Díaz-Canel gets tangled up in a quote about utopia in his eagerness to cover up the greatest setback in contemporary Cuba.
Díaz-Canel is the expendable face of a power structure that uses surnames with no history to protect the important surnames. / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, July 25, 2026 — Ever since his years leading the bureaucracy in Holguín, it was clear that Miguel Díaz-Canel was a failed leader. Farmers showed remarkable foresight when they nicknamed him “Díaz-Condom,” because he kept milk from entering the city. The theater company El Portazo also proved prophetic when, after his appointment as president, it dedicated the children’s song Little Mouse Miguel to him in Matanzas. One of its verses seems written to summarize these years of continuity: “Things are… so horrifying they truly inspire fear.”
Now memes have flooded social media over the mangled version the ruler made of a quote that, evidently, he did not even understand. In an interview with the Russian outlet RT, the sub-dictator tried to quote Eduardo Galeano, who in turn was repeating a reflection by Argentine filmmaker Fernando Birri. But Díaz-Canel’s version completely destroyed the meaning of utopia, as if the horizon itself had run away in terror from the monstrosity that was trying to reach it.
The blunder sparked ridicule because it came at the worst possible moment. It was uttered by the man who has spent eight years at the helm of a country where virtually everything has deteriorated dramatically. His continue reading
government does not need to take two steps forward for utopia to move ten steps away. It only has to announce an “economic measure.”
With 134,354 deaths, 2025 was the second deadliest year since records have been kept, surpassed only by 2021, the year of covid
Díaz-Canel inherited a dictatorship that was already dystopian. He was handed a ruined system, that is true, but he has demonstrated an extraordinary talent for making every inherited ruin even worse. Under his rule, the Tarea Ordenamiento [Ordering Task] was implemented, presented as the great solution to the “distortions” accumulated over decades. The result was the pulverization of wages and pensions, runaway inflation, the devaluation of the peso, and the consolidation of a caste economy in which some shop in foreign currency while others are left staring through store windows.
The hardest year of the pandemic, despite all the propaganda surrounding Cuba’s vaccine candidates, produced the highest death toll in the official Cuban statistical series published since 1970. But death did not retreat with the coronavirus. In 2025 it struck Cubans once again, although almost no one in the official narrative wants to talk about it. With 134,354 deaths, it was the second deadliest year in that series, surpassed only by 2021, the year of Covid. Continuity has failed to multiply the loaves and the fishes, but it has succeeded in multiplying the corpses.
The greatest feat of so-called “creative resistance” has been to switch off the country. The national power grid has collapsed so many times that it now seems to come back online only long enough to gather momentum before crashing again. Tourism began to sink even before the new sanctions imposed by the Trump administration. And foreign companies are leaving not only because they fear Washington, but also because they are tired of dealing with a State that does not pay its debts, freezes funds, and changes the rules as easily as its bureaucrats change their guayaberas.
The regime no longer promises to achieve anything. It only asks people to walk backward like crabs, to resist and wait for nothing like zombies
But Díaz-Canel will not be remembered solely for his economic failures. When thousands of Cubans took to the streets on 11 July 2021, demanding freedom, food, and electricity, he did not react like a president but like the leader of a gang. That was when he uttered his most authentic phrase: “The combat order is given.” What followed were beatings, arrests, show trials, excessive prison sentences, and exile.
That day made it clear what he was there for. Raúl Castro did not put him in office because he was bold, but because he was obedient. He needed someone willing to destroy an entire country rather than endanger the ruling caste. Díaz-Canel is the civilian fuse of a military machine, the expendable face of a power structure that uses surnames with no history to protect the important surnames.
That is why the utopia quote was not just another intellectual lemon. It was a confession. The regime no longer promises to achieve anything. It only asks people to walk backward like crabs, to resist and wait for nothing like zombies. It offers no deadlines, no results, and no direction. Its only goal is to prolong obedience and resignation.
Fernando Birri spoke of utopia as a horizon that compels us to keep walking. Galeano turned that idea into one of his most widely quoted reflections. Díaz-Canel transformed it into the bureaucratic excuse for decline. For him, utopia serves to keep the people wandering without asking who walked away with their shoes.
And what is dystopia for? To govern without results. To justify every failure with the previous failure. To call resignation hope, misery resistance, and collapse continuity. To drive horizons away. And, above all, to allow a man incapable of correctly repeating a simple quote to continue presenting himself as the president of a country that never elected him.
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.
Studies rule out the effectiveness of electronic repellents, bracelets, and citronella candles against insects.
Mosquito control campaigns, once a public health priority in Cuba, have lost effectiveness because of the economic crisis. / 14ymedio
14ymedio/SINC/Javier Yanes, Madrid, July 25, 2026 – Mosquitoes transmit about 78 diseases that, according to some estimates, cause up to one million deaths each year, 600,000 of them from malaria. In Cuba, where mosquito control campaigns were a public health priority for decades, the economic crisis and the deterioration of public services have weakened that response capacity.
The dengue and chikungunya epidemic that swept across the Island beginning in 2025 found favorable conditions due to the lack of fumigation, the accumulation of garbage, and difficulties in diagnosing and treating patients. In February of this year, the Pan American Health Organization reported two new chikungunya deaths in January, bringing the total number of deaths recorded by the organization to 67, along with 1,457 cases of the disease during that month.
How can we protect ourselves from mosquitoes? While science searches for new weapons against this pest, the best option remains to rely on methods whose effectiveness has been proven. Despite their popularity, this does not include certain remedies that have been shown to be useless. continue reading
DEET “remains the most widely used, the most effective, and the least expensive in the world”
During World War II, troops deployed in tropical regions suffered from mosquito-borne diseases. Sixty percent of U.S. soldiers in the Pacific contracted malaria, while another 5% came down with dengue. In total, 1.2 million suffered from one or both infections. Although mortality was low, the impact on military operations was so severe that it forced the U.S. government to seek solutions.
At the time, insect repellents such as citronella oil (lemongrass) were already in use, but they were not effective enough. Beginning in 1942, scientists such as chemist Samuel Gertler of the Department of Agriculture tested more than 7,000 compounds in search of new formulas to protect against insects. That was how Gertler discovered DEET (diethyltoluamide). Patented in 1946, after the war, it was kept as a closely guarded military secret until civilian use was authorized in 1957.
DEET has stood the test of time: eighty years later, it remains the benchmark repellent. “It is still the most widely used in the world, the most effective, and the least expensive,” Claudio Lazzari, a biologist specializing in disease-carrying insects at the University of Tours (France) and the University of Buenos Aires, told SINC.
Higher concentrations are recommended for regions at risk of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases
DEET is the reference standard against which any new candidate is measured. It is sold under numerous brand names and in different concentrations; higher concentrations provide longer-lasting protection, up to eight or nine hours, although protection does not appear to increase significantly beyond 50%. Higher concentrations are recommended for regions at risk of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases.
DEET’s long history also supports its safety, and it can even be used on babies as young as two months old. According to Lazzari, at very high concentrations, around 75%, “it has been associated with allergic reactions and some toxicity,” but “no commercial repellent contains that much in its formulation.”
In addition, although it is moderately harmful to aquatic organisms, it biodegrades slowly and therefore does not tend to accumulate.
In short, DEET is the closest thing we currently have to the perfect repellent. But it has one major drawback: it is unpleasant to use. Its oily texture leaves the skin greasy, and, even worse, it dissolves plastic, meaning it can damage many objects or materials that come into contact with the skin, including bracelets, sandals, watchbands, sunglasses, nail polish, or synthetic fabrics such as elastane or Lycra.
“Alternatives, especially natural ones, tend to be more expensive, provide less protection, and are not usually completely harmless”
This shortcoming of DEET leaves room for other options, although, Lazzari warns, “alternatives, especially natural ones, tend to be more expensive, provide less protection, and are not usually completely harmless.” These other repellents include traditional citronella oil, Merck’s IR3535, or distilled oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE), enriched with an active ingredient called para-menthane-3,8-diol (PMD). However, this is not the essential oil extracted directly from the plant, which is sometimes falsely marketed as a repellent.
However, study after study reaches the same conclusion: the protection provided by citronella oil and other plant oils fades quickly because of their high volatility, dropping by half after two hours, whereas DEET’s protection remains. Although PMD is an option, DEET’s strongest competitor is picaridin, also known as icaridin, developed by Bayer in the 1980s. It is the only repellent that has matched DEET’s performance in tests, without damaging plastics or leaving a greasy feel. Concentrations of 20% provide the same level of protection as DEET.
It is possible that new repellents will be discovered in the future, but this search faces a major obstacle: despite DEET’s long history, scientists have still not resolved exactly how it works. “There is no general model explaining why repellents repel,” Lazzari points out. There are at least three hypotheses, each supported by experimental evidence: “That they block mosquitoes’ ability to detect us, that they are toxic and affect the nervous system, and that mosquitoes smell them and avoid them.”
“The more we understand how mosquitoes process odors, the better we will be able to design more precise repellents”
This last idea is supported by a recent study led by Lazzari that revealed a surprising result: mosquitoes exposed to a puff of DEET while feeding can learn to associate its smell with food, causing the repellent to become an attractant for them.
It is the classic conditioning demonstrated by Pavlov’s dogs, which salivated in response to a stimulus associated with food. This indicates that, for mosquitoes, DEET’s action is not purely mechanical but also has a cognitive component.
Humanity’s battle against pests has repeatedly encountered this kind of obstacle: over time, one way or another, our enemies eventually find ways to resist, avoid, or tolerate the weapons we use against them.
Although DEET remains widely effective for now, “the fact that we do not know exactly why mosquito behavior changes in this way is a major obstacle to the search for new molecules,” says Lazzari.
