Dairy

 

The signing of several interbank, business and institutional agreements resulted from the 12th session of the Cuban-Belarusian Intergovernmental Commission for economic-commercial collaboration, held yesterday.

 The meeting highlighted “the projects for the joint production of medicines, the development of the Cuban Dairy Complex, with Belarusian raw material and technology; and the second phase of tractor assembly, as initiatives with the highest level of progress for the period 2025-2026,” said the First Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment (Mincex), Carlos Luis Jorge Méndez.

 He stressed that the formal dialogue has been surpassed, giving priority to the exchange between the business delegations of both sides to agree on future contracts and projects that make effective the participation of Belarusian companies in the National Plan for Economic and Social Development of Cuba until 2030, especially in sectors of mutual interest, such as agri-food, industrial, transportation, health, biopharmaceuticals, among others, in which real potential for economic complementation is observed”.

 The signatures, also presided over by the Belarusian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Evgeni Shestakov, contributed to establishing work priorities to be developed in the short, medium and long term, which confirms the important role of the business sector of both countries in the implementation of the agreements reached.

 The Belarusian Vice-Chancellor, at the closing of the event, emphasized that the work by sector will allow “to achieve all those plans and objectives that have been set in search of new collaboration niches”.

The Truth

 

A lie repeated does not become the truth

The U.S. government once again discredits itself by unjustly including Cuba on the List of countries that "do not fully cooperate with its anti-terrorist efforts".

Once again, the State Department turns the fight against international terrorism into a unilateral political exercise against countries that do not bow to its hegemonic interests.

Exactly one year ago, when the previous U.S. government excluded Cuba from the same list, it recognized the value of bilateral cooperation in law enforcement and compliance, which includes the joint confrontation of terrorism. Nothing has changed since then in Cuba's exemplary performance in this area. What has changed is the U.S. administration and the intention of its new Secretary of State to impose the narrative that Cuba constitutes a threat to that nation, derail bilateral relations and lead both countries into confrontational scenarios, undesirable for our peoples.

The list does not respond to concrete evidence. Neither did the new government present evidence nor did it have any qualms about circumventing and reversing, a few hours after taking office, the process of consultations among specialized agencies that led to the exclusion of Cuba from the list of countries that allegedly sponsor terrorism.

These instruments respond to the design of the policy of "maximum pressure" and economic warfare. Their promoters know the damage they cause to the Cuban population and the intimidating effect they unleash against any State that appears to be affiliated with terrorism, regardless of what the truth may be.

Cuba's commitment to energetic action and condemnation of terrorism is absolute and invariable. It does not respond to the whims of the U.S. Secretary of State in office. Cuba, a victim of terrorist acts, has an exemplary performance in the fight against terrorism.

On the contrary, the U.S. government tolerates or is complicit in this scourge. Confessed terrorists such as Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch Avila lived peacefully in the city of Miami, protected by the US. The Cuban government is still waiting for answers to the request for information on the identity of the author of the terrorist attack against the Cuban Embassy in September 2023, and the requests on 61 persons and 19 organizations based in that country, allegedly linked to violent and terrorist acts against Cuba.

Our country has never participated in the organization, financing or execution of terrorist acts against any country, nor has its territory been used or will be used for that purpose. The same could not be said of the United States. Respect the truth!

Albi Arhó

Human Traffickers

 

Each year, between 14,500 and 17,000 people from some 59 countries are trafficked into the U.S.; however, experts in the field point out that these figures reflect only a negligible part of the reality.

In 2020, a report by the Human Trafficking Institute revealed that 41 percent of the people trafficked to the United States by human traffickers come from Mexico and other Latin American countries; another source is Southeast Asia.

It is estimated that, during 2023, more than one million people were victims of this scourge in the U.S. Fifty-nine percent were U.S. citizens, 90 percent of them women, according to the Anti-Trafficking Data Collaborative.

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But it is immigrants who are most at risk of human trafficking. A high number of the cases are young women, who are not fluent in English and are tricked by criminals with promises of jobs, have their passports taken away, and in many cases are forced to use drugs that make them addicted and dependent.

An unknown number of predators operate independently or through organized crime networks. They mostly use the Internet to lure people, with promises of living the “American dream.”

Another method is deception through close friends, trusted relatives or family friends, especially when minors are involved. Victims end up being forced into prostitution, domestic servitude, factory, farm, ranch or other types of forced labor.

The state of Florida has been at the top of the national trafficking statistics for years in terms of the number of cases reported.

According to the Children’s Report Card, published by the Florida Department of Children and Families, there were nearly 2,100 reported cases in 2023, of which 1,627 involved minors.

In that vein, one in six of the more than 26,500 cases of children reported missing to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is likely to be a victim of child sexual exploitation. In 2020, the center received more than 17,000 reports of child sex trafficking.

The hunters camouflage themselves. Today, mainly on social networks, they carefully set the trap and wait for the next “dreamer” or desperate person looking to escape from misery.

We are talking about a cruel business that moves hundreds of millions of dollars in the U.S. Organ trafficking, child prostitution and slave labor alone bring great wealth to traffickers.

Meanwhile, the government pretends not to see what is happening in its own house, and places others on lists that should be headed by the U.S., given the records it exhibits in this and other inhumane matters.

Healthcare

Through the platform, services such as teleconsultations, second opinion consultations, case discussion, tele-diagnosis, tele-assistance, among others, can be offered. Through the platform, services such as teleconsultations, second opinion consultations, case discussion, tele-diagnosis, tele-assistance, among others, can be offered. Photo: Albi

 On the road to the development of telemedicine in Cuba, the Defense Information Technology Enterprise (Xetid) is contributing with its own solutions to the implementation of the Virtual Hospital, a project associated with the Ministry of Communications' Sector Program for the Informatization of Society.

