Pope’s visit to Cuba looks to boost role of Church

Pope's visit to Cuba looks to boost role of Church
Reuters, 20/03 16:11 CET
By Jeff Franks

HAVANA (Reuters) – Father Miguel Angelo Jimenez' congregation is small
and mostly elderly and his church, Our Lady of Carmen in central Havana,
needs repairs to a leaking roof for which there is no money.

As he sits behind a worn desk that looks like it dates back to the
church's opening in 1926, he is under no illusions about the state of
the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba.

"It was in decline (before Cuba's 1959 revolution) and it continues to
decline in many things. The Church really needs to renew itself," he said.

That, in essence, is why Pope Benedict will visit the communist island
on March 26-28 after a three-day stop in Mexico.

The once-powerful Catholic Church in Cuba is hoping the German pontiff
will awaken what Cardinal Jaime Ortega called last week a "a sleeping
faith" and also help build on its budding relationship with the Cuban
government.

Badly weakened in the years after the revolution, the Church wants to
regain some of its lost glory, both in terms of bringing more people
into the fold and expanding its role in shaping Cuban society.

In the past two years, it has served as an interlocutor with the
government, with Ortega brokering a deal to free political prisoners,
convincing President Raul Castro to let a women's dissident group, the
'Ladies in White' continue their weekly protest marches, and creating
more space for the Church to expand its social programs and educational
courses.

The rapprochement is in part a case of mutual need, experts say.

The Church wants to be a bigger player, and Castro needs allies as he
undertakes economic reforms that include the slashing of one million
workers from government payrolls.

A partnership with the Church, which is Cuba's largest and most socially
influential institution outside of the government, "encourages stability
and gives the state a certain degree of credibility," said Geoff Thale
at the Washington Office on Latin America, an independent organization
that advocates for human rights.

Castro has said his goal is to strengthen the communist system for a
future without its aging founders.

He also has shown more tolerance towards religion than did his elder
brother, Fidel Castro, who ruled Cuba for 49 years before he fell ill
and Raul succeeded him in February 2008.

"The party should be convinced that beyond the material requirements and
even cultural ones, there exists in our people a diversity of concepts
and ideas about their own spiritual necessities," Raul Castro told a
Communist Party congress last year.

CONFLICT

The 1959 revolution brought years of conflict in which many in the
Church sided with opponents of Fidel Castro and he in turn expelled
hundreds of priests and nuns, seized Church property, refused it access
to mass media and forbade religious believers in the Communist Party.

Ortega, now 75, was detained in a work camp for several months in 1966.

In 1962, Pope John XXIII excommunicated Fidel Castro, who later made
religious antipathy official by declaring Cuba atheist in a constitution
adopted in 1976. Christmas as a national holiday was abolished.

Membership in the Catholic Church and other religions plummeted with the
exodus of people leaving Cuba after the revolution, and many of those
who stayed quit practicing their faith openly because of harassment in
the increasingly anti-religious atmosphere.

Church officials say about 60 percent of Cuba's 11.2 million people have
been baptized in the faith, but only about five percent of those
regularly go to mass.

The story of the Church's once-dominant role in Cuba and its precipitous
decline is told by the presence of numerous churches in every nook and
cranny of the island, and the fact that many of them now stand closed
and empty.

With its baroque altar, intricately tiled pillars and a towering statue
of its namesake atop its dome, Our Lady of Carmen church symbolized the
Church's soaring status in Cuba when it opened in 1926.

But at a recent Sunday mass, it was more a symbol of the Church's
modern-day problems, with half the wooden pews empty and mostly elderly
people in attendance.

"I still love the church, but things have been difficult for a long
time," said 80-year-old retiree Esther, who preferred not to give her
full name as she waited for her family to take her home from mass.

Church-state relations began a slow thaw in the mid-1980s when Fidel
Castro warmed to the leftist "liberation theology" movement inside the
Church in Latin America and Catholic leaders issued a willingness for
dialogue, saying that socialism was not all bad.

In the early 1990s, coinciding with the collapse of the Soviet Union,
Cuba's top ally and benefactor for 30 years, Fidel Castro replaced the
word "atheist" with "secular" in the constitution, eliminated a ban on
religious believers in the Communist party and allowed Caritas, the
Church's social services branch, into Cuba.

In 1994, Ortega was named cardinal, and in 1996 Fidel Castro went to
Rome to invite Pope John Paul II to Cuba. Just before the pope's arrival
in January 1998, Castro reinstated the Christmas holiday.

"May Cuba, with all its magnificent potential, open itself up to the
world, and may the world open itself up to Cuba," Pope John Paul II said
in a well-remembered and still unfulfilled line.

PATRON SAINT

The Church believes another turning point may have come last year when
the government allowed it to take the image of the Virgin of Charity of
El Cobre, Cuba's patron saint, around the country in a pilgrimage to
celebrate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the doll-like icon
by three fishermen.

In a nationally televised address last week, Ortega said a million
people turned out to see the icon in a massive display of faith.

The cardinal said the showing so impressed Pope Benedict, 84, that he
decided to come to Cuba, despite his advanced age and frail health, to
reawaken that latent faith.

"There was great interest in this pilgrimage because the pope is
committed to reviving the faith in countries that were Christianize
before, but need a new evangelization," Ortega said.

The pope's visit will include a stop in El Cobre, the mountainside town
in eastern Cuba where the icon is enshrined.

Regaining the Church's past glory in Cuba will take work.

Afro-Cuban religions such as Santeria, a legacy of slavery on the
island, are widespread and Protestant churches are estimated to have a
combined membership of as many as 800,000 people.

Before the revolution, Protestant religions such as Baptist, Methodist
and Presbyterian had a strong presence in Cuba due to American influence
on the island and they are said to be growing today, including the
evangelical and Pentecostal churches.

Lazaro Alvarez, pastor of the University Methodist Church in Havana's
Vedado neighbourhood, said outreach programs have fuelled strong growth
the past four years and he now has 2,216 members.

In contrast to lightly attended Catholic masses, "we fill the chapel
with 1,300 people every Sunday and have an overflow room where those who
don't fit inside can watch the service on television monitors," he said.

Still, none of the other religions are as institutionally powerful as
the Catholic Church nor wield its political clout. Within limits, it has
become a forceful voice for economic and political change, particularly
through its publications.

But critics say it has not used its power as much as it could or should
have to push for more rapid and deep change.

"We're seeing a Church that is kowtowing to a regime for no reason at
all. What do the people of Cuba have to show for this? Nothing at all,"
said Daniel Alvarez, a religious studies expert at Florida International
University in Miami.

Alvarez was particularly critical of an incident last week when 13
dissidents occupied a Catholic church in Havana for two days before the
Church called police in to remove them.

"This is an institution that has taken on emperors and kings. I don't
understand why they're trying to accommodate the regime," he said.

Thale said the Church's weakened state and other factors have forced it
to shy away from direct confrontation with the Cuban government in
favour of a more gradual approach.

"My sense of things is the Church decided that the best tactic was to
push for space and change within that," he said. "You can disagree with
the path the Church took, but I think there's a sound argument that it's
the right path," he said.

(Additional reporting by David Adams in Miami; Editing by Kieran Murray)

http://www.euronews.com/newswires/1446146-popes-visit-to-cuba-looks-to-boost-role-of-church/

Can the Pope bring hope to Cubans?

Can the Pope bring hope to Cubans?
By Editorial Board, Tuesday, March 20, 1:26 AM

HOW IS CUBA preparing for the visit next week of Pope Benedict XVI? By
rounding up dissidents, of course.

Four score or so were detained over the weekend, including the leaders
and most of the members of the Ladies in White, the group that regularly
marches in support of political prisoners. Many were released Monday,
but they can expect regular harassment in the coming days. The regime's
practice is to carry out short-term arrests rather than formal
imprisonments: According to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and
National Reconciliation, there were more than 600 such detentions in
February alone.

If Pope Benedict or the Cuban Catholic hierarchy under Cardinal Jaime
Ortega is troubled by this, they don't show much sign of it. So far, the
pontiff has not responded to appeals by the Ladies in White and other
dissident groups seeking a few minutes of his time during the three days
he will spend in Cuba. He has, however, scheduled two meetings with Raul
Castro and made it known that he will be "available" if Fidel Castro
wishes to meet with him. Cardinal Ortega, for his part, asked police to
expel 13 dissidents who were camped in a Havana church last week in an
attempt to push the pope to talk to the Castros about human rights.

The church's coldness toward peaceful pro-democracy activists isn't all
that surprising. Since 2009, Cardinal Ortega has become a de facto
partner of Raul Castro, meeting with him regularly and encouraging his
limited reforms. The church helped broker the release of more than 100
political prisoners and did not object when most were pressured into
emigrating to Spain. The cardinal has lobbied in Washington for the
relaxation of U.S. sanctions against Cuba; the pope himself gave a
speech Friday calling for the lifting of the U.S. trade embargo. Pope
Benedict's visit, the first by a pontiff since John Paul II toured the
island in 1998, seems aimed at reinforcing what the church sees as a
gradual process of peaceful reform led by the regime.

The problem is that, as Raul Castro has made clear, liberal democracy
plays no part in his strategy. Rather, he hopes that Cuba will follow
the path of Vietnam or China, opening its economy enough to stabilize a
one-party regime. That may work for Cardinal Ortega, but it won't
satisfy Cuba's opposition. Some 750 activists sent a letter to Pope
Benedict warning that his visit "would be like sending a message to the
oppressors that they can continue to do whatever they want, that the
church will allow it."