In recent years, research has delved deeper into the mosquito’s systems that guide it toward humans, beginning with the odor of substances we emit, such as carbon dioxide from our breath, lactic acid, and other metabolic products and skin bacteria. “The more we understand how mosquitoes process odors, the better we will be able to design more precise repellents,” Floris van Breugel, a researcher at the University of Nevada, Reno, whose studies have shed light on this field, told SINC.
“The fact that we do not know exactly why mosquito behavior changes in this way is a major obstacle to the search for new molecules”
Researchers are therefore looking for compounds that interfere with mosquitoes’ sense of smell or confuse them, enhancing the effect of repellents. Although more extensive testing is still needed, substances have already been identified that provide longer-lasting protection than DEET.
According to Lazzari, this knowledge makes it possible to design “rational strategies,” such as the one he is developing through a collaborative project between Argentina and France. “The idea is to test molecules that are likely to trigger an avoidance response, such as bitter substances.”
Repellents are a primary resource in areas at risk of mosquito-borne diseases, but they are not the only means of personal protection. The most traditional basic measure is a physical barrier such as a mosquito net, especially one treated with widely available insecticides such as permethrin. The World Health Organization has recently added a new recommendation for malaria control: the use of so-called emanators, or spatial repellents, systems that gradually release insecticides into the air.
On the other hand, environmental concerns argue against ultraviolet mosquito lamps. Studies have shown that they attract very few mosquitoes but many beneficial insects, such as moths. In one sample, only 31 out of 13,789 insects killed in the trap were mosquitoes.
“Many of the products marketed as repellents that have been tested do not reduce mosquitoes’ attraction to humans.”
As for other types of measures, at best they may provide slight help; at worst, they are completely useless. One example is one of the most popular supposed mosquito defenses available in stores every summer: citronella candles. Although citronella oil works as a repellent when applied to the skin, there is absolutely no guarantee that burning wax mixed with this substance will repel insects.
In fact, it does not. A study by New Mexico State University comparing various mosquito control methods concluded that “the citronella candle has no effect whatsoever.” The authors added that “many of the products marketed as repellents that were tested do not reduce mosquitoes’ attraction to humans.”
Among these major failures are two other popular products: repellent bracelets and electronic ultrasonic mosquito repellents.
“Our hypothesis is that the concentrations released by the tested bracelets are too low to have any effect”
As for the bracelets, one study found a 30% reduction in bites when using a DEET-treated bracelet, but only on the arm wearing it. Regarding bracelets containing citronella or other plant extracts, the New Mexico study found no benefit.
“Our hypothesis is that the concentrations released by the tested bracelets are too low to have any effect,” the authors wrote, emphasizing that a compound that works in one form does not necessarily work when used differently—for example, a topical repellent incorporated into bracelets.
Even worse are electronic devices that claim to repel mosquitoes with ultrasound. Time and again, tests have shown that they do not deter mosquitoes at all.
“Field entomological studies confirm that electronic mosquito repellents have no effect whatsoever in preventing bites,” wrote the authors of a review of the available studies.
“Field entomological studies confirm that electronic mosquito repellents have no effect whatsoever in preventing bites”
The same applies to smartphone apps. According to the New Mexico study, any system claiming to repel mosquitoes with sound is “the modern equivalent of snake oil,” a reference to fraudulent remedies.
The list of false anti-mosquito claims is endless. For example, some people claim that certain foods or supplements, such as vitamin B1 (thiamine), yeast, or garlic, protect us from mosquito bites.
According to National Taiwan University entomologist Matan Shelomi, who reviewed the available studies, “the scientific consensus is unequivocal that oral repellents do not exist. Despite extensive searches, no food, supplement, medication, or condition has ever been proven to make people repellent to mosquitoes.” The New Mexico study also tested vitamin B1 patches applied to the skin. The verdict: they do not work either.
The same drawer of failed remedies also includes so-called repellent plants, as emphasized by medical entomologist Cameron Webb of the University of Sydney.
This expert also warns about mosquito-repellent clothing. Although garments treated with permethrin or other insecticides provide better protection than untreated clothing, “they are unlikely to prevent mosquito bites on exposed areas of the skin.” Furthermore, “after washing, any protection these garments provide is likely to decrease.” At the very least, covering the entire body remains a measure that never fails.
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.
A family can spend thousands of pesos before even getting close to the dolphins or seals
“Only people with remittance income can come here, because this is a palace of consumption./ 14ymedio
14ymedio, Havana, Juan Diego Rodríguez, July 25, 2026 / Hundreds of people were waiting this past Friday shortly before 10 a.m. for Cuba’s National Aquarium to open. The lack of small change was delaying ticket sales, heightening the anticipation. It had been a long time since the center, located in Havana’s Miramar neighborhood, drew such a crowd. The last time, in fact, that 14ymediovisited the site, it seemed unable to recover in any way from the decline into which it had fallen in recent years, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.
To breathe some life into it this summer, the State has carried out two strategies: concentrating visits into fewer days of the week – at first, only from Friday to Sunday, though starting next week Wednesdays will be included – and organizing a “festival” called Pa’ Cuba. It is run by Grupo Palco, the entity belonging to the military conglomerate Gaesa in charge of organizing fairs, sales, and exhibitions.
“Some people come here just to kill their hunger,” says one worker. / 14ymedio
And indeed, more visitors can be seen at the Aquarium, but in exchange, very little attention is paid to the animals. “There are people who haven’t even seen the fish yet, but they’re already in line for a cafeteria that sells bread with cheese for 150 pesos,” lamented one worker. “Some people come here just to kill their hunger,” she admitted candidly.
The kiosks selling all kinds of goods and food, as well as the tents with the most varied attractions, were indeed more appealing – provided, of course, that one was willing to part with cash.
Tartlets for 700 pesos, lemonade for 1,000 pesos, or a frappuccino for 2,800 were some of the prices in the food area. “And sugarcane juice, 300, 400, and 500 pesos,” noted a retiree who had brought her grandchildren to spend the day. And she complained: “They’re really squeezing continue reading
people dry here.”
“All you can do is touch them, nothing more.” With payment required beforehand, of course: 1,300 pesos, for example, to interact with the sea lion. / 14ymedio
Rather than the country’s main center for marine species research, it was a genuine variety fair. At the stalls one could see anything from sneakers for 26,500 pesos to dolls priced between 4,000 and 10,000 pesos, as well as Bluetooth speakers for 19,500 pesos or knockoff soccer jerseys – including an old one from Spain, the reigning World Cup champion – for 20,000 pesos.
Some of the stalls, a knowledgeable visitor noted, “belong to private vendors.” At these, one could pay in either pesos or dollars.
As for the attractions for children, they weren’t cheap either: 300 pesos for the mechanical bull, 500 pesos for the zip line, 850 for face painting, 1,500 pesos for tattoos, 3,000 pesos for an hour… Didn’t the Aquarium have dolphin and seal shows? “Not right now,” answered a worker. “All you can do is touch them, nothing more.” With payment required beforehand, of course: 1,300 pesos, for example, to interact with the sea lion.
While the food and recreation areas were packed, the corridors with the fish tanks looked empty. / 14ymedio
None of that was reflected in the words of Mabel Góngora Leal, head of the Aquarium’s Marketing and Communications department, when she announced the opening of the Pa’ Cuba festival in the state media on June 18. “The aquarium is a scientific, educational, and recreational center, and environmental education is essential here,” the official said. In the same forum, Góngora acknowledged that the place had been “depressed” and that it had nearly “hit rock bottom,” although, she added, “we never closed,” and she expressed satisfaction over the “small” recovery in visitor numbers they were seeing.
Some visitors did not agree with this view. “This place is here to raid people’s pockets,” said a Centro Habana resident who had come to the Aquarium with her mother and her two children to relieve the children’s boredom. Transportation to get there cost them 13,500 pesos, on top of which the family had to pay for tickets – 150 pesos for adults and 50 for children. “We don’t have much left to enjoy, and without money you can barely do anything.”
“This place is here to raid people’s pockets.” / 14ymedio
Lydia, another Havana resident, agrees, with one caveat: “It’s a good entertainment option for the kids, because in the end there aren’t many options for them right now, not to say there are none at all. The children are locked up at home all day, suffering through blackouts and water shortages.” Still, she conceded: “Only people with remittance income can come here, because this is a palace of consumption.”
While the food and recreation areas were packed, the corridors with the fish tanks looked empty. Workers were filling the sea turtles’ tank, the turtles hidden from the sun beneath a rock in the meantime. They had emptied it, an employee explained to this newspaper, to remove the leaves and seeds that fall from the trees. “Now we’re filling it back up.”
Once they had finished their breakfast, visitors began walking through those areas as well. A father, trying to be funny, said to his son: “The fish look good enough to eat.” There was still hunger there.
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.
From the U.S., the artist and activist looks back on the physical shock of freedom, the impact of his confinement in Guanajay, and his unshaken conviction to return to the island
Artist and activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, in exile in Miami. / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Miami, July 24, 2026 / On July 11, 2021, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara went out into the streets of Havana with barely 20 pesos in his pocket and the determination to join the popular uprising that shook the island. He did not get far: he was arrested before joining the march and taken to the maximum-security prison in Guanajay. There he served a full five-year prison sentence, subjected to isolation, the harsh conditions of political imprisonment, and constant psychological harassment from the Cuban regime.
The artist landed in the United States six days ago, where he was taken as a condition of his release, far from his homeland, his home in San Isidro, and his son.
Question. After five years imprisoned and cut off from the outside world, what has that immediate collision with physical freedom been like? What was the first thing you felt or thought when you set foot outside Cuba?
Answer. It’s a stage, a transition. Tomorrow it will be a week since I arrived in the United States, and in this transition the hardest thing for me has been adapting to freedom. It’s like learning to walk again. The light, the beauty… At first you walk down the streets and everything is beautiful, but not everything beautiful is yours, or not everything beautiful can you touch.
