The Vatican’s silence amid Cuba’s atrocities

Posted on Sunday, 04.08.12

The Vatican's silence amid Cuba's atrocities
BY MARIA C. WERLAU
info@cubaarchive.org

During his recent visit to Cuba, Pope Benedict XVI said nothing about
the Castro brothers' victims. This is not surprising. For decades, the
Catholic Church has remained silent about most of the Castro regime´s
worst crimes in its quest to expand its reach in totalitarian Cuba.

One atrocity stands out because the church played a direct role in the
events. On Jan. 2, 1981, three young brothers were executed for having
sought asylum at the Vatican's embassy ("nunciatura") in Havana. Their
names: Ventura, Cipriano and Eugenio García-Marín Thompson. They were
19, 21 and 25 respectively.

The three brothers came from a very humble family of Jehova's Witnesses,
which have been fiercely persecuted in Communist Cuba. At least one had
served political imprisonment for practicing this faith. They had
received several warnings under Cuba's "dangerousness" law and were
desperately seeking refuge. On Dec. 3, 1980, together with two other men
and three women, they pushed their way into the Vatican Embassy in
Havana, requesting asylum.

The nunciatura immediately evacuated most personnel. Soon, Vatican
representatives fooled the asylum-seekers into believing consular
officers were coming to process their safe conduit from the country.
Instead, in their place came a team of the Interior Ministry's Elite
Special Troops and took them captive.

Accused of killing a Cuban worker at the embassy, the brothers were
tried summarily and immediately sentenced to death. Four weeks later,
they were taken from their prison cells in the middle of the night and
executed.

The remaining raid participants were sentenced to prison terms of 15 to
25 years. The García-Marín brothers' mother and several relatives were
given 20-year prison sentences for knowing about the plan despite not
participating. All were released some years earlier than their sentences
after the case received international attention. The mother died in 1992
having lost her mind in prison, still clamoring for her sons' remains to
give them proper burial.

Cuban authorities said the brothers had been armed with a pistol, which
they strongly denied and some witnesses agreed. The embassy worker
allegedly killed in the raid was an employee of the Cuban government
agency Cubalse, reported to have been a State Security agent. (All Cuban
workers in diplomatic missions must be hired from a government agency
and most are known to be spies.) Subsequent investigations by human
rights' defenders in Cuba revealed he was living in Havana and had
staged his injuries with fake blood to play his part in the raid. (See
details at www.CubaArchive.org/database).

For three decades, the Vatican has been publicly mute about the
killings. Allegedly, it gave Cuban security forces permission to enter
the diplomatic mission and take the asylum-seekers.

The trail of blood of the Castro brothers is lengthy and ever present.
Many young Catholics died long ago in firing squads clamoring, "Long
live Christ the King." The death toll is spread over five decades and
continues to grow. It includes scores of children and their parents
murdered by border guards for attempting to escape Cuba as well as
pregnant women and teenagers beaten to death by prison guards. Today,
courageous dissidents are choosing death by hunger strike as a last
stand against repression, Cubans of all ages disappear in the Florida
Straits while trying to flee, and many young men are dying due to horrid
prison conditions while serving long years for illegal economic
activities such as killing a cow in protein-deprived Cuba.

Pope Benedict's decision to legitimize the killers while failing to
remember their victims is regrettable. The Church ought to decisively
demand an end to these atrocities and stand firm for the life and safety
of the Cuban people.

Maria C. Werlau is executive director of the nonprofit Cuba Archive in
Summit, N.J.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/08/2735465/the-vaticans-silence-amid-cubas.html

Cuba: a look from the inside

Cuba: a look from the inside

We must build bridges
BY ANDY S. GOMEZ
agomez@miami.edu

One of the reasons I went to Cuba during the pope's visit was to see and
hear from men and women of all ages what they thought of the current
economic, political, and social conditions. As an academic that deals
with this subject each day, it is very hard to continue to build future
scenarios and make predictions without seeing it firsthand.

There is no question that Cuba's economy is in shambles. The economic
reforms introduced by the government have had very limited success. Yes,
there are more small businesses that you find in the urban areas
catering mainly to tourists. But there is very little activity in the
rural areas. This is creating a problem for the government as people
migrate to large cities looking for better opportunities.

I visited a number of cultural centers and churches that are offering
courses and training on how to start a small business. I was very
impressed with their methods and techniques. How much of this activity
they can sustain will depend on the success of these businesses.
However, these are not the type of economic reforms that will
restructure a country's economy. Cuba is no where near this process.

The government continues to show that it has no interest in changing the
current system. In reacting to a statement made by the Holy Father,
Cuba's economic czar said, "Cuba welcomes suggestions but we have no
intentions of making changes."

The members of the older generation I met with are mentally tired. As
dissident Oswaldo Paya told me briefly in Havana. "We are tired of the
same rhetoric from the government." People do not care about politics.
They want to live better. However, the older generation still fears
"change." They do not know if it will be better or worse.

The psychological trauma that the population has suffered for over 50
years will not be erased tomorrow from their minds. It will take time.
By contrast, the younger generation wants change tomorrow — much faster
than the government can provide. They want to travel, they want
information, they want to read books banned by the government. There is
very little communication ties across the island. I was surprised to see
fewer cell phones than I expected. When I asked a young man why, he
simply told me it was too expensive.

I asked them if they believed in Marxist ideology. They simply laughed
and told me that most youngsters their age do not believe in it. But
they also cannot clearly tell you what they want. I spent time talking
to them about democracy and they seemed to embrace the concept of freedom.

Both generations felt very strongly about creating stronger ties with
the Cuban diaspora. They wanted to know what type of music my
Cuban-American daughters listened to. What food they liked and what
language they spoke. hey wanted to know if they had been free to study
for a career and practiced it. As one young lady told me, "You are
Cubans like us. Please tell everyone that is how we feel."

There were moral and ethical issues I had to deal with. I did not go to
Cuba as a tourist. Yet I was taken to some of the best restaurants in
Havana. When I asked a waitress how much she made, she told me $20 per
month, and the tips go to the establishment owned by the state. She
works from 8 a.m. to midnight and gets one meal per day. Her tears
started rolling down her beautiful eyes when she told me she could not
take it anymore. She wanted to leave. Anywhere but Cuba!

I could not help myself but to give her a bigger tip in a wrapped napkin
so no one would see or she would be fired. I'm glad I made the trip. I
learned a great deal and developed new bonds with many Cubans. This is
no longer about Fidel and Raúl Castro and their cronies. This is about
Cuba. As I said before, we must continue to build bridges. Cubans of all
ages have a great thirst for freedom, and I believe that day is not too
far in the distance.

Andy S. Gomez is special assistant for international affairs and senior
fellow at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University
of Miami.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/08/2735468/cuba-a-look-from-the-inside.html

Is it Good or is it Bad? / Luis Felipe Rojas

Is it Good or is it Bad? / Luis Felipe Rojas
Luis Felipe Rojas, Translator: Raul G.

This question, among others, is shot at me weekly in an international
poll about the potential and efficiency of self-employment in Cuba. Of
course, it is not a bad thing to once again have goods produced by your
own work- shoes and other products which disappeared from Cuban homes
decades ago. It is good that thousands of my compatriots have broken
away from the chains of bureaucracy to buy or sell a pair of pants. It's
good that they've moved away from the anti-pedagogical rules of orders
and control.

It's a good thing, and it will always be good, for people to learn how
to plan their vacations and that, once and for all, an end is put to the
damned meritocracy which has turned the work place into a battlefield of
snitches who carry out their dirty work all for a summer reservation in
a cabin at the edge of a river, or a ticket to buy a TV made in China.

In the long run, recognizing the weight which subterranean operations
have on third world emerging economies, it should be fateful that we
will have to sustain ourselves based on illegal extractions in order to
strengthen the universe of what tomorrow will be known as the small
business. The costs, the feasibility, and the usefulness are terms which
become shreds when we discover that the prices of prime materials
fluctuate, not according to internal or external markets, but according
to the hands which release them onto the black market.

What is not good is the material shortage due to inflation of prices in
the sole provider which exists: the sacrosanct state. Instead of ceasing
to produce or ceasing to continue onward with small producers of goods
and services, used for the first time by owners of their lowest
fortunes, they prefer to turn their faces and buy the ingredients
without finding out about their origin. That's how they prepare
themselves, also for the disloyal competition of tomorrow.

Articles and reports which appear on the daily (and only) press, telling
the self-employer to carry out honest work, to treat their customers
well, and to join the national economy which aims to re-fossilize,
perfect itself, and tighten its chains to a corset of rules imposed as
mandates of sole salvation. All this means nothing.

A native information technology business (CITMATEL) developed a software
to allow the registry of personal data, any taxes or other things
applicable to self-employment, and surely, it is not a bad thing. Of
course, they have started to sell it for 250 Cuban pesos (about 12
dollars), with the added difficulty that the rate of workers in the
private sector who actually own a computer is very low, and according to
their own announcement, their license would expire in two months. It's
not a matter of whether if it is a good thing or a bad thing, instead,
we ask: for who is it positive or negative what is happening if we
continue mortgaging the future?

Translated by Raul G.

5 April 2012

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=17347

People with HIV Have the Right to Not be Subjected to Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment / Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada

People with HIV Have the Right to Not be Subjected to Cruel, Inhumane or
Degrading Treatment / Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada
Translator: Unstated, Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada

The right not to be subjected to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment
or penalties should be addressed in several ways in the context of HIV
in Cuba, for example in the treatment of prisoners who are sick.

The penalty of imprisonment should not provoke the loss of those rights
or of dignity. In particular, the State, through the penal authorities,
has the duty to care for prisoners. This implies the duty to protect the
rights, life and health of all people in their custody.

Denying prisoners access to information, education and means of
prevention (disinfectants, condoms and sterile injecting equipment) with
respect to HIV / AIDS, voluntary testing and counseling, confidentiality
and health care to HIV/AIDS and the ability to participate.

