How many Cubans read?
JOSÉ PRATS SARIOL | Miami | 2 de Septiembre de 2016 - 15:11 CEST.
An article by Juan Cruz in the Spanish daily El País features
frightening figures about reading habits in Spain: 39.4% of Spanish
adults have not read a book in the last 12 months. It adds that 57.5%
have not set foot in a bookstore, and 74.7% have not been to a library.
If in the Spanish-speaking country where the most books are published,
and boasting the widest free access to books, and enjoying a European
Community standard of living, despite the local crisis, four out of ten
people have not cracked a book since 2014, what must the figure be for
Cubans, on and off the Island?
When we add to the rampant banalization sweeping the world the dire
everyday problems entailed by the Cuban economy (food low in protein,
the difficulty of accessing transport to get to a library, of paying for
lighting by which to read, and of being packed into overcrowded
housing), I imagine that not even the most deluded defender of the
regime (e.g. Abel Prieto) would dare to claim that there are more
readers than in Spain.
The logic is inexorable: more than half of Cubans - to be charitable -
have not opened a book. This begs a question that is pressing for any
country: how long has this phenomenon prevailed? And it gives rise to
another: what percentage of the population is in the habit of reading?
Scholars who are experts on the issue - even before Robert Escarpit -
agree that a habit means at least one hour of daily reading, on average.
This yardstick is used, without distinguishing between paper (which
still prevails, and much more so in Cuba) and electronic books, steadily
spreading thanks to their price, speed, interactive features, constant
updating and convenient storage; they are especially popular among young
people, although access to current literature via the Internet is still
somewhat restricted, especially when it comes to the Humanities or
Social Sciences.
This sad figure - half of Cuban adults do not read - does not seem
likely to change in the coming decades. While illusory Rousseauian
visions have portrayed a bucolic, traditional rural life that nurtures
reading an as an inevitable and unavoidable form of leisure in Cuba,
there is another question that the Ministry of Education has never dared
to objectively answer: how many teachers read? And its corollary:
however good one is in the classroom, can he inculcate a habit that he
himself does not even have? With what courage, enthusiasm or love? Or
are the students just dumb?
The next generation of adults is doomed in Cuba: in 2030 only one out of
three will read, not to mention (permit me a quick digression) other
"benefits" stemming from their deficient social education and their
teachers' improvisation, and the political habits of shutting up and
clapping while looking skyward.
In addition to the skewed supply of books available, shaped by
ideological and political censorship perpetrated by the Communist Party
(PCC), there are the repeated failures, year after year (only 30% of the
target in 2015) to carry out the Book Institute's publishing