The matter of time, the fact that five minutes aren’t really five minutes, or the relationship with transportation, how to get from one place to another, which can seem close and at the same time very far. Even the relationship with aesthetics: how you come out of a situation where you’re dressed in gray 24/7, and for five years you don’t dress differently nor do you have any reason to – neither you nor your physical, aesthetic, intellectual, political body has to interact in any way other than dressed in gray – and when you arrive here that contrast is insane.
“There are moments when I feel like something is missing or something is too much.”
There are moments when I feel like something is missing or something is too much. I went into prison wearing a face mask, because of COVID. I compare the feeling of being without a mask to freedom of expression. You feel like something was taken from your mouth, from your eyes, something you used to have in Cuba that you no longer have here, because you spent five years unable to speak, unable to say things.
Question. You were locked up in Guanajay, a prison whose conditions have been denounced as extreme and inhumane. There you shared imprisonment with many of the young people from July 11. What were you able to see and learn about how they are living through their confinement, what is their physical and emotional state, what do people suffer inside that prison?
Answer. The first thing: when I arrived, I felt my body shut down. I was overwhelmed with emotions. First, getting out of that confinement, the first confinement, which was in Guanajay, then the second confinement, which was the State Security safe house near Guanabo beach.
Then, going through all the stress before the airport. Then getting on a plane, flying 45 minutes, and arriving in the United States. And in that moment there is so much information in so little time. I meet Claudia Genlui, the first of my friends I see up close. But I was seeing so many people moving around, so many things my body had left behind for five years. So my body shut down. Then I go out and there’s a crowd of people with cameras, listening to what I have to say. Among those cameras, you see friends, you see faces, you see people from your childhood.
“I was seeing so many people moving around, so many things my body had left behind for five years. So my body shut down.”
And in that span of time, if your body had responded to all those emotions, it could have collapsed. That’s why, little by little, it has been opening up, letting the information through.
In fact, with my friends it’s been little by little: at first I spoke with two, then I spoke with four, then I spoke with six, then I spoke with ten, and so on, little by little, I’ve been incorporating more friends into my routine, because it’s impossible to talk to all my friends from the first day without collapsing, without crying, without going into shock. Little by little my body has lost that rigidity.
Prison is a different experience for each individual. Even the violence experienced inside is a completely different kind of violence.
For example, there were a lot of people from July 11 who were released on a kind of parole, and many went back to prison for not following the script the regime set for them. I served the full five years. There are many types of imprisonment and many types of relationships inside, where many of the young people or the people who went out on the 11th weren’t even activists or political people. They were young people who simply went out to fight for their freedom, for Cuba’s freedom.
A young man named Denis came to me – he was released under a kind of conditional freedom that required him to keep his mouth shut, work for them, and take a certain stance, and when he failed to comply, they sent him back to prison.
“A trip of 20 kilometers can cost a fortune in pesos, so not every prisoner in the world has someone who can come see them, or bring them a little food.”
In there, there are also many types of imprisonment depending on the level of attention received. Many prisoners are kept in conditions that allow their families to visit. But today a trip of 20 kilometers can cost a fortune in pesos, so not everyone has someone who can come see them, not everyone has someone to bring them a little food. And not all political prisoners have outside attention or help from friends.
But prison for everyone is confinement in an extremely difficult situation. When you look at people’s faces, even the faces of those who are there because they committed a crime, you see sad faces, faces in which you can make out a feeling that doesn’t belong to any reality other than confinement.
Question. Prison in Cuba is designed to break the spirit, especially that of an artist. In what ways did they try to break you? Where did you find the strength to hold on for these five years, and how did you manage to keep your creative capacity alive inside prison?
Answer. Prison, and political prison even more so, is one of the most aberrant things human beings – in this case, dictatorships – have invented. It’s extremely hard to explain the human and personal experience of being locked behind bars, in a space where you cannot move, on top of every kind of deprivation. Having another human being decide for you, like what time you see your children, how long you see them, or what you’re allowed to say.
In my case, I feel the regime knew… Remember that the regime has a psychological profile on me and knows what things matter to me, what motivates me, and the things I cannot live without.
There was an incident at Calixto García Hospital [in May 2021], during which they saw the effect it had on me when they destroyed five or six of my paintings. That’s how they build a psychological profile. Coming from that experience, it seems they realized that if they didn’t let me paint, I would die, so they allowed materials to be brought in and let me paint.
There was a time when I was in the punishment cell (one of the many times I was) and I made a particular kind of painting, a very dark one. They confiscated that piece, examined it, and never gave it back to me. From that moment on, I was never sent to the punishment cell again. It seems they saw something there that they didn’t want to leave me alone with, so I could decide things for myself, because human creativity outstrips man’s surveillance.
“I think the strength came from my DNA, that heritage of the mixture of Black African, Spanish, and Arab blood. Did you know my last name, Alcántara, means ‘bridge’?”
I think the strength came from my DNA – the DNA my mother and father gave me, my family heritage. That heritage of the mixture of Black African, Spanish, and Arab blood. Did you know my last name, Alcántara, means “bridge”? That Alcántara had to come from somewhere.
My creative strength was nothing more than an exercise in resistance and a portrait of pain; at first it was like vomiting, like screaming. The horrible place where I was spoke to me from every direction, everything around me was begging me to depict it on a sheet of paper, on a piece of cardboard.
There’s a point where I say I could have had, say, a camera, as a metaphor. And a photograph wasn’t going to capture everything that was captured in the painting, because painting is something you touch.
Something that carries the tactile experience, the organic experience; it’s like when you’re working with ceramics and you’re touching it. That ceramic, at some point, receives heat, receives all the spiritual, physical, and chemical experiences that come with it.
And painting is the same way. Painting is so organic and clings so closely to reality that it’s capable of capturing experiences that a lens, for example, cannot capture. In that moment, everything around me… I was like in a trance. It was as if it passed through me and had to come out, it was inevitable to put it onto the cardboard, otherwise my head would explode.
Question. You’ve always said your body and your work are inseparable. How did your relationship with art change during your confinement? Do you feel that the Luis Manuel who comes out today is the same artist who went into Guanajay in 2021?
Answer. Yes, I do believe I’m the same Luis Manuel. Now, there’s an important word when you talk to me about coming out of prison as a different Luis Manuel: I do believe I’m the same person, what happens is that there are processes of maturity. One understands maturity by living through maturity. Prison is an extremely violent, extremely aggressive exercise.
When you look into the eyes of people who have committed crimes that are extremely hard to understand, and despite that you manage to see the face of a sad human being, that sensitizes you even if you don’t understand things, it makes you feel more human.
“It wasn’t a youthful protest, it wasn’t an adolescent experience, it’s an adult experience, it’s fighting for others, sacrificing yourself for others so that the world can be a better place.”
And especially when you come out understanding other political, ideological, and human processes: you don’t come out hating, you don’t come out with that darkness. That lets you see, it illuminates you, and in that illumination you’re more human. You reaffirm to yourself your love for humanity; you feel it wasn’t a youthful protest, it wasn’t an adolescent experience, it’s an adult experience, it’s fighting for others, sacrificing yourself for others so that the world can be a better place.
My relationship with art had a moment, for example, with the piece of the Virgin they commissioned from me for Santiago de Cuba, where my body went out walking, and along the way I began to understand the aesthetic dimension of the act of walking, where people saw not just a work of art but a real pilgrimage, and processes happened there that were, for me, a kind of illumination.
In prison I was like a camera, a kind of stack of paper, and reality was a stack for screen printing or woodcut printing. I would simply take the cardboard, press it against reality, and when I lifted it, these figures would come out. I still live with a lot of unanswered questions and answers that I myself give to reality; coming from there, that place spoke to me constantly, and I simply wrote down in colors each experience or each question I had inside, or that someone asked me to depict.
Question. For the regime, exile is a tool for dismantling the opposition and cultural movement. How do you process this forced banishment? Do you feel that leaving was the only possible path at this moment?
Answer. The regime, within its military mathematical codes, has always understood exile as the next step, because in some way it worked for them for 70 years. They see death as the last step, but they know the cost it carries.
In the case of someone like me, as an activist and artist, it’s a different process. I didn’t want to go into exile, I didn’t want to leave Cuba, because of the love I have for that reality, because I love always returning to my home, to my son, to the place where I scattered my mother’s and father’s ashes. That place is mine and no one is going to take it from me.
Now, in my thinking as an activist there’s something important: what is the next step in the evolution of activism itself so that Cuba can move toward democracy? We went through the confinement in San Isidro, the persecution, and all those experiences, and each one led to a social evolution.
“When I was arrested, I was given the option to leave; I could have left the next day, and I decided not to, that it was an experience of civic resistance I had to go through.”
When I ended up in prison, I could have stayed a prisoner and remained a victim of Castroism (which I still am), but I felt that no longer interested me or produced anything. When I was arrested, I was given the option to leave; I could have left the next day, and I decided not to, that it was an experience of civic resistance I had to go through. Who are you not to go through political imprisonment?
Having gone through that, and making the decision not to leave in those first months, helped me understand a reality. If we ask ourselves, on a spiritual level, why I had to be there, I understood it was to grasp the suffering of confinement and of the prisoner, both political and common.
Question. The San Isidro Movement and the spirit of July 11 marked a turning point on the island, but today much of that generation is in exile or under repression. From your perspective, where does the fight for Cuba’s freedom stand today?
Answer. I believe the fight for Cuba’s freedom has to be creative and has to constantly rethink itself in the face of new challenges. Fifteen years ago I was afraid to put a sculpture in the middle of a park. I would arrive at the Capitolio, put up an elephant, and I’d be terrified. I kept evolving as repression increased, but that creativity of mine never stopped existing.
There was a time when, locked in my house, unable to go out and do a public performance, the chocolate paintings stirred up thoughts to such a degree that they had to come in and destroy them. Then I went through Calixto García Hospital and later through prison, always proposing creative experiences.