The National Directorate of Prisons in Cuba has recognized a total of
six prisons for inmates with HIV/AIDS. Prisons that do not differentiate
between the treatment of healthy prisoners and the prison population
affected by this disease.

Inmates who commit dangerous acts, such as rape and sexual violence
should be punished regardless of their HIV/AIDS status. There is no
reason for the health or security authorities to justify mandatory HIV
testing or to refuse prisoners living with HIV the chance to perform all
the activities available to the rest of the prison population. The only
justification for segregation of people living with HIV in the prison
population would be the preservation of their own health.

The Cuban state should consider that prisoners with a terminal illness,
including AIDS, be given early release and given proper treatment
outside prison.

https://www.ligacubanacontraelsida.com

March 19 2012

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=17345

Praying to Ratzinger Between the Bars of the Revolution / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Praying to Ratzinger Between the Bars of the Revolution / Orlando Luis
Pardo Lazo
Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Translator: Unstated

The jail guards had a small battery-operated radio, an obsolete gadget
like everything in the Regla police station, on the other side of Havana
bay.

The decor of the interrogation rooms was antediluvian, pure Soviet-style
political propaganda, with quotes from Fidel Castro stuck to his early
icons of the Revolution: the assault on the Moncada Barracks, the
landing of the Granma yacht, Che Guevara's arm in a sling, the
wide-brimmed hat of the late Commander Camilo.

The dungeon looked newly renovated, with a certain look of having been
straightened up by me, which rendered the neatness in terrifying detail.
I felt an inconsolable loneliness in that basement of bars and colossal
locks. I had never been imprisoned, I have no criminal record. In fact,
this time I was hunted like a wild animal in the street. Without
criminal charges against me. Without identification from the commando
that kidnapped me (they never told my family or friends). Without legal
documents for the arrest, seizure of property, and detention for two
days: two days of Pope Benedict XVI in Havana, in a parallel
installation of bliss and barbarism (Kafka 100% flush with the Caribbean
Sea).

On the morning of Tuesday 29 March, on the eve of the Pope's Mass at the
Plaza of the Revolution, the Cuban capital awoke unhinged by a flood of
officers in uniform or civilian clothes. They coagulated traffic. They
coerced and captured countless independent journalists, human rights
activists, political opponents (as well as beggars and unlicensed
vendors). They did so right in the face of the international press
correspondents, all concentrated on the altar of Joseph Ratzinger, or
perhaps in the facial reactions of President Raul Castro before every
subtlety of the papal homily.

From a few days ago, the State telephone companies — ETECSA CUBACEL —
were complicit in the operation unofficially called "Vow of Silence" and
blocked, without any technical reason, thousands of their users' lines,
without notice or right to compensation. They also cut all the very
limited internet service, which in Cuba is the privilege of foreigners
and a certain caste of officials.

From the beginning, I stopped eating and drinking water. Nor did I
responded too much to the personal provocations of an attorney for State
Security, like a character out of the film Minority Report, he wanted to
buy time until the Pope took off for the Vatican, charging me with the
words, without requiring evidence, "subversive activity" and "public
scandal" with "preventative character." Apparently, H.G. Wells' time
machine Wells retains all its functions intact in the Cold War Museum of
Cuban Counterintelligence (or perhaps should be renamed the Cuban
Countercitizenry).

Only one small battery radio, a gadget discontinued at the time of Cuban
socialism, kept me connected to the world beyond our modern catacombs
(the police station is across from the Regla cemetery). So I kept count
of the passing hours (it was the world's most endless night). Thus,
already with symptoms of muscle weakness and lack of glucose in the
brain, I finally heard the chorus of the only liturgical Mass kidnapped
in the history of Catholicism.

It was a sad theater crammed with atheists workers, inspired unions more
Stalinist than Marxist-Leninist, not to mention security personnel
disguised as Red Cross stretcher-bearers or, who knows, as altar boys.
Not even the parishes could choose freely who would attend and who is
not among their faithful, as there were "black lists" with names that
were promptly thrown under the official buses, which were the gateway to
the Plaza of the Revolution: the tribune so often changed into a
tribunal, where the blind masses and the Maximum Leader (excommunicated
by Rome decades ago) have clamored hysterically for "Death to the traitors."

When the Mass of His Holiness Benedict XVI seemed it would never end, I
knelt instinctively and prayed for release from my cell. Not to God, but
to the man Joseph Ratzinger in person. I asked him to abbreviate the
stages of his rhetoric, to skip the Eucharistic formalities, and not to
delay over the diplomatic greetings between the Catholic and Communist
hierarchies, that would not repay the bullying of the Cuban Cardinal's
smile, that the Popemobile leave at top speed from the altar itself
directly to Havana International Airport, so as not to commit heresy, I
prayed that no Pope ever again accept an invitation to repress the poor
people of this or any other country-prison.

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=17337

Cuban Dissenters Find a Niche in Church

Cuban Dissenters Find a Niche in Church

Catholic-Sponsored Magazines, Granted Leeway by Castro, Get Away With
Greater Freedoms to Criticize Government

HAVANA—Last year, as Libyan rebels fought Moammar Gadhafi, Fidel Castro
took to his state-run newspaper Granma to defend the dictator as a
revolutionary hero.

Now, the former Cuban leader faces an unlikely voice of dissent on that
Libya stance—from a publication financed by the Catholic Church and
published here in his own capital.

Pope Benedict XVI left Cuba last week calling on its government to allow
more freedom for the church and for Cuba to change. He also leaves
behind a mechanism to help accomplish this: A network of
Catholic-sponsored newsletters and magazines, reaching tens of thousands
of Cubans, that criticize the government and call for change.

Espacio Laical magazine, or Layman's Space, in its latest issue called
Gadhafi a tyrant and questioned why more Latin American leaders weren't
supporting "democratic Arab revolution." The editorial was unusual
because the state-run media, where most Cubans receive news, largely
avoids mentioning foreign insurrections, except to support strongmen.

Throughout Cuba, those who have tried to publish information outside of
official government channels have been intimidated or even jailed. A
small blogger community operates largely undercover.

But as President Raúl Castro has loosened restrictions on the Catholic
Church in recent years, he also has allowed the church to distribute
about a dozen publications openly, mainly out of local archdiocese offices.

From a tiny office above a schoolyard in Havana's Old Town, Roberto
Veiga explains Espacio Laical's mission: Tackling general-interest
topics and printing essays and opinions on matters such as changes to
the Cuban constitution and complaints about the education system. It
also publishes articles by prominent Communists supporting the government.

"We want to create a place where Cubans write from all perspectives,
from cultural topics to politics and the economy," Mr. Veiga says. "The
idea is to create bridges, not trenches."

Cuba experts say that while it is increasingly possible to have critical
discussions about the government in a streetside coffee shop, for
example, questioning the government in the media hasn't been possible in
the past. "These publications are opening spaces about discussion for
Cuban people that didn't exist before," explains Uva de Aragón, an
expert on the island at Florida International University.

For decades, the Cuban church and state had a tense relationship in a
country that was officially atheist under Fidel Castro, until 1992. Pope
John Paul II's 1998 visit to Cuba and recent economic declines have
prompted the government to reach out to the Catholic Church for
assistance in social programs from child care to soup kitchens, giving
the church a larger influence. The church's publications, some of which
had existed for decades but had kept to spiritual issues, began to take
greater editorial latitude, and new magazines were founded.

Espacio Laical, founded eight years ago, has a distribution of just
4,500 copies a month. But Mr. Veiga estimates each copy is ready by at
least 20 people, and says subscribers include top political and academic
decision makers.

Not far from Mr. Veiga's offices, Orlando Márquez runs Palabra Nueva,
the Havana archdiocese newsletter. "We answer everyday questions, we
publish on cultural topics, sports, society, history—the kind of things
you won't see in official publications," he says.

State outlets such as Granma, Juventud Rebelde and Verde Olivo generally
portray the U.S. as Cuba's enemy and discuss such topics as the U.S.
economic embargo on the island. In contrast, Palabra Nueva has run
articles about Catholic Church programs in the U.S. Despite running many
pieces that don't toe the Communist Party line, Mr. Márquez says he
hasn't received one complaint from officials.

The Cuban government didn't respond to specific questions about the
publications. But a Foreign Ministry statement said Cuba's churches
enjoy broad freedoms, including the freedom of expression.

Not everything has gone smoothly, as church publications experiment in
critiques.

In 2007, the editors of magazine Vitral, a church publication in Cuba's
western Pinar del Río province, were dismissed by church officials. U.S.
diplomats wrote in a cable published by website WikiLeaks that Vatican
officials said Cuba's Cardinal Jaime Ortega was behind the move because
the government didn't like the magazine's brash tone.

The Havana archdiocese says the cardinal wasn't involved. The magazine's
former publisher, Dagoberto Valdés, who now runs an online publication,
didn't respond to a request to comment.

Publishing a magazine in Cuba can be difficult for other reasons. Mr.
Veiga must print Espacio Laical on a press that dates from before the
1959 revolution, because new ones are in short supply. Its staff are
volunteers because the Cuban government requires everyone to work in
state-approved jobs—most often for the government itself. And work as an
independent journalists isn't an approved occupation.

"It's a challenge but we don't miss an issue," Mr. Veiga said.

Mr. Veiga's magazine and many of the others are also published online,
where they have gotten a positive nod from many in the Cuban exile
community and even a few dissidents.

"The fan is opening up for a civil society in Cuba and the church
publications are a part of that," says José Luis García Paneque, who was
jailed for seven years after founding an unauthorized newspaper.

Write to Nicholas Casey at nicholas.casey@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared April 7, 2012, on page A8 in some
U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Cuban
Dissenters Find a Niche in Church.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303299604577323813589920668.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Remembering Cuba's Du Bouchet Hernández

Remembering Cuba's Du Bouchet Hernández
By María Salazar-Ferro/Coordinator, Impunity Campaign and Journalist
Assistance Program

On Wednesday morning, exiled Cuban journalist Albert Santiago Du Bouchet
Hernández took his own life, according to reports in the Cuban exiled
media. He was the last of more than 20 Cuban journalists to be released
from prison and sent to Spain following July 2010 talks between the
government of Cuban President Raúl Castro and the Catholic Church. Du
Bouchet Hernández, who reported opposition political news, endured
inhumanity at home and, ultimately, suffered hardship in exile.

