I can imagine the number of onions, potatoes, mangoes, and peppers that won’t survive another day to be sold this Saturday.
You have to hold on to something. Waiting for those yellow petals to open in the middle of the rooftop gave me hope. / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, May 23, 2026 / I need onions. I take advantage of the electricity and go down in the elevator, also carrying the garbage that has accumulated during the days of blackout on our 14th floor. On the corner, the bins are no longer visible because a mountain of waste has covered their blue plastic. Several wheels have also been ripped off to make wheelbarrows for hauling water. One has its plastic ripped lengthwise, the other has holes caused by the flames of some fire. Neither has a lid.
I continue along Factor and turn onto Tulipán Street. A cart loaded with plantains and papayas catches my eye and makes my mouth water. It belongs to a family who come every weekend from San Antonio de los Baños, in Artemisa. I calculate the distance, consider the work it must take to move the merchandise to Havana, amidst the fuel shortage. “Everything is brought here because this is where the money is; in our town, there’s not even enough room to tie up a goat,” the matriarch of the clan, who also sells guavas, confides in me.
There was a time when I used to go to San Antonio de los Baños a lot. I would take my German students to visit the Museum of Humor, we’d go boating on the Ariguanabo River, and we’d even sneak into the International Film and Television School. The last few times I’ve been to that small town, a bridge between so many other areas of “red earth” and old pre-university schools in the countryside, I’ve barely recognized the once beautiful village. After 11 July 2021, which erupted right in its streets, the small town has become a place of silence. “We don’t even have water,” the vendor tells me as she offers me a handful of tiny plantains.
They tell me that “they’ve given the order to go to the march for Raúl [Castro]” and that’s why the most important market in the area hasn’t opened.
I continue along Tulipán Street to the farmers market, but I came across a closed gate and other people, like myself, arriving and feeling frustrated to see the empty stalls and an eerie silence that hangs over the place, on a Friday that is traditionally bustling. No one knew what had happened. I turned around and approached the other gate, which opens onto Marino Street. Inside, two young men were dozing in a guard booth. At my insistence, they told me that “they’ve given the order to go to the march for Raúl [Castro]” and that’s why the most important market in the area hadn’t opened.
An elderly man approaches with perplexed look upon hearing the justification. “So all this is because we went to support that old guy who shot down the planes,” he says angrily. Fury has taken hold here, where complaints used to be voiced with a touch of irony, a half-smile. Now anger has become the state in which we spend most of our time. We’re angry the 24 hours of the seven days in the week. There aren’t even jokes left to tell amidst a collapse that, according to one of my neighbors, “hasn’t hit rock bottom yet.”
Standing in front of the silent market, I imagine the countless onions, potatoes, mangoes, and peppers that won’t survive another day to be sold this Saturday. A single day of closure skyrockets spoilage, costs, and losses. Nor can I imagine the private vendors who fill these stalls, once run by the Youth Labor Army (EJT), crowding into the Anti-Imperialist Tribune to support a man they feel is both distant and responsible for the debacle we’re living through. There go the military personnel, the relatives of Castro, a fugitive from US justice, where he has been indicted on criminal charges including murder for the downing of the Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996. There go the workers from the military conglomerate Gaesa, who can’t refuse these calls to action. There go those who haven’t realized, or don’t want to realize, the rage that throbs in these streets.
There go the military personnel, the relatives of Castro, a fugitive from US justice, where he has been charged with criminal offenses.
The onions will have to wait for another day. I’m heading home quickly before the blackout hits. Last week was terrible. One day we only had electricity for an hour and a half, divided into two 45-minute blocks. They couldn’t pump water to our building’s tank those days, and to top it all off, the Havana Water Company announced a break. One morning we only had one pitcher of drinking water left, but a sunflower I’ve been carefully cultivating absolutely needed some water.
You have to hold on to something. Waiting for those yellow petals to open in the middle of the rooftop gave me hope. Should I drink the blessed glass of water or give it to this spindly plant that won’t make it to tomorrow if I don’t water it now? I faced the dilemma. With its drooping leaves and limp stem, it didn’t have much of a chance. I’m definitely not prepared to survive by trampling over other lives. I poured the last of my water on it. That morning, miraculously, the electricity came back on and they were able to pump water into the tank.
This Friday, when I returned from the closed market, the sunflower on the rooftop was waiting for me in full bloom. I’m not ready to give up on beauty, not even amidst so much pent-up anger.
COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
Father Alberto Reyes points out that “the people want and expect” international intervention. Many Cubans say they “prefer a horrific end to endless horror.”
The documentary screening was followed by a discussion of more than two hours with Reyes, one of the most critical Catholic voices in Cuba. / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Dayana Prieto, Madrid, May 23, 2026 / “Cuba is not that happy, Caribbean, beautiful paradise of propaganda.” The phrase, uttered by Cuban priest Alberto Reyes before a packed auditorium in Madrid this Friday, summed up the sense of despair felt by a large part of Cuban society. Amid applause, laughter, and tears, the audience experienced the bitter realization of a country where, according to the priest from Camagüey, “life is unlivable” and “misery is insurmountable.”
The Palacio de la Prensa in Madrid hosted the presentation of the documentary Cuba’s Eternal Night on May 22nd. The film is by British-American filmmaker, journalist, and human rights advocate Jordan Allott, founder of In Altum Productions and senior advisor to the organization In Defense of Christians. The screening of the film—whose title is inspired by Oswaldo Payá’s famous quote, “The night will not be eternal”—was followed by a discussion of more than two hours with Reyes, one of the most critical Catholic voices in Cuba.
🇨🇺 “Life in Cuba is unlivable”: Father Alberto Reyes’ testimony shakes Madrid / 14ymedio
The event was part of the Fourth Wall project, organized by “It’s Time to Think”, also known as “the thought movement.” The hall, with a capacity of about 200 people, was completely filled with Cubans, Spaniards, and people from various other countries. Before it began, the priest personally greeted the attendees at the entrance, in a gesture that combined pastoral warmth and a sense of community.
One of the most harrowing stories is that of Emilio, a father of three who participated in the La Güinera protests.
Cuba’s Eternal Night delves into the aftermath of 11 July 2021, when thousands of Cubans took to the streets chanting “freedom.” The documentary follows several families marked by repression, exile, surveillance, and imprisonment. In a video submitted for the presentation, Allott explained that he met Reyes in Mexico and, from that moment on, knew that his testimony had to be included in the film.
Among the stories collected is that of Ariadna, a protester on July 11th and mother of two girls. After the protests, she had to leave the island after authorities threatened to imprison her or harm one of her daughters if she continue reading
didn’t leave the country. The camera follows her journey to the United States, but the narrative doesn’t stop at her arrival; instead, it focuses on what she leaves behind: her daughters, the family rupture, and that form of exile that begins even before crossing a border.
Also featured is Camila Acosta, a journalist for Cubanet and contributor to the Spanish newspaper ABC, arrested on July 12, 2021, and still subjected to surveillance and persecution by State Security in Cuba. And Raúl appears, the son of an evangelical pastor, who participated alongside his father in the demonstrations and is presented as a young man who believed, for a few hours, that Cuba could become free.
“In Cuba we say this phrase: if Yankee imperialism hadn’t existed, Fidel would have invented it.” / 14ymedio
But one of the most harrowing stories is that of Emilio, a father of three who participated in the protests in La Güinera—on the outskirts of Havana—one of the neighborhoods hardest hit after July 11. His daughter was the one who came to the aid of Diubis Laurencio, shot in the back by the police. Then came the punishment. Emilio’s three children were sentenced to ten years in prison.
Since then, that father’s life has become a pilgrimage through prisons, scarcity, and exhaustion. He must find food in a country where everything is in short supply, pack bags, scrape together money for transportation, and travel from one end of the country to the other to visit his children. One daughter is incarcerated in a women’s prison, one of his sons is in a juvenile detention center, and another is in a men’s prison. The sentence, in practice, didn’t fall only on them. It also fell on the father, who grows old standing in lines, traveling, carrying packages, and trying to support three lives unjustly imprisoned.
The figure of Alberto Reyes plays a central role in the film. The images show him in his pastoral work in the province of Camagüey, in remote and hard-to-reach villages, delivering medicine and humanitarian aid to communities in need, but also denouncing human rights violations. In Madrid, the priest once again dismantled one of the regime’s favorite arguments: the constant justification of the disaster by blaming “the blockade.”
“Something in Jonathan Muir has already died. Something of his innocence, of his childhood, has already died, and no one has been able to do anything about it.”
“Cuba has very effectively exploited the technique of the external enemy,” he stated. “In Cuba we say this phrase: if Yankee imperialism hadn’t existed, Fidel would have invented it.” For Reyes, the embargo—“blockade, embargo, whatever we want to call it”—functions as “the easy excuse to justify the unjustifiable.”
The priest maintained that Cuba trades with numerous countries and that the United States itself sells products to the island, on the condition that the government pays in cash. “The chicken consumed in Cuba comes from the United States,” he noted. “So, in reality, the embargo is a justification.”
The conversation turned to the possibility of a U.S. intervention. Reyes didn’t sugarcoat what, according to him, is being said on the street. “What does the average Cuban say? They want it and they’re waiting for it. That’s the reality of my people.” To explain, he used a simple image: if an eight-year-old is bullied by another child of the same age, they can stand up to them; but if the aggressor is a 16-year-old, it takes “a higher power” to stop them.
“We prefer a gruesome end to a horror without end.”