I don’t think we should do the same thing San Isidro did, because we’re not in the times when San Isidro was born. We’re in a time when the situation and the repression in Cuba are extremely difficult, and we as creative beings must respond creatively. Right now I’m in exile: exile is going to speak to me and I’m going to respond to it, Cuban reality is going to speak to me from here and I’m going to respond to it, and all of that is going to be the new experience.
Question. What remains today of the San Isidro Movement?
Answer. For now, what remains of San Isidro are the human beings who are going to reunite at some point, we’ll embrace each other and see what the next step is at the level of collective experience.
There will come a time when I’ll sit down with the founders of San Isidro and we’ll see what’s left of that feeling and energy that united us. It may be that we decide San Isidro fulfilled its mission and can’t go any further, or it may evolve. That’s a decision that we, the people who built it, will make, because I’m not going to claim San Isidro as my own, nor am I the owner of anything; San Isidro was an energy that arose from the collective.
Question. Will your art continue down the activist path?
Answer. Yes, of course. I’m going to keep going down the activist path. There were times when I couldn’t sleep; things happened around me that forced me to tell their stories because they were voiceless beings. In Guanajay there were deaths and crimes that stayed there and that no one knows about, innocent people whom the surrounding environment itself pushed to be there.
“There are a lot of experiences I feel responsible for and wasn’t going to leave behind.”
There are a lot of experiences I feel responsible for and wasn’t going to leave behind. My paintings aren’t only going to be for sale, they’re going to be to make people think and to change a lot of social attitudes.
Question. In Cuba there are still hundreds of political prisoners and a population suffocated by the crisis and under heavy surveillance. What message do you send to those who are still resisting inside the island and to the families of those imprisoned?
Answer. The message to the families, to the people fighting inside, and to the prisoners is that institutions, dictatorships, and democracy are created by human beings. No one should think things are going to fall from the sky: we have to create them ourselves. And one important thing is that sacrifice is necessary.
Question. Exile forces you to rebuild from scratch, both personally and creatively. Where are your steps and your work headed now, in this new stage? Why Miami?
Answer. I decided to go into exile because today activists and journalists living abroad have a level of influence inside Cuba, and that distance no longer exists.
I understood that inside Cuba you spend more than 70% or 80% of your energy dealing with repression: hiding, going from one holding cell to another… All of that takes away creative time, and what interests us far more is creating rather than being victims. We’re going to keep pursuing the goal and the project.
“I’m going to respond with my artistic, political, cultural, physical self as it adapts to this reality. I’m never going to pretend.”
Exile really is a space to start from zero. I think this is the simplest answer I can give you: I’m going to respond with my artistic, political, cultural, physical self as it adapts to this reality. I’m never going to pretend; right now I’m not going to start painting who knows what, I don’t even know what’s going to happen.
And what’s going to come out of this collision of mine with exile, which is part of Cuba… We’ve been here barely ten days and we’ve already started stirring up controversy. You know, controversy follows us, but from controversy you also learn that reality evolves.
This exile that is happening right now, and that millions of people have lived through for 70 years, is going to give me raw material to express myself, to change, to produce things. Guanajay gave me an experience of confinement that, of course, I couldn’t paint the same way right now, and exile gives me this other thing, above all the distance from Cuba: how, even from here, I can still help make Cuba freer and help Cubans here be freer.
I’m going to flow, and honestly I’m going to let myself be carried by the aesthetic, biological, artistic, political, and cultural experience of exile.
Question. We’ve already seen you in photos walking around Miami, in iconic places like Versailles. After years of confinement, isolation, and harassment, how are people receiving you when they recognize you on the street, and what does it feel like to receive that affection in freedom?
Answer. Do you know what surprised me the most? Walking down the streets, having 60-, 70-, or 80-year-old men and women recognize you and give you a hug, admire you… You know, one comes from a place where creating is neither complicated nor a difficult challenge.
But you walk down the streets and you realize that these elderly folks who have been here for 30, 40, or 50 years hug you, and in that hug they pass on to you their hopes of returning to Cuba even if just once. That’s wonderful, it’s spectacular.
Question. If you go back to Cuba, what do you imagine yourself doing?
Answer. I’m going to go back to Cuba, of course. You know me. I’m going to go back to Cuba, and when I do, we’ll see what Cuba needs and what we can offer it. What I am sure of, though, is that today, tomorrow, and always I’m going to have a pencil, a pen, some ink, a bit of color to make art, or some sequins to put on a performance. We’re super connected and persistent.
Translated by GH
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Is Washington Prepping Public Opinion for Military Action Against Castroism?
The CubanAmerican Voice, Julio M. Shiling, July 24, 2026 / The United States appears to be doing something that previous administrations rarely attempted systematically. It is educating the American public about the strategic nature of Castro- Communism and its decades-long role in advancing Marxist revolutionary movements throughout the Western Hemisphere and beyond. It is not treating Cuba merely as a human rights problem. Nor is it pitching the issue as a bilateral dispute dating back to the Cold War. Recent actions by the Trump Administration increasingly frame the Cuban communist regime as an enduring national security threat to the United States itself.
The State Department’s July 2026 report, Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism, documents that record with unusual clarity. It assembles, in one comprehensive document, evidence accumulated over decades concerning Havana’s support for revolutionary organizations, intelligence operations, terrorist groups, propaganda networks, and ideological movements dedicated to undermining democratic institutions. Much of this information has long existed within academic literature, intelligence assessments, congressional investigations, and declassified government records. What is new is that the U.S. government has consolidated these findings into an official narrative intended for public consumption.
For most Americans, Cuba remains frozen in time—a poor Caribbean dictatorship sustained by Soviet nostalgia and economic failure. Few understand that, from the early years of Fidel Castro’s revolution, Havana deliberately transformed itself into the world’s premier exporter of Marxist revolution. Throughout Latin America, Castro’s regime financed, trained, armed, and advised guerrilla movements that sought to overthrow democratic governments. Cuban intelligence developed close operational relationships with the Soviet KGB and later cultivated strategic alliances with dictatorial governments hostile to the United States.
Less understood is communist Cuba’s persistent effort to influence political developments within the United States itself. Over several decades, Havana sought to cultivate relationships with revolutionary organizations, activist networks, intellectual continue reading
circles, and ideological movements whose objectives aligned with weakening American influence or advancing anti-capitalist political causes. The State Department’s report argues that this activity formed part of a long- term strategy rather than isolated episodes of Cold War opportunism. Whether one agrees with every conclusion in the report or not, it unmistakably reframes Cuba as an active ideological combatant rather than merely a passive totalitarian state.
On July 23, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced additional sanctions pursuant to Executive Order 14404, targeting entities and individuals involved in financing the Castro regime through sectors including energy, financial services, and the overseas medical labor program. The administration characterized these labor-export arrangements as exploitative practices that generate billions of dollars for the regime while denying Cuban medical professionals fundamental labor rights that international organizations have repeatedly condemned.
These measures are not isolated economic penalties. They fit within a broader campaign that increasingly portrays Castro-Communism as a hostile state apparatus whose activities extend well beyond repression inside Cuba. Executive Order 14404 itself identifies the Cuban government’s conduct as an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. This presidential decree, it must be remembered, authorizes sanctions against foreign people and institutions that materially support the regime.
Viewed together, the report, the executive order, and the expanding sanctions regime suggest a coordinated effort to reshape public understanding of Cuba. Rather than emphasizing humanitarian concerns alone, Washington is constructing a historical and strategic case that correctly portrays Castro-Communism as an enduring adversary engaged in decades of ideological warfare against the United States and the broader Western democratic order.
Whether this effort ultimately serves primarily as justification for stronger economic pressure, broader diplomatic isolation, or additional coercive measures remains uncertain. Governments often build public understanding before undertaking significant shifts in foreign policy, particularly when national security considerations are involved. Establishing the historical record can itself become part of preparing the political environment for future decisions.
While this does not necessarily mean military action is imminent, it does signal a seminal departure from inside-the-box prescriptions to solve the decades-long Cuban communist threat. It is reasonable to observe that administrations frequently seek to explain why a foreign regime constitutes a strategic threat before adopting substantially more forceful policies. The present campaign appears designed to persuade Americans that Castro-Communism is not simply an internal Cuban problem but a continuing source of regional instability and anti-American subversion.
Critics will argue that additional sanctions merely repeat policies that have failed for decades. Supporters respond that sanctions alone have never been accompanied by a comprehensive effort to expose the regime’s international revolutionary infrastructure and ideological operations. They contend that the current strategy seeks to redefine the debate by focusing not only on Cuba’s domestic repression but also on its long record of exporting Marxist and Neo-Marxist revolutionary doctrine. It also involves collaborating with governments and movements hostile to the United States.
If that assessment proves correct, then the State Department’s report may ultimately be remembered less for the information it contains than for the strategic purpose it serves. It signals that Washington increasingly views Castro-Communism not as a relic of the Cold War but as a continuing geopolitical actor whose influence extends beyond Cuba’s shores. By documenting that history in an official government publication and coupling it with progressively stronger sanctions, the administration appears intent on building a broad public understanding of the regime’s long-term challenge to American national security.
Whether this evolving strategy culminates in intensified economic pressure, expanded international coordination, or other forms of coercive statecraft remains to be seen. What is already evident is that the United States is attempting to redefine how Americans understand the Cuban communist regime—from an impoverished dictatorship surviving on inertia to a revolutionary state whose ideological ambitions and international activities continue to carry strategic consequences for the United States and the Western Hemisphere. The evidence Cuban insiders knew for decades is now popularly accessible in an undisputable United States government format. This is most welcome indeed!
Experts agree that private investment and the diaspora will be essential to modernizing the island after a democratic transition.