Yosney Hernández Hernández, Director of Xetid's basic digital industry unit, commented to Granma that Virtual Hospital is a platform under construction, based on a group of technologies already established at the national level, in which solutions from several entities converge, including inter-hospital and extra-hospital services.

“The idea is to make intensive use of information and communications technologies for healthcare,” he said.

He said that the objective of Xetid is the development of an IT platform in which each of the hospitals can have a cloud-based representation to interact, make requests, and plan and schedule telematic services.

He added that these services could include teleconsultations, second opinion consultations, case discussion, telediagnosis, tele-assistance, among others.

He pointed out that this would help to avoid the need for patients to travel for specialized consultations, from the first assessment to medical follow-up, which can be offered with services such as videoconferencing.

Likewise, it would contribute to inter-consultations between medical specialists at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels of healthcare.

He added that, although the platform is still being perfected, it already allows the generation of procedures associated with contracting, with the aim of creating a network of hospitals and interconnecting them.

Hernández pointed out that the platform will be integrated with the Galen Clínica software, developed by Softel, with Xavia His, from the Computer Sciences University, and the videoconferencing system for Telemedicine developed by Xetid, while mentioning the incorporation of the technologies of the Ticket platform in terms of Healthcare.

Xetid also signed two collaboration agreements with the Cira García International Clinic and La Pradera International Health Center for the implementation of virtual hospitals using the aforementioned technologies.

This system, said Katerin Ortega Rodríguez, Commercial Specialist of Xetid's basic digital industry unit, will serve to support the project for the doctor-patient or doctor-doctor relationship.

Follow Martí's

 

Just meters away from the obelisk that marks the site of the Apostle's fall in combat, the meeting between the Party leadership and a hundred young people took place in a “sacred place for all that it entails”, affirmed the first secretary of the National Committee of the Young Communist League, Meyvis Estévez Echevarría.

The young leader introduced the prestigious historian Eduardo Torres-Cuevas, director of the Martiano Program Office:

“I think today is a very happy day,” he enunciated.” That is to say, that really Martí's passion is here, among all of us; and it has been manifested to the extent that we are getting closer to him and we are understanding him more and more.

“Martí is much more than everything we sometimes think he is”, and he emphasized Marti's idea: ‘Homeland is humanity, it is the part of humanity in which we are born and to which we are most obliged’.

The concept of Homeland, in Martí, is reiterated in numerous writings, commented the expert, who also brought up the concept according to which it is something that merges and is indivisible. “The Cuban is above all a new quality, and that new quality is here, and it will always continue to grow, changing, developing; and then, when we talk about the Homeland, we must take it as it is in its original concept, which means mother earth”.

A very special moment was the narration of the historian of the sacred site, Antonio Espinosa Martínez.

“I have had the opportunity to meditate on the pain, on the traumatic” of that May 19, he said.

On the day of the Apostle's fall “there was a lot of pain in the Mambí camp, practically nobody ate food, they didn't even have the opportunity to have José Martí's corpse, because it had been left in the hands of the Spaniards, who were the ones who buried him in a common grave in the Vuelta Grande cemetery”. And he recalled that, as General Máximo Gómez said, “the most important man for Cuba at that time was lost that day”.

Moving were the words of Lil María Pichs Hernández, deputy director of the Office of the Martí Program, who -recalling on the Apostle's gaze- recalled that there is a sense of life in the homage of May 19; and that, as the National Hero once said, the best tree is the one that has a dead man underneath it. He added that “Martí is nature”.

It is very important to touch the heart, it is very important to touch the heart of human beings, especially if it is about convoking and moving with a cause. This conceptual axis was shared by Tin Cremata, who was there, with La Colmenita.

The director of the Center for Martí Studies, Marlene Vázquez Pérez, spoke of optimism reinforced by everything she had seen and warned that “in the midst of the symbolic war, if they want to take something away from us it is Martí; and we are not going to allow them to falsify him, much less to take him away from us”.

ANOTHER DATE WITH HISTORY

“Once again we are in an appointment with history; and this meeting has been so emotional, so patriotic, so full of teachings, that it deserves to be taken to a podcast From the Presidency, so that we can also share it with other young people in Cuba, and with our people.” This is what President Díaz-Canel said.

He recalled a Martí's maxim: “Honor, honor”. And by the way, he reflected: “That is what we are doing here; and that is what we are trying to do every time we have a meeting of this kind: we honor our history, we honor our heroes, we honor our thinkers, we honor our heroes, we honor our martyrs.

“And we are honoring ourselves because we are growing, we are surpassing ourselves, we are learning, we are getting excited, we are getting more committed, and our convictions with the Homeland, with the Revolution, with that history we have, and with socialism are getting stronger.”

The Head of State made reference to a “significant coincidence”: He recalled the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, born on May 19, 135 years ago, and highlighted the common points in humanist thought, between Martí and the Asian fighter.

“When we live in difficult times, I believe that it is necessary to bring Martí, to think about him, to believe in him, to assume him”, stressed the Head of State, who shared this conviction: ‘We need every Cuban citizen, every young Cuban to follow Martí’s ideas; and by turning to Martí we can achieve it; first, because of the patriotism and love for Cuba that he always professed; and secondly, because Martí had a clean life’. The ethics, the morality in the Apostle's life, he affirmed, is enough to inspire.

“On the other hand,” he reasoned, “Martí was always resilient in the face of adversity, and he overcame many adversities; and, as he said in many of his writings, he did it without harboring hatred. He went above hatred.

