapons they had brought into the country. Then we took him out clandestinely.
What activities did the CIA entrust him with?
To send information.
What kind of information?
All kinds. Especially military and economic. For example, if Cuba bought some buses from England, we would tell the Americans and they would prevent the sale of spare parts.
POLA GRAU AND HER BROTHER RAMÓN, BOTH AGENTS OF THE CIA.
Did you work alone?
I created a network of women in most provinces that collected information. We also hid hunted people, gave them asylum, collected money and transported them in a van. Some did not know of my existence. Much less that I was the boss. I handled myself with the necessary discretion.
Do you remember any names?
Queta Meoqui, María Dolores Núñez, a lady named Aurelia, over the years I have forgotten her last name. A good friend of mine. She was the wife of a real senator from Camagüey. As well as Mario del Cañal.
The person I trusted the most was Maria Horta. She was able to leave the country. I don’t know why State Security didn’t arrest her. When I fell prey, she was here, but she left in a quiet plane. However, other women who were not so important fell.
I recognize that Security is one of the best organized things the government has, but they had a failure there. They didn’t catch the woman who was precisely the key.
Has it ever occurred to you that State Security has intentionally let Maria Horta go?
I never thought about it.
By what name were you known?
My old friends used to call me Polita. The others, Hilda or Isabel.
Did you think that the Americans would achieve their freedom?
At first, yes. Then I became disappointed in them. We served them so well and none of us were taken away.
Were they ungrateful?
I’m sure they were. Although they said that we worked at our own risk.
Did you intervene in the preparation of Fidel Castro’s assassination?
They were instructions I received from the CIA.
How would the attack be carried out?
By poisoning with some aspirin-type pills that they sent me from Miami.
How did they reach you?
Tony Varona sent them to me with Leon Curbelo.
What were they for?
In an ordinary Bayer aspirin knob.
What color were they?
White.
What did he do with them?
I gave the knob to Herminia Suárez to keep it.
Why to her?
Her house was the one that served as contact with the Rescue people and with the group of Carlos Guerrero, an old friend of mine.
What did she do with the “aspirins”?
Cruz, Margolles and I agreed to distribute them among collaborators we had in the gastronomic network. Not much time had passed when a diplomatic friend asked to see me.
From which embassy?
Spain.
What was his name?
Alejandro Vergara.
What did he want?
He gave me a letter from Tony Varona and some capsules sent to me by the CIA.
What did the letter say?
He explained that these capsules were more effective for Castro’s assassination and how to use them.
What did they contain?
A deadly poison prepared in the CIA laboratories. They were flavorless liquid capsules. They had an effect on the body between 12 and 24 hours after being swallowed, and they left no trace.
How did you distribute them?
I gave several to Manuel de Jesús Campanioni, who had been a dealer at the San Souci cabaret, and he distributed them to gastronomic workers he trusted.
We were fascinated by the capsules. When we saw that time was passing and nothing was happening, someone – I think it was Matamoros – thought that we could also try to poison some leader, a “peje gordo”, so that Castro would go to the funeral and make an attempt on him. We had people and weapons to carry out the action. We requested authorization from the CIA to apply this variant. They answered in the affirmative.
With this intention, I took a capsule to a young man who worked in the El Recodo cafeteria. But I did not find it. The boy had left the country.
In the midst of all this, Margolles was arrested. They put him on trial and shot him. He was the soul of Rescate. Cruz was the coordinator but the man of action, the military man, was Margolles, and when he died, everything fell apart.
What did he do with the capsules?
I also gave them to Herminia Suárez to hide them in her residence. Until Dr. Carlos Guerrero asked me for them.
What was the final destination of the capsules?
In those years I was working in the cafeteria of the Habana Libre Hotel, one of the places Castro used to visit, a clerk called Santos de la Caridad Pérez Núñez, who received from Campanioni two capsules with the precise instructions to use them against the Prime Minister.
Where did Pérez Núñez take them?
He kept them in his employee locker at the hotel. Later he placed one in the ice cream fridge in the cafeteria.
Where in the fridge?
Inside the middle door, between some tubes that serve as a conduit for Freon gas.
What happened?
One night in March 1963, Castro arrived at the cafeteria. As was his custom, he asked for a chocolate shake. Santos de la Caridad was working. He went to the freezer to get the capsule and pour it into Castro’s shake.