The forum ‘Rebuilding Cuba’s Infrastructure as Part of the Transition to Democracy’, organized in Miami. / El Nuevo Herald / Pedro Portal
14ymedio, Havana, July 24, 2026 / Decades of neglect have left Cuba with an obsolete and deeply decayed infrastructure. Rebuilding it will be the main challenge facing a future democratic transition, according to specialists gathered at the forum “Reconstruction of Cuba’s Infrastructure as Part of the Transition to Democracy” held on July 22 at the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora in Miami.
Cuban-American academics, business leaders, engineers, and architects analyzed a hierarchy of urgent needs—electricity, water, sanitation, transportation, and connectivity—and proposed recovery strategies that, above all, will depend on creating a legal framework capable of attracting private investment and facilitating the participation of the Cuban diaspora. This was emphasized especially by economist Rafael Romeu, president of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy.
Romeu proposed an initial phase of humanitarian aid aimed at sustaining basic services and responding immediately to the urgent social situation: the deterioration of the electrical grid, the water supply, and the healthcare system. The analyst noted that Cuba does not have immediate access to aid from organizations like the International Monetary Fund, from which it withdrew in 1964. “Waiting for international organizations could lead to chaos and suffering for the Cuban population, who would have to face worsening hyperinflation, dollarization in the black market, and the collapse of essential services.”
“Waiting for international organizations could lead to chaos and suffering for the Cuban population.”
Romeu insisted that the recovery will depend on a combination of public and private resources, with private investment as the main driver. Among his stabilization measures is the dollarization of the economy, a proposal he believes would curb inflation and dismantle the distortions that currently continue reading
fuel the informal market.
The reconstruction of Cuba, in any case, would cost billions of dollars, and that’s where “the venture capitalists” would come in, according to Romeu, who also pointed to tourism as one of the activities with the greatest potential for attracting capital. The economist estimated that an open Cuba with adequate infrastructure could receive between seven and ten million visitors a year.
For his part, Jorge Piñón, a researcher at the Austin Energy Institute at the University of Texas, addressed his area of expertise. “Without energy, there is no country,” he affirmed. For him, the immediate priority is to ensure a reliable and clean energy supply, essential both for daily life and for attracting investment.
As he told 14ymedioin an interview, Piñón is committed to expanding the use of natural gas, which Cuba already extracts in Canasí and Puerto Escondido, and complementing it with solar energy and ethanol produced from sugarcane. His proposal involves gradually abandoning crude oil refining and transforming existing refineries into open-access fuel storage and distribution terminals. According to the expert, this conversion would avoid the high costs of modernizing aging facilities, reduce pollution, and facilitate competition among suppliers.
The expert explained that although Cuba has 59 treatment plants, many barely function or do so with low efficiency.
With regards to the water crisis also affecting the island, engineer José Enrique Cueto, former director of the Miami-Dade Water and Sewerage Department, spoke. The expert explained that although Cuba has 59 treatment plants, many are barely functioning or operating at low capacity due to a lack of chemicals, equipment, pumps, and adequate filters. He advised that the use of chlorine gas as the primary disinfectant adds risks due to its toxicity. Furthermore, an insufficient sewer system forces a large part of the population to rely on septic tanks.
Cueto proposed starting by restoring pumping, drinking water treatment, and pipelines, prioritizing hospitals, densely populated cities, and vulnerable communities. He estimated two to five years for basic rehabilitation, up to ten for modernization, and more than a decade to expand wastewater infrastructure, industrial capacity, and agricultural supply. This is not, therefore, a quick fix, but a long-term national program.
Transportation in Cuba has also suffered from severe deterioration for decades. Carlos Peñín, founder of CAP Government and former president of the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority, stated that 70% of Cuban roads are in poor condition. The Central Highway and the National Highway—unfinished for decades—reflect the neglect of a network where fatal accidents are frequent and vehicles, carts, and pedestrians coexist without minimum safety conditions. According to Peñín, there is potential for transportation development on the island, but a significant investment would be needed for it to have an economic impact.
Regarding port infrastructure, experts noted that Cuba has 30 ports, including Mariel, but cautioned that many require comprehensive modernization. Even so, they highlighted the potential for reviving cruise tourism and leveraging the reconstruction of the transportation system to incorporate the most advanced technologies from the outset.
Lebeña stated that the transition to a modern telecommunications network, including 5G technology, could be completed in less than three years.
Willy Bermello, president of Bermello Ajamil & Partners, estimated that modernizing Cuban airports and bringing them up to international standards would require between $8 billion and $10 billion over 15 years.
Jesús Lebeña, vice president of corporate operations at MasTec Communications Group, addressed the topic of telecommunications. In his view, a Cuba in transition should guarantee unrestricted access for the entire population to voice, messaging, and data services with international connectivity.
Lebeña stated that the transition to a modern telecommunications network, including 5G technology, could be completed in less than three years if Cuba connects via fiber optic cables to the US and other countries and opens the sector to competitive bidding among international companies. According to him, this would lower service costs for consumers and allow the entry of satellite internet platforms like Starlink, currently prohibited on the island. In that scenario, Cuba could even aspire to become a regional data center.
In conclusion, Marcell Felipe, president of the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora, maintained that the talent and capital of the exile community exist, but their participation will depend on a change of government in Cuba and the creation of rules that guarantee economic freedom, competition, and legal security. According to the specialists gathered at the forum, post-Castro Cuba will inherit a devastated infrastructure and an exhausted population. The question will no longer be whether the country will need aid, but rather which institutions will be prepared to administer it without repeating the monopolies, improvisation, and opacity that led to the current crisis.
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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.
So far, only Bruno Rodríguez has spoken out: “an attack on the human right to access health care for hundreds of thousands of people in many parts of the world”
“We urge governments to pay doctors directly for their services, not the regime’s slave drivers,” the statement emphasized / PL
14ymedio, Madrid, July 24, 2026 / The Cuban regime’s response to the most recent round of sanctions announced by the U.S. has been, so far, more restrained than the previous one. Neither Miguel Díaz-Canel nor Manuel Marrero—the president and prime minister, respectively—have spoken out, nor has the person directly affected, Health Minister José Ángel Portal Miranda.
Bruno Rodríguez has been tasked with issuing the main statement of condemnation via his X account, where he denounced what he considers “an attack on the human right to access health services for hundreds of thousands of people in many parts of the world.” Some of the measures are directed against the Cuban Medical Services Marketing Company, S.A. (CSMC) and the Central Unit for Medical Cooperation (UCCM), as well as Gretza Sánchez Padrón, director of the latter, and Portal Miranda.
“They are punishing Cuba for providing a humane and compassionate service that has been recognized by the international community. This is being done by the government of the world’s richest country, which is determined to deny that basic human right to tens of millions of its own citizens,” the foreign minister argued, referring to a free and universal public health system, although part of the sanctions are specifically directed at the company that sells health services for foreign currency, both domestically to tourists and abroad to governments.
“They are punishing Cuba for providing a humane and compassionate service that has been recognized by the international community”
CSMC operates in medical tourism—offering packages that include medical treatment, wellness, and natural therapies—sells university programs, provides healthcare at border crossings (ports and airports), organizes scientific events, forges biotechnology partnerships, and, most importantly, exports doctors to other countries upon payment. continue reading
In contrast, the sanctions against UCCM do affect services linked to humanitarian work, such as the Henry Reeve Brigade, or the commercial management of medical missions in foreign countries. This department is responsible for mobilizing its response to emergencies, as well as for the selection, training, and deployment of international missions. In this regard, it is held responsible for the conditions under which Cuban doctors live, including restrictions on socializing, curfews, and—far more seriously—the withholding of passports.
“Every act of aggression by the U.S. government—such as the measures announced on July 23 by the Secretary of State—demonstrates that the objective is to impose collective punishment on the entire Cuban people. Although the U.S. government continues to deny the existence of the economic blockade against Cuba, it is finding it increasingly difficult to hide its genocidal intentions and its desire to provoke a humanitarian crisis,” Rodríguez protested.
Although the foreign minister focused on medical services, just as—if not more—worrisome for the population are the new sanctions against the port of Mariel, which expand upon the existing ones. Until June, the terminal was operated by the company Terminal de Contenedores de Mariel S.A., owned by Gaesa, but when the military conglomerate was sanctioned, the state transferred control to two new entities: Coral Marítima S.A., which took over the assets, and the Grupo Empresarial de Transporte Marítimo Portuario (Gemar), which controls the country’s port infrastructure, ships, freight, and maritime logistics operations.
On July 13, the U.S. Department of State included these two companies in its previous round of sanctions. But now, it has added the original company, Terminal de Contenedores Mariel, on the grounds that all three are responsible for a scheme to circumvent the sanctions. This closes any legal loophole for sanctioning the port through which approximately 85% of the goods received by the island pass, according to data from the Ministry of Transportation, the port operator PSA International, and the State Department’s own assessment.
Major shipping companies, such as France’s CMA CGM and Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd—which, according to two Reuters analysts, account for approximately 60% of cargo bound for Cuba—had already ceased operations in anticipation of these measures. Currently, as reported by Medicuba, ten containers holding medical supplies and medications are being held by these companies in ports in Jamaica and Colombia, while food is beginning to run short.
Ten containers of medical supplies and medications are being held by these companies in ports in Jamaica and Colombia, while food is beginning to run short.
Ernesto Soberón, Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations, took the opportunity to denounce the new measures during a debate on Thursday at the UN dedicated to “strengthening mechanisms for the peaceful settlement of disputes.”
“Preventing conflicts requires full respect for the United Nations Charter, international law, and the sovereign equality of states. I denounced the intensification of the U.S. blockade against Cuba, the energy siege, and the use of unilateral coercive measures, which contradict the principles of peaceful coexistence and pose a threat to regional and international peace and security,” he said. At the same time, he affirmed that the regime remains open to serious and respectful dialogue.
