Court Martial for Accused “Kill Squad” Leader
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La Puntilla this morning. Havana is incredibly still. I thought the weekend after Fidel Castro died was the most silent this city had ever been. But this morning you hardly heard a car start, a dog bark or anyone making the rounds with wares to sell. It’s like the whole city is on tip toes, trying not to be heard.As of today the Cuban government has canceled all regular commercial air travel with the rest of the world.An empty Malecón.... We took our kids for a drive down the Malecón yesterday evening and saw a grand total of two people sitting out. Police are “encouraging” people not to sit or exercise or even walk on the Malecón right now. From a social distancing standpoint I know this makes sense but it is jarring to see one of Havana’s central gathering points without any people.Our new collection of “nasobucos” as they call them in Cuba. Face masks were pretty much impossible to find here but this being Cuba there’s always a solution. @cubajournal gave a set of our bed sheets to a seamstress and two days later we had face masks for the whole family. Stay safe everyone.I guess castaways were the original social distancers. We finally were able to get the kids out of the house today for the first time in two weeks. As there are no tourists here anymore, they had the beach to themselves. Hope we can all get back to the beach soon.Our new daily visitor from salud pública who checks our house and every other house in our neighborhood each day to make sure there is no one feeling ill, no cases of coronavirus. This is going on across the island right now in every city and every town. Cuba has many problems but the massive effort that the country is making hopefully will save lives.An eerie photo of a nearly empty plane heading to Cuba by my colleague and friend photographer @svenxman. Sven writes, “A Cuban passenger wears a face mask and plastic gloves aboard Swiss Edelweiss' Airlines last flight to Cuba, Monday 23 of March. The aircraft made its trip to Havana with only 12 passengers aboard, out of 315 max of the Airbus 3300-300. Airlines worldwide are grounding most of their passenger flights due to the Covid-19.” Follow @svenxman for his outstanding photos of Cuba. He also has a new book of his decades of Cuba photography called “Havanna.”The Knights of Havana. Living in Cuba had already made us into recyclers and repurposers. I wish I could take credit but this was all @cubajournal Today was Day 1 of a 30 day or more lockdown in Cuba. No more tourism, international or domestic travel for Cubans among other strict measures to try and combat the coronavirus here.The thing I am probably most proud of in my now 20 years at CNN is when we moved the CNN Havana bureau to its current location. It’s not easy to search out the perfect work space and build a bureau from scratch, especially in Cuba where finding a paper clip is sometimes a challenge. The CNN Havana bureau is a special place though and we have covered a lot of news in the five years we have been at our location in Old Havana. So it was a tough decision to tell my coworkers here last week that we had to work from home for the immediate future. I work with five wonderful Cubans who have become like family to me and I already miss seeing them every day. But to keep each other safe we all need to limit our interactions to the absolute minimum. On Tuesday, Cuba will shut it’s doors for at least 30 days to all tourists. Cuban citizens and residents who return from abroad will have to go into quarantine for 14 days. I hope to report from the CNN Havana bureau soon that Cuba is coronavirus free. In the meantime stay at home, check in with your loved ones and think of the celebration we will all have once this is over. I’ll bring the rum and cigars...Terminal 3 of the Jose Martí International Airport. You get your temperature taken now when you come in to the departures area. A crush of people trying to get home before their countries close their borders and before Cuba begins to turn away visitors starting this Tuesday.Just in: Cuba to shut its borders to visitors for the next 30 days, starting this Tuesday. Commerce will continue and residents of Cuba can still return but will have to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival. The 21 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Cuba were all brought in from abroad by tourists or came from contact with visitors. Hopefully these measures will stem the tide of the infection in an island with a large population of elderly and at risk people. So we are on lockdown. Hope to see everyone in 30 days!Waking around Havana this morning.I took my kids this am to see a man in our neighborhood who is building a plane in his garage. This would be an impressive feat anywhere in the world but in Cuba where there are shortages of everything and endless red tape it’s absolutely incredible. Almost unbelievable really. Adolfo — the man whose plane it is— has spent the last seven years making an airplane out of whatever pieces he can find a little bit at a time. Now that it can fly he has to go through the equally daunting process of getting permission to fly it from the Cuban government. My kids asked him if they could use it to escape the coronavirus because that’s all anyone talks about anymore. It did get me thinking about how amazing human beings are and what we have accomplished through perseverance and dreaming big. That in the end is worth more than all the hand sanitizer and toilet paper in the world.Getting honey straight from the source. Thanks for another great visit @fincatungasukHotel construction worker... Old Havana.Following the controversy surrounding Sen. Bernie Sanders comments this week it was interesting to speak with two "alfabetizadores" who in 1961 took part in a massive literacy campaign in Cuba. Juan Hernandez was only twelve but lied about his age to go into the countryside for six months to teach poor Cubans there how to read and write. He went with his brother and said he had his parents permission. Initially, Juan said many of the Cubans he encountered weren't interested in the program but eventually they came around and even gave him a horse so he could travel more easily between the small towns where he taught. Like just about everything Cuba, the literacy campaign is divisive. People point out that there were other rural literacy campaigns before the revolution and Cuba already had a high literacy rate for the region when Fidel Castro took power. Critics say the literacy campaign was a way to indoctrinate many Cubans as the island turned towards communism. The Cuban government says the campaign helped end illiteracy on the island and taught hundreds of thousands of people to read and write. My favorite part of being a journalist is sitting down with people who have different view points and life experiences than my own and getting to hear their stories. Both of these individuals had fascinating experiences to recount and were still very proud of their work on the literacy campaign all those years ago. Interestingly they thought Sanders had made something of an error by defending the literacy program as they didn’t think that would go over very well with US voters. If you listen to people they can surprise you some times.Entrance to the 400 year old Convento de Belen in Old Havana.Picking “tabaco tapado,” cigar tobacco grown in the shade, in Artemisa province, Cuba.It’s Friday! Go buy somebody flowers to celebrate.