When he went to remove the capsule, the one that had stuck to the cold, burst. When they told me that for me it was a real miracle. I don’t know if I should talk about this. I’ve never discussed it with anyone.
What haven’t you told anyone?
Well, we had studied all the variations for years. The CIA had even analyzed any unforeseen event. But no one, absolutely no one, thought that the capsule would harden in the cold and that it would burst when you took it.
What I am about to tell you does not diminish the professionalism with which Cuban security worked against us. It is not because I have been defeated that I am now going to deny my enemies.
In prison I learned of other cases, of other attempts at assassination attempts that also failed, sometimes even because of changes in timetables, because of insignificance, because of inspirations from Castro himself that no one has ever been able to explain. Apparently, providence is on his side.
History of a medical feat
History of a medical feat
Maylín and Mayelín Téllez Bruzón were born on December 18, 1973, united by the abdomen and were the first Siamese twins to be successfully separated in Latin America
Author: Juan Morales Agüero | juan@juventudrebelde.cu
December 19, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
When they turned 15, Dr. Vazquez Fernandez accompanied them in the celebration. Author: Norge Santiesteban Published: 19/12/2020 | 12:07 pm
Las Tunas – At 3:00 pm on December 18, 1973, the phone of Dr. Rafael Vazquez Fernandez, a surgeon at the Hospital Vladimir I. Lenin Hospital in Holguin, began to ring with insistence. “Good afternoon, tell me,” answered the doctor when he picked up the phone. “Dr. Vázquez? -Yes, this is Dr. Hernández Ojito from the Victoria Maternity Hospital in Las Tunas. A woman has just given birth here, Siamese twins. Would you help us evaluate them?”
The news took his breath away. “Siamese twins! -exclaimed the also professor of surgery at the Universidad de Oriente. You don’t see that much in Cuba. And he recalled having read that the highest proportion of twin births is among the Yoruba in Nigeria, where almost one in every 22 births is a twin.
Dr. Vazquez Fernandez didn’t think twice: “I’m going there,” he said before hanging up. Minutes later, he boarded a car, took the road, devoured the 70-something kilometers [43 miles] that separated him from Victoria de Las Tunas and in a matter of an hour and a half he was on the ground in front of the health institution of the neighboring province. Not by a long shot did he suspect that days later he would star, along with other specialists, in an event of unusual transcendence in the history of Cuban and Latin American medicine.
The preliminary assessment
In front of the Mártires de Las Tunas hospital, his colleague Hernández Ojito was waiting for him. He had attended the multiple birth together with pediatrician Clara Bisquet and doctor Orlando Zaldívar. Without wasting a minute, they went to the room where the little Siamese girls Maylín and Mayelín Téllez Bruzón – each weighing six pounds – were taking their first nap on earth, joined at their abdomens.
The preliminary examination concluded that their separation could be attempted. They requested an ambulance and left for the Lenin Hospital in Holguin, opened eight years earlier. “How much times have changed,” said Dr. Vazquez Hernandez. And his thoughts went back to the time of the Hindus of the 16th century, who incinerated Siamese creatures as soon as they came to life.
Already in the City of Parks, a multi-disciplinary team was formed to study the feasibility of separating girls through surgery. Anesthesiologist Pura Avilés, pediatrician Félix Álvarez, hematologist Norberto Rodríguez and doctor Vázquez Fernández performed cardiovascular, hematological, genetic, blood gas and radiological tests on them.
The results were encouraging. All that remained was to consult the parents. “Success is possible, but it can also fail. Do you agree to the operation?” they were asked. And they agreed.
For the first time in Latin America, an intervention of this kind would be carried out. Other cases in the world appeared in the literature, but not identical. The foundational separation of Siamese twins took place in France in 1689. They were united by the navel. And if we are talking about Siamese twins, the oldest were the English Mary and Eliza Chulkhurst, born in 1110. They lived 34 years with a single pair of upper and lower limbs, a rectum and a single vagina.
Meanwhile, the most famous conjoined twins were Chang and Eng Bunker, born in 1811 in Siam, today’s Thailand. They lived to be 63 years old. Doctors refused to operate on them because they had… a common liver! They both married and had 10 and 12 children, respectively. Chang was the first to die. A few hours later Eng died. Since then the term Siamese designates this type of twins.