How could Pope Benedict avoid sending that message? He could meet with
the Ladies in White. He also could press the Castros to stop persecuting
democratic activists and release those who remain in prison. That should
include the American Alan Gross, who is serving a 15-year prison term
for delivering computers and satellite Internet connections to Cuba's
Jewish community as a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International
Development.

The Vatican is right to support change in Cuba but wrong to suppose that
it will happen without greater pressure on the regime and cooperation
with peaceful opponents.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-the-pope-can-help-cubans/2012/03/19/gIQADeM6NS_story.html

In Cuba will new rules mean new markets?

In Cuba will new rules mean new markets?
The Mark News Mar 20, 2012 – 9:00 AM ET | Last Updated: Mar 20, 2012
10:46 AM ET
By Nicholas Ward

At the centre of Old Havana, the crests of 48 American states, painted
on the ceiling moulding of a wood-panelled room, hearken back to a
bygone era. In the 1930s, this room was the private club of the American
business elite in Cuba.

Today, it houses a restaurant named El Gijones, one of the first private
enterprises operating in Cuba since reforms were introduced last year.
The reforms made it legal for Cubans to start micro businesses, and
triggered a surge of entrepreneurial activity.

"The Cuba of today is barely recognizable from the Cuba of a year ago,"
says Gregory Biniowsky, a British Columbia native and Havana-based
consultant to the law firm Heenan Blaikie.

Cuban President Raul Castro first instituted limited economic reforms in
2008, after taking over the presidency from his ailing older brother,
Fidel. But these reforms were widely perceived to be inadequate to
address Cuba's considerable economic challenges, and, in 2011, the
younger Castro announced a new set of regulations that went much further
than the reforms of three years earlier.
Advertisement

Licences have now been issued for more than 360,000 small businesses,
more than double the number that existed prior to the reforms. The
buying and selling of homes and cars, illegal for decades, is now
permitted. Most state-owned farmland is being transferred to
co-operatives, and several hundred thousand state jobs will be phased out.

As Rafael Hernandez, editor of the Cuban news journal Revista Temas,
suggests, any domestic efforts to grow the economy will be stunted by
the U.S. embargo imposed more than 50 years ago: "We can't sell one
cigar, one bottle of rum, one Cuban vaccine in the United States. We
have zero access to that market."

But U.S. President Barack Obama has relaxed restrictions on travel and
cash remittances to Cuba, allowing Cuban Americans to send much-needed
capital to invest in their families' small businesses back home.

Larger-scale foreign investment is still restricted, but investors and
observers in Cuba predict a relaxation of the rules in the near future.

Hugo Pons, vice president of Cuba's National Association of Economists
and Accountants (ANEC), is optimistic that Cuba will become more open to
foreign investment, specifically in the biotech and mining industries.

"Cuba has the knowledge and capabilities to develop new technologies.
[But] to do that, Cuba needs capital, and [the government] is open to
[listening] to proposals of mutual benefit," he says.

The Canadian government and Canadian business leaders have cultivated
close ties with Cuba. Many Canadian companies are also actively
exploring business opportunities there, hoping to be ready when and if
the market opens up.

While it is uncertain how quickly Cuba will implement any new reforms,
it is unlikely to retreat from the ones already introduced. "I don't
think anybody or anything can stop this process," says Marc Frank,
correspondent with the Financial Times. "The changes they're making and
the way they're making them … it is not reversible."

http://business.financialpost.com/2012/03/20/in-cuba-will-new-rules-mean-new-markets/

Tensions rise in Cuba ahead of Pope visit

Tensions rise in Cuba ahead of Pope visit
AFP Updated March 20, 2012, 5:13 am

HAVANA (AFP) - Tensions in Cuba between dissidents and the Communist
leaders are rising ahead of next week's visit by Pope Benedict XVI, with
the arrests of more than 50 activists and a showdown at a Havana church.

In operations around the capital, police on Sunday rounded up activists
with the Ladies in White group, which is seeking the release of
political prisoners and their loved ones.

Early Sunday, an activist with the Ladies in White said 33 women,
including leader Berta Soler, were detained as they were leaving the
group's headquarters to attend Sunday mass at a Roman Catholic church.

Hours later police then broke up a protest march by wives and mothers of
political prisoners and arrested about 20 dissidents after they strayed
off their usual march route, an AFP reporter witnessed.

The Ladies in White, who won the European Union's 2005 Sakharov Prize to
honor those committed to the struggle for human rights, has long pressed
for the release of political prisoners, carrying gladiola and marching
in white.

In Washington, the White House called for the release of all members of
the Ladies in White activist group, saying the arrests underscored the
"disdain of Cuban authorities for the universal rights of the Cuban people."

"We call for the immediate release of all who were detained and for
Cuban authorities to abandon their tactics of intimidation and
harassment to stifle peaceful dissent," said National Security Council
spokesman Tommy Vietor.

"President (Barack) Obama and the American people remain steadfast in
standing with (the group) and other courageous voices in Cuban civil
society who demonstrate the Cuban people's desire to freely determine
their country's future."

By early Monday, some of those arrested Sunday were released, a ladies'
group member said.

But just a week before the pope arrives from Mexico, the arrests
highlight the Catholic church's fears that his visit -- which church
officials want to be strictly spiritual -- could end up taking on
political overtones.

Cuba is the Americas' only one-party Communist state.

Only about 10 percent of Cubans are practicing Catholics. Seventy to 80
percent, in a country of more than 11 million, identify themselves most
with Afro-Cuban Santeria beliefs.

But the Roman Catholic Church in recent years has emerged as Cuba's most
influential non-state actor.

"Certainly there is a risk, in the absence of independent parties, that
some will want the church to be a motor for radical change in Cuba,"
wrote Orlando Marquez in a March 2 article on the Cuban Episcopal
Conference website.

Last week, a two-day sit-in style protest at a Havana church by
dissidents seeking democratic reforms ended peacefully after the
archbishop of Havana ordered the group removed. Police took the 13
protesters in for booking and then released them.

The Havana church has been deeply involved in mediating the release of
political prisoners, and some opposition members have been critical of
it for cooperating with the regime.

But the church is keen to maintain and expand its influence to try to
stoke new Catholic religious fervor in Cuba. After decades of official
atheism, the Cuban regime now has cordial relations with Roman Catholics
and other churches.

Benedict's will be the first visit to Cuba by a pope since John Paul II
in 1998, which helped usher in an era of better church-state ties. John
Paul urged the government to "open up" to the world, yet it remains a
highly isolated, centrally run state.
The pope will first travel to Mexico and is then due to visit Cuba
between March 26-28. Benedict, 84, will offer mass in Santiago and
Havana, and meet with President Raul Castro, 80.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/13206653/tensions-rise-in-cuba-ahead-of-pope-visit/

Our Responsibility in Cuba

Our Responsibility in Cuba
March 20, 2012
Yusimi Rodriguez

HAVANA TIMES, March 20 — Just a little while ago I finished writing the
last line of my blog entry "In Cuba, the Party Doesn't Need Elections"
and I'm already starting this second entry, almost without taking a
breath. But far from feeling particularly productive, I feel ashamed.

I didn't spare words or irony to question the existence of a single
political party here in my country. The same goes for a constitution
that only allows us freedom of speech and the press in accordance with
the aims of "socialist" society, and an electoral system designed so
that we can't choose.

Whenever I dare to criticize the Cuban political system, I think back to
ten years ago, when I was among the millions of people who signed the
constitutional amendment providing for the irrevocability of socialism
in Cuba.

The question was not whether I considered socialism as the best option
for the country. I'm sure that I thought so at that time, sometimes I
still think it is, mainly because I'm increasingly convinced that the
system that prevails in this country has little to do with socialism.

But the issue ran much deeper. It was over the right to decide to
whether to leave this path of socialism when we wished. Likewise, it was
over the right of future generations to leave the path to socialism (or
to take the true path to socialism) if they wish.

It's easy to write, especially if you do it on a website that few
citizens have access to in the country. What's difficult is to act
responsibly at the appropriate time. I didn't. I signed that document
without a second thought, without reading it once.

I don't remember if I considered socialism as being the best option at
the time, because I didn't think about it. It wasn't my faith in
socialism that led me to sign.

Yet I could also say that I signed it out of fear, because that mockery
of a referendum was not held by secret vote; the president of each
neighborhood Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) went from
house to house collecting the signatures.

But more than anything else, I signed for convenience, out of simple
expediency.

I had just gotten a job as an English teacher at the Jose Antonio
Echevarria Superior Politecnical Institute, better known as CUJAE.

I had just obtained the status of a university professor, which is less
poorly paid than my mid-level colleagues, a little better recognized and
a little closer to the possibility of a trip abroad.

I wanted to keep that job. I wanted to preserve the possibility of
hoping for a trip. I wanted above all for everything to stay calm, for
me to stay out of trouble.

It wasn't until five years later that I learned that this "support" for
the amendment hadn't had anything to do with "demands and threats by the
imperialist government of the United States."

It was the Cuban government's response to the Varela Project, which had
gathered 11,200 signatures, which was more than the 10,000 signatures
required by the constitution from registered voters to propose laws.

The people of Cuba weren't permitted to become familiar with the Varela
Project or what it proposed. But I know that even if had I known what it
was about back then in 2002, I still wouldn't have dared refusing to
sign the document that the president of my CDR brought over to my house.

Now I get embarrassed whenever I run into someone who had the courage
not to support that constitutional amendment. But at least I can say
that I was afraid not to sign it.

