Rolando Hernandez is a member of the Association of Cuban Residents of Ottawa-Gatineau.
“They don't have airlines from Canada to Cuba anymore. And it is incomprehensible also that there are still American Airlines going to Havana and no Canadian. I don’t have an explanation for that.”
“I still have a family in Cuba. I have brothers and sisters. I have a sister that lives in Havana and is a senior and has the condition of diabetes. So this sister has to go every day to find something to buy in the market to eat. And this cannot be too much because even if she has the money, she cannot take too much food at home. Because even if she has a fridge, she cannot conserve the food in the fridge because they have no energy to keep this food fresh. So imagine the situation. Then she has to take that food that she bought and try to cook it, but she cannot cook it inside the house. She has to go on the street and improvise a stove because she cannot use the one inside the house.
And why she has to go outside? Because the smoke. She's cooking with wood and the smoke will make the entire family in the house sick. So the situation is really, really bad.
Then also, the food that she is having with no choice is not maybe a good food for her condition of diabetes. So that makes the diabetes grow worse and she needs medication. She needs medicines. But she has not enough medicine for that because the government cannot produce medicine, even [though] in normal times, Cuba used to produce this kind of medicines. But now with the lack of energy, they can neither import the medication because of the embargo and there is there are 7,000 containers waiting in different parts of the world to be shipped to Cuba, because the embargo don't allow the thing to go in the country.”
“Do you think that all of this situation is correct? That all of this situation that is happening to the Cuban family is correct? Do you think it is fair that the stronger country economically and military in the world punish the Cuban family just because they don't like or they don't agree with the government that they are having in Cuba? I know the answer very well, but I will leave this open to the people that are listening to this, to look for a honest answer to this.”