“There is no rule of law in Cuba,” he said. “Civil society is extremely vulnerable.” He then mentioned the case of Jonathan Muir, a 16-year-old who went out with his father to demand freedom. He is imprisoned, has a health condition, is accused of sabotage, and faces an eight-year sentence. “He was beaten the other day,” Reyes reported. “I think he’s a broken child. He’ll get out of prison, he’ll get through this, but something inside Jonathan Muir has already died. Something of his innocence, of his childhood, has died, and no one has been able to do anything about it.”
That sentence silenced the room. Because Jonathan is not just a court case. He is, above all, a warning. To young people, to parents, to churches, to anyone who thinks that demanding freedom can come without consequences.
As the night drew to a close, there were no easy answers. Nor does the documentary offer them. Cuba’s Eternal Night portrays an island where repression is inherited, imprisonment extends to the family, and exile begins long before the airport. But it also reveals something that the regime has failed to silence: the voice of those who still dare to speak out.
Reyes left the Press Palace in Madrid with several masses scheduled for the weekend in the Spanish capital. Many approached to greet him. Others remained in their seats, some in tears, others in silence. Many were left with the phrase that, according to Reyes, is heard throughout the island: “We prefer a horrific end to a horror without end.”
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
The case of Adys Lastres Morera reveals how relatives of military power on the Island have used the United States as a destination for migration, business, and property.
Adys didn’t enter the US like thousands of Cubans do, with a backpack, a border in between, and a scary story to tell an immigration officer. / Social Media
14ymedio, Havana, May 23, 2026 / The most talked-about news among Cubans this Friday wasn’t the tribute to Raúl Castro in Havana, which the honoree did not attend, but rather an event that occurred on the other side of the Florida Straits. It all began with an arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a name lost among immigration files, and two surnames familiar to any informed Cuban: Lastres Morera. The arrested woman was Adys, sister of Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, CEO of GAESA, the military conglomerate that manages a significant portion of the money flowing in and out of Cuba.
Adys Lastres Morera didn’t enter the United States like thousands of Cubans do each year, with a backpack over her shoulder, a border to cross, and a scary story to tell an immigration officer. She arrived on January 13, 2023, as a legal permanent resident, according to ICE, sponsored by her son, Ernesto Carvajal Lastres, a U.S. citizen who had been living in the country for twelve years. In other words, Adys didn’t arrive through a loophole in the immigration system. She arrived through a family door, legal and perfectly open.
Thousands of people emigrate through family connections and obtain residency in the United States without anyone noticing. But in Adys’s case, there was a piece that changed everything. Her sister wasn’t just any civil servant. Brigadier General Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera took over GAESA after the death, in July 2022, of Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, Raúl Castro’s former son-in-law and the architect for more than two decades of the military’s economic empire. She initially assumed the position on an interim basis. In February 2023, she was confirmed as the executive president of the conglomerate that controls a crucial part of the Cuban economy.
Brigadier General Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera took over as head of Gaesa after the death of Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, Raúl Castro’s former son-in-law. / Screenshot / Canal Caribe
Adys’s path in the United States is also unlike that of so many Cubans who, after obtaining legal status, start from scratch in a restaurant, a warehouse, or a shopping mall. Just over a year after her arrival, her name already appeared in Florida’s corporate records as a registered agent and manager of REMAS Investments LLC, a company created in April 2024 and publicly presented as a real estate investment platform.
On its website, REMAS offered property sales and purchases, renovations, fund management, and projects in areas like Tampa and Lehigh Acres. The language was typical of the South Florida real estate market: fast-paced, optimistic, and full of promises of profitability. The difference lay in the name behind that storefront: a woman directly related to the economic elite of the Cuban dictatorship.
In Cuba, Adys Lastres Morera didn’t appear as a visible official in the state apparatus, but neither did she appear as a humble housewife. A professional profile under her name presented her as a telecommunications engineer. Her most striking trace, however, lay in the private tourism business. Before emigrating, she managed accommodations in Havana, including Casa Verde Habana and Casa Presidente, a 320-square-meter apartment continue reading
described as “luxury.”
Adys was there, managing or representing real estate companies, while her sister ran the economic heart of the Cuban military.
In Florida, REMAS wasn’t her only business footprint. Her name also appears in STA Elena Investments LLC, a company registered in January 2025. There, she’s listed as a manager alongside Maria E. Gomez Martinez, Jorge Chall Rodriguez, and Jose E. Veliz Gonzalez. Unlike at REMAS, where her position seemed more central, at STA Elena she shared management with other managers. The company purchased at least one lot in Lehigh Acres for $25,000, a minor transaction in real estate terms, but enough to illustrate the type of structure that was beginning to take shape: companies, land, Florida addresses, and names connected by public documents.
Limited liability companies in Florida do not publish balance sheets, profits, or beneficial owners with the level of detail necessary to establish earnings or income. The available records do not reveal who contributed capital, whether there were commissions, whether there were clients, or how much money passed through these structures. The verifiable fact is something else entirely. Adys was there, managing or representing real estate companies, while her sister ran the economic heart of the Cuban military.
How many relatives of Cuban leaders, military personnel, state-owned businesses, or intermediaries have used the United States as a haven for their assets?
Following her arrest, Adys Lastres Morera was taken into ICE custody pending formal deportation proceedings. U.S. authorities assert that her permanent residency was revoked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who accused her of living in Florida and managing real estate assets while aiding the communist regime in Havana. ICE has not reported any criminal charges against her, but maintains that her continued presence in the United States contradicts Washington’s foreign policy objectives toward Cuba.
Adys’s son, Ernesto Carvajal Lastres, came to her defense after her arrest. He asserted that the family had done “everything right,” from the initial application to obtaining residency, “like all Cubans.” He also reported that he hadn’t been able to speak with his mother since her arrest and that she was being held in isolation. “I thought I had come to a country where institutions are respected, and apparently not,” he said, questioning how Rubio could revoke a permanent residency without first going through a court.
The question isn’t just what Adys Lastres Morera did. The bigger question is who else has done the same. How many relatives of Cuban leaders, military personnel, state-owned businesses, or intermediaries of power have used the United States as a haven for their assets? How many have bought properties, created companies, or moved capital while in Havana they denounce the “imperialist enemy” and call for resistance from ordinary citizens? How many names still lie dormant in corporate records, property deeds, and immigration files?
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
By Julio M. Shiling | May 22, 2026 | This coming Monday, May 25, 2026, marks the 54 th anniversary of the death of Pedro Luis Boitel, a courageous Cuban patriot and emblematic victim of the Castro regime’s brutal political prison system. Boitel died on May 25, 1972, after enduring 53 days on a hunger strike. He had launched the protest to denounce the inhumane treatment of political prisoners and the regime’s arbitrary extension of his sentence. Despite his critical condition, authorities failed to provide adequate medical care when he was moved to the prison infirmary.
Boitel’s death was entirely preventable. The Castro-Communist regime chose to let him perish. His sacrifice remains a powerful symbol of the thousands of Cubans who have suffered torture, dehumanization, and extrajudicial killing under more than six decades of communist rule. Boitel’s story continues to expose the systematic cruelty that defined Cuba’s prisons and the regime’s ruthless suppression of dissent. A horrific fact that remains true to this day.
Last Wednesday, May 20—Cuba’s Independence Day—an important development occurred when dictator Raúl Castro was formally indicted for the 1996 murder of four humanitarian pilots and crew members of Brothers to the Rescue: Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre Jr., Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales. The two civilian aircrafts were shot down in international waters while on a mission to aid Cuban rafters fleeing the island. This indictment, though long overdue, serves as a timely reminder that even the most powerful figures of the regime are not beyond the reach of justice. Time does not contain its exercise when the crime is of this proportion.
Raúl Castro’s advanced age should evoke no pity. The soul knows no calendar. At 94, he remains the same man, with the same soul. In 1959, for example, he ordered the Massacre of San Juan Hill, one of the most notorious mass executions in modern Latin American history, where 71 individuals were mercilessly shot without any due process. Hundreds of summary executions received his continue reading
endorsement. The system that he, along with his older brother, concocted oversaw the killing, torture, and dehumanization of thousands of Cubans. In the Latin American context, by way of their Marxist revolution export business, the victims list grows to the hundreds of thousands. Raúl Castro’s physical body may be decaying, but the malicious soul that drove those crimes has never changed.
As we remember and honor Pedro Luis Boitel this Monday, the recent indictment against Raúl Castro stands as a fitting prelude. It reinforces a vital truth. Justice may be delayed for decades, but it must not be ignored. Boitel was killed 54 years ago. The Brothers to the Rescue volunteers were murdered 30 years ago. In both cases, the perpetrators bear full responsibility. These anniversaries remind us that heinous crimes against humanity carry no statute of limitations.
The convergence of these two dates carries deep significance for the Cuban people. As the prospect of a free and democratic Cuba grows stronger, the nation must consciously embrace the imperative of justice. A future democratic government—or any transitional authority, even if temporarily operated by the United States—should place comprehensive transitional justice at the very cornerstone of its mission. This includes truth-seeking, accountability for the killers and torturers, reparations for victims and their families, and the moral restoration of a nation long scarred by repression.
The memory of Pedro Luis Boitel demands nothing less. His death was not in vain if it continues to inspire the pursuit of justice for all who suffered under the Castro regime. The indictment of Raúl Castro should be celebrated not merely as a legal action but as a powerful signal that the long era of impunity is coming to an end. Cubans both on the island and in exile must internalize this message. Justice is not optional. It is essential for genuine national reconciliation and the construction of a truly free society. Let us properly honor Boitel by committing ourselves to the idea that no crime this monstrous can remain forever unpunished. Justice delayed for more than half a century is still justice. This is the case, even if it is long overdue.
