Posted on Sunday, 07.07.13
Castro speech scolds islanders for bad behavior
BY PETER ORSI
ASSOCIATED PRESS
HAVANA -- Raul Castro spent the lion's share of a prominent speech
Sunday scolding his countrymen for all kinds of bad behavior, everything
from corruption and theft to public urination and the odoriferous
practice of raising pigs in cities.
Speaking before legislators at one of parliament's twice-annual
sessions, the Cuban president railed against decaying morals, a
deteriorating sense of civic responsibility and vanishing values like
honor, decency and decorum.
Castro aired a laundry list of complaints about illegal activities that
he said do the country harm: unauthorized home construction, illicit
logging and slaughter of livestock and the acceptance of bribes, to name
a few.
He also fulminated against baser examples of "social indiscipline":
shouting and swearing in the streets, public drinking and drunk driving,
dumping trash on the roadside and even people who relieve themselves in
parks.
At times, the 82-year-old's speech sounded like a generational broadside
against disrespectful youth who do as they please, a diatribe that could
have crossed the lips of many a grandfather.
"When I meditate on these regrettable displays, it makes me think that
despite the undeniable educational achievements made by the Revolution
... we have taken a step back in citizens' culture and public spirit,"
Castro said. "I have the bitter sensation that we are a society ever
more educated, but not necessarily more enlightened."
Other examples of bad behavior cited by Castro:
- People showing up late to work.
- Graffiti and vandalizing of parks, monuments, trees and gardens.
- Loud music that disturbs neighbors' sleep.
- Raising pigs in cities despite the public health risk.
- Scavenging metal from phone and electrical lines, sewers, signs and
traffic lights.
- Fare evasion on public transportation.
- Failure to comply with school dress codes, and teachers who accept
bribes for higher grades.
- Lack of deference to the elderly, pregnant women, mothers with small
children and the disabled.
- Children throwing rocks at cars and trains.
"All this takes place right in front of our noses without inciting
public condemnation and confrontation," Castro said.
"It is not acceptable to equate vulgarity with modernity, sloppiness and
negligence with progress," he added. "Living in society entails, in the
first place, accepting rules that preserve respect for decency and the
rights of others."
The Cuban leader also spoke of the corrosive effects of official
corruption, quoting his elder brother Fidel as saying such activity
poses a greater risk to the Cuban Revolution's success than any outside
forces.
Castro's biannual speech to parliament has sometimes been a moment to
announce new initiatives, but Sunday's was short on specifics. Perhaps
his most notable comment was a reiteration of the importance of doing
away with Cuba's unique dual currency system.
Most citizens get paid in Cuban pesos, while a second currency, the
dollar-pegged convertible peso, is used in tourism and to purchase most
imported goods.
Castro told legislators that the Cuban economy is advancing "positively"
even if those gains have yet to be felt by the average Cuban family.
On Saturday, Economy Minister Adel Yzquierdo reported to the body that
GDP growth for the year will likely be between 2.5 and 3 percent, short
of a previous forecast of 3.5 percent.
Castro also voiced support for Latin American allies' apparent
willingness to grant NSA leaker Edward Snowden asylum, though he did not
say whether Cuba itself would offer him refuge or safe passage.
Peter Orsi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Peter-Orsi
Source: "HAVANA: Castro speech scolds islanders for bad behavior - Cuba
- MiamiHerald.com" -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/07/3489464/castro-speech-scolds-islanders.html
Monday, July 8, 2013
Sunday, July 7, 2013
An Office that is unnecessary, and that never should have been
An Office that is unnecessary, and that never should have been / Mario
Lleonart
Posted on July 7, 2013
The members of our church are victims of a constant process of pressure,
intimidation, blackmail, coercion and even recruitments in the midst of
a psychological Cold War, whose ultimate goal would be my long-awaited
resignation or recall as pastor.
This shows the double standard of this regime, whose agents, in the
arbitrary detention that they put me in on Wednesday, October 12, 2011,
and in an effort to pressure me so that I would sign an official written
warning, to which of course I did not agree, they officially threatened
me so that I would focus on my pastoral activity and leave aside my
social concerns, as though these were not two sides of the same coin.
The sad thing is that, in practice these are the same agents, sheltered
by the highly overrated political Office in Havana, who hinder and
obstruct everything I try to do in my community, basically.
But the epitome that, as pastor I find myself in the painful decision to
denounce, is that that Office, not satisfied with this dirty policy of
constant interference to my pastoral work, which moreover has not yet
given the expected result, taking advantage of its power to grant or
reject permits, extend or withdraw privileges, in extreme cruelty, and
in the unforgivable stance of "making the believers fight," in order to
interfere with our evangelistic mission to the people (John 17, 21), has
extended permissions and privileges to another congregation
unfortunately fitting, to the honored Evangelical Pentecostal work known
as "Good News," so that, in a first phase, it would prohibit them from
any type of relationship, not only with me or my family, but with any
member of our church; they were forbidden to invite us to their
activities, or to attend those to which we cordially invited them.
After this discriminatory and segregational posture towards the
brothers, worthy of the words of the Second Epistle of the apostle John
(verses 9-10) concerning the tyrannical leadership of Diotrophes; the
sad thing is that this congregation with privileges easy to see for our
community and everyone knows at what cost, has passed through a sad
phase which consists of putting a first priority on evangelistic work
for which there is more than enough land among our people ("the harvest
is plentiful but the workers few"), an aggressive proselytism and
without dissimulation obviously addressed to the members of our local
church in order to grasp whichever of our brothers it can (that in
Evangelical Cuban slang is known as "fishing in another's pond"),
without taking into account either the most minimum rule of ethics, and
in which sadly they already have reaped some fruits.
Someday the history of this sad period of Christianity in Cuba will be
written, in which our case unfortunately does not constitute an
exception, and it will be strong enough to discover information and
facts that will leave the skeptics astonished. Then perhaps we will know
how much damage this Office caused, what excess, and what never should
have been, to the church in Cuba, "Although its gates shall not prevail
against it."
In the meantime I have the most precious thing, that God who is my help
and strength and who is also my witness of these brief accusations that
constitute only a point at the tip of the iceberg that is the violation
of religious freedom in Cuba.
Translated by: Hombre de Paz
20 May 2013
Source: "An Office that is unnecessary, and that never should have been
/ Mario Lleonart | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/an-office-that-is-unnecessary-and-that-never-should-have-been-mario-lleonart/
Lleonart
Posted on July 7, 2013
The members of our church are victims of a constant process of pressure,
intimidation, blackmail, coercion and even recruitments in the midst of
a psychological Cold War, whose ultimate goal would be my long-awaited
resignation or recall as pastor.
This shows the double standard of this regime, whose agents, in the
arbitrary detention that they put me in on Wednesday, October 12, 2011,
and in an effort to pressure me so that I would sign an official written
warning, to which of course I did not agree, they officially threatened
me so that I would focus on my pastoral activity and leave aside my
social concerns, as though these were not two sides of the same coin.
The sad thing is that, in practice these are the same agents, sheltered
by the highly overrated political Office in Havana, who hinder and
obstruct everything I try to do in my community, basically.
But the epitome that, as pastor I find myself in the painful decision to
denounce, is that that Office, not satisfied with this dirty policy of
constant interference to my pastoral work, which moreover has not yet
given the expected result, taking advantage of its power to grant or
reject permits, extend or withdraw privileges, in extreme cruelty, and
in the unforgivable stance of "making the believers fight," in order to
interfere with our evangelistic mission to the people (John 17, 21), has
extended permissions and privileges to another congregation
unfortunately fitting, to the honored Evangelical Pentecostal work known
as "Good News," so that, in a first phase, it would prohibit them from
any type of relationship, not only with me or my family, but with any
member of our church; they were forbidden to invite us to their
activities, or to attend those to which we cordially invited them.
After this discriminatory and segregational posture towards the
brothers, worthy of the words of the Second Epistle of the apostle John
(verses 9-10) concerning the tyrannical leadership of Diotrophes; the
sad thing is that this congregation with privileges easy to see for our
community and everyone knows at what cost, has passed through a sad
phase which consists of putting a first priority on evangelistic work
for which there is more than enough land among our people ("the harvest
is plentiful but the workers few"), an aggressive proselytism and
without dissimulation obviously addressed to the members of our local
church in order to grasp whichever of our brothers it can (that in
Evangelical Cuban slang is known as "fishing in another's pond"),
without taking into account either the most minimum rule of ethics, and
in which sadly they already have reaped some fruits.
Someday the history of this sad period of Christianity in Cuba will be
written, in which our case unfortunately does not constitute an
exception, and it will be strong enough to discover information and
facts that will leave the skeptics astonished. Then perhaps we will know
how much damage this Office caused, what excess, and what never should
have been, to the church in Cuba, "Although its gates shall not prevail
against it."
In the meantime I have the most precious thing, that God who is my help
and strength and who is also my witness of these brief accusations that
constitute only a point at the tip of the iceberg that is the violation
of religious freedom in Cuba.
Translated by: Hombre de Paz
20 May 2013
Source: "An Office that is unnecessary, and that never should have been
/ Mario Lleonart | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/an-office-that-is-unnecessary-and-that-never-should-have-been-mario-lleonart/
The legal farce against Angel Santiesteban reminds me of the celebrated storyteller Reinaldo Arenas and the poets Heberto Padilla and Raul Rivero
The legal farce against Angel Santiesteban reminds me of the celebrated
storyteller Reinaldo Arenas and the poets Heberto Padilla and Raul Rivero
Posted on July 7, 2013
Three memories of Angel Santiesteban
Miguel Iturria Savon
September 2, 2011, I published on Cubanet the article SOS for Angel
Santiesteban, then harassed by the political police of the Cuban
government in spite of being a writer awarded multiple prizes by the
regime's own institutions.
At the end of 2012 Angel was sentenced to five years in prison after a
rigged trial in which they used his ex-wife as a lance point against
him. I will not refer to the details of the case, because they still
circulate in various writings and on Santesteban's blog, but to my
personal impressions about this wordsmith.
Before personally knowing the author of Dreams of a Summer Day, The
Children Nobody Wanted, Happy Are They Who Mourn, and South: Latitude
13, I read his books and heard several anecdotes that reflect his
temperament and satirize the Cuban political situation. It is hard to
forget some characters from his stories about jail and the Cuban
intervention in the African wars. Maybe the masterful design of those
alienated beings that gallop on the pages of his works are the true
cause of the degrading judicial process that attempts to nullify his
rebellion and the voice of this audacious and mask-free man.
As my son was the lawyer for Angel Santiesteban I had the privilege of
receiving him in my Havana home and speaking with him over a glass of
water — Angel does not drink rum or coffee. We spoke of literature and
of his family experience. Only on one occasion, on asking him about one
of his characters, did he reveal to me the traumatic imprint of his
brief prison stay before turning 20 years of age after being detained on
the north coast while saying goodbye to a relative who tried to leave
the island on a raft.
I encountered Santiesteban several times in the home of blogger Yoani
Sanchez and in the cultural gatherings organized in the residence of the
physicist Antonio Rodiles, leader of the Estado de Sats program. I
remember that Angel barely intervened in the debates and sat almost
always at the end of the room, far from posturing and prominence but
cordial to whoever approached him. In the end he would leave in his car
with four or five others whom he took to or near their homes.
The last time that we met was across from the Infanta and Manglar Police
station, next to the building "Fame and Applause," where half a hundred
opponents demanded the liberation of Antonio Rodiles, detained after the
burial of Oswaldo Paya Sardinas, dead in a suspicious accident. There we
talked while Wilfredo Vallin and Reinaldo Escobar tried to negotiate
with the Station Chief, also surrounded by a band of delinquents who
awaited orders from Security officers to kick and drag the opponents.
The legal farce against Angel Santiesteban reminds me of the celebrated
storyteller Reinaldo Arenas and the poets Heberto Padilla — incarcerated
in 1971 — and Raul Rivero — sentenced in 2003 — victims of a
dictatorship that sanctions freedom of expression and promotes the
quietism and complicit silence of intellectuals.
Translated by mlk
9 June 2013
Source: "The legal farce against Angel Santiesteban reminds me of the
celebrated storyteller Reinaldo Arenas and the poets Heberto Padilla and
Raul Rivero | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-legal-farce-against-angel-santiesteban-reminds-me-of-the-celebrated-storyteller-reinaldo-arenas-and-the-poets-heberto-padilla-and-raul-rivero/
storyteller Reinaldo Arenas and the poets Heberto Padilla and Raul Rivero
Posted on July 7, 2013
Three memories of Angel Santiesteban
Miguel Iturria Savon
September 2, 2011, I published on Cubanet the article SOS for Angel
Santiesteban, then harassed by the political police of the Cuban
government in spite of being a writer awarded multiple prizes by the
regime's own institutions.
At the end of 2012 Angel was sentenced to five years in prison after a
rigged trial in which they used his ex-wife as a lance point against
him. I will not refer to the details of the case, because they still
circulate in various writings and on Santesteban's blog, but to my
personal impressions about this wordsmith.
Before personally knowing the author of Dreams of a Summer Day, The
Children Nobody Wanted, Happy Are They Who Mourn, and South: Latitude
13, I read his books and heard several anecdotes that reflect his
temperament and satirize the Cuban political situation. It is hard to
forget some characters from his stories about jail and the Cuban
intervention in the African wars. Maybe the masterful design of those
alienated beings that gallop on the pages of his works are the true
cause of the degrading judicial process that attempts to nullify his
rebellion and the voice of this audacious and mask-free man.
As my son was the lawyer for Angel Santiesteban I had the privilege of
receiving him in my Havana home and speaking with him over a glass of
water — Angel does not drink rum or coffee. We spoke of literature and
of his family experience. Only on one occasion, on asking him about one
of his characters, did he reveal to me the traumatic imprint of his
brief prison stay before turning 20 years of age after being detained on
the north coast while saying goodbye to a relative who tried to leave
the island on a raft.
I encountered Santiesteban several times in the home of blogger Yoani
Sanchez and in the cultural gatherings organized in the residence of the
physicist Antonio Rodiles, leader of the Estado de Sats program. I
remember that Angel barely intervened in the debates and sat almost
always at the end of the room, far from posturing and prominence but
cordial to whoever approached him. In the end he would leave in his car
with four or five others whom he took to or near their homes.
The last time that we met was across from the Infanta and Manglar Police
station, next to the building "Fame and Applause," where half a hundred
opponents demanded the liberation of Antonio Rodiles, detained after the
burial of Oswaldo Paya Sardinas, dead in a suspicious accident. There we
talked while Wilfredo Vallin and Reinaldo Escobar tried to negotiate
with the Station Chief, also surrounded by a band of delinquents who
awaited orders from Security officers to kick and drag the opponents.
The legal farce against Angel Santiesteban reminds me of the celebrated
storyteller Reinaldo Arenas and the poets Heberto Padilla — incarcerated
in 1971 — and Raul Rivero — sentenced in 2003 — victims of a
dictatorship that sanctions freedom of expression and promotes the
quietism and complicit silence of intellectuals.
Translated by mlk
9 June 2013
Source: "The legal farce against Angel Santiesteban reminds me of the
celebrated storyteller Reinaldo Arenas and the poets Heberto Padilla and
Raul Rivero | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-legal-farce-against-angel-santiesteban-reminds-me-of-the-celebrated-storyteller-reinaldo-arenas-and-the-poets-heberto-padilla-and-raul-rivero/
The Dilemma of Lunch in Cuba
The Dilemma of Lunch in Cuba / Luis Felipe Rojas
Posted on July 6, 2013
It's not enough dealing with the high cost of finding products to make
lunch for a family of four people. In Cuba, we have to add up the amount
needed, the share of sacrifice go find all the products for decent
nutrition. If it costs 15 CUC* we're talking about a disproportionate
figure of 375 Cuban pesos*, an amount that far exceeds the minimum wage,
fixed at 225 Cuban pesos (or "national money").
But many Cubans eat lunch every day without including a main dish of the
two meets that they most crave, which are pork and chicken. The
delicacies of the Cuban table are reserved for the weekend, when family
gets together, and they don't have to work or return to boarding schools.
A pound of rice is 5 Cuban pesos, one of beans (black or red) are 12,
and quart of oil is 60 Cuban pesos, or 2.50 CUC. If we include a salad
which the majority of times costs more than 10 pesos a pound for
products like tomatoes and avocados. Meat is a side.
For a very scant ration that any woman who has the task of preparing the
meals for her home, spices are a vital piece. Right now, a pot's worth
of "full flavor" — a mixture of cumin, garlic and onion — has come to
cost 1.50 CUC each.
Currently, a quart and a half of soda costs 25 Cuban pesos or 1.50 CUC,
not counting dessert, which many consider a luxury for any Cuban who
survives on his salary.
Yuliet Rodríguez Báez, a housewife from Pinar del Rio who also cares for
her sick mother, believes that lunch is an odyssey that can't always be
managed gracefully.
Yuliet said that, "A pound of melon is about 12 Cuban pesos, and a
pumpkin is about the same. If I manage to buy pork, it could cost me 30
or 40 pesos a pound, which could be 4 steaks."
Looking for what you need
Maikel Martínez Cruz, an independent photographer who makes a living
capturing the happy moments of the locals in Holguin province, thinks
it's madness what lunch costs for four people.
"In Cuba dessert is a luxury food," he says, and continues, "almost
nobody eats dessert because it's very expensive. A soft drink, a soda,
could cost 0.60 CUC each." In the case of meat, according to Maikal,
it's now a privilege, "If it's pork, it's 25 pesos (fat, meat and bone,
together), and it it's chicken, a kilo (2.2 pounds) cost 3.40 or 3.50
CUC, which is not for whole chicken, its only the thigh, no breast,
that's the one we sell here at the 'shopping'."