Du Bouchet Hernández was the director of the Havana-based independent
news agency Havana Press. He was jailed twice, in 2005 and 2009, on
"disrespect" charges. According to CPJ research, he drew the ire of
Cuban authorities after reporting on an unprecedented gathering of
hundreds of Cuban opposition activists in 2005. Like most political
prisoners, Du Bouchet Hernández was jailed in inhumane conditions that
included rotting food and overflowing wastewater.

I spoke to him many times between prison stints. He was determined, and
continued working after his initial release. But it was clear from our
conversations that he was also deeply affected by the continuous
repression he faced from Cuban authorities.

Du Bouchet Hernández was released the second time in April 2011. He
initially settled in Madrid with his former wife and son, but then moved
to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where he died. News of his death was
first reported by the exiled reporter Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta on
Facebook. Herrera Acosta said he did not know precisely what motivated
his friend but knew that he had been in pain.

Like most journalists released from Cuban prisons to Spain, Du Bouchet
Hernández had a very difficult time adjusting. Economic woes and
bureaucratic problems made the transition extremely difficult for many,
as my colleague Borja Bergareche reported for CPJ in 2011. At the time,
many said Spain would only be a temporary stop. Since then, at least
seven journalists, including Herrera Acosta, have moved to the United
States by CPJ's count.
María Salazar-Ferro is CPJ's Impunity Campaign and Journalist Assistance
Program coordinator. A native of Bogotá, she studied at Universidad de
los Andes, in Bogotá, and graduated from the University of Virginia.

http://www.cpj.org/blog/2012/04/remembering-cubas-du-bouchet-hernandez-1.php

Silenced During Papal Visit, Cuban Bloggers, Dissidents Speak Out

April 04, 2012

Silenced During Papal Visit, Cuban Bloggers, Dissidents Speak Out
Jerome Socolovsky | Havana

Not much was heard from dissidents during Pope Benedict XVI's recent
visit to Cuba. They say that is because the government mounted a
campaign of arrests and harassment to silence them. After the pope
left, I was invited to a meeting that the country's best known
Internet blogger, Yoani Sanchez, had with other critics of the
government to share their experiences.

"I heard the car start moving with incredible speed," said Danilo
Maldonado, waiving his arm tattooed with political drawings. "And
when it turned like this, they grabbed me and shoved me inside."
Maldonado, a graffiti artist, said he was held with other detainees
for three days near Havana's airport.

Meeting in the shaded garden of one of their houses, these dissidents
said the roundup coincided with the pope's March 26-28 visit, as he
held mass in Havana and Santiago and met with President Raul Castro
and his brother Fidel.

Some dissidents said they were were taken into detention, others say
they were put under house arrest. Many of them said they were unable
to use their cell phones.

"Whoever has details to tell should tell them, because I don't know
what happened," Sanchez told the group. Earlier, in an interview, she
had told me she could not receive international telephone calls and
that most of the Cuban contacts in her phone book were unreachable.

Earlier, in a television interview with the Voice of America, she
described what she writes about. "My blog does not draw on political
or academic analysis. It's about the feelings, impressions and
observations that I draw from daily life," she said, seated in her
apartment on the 14th floor of a Soviet-style housing block.

"For example, now, there's no electricity in this building. So you
have to climb the stairs. On those stairs, I hear stories. I hear
complaints; I hear frustrations. And all of that goes into my blog."

But those reflections have been deemed counterrevolutionary by Cuban
authorities. And Sanchez says she has suffered retaliation.

"Arrests, days in jail, police threats," she recalls. "But I have to
say that wonderful things have happened to me. To go out into the
street and have people say to me, 'I read your work, I agree with
you.' People my age with tears of emotion telling me to continue the
fight -- that compensates for everything."

Sanchez says she was brought up as a doctrinaire youth who used to
mouth slogans idolizing Marxist revolutionary hero Ernesto "Che"
Guevarra. But during adolescence, she says, she watched as "everything
my parents had sacrificed and struggled for left us in a miserable
economic situation without a future."

She cannot travel abroad to collect awards she has received. What
hurts her the most, she says, is the intimidation of those dear to
her. "I've lost many friends, people who are afraid to be near me.
But I've also made new friends, who are aware of the risks" -- like
the fellow bloggers, journalists, artists and dissident clergy who
gathered to talk about what happened to them during the papal visit.

Reverend Jose Conrado Rodriguez Alegre, a Catholic priest form
Santiago, told them that his house was surrounded by security forces.
He promised to pass on the testimonies to the papal nuncio. "In the
church, whoever prevents a priest or ordinary Christian from directly
communicating with the Holy Father commits a grave offense," he said.

Their allegations did not draw a response from the Cuban government.
Since taking over the presidency from his ailing brother Fidel, Raul
Castro has moved to liberalize the country's economy and let ordinary
Cubans have cell phones and Internet access.

Many defenders of Cuban communism praise its egalitarian ideals and
say it provides a high standard of universal health care and
education, in spite of the 50-year-old U.S. economic embargo. Sanchez
has written that the embargo should be lifted, but she has little
patience for people in Western countries who romanticize Cuba.

"I would advise most of those people to spend two months in Cuba,
trying to survive on a local salary and live on rations. And I'm sure
that after those two months, they would be more critical of the Cuban
government than I or any other opposition figure based in this
country."

Last year, the government lifted a three-year blockage on blogs like
Sanchez's. "The only thing the Cuban government achieved during those
three years is that alternative blogs became very popular through
alternative networks - being distributed hand to hand, on CDs and
flash drives," she said.

But Sanchez says that because Arab youth played a key role in toppling
authoritarian governments during the past year, the Cuban government
has tightened its control on society.

She tweets from her cell phone via text messaging, but has no Internet
connection at home. She has to go to hotel business centers where
online access costs about $10 per hour, a fortune for ordinary Cubans.

Sanchez says adversities such as these lead many Cubans to feel
apathetic, "as though this is some sort of curse and there's nothing
we can do." But she says the Middle East and North Africa uprisings
changed that and gave young Cubans a feeling of empowerment.

"Civil society is in ferment," she says. "Things are happening not
just among dissidents, but also among young people making hip hop
music, art, theater, alternative film."

Many of them, including Yoani Sanchez, are convinced that the future
of Cuba is in their hands.

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/americas/Silenced-During-Papal-Visit-Cuban-Bloggers-and-Dissidents-Speak-Out-146170015.html

They Have Lost the Ruler / Lilianne Ruíz

They Have Lost the Ruler / Lilianne Ruíz
Lilianne Ruíz, Translator: M. Ouellette

Sometimes one has the crazy idea that if the little soldiers of power
were reading us, even they would understand us. That is, even if they
didn't agree with us, they would understand that in the world we dream
of, there would be room for everyone, and only crime would be penalized,
of course. Crime is anything that threatens the integrity of any human
being. But one has to start by observing, understanding, stating as
close to the truth as possible the meaning of this mystery that is our
humanity.

Even when I am aware I am the person behind my eyes, I don't know if my
name is really Lilianne. Culture, religion, philosophy exist. But pain,
death, suffering exist. And none of these should be inflicted on anyone.
Maybe if I didn't have in front of me the obstacle and the war of the
State Security against the Cubans, I would condemn the Pentagon's war.

From here, knowing the essence of totalitarianism, out of step with
ethics that better agrees with the happiness of humans, without
preferring one bad thing to another, it worries me a thousandth of a
second less that it is the West with the weapons of mass destruction and
not the religious sultanates, or Korea, or Venezuela, or Cuba.

Because in those "left" countries, the "socialist" ones, the law
dictates a leader protected by thousands of subjects, and that law, when
the leader has already fixed it to imprison our liberty and our rights,
is broken from one day to the next. And this means that if those
socialist leaders had weapons of mass destruction, not only would
dissidents be exterminated, as were the Jews at Auschwitz, but nuclear
weapons would be used more quickly. Because the mutation has been worse
in those countries.

We have never been good in history, but there was an ideology behind
Hitler and Stalin, and there was doctrine behind the Inquisition; the
pain of human beings was not contemplated by any of the institutions
that exterminated people accused of dissent or of being racially
inferior or ideologically marginal. In Cuba, those youths who like Pope
Benedict XVI have been educated in an ideology that at some moment meant
to position the Cuban Revolution as a Universal Paradigm of virtue and
justice. The General President of Cuba still says "all the justice."
When people say "all the truth" or "all the justice," they are lying.

But the idea is that the paradigm that our parents believed in, already
distanced from the values of our grandparents, which were still those of
the Republic, cracked completely when Soviet subsidies ended. And then
the dollar appeared, both loved and hated by the Cuban family. Today,
most Cuban youths have neither a spiritual inheritance connecting them
to the spiritual development of humanity nor the ethics of the left that
the intellectuals of the 1970s made fashionable; they have nothing more
than a desire to have money and the desire to have power by serving power.

Because of this, the new generation of security guards is not going to
read what we write, as if one day, when they detain us by force, they
could sit and talk with us. In these days during the Pope's visit, my
friends were detained and obliged to talk with State Security.
Threatened, or simply tricked, they were interrogated, and the principal
accusation was that they wanted to attend the Papal mass in the square.

Such a thing did not even interest many but at the very least, when and
how did seeking an audience with the Pope become an offense? But this
did not happen either, and the terror felt by "those who govern" and its
Nomenklatura of losing the immense satisfaction of governing us,
controlling us, subjugating us, and threatening the entire world above
us, envying world power, made the political police try to terrorize us.

Does human nature suffer a mutation in the cauldron of totalitarian
violence? Yes. And it is worse than cancer and HIV because it is a
condition of the soul and not just the body. The mutants are not
interested if power is just or unjust; they like power.