The announcement of new sanctions, which also affect other entities in the energy and financial sectors, coincides with recent remarks by the U.S. Secretary of State, who spoke in Manila, where he was attending the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit. There, when asked about Cuba, Rubio stated that talks with the regime are continuing to see “what kind of changes they can make.” “We are willing to be very realistic and patient about how. A serious process is needed to bring that about,” he added, offering the carrot just hours before delivering another stick.
Translated by GH.
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Moisés David Torres Puig, from Las Tunas and named the best goalkeeper in the 2024 National Championship, left the delegation.
The departure is the first known defection from the Cuban delegation during the Santo Domingo Games. / / Facebook / DPorto Sports News
14ymedio, Havana, July 24, 2026 / Field hockey goalkeeper Moisés David Torres Puig left the Cuban delegation participating in the Central American and Caribbean Games in Santo Domingo on Friday, just hours before the tournament’s official opening ceremony and without having played a single match.
The departure of the athlete, a native of Las Tunas and the youngest member of the men’s national team, was revealed by sports journalist Yasel Porto, who said he had received an audio message from the player himself and confirmed the case with sources close to the delegation.
According to Porto’s account, Torres Puig took advantage of the fact that the men’s team was at a stadium watching a match involving the women’s national team. The goalkeeper pretended to have been struck by a ball during training and asked for ice to treat the supposed injury. Shortly afterward, he said he was going to throw the ice into a container located in one of the facility’s hallways. Another person was waiting for him there, and the two exchanged clothes before Torres Puig walked out of the venue and left in a vehicle requested through the Uber app.
The account also reflects the strict surveillance that Cuban athletes are typically subjected to during their trips abroad
“I made the decision to stay here in the Dominican Republic and break all ties with the Cuban delegation,” the athlete says in the audio attributed to him, as quoted by DPorto Sports News. The account also reflects the strict surveillance that Cuban athletes are typically subjected to during their trips abroad, accompanied by coaches, officials, and other delegation “supervisors” who monitor their movements. “I was very nervous in case they discovered me,” Torres Puig confessed. continue reading
The young player was listed on the national team roster alongside Ignacio Miguel Aroche O’Farrill, the other goalkeeper called up for the competition. His departure leaves the team with only one available goalkeeper before its first match, scheduled during the tournament being held between late July and the first days of August.
His absence poses an additional problem for the coaching staff, which will have to compete throughout the tournament with only Aroche O’Farrill, unless the organizers allow a replacement to be added after the established deadline. No sports authority has yet clarified whether Cuba will request a replacement or whether Torres Puig has been formally removed from the accreditation list.
Just one week before leaving the country, the official press in Las Tunas had included his home among the so-called Central American Houses. / Facebook / Walfrido Quesada
The young man was not a last-minute addition to the team. In April 2024, he was named the best goalkeeper at the National Field Hockey Championship held in Ciego de Ávila, where that province’s team retained the men’s title. His performance established him as one of the country’s most promising goalkeepers. He had also received special recognition from the sports authorities in Las Tunas for his achievements during 2023.
Just one week before leaving the country, the official press in Las Tunas had included his home among the so-called Central American Houses, a propaganda initiative through which provincial authorities identify the homes of athletes and coaches participating in international competitions. In Torres Puig’s case, the gesture became ironic: while the authorities were publicly celebrating his “sense of belonging,” the athlete was preparing his escape.
Every international trip continues to be, for many athletes, an opportunity to escape the Island
Field hockey has also suffered numerous defections. Five players left the Cuban delegation during the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, while other members of the national team had previously abandoned the squad during a stay in Spain.
In every case, the sports authorities have repeated their usual formula, describing the decisions as “serious acts of indiscipline” or abandonment of commitments, without referring to the low salaries, the lack of professional opportunities, and the restrictions athletes face on the Island, not to mention the crisis affecting the majority of the population.
Santo Domingo was supposed to serve the Cuban Government as a showcase for an ambitious delegation and help stem the decline in its regional results. However, every international trip continues to be, for many athletes, an opportunity to escape the Island.
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 cold chain is breaking down in warehouses, trucks, and stores, while foods that require refrigeration are disappearing from refrigerators.
The La Isla de Cuba store, located just a few meters from Fraternity Park, has remained closed for weeks. / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Natalia López, Havana, July 24, 2026 – When a customer opens the door of a refrigerator at La Puntilla store, they no longer expect to find a tray of chicken or a package of cheese. The first thing they notice is the absence of that blast of cold air that used to escape. The motors are turned off, the shelves are empty, and the silence is broken only by the distant hum of a generator. In a Havana where heat and blackouts have become inseparable companions, even the cold seems to have disappeared from stores.
This Thursday, the market in the municipality of Playa presented a bleak scene. The refrigerators remained empty and switched off. The butcher section seemed frozen in time, with several employees having almost no work as they stood behind counters with no merchandise. According to one of the workers, there are several reasons, but they all lead to the same crisis.
“Nobody has any way to keep anything cold—not in the warehouses, not in the trucks, and certainly not here,” the employee told 14ymedio. Along with the prolonged blackouts comes another problem: the lack of supplies. “We’re not even receiving merchandise of that kind anymore,” he admitted.
“Nobody has any way to keep anything cold—not in the warehouses, not in the trucks, and certainly not here”
The same scene is repeated in other parts of the capital. A few kilometers away, at the dollar-denominated market near the Almendares River bridge, the situation is equally discouraging. The freezers remain empty, and tape blocks access to the area designated for meat products, an unmistakable sign that there is nothing requiring refrigeration to sell. continue reading
Customers receive the same answer at the store on 26th Street. “No, we’re not getting any of that,” an employee replies when a shopper asks about meat, cold cuts, or cheese. The exchange lasts only a few seconds. The lack of products makes any further explanation unnecessary.
In response to a question from this newspaper about whether the merchandise arrives but is refused because of the lack of refrigeration, or whether the State simply is no longer trying to supply refrigerated products to its own dollar stores, the employee explained that it is “a bit of both.” Store managers “don’t place the orders, and if a truck arrives with chicken, they tell it they can’t accept it because otherwise we’d end up with too much spoilage, and that can’t be justified. The company itself won’t allow you to report losses of that magnitude.”
At La Mariposa, on Tulipán Street in Nuevo Vedado, the deterioration of the commercial offering has reached an almost symbolic point. One of the refrigerators, disconnected from the power supply, is no longer preserving food; it now serves as an improvised shelf for storing packages of macaroni. Where frozen products once stood, only dry pasta remains, capable of enduring entire days without electricity.
The transformation has also reached establishments that for years were a benchmark for those with access to foreign currency. The La Isla de Cuba store, located just a few meters from Fraternity Park, has remained closed for weeks, another symptom of the difficulties facing a retail network that is increasingly unable to guarantee a stable supply.
Nor is the crisis sparing the private sector. Small businesses that until a few months ago competed to offer a wide variety of frozen meats have drastically reduced their inventories. Most now carry only indivisible packages of about ten pounds of chicken drumsticks. The popular mixed packs of drumsticks and thighs, much more sought after by families because they allowed them to make better use of their purchases, have practically disappeared from refrigerators. Ground meat, hot dogs, cheeses, and other foods that depend on a stable cold chain are also in short supply.
The popular mixed packs of drumsticks and thighs, much more sought after by families because they allowed them to make better use of their purchases, have practically disappeared from refrigerators
“That’s like jumping into the sea without a life jacket. Nobody wants to take that risk right now,” admitted the manager of a private small business with a store on Ayestarán Street. “A lot of people come asking, and you can tell they’re getting desperate, but nobody can demand that we buy merchandise when so much of it is going to spoil. That’s our decision, and we’ve decided not to take the risk.”
Merchants acknowledge that the financial risk has become far too great. Keeping frozen goods during blackouts that in many parts of Havana now last well over 12 hours a day means accepting losses that are difficult to recover. On top of that are power outages at warehouses, cold storage facilities, and distribution centers, as well as the challenges of transporting refrigerated food in a country where fuel is also in short supply.
According to official figures published recently, retail sales continue to decline, and data for the first months of the year already show a significant contraction compared to 2025. However, all indications suggest that the statistics for June and July could be even worse, coinciding with the worsening energy crisis, marked by blackouts lasting more than 20 hours in numerous provinces and increasingly prolonged outages in the capital as well.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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Santo Domingo is offering a subsidy to its producers so they can compete with the U.S. in the Cuban market
Since 2023, Cuba has relied on imports from the Dominican Republic to try to cover part of its production shortfall.
14ymedio, Madrid, July 24, 2026 / The Dominican Republic resumed egg exports to Cuba this week, which had been suspended for several months due to logistical difficulties stemming from the most recent U.S. sanctions against the regime in Havana.
The resumption of trade was made possible by a new regulation approved by the Dominican government to subsidize maritime transport. The measure aims to offset rising logistics costs and ensure the continuity of shipments to the island, as Miguel Lajara, a member of the Dominican Poultry Association, explained to El Nuevo Diario.
Lajara also noted that 12 containers containing 3,900,960 eggs—corresponding to the first export batch—have already been shipped, with the companies Agrokilda, Granja Wilse, Huevos Perla, and Agropecuaria SSK participating. He added that shipments could take place twice a month, with an expected volume of more than 13 million eggs sent to Cuba each month. The figure, however, remains well below the nearly 60 million eggs per month that Argentina used to export to Cuba before shipments were suspended. continue reading
“We had been building up capacity for Cuba. That market disappeared overnight, and it will take time to recover that volume.”
“We encountered a setback due to the restrictions the U.S. has imposed on ships, and we are working to resume that trade,” Pavel Concepción, president of the Dominican Poultry Association (ADA) told the local press. He added that the interruption in shipments was not due to a total suspension of maritime travel, but rather to the fact that, as a result of U.S. sanctions, shipping companies reduced the availability of refrigerated containers. He noted that the sector secured a new shipping company willing to cover the route to Cuba, which allowed exports to resume.
