Translations 677

Translations, mostly from Spanish to English. Mostly edited and posted to the Web by Walter Lippmann. Translations prior to August 2015 can be found here.

Diaz-Canel speech to Ibero-American Summit

4 years ago Juventud Rebelde, Translationsblockade, Cuba, science, Venezuela

In Cuba, science and innovation have been key factors in the development process and social justice objectives.

An inclusive Ibero-America, which takes into account the interests and development needs of all members of this Conference, can favor the advancement of our nations, stressed the President of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel.

Author:

Juventud Rebelde
|digital@juventudrebelde.cu

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

The legitimacy of a government emanates from the expressed and sovereign will of its people. Autor: Estudios Revolución Publicado: 21/04/2021 | 10:35 pm

Speech by Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, at the XXVII Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government, on April 21, 2021, “Year 63 of the Revolution”.

His Excellency Xavier Espot Zamora, Head of Government of the Principality of Andorra;

His Majesty Felipe VI;

Your Excellencies Heads of State and Government of Ibero-America and other heads of delegations; Your Excellency Rebeca Grynspan, Ibero-American Secretary-General:

Please receive cordial greetings on behalf of the Cuban people and Government.

The efforts of the Principality of Andorra to organize this Summit and to give continuity to the work of the Ibero-American Conference, in the period that is coming to an end, under the exceptional conditions imposed by COVID-19, must be acknowledged and thanked.

Our congratulations and support to the sister Dominican Republic, next Pro Tempore Secretariat.

Excellencies:

Cuba has experiences to show and attaches special relevance to the theme of this appointment: “Innovation for Sustainable Development-Objective 2030. Ibero-America facing the challenge of the Coronavirus”.

In barely a year, a devastating pandemic has worsened the living conditions of millions of human beings on the planet and caused the worst economic downturn in nine decades¹. In contrast, five years after its adoption, hardly any progress has been made in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

There is talk of the multiple crises generated by COVID-19, but some problems are dozens of years older.

Developing countries are burdened with the unbearable weight of a foreign debt that has already been paid a thousand times over, and some of them are also suffering the impact of unilateral coercive measures that violate international law and hinder their legitimate right to development.

Until a just, democratic and equitable international economic order can be established to address the root causes of inequalities and move towards the Sustainable Development Goals, these will remain a chimera for most of the world’s peoples.

Let us be honest. The current development paradigms cause poverty and exclusion of the majority due to their irrational patterns of production and consumption that, under the designs of the market, disdain the most valuable thing: human life and dignity.

An inclusive Ibero-America, which takes into account the interests and development needs of all the members of this Conference, can favor the progress of our nations.

Sustainable development demands political will, solidarity, cooperation, financial and technology transfers from developed countries and equitable access to these resources that takes into account accumulated inequalities.

The pandemic has laid bare an indisputable truth: health and social protection systems, education, science, technology and available material resources must be put at the service of all and not at the mercy of the narrow interests of a few. Regardless of ideologies, the State has a responsibility to assume in the use of resources associated with the life and well-being of citizens.

As I explained at the Ibero-American Summit in Veracruz in 2014, in Cuba, science and innovation have been key factors in the development process and social justice objectives. This premise, which is a fundamental part of the legacy of the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, has allowed us to face the current pandemic under the blockade.

A robust system of science and technological innovation with an advanced and efficient biotechnological and pharmaceutical industry, allied to the universal, free and quality health system, with highly specialized human resources, have made possible the Cuban response to the pandemic that seems to surprise some.

A little more than a year after the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in the country, we have five vaccine candidates, two of them, Soberana 02 and Abdala, in Phase III clinical trials and we hope to immunize the entire Cuban population before the end of 2021, with our own vaccines.

Our National Economic and Social Development Plan until 2030, aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, gives a leading role to innovation and scientific research.

The links between government structures and the knowledge and goods and services production sectors have been strengthened to promote innovation for economic and social development, with emphasis on local development.

Cuba has 229 Science, Technology and Innovation entities, of which 141 are Research Centers, 26 Scientific and Technological Services Centers, 61 Development and Innovation Units and a Science and Technology Park², and at the same time it is developing a Government Management System based on Science and Innovation.

The Government of the United States, in the midst of the pandemic, brutally tightened the economic, commercial and financial blockade, and financed and supported dangerous acts of violence and disrespect for the law to promote social and political instability in our country. The Cuban people have responded by redoubling their proverbial resistance to the blow of creativity.

The campaigns of the U.S. Government to discredit and boycott the medical cooperation that Cuba offers have not tarnished our vocation of solidarity and cooperation: 57 medical brigades of the Henry Reeve Contingent have contributed to confront the pandemic in 40 countries and territories. Many of the members of this Conference have appreciated the high altruism of Cuban health professionals.

Excellencies:

The legitimacy of a government emanates from the expressed and sovereign will of its people, not from the recognition of foreign powers. The Government presided over by the constitutional President Nicolás Maduro Moros must be respected.

It is unfair to blame the Venezuelan Government for the economic and social situation facing Venezuela, when the application of cruel unilateral coercive measures, planned and implemented by the United States accompanied by several of its allies, with the aim of causing suffering among the population, continues. These coercive measures promote emigration, a phenomenon about which some express great concern and could contribute to resolving its cause.

It would be useful and sincere to recognize that the U.S. design of intervention in Venezuela failed miserably and placed other countries that supported it in an untenable political and legal situation.

Those who claim to respect the will of the Venezuelan people and promote a political solution among Venezuelans should recognize that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is a sovereign state, cease meddling and act with respect for the United Nations Charter and the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.

Excellencies:

On behalf of the Cuban people, I am grateful for the traditional support of the Ibero-American community for the just demand to put an end to the blockade against Cuba, as well as the signs of rejection to the arbitrary and unilateral qualification of our country as a sponsor of terrorism, by the Government of the United States.

Cuba maintains unchanged its policy of solidarity and international cooperation for the benefit of our peoples, and will never renounce the construction of a sovereign, independent, socialist, democratic, prosperous and sustainable nation, always ready to share, as a human heritage, the results of our experiences based on Science and Innovation.

Thank you very much to all of you.

Taken from the Report: “The Inequality Virus”, published by OXFAM on January 25, 2021 and available at: https://www.oxfam.org/es/informes/el-virus-de-la-desigualdad
Data provided by Citma’s International Relations Department.

The So-Called “San Isidro” Case

4 years ago Esteban MoralesCuban Society, Fidel Castro, PCC, poverty, racism

MONCADA Lectores

The So-Called “San Isidro” case

by Esteban Morales

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews

I believe that what is happening there is a consequence of not having taken care of four fundamental issues in time:

1- The marginal conditions of some of our neighborhoods in Havana.

2-The lack of attention or delay in recognizing and using the Social Sciences.

3- In spite of Fidel’s early warning, having neglected, for a long time, the racial question.

4-Some deficiencies in our political-ideological work.

On the last three points, I have warned enough.

But as a result of my warnings, I was never called to the Round Table, and when the faces of its protagonists appear, mine is never there. In spite of having been, individually, among those who have attended the Round Table the most.

None of those who used to publish me now publish me. They have not called me anymore to Cuban Television. Luckily TELESUR gave me a job.

I have also written many works on the racial question, three books and dozens of articles, always warning about the role that the Social Sciences should play and about the importance of ideological work. I am sure you have read some of them. In them, I have had to fight many battles, so that they do not accuse me of being a racist, accept my criticisms as necessary and do not believe that because I have traveled a lot to the United States, I have brought these things from there. Of which I have been accused more than a few times. Racism and discrimination were not brought by anyone, from anywhere. They are here, because they were born, with us, as a nation. And from here we will eliminate them someday. For the glory of all Cubans. We are already working on it within a Governmental Commission, presided over by Miguel Diaz Canel, President of the Republic.

We have slums, which I know very well, because I have visited them, so that no one can tell me about them. And, in addition, because when I had to come from my town, to Havana, in October 1958, I lived, beyond the triumph of the Revolution, in the Jesus Maria neighborhood, in Vives Street No. 258 between Alambique and San Nicolas. I know the neighborhood very well, because I participated in the La Coubre, joined the Young Rebels there and worked in the Provincial Directorate of 26th of July, which was on Arroyo and 27th.

In those neighborhoods, the standard of living is very low, it always was. They are plagued by delinquents, prostitutes, and poor people, who live on the day-to-day things they can get. It does not mean that all their neighbors are prostitutes, antisocial and delinquents.

Many decent and revolutionary people also live there. But this is the environment that has always tended to dominate. In general, social relations, forms of behavior and mentality are still far removed from what is reflected in our journalistic, radio and television media. The state of the houses, the streets, the material conditions, do not contribute to generating a healthy social environment. As a result, many families struggle to move to other neighborhoods and the worst remains in the neighborhood.

Thus, attitudes, forms of behavior, colloquial language, philosophy of life are generated, all of which are very different from the environment in which most of us live and develop.

In general, there are no reading habits, interest in studying is very low, the sense of intellectual and cultural improvement is also very low. Access to the University is very limited.

Most of them are interested in earning money, or rather in having it, even if they do not seek it by lawful and moral means. Therefore, whoever offers them money, buys not a few, with relative ease, even if it is to carry out antisocial activities, and sometimes even counterrevolutionary activities.

Excessive drinking is very common among the type of person who live in this neighborhood. Rather, not a few of them are interested in partying and getting drunk. As a result, the vast majority of them, within the environment in which they live, are not interested in standing out for the positive, but for the negative, which not a few exacerbate. In their dress, their speech, their behavior, the way they behave socially, the way they treat women.

So then, the people, let’s call them normal, who live there, suffer a kind of cornering. That forces them to move away, so as not to suffer the negative consequences of being forced to live under such conditions.

The environment in which they live, tends to generate an ethic of permissibility, before any crime. A similar type of behavior is the treatment that women generally receive. Women often react in the same way, with a tendency to associate with these types of men, who some consider more “macho”. Generally, this type of woman, when receiving from the man any cultured attention, respectful treatment or delicacy, confuse them with homosexuality, as a lazy and effeminate type. This serves to fuel rude and disrespectful behavior, with a tendency to brutality towards them. Without realizing, sometimes, that they themselves contribute to the worse treatment they are subjected to. So then, feminism, the struggle for equality and recognition of women’s status, does not have much space among many of them.

They despise the laws, those who apply them, the police, in particular, they hate them and do not deserve any respect. They see them as their enemies and never as agents of order or guardians of good morals. For this reason, the tendency is not to inform on anyone, regardless of the crime they may have committed. This is considered as an act of “snitching”, lack of manhood, which many consider should be punished, even with a beating or death. Revenge is a typical phenomenon of social behavior.

They were not born this way, but, not infrequently, the example they receive at home, is forming them in this way; because, not infrequently, the same parents, inoculate them with customs, forms of behavior, values, ethics, inverse to those that the average of the society demands of them. From here also, sometimes, developed their behavior regarding education, respect to teachers, authority and government institutions.

In their eyes, the ideological work that is done is looked down upon, the work of the UJC seems to them as elitist and that of the rest of the organizations do not manage to attract them to good manners.