“Let us bring Martí to the current situation, let you young people become the standard bearers of that movement, because we would be reencountering the thought and action of the political poet who knew his people best, and that was José Martí.”

It was recalled that the first cross that marked the place where Martí fell was made of Caguairán; that is why the first of the one hundred Caguairán trees that will be planted there in salute to the centenary of the best and greatest disciple of the Apostle: Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz.  

“THERE IS NO ONE WHO WILL SURRENDER US”.

On a day full of symbolism, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez inaugurated, as a sign of the importance given in Cuba to the preservation of history, the Dos Ríos Museum, an annex to the Monument.

The space, located near the obelisk that honors the hero, exhibits historical objects and recreates scenes of Martí's life in the region, highlighting his independence legacy. At the ceremony, Díaz-Canel highlighted the importance of the site as an educational tool to promote patriotic values.

Accompanied by member of the Political Bureau and Secretary of Organization of the Central Committee of the Party Roberto Morales Ojeda, and by the highest authorities of the province, the inauguration was followed, as has become customary, by an exchange with inhabitants of the community, in which social advances derived from a program of homage to Martí were discussed, such as improvements in access to water, gastronomic services, remodeling of houses affected by the erosion of the river, and medical care. According to Urbano Macías Fajardo, president of the popular council, the actions respond to citizens' demands.

The delegate emphasized that these projects were executed “in times of less cement, fuel and resources”, demonstrating the capacity for collective resilience.

“So the lesson is that there is no one who gives up on us, and that in difficult times we can do things even better than we did at other times,” Díaz-Canel stressed.

The President also visited the Santa Ursula base business unit, key in the production of stallions of high genetic value for livestock.

Its main objective is to improve the genetics of the national livestock by producing high-value bulls for artificial insemination and direct mating, contributing to the efficiency of meat and milk production. Despite its capacity to house 120 bulls, it currently has 54, and is part of a recovery process, reflecting technical and economic limitations extended over time.

“Our commitment is to continue recovering and strengthening this unit, to have good sires and improve the quality of the zebu cattle,” stressed Yunior Milanés Ramírez, director of the UEB.

Leticia Ledea Fernández, director of the Manuel Fajardo Genetics and Breeding Company, emphasized the commitment to behavioral testing projects in other breeds, and the preservation of the livestock mass, despite the drought.

In a context of an intensified blockade and economic tensions, the main message that stood out on the day was Cuba's capacity to promote transforming projects, even in the midst of adversity, as the martyr of Dos Ríos taught us by his example.

Martí

 

In everything José Martí wrote he left his soul; but his life, since he opened his eyes, and until he fell fighting for freedom in the Cuban fields, 130 years ago, was summarized in that kind of lyrical sentence he entitled Yugo y Estrella (Yoke and Star).

He was born “without sun”, and still a child, he knew what to choose between those two insignias, and how sadly comfortable it is to live, if “you serve the lords”; and also the growth, far from any involution, that entails sticking to the star. He was a child when the ignominy of slavery wrung his throat and at the foot of the dead he swore / to wash away the crime with his life; a child when he charted the course of his heroic existence.

Slave of his age and his doctrines, the adolescent paid a very high price for the love of his homeland. At the age of 15, he had created the newspaper La Patria Libre, and in the only issue that would circulate, would burn the verses of Abdala, an epic poem in which its protagonist, in circumstances similar to those of its author, knew that to throw off the yoke that oppressed his country was the only possible destiny.

That was the age of prison, which deprived him of his mother's arms, and threw him into perpetual pain, “because the pain of prison is the harshest, the most devastating of pains, the one that kills the intelligence, and dries the soul, and leaves traces in it that will never be erased”.

The chain on his foot, “the strange clothes”, the cruel blow, the hallucinated fainting, Lino Figueredo and his 12 years old, the old man Nicolás del Castillo, the illness, the cynical laughter of the whip... were the common scenes. His homeland -he said then- had taken him in its arms, kissed him on the forehead, and left again, “pointing me with one hand to space and with the other to the quarries”.

The horror was not enough for the young man to grow abject feelings. Not even having seen his father place, choking with tears, the pads made by Leonor to avoid the rubbing of the shackle, which caused sores “of blood and dust” and “matter and mud”, awakened in him aversion. “And I still don't know how to hate,” he alleged in recounting the dreadful experience.

What a lesson of probity in each page of the hero's life! How much admirable in each gesture! How many astonishing impressions before each picture! How much righteousness and immeasurable humanism in everything that would come later, when the banishment, the death of his sister Ana, the love experience, the unstoppable pen to write beauty and denunciation, fatherhood, the podium of the classroom, the unique oratory, the conspiracy against the master, the second banishment, journalism, diplomacy, the founding of the Party and the Necessary War would be drawing the line of his days!

As a kind of extension of himself he took up friendship, for “great things cannot be done without great friends”; and in love he found “the excuse of life.” Virtue, he said, “cannot understand villainy”; and of glory, he understood that only by assaulting it can it be conquered.

Martí wrote about everything, because nothing was indifferent to him. Notions such as honor and humanity were tenacious in his thinking. Humanity would have its guidelines, but among its laws there would never be room for cowardice or indolence; and of honor only those who were capable of selling it, he said, would have “the courage to propose the sale of the honor of others”.

There was, however, a sweet and guarded word, perhaps the most beloved, which he did not know how to say without trembling and with which he was betrothed forever. Of such a sacred bond he wrote: "I wear an iron ring and have to perform iron feats. The name of my country is engraved on it and I must live or die for my country".