During the time the Dominican Republic was absent from the Cuban market, the U.S. filled its role as a supplier of eggs to the island, according to Concepción. “We managed to get the government to help with part of the transportation costs, which lowers the price of eggs and may allow us to compete with U.S. eggs.”
“We had been building up capacity for Cuba. That market disappeared overnight, and regaining that volume will take time,” the leader explained.
The government program includes a fund of 25 million Dominican pesos—about 430,000 dollars—administered by the Dominican Poultry Association, in coordination with the National Association of Laying Hen Producers, and establishes a subsidy of 4,500 dollars for each container exported, with a limit of up to 20 containers per week, until available resources are exhausted.
“We managed to get the government to help cover part of the transportation costs, which lowers our expenses and may allow us to compete with eggs from the United States.”
In Cuba, eggs have become a luxury item in recent years. They cost around 3,000 pesos for a 30-count carton in a country where the minimum wage is 3,210 pesos per month (less than five dollars), while prolonged power outages—exacerbated by the energy crisis—make it difficult to store them.
The island’s poultry sector has been in a state of severe decline for nearly a decade. Domestic production fell from about five million eggs per day in 2020 to around 2.2 million in 2023, as a result of shortages of feed and other poultry farming supplies. The lack of feed even forced the culling of more than 50,000 laying hens in Holguín, further reducing the country’s egg production capacity.
Egg distributions through the “canasta familiar” (basket of essential goods) have been reduced or suspended in numerous provinces, while the crisis has forced the Cuban government to rely increasingly on imports to meet part of domestic demand.
Since 2023, Cuba has turned to imports from the Dominican Republic to try to cover part of the production shortfall, a dependence that has intensified as the national poultry industry has deteriorated. The resumption of exports will ease supply constraints, but it will not resolve the structural problem of domestic production, which remains limited by the lack of poultry feed and other inputs.
“The difficult situation regarding feed production in Cuba—which is vital for livestock farming and the production of meat and eggs—has been a persistent burden on the national economy and the people’s food supply,” the State newspaper Granma acknowledged earlier this year, before the U.S. tariff sanctions that have exacerbated the crisis on the island had been implemented.
Translated by GH
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Blackouts, shortages, and uncertainty have narrowed the horizon for Cubans to the point that planning for next week seems like a luxury.
Micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) without internet access on Carlos III Avenue in Havana. / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Havana, Generation Y, Yoani Sánchez, July 21, 2026 / “Can you sell me just one pound of chicken?” a woman asks pleadingly as she enters one of the many privately owned shops on Monte Street in Havana. But her plea falls flat: “Only the whole package,” the clerk says firmly. In a city where electricity is increasingly scarce, taking home several kilograms of food that needs refrigeration is like shooting yourself in the foot.
But these small offerings aren’t just affecting our plates and refrigerators; our lives are also being scaled down. I run into an old acquaintance who needs to undertake repairs so he can use his shower again. “What’s the point if we don’t even know if there will be water, or if we’ll even have a country left in a couple of weeks?” he asks, paralyzed by fear. Forecasts have become so unreliable that it’s best to plan only for a few hours; for tomorrow, if that.
We live in such a narrow present that any medium-term plan seems extravagant.
There’s a word that has become too big for our reality: future. It used to encompass buying a refrigerator, fixing up a room, or taking an August vacation. Now it barely allows us to decide whether it’s worth defrosting a package of sausages or saving our phone’s dwindling battery for an important call. We live in such a narrow present that any medium-term planning seems extravagant.
Uncertainty has ended up colonizing everything. Friends who postpone weddings, parents unsure whether to enroll their children in extracurricular activities, elderly people missing doctor’s appointments because they don’t know if there will be transportation or electricity that day. Everything has become provisional. The sensation that any decision could be overturned by a blackout, a breakdown, or a new crisis turns daily life into a kind of makeshift camping. continue reading
Perhaps the most profound damage isn’t the spoiled meat, the water that doesn’t come, or the shower my friend won’t repair. Maybe it’s having learned to live without plans. A nation that stops imagining next month, next year, or the next decade is a nation that shrinks every day. And when even hope has to be rationed in small portions, like that package of chicken that couldn’t be sold by the pound, the real scarcity is no longer in the markets, but in our dreams.
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After almost seven decades of promises, the problem is no longer the horizon, but the distance between official discourse and everyday life.
To those who imposed this illusion on us without consulting us, we should say something very simple: we don’t want to live chasing what doesn’t exist, what will never exist. / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Havana, Generation Y, Yoani Sánchez, July 23, 2026 / Miguel Díaz-Canel tried to get philosophical. In a recent interview, he spoke about utopia and attempted to repeat a phrase popularized by Eduardo Galeano, which he didn’t even manage to quote correctly. He said that “utopia is on the horizon. When we take two steps forward, utopia takes two steps back. And the horizon moves ten steps forward.” A strange mix that ended up sounding more absurd than inspiring.
And yet, perhaps the most revealing thing is not that he muddled the quote. What is truly revealing is that, after almost seven decades of this regime, the country’s top leader continues to offer us a utopia instead of a reality.
I, sincerely, am already tired of utopias.
Not because I’ve stopped believing in a better country. On the contrary. Precisely because I want a better nation, I refuse to continue living within a dream that belongs to others.
We inhabit a utopia that is not our own. Some who don’t even experience it try to convince us, from a distance, that we must conserve it intact.
We inhabit a utopia that isn’t ours. Some who don’t even experience it try to convince us, from a distance, from an office, or from the comfort of their privilege, that we must conserve it intact. They ask us for resilience, sacrifice, and faith. But they aren’t the ones who spend entire nights without electricity, who have to walk miles because there’s no public transportation, or who have to bring even antibiotics when a family member is hospitalized. They aren’t the ones who have to choose between buying medicine or putting food on the table.
It is profoundly alienating to live within the illusion of another person. To carry for a whole life the weight of a dream we never continue reading
chose. No one asked Cubans if we wanted to dedicate our lives to building that utopia. No one consulted us if we were willing to trade our youth for promises, our maturity for slogans, and our old age for speeches that always tell us the future will be better.
That future has been coming for almost seventy years.
And it never arrives.
Because the difference between a utopia and public policy is enormous. Public policy must produce results; it must ensure there is food, transportation, electricity, decent wages, functioning hospitals, and schools where teachers don’t abandon their classrooms. A utopia, on the other hand, always finds an excuse to postpone itself. It always lacks one more effort, there is always a little more resistance, always another step to take.
But while we walk toward that unattainable horizon, reality does the exact opposite: it regresses. The electrical system is deteriorating, transportation is decaying, and agriculture is shrinking. Hospitals are falling apart. The population is dwindling, with hundreds of thousands leaving the country. Even hope is fading.
Utopia can no longer be used as an argument to justify the persistent failure of a model. Because it is one thing to strive towards an ideal and another very different thing to use this idea to explain why even the most basic objectives are never achieved.
We don’t want to be governed by improvised philosophers. We want people capable of guaranteeing that there is running water, electricity at night, and food that can one can pay for with their wages. We want to live in a country where emigration isn’t the only option.
To those who imposed on us without consulting us, this mirage, we must say to them something very simple: : we do not want to live chasing what does not exist, what will never exist.
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The US Secretary of State now tempers expectations of imminent action: “We are prepared to be very realistic and patient.”
Rubio insisted that it is a “failed state,” but maintained that he has “never” provided a timeline. / EFE
14ymedio, Madrid, July 23, 2026 / In a new episode of the tug-of-war between the US and Cuba, this Wednesday Marco Rubio had to dispel any notion of an imminent resolution to the issue . “We continue talking with them about the kind of changes they can make,” he declared to the press at the Manila International Convention Center in the Philippines, where he is attending the The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit.
Asked whether the Trump administration still aimed to achieve regime change through economic collapse or military intervention, the US Secretary of State said the goal was to bring “prosperity, security, certainty, and a better future” to Cubans. With regards on how to achieve this, he stated, “We are prepared to be very realistic and patient about how. It takes a serious process to get there.”
Rubio was visibly annoyed when the press asked him about the many statements made throughout the year by members of Congress, senators, and various other U.S. officials who have spoken of short timelines for regime change. “Who are ‘many of them’? Who was saying that?” the Secretary of State snapped at the reporter, who said he was referring to “people within continue reading
the administration who work on this issue.”
“No, global affairs are not a miniseries where you go through three episodes and that’s it. Global affairs are difficult.”
The high-ranking official insisted: “Like whom? Because I work on this issue more than anyone, and I never said that,” he continued. And when the reporter responded that the expectation of imminence stemmed, above all, from Cuba’s own weakness, Rubio replied, “No, global issues aren’t a miniseries where you go through three episodes and it’s over. Global issues are difficult.”
Despite Rubio’s reticence, mentions of imminent change in Cuba range from Trump himself—who less than a week ago spoke of a two-month timeframe—to Florida congressmembers who have mentioned summer or “before the end of the year.” Yesterday, however, Rubio tempered the sense of urgency after several minutes spent reminding everyone that it is a regime that has been entrenched in the country for more than six decades. He insisted that it is a “Failed State,” but maintained that he has “never” given a timeline. “I wish it were tomorrow because they deserve it; the people of Cuba deserve a better future,” he said.
The Secretary of State insisted that Cuba’s economic model is not working and reminded everyone that it no longer receives free oil from Venezuela, without mentioning that even if it could, it wouldn’t be able to buy it. Since the end of January, his administration has prevented any country from sending fuel to the island—whether for payment or not. He did speak, however, of the first shipment of US humanitarian aid that arrived on the island this Tuesday, “which will be distributed by non-governmental organizations on the ground.”