Fidel was very concerned about this, when he spoke several times about the racial question and generated the “Social Workers”, in view of the reality of the number of young people who neither studied nor worked. It was said that there were about 80,000 in the province of Havana. I also oriented to make investigations to know what was happening with the children in these neighborhoods. If the mothers had enough money to buy food for them, if the children had a television set and toys, etc. Trying to alleviate a social situation that could already be considered critical.

But all this remained in Fidel’s good intentions and the work that was being done was not continued. We were coming from a situation in which prostitution, drugs and these social problems were not considered to have a place in our society. But Fidel perceived them clearly from the beginning and oriented work toward them.

Today then, these neighborhoods are affected by delinquency, drugs, people without ideology, the unclassed, the marginalized, to whom we have already arrived too late. The consequences are manifesting themselves.

In these neighborhoods, in general, the revolution has not been able to reproduce itself and the counterrevolution, which has always stalked them, does not find it very difficult to attract them. If we add to this, the Pandemic and the difficult economic conditions we are going through today, I would say that we are in the most complex situation to address their problems. Although I am sure we are going to do it. Because our social policy and the interest that “no one is left helpless” are real. And they are being reinforced within the current economic policy.

They would not have been counterrevolutionaries, in their immense majority, but we, with our inattention and deficient political-ideological work, have been giving them away to the counterrevolution. Perhaps, without realizing it. So, if the revolution had managed to work more strongly against inequalities, the racial question, marginality, invisibilization; if our television and our media in general, had always been more visible of the differences, had debated more our problems, of things about which we are only beginning to talk about now, it would have been less difficult to fight against that environment and rescue its victims from the problems that now afflict them. And that the counterrevolution takes advantage of.

But we concentrate on the advances, neglecting the fact that not all of us have arrived in the same way to the current Cuban society and those have been left behind. Being the majority, blacks and mestizos, unfortunately, poor in general. They are the ones who were more directly affected by the “starting points”, farther away from the social and cultural welfare that the revolution, from the beginning, has lavished on many.

San Isidro is not the only neighborhood in Havana with these inequalities, marginalities and social disadvantages that have degenerated into the counterrevolutionary attitudes of a few.

There are other neighborhoods. And not only in the Capital.

What should we do now?

I believe that we should pay attention, with urgency, to the following issues:

1- We must pay attention to the material needs of those neighborhoods, in order to improve them. No promises, no propaganda. Just start. To make people see that their material situation begins to improve.

2- It is necessary to work on those neighborhoods with quality ideological and cultural work. Not with speeches or talks. Nor with master classes.

3- The situation of all those neighborhoods, Cuasi cuaba, La Lisa, Siboney, Atares, Luyano, etc., must be reviewed. If they have not turned around, it is because there are community projects and positive neighborhood leadership.

4- It is necessary to dust off everything that the Social Sciences have investigated and put it into execution. Formulate new projects and finish giving the Social Sciences the place they deserve, within the general scientific work and in the treatment of problems, in particular. There is scientific potential to do so.

5- The party must thoroughly review the work of the Ideological Apparatus and turn part of the tasks of its cadres in the directions that this situation demands.

6- The neighborhood of San Isidro, it is necessary to negotiate with them. See what they want. Take them to the logic of what they can ask for. And try to convince them of what cannot be given to them.

7- Formulate a strategy to help the nuclei of the party in situations of this nature. Because I am convinced that this struggle continues. And the insurmountable ones, already on the side of the counterrevolution, will continue, as long as they can, taking advantage of the complex situation the country is going through, to fulfill their purposes linked to the current US policy towards Cuba.

Biden already gave them the human rights policy, in his recent report, with which they will continue to pressure and perhaps do nothing to help the country solve its difficulties. On the contrary, they will try to exacerbate them. Generating a waiting period to see how the story ends.

Havana, April 18, 2021

About Solidarity with Cuba

4 years ago Translationsblockade

MONCADA, Lectores

About Solidarity with Cuba, notes of a chronicle

By Gisela Arandia Covarrubias

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Thanks to Rosemari Mealy for bring this to my attention.

Listening these days to President Miguel Díaz Canel’s comments on the duration of the blockade against Cuba, I remembered a meeting held in the city of Oakland, in 1998, during the Dialogue with Cuba Conference organized by the US University of California Berkeley, where a group of Cuban intellectuals and scientists participated and the blockade was one of the topics. It came to my mind then, when I explained the spiritual impact of that aggressive measure against Cuban people rooted to their cultural identity wherever they are in the world.

There I spoke of the cultural impact of the blockade, in the space that transcends beyond the political and economic damage, such as the lack of medicines and medical equipment. I made a reference to the anguish caused by sustained shortages in daily life, where the younger generations have known no other reality than that of shortages, a childhood with minimal limitations for their enjoyment, due to the absence of simple things, such as modern toys, that stimulate their abilities. I also mentioned the uncertainty of housewives at the time of preparing the family diet due to the lack of simple but indispensable products in the diet. I insisted on the sadness of the families who could not have the relationships that other peoples have, where emigration is a daily phenomenon. I had just finished an investigation in Miami, organized by Florida International University and I still had fresh in my mind those encounters with Cuban families where crying for the island was a frequent occurrence.

But the reason for this chronicle was the idea of the Cuban President, with reference to the duration of the blockade of Cuba, the longest in history. It is a subject that refers to several variables. Although Cuba does not possess enormous wealth like other nations, its oil resources are still incipient compared to other territories and are still in the process of being studied. Cuba’s reserves of strategic minerals do not offer millionaire profits either. This is a reality known since the XIX century, that, for the empire, towards a nation that, by the way, has not been a political priority for them. Nor have they attempted an armed invasion with the U.S. military as they have done in dozens of countries around the world, although they know that, in this case, the response would be without winners or losers.

Why then this persistence only with Cuba? Even in the case of Vietnam, the scene of human losses for both sides after a war that shook American society or conflicts with other countries where direct or diplomatic attacks have been carried out, why this sustained abuse against this neighboring island where the blockade has a broad historical consensus of rejection in various instances in the United States itself? So, what is it that bothers them so much about this small Caribbean island with an area of only 110,860 square kilometers [42,803 square miles]? Perhaps one answer could lie in the approach to issues of the Humanities and Social Sciences, such as cultural identities.

In all the years of the blockade, it was Barack Obama, a non-white president, who made a different reflection on this long conflict. I am not going to present a eulogy, but to delve into a different look, to dig into the space of those cultural subjectivities, which finally shape humanist behavior. Obama’s genealogy was not typical of the status quo in that country. He was born in Honolulu to an African economist father and an American anthropologist mother, his primary studies were in Hawaii, with his maternal grandparents, with an education that culminated with outstanding grades at Harvard. His professional level provided him with a pragmatic view of Cuba:

“When I was a child this conflict was already going on and in more than half a century nothing has changed in favor of the United States….”

As perhaps the philosophers of the Enlightenment would say, the strategies and tactics employed have become obsolete, so I propose to explore history as that scientific discipline that describes, roughly speaking, social events and, for that, we have as an essential guide José Martí, [1]. He predicted, more than a century in advance, the significance for that empire of its sustained effort to be the master of the continent. There we find a United States that saw and felt the island as an extension of its territory, where, as masters, they determined their road map, from the simplest things such as promoting their way of life, [2] to decisions such as the Treaty of Paris. In order to eliminate Spain in a sort of ultimatum, they even named their maneuvers, with cynical serenity as “Hispano-American agreement” [3] supposedly to liberate a Cuba that had already practically defeated the Spanish troops.

A practice of expropriation also used with native peoples of that country or with Mexican territories. In other words, history from the perspective of the Annals [4] announces a long-lasting conflict between the mighty Goliath and the young David. But in addition to the story, there is the psychological significance, from a perhaps Freudian perspective, of a dominant and powerful father who does not accept the break with a daughter, perhaps a bastard, but whom he wants to keep under his absolute dominion. The hypothesis would have to be formulated: Is it perhaps a lack of psychic capacity to accept that something that is supposedly his own reveals itself against his authority? This also seems to be an unacceptable reflection.

Now from sociology, with a classist and philosophical vision, let us see how Hitler decided that the Jews did not have the right to live. That is why he created the concentration camps for the extermination of those peoples, from the paradigm of an identity superiority, of white-European-Christian people, supposedly with superior intelligence genes. A cultural identity, in force in the United States, that, unfortunately, was possible to observe in the recent events during the electoral process.

Proclaiming themselves to have a superior identity, they do not tolerate, they do not admit being defeated or to lose an iota of what they have believed to be theirs. Even more dramatic, if it is in what they have considered their backyard, where they have lost a part of their property and do not accept losing, nor being surpassed by others, let alone to be ridiculed, because that hurts a lot.

Because something that the U.S. administration cannot stand is the cultural trauma that Cuba has generated. It’s a reality that is expressed in the United Nations, where for years the world has been in favor of Cuba and against the United States. It could be argued that, for the mentality of a sector of that leadership, it is inadmissible to recognize that Cuba has not submitted to its mandates and hegemony, but not only that, but it has been able to survive and even triumph in spite of the sanctions, a reality that is too strong for that segment of an elite, clinging to the thought of an identity superiority.

And there we find then, how the accumulated rage can increase. Thanks to the low political level and ignorance about Cuban reality, Donald Trump found a space in Miami for an alliance with his also-rabid colleagues. Where are those who thought in 1959, that emigration to the United States would give them the possibility of returning to Cuba, as “their owners”, again? Those who left with suitcases in hand and imagined that within a year or two at the latest, they would be back in their homes, with their servants, in their properties. But it was a dream that was not fulfilled and the one that Trump gave them the hope of recovering.

In conclusion, it is possible to think that the U.S. blockade against Cuba hides a kind of paranoia that has penetrated deeply into that colonizing and imperial mentality, which does not admit a Waterloo. Neither the defeat at the Bay of Pigs nor the loss of the war in Vietnam, which caused this inexplicable pain, of those who have imagined that they are the masters of the world. Because neither lies such as the sonorous aggression or the slander that Cuba is a nation that supports terrorism are able to unbalance the Cuban population. They know that David has already defeated them long ago, with his scientific, cultural and athletic advances, but they panic to admit it. That is why Biden continues with indecision about continuing Obama’s agenda or standing and watching the bulls from the rail, as Juan Formell said, paraphrasing his song: Que tiene Cuba, que sigue ahí, ahí, ahi…!!!!!

Notes

– [1] José Martí “Our America”.

– 2] Louis Pérez, “Ser Cubano identidad, nacionalidad y cultura” 2006.-Ed. Ciencias Sociales.

– 3] The Treaty of Paris of 1898, signed on December 10, 1898, ended up misnamed as the Spanish-American War, by which Spain abandoned its claims over Cuba and declared its independence. The Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico were officially ceded to the United States for $20 million. That agreement has been regarded as the endpoint of the Spanish overseas empire and the beginning of the period of U.S. colonial power.

– 4] The Annals School is a historiographical approach that emphasizes events of long duration.