A medical feat is accomplished
But let’s continue with Maylin and Mayelin. At midnight on December 27, 1973, the surgical procedure began and lasted almost two hours. An atmosphere of great expectation was felt in the rooms surrounding the operating room. Bohemia magazine reported this in a memorable article: “For the first time in the history of medicine in Cuba, the complex task of operating on two people at the same time in the same room, and, in this case, on two small creatures only nine days old, and closely connected by the abdominal region, was undertaken.
Two groups were formed to provide differentiated care to the Siamese twins during the surgery. In the first, Doctors Vázquez Fernández, Hernández Ojito and Viamonte would assume the separation. In the second, on a parallel table, Doctors Cabrera, Velázquez and Abadía would be in charge of reconstructing their abdominal walls, once they had been separated.
“We operated with an electric scalpel, which cuts and prevents bleeding,” said Dr. Vazquez Fernandez later. We faced three tense moments: the opening of the abdominal cavity, the cutting of the xiphoid appendix, and the section into two equal parts of the common liver. This organ, by the way, had independent systems for each girl. Otherwise, the operation would have been fatal for one of them. All obstacles were overcome.
The prestigious anesthesiologist Pura Avilés also referred to her experiences at that time. “We faced another extremely challenging technical difficulty when proceeding with the endotracheal intubation of the creatures. It happened because of the proximity of their faces and because of the unwieldy heads. But we were able to solve these problems as well.
It was a resounding and resounding victory. The Holguin newspaper ¡Ahora! in the edition of January 5th, 1974, highlighted in a great headline of its front page the unusual event: “GREAT SUCCESS OF CUBAN MEDICINE”. According to the specialized literature, it was the 132nd surgical intervention on Siamese women in the history of humanity. Ours, as it has been said, were born by natural childbirth, but united from the xiphoid appendix to the umbilical region.
Motherhood was another of the prizes that life offered Maylín and Mayelín. Photo: Norge Santiesteban
Today Maylín and Mayelín are two completely normal women, who this December 18th, turned 47 years old. Both continue to reside without setbacks or consequences in their native Las Tunas. In addition to granting them strong health and notoriety, life also offered them the joy of being mothers. “At present, we don’t live together, because each one has her own family,” says Mayelín. But we visit each other frequently and are aware of each other to help each other if necessary. Maylín, for her part, remembers that “we lost our mother a few years ago. She always wanted us to be together and that is what we do”. The separation of the Siamese from Las Tunas is recalled in a sculpture erected at the School of Medical Sciences in Holguin. It’s a tribute to a feat of Cuban medicine that began to be shown on December 18, 1973, when the sound of Dr. Vázquez Fernández’s phone ringing augured something that still fills us with wonder.
The Theory of Induced Demoralization
DESDE LA IZQUIERDA
The Theory of Induced Demoralization
Combating induced demoralization in no way means suspending criticism. Quite the contrary. It implies the exercise of responsible and well-founded criticism, which safeguards unity and does not make it easy for the enemy to destroy us. Demoralized we are nothing
Author: Fernando Buen Abad | internet@granma.cu
December 20, 2020 20:12:21
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Argentina in the year of the pandemic
Argentina in the year of the pandemic
As everywhere else, the arrival of SarsCoV-2 has hindered Peronist management in its return; but this has not hindered a social task that has struggled to impose itself on the economic ballast during its first year in office
Author: Marina Menéndez Quintero | marina@juventudrebelde.cu
December 12, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Alberto Fernandez believes he will be able to raise Argentina again, as he did in 2003 when he was Nestor Kirchner’s right-hand man. Author: Getty Images Published: 12/12/2020 | 08:21 pm
The debates to legalize the voluntary termination of pregnancy close the legislative year and, also, the list of relevant events noted in Argentina during the first 12 months of the Peronistas return. But the events that will most mark the life of the nation are in the economy and in society itself, at the mercy of both, like everything in this world, of the scourge and the confrontation of the pandemic.
The interruption of the pregnancy will be the last vote that the Senate will take on the 29th of this month after its approval in the House of Representatives, which could lead, if it is approved, to the fulfillment of one of the most important campaign promises of the executive that Alberto Fernandez presides over.
And although the issue is attracting the attention of defenders and detractors, it is discussing spaces in the media with the arrival, in the first two months of 2021, of ten million doses of the vaccine against Covid-19. This was negotiated with Russia through the direct intermediary of President Vladimir Putin to help a country that is accumulating more than 40,000 deaths from Sars-Cov-2, despite the efforts of the government in the care of the disease and the sick.