That is why he put at her service his enormous reason, his capacity to unite forces, his diaphanous and incomparable soul. His voice did not tremble nor his pulse to defend, from all the fronts that were given to him, the name of Cuba, when someone dared to stain it.

The document that our history contemplates under the title of Vindication of Cuba, published in The Evening Post on March 25, 1889, and dated four days earlier in New York, is well known -and nowadays more valid than it has always been-.

It would be enough to return to those lines to not only vibrate before Martí's imperturbable defense, but to perceive his legacy in our people, in days when the Island is defamed, distorting and distorting its truths, trying to overshadow his lighthouse light, which continues to be a guide for those with whom Martí wanted to cast his fate.

“(...) The struggle has not ceased (...) The new generation is worthy of its fathers (...) Only with life will the battle for freedom cease among us (...)”.

A few hours before falling in combat, Martí spoke to the Mambi troops and told them: “I want it on record that for the cause of Cuba I let myself be nailed to the cross”.

We are not unaware of these arguments. Every moment of his existence is a lesson and an example. Not a single one escapes his vocation of deeds, the only way to give body to conviction. Martí thought, lived and left for us the score of that music called Homeland.

Apostle

Albi

 Extraordinary talent, children and teenagers singing like angels, art entering through every chink of the soul. It all happened yesterday, May 19, just meters away from the obelisk that marks the place where José Martí fell.

So was the national act that recalled the 130th anniversary of the Apostle's fall in combat, impeccable and emotional, led by First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez; by member of the Political Bureau and Secretary of Organization Roberto Morales Ojeda, by local authorities and the people.

Among so much life and color, in the same nature and under the same sun that illuminated the face of the good man as he fell, one idea was recurrent: This was what he wanted; beyond any uncomfortable nuance, beyond any pain, beyond all that may be missing, it was this - joy, brotherhood and freedom - precisely what unveiled the man whom the barefoot mambí fighters began to call President, just by listening to his voice as if it were an embrace.

This is how the intense and very clear morning in Dos Ríos began this Monday. If he had seen these moments of the National Anthem sung with pride and without fear; if he had seen how we remember what he said: “no deed without mercy and without cleanliness will ever leave my heart”.

“We are not here to evoke a static past,” said Danhiz Díaz Pereira, deputy to the National Assembly of People's Power and president of the Martí Movement of Young People. “Martí taught us that every Cuban deserves respect.”

Referring to the master, he affirmed that he “is the fire that burns us when we falter,” and that the resistance of now is the reflection of the Martí spirit.

“Sisters and brothers of this heroic Cuba”, first secretary of the Provincial Committee of the Party in Granma Yudelkis Ortiz Barceló began her speech in a fiery, beautiful and patriotic intervention, and spoke about the ‘Martí's perpetuity’ that was born precisely from the fall of the exceptional man.

We are not before a simple memory, we are before a fire that will not be extinguished. In such a way, the party leader affirmed that, “facing the sun” -that Martian phrase- means among Cubans to live with dignity, to embrace the future and to do it without fear, not to give up. “In every Cuban who resists with dignity, there is Martí”.

Socialism

 

Inter-party ties constitute the cornerstone of Cuba-Vietnam relations in all fields. Under that maxim the member of the Political Bureau and Secretary of Organization, Roberto Morales Ojeda, exchanged with Nguyen Xuan Thang, member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, director of the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics and president of the Central Theoretical Council.

Photo: Albi

This meeting takes place prior to the celebration of the 6th Inter-Party Theoretical Seminar and the 2nd Fidel Castro Ruz-Ho Chi Minh Scientific Conference, to be held today and tomorrow in Havana.
Morales Ojeda stressed the importance of this seminar, which takes place prior to the Congresses of both Parties, and which will allow addressing issues that are vital in the construction of socialism.
He pointed out that experiences will be shared on how to face a phenomenon that is incompatible with our social system: crime, corruption, illegalities and social indisciplines.

Nguyen Xuan Thang emphasized that the exchange mechanism of the theoretical seminar is very important, as it helps to strengthen the links between both Parties, in addition to promoting cooperation in the implementation of the consensus reached between the leaders of both Parties and countries, especially the agreements reached during the State visit to Cuba of the General Secretary of the Party, To Lam, last September.
At the meeting it was learned that the central theme of the vi Seminar will be Theoretical and practical experiences on the construction of socialism in Cuba and Vietnam.
Three commissions will work: the Party in the conduction of the economic processes; experiences and lessons in the forms of state and non-state management of the economy, and the political-ideological work with the youth.
Theoretical Seminars between both Communist Parties have been held since 2012 and constitute important mechanisms for the exchange of experiences in the process of building socialism with their own characteristics.
Present at the exchange were members of the Secretariat, heads of Departments and Offices of the Central Committee of the Party, as well as leaders of the Young Communist Youth Union, the Ñico López Party University and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Photo: Albi

Photo: Albi

Cohiba

 

Cuba won a new victory in the almost 30-year long legal battle for Cohiba. Photo: Albi

Cuba won a new victory in the nearly 30-year long legal battle over Cohiba, its flagship cigar brand, after a U.S. federal judge ruled in favor of the Cubans once again.
The verdict is the result of a lawsuit filed in February 2023 by General Cigar Company vs. the Cuban Tobacco Company, known as Cubatabaco.
General sought to overturn a decision made by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAH) in 2022, which ruled to cancel the registration of General's Cohiba trademark in the United States.
But this Wednesday, General - which sells versions of the famous brand in the United States - lost the case.
Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia upheld the TTAB's decision three years ago, a matter in dispute in the courts since the William Clinton administration (1993-2001).
According to the magistrate, Cubatabaco's Cohiba was protected by the Inter-American Convention (CIH), a 1929 law that protects international brands.
These cigars - valued among the best in the world - Cuba cannot legally sell them in U.S. territory due to the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by Washington on the Caribbean country more than six decades ago.
Cubatabaco, owner of the Cohiba name and the rights to market it internationally, challenged the legality of U.S. trademark and filed the first lawsuit in January 1997, the year the litigation began.
Cubatabaco applied for the Cohiba trademark in September 1969 and obtained the registration on May 31, 1972. Almost six years later, on March 13, 1978, General Cigar made a similar request before U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which was issued on February 17, 1981, the legal document states.
One of General Cigar's main arguments in the lawsuit was the claim that Cuba allowed the Cohiba trademark to lapse for lack of use in the 1970s, an idea that the court rejected.

