Latest News from Cuba

US Embargo on Cuba vs. Vaccines, Debunking Washington Post
(Original www.havanatimes.org. Slightly modified version for this publication.)

Leer en español

The Washington Post recently gave us a disturbing recommendation: “Next pandemic, let Cuba vaccinate the world.” Forgiving the exaggerated headline, the lack of information Achal Prabhala and Vitor Ido – the two authors of the article originally published on June 1st -, have about the tragedy of the Cuban people is quite unfortunate.

The commentators say that “The story of how Cuba was systematically blocked in its quest to make its own highly effective vaccines widely available offers crucial lessons.”

Informing yourself before writing is crucial, because the US is the main source of net foreign currency captured by the Cuban State. In early 2020, CNN published the following fragment from a report provided by the Inter-American Dialogue, an institution affiliated with the World Bank.

Last year, Cubans received US $2.055 billion in direct money transfers as remittances:

“1,042,451 out of a total of nearly 4 million households in Cuba received remittances over the period (approximately 26%), an average of 2,210 USD per household. The US is the main source of these remittances, accounting for US $1.721 billion, or 83.72% of the total.” 

Interview with David E. Hoffman, Biographer of Oswaldo Paya

HAVANA TIMES – David E. Hoffman is a journalist born in Palo Alto, CA. in 1953. He won three National Journalism Awards during a decade of coverage for The Washington Post at the White House, during the Reagan administrations, and the early days of George Bush Sr. Then he was Post’s chief of the Moscow office of for 6 years.

His fourth book motivates the following interview: Give me Liberty, The true story of Oswaldo Paya and his daring quest for a free Cuba. (Simon & Schuster, 2022)

I met David E. Hoffman at Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida, during the presentation of his recent biography on Oswaldo Paya, emblematic Cuban government opponent, Sakharov Prize for Human Rights of the European Parliament, Catholic and promoter of non-violence, who died in the still unclarified circumstances on July 22, 2012, because of a car accident.

Exploring the Nashville environment, as a newly arrived Cuban, I discovered another great bookstore, Barnes & Noble, part of picturesque Hendersonville, and the face of the Cuban martyr reappeared, motivating the following questions that the biographer answered.

Carlos Alberto Montaner, perhaps the most widely read Cuban Journalist in the Spanish language has written: “The acts that a liberal classifies in Russia as political crimes, he ignores when they occur in Cuba.”

Considering that you have written, and with remarkable success, on the Russian-Soviet subject, do you also suffer from this disappointment? Do you have an explanation? 

Henchmen of Castroism Are Taking Advantage of the U.S. Border Crisis (Part 1)

The United States has opened its arms to Cuban exiles since 1959, but the current crisis on the southern border and the lack of control in legal migration processes attract servants of the socialist tyranny and violators of human rights to the same country where the regime’s victims found refuge.

This is part one of a four-part series.

Oscar Casanella did not believe it. The repressor, who in Cuba expelled him from his job as a biochemist due to his disagreements with the socialist tyranny, was in Miami. The capital of exile, where Oscar and his family found refuge in 2022, gave him back the possibility of Erasmo Pablo Gómez walking its streets.

Casanella worked at the National Institute of Oncology and Radiobiology (INOR) in Havana until his position against the regime earned him harassment from the authorities and the institutional administration, of which Gómez, also a collaborator of the military, was a part. “The political police kidnapped me at the INOR to interrogate me, [and] threatened me and beat me in cells,” Casanella said during a break in the warehouse where he found a job in Miami.

In July 2016, a hearing was held on his expulsion before the labor court of the scientific center. But Gómez, along with several soldiers, physically blocked the entrance of Casanella’s witnesses and relatives to the INOR room where the trial was held.

Debate over US sanctions on Castro regime. Manolo De Los Santos and Stephen Wilkinson, defenders of the Castro dictatorship, and Julio M. Shiling, an anti-Castro activist, battle in a heated debate moderated by journalist and host Andrea Sanke on the television program "Newsmakers" of TRT World (Turkish Public Television). Program aired on October 12, 2022.

Meet the participants and don't miss this intense debate!

Manolo De Los Santos, Co-Executive Director of peoplesforum.org, and a great admirer of the Castros, Che Guevara and Díaz-Canel, Chávez, Maduro, and other Dictators. Get to know him on Twitter @manolo_realengo

Dr. Stephen Wilkinson, President of the International Institute for the Study of Cuba at the British University of Buckingham, and editor of the International Journal of Cuban Studies opposes the US embargo/sanctions based on false health political narratives such as "free" education, and healthcare in Cuba without pointing out the deplorable state of hospitals and medical services to the population in contrast to those received by the leaders of Castroism and foreigners, blaming the US embargo for all the deficiencies of the socialist system and favoring a rapprochement with the Cuban dictatorship without taking into account the dictatorship's lack of freedom and the human rights violations.