They have been educated without others, without a needle on the balance
that was universal, international. If they have something, it is the
ideology of the "Revolution," that deals with all persons as if they
were not human beings, conscious souls with real desires, with human
rights. I am referring to the fact that there is no scale of universal
values, higher than a party, that can be compared to.

They are alone in front of us, but they are armed. They are not
interested in the search for truth; those are aristocratic values and
they have left the "people," condemned for being poor, inferior to the
power and nomenclature of the politburo.

A neighbor told me that one has to apply the politics of conviction and
after, if the person is not convinced, apply the politics of defeat.
This man studied and graduated with an honors degree in history from the
University of Havana. This is the training that they all pass through,
with professors that are not humanities chairs, but rather take part in
perverting the value of human beings. Its brutality and barbary attack
us spiritually and physically because they cannot really communicate;
they are not interested in the truth. They are programmed to impose
themselves, to "defeat," to lie if necessary. It is the most frightening
anthropological vacuum.

They are like dry trunks without vital sap that could have accomplished
a number of things before dying, but which are cut instead, so their
destiny is condemned by the historical chronicles and by God.

They are mutants; their ethics is to obey and earn "money" and
privileges according to national standards. Later, when delegations of
foreign students or people on the left come to visit, they show them
what we have been taught since childhood: to simulate a country better
than theirs, because they are capitalists and have to pay for school,
and sometimes those foreigners leave with this idea.

Everyone in the world with a conscience, directly affected or not, we
should fight against totalitarianism, because they are not going to
agree to being alone in their countries. They want all the power that
even Western countries have today, in spite of any shortcoming
preferable to this.

It is possible that there is a crisis of faith in the entire world. I
learned to live in pure faith by suffering the result of a society that
changed by not believing in prior values into an ideology that taught
them to be bad, to lie with out scruples of conscience, to be sadistic,
overbearing, forceful, greedy, mimicking. The security guards are
mutants; there is no human behind them and nevertheless, some day, God
willing, although they apparently already do not serve any other
purpose, we will have to respect their rights in order to not be like them.

Translated by: M. Ouellette

April 2 2012

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=17317

Number of visitors reaches million in Cuba this year

Number of visitors reaches million in Cuba this year
English.news.cn 2012-04-06 09:04:12

HAVANA, April 5 (Xinhua) -- The number of visitors to Cuba this year
reached 1 million as of Thursday, the Ministry of Tourism announced.

"Arriving again at this important number of visitors, in a shorter
period than the previous year, confirms a preference for our destination
and our promise of a tranquil, healthy, safe and reliable" tourism
experience, the ministry said in a statement.

The largest number of visitors came from Canada, followed by Argentina,

Russia, Germany, France, and Mexico respectively, the ministry said,
adding that it expects more tourist arrivals from these nations over the
next few months.

The ministry said it also hopes to see an increase in the number of
visitors this year from Colombia, Peru and the Netherlands.

The island nation saw a 4 percent increase in visitor arrivals in the
first quarter of 2012 over the same period of last year while tourism
revenues grew by 12 percent in the same period, the statement said.

Cuba is expected to receive a total of 2.9 million tourists in 2012 and
hopes to increase the number in coming years.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/business/2012-04/06/c_131509972.htm

Oasis of the Seas cruise ship picks up 23 Cuban refugees

Oasis of the Seas cruise ship picks up 23 Cuban refugees
By Dan Askin, CruiseCritic.com

The world's largest cruise ship picked up 23 Cuban refugees in the
Caribbean Sea on Wednesday.

Royal Caribbean's 225,282-ton, 5,400-passenger Oasis of the Seas was
sailing from Falmouth, Jamaica, to Cozumel, Mexico, when it spotted a
small boat, said the line in a statement. Oasis approached the boat and
picked up 23 refugees, including 19 men and four women. (Thanks to
Cruise Critic member bajathree, who's onboard, for the tip.)

Once onboard, the refugees received food, water and medical treatment,
said the line. Royal Caribbean spokeswoman Cynthia Martinez told Cruise
Critic that the new passengers were housed in Oasis' conference room
with a few crewmembers until the ship arrived in Cozumel this morning.
Advertise | AdChoices

According to Royal Caribbean, the U.S. Coast Guard was notified, as is
the line's standard practice when dealing with distressed mariners. At
the direction of the U.S.C.G, the 23 Cuban citizens were disembarked in
Cozumel, where they were handed over to the Mexican authorities.

Passenger and youtuber Spensaf1 posted a video of the refugees being
handed life jackets and then transferred from their makeshift craft to a
yellow boat. One of the onlookers can be heard saying, "it's lobster
night tonight. Going to be eating pretty well tonight."

http://overheadbin.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/05/11041440-oasis-of-the-seas-cruise-ship-picks-up-23-cuban-refugees

Cautious capitalism emerging in Cuba

Cautious capitalism emerging in Cuba
by: James Bone
From: The Times
April 06, 2012 11:58AM

Cuba

A BRITISH businessman has set up the first curry house in the Cuban
capital as the cash-strapped communist country experiments with private
enterprise.

Cedric Fernando, the son of Sri Lankan immigrants, used to own an estate
agent's on Church Street in Kensington, West London.

Three months ago he opened Bollywood, Cuba's first curry restaurant, in
the smart Nuevo Vedado section of Havana.

Mr Fernando, 49, who has put the business in the name of his Cuban wife
Oyaky, is part of a growing entrepreneurial class in Cuba as the
government permits certain categories of people to work por cuenta
propia - for their own account.

With a vintage MG sports car parked outside his restaurant, which is in
his wife's home, Mr Fernando looks every inch the successful small
businessman. But he is careful to avoid the word "capitalist" because of
its derogatory implication in Cuba.
Rec Coverage 28 Day pass

"I am neither communist nor socialist nor capitalist. I'm a normalist,"
he said. "When you say capitalist, they think you are going to come and
rob them."

Bereft of its Soviet benefactor and reliant on the generosity of the
ailing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Cuba can no longer afford to
maintain the State's monopoly over the economy.

Under Raul Castro, who took over from older brother Fidel in 2008, the
Cuban Government intends that up to 40per cent of the island's workforce
of 5.2 million will be in non-state jobs by 2015.

The Government wants to cut 170,000 state jobs this year and create
240,000 new non-state jobs. More than 362,000 people already work for
themselves.

In October 2010, the Government published a list of 178 jobs that could
be performed privately. It makes sometimes comic reading: alongside
plumbers, barbers and carpenters are folk dancers, artificial-flower
sellers and even "dandies".

Cubans are allowed to open shops and even to sell their homes and cars.
State-owned farmland is being leased to 150,000 peasants to cultivate
and the State is to start providing loans for small businesses. It is
also possible to buy advertising in the state-owned telephone directory.
For people who earn an average of $US19 ($18) a month, being allowed to
become a "cuenta propistas" - self-employed - is a turning point.

It gives them an incentive to work and to be rewarded directly for their
endeavour.

However, Cuba's economic czar, Marino Murillo, a rising power in the
government, insists that economic reform will not shake the one-party
system.

"In Cuba there will be no political reforms. What we are talking about
is an updating of our Cuban economic model, which makes our own form of
socialism more sustainable for the wellbeing of our people," he told
foreign journalists this week.

Stroll along Calle Neptuno in Old Havana and you can see the budding
private economy on display. The street is lined with nascent businesses
ranging from those selling plumbing supplies and women's makeup to those
giving tango lessons.

Jaisel Lopez sells counterfeit DVDs and music CDs in a shop along with
21 other merchants who pay just over $US1 a day in rent for their space.
She has Hollywood action films on sale for $US1, which she copies onto
empty DVDs.

"We have films from all countries except Cuba," she said, "because Cuban
films you cannot sell."

On a good day, she can sell 40 copied DVDs and music CDs.

Yanislevy Sierra deals in second-hand clothes. "When you buy clothes
from someone else, you pay half price," she said. "If your shirt costs
20 pesos (just under $US1), we pay 10 pesos."

In the 1990s private restaurants and renting rooms to tourists became
two of the first categories of small business allowed to operate. But
the government put many restaurants out of business by limiting them
with a "ten-seat" rule.

Mr Fernando's Bollywood restaurant has been open for three months and is
flourishing to the point where he is considering extending the seating.

To promote it, he recently sent a text to his customers - many of whom
are diplomats - saying: "You Know Who will be eating at Bollywood
tomorrow at 8pm."

The diplomats, hoping to catch a sight of the ageing Fidel Castro,
turned up in droves, he said.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/cautious-capitalism-emerging-in-cuba/story-fnb64oi6-1226320412480

Little to commemorate, celebrate after pope’s visit

Posted on Thursday, 04.05.12
The Miami Herald | EDITORIAL

Little to commemorate, celebrate after pope's visit

OUR OPINION: Repression continues after Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Cuba
By The Miami Herald Editorial
HeraldEd@MiamiHerald.com

As Christians commemorate Good Friday leading up to Easter and Jews
prepare to celebrate Passover, the story of the Exodus, when the ancient
Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt, there's a communist island
in the Caribbean where its people remain enslaved and few days can be
called "good."

Barely a week after Pope Benedict XVI left Cuba, the repression
continues. His short visit did nothing to give Cubans hope for a better
future. The Vatican will point to the Cuban government allowing its
people to not work this Good Friday as a sign that change is coming, if
slowly. Yet the pope's visit was one missed opportunity after another to
speak up for Cubans' basic human rights.

The pope had no time in his busy schedule to meet with the Ladies in
White, the mothers, daughters and relatives of those imprisoned for
peacefully protesting the Cuban dictatorship. Yet these women have been
loyal Catholics, going to mass every Sunday for years. They have been
spat on, punched out and knocked down by government-approved mobs. But
the pope had no time for them.