Every time a Cuban has the courage to at least say that they were
afraid, that they're still afraid, they're demonstrating that there is
no freedom of expression in Cuba.

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=64899

Bank of Cuba Softens Money Export/Import Rules

Bank of Cuba Softens Money Export/Import Rules
Tuesday, 20 March 2012 08:58

Havana, Cuba, Mar 20.- The Central Bank of Cuba (BCC) updated and
relaxed the rules governing the import and export by individuals of
freely convertible currency, of Cuban pesos and of the payment
instrument called convertible peso.

The measures came into force on March 17, upon publication in the
Official Gazette of resolutions 17 and 18, 2012 issued by the Minister
President of BCC, Ernesto Medina Villaveirán.

According to the legal regulations imports of hard currency (MLC) for
individuals is free, including cash, checks or other means of payment
used in international banking practice.

Those who enter the country with an amount exceeding five thousand US
dollars or its equivalent in other MLCs in cash, are obliged to report
to officials of the General Customs of the Republic.

When leaving the country individuals can freely export up to five
thousand U.S. dollars or its equivalent in other MLCs in cash or by
check or other means of payment used in international banking practice.

The BCC president may authorize persons seeking to export amounts
greater than those stated, upon submission by the applicant of documents
proving their lawful ownership.

Among other provisions, the resolutions provide that temporary resident
aliens in the country with work permits who receive income in MLC may
send such currency abroad through a bank.

The regulations also allow Cuban citizens domiciled in the country and
permanent resident aliens, to export and import upon their departure or
arrival in Cuba amounts not exceeding two thousand Cuban pesos (CUP) in
cash and in any denomination.

But the regulations bam the export of the means of payment denominated
convertible peso in any denomination, as well as the export of Cuban
pesos by way of payments not related to trade.

The BCC noted that exports and imports of old currency (without monetary
value) and samples of CUP and convertible pesos, for collecting or of a
patrimonial nature, are governed by specific regulations. (Prensa Latina)

http://www.cadenagramonte.cu/english/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10015:-bank-of-cuba-softens-money-exportimport-rules-&catid=2:cuba&Itemid=14

LGBT Tourism in Cuba (Part II)

LGBT Tourism in Cuba (Part II)
March 20, 2012
Maria Matienzo

HAVANA TIMES, March 20 — I don't like to leave my promises unfulfilled.
So, since I had promised myself not to leave this issue hanging —
regardless of the wrongdoing of my tearing out some pages from someone
else's magazine — I wanted to continue with the topic of LGBT tourism on
the island and the article about that subject in Touristic Excellencies
the Caribbean magazine.

The article begins with this quote "Visibility facilitates integration,"
and it gets more interesting when in this same lead it outlines a
controversy surrounding sexual discrimination. It reads, "For others,
the only way not to discriminate is not to differentiate."

Nonetheless, Excellencies keeps a certain distance from the matter. It
steers clear of any sociological approach and reminds us that it's only
talking about tourism and money.

And that's fine. That's what's expected from a tourism magazine.

Of the photos it uses, of course none of them were taken from the "Week
against Homophobia" celebrated in Cuba. And I understand that too.

The problem is that our week is a bit dull, gloomy and gray – despite
our being on an island with so much sunshine and in an event held in the
middle of spring (it ends on May 17).

Except for the day of the several-block-long conga line, the rest of the
activities are talks, lectures and book presentations to those of us who
attend and who are overly concerned. The magazine's colored photos
(retouched with Photoshop or not), I don't think can be found in Cuba,
not even during that week.

Sometimes the information we receive on the topic of LGBTs is so dense
and didactic that it seems like we're talking about people who are
medically ill, we tend to oversaturate everybody. Then to, some people
create a whole joke out of the May 17 parade.

Like one man said to me recently: "Are they trying to make all of us
gay? Now they have at least one of them in every TV series." Since his
comment seemed so off the mark, I didn't even respond I left him there
with his "doubts," if he really had any.

But I realized that sometimes people are not as homophobic as they are
opportunistic.

I realized once again the need to implement a system or to encourage a
system that fights against discrimination and the harassment of
homosexuals, which is something that goes well beyond two or three
people yelling their demands for a few little reforms.

Above all, I realized that Cuba as a gay-friendly destination wouldn't
work like it does in Brazil or Argentina, not to mention France, the
United States, Germany or Japan.

We would first have to create a more hospitable environment, one where a
scandal wouldn't break out over two women holding hands or caressing
each other on the street. In such a climate, people wouldn't
automatically perceive such acts to be pornographic.

So the magazine Touristic Excellencies the Caribbean, if it's not as
utopian as I tend to sometimes be when I dream of the recognition of
rights in Cuba, then it's part of a masquerade, a mime, fantasy, a game
to make people believe that the world is actually open to change.

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=64922

Cuba’s Ladies in White warned public protests no longer allowed

Posted on Monday, 03.19.12

Cuba's Ladies in White warned public protests no longer allowed

The women said that state security told them that they can attend mass
in Havana, but cannot march outside. The action comes a week before Pope
Benedict XVI arrives for three-day visit.
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Cuba's Ladies in White say the secret police have told them that they
will shut down the only public protests allowed by the government
anywhere on the island — the marches staged by the women after Sunday
masses in Havana's Santa Rita church.

The threat came as police arrested more than 70 group members over the
weekend and dissidents stepped up their activities as Cuba prepares for
Pope Benedict XVI's three-day visit to Havana and the eastern city of
Santiago de Cuba, starting Monday.

The Ladies in White have been generally allowed to protest outside the
Santa Rita church since mid-2010, when Cardinal Jaime Ortega interceded
with the government after the women were accosted, sometimes lewdly,
several times by mobs of government supporters.

Their Sunday marches after mass at Santa Rita, where many churchgoers
are foreign residents of Havana, along the grassy median of Fifth Avenue
in the western neighborhood of Miramar have been the only such regularly
occurring protest in Cuba.

Police have cracked down harshly, however, when women tried to launch
similarly peaceful marches elsewhere, including the cathedral in the
city of Santiago de Cuba and the Basilica of Our Lady of Charity in El
Cobre, both in eastern Cuba.

The Ladies in White was started by the wives, daughters and mothers of
75 dissidents jailed in a 2003 crackdown known as Cuba's "Black Spring."
The last still in prison were freed last spring, but all except 12 went
directly from prison to exile in Spain, with their female relatives.

"They told us that our dear ones are no longer in prison, so this small
space will no longer be permitted," group leader Berta Soler said of the
Santa Rita protests. Her husband, Angel Moya, was among the dozen
political prisoners who were freed and stayed on the island.

Soler said the top State Security officer in charge of watching the
Ladies in White, a man who only identifies himself as Alejandro, gave
the same message Saturday to her and members Alejandrina García and
Laura Maria Labrado, daughter of the group's late founder, Laura Pollán.

"We were told that we were given the opportunity to march because we
were a humanitarian group, but that now they are not going to tolerate
this anymore," Soler told El Nuevo Herald by phone from her Havana home.
Labrado and García confirmed her account.

The women said they understood that they would still be allowed to
attend the Sunday mass at Santa Rita, dressed in their usual white
clothes and carrying gladiolas, even though virtually all the Ladies in
White that tried to gather this weekend at the church were detained.

Many were punched and handled roughly as police loaded them aboard
government buses, and one 70-year-old woman was kicked, Soler said,
adding that she was still sore from the way she was shoved aboard the bus.

Soler said she and 17 other women were detained Saturday when they left
the Ladies in White headquarters — Pollán's house in downtown Havana –
to mark the anniversary of the 2003 crackdown. They wore paper masks of
Pollán, who died last year, and were freed after several hours.

Soler and another 31 women detained again Sunday as they tried to go
from Pollán's house to the Santa Rita church. The women who live in the
provinces were transferred to other buses and driven to their hometowns.

Another 22 group members went from their own homes to the Santa Rita
church and staged a brief protest outside afterward, but were swiftly
arrested and carted away on buses when they tried to break away from
their usual course, Labrado said.

Still detained as of Monday evening were two women and Moya, who was
freed last spring after serving about eight years in prison. He was
arrested near one of the women's groups.

A spokesman for the White House's National Security Council said Monday
that the round of detentions on the eve of Benedict's visit "underscores
the disdain of Cuban authorities for the universal rights of the Cuban
people."

"The quiet dignity of the (Ladies in White) stands in stark contrast
with the acts of those who are standing in the way of the basic
aspirations of the Cuban people," added spokesman Tommy Vietor.
"President Obama and the American people remain steadfast in standing
with the (women) and other courageous voices in Cuban civil society who
demonstrate the Cuban people's desire to freely determine their
country's future."

Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen issued a statement Monday
charging that "the tyranny's deliberate targeting of innocent and
non-violent women, like the Ladies in White, is shameful and reaffirms
the brutal nature of the regime."

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/19/2702661/cubas-ladies-in-white-warned-public.html

Cuban spy convicted in Miami can travel home to visit sick brother

Posted on Monday, 03.19.12

Cuban spy convicted in Miami can travel home to visit sick brother
By EL NUEVO HERALD

A federal judge in Miami granted a Cuban spy's request to return home
temporarily to visit a brother suffering from lung cancer.

According to Monday's order by Judge Joan Leonard, Rene Gonzalez must
return from Cuba within two weeks of his departure. Gonzalez is on
probation after his release from federal prison last fall.

The Justice Department argued against the request, arguing that Gonzalez
could get new spying instructions if he met with Cuban intelligence
officials.