In addition to these high prices, consumers have to add "trying to find
it," says Maikal, who concludes, "this can cost you four hours of
running around because if you find a place with meats, they have no
rice, and so you have to keep going."
The "complete"
However, most Cubans live their lives eating lunch in the time allowed
to them at work, and arrange to have a small snack they bring from home
or they see what they can find on the recently opened stands.
A lunch with two-peso croquettes and a soft drink for the same amount; a
5 peso pizza with a natural fruit smoothie are generally the choices of
those who have a half hour off from the workplaces or universities where
they work.
Although still illegal, services that deliver what is known as a
"complete" with a base of rice, beans, mincemeat or root vegetables (or
salad), is an option for those spending 10 Cuban pesos in the provinces,
but in the capital it can be about 2 CUC a serving.
*Translator's note: Cuba has two currencies, convertible pesos (CUC) and
Cuban pesos (also known as "national money"). Many products are only
available in CUCs, but wages are paid in Cuban pesos. The exchange rate
is roughly 24 Cuban pesos to 1 CUC, and a CUC is roughly $1 US (it
varies and exchange fees can add to the cost). Salaries in Cuba tend to
top out around $20 (480 Cuban pesos) a month (even for doctors), though
"benefits" can add to that; with the minimum wage set at 225 Cuban pesos
(less than $10).
5 July 2013
Source: "The Dilemma of Lunch in Cuba / Luis Felipe Rojas | Translating
Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-dilemma-of-lunch-in-cuba-luis-felipe-rojas/
Posted on July 6, 2013
It's not enough dealing with the high cost of finding products to make
lunch for a family of four people. In Cuba, we have to add up the amount
needed, the share of sacrifice go find all the products for decent
nutrition. If it costs 15 CUC* we're talking about a disproportionate
figure of 375 Cuban pesos*, an amount that far exceeds the minimum wage,
fixed at 225 Cuban pesos (or "national money").
But many Cubans eat lunch every day without including a main dish of the
two meets that they most crave, which are pork and chicken. The
delicacies of the Cuban table are reserved for the weekend, when family
gets together, and they don't have to work or return to boarding schools.
A pound of rice is 5 Cuban pesos, one of beans (black or red) are 12,
and quart of oil is 60 Cuban pesos, or 2.50 CUC. If we include a salad
which the majority of times costs more than 10 pesos a pound for
products like tomatoes and avocados. Meat is a side.
For a very scant ration that any woman who has the task of preparing the
meals for her home, spices are a vital piece. Right now, a pot's worth
of "full flavor" — a mixture of cumin, garlic and onion — has come to
cost 1.50 CUC each.
Currently, a quart and a half of soda costs 25 Cuban pesos or 1.50 CUC,
not counting dessert, which many consider a luxury for any Cuban who
survives on his salary.
Yuliet Rodríguez Báez, a housewife from Pinar del Rio who also cares for
her sick mother, believes that lunch is an odyssey that can't always be
managed gracefully.
Yuliet said that, "A pound of melon is about 12 Cuban pesos, and a
pumpkin is about the same. If I manage to buy pork, it could cost me 30
or 40 pesos a pound, which could be 4 steaks."
Looking for what you need
Maikel Martínez Cruz, an independent photographer who makes a living
capturing the happy moments of the locals in Holguin province, thinks
it's madness what lunch costs for four people.
"In Cuba dessert is a luxury food," he says, and continues, "almost
nobody eats dessert because it's very expensive. A soft drink, a soda,
could cost 0.60 CUC each." In the case of meat, according to Maikal,
it's now a privilege, "If it's pork, it's 25 pesos (fat, meat and bone,
together), and it it's chicken, a kilo (2.2 pounds) cost 3.40 or 3.50
CUC, which is not for whole chicken, its only the thigh, no breast,
that's the one we sell here at the 'shopping'."
In addition to these high prices, consumers have to add "trying to find
it," says Maikal, who concludes, "this can cost you four hours of
running around because if you find a place with meats, they have no
rice, and so you have to keep going."
The "complete"
However, most Cubans live their lives eating lunch in the time allowed
to them at work, and arrange to have a small snack they bring from home
or they see what they can find on the recently opened stands.
A lunch with two-peso croquettes and a soft drink for the same amount; a
5 peso pizza with a natural fruit smoothie are generally the choices of
those who have a half hour off from the workplaces or universities where
they work.
Although still illegal, services that deliver what is known as a
"complete" with a base of rice, beans, mincemeat or root vegetables (or
salad), is an option for those spending 10 Cuban pesos in the provinces,
but in the capital it can be about 2 CUC a serving.
*Translator's note: Cuba has two currencies, convertible pesos (CUC) and
Cuban pesos (also known as "national money"). Many products are only
available in CUCs, but wages are paid in Cuban pesos. The exchange rate
is roughly 24 Cuban pesos to 1 CUC, and a CUC is roughly $1 US (it
varies and exchange fees can add to the cost). Salaries in Cuba tend to
top out around $20 (480 Cuban pesos) a month (even for doctors), though
"benefits" can add to that; with the minimum wage set at 225 Cuban pesos
(less than $10).
5 July 2013
Source: "The Dilemma of Lunch in Cuba / Luis Felipe Rojas | Translating
Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-dilemma-of-lunch-in-cuba-luis-felipe-rojas/
Slowly, Cuba Is Developing an Appetite for Spending
Slowly, Cuba Is Developing an Appetite for Spending
Jose Goitia for The New York Times
Published: July 6, 2013
HAVANA — When a 3-D movie theater opened in his neighborhood two months
ago, Manuel Alejandro snapped up tickets. It was no IMAX, just a small
lounge in a converted apartment with a 55-inch television and an M&M's
dispenser in the corner. But for $3 a person, Mr. Alejandro and his
friends donned special glasses and watched the movie of their choice.
A consumer class in Cuba has caught the eye of entrepreneurs, some of
whom outfit their apartments with 3-D equipment.
"This is novel — at least in Cuba," said Mr. Alejandro, 33, who on a
recent evening was waiting to see his second 3-D movie, "Journey 2: The
Mysterious Island."
"If people have a little more money to spend, they look for ways to
spend it," said Mr. Alejandro, who works at a state-owned recording
studio by day and builds Web sites for his own clients by night. "Now,
you have a few more options for going out and entertaining yourself."
Mr. Alejandro is part of a small, but increasingly visible, consumer
class in Cuba whose appetite for luxuries, albeit modest ones by
American standards, has caught the eye of the island's entrepreneurs.
Some savvy businesspeople are transforming their homes and garages into
small movie theaters, others are renting out swimming pools or opening
sports bars, cafes with video games, carwashes and even pet-grooming shops.
"It's not consumption as such — not yet," Mr. Alejandro said. "It's the
seed of consumption."
People like Mr. Alejandro are strictly a minority in Cuba, where the
state pays its four million workers an average salary of $19 a month and
pensioners receive just over half that. Though they get food rations,
health care, and, in many cases, remittances from relatives or money
from black-market trade, most Cubans live humbly, with even toilet paper
a luxury.
A woman who requested that she be identified only by her first name,
Yunesky, said her husband's salary of $80 a month as a private security
guard was barely enough to cover food, soap and detergent for her family
of five.
"A 3-D movie? No, no," she said, pointing to her two daughters and her
grandson. "I can't even afford to buy them an ice cream."
But the number of Cubans who have spending money has grown over the past
four years, as President Raúl Castro opened the economy to limited
nonstate business and farming.
Today, about one million Cubans, or 9 percent of the population, work or
farm in the private sector, up from about 600,000 in 2009, according to
government statistics.
At the same time, new markets for used cars and houses have flushed
money into the system, economists say, while the Cuban diaspora has
pumped cash and goods into businesses.
The new entrepreneurs and farmers have joined the others who make up
Cuba's peculiar consumer class: waiters, artists, musicians, black
marketeers, corrupt government workers and a clutch of longstanding
business owners.
And they are spending more and more openly.
On an island where everyone is supposed to be equal, the privileged
often keep a low profile, building scruffy walls around a well-appointed
house, say, or drinking beer in their living rooms rather than in the
local bar.
But that is changing, said Liván Beltrán, 47, who two months ago opened
a carwash and a diner in the yard of his house. There, he cleans 60 cars
a day, the majority belonging to Cubans, for $3 to $7.
Mr. Castro has repeatedly railed against egalitarianism, which he
loosely defined as one worker loafing while another works hard. Cuba
must strive for "a society that is less egalitarian, but more fair," he
said in a speech to the National Assembly in February.
Soon after taking office in 2008, Mr. Castro opened the way for more
consumption by allowing Cubans to stay in hotels for the first time and
to buy mobile phones and laptop computers.
Since then, the economic overhauls have legalized many businesses that
formerly operated underground and have reduced the stigma attached to
having money, Mr. Beltrán said.
"The question is not whether there are Cubans with money," said Mr.
Beltrán, gesturing at the Cubans and foreigners sipping beer while his
workers sprayed their cars with power hoses and vacuumed the interiors.
"It's where do you spend it? How do you spend it?"
With ease, apparently. Figures published by the National Statistical
Office indicate that nearly 1.5 million Cubans stayed at hotels or spent
money on tourist activities in 2012, up from 1.3 million in 2011. A
worker at a hotel sports club, where monthly membership costs about $50,
said the ratio of Cuban clients to expatriates had risen significantly
over the past three years.
In Havana, privately owned restaurants that a year or two ago catered
mainly to expatriates now have more Cuban clients. Outside nightspots
like the comedian Roberto Riverón's 3-D Café — where customers can watch
a stand-up routine or a movie through a mist of dry ice — the many
yellow license plates, which denote cars owned by Cubans, are a clue to
the heavily local crowd.
Joseph L. Scarpaci, a professor emeritus at Virginia Tech who is one of
the authors of a book on consumption in Cuba, said private-sector
workers were a "new shade" of middle class, the petite bourgeoisie in
Marxist terms, that emigrated after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution or
evaporated when he nationalized businesses in the 1960s.
He said there was now "much more class stratification," but predicted
that Cubans' reserve about flashing their money would endure, while a
residue of socialism would temper the islanders' love of luxuries.
"It's a Cubanized version of middle-class activity, in that it's not
that ostentatious," he said. "A Cuban guy once told me, 'You need to
know when to flash your gold chains and when to hide them.' "
Certainly, mistrust lingers. One Cuban, who rents out equipment for
children's parties at $60 per half a day, said his family routinely
threw its garbage out a few blocks away to avoid too much attention on
all he is consuming.
"Everyone watches," he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity
because he feared drawing attention to his business. "Cubans are very
envious."
Some worry that the economic changes — which have generated a busy
retail sector and thousands of food kiosks, bars and restaurants, but
almost nothing in the way of manufacturing — have created an aura of
well-being that belies Cuba's staggering lack of production.
"On the positive side, the private sector is raising the quality of
services," said Lenier González, co-editor of Espacio Laical, a magazine
financed by the Roman Catholic Church. "But it is not linked to the
production of tangible goods," he added. "It's just money in a closed
circuit."
Unless the government stimulates production and raises state salaries,
the social fissure will widen, Mr. González said.
"The country is fractured," he said. "There are people who have money
and people who don't. Nowadays, it's more obvious."
Whether this newfound prosperity some Cubans are feeling will last,
Cuba's new spenders are a good source of business.
Karina Martín, 50, a former accountant who three years ago started
renting out the pool of her spacious home about half an hour from
Havana, said she was booked until September. Ms. Martín charges $5 a
head for a day at the pool and a hearty lunch — a fraction of the cover
charge at most state-run hotel pools. Blanca Rosa Cabrera, a laboratory
technician who was spending a recent Sunday at Ms. Martín's pool with 20
friends and relatives, said it was a treat she could afford thanks to
her husband's work renting inflatable castles in a park for about $6 a
day and her side business baking cakes. "We sacrifice a lot so we can
come here," said Ms. Cabrera, 46.
Mr. Alejandro makes a few hundred dollars for each Web site he designs,
enough to cover rent, food and clothing for himself and his wife. They
both send some money to their parents each month, and the rest they save
or spend on extras.
The other day, he said, he was reminiscing with some friends about an
occasion, a few years ago, when they pooled the money in their pockets
to buy one can of beer. He laughed.
"We said, 'Wow, we have changed.' "
Source: "Slowly, Cuba Is Developing an Appetite for Spending -
NYTimes.com" -
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/world/americas/slowly-cuba-is-developing-an-appetite-for-spending.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0
Jose Goitia for The New York Times
Published: July 6, 2013
HAVANA — When a 3-D movie theater opened in his neighborhood two months
ago, Manuel Alejandro snapped up tickets. It was no IMAX, just a small
lounge in a converted apartment with a 55-inch television and an M&M's
dispenser in the corner. But for $3 a person, Mr. Alejandro and his
friends donned special glasses and watched the movie of their choice.
A consumer class in Cuba has caught the eye of entrepreneurs, some of
whom outfit their apartments with 3-D equipment.
"This is novel — at least in Cuba," said Mr. Alejandro, 33, who on a
recent evening was waiting to see his second 3-D movie, "Journey 2: The
Mysterious Island."
"If people have a little more money to spend, they look for ways to
spend it," said Mr. Alejandro, who works at a state-owned recording
studio by day and builds Web sites for his own clients by night. "Now,
you have a few more options for going out and entertaining yourself."
Mr. Alejandro is part of a small, but increasingly visible, consumer
class in Cuba whose appetite for luxuries, albeit modest ones by
American standards, has caught the eye of the island's entrepreneurs.
Some savvy businesspeople are transforming their homes and garages into
small movie theaters, others are renting out swimming pools or opening
sports bars, cafes with video games, carwashes and even pet-grooming shops.
"It's not consumption as such — not yet," Mr. Alejandro said. "It's the
seed of consumption."
People like Mr. Alejandro are strictly a minority in Cuba, where the
state pays its four million workers an average salary of $19 a month and
pensioners receive just over half that. Though they get food rations,
health care, and, in many cases, remittances from relatives or money
from black-market trade, most Cubans live humbly, with even toilet paper
a luxury.
A woman who requested that she be identified only by her first name,
Yunesky, said her husband's salary of $80 a month as a private security
guard was barely enough to cover food, soap and detergent for her family
of five.
"A 3-D movie? No, no," she said, pointing to her two daughters and her
grandson. "I can't even afford to buy them an ice cream."
But the number of Cubans who have spending money has grown over the past
four years, as President Raúl Castro opened the economy to limited
nonstate business and farming.
Today, about one million Cubans, or 9 percent of the population, work or
farm in the private sector, up from about 600,000 in 2009, according to
government statistics.
At the same time, new markets for used cars and houses have flushed
money into the system, economists say, while the Cuban diaspora has
pumped cash and goods into businesses.
The new entrepreneurs and farmers have joined the others who make up
Cuba's peculiar consumer class: waiters, artists, musicians, black
marketeers, corrupt government workers and a clutch of longstanding
business owners.
And they are spending more and more openly.
On an island where everyone is supposed to be equal, the privileged
often keep a low profile, building scruffy walls around a well-appointed
house, say, or drinking beer in their living rooms rather than in the
local bar.
But that is changing, said Liván Beltrán, 47, who two months ago opened
a carwash and a diner in the yard of his house. There, he cleans 60 cars
a day, the majority belonging to Cubans, for $3 to $7.
Mr. Castro has repeatedly railed against egalitarianism, which he
loosely defined as one worker loafing while another works hard. Cuba
must strive for "a society that is less egalitarian, but more fair," he
said in a speech to the National Assembly in February.
Soon after taking office in 2008, Mr. Castro opened the way for more
consumption by allowing Cubans to stay in hotels for the first time and
to buy mobile phones and laptop computers.
Since then, the economic overhauls have legalized many businesses that
formerly operated underground and have reduced the stigma attached to
having money, Mr. Beltrán said.
"The question is not whether there are Cubans with money," said Mr.
Beltrán, gesturing at the Cubans and foreigners sipping beer while his
workers sprayed their cars with power hoses and vacuumed the interiors.
"It's where do you spend it? How do you spend it?"
With ease, apparently. Figures published by the National Statistical
Office indicate that nearly 1.5 million Cubans stayed at hotels or spent
money on tourist activities in 2012, up from 1.3 million in 2011. A
worker at a hotel sports club, where monthly membership costs about $50,
said the ratio of Cuban clients to expatriates had risen significantly
over the past three years.
In Havana, privately owned restaurants that a year or two ago catered
mainly to expatriates now have more Cuban clients. Outside nightspots
like the comedian Roberto Riverón's 3-D Café — where customers can watch
a stand-up routine or a movie through a mist of dry ice — the many
yellow license plates, which denote cars owned by Cubans, are a clue to
the heavily local crowd.
Joseph L. Scarpaci, a professor emeritus at Virginia Tech who is one of
the authors of a book on consumption in Cuba, said private-sector
workers were a "new shade" of middle class, the petite bourgeoisie in
Marxist terms, that emigrated after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution or
evaporated when he nationalized businesses in the 1960s.
He said there was now "much more class stratification," but predicted
that Cubans' reserve about flashing their money would endure, while a
residue of socialism would temper the islanders' love of luxuries.