It could be said that the outbreak of the pandemic in March, barely three months after the arrival of the Front of All to power, has passed through his presidential administration at the beginning, to the point that the Head of State has declared that when history is written he will be remembered as “the president of the pandemic”.
The Argentine Senate also approved the Law of Solidarity and Extraordinary Contribution to Covid-19. Getty Images
Confronting the coronavirus has been much more difficult for a nation that was left, as Argentines often say, “in intensive care” by Mauricio Macri’s terms and was therefore in a worse position to face a crisis that has continued to rage.
In October 2019, still in the middle of Macri’s administration, the official National Institute of Statistics and Census (Indec) reported that poverty had risen to 35.4 percent and destitution to 7.7 percent.
That was the scenario where the restrictions imposed against the risk of contagion were primed, so that at the end of the first half of 2020, Indec reported another slight rise in poverty by five percentage points to 40 percent. Meanwhile, the price of the basic basket rose by 20 percent: nine percent more than the increase in total family income which grew by 11 points, so that families living standards continued to decline .
The substratum was visible in the macro numbers left by Macri. At the end of his two terms, inflation had escalated from 25 to 50 percent annually, the accumulated peso devaluation was 540 percent, reserves had become thinner and, worst of all, the foreign debt was equivalent to 95 percent of the GDP in a country that was not growing.
Argentina was in virtual default.
Faced with this reality, the impact of what was the biggest challenge and now also the biggest success of the new government is not yet visible: the renegotiation of 99 percent of the debt bonds held by private holders, an agreement that saved the country from default and set sail so that, despite everything, the ship would sail again.
The rescheduling of payments – as the young and talented Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán, is accustomed to say, because only the terms have been distanced but Argentina will pay – was completed in September and, although it may have passed by in the midst of the contingencies unleashed by the Covid-19, it can be considered transcendental. Paying interest on the debt, it was impossible to think of any plan for national revitalization.
The arrival of the coronavirus added to other problems already facing Argentines. Photo: Getty Images
The payment of $66,137 million dollars of debt under foreign legislation in ten years was restructured with a deduction of around 60 percent, so that only the debts agreed to with the International Monetary Fund itself, relatively “comprehensive” now but responsible for an unpublished disbursement approved by Macri of 57 billion dollars, of which $44 billion were received. Despite its cooperation in the process with the bondholders, the Fund will try to negotiate with the government by imposing prescription books that the Argentine executive does not want to accept.
The successful negotiation with the private sector made it possible for the legislature to approve last month an ambitious and optimistic budget for 2021 that contemplates the forecast of 5.5 percent economic growth after the 12.1 percent collapse of the year that ends,. Inflation is projected to decelerate from 32 percent reported this year, to 29%; and a primary deficit of 4.5 percent, among other aspects.
Martin Guzman, who is responsible for the plan already approved by Congress, has said that this will be one of the elements he would use to negotiate a new program of extended facilities with the IMF.
The interventions of the IMF in Argentina have been popular rejected. Photo: AFP
Offering the shoulder to the people
But the benefit that some of this brings is not yet visible today, when the adversity of the economic figures has been lessened by the government with social measures, aimed at making the burden on the people less heavy.
This shouldering of the burden must be responsible for the fact that, in spite of the sorrows, the executive headed by Alberto and former President Cristina Fernández closed the year with popularity ratings that give more than 50 percent support to the president.
A neoliberal ideologue bent on discrediting him would call it “populism”; but such thinking about people is precisely what offers the nuances that differentiate the models from the socio-political point of view.
Among these measures is the Law of Solidarity and Productive Reactivation, which suspended the formula for adjusting pensions and retirement pensions, and promoted their stability. Also, there is the increase of withholding taxes on exports, the freezing of public service rates throughout the year, the creation of the so-called PAIS Tax on purchases with dollars in order to increase savings, and the increase of taxes only on those who receive more income.
In addition, steps were taken to strengthen local production chains in order to make products cheaper, and it was decided to create a food card that will monitor the nutritional quality of families.
Interviewed by the alternative media El Destape, Alberto Fernandez has confessed the rigors of governing a country that received in crisis and then has vilified the coronavirus. But he has also shown that he feels at ease.