🖋️Author Julio M. Shiling Julio M. Shiling is a political scientist, writer, columnist, lecturer, media commentator, and director of Patria de Martí and The CubanAmerican Voice. He holds a master’s degree in Political Science from Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida. He is a member of The American Political Science Association, The PEN Club (Cuban Writers in Exile Chapter) and the Academy of Cuban History in Exile.
The main speaker was Gerardo Hernández, one of the five former spies accused in the US of participating in the conspiracy to shoot down the Brothers to the Rescue planes
Tired and disinterested attendees during the demonstration. / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Dario Hernandez, Havana, May 22, 2026 / In a new attempt to display popular support, increasingly weakened, the Cuban government called for another mobilization this Friday at the so-called Anti-Imperialist Tribune – located in front of the US Embassy in Havana – “to condemn the despicable and infamous act of the United States Department of Justice” –referring to the indictment made this Wednesday against Raúl Castro for the downing of the Brothers to the Rescue planes – “and to support the declaration of the Revolutionary Government.”
The official media presented it as a novelty that the call for the mobilization came from the Union of Young Communists, “along with other student organizations, mass groups, and youth movements.” The official statement also framed the event within the celebrations for Raúl Castro’s 95th birthday, on June 3rd.
For these mobilizations, the government spares no resources or fuel. / 14ymedio
Despite the severe fuel crisis that the Island is experiencing and that worsens every day, the Government has found resources to organize these mobilizations, which are coordinated in a mandatory way through state institutions and workplaces.
While Havana residents deal daily with the lack of transportation and authorities have applied drastic reductions to public mobility, a long line of buses waited in the early hours of this Friday after transporting attendees to the event, as shown in the photographs taken by 14ymedio.
Buses used to transport attendees during the demonstration. / 14ymedio
The leak of an internal document from the Havana Electric Union, ordering the mobilization of workers, reveals the mandatory and controlled nature of these calls, with which the regime attempts to project an increasingly less credible image of popular support.
The mandatory nature of the rally is also evident in the large presence of uniformed military personnel and attendees wearing propaganda T-shirts distributed by state entities. “Raúl is Raúl” is one of the slogans of this propaganda campaign, which aims to counteract the effects of the indictment.
However, the Army general was not present at the ceremony, which has sparked speculation on social media. The nonagenarian is no longer continue reading
in good enough health to make public appearances, and his presence at the May Day parade had already drawn similar comments due to his visible physical decline.
Young athletes fatigued during the mobilization, after having been called up since dawn. / 14ymedio
Miguel Díaz-Canel led the ceremony in military uniform, and among those present was the general’s grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, known as “El Cangrejo” (The Crab). Also in attendance were the president of the National Assembly of People’s Power, Esteban Lazo; the prime minister, Manuel Marrero; and the commander of the Rebel Army, José Ramón Machado Ventura.
The five former Cuban spies were also present; their activity in US territory was fundamental for Cuban intelligence services to obtain information on all the movements of Brothers to the Rescue during the nineties, until the fateful February 24, 1996, when a MiG-29 shot down two planes of the humanitarian organization in international waters, causing the death of the four crew members, three of them with US nationality and one with legal residence in Florida.
To begin, the pro-government musician Raúl Torres performed a song dedicated to Raúl Castro. Following this, the pro-government lawyer Rolando López Meriño took the floor to express, on behalf of the legal profession, their rejection of the “scoundrelly accusation” against the former president and to reiterate the regime’s arguments against the legality of the charges brought by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Attempts to chant slogans sounded half-hearted, mostly coming from the soldiers themselves. / 14ymedio
“It is absolutely fraudulent and illegitimate,” stated López Meriño, who invoked the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation to justify shooting down the planes as an act of defending national sovereignty. The lawyer also held the United States responsible for the incident, arguing that Washington ignored warnings from the Cuban government about alleged violations of national airspace by the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft.
López Meriño’s speech added nothing new to the official discourse, which has historically rejected Washington’s version that the downed planes were in international airspace, a conclusion supported by reports from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, one of the five former Cuban spies and accused in the US of participating in the conspiracy linked to the downing of the Brothers to the Rescue planes, was the main speaker at the event.
A large military presence was seen attending the demonstration. / 14ymedio
He paraphrased a “message from our comrade, the Army General,” to those present: “He tells us that he sincerely appreciates the solidarity of the people and of friends around the world, and that we can be certain that as long as he lives, he will continue marching at the head of our people, defending the revolution, with his foot in the stirrup.”
The former Cuban agent also lashed out at Cuban-American José Basulto, founder of Brothers to the Rescue and one of the figures linked to the current accusations against Raúl Castro. Hernández called him “one of the real culprits behind those tragic deaths” and accused him of seeking a confrontation between the two countries.
“Who do they think they are to judge Raúl?” Hernández Nordelo asked before launching into extensive praise for Castro. He also reiterated the official position on the downing of the Brothers to the Rescue planes, maintaining that the Cuban government had repeatedly warned Washington about violations of its national airspace. “We had and have a moral obligation to preserve the security of our people,” he said.
Hernández Nordelo questioned when US President Donald Trump will be tried “for ordering the killing of 200 people and 57 vessels in international waters of the Caribbean and the Pacific without showing evidence, solely on suspicion that they are drug traffickers.”
After the former spy finished his speech, the attendees dispersed to attend to their daily needs. / 14ymedio
As soon as the former spy finished speaking, many attendees immediately began to leave the square, tired and eager to get on with their daily needs. Attempts to chant slogans were lackluster, mostly coming from the soldiers present.
Once again, the population, already tired and desperate in these long months of scarcity and prolonged daily blackouts, has taken on the obligation of attending these types of events, in order to avoid consequences in their respective state institutions, and so that the Government can demonstrate some popular support before public opinion.
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
In the province, 560 criminal acts were committed, 28 more than the previous year.
Police patrol on Neptuno Street in Havana. / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Madrid, May 22, 2026 — Not all official media outlets are reproducing the news about the new National Exercise for the Prevention and Combating of Crime — the fifth of its kind — currently taking place in Cuba with mere vagueness, voluntarist prose, or exemplary stories. In Artemisa, for example, they admit that crimes have increased.
Specifically, 560 criminal acts were committed in the province, 28 more than the previous year, and most of them (426) were theft with force. These occurred mainly, El Artemiseño reported, in the local districts of Los Pinos, San Cristóbal 1, Taco Taco, and José Martí.
The most frequent type of theft, said Lieutenant Colonel Víctor Abat García, delegate of the Ministry of the Interior, is cattle theft. The military official also reported the theft in the municipality of San Cristóbal of 1,656 liters of dielectric oil from transformers, which he described as an “unacceptable phenomenon at the present time.” This type of crime, he warned, “must generate greater severity at a time when the U.S. Government is intensifying its energy blockade against Cuba.”
The remarks by the municipal governor of Artemisa, Idalmys Quiñones González, nevertheless revealed that “greater effectiveness is still needed” in the prosecution of crimes. continue reading
In Santiago de Cuba, a “rigorous follow-up” is being carried out on “ten cases of alleged crimes and administrative corruption”
Meanwhile, in Santiago de Cuba, officials at the meeting regarding the Exercise — which is taking place between May 18 and 23 — reported that they are carrying out a “rigorous follow-up” on “ten cases of alleged crimes and administrative corruption that have had a significant impact on the province.” They said more details on the matter would be provided this Friday.
On Tuesday, the Provincial Court of Matanzas sentenced three citizens to prison terms ranging from 10 to 15 years for “robbery with violence or intimidation against persons in the degree of attempt,” in an “exemplary” trial framed within the same initiative to combat “irregularities.”
The three defendants, whose names were not released, were inside a home in the town of Máximo Gómez, in the municipality of Perico, intending to seize valuables when they were surprised by one of the residents, whom they “attacked and caused multiple bodily injuries.”
The Court, in accordance with the classification presented by the Prosecutor’s Office, sentenced two of the accused to 15 years in prison each, and the third to 10 years. As additional penalties, they were stripped of certain rights and subjected to a travel ban.
In addition, the Prosecutor’s Office requested “compensation for the victim’s wife for medical treatment and transportation expenses resulting from the injuries inflicted on her husband during the criminal incident.” The report does not specify the amount, but it highlights the socioeconomic problems on the Island, where healthcare is supposed to be free.
The deployment of the current Exercise, the official state newspaper Granma said in an article, “is taking place under circumstances of special complexity, as a consequence of the intensified economic, commercial, and financial blockade, the oil embargo, the increase in sanctions, hostility, psychological warfare, and threats of military action by the United States government against Cuba.”
The previous campaign of this kind concluded with thousands of inspections that led to the immediate closure of nearly 70 businesses, mainly for violations of banking regulations. Tax violations amounting to 1.1098 billion pesos were also identified, and fines were imposed that rapidly recovered nearly 53 million pesos.
In addition, dozens of exemplary trials were held through which the authorities attempt to project an image of control and security amid a situation that increasingly demonstrates the opposite.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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According to Cáritas, the shipment consists of 1,900 hygiene and food kits, part of aid valued at three million dollars.