"It's a Cubanized version of middle-class activity, in that it's not
that ostentatious," he said. "A Cuban guy once told me, 'You need to
know when to flash your gold chains and when to hide them.' "
Certainly, mistrust lingers. One Cuban, who rents out equipment for
children's parties at $60 per half a day, said his family routinely
threw its garbage out a few blocks away to avoid too much attention on
all he is consuming.
"Everyone watches," he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity
because he feared drawing attention to his business. "Cubans are very
envious."
Some worry that the economic changes — which have generated a busy
retail sector and thousands of food kiosks, bars and restaurants, but
almost nothing in the way of manufacturing — have created an aura of
well-being that belies Cuba's staggering lack of production.
"On the positive side, the private sector is raising the quality of
services," said Lenier González, co-editor of Espacio Laical, a magazine
financed by the Roman Catholic Church. "But it is not linked to the
production of tangible goods," he added. "It's just money in a closed
circuit."
Unless the government stimulates production and raises state salaries,
the social fissure will widen, Mr. González said.
"The country is fractured," he said. "There are people who have money
and people who don't. Nowadays, it's more obvious."
Whether this newfound prosperity some Cubans are feeling will last,
Cuba's new spenders are a good source of business.
Karina Martín, 50, a former accountant who three years ago started
renting out the pool of her spacious home about half an hour from
Havana, said she was booked until September. Ms. Martín charges $5 a
head for a day at the pool and a hearty lunch — a fraction of the cover
charge at most state-run hotel pools. Blanca Rosa Cabrera, a laboratory
technician who was spending a recent Sunday at Ms. Martín's pool with 20
friends and relatives, said it was a treat she could afford thanks to
her husband's work renting inflatable castles in a park for about $6 a
day and her side business baking cakes. "We sacrifice a lot so we can
come here," said Ms. Cabrera, 46.
Mr. Alejandro makes a few hundred dollars for each Web site he designs,
enough to cover rent, food and clothing for himself and his wife. They
both send some money to their parents each month, and the rest they save
or spend on extras.
The other day, he said, he was reminiscing with some friends about an
occasion, a few years ago, when they pooled the money in their pockets
to buy one can of beer. He laughed.
"We said, 'Wow, we have changed.' "
Source: "Slowly, Cuba Is Developing an Appetite for Spending -
NYTimes.com" -
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/world/americas/slowly-cuba-is-developing-an-appetite-for-spending.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0
Tampa looks to capitalize on tomorrow’s Cuba
Posted on Saturday, 07.06.13
Tampa looks to capitalize on tomorrow's Cuba
BY ERIC BARTON
FLORIDA CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING
A group of 38 business leaders and politicians from Tampa flew to Cuba
in late May. Tourist visas forbid them from any official meetings. But
there was no mistaking that the trip was about promoting Tampa as Cuba's
future trading partner.
On the last night of the five-day trip, members of the delegation
gathered at the bar at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba to watch the sun set
over the Florida Straits and sip 7-year-old rum.
Vince Cassidy was among the Tampa delegation. He went with a singular
purpose: Someday Cuba will open up to U.S. investors. Land purchases
will be a mess. Title companies — like the one Cassidy owns in Tampa —
will be needed to research convoluted sales histories.
As Cassidy sipped drinks at the hotel bar, he kept thinking: "We have a
foreign country 90 miles away from our shores. We're not doing business
with them right now. Imagine if we were."
Quietly at first, and now quite publicly, the city of Tampa has courted
Cuba in hopes of becoming its future trading partner. Business owners
talk of how to expand into Cuba. Politicians make trips there and have
come out against the embargo.
Tampa's efforts began in 2002 with a visit from its mayor. A city
councilwoman followed with multiple trips over the past decade, and in
May the chamber organized a group of 38 politicians and business leaders.
Tampa politicians talk of expanding direct flights to Havana. They want
to be home to cruise ships that call to Cuban cities. And they imagine
the port of Tampa becoming the main hub of goods heading to the island
once the embargo is lifted.
José Gabilondo, head of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida
International University, said Tampa city leaders talk of exploiting
Miami's reluctance to plan for Cuban trade.
"Ironically, Miami may be the only major city in Florida that's not
actively preparing for more engagement with Cuba," he said.
Tampa is making a mistake, said Andy Gomez, a Cuba expert and former
senior fellow at University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and
Cuban-American Studies. The country's crumbling infrastructure can't
support business on a large scale, and its legal system is so corrupt
that companies have no recourse when debts go unpaid, he said.
"I don't know about you, but I don't want to invest in Cuba," Gomez
said. "Why would Tampa take that risk with a country that's in shambles?"
Miami-Dade Commissioner Javier Souto compared Tampa's plans to trade
with Cuba to countries that have ignored the U.S. embargo. "They don't
care about human rights, they don't care about freedom of expression,
they don't care about any of that, these other countries of the world,"
he said. "They only care about money."
Patrick Manteiga, meanwhile, talks about the jobs Tampa will add. He's
publisher of La Gaceta, the Cuban-focused newspaper in Tampa. His
grandfather founded the paper in 1922 after spending years as a reader
in the Ybor City cigar factories, shouting out the day's stories to the
workers. Manteiga said he circulates 18,000 copies a week in 44 states.
Manteiga has published editorials in favor of lifting the embargo. He
has traveled to Cuba. He met with Fidel Castro and had him sign a photo
— the photo shows Manteiga's grandfather sitting with Castro at a table
overflowing with money raised for the revolution.
Manteiga's views are common in Tampa, a city that has always been less
averse than Miami to Castro's revolution. Tampa's Cuban population is
largely made up of descendants from cigar factory workers who came from
the island in the 1800s and a new influx of immigrants in the past two
decades, said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a Cuba expert at the University of
Denver. Both groups support lifting the embargo in greater numbers than
the 1960s-era exiles of Castro's revolution, who are more likely to have
seen loss of property, mass murders, and torture at the hands of the
dictator.
"Tampa isn't pro-Castro, but it's a population that's more realistic
about the effectiveness of the embargo," Lopez-Levy said. "Even those
who oppose the Castro brothers don't make the embargo a litmus test."
In 2002, then-Tampa Mayor Dick Greco and 19 business leaders headed to
Cuba. Greco, the son of an Italian immigrant, had grown up in Ybor City.
Greco's trip was believed to be the first by a Florida mayor to Cuba in
40 years. Cubans in Tampa flooded Greco's office with angry phone calls
and emails, especially after the mayor admitted to spending five hours
meeting with Castro.
But Tampa has become far more moderate since, said City Councilwoman
Mary Mulhern. She has traveled to Cuba three times, most recently with
the chamber in May.
"It's true that the backlash has been loud and vitriolic," Mulhern said.
"But I could count the number of people who have objected on one hand —
and with not many fingers."
Mulhern is among several Tampa politicians publicly calling for an end
to the embargo. In April, U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa, became the
first member of the Florida delegation to call for an end to the policy.
Castor, who did not return phone calls for this article, also traveled
to the country on a separate trip in May. In an article published on her
website, Castor said the country has made reforms that remind her of
"the historic economic changes since the 1980s in the former Soviet bloc
countries, and in China and Vietnam over the past 25 years."
Now, Tampa International Airport is putting on a series of Cuban
heritage events, including sandwich tastings and Cuban bands, to promote
its direct flights to the island. And business leaders are outwardly
discussing their plans to expand one day to the island. Those who
traveled to Cuba as part of the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce's
recent trip include the president of the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey
team, executives from several local hospitals, and the president of the
University of South Florida.
Less than a month after the Tampa chamber returned from Cuba, Greater
Miami Chamber of Commerce Chairman Alberto Dosal declined to speak about
the issue, instead issuing an emailed response that read in part: "Once
Cuba is a free and democratic country, the Greater Miami Chamber of
Commerce would be more than happy to comment on doing business with the
Pearl of the Caribbean. Until then, any conversation on the issue is
moot and would be premature."
When asked if Tampa is in a better position to invest in Cuba after the
embargo, Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Bob
Rohrlack responded: "Hands down. Absolutely."
Rohrlack said the chamber's governing board has been talking about
planning for trade with Cuba for seven years now. Chambers of commerce
are typically forbidden from getting involved in politics, but Rohrlack
said he saw an opportunity for Tampa. "People here understand that this
50-year-old policy is outdated," he said. "It's time we start thinking
about what happens after the embargo."
Originally, the chamber planned to send one of its own with five others
from the community. Hundreds of people expressed interest, and dozens
signed up. Rohrlack said they had to cut off the number at 38. "Interest
kept growing, and we just finally had to cut it off," he said.
During the trip, Rohrlack recalled conversations with locals who
referred to Miami as a city of anti-Castro politics, while they saw
Tampa as a place that grew up around Ybor cigar factories. "In Tampa,
there's a celebration of diversity of Cubans," Rohrlack said, "while in
Miami there's less acceptance. This is going to bode well for us when
Cuba opens."
Tampa will add "at least 5,000 jobs overnight" when it happens,
estimates Manteiga, sitting in front of a painting of his grandfather in
the Ybor City office of La Gaceta. Cuba doesn't have warehouses to
handle mass shipping, so supplies will have to be brought in from a
nearby port until they can be built. Florida strawberries, for instance,
can't be kept in bulk in Cuba, meaning weekly shipments from the Port of
Tampa.
"Tampa has been the safety valve for Cuba for over 100 years," Manteiga
said, noting that Ybor settlers helped fund Cuban independence from
Spain. "It's going to be the same way after the embargo is lifted."
Like many in Miami, Mike Vidal objects to any dealings with Cuba until
the island makes major reforms. Among them, Vidal wants back the land
the Castro government seized from his family, including his
grandfather's castle-like home, a copper mine, a cattle ranch, and a
mile of pristine oceanfront property.
Vidal, a 57-year-old computer technician, comes from a politically
connected family — his grandfather was speaker of the house in Cuba and
a United Nations ambassador. His dad was an advisor to President
Fulgencio Batista.
"I consider myself pretty moderate when it comes to Cuba," Vidal said.
"But when it comes to doing business with Castro, or traveling there, I
don't want to see it happen until they return the land they took from
families, mine included. Pay for it, or give it back to us."
The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting is a nonprofit news
organization supported by foundations and individual contributions. For
more information, visit fcir.org. The Public Insight Network contributed
to this report and can be found online at publicinsightnetwork.org.
Source: "Tampa looks to capitalize on tomorrow's Cuba - Miami-Dade -
MiamiHerald.com" -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/06/v-fullstory/3488287/tampa-looks-to-capitalize-on-tomorrows.html
Tampa looks to capitalize on tomorrow's Cuba
BY ERIC BARTON
FLORIDA CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING
A group of 38 business leaders and politicians from Tampa flew to Cuba
in late May. Tourist visas forbid them from any official meetings. But
there was no mistaking that the trip was about promoting Tampa as Cuba's
future trading partner.
On the last night of the five-day trip, members of the delegation
gathered at the bar at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba to watch the sun set
over the Florida Straits and sip 7-year-old rum.
Vince Cassidy was among the Tampa delegation. He went with a singular
purpose: Someday Cuba will open up to U.S. investors. Land purchases
will be a mess. Title companies — like the one Cassidy owns in Tampa —
will be needed to research convoluted sales histories.
As Cassidy sipped drinks at the hotel bar, he kept thinking: "We have a
foreign country 90 miles away from our shores. We're not doing business
with them right now. Imagine if we were."
Quietly at first, and now quite publicly, the city of Tampa has courted
Cuba in hopes of becoming its future trading partner. Business owners
talk of how to expand into Cuba. Politicians make trips there and have
come out against the embargo.
Tampa's efforts began in 2002 with a visit from its mayor. A city
councilwoman followed with multiple trips over the past decade, and in
May the chamber organized a group of 38 politicians and business leaders.
Tampa politicians talk of expanding direct flights to Havana. They want
to be home to cruise ships that call to Cuban cities. And they imagine
the port of Tampa becoming the main hub of goods heading to the island
once the embargo is lifted.
José Gabilondo, head of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida
International University, said Tampa city leaders talk of exploiting
Miami's reluctance to plan for Cuban trade.
"Ironically, Miami may be the only major city in Florida that's not
actively preparing for more engagement with Cuba," he said.
Tampa is making a mistake, said Andy Gomez, a Cuba expert and former
senior fellow at University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and
Cuban-American Studies. The country's crumbling infrastructure can't
support business on a large scale, and its legal system is so corrupt
that companies have no recourse when debts go unpaid, he said.
"I don't know about you, but I don't want to invest in Cuba," Gomez
said. "Why would Tampa take that risk with a country that's in shambles?"
Miami-Dade Commissioner Javier Souto compared Tampa's plans to trade
with Cuba to countries that have ignored the U.S. embargo. "They don't
care about human rights, they don't care about freedom of expression,
they don't care about any of that, these other countries of the world,"
he said. "They only care about money."
Patrick Manteiga, meanwhile, talks about the jobs Tampa will add. He's
publisher of La Gaceta, the Cuban-focused newspaper in Tampa. His
grandfather founded the paper in 1922 after spending years as a reader
in the Ybor City cigar factories, shouting out the day's stories to the
workers. Manteiga said he circulates 18,000 copies a week in 44 states.
Manteiga has published editorials in favor of lifting the embargo. He
has traveled to Cuba. He met with Fidel Castro and had him sign a photo
— the photo shows Manteiga's grandfather sitting with Castro at a table
overflowing with money raised for the revolution.
Manteiga's views are common in Tampa, a city that has always been less
averse than Miami to Castro's revolution. Tampa's Cuban population is
largely made up of descendants from cigar factory workers who came from
the island in the 1800s and a new influx of immigrants in the past two
decades, said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a Cuba expert at the University of
Denver. Both groups support lifting the embargo in greater numbers than
the 1960s-era exiles of Castro's revolution, who are more likely to have
seen loss of property, mass murders, and torture at the hands of the
dictator.
"Tampa isn't pro-Castro, but it's a population that's more realistic
about the effectiveness of the embargo," Lopez-Levy said. "Even those
who oppose the Castro brothers don't make the embargo a litmus test."
In 2002, then-Tampa Mayor Dick Greco and 19 business leaders headed to
Cuba. Greco, the son of an Italian immigrant, had grown up in Ybor City.
Greco's trip was believed to be the first by a Florida mayor to Cuba in
40 years. Cubans in Tampa flooded Greco's office with angry phone calls
and emails, especially after the mayor admitted to spending five hours
meeting with Castro.
But Tampa has become far more moderate since, said City Councilwoman
Mary Mulhern. She has traveled to Cuba three times, most recently with
the chamber in May.
"It's true that the backlash has been loud and vitriolic," Mulhern said.
"But I could count the number of people who have objected on one hand —
and with not many fingers."
Mulhern is among several Tampa politicians publicly calling for an end
to the embargo. In April, U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa, became the
first member of the Florida delegation to call for an end to the policy.
Castor, who did not return phone calls for this article, also traveled
to the country on a separate trip in May. In an article published on her
website, Castor said the country has made reforms that remind her of
"the historic economic changes since the 1980s in the former Soviet bloc
countries, and in China and Vietnam over the past 25 years."
Now, Tampa International Airport is putting on a series of Cuban
heritage events, including sandwich tastings and Cuban bands, to promote
its direct flights to the island. And business leaders are outwardly
discussing their plans to expand one day to the island. Those who
traveled to Cuba as part of the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce's
recent trip include the president of the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey
team, executives from several local hospitals, and the president of the
University of South Florida.
Less than a month after the Tampa chamber returned from Cuba, Greater
Miami Chamber of Commerce Chairman Alberto Dosal declined to speak about
the issue, instead issuing an emailed response that read in part: "Once
Cuba is a free and democratic country, the Greater Miami Chamber of
Commerce would be more than happy to comment on doing business with the
Pearl of the Caribbean. Until then, any conversation on the issue is
moot and would be premature."
When asked if Tampa is in a better position to invest in Cuba after the
embargo, Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Bob
Rohrlack responded: "Hands down. Absolutely."
Rohrlack said the chamber's governing board has been talking about
planning for trade with Cuba for seven years now. Chambers of commerce
are typically forbidden from getting involved in politics, but Rohrlack
said he saw an opportunity for Tampa. "People here understand that this
50-year-old policy is outdated," he said. "It's time we start thinking
about what happens after the embargo."
Originally, the chamber planned to send one of its own with five others
from the community. Hundreds of people expressed interest, and dozens
signed up. Rohrlack said they had to cut off the number at 38. "Interest
kept growing, and we just finally had to cut it off," he said.
During the trip, Rohrlack recalled conversations with locals who
referred to Miami as a city of anti-Castro politics, while they saw
Tampa as a place that grew up around Ybor cigar factories. "In Tampa,
there's a celebration of diversity of Cubans," Rohrlack said, "while in
Miami there's less acceptance. This is going to bode well for us when
Cuba opens."
Tampa will add "at least 5,000 jobs overnight" when it happens,
estimates Manteiga, sitting in front of a painting of his grandfather in
the Ybor City office of La Gaceta. Cuba doesn't have warehouses to
handle mass shipping, so supplies will have to be brought in from a
nearby port until they can be built. Florida strawberries, for instance,
can't be kept in bulk in Cuba, meaning weekly shipments from the Port of
Tampa.
"Tampa has been the safety valve for Cuba for over 100 years," Manteiga
said, noting that Ybor settlers helped fund Cuban independence from
Spain. "It's going to be the same way after the embargo is lifted."
Like many in Miami, Mike Vidal objects to any dealings with Cuba until
the island makes major reforms. Among them, Vidal wants back the land
the Castro government seized from his family, including his
grandfather's castle-like home, a copper mine, a cattle ranch, and a
mile of pristine oceanfront property.
