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Cuban Sports

The national ensign in the hands of the future champions

The national ensign in the hands of the future champions

The Cuban delegation that will participate in the Junior PanThe Cuban delegation that will participate in the Junior Pan American Games in Asuncion was flagged American Games in Asuncion was flagged

Author:  | informacion@granmai.cu

august 1, 2025 08:08:23

The athletes will defend their flag in each of the facilities in Asunción. Photo: Ricardo López Hevia

Yesterday was a different experience at the Antonio Maceo Monument Complex in San Pedro. The emblematic site, located in the municipality of Bauta, in the province of Artemisa, served as a stage for the future of Cuban sports to receive the banner that will accompany them in the upcoming Junior Pan American Games in Asuncion.
Deputy Prime Minister Inés María Chapman Waugh and five-time Olympic champion Mijaín López, Hero of the Republic of Cuba, handed over the national ensign to wrestler Yainelis Sanz and rower Roberto Carlos Paz, escorted by Yisnoly López (canoeing) and Emmanuel de la Rosa (weightlifting), in a ceremony that evoked patriotic feelings in the place where the lieutenant general of the Liberator Army Antonio Maceo fell in combat.
In the presence of Yuniasky Crespo Vaquero, head of the Department of Attention to the Social Sector of the Central Committee of the Party, the taekwondoca Elianet María Crespo, and the beach volleyball player, Eblis Verane, laid a wreath in the exact place where Maceo and his aide Francisco Gómez Toro fell in combat.
The 231 talented young people who make up the Antillean delegation were summoned to defend with dignity, and with Maceo’s intransigence, the patriotic colors in each of the competition scenarios.
In Yainelis Sanz’s opinion, “being the Cuban flag bearer represents a great honor and an additional motivation to add my second title in these competitions. We know that the challenge ahead is great, but we have trained hard to achieve the best possible performance,” she told Granma.
On the other hand, the president of Inder, Osvaldo Vento, stated that “we are happy with the representation we are going to have in these Games. In the midst of a very complex scenario, the Revolution has allocated valuable resources for the preparation of our athletes. We cannot create false expectations, but we know that our athletes will give their all for Cuba in Asunción,” he said.
Asunción-2025 will be an ideal scenario to evaluate the Island’s sports reserve and achieve the highest number of qualifiers for the Lima-2027 Pan American Games. Those are the fundamental objectives, confirmed to this newspaper by José Antonio Miranda Carrera, general director of High Performance of Inder.
Cuba will only participate in 56% of the 336 events called, due to the impossibility of covering the entire critical route in most of the specialties. In the Cali-Valle-2021 edition, 29 gold medals were obtained, which meant a 13.6% of effectiveness, given that there were 212 competitors. A better parameter than Colombia (12.6%, with 386 members) and Mexico (12%, with 378).
This time, the studies of opponents and positions in the ranking show that the greatest potential to bring gold medals are centered on athletics, canoeing, wrestling, judo, weightlifting and rowing, with taekwondo, fencing, volleyball, beach volleyball, diving and table tennis, with real possibilities of climbing the podium of awards.
The political-cultural gala was also attended by Meyvis Estévez Echavarría, first secretary of the UJC National Committee, and the president of the Cuban Olympic Committee, Roberto León Richards.

U.S. sanctions on Cuba

Economic sanctions: a “non-violent measure” that takes lives

Economic sanctions: a “non-violent measure” that takes lives

In the case of Cuba, only four months of blockade “are equivalent to the financing required to cover the country’s basic medicine needs for one year”

Author:  | internet@granma.cu

august 1, 2025 08:08:52

Although the declared objective is to force behavioral changes, economic sanctions especially harm Photo: Granma

