Cuba prepared for Elsa and ready to begin recovery
As tropical storm Elsa makes landfall this morning, Cuba’s western provinces, including Havana, are prepared, while Party First Secretary and President Miguel Diaz-Canel notes that recovery efforts in central and eastern regions have begun

Author: National news staff | informacion@granma.cu
july 5, 2021 11:07:28

Photo: INSMET.
Cuba is ready to confront tropical storm Elsa, under the special conditions created by the epidemic, and prepared to rapidly begin recovery work, stated First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee and President of the Republic Miguel Diaz-Canel yesterday, during a joint meeting of the government COVID-19 task force and the National Defense Council’s socio-economic authority.

At this point, damages reported are concentrated in agriculture, especially in the province of Granma, the President tweeted and called on the population to stay in safe locations, to avoid any loss of human life, noting, “Discipline is key to overcoming this situation with the least possible harm.”

He likewise emphasized the professional work of the Meteorology Institute and thanked the press for keeping the population well informed, adding, “Our country rises to the occasion before adversity.”

Elsa is projected to make landfall between Cienfuegos and the Zapata Peninsula, around noon today, July 5, crossing the island to enter the Gulf of Mexico along the northern coast between the provinces of Matanzas and Artemisa this evening, according to Dr. José Rubiera.

FEBRUARY 14, 2018      FROM

Two Wings of the Same Bird – Puerto Rico, Cuba, Hurricanes and Political Prisoners
by DIANA BLOCK
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Photo by Rob Oo | CC BY 2.0
Six months after Oscar López Rivera was released from prison having spent 35 years inside, he traveled to Cuba. “I feel at home, this is a dream come true; for many, many years, I have wanted to come to Cuba and today for the first time I have arrived,” Oscar told Fernando Llort González, the President of ICAP (Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples), who greeted him when he stepped off the plane.
The last time Oscar had seen Fernando was in the cell he shared with him for four years in Terre Haute prison where they became good friends. Their friendship wasn’t surprising. Oscar was in prison because of his participation in the struggle to win Puerto Rican independence from the U.S. while Fernando, one of the Cuban 5, was in prison for his efforts to protect a sovereign Cuban nation from U.S. aggressive interventions. A Puerto Rican and a Cuban freedom fighter sharing a cell was a twenty-first century manifestation of the historical bonds between the two islands, eloquently expressed in the lines that Puerto Rican poet Lola Rodriguez de Tió wrote in 1893:
Cuba and Puerto Rico are
as two wings of the same bird,
they receive flowers and bullets
into the same heart.
When Oscar arrived in Cuba on November 13, 2017, both Cuba and Puerto Rico had recently received bullets into the geographical hearts of their islands. Cuba was hit by Hurricane Irma, a category 5 hurricane, on September 8, 2017. Two weeks weeks later, on September 20th, Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria, a category 4 hurricane. In Cuba, the electricity was restored to the entire island within a few weeks. In Puerto Rico, over four months after Maria nearly 40% of the island is still without power. The scandal-plagued response to the hurricane on the part of the U.S. and Puerto Rican governments exposes the operation of disaster capitalism at its worst.

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