Another topic that inevitably came up was the recent report from his department that identifies Cuba as the main promoter of international communism. “This is a government that has passed, a regime—he corrected himself—that has spent most of the last 30, 40, or 50 years destabilizing the region with the movements it has supported. And they have lost, I don’t know, between 10% and 15% of their population since 2021,” he said.
“Yes, but our problem is with communist interference within our country.”
A reporter asked Rubio why this report focused on Cuba and not China. “They are the largest communist party in the world, with 100 million members,” the reporter inquired. “Yes, but our problem is with communist interference within our country. That report was about what these different elements do to interfere in our country and undermine our foreign policy,” the Secretary of State responded.
Rubio also expressed his preoccupation with the potential for mass migration from Cuba if the country becomes destabilized, one of the major reasons for his caution and his defense of continuing the conversations. “We want them to have a better future, and we are willing to do whatever it takes to help them achieve it. But they have to decide they want to do it. Those in charge there right now don’t want to,” he added, but insisted that his Administration is prepared “to do everything in our power to bring about positive change in Cuba because it directly impacts our national security.”
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“A Granel was only the first of many,” says a knowledgeable source who requested anonymity. “The fuel is coming in through pipelines.”
A Cupet fuel tanker leaving a gas station in Guanabacoa. / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Darío Hernández, Havana, July 23, 2026 – It is no longer just small private businesses connected to the oil or transportation sectors, or those that specifically need gasoline to operate. The importating of fuel from the U.S., authorized for the private sector since last February, has spread to all kinds of businesses.
This can be seen at several gas stations in Havana. One example is the service station known as the Shell Roundabout in Guanabacoa, which was closed to the public five months ago to serve only yellow taxis and began selling imported gasoline last May. There, 14ymedio confirmed that gasoline is being sold for $5 dollars per liter*.
“They lease the gas stations, issue invoices, and sell gasoline by the liter in dollars,” summarizes a customer at that station, where, as this newspaper previously reported, fuel is supplied not only to private businesses but also to state-owned companies, in direct violation of the authorization granted by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
This Monday, in a report published by the Sancti Spíritus provincial newspaper Escambray, José Lorenzo García, the provincial transportation delegate, stated that the ministry had “circulated” a document regarding the possibility of bus companies purchasing fuel from small private businesses, but continue reading
that there was still no regulation in place to govern the practice.
“They lease the gas stations, issue invoices, and sell gasoline by the liter in dollars” / 14ymedio
In practice, this newspaper has confirmed that, in Havana, these State-owned vehicles are already fueling up at the same gas stations that serve private businesses. Among them is the station on Avenida del Puerto, where fuel is sold to national buses, whose terminal is located right next door, while the station at Vía Blanca and Fábrica serves trucks and water tankers. In addition, many state-owned Lada cars can be seen at the Vía Blanca station near the Luyanó bridge.
An entire black-market buying and selling network has also emerged that goes far beyond specialized businesses. “Right now anyone on the street has gasoline and will sell it to you at outrageous prices,” says a Havana driver. “Food businesses, people in the dollar-selling business—anyone will sell you a liter of gasoline for 3,500 pesos.”
One example is a small company dedicated to selling beer. “Right now, all they are promoting is gasoline, nothing else,” says one customer. In a WhatsApp message, they explain the requirements and, while revealing other service stations operating like the Shell Roundabout, warn: “You have to keep in mind that a waiting list is made, and you will be notified when they are ready to enable fueling at Tropicana [a gas station in the Playa municipality] and Acapulco [in Nuevo Vedado].”
Advertisements are also multiplying on social media. “Imported premium gasoline, minimum purchase 20 liters, $4.30 per liter,” reads one ad from Jaimanitas, in Playa. The same seller offers a price of $4.25 per liter for purchases of 40 liters or more, $4.20 for 100 liters or more, and $4.15 for purchases of 200 liters or more.
Beyond the fact that the business activities of these companies have nothing to do with fuel, the issue is that they are using the State distribution network, thereby also violating U.S. regulations. This is the case of A Granel, documented by 14ymedio, which sells diesel for $2.50 per liter from an industrial warehouse located at the end of Avenida del Puerto, owned by the Cuban Lubricants Company (Cubalub), which belongs to the State-owned Cupet.
“A Granel was only the first of many,” says a knowledgeable source who requested anonymity. “The fuel is coming in through pipelines”
Whatever the case, it is privately imported fuel that is keeping the country minimally running since the U.S. imposed an oil blockade
Whatever the case, it is privately imported fuel that is keeping the country minimally running since the U.S. imposed an oil blockade on the Cuban regime following its intervention in Venezuela earlier this year. Since January 9, the date when the last Mexican tanker, the Ocean Mariner, arrived on the island, only one vessel has docked: the Anatoly Kolodkin, which arrived on March 30 carrying Russian crude oil.
The official price of gasoline increased on July 10: gasoline rose from $2 to $2.50 per liter, while diesel increased from $1.80 to $2 per liter. In any case, fuel available for public sale through the Ticket app has reached extremely low levels.
In Havana it has been unavailable since May 28. Only a few gas stations outside the capital remain open, almost exclusively in Sancti Spíritus, where the number of operating service stations has also been reduced since July 8. Matanzas and Villa Clara, which had been dispensing fuel almost daily at several stations, have not done so since June 4.
There have been three exceptions to this situation: this Tuesday, when a gas station opened in Camagüey; on June 16, when another station opened in Artemisa; and on June 30, when fuel was dispensed at a service station in Havana (Santa María del Rosario).
*Equivalent to almost $19 a gallon
Translated by Regina Anavy
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The Cuban crisis forces people to give up the basic habits that sustain communal life
I’m crammed against the back door, and right in front of my face is a sign that warns: “Don’t slam the door.” They’re asking for a kind and courteous gesture in this every-man-for-himself situation. / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, July 22, 2026 / The street I walk down is called Hidalgo, but on one of its corners, the poorest people in my neighborhood gather, while waiting for their bread from the ration books. Some couldn’t survive without this support, which, for others, is just a small piece of dough, sometimes sour, sometimes almost greenish. I have a neighbor who goes down more than ten flights of stairs and then back up just to make sure he gets this extra portion of his daily ration. Poor quality, but still subsidized, this bread remains the main source of sustenance for many of the people I pass every morning.
I jump over a sewage-filled stream, just a few meters from where a tamale vendor is hawking his wares. I quicken my pace toward La Timba. Only the building of the General Customs of the Republic appears freshly painted. Everything around me is parched from the heat and lack of rains, peeling from the crisis, and dulled by neglect. Even Paseo Street, once the sacred thoroughfare of power, where caravans of official vehicles escorted by motorcyclists used to parade, looks abandoned. Have the Party leaders boarded that plane and we don’t even know it? Like in some novels, is it that power in Cuba is nothing more than an empty shell that survives only in our imaginations and in the offices of State Security?
For the work and grace of daily survival, now “five” means five hundred and “two” is enough to describe two hundred.
It’s not summer. In July and August, everything usually slows down a bit; the heat is oppressive, and the city seems to yawn at every turn. But this year is different. This isn’t slowness. It’s paralysis.
“It’s three to Prado,” the driver of the electric tricycle tells me as I hop on in Vedado. Money has become so difficult to pronounce that we’ve ended up simplifying it. Thanks to the daily grind of survival, now “five” means five hundred and “two” is enough to describe two hundred. We drop zeros from conversations as quickly as those colorful bills disappear from our pockets. But if “one” equals one hundred, what do we do with that bill that showed José Martí’s face and that for so long represented one peso? That one no longer exists. It has been erased by inflation and by forgetfulness.
The almendrón, the classic American car, that’s taking me home speeds by. I’m pressed against the back door, and right in front of my face is a sign that warns: “Don’t slam the door.” They’re asking for a kind and courteous gesture amidst the chaos. “It’s five to Boyeros and Tulipán,” the driver explains. His statement confirms that zeros to the right of the fare are worthless; they’ve become as useless as those on the left. Just as we’ve eliminated hundreds and thousands of our conversations, we’ve also been stripping our days of any embellishment. There’s no room for frills anymore. Only the most urgent and basic needs remain.
Animalization rarely happens suddenly. It creeps in little by little. The real deterioration is not just in the streets or on the facades.
While walking down Colón Street a few days ago, a bag full of excrement flew over my head before hitting the pavement. The residents of that area have been without water for days. Instead of accumulating their waste in a toilet that seems unlikely to be flushed, they throw it in the nearest garbage can. In this country, we’ve been pushed to disregard centuries of basic lessons: mixing shit with public space ultimately turns life into shit.
It is not the only setback. There are neighborhoods where people cook with firewood in the middle of the city and where the darkness of the blackouts forces them to sleep with the chickens. A friend called me a few days ago to invite me to a comedy show. “I can’t,” I told him, “I have to get up before five in the morning to get online for a few minutes and get some housework done.”
Progress can not only stop; it can also reverse at great speed.
Havana wasn’t sustained solely by buildings or avenues. It was also raised on unspoken agreements: don’t throw excrement out the window, keep sewage away from where you cook. These are rules so old they seem instinctive, but a prolonged crisis is enough to reveal that they aren’t. We’ve begun to accept as normal scenes that just a few years ago would have seemed like something out of a refugee camp.
Animalization rarely happens in one blow. It creeps in little by little. The real deterioration isn’t just in the streets or the facades. It’s in realizing that, to survive, we’ve had to forget too many things that kept us healthy and sane.
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14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, July 25, 2026 — Ever since his years leading the bureaucracy in Holguín, it was clear that Miguel Díaz-Canel was a failed leader. Farmers showed remarkable foresight when they nicknamed him “Díaz-Condom,” because he kept milk from entering the city. The theater company El Portazo also proved prophetic when, after his appointment as president, it dedicated the children’s song Little Mouse Miguel to him in Matanzas. One of its verses seems written to summarize these years of continuity: “Things are… so horrifying they truly inspire fear.”