During the last three months, income has exceeded inflation by almost three points, he said. Industries such as the automotive industry produced 20 percent more in November than in the same month last year, and reports state that “in the most popular neighborhoods, where people need it most, demand in the dining halls has fallen,” he said.
“So I say, I was not wrong.
A second inauguration on January 20th?
A second inauguration on January 20th?
Outgoing President Donald Trump is organizing a “second inauguration” online at the same time that Bidel will take his oath of office and officially begin the term of 46th U.S. President, Democrat Joe Biden
Author Juana Carrasco Martín | juana@juventudrebelde.cu
December 22, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
People have spoken, says cartoonist Author: Juventud Rebelde Published: 22/12/2020 | 12:34 am
The height of irrationality among supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump: they are organizing a “second inauguration” for him, on January 20, at noon, at the same time that he will be sworn in and officially begin the term of 46th U.S. President, Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump’s inauguration will be online and can be considered a provocation and probably a violation of constitutional norms, but there they go proclaiming that it is their right “to freedom of expression.”
As social networks endure everything, more than 60,000 Facebook users are promoting the event they have called “Donald J. Trump’s second presidential inauguration ceremony,” and they claim in a “disclaimer” that they are a sum of 325,000 private individuals, not affiliated with any formal organization, who want to show their support for “President Donald Trump”.
In the face of such ignorance of the popular will expressed in the ballot box and the certification of the Electoral College, Facebook has simply issued another “disclaimer”: “Joe Biden is the president-elect. He will be inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States on January 20, 2021.”
As reported in The Hill, the event will be hosted by Ilir Chami and Evi Kokalari, who was allegedly part of Trump’s 2020 campaign and is featured in regular on right-wing news networks such as One American News Network.
In a recent post on the Facebook page, Kokalari re-posted Facebook’s disclaimer, writing: “Our voting rights are under attack! So is our freedom of speech! And FB’s disclaimer in this post proves it.”
One could not expect less from these fans when Trump has not recognized himself as a loser and continues to encourage such false news and disruptive actions.
Rumor has it that in his obsession with staying in the White House he seems to have in mind appointing attorney Sidney Powell as special counsel to investigate allegations of voting fraud.
For identification purposes, Powell was separated from the Trump campaign in November when he was mocked for claiming that there was a broad “national conspiracy” to deny the current president victory and an “immense influence of communist money from Venezuela, Cuba and probably China” that interfered with the elections, in addition to claiming that the voting machines used were “created in Venezuela by Hugo Chávez” to ensure that he would never lose an election.
At the time, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, had said in a statement: “Sidney Powell is practicing on her own. She is not a member of Trump’s legal team. Nor is she an attorney for the President in her personal capacity.”
Now, that statement comes crashing down. Desperate Trump put her in the ring and provided evidence that anywhere in the world psychiatry would have already rendered a verdict of committal or at least strong treatment of insanity.
2020: Hollywood’s worst year
2020, the worst year for Hollywood and theaters
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Internet
With only a few days to go before 2020 becomes a historical reference, what many had been predicting is being confirmed: theaters in the United States had the worst box office results since 1980, the year in which the calculation of the collections began.
But if you look back at inflation and other indexes moviesof the economy, you can be sure that 2020 has been the most chaotic year, not only for U.S. movie houses, but in the history of the Hollywood film industry, the most powerful in the world.
Losses from the pandemic have been in the millions, and according to the Hollywood Reporter, box office receipts in 2020 represent an 80% drop in revenue from 2019.
If the damage was not greater, it is because US cinemas were able to function fully until mid-March, but since then they have been intermittent, with few spectators and essential isolation, while in territories like California and New York the policy of closed doors was maintained.
Also, the box office in Asian countries that exhibited films produced in Hollywood contributed to the fact that the collapse was not total, as well as the films released in streaming, an option before which some production houses have remained hesitant, waiting for the vaccines against covid-19 to end up recovering the luminous paths of the great cinematographic business.
But time is running out, capitals are contracting, and there is no lack of studios like Warner Bros. who have already announced that they will not wait for the movie theaters and will play films in 2021 by releasing them in streaming, ignoring the movie theater owners who, standing at the entrance of their theaters, continue to shout and talk about betrayal.