The author may be reached at:
Gisela Arandia Covarrubias
colorcubano@cubarte.cult.cu

Biden-Harris and Cuba

4 years ago Translations

English
Español

Great Expectations, Failed Expectations

Biden-Harris and Cuba

By Domingo Amuchastegui
March 31, 2021
Translated by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

For many Cubans, last November’s election results in the United States were loaded with great expectations. The economic war imposed by Trump with its devastating effects was to come to an end and with the Biden-Harris binomial in the White House -it was apparently the most logical thing to think- the dynamics of normalization of relations between Cuba and the US initiated in 2014 would be resumed. Biden and his advisors had actively participated in that dynamic and the premises to resume the process interrupted by Trump. However, at this point, those great expectations do not appear on today’s horizons or in more distant scenarios.

Almost 100 days into the inaugural 100 Days, the Biden-Harris binomial has not lifted a finger to partially or completely reverse the set of economic and political-diplomatic attackers launched by Trump against the Cuban authorities. They have not even taken a step to fulfill the three steps they promised to undertake immediately (reestablish diplomatic and consular presence, family reunification processes and the normal sending of remittances). It has been argued by some specialists that the Cuba issue is neither important nor a priority for the Democratic agenda. If this were so -given its insignificance- it could be resolved quickly and with the stroke of a pen. But, the issue is more complex and of greater relevance.

To the proposals of a hundred or so members of Congress advocating a restart of the normalization process and carrying it through to its ultimate consequences, he has so far not given them the slightest attention or consideration. They have been sent to the usual “freezer” or usual procedure to “kill” the legislative proposals that do not interest the system or the situation.

In addition, the Biden-Harris administration is now seeking to “revive” the case of the “Havana syndrome,” a chapter that was cleared up a long time ago, even in Trump’s own time. If he could not prove and legitimize before the world any guilt on the part of the Cuban authorities, what sense does this measure make now?

To this is strung together a curious congressional proposal promoted by well-known Senators Bob Menendez (NJ) and Marco Rubio (FL) with some bipartisan backing. It is a meticulously elaborated plan, in great detail, articulating an articulated body of pressures, restrictions and sanctions on the Nicaraguan government in order to force it to accept the convocation of an electoral process, to the liking and design of these senators.

And why against Nicaragua, the weakest link of the “troika” so characterized by John Bolton at the time? Nicaragua would be the “laboratory,” from whose effectiveness would emerge its application to the cases of Venezuela and Cuba, the cases that most interest these influential senators. It remains to be seen whether or not the “freezer” resource will be applied. The proposal also assures the approval of their electoral bases and the approval of powerful Cuban-American political-economic interests.

Faced with such tendencies, it is legitimate to ask: Is the Cuba of today diametrically different and opposite to the one that Blinken, Mayorkas, Kerry and others of the current Biden team knew in detail, including the Cuban leaders? Except for the devastating effects of the Trump era mentioned above, Cuba, its situation and authorities are the same. It could even be added that positive reform factors are present that were not present in 2014. What cataclysms or dramatic turns have taken place in Cuba for the new administration to have the handling of the Cuba issue in a situation of prolonged quarantine until now? None. Conveniences and domestic policy objectives, and first and foremost the dispute to win Florida for 2022/2024, seem to explain these courses of action.

To culminate this flow of hostile currents to the normalization of relations, a kilometric report on human rights violations in Cuba, signed by its Secretary Antony Blinken, emerges from the State Department. It includes a string of accusations including extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture, etc., etc., which seem to configure a case worthy of Nuremberg…

The sources are almost entirely those opposition organizations trained and paid by the US (as can be documented in US government sources). There are in the Cuban case reprehensible and debatable objections in several areas of freedom of association and expression and other issues, but the monumental dossier of monstrosities pointed out in Blinken’s report would seem to be a Hollywood script of the worst, if not a fabulous fabrication of little or no credibility. Blinken seems to forget that all the opponents with whom President Obama met during his visit are still there, in perfect physical condition, writing whatever they want, surfing the cyberspace and waging war with their statements, trips abroad and denunciations, that the UNPACU and the Ferrer brothers continue distributing their little bags of food to gain support, Yoani Sanchez continues with 14 ½, the Catholic clergy makes its criticisms and among the revolutionaries we also find all kinds of criticisms.

And these issues -difficult and controversial- the Cuban authorities discuss them in a civilized manner with the European Union within the framework of Political Dialogue and Cooperation (from which the United States could learn a little), they seek consensus and agreements. If the Cuba described in Blinken’s report were true with its extrajudicial executions, torture, disappearances, etc., why has it been actively contributing to the peace processes from Central America to Colombia? Why do the Lima Group, Norway, Canada and Spain seek its mediating contribution? If it were the Cuba that Blinken is trying to “sell” now, how would he explain that three Popes visited Cuba in the last 20 years and chose, by mutual agreement with the Metropolitan of Moscow, Havana (and not Paris, Rome or Geneva) to host their first meeting at the highest level after the Great Schism of Christianity more than a thousand years ago?

So why does the Biden-Harris pairing now assume such a course? If George H.W. Bush in 1989 was able to proclaim the victory of the United States -with God’s favor, as he proclaimed- now the Democratic team, based on a sure assessment that “the Cuban regime” is facing the most critical stage of its existence that foreshadows a possible collapse. In view of this -they seem to calculate- it would not make sense for the White House to plan to resume the process that Obama initiated. To do so -it is understood- would provide the Cuban authorities with sufficient political-diplomatic and economic oxygen to refloat their system.

The benefits of this reasoning would ensure -as perceived- a solid backing of Cuban-American and Latino voters in Florida while on a hemispheric scale it would be a very serious setback for the so-called “pink wave” of center-left options and other radical nuances, especially for the civil-military government of Maduro in Venezuela, a certain version of “domino theory.”

It is worth noting that such a scenario may be complicated in the short and medium-term by events and trends in the hemisphere that would in no way favor the current Biden-Harris foreign policy. Some of these could have a particularly negative impact on the new administration’s policy. Some of them are:

-New rise of the “pink wave” (return of MAS in Bolivia, electoral victory of Arauz in Ecuador, formation of the Patriotic Front as an important challenge to the declining Duque government, possible defeat of the right in Chile)….

-The civilian-military power still headed by Maduro is not cracking or falling down so far…

-The model put to the test against Ortega (Nicaragua), the latter survives the offensive to subvert it…

-The “sabre rattling” in Brazil could well lead to a coup d’état, not so much to put an end to the Bolsonaro disaster, but to prevent it from frustrating the certain victory of Lula in the next elections…

-The crisis on the border with Mexico and the massive immigration (the barbarians are knocking at the doors of the Empire!) overflows the attempts of its management and neutralization, it transcends its local and domestic limits with very diverse regional connotations…

-In such a context, the holding of an upcoming Summit of the Americas may become a major setback for the current foreign policy designs of the Biden-Harris administration that will weaken its attempts for a successful hemispheric primacy, allowing its capitalization by Trumpism in the 2022/2024 contests.

In such a situation, the Biden-Harris policy toward Cuba may face unforeseen setbacks and setbacks that will force it to reorient objectives and priorities, in which case Cuba will have a better chance of survival.

Grandes expectativas, expectativas fallidas:
Biden-Harris y Cuba

Por Domingo Amuchastegui
31 de marzo 2021

Para muchos cubanos los resultados electorales de noviembre del pasado año en EEUU venían cargados de grandes expectativas. La guerra económica impuesta por Trump con sus devastadores efectos debía llegar a su fin y con el binomio Biden-Harris en la Casa Blanca -era aparentemente lo más lógico pensar- se retomaría la dinámica de normalización de relaciones entre Cuba y EEUU iniciada en el 2014. Biden y sus asesores habían participado activamente de esa dinámica y las premisas para retomar el proceso interrumpido por Trump. Sin embargo, a esta altura esas grandes expectativas no aparecen en los horizontes de hoy ni en más distantes escenarios.

Casi cumplidos los inaugurales 100 Dias, el binomio Biden-Harris no han levantado un dedo para revertir parcial o completamente el conjunto de agresiones económicas y politico-diplomáticas acometidas por Trump contra las autoridades cubanas. No han dado un paso siquiera para cumplir los tres pasos que prometieron acometer de inmediato (restablecer la presencia diplomática y consular, los procesos de reunificación familiar y el normal envío de remesas). Se ha argumentado por algunos especialistas que el tema de Cuba no es importante ni prioritario para la agenda demócrata. Si esto fuera así -dada su insignficancia- rápido y de un plumazo pudiera resolverse. Pero, el tema es más complejo y de myor relevancia.

A las propuestas de un centenar de congresistas abogando por reiniciar el proceso de normalización y conducirlo hasta sus últimas consecuencias, no les ha concedido hasta ahora ni la más minima atención o consideración. Las ha remitido al habitual “congelador” o procedimiento habitual para “matar” las propuestas legilativas que no interesan al sistema o la coyuntura.

A esto se añade ahora el que la administración Biden-Harris busca “revivir” el caso del “síndrome de La Habana,” capítulo bien esclarecido hace tiempo, incluso en tiempos del propio Trump. Si éste no pudo probar y legitimar ante el mundo ninguna culpabilidad de las autoridades cubanas, ¿qué sentido tiene ahora esta medida?

A esto se engarza una curiosa propuesta congresional promovida por los conocidos senadores Bob Menéndez (NJ) y Marco Rubio (FL) con algún respaldo bipartidista. Se trata de un plan minuciosamente elaborado, con todo lujo de detalles, articulando un cuerpo articulado de presiones, restricciones y sanciones sobre el gobierno de Nicaragua a fin de forzarlo a aceptar la convocatoria de un proceso electoral, a gusto y diseñado por estos senadores. ¿Y por qué contra Nicaragua, el eslabón más débil de la “troika” así caracterizada por John Bolton en su momento? Nicaragua sería el “laboratorio,” de cuya eficacia se desprendería su aplicación a los casos de Venezuela y Cuba, los casos que más interesan a estos influyentes senadores. Habrá que ver si se le aplica o no el recurso del “congelador.” La propuesta además asegura el beneplácito de sus bases electorales y el beneplácito de poderosos intereses político-económicos cubano-americanos.

Frente a tales tendencias, es legítimo preguntarse: ¿Es acaso la Cuba del presente diametralmente distinta y opuesta a la que Blinken, Mayorkas, Kerry y otros del actual equipo de Biden conocieron en detalle, incluídos los dirigentes cubanos? Salvo los efectos devastadores de la era Trump antes mencionados, Cuba, su situación y autoridades son los mismos. Incluso pudiera agregarse que están presentes factores positivos de reforma que en el 2014 no estaban. ¿Qué cataclismos o virajes dramáticos han tenido lugar en Cuba para que la nueva administración tenga el manejo del tema Cuba en una situación de prolongada cuarentena hasta ahora? Ninguno. Conveniencias y objetivos de política doméstica, y en primer lugar la disputa por ganar la Florida para el 2022/2024, parecen explicar major estos rumbos.