Vidal, a 57-year-old computer technician, comes from a politically
connected family — his grandfather was speaker of the house in Cuba and
a United Nations ambassador. His dad was an advisor to President
Fulgencio Batista.
"I consider myself pretty moderate when it comes to Cuba," Vidal said.
"But when it comes to doing business with Castro, or traveling there, I
don't want to see it happen until they return the land they took from
families, mine included. Pay for it, or give it back to us."
The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting is a nonprofit news
organization supported by foundations and individual contributions. For
more information, visit fcir.org. The Public Insight Network contributed
to this report and can be found online at publicinsightnetwork.org.
Source: "Tampa looks to capitalize on tomorrow's Cuba - Miami-Dade -
MiamiHerald.com" -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/06/v-fullstory/3488287/tampa-looks-to-capitalize-on-tomorrows.html
The Briton who languished in a Cuban jail after being accused of spying
The Briton who languished in a Cuban jail after being accused of spying
Stephen Purvis has returned to Britain after spending 16 months in a
Cuban jail on false spying and fraud charges. He speaks to Colin Freeman
about the ordeal.
By Colin Freeman9:00PM BST 06 Jul 2013
WHEN the £400 million Bellomonte Golf and Country Club eventually opens
for business, its pristine fairways will mark an elegantly-landscaped
route for Cuba to move into the 21st century. In a country that once
banned golf as a "bourgeois sport", its five-star hotel, spa and luxury
villa complex is the clearest sign that the Communist outpost is finally
embracing the long-taboo ethos of capitalism.
One man who is unlikely to attend any future ribbon-cutting ceremony,
though, is Stephen Purvis, the Wimbledon-born architect whose firm,
Coral Capital, was behind the Bellomonte development. Resident with his
family in Cuba for ten years, he was the ideal person to mastermind the
flagship project of its tourist economy, having previously turned
Havana's crumbling, colonial-era Saratoga Hotel into a chic hang-out
favoured by the likes of Beyonce and Naomi Campbell.
Last week, though, he was recovering back in London, after losing 16
months of his life - and 50lbs in weight - to a stint in the rather less
comfortable accommodation of Cuba's prison system.
In an ordeal that could have been torn from the pages of a Graham Greene
novel, Mr Purvis was falsely accused first of being a spy, and then of
obscure breaches of finance laws, while never being told details of the
allegations against him. He fled the island after a court released him a
fortnight ago, following a trial conducted entirely in secret.
Meanwhile, Coral's offices in Cuba have been shut down, and the country
club project in which he has invested millions of pounds and five years
of his life handed to a Chinese firm.
Yet he counts himself lucky. During his time in Havana's notorious Villa
Marista spy interrogation centre, he feared he might never see the
outside world again, or his wife Rachel and four children.
"It was grim, absolutely grim," he told The Sunday Telegraph. "Being
accused of espionage is bad enough anywhere, let alone somewhere like
Cuba. You get this overpowering sense of being forgotten by the world,
and that you are about to receive a huge prison sentence for nothing at
all."
Mr Purvis, 52, spoke out last week to warn other British entrepreneurs
of the risks in Cuba, which has courted foreign investors in recent
years to revamp its moribund command economy. They were risks, though,
that he himself thought he no longer had to worry about, given that his
own firm, financed by private European backers, was among the
best-established on the island. Since setting up there in 2000, it has
invested in everything from tourism through to factories and docks, and
even financed El Benny, a Cuban film about the country's most famous
singer, Benny Moré.
Mr Purvis was also a pillar of Havana's expatriate community, working as
vice-chair of Havana's international school, where diplomats sent their
children, and producing "Havana Rakatan," a Cuban dance show which has
toured London's West End.
His connections, however, counted for nothing when in October 2011,
Cuban police arrested Coral's British-Lebanese chief executive Amado
Fakhre, on charges of bribery and revealing state secrets. The move
appears to have been part of a wider sweep against dozens of foreign
businessmen, launched after Cuban intelligence - which still views
capitalism with suspicion - became convinced that the occasional bribes
which took place had become an epidemic.
While his diplomatic contacts urged Mr Purvis to leave, he decided to
stay behind and try to help, having been told by Cuban officials that
they had no interest in him personally. Then, five months later, as he
was about to take his children to school, state police arrested him.
What followed was a first-hand insight into Cuba's darker side - and
confirmation that for all its attempts at reform, its security services
remain as repressive as ever.
"At first I was taken to a run-down villa in the middle of nowhere,
where I was interrogated for two hours every morning, afternoon and
night," said Mr Purvis. "They accused me of passing information to a
foreign state, but never said who, where or how. At the end of each day
they would make me write up a summary of events, even though they kept
their own notes too. Then, after five days, they put me in 'pre-emptive
detention' in Villa Marista."
A Catholic boys' school in pre-revolution days, Villa Marista is used
for interrogations of political prisoners. Officials boast that
eventually everyone "sings" after a stay there.
While Mr Purvis did not experience torture, he says the jail was
designed to send inmates mad. He was kept with three other prisoners in
a filthy 8ft by 8ft cell, with the lights on round-the-clock, and
exercise limited to 15 minutes a week. Each prisoner was also assigned a
personal interrogator who would even cut their toenails, fingernails and
hair for them.
"They decide absolutely everything about your life, even personal
grooming. The idea is to separate you from your personal identity, so
you lose a sense of who you are. Several inmates who passed through my
cell during my time went cuckoo, and there was an attempted suicide
about once a month. You'd be trying to sleep at night and suddenly
there'd be this terrible wail from some other cell."
Worse still was learning just ten days into his detention that his wife
had been hospitalised due to the stress. Three weeks later, she and the
children were flown back to Britain for their own safety, leaving him
reliant on prison visits from local friends and British embassy staff,
who were helpful but could do nothing to resolve his case. "It was a
nightmare, I knew my wife was ill and I was powerless to look after
either her or the children."
Eight months later, he learned that the spying charge - based on a
"denunciation" by an anonymous informant - was being dropped. But the
charge was then simply switched to "economic crime", and he was switched
to the special foreigners unit at Cuba's La Condesa prison. A collection
of dusty huts surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers, it was
comfortable compared to Villa Marista, even though his new companions
included multiple murderers, Jamaican Yardies and drug barons. Luckily,
he says, the guards kept a very close watch.
Mr Purvis passed the time by writing a new script for his dance show,
and drawing up business plans for inmates who wanted to go into
legitimate enterprises after their release. A keen amateur artist, he
also found himself in demand to paint portraits of prisoners' wives and
girlfriends. "They would show me a photo of someone who often looked
like a warthog, and ask me to make her look more like Beyonce," he said.
"And perhaps a bit fruitier."
It was not until three weeks before his trial last month that his Cuban
lawyer finally got the charge sheet against him - an 8,000-page document
that even then, Mr Purvis was not allowed to see. He was convicted,
though, only of the minor charge of conducting illegal foreign currency
transactions. "That is something that every foreign business does in
Cuba, and the central bank had authorised all our transactions for 12
years. Then all of a sudden they were saying they weren't authorised,
and that we didn't have specific permission. It was a very arbitrary
application of the law."
In the end, Mr Purvis received a two-and-a-half-year "non-custodial
sentence" - the closest thing to an apology from the court, according to
his Cuban lawyer. He was released on June 17, two days before Mr Fakhre.
Since leaving Cuba he has been staying with at his mother Anne's house
in London, reunited with his wife Rachel and children Joseph, 18, Max,
17, Poppy, 15 and Anna Rose 13.
"I'm overjoyed to have Stephen back," said Mrs Purvis, 49. "Although it
had been so long that when I first heard the news I partly just felt numb."
Coral is now contemplating another tussle with the Cuban courts - this
time a lawsuit to regain £10.6 million in confiscated company assets.
But exactly why the Cuban authorities moved against them remains a mystery.
One possibility is that the denunciation came from a business rival.
Another, says Mr Purvis, is that the firm was simply the victim of an
over-zealous anti-corruption trawl by Cuba's intelligence service, "who
know nothing about business, so they see crime everywhere".
But he also believes a wider political game may be at work. Most of the
arrested businessmen have been Westerners. But competitors from the
likes of China and Venezuela have been left alone, suggesting a plan may
be afoot to clear Cuba's markets for countries Havana feels more
ideologically comfortable with.
"It's hard to be sure because everyone is too scared to talk about this
kind of thing when they're on the island," Mr Purvis said. "The sad
thing is, I'll probably never be able to go back to Cuba now, even
though I love the place. They just don't understand business yet, and in
the long-term that's going to be bad for them."
Source: "The Briton who languished in a Cuban jail after being accused
of spying - Telegraph" -
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/cuba/10164579/The-Briton-who-languished-in-a-Cuban-jail-after-being-accused-of-spying.html
Stephen Purvis has returned to Britain after spending 16 months in a
Cuban jail on false spying and fraud charges. He speaks to Colin Freeman
about the ordeal.
By Colin Freeman9:00PM BST 06 Jul 2013
WHEN the £400 million Bellomonte Golf and Country Club eventually opens
for business, its pristine fairways will mark an elegantly-landscaped
route for Cuba to move into the 21st century. In a country that once
banned golf as a "bourgeois sport", its five-star hotel, spa and luxury
villa complex is the clearest sign that the Communist outpost is finally
embracing the long-taboo ethos of capitalism.
One man who is unlikely to attend any future ribbon-cutting ceremony,
though, is Stephen Purvis, the Wimbledon-born architect whose firm,
Coral Capital, was behind the Bellomonte development. Resident with his
family in Cuba for ten years, he was the ideal person to mastermind the
flagship project of its tourist economy, having previously turned
Havana's crumbling, colonial-era Saratoga Hotel into a chic hang-out
favoured by the likes of Beyonce and Naomi Campbell.
Last week, though, he was recovering back in London, after losing 16
months of his life - and 50lbs in weight - to a stint in the rather less
comfortable accommodation of Cuba's prison system.
In an ordeal that could have been torn from the pages of a Graham Greene
novel, Mr Purvis was falsely accused first of being a spy, and then of
obscure breaches of finance laws, while never being told details of the
allegations against him. He fled the island after a court released him a
fortnight ago, following a trial conducted entirely in secret.
Meanwhile, Coral's offices in Cuba have been shut down, and the country
club project in which he has invested millions of pounds and five years
of his life handed to a Chinese firm.
Yet he counts himself lucky. During his time in Havana's notorious Villa
Marista spy interrogation centre, he feared he might never see the
outside world again, or his wife Rachel and four children.
"It was grim, absolutely grim," he told The Sunday Telegraph. "Being
accused of espionage is bad enough anywhere, let alone somewhere like
Cuba. You get this overpowering sense of being forgotten by the world,
and that you are about to receive a huge prison sentence for nothing at
all."
Mr Purvis, 52, spoke out last week to warn other British entrepreneurs
of the risks in Cuba, which has courted foreign investors in recent
years to revamp its moribund command economy. They were risks, though,
that he himself thought he no longer had to worry about, given that his
own firm, financed by private European backers, was among the
best-established on the island. Since setting up there in 2000, it has
invested in everything from tourism through to factories and docks, and
even financed El Benny, a Cuban film about the country's most famous
singer, Benny Moré.
Mr Purvis was also a pillar of Havana's expatriate community, working as
vice-chair of Havana's international school, where diplomats sent their
children, and producing "Havana Rakatan," a Cuban dance show which has
toured London's West End.
His connections, however, counted for nothing when in October 2011,
Cuban police arrested Coral's British-Lebanese chief executive Amado
Fakhre, on charges of bribery and revealing state secrets. The move
appears to have been part of a wider sweep against dozens of foreign
businessmen, launched after Cuban intelligence - which still views
capitalism with suspicion - became convinced that the occasional bribes
which took place had become an epidemic.
While his diplomatic contacts urged Mr Purvis to leave, he decided to
stay behind and try to help, having been told by Cuban officials that
they had no interest in him personally. Then, five months later, as he
was about to take his children to school, state police arrested him.
What followed was a first-hand insight into Cuba's darker side - and
confirmation that for all its attempts at reform, its security services
remain as repressive as ever.
"At first I was taken to a run-down villa in the middle of nowhere,
where I was interrogated for two hours every morning, afternoon and
night," said Mr Purvis. "They accused me of passing information to a
foreign state, but never said who, where or how. At the end of each day
they would make me write up a summary of events, even though they kept
their own notes too. Then, after five days, they put me in 'pre-emptive
detention' in Villa Marista."
A Catholic boys' school in pre-revolution days, Villa Marista is used
for interrogations of political prisoners. Officials boast that
eventually everyone "sings" after a stay there.
While Mr Purvis did not experience torture, he says the jail was
designed to send inmates mad. He was kept with three other prisoners in
a filthy 8ft by 8ft cell, with the lights on round-the-clock, and
exercise limited to 15 minutes a week. Each prisoner was also assigned a
personal interrogator who would even cut their toenails, fingernails and
hair for them.
"They decide absolutely everything about your life, even personal
grooming. The idea is to separate you from your personal identity, so
you lose a sense of who you are. Several inmates who passed through my
cell during my time went cuckoo, and there was an attempted suicide
about once a month. You'd be trying to sleep at night and suddenly
there'd be this terrible wail from some other cell."
Worse still was learning just ten days into his detention that his wife
had been hospitalised due to the stress. Three weeks later, she and the
children were flown back to Britain for their own safety, leaving him
reliant on prison visits from local friends and British embassy staff,
who were helpful but could do nothing to resolve his case. "It was a
nightmare, I knew my wife was ill and I was powerless to look after
either her or the children."
Eight months later, he learned that the spying charge - based on a
"denunciation" by an anonymous informant - was being dropped. But the
charge was then simply switched to "economic crime", and he was switched
to the special foreigners unit at Cuba's La Condesa prison. A collection
of dusty huts surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers, it was
comfortable compared to Villa Marista, even though his new companions
included multiple murderers, Jamaican Yardies and drug barons. Luckily,
he says, the guards kept a very close watch.
Mr Purvis passed the time by writing a new script for his dance show,
and drawing up business plans for inmates who wanted to go into
legitimate enterprises after their release. A keen amateur artist, he
also found himself in demand to paint portraits of prisoners' wives and
girlfriends. "They would show me a photo of someone who often looked
like a warthog, and ask me to make her look more like Beyonce," he said.
"And perhaps a bit fruitier."
It was not until three weeks before his trial last month that his Cuban
lawyer finally got the charge sheet against him - an 8,000-page document
that even then, Mr Purvis was not allowed to see. He was convicted,
though, only of the minor charge of conducting illegal foreign currency
transactions. "That is something that every foreign business does in
Cuba, and the central bank had authorised all our transactions for 12
years. Then all of a sudden they were saying they weren't authorised,
and that we didn't have specific permission. It was a very arbitrary
application of the law."
In the end, Mr Purvis received a two-and-a-half-year "non-custodial
sentence" - the closest thing to an apology from the court, according to
his Cuban lawyer. He was released on June 17, two days before Mr Fakhre.
Since leaving Cuba he has been staying with at his mother Anne's house
in London, reunited with his wife Rachel and children Joseph, 18, Max,
17, Poppy, 15 and Anna Rose 13.
"I'm overjoyed to have Stephen back," said Mrs Purvis, 49. "Although it
had been so long that when I first heard the news I partly just felt numb."
Coral is now contemplating another tussle with the Cuban courts - this
time a lawsuit to regain £10.6 million in confiscated company assets.
But exactly why the Cuban authorities moved against them remains a mystery.
One possibility is that the denunciation came from a business rival.
Another, says Mr Purvis, is that the firm was simply the victim of an
over-zealous anti-corruption trawl by Cuba's intelligence service, "who
know nothing about business, so they see crime everywhere".
But he also believes a wider political game may be at work. Most of the
arrested businessmen have been Westerners. But competitors from the
likes of China and Venezuela have been left alone, suggesting a plan may
be afoot to clear Cuba's markets for countries Havana feels more
ideologically comfortable with.
"It's hard to be sure because everyone is too scared to talk about this
kind of thing when they're on the island," Mr Purvis said. "The sad
thing is, I'll probably never be able to go back to Cuba now, even
though I love the place. They just don't understand business yet, and in
the long-term that's going to be bad for them."
Source: "The Briton who languished in a Cuban jail after being accused
of spying - Telegraph" -
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/cuba/10164579/The-Briton-who-languished-in-a-Cuban-jail-after-being-accused-of-spying.html
Cuban parliament opens 2-day session
Posted on Saturday, 07.06.13
Cuban parliament opens 2-day session
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
HAVANA -- Cuba's parliament is meeting in one of its twice-annual
legislative sessions.
President Raul Castro is expected to speak at the close of the two-day
event about the status of his social and economic reforms.
He is also likely to touch on his battle against corruption, which has
caught up dozens of high-ranking Cuban executives and government
officials and a handful of foreign businessmen.
Observers will be watching to see if new Vice President Miguel
Diaz-Canel is taking on increasing responsibility since assuming the
post in what was seen as the beginning of a generational leadership
transition.
Foreign media were not allowed access to Saturday's proceedings.
Delegates have been meeting in committee this past week ahead of the
full session of parliament.
Source: "HAVANA: Cuban parliament opens 2-day session - Americas Wires -
MiamiHerald.com" -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/06/3487597/cuban-parliament-opens-2-day-session.html
Cuban parliament opens 2-day session
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
HAVANA -- Cuba's parliament is meeting in one of its twice-annual
legislative sessions.
President Raul Castro is expected to speak at the close of the two-day
event about the status of his social and economic reforms.