Image of Granma after the passage of Hurricane Melissa. / La Demajagua
EFE/14ymedio, Havana, May 22, 2026 — The Catholic organization Cáritas reported this Thursday that 1,900 hygiene and food kits from a U.S. government aid shipment valued at three million dollars for victims of Hurricane Melissa arrived in Santiago de Cuba this week.
Two flights from Miami transported the donations on Tuesday the 19th and this Thursday to Santiago, where they will be distributed to vulnerable families affected by the hurricane’s passage through the eastern third of Cuba on October 29, Cáritas explained on social media.
The organization recalled that donations from this first package began arriving on January 14 and included food kits, hygiene supplies, and household items purchased and sent by Catholic Relief Services (CRS).
Cáritas clarified that, so far, 82% of this aid has been delivered
Likewise, Cáritas clarified that up to this point 82% of the assistance has been carried out, which the U.S. government stipulated must be distributed by the Catholic Church and under no circumstances by the regime.
The Catholic organization added that the remaining 18% of the assistance will be received this month and that, in total, it will benefit 8,800 families in the affected provinces: Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, Bayamo, and continue reading
Guantánamo.
It also announced that “at the same time, work is beginning on the management and implementation of a new donation which, valued at six million dollars, has been made by the U.S. government for the same purpose.”
As Cáritas previously explained, the beneficiaries are “single mothers with small children, older adults, people with disabilities, and people with limited or no mobility.”
The donations have included rice, beans, oil, sugar, water purification tablets, pots, kitchen utensils, blankets, and flashlights.
Hurricane Melissa crossed the eastern part of the Island on October 29 as a Category 3 storm (out of 5) on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with winds of up to 200 kilometers per hour and rainfall of up to 400 millimeters in some parts of the country.
According to assessments by the Cuban government, the storm caused no fatalities but did cause extensive material damage to more than 116,000 homes, as well as to 600 state medical facilities, more than 2,000 schools, around 100,000 hectares of crops, and infrastructure related to transportation, telecommunications, electricity, and water supply.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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There is no Churchill, no Lincoln, no Adenauer, but boastful leaders abound.
The US president also appeared exhausted in Beijing. / EFE/ Maxim Shemetov
14ymedio, Federico Hernández Aguilar, San Salvador, May 21, 2026 / The world suffers from a dramatic shortage of character. The great personalities of yesteryear have practically disappeared. International politics is a wasteland: the principles of yesteryear have been forgotten; the great ideals, shelved. There is no Churchill, no Lincoln, no Adenauer. But there is an abundance of boastful leaders, bombastic speeches, and ridiculous bravado.
Nicolás Maduro had convinced himself that he would never be held accountable. But within an hour, his dream of unlimited power transformed into a nightmare of reality. Suddenly, the armies of sycophants and the massive demonstrations in the public square evaporated before his eyes.
Meanwhile, other “strongmen”—in Havana and Managua—found their knees trembling. So many years of blaming the “empire” ended, suddenly, in moving calls for neighborly harmony. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who, through a haze of conscience, recalls his revolutionary days whenever he takes a microphone, now has to be silenced on state television by his paranoid wife, who fears ending up in jail like Cilia Flores, the disgraced Venezuelan first lady.
Barely echos remain, in Cuba, of Fidel’s old rhetoric against the United States. Yesterday, the Florida federal prosecutor’s office filed criminal charges against the nonagenarian Raúl Castro for the downing of two civilian aircraft when he was still the newly appointed head of the Cuban Armed Forces. A nervous breakdown! Even the director of the Central Intelligence Agency—the much-maligned CIA—is being greeted with handshakes in Havana.
While Maduro, Díaz-Canel, and Ortega ceased to be strong overnight, other leaders have needed to engage in stupid wars to realize their weakness.
No one knows what message John Ratcliffe carried with him, but his official visit to Cuba is a complete humiliation. If Fidel were to rise from the grave, he wouldn’t recognize the country he shaped for almost continue reading
half a century. The pride of his heirs didn’t even outlive him by ten years! So much suffering, so many deaths, so much repression… only to come and watch the collapse of a revolution that promised paradise and installed hell.
But if Maduro, Díaz-Canel, and Ortega lost their power overnight, other leaders have needed to become embroiled in senseless wars to realize their weakness. Vladimir Putin was so confident of victory in Ukraine that four years ago, according to internal reports, he told the Russian military leadership that he would take Kyiv in a matter of hours. As of May 2026, those hours have stretched into fifty months, exceeding the time the Soviet Union spent fighting the Nazis during World War II.
Thanks to the Ukrainian debacle, Putin’s political decline has been the worst of his authoritarian career. Independent polls show plummeting approval ratings, exacerbated by public weariness with the war and growing discontent with the unjustifiable internet restrictions. Even the lavish military parade on May 9—commemorating the decisive Soviet victory over Hitler—was threatened by drone strikes over Moscow. Being so far from victory in Kyiv is the closest thing to a major defeat, and Putin has never appeared so weak and subdued.
As for the powerful Donald Trump, who until recently believed himself immune to setbacks, now also has his own disastrous war to contend with. Iran has been the most evident setback in his relentless march toward global hegemony, to such an extent that he has had to fly to China to meet with the only person who can help him bring order to his chaos: Xi Jinping. The resilient Shiite regime, for its part, is rubbing its hands with glee. An official newspaper in Tehran ran the headline: “Trump visits China in the shadow of failure and stagnation.” And it is true.
Donald Trump, who until recently believed himself immune to setbacks, now also has his own disastrous war.
The US president also looked exhausted in Beijing. Striding heavily through the streets of the sprawling Chinese metropolis, he appeared to be weighed down by several burdens: an economic crisis resulting from his tariff madness—the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that the White House’s trade policy has cost each American household $1,600 annually—a national debt that last year reached 124% of GDP, with a staggering interest payment already exceeding one trillion dollars (equivalent to 20% of total annual revenue); approval ratings so low that they make him one of the most unpopular presidents in American history; and a foreign policy so misguided that the resulting isolation has ultimately driven him into the arms of his main economic and technological adversary.
Xi Jinping, however, is not invulnerable either. The strength of communist control is also the source of its main economic weaknesses. China has yet to recover from the calamitous effects of the pandemic, insists on state control of production decisions, lacks its own engines to consolidate its technological revolution, and continues to depend on the US and Europe for growth.
No one, therefore, is strong enough to impose their will on the rest of the planet, no matter how loudly they proclaim it. Those who believe themselves strong are, in reality, weaker than they think, and those who at first glance appear weak, in practice, possess more strength than their adversaries would admit.
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The Cuban activist says the Cuban Classical Liberal Party was born as “a challenge to tyranny” and promises to prepare proposals for a democratic transition.
Calzadilla this Tuesday in Madrid during the presentation of the party / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Madrid, May 21, 2026 – At the Casino de la Reina in Madrid, before nearly fifty Cubans, activist Amelia Calzadilla presented this Tuesday the Cuban Classical Liberal Party (Partido Liberal Clásico Cubano, PLC), a political organization opposed to the Havana regime that aspires to bring together Cubans inside and outside the Island around a proposal for a future democratic transition.
The event served to officially launch a project that Calzadilla had announced weeks earlier as the Cuban Orthodox Liberal Party. The new name, its promoters explained, seeks to better define its ideology: classical liberalism, defense of private property, reduction of state control, separation of powers, and rule of law.
“This is, above all, a challenge to tyranny,” Calzadilla said during the presentation. “Here we are, free Cubans, organized, trying to defend what belongs to us.” The activist insisted that the opposition cannot limit itself to denouncing the regime but must begin preparing answers for the future. “Governing a country is not a prize, it is a responsibility,” she stated.
The activist insisted that the opposition cannot limit itself to denouncing the regime but must begin preparing answers for the future
Calzadilla, known for her social denunciations from within Cuba and for her later exile, sought to distinguish political commitment from improvisation. The new party, she said, was not created to distribute positions or feed vanity, but to think about the “day after” the dictatorship. Its proposal, she explained, starts from the idea that the State must stop occupying everything. “The State is not a decision-maker; it is a servant. The decision-makers are the citizens,” she argued. continue reading
“We are not center-right, but right-wing,” said Lucio Enríquez Nodarse, the party’s treasurer, repositioning the party, which Calzadilla had originally described as centrist. The definition, he explained, does not imply an extremist position nor the complete disappearance of the State, but rather a clearer defense of classical liberalism.
“We believe the State has to participate in some very controlled aspects,” he said. A physician by profession, Enríquez used healthcare and education in a future Cuba as examples: “We need a strong healthcare system, and the healthcare system as we conceive it is mixed: public and private. So there is a social component there. As you can see, there is no extremism there.” The same, he added, should apply to education. According to Enríquez, the party does not rule out State participation in certain areas, always with the aim of helping the most vulnerable people.
Registration in Spain places the PLC in a unique situation. Legally it is a Spanish party, but politically Cuban and diasporic in its social base. Calzadilla made clear that she does not plan to run in any electoral process in Spain, something Spain’s Party Law does not require, although it does require political activity.
The presentation brought together several well-known figures from the Cuban exile communities in Madrid and Miami. Among those present were journalist Juan Manuel Cao, activist Elena Larrinaga, and playwright and dissident Yunior García, along with activists, journalists, and supporters of the new project. Also attending were Ileana Álvarez, director of Alas Tensas, and Francis Sánchez, director of Árbol Invertido, as well as collaborators and figures linked to independent media outlets such as CubaNet, Diario de Cuba, and 14ymedio.