Para culminar este flujo de corrientes hostiles a la normalización de relaciones, surge del seno del Departamento de Estado, suscrito por su secretario Antony Blinken, un kilométrico informe acerca de las violaciones de los derechos humanos en Cuba, que incluyen un rosario de acusaciones que incluyen ejecuciones extrajudiciales, desapariciones, torturas, etc., etc. que parecen configurar un caso digno de Nuremberg…

Las fuentes en su casi totalidad son aquellas organizaciones de oposición entrenadas y pagadas por EEUU (como puede comprobarse documentalmente en fuentes gubernamentales de EEUU). Existen en el caso cubano objeciones reprobables y discutibles en varias áreas de las libertades de asociación y expresión y otros temas, pero el monumental expediente de las monstruosidades apuntadas en el informe de Blinken parecerían un guión hollywoodense de los peores, si no una fabulosa fabricación de escaso o ningún crédito. Parece olvidar Blinken que todos los opositores con los cuales se entrevistó el presidente Obama durante su visita ahí están continúan ahí, en perfectas condiciones físicas, escribiendo lo que se les antoja, navegando por los espacios cibernéticos y haciendo la guerra con sus declaraciones, viajes al exterior y denuncias, que la UNPACU y los hermanos Ferrer siguen distribuyendo sus bolsitas de comida para ganar adhesiones, Yoani Sánchez sigue con 14 ½, el clero católico hace sus críticas y entre los revolucionarios también encontramos también todo género de críticas.

Y estos temas -díficiles y controversiales- las autoridades cubanas los discuten civilizadamente con la Unión Europea en el marco de Diálogo Político y de Cooperación (del que pudiera aprender un poco EEUU), buscan consenso y acuerdos. Si la Cuba que se describe en el informe de Blinken tuviera visos de veracidad con sus ejecuciones extrajudiciales, torturas, desaparecidos, etc., ¿por qué ha venido contribuyendo activamente a los procesos de paz desde Centroamérica hasta Colombia? ¿Por qué desde el Grupo de Lima hasta Noruega, Canadá y España procuran su contribución mediadora? Si fuera la Cuba que Blinken intenta “vender” ahora, ¿cómo explicaría que tres Papas visitaran Cuba en los útimos 20 años y escogieran, de mutuo acuerdo con el Metropolitano de Moscú, a La Habana (y no París, Roma o Ginebra) para sopstener su primer encuentro al más alto nivel después del del Gran Cisma de la cristiandad hace más de mil años?

Entonces, ¿por qué el binomio Biden-Harris ahora asume semejante rumbo? Si George H.W. Bush en 1989 pudo proclemar la victoria de EEUU -con el favor de Dios, según proclamó- ahora la pareja demócrata, a partir de una segura evaluación de que “el regimen cubano” enfrenta la etapa más crítica de su existencia que prefigura un posible desplome. Ante esto -parecen calcular- no tendría sentido que la Casa Blanca proyecte retomar el proceso que Obama iniciara. Hacerlo -se entiende- brindaría a las autoridades cubanas oxígeno politico-diplomático y económico suficiente para reflotar su sistema.

Los beneficios de este razonamiento asegurarían -según se percibe- un sólido respaldo de votantes cubano-americanos y latinos en la Florida en tanto que a escala hemisférica sería un gravísimo revés para la llamada “ola rosada” de opciones de centro-izquierda y otros matices radicales, en especial para el gobierno cívico-militar de Maduro en Venezuela, una cierta versión de “teoría del dominó.”

Conviene destacar que tal escenario puede complicarse a corto y mediano plazo con acontecimientos y tendencias en el hemisferio que en nada favorecerían la actual política exterior de Biden-Harris. Algunos de ellos pudieran ejercer una gravitación particularmente negative para la política de la nueva administración. Algunos de ellos son:

-Nuevo ascenso de la “oleada rosada” (regreso del MAS en Bolivia, victoria electoral de Arauz en Ecuador, formación del Frente Patriótico como importante desafío al declinante gobierno de Duque, posible derrota de la derecha en Chile)…

-El poder cívico-militar que todavía encabeza Maduro no se resquebraja ni se cae hasta ahora…

-Puesto a prueba el modelo contra Ortega (Nicaragua), éste sobrevive la ofensiva por subvertirlo…

-Novedoso “ruido de sables” en Brasil que bien pudiera desembocar en una salida golpista, no tanto para poner fin al desastre Bolsonaro, sino para impeder con ello frustrar la segura victoria de Lula en las próximas elecciones…

-La crisis en la frontera con México y la inmigración masiva (los bárbaros tocan a las puertas del Imperio!) desborda los intentos de su manejo y neutralización, trasciende sus límites locales y domésticos con muy diversas connotaciones regionales…

-En un contexto tal, la celebración de una próxima Cumbre de las Américas puede convertirse en un importante revés para los actuales diseños de política exterior de la administración Biden-Harris habrán de debilitar sus intentos por una primacía hemisférica exitosa, permitiendo su capitalización por parte del trumpismo en las contiendas del 2022/2024.

En una situación como esta, la política de Biden-Harris hacia Cuba puede enfrentar tropiezos y contratiempos imprevistos que lo obliguen a reorientar objetivos y prioridades, en cuyo caso Cuba podrá sortear major sus posibilidades de sobrevivencia.

Remembering Ramsey Clark

4 years ago Translations

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Remembering Ramsey Clark

by Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada

April 12, 2021
Translated by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

The news of his death did not come as a surprise since it was known that his health was declining and he was also affected by irreparable family losses. But the death of Ramsey Clark is a source of pain and suffering for many in many parts of the world.

His trajectory since the 1960s was one of admirable personal integrity and fidelity to the principles that made him one of the most respected personalities of the American progressive movement.

Attorney General of the United States during the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, he played a key role in the approval and application of the Civil Rights Act, a decisive step in eliminating discrimination against African-Americans in electoral matters. He also accompanied Johnson in his efforts to ensure affordable health care for all. Both issues were flags that “liberals” raised but with increasingly hesitant hands while their elimination has become a priority for Trump and his supporters.

Ramsey for his part became a point of reference for those who did not abandon the ideals of freedom and true democracy.

He opposed the war against the Vietnamese people to the point that the President excluded him from the National Security Council despite the fact that his participation in that body derived from the high office he held.

Outside the government, Ramsey waged a tireless battle to stop this aggression, which generated a growing mobilization not only in his country but throughout the world, and to which he contributed as few others did. Not only with speeches and declarations. Of special significance was his physical, personal presence on Vietnamese soil in open violation of Washington’s official prohibition.

He had an exceptional capacity for work and delivering solidarity was for him a mission to which he gave his all. No cause was alien to him.

We Cubans owe him a great debt. Our cause was also his. His voice was raised time and again to denounce the blockade and the war that the Empire is waging against us in all fields.

His participation in the campaign to free Elián González and in the hard, complex and prolonged struggle for the liberation of our Five Heroes was decisive. Personally, as long as I live I will thank him for his help and from the bottom of my heart I say Thank you for everything dear friend, brother, compañero.

Ramsey Clark en la memoria

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
12 de abril 2021

La noticia sobre su fallecimiento no causó sorpresa pues se sabía que su salud declinaba afectada además por pérdidas familiares irreparables. Pero la muerte de Ramsey Clark es fuente de dolor y sufrimiento para muchos en muchas partes del mundo.

Su trayectoria desde la década de los Sesenta del pasado siglo es de admirable integridad personal y de fidelidad a los principios que lo convierten en una de las personalidades más respetadas del movimiento progresista norteamericano.

Fiscal General de Estados Unidos durante la Administración de Lyndon B. Johnson fue pieza clave en la aprobación y aplicación de la Ley de Derechos Civiles paso decisivo para eliminar la discriminación contra los afroamericanos en materia electoral. Acompañó a Johnson también en sus medidas para asegurar servicios de salud asequibles para todos. Ambos temas fueron banderas que los “liberales” levantaron pero con manos cada vez más vacilantes mientras que su eliminación se ha convertido en prioridad para Trump y sus seguidores.

Ramsey por su lado se convirtió en punto de referencia para quienes no abandonaron los ideales de libertad y verdadera democracia.

Se opuso a la guerra contra el pueblo vietnamita al punto de que el Presidente lo excluyó del Consejo de Seguridad Nacional pese a que su participación en esa instancia se derivaba del alto carga que desempeñaba.

Fuera ya del Gobierno Ramsey libró una batalla incansable para detener esa agresión que generó la movilización creciente no sólo en su país sino en todo el mundo y en cuyo despliegue él contribuyó como pocos. No sólo con discursos y declaraciones. De especial significación fue su presencia física, personal, en la tierra vietnamita violando abiertamente la prohibición oficial de Washington.

Tenía una capacidad de trabajo excepcional y entregar solidaridad fue para él una misión a la que se dio por entero. Ninguna causa le fue ajena.

Es grande la deuda que con él tenemos los cubanos. Nuestra causa fue también la suya. Su voz se alzó una y otra vez para denunciar el bloqueo y la guerra que el Imperio nos hace en todos los terrenos.

Fue decisiva su participación en la campaña para liberar a Elián González y en la dura, compleja y prolongada brega para la liberación de nuestros Cinco Héroes. Personalmente mientras viva le agradeceré su ayuda y desde el fondo de mi corazón le digo Gracias por todo querido amigo, hermano, compañero.

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Decree Law on Animal Welfare

4 years ago CubaDebate, Translationsanimal welfare, legislation

Decree Law on Animal Welfare published in Official Gazette (+ PDF)

April 10, 2021

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

The Decree Law No. 31 Animal Welfare was published Saturday in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Cuba. With this, it is possible to take legal action in favor of the care and better treatment of animals in the country.

The document will regulate the principles, duties, rules and purposes regarding the care, health and use of animals, to guarantee their well-being, with a focus on “One Health”, in which human health and animal health are interdependent and linked to the ecosystems in which they coexist.

The text published this Saturday in the extraordinary Official Gazette No.25 highlights that animal welfare is understood as the adequate physical and mental state of an animal in relation to the conditions in which it lives and dies.

It refers that natural and legal persons, owners, holders and possessors of animals, must satisfy their basic needs, according to their species and category, they are also required to register.

People are prohibited from inducing confrontation between animals of any species and the activity of veterinary doctors is regulated by Decree Law.

The National Center for Animal Health of the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAG) will be responsible for directing, executing, implementing and controlling State and Government policy on animal welfare, in relation to the organs and agencies of the Central State Administration, state entities, local bodies of People’s Power and associative forms that are linked to animal welfare.

The regulations include the specific functions of each Ministry to promote the proper care and treatment of animals, as well as the conditions with which their owners must comply to guarantee the well-being they require.

The Decree Law stipulates precise actions to be followed by the holders of productive and working animals, also clarifies that species that are domesticated to accompany people or for the purpose of their enjoyment are considered companion animals.

Pets that remain in the outdoor spaces of a home must have conditions that allow them to shelter from inclement weather, isolated from the ground and with enough space for their movement, he points out.

In the case of those that are abandoned by their owners and do not have identification, or those that wander on public roads, agencies or entities, they will be collected by the competent authority, in accordance with the provisions of the Regulation of the Decree-Law.

Regarding commercialization, it is defined that those who carry out this activity must have the corresponding licenses or authorizations, in accordance with the provisions of current legislation, which also applies to people who carry out import and export operations.