He is also likely to touch on his battle against corruption, which has
caught up dozens of high-ranking Cuban executives and government
officials and a handful of foreign businessmen.
Observers will be watching to see if new Vice President Miguel
Diaz-Canel is taking on increasing responsibility since assuming the
post in what was seen as the beginning of a generational leadership
transition.
Foreign media were not allowed access to Saturday's proceedings.
Delegates have been meeting in committee this past week ahead of the
full session of parliament.
Source: "HAVANA: Cuban parliament opens 2-day session - Americas Wires -
MiamiHerald.com" -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/06/3487597/cuban-parliament-opens-2-day-session.html
Ladies in White resign over alleged State Security infiltrator
Posted on Saturday, 07.06.13
Ladies in White resign over alleged State Security infiltrator
BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
JTAMAYO@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM
At least 18 members have quit Cuba's dissident Ladies in White in the
eastern province of Santiago de Cuba. Top opposition leader Jose Daniel
Ferrer has been accused of treating a black supporter like a slave. And
Ferrer has split from his wife of 20 years.
The two most aggressive opposition movements in eastern Cuba appear to
be going through a rough period in recent weeks, forced to deny serious
allegations and even hanging up the phone on usually friendly Miami news
media.
But dissidents say their troubles are the work of infiltrators from the
State Security apparatus in the communist-ruled island, tasked with
fueling the jealousies and rivalries that have long riven the
opposition, and creating new ones.
"It is very, very clear that all of this comes from people who have a
job to do for the political police," said Ferrer, who served eight years
as a political prisoner, was freed in 2011 and is now one of the
island's most respected opposition activists.
The group he founded, the Cuban Patriotic Union (UNPACU), is the most
combative dissident faction in Santiago. Earlier this year it forged a
national alliance with Guillermo Fariñas, winner of the European
Parliament's $67,000 Sakharov prize.
Authorities meanwhile have repeatedly cracked down on the Santiago
branch of the Ladies in White as they push to win the same right to
stage public protests as their counterparts in Havana, who march along
an avenue after Sunday Mass.
At the root of the split within the Ladies in White is a push by several
members to expel a woman repeatedly accused of being a State Security
infiltrator and inventing gossip about infidelities by the group's
members or their husbands.
Group leader Berta Soler in Havana acknowledged that she and Santiago
leader Belkis Cantillo opposed expelling the woman during a June 18
meeting in Santiago because it would be essentially undemocratic to
drive her out without hard evidence.
"We are learning each day how to live with infiltrators. It does not
worry us," Soler told El Nuevo Herald by phone from Havana. "We are not
going to waste the time that must be used to continue working for human
rights."
In a statement issued June 30, Soler had declared: "We will not fall
into the foolish game of you tell me and I tell you … There are no
proofs that she is an agent … so she will continue being a member until
it is proven."
That statement acknowledged that 18 Ladies in White in Santiago had
resigned. Ferrer, who is married to Cantillo, said last week that the
number of resignations had climbed to 27. Several calls to Cantillo's
cellphone went unanswered.
Ferrer said he separated from Cantillo after 20 years of marriage
because of her attitude toward some of the Ladies in White who want to
expel the alleged infiltrator. The women who resigned remain members of
UNPACU, he said.
State Security agents have repeatedly infiltrated and in some cases
founded opposition movements during the five decades of Castro rule, to
spy on the groups and exacerbate the many rivalries and tensions that
have historically hit the dissident movements.
Soler and Cantillo returned to Cuba in May after a lengthy trip abroad
during which they received a hero's welcome in the United States and
Europe and collected more than $65,000 — a fortune by island standards —
in prizes and donations.
The alleged infiltrator not only spread the gossip about infidelities
but sold end-of-year school exams and offered to obtain U.S. visas for
$3,000, two Ladies in White said, both crimes that real dissidents know
too well would immediately land them in jail.
"Since she joined us [in August] the bickering started. We have no
doubts about her," said Yelena Garcés, who with her sister Aimee led the
group of women that resigned.
"We have no doubts that she and her husband work for the political
police, and that their principal mission … is to divide" the opposition,
Ferrer said by phone from his home in the small Santiago town of
Palmarito de Cauto.
Ferrer said UNPACU expelled the woman several months ago, but the Ladies
in White remain "incapable of realizing that she … is creating
problems." El Nuevo knows her name, but will not print it because it has
been unable to reach her for comment.
Some of the women who resigned said Soler made the dispute worse during
the June 18 meeting by telephoning the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana
to report their separation, a call they took as a threat to deny them
U.S. visas. Soler told El Nuevo she would not comment on that
allegation. Radio Martí reported last week that she hung up when one of
its reporters asked her about it.
The Ladies in White was founded by female relatives of 75 dissidents
jailed during a 2003 crackdown to demand their freedom. The government
freed the last of the 75 still in prison in 2010-2011 — but forced most
to go into exile in Spain.
Only a dozen insisted on staying in Cuba to continue their opposition
activism, including Ferrer and Angel Moya, Soler's husband. The Ladies
in White vowed to remain together to push for human rights and democracy.
Ferrer himself as come under harsh attacks from Raumel Vinajera, a
former UNPACU activist now living in the United States who has accused
him of being a "slave keeper" and stealing money donated for the
opposition movement.
A photo of Vinajera, who is black, holding an umbrella over the
light-skinned Ferrer while the UNPACU leader speaks on a cellphone has
been spread on the Internet, especially by Ernesto Vera, a Santiago
lawyer and self-described dissident who regularly attacks UNPACU, the
Ladies in White and blogger Yoani Sanchez.
Ferrer said the photo was snapped when it was raining and he went to his
patio to get better reception on his cellphone. He added that police
seized that photo and several others during a raid of his home in July
of last year.
Source: "Ladies in White resign over alleged State Security infiltrator
- Cuba - MiamiHerald.com" -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/06/v-fullstory/3488189/ladies-in-white-resign-over-alleged.html
Ladies in White resign over alleged State Security infiltrator
BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
JTAMAYO@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM
At least 18 members have quit Cuba's dissident Ladies in White in the
eastern province of Santiago de Cuba. Top opposition leader Jose Daniel
Ferrer has been accused of treating a black supporter like a slave. And
Ferrer has split from his wife of 20 years.
The two most aggressive opposition movements in eastern Cuba appear to
be going through a rough period in recent weeks, forced to deny serious
allegations and even hanging up the phone on usually friendly Miami news
media.
But dissidents say their troubles are the work of infiltrators from the
State Security apparatus in the communist-ruled island, tasked with
fueling the jealousies and rivalries that have long riven the
opposition, and creating new ones.
"It is very, very clear that all of this comes from people who have a
job to do for the political police," said Ferrer, who served eight years
as a political prisoner, was freed in 2011 and is now one of the
island's most respected opposition activists.
The group he founded, the Cuban Patriotic Union (UNPACU), is the most
combative dissident faction in Santiago. Earlier this year it forged a
national alliance with Guillermo Fariñas, winner of the European
Parliament's $67,000 Sakharov prize.
Authorities meanwhile have repeatedly cracked down on the Santiago
branch of the Ladies in White as they push to win the same right to
stage public protests as their counterparts in Havana, who march along
an avenue after Sunday Mass.
At the root of the split within the Ladies in White is a push by several
members to expel a woman repeatedly accused of being a State Security
infiltrator and inventing gossip about infidelities by the group's
members or their husbands.
Group leader Berta Soler in Havana acknowledged that she and Santiago
leader Belkis Cantillo opposed expelling the woman during a June 18
meeting in Santiago because it would be essentially undemocratic to
drive her out without hard evidence.
"We are learning each day how to live with infiltrators. It does not
worry us," Soler told El Nuevo Herald by phone from Havana. "We are not
going to waste the time that must be used to continue working for human
rights."
In a statement issued June 30, Soler had declared: "We will not fall
into the foolish game of you tell me and I tell you … There are no
proofs that she is an agent … so she will continue being a member until
it is proven."
That statement acknowledged that 18 Ladies in White in Santiago had
resigned. Ferrer, who is married to Cantillo, said last week that the
number of resignations had climbed to 27. Several calls to Cantillo's
cellphone went unanswered.
Ferrer said he separated from Cantillo after 20 years of marriage
because of her attitude toward some of the Ladies in White who want to
expel the alleged infiltrator. The women who resigned remain members of
UNPACU, he said.
State Security agents have repeatedly infiltrated and in some cases
founded opposition movements during the five decades of Castro rule, to
spy on the groups and exacerbate the many rivalries and tensions that
have historically hit the dissident movements.
Soler and Cantillo returned to Cuba in May after a lengthy trip abroad
during which they received a hero's welcome in the United States and
Europe and collected more than $65,000 — a fortune by island standards —
in prizes and donations.
The alleged infiltrator not only spread the gossip about infidelities
but sold end-of-year school exams and offered to obtain U.S. visas for
$3,000, two Ladies in White said, both crimes that real dissidents know
too well would immediately land them in jail.
"Since she joined us [in August] the bickering started. We have no
doubts about her," said Yelena Garcés, who with her sister Aimee led the
group of women that resigned.
"We have no doubts that she and her husband work for the political
police, and that their principal mission … is to divide" the opposition,
Ferrer said by phone from his home in the small Santiago town of
Palmarito de Cauto.
Ferrer said UNPACU expelled the woman several months ago, but the Ladies
in White remain "incapable of realizing that she … is creating
problems." El Nuevo knows her name, but will not print it because it has
been unable to reach her for comment.
Some of the women who resigned said Soler made the dispute worse during
the June 18 meeting by telephoning the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana
to report their separation, a call they took as a threat to deny them
U.S. visas. Soler told El Nuevo she would not comment on that
allegation. Radio Martí reported last week that she hung up when one of
its reporters asked her about it.
The Ladies in White was founded by female relatives of 75 dissidents
jailed during a 2003 crackdown to demand their freedom. The government
freed the last of the 75 still in prison in 2010-2011 — but forced most
to go into exile in Spain.
Only a dozen insisted on staying in Cuba to continue their opposition
activism, including Ferrer and Angel Moya, Soler's husband. The Ladies
in White vowed to remain together to push for human rights and democracy.
Ferrer himself as come under harsh attacks from Raumel Vinajera, a
former UNPACU activist now living in the United States who has accused
him of being a "slave keeper" and stealing money donated for the
opposition movement.
A photo of Vinajera, who is black, holding an umbrella over the
light-skinned Ferrer while the UNPACU leader speaks on a cellphone has
been spread on the Internet, especially by Ernesto Vera, a Santiago
lawyer and self-described dissident who regularly attacks UNPACU, the
Ladies in White and blogger Yoani Sanchez.
Ferrer said the photo was snapped when it was raining and he went to his
patio to get better reception on his cellphone. He added that police
seized that photo and several others during a raid of his home in July
of last year.
Source: "Ladies in White resign over alleged State Security infiltrator
- Cuba - MiamiHerald.com" -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/06/v-fullstory/3488189/ladies-in-white-resign-over-alleged.html
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Cuba’s Public Transport System Adjustments are not Enough
Cuba's Public Transport System: Adjustments are not Enough
July 4, 2013 | Print |
Fernando Ravsberg*
HAVANA TIMES — Fifty years of unsuccessful attempts at re-structuring
its public transportation into a system that works should suffice to
make Cuba consider changing the very foundations of the system. The
"reorganization" being proposed today promises to be more of the same
and is not likely to yield the quality services aimed for.
The last meeting held by Cuba's Council of Ministers publicly recognized
that the country's transportation system "has been unstable, inadequate
and low-quality for years." The common Cuban who "hops on a bus" every
day has something similar to say, albeit with far less refined words.
"Updates" can help steer those sectors that actually work, such as
public health, education or sports, in the right direction. It can even
improve the tourism industry, which has seen much progress in the course
of the last 3 decades.
Cuba's public transportation system, however, has always been bad and,
in recent years, has gone from bad to worse. Truth is, it wasn't even
satisfactory in the days of Soviet aid, when there was plenty of money
and State subsidies to invest in it.
One of the many problems faced by the sector are the odd administrative
decisions of Cuba's Ministry of Transportation, which purchases buses
from China but demands that they be equipped with U.S. engines, as
though oblivious to the economic embargo that has existed for over fifty
years.
When the engine in one of those buses breaks down, Cuba has to buy it
from the United States. The purchase is conducted through a foreign
company and involves sending the product to a third country, where it is
re-shipped to Cuba. Prices naturally skyrocket and spare parts take a
long time to reach the island.
What's more, a whole series of meetings between the commercial
departments of the Cuban import companies and Ministry experts are held
before the order is actually placed. There are committees that convene
to evaluate one, specific aspect of the product, which refer the matter
to other committees designed to review other product details, which in
turn call on a third committee…and this process goes on and on for months.
All the while, the broken bus idles at a State workshop where, many a
time, it is scavenged for pieces that can be sold in the black market.
When the Ministry finally decides to make a purchase, more spare parts
are needed and the whole, interminable process of committee meetings
begins anew.
In this way, Cuba's Ministry of Transportation has at times managed to
keep half of Havana's public buses out of circulation, a remarkable feat
when we recall that the country has purchased a large fleet of vehicles
from China.
Organizing a functioning public transportation system anywhere is,
admittedly, a complex task which requires experts, large investments and
continuous subsidies. Such efforts, however, are only successful when
the system, at base, actually works, be it in a wealthy or poor country.
Granting a large number of vehicle owners licenses to operate as private
cabs greatly improved Cuba's public transportation situation, but the
government undertook this liberalization without establishing a standard
fare, the routes where these taxis must circulate and a maximum
frequency of operations, regulations which are currently being applied
in many countries around the world.
In the end, those who end up paying for the absence of official
regulations are the passengers, for cab drivers charge whatever they
feel like charging and circulate down the city's busiest streets at the
time of day they deem convenient, leaving other areas of the city bereft
of viable transportation.
I also hear that the government will begin encouraging the use of
bicycles as a means of transportation people can use to move around the
city. Vice-President Murillo even said that authorities "will evaluate
the possibility of selling spare parts needed to maintain the bicycles
at subsidized prices."
When I questioned the wisdom of removing bicycle lanes from Cuban
streets in this blog, I was accused of being hypercritical. Now, it
appears as though they will have to bring back these lanes, as selling
cheap bicycles won't be enough – you also need to give cyclists a safe
space to move in.
Some people make fun of this proposal, as though the use of this means
of transportation were a sign of backwardness. In fact, many developed
nations promote the widespread use of bicycles and have an extensive
network of bike lanes. Some major cities, like Barcelona, even have an
efficient public bicycle rental system.
Cuba, a poor country, would benefit considerably from a strategy that
availed itself of its various resources, creating a transportation
system that could harmonize State, private, cooperative and even
individual initiative.
To get there, however, the many import companies and endless committees
that have been stepping on the brakes of the State must be removed, the
private sector must be organized more efficiently, the cooperative
sector expanded and inexpensive, individual alternatives which the
population can afford must be sought.
Everything depends on how priorities are established. With what the
government spends on only one of the thousands of vehicles it imports
for use by its companies and ministries, a dozen electrical motorcycles
or hundreds of good-quality bicycles could be purchased.
To buy a new bus, there's no need to make an additional investment –
importing 10 less automobiles suffices. The government could begin by
suspending the practice of assigning vehicles to transportation
officials, so as to give them the opportunity to experience what their
less privileged compatriots endure (and think) on a daily basis.
Cuba's economic progress should not be measured on the basis of the
number of automobiles in circulation around the country, the fact there
are more luxury cars on the street or we catch sight of a Hummer in
Havana from time to time.
True success in this area will be to guarantee that ordinary Cubans have
the means of transportation they need to get to work every day and take
their kids to the Zoo one weekend or other.
—–
(*) An authorized HT translation of the original published in Spanish by
BBC Mundo.
Source: "Cuba's transport system needs more than cosmetic changes" -
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=95875
July 4, 2013 | Print |
Fernando Ravsberg*
HAVANA TIMES — Fifty years of unsuccessful attempts at re-structuring
its public transportation into a system that works should suffice to
make Cuba consider changing the very foundations of the system. The
"reorganization" being proposed today promises to be more of the same
and is not likely to yield the quality services aimed for.
The last meeting held by Cuba's Council of Ministers publicly recognized
that the country's transportation system "has been unstable, inadequate
and low-quality for years." The common Cuban who "hops on a bus" every
day has something similar to say, albeit with far less refined words.
"Updates" can help steer those sectors that actually work, such as
public health, education or sports, in the right direction. It can even
improve the tourism industry, which has seen much progress in the course
of the last 3 decades.
Cuba's public transportation system, however, has always been bad and,
in recent years, has gone from bad to worse. Truth is, it wasn't even
satisfactory in the days of Soviet aid, when there was plenty of money
and State subsidies to invest in it.
One of the many problems faced by the sector are the odd administrative
decisions of Cuba's Ministry of Transportation, which purchases buses
from China but demands that they be equipped with U.S. engines, as
though oblivious to the economic embargo that has existed for over fifty
years.
When the engine in one of those buses breaks down, Cuba has to buy it
from the United States. The purchase is conducted through a foreign
company and involves sending the product to a third country, where it is
re-shipped to Cuba. Prices naturally skyrocket and spare parts take a
long time to reach the island.
What's more, a whole series of meetings between the commercial
departments of the Cuban import companies and Ministry experts are held
before the order is actually placed. There are committees that convene
to evaluate one, specific aspect of the product, which refer the matter
to other committees designed to review other product details, which in
turn call on a third committee…and this process goes on and on for months.