Yes

 

First Secretary of the Party's Central Committee and President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez called for the food needed in the Isle of Youth, where some 80,000 people live, to be sown in the shortest possible time in that municipality, at the 15 de Mayo tobacco production center.

After the ceremony for the 70th anniversary of the release of Fidel and Moncada fighters, and prior to the meeting with the young people of the Isle of Youth, the Head of State, together with member of the Political Bureau and Secretary of Organization of the Central Committee of the Party Roberto Morales Ojeda gave continuity, in a second round, to the work system of the Party leadership in the territories.
At the beginning of the working visit, Diaz-Canel toured areas of the Pioneers Palace, which occupies buildings of the former Presidio Modelo, and where the first secretary of the Municipal Committee of the Party, Rafael Ernesto Licea Mojena, informed him about the rehabilitation and operation of an enclosure that is part of the childhood and adolescence of several generations of the Isle of Youth residents.
Already in one of the enclaves of the municipal tobacco company, he learned that the productive pole 15 de Mayo has five caballerias of land (67 hectares), which had been idle for four years; only 1.7 hectares were cultivated.
However, from January of this year to date, the collective, with the support and territorial commitment, has recovered the strategy of self-sufficiency in the lands located on the edge of the Sierra de Caballos.
The landscape in this area of northeastern the Isle of Youth has now acquired a new quality, more beautiful, according to Díaz-Canel, as the most typical of the island's nature and the hard work of its men and women converge.
Of the 67 hectares of the productive pole, only about seven have yet to be planted, the rest is covered by crops such as cassava, which occupies most of the space, banana, pumpkin, vegetables...
After the spring harvest, the company's management and the people of the production pole expect to start planting tobacco in October, initially on ten hectares, to evaluate the results. For this purpose, they are preparing several curing houses.

Tobacco has not been planted here for four years, but the tradition of the crop is still alive in the old farmers and technicians, who also hope that the crop, which pays well - including foreign currency - will allow them to promote other crops, such as miscellaneous crops and vegetables.

The President inquired about the progress of the self-sufficiency program in the municipality, especially the rustic crops, in which cassava and sweet potato have already achieved and overachieved, according to the per capita hectares per inhabitant. The same is not true for plantain, malanga and yam.

He insisted on the concepts to develop these varieties and, at the same time, reviewed the projections for the production of rice, beans, eggs, and oil, from soybean and sesame.

He asked about the income received by the collective from the entity, which is around 8,000 pesos per month, although they plan, after the harvests, with the distribution of profits, to reach an average of 20,000 pesos, according to Raul Fernandez, director of the Tobacco Company.
Before the usual meeting, at the end of these tours with Party cadres and territorial managers of the social and economic spheres, the Head of State visited the Meñique children's circle, inaugurated this school year in a large and airy building recovered by the institutions and enterprises of the territory, for the care of children of working families.

With an enrollment of 150 children, of which 80 are already occupied, the center is attended by educators and assistants committed to provide all the love required by the infants in the different stages of life, including pre-school.

The President wrote in the visitors' book his impressions about the center: “It is important to highlight -he wrote in his own handwriting- how with commitment, effort and dedication they have managed to build and put into operation this beautiful children's center in difficult times and with a lack of resources”.

Fidel Castro

 

It is an instrument of ideological struggle that should not be broken down into its parts, but analyzed in its integrality as an indivisible concept

Today marks the first quarter of a century of the concept of Revolution outlined by Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz. Perhaps no other of his definitions took such a historical dimension as the one pronounced in the Revolution Square, on May 1st, 2000; in the words of Army General Raul Castro Ruz: "the quintessence of the political-ideological work".

But what makes this conceptualization so transcendent?

Throughout his political life, both the construction of the Cuban revolutionary process and its impact on the world, and especially on the peoples of the Third World, were the object of multiple reflections by Fidel Castro. As early as January 1959 he reflected: "It hurts me to think of what would be the destiny of America if this Revolution is crushed, because this Revolution, (...) must constitute for the peoples of America a hope".

And to the extent that the revolutionary project was being consolidated, and that "everything that seemed impossible was possible", the maximum leader of the Revolution realized that "a Revolution greater than ourselves" had been made, much greater than the dreams of justice that led the Centenary Generation to the Moncada in 1953.

After the Bay of Pigs, the Revolution had crossed the threshold of the most basic measures of social justice, and was heading towards the construction of socialism, a project that had no precedents in Cuba or in Latin America to help understand such a social transformation; This fact was aggravated by the Cuban peculiarity of having passed, in a very short historical time, from a Spanish colony -together with its inheritance of underdevelopment, racism, etc-, to a new system of much stronger and more subtle dependencies, based on economic, political and cultural ties that aggravated the deformations inherited from the colony.