The Gazette published today also includes Decree 38: Regulation of Decree-Law 31 on Animal Welfare, signed by Cuban Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero, and the head of MINAG, Gustavo Rodríguez, which stipulates the rules and conduct to be followed by the veterinarians, agencies, and by natural or legal persons.

It also lists the violations and penalties to be applied in each case, which include fines of between 500 and four thousand pesos; The pertinent ways to present complaints or disagreements are also shown.

The Decree-Law of Animal Welfare, approved by the Council of Ministers on February 26, came to satisfy a need of the population and of experts and interested in the subject that required regulations more in line with current times.

Both the Decree-Law of Animal Welfare and the Regulations come into force 90 days after the date of their publication in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Cuba.

In this regard, the Cuban Minister of Agriculture has highlighted that although the Decree-Law may be implemented after 90 days of publication in the Official Gazette, the MINAG has established certain lines for what it considers the first stage of work .

Download the Decree Law of Animal Welfare here .

(With information from ACN)

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COVID-19 Vaccines: Stories of monopoly, blackmail and inequality

4 years ago CubaDebateCovid-19, vaccine apartheid, vaccines

COVID-19 Vaccines: Stories of monopoly, blackmail and inequality

By Randy Alonso Falcón, Cuban journalist, Director of the web portal Cubadebate, the site Fidel Soldado de las Ideas and the Cuban Television program “Mesa Redonda”. He directed other Cuban publications such as Somos Jóvenes, Alma Mater and Juventud Técnica. He received the Juan Gualberto Gómez National Journalism Award in TV in 2018. He has won several awards in the 26th of July National Journalism Contest. Email: director@cubadebate.cu On Twitter: @RandyAlonsoFalc,

Edilberto Carmona Tamayo, Chief of the Department of Multimedia Production, Monitoring and Innovation of Cubadebate and the Roundtable. Graduated in Journalism in 2016 from the University of Holguín. Contact: edilberto@cubadebate.cu On Twitter: @edctamayo
March 19, 2020

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

Design: Edilberto Carmona Tamayo

The apprehensions raised in some countries by the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine, the US dirty campaign against the Russian Sputnik V and the confirmed refusal of the most powerful nations to let their pharmaceutical companies temporarily release the patents of their antidotes against COVID-19, have further strained the availability of vaccines and deepened the profound differences in the right to life between the powerful and the poor in this world.

Never before has a health emergency struck so many in so many places and in such a short space of time. COVID-19 has already affected more than 120 million people in the world and has caused the death of more than 2.6 million human beings.

Such a universal challenge warranted a global and coordinated response. But once again, contrary to the demands of the UN and the World Health Organization, nationalism, pettiness, the overwhelming power of transnational corporations and every person for themselves, have prevailed.

Vaccines seem to be the only effective barriers against the pandemic. Only immunization of a majority of the world’s population could put a stop to the growing transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. But neither the pharmaceutical transnationals nor the governments of the rich world have that vocation for collective response and global solidarity.

Who can develop and produce vaccines?

The pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry suffers from high concentration and transnationalization. Large companies from developed countries and emerging economies monopolize drug research, production and distribution. Nine of them are among the 100 companies that generate the highest revenues worldwide.

According to Euromonitor Global, the pharmaceutical industry is responsible for almost 4% of global production activity. If it were a country, it would be among the 15 richest economies on the planet. Almost half of the sector’s total sales come from China and the USA, followed by Switzerland, Japan, Germany and France.

The production of vaccines, in particular, concentrates in 4 large firms more than 80% of the market, according to 2019 data: the British GlaxoSmithKline, the American Merck Sharp & Dohme and Pfizer, and the French Sanofi.

That global market generated in 2018 some $37 billion and it is estimated that by 2027 it will exceed 6$4.5 billion.

As is remarkable, underdeveloped nations -which are the vast majority-, have hardly any capacity to develop their own vaccines (Cuba is one of the few honorable exceptions) and no productive capacities of their own. This has left them with little room for maneuver to influence the uneven development of vaccines in the midst of the pandemic.

How have the vaccines against COVID-19 been financed?

Since the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, it has been calling for a concerted and joint solution to the threat. But the wrathful logic of the market dictates the course of our world and what has taken place since then is a frantic race to hit the bull’s eye (immune and financial), in which there has been no shortage of obstacles, pressures and even blackmail.

From the outset, the major powers allied themselves with the major pharmaceutical corporations in order to conveniently manage the discovery of a solution that would allow them to emerge with an advantage from the health and economic crisis ravaging the world.

Governments provided at least $8.6 billion for vaccine development, according to analyst firm Airfinity. The US, EU and UK invested billions in AstraZeneca’s vaccine, developed by Oxford University. Germany invested $445 million in the vaccine developed by Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech. Moderna’s vaccine was fully funded and co-produced by the U.S. government.

While philanthropic organizations contributed $1.9 billion. Individual personalities such as Bill Gates, Alibaba founder Jack Ma and country music star Dolly Parton made contributions.

Only $3.4 billion has come from the pharma companies’ own investment, part of which has also come from external funding.

Despite the fact that Big Pharma has only provided one third of the funding, who is reaping the economic benefits? Who has set the rules of the game in the distribution of vaccines?

Foul Play

To obtain the vaccine against COVID became, beyond the health interest, a geopolitical objective. Whoever managed to get the vaccine would capitalize on its commoditization and whoever had more financial resources would be able to monopolize more immunizations.

Scandalous was the news of the Trump administration’s maneuver, as early as March 2020, for the German company CureVac -which had begun to research a possible vaccine-, to leave its headquarters in the European country and move to the U.S. in exchange for “large amounts of money”.

As it had also acquired PCR tests, pulmonary ventilators, masks and biosafety equipment, Washington also set out from the beginning to acquire the production and distribution of vaccines.

This was coupled with sometimes subtle, sometimes overt, smear campaigns against Russian and Chinese vaccine candidates in a concerted attempt to shut them out of other markets. Many doubts were cast on the speed of development, quality of clinical trials and effectiveness of the candidates from both nations, especially against Sputnik V from Gamaleya Laboratories.

A nurse prepares a Sputnik V injection at a Moscow clinic. Photo: AFP

After Russia’s leading vaccine was certified by its authorities and sparked interest in several nations, the United States and the European Union have been tripping it up all over the place. The 2020 Annual Report of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently revealed that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently revealed that the Office of Global Affairs (OGA) used the Office of the Health Attaché in Brazil to persuade the government of that South American country to “reject the Russian COVID-19 vaccine”.

Text subtitled as Combating malign influences in the Americas. Photo Screenshot of HSS annual report

In response to the revelation, Russian presidential spokesman Dimity Peskov stated: “In many countries, the scale of pressure is unprecedented (…) such selfish attempts to force countries to abandon some vaccines lack perspective. We believe that there should be as many doses of vaccines as possible so that all countries, including the poorest, have a chance to stop the pandemic.”

The European Union, for its part, has not yet given the green light to the Russian vaccine for use in its member countries, even though that region has lagged behind the US, Canada, the UK and Israel in vaccine availability, and even though the prestigious health journal The Lancet acknowledged the high efficacy of Sputnik V in a publication.

Beyond such barriers, Russian and Chinese vaccines have been gaining ground in different regions, due to their effectiveness and the global shortage of immunizers. Slovakia even left the European Union fold to acquire 2 million doses of Sputnik V and Hungary, which has also approved the use of the Russian vaccine, acquired doses of the Chinese Sinopharm, which has also not received the green light from the European Medicines Agency.

Health workers in Indonesia unload a shipment of Chinese vaccine Sinovac

Blackmail without anesthesia

The States made the major investment, but BigPharma imposes the conditions and keeps the revenues. The monopoly of a few multinationals in the procurement and production of anti-COVID-19 vaccines gives such companies overwhelming power.

Recent reports show how pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has attempted to impose onerous conditions on Latin American nations to supply them with certain quantities of its injectable.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro showed his displeasure these days at Pfizer’s demands on his government, pointing out that among the conditions set by the consortium is a clause in the purchase contract that exempts it from “all liability” for possible side effects of its immunizer.

“We have been very hard and they have been very hard on us. They won’t change a comma. The government is dealing with this together with Congress and it is being discussed in terms of a relaxation of the law”, said the recently dismissed Brazilian Minister of Health, Army General Eduardo Pazuello.

Argentina, Peru and the Dominican Republic also suffered intense pressure from Pfizer, as shown in an investigation by The Bureau Investigative Journalism.

Pfizer representatives in Buenos Aires demanded indemnification against any civil claims citizens might file if they experienced adverse effects after being vaccinated. “We offered to pay for millions of doses upfront, we accepted this international insurance, but the last request was extraordinary: Pfizer demanded that Argentina’s sovereign assets also be part of the legal backing,” an Argentine official confessed. “It was an extreme demand that I had only heard when the foreign debt had to be negotiated, but in that case as in this one, we rejected it immediately.”

The Argentine government believes that Pfizer’s demands were part of a commercial strategy that favored sales to developed countries and not to Latin American countries.

There are several voices that warn that the urgency to have vaccines available for a disease that has left so many dead in the world may have led some governments to accept significant limitations on their responsibilities and demand transparency on the agreements with pharmaceutical companies.

Professor Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center for National and Global Health Law said, “Pharmaceutical companies should not use their power to limit life-saving vaccines in low- and middle-income countries” and noted that liability protection should not be used as “the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of desperate countries with desperate populations”.

Even mighty Europe seems to have felt the pressures. Although EU agreements with vaccine manufacturers are kept with their main clauses secret, the Vaccine Procurement Strategy made public by the European Commission states that “the responsibility for the development and use of the vaccine, including any specific compensation required, will lie with the procuring Member States.”

Excerpt from the contract for the purchase of vaccines from CureVac by the European Commission was disclosed with all essential parts blacked out.

Who will be able to be vaccinated in 2021?

Vaccine production capacities in the world are insufficient to have the necessary doses this year to immunize the world’s population. The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) says that the estimated global demand for vaccines in 2021 is between 10 and 14 billion doses.

According to statistics cited by data firm Statista, the United States can produce nearly 4.7 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine and India more than 3 billion potential doses. China, previously not a major player in the vaccine export market, has committed to manufacturing more than 1 billion doses.

Great Britain, Russia, Germany and South Korea are also among the established manufacturing centers, but with lower production capacity.

Vacuna Johnson & Johnson. Photo: Reuters.

Given this reality, the inequity and injustice of today’s world are once again evident: the richest countries have purchased most of the vaccines that will be produced in 2021 (even for stockpiling), while poor nations will not have doses to administer even to their most vulnerable segments of the population. More than 100 nations are waiting for the first bulb to arrive.

It is estimated that 90% of the inhabitants of the nearly 70 lowest-income countries will not have the opportunity to be vaccinated against COVID-19 this year.

The most powerful nations took advantage of their purchasing power and investments in vaccine development to secure supplies of the coveted antidote.

So far, about 12.7 billion doses of various coronavirus vaccines have been pre-purchased, enough to vaccinate approximately 6.6 billion people (except for Johnson & Johnson’s, all vaccines approved so far require two doses).