Gonzalez, 55, is one of the so-called "Cuban Five" convicted of spying
on Cuban exiles in South Florida and attempting to infiltrate military
installations and political campaigns. One of the five also was
convicted of murder conspiracy for the 1996 shooting down of two
Brothers to the Rescue planes.

Gonzalez's lawyer, Philip Horowitz, told El Nuevo Herald that the ruling
does not mean Gonzalez can leave for Cuba as early as Tuesday, however.

Gonzalez must comply first with some procedural requirements, including
notifications for his parole officer, before he can leave the country,
Horowitz said.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/19/2703126/cuban-spy-convicted-in-miami.html

Signs? / Yoani Sánchez

Signs? / Yoani Sánchez
Translator: Unstated, Yoani Sánchez

karl_marxThe interior stairs of a building collapse on the same corner
where the socialist character of the Revolution was declared. A
desperate group of thirteen people occupy the Church of Charity in
Central Havana and are taken out by force in the middle of the night.
The television shows a report about the bridges vandalized by people who
dismantle them to build houses. The Archbishop publishes a note in the
Communist Party's newspaper, with a tone that emulates its official
editorials. Potatoes appear only sporadically on the stands at the
farmers markets, and at higher prices in the black market. A hip-hop
musician is arrested for protesting his son's treatment at school and
taking a photo of Camilo Cienfuegos from the entry of the high school.
The Cardinal makes a speech on prime time TV, on the same date that 55
years earlier a young man forced his way into a radio station.

Hugo Chavez spends his postoperative time in Cuba surrounded by secrecy
and rumors of a return to the Special Period. Fidel Castro's book is
presented to Latin American intellectuals, using up in its thousands of
copies the paper destined for the entire annual production of a
publisher. A doctor declares a hunger strike so they will restore his
right to cure patients. The "cyberwar" rises to incredible paroxysms and
manipulates the social networks as nothing but a weapon in the struggle,
or an enemy to be defeated. A man with a mobile phone films a fire and
later the police confiscate the gadget for showing "the ugly side of
things." In the midst of the information battle against secrecy, a
journalist rails against those who buy enormous quantities of cookies
and pastries to resell them. Winter says goodbye to Havana without our
barely having taken out our coats. It was announced that an illegally
exported crocodile will return to our Island from Italy in the same
retinue as the Pope.

And I wonder: all these signs, these events, are they indications of the
end or of the beginning? Are we all going crazy or is it only now that
we've arrived at sanity?

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=16677

Cuba Will Receive the Pope with a “Bath of Masses” / Iván García

Cuba Will Receive the Pope with a "Bath of Masses" / Iván García
Iván García, Translator: Unstated

It's something exclusive to the olive-green revolution. Fifty-three
years ago, when Fidel Castro toured the island mounted on a Sherman
tank, after overthrowing the Batista dictatorship, he was feted frankly
and spontaneously by a sea of Cubans and he felt comfortable surrounded
by crowds.

Since that times, the baths of the masses were a weapon of his
revolution. Five decades ago, large segments of people voluntarily
attended the meetings and listened to long speeches of the one comandante.

Over time, that spontaneity is lost. Now in the 21st century, most
people go to political rallies or the hosting of personalities as if
they were going to a carnival. Or to a boring union meeting.

It is a mixture of conditioned reflex and fear. Remember that for years,
answering the calls of the Revolution had an effect on your quality of
life and career. If you were not very Revolutionary and often didn't
attend such concentrations, then forget about winning a Russian Krim 218
black-and-white TV, a Minsk refrigerator, a Lada 2105 car, and even an
apartment in Alamar.

When filling out forms to get an important job, in addition to writing a
detailed biography where you should highlight your loyalty to the
regime, you had to recount the marches you had attended.

In 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, things changed. And between
the exhaustion of power and the disgust of the citizenry for a chaotic
administration and an economy unable to make toothpicks, people just
grumbled at the partying revolutionaries.

Fidel Castro abused those baths of the masses. Up to ten or twelve a
year in Havana or in the capitals of provinces. Whether it was the first
of May, to receive the remains of Che Guevara or demand the return of
Elián González.

Those days they paralyzed the country. Public transport stopped working
after midnight and the workers and employees were paid their full wages.
They also suspended classes at all levels of education.

Many workers and students loved the marching soldiers. They could slip
out of the crowd and go home to take a nap.

There are no statistics collected of many engagements and marriages were
forged in those proletarian festivities. Amid shouts and chants, men
made towers of rum or brandy bottles that came in plastic. Or homemade
wine. Or 90 proof alcohol with water. Anything to change the body to
endure hours of standing in the terrifying sun.

Since hand-picked General Raul Castro took the throne, July 31, 2006,
public events decreased quantitatively. Castro II knows the millions of
pesos wasted in all these concentrations convened by his brother.
Mobilizations, the minimum. The key dates. The first of May or the July
26, dates of the autocracy that have become a tradition.

If the country is visited by a distinguished personage, he entertains
them with a bath of the masses. So the organizing committee responsible
for giving a monumental welcome Pope Benedict XVI is oiling the machinery.

Schools and workplaces are ready to welcome the pope when he arrives in
Havana, after canonizing the Virgin of Charity in El Cobre, Santiago de
Cuba. Rene, and phone company engineer, says the union and the core of
the party within the company are calling on workers. Some allege
personal problems for not attending, others say they hold a religious
doctrine contrary to that preached by Benedict XVI.

"Although most people think they'll go. Some out of faith. Others
because they believe that this visit may mark a before and after. Of
course, many of us who go to welcome the Pope in the capital, will
subtly desert and go home to watch it on television," he says.

The papal visit has aroused wide register of opinions in Cuba:
indifference and applause, reviews and dislikes in a sector of the
opposition and Afro-Cuban religions, because the Holy Father is
scheduled to meet with them.

Whether Benedict XVI's visit will make history, as his predecessor John
Paul II's did, remains to be seen. But you can be assured that this
Vicar of Christ will be treated to a bath of masses. And sound. As only
a regime that has made the public acts a registered trademark knows how.

From his Popemobile and in the two masses he will officiate in Cuba,
the Pope will see hundreds of thousands people. While on the island only
10% of the population practices Catholicism. One detail that the German
pope should not overlook.

Photo: Reuters. Preparations in the Revolution Square in Havana, where
Benedict XVI will give a Mass on Wednesday 28 March. Taken from Martí
News. The Pope will arrive on Monday March 26 in Santiago de Cuba and
say Mass in the Antonio Maceo Square in that city. The next day, Tuesday
27, he will visit to the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre in the Sanctuary.

March 18 2012

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=16658

Voices Behind the Bars / Lilianne Ruíz

Voices Behind the Bars / Lilianne Ruíz
Lilianne Ruíz, Translator: Unstated

In 2003, what was I doing? Now I can't remember exactly. None of those
tried in summary trials in the Black Spring of 2003, they charged,
according to prosecutors' intentions, with 20 years or life
imprisonment, had committed any crime. They were made prisoners for
exercising their right to try to change this state of affairs, striving
for freedom, justice, law and the peace of citizens against the State.

It is not a protest against a foreign power, civil protest is against
the State. A State that has never wanted to be accountable to its, which
has always justified closing ranks and threatening nationals with all
its weapons, with the excuse of the ambition of a foreign power to
colonize the country.

From the beginning we have seen how they have manipulated Cubans but no
one had the spirit to protest, to avoid a major problem in the future.
Or rather, those who protested before us were imprisoned, some served
twenty years within the walls of la Cabaña,, turned into hell, and we do
not go out in their defense nor do we remember most of them.

Thus, almost without paying attention, all generations, in turn, have
granted permission to the "Revolutionary Government" to violate the
rights of everyone. Here the old people say that in the first years
after the triumph of those who came down from the Sierra, was there is
opposition in Cuba. That's not entirely true, because in all the years
of this ordeal there have been people who have defended their rights,
all the rights we have as human beings. But at that time there was still
something of a habit of Civil Society, so students could demand from the
Revolutionary Government, and were protected by Constitutional rights,
but gradually those rights were also erased.

From the beginning whoever did not serve the interests of power was
demonized the press, be they domestic or foreign;they were called
reactionary and counterrevolutionary and people were ordered to applaud
the restrictive measures of the new regime. And the truth is, if there
weren't people outside of Cuba who still believe that the human person
has a value before and after the privations to which the "New Man" is
subjected, the destiny of all those born in Cuba would be punishment.
And this I cannot allow because I am a person and a mother. And it is my
right, I don't want to live with a sentence hanging over my head. A "New
Man," armed, supplanting humanity, making excuses with schools and
hospitals, polishing my nails with cynicism, thinking myself decent.

Meanwhile ignoring that there are 30 rights proclaimed after much
observation and while new rights could be recognized, none can ever be
taken away. In Cuba they have taken away many rights. And anyone can be
kidnapped by the government in this country as in Sodom and Gomorrah. I
compare it with Sodom and Gomorrah for the unlimited violence, full of
hidden traps. Not for the issue of gays with which I sympathize faced
with a government that considers that this group pf people could signify
more sympathizers and more imaginary votes, because there are no free
elections.

Anyone would say they elections are always free, but in Cuba, no;
because they only choose the actors from one Party that always elects
the same master.

If it were not for all people in the world who condemned the
imprisonment of the 75 peaceful opponents arrested in the Black Spring
of Cuba; if it weren't for the Ladies in White, and for Guillermo
Fariñas; and finally only because the Cardinal was the only native the
government chose to talk with in closed session: What would have become
of them now?