One of the most significant attendees was physician and Cuban exile Tony Guedes, former leader of the Cuban Liberal Union and a figure close to the liberalism of Carlos Alberto Montaner
One of the most significant attendees was physician and Cuban exile Tony Guedes, former leader of the Cuban Liberal Union and a figure close to the liberalism of Carlos Alberto Montaner. His presence, together with that of Linda Montaner, widow of the Cuban intellectual, gave the event a sense of continuity between the exile’s liberal tradition and a new generation of activists trying to organize politically around Calzadilla.
According to the statutes published by the organization, the PLC presents itself as a Spanish political party representing the Cuban diaspora, headquartered in Madrid until it can register in Cuba. The document also contemplates the creation of branches in other countries where legally possible. The organization defines itself as a right-wing liberal democratic party focused on individual freedom, the market economy, equality before the law, and limits on State power.
The provisional leadership is headed by Calzadilla as president. Activist and journalist Iliana Hernández serves as vice president; Lucio Enríquez Nodarse is listed as treasurer; Emilio Arteaga Pérez and Avana de la Torre were introduced as board members. Omar Antonio Díaz Peña appears in charge of digital infrastructure.
As collaborators or initial supporters, Lázaro Mireles Galbán, Yoelkis Torres Tápanes, Maribel García González, Antonio F. Díaz Hernández, and Raidel Argudín Pose were mentioned. Calzadilla stated that the party had already received more than one hundred membership applications, many from people inside Cuba. For those cases, she explained, a private registry would be used to protect those living under regime surveillance.
“Limiting information is the best resource we can use today to protect Cuban citizens who are inside Cuba and want to participate in the party,” she said.
“Limiting information is the best resource we can use today to protect Cuban citizens who are inside Cuba and want to participate in the party,” she said
The launch, however, has not been free of criticism. Some sectors of the exile community question the proliferation of opposition organizations without a verifiable structure inside Cuba. Others reproach Calzadilla for the speed with which she moved from social media activism to creating a political party. Independent media and social networks have repeatedly raised doubts about the project’s viability, its territorial base, and its ability to coordinate with political prisoners, relatives, and activists within the Island.
Calzadilla herself referred to the personal attacks she has received. “To tell you I handled it well would be to lie to you. And I don’t like deceiving anyone. Nobody feels good when they are attacked,” she said. However, she assured that the messages she receives from the Island have ended up functioning as a counterweight to the criticism. “Every person who writes to me from Cuba saying ‘I want to belong to your party’ creates an emotional shield in me.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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Donald Trump ruled out any escalation and added that he would soon make an announcement on the oil blockade he imposed on the island.
Dozens of members of the Cuban diaspora went this Wednesday to the Freedom Tower in Miami, an emblem of exile in this city. / EFE
EFE (via 14ymedio), Miami, Hugo Barcia, 21 May 2026 – A thunderous ovation was the thanks that Cuban community leaders in Miami gave the United States Government following the indictment of former Cuban president Raúl Castro over the shooting down of two small planes that left four people dead 30 years ago. They celebrated the fact that it sends a powerful message that “impunity for the executioners is over.”
“It is a very important message: the impunity of the executioners Cuba has suffered under for 67 years has ended. Raúl Castro’s impunity is over. It is a devastating message for that regime and for those people who fought so hard for their freedom,” Orlando Gutiérrez, secretary general of the exile organization Assembly of the Cuban Resistance (ARC), told EFE.
He was one of the dozens of members of the Cuban diaspora who went this Wednesday to the Freedom Tower in Miami, an emblem of exile in this city, to applaud and hear in person United States Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announce Castro’s indictment.
Flanked by images of the four victims of the attack on two small planes belonging to the humanitarian organization Brothers to the Rescue — shot down by Cuban fighter jets in 1996 — Blanche charged the former Cuban president with the crimes of murder, conspiracy to kill Americans, and destruction of aircraft for allegedly giving the order to shoot them down.
Blanche charged the former Cuban president with the crimes of murder, conspiracy to kill Americans, and destruction of aircraft for allegedly giving the order to shoot them down.
The setting, the Freedom Tower, and the day, coinciding with what exiles celebrate as the island’s Independence Day, even though the Cuban Government does not commemorate the date in that way, fitted perfectly with the symbolism of the announcement.
“I passed through here when I came from Cuba with my parents. For me, this is emblematic. (…) For us, this is the gateway to freedom,” Cuban-American Guillermo Cueto recalled from inside the continue reading
Tower, guarded by slender columns and a monumental painting with maps of America and Europe.
The charges Castro faces, at 94 years of age and currently in Cuba, could mean life imprisonment or even the death penalty, according to the indictment.
“We would love to see Raúl in handcuffs in the United States, but above all in Miami,” said city commissioner Rolando Escalona, referring to the arrival in the United States of deposed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro after his capture last January.
Bryan Calvo, the mayor of Hialeah, the city with the highest proportion of Cuban population in the United States, hopes this will be “a first step toward direct action,” calling for it “not to remain a symbolic act” and for Castro and the other five accused to be brought before United States justice.
Bryan Calvo, the mayor of Hialeah, the city with the highest proportion of Cuban population in the United States, hopes this will be “a first step toward direct action.”
“It has to be more than what happened in Venezuela. There, only one person was removed from power. Here, what we as the Cuban community are asking for is for all these people to be removed, for there to be a new Government on the island,” he stressed.
The United States Government has not clarified the next steps in the case, although Blanche emphasized during the press conference that Castro will face justice “of his own free will or in any other way.”
United States President Donald Trump, however, ruled out in a message on Truth Social that there would be any escalation, and added that he would soon make an announcement on the oil blockade he imposed on the island, worsening its energy and humanitarian crisis.
The Cuban exile community blames the “Castro regime” for the increasingly miserable situation being experienced in Cuba.
That is why the potential capture of Castro, brother of Fidel Castro, is interpreted as the beginning of the end of the Cuban Government by most exiles living in Miami, considered the historic, cultural, and political capital of Cuban exile and the Cuban diaspora in the world.
In this regard, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine-Cava told EFE that she has “great hope of seeing freedom and democracy in Cuba very soon,” and pointed out that Wednesday’s development is a sign that the Miami community stands with the Cuban diaspora.
A development which, once the euphoria of the announcement had faded, gave way to the silent routine of the Tower as a museum of Cuban memory and a symbol of exile in Miami.
Translated by GH
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The deputy foreign minister and other guests on Mesa Redonda justify the shooting down of the two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft
The television programme Mesa Redonda was devoted this Wednesday to responding to the US criminal charges against Raúl Castro. / EFE
14ymedio, Madrid, 21 May 2026 / The United States’ ambivalent strategy toward Cuba has met its match in the island’s Foreign Ministry, which this Wednesday also responded to the same script with a bit of carrot and stick. On the day Washington indicted former president Raúl Castro over the shooting down of the two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft in 1996, Trump toned things down by saying there would be no “escalation”; while the regime, as if mirroring him, launched a furious attack on the judicial measure -above all through Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Carlos Fernández de Cossío -and held out a hand for dialogue, via Ernesto Soberón in New York.
Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations spoke with The New York Times this Wednesday and insisted that the regime is willing to implement changes in its economy and Government, as well as wishing to continue negotiations with the United States, although he accuses Washington of acting in bad faith.
Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations insisted that the regime is willing to implement changes in its economy and Government
“Cuba is willing to talk about everything with the United States. There is no taboo subject in our conversation. On the basis, as I was saying, of reciprocity and equality,” he insisted. Soberón said it was the first time a Government representative had granted an interview to the NYT because he considered it important to tell the American people that Havana wants peace and cooperation, but that statements such as Donald Trump’s “we will take Cuba” do not help.
Soberón Guzmán criticised the message Marco Rubio addressed to the Cuban people this Wednesday, saying that it denies US responsibility for the worsening conditions on the island since the oil blockade was approved at the end of January. “For anyone with the slightest bit of common sense, it is an insult to human intelligence,” he said.
“You don’t have to be a Nobel Prize-winning mathematician to realise that where things are taken out and taken out and nothing is put in, it runs out,” he said in relation to the end of the fuel that arrived aboard the Russian oil tanker Anatoly Kolodkin. Soberón stated that they expect to accept the 100 million dollars in aid offered by the US — which he nevertheless also described as an insult — and that, as confirmed by the recent visit to Cuba by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, cooperation is under way and can continue in areas such as migration, tourism, agriculture, medicine production and the fight against drug trafficking.
However, the diplomat questioned some aspects of the US electoral system — such as the influence of billionaire donors or the distribution of electoral districts. “Is that the democracy they want for Cuba? We are not interested,” he said. In any case, he argued, that is not Washington’s real motivation. “The United States maintains positive relations with various nations that lack democratic systems, so democracy in Cuba is not the continue reading
reason why the United States is applying this policy,” he concluded.
All those criticisms were, in any event, the conciliatory version. The other one, that of “fierce resistance”, was invoked by Fernández de Cossío on the television programme Mesa Redonda, devoted this Wednesday to responding to the US criminal accusations against Raúl Castro.
The official, who was accompanied by the director of International Law, Yusnier Romero Puente, and the president of Prensa Latina, Jorge Legañoa, denounced the operation as “fraudulent, because it has no legal basis, no political basis, and no moral basis” and said it “must be seen as part of the aggressive, growing escalation” that the US has carried out this year.
The president of Prensa Latina, Jorge Legañoa, denounced the operation as “fraudulent, because it has no legal basis”
“This is not an isolated event; it forms part of that aggressiveness, of a despicable act within that aggressiveness,” he said, in line with what was condensed in an official Government statement and in Miguel Díaz-Canel’s post on social media.