More than half of those doses, 4.2 billion insured, with the option to buy another 2.5 billion, have been purchased by wealthy countries that are home to only 1.2 billion people.

Canada has bought enough doses to inoculate every Canadian five times, while the U.S., U.K., EU, EU, Australia, New Zealand and Chile have bought enough to vaccinate their citizens at least twice, although some of the vaccines have not yet been approved.

Israel struck a deal for 10 million doses and a promise of a steady supply from Pfizer in exchange for data on vaccine recipients. According to reports, the country also paid $30 per dose, double the price paid by the EU.

As Irene Bernal, a researcher on access to medicines at the NGO Salud por Derecho, told the newspaper El País last December, “we are seeing that whoever has the money is the one who has the access. We have kept 53% of the vaccines for 14% of the population, the rich. And the companies have a limited production capacity, so when are the doses going to reach the poorest countries?”

Design: Edilberto Carmona tamayo

Low- and middle-income countries, with 84% of the world’s population, have made deals directly with pharmaceutical companies, but have so far secured only 32% of the supply.

“We are in such a massive crisis,” said Fatima Hassan, founder of the South African Health Justice Initiative. “If even in South Africa we can’t vaccinate half our population soon, I can’t even imagine how Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Namibia and the rest of Africa will cope. If this is going to go on for another three years, we won’t get any kind of continental or global immunity.”

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard have asked the U.S. authorities to allow them to acquire part of the tens of millions of AstraZeneca vaccines produced in the United States, which Washington has stockpiled without having approved the use of this drug. Other countries that have already authorized this vaccine are begging to have them.

Mexico, one of the countries with the largest presence of COVID-19, has so far administered some 4.4 million doses using Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sinovac and Sputnik V vaccines, in a population of more than 128 million inhabitants, which means a low vaccination rate, according to the website www.ourworldindata.org managed by the University of Oxford.

The most current statistics from this observatory show the low proportion and unequal distribution of the number of fully vaccinated people (with all the necessary doses) in the world:

Percentage of population fully vaccinated with required doses by country, March 16, 2021. Graphic: OurWorldinData /Oxford University

According to data collected by Bloomberg, as of Thursday, more than 410 million doses of anti-COVID vaccines have been administered worldwide in some 132 countries. This represents just 2.7% of the world’s population.

% of population

Country Doses administered Enough for % of people given 1+ dose fully vaccinated Daily rate of doses administered

Global Total 410,697,435 – – – 9,959,983

U.S. 115,730,008 17.7 22.7 12.3 2,503,731

China 64,980,000 2.3 – – 960,000

EU 54,084,195 6.1 8.3 3.6 1,236,527

India 38,920,259 1.4 2.3 0.5 1,835,249

U.K. 27,614,526 20.7 38.5 2.8 458,471

Brazil 14,936,060 3.6 5.2 1.9 357,115

Turkey 12,707,210 7.6 9.6 5.7 306,998

Germany 10,067,955 6.1 8.4 3.7 233,813

Israel 9,609,766 53.1 57.1 49.1 76,526

Russia 8,500,000 2.9 3.4 2.4 100,000

France 7,927,771 6.1 8.7 3.5 214,391

Chile 7,907,275 20.7 27.9 13.5 290,378

Italy 7,330,104 6.1 8.4 3.8 178,874

UAE 6,980,466 32.5 – – 81,874

Indonesia 6,787,283 1.3 1.8 0.7 256,516

Morocco 6,499,476 9.1 12.0 6.3 199,542

Spain 5,993,363 6.4 8.8 4.1 117,322

Poland 4,738,902 6.2 8.1 4.4 72,826

Mexico 4,737,622 1.9 3.2 0.5 178,501

Note: Population coverage accounts for the number of doses required for each vaccine administered. The daily rate is a 7-day average; for countries that don’t report daily, the last-known average rate is used.

Vaccine Apartheid

Design: Edilberto Carmona Tamayo

Scientists and activists warn that we are heading towards a “vaccine apartheid” in which people in the global South will be vaccinated years later than those in the West.

Not only will poorer countries be forced to wait, but many are already being charged much higher prices per dose. Uganda, for example, has announced a deal for millions of vaccines from AstraZeneca, at a price of $7 a dose, more than three times what the European Union paid for it. Including transport fees, it will cost $17 to fully vaccinate a Ugandan.

The effects of this inequity would be severe. A model developed by Northeastern University indicates that if the first 2 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines were distributed proportionally by national population, deaths worldwide would be reduced by 61%. But if the doses are monopolized by 47 of the world’s richest countries, only 33% fewer people would be saved.

Scientists are also concerned that if there are countries that will not be able to immunize a large part of the population, there will be more opportunities for the virus to continue mutating and deaths will increase in these under-vaccinated countries, making the available vaccines less effective over time.

As WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted earlier this year, “…we face a real danger that, while vaccines bring hope to some, they become one more brick in the wall of inequality between those who have resources and those who do not.”

A restrained alternative

The difficulty in securing vaccine supply will make many poorer countries dependent on Covax, an organization created in April 2020, coordinated by WHO, the Coalition for Innovations in Epidemic Preparedness and GAVI, the international vaccine alliance.

Covax aims to administer 2 billion doses globally, including at least 1.3 billion for 92 low- and middle-income countries, by the end of 2021. This would be enough to inoculate 20% of each country’s population, with priority given to healthcare workers, the elderly and people with underlying medical conditions, although that target has been criticized as inadequate to deal with the pandemic.

Analysts estimate instead that Covax will at most provide between 650 million and 950 million doses, divided among 145 nations, including some of those with enough confirmed agreements for the vaccines to vaccinate their citizens multiple times such as Canada and New Zealand.

The pharmaceuticals have not delivered on their promises to COVAX and AstraZeneca, which was the main supplier is also facing its own particular situation of millions of doses withheld in the US and Europe.

Even Europe is not spared from the backlog

Germany suspended vaccination with AstraZeneca as of Monday 15. Photo: EPA Even the European Union is frustrated by the obstacles they have encountered in vaccinating their population. The only European vaccine so far, the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine, is in serious trouble after reports of some 30 cases of clotting problems in people immunized with the injectable. There are already 13 EU countries that have suspended vaccination with AstaZeneca, despite the fact that the WHO and the European regulatory agency defend its use as having more benefits than harmful impact.

To make matters worse, in the midst of the flare-up in the region, AstraZeneca had only delivered 25% of the agreed doses to the EU for the first quarter and Pfizer was also behind in its deliveries. In early 2021 Italy threatened to sue Pfizer for reducing by 29% the distribution of doses in that country. Now the European Commission announces that it has reached an agreement with Pfizer/BioNTech to bring forward 10 million doses for the second quarter of the year.

Despite the fact that BioNtech and CureVac are German, this European country has had problems with vaccination. The daily Der Spiegel pointed out a few weeks ago that “the European Union and Germany could run short of vaccine supplies. The delay in signing contracts with pharmaceutical companies could mean that the vaccines arrive late, as well as not being sufficient”.

The EU has so far administered 11 doses per 100 people, compared with 33 doses in the US and 39 doses in the UK, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker index.

The low availability and unequal distribution within the European Union has led countries such as Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia and Latvia to publicly express their discomfort and ask for a “correction” in the distribution.

In view of the dilemma, the European Commission determined that the pharmaceutical companies which have vaccine factories in EU territories will not be able to export the products they generate to other regions if they do not receive permission to take them out of the country from the authorities of those nations.

Already on March 4, Italy, one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic, took advantage of this EU decision to ban the export to Australia of 250,000 doses of Astrazeneca’s vaccine, which the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company produced at its factory in Agnani, near Rome.

As frustrations grow more intense, some European officials are blaming the United States and the United Kingdom. European Council President Charles Michel said the U.S., along with Britain, “have imposed a total ban on the export of vaccines or vaccine components that are produced on their territory.”

Asked about this, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters that vaccine manufacturers were free to export their U.S.-made products as long as they met the terms of their contracts with the [U.S.] government.

But because AstraZeneca’s vaccine was produced with help from the Defense Production Act, for which it received more than $1 billion in funding, Biden has to approve overseas shipments of its doses.

No holds barred for a round deal

The most powerful countries have put pharmaceutical profits above global immunity, despite political discourse that there will be no solution to the pandemic unless it is corralled worldwide.

Last week, on the same day marking one year since WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic, the US, EU, UK and Canada (all with sufficient vaccines secured) blocked the latest attempt by poor or middle-income nations to speed access to vaccines and treatments for COVID-19 by temporarily lifting World Trade Organization rules protecting intellectual property.

A resolution sponsored by South Africa and India and backed by 57 countries, which called for suspending during the pandemic parts of the TRIPS (Trade Related Protections for Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement that protects medical patents, was rejected by the bloc of rich nations. It had already met the same fate in discussions at the WTO in October and December 2020.

An agreement would have allowed underdeveloped or emerging nations to produce COVID drugs and vaccines without waiting for or adhering to licensing agreements with pharmaceutical companies that own the intellectual property of these medical products. This would have expanded the production of antidotes against the lethal disease and lowered treatment costs.

The governments of wealthy nations, the majority financiers of the anti-COVID vaccines, based their refusal on concerns that the release of intellectual property, even temporarily, could reduce incentives for corporate research and also questioned whether “developing” nations could begin production of the drugs soon enough to prevent the spread of the virus.

The truth is that Big Pharma multinationals were initially reluctant to fund COVID vaccine research because of the uncertainty of a race against time to get results and because of the poor cost-effectiveness of creating vaccines for health emergencies in the past.

The drugs sought by these companies are primarily those offered to citizens of wealthy countries, and especially those needed for chronic diseases requiring routine doses, which make them highly profitable.

But after they have seen the profitability that the durability in time of COVID-19 can leave them, they do not want now any limit to the “party” of income that they are enjoying in view of the urgent demand for vaccines.

Moderna reported that it has signed advance purchase agreements for more than US$18 billion for supplies to be delivered this year, while Pfizer projected nearly US$15 billion in revenues this year for its vaccine with BioNTech.

Boxes containing Modern COVID-19 vaccine are prepared for shipment at McKesson’s distribution center in Olive Branch, Mississippi, U.S., Dec. 20, 2020. Photo: Reuters

The main vaccine developers have benefited from billions of dollars in public subsidies, yet pharmaceutical companies have been granted a monopoly over their production, as well as over the profits they generate.

The prices at which vaccines are sold to different countries (they vary) are kept under the veil of secrecy of the agreements signed between pharmaceutical companies and governments, although the specialized website Statista has calculated the average price per dose at these amounts:

Multiply those numbers by the billions of doses required every x years (depending on the length of time these vaccines achieve immunity) and you can calculate how much the dance of the millions will amount to.

But, while pharmaceutical companies profit and control the pace and scope of vaccinations, the costs of the unequal distribution of vaccines to the global economy could be as high as $9 billion, according to Katie Gallogly-Swan, a researcher working with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

“It is unconscionable that in the midst of a global health crisis, huge multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical companies continue to prioritize profits, protect their monopolies and raise prices, instead of prioritizing the lives of people everywhere, including the Global South, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders aptly tweeted a few days ago.