Houdini and Doyle
Houdini and Doyle
Among the criminal and detective series to which Multivision has accustomed us at night, a rare advert snuck in: Houdini & Doyle
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Internet
Among the crime and detective series to which Multivision has accustomed us at night, a rare advert has crept in: Houdini & Doyle. What did the famous escapist, precursor of David Copperfield’s truculence, have to do with the creator of Sherlock Holmes? How much truth and how much imagination is there in the approach to the cases developed throughout the ten chapters conceived by David Shore, Dr. House’s own, in the service of the 2016 British-Canadian co-production?
The truth was that, in real life, Harry Houdini (Budapest, 1874-Detroit, 1926) and Arthur Conan Doyle (Edinburgh, 1859-Crowborough, 1930), met, dealt with and made enemies. The bond and the antagonism had a certain basis. The writer who applied with tenacity and contumacity the deductive method became fanatical about occultism. meanwhile, the magician who made an epoch in Europe and the United States by untying chains, overcoming immersions and weaving optical illusions, disbelieved in spiritualism and appealed to reason to explain complex phenomena. So much so that he publicly denounced the medium who sold him an alleged message sent by his mother from the beyond: the text, headed by a Christian cross, was written in impeccable English. The magician’s mother was ignorant of that language, spoke in Yiddish, and professed Judaism.
Again and again, in each chapter of the series, the two confront each other in the effort to decipher mysteries and misunderstandings come to light. There is no progression in their views, for when Doyle (Stephen Mangan) seems to fail, and Houdini (Michael Weston) is stubborn, the case is solved by plausible, though sophisticated, explanations that leave a margin of doubt for Houdini to admit the possibility of supernatural intervention, and Doyle, more defeated than convinced, becomes more like Holmes than himself.
Shore and the Canadian scriptwriter David Titcher, known among us for the series The Librarians, got their hands on a third character, Detective Stratton (Rebecca Liddiard), the first woman with that degree in the English police force, a fact that was never sufficiently taken advantage of -it would have been an interesting feminist note- and ended up paling in the face of the antagonists’ clashes.
Neither by polishing the epochal reconstruction to the last detail, nor by mixing ingredients from the gothic novel and the psychological thriller, nor by putting into the plot, to the cannon, real characters, such as the inventor Thomas Alva Edison and Bram Stoker, the creator of Dracula, managed to hold the artistic breath of the series, which was canceled at the end of the first and only season. Critics recalled the counterpoint between Houdini and Doyle as a washed-up version of the debates between Mulder and Scully in the X-Files.
The Bravery of the Bravos
The Bravery of the Bravos
The event was chaired by Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba (Minrex), and Alpidio Alonso Grau, Minister of Culture (Mincult), who personally presented the award.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Ariel Ley Royero/ACN
If bravery is a quality to face each step in life with courage, it is abundant in the political and artistic career of Estela and Ernesto Bravo. She, a North American, he, an Argentine, supportive, internationalists and Cubans by conviction since they decided to share dreams and destiny in the homeland of Marti and Fidel.
The Distinction for National Culture awarded to both of them last Saturday honors their passionate contributions to art and their permanent commitment to the ethical values and ideals of justice advocated by revolutionary Cuba.
Culture Minister Alpidio Alonso presented the award to the Bravo couple in a ceremony attended by Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, a member of the Party’s Political Bureau and Minister of Foreign Affairs, during which the poet Nancy Morejón gave the words of praise.
Estela’s contribution to the documentary screen as a director, always assisted by Ernesto as a scriptwriter, consultant and coordinator in the tasks of production, stands out among the most lucid and penetrating in the cinema of the last four decades, starting with the 1980 release of Los que se fueron [Those Who Left].
With a catalog of more than 30 works of diverse footage, a substantial part of the Bravos’ filmography bears witness to events related to Cuban migration to the United States and the traumatic human and family cost of the hostility of that country’s rulers towards Cuba.
It is worth looking at the Latin American and Caribbean context of the time of the dictatorships and the US interventions in the region.
But, without a doubt, the most endearing productions of Estela and Ernesto are those that have had the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution in the forefront. Fidel, the untold story is revealed as one of the most complete portraits of the Commander in Chief’s personality.