In Santiago, there was another powerful missed opportunity when Andrés
Carrión Alvárez ran through the crowd during the outdoor church service
yelling, "Down with communism!" He was beaten and carted away — but not
before getting pummeled on the head with a cot used as a weapon by a
Cuban Red Cross worker. From the pope and the Cuban church leadership
there was silence. Mr. Carrión, meanwhile, hasn't been seen since.

In Havana, Alan Gross, an American contractor working for the U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID), will "celebrate" Passover
in prison. He was arrested in December 2009. His crime? Bringing
satellite equipment to Cuba's tiny Jewish community. For this, he is
serving a 15-year prison sentence.

Again, the pope said nothing, at least publicly, to ask for Mr. Gross'
release or to defend the fundamental right of all Cubans to be able to
reach out and communicate with the world.

Another pope, John Paul II, asked Cuba to open up to the world and for
the world to open up to Cuba some 14 years ago. Since then, Cubans have
experienced some small successes — Christmas is now celebrated openly,
for instance, in a nation that Fidel Castro had proclaimed to be
atheists and remained officially so for decades. But the crackdowns on
those who speak out against the regime's abuses continue to this day.

In preparation for Pope Benedict's visit, the Cuban regime detained
hundreds of dissidents and shut them out of participating in any of the
religious observances. They redirected dissidents' phone lines to state
security and claimed a technical glitch cut off Internet access
islandwide. Worse still, Cuban Catholic leaders, led by Cardinal Jaime
Ortega, turned over several Cubans — who had gone into a Havana church
to seek the pope's attention before his visit — to state security.
Disgraceful.

Since the pope's departure, the beatings and detentions by Cuban
authorities continue. Cuban authorities have locked up at least two
dozen dissidents, including José Daniel Ferrer Garcia, who was among the
75 detained during Cuba's Black Spring crackdown of dissidents in 2003,
and his wife, Belkis Cantillo. Their small children are now in the care
of an aging relative. So much for progress.

Church has ‘marriage of convenience’ with dictatorship

Posted on Thursday, 04.05.12

Church has 'marriage of convenience' with dictatorship

Pope Benedict XVI should never have accepted the terms and conditions
insisted upon by the Cuban dictatorship for his trip to Cuba. By
strictly following the dictatorship's conditions, the trip ended up
constituting a sad demonstration of lack of solidarity toward the
oppression of the

Cuban people.

It was inappropriate for the pope not to visit with the devoutly
Catholic "Ladies in White." It was inappropriate for him not to mention
the sacrifice of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Wilman Villar and Laura Pollán,
recent martyrs of Cuba's struggle for freedom.

It is common knowledge that the church's marriage of convenience with
the dictatorship was planned and guided by the collaborationist Cuban
Cardinal Ortega. But the fact that the "violently remove the peaceful
pro-democracy activists from the church!" cardinal may have

been the wedding planner, does not justify the marriage.

It seems as though history has repeated itself in Cuba. I recently
re-read Jesuit scholar Manuel Maza Miguel's masterful account of Vatican
policy toward Cuba in the 19th Century, Entre la Ideología y la
Compasión. Leo XIII, an erudite, respected pontiff, was an ally of many
just causes in his time, but he was no friend of Cuba's freedom. Maza
Miguel describes how Catholic churches were used as forts by the army of
colonial Spain in Cuba.

"How can it be explained," he asks, "that the extraordinary Leo XIII,
who showed such solidarity toward the working class, could not
understand the justice of the Cuban struggle for independence?" The
Jesuit scholar continues, "The measures taken by the Spanish
ecclesiastical and civil authorities against those who sought a new
direction for Cuba decisively limited the presence and vigor of
Catholicism in the Cuban ethos."

There are many admirable, patriotic Catholics in Cuba, and the church
will survive this difficult test of faith for Cuban Catholics. But
history cannot be separated from politics. It is not surprising that, in
contrast to many countries in Latin America and Europe, there was never
a "Christian Democratic" political party of any relevance during the
first Cuban Republic (1902-1958). I believe the Church's political
influence will be even less in the second Republic, which is fast
approaching despite the cruel lack of international solidarity the Cuban
people have had to suffer for over five decades.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/05/2733961/church-has-marriage-of-convenience.html

ZURAIMA AND HER RASTAFARIAN HUSBAND ASK FOR WORLD SOLIDARITY: +53-52519247 / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

ZURAIMA AND HER RASTAFARIAN HUSBAND ASK FOR WORLD SOLIDARITY:
+53-52519247 / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Translator: Unstated

INJUSTICE, BRUTALITY AND DISCRIMINATION AGAINST RASTAFARIANS IN CUBA
2012. CUBAN RASTAFARIANS UNDER THE NEGATIVE POWER

ASKING FOR HELP FROM THE POWER OF LIGHT AND TRUTH.

By: Family, artists and friends of Hector Riscart

TRUTH ALWAYS IN FRONT, THE TRUTH BEFORE, THE TRUTH AFTER, THE TRUTH WITH
LOVE …

Amid the profound changes taking place in Cuba (which some create or
not, which seem slow to others, or a deception to so many), changes that
are demanded by the President of the Republic and for all at all social
levels, inside and outside the island, and although each day are new
openings in the economic and civil are published in the official press
and articles appear denouncing discrimination, there are still
mechanisms that operate efficiently and urgently before the abuse of
power and the injustice for citizens with police authority over
civilians, Cubans all equal, everyone with the same rights.

On November 15, 2011, something very unfortunate happened. The artist
Hector Riscart (El Ñaño), one of the first Rastafarians in Cuba,
director of the Reggae Band Herencia, the musical group most committed
to the spiritual growth of our youth, respected by the emerging
alternative Cuban art, left his concert at the National Cabaret, and was
searched by the police along with other members of his group on the
corner of the Capitol across from the Payret cinema.

To El Nano, this seemed humiliating and he asked them, please, to take
him to the police station and search him there and not humiliate him
right there in the street. The police didn't listen and when El nano
defended his rights, he was attacked with great violence by the officers
and treated worse than the most despicable criminal. Then at the Police
Station, he had to suffer insults and slurs and, to the astonishment of
the Duty Officer before the evident brutality, her heard, along with
another brother detained, plans to fabricate a false accusation of drug
trafficking: "You, when you're in the Communist Party and accuse
someone, no one will doubt your word."

Much less would they doubt it, because this same officer boasted during
the violent arrest of having found important artists in the country with
hard drugs. During the following days they violated all the established
legal procedures, without making any records or charges, with
declarations of false investigations, refusing a line-up before
witnesses, without allowing him the help of an attorney, and blatantly
brainwashing his wife Zurainma not to act in the public defense of El
Nana. In addition, the authorities visited the manager of the National
Cabaret to ask him, with exaggerated lies, to fire the group Herencia
from their jobs.

So, El Nano was sent to a provisional prison where they cut off his
dreadlocks, which are most sacred to a Rastafarian.

Many brothers were moved by this, waiting in silence for a solution.
Only about two months later could El Nano see his lawyer, who was very
afraid and didn't know how to defend this case and said it was
impossible to go against the word of the National Revolutionary Police.

All this happened under the surveillance cameras of the Payret Cinema,
but these images disappeared. The police investigators send the
Prosecutor a file completely full of lies and incoherencies, where they
said El Nano had no witnesses. The situation has been reported twice to
the Central Committee of the Council of State (Citizen Matters), but
nothing has happened and Hector Riscart, connected to his biblical
belief in God, is no longer willing to eat any kind of food or liquids.

Why this effort to keep in prison such a noble and beloved artist, who
brings messages of spiritual liberation, and who everyone knows where
and how he works?

There is a history of much gravity that is not told in the book Cuban
Rastafarians, whose presentation was promoted last year on national
television. This book should be re-printed and distributed to police
stations and schools in the country. Artists of new protest HipHop have
denounced them over and over in their songs. The Internet is full of
fabrications, but also the audiovisual documentaries have not given
space to the abuse of police power.

In December 2011 several of El Nano's songs of commitment had already
seen the light.

According to statements from the brother Zenen (soundman for the
Herencia group, also detained that day), when he saw him the last time
at the police station, Hector Riscart was already convinced they were
going to condemn him with completely negative premeditation. "Look after
my children, that's all I care about," he said.

Zenen shed tears in the Police Station before the hard official who
tortured her psychologically by lying. Just then a very young girl came
in, who was with them at the cabaret during the whole concert of the
Herencia group, working as a prostitute. It's clear that the weaving of
an offense by the leader of Cuban alternative art already included her.

Perhaps, with regards to this arrest, one can open a debate about the
use of drugs in Cuba. The most consumed are 1) alcohol, 2) tobacco, 3)
marijuana (unlike many other countries here even its consumption is
condemned), 4) crack cocaine, 5) meth, 6) paco (cocaine residue,
industrial solvents and rat poison) and 7) ketamine.

These last three are medical industrial products. Those that generate
the greatest death and violence are the first two, both legal in Cuba,
of course. There is a very great negative prejudice associated with
marijuana and Rastafarians. But we must listen to the Rasta fundamentals
and attend to the truth of the behavior in reality at all levels.

The fear based on repeated history is also natural, where police
witnesses retract and admit in open court they have been pressured and
intimidated to make false accusations against the accused, yet despite
this, the court condemns the accused, so it follows that the jury was
already prepped with a false ruling beforehand. This gives us great
fear, and suggests judicial corruption. Our government should look at
this data and feel deeply concerned for the love of justice.

Other members of the Rasta movement are suffering harassment,
imprisonment and injustice around the country, especially when trying to
use the new economic and civil rights of association. Some have also
complained to the Central Committee of the State Council, but without
solution.

Faced with the impossibility of receiving justice promptly, and by the
seriousness (which grows, as we know they continue to manufacture a way
of judging to the Nano, with no guarantee of a solid defense), almost
five months later we have to let the public know of this situation,
waiting for the light.

LIGHT. LIGHT…

April 2 2012

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=17280

Cost-benefit, Right-freedom / Joisy García Martínez

Cost-benefit, Right-freedom / Joisy García Martínez
Joisy García Martínez, Translator: Unstated

To Tweet from a cell phone in Cuba is disproportionately costly, almost
impossible, and only comparable with the draining of the Cienaga de
Zapata swamp, the eradication of prostitution, computer illiteracy or
the forbidden game.