The full programme once again reconstructed the events surrounding the shooting down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes — which it constantly refers to as a terrorist organisation — from the regime’s perspective. The participants reviewed the “more than twenty-five serious and deliberate violations of Cuban airspace” carried out by the group and of which, they stressed, there is graphic evidence: recorded images in which the pilots themselves “boasted of being over Havana and of nothing happening from the military point of view.”
The regime’s second line of argument — and the one it insisted on most — is that the US had evidence that this was happening and did nothing to prevent it, as required by Article 4 of the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation. They also brought up again the warning notes sent by the Cuban Government to the US Government, and one by a US aviation official who left it in writing that there was concern in the State Department over “Cuba’s reactions to this flagrant violation.”
With all this, “they took the decision not to act. In other words, there was complicity in that act,” said Fernández de Cossío, who also demanded that the US show the satellite evidence proving that the aircraft were in international waters, ignoring the fact that this has been firmly proven in a report by the International Civil Aviation Organization, which is part of the UN system.
Legañoa, for his part, rhetorically asked what the US would do if someone violated its airspace and said that, in fact, it does just that
Legañoa, for his part, rhetorically asked what the US would do if someone violated its airspace and said that, in fact, it does just that. Without presenting a single example, he answered himself: “It would shoot it down. As has happened on various occasions, including civilian personnel, not military personnel. What has it done? Defend its airspace.” In reality, there is not a single documented case that would allow such a claim to be made. What the US has done, by contrast, is intercept civilian aircraft and force them to land when they violated its airspace. Precisely what Havana did not do.
There was a great deal of going over the events, all of it already known, but the most important part for Havana was to make the obvious clear: the indictment “forms part of a psychological warfare strategy,” although the objective differs depending on who is analysing it. In Miami, it is about applying maximum pressure for change without violence; in Havana, it is about preparing the ground for an invasion.
“The dark practice of the United States of using accusations such as these in order to act militarily against sovereign States is well known. Its shelter is not justice; its shelter is the use of the overwhelming military might possessed by the Government of the United States,” said Fernández de Cossío, who described these actions as “imperial arrogance.”
The officials also lamented Rubio’s video and the date chosen to give the act more symbolism. “What does 20 May mean for Cuban history? Interventionism. The date that marked the establishment of the neocolonial pseudo-republic, under Washington’s tutelage, remains today a symbol used by the anti-Cuban right to set its aggressive agenda against the Revolution,” said Legañoa.
Lastly, the deputy foreign minister considered that the US is trying to resort to “an illegal use of justice for United States political purposes.” All this, after “completely disconnecting Cuba from the international economy and by that route destroying the economy”, so as to present itself as the only alternative by taking advantage of the population’s understandable desperation.
Translated by GH
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
The Cuban opposition leader analyzes the challenges of a democratic transition, the role of the opposition, and the need to prevent Castroism from being recycled.
“We must put the nation above ideologies and political ambitions.” / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, May 20, 2026 / For years, the Cuban regime’s propaganda machine has attempted to sow prejudice against opponents, activists, and critical voices. Few have been the object of a smear campaign as sustained as that against José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU).
It is surprising, however, to encounter this Cuban, raised in Palmarito de Cauto (Santiago de Cuba), and discover, behind the tale of persecution and dungeons, a profoundly Cuban sense of humor, a simplicity that contrasts with his physical and political stature, a culture capable of moving from the verses of Samaniego and Lope de Vega to the history of Cuba or the countries of Eastern Europe, and a rare ability to move naturally between very different worlds: sitting with diplomats and high-level politicians, stopping on a street in Madrid to talk to a Cuban who recognizes him, or standing up to the regime’s thugs from a punishment cell.
14ymedio spoke with José Daniel Ferrer in Madrid’s Plaza de Santa Ana. We talked about prison, justice, Cuba’s democratic future, and the challenges of a transition that, for many Cubans, is beginning to seem closer than ever.
Yunior García Aguilera: What did prison teach you about the type of state Cuba should never have again?
José Daniel Ferrer: From the moment I began defending human rights and fighting nonviolently for the democratization of Cuba, I knew I was fulfilling my duty as a Cuban. I was clear that we were facing a cruel dictatorship that not only violates fundamental human rights but also deeply despises Cubans.
When I was first arrested, I realized I hadn’t been wrong. The repression against me solidified that certainty. When I was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2003, I told myself again: “You weren’t wrong. You have to keep fighting against this system, because it is the worst thing that can happen to Cuba, or to any people.”
Prison taught me a fundamental lesson: never give up. Never lose heart. And even when Cuba is free, continue defending freedom and democracy in other lands as well.
That is one of the great challenges of democratic Cuba: to ensure that Cubans have equal rights and opportunities, both in the capital and in the rest of the country.
Yunior García Aguilera: You have led much of your life from eastern Cuba, not from Havana or from traditional exile. How should that eastern, rural, impoverished, and marginalized Cuba be reflected in the design of a new Republic?
José Daniel Ferrer: When the Patriotic Union of Cuba began to grow in Havana, many activists and friends told me: “Go live in Havana.” And I went. But they expelled me time and time again.
The eastern region, and indeed all of Cuba outside the capital, has suffered poverty more severely than Havana. The capital has always had some advantages, though not many. But the further east one travels, the greater the poverty has been.
I remember the 1990s, when many young people from eastern Cuba tried to go to Havana, to Ciego de Ávila to work in agriculture, or to Camagüey to work in rice farming. They looked for jobs on rice farms and then took rice back to Santiago to sell and earn a few pesos.
That is one of the great challenges of democratic Cuba: to ensure that Cubans have equal rights and opportunities, both in the capital and in the rest of the country.
The first democratic government will have the responsibility of implementing policies that allow the East to catch up in development. Cuba will become democratized, and I am sure it will be quite soon. Then will come the reconstruction. We will see the country move forward, prosper, and develop. But that development must be continue reading
as equitable as possible.
What has happened to us for 67 years will never be repeated in the history of Cuba. / 14ymedio
Yunior García Aguilera: What would you say to Cubans on the island who fear that the opposition intends, as happened in 1959, to replace one dictatorship with another?
José Daniel Ferrer: They have no reason to worry. What has happened to us for 67 years will never be repeated in the history of Cuba.
When we conquer our rights and freedoms, when we recover our democratic Republic, I am convinced that we Cubans will take such good care of freedom that it will be very difficult for another Fidel Castro, another Fulgencio Batista like the one from 1952, or a Gerardo Machado like the one from the 1930s to appear.
Freedom—and we are in a square surrounded by illustrious names of Spanish literature—as Cervantes said in Don Quixote, is one of the greatest gifts that humankind has received. After suffering the oppression, misery, and lack of basic rights imposed by the communist regime, we will understand how much we must cherish it.
The people of Eastern Europe who lived under communism understand us best. On this tour of Europe, we find it very easy to explain to Poles, Lithuanians, or Czechs what is happening in Cuba and the need for the European Union to take a firmer stance against the Cuban regime.
On the other hand, it is sometimes surprising that the French, Dutch, or Belgians do not understand the risk of neglecting freedom in the same way. They seem unaware of the danger they face when they take it for granted.
Freedom is hard-won. Martí said that either you decide to buy it, paying its price, or you have to resign yourself to living without it. But once won, you have to keep fighting to keep it.
That’s why I don’t share that fear. My exhortation to Cubans is to think positively: if we defend the conquest of freedom today, we will know how to defend it tomorrow as well.
They destroyed the economy themselves, and every reopening is used to survive, not to change. / 14ymedio
Yunior García Aguilera: Some European politicians behave like Aesop’s frog that rode the scorpion on its back: they do not know the nature of dictatorships.
José Daniel Ferrer: That’s a very clever way of explaining it. When Barack Obama launched his new policy toward the Cuban regime between 2014 and 2015, I was in the United States and in Europe. In Brussels, many interlocutors from the European Union told me, “Now, with this new US policy, Cuba is going to move toward respecting human rights and democracy.” I replied, “It’s not going to happen.” They said, “Why? There will be more contact; the Cuban government will be forced to respect the rights of Cubans a little more.” And I insisted, “It’s not going to happen.” Then I told them a story I had read years before in an old edition of Selections from Reader’s Digest. A Western journalist was secretly interviewing a disgraced Soviet official and asked him what he thought about the détente process between the West and Nikita Khrushchev. The Soviet looked at him, smiled maliciously, and said, “We Soviets are never sincere.”
That’s exactly what I told them about the Cuban regime: don’t trust them. The regime is always negotiating something, trying to buy time, gain economic benefits, and political breathing room. They destroyed the economy themselves, and they use every opening to survive, not to change. That’s what they’re trying to do now: buy time, hope that circumstances in the United States change, that things get complicated internally, and that Washington forgets about Cuba and Venezuela. But I think this time that calculation could backfire. Their dream could turn into a nightmare.
With the will of the majority, we can ensure that reason and justice prevail, not revenge.
Yunior García Aguilera: There is much talk of truth and justice to redress the crimes of the dictatorship, but also of national reconciliation. How can the damage caused be judged without turning tomorrow’s democratic courts into instruments of vengeance?
José Daniel Ferrer: It is as complex as maintaining perfect balance on a tightrope. Guaranteeing a 100% impartial justice system is a dream. I wish it were so, but wishing for it and what might happen in practice are two different things.