Cuba: Pilgrimage to San Lázaro
Cuba: Pilgrimage to San Lázaro
December 17, 2012
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Yeniel Zamole crawled five kilometers with a cement block chained to one foot to thank St. Lazarus for her daughter’s health, while other believers on Monday asked Cuba’s most revered saint to intercede for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
“I make this promise because of the devotion of my daughter, who walked here again thanks to Saint Lazarus,” said Zamole, a 25-year-old ceramist who paid a promise to a miraculous being venerated by Catholics and Santeros (worshippers of African origin), in a communist country that until 1992 was officially atheist, before becoming a layman.
Every December 17, hundreds of thousands of Cubans come to the Sanctuary of Saint Lazarus in El Rincón, 30 kilometers southwest of Havana, to venerate the person whom Catholics identify with Saint Lazarus the Bishop and the Santeros with Babalú Ayé.
Visited by Pope John Paul II during his historic trip in January 1998, this small chapel is, together with a leper colony, the main place of devotion to this deity of popular creation, in a pilgrimage in which prayers are mixed with reggaeton, bread with piglet, rum and cigars.
The five kilometer walk from the town of Santiago de las Vegas to the Sanctuary is completed by many dressed in jute or purple clothing. Dozens of faithful are martyred during the way and enter the temple exhausted, crawling, kneeling, rolling or doing somersaults.
Yeniel Zamole dragged a block of cement, others carried rocks, shackles or even a piece of rail. One man rolled down the road with two lighted candles held in place by his toes.
The walk, which started on Sunday, took place under heavy police protection, in a fair atmosphere – as in previous years – with stalls selling criollo food and loud music, which was mixed with sales of flowers, candles and plaster statuettes of St. Lazarus of different sizes.
Once in the temple, the believers and payers of promises deposited their offerings to the saint and prayed, while the public renewed itself incessantly.
“My baby girl, when she was born, looked very serious. I made a promise to him (Saint Lazarus) that if my little girl never went to a hospital again, I would come every year that I could come,” Yaniset Avila, who came with her daughter, who is now 11 years old, told AFP.
“I’m here because my daughter was seriously ill three years ago and she’s fine now. I made a promise for 10 years,” Jorge, who makes and sells candy in La Lisa, a western Havana suburb, told AFP.
This year, some of the faithful had a new reason to pray to Saint Lazarus: the health of the president of Venezuela, Cuba’s main political ally and business partner, who underwent surgery last Tuesday for the fourth time for cancer in Havana.
“Chavez is the best, he is very good, he is a good president,” Patricia Ascui Martinez, an old lady from the western province of Pinar del Rio who lit candles and prayed before a small picture of the president that another pilgrim pasted on a wall inside the Shrine, told AFP.
Olivia Valle, another woman from Pinar del Rio who prayed to the photo of the Venezuelan leader, expressed: “He is very human, he worries about everyone, we are asking for him in the prayers we make”.
“I pray for Chávez, poor thing, that Saint Lazarus may help him. I wish him much health, he is good, I am not a fool, he is good”, indicated María Caridad González, from the central province of Villa Clara.
On the economic level, there are neighbors of El Rincón who took advantage of the massive influx of people to earn some money selling flowers or food, but some complained that the sales were not very good.
“The sales are weak, because there are many vendors,” said Walnier Pérez Morales, who sold sunflowers and strange roses outside his house.
“The devotion to Saint Lazarus is still the same, but (the authorities) gave many sales licenses this year,” he lamented.
(With information from Noticias24)
Dr. Salvador Capote on Biden vs. Trump
Biden vs. Trump
By Dr. Salvador Capote
October 14, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Trump and Biden pursue the same goal: to liquidate the Cuban Revolution. Trump embodies the hard line that is expressed in economic, commercial and financial suffocation, without ruling out the military option. Biden is on “Track 2”, the track of cultural and media penetration, of corrupting USAID and NED money, of diversionism, consumerism, and siren calls. Cuba can face both challenges, since it is very possibly the most politically aware people in the world.
It is the people of Martí and Fidel, whose courage and capacity to resist have been proven a thousand times over. But to face the line of the hawks in Washington would cost a lot of blood, in fact it has already cost a lot in the suffering of the Cuban people because of the blockade.
Facing the Obama line, represented by Biden for now, is in the long run the most subtle and dangerous, but we Cubans are aware of the danger and we know how to face it.
With the Biden administration, we could breathe and, if they take their knee off our neck, in a very short time we will demonstrate that to achieve the well-being and happiness of human beings there is no other option than socialism.
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