They couldn't count on the people. They couldn't count on me. I was
tangled in my private life. There will always be a private life where
people take refuge. Admittedly, we depend on external help to handcuff
the clutches of the regime. In this vast concentration camp on the
island of Cuba, people are good up to a limit, within the limits imposed
on them by submission and self-preservation and survival. They have
surrendered to what they believe to be stronger than them, and maybe it
is, in fact, until the day when the certainty returns that we are not
orphans. There is still God in the Universe.

For every Cuba who has been incarcerated, while I am silent, I have been
complicit, I have sinned against God and against myself.

This regime, from top to bottom, has vilely tried to use the aspirations
that belong to us as Humanity, and has squandered in speeches as if
honesty has no value, because he does not fear God who does not make
himself responsible before Him for every word and every action committed
against his neighbor. What seems not to have been imported is that
normally in our private life we learn that people can lie with their
words, speaking of our desires without ever satisfying them, among other
things, because no person can truly represent the desires of every human
person who needs the best values of education and freedom, which already
carry a healthy conflict from the Oedipus complex of each one, from the
intervening instinct of education to direct them to the order of life.

We have endowed a monster of immense power and I have to hope that for
being unjust he can still be beaten. At least for our children, for our
grandchildren, not just for Cubans but so the world is not fooled any
more by some heretic seller of miracles who like a devil steals our
souls. We can do well in freedom, we can aspire to health care services
in freedom, and education and food, in another way. Without political
prisons.

March 18 2012

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=16659

Cuban dissident leader free after brief detention

Cuban dissident leader free after brief detention
By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press

HAVANA (AP) — One of Cuba's leading dissidents said Monday that she was
released hours after being detained ahead of a weekly protest, but her
husband was apparently still being held.

Bertha Soler, leader of the Ladies in White opposition group, said
authorities have also warned her not to spoil Pope Benedict XVI's visit
next week.

She said she and three dozen supporters were taken into custody early
Sunday when they tried to reach a Havana church to protest. About 30
more who arrived at the church were detained when they tried to march
down streets where they don't normally demonstrate.

Soler said most of the demonstrators were freed by late Sunday, but
others were held overnight. She said she had not heard from her husband,
Angel Moya, another anti-government activist who was arrested Sunday.

The detentions capped a tense week in which little-known government
opponents occupied another Havana church for two days in an attempt to
shine the spotlight on human rights ahead of the pope's March 26-28 trip.

The Ladies in White walk through a western Havana neighborhood each
Sunday after Mass to press the government to free prisoners jailed for
politically motivated crimes. They also demand political change on the
island ruled for 53 years by Fidel and Raul Castro.

The Cuban government considers all dissidents to be common criminals and
troublemakers financed by Washington to harm the communist-run
government. Authorities have been quiet about the weekend arrests, and
did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last spring, Cuba released the last of 75 government opponents
imprisoned in a 2003 crackdown on dissent. Amnesty International no
longer recognizes any inmates in Cuba as "prisoners of conscience,"
though some are behind bars for politically inspired crimes that were
violent in nature.

Soler said authorities warned the Ladies to stay away from Benedict's
public events in Havana and the eastern city of Santiago.

"Even if we are unable to meet with the Holy Father ... we will go to
his Mass in Santiago de Cuba as well as the one here in Havana, whatever
the cost," Soler said. Cuban dissidents have asked for an audience with
the pontiff, but the Vatican has said Benedict has no plans to alter his
schedule, which is limited due to his advanced age.

The Roman Catholic Church has usually mediated for Cuban dissidents, but
tensions have risen since last week's occupation of the church in
central Havana. The protesters demanded the pope raise their concerns
with Cuban officials.

Police raided the church Thursday at the request of Havana Cardinal
Jaime Ortega. The protesters were not jailed, but received a stern warning.

More than 100 government opponents were briefly detained across the
country over the weekend, according to Elizardo Sanchez, who monitors
the human rights situation in Cuba and acts as a de facto spokesman for
the opposition.

"The government is creating a climate not at all favorable for the visit
by Benedict," Sanchez said. "I think it is having an impact. Vatican
diplomacy will take note."

A church spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In Washington, the State Department called the detentions a
"reprehensible" violation of democratic principles and urged Benedict to
address human rights in conversations with Cuban authorities.

"One would hope and expect that this would be the kind of thing that
would be raised in the context of such a visit," spokeswoman Victoria
Nuland told reporters.

On Monday morning, Soler appeared at the home of the late Ladies in
White co-founder Laura Pollan, which the group uses as a base of
operations. She said the protesters were told the wide Havana
thoroughfare where they hold their weekly post-Mass demonstrations would
be off-limits. It was not clear, however, whether such a restriction
would stretch past the pope's visit.

"They warned us that the space they had given us on Quinta Avenida was
going to end, that we were not going to be able to go to (the church)
any more," Soler said. "That is something we are not going to respect,
because it is our right ... nobody can take that away."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hfqszogorKB43vOOQoKyI_qWv0UQ?docId=b4ddb98142704da8b8eafa04ef5ae2ac

Cuba arrests dissidents ahead of papal visit

March 19, 2012 12:13 AM

Cuba arrests dissidents ahead of papal visit

Members of dissident group Ladies in White take part in their weekly
march in front of Santa Rita church in Havana, Cuba, Sunday March 18,
2012. (AP Photo/Franklin Reyes)

(AP) HAVANA - Cuban authorities detained a prominent dissident and
dozens of her colleagues early Sunday, then rounded up more activists
while they staged a weekly protest march through Havana.

Police took away Bertha Soler and three dozen supporters of the Ladies
in White dissident group hours before they were to take part in a
regular march down Quinta Avenida in the leafy Miramar neighborhood of
Havana.

"They were arrested," said Angel Moya, Soler's husband and a former
political prisoner himself. Soler was also detained briefly Saturday
evening, he said.

About 30 other Ladies supporters did make it to the march, which began
peacefully, but state security agents moved in when the Ladies tried to
extend the protest into streets they don't normally enter. All were
escorted onto a bus belonging to state security. By Sunday evening, many
had been released and some driven back to their homes, though Soler was
apparently still being held.

The Ladies in White formed in 2003, shortly after authorities jailed 75
intellectuals, activists and social commentators in a notorious
crackdown on dissent, sentencing them to long prison terms. All have
since been freed, and many have gone into exile.

Cuba has cleared its jails of most political prisoners, but human rights
groups say the government of President Raul Castro has stepped up
short-term detentions and other forms of harassment against the island's
tiny opposition.

Cuba denies it holds any political prisoners, and says the dissidents
are nothing more than common criminals and mercenaries paid by
Washington to stir up trouble. It scoffs at criticism of its human
rights record by the West, saying its Marxist system provides citizens
with free health care and education, and many other subsidies, while
capitalist countries are plagued by poverty.

Sunday's detentions came just over a week before a March 26-28 visit by
Pope Benedict XVI, who is likely to encourage the government to adopt
increased religious, political and human rights during his tour, at
least privately. It also comes days after Cuban Roman Catholic Cardinal
Jaime Ortega asked police to remove a group of 13 opposition members who
had occupied a church in Central Havana for two days.

While the church won assurances that the group members would not be
prosecuted, the church-sanctioned raid and its hardline stance
throughout the standoff was derided by many dissidents, even those who
had opposed the initial occupation.

While many praise Ortega for mediating the release of political
prisoners in 2010 and occasionally speaking out in favor of greater
economic and political freedom on this Communist-run island, others say
he has not done enough.

They say Thursday's decision to call in police to remove dissidents from
the Church of Charity demonstrates Ortega's lack of sympathy. Sunday's
events will likely provide more fodder for those critics.

Elizardo Sanchez, who monitors human rights on the island and acts as a
de facto spokesman for the opposition, expressed astonishment at the
posture of Ortega, whom he has often praised in the past.

"I can't get over my astonishment over what has happened in these last
few days," Sanchez told The Associated Press. "The cardinal is acting
like the first two of the three wise monkeys," who could neither see
evil nor hear it.

Even as members of the Ladies in White were being detained, Ortega was
performing Mass at the grand Cathedral in Old Havana. His sermon inside
the baroque, stone edifice before several hundred worshippers did not
mention the week's drama, nor did he say anything about human rights in
general. Instead, he kept his comments focused on religion and the
pontiff's imminent arrival.

"With a sense of gratitude, enjoyment and profound spiritual peace, and
with the gifts that God has given us we prepare to receive the Pope,"
said the 75-year-old Ortega. "Let God grant us a truly warm reception
for the Holy Father, and let his visit bear abundant fruit."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57399670/cuba-arrests-dissidents-ahead-of-papal-visit/

CUBA: One step forward

http://www.emergingmarkets.org/Article/2996974/Economics-and-Policy/CUBA-One-step-forward.html

CUBA: One step forward
19/03/2012 | Andrea Armeni

Recent reforms have offered some hope for the island nation. But without
US engagement, its propects will remain dim

After several tough years, the Cuban economy in 2011 started to show
signs of recovery. Following a wave of reforms seeking a mild opening of
the economy, and renewed, if limited, attention from international
partners, some took this as cause for hope that things might be looking
up for the island nation.

Yet the challenges for the small and isolated enclave of socialism in
the Americas remain daunting.

Faced with crippling foreign debt following the liquidity crisis of 2008
and 2009, Cuba found itself in need of a drastic overhaul. Already
bare-bone, imports were slashed a further 38%, and government spending
was cut back.