To write 140 characters via a cell phone in Cuba, however simple it may
seem, is a luxury few can afford and there are few people who enjoy the
privilege of being able to access the social network Twitter because of
the high price of this service on telephones and in hotels. One hour of
internet access in one of the cybercafes, that are proliferating more
and more in the major cities, cost between six and eight dollars, which
represents a fortune if you consider the average monthly wage for the
average Cuban is around 20 dollars.

On the island, there are few who have a quality computer in their homes.
Those who manage to break the limitations of this internal blockade and
get a computer, then have to deal with the nonexistent connections in
home and the high costs of surfing the internet on the island. Although
social networks like Twitter and Facebook are not blocked by the Cuban
government, like some other sites of a critical and dissident nature,
for the average Cuban to access the, outside the monitored schools, is a
luxury not granted to most. But before these critical hurdles, Cuban
bloggers who are active on sites like Twitter have found other
alternatives, although they remain expensive, they allow us to get on
the network more often and to express ourselves.

This alternative is through text messages of 140 characters send via
cell phones and subsequently published on the accounts of the
microblogging site. To participate in the social network in this way
cost one convertible peso, around 24 pesos in national money, for each
Tweet sent, something that many call "the luxury of expression."

This option, as expensive as it is, at least some of the dozens of
Cubans who have a web presence use. Access to the Internet, and in
particular this latter alternative of tweeting in our country is as
scarce as beef and tolerance. The officials say the island doesn't limit
Cubans' access to social networks, and that platforms like Twitter and
Facebook don't have agreements with the Cuban Telecommunications Company
to allow free messages to these networks from mobile phones, but the
reality is that communication is complex and excessively expensive for
the citizen in the XXI century. An issue that makes me question the
supposed social function of the Cuban telephone monopoly.

This reflection brings to mind the solidarity shown by a person who
recently recharged my cellphone from the internet, so I would transmit
via Twitter the essentials of the hunger strike undertaken by Dr.
Jeovany Jimenez Vega in Guanajay in March. Thank you, actions like these
make me thing that those of us who want to communicate and express
ourselves through tweets in Cuba are not alone, but be must analyze the
cost-benefit, right-freedom that this option brings.

3 April 2012

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=17275

Carlos Saladrigas and the Two Cubas / Iván García

Carlos Saladrigas and the Two Cubas / Iván García
Iván García, Translator: JT

Right now there are two Cubas. The visible, of official gridlock,
popular disenchantment, and an unknown future. And that in which what
happens in the few spaces in which the regime allows bare-chested
debate, and where those who think differently aren't called
"mercenaries", nor are they accused of being agents of the United States.

It looks like gibberish. While a Cuban who yells "democracy and freedom"
in the public way is crushed with billy clubs and karate chops dispensed
by intelligence experts in street fights, slowly and behind closed
doors, liberal thought gains ground, respectful and tolerant.

One of these pockets of democratic debate is located in the old San
Carlos seminary, in the old section of Havana. There, on March 30th, the
magazine "Lay Space", a publication of the Catholic Church, organized a
conference there with the Cuban-American entrepreneur Carlos Saladrigas.
Its title: Cuba and the Exodus.

Access was free. In the packed room close to 200 people gathered. You
could see alternative bloggers like Yoani Sánchez or Miriam Celaya.
Independent journalists a la Reinaldo Escobar and Miriam Leiva;
economists marginalized by the State such as Oscar Espinosa Chepe;
activists for racial integration such as Juan Antonio Madrazo and
Leonardo Calvo, and a new generation of dissidents, like Eliécer Ávila
or Antonio Rodiles.

Also in the discussion were distinguished neocommunists such as Félix
Sautié or Pedro Campos; the moderate politician Esteban Morales; the
anti-State priest José Conrado and His Worship Monsignor Carlos Manuel
de Céspedes, an authentic man whom nothing deters.

The majority of the democratic dissidence on the Island approves of
these grounds for civilized debate. It's the society on which they bet.

At 4 o'clock sharp in the afternoon in the central hallway of the Félix
Varela Salon, Carlos Saladrigas made his way. He wore a white long
sleeve guayabera, a trimmed beard, and wire-framed glasses.

After greeting the audience, he took out his Apple tablet and began his
presentation. It wasn't extensive. In little more than 30 minutes he
drew with a broad brush his impressions on Cuban exile.

Saladrigas knows what it is to be dispossessed. Son of a political
family during the republican era, he inherited from his father the genes
of a pure and tough negotiator. His story is the vision we have of the
United States. The solitary boy who arrived in an operation frocked by
the Catholic Church, known as Peter Pan, and when his family could
travel, he had to wash dishes and pick tomatoes in South Florida, as
Saladrigas himself tells it. Then he became a successful businessman,
with an estate valued at several million dollars.

Between that Saladrigas — who cried inconsolably and prayed in the last
row of wooden pews at a small parish church in Miami in the 60s, and
this one — seated with his immaculate guayabera in a debate arena in the
Cuban capital, there is a 180-degree turn.

At one stage, he asked for the head of Fidel Castro on a tray; it was
the shot at a target for all he'd lost. He had to live transplanted in
Miami, while he felt the lullaby of la Habanera Tu or La Bayamesa in the
distance.

After having been a conservative who disavowed all dialog with the olive
green autocrats, and opposing a crossing loaded with Catholics to the
other shore, he would travel to Cuba in 1998, during the visit of John
Paul II, Saladrigas moved his political positions from the ultra-right
to the center, perhaps leaning a little towards the left.

The 'why' of his transformation is something that isn't clear. If we
were to take at face value his public statements, we would have to come
to the conclusion that his Catholic faith put to the missile test was
one of the causes of his political transplantation. There are those who
allege other reasons.

In his rear-view mirror, Carlos Saladrigas observes how the pages of the
almanac turn inexorably and the Cuban economy springs leaks everywhere.
Castro II is betting heartlessly on State capitalism. And a virgin
island opens its legs to, in the near future, receive the dance of the
millions. Perhaps he doesn't want to arrive late for the cutting of the
cake.

At least so thinks a sector of exiles and dissidence on the Island. You
can't be naive. Something is cooking in the sewers of power. In that
very salon, some months ago, a firm Fidelista like Alfredo Guevara
responded to questions from "sellout mercenaries" such as Oscar Espinosa
Chepe, ordered to be imprisoned in the spring of 2003 by his friend Fidel.

Through the San Carlos seminary have also passed some suspicious types,
like Arturo López-Levy, graduate from a US university, and professor in
Denver, cousin of Luis Alberto López Callejas, son-in-law of General
Raúl Castro and the best picker of hard cash in Cuba.

The dissertation of Carlos Saladrigas was nothing to write home about.
Old news. What every Cuban knows, because he has at least one relative
in exile. The key wasn't the bland, politically correct chat. No. It was
the message that the round trip which sent Saladrigas into dissidence
and exile has for the future of Cuba: reforms are underway and he wants
to be one of the agents of change.

After his presentation, Saladrigas responded to a battery of questions.
He ran several analyses from which we can learn that the Cuban-American
impresario is not playing a sterile game, and is well-connected and
informed, more than one might imagine.

He assured us that within 5 years, Cuba's situation will unfailingly
change. And, of course, 'no' to more socialism, contrary to what was
said recently in a press conference given by the economy czar, Marino
Murillo, when he said that no political reforms would take place.

With serenity and self-assurance, Saladrigas drew a dream future of an
inclusive, tolerant, and rich Cuba. To achieve it, he said, the country
will rely on its enviable human capital. The astute businessman winked
at the regime in affirming that the best merit of the Castro brothers
was having known how to administer poverty.

"There are nations that can generate riches, but do not know how to
administer poverty", he noted. With the intent of stimulating those
disaffected who are waiting for the slightest opportunity to flee Cuba,
he said "if you were 25 years old, you wouldn't get out of the country
before me".

Carlos Saladrigas sees it all very clearly. Too clearly. I noticed that
he did not question the hundreds of detentions of dissidents for the
visit of the German Pope, or the spontaneous blow to someone who shouted
"Down with communism" in the Plaza Antonio Maceo in Santiago de Cuba.
Nobody else asked, either.

And it is these open spaces for the Catholic Church that generate a
certain mistrust and some, not meaning all, attend to see and hear, not
to investigate. It's the lack of custom after five decades of listening
to only one discourse. And many still don't believe it.

Photo: Juan Antonio Madrazo. Carlos Saladrigas makes his way to the dais
to give his presentation, after having greeted the independent economist
Oscar Espinosa Chepe, standing, in a black shirt.

April 1 2012

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=17278

Domestic Tourism Here in Cuba

Domestic Tourism Here in Cuba
April 3, 2012
Yanelys Nuñez Leyva

HAVANA TIMES, April 3 — For Cubans, traveling in our own country to see
its beauty is a veritable utopia. The difficulties lie in the relatively
high costs of transportation, accommodations, food and leisure
activities themselves.

This is why when the slightest chance presents itself to affordably
break one's daily routine to go somewhere, we have to jump at it –
sometimes with our eyes closed.

My chance came recently when my mother's union (made up of tourism
workers) organized a trip to the Bellamar Cave, in Matanzas Province.

The excursion included transportation to and from the destination, lunch
and a snack – all for the per-person price of 52 pesos (about $2 USD).

Unfortunately though, the trip was anything but problem free.

One of the mix-ups occurred even before we went inside the cave. We were
informed by the huge sign at the entrance that in addition to various
prices per person based on their classification (foreigners, Cubans and
children under 5 years of age), people would also be charged 20 pesos
for bringing a camera into the cavern.

This was something that came off as absurd to all the Cubans present,
who acted on their common sense by simply not declaring their cameras
and then surreptitiously snapping their photos once inside.