Although the main thinkers of Marxism were invaluable references, not as dogma, but as a method, the "Soviet manuals" did not fit the Caribbean reality that the Revolution intended to transform, so it had to think for itself, being aware of its own "sense of the historical moment", without following schemes or imported manuals; and it was Fidel, as a first-rate intellectual, who led that battle.

To be genuine will be one of the keys to the survival of the Cuban Revolution in the following decades, especially to face the Special Period.

A REVOLUTION FOR ALL TIMES

Fidel, a profound connoisseur of our history, knew firsthand that the term "revolution" was manipulated and stripped of its ideological essence during the first half of the 20th century. Grau, Prío and Masferrer, to cite a few examples, defined themselves as revolutionaries, and in the same way Batista tried to manipulate the barracks coup of March 1952, which had the energetic reply of the young Fidel Castro in Not a Revolution, but a swipe!

For Fidel, Martí, Maceo, Mella or Guiteras did not fit in the same concept with the lukewarm and genuflecting politicians of the Republic, even if they had had some participation in the deed of the 1930s.

This justifies, from the historical, political and theoretical point of view, its conceptualization of the year 2000, and therein lies one of the greatest values of the fidelist concept: its capacity to distance itself from the bourgeois and colonialist revolutions engendered from the entrails of capitalism. Because of its content, Fidel's concept of Revolution is incompatible with these and their individual spawns of any epoch.

"Revolution" is an advanced concept, which beyond the particular historical conjuncture in which it is expressed, transcends the frameworks of a particular epoch or socialist process. More than a look to the past, it is a projection to the future, a political reference for the leftist forces and a reflection of the humanism of the Cuban Revolution, as well as the result of the coherent union of Marti's and Marxist thought as a peculiarity of the Cuban process.

Although on multiple occasions Fidel conceptualized the Cuban political project, the definition of 2000 is the result of the definitive maturation of an idea whose author had had the rare privilege of remaining in the leadership of Cuban society for more than four decades, and of having been able to study and observe various revolutionary processes in the Third World, most of which were unable to sustain themselves over time in their struggle with imperialism and their own contradictions.

In addition to its humanist and philosophical value, "Revolution" is an instrument of ideological struggle that should not be broken down into its parts, but analyzed in its integrality, as an indivisible concept. It does not pretend to be a recipe of what to do, but a reference of what it is essential not to ignore; to assume otherwise would be to tarnish Fidel's ethical and anti-dogmatic thought and conduct.

It is an instrument to sow ideas and consciences as weapons against imperialist aggression; and this is precisely the idea defended by Fidel, as a preamble to his historic statement: "Our weapons have been the conscience and the ideas that the Revolution has sown for more than four decades". Immediately after reading his concept of Revolution, he added: "In real and concrete terms, we have faced for 41 years the most powerful power that has ever existed in the world (...)", a statement through which he made it clear that the ideas expressed above went beyond the particular context of the battle for the return of the child Elián González, one of the most grotesque aggressions of imperialism, and in which the island was involved at that time.

Twenty-five years have not been enough to take a reflective look at the concept of Revolution from every possible angle, but that time is enough to consider it a classic text of Latin American political literature.

CONCEPT OF REVOLUTION

"Revolution is a sense of the historical moment; it is to change everything that must be changed; it is full equality and freedom; it is to be treated and to treat others as human beings; it is to emancipate ourselves by ourselves and with our own efforts; it is to challenge powerful dominant forces within and outside the social and national spheres; is to defend values in which we believe at the price of any sacrifice; is modesty, selflessness, altruism, solidarity and heroism; is to fight with audacity, intelligence and realism; is to never lie or violate ethical principles; is a deep conviction that there is no force in the world capable of crushing the force of truth and ideas. Revolution is unity, it is independence, it is fighting for our dreams of justice for Cuba and for the world, which is the basis of our patriotism, our socialism and our internationalism".

Cuban

 

José Angel Portal Miranda, Cuba’s Minister of Public Health. Photo: Facebook.com

 Micky Albi

The Cuban health system is not a set of scattered institutions, but a coherent community-based network, and its axis, Primary Health Care, transverses all levels of medical care and focuses on individuals and families through integrated networks that reach the entire territory, said José Angel Portal Miranda, Cuba’s Minister of Public Health, in his inaugural lecture at the 5th Cuba Health 2025 International Convention.

At the opening, which was attended by the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, the minister referred to the Island’s medical collaboration in the world, and meant that our cooperants have reached the remotest corners, bringing not only medicine, but also comfort, hope and dignity.

“International medical cooperation is perhaps the most concrete expression of Cuba’s commitment to global health,” he said.

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Also on the opening day, the National Health System exhibition was inaugurated, a space to present the main indicators and achievements of the sector in recent years.

Ileana Morales Suárez, director of Science and Technological Innovation of Minsap, pointed out that this 5th Cuba Health 2025 Convention has more than 5,000 participants from 88 countries.

In addition, the scientific program includes more than 1,670 activities that will allow for the discussion of topics focused on models of integral health strategies, artificial intelligence in health, transformations in Primary Health Care, universal access and equity of medical services and products, among other topics.

The opening ceremony was attended by members of the Political Bureau of the Party’s Central Committee, Esteban Lazo Hernández, president of the National Assembly of People’s Power and the Council of State;

Manuel Marrero Cruz, prime minister, and Teresa Amarelle Boué, secretary general of the Federation of Cuban Women, as well as other government and Party leaders.

Child

 

Kim Duncan’s three adopted daughters, from left, Shalyn, Shyanne and Shelbi, sit smiling with their watermelon in the summer heat. (Photo: Albi))

Cetan Sa Winyan, director of the American Indian Movement’s Indian Territory Oklahoma chapter, said all tribes — not just the four already petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court — should stand together against potential changes to the Indian Child Welfare Act in a case the court has been asked to review.