All the while, the broken bus idles at a State workshop where, many a
time, it is scavenged for pieces that can be sold in the black market.
When the Ministry finally decides to make a purchase, more spare parts
are needed and the whole, interminable process of committee meetings
begins anew.
In this way, Cuba's Ministry of Transportation has at times managed to
keep half of Havana's public buses out of circulation, a remarkable feat
when we recall that the country has purchased a large fleet of vehicles
from China.
Organizing a functioning public transportation system anywhere is,
admittedly, a complex task which requires experts, large investments and
continuous subsidies. Such efforts, however, are only successful when
the system, at base, actually works, be it in a wealthy or poor country.
Granting a large number of vehicle owners licenses to operate as private
cabs greatly improved Cuba's public transportation situation, but the
government undertook this liberalization without establishing a standard
fare, the routes where these taxis must circulate and a maximum
frequency of operations, regulations which are currently being applied
in many countries around the world.
In the end, those who end up paying for the absence of official
regulations are the passengers, for cab drivers charge whatever they
feel like charging and circulate down the city's busiest streets at the
time of day they deem convenient, leaving other areas of the city bereft
of viable transportation.
I also hear that the government will begin encouraging the use of
bicycles as a means of transportation people can use to move around the
city. Vice-President Murillo even said that authorities "will evaluate
the possibility of selling spare parts needed to maintain the bicycles
at subsidized prices."
When I questioned the wisdom of removing bicycle lanes from Cuban
streets in this blog, I was accused of being hypercritical. Now, it
appears as though they will have to bring back these lanes, as selling
cheap bicycles won't be enough – you also need to give cyclists a safe
space to move in.
Some people make fun of this proposal, as though the use of this means
of transportation were a sign of backwardness. In fact, many developed
nations promote the widespread use of bicycles and have an extensive
network of bike lanes. Some major cities, like Barcelona, even have an
efficient public bicycle rental system.
Cuba, a poor country, would benefit considerably from a strategy that
availed itself of its various resources, creating a transportation
system that could harmonize State, private, cooperative and even
individual initiative.
To get there, however, the many import companies and endless committees
that have been stepping on the brakes of the State must be removed, the
private sector must be organized more efficiently, the cooperative
sector expanded and inexpensive, individual alternatives which the
population can afford must be sought.
Everything depends on how priorities are established. With what the
government spends on only one of the thousands of vehicles it imports
for use by its companies and ministries, a dozen electrical motorcycles
or hundreds of good-quality bicycles could be purchased.
To buy a new bus, there's no need to make an additional investment –
importing 10 less automobiles suffices. The government could begin by
suspending the practice of assigning vehicles to transportation
officials, so as to give them the opportunity to experience what their
less privileged compatriots endure (and think) on a daily basis.
Cuba's economic progress should not be measured on the basis of the
number of automobiles in circulation around the country, the fact there
are more luxury cars on the street or we catch sight of a Hummer in
Havana from time to time.
True success in this area will be to guarantee that ordinary Cubans have
the means of transportation they need to get to work every day and take
their kids to the Zoo one weekend or other.
—–
(*) An authorized HT translation of the original published in Spanish by
BBC Mundo.
Source: "Cuba's transport system needs more than cosmetic changes" -
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=95875
British tourists injured in Cuba coach crash
6 July 2013 Last updated at 03:33 GMT
British tourists injured in Cuba coach crash
All 16 tourists were taken to hospital after the crash
Two British women tourists are in hospital after a coach crashed in
southern Cuba.
Cuban state media say Irish, Russian, Dutch, Czech and Philippine
nationals were also among the 16 passengers on the bus, which overturned
near the city of Cienfuegos on Thursday evening.
Three women are still in hospital, including the two Britons, one of
whom is in intensive care.
The hospital said the condition of all three women was stable.
All the tourists on the bus were taken to hospital in Cienfuegos but
most have now been discharged.
A Cuban driver and two guides were also on the vehicle at the time.
It is not yet known what caused the bus to swerve off the road on its
way from the colonial town of Trinidad to the beach resort of Varadero.
The BBC's Cuba correspondent Sarah Rainsford said it is the height of
the tourist season and coaches are the main means of moving around the
island.
Most roads are poorly maintained and dangers include large, unmarked
potholes, and untethered animals although major accidents are relatively
rare, our correspondent added.
A spokesman for the British Embassy in Havana said it was raining at the
time of the crash and an official investigation had now been launched.
A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "Our embassy in Havana is in close
contact with local authorities. Consular officials are on their way to
the area to provide assistance if needed."
Source: "BBC News - British tourists injured in Cuba coach crash" -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23208899
British tourists injured in Cuba coach crash
All 16 tourists were taken to hospital after the crash
Two British women tourists are in hospital after a coach crashed in
southern Cuba.
Cuban state media say Irish, Russian, Dutch, Czech and Philippine
nationals were also among the 16 passengers on the bus, which overturned
near the city of Cienfuegos on Thursday evening.
Three women are still in hospital, including the two Britons, one of
whom is in intensive care.
The hospital said the condition of all three women was stable.
All the tourists on the bus were taken to hospital in Cienfuegos but
most have now been discharged.
A Cuban driver and two guides were also on the vehicle at the time.
It is not yet known what caused the bus to swerve off the road on its
way from the colonial town of Trinidad to the beach resort of Varadero.
The BBC's Cuba correspondent Sarah Rainsford said it is the height of
the tourist season and coaches are the main means of moving around the
island.
Most roads are poorly maintained and dangers include large, unmarked
potholes, and untethered animals although major accidents are relatively
rare, our correspondent added.
A spokesman for the British Embassy in Havana said it was raining at the
time of the crash and an official investigation had now been launched.
A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "Our embassy in Havana is in close
contact with local authorities. Consular officials are on their way to
the area to provide assistance if needed."
Source: "BBC News - British tourists injured in Cuba coach crash" -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23208899
If Snowden Tries To Get To Latin America, Cuba Could Be Key
If Snowden Tries To Get To Latin America, Cuba Could Be Key
by MARK MEMMOTT
July 06, 2013 8:20 AM
The news that the leaders of Venezuela and Nicaragua say they're willing
to give asylum to "NSA leaker" Edward Snowden raises an obvious question:
If Russian authorties give him permission to leave, can he get to either
country from Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, where he's been lingering in
legal limbo for nearly two weeks?
ABC News points out that:
"The only 'safe' commercial flight across the Atlantic — one that would
avoid U.S. extradition treaties — is to Cuba. Cuba has an extradition
treaty from 1904, but the Castro government could chose to ignore it.
From Havana, Snowden could connect to Caracas, Venezuela, or Managua,
Nicaragua."
But according to Reuters, "it is not clear if the Cuban authorities
would let him transit ... and there was no sign of Snowden aboard the
flight to Havana on Saturday." What's more, "given the dramatic
grounding in Vienna of the Bolivian president's plane this week over
suspicions that Snowden was onboard, using European airspace could prove
problematic."
With financial help from his supporters, ABC News adds, Snowden might be
able to charter a private plane. It writes that: "Reports last week
quoted the cost of a private plane to Ecuador to be more than $200,000
on one of the few private jets that could make the trip without
refueling. Similar flights to Venezuela or Nicaragua would presumably be
only a bit less."
Of course, some nations might try to block a plane with Snowden aboard
from flying through their airspace. It's unlikely, though, that they
would use force to make a jet land. As President Obama said last week,
"I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker."
Morales' plane had to land somewhere in Europe to refuel.
Source: "If Snowden Tries To Get To Latin America, Cuba Could Be Key :
The Two-Way : NPR" -
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/07/06/199337924/if-snowden-tries-to-get-to-latin-america-cuba-could-be-key
by MARK MEMMOTT
July 06, 2013 8:20 AM
The news that the leaders of Venezuela and Nicaragua say they're willing
to give asylum to "NSA leaker" Edward Snowden raises an obvious question:
If Russian authorties give him permission to leave, can he get to either
country from Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, where he's been lingering in
legal limbo for nearly two weeks?
ABC News points out that:
"The only 'safe' commercial flight across the Atlantic — one that would
avoid U.S. extradition treaties — is to Cuba. Cuba has an extradition
treaty from 1904, but the Castro government could chose to ignore it.
From Havana, Snowden could connect to Caracas, Venezuela, or Managua,
Nicaragua."
But according to Reuters, "it is not clear if the Cuban authorities
would let him transit ... and there was no sign of Snowden aboard the
flight to Havana on Saturday." What's more, "given the dramatic
grounding in Vienna of the Bolivian president's plane this week over
suspicions that Snowden was onboard, using European airspace could prove
problematic."
With financial help from his supporters, ABC News adds, Snowden might be
able to charter a private plane. It writes that: "Reports last week
quoted the cost of a private plane to Ecuador to be more than $200,000
on one of the few private jets that could make the trip without
refueling. Similar flights to Venezuela or Nicaragua would presumably be
only a bit less."
Of course, some nations might try to block a plane with Snowden aboard
from flying through their airspace. It's unlikely, though, that they
would use force to make a jet land. As President Obama said last week,
"I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker."
Morales' plane had to land somewhere in Europe to refuel.
Source: "If Snowden Tries To Get To Latin America, Cuba Could Be Key :
The Two-Way : NPR" -
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/07/06/199337924/if-snowden-tries-to-get-to-latin-america-cuba-could-be-key
Irish citizen hurt in Cuba crash
Irish citizen hurt in Cuba crash
06 JULY 2013
An Irish citizen and two Britons were among 16 tourists injured when
their bus overturned on a road in Cuba.
Local reports said the government-operated vehicle left the road and
overturned on Thursday evening local time, between Trinidad and
Varadero, two major tourist destinations.
Nineteen people were said to be on board the bus at the time. The others
injured were said to be two Czechs, four Dutch, one Filipino and six
Russians.
State-run newspaper Cinco de Septiembre said three of the tourists were
considered to be in a serious condition. Two underwent surgery and are
in intensive care.
In a statement, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: "We are
aware of a bus crash involving British nationals between Trinidad and
Varadero in Cuba on the evening of July 4.
"Our embassy in Havana is in close contact with local authorities.
"Consular officials are on their way to the area to provide assistance
if needed."
Source: "Irish citizen hurt in Cuba crash - Independent.ie" -
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/irish-citizen-hurt-in-cuba-crash-29400018.html
06 JULY 2013
An Irish citizen and two Britons were among 16 tourists injured when
their bus overturned on a road in Cuba.
Local reports said the government-operated vehicle left the road and
overturned on Thursday evening local time, between Trinidad and
Varadero, two major tourist destinations.
Nineteen people were said to be on board the bus at the time. The others
injured were said to be two Czechs, four Dutch, one Filipino and six
Russians.
State-run newspaper Cinco de Septiembre said three of the tourists were
considered to be in a serious condition. Two underwent surgery and are
in intensive care.
In a statement, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: "We are
aware of a bus crash involving British nationals between Trinidad and
Varadero in Cuba on the evening of July 4.
"Our embassy in Havana is in close contact with local authorities.
"Consular officials are on their way to the area to provide assistance
if needed."
Source: "Irish citizen hurt in Cuba crash - Independent.ie" -
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/irish-citizen-hurt-in-cuba-crash-29400018.html
Friday, July 5, 2013
Prison Diary XXXIV Courts That Offer Revenge
Prison Diary XXXIV: Courts That Offer Revenge
Posted on July 5, 2013
The best thing that could happen to me in prison is that time slips
away, because between editing unpublished manuscripts, creating some
story, reading, writing posts, and listening to complaints from the
prisoners, I barely have time to sleep.
Alexander Sanchez Izquierda complains about the arbitrariness with which
they sentenced him. The instructor, First Lieutenant Dueña of the Sixth
Station, is the godmother of his ex, and assured him during his
detention that she would get revenge for his breaking up his marriage to
her.
To achieve this, the officer to let him know he hurt-Alexander-was the
one who had committed the crime and not accepted during the trial
witnesses attesting to his innocence.
To achieve this, the officer told the injured one that he — Alexander —
was the one who committed the crime, and during the trial they didn't
accept witnesses who'd testified to his innocence.
Alexander asked me how it's possible that a government can ask for
"justice" for five spies who carry several deaths on their shoulders,
and not worry about the courts handing out justice to its nationals.
Alexander is waiting to finish his ten-year sentence to fight for the
freedom of Cuba. He says the Cuban people can continue supporting the
prisons being flooded by innocent people.
This is what we all are waiting for, I say to him. Meanwhile, we
continue being the children nobody wants.
Ángel Santiesteban-Prats, Prison 1580, June 2013
4 July 2013
Source: "Prison Diary XXXIV: Courts That Offer Revenge | Translating
Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/prison-diary-xxxiv-courts-that-offer-revenge/
Posted on July 5, 2013
The best thing that could happen to me in prison is that time slips
away, because between editing unpublished manuscripts, creating some
story, reading, writing posts, and listening to complaints from the
prisoners, I barely have time to sleep.
Alexander Sanchez Izquierda complains about the arbitrariness with which
they sentenced him. The instructor, First Lieutenant Dueña of the Sixth
Station, is the godmother of his ex, and assured him during his
detention that she would get revenge for his breaking up his marriage to
her.
To achieve this, the officer to let him know he hurt-Alexander-was the
one who had committed the crime and not accepted during the trial
witnesses attesting to his innocence.
To achieve this, the officer told the injured one that he — Alexander —
was the one who committed the crime, and during the trial they didn't
accept witnesses who'd testified to his innocence.
Alexander asked me how it's possible that a government can ask for
"justice" for five spies who carry several deaths on their shoulders,
and not worry about the courts handing out justice to its nationals.
Alexander is waiting to finish his ten-year sentence to fight for the
freedom of Cuba. He says the Cuban people can continue supporting the
prisons being flooded by innocent people.
This is what we all are waiting for, I say to him. Meanwhile, we
continue being the children nobody wants.
Ángel Santiesteban-Prats, Prison 1580, June 2013
4 July 2013
Source: "Prison Diary XXXIV: Courts That Offer Revenge | Translating
Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/prison-diary-xxxiv-courts-that-offer-revenge/
Private talks hint at change in U.S.-Cuba relationship
Private talks hint at change in U.S.-Cuba relationship
By Guy Taylor-The Washington Times Thursday, July 4, 2013
The State Department has quietly been holding talks with a small but
diverse cadre of Cuban natives in Washington — including democracy
activists offering insider views of the communist island's politics —
that analysts say could send shock waves through the long-standing
debate about what a future U.S. policy toward Cuba should look like.
Obama administration officials are mum on the closed-door meetings,
including one held at Foggy Bottom last week with renowned Cuban
hunger-striker Guillermo Farinas, who came bearing a somewhat
paradoxical message: Most pro-democracy activists now operating in Cuba,
which has been a Communist dictatorship and a U.S. enemy for more than a
half-century, oppose lifting the long-standing U.S. embargo on trade
with their nation.
Such realities may not surprise close Cuba watchers, who say U.S.
officials have known for years that ending the embargo might unleash a
flow of badly needed foreign cash to the government of President Raul
Castro — enhancing its ability to crush the island's fragile
pro-democracy movement.
But activists like Mr. Farinas are now being allowed to inject their
views directly into the heart of Washington's foreign policy
establishment, ironically because he and other dissidents have been
allowed to take advantage of January's historic lifting by the Castro
government of a decades-old ban on travel abroad.
"The activists are feeling with their blood and bones the repression of
the Cuban security apparatus," said Mauricio Claver-Carone, executive
director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC in Washington.
U.S. policymakers "now get to actually see it and feel it firsthand from
the protagonists themselves," he said. "That's extraordinary and it's
very helpful."
The impact such visits are having on the Obama administration, however,
is a subject of debate.
Mr. Farinas' visit occurred in the shadow of headlines from a landmark
meeting last month between U.S. and Cuban officials, who talked about
possibly re-establishing direct mail service between the two nations.
The two nations plan to meet July 17 to talk about regulating migration.
Together, the negotiations have some in Washington wondering whether the
Obama administration is looking to break the stalemate that has defined
U.S. relations with Havana since Cuban leader Fidel Castro agreed to
house Soviet ballistic missiles in 1961.
Mr. Castro, 86, stepped down in 2008, and the top post is now held by
his 82-year-old brother, who has allowed such incremental reforms as the
easing of the ban on his citizens' travel. Raul Castro has said that he
will step down when his five-year term ends in 2018.
But Cuba remains on Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism,
and sources close to the Obama administration told The Washington Times
that ongoing frustration with Havana's detention of American Alan Gross
is likely to prevent the kind of wide-scale redefinition of policy some
thought would come during Mr. Obama's presidency.
Washington wants the release of Mr. Gross, a subcontractor who was
arrested in 2009 while working for a U.S. Agency for International
Development-funded program. Cuban authorities accused him of illegally
delivering satellite phones to individuals in the nation's Jewish
community and gave him a 15-year prison sentence.
His detention served only to amplify back-channel tensions with Havana.
The Castro government has for its part long complained about U.S.
treatment of the "Cuban Five" — a group of Cuban intelligence officers
convicted in Miami in 2001 of conspiracy to spy on U.S. military
installations, Cuban exiles and anti-Castro politicians.
'Modest thaw'
The recent move toward re-establishing direct mail with the U.S. and the
upcoming talks on migration might seem insignificant within the context
of such tensions.
"These talks are not a major breakthrough," said Geoff Thale, a program
director at the Washington Institute on Latin America. "But they are one
more signal that there is at least a modest thaw in the relationship, a
new willingness to talk."