Once in the cave, the presence of a single guide for the more than 80
people required us to repeatedly stop during the long underground walk,
thereby subjecting us to extended periods of stifling heat. All of this
was endured only so that the guide could point out the abundant
stalagmites and stalactites there in the cave.

At the resort located near the cave, where we should have been able to
enjoy the lunch which had been reserved in our package. As for the
swimming pool — the main interest of everyone who normally comes there —
it was being cleaned, as was the one at Las Lagunas, the second camping
resort (for Cubans) we visited to see if we could take a swim.

In sum, the countless setbacks were due to the lack of any real
organization and management abilities on the part of the related state
entities.

The best part of my trip was discovering the perfect view from the
Bacunayagua Bridge and taking a deep sleep in front of the rough sea,
which didn't prove to be a deterrent for two teenagers — guests at the
Las Lagunas camping resort — who were making love there in the full view
of everyone.

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=66406

Vision Problems

Vision Problems
April 3, 2012
Daisy Valera

HAVANA TIMES, April 3 — I had felt something was wrong when the eye
doctor — in her immaculate white coat — asked if I wanted the
prescription made out for making my purchase in national currency pesos
or in hard-currency CUCs.

I replied in automatic mode: "National currency."

She immediately whipped off the prescription – tearing up the one she
had written out of her elegant green pad – and handed me a fragile piece
of grey paper.

The texture and size of that small opaque slip made of low-grade paper
told me everything. I shouldn't have — I mustn't have — gone into that
place.

I had entered the Optica Almendares, on busy Obispo Street, desperate to
get rid of this headache. It had been triggered by astigmatism after I
broke my old pair of glasses several months ago.

Everything there was perfect: the air conditioning, the uniform of the
receptionist, the black and white striped armchairs, and even me.

All that I knew was that at that very moment I was enjoying a pause from
the infernal lines and whole days that would have been wasted trying to
correct my eyesight in some hot little office associated with the public
health care system.

I felt relaxed in the waiting room. No one was shouting, and the doctors
and technicians walked from place to place without disgust written on
their faces.

I simply sat there reading the directions written in French on the
lenses, glass frames and eye gels, as if I wanted to get an idea of what
it was like to be in Paris.

But that wasn't the case.

I was taking in the willingness of the staff to assist, along with their
professionalism and efficiency. The paradise demanded by the Communist
Party was here on this street in Old Havana.

I tried on about 10 pairs of glasses, while the doctor finished her
calculations. "The eye test costs 10 CUC ($11 usd)," she said. I
swallowed hard and prepared to pay the price demanded at that apparently
friendly and clean place of business.

It was the end of a dream, next came the moment of truth.

There I was with that little piece of gray paper that was rubbing in my
face the fact that even three months of my salary wasn't enough to pay
for these designer glasses, which are apparently kept in stock here at
the Optica Almendares for the Cuban upper class.

Time for impotence.

I hit the streets and went to all of the opticians that charged in local
currency in the Cerro neighborhood, but none of them had the lens type
that I needed.

I finally made it to Vedado, where people tell me they have all the
corrective lens types available – ones that wouldn't be found in Cerro,
Marianao, the 10th of October or in any of the other poor areas of the city.

In the end, though, I came to terms with the wonders of our health care
system. I waited through the horrendous line and finally ordered my pair
of glasses for 20 Cuban pesos (about 80 cents USD). I even got a case
for them – for an extra 11.50 pesos.

Now I'm happy, even if I'm waiting. It will only take a month for them
to have my new pair ready.

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=66401

Chilean Student Leader Camila Vallejo Returns to Cuba

Chilean Student Leader Camila Vallejo Returns to Cuba
April 5, 2012
Armando Chaguaceda

HAVANA TIMES, April 4 — The charismatic Chilean student-protest leader
Camila Vallejo traveled to Cuba to participate in the events marking the
anniversary of the island's Young Communist League. This young woman is
a case — rare in these times — that combines intelligence, perseverance
and social commitment.

To these must be added her being the face (an entrancingly beautiful
one, like that of an actress) of the most creative, combative and
respected post-Pinochet social mobilization in Chile, one in which
students are demanding the right to education.

In the prelude to her most recent visit in Cuba, Camilla made some
statements that were picked up by several web forums.

Alarm was raised concerning her remark comparing repression in Cuba and
Chile, where — without denying its existence here on the island — the
young Chilean recalled the violent means in which her fellow
demonstrators have been attacked during social protest actions in her
country. This doesn't mean that she is unaware of the violent acts
committed by agents of the Cuban government; it merely speaks of her
real and personal experience and knowledge.

Here, perhaps one might might add to Camilla's assessment by saying that
the substantial difference between the two contexts and populations is
the existence in her country of a public sphere — the media, laws and
institutions — in which people can express their dissent against
official policy without censorship or the suppression (though there is
indeed repression) of the right to protest.

Likewise, the Chilean citizenry — despite the anesthetic effect of the
military dictatorship and neoliberal consumerism — is in a qualitatively
superior position for dealing with fear and in their capacity for
mobilization as compared to the Cuban population.

What few critics recognize in Camila's words is that — unlike many
"friends of Cuba" who visit us — she didn't keep her critical opinions
to herself. As true friends do, Camilla said:

"With these words, I don't wish to conceal the legitimate discontent
felt by certain sectors of Cuban society with regard to its political
and social system. We were able to hear criticisms about these during
our visit to the island" (referring to a previous visit in 2009).

And to make clear the absence of mimicry or dogma in the fight that she
helps lead, she concluded:

"Cuba is not a perfect society and Chile does not have to follow its
path. Chileans must develop their own path to overcoming inequality."
Although the progressive sectors of that country value the Cuban
experience, she recalled, "We have aimed to place Chile on a path of
broad social and political convergence within a multiparty system."

Therefore I don't think that this experienced student leader is either
an accomplice of repression or naively uninformed. She speaks from the
position of a new generation and with a new political vision, the same
one that has led her — overcoming the admiration held by many of the
world's leftists for caudillos or the fierce xenophobia that exists in
her own country — to prefer coca-growing leader Evo Morales over the
brash former soldier Hugo Chavez.

Hers is a generation that has the challenge of overcoming the
neo-liberal legacy of dictatorship while advocating education as a
public good and right in the face of justifications issuing from all of
Chile's established political parties – including the Socialists.

We can perhaps assist Camila by giving testimonies about the experiences
here, that — without denying her claims — could provide her with new
arguments for better seeing "the other Cuba."

We can point to what doesn't reside in the lush foreign-guest facilities
at El Laguito or in organized visits to model schools with diligent
pioneers. We could show her experiences where the idolatry of the market
and order are advancing while the emblematic social programs of the
revolution are being cut back in an agenda similar to that of the
military coup leaders and their US-trained advisers from the Chicago School.

We can testify to experiences in which average people are seeing their
living standards fall without these citizens having mechanisms for
expressing their concerns or raising protests. Where college students
who tried, in the past decade, to discuss the thinking of Che Guevara,
or to organize a protest march against the war in Iraq or who resisted
the imposition of spurious leaders over their student organizations were
punished for thinking and acting with their own minds and hearts.

We could point to where those who today discuss the experiences of the
Chilean students or the Spanish "Outraged" are monitored by police
agencies and defamed with impunity as "members of the services of enemy
intelligence."

All these testimonies exist and their central figures certainly have
much to tell this courageous leader and her brave companions. This is
not to turn her visit into a "wailing wall," but to give a contribution
to the pluralistic and fresh vision — concerning Cuba and the world —
that is being forged by a new generation of social activists.

This is because you don't pour new wine into old wineskins and because
the birth of this new radical and democratic, anti-capitalist and
anti-authoritarian politics is the best tribute that can be made to the
heroic legacy of those who died in La Moneda that fateful day in
September 1973. The youth, despite everything, are living up to that legacy.

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=66548

Yes, they're abierto: Cubans open their doors to small business

Yes, they're abierto: Cubans open their doors to small business
Since President Raul Castro loosened the island's commerce rules to
energize the economy, Cubans all over are pondering how to get in on the
wave.
By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times
April 5, 2012

HAVANA — Olga Lidia Garcia sat back and surveyed the length of her
empire: a storefront with seven busy manicurists, scrubbing, clipping,
buffing, gluing and polishing to the bounce of salsa.

The shop, decked out in oversize Oriental fans and racks stocked with a
Day-Glo rainbow of nail polishes, shares the street-level space with a
tiny photo studio. Garcia, wearing a tumble of frizzy hair,
electric-blue dress and dangling golden hoop earrings, is
manicurist-in-chief. This is a good day.

"Look at this," Garcia said, a note of wonder in her voice. "A full salon."

Filling seven chairs in a nail shop may not sound like a big deal. But
this is socialist Cuba, and Garcia is on the leading edge of a push by
the government to energize the creaky economy by allowing residents to
launch small businesses and buy and sell property as never before.

The reform, announced in late 2010, is fast taking root around Havana's
weather-worn downtown and in other cities and towns, prompting Cubans
all over to ponder how to get in on the wave.

The sense of change is evident throughout Old Havana, where tourists are
ferried past renovated colonial-era buildings in "coco-taxis,"
tinny-sounding motorized tricycles with rounded carriages that resemble
giant baseballs, and nearby sections where the wrought iron balconies
remain rusted and the pastel facades faded and crumbling.

Amid the exhaust-belching buses and 50-year-old American sedans that
often serve as taxis are sprinkled no-name pizzerias and other
businesses, some no more than tables stacked with drill bits and
cellphone batteries, peeking from darkened, cave-like doorways. Taped to
chipped power poles are hand-lettered fliers offering homes for sale or
cooking jobs.

Websites are advertising houses and apartments for sale — a first in
Cuba, where homeowners were previously allowed only to swap properties.
Taxi stands serve as impromptu used-car lots for private transactions.

Garcia, 40, a single mother who began doing manicures in her home 18
years ago and expanded to two tables last year, is already talking about
adding to her shop. She hopes to have two chairs for hairstyling by the
end of the year.