“They closed the boarding schools and opened up CPS (Child Protective Services), but it’s the same thing — they’re still coming in and taking our children,” Winyan said.

The ICWA was enacted in 1978 to help keep Indigenous children in Indigenous homes. In ICWA cases, the first preference for placement is that the child go to an extended family member, even if the relative is non-Native. Second preference is someone within the child’s tribe; third preference is another tribe.

The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, the Morongo Band of Mission Indians of California and the Quinault Indian Nation of Washington are petitioning the Supreme Court to request that the bill remain intact.

The state of Texas is challenging the constitutionality of ICWA, claiming it’s a race-based system that makes it more difficult for Native kids to be adopted or fostered into non-Native homes. Another argument is that the law commandeers states too much, giving federal law imbalanced influence in state affairs.

A Supreme Court response to the tribes’ petition and the petition filed by the plaintiffs is due Oct. 8.

Tribes and advocates argue that ICWA is culturally- and politically-based, not race-based, because tribal nations have political status as sovereign governments under federal law. 

Cherokee Nation Deputy Attorney General Chrissi Nimmo said the tribe will put all the resources it has into making sure ICWA is protected.

“ICWA attempts to keep children connected to their tribe … and an attack on that is absolutely an attack on tribal sovereignty,” Nimmo said.

The bill was enacted to quell the disproportionately high rate of Indigenous children’s removal from their traditional homes, culture, language and dress. Before ICWA passed, 25% to 35% of all Indigenous children were being forcibly “assimilated” from intact Indigenous family structures to predominantly non-Indigenous homes.

“There was this bias that would lead to children being placed in foster care for things that weren’t abuse or neglect but things mainstream social services didn’t understand,” Nimmo said.

Te’Ata Loper, partnership grant coordinator for the Oklahoma Indian Child Welfare Association, said ICWA is “vital to the continuation of our tribal nations and tribal families” and is optimistic the court will maintain tribal sovereignty given the legal precedent found “in countless Supreme Court case decisions.”

The Oklahoma Indian Child Welfare Association is a nonprofit supporting Indigenous families and children by providing advocacy, education, training and collaboration with Oklahoma tribes and partner agencies.

AIM Indian Territory also provides a support system for tribal families trying to navigate the child welfare system. Winyan said the organization has been working to educate Oklahoma tribes about what’s been happening with ICWA in the courts. 

She knows some don’t understand the politics of it, or the severity, but Winyan said many can understand ICWA’s impact when it’s compared to the boarding schools era. 

“It’s just another form of saying, ‘Kill the Indian, Save the Man,’”she said. “It hasn’t changed.”

One mother from the Cherokee Nation has seen the impacts Indigenous children face when raised in non-Indigenous homes. 

Kim Duncan adopts and fosters children through the tribe. She and her husband, also an enrolled Cherokee member, became certified to foster and adopt in December 2017 and shortly thereafter took in two girls who were also Cherokee.

The girls, then ages 9 and 10, had gone through six different non-Indigenous homes between Dec. 13 and Dec. 28 of that year, by the time Duncan and her husband became their seventh and final home. 

“The other six homes before us completely shut down and said, ‘we don’t want any more kids,’” Duncan said. “That’s how traumatic it was … ​​They were probably the hardest two we’ve ever taken in and we ended up adopting them, and they are totally different kids now.”

Duncan said leaving the Indian Child Welfare Act as it is would mean that Indigenous children like hers would still get to grow up in homes where they are surrounded by people that not only sometimes look like them but speak their language, understand their culture. 

A non-Indigenous home, she said, just can’t provide those needs to Indigenous children.

Duncan said when they made a home for their two girls, they were immediately drawn to Duncan’s husband because he was perhaps a familiar — darker — face.

“They just related to him more,” Duncan said. “My children are darker-skinned, most of them, and they related to them.”

Duncan has fostered 14 children since 2017 and adopted three of them. 

“People that are non-Indian are not as passionate about keeping the language strong, the culture strong,” Duncan said. “If we allow our Indian children to be adopted by non-Indian homes, we’re going to lose it.”

ICWA applied in the adoption of Jennifer Bailey’s now 7-year-old Cheyenne daughter. Bailey is a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. 

The birth mother, Bailey said, walked away from the adoption agency and chose she and her husband to raise her child because the child and Bailey were of the same tribe.

Bailey said she’s concerned that changing ICWA would lead potentially to long-term impacts on culture and language preservation, because it will keep Indigenous children from staying connected to their history and ancestry.

Nimmo said if ICWA is ruled as unconstitutional, as “race-based,” it would open the door to dismantling other Indigenous laws using that argument.

“Nothing else that we deal with as tribal people — land doesn’t matter, money doesn’t matter, language doesn’t matter, artifacts don’t matter if we don’t have future generations,” Nimmo said.

Scene

 

OK3 members Sierra Sikes, Courtney Hooker and Kenna Fields. Photo provided by Albi

Two Oklahoma artists appeared on this season of NBC’s “The Voice,” showcasing the talent they’ve built upon while living in the Sooner State.

The Oklahoma City-based trio OK3 secured a four-chair turn, which is when judges select an artist to join their teams, after performing “Made You Look” by Meghan Trainor during the season premiere on Feb. 26. They joined Grammy-winning R&B artist John Legend’s team.

Singer-songwriter AJ Harvey of Norman made his debut on March 11, landing a two-chair turn from Chance the Rapper and duo Dan + Shay with a performance of Bob Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country.” Harvey moved on as part of Dan + Shay’s team.