But this last crisis finally prompted the state to enact its first
series of serious economic reforms in six decades. As Cuba's outdated
economic model is generally considered to be the real reason of its
economic ills, any kind of progress in the model is an improvement.

Observers had anticipated that Raúl Castro, after taking over the reins
from his brother Fidel in 2006, would herald a period of transition. But
early attempts at reform were stymied, and Raúl did not prove to be a
stalwart of change. His early criticisms of the Cuban economy did not
materialize into effective policy. Moves towards openness and away from
the almost absolute control by the state of economic activity didn't happen.

Real change started to take place in 2011, when Raúl pushed for the
long-delayed Sixth Congress to adopt a series of economic action points
ranging from a slashing of the bloated state payroll and a sliver of
openness to private enterprise, to private ownership of real estate and
greater freedoms in agricultural production.

The reforms are moving Cuba in the right direction – and, as compared to
previous measures, they are concrete measures. According to Armando
Linde, former president of the Association for the Study of the Cuban
Economy (ASCE), unlike in the past: "the current reforms are not merely
to appease possible Castro-fatigue in Cuba. They are doing it because
they feel that their model has been exhausted."

Richard Feinberg, a non-resident senior fellow of the Brookings
Institution and author of a recent major report on Cuba, notes that "the
reform process, which is still cautious, is accelerating."

This positive impression of the state's intentions is accompanied by a
widespread sentiment that the reforms still do not go far – or fast –
enough. Others, such as Arch Ritter, a Canadian academic at Carleton
University and an expert on the Cuban economy, voice concerns over the
feasibility and the implementation of the 300-odd "main lines" of reform.

Cuban economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, a frequent critic of the state,
welcomes the reforms but also notes that the government has already
fallen short on its proposed implementation timetable.

Omar Everleny, a professor as well as director of the prominent Center
for the Study of the Cuban Economy in Havana, sounds a more positive
note: "The option given by the government is a good one: a gradual
approach, that is to say, every few months a new measure is implemented."

A case in point is the reduction of the state employee rolls: the plan
called for the dismissal of half a million workers in the state's employ
by the end of 2011. According to Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a respected scholar
of the Cuban economy, only some 100,000 have been dismissed so far.
Without the sudden creation of jobs in the private sector, the firing of
so many state employees would have resulted in an unemployment rate of
22%, says Mesa-Lago.

With significant limitations on alternative employment for a population
used to monopolistic state employment, change has to be gradual.

INITIAL CHANGES

But the resurgence of economic activity is evident, particularly in the
capital, and there is little doubt that Cuba's internal economy has
received a positive push by allowing private micro-enterprise.

Real GDP growth is expected to reach 2.5% in 2012.

But limitations remain in terms of the scarcity of productive inputs,
from flour to fertilizer, an uncertain new taxation scheme, and the
strangulation of any enterprise that goes beyond a handful of employees.

Agriculture, another sector that has suffered tremendously in the last
years, is showing signs of recovery in the official figures. This should
be spurred further by easing restrictions on independent agricultural
production and sale of farm produce. There is talk of making
agricultural credits available as well as providing raw materials, such
as seeds and fertilizers, that were previously accessible only to state
producers.

But national production across the board remains dismal. Cuba manages
its trade deficit in goods only by exporting services, principally in
the form of doctors and nurses, to Venezuela and other friendly countries.

Cuba's dependency on Venezuela creates problems of its own. Venezuela
now counts for 40% of Cuba's hard currency from trade, and its share in
Cuba's total trade deficit has risen to 42%, according to Mesa-Lago.
Cuba is still reeling from the impact of the end of Soviet subsidies and
many believe that if Venezuela's policies vis-à-vis Cuba were to change,
the island would likely suffer another tremendous crisis.

Venezuela's elections, scheduled for October, have raised the
possibility, however slim, that Chávez could be unseated, not least
following his diagnosis with cancer.

"Cuba is going to be in trouble if there is a change of regime in
Venezuela," says Ritter. "With a regime change in Venezuela, which looks
like a possibility, Cuba may lose its massive indirect
quasi-subsidization through the purchase of these medical services."

Nor is there any imminent rescue from other parties in sight. China's
credits are reportedly limited to commercial purchases of Chinese goods
(Cuba does not officially publish such figures). Foreign direct
investment is still low after the scare from the 2008–09 liquidity
crisis, which caused investors to flee as the government froze foreign
companies' bank accounts and limitations emerged on the repatriation of
proceeds.

At the institutional level, Brazil is a potential partner for Cuba in
the coming years. Lula's seminal visit in 2010 was followed by a
three-day visit from president Dilma Rousseff early this year. The
economy featured at the core of the discussions, reinforcing Brazil's
presence on the island, with interests that range from a successful
tobacco joint venture, Brascuba, to Brazil's $640 million contribution
to the renovation of one of Cuba's main harbours.

Brazil's interests in Cuba are far less ideological than those of
Venezuela. Brazil's knowledge and investments in sugar cane and its
derivative ethanol could revive Cuba's sugar industry, for example. But
the interest is also geopolitical, as Brazil aims to assert its
diplomatic influence over the continent.

The prospect of oil revenues is another reason for hope that Cuba can
earn much-needed hard currency. Exploration began earlier this year for
offshore oil extraction in Cuba's waters. While the discovery of
drillable reserves would be a godsend to the Cuban economy, any
financial rewards would not come for another four or five years.

Cuba can't afford to wait that long on the economic sidelines – the
reforms will have to prove effective in spurring internal growth quickly
if Cuba is to avert another major crisis.

NOT SO SPLENDID ISOLATION

Beyond all this lies the fact that Cuba is still cut off from all
international financial institutions (IFIs). "Cuba can't be the only
country out of some 200 that doesn't belong to any of these
institutions," says Everleny. "To the extent that Cuba is changing its
economy and is establishing better relations with other countries in
Latin America, why should Venezuela be a part of these international
institutions but not Cuba? Why Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua?"

The notion that Cuba should become a member in IFIs is gaining traction.
Feinberg's recent seminal paper, published by the Brookings Institution,
analyses the feasibility of Cuba joining the IFIs, and was read with
interest in Cuba.

Feinberg outlines the complicated interplay between the morass of US
legislation surrounding Cuba's isolation from the rest of the world and
the island's real chances for establishing relations with the IFIs and,
perhaps more plausibly, with Andean Development Bank Comunidad Andina de
Fomento (CAF), which has already invested beyond its member countries.

"One would imagine that influential CAF shareholders (including
Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina) would be supportive, and would agree
that the goals of a Cuba fund could be made consistent with overall CAF
policies," says Feinberg's paper.

For a long time the socialist state scoffed at the idea of dealing with
such imperialist institutions as the World Bank and the IMF, but Cuba
under Raúl has toned down its rhetoric against the IFIs. A recent visit
to Cuba by several World Bank economists – though in their personal
capacities – was mentioned positively by several observers.

Everleny, who met officials from the Washington multilaterals visiting
Havana, says: "The spirit is to try to initiate an exchange from a
technical standpoint – information, publication, access for them to see
what is happening in Cuba."

Officially, the World Bank, the IMF and the IDB will not comment on
anything concerning Cuba, but these informal gestures have been welcome
– even on the part of the Cuban government. "There has to be a dialogue
already, even though officially there has not been a proposal to join
any of the IFIs," says Everleny. "But at the same time – the state has
not blocked it either."

Peter Hakim, president emeritus of the Inter-American Dialogue, echoes
the voices that would welcome more involvement by the IFIs in Cuba, even
if just at the consultative level. "The World Bank and the IMF have very
talented people who know a lot about developing economies; they could be
very helpful," he says, "and even more helpful if they could put some
money behind the reform process."

Linde, the ASCE economist who retired as deputy secretary of the IMF,
agrees, but he sees little chance of any significant steps happening
quickly. While it is doubtful that any steps towards openness will come
from the Obama administration before the 2012 elections, he says: "The
Cuban community in the US is becoming more open to a rapprochement with
the Castro regime. This younger generation is more amenable to looking
ahead rather than looking back to the past."

But the fact remains that until the US – for whatever reason –
demonstrates a willingness to engage with Cuba, there is little prospect
for any international action that could do much to improve the lot of
the Cuban people.

Hakim calls this a "terrible mistake" that has effectively stopped the
IFIs from meaningfully approaching Cuba.

One good chance for openness to a dialogue in recognition of Cuba's
reforms should be the Summit of the Americas in April. Despite its lack
of participation in the OAS (Organization of American States), Cuba has
signalled its willingness to participate in the summit if invited, a
position backed by the ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas)
countries. This is seen by some as a good opportunity for the US and
Cuba to greet a new era where the two can sit at the same table.

Uninspiringly, US hardliners such as chairman of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee Ileana Ros-Lehtinen are vehemently opposed to Cuba's
presence at the Colombia Summit: "Allowing the Cuban tyranny to
participate would fly in the face of everything the Charter and the OAS
is supposed to stand for," she says.

The isolationist stance has fewer and fewer supporters outside a
narrowing cluster of Miami Cubans. The overwhelming majority of
non-political observers say the US should recognize the steps taken by
Cuba and help push them along.

It is 2012, not 1962, after all.

Chavez in Cuba? Or Cuba in Chavez

Yoani Sanchez - Award-winning Cuban blogger

Chavez in Cuba? Or Cuba in Chavez?
Posted: 03/18/2012 11:55 pm

"These are the last caramels! Get 'em while you can!" shouted Olga -- we
called her "La Guajira" -- in the dorms of our high school in the
countryside. My bunkmate sold the food she got from Soviet technicians
who bought them in stores that Cubans weren't allowed to enter. It was
the last few months of 1990 and the community of Russian "comrades" who
had meddled in the Cuban reality were starting to pack their bags.