“The world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure” has written the Director-General of the World Health Organization. Meanwhile, over here, we cross our fingers for Soberana and Abdala to immunize all of us, without distinction, before this year expires.

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% of population
Global Total	410,697,435	–	–	–	9,959,983
U.S.	115,730,008	17.7	22.7	12.3	2,503,731
China	64,980,000	2.3	–	–	960,000
EU	54,084,195	6.1	8.3	3.6	1,236,527
India	38,920,259	1.4	2.3	0.5	1,835,249
U.K.	27,614,526	20.7	38.5	2.8	458,471
Brazil	14,936,060	3.6	5.2	1.9	357,115
Turkey	12,707,210	7.6	9.6	5.7	306,998
Germany	10,067,955	6.1	8.4	3.7	233,813
Israel	9,609,766	53.1	57.1	49.1	76,526
Russia	8,500,000	2.9	3.4	2.4	100,000
France	7,927,771	6.1	8.7	3.5	214,391
Chile	7,907,275	20.7	27.9	13.5	290,378
Italy	7,330,104	6.1	8.4	3.8	178,874
UAE	6,980,466	32.5	–	–	81,874
Indonesia	6,787,283	1.3	1.8	0.7	256,516
Morocco	6,499,476	9.1	12.0	6.3	199,542
Spain	5,993,363	6.4	8.8	4.1	117,322
Poland	4,738,902	6.2	8.1	4.4	72,826
Mexico	4,737,622	1.9	3.2	0.5	178,501

Hotels as anti-COVID-19 isolation centers

4 years ago TranslationsCovid-19, hotels, quarantine, tourism

SPECIAL: Cuba uses hotels as anti-COVID-19 isolation centers

Updated 2021-03-18 05:03:44 | Spanish. xinhuanet. com
By Raul Menchaca

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews

mage from March 16, 2021 of an employee sanitizing the hands of a foreign visitor at the entrance of the Capri Hotel, which is being occupied as an isolation center, in Havana, capital of Cuba. Cuba has set up some 20 hotels, mostly in Havana, as isolation centers where travelers arriving from abroad spend a few days until it is confirmed that they are not infected with the new coronavirus. (Xinhua/Joaquín Hernández)

HAVANA, Mar. 17 (Xinhua) — Cuba has set up a score of hotels, mostly in Havana, as isolation centers where travelers arriving from abroad spend a few days until confirming that they are not infected with the new coronavirus.

Since the beginning of February and in view of a third outbreak of the pandemic, the authorities determined the isolation of these travelers, who must also present a negative molecular biology test, the so-called PCR test, carried out 72 hours before their arrival in Cuba.

The isolation has two modalities since there are paid hotels for foreigners and Cubans who opt for them and free centers only for Cubans, but with less comfort.

Travelers remain isolated for five nights until they know the results of the PCR test performed at the airports and another one at the hotel, where they also have daily sanitary control, since in each facility there is a doctor and a nurse, who twice a day examine each traveler.

“It’s a little stressful to be locked up, but I understand that it is the sanitary protocol to protect us and others,” Cuban Yosvany Barrios, who lives in the southern United States and returned to the island to spend a few days with his wife, who is four months pregnant, told Xinhua.

Barrios, a construction contractor, who stayed at the downtown Havana hotel NH Capri, said he feels safe with these measures, which help him “also to take care of my wife and the future baby”.

This opinion is shared by Jorge Carmona, another Cuban who also lives in the United States and who said he understands the need for these restrictions, despite the fact that it is uncomfortable to be locked up for so many days.

Visitors are not allowed to leave their rooms, pending the result of the PCR test, and can only leave them when it is confirmed that they are not infected.

“This prevents contact between people and therefore transmission,” said Dr. Juan Carlos Vidaud, an intensivist who usually works in a Havana hospital, but who with the arrival of the pandemic has been assigned to health surveillance at the NH Capri Hotel, where more than 100 people are staying.

For a month and a half, Vidaud has attended to more than 200 travelers staying at the hotel and explained that only four have tested positive for COVID-19, which has activated a rigorous emergency plan to transfer them to hospitals where they received specialized medical care.

It is a new reality for the now depressed Cuban tourism sector, once the second-largest contributor of foreign currency to the island, with some 3.1 billion dollars annually, only surpassed by the export of medical services, but today hard hit by the pandemic.

“We have a different clientele than we had before. There is a pre-COVID client and now there is a post-COVID client,” said Spain’s Juan Francisco Candeal, general manager of the NH Capri and NH Victoria hotels.

Candeal, a man of vast experience in the hotel industry, noted that the facilities he manages have modified more than 700 actions to conform to a strict sanitary protocol and protect clients and workers.

“I think that within this great misfortune that we are all going through, it has been a great improvement for the tourism industry,” said the executive of the Spanish chain.

Cuban authorities had closed the borders in April last year, but reopened them on November 1, which with the massive arrival of travelers for the end-of-year holidays gave rise to the current third outbreak of the disease on the island.

Therefore, at the beginning of February, in addition to the sanitary protocol in airports, the list of countries with restricted regular flights was extended to include the United States, Mexico, Panama, Dominican Republic, Bahamas, Colombia and Jamaica, and connections with Nicaragua, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname were suspended.

Measures such as the suspension of the school year and the closure of public places such as theaters, bars and restaurants were also applied throughout the country.

In Havana, the main source of transmission of the disease, the authorities are maintaining restrictive sanitary measures that include limiting circulation from 21:00 local time until 5:00 hours the following day, as well as severe fines for those who do not use or misuse masks.

Since the Sars-CoV-2 virus, which causes the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19), was first recorded on the island a year ago, Cuba has accumulated 63,725 infected people and 380 deaths.

HAVANA, March 17, 2021 (Xinhua) — Picture on March 16, 2021 of an employee moving the luggage of a foreign visitor at the Capri Hotel, which is being occupied as an isolation center, in Havana, capital of Cuba. Cuba has set up some 20 hotels, mostly in Havana, as isolation centers where travelers arriving from abroad spend a few days until it is confirmed that they are not infected with the new coronavirus. (Xinhua/Joaquín Hernández)

HAVANA, March 17, 2021 (Xinhua) — March 16, 2021 image of a foreign visitor being checked by a Cuban doctor at the Capri Hotel, which is being occupied as an isolation center, in Havana, capital of Cuba. Cuba has set up some 20 hotels, mostly in Havana, as isolation centers where travelers arriving from abroad spend a few days until it is confirmed that they are not infected with the new coronavirus. (Xinhua/Joaquín Hernández)

HAVANA, March 17, 2021 (Xinhua) — March 16, 2021 image of an employee knocking on a room door to deliver food service to a foreign visitor at the Capri Hotel, which is being occupied as an isolation center, in Havana, capital of Cuba. Cuba has set up some 20 hotels, mostly in Havana, as isolation centers where travelers arriving from abroad spend a few days until it is confirmed that they are not infected with the new coronavirus. (Xinhua/Joaquín Hernández)

HAVANA, March 17, 2021 (Xinhua) — March 16, 2021 image of people walking in front of the Capri Hotel, which is being occupied as an isolation center, in Havana, capital of Cuba. Cuba has set up some 20 hotels, mostly in Havana, as isolation centers where travelers arriving from abroad spend a few days until it is confirmed that they are not infected with the new coronavirus. (Xinhua/Joaquín Hernández)

HAVANA, March 17, 2021 (Xinhua) — March 16, 2021 image of a Cuban nurse performing a body temperature check on a foreign visitor at the Capri Hotel, which is being occupied as an isolation center, in Havana, capital of Cuba. Cuba has set up some 20 hotels, mostly in Havana, as isolation centers where travelers arriving from abroad spend a few days until it is confirmed that they are not infected with the new coronavirus. (Xinhua/Joaquín Hernández)

HAVANA, March 17, 2021 (Xinhua) — March 16, 2021 image of people coming from abroad checking in at the Capri Hotel, which is being occupied as an isolation center, in Havana, capital of Cuba. Cuba has set up some 20 hotels, mostly in Havana, as isolation centers where travelers arriving from abroad spend a few days until it is confirmed that they are not infected with the new coronavirus. (Xinhua/Joaquín Hernández)

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The Right to Love

4 years ago CubaDebateCENESEX, Constitution, Equality, gender, gender inequality, LGBT, marriage

Translated by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

The Right to Love

By Ania Terrero, Journalist of Cubadebate. Graduated in 2018 from the School of Communications at the University of Havana.Ania Terrero,

Posted in: Genre Lyrics

In this article: CENESEX , Constitution of the Republic , Cuba , Gender Inequality , Discrimination , Family , Gender , Homophobia , LGBTI , Constitutional Reform , Sexuality , Gender Violence

March 7, 2021 | 183 |

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Sexual diversity Photo: Peter Hershey / Valencia Education.

Before last February 14, Alberto searched for more than a week for a gift for his boyfriend. Someone told him about a private business where they customized handmade candles and he thought it would be a nice touch. He contacted the managers and asked if they could make one for him with their names. At first, there were no problems. They assured him that the service was available and he only had to send the details. However, everything changed when they noticed that their partner was a man.

“They told me they were very sorry, but they could not solve me because they were a Christian business,” he tells this medium. They even suggested that he buy candles with hearts or any other romantic detail, but they completely refused to stamp the free love of a homosexual couple on one of their products.

Facts like this, real and more frequent than we suppose, show the discrimination that persists in Cuba in 2021 towards those who leave the heteronormative codes imposed. And it’s scary, because while many of us enjoy couples’ celebrations without major setbacks, people like Alberto and his boyfriend deal more than necessary with the limitations imposed by prejudices. That insistent reality, in short, lacerates.

For this reason alone, it is urgent to naturalize all sexual orientations and gender identities, the various designs of couple relationships and families. Regardless of their differences, all people deserve the same rights and duties. Recognizing this changing reality and translating it into the new Constitution was just the first step on a difficult path. Assuming these battles from the Family Code and other laws is the following, but it will not be easy.

Although in recent years, thanks to the coherent and systematic work of institutions and activists, respect for sexual diversity has gained space, not a few stereotypes persist that can play a trick on the airs of change and inclusion. In a sexist society due to inheritance, prejudices still limit the full development of all people. This is confirmed by activists, researchers and those who experience it firsthand.

For Manuel Vázquez Seijido, deputy director of the National Center for Sex Education (Cenesex), the presence of homo-affective couples is not a new reality. “However, it is more visible after the issue of our sexuality was clearly introduced into the public agenda in the regulations, based on the discourse of educational and cultural institutions as well as many opinion leaders,” he explains to Cubadebate.

The celebration since 2008 of the Cuban Week against Homophobia and Transphobia and the growing work of the media on these issues speak of a political will to advance on issues of equality and non-discrimination.

“More recently, since 2019, the constitutional regulation of family diversity that rests on the principle of equity, equality and non-discrimination has constituted the newest legal political support to defend the rights of this population group,” adds the deputy director of Cenesex.

From the perspective of Juan Carlos Gutiérrez Pérez, professor and researcher at the University of Las Villas, Cuba is moving towards respect and inclusion. Although there is an ancestral machismo dragged on for centuries, these struggles are gaining positions and visibility, both in the media and in the Cuban legal framework.