It must be remembered that the regime has been truly cruel to many Cubans. It has been sadistic. From the very beginning of its struggle to seize control of Cuba, it employed terrorist methods. They executed anyone for the mere accusation that they might be an informer or collaborator of Batista.
Then, those revolutionary tribunals committed many crimes. And for decades, in the prisons, there has also been torture, humiliation, and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
That’s why it will be difficult to completely control the impulse for revenge that some Cubans may feel during a transition. But with the will of the majority, we can ensure that reason and justice prevail, not revenge.
We are not going to build a fraternal, humane, prosperous, and civilized Cuba on the basis of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” because, as someone already said, we would all end up blind and toothless. And we already have enough blind people, and enough dental problems in Cuba, without making them worse.
I believe that in a free and democratic Cuba, the support of human rights organizations, international actors, advisors, and experts, including those from countries that lived under communism, will be very important. The Poles and the Czechs, for example, have very valuable experiences.
It’s preferable that the change be Czech-style. However, who is the main obstacle to an orderly, less traumatic, and less violent process? The regime, which is determined to cling to power at all costs.
The United States, regardless of our opinions or desires, is now a decisive actor in this process, imposing certain rules. And it is still offering those who rule the tyranny a chance: “Leave, even keep what you’ve already stolen, which is far too much.” But it seems they don’t want to accept that option, as happened to Nicolás Maduro.
“You can’t just remove all the police officers overnight and replace them with new ones. It takes a process.”
Yunior García Aguilera: In a Cuba marked by increased crime and the discrediting of repressive institutions, how can public order be guaranteed in a democratic transition without preserving the dictatorship’s police apparatus intact or creating an authority vacuum?
José Daniel Ferrer: I don’t see it as impossible, but it can’t be done radically or all at once. You can’t just remove all the police officers overnight and replace them with new ones. It takes time.
In my opinion, a first step could be to gradually replace the current police force with members of the Armed Forces who are willing to assume responsibility for public order. I’m not saying there isn’t corruption or complicity with the tyranny within the FAR. Of course there is. The Army is subordinate to the Communist Party.
But the police are extremely discredited and excessively corrupt. The rules imposed by the regime have led many officers to be more concerned with how to get food, clothes, or money to celebrate their children’s birthdays or quinceañeras than with maintaining order. And how do they get it? By taking from the population, by accepting bribes from those with businesses or political influence.
Therefore, initially, it would be necessary to begin replacing those repressive bodies, which are deeply involved in corruption and discredited in the eyes of the people.
Next, it will be necessary to professionalize the security forces, depoliticize them, and rid them of corruption. We have already heard from Cubans with extensive experience in security and public order in the United States, such as Manuel Morales, Miami’s police chief, offering their expertise in this process.
“When you analyze how the regime stays in power, you discover that it is sustained by people who don’t want it.”
Yunior García Aguilera: Taking into account the experience of Venezuela, do you believe that the Cuban opposition has enough respect and strength to not be left out of a possible change or transition?
José Daniel Ferrer: The Cuban opposition, with an effective structure, true unity in action, and the necessary coordination, would be so powerful that we could achieve freedom for Cuba even without help from the United States or any other international actor.
When you analyze how the regime maintains its grip on power, you discover that it relies on people who don’t support it. When you get to know the police officer, the soldier, the civil servant; when you establish trust with them and guarantee that what they say won’t be overheard, you reach one conclusion: the regime has no one who supports it.
In prison, for example, I convinced sergeants, non-commissioned officers, lieutenants, captains, and even majors that our fight was also for them and their families. I told them there was no intention of settling scores or seeing them as enemies to be persecuted.
When I managed to make them understand me, they became collaborators. I was completely isolated, but I knew everything. I had to play dumb, pretend I didn’t know what was happening outside the prison, so that the political police would believe the isolation was working.
They came to tell me things themselves. At first they were afraid. They would say, “There are microphones.” I would reply, “Speak softly, no one will hear. And I’ve already checked every inch of this place.”
They told me, “¿Hasta cuándo? [Until when?] I can’t take it anymore. I don’t have enough money. I don’t have any oil at home. My shoes are worn out. My TV broke and I can’t afford to fix it. I get paid in electronic money and I can barely buy anything. If I want to convert it to cash, the bank charges me 20%.”
When they were with me, they seemed like opponents. But if three of them came together, they’d give me dirty looks and say, “Hey, Ferrer, how are you?” And I was dying of laughter inside, because I knew that when they came individually, they were all sweetness and light and would ask, “How long, José Daniel? When is this going to end?”
“That’s why I think the possibility of a bloodbath, like the one Díaz-Canel is announcing, is ridiculous. The people don’t want it, but neither do his own military personnel.”
I’m telling you this because we have several advantages. In Venezuela, many military personnel were more aligned with the regime because the regime prioritized them over society. In Cuba, on the other hand, the military is just as affected as most of the population. The privileged few are the top generals, a small group. Most of them also want this to end. They are tired of blackouts, hunger, poverty, transportation crises, health crises, and lack of medicine.
That’s why I think the possibility of a bloodbath, like the one Díaz-Canel is announcing, is ridiculous. The people don’t want it, but neither do his own military officers.
We have another advantage: Venezuela didn’t have a Secretary of State who was the son of a Venezuelan. We have Marco Rubio, who has been committed to freedom and democratization in Cuba for many years.
I am sure that, whatever happens – and it will happen soon – the Cuban opposition will have a much faster and more effective leading role than Venezuela has had so far.
That said, how do we ensure that happens? With greater unity, greater coordination, and above all, by putting the nation above ideologies and political ambitions.
If some try to use this moment as an election campaign for Cuba’s democratic future, they will harm the cause. That would create rivalries and mistrust: “This person wants to use my sacrifice for political gain.” And that’s not good.
They could bring out a Carlos Lage, or another well-known face, and say: “He was removed because he wanted freedom and democracy.”
This is the moment to remember José Manuel Cortina: political parties out; the homeland must be what matters. The more we talk, get to know each other, unite, and act together, the greater our capacity will be to participate in the change that Cuba needs.
We need something similar to what Solidarity was in Poland, the Indian National Congress in the struggle for independence, the African National Congress in South Africa, or that Chilean coalition where center-left and center-right forces, social democrats and Christian democrats, participated to promote the “No” vote against Pinochet. [see also] They won by a narrow margin, but they won because they put together a very organized and united campaign.
Later, in a democracy, everyone will know what alliances to form and how to run in elections. But even then, we will have to build alliances with those who are closest to our goals, because alone we cannot face an enemy that will try to reinvent itself.
Yunior García Aguilera:. How could that enemy be recycled?
José Daniel Ferrer: They could bring up a Carlos Lage, or another well-known figure, and say, “He was sidelined because he wanted freedom and democracy.” They could make him their star candidate and try to win the election against a pro-democracy opposition that has suffered imprisonment, torture, exile, and death.
But if the opposition can’t organize itself, it could lose. The World Series isn’t won by the team with the best players, but by the one with good players who truly play as a team. That’s what we have to do.
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
The Canadian company says the State Department has raised no objection to a possible sale of 55% of its shares to American Ray Washburne, owner of Gillon Capital.
The Moa mines are located on land claimed by the Pitt-Wasmer family. / ACN
14ymedio, Madrid, May 20, 2026 – The Canadian company Sherritt International announced this Wednesday that it has signed a preliminary agreement with Gillon Capital, owned by Ray Washburne, former adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, for a placement of up to 55% of its shares with an option to purchase. If exercised — there is a nine-month deadline — the American investment firm could take control of most of the mining company.
The news comes just one day after Sherritt itself announced that it was suspending the decision to dissolve its interests in Cuba, including the joint venture Moa Nickel S.A., through which it produces nickel and cobalt in mines in Holguín, contrary to what it had announced on May 7, pressured by Trump’s executive order targeting anyone doing business with the Havana regime.
That same day, the State Department reported that on the list of new entities sanctioned by the United States, in addition to the military conglomerate Gaesa and its president, General Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, was Moa Nickel itself, fully justifying the Canadian company’s statement issued hours earlier.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control can issue a special permit in the case of strategic assets such as nickel and cobalt
If Sherritt were to have majority American capital, as would happen if Gillon exercises its purchase option, the firm would be able to negotiate directly with the Government for a special permit to operate continue reading
on the Island. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the Treasury Department can issue such a permit in the case of strategic assets such as nickel and cobalt.
A special permit negotiated with OFAC, in fact, was one of the scenarios raised this Wednesday by Discovery Alert for Sherritt to continue its operations in Cuba. The nickel and cobalt deposits in Holguín, the specialized outlet said, “are among the most significant in the Western Hemisphere.” In particular, because of the ease of extracting both minerals, considered critical and used in batteries, from surface deposits.
Discovery Alert also pointed out that although Cuban production is far from that of the Democratic Republic of the Congo — which dominates global cobalt extraction with more than 70% — it still represents “one of the few non-African and non-Chinese-controlled sources of cobalt accessible to Western refineries.” Hence the strong interest from the United States.
The owner of Gillon, meanwhile, is highly trusted by Trump. Washburne was appointed by him in 2017 as director of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and later as a member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.