But even those modest steps have been criticized by some U.S. lawmakers,
most prominently Cuban-American Republicans who represent districts in
Florida heavy with anti-Castro exiles.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lethinen, Florida Republican, told The Washington Times
on Thursday that she and other Cuban-American lawmakers had met with
several of the democracy activists and said the meetings reinforced her
skepticism about the changes in Cuba and her support for the economic
embargo.
"This year, many pro-democracy advocates have come to D.C. to shed light
on the charade of the so-called reforms that are nonexistent in Cuba.
Many Cuban-American members of Congress, including me, had the
opportunity to meet with island human rights activists, such as Yoani
Sanchez, Berta Soler, Guillermo Farinas, Rosa Maria Paya, Antonio
Rodiles, and others," said Mrs. Ros-Lehtinen, who also criticized the
Obama administration's mail and migration talks when they were announced
in mid-June.
"During our meeting with Farinas, my colleagues Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart,
Rep. Albio Sires and I had the opportunity to discuss the ongoing human
rights violations continuing to occur in Cuba perpetrated by the Castro
regime and the need to enforce the embargo until Cuba becomes a free and
democratic society," she said.
A source told The Washington Times that Rep. Joe Garcia, Florida
Democrat and a former executive director of the Cuban American National
Foundation, also met with Mr. Farinas during his visit to the Hill last
week.
Mr. Garcia's office did not respond to a Washington Times request for
confirmation of the meeting or a comment on it.
Whether that modest thaw gets helped — or hindered — by the ongoing
visits being made by Cuban dissidents to Washington is a subject of
growing speculation.
"What's interesting about the dissidents is that they all share a strong
critique of the Cuban government, but have a wide range of views about
what the U.S. government ought to do, and about the embargo," said Mr.
Thale. "I think it's useful for the State Department to hear this range
of views, and to take the measure of the dissident community."
The State Department declined to specify what was discussed during
recent meetings at Foggy Bottom with such dissidents as Yoani Maria
Sanchez, a Cuban blogger internationally known for her portrayals of
life in Cuba under the Castro government. Among the others in the
discussions was Berta Soler Fernandez, the current leaders of the
"Ladies in White," an outspoken group of wives of political prisoners in
Cuba.
"We still continue to be concerned by the Cuban government's repeated
use of detention and violence against critics and disruptions of
peaceful assembly," said William Ostick, a spokesman for the
department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. "We continue to call
on the Cuban government to end the practice of arbitrary and
extrajudicial detentions."
One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the
sensitivity of the talks, said that the Castro government has continued
to block the travel of some dissidents to Washington. For instance, Mrs.
Soler Fernandez's husband — construction worker and democracy activist
Luis Moya Acosta — has "not been allowed to travel," the official said.
But, the official added, "the fact of the matter is that Cuba's lifting
of the exit-visa restriction has allowed a certain number of these
people to travel and be able to communicate with broader civil society
and think tanks and governments."
Mr. Farinas was accompanied by Cuban human rights campaigner Elizardo
Sanchez in meeting with Michael G. Kozak, the acting assistant secretary
of state for democracy, human rights, and labor on June 27.
Mr. Farinas spoke the same day on Capitol Hill at the Florida House
Foundation, a nonprofit focused on Florida-related issues, where he
responded to a question about how Cuba's opposition community views the
existing U.S. embargo on trade with the island.
"The overwhelming majority of dissidents on the island do not support
the lifting of the embargo," he said, according to Mr. Claver-Carone,
who posted the remark on a blog he runs in addition to his work as head
of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC.
According to the blog, Mr. Farinas added that "there are those who do
support [the embargo's] lifting, and we respect their criteria, but they
are mostly intellectuals who do not have a membership base behind them."
He and Mr. Sanchez also participated in a recorded conversation with
foreign policy experts at the Center for Strategic International Studies
in Washington.
"It's important for Americans to see that there's dissent within the
island," said Carl Meacham, who heads the center's Americas Program.
"It's not just something that members of Congress or folks that are
living in Florida are talking about."
Those who speak out during the visits "might go back to Cuba and get
arrested, but I think that's what happens when you're trying to improve
the conditions," he added. "These people are great because they know
that there's a consequence for their criticism of the Cuban government
and they love their country so much that they're willing to pay that
consequence."
Source: "Private talks hint at change in U.S.-Cuba relationship -
Washington Times" -
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/4/private-talks-hint-at-change-in-us-cuba-relationsh/?page=all#pagebreak
By Guy Taylor-The Washington Times Thursday, July 4, 2013
The State Department has quietly been holding talks with a small but
diverse cadre of Cuban natives in Washington — including democracy
activists offering insider views of the communist island's politics —
that analysts say could send shock waves through the long-standing
debate about what a future U.S. policy toward Cuba should look like.
Obama administration officials are mum on the closed-door meetings,
including one held at Foggy Bottom last week with renowned Cuban
hunger-striker Guillermo Farinas, who came bearing a somewhat
paradoxical message: Most pro-democracy activists now operating in Cuba,
which has been a Communist dictatorship and a U.S. enemy for more than a
half-century, oppose lifting the long-standing U.S. embargo on trade
with their nation.
Such realities may not surprise close Cuba watchers, who say U.S.
officials have known for years that ending the embargo might unleash a
flow of badly needed foreign cash to the government of President Raul
Castro — enhancing its ability to crush the island's fragile
pro-democracy movement.
But activists like Mr. Farinas are now being allowed to inject their
views directly into the heart of Washington's foreign policy
establishment, ironically because he and other dissidents have been
allowed to take advantage of January's historic lifting by the Castro
government of a decades-old ban on travel abroad.
"The activists are feeling with their blood and bones the repression of
the Cuban security apparatus," said Mauricio Claver-Carone, executive
director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC in Washington.
U.S. policymakers "now get to actually see it and feel it firsthand from
the protagonists themselves," he said. "That's extraordinary and it's
very helpful."
The impact such visits are having on the Obama administration, however,
is a subject of debate.
Mr. Farinas' visit occurred in the shadow of headlines from a landmark
meeting last month between U.S. and Cuban officials, who talked about
possibly re-establishing direct mail service between the two nations.
The two nations plan to meet July 17 to talk about regulating migration.
Together, the negotiations have some in Washington wondering whether the
Obama administration is looking to break the stalemate that has defined
U.S. relations with Havana since Cuban leader Fidel Castro agreed to
house Soviet ballistic missiles in 1961.
Mr. Castro, 86, stepped down in 2008, and the top post is now held by
his 82-year-old brother, who has allowed such incremental reforms as the
easing of the ban on his citizens' travel. Raul Castro has said that he
will step down when his five-year term ends in 2018.
But Cuba remains on Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism,
and sources close to the Obama administration told The Washington Times
that ongoing frustration with Havana's detention of American Alan Gross
is likely to prevent the kind of wide-scale redefinition of policy some
thought would come during Mr. Obama's presidency.
Washington wants the release of Mr. Gross, a subcontractor who was
arrested in 2009 while working for a U.S. Agency for International
Development-funded program. Cuban authorities accused him of illegally
delivering satellite phones to individuals in the nation's Jewish
community and gave him a 15-year prison sentence.
His detention served only to amplify back-channel tensions with Havana.
The Castro government has for its part long complained about U.S.
treatment of the "Cuban Five" — a group of Cuban intelligence officers
convicted in Miami in 2001 of conspiracy to spy on U.S. military
installations, Cuban exiles and anti-Castro politicians.
'Modest thaw'
The recent move toward re-establishing direct mail with the U.S. and the
upcoming talks on migration might seem insignificant within the context
of such tensions.
"These talks are not a major breakthrough," said Geoff Thale, a program
director at the Washington Institute on Latin America. "But they are one
more signal that there is at least a modest thaw in the relationship, a
new willingness to talk."
But even those modest steps have been criticized by some U.S. lawmakers,
most prominently Cuban-American Republicans who represent districts in
Florida heavy with anti-Castro exiles.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lethinen, Florida Republican, told The Washington Times
on Thursday that she and other Cuban-American lawmakers had met with
several of the democracy activists and said the meetings reinforced her
skepticism about the changes in Cuba and her support for the economic
embargo.
"This year, many pro-democracy advocates have come to D.C. to shed light
on the charade of the so-called reforms that are nonexistent in Cuba.
Many Cuban-American members of Congress, including me, had the
opportunity to meet with island human rights activists, such as Yoani
Sanchez, Berta Soler, Guillermo Farinas, Rosa Maria Paya, Antonio
Rodiles, and others," said Mrs. Ros-Lehtinen, who also criticized the
Obama administration's mail and migration talks when they were announced
in mid-June.
"During our meeting with Farinas, my colleagues Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart,
Rep. Albio Sires and I had the opportunity to discuss the ongoing human
rights violations continuing to occur in Cuba perpetrated by the Castro
regime and the need to enforce the embargo until Cuba becomes a free and
democratic society," she said.
A source told The Washington Times that Rep. Joe Garcia, Florida
Democrat and a former executive director of the Cuban American National
Foundation, also met with Mr. Farinas during his visit to the Hill last
week.
Mr. Garcia's office did not respond to a Washington Times request for
confirmation of the meeting or a comment on it.
Whether that modest thaw gets helped — or hindered — by the ongoing
visits being made by Cuban dissidents to Washington is a subject of
growing speculation.
"What's interesting about the dissidents is that they all share a strong
critique of the Cuban government, but have a wide range of views about
what the U.S. government ought to do, and about the embargo," said Mr.
Thale. "I think it's useful for the State Department to hear this range
of views, and to take the measure of the dissident community."
The State Department declined to specify what was discussed during
recent meetings at Foggy Bottom with such dissidents as Yoani Maria
Sanchez, a Cuban blogger internationally known for her portrayals of
life in Cuba under the Castro government. Among the others in the
discussions was Berta Soler Fernandez, the current leaders of the
"Ladies in White," an outspoken group of wives of political prisoners in
Cuba.
"We still continue to be concerned by the Cuban government's repeated
use of detention and violence against critics and disruptions of
peaceful assembly," said William Ostick, a spokesman for the
department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. "We continue to call
on the Cuban government to end the practice of arbitrary and
extrajudicial detentions."
One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the
sensitivity of the talks, said that the Castro government has continued
to block the travel of some dissidents to Washington. For instance, Mrs.
Soler Fernandez's husband — construction worker and democracy activist
Luis Moya Acosta — has "not been allowed to travel," the official said.
But, the official added, "the fact of the matter is that Cuba's lifting
of the exit-visa restriction has allowed a certain number of these
people to travel and be able to communicate with broader civil society
and think tanks and governments."
Mr. Farinas was accompanied by Cuban human rights campaigner Elizardo
Sanchez in meeting with Michael G. Kozak, the acting assistant secretary
of state for democracy, human rights, and labor on June 27.
Mr. Farinas spoke the same day on Capitol Hill at the Florida House
Foundation, a nonprofit focused on Florida-related issues, where he
responded to a question about how Cuba's opposition community views the
existing U.S. embargo on trade with the island.
"The overwhelming majority of dissidents on the island do not support
the lifting of the embargo," he said, according to Mr. Claver-Carone,
who posted the remark on a blog he runs in addition to his work as head
of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC.
According to the blog, Mr. Farinas added that "there are those who do
support [the embargo's] lifting, and we respect their criteria, but they
are mostly intellectuals who do not have a membership base behind them."
He and Mr. Sanchez also participated in a recorded conversation with
foreign policy experts at the Center for Strategic International Studies
in Washington.
"It's important for Americans to see that there's dissent within the
island," said Carl Meacham, who heads the center's Americas Program.
"It's not just something that members of Congress or folks that are
living in Florida are talking about."
Those who speak out during the visits "might go back to Cuba and get
arrested, but I think that's what happens when you're trying to improve
the conditions," he added. "These people are great because they know
that there's a consequence for their criticism of the Cuban government
and they love their country so much that they're willing to pay that
consequence."
Source: "Private talks hint at change in U.S.-Cuba relationship -
Washington Times" -
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/4/private-talks-hint-at-change-in-us-cuba-relationsh/?page=all#pagebreak
The Last Days of a House
The Last Days of a House / Regina Coyula
Posted on July 4, 2013
Once, many years ago, the little palace at 13th and 4th in Vedado was
the home of a family, a rich family who abandoned it also leaving behind
other assets at the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 to go into what
they thought was temporary exile and where nothing would even be the
same again.
Along with other family properties, the house was considered embezzled
goods recovered by the government and was then a diplomatic site for one
of our brother countries of Eastern Europe with us in the construction
of socialism.
I didn't know at what point the brotherhood changed in tone, and
socialism as well, and the mansion became an annex to the well-known
MININT (Ministry of the Interior) unit charged with checking telephone
transmissions, about 100 yards away; the annex was in charge of
monitoring email traffic.
The corner is shadowed by powerful poplars sending roots over the
sidewalk, the slender bars were boarded up with metal plates, and the
enormous house was safe from prying eyes and at the mercy of its new owners.
Sheds were erected, the arcades bricked in and the walls painted now and
then with treachery and cruelty to blacken later with humidity until it
became a blot on the landscape.
I couldn't fail to be surprised when I recently saw the metal plates
removed from the perimeter, restoring the garden with the addition of
streetlights, the little palace painted in the pastel shades they favor.
A second youth to host in its heart something like the site for the
struggle for the return to the fatherland of the anti-terrorist fighters
imprisoned in the empire's prisons, and the predictable and final
destination of the ex-member of the Party Central Committee and the
ex-president of the National Assembly of Peoples Power — and of so many
exes, extinct — Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada.
3 July 2013
Source: "The Last Days of a House / Regina Coyula | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-last-days-of-a-house-regina-coyula/
Posted on July 4, 2013
Once, many years ago, the little palace at 13th and 4th in Vedado was
the home of a family, a rich family who abandoned it also leaving behind
other assets at the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 to go into what
they thought was temporary exile and where nothing would even be the
same again.
Along with other family properties, the house was considered embezzled
goods recovered by the government and was then a diplomatic site for one
of our brother countries of Eastern Europe with us in the construction
of socialism.
I didn't know at what point the brotherhood changed in tone, and
socialism as well, and the mansion became an annex to the well-known
MININT (Ministry of the Interior) unit charged with checking telephone
transmissions, about 100 yards away; the annex was in charge of
monitoring email traffic.
The corner is shadowed by powerful poplars sending roots over the
sidewalk, the slender bars were boarded up with metal plates, and the
enormous house was safe from prying eyes and at the mercy of its new owners.
Sheds were erected, the arcades bricked in and the walls painted now and
then with treachery and cruelty to blacken later with humidity until it
became a blot on the landscape.
I couldn't fail to be surprised when I recently saw the metal plates
removed from the perimeter, restoring the garden with the addition of
streetlights, the little palace painted in the pastel shades they favor.
A second youth to host in its heart something like the site for the
struggle for the return to the fatherland of the anti-terrorist fighters
imprisoned in the empire's prisons, and the predictable and final
destination of the ex-member of the Party Central Committee and the
ex-president of the National Assembly of Peoples Power — and of so many
exes, extinct — Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada.
3 July 2013
Source: "The Last Days of a House / Regina Coyula | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-last-days-of-a-house-regina-coyula/
Cuba to launch 8th national audit in anti-corruption efforts
Cuba to launch 8th national audit in anti-corruption efforts
Xinhua | 2013-7-5 13:40:48
By Agencies
Cuba will launch its Eighth Internal Control National Audit on Oct. 21
as part of the government's fight against corruption, a senior official
of the Comptroller General Office announced Thursday.
The one-month audit campaign will look into programs including building
materials sales in the provinces of Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo,
which were hit hard by Hurricane Sandy last October.
Other programs to be audited involve export subsidies, the granting of
land use permits, direct trade between farmers and tourism entities, the
implementation of the 17 recently-adopted measures on agricultural
cooperatives and state payments to private entities.
The Comptroller General Office was created by the the government of
Cuban leader Raul Castro in 2009 to fight corruption and strengthen law
enforcement in the country.
The last general audit was held six months ago, when 34 percent of the
surveyed state-run entities showed deficiencies.
Source: "Cuba to launch 8th national audit in anti-corruption efforts -
WORLD - Globaltimes.cn" - http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/794103.shtml
Xinhua | 2013-7-5 13:40:48
By Agencies
Cuba will launch its Eighth Internal Control National Audit on Oct. 21
as part of the government's fight against corruption, a senior official
of the Comptroller General Office announced Thursday.
The one-month audit campaign will look into programs including building
materials sales in the provinces of Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo,
which were hit hard by Hurricane Sandy last October.
Other programs to be audited involve export subsidies, the granting of
land use permits, direct trade between farmers and tourism entities, the
implementation of the 17 recently-adopted measures on agricultural
cooperatives and state payments to private entities.
The Comptroller General Office was created by the the government of
Cuban leader Raul Castro in 2009 to fight corruption and strengthen law
enforcement in the country.
The last general audit was held six months ago, when 34 percent of the
surveyed state-run entities showed deficiencies.
Source: "Cuba to launch 8th national audit in anti-corruption efforts -
WORLD - Globaltimes.cn" - http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/794103.shtml
Getting Tough on Corruption in Cuba
Getting Tough on Corruption in Cuba
By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Jul 3 2013 (IPS) - As two separate trials of foreign businessmen
continued amid extreme discretion, the Cuban government passed new
anti-corruption measures, apparently indicating the Raúl Castro
government's desire to avoid loose ends with this thorny problem.
Castro, who is in his second and last five-year presidential term, said
"the shameful matter of acts of indiscipline and illegalities" would be
addressed "in-depth" during the parliament meeting set for Saturday Jul.