The sudden wave of entrepreneurship has brought with it shades of
cutthroat capitalism.

Garcia said a rival nail shop across the street was undercutting her
price for a manicure, $1. But she planned to hold tight.

"I'm not going to change," Garcia said. "What matters more is that
people enjoy coming here."

The loosened rules have others crafting new lives too.

In the southeastern city of Santiago, 58-year-old Rolando Cervantes, a
former factory worker, capitalized on the new car-sale freedoms, buying
a 1964 Pontiac from a friend for $5,000 using a loan from a daughter in
the United States. The old car is now his livelihood, a taxi.

On a good day, Cervantes said, he can earn about $15.

"For us, that's a lot of money," he said. "Of course, I don't always
earn that much but with what we make in a week, we can buy flour, rice,
ham and even get a little piece of cheese on the black market."

Enterprising Cubans have long peddled merchandise on that market or
informally, but the new push is sanctioned by the government — complete
with licenses and tax bills.

One vendor said he quit a decent-paying government job last year to
strike out on his own, getting a license to sell hardware at the
entrance to his home. His "store" is basically a chest heaped with light
fixtures, electrical cables, fittings, valves and pieces of rubber hose.

The budding businessman, who declined to give his name, said his
earnings of up to $20 a day top his old salary, despite the permit fee
and the ups and downs of a merchant's life.

"It's worth it," he said.

The reform has boosted the number of small enterprises in Cuba to more
than 350,000 since the government of President Raul Castro moved to coax
more out of Cuba's economy and ease the load on the treasury by shaving
the bloated public payroll.

Residents are free to hire employees and expand operations of businesses
that were already legal, such as small-scale restaurants. Many Cubans
are hurrying to get titles so they can sell their homes.

"This is a big, complex reform that they're trying to pull off," said
Philip Peters, a Cuba expert at the Virginia-based Lexington Institute.
"Raul Castro has made it very clear that the economy does not produce
enough."

The burst of startups will certainly mean heartache for some. Many
would-be merchants lack marketing acumen or the savings to weather down
times. It may be hard for a pizzeria to survive when others have
sprouted close by.

On a recent afternoon in Havana, trade looked near-dead at a number of
the modest shops, some lacking a name or sign. Taxes and the expense of
covering employee's social security insurance adds another burden.

Still, there are signs of new promise even in businesses that have long
existed.

Dario Gutierrez, who pedals a three-wheeled bicycle taxi he built from
scrap, said the government has been issuing many more bike-taxi permits
than before. He said he began without a license eight years ago and was
fined often.

Gutierrez now earns as much in a day ferrying tourists in Old Havana as
he did in a month in the rural town he came from. Buying a pair of jeans
used to take two months' earnings. He can afford new pants in a week now.

"We don't live rich," he said during a break between fares. "But it's OK
— we live."

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-cuba-small-business-20120405,0,579542,full.story

Cuba arrests 43 dissidents in areas visited by Pope

Cuba arrests 43 dissidents in areas visited by Pope
Thursday, April 05, 2012

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP) — At least 43 Cuban dissidents have been arrested in
areas near where Pope Benedict XVI visited last week, dissidents said
Tuesday, as the United States urged their immediate release.

"We have been able to confirm that 43 opposition members have been
detained — 10 women and 33 men — in a crackdown on Monday in the
Santiago de Cuba area. All remain under arrest," said Elizardo Sanchez,
head of the outlawed but tolerated Cuban Human Rights and National
Reconciliation Commission.

The commission on Monday reported 25 detentions but its figure on
detentions near Santiago de Cuba — Cuba's second-largest city — has kept
rising.

"Almost all of the detainees are members of the Patriotic Union of
Cuba," an opposition force led by former political prisoner Jose Daniel
Ferrer. He was arrested on Monday along with his wife Belkis Cantillo,
at their home in Palmarito de Cauto, near Santiago.

Ferrer, who was among 75 dissidents arrested in a 2003 crackdown and
released last year after a mediation effort by the Roman Catholic
church, had his telephone line cut as well, according to activists.

Sanchez said the Cuban secret police on Monday launched a "wave of
repression" with the arrests, following up on dozens of detentions of
opponents just ahead of a landmark visit last week of the pope.

The United States, which has tense relations with Cuba, said it was
"extremely concerned" about the latest detentions and what it said were
efforts to silence reporting by cutting off activists' cellular and
Internet services.

"We call upon the Cuban government to release all peaceful civil society
activists immediately," State Department spokesman Mark Toner told
reporters in Washington.

"We particularly condemn that most of those arrests took place during
the pope's visit and with the aim of preventing those arrested from
attending public masses that the pope officiated," Toner said.

While in Cuba, the pontiff did not meet with opposition members. But
last Wednesday he wrapped up a visit to Cuba with a call for respect of
"basic freedoms," pursuing his persistent prodding of the island's
communist authorities to embrace change.

"May no one feel excluded from taking up this exciting task because of
limitations of his or her basic freedoms," Benedict said at a mass in
Havana, as President Raul Castro looked on. Cuba is the Americas' only
one-party communist regime.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Cuba-arrests-43-dissidents-in-areas-visited-by-Pope_11205799

Cuba to reform two ministries, expand employee co-ops

Cuba to reform two ministries, expand employee co-ops
Reuters
2:28 a.m. CDT, April 5, 2012
* Agriculture Ministry said to be in "unfavorable" state
* More employee cooperatives to run state businesses
* Castro says long reform road ahead
By Nelson Acosta

HAVANA, April 5 (Reuters) - The Cuban government plans to
shake up two underperforming ministries and broaden a project to
turn state businesses over to employee cooperatives, state
television reported.

The Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Informatics
and Communications needed reorganizing, it said on Wednesday
night.

The changes, said to have been discussed at the Council of
Ministers on Saturday, are part of wide-ranging reforms
initiated by President Raul Castro.

He is encouraging the growth of Cuba's private sector and
reducing the size and role of government in the Caribbean
island's cash-strapped Soviet-style system.

Cuban television said Marino Murillo, the architect of the
reforms, described the Ministry of Agriculture as having been in

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-rt-cuba-reformgovernmentl6e8f514a-20120405,0,6611053.story

US calls for immediate release of government opponents in Cuba

US calls for immediate release of government opponents in Cuba

Ladies in White dissident group and the U.S. State Department on
Wednesday criticized detentions of government opponents in Cuba.
By Juan Carlos Chavez
jcchavez@elnuevoherald.com

The Ladies in White, mothers and wives of political prisoners, made ​​an
urgent appeal Wednesday to the international community to denounce the
Cuban government's crackdown against dozens of opponents and activists
in the east of the island. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., State
Department spokesman Mark Toner demanded the immediate release of those
detained in recent days.

In a statement signed by Ladies in White leader Berta Soler called for
condemnation of the "ferocity" with which authorities acted to silence
critical voices.

Meanwhile in Washington, Toner criticized the lack of security and
vigilance toward peaceful opponents.

"We call upon the Cuban government to release all peaceful civil society
activists immediately," he said.

Toner added: "We particularly condemn that most of those arrests took
place during the pope's visit and with the aim of preventing those
arrested from attending public masses that the pope officiated."

El Nuevo Herald reported Wednesday that Cuban authorities intensified
harassment on Monday and Tuesday of dissidents, arresting dozens of
peaceful opponents in the cities of Palma Soriano and Palmarito de
Cauto, in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba.

Among those arrested was José Daniel Ferrer García, president of the
illegal Patriotic Union of Cuba, and his wife, Belkis Cantillo, a member
of Ladies in White.

The worst incident took place in Palma Soriano, when State Security
agents and the police stopped a demonstration and beat up a group of
activists who had gathered in opponent Raumel Vinajera's house, located
in La Concepción neighborhood.

"A total of 24 human-rights activists took to the streets in a peaceful
march in Palma Soriano to request the release of the kid who jumped the
wall during the pope's Mass in Santiago de Cuba. All the demonstrators
were beaten and jailed," said Soler.

She said the attack had the support of the Committees of Defense of the
Revolution and the Quick Response Brigades. Both organizations function
under the umbrella of the authorities and their acts are generally
perpetrated with total impunity.

The dissidents had planned to organize wide protests to demand the
release of three activists, as well as the one from Santiago, Andrés
Carrión Alvarez, 38. On March 26 Carrión shouted "Freedom!" and "Down
with communism!" at the Antonio Maceo Square in Santiago de Cuba,
minutes before the papal Mass. When he was removed from the square he
was violently beaten with a folded gurney by, among others, a man
wearing the Red Cross uniform.

Carrión's arrest prompted numerous demonstrations of concern inside the
island and abroad. For several days it was impossible to find out his
identity, until a member of the Patriotic Union in Santiago de Cuba
recognized him on Friday. The news circulated widely through the media
and the movement Háblalo sin Miedo (Say It Without Fear).

Guillermo Fariñas, recipient of the European Parliament's Sakharov
Award, said the brutal repression was caused by Carrión's identification
and the intense opposition work of the Patriotic Union of Cuba.

"It's an opportunistic and intolerant attitude by the Cuban government,
which constantly tries to apply force," Fariñas told El Nuevo Herald.
"We hold the Cuban government responsible for the physical integrity and
the lives of Ferrer and Cantillo, among others."

A mob organized by the government surrounded the house of Ferrer and
Cantillo in Palmarito de Cauto. State Security agents emptied their
house during six hours and took away materials and office equipment.
They also cut the service of their cellular phones, and confiscated
books, documents and several articles owned by the family.

Minutes before the raid, Ferrer managed to make a dramatic call to
Háblalo sin Miedo and denounced the raid and the violence displayed by
the authorities.

"They are assaulting my house. The political police, all the officers of
the area's political police and other officers from Santiago de Cuba
have just now come to my house and they want to knock down the door,"
said Ferrer, a dissident released last year after eight years in prison.
"This is a difficult situation. We have people who have entered the
house and we will not permit a forced entry into my house."

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/04/2732066/us-calls-for-immediate-release.html