OK3 began when Sierra Sikes, 24, Courtney Hooker, 26, and Kenna Fields, 22, met through their vocal coach. At the time, Fields was 12, Sikes was 14 and Hooker was 16. They attended nearby schools in the Oklahoma City area, allowing them to foster a friendship that would continue into their careers.

“We were together all the time,” said Hooker. “Probably six days a week, whether or not it would be us actually practicing or rehearsing for something, or if it was just us having sleepovers or hanging out.”

Gallery • 4 Photos

OK3 during rehearsals for Team John Legend. Photo provided by Albi

In 2017, the members of OK3 went their separate ways. Hooker said they always aspired to come together again in adulthood.

“We came back together because of this opportunity,” Hooker said. “It was so quick, and it just felt right.”

Hooker graduated in 2020 from the Academy of Contemporary Music at the University of Central Oklahoma with degrees in vocal performance and commercial music. Sikes also attended UCO, graduating with a degree in musical theater in 2021. Fields is a senior at the university studying contemporary music.

Harvey, 25, grew up in Wichita, Kansas, and moved to Norman in 2020. A member of the Ponca Tribe and Pawnee Nation, he attended powwows as a child and developed an interest in  traditional ceremonial music.

Harvey said he keeps the contemporary music he performs and the powwow songs he grew up around separate, but draws connections between his own chords and the emotion found in traditional Native tunes.

“You might hear a song that makes you choke up,” Harvey said. “We always were told that that’s a good thing, that maybe the spirit of that song and hearing that drum (is) medicine for us.”

Harvey said having a Native background and relatives in central Oklahoma gave him an opportunity to move to Norman and become involved in its local music scene. 

“A goal of my moving here was to make a name for myself, in whatever way that was,” Harvey said.

Harvey has a residency at The Deli. He takes the stage every Thursday night with the band Biscuits and Groovy and has performed at venues around Norman and Oklahoma City such as Beer City Music Hall and Ponyboy.

While living in Wichita, Harvey performed in local businesses such as coffee shops and bookstores. Norman has provided him with an array of venues as well as connections with artists in the local music scenes.

“After I moved here, I really wanted to develop songwriting that I thought was me,” Harvey said. “I’ve gotten to see other aspects of people (in Norman) who really take to that craft.”

Scott Booker, manager of the Grammy-winning band The Flaming Lips and founder of UCO’s Academy of Contemporary Music, said the opening of venues in central Oklahoma has played a key role in its flourishing music scene.

“One of the things we didn’t have when ACM first started was what I like to call a venue ladder,” Booker said. “We had very small venues and we had bigger venues, but we didn’t have very many in between.”

Another factor lending support to musicians in central Oklahoma is its abundance of universities with music programs. Among them are UCO, Oklahoma City University and the University of Oklahoma. UCO is Oklahoma’s only university with a contemporary music program.

“If you look at before ACM and then now, you’ll notice that there’s so many more venues,” Booker said. “There’s all these venues that have opened up, and I think it’s a direct relation to more people focused on music.”

ACM provides opportunities for students to work with local and touring professionals. Faculty members have worked with Grammy-winning artists such as Miley Cyrus, Elton John and Reba.

“All of the professors there are in their own projects,” Hooker said. “Now that I’m out of college, and I’ve grown and been in the industry for a bit, I’ve played gigs, like with my old professors, which is so cool.”

Because Fields is a student at ACM, she said, having professors in the music industry was helpful as she balanced academics while competing on “The Voice.”

“At the school, all the professors understand, you know, they’ve been in the industry, they’ve done this,” Fields said. “They offer any help and advice, and I can use the facilities when I need. So that’s really nice, because I feel like a lot of other majors wouldn’t necessarily be as understanding.”

Harvey said when he received an Instagram message for casting in December 2022, he thought it was a scam. Once the new year rolled around, he responded, beginning the audition process that led to his nationwide emergence.

“This was a whole other ballgame for me,” Harvey said. “You’re out there in front of these excellent musicians and performers, and you get to see what they think of you. Overall, it was an incredible experience.”

During his blind audition, Harvey said he was trying to keep himself centered.

“All I kept saying to myself was ‘this is just another show at The Deli,’” Harvey said. “I look up and see Chance the Rapper and Dan + Shay looking at me and I was like ‘alright, we’re good.’”

Fields said OK3 spoke with other contestants on the show about Oklahoma’s reputation for country music.

“I think what we wanted to show is that there’s a lot of versatility in the Oklahoma music scene that people aren’t aware of,” Fields said.

OK3 and Harvey were eliminated from “The Voice” in their respective battle rounds, which are when two artists on the same team perform one song together, with their coach deciding who will move on to the next round.  Harvey was defeated by 17-year-old Anya True in a performance of John Mayer’s “Half of My Heart.” 

Legend chose 20-year-old Zoe Levert after her battle with OK3, describing her as the “underdog” against the trio.

Having gained exposure from “The Voice,” Sikes said, OK3 wants to continue to build their platforms locally and nationally. Hooker said OK3 is hoping to release original music, and released her own original song “Then I Met You,” on March 21.

“We’re really trying to build off of the momentum from the show,” Sikes said. “Now it’s not just Oklahoma people that know us, (but) we’re getting people from the north and west, and all that, that are telling us that they’re rooting for us.”

Harvey said his goal as a musician is to establish an audience for himself, and his experience on “The Voice” gave him a chance to hone in on this aspiration.

“I hope to have a following of people that like what I do and like what I have to say, musically,” Harvey said. “At the end of the day, that’s the most important thing, and to make the music that’s most me as much as I can be.”