6. More than once, the president has said that such actions are a threat
to the foundations of the country's social system.
People posting comments on Café 108, the interactive section of the IPS
Cuba bureau's website, expressed scepticism about the possibility of
short-term results in the crackdown on corruption, a problem that some
described as a "product of the crisis" or a phenomenon "present in
everyday life for Cubans."
It is "damaging to the country, a bad example for the coming
generations, insufficiently fought, tolerated, insufficiently reported
by the media, not criticised at all among the populace, permitted in the
family, a way of life for meeting household needs, and a breeding ground
for the enemy," wrote one participant, who signed as "Naue," and also
noted what had happened to essayist Esteban Morales after he published
articles on the issue.
In a recent interview that circulated on the Internet, Morales said that
the problem was being tackled, but still insufficiently.
In his opinion, the public should be urged to act. "Innovation is needed
for combating corruption, because none of the methods used until now
have managed to eliminate the problem. And I think innovation could lie
in organising the masses, not the bureaucrats, for this battle," he told
IPS.
While other analysts agree that legal measures alone are not enough for
addressing this delicate matter, changes and steps taken in that area
are part of a broader effort toward institutionalisation in Cuba
undertaken by Castro, who began by creating the Office of the
Comptroller General of the Republic in 2009.
In June, Cuba`s Central Bank began enforcing a number of general
regulations for detecting and preventing illegal movements of capital,
money laundering and the financing of terrorism, and changes to the
penal code and procedural law were introduced. These regulations
followed the creation in March of a state oversight agency tasked with
uprooting administrative corruption.
Economists consulted by IPS said bank regulations would not discourage
foreign investors.
However, a Latin American executive doing business in Cuba warned that
operations with foreign clients would become more complicated due to the
larger amount of information that will have to be requested by Cuban
banks, which are also obligated to establish verification procedures.
The executive, who is associated with the banking sector, said these
rules were not new to him, given that regulations in the sector were
passed some time ago in his country. And Pável Vidal, an academic and
specialist in financial matters, told IPS that the regulations "are in
line with the new times."
"At an international level, banks are tending to use more caution and
control for all types of transactions," he said. Among other measures,
financial institutions must verify a client's identity with reliable
data from independent sources, continuously monitor the commercial
relationship, and prevent the "opening of coded or numbered accounts."
In another decision this year, the Council of State, presided over by
Castro, announced a decision to create a state oversight commission,
whose principal mission will be "the presentation, analysis and study of
significant cases where illegality, suspected criminal actions and
corruption are manifest."
The new body, charged with "intensifying the study of the causes and
conditions that give rise to acts of corruption," and with curbing and
eliminating the problem, replaces and confers the rank of state agency
on a government commission with the same purpose that existed since 2008
as a government advisory body.
The commission's president is Gladys Bejerano, who has been Comptroller
General of the Republic since that office was created to increase
internal control and "to directly confront any manifestation of
corruption." Bejerano has gained a reputation for vigorously fulfilling
her duties.
In the context of what the official media calls the "perfecting of
Cuba's criminal justice system," in October a number of changes to the
penal code and criminal procedural law will go into effect, with the
goal of updating current regulations and bringing them into harmony with
other changes taking place in the country's social and economic life.
At the same time, the Supreme Court instructed that "particular
attention" was to be paid to cases involving foreign suspects or Cubans
who are permanent residents of other countries; that the former should
be guaranteed consular access as an "essential requirement" for their
defence; and that they should not be tried without the proper diplomatic
steps being taken.
In May, foreign businessmen were tried on corruption-related charges in
two separate trials. Neither the trials, held behind closed doors in
Havana, nor the sentences handed down were reported in the state media.
There were no official announcements about the matter, either, even
though international news agencies reported on the cases.
The foreign press reported that Canadian businessman Sarkis Yacoubian,
originally from Armenia and owner of the import company Tri-Star
Caribbean, and Lebanese citizen Krikor Bayassalian were sentenced in
late June to nine and four years in prison, respectively.
Meanwhile, Amado Fakhre and Stephen Purvis, executives of the British
investment firm Coral Capital Group Ltd, who were found guilty on lesser
charges, were released on time served after they were arrested in 2011,
according to diplomatic sources quoted in foreign media reports.
Between 2011 and 2012, numerous Cuban citizens, a French businessman,
and two Chileans (tried in absentia) were sentenced in Havana on
corruption-related charges.
Source: "IPS – Getting Tough on Corruption in Cuba | Inter Press
Service" -
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/07/getting-tough-on-corruption-in-cuba/
By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Jul 3 2013 (IPS) - As two separate trials of foreign businessmen
continued amid extreme discretion, the Cuban government passed new
anti-corruption measures, apparently indicating the Raúl Castro
government's desire to avoid loose ends with this thorny problem.
Castro, who is in his second and last five-year presidential term, said
"the shameful matter of acts of indiscipline and illegalities" would be
addressed "in-depth" during the parliament meeting set for Saturday Jul.
6. More than once, the president has said that such actions are a threat
to the foundations of the country's social system.
People posting comments on Café 108, the interactive section of the IPS
Cuba bureau's website, expressed scepticism about the possibility of
short-term results in the crackdown on corruption, a problem that some
described as a "product of the crisis" or a phenomenon "present in
everyday life for Cubans."
It is "damaging to the country, a bad example for the coming
generations, insufficiently fought, tolerated, insufficiently reported
by the media, not criticised at all among the populace, permitted in the
family, a way of life for meeting household needs, and a breeding ground
for the enemy," wrote one participant, who signed as "Naue," and also
noted what had happened to essayist Esteban Morales after he published
articles on the issue.
In a recent interview that circulated on the Internet, Morales said that
the problem was being tackled, but still insufficiently.
In his opinion, the public should be urged to act. "Innovation is needed
for combating corruption, because none of the methods used until now
have managed to eliminate the problem. And I think innovation could lie
in organising the masses, not the bureaucrats, for this battle," he told
IPS.
While other analysts agree that legal measures alone are not enough for
addressing this delicate matter, changes and steps taken in that area
are part of a broader effort toward institutionalisation in Cuba
undertaken by Castro, who began by creating the Office of the
Comptroller General of the Republic in 2009.
In June, Cuba`s Central Bank began enforcing a number of general
regulations for detecting and preventing illegal movements of capital,
money laundering and the financing of terrorism, and changes to the
penal code and procedural law were introduced. These regulations
followed the creation in March of a state oversight agency tasked with
uprooting administrative corruption.
Economists consulted by IPS said bank regulations would not discourage
foreign investors.
However, a Latin American executive doing business in Cuba warned that
operations with foreign clients would become more complicated due to the
larger amount of information that will have to be requested by Cuban
banks, which are also obligated to establish verification procedures.
The executive, who is associated with the banking sector, said these
rules were not new to him, given that regulations in the sector were
passed some time ago in his country. And Pável Vidal, an academic and
specialist in financial matters, told IPS that the regulations "are in
line with the new times."
"At an international level, banks are tending to use more caution and
control for all types of transactions," he said. Among other measures,
financial institutions must verify a client's identity with reliable
data from independent sources, continuously monitor the commercial
relationship, and prevent the "opening of coded or numbered accounts."
In another decision this year, the Council of State, presided over by
Castro, announced a decision to create a state oversight commission,
whose principal mission will be "the presentation, analysis and study of
significant cases where illegality, suspected criminal actions and
corruption are manifest."
The new body, charged with "intensifying the study of the causes and
conditions that give rise to acts of corruption," and with curbing and
eliminating the problem, replaces and confers the rank of state agency
on a government commission with the same purpose that existed since 2008
as a government advisory body.
The commission's president is Gladys Bejerano, who has been Comptroller
General of the Republic since that office was created to increase
internal control and "to directly confront any manifestation of
corruption." Bejerano has gained a reputation for vigorously fulfilling
her duties.
In the context of what the official media calls the "perfecting of
Cuba's criminal justice system," in October a number of changes to the
penal code and criminal procedural law will go into effect, with the
goal of updating current regulations and bringing them into harmony with
other changes taking place in the country's social and economic life.
At the same time, the Supreme Court instructed that "particular
attention" was to be paid to cases involving foreign suspects or Cubans
who are permanent residents of other countries; that the former should
be guaranteed consular access as an "essential requirement" for their
defence; and that they should not be tried without the proper diplomatic
steps being taken.
In May, foreign businessmen were tried on corruption-related charges in
two separate trials. Neither the trials, held behind closed doors in
Havana, nor the sentences handed down were reported in the state media.
There were no official announcements about the matter, either, even
though international news agencies reported on the cases.
The foreign press reported that Canadian businessman Sarkis Yacoubian,
originally from Armenia and owner of the import company Tri-Star
Caribbean, and Lebanese citizen Krikor Bayassalian were sentenced in
late June to nine and four years in prison, respectively.
Meanwhile, Amado Fakhre and Stephen Purvis, executives of the British
investment firm Coral Capital Group Ltd, who were found guilty on lesser
charges, were released on time served after they were arrested in 2011,
according to diplomatic sources quoted in foreign media reports.
Between 2011 and 2012, numerous Cuban citizens, a French businessman,
and two Chileans (tried in absentia) were sentenced in Havana on
corruption-related charges.
Source: "IPS – Getting Tough on Corruption in Cuba | Inter Press
Service" -
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/07/getting-tough-on-corruption-in-cuba/
Flap over late cultural figure's estate
Posted on Thursday, 07.04.13
Cuba: Flap over late cultural figure's estate
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
HAVANA -- A dispute is brewing in Cuba over the estate of a prominent
intellectual after authorities carried out a surprise search of his home
last weekend.
Officials say they were conducting an inventory of art, books, furniture
and documents belonging to the late Alfredo Guevara. They say that they
intervened after neighbors reported people coming and going from the
house at night, and that three valuable paintings are missing.
But Guevara's heirs in Mexico are calling it an unjustified and
intrusive raid. They accuse authorities of breaking down doors, hauling
away items in trucks and refusing to explain their actions.
Granddaughter Claudia Guevara says the family is "very taken aback."
Alfredo Guevara was a major figure in Cuba's cultural world until his
death April 19 of a heart attack.
Source: "HAVANA: Cuba: Flap over late cultural figure's estate -
Americas Wires - MiamiHerald.com" -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/04/3484935/cuba-flap-over-late-cultural-figures.html
Cuba: Flap over late cultural figure's estate
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
HAVANA -- A dispute is brewing in Cuba over the estate of a prominent
intellectual after authorities carried out a surprise search of his home
last weekend.
Officials say they were conducting an inventory of art, books, furniture
and documents belonging to the late Alfredo Guevara. They say that they
intervened after neighbors reported people coming and going from the
house at night, and that three valuable paintings are missing.
But Guevara's heirs in Mexico are calling it an unjustified and
intrusive raid. They accuse authorities of breaking down doors, hauling
away items in trucks and refusing to explain their actions.
Granddaughter Claudia Guevara says the family is "very taken aback."
Alfredo Guevara was a major figure in Cuba's cultural world until his
death April 19 of a heart attack.
Source: "HAVANA: Cuba: Flap over late cultural figure's estate -
Americas Wires - MiamiHerald.com" -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/04/3484935/cuba-flap-over-late-cultural-figures.html
Thursday, July 4, 2013
The Cuban Mega-Soap Opera
The Cuban Mega-Soap Opera / Fernando Damaso
Posted on July 4, 2013
The mega-soap opera of the Five Spies, recycled as anti-terrorists and
heroes, for years have occupied a lot of space in the national political
programming. Structured for the seasons, in the best style of the soaps,
they appear one after another, regardless of the actual audience. The
main characters presented at the beginning as meek and innocent doves
attacked by the imperial eagle, according to the season it's broadcast,
have been adapted to the arguments of the interests of the moment.
In the first season, the starring performances were given by the
attorneys, some designated officials and chosen journalists, who were
charged with trying to convince us of their innocence, constantly
bombarding us with scholarly interventions and articles. In it, the main
characters were kept discreetly in the background, with few public
declarations, to give the impression that in addition to imprisonment,
they were subjected to isolation.
In the second, they started to appear alongside the popular figures
(mainly actors who visited them) and their mothers, where they looked
lush and healthy, although on returning these people speak of the cruel
physical and psychological tortures, the subhuman conditions,
harassment, etc. and shed a tear to add spice to their words in the in
the best style of the soap operas from the fifties of the last century.
The melodramatic weight increased from chapter to chapter, with the
incorporation of the loving and long-suffering wives and daughters, who
lost no opportunity for national and international stardom, both in
print and on radio and television.
The third season was characterized by their recycling as intellectuals.
It turns out that not only were they anti-terrorists and heroes, but
also cartoonists, painters, poets and writers. The reason for this
readjusted argument was given so they could incorporate national and
foreign artists and intellectuals and to the cause, and it was necessary
that the main characters belong to that sector. Cartoons, paintings,
poems and writings proliferated, most of poor quality, despite the hard
work of surreptitious cartoonists, painters, poets and writers, trying
to improve the work and make them more digestible.
In this fourth season, with one of the main characters gone from the
plot (he already served his sentence), the argument has moved on to the
moral and altruistic, related to virtue, dignity, loyalty and courage.
Thus, one of those who is still in prison, marvels at the attitude of a
self-employed punch seller in Las Tunas, whom he welcomes and greets for
offering free punch to the ambulances.
The one released, now acting as a hero at events (he has no other work),
participates in whatever congress, conference, meeting or workshop held,
and offers lectures on morality, loyalty, dignity, etc. to students and,
out of sync with the times, talks to them about visiting the Coppelia
ice cream stand, without realizing that this hasn't been an option for
young people for several years, more interested as they are in discos,
hotels, trips abroad and private restaurants (paladares).
Together, with the participation of some artists from the Governmental
Team Cuba, draw up a huge mural for the Cuba Pavilion on the Havana La
Rampa, and so it continues.
We don't know what they're going to try in the fifth season nor those
that will come later, but it seems that the mega-soap opera will be
prolonged in time, considering that in the absence of some more
interesting argument, they will continue stretching it out as a way to
keep a part of the population entertained and make them forget more
important and momentous things, at least until the boredom of "more of
the same" runs its course. The argument, which is nothing original, has
already been used multiple times. They are only changing the characters!
1 July 2013
Source: "The Cuban Mega-Soap Opera / Fernando Damaso | Translating Cuba"
- http://translatingcuba.com/the-cuban-mega-soap-opera-fernando-damaso/
Posted on July 4, 2013
The mega-soap opera of the Five Spies, recycled as anti-terrorists and
heroes, for years have occupied a lot of space in the national political
programming. Structured for the seasons, in the best style of the soaps,
they appear one after another, regardless of the actual audience. The
main characters presented at the beginning as meek and innocent doves
attacked by the imperial eagle, according to the season it's broadcast,
have been adapted to the arguments of the interests of the moment.
In the first season, the starring performances were given by the
attorneys, some designated officials and chosen journalists, who were
charged with trying to convince us of their innocence, constantly
bombarding us with scholarly interventions and articles. In it, the main
characters were kept discreetly in the background, with few public
declarations, to give the impression that in addition to imprisonment,
they were subjected to isolation.
In the second, they started to appear alongside the popular figures
(mainly actors who visited them) and their mothers, where they looked
lush and healthy, although on returning these people speak of the cruel
physical and psychological tortures, the subhuman conditions,
harassment, etc. and shed a tear to add spice to their words in the in
the best style of the soap operas from the fifties of the last century.
The melodramatic weight increased from chapter to chapter, with the
incorporation of the loving and long-suffering wives and daughters, who
lost no opportunity for national and international stardom, both in
print and on radio and television.
The third season was characterized by their recycling as intellectuals.
It turns out that not only were they anti-terrorists and heroes, but
also cartoonists, painters, poets and writers. The reason for this
readjusted argument was given so they could incorporate national and
foreign artists and intellectuals and to the cause, and it was necessary
that the main characters belong to that sector. Cartoons, paintings,
poems and writings proliferated, most of poor quality, despite the hard
work of surreptitious cartoonists, painters, poets and writers, trying
to improve the work and make them more digestible.
In this fourth season, with one of the main characters gone from the
plot (he already served his sentence), the argument has moved on to the
moral and altruistic, related to virtue, dignity, loyalty and courage.
Thus, one of those who is still in prison, marvels at the attitude of a
self-employed punch seller in Las Tunas, whom he welcomes and greets for
offering free punch to the ambulances.
The one released, now acting as a hero at events (he has no other work),
participates in whatever congress, conference, meeting or workshop held,
and offers lectures on morality, loyalty, dignity, etc. to students and,
out of sync with the times, talks to them about visiting the Coppelia
ice cream stand, without realizing that this hasn't been an option for
young people for several years, more interested as they are in discos,
hotels, trips abroad and private restaurants (paladares).
Together, with the participation of some artists from the Governmental
Team Cuba, draw up a huge mural for the Cuba Pavilion on the Havana La
Rampa, and so it continues.
We don't know what they're going to try in the fifth season nor those
that will come later, but it seems that the mega-soap opera will be
prolonged in time, considering that in the absence of some more
interesting argument, they will continue stretching it out as a way to
keep a part of the population entertained and make them forget more
important and momentous things, at least until the boredom of "more of
the same" runs its course. The argument, which is nothing original, has
already been used multiple times. They are only changing the characters!
1 July 2013
Source: "The Cuban Mega-Soap Opera / Fernando Damaso | Translating Cuba"
- http://translatingcuba.com/the-cuban-mega-soap-opera-fernando-damaso/
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