In the statement issued today, Sherritt says it has maintained a constructive dialogue with the U.S. State Department, which, according to Reuters, confirmed it has no objections to Gillon Capital’s collaboration with the Canadian company. Neither the State Department nor the Treasury Department, the report continued, considers the negotiations to violate U.S. legislation.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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The decision is due to the “complex situation” Cuba is facing because of the lack of fuel and transportation
Official discourse wants to erase the image of the previous school year, marked by the students’ rebellion against Etecsa’s rate hike. / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Madrid, May 20, 2026 – The unsustainable energy conditions Cuba is experiencing have claimed a new victim: education. On one hand, the school year, which will end approximately one month earlier than planned; on the other, university entrance exams, which are being suspended. Education Minister Naima Ariatne Trujillo Barreto spoke about the first issue when she appeared alongside Higher Education Minister Walter Baluja García this Tuesday on the television program Mesa Redonda. Classes had been scheduled to end on July 24, as announced last September at the start of the school year, but they will now end gradually between June 15 and June 30.
“We are going to continue giving the response that educational institutions are accustomed to giving because of the implication they have for society,” she said, trying to calm families worried about leaving students without a place to be or activities for such a long time. The decision was made, she said, after conducting a “deep and sensitive human evaluation” of the “complex situation” the country faces because of the lack of fuel and the resulting difficulties, such as transportation shortages.
“There has been a need to reduce in each territory, according to its particularities, enrollment, semi-boarding services, and in-person attendance days. Long distances are being walked by children, their families, and teachers,” she added. In addition, to stop rumors about moving exams forward, she said the process would be addressed progressively. continue reading
“Long distances are being walked by children, their families, and teachers”
Another of the most drastic measures taken by the ministry is the elimination of university entrance exams, a measure presented by the head of the sector, Walter Baluja García. “The admissions process will be based on the grade point average or academic index students obtained during their pre-university studies,” he said. In addition, the official emphasized that all applicants “have their place guaranteed.” The assignment process will determine which one.
It is precisely the students who are going to enter university who will be those given priority in secondary education, Trujillo clarified. The minister said that twelfth grade — as well as sixth and ninth grades, since they are terminal years for each cycle — would be protected, relying on the already known “didactic and pedagogical variants,” referring to what already occurred during the pandemic, only under worse conditions, since even technological support has diminished.
Evaluations will be adapted to the systematic monitoring teachers carry out of their students’ progress. “A good teacher accompanied by the families of their own group can probably achieve greater comprehensiveness than an exam that, ultimately, if someone studies hard on the last day, does well and is not the result of what was really learned throughout the entire school year,” she stated.
The minister also recalled the difficult conditions teachers and students face daily. “After a night without electricity, getting the child to school, how to attract him, the class itself is a challenge. And for teachers, who suffer just the same, without electricity or with the problem of whether they have water or don’t have water at home, concentrating on teaching the children has been a huge challenge.”
Trujillo spoke of sensitivity, commitment, sacrifice, and even “daily heroism.” At some moments, she said, between 10,000 and 20,000 students during this school year were unable to attend classes depending on how remote their places of residence were. “For each one we have had to find alternatives,” she added.
The final details of the school year will be wrapped up progressively. On one hand, graduations will take place in neighborhoods, schools, or municipalities. “We cannot limit the possibility of that tremendous event that achieving a grade level implies,” the minister argued. As for special education, whose logistical demands are greater, it will end this month, while schools linked to the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (Inder) and the Ministry of Culture will also finish very soon, although without a fixed date.
Schools, she insisted, will remain open in order to keep the most vulnerable students protected “and guarantee that they do not lose connection with their skills.” Children, the minister said in one of the most surprising phrases of the presentation, “have an exceptional opportunity on this Island full of opportunities and dreams that we all must protect.”
Schools, she insisted, will remain open in order to keep the most vulnerable students protected “and guarantee that they do not lose connection with their skills”
The Higher Education Minister recalled the difficulties of this school year “in which a large part of the university community has faced serious problems regarding connectivity and transportation, making it necessary in many cases to adopt hybrid and distance-learning modalities, with adjustments according to each person’s conditions and special attention to final-year students.”
There was no mention, however, of the days of conflict last March, when around fifty students staged a sit-in protest on the steps of the University of Havana and a police cordon prevented others from joining them. Baluja García went to speak with them to calm tensions, although discontent remained constant for several weeks over the hybrid system decreed for the current academic year. Students demanded suspension because of the impossibility of following normal learning, among other demands that went further, although in the end the authorities managed — once again, as during the protests over Etecsa’s 2025 rate hike — to resolve the situation behind closed doors.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
The Secretary of State sends a video to the population on the day when the criminal indictment against Raúl Castro will be officially announced
Screenshot of Marco Rubio’s video addressing Cubans, released by ‘Axios’. / Axios/ State Department
14ymedio, Madrid, 20 May 2026 / Anticipation is running high on a Cuban Independence Day that will see the US indict former president Raúl Castro, news that was already more than expected after it was leaked days ago, but which comes with a new development first thing in the morning. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has addressed some direct words to the Cuban people in a video obtained by Axios, the outlet that the regime has turned into its new bête noire because of the leaks it has published on relations between the two countries and the Donald Trump Administration’s plans for the Island.
“President Trump is offering a new relationship between the United States and Cuba. But it must be directly with you, the Cuban people, not with Gaesa,” Rubio says in the message, later published by the State Department.
Judging by the leaked content, Rubio does not say anything he has not said before, although what is new is that he addresses the population directly and does so on a date of special historical importance, both for the opposition, which regards it as its national holiday, and for the regime, which has demonized a date it identifies with the celebration of a “bourgeois republic.”
The US Secretary of State, who is of Cuban origin, aims all his fire at the military conglomerate Gaesa, which he repeatedly accuses of stealing. “The real reason you have no electricity, fuel or food is because those who control your country have looted billions of dollars, but none of it has been used to help the people,” he says. In his speech, he highlights the contrast between “the wealthy elites” who run Gaesa and a population living through “unimaginable hardships.” continue reading
“Cuba is not controlled by any ‘revolution’. Cuba is controlled by Gaesa,” he insists. The official also recalls that Washington has promised “one hundred million in food and medicines for you, the people,” which will be distributed by “the Catholic Church or charitable organizations,” without the government conglomerate being able to keep them in order to “sell them in one of its stores.”
Marco Rubio draws on the estimates he has used in recent days, according to which Gaesa has billions of dollars in assets, although a recent analysis by The Economist stated that the successive failures of recent years — especially in tourism — have ended up leaving its funds at no more than one billion, pushing it into a situation close to bankruptcy. The military conglomerate owns 70% of the Cuban economy — as the Secretary of State recalls — but that would be precisely what has led it to figures in free fall.
“The real reason you have no electricity, fuel or food is because those who control your country have looted billions of dollars, but none of it has been used to help the people”
“The real reason you have no electricity, fuel or food is because those who control your country have looted billions of dollars, but none of it has been used to help the people,” Rubio says in the speech, adding that “the only role played by the so-called government is to demand that you continue making ‘sacrifices’ and to repress anyone who dares to complain.”
However, a better future would await the population, he says, if change succeeds. “You, the ordinary Cuban, [have] the right to own a business, whether a gas station or a media company. A new Cuba where citizens can vote for their leaders and complain about a failed system, without fear of going to prison or being forced to leave the Island.”
Rubio believes that there is nothing that makes Cubans different, since they “have reached the top of practically every industry in every country, except one: Cuba.” And he argues that this “is not impossible.” “All this exists in the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and even just 90 miles away, in Florida. If it is possible to have your own business and have the right to vote near Cuba, why is it not possible in Cuba?”
The message comes to heat up the day on which the US Department of Justice will announce a criminal indictment against Raúl Castro over the shooting down of the planes belonging to the Brothers to the Rescue organization 30 years ago. The agency has summoned the media to Miami’s Freedom Tower at 1 p.m., where Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and the US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jason A. Reding Quiñones, will be present to make the announcement.
“Raúl has cultivated that loyalty every day which does not bend before either fatigue or hardship. That is why we love him as the steadfast patriot who teaches us to defend the Revolution, with tenderness and with a rifle, with study and with intelligence, with heads held high and hands extended”
The event will be historic for many Cuban exiles, although everything suggests that the US is trying, with this, to continue exerting pressure so that the regime gives way, and that it will not enter Cuba to arrest the ninety-something Castro. It is precisely his advanced age that the Union of Young Communists refers to today, having made public a statement — with an obvious whiff of a show of support on this day — to call for a march celebrating the 95 years that the former leader will turn on 3 June.
“Raúl has cultivated that loyalty every day which does not bend before either fatigue or hardship. That is why we love him as the steadfast patriot who teaches us to defend the Revolution, with tenderness and with a rifle, with study and with intelligence, with heads held high and hands extended,” the text reads. In the call, with references to the concept of “not giving up,” it asks that “this 95th be the enormous embrace for a dear friend and a leader proven in every trial.”
The statement has been circulated by an official press which, coincidentally, also today publishes a declassified US document showing that officials from the Federal Aviation Administration warned of the possible shooting down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996. “Someday the Cubans will shoot down one of these planes,” they wrote.
“The declassification comes amid a new political and media escalation surrounding that case,” says the text published by Cubadebate, without making any mention of Castro and the indictment that is on its way.
Translated by GH
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, May 23, 2026 / I need onions. I take advantage of the electricity and go down in the elevator, also carrying the garbage that has accumulated during the days of blackout on our 14th floor. On the corner, the bins are no longer visible because a mountain of waste has covered their blue plastic. Several wheels have also been ripped off to make wheelbarrows for hauling water. One has its plastic ripped lengthwise, the other has holes caused by the flames of some fire. Neither has a lid.
🖋️Author Julio M. Shiling