In tune with this idea, the journalist Francisco Rodríguez Cruz [Paquito] believes that life in a couple of homosexual people is more and more frequent, without major setbacks, although some people experience their relationship as something very private and intimate, without making it known in their work or study center, and sometimes even in the family.

“They live the same difficulties that all couples have in relation to housing, which is a bit worse for
young people, when at home they are not allowed to establish a relationship with someone of the same gender, due to homophobia,” he explains.

However, “it is curious the embarrassment that many people feel when approaching naturally with any colleague the relationship of this type of couple. They do not know how to ask about the partner, or they are embarrassed, sometimes they say “your partner”, or another formula that seeks not to hurt or attack, but it ends up being a different treatment”.

Anecdotes like these speak of the distance that remains to be covered towards total naturalization of sexual diversity. And on that path, unfortunately, prejudices abound. Discrimination against non-heterosexual people can occur in different spheres of life: in the family, in the community, in study or work centers. Its manifestations tend to discredit the legitimacy of their relationships, their work potential and their capacities to build functional families and raise children.

“There are many consequences,” Rodríguez Cruz points out, “depending on the assertiveness of the people involved in the relationship. Sometimes the non-acceptance of the family or among the circle of friends can be very painful for homosexual people, because they have to fight for a recognition that heterosexuality has per se. And that wears down, it can even undermine the love bond itself ”.

People in this population group also suffer the effects of rejection, teasing and harassment that range from insecurities and depression to more complex trauma that can even lead to self-deprecation and physical damage.

Gutiérrez Pérez comments that, despite the proven progress, many signs of discrimination against the LGBTI community persist. “From the lewd gaze, the malicious comment, the homophobic and transphobic harassment, to the denial of basic rights to consume certain products or services.”

In parallel, alert, with the gradual increase of the private sector, there are cases where “business leaders feel they have the right to discriminate, due to their personal or religious positions.”

Teresa de Jesús Fernández, coordinator of the Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s Network, confirms latent discrimination. In his opinion, “the non-recognition of couples formed by people from this population group is a reality at all institutional, social, legislative and patrimonial levels.”

“That there is no legal and social recognition of equal marriage and the recognition of LGBTI families implies that our unions and our families do not enjoy the same guarantees and the same rights as heterosexual people and causes legal and social inequity” , she adds.

Statistics confirm latent biases. The results of the National Survey on Gender Equality (ENIG-2016), developed by the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) and the Women’s Studies Center of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), are revealing in this sense. 77 percent of the people questioned agreed that homosexual people should have the same rights as others.

However, only 49.1 percent agreed in part that they could marry. Meanwhile, about 50 percent of the sample was against homosexual couples, both women and men, although they with a slightly higher number, could adopt. Beyond general considerations, there is no consensus that these people have specific rights such as marriage or adoption.

It is clear that the fight for equal rights within families is of vital importance for the LGBTI community which, as a result of discrimination based on persistent sexual orientation in the country, suffers the most intense and direct consequences of not having laws to protect it.

The causes of these numbers, although it may sound repetitive, lie in the macho culture that still marks us. “The culture and ideology of patriarchy that is transmitted and ratified throughout society and its institutions from the family, school, religion, laws, mass media are the cause that the LGBTI population continues to experience the violation of their rights,” said Teresa de Jesus Fernandez.

For the journalist Rodríguez Cruz also influences “the lack of visibility or sufficient positive examples in the media about natural interpersonal relationships with our partners, from heterosexuality.”

In this context, the increase in recent years of currents of opinion linked to various fundamentalisms poses an extra challenge. “The advance of fundamentalist groups has contributed to strengthen the prejudices that are at the base of discrimination, and they have even tried to assemble a theoretical body from biology and Christian practice that sustains those prejudices,” Vázquez Seijido explains.

Fortunately, he said, there is an emergence of theologians, theologians and practitioners, not only from Christian practice, who offer other perspectives in tune with the values of social justice, equality and non-discrimination.

Family Code, facing the challenge

The new Family Code will have among its main challenges recognizing marriage, and consensual union, as alternatives for living as a couple and as a family, without any discrimination in scope and without distinction based on sexual orientation. Related to this, it must establish guidelines so that homoparental, heterosexual families or with any other structure, have equal access to assisted human reproduction techniques and adoption.

In the opinion of Manuel Vázquez Seijido, the new code should contemplate the protection of these various forms of organization on a level of absolute equality, without superimposing one on the other. It is not by chance that the first change is the name of the document: from the Family Code, to the Family Code, in terms of plurality.

“The biggest challenge is the deconstruction of all that heterosexist, patriarchal, prejudicial mechanism of domination, which dismantles centuries of a culture of exclusion towards LGBTI people,” says Teresa de Jesús Fernández.

In a country where discrimination against this population group is seen much more than it should , the prior debate and the approval in a referendum of the new Code implies other challenges. So that prejudices do not decide on the rights of all citizens, education and awareness-raising work is also necessary.

From Rodríguez Cruz’s perspective, another challenge lies in the low visibility of homosexual couples and LGBTI families in general. Many people maintain a low profile of their affections before society, “for which reason when defending those rights there is not always a firm, open and clear stance, even in people who are opinion leaders, leaders or others who they do not make those non-heterosexual couple ties transparent in a public way, as if they do their job or their professional duties. Perhaps they fear to appear activists, or they think that it is not necessary, or they underestimate the importance of being like any other heterosexual couple, “he highlights.

It is necessary, more than ever, to promote an education that transcends formal spaces and is committed to inclusiveness and respect for diversity. It is necessary to transcend the models imposed by a society that limits and suffocates its members when they do not comply with the established. Ultimately, it is about recognizing rights, social justice.

Facing the debate, Vázquez Seijido insists, it is necessary to mobilize all those people who are in tune with the construction of a fairer country. “I am referring to enhancing that capacity as citizens to participate in the consultation process in a critical way, turning each space of the nation into a space for raising awareness and then, during the referendum, inviting us to express our commitments and exercise our citizenship in pursuit of of equality and non-discrimination ”, he highlights.

Along this path, it is urgent to establish alliances between the media, institutions, schools and activists. Promoting respect for sexual diversity involves having laws that guarantee all rights for all people, but also by raising awareness of that need.

We must “educate at all levels from a gender perspective and from a comprehensive sexuality education, make our lives, families, unions visible in a respectful and non-judgmental way, carry out public good campaigns that raise awareness and deconstruct prejudices, include in the academic curricula of all levels of education and of all academic formations all the information necessary to train people with a humanistic and respectful culture without distinction of ethnicity, sex, gender and any type of prejudice that is harmful to human dignity ”, sums up Teresa by Jesús Fernández when we have the information.

It is about, time and again, defending everyone’s right to be, do and love, without absurd limitations.

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For March 8 (and beyond)

4 years ago GranmaWomen

For March 8 (and beyond)

In what way and where, by whom and with what effects do we construct the image of what a woman is? Better yet, in what way are the limits of what is considered – at a given moment in a particular society – possible for a woman to be and to project?

Author: Víctor Fowler | internet@granma.cu

Date March 10, 2021

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

A friend of mine posts on her Facebook wall a comment in which she regrets what she considers to be an example of insufficient diversity in the images that, on the television screen, were used to present (and represent) Cuban women in the celebration of March 8. My friend is black, with a deeply dark skin tone.

Here’s a topic, I say to myself, and then I remember that years ago I wrote an article for the newspaper Juventud Rebelde about the transformations that -in terms of beauty standards- had taken place in the country since the years of my childhood.

The article focused on the perceptions and meanings of black people’s hair and hairstyle and, on this basis, proposed assessments in which racism and freedom, the hidden mechanisms of domination and the battles of the subjects in search of their real emancipation were confronted.

After that I wrote two other articles, which were not published at the time:. The first aimed to analyze the connections between obesity, beauty and social control; the other took as its motif the case of a woman in England who had announced on her personal website that she would stop shaving her legs and who – from then on – began to receive dozens (eventually hundreds) of denigrating messages, some of which contained threats to her physical integrity.

How and where, by whom and with what effects do we construct the image of what a woman is? Better yet, in what way are the limits of what is considered – at a given moment in a particular society – possible for a woman to be and project? What participation do we have, even those of us who are willing to swear that we are not part of the process, in the infinite number of actions through which this “ideal” of what is supposedly feminine is molded?

This inevitably leads us to understand (and propose for debate) not only the responsibility in the production, distribution, control and consumption of images, but to lead us to a point where we are forced to ask ourselves: What have we done or do? What role do we play in the various forms and scenarios in which actions of micro-oppression of women are manifested?

Another friend tells me about the time when, at the exact moment of wearing a new dress for a night out she was looking forward to, she discovered -just as she arrived at the place- that the rush had made her mix up the ornaments and that she had put on two different earrings. She doesn’t know how much she taught me and I learned from her response when, contemplating her face in the mirror of a bathroom on-site, she said to herself: “it doesn’t matter: you are the fashion”.

I admire that way of not obeying the dictates of a codified norm, which pretends to define what you are in a perverse game, where visuality is supposed to make transparent the moral condition of the person and even her history itself. I admire that inner strength and will to self-affirmation.

A third friend uses her menstrual emissions, exactly that which, in a more evident way, transmits the “weakness” or “flaw” of the woman, to create -with that intimately personal matter- works of art. As in the previous example, the logic that presides over the action is that of the search for and expression of the most absolute freedom.

What is a woman, where is she, what are her limits, how is she represented/presented?

The face perfectly aligned with the Hellenic beauty patterns or the very dark skin accompanied by thick lips and a wide and flattened nose; the youthful figure that communicates agility and the other that moves with effort due to age; the straight hair, the implants, the straightening under the effect of keratin, the hair in the form of “afro”, in the so-called “carreritas” or in long and powerful “drelos”; the thin or overabundant, obese contour; the gesture of a dapper style or with a wider arc in the movement of the hands; the image of a “traditional” femininity (in which ideals of “fragility”, “delicacy” and “sensuality” prevail) or the reverse of the “masculinized” female, which is usually attributed to the lesbian; with tattoos, “piercings”, hair dyed in unusual colors (green, blue, orange): it’s all women.

Peasant women, highly skilled professionals, housewives, workers in an industry or construction site, we need images of the most extraordinary diversity possible to “refresh” our images and approach women, ask questions, get closer to their struggles, offer them solidarity and push together with them the limits of presence, representation and participation in new worlds.

And that is what a Revolution is: a new world.

I end with a personal story. A few years ago my children Kenneth, Karen and I got tattoos. On that occasion the one that my wife dreams of for herself was left pending: the Elvish word for FREE.

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For March 8 (and beyond)

In what way and where, by whom and with what effects do we construct the image of what a woman is? Better yet, in what way are the limits of what is considered – at a given moment in a particular society – possible for a woman to be and to project?

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MONCADA Lectores

The So-Called “San Isidro” case

Grandes expectativas, expectativas fallidas:
Biden-Harris y Cuba

Por Domingo Amuchastegui
31 de marzo 2021