Economic sanctions imposed unilaterally by some States do kill. This was recalled by a publication of Misión Verdad, based on a study by the journal The Lancet Global Health.
The analysis – led by economists Francisco Rodríguez, Silvio Rendón and Mark Weisbrot, and supported by data from 152 countries – states that these restrictive measures “imposed by the United States or the European Union were associated with 564,258 deaths per year between 1971 and 2021”.
Although the stated objective is to force behavioral changes, according to the researchers, “all economic sanctions ultimately function as health sanctions,” affecting access to medical services, food security and socioeconomic development, which especially harms “children, women and the most marginalized populations.”
Another article published in the journal reveals that, as a result of sanctions, there has been a “3.1% increase in infant mortality and a 6.4% rise annually in maternal mortality between 1990 and 2019.”
It argues that the increase in sanctions has been steady since 1950, according to the Global Sanctions Database. However, “their success rate in achieving the stated goal remains at around 30%”.
Mission Truth exposes that “Venezuela, subject to sanctions as of 2017, recorded between 2012 and 2020 an economic contraction of 71 %, and shortage peaks that directly affected the availability of oncological treatments and retrovirals. In Iraq, the embargo imposed after the invasion of Kuwait coincided with the death of more than 500 000 children during the 1990s, according to Unicef,” he underlines.
“Syria accumulated successive rounds of sanctions since 2011, reinforced with the Caesar Law, in 2020, and today has 90% of its population below the poverty line.”
In the case of Cuba, according to the latest report presented to the United Nations, just four months of blockade “is equivalent to the financing required to cover the needs of the country’s basic list of medicines for a year”.
“For countries under sanctions, induced shortages are not a surgical intervention but a sustained form of coercion. With an additional 564 000 deaths per year, the label of ‘non-violent measure’ collapses,” the publication reads.

Our martyrs: Neither forgotten, or dead

To the martyrs of the Revolution, the homage of Santiago and all Cuba

To the martyrs of the Revolution, the homage of Santiago and all Cuba

Floral offerings from Raúl, Diaz-Canel, Lazo and the people of Cuba were placed in the altarpiece of the martyrs in Santa Ifigenia

Author:  | internet@granma.cu

july 31, 2025 11:07:56

In its streets, Santiago de Cuba raised Frank País. Photo: Luis Alberto Portuondo

Santiago de Cuba. -The people of Santiago, in pilgrimages to the intersection of Callejón del Muro and San Germán, and the Santa Ifigenia patrimonial cemetery, paid homage to their beloved son Frank País García and his companion in struggle, Raúl Pujol Arencibia, who were assassinated by henchmen of the Batista tyranny on July 30, 1957, date consecrated as the Day of the Martyrs of the Revolution.
At the Martyrs’ Altarpiece in Santa Ifigenia, floral offerings were placed by the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz; the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez; Esteban Lazo Hernández, president of the National Assembly of People’s Power and the Council of State, and the Cuban people.
Díaz-Canel expressed in X that in both patriots “we have references of virtue, and also the pride of knowing that we come from Cubans like them”.
To the rhythm of patriotic marches, played by the Municipal Concert Band, the highest political and governmental authorities of Santiago and the people arrived at the Martyrs’ Square, where a wreath was placed on behalf of the people of Cuba, at the base of the monument that commemorates the event of which Fidel said: “What monsters! They do not know the intelligence, the character, the integrity that they have murdered”.
During the day of tribute, Party militant cards were given to outstanding workers, and in the afternoon, the funeral honors that the people of the Hero City held that day were reedited in honor of Frank, of whom Army General Raúl Castro Ruz said: “he was upright in principles, organized and demanding, of a proverbial modesty, courageous to the point of recklessness and of uncommon intuition; he was the kind of man who penetrates deeply and definitively into the heart of the people”.

Cuban Solidarity

Esteban Lazo’s busy schedule in Geneva

The fraternal meeting in Geneva between the presidents of the legislative bodies of both nations was a demonstration of the close and strategic relations between Cuba and Russia

Author:  | informacion@granmai.cu

july 30, 2025 08:07:19

Photo: Taken from X 

The fraternal meeting in Geneva between Esteban Lazo Hernández, member of the Political Bureau, Cand the Council of State, and Valentina Matvienko, president of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, in the context of the Sixth World Conference of Speakers of Parliament, was a demonstration of the close and strategic relations between Cuba and Russia.

Lazo conveyed greetings from Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, leader of the Cuban Revolution, and Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic.

Matvienko highlighted the close ties between the two legislative bodies, as well as the significance of Cuba’s incorporation into BRICS as a partner country and into the Eurasian Economic Union as an observer state.

Lazo also spoke with the president of the National Assembly of Cambodia, Khuon Sudary; the president of the Chamber of Deputies of Equatorial Guinea, Salomón Nguema Owono; and the president and secretary general of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Tulia Ackson and Martin Chungong, respectively, whom he thanked for their firm rejection of the US economic blockade against Cuba.

He exchanged views with Zhao Leji, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress; and with Rawhi Fattouh, head of the Palestinian National Council, and participated in the opening of the World Conference of Speakers of Parliament.

He also participated in the parallel event Respecting International Law and the United Nations Charter to Ensure International Peace and Security, in which he reaffirmed his condemnation of Israel’s attacks on Iran and reiterated Cuba’s support and solidarity with the cause of the Palestinian people.