Throughout the city many houses were left empty in the stampede of these
foreign residents, while the black market they had fostered languished.
That candy wrapped in rough paper was, for me, the first sign that the
subsidies sent by the USSR would be abruptly curtailed. This harbinger
of bad news presented itself to my teenage palate in the form a caramel
that melted away for good.

Today, more than twenty years later, there are somewhat bitter
indications of another material collapse. But this time the risk doesn't
emanate from the Kremlin but from a much closer palace, the Miraflores
in Caracas. Hugo Chavez has just left Cuba amid infinite speculation,
and some alarming future scenarios are being woven around his health.
The more than 100,000 barrels of oil we import from Venezuela might fade
as fast as a caramel melts in the mouth, if the president of that
country dies from the cancer that afflicts him.

In the streets of Havana the questions go beyond morbidity in medical
terms, to become worrisome predictions of the future. A woman, her face
soured by everyday life, tells another curtly, "If something happens to
Chavez we're going to fall into another Special Period." The emphasis on
each syllable reminds me of that teenager proclaiming the last sweets
sent from the Soviet Union. The story is just as whimsical, sometimes it
repeats itself coated in syrup... other times in vinegar.

We have had the painful opportunity to learn -- as a country -- the
lesson of dependence; of promising ourselves that never again would the
future of this Island hang on a foreign president or a foreign party.
But in early 1999, when Hugo Chavez assumed power, it was clear that
economic independence would be just a national fantasy, postponed again
and again.

The unbalanced trade between Cuba and Venezuela has allowed the
government of Raul Castro to avoid collapse, despite our country's
inability to produce. The larger-than-life patient operated on in Havana
stands as the main guarantee that Raul's reforms can maintain their
timid steps forward and that he can remain in power. Seeing Chavez on
television announcing his speedy recovery to the newspapers, is like
giving a proof of life to the Castro regime.

When we read the smiling face of the Venezuelan president we are not
hoping just to read a man's state of health, but also the political
outlook of both countries. Thus, the official propaganda is eager to
connect his supposed "victory" over the physical tumor, with the triumph
of an entire ideological project.

The leaders maintained, the regimes subsidized, have the false illusion
they can learn to live without their patrons. They profess that they
will manage to walk on their own, once the support of the other ends.
But in reality, during the long period of dependency, we have only
learned to find a new source from which to nurse, a new partner to exploit.

Economic dysfunction cannot be repaired in the time it takes malignant
cells to advance through an organism. A system where inefficiency has
metastasized even to the production of potatoes, bricks and detergent,
knows that every step taken alone is a step closer to the end. It is
clear that Hugo Chavez came to Cuba to treat his physical illness
because the guarantees of discretion about his condition are also
guarantees of silence about the real state of our country.

So here we are again, in a situation we know well: the Berlin Wall
falls, or cancer takes up residence in a man's body; glasnost takes the
lid off seventy years of garbage, or a doctor is reckless with a
patient; Soviet technicians pack their bags in Havana, or Cubans weigh
their possessions in Venezuela; a young girl warns that caramels made in
the USSR will soon run out, or a disillusioned woman talks to another
about possible material collapse; a president sees how the map of a
political block is breaking apart into various fragments, or fading
leader stares in shock at the report of a CAT scan.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/hugo-chavez-cuba_b_1359144.html

Many hope Pope Benedict will address tough issues in Cuba

Posted on Monday, 03.19.12

Many hope Pope Benedict will address tough issues in Cuba
By Mimi Whitefield
The Miami Herald

For centuries, pilgrims have come to the Our Lady of Charity shrine with
wishes for a cure for ill health, a better economy, and improved
relationships. Now Cubans inside and outside the island also have a long
list of wishes for Pope Benedict XVI when he visits Cuba to celebrate
the 400th anniversary of the discovery of a statue of the Virgin.

Benedict, who begins a two-country visit in the central Mexican state of
Guanajuato on Friday, will arrive in Santiago de Cuba on March 26 to
mark the the Jubilee year of the discovery in the Bay of Nipe. The
statue of the Virgin, who became Cuba's patron saint in 1916, is now
ensconced in a shrine in El Cobre, a mining town about 12 miles
northwest of Santiago.

The pope has said he comes to Mexico and Cuba as a pilgrim of charity
"to proclaim the word of Christ and the conviction that this is a
precious time to evangelize.''

But the list of topics those in South Florida hope he will address is
long, ranging from calling for Catholic education in Cuba to meeting
with dissidents on the island to requesting freedom for jailed American
subcontractor Alan Gross.

There were results from the 1998 visit by Pope John Paul II to Cuba, and
many would like to see some this time around also: After John Paul's
visit, a new convent and seminary opened, the government permitted
occasional Masses and addresses to be broadcast on state-controlled
media — and Christmas, long a regular day of work, became a national
holiday.

"There's a long way to go, however, and I think Benedict will address
that,'' said Msgr. Franklyn M. Casale, the president of St. Thomas
University in Miami Gardens. "The return of Catholic schools would be a
great breakthrough.''

Former President Fidel Castro received a Jesuit education, but after the
1959 revolution, religious schools across the island were closed. St.
Thomas, which traces its roots to the Universidad de Santo Tomás de
Villanueva, founded in 1946 by Augustinian friars, was one of them.

After the friars were expelled in 1961, they came to South Florida and
founded Biscayne College, which later became St. Thomas.

More than 50 years after that, Casale took a group of 10 students and
three faculty members to Cuba on a weekend pilgrimage and what he called
a "learning experience'' earlier this month.

Casale said he expects the 84-year-old pope to talk about religious
freedom, education and human rights. "These are all very regular themes
in his pontificate,'' said Casale.

Human rights may be a regular theme, but an item high on many exiles'
wish list — a meeting with island dissidents — is more controversial.
Dissident and human rights groups have sent letters and petitions to the
pope asking for such a meeting.

In Miami, a group of young professionals has launched One Cuba, a
Facebook campaign urging the pope to meet with human rights activists
during his trip and asking people to sign their petition.

Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen also appealed to the pope "to show
his support for the Cuban people by meeting with peaceful dissident
groups, including those practicing their faith while bringing attention
to human rights violations, the Ladies in White and Jorge García Pérez
(Antúnez)'' in a recent written statement.

The Ladies in White are relatives of political prisoners who dress in
white during weekly marches. García, a human rights activist known as
Antúnez, was jailed for 17 years. Pope John Paul II asked for his
release during his 1998 trip, but he was held until 2007.

Former political prisoner Guillermo Fariñas, in a letter to Benedict,
asked the pope to address themes such as freedom for all political
prisoners, the end to violence against the opposition, free travel for
all Cubans, and a dialogue between government authorities and the
peaceful opposition. Fariñas suggested it would be better for Benedict
to postpone his trip if he could not. But the occupation of a basilica
that's part of the Our Lady of Charity church in Havana last week by 13
dissidents seems to have opened a rift between the Catholic Church and
the dissident movement.

"No one has the right to convert temples into political trenches,'' said
a statement signed by Orlando Márquez, spokesman for the archdiocese of
Havana.

And after his attempts at persuasion didn't work, Cardinal Jaime Ortega
requested that police remove the dissidents from the church although,
Márquez said, he requested that they be allowed to return to their homes
and not be charged. However, some of the dissidents said they were still
threatened with prosecution after the pope leaves.

That seemed to put even more distance between Ortega and the fractured
dissident movement — even though it was his dialogue with President Raúl
Castro that led to the release last year of 130 political prisoners,
most of whom were required to go into exile in Spain.

"Generally speaking the Church has been careful not to bring the
dissidents under its skirts,'' said Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski. "I
think the dissidents understand this has to be their own project.''

He said he didn't know if the pope would be meeting with dissidents and
human right activists. But he noted that if Benedict were to telegraph
such an intention, "he probably wouldn't be able to find them" — a
reference to a government policy of frequent, short-term detentions of
dissidents in recent months.

As far as his own wishes for the pope's trip, Wenski said, "I'll allow
myself to be pleasantly surprised.''

But Andy Gomez, a University of Miami Cuba analyst who will be going on
the archdiocese pilgrimage, is specific about what he would like to see
the pope do: reach out to dissidents and invite the Ladies in White to
one of his Masses, talk about human rights abuses — and specifically
reach out to the Afro-Cuban community.

Many of the more recent dissidents are black, poor and less likely to
have family members abroad who can send them remittances to help make
ends mean during tough economic times, Gomez pointed out. And without
strong messages from the pope, he said, "my concern is that people may
be looking at the Church as betraying the Cuban people or not doing
enough. You've got to build bridges to the Cuban people.''

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/19/v-fullstory/2701883/many-hope-pope-benedict-will-address.html

Cuba detains dissidents ahead of papal visit

Posted on Sunday, 03.18.12

Cuba detains dissidents ahead of papal visit
By PAUL HAVEN
Associated Press

HAVANA -- Cuban authorities detained a prominent dissident and dozens of
her colleagues early Sunday, then rounded up more activists while they
staged a weekly protest march through Havana just days before a visit by
Pope Benedict XVI.

Police took away Bertha Soler and three dozen supporters of the Ladies
in White dissident group hours before they were to take part in a
regular march down Quinta Avenida in the leafy Miramar neighborhood of
Havana.

"They were arrested," said Angel Moya, Soler's husband and a former
political prisoner himself. Soler was also detained briefly Saturday
evening, he said.

About 30 other Ladies supporters did make it to the march, which began
peacefully, but state security agents moved in when the Ladies tried to
extend the protest into streets they don't normally enter. All were
escorted onto a bus belonging to state security. By Sunday evening, many
had been released and some driven back to their homes, though Soler was
apparently still being held.

The Ladies in White formed in 2003, shortly after authorities jailed 75
intellectuals, activists and social commentators in a notorious
crackdown on dissent, sentencing them to long prison terms. All have
since been freed, and many have gone into exile.

Cuba has cleared its jails of most political prisoners, but human rights
groups say the government of President Raul Castro has stepped up
short-term detentions and other forms of harassment against the island's
tiny opposition.

Cuba denies it holds any political prisoners, and says the dissidents
are nothing more than common criminals and mercenaries paid by
Washington to stir up trouble. It scoffs at criticism of its human
rights record by the West, saying its Marxist system provides citizens
with free health care and education, and many other subsidies, while
capitalist countries are plagued by poverty.

The U.S. State Department criticized the detentions of Soler and the
other activists.

"We strongly condemn this assault on peaceful members of Cuba's civil
society," spokeswoman Neda A. Brown said. "The fact that so many members
of the Damas de Blanco were rounded up and detained by the Cuban
government as they were congregating for religious services barely a
week before the visit of Pope Benedict is particularly reprehensible and
in violation of the democratic norm in the Western Hemisphere."

The detentions came just over a week before a March 26-28 visit by
Benedict, who is likely to encourage the government to adopt increased
religious, political and human rights during his tour, at least
privately. It also comes days after Cuban Roman Catholic Cardinal Jaime
Ortega asked police to remove a group of 13 opposition members who had
occupied a church in Central Havana for two days.

While the church won assurances that the group members would not be
prosecuted, the church-sanctioned raid and its hardline stance
throughout the standoff was derided by many dissidents, even those who
had opposed the initial occupation.

While many praise Ortega for mediating the release of political
prisoners in 2010 and occasionally speaking out in favor of greater
economic and political freedom on this Communist-run island, others say
he has not done enough.

They say Thursday's decision to call in police to remove dissidents from
the Church of Charity demonstrates Ortega's lack of sympathy. Sunday's
events will likely provide more fodder for those critics.

Elizardo Sanchez, who monitors human rights on the island and acts as a
de facto spokesman for the opposition, expressed astonishment at the
posture of Ortega, whom he has often praised in the past.

"I can't get over my astonishment over what has happened in these last
few days," Sanchez told The Associated Press. "The cardinal is acting
like the first two of the three wise monkeys," who could neither see
evil nor hear it.

Even as members of the Ladies in White were being detained, Ortega was
performing Mass at the grand Cathedral in Old Havana. His sermon inside
the baroque, stone edifice before several hundred worshippers did not
mention the week's drama, nor did he say anything about human rights in
general. Instead, he kept his comments focused on religion and the
pontiff's imminent arrival.

"With a sense of gratitude, enjoyment and profound spiritual peace, and
with the gifts that God has given us we prepare to receive the Pope,"
said the 75-year-old Ortega. "Let God grant us a truly warm reception
for the Holy Father, and let his visit bear abundant fruit."

---

Associated Press writers Anne-Marie Garcia and Andrea Rodriguez
contributed to this report.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/18/2700737/cuba-detains-dissidents-ahead.html

Disciplined Correspondents / Fernando Dámaso

Disciplined Correspondents / Fernando Dámaso
Fernando Dámaso, Translator: Unstated

Cuban journalists located in other countries, where they act as
correspondents for government media, seem to me like the bread sold on
the ration book (the government bread, as a poet friend of mine calls
it): they are unpalatable and difficult to digest.

If they carry out their duties in a country whose government is a friend
to Cuba, everything is marvelous and it advances in its accomplishments,
despite the resistance of the local employees of the empire. If a county
is neutral or an enemy of the Cuban government, everything is terrible,
it's almost a Hell, and it regresses from failure after failure.

So it is, in black and white with no shades of gray: the good are always
good and the bad are always bad. Objectivity, for them, is a dirty word
which has been expunged from the dictionary. One could argue, in their
defense, that they do this because the enemy is in charge of its own
propaganda, but here their newspapers and magazines are not sold, their
radio and television signals are not allowed, not to mention the
Internet, access to which is prohibited to the population.

Due to all this, the media blitz is one-sided, with no chances to
compare and think and decide with your own head; we are shown only one
side of the coin. So, when I hear some natives and foreigners say that
the Cuban people is a politically educated people, I'm overcome by fits
of laughter, which I try to contain because of the tragedy of the
situation. Educated? Without media independent of the State? Educated?
Without public opinion? Good God!

Perhaps one aspect for these correspondents to exploit, which the
majority would appreciate, would be to learn about the lives and work of
Cubans abroad who number in the hundreds of thousands: their
opportunities and difficulties, their successes and failures, be they
entrepreneurs, engineers , artists, scientists, politicians, athletes or
ordinary citizens.

For me, such Cubans include Duque Hernandez, Willy Chirino, Andy Garcia,
Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Thomas Sanchez, Arturo Sandoval, Gloria
Estefan, Olga Guillot, Celia Cruz, Rigondoux and others such as Pedro
Luis Lazo, Silvio Rodriguez, Patricio Wood, Leonardo Padura, Roberto
Fabelo, Chucho Valdes, Omara Portuondo, Beatriz Marquez, Savon and
others regardless of their political and ideological positions.

I mention these athletes and artists because, one way or another they
are known, which does not happen with architects, businessmen, doctors,
physicists, chemists, etc., whom we don't even know exist.

Lately we celebrated the Day of the Press (it's the 14th here) and,
prior to that some prominent national journalists received awards, and
national and foreign personalities were honored who, although they are
not journalists they act as such in the unconditional defense of the
model against media aggression.

Really, I don't know if they deserve to be congratulated: I remember a
journalist, yeoman of the previous regime, who never tired of mouthing
off on some midday TV show, against the treacherous and traitors who
opposed it.

When the change came, he was given a long prison sentence, and now no
one remembers him. Hopefully those events won't be repeated! At least
there will be no prison sentences because we aspire to a country with
freedom of expression. However, that of the forgotten one cannot be erased.

March 15 2012

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=16626

Feds investigate Portland's Esco Corp. for violating U.S. embargo against Cuba

Feds investigate Portland's Esco Corp. for violating U.S. embargo
against Cuba

Mar 16, 2012 (The Oregonian - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via
COMTEX) -- Federal officials are investigating Esco Corp. for using
nickel obtained from Cuba in violation of a U.S. trade embargo, the
Portland company confirmed Friday.

Esco lawyers expect the company to face fines of no more than $5.5
million, but acknowledge penalties could be more, according to a public
filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The disclosure of the violation by a Canadian subsidiary comes at a
delicate moment for Esco, an old-line manufacturer whose managers have
been trying to take the company public on the Nasdaq exchange. Esco
announced its plans in May for a $175 million public offering that has
since languished.

It's not clear whether the Cuban matter held up the offering or whether
the soft market for IPOs is behind the delay.

Esco spokeswoman Kelley Egre declined to comment Friday on the IPO or
its timing, citing an SEC-imposed quiet period. But she did address the
Cuban disclosure, contained in a 317-page amended IPO document filed by
the company and appearing on the SEC's website late Friday.

"Truly, we take compliance very seriously," Egre said, "and as soon as
we found out, we immediately reported to the appropriate agencies."

For 50 years, the United States has maintained an embargo that prohibits
nearly all trade, financial and aid transactions with Cuba, 90 miles
from Florida. The embargo is somewhat permeable, given dealings through
third countries, but U.S. officials take violations seriously.

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control
investigates violations. That's the agency Esco managers say they
alerted when they discovered the Cuban dealings in June.

"We learned that a foundry operated by one of our foreign subsidiaries
had been purchasing and using material from a distributor that obtained
the material from a supplier that procured the source material from
Cuba," the company wrote in its SEC filing.

"We voluntarily reported the violation to OFAC, stopped purchasing from
the distributor, temporarily halted production at the foundry and
sequestered all inventory containing Cuban material," Esco said. "In
July 2011, we resumed production at the foundry with material provided
by another supplier and subsequently received a license to sell most of
the inventory that contained Cuban material."

The Treasury investigation continues, the company said, and could take
many months to complete. Penalties can be significant, Esco said,
because each purchase of Cuban material and each sale of a product
containing the material could result in a fine of up to $65,000.
Esco has four foundries in Canada, among about 30 plants worldwide. Cuba
and Canada maintain thriving commercial and diplomatic relations.

So a Canadian subsidiary of a U.S. company could easily do business with
a Cuban supplier without perhaps realizing the ramifications.

The Cuban connection could embarrass Esco, which makes parts such as
teeth for gigantic mining shovels. But a $5.5 million fine would hardly
set the company back.

The SEC filing showed Esco's net sales jumped to $1.12 billion in 2011,
up 32 percent from $850 million in 2010.

Gross profit grew 34 percent, from $223 million in 2010 to $299 million
last year.

Esco reported that because of the improved economy and business
expansion, the company increased its global workforce to 5,362 employees
in 2011, up from about 4,600 in 2010.

-- Richard Read, twitter.com/ReadOregonian

http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story.asp?storyid={255d45f4-767f-4f51-95ac-c7f6b62706d3}&src=main