International
Cuba: “The history of tobacco”

October 17 |
Everyone on the Island knows that this is the longest story in the world, that when your grandfather drops the first word, the knot of worsted is untied, the sentences are chained to each other, the stories are connected to each other and little by little before the eyes is built an eternal road of words that goes around Cuba, goes out to sea and sails around the world until the word tobacco throws twist, ends up in the mouth of a Russian in Siberia.
As far can the stories go as the ships, as close to the sea grow the leaves that Christopher Columbus discovered in the name of the Old World. For more than two centuries, the starting point of this narration has been the hands of the people of Pinar del Río, people from the west, and not precisely the proud conquering the desert, but simple and noble hands that have chosen tradition as a way of life.
Among the modern descendants is Miyelis Canales Machuat, a teacher by profession and vocation, but faced with the vicissitudes of life she had no choice but to take up work on the land as a way of life. Seven years ago her husband passed away, and since tobacco production was the main income for her family, she put all her efforts into running the farm.
But her battles have not been few, last year Cuba registered one of its strongest hurricanes of all times, Ian with category 3 made landfall in Cuba precisely in the town of La Coloma, not far from Miyelis’ farm, who tells us: “when it passed through here, out of 59 tobacco houses that these lands had, only 6 were left standing”.
“I’m going to be honest, I didn’t think that my tobacco house would have been on the ground, completely destroyed, because it wasn’t new, but it wasn’t in such bad conditions, but that cyclone, the hardest part was after the eye passed, everything was destroyed, all these fields were devastated, completely devastated”.
Cuba
Among the modern descendants is Miyelis Canales Machuat, a teacher by profession and vocation, but faced with the vicissitudes of life she had no choice but to take up work on the land as a way of life. I Photo: teleSUR
Miyelis, who at the time, full of tears, did not know what to do, tells that her children were discouraged, they thought it would be impossible to harvest tobacco, they did not know how to raise again a priest’s house because they lacked the resources. The hurricane had left the production of Pinar del Río totally in ruins.
But giving no place to grief, Canales says that she and her children rebuilt a dream based on rubble, rescued the wood and zinc they could and with that they faced hopelessness. They put their feet on the ground and were able to be even one of the few producers who were able to plant in the previous season. With the house half-built, they obtained more than 50 percent of the plan they had to stockpile.
Photo: teleSUR
“Tobacco takes a lot of dedication but the greatest satisfaction is to see the final result, when you have money that satisfies all the basic needs of your house and others that perhaps are not so basic but that make your life more human.”
Miyelis’ life is a sort of odyssey, an incarnation of Homer if you want to compare. This Cuban woman does not give up, she does not stop thinking that the future is one of construction, of “echar pa’ lante”.
The history of tobacco is long, but they always have mouths to tell it, adept at unraveling the mysteries in the leaves. Among the smoke of a smoker, made into faint shapes is the voice of the Taino Indians, the voice that whispers “Cohiba”.
International
China shows at the UN its “condemnation” of Israel for the “violation of Iran’s sovereignty”

The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, showed the “condemnation” of his country against the “violation of the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Iran” after the air attack launched by Israel against multiple targets in that country, the official newspaper Diario del Pueblo reports this Saturday.
That media echoes Fu’s speech to the UN Security Council on Friday, in which he demanded that Israel “immediately stop all its military actions.”
“China (…) opposes the expansion of conflicts, and is deeply concerned about the serious consequences that may arise from Israel’s actions. The intensification of regional tensions does not interest any of the parties involved,” said the Chinese emissary.
Beijing called on Tel Aviv and Tehran to “resolve their disputes through political and diplomatic means, and maintain peace and stability at the regional level jointly.”
In Fu’s view, the Israeli attack will have a “negative impact” on the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program: “China has always been committed to the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and consultations, and opposes the use of force, illegal unilateral sanctions and armed attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities.”
This Friday, China had already expressed its willingness to “play a constructive role” to curb the escalation of tensions and facilitate conciliation, in line with its traditional position of active neutrality in the region’s conflicts.
The Israeli attack, which according to Tehran caused dozens of deaths, including senior military commanders and at least six nuclear scientists, targeted key facilities such as the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Numerous civilian casualties were also reported.
Israel justified the offensive by claiming that the Iranian regime is secretly developing a program to manufacture nuclear weapons.
For his part, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, promised a “severe response” and assured that the attack would reveal the “evil nature” of Israel.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also expressed concern about the bombing, at a time when Iran and the US The United States is holding talks about the Iranian nuclear program.
International
Donald Trump’s government pauses its program of indiscriminate raides against migrants

The government of US President Donald Trump has decided to pause its campaign of discretionary roundings against migrants in certain areas due to its apparent concern about the growing unpopularity of these methods, according to The New York Times newspaper on Friday.
According to an email to which the newspaper has had access and the confirmation of US officials, the Executive has ordered the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE) to pause the beatings that affect the agricultural industry and the hospitality industry.
The spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed in a statement that “the president’s instructions” will be obeyed and the portfolio will also continue to “work to get the worst illegal foreign criminals out of the streets of the United States.”
The decision points out that this campaign of discretionary arrests to try to deport large-scale immigrants is harming industries and electoral constituencies whose support Trump wants to retain for next year’s legislative elections.
The new instructions were transmitted to ICE in an email sent last Thursday asking that “all investigations/law enforcement operations be suspended in work centers in the agricultural sector (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and hotels.”
These new guidelines come in turn after more than a week of intense protests in Los Angeles against this immigration policy and that Trump himself admitted that the raids seem to be affecting the agricultural sector, which in states like California, where beatings have intensified, depend almost exclusively on immigrant labor.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has implemented an aggressive policy of hard hand against immigration and as a sample of his Cabinet officials recently held a meeting with the ICE leadership to order them to carry out 3,000 arrests a day, a mandate that seems to be behind the intensification of the raids.
International
Trump says he knew “everything” about the attack on Iran and assures that the dialogue remains open

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington “known everything” about the Israeli attack on Iran and that the dialogue on Tehran’s nuclear program “is not dead.”
“We knew everything and I tried to avoid Iran all this humiliation and death. I tried hard to avoid it because I would have loved to see an agreement,” Trump said in an interview with Reuters.
The US president insisted on what he wrote today about the attack on social networks, where he said he gave an ultimatum of 60 days to Tehran to reach an agreement.
“We knew practically everything. We knew enough to give Iran 60 days to reach an agreement and today it is already 61 days,” he explained in the interview, in which he said he did not know what the current situation of the Iranian nuclear program is after the attack launched by Israel, which also ended the lives of key military leaders of the Persian country.
Regarding the dialogue between the US and Iran about the nuclear program of the ayatollahs, Trump assured that “he is not dead”, that “an agreement is still possible” and also recalled that on Sunday a sixth round of dialogue is scheduled in Muscat (Oman) that they consider is now in the air.
“We have a meeting with them on Sunday. Now, I’m not sure if that meeting will take place, but we have a meeting with them on Sunday,” he said.
The United States and Iran have held five rounds of talks on the Iranian nuclear program since April, with Washington demanding that Tehran discard its capabilities both to manufacture an atomic bomb and to enrich uranium, something that the ayatollahs considered unacceptable.
Both Israel and Trump himself had warned of possible preventive attacks on the Persian country due to this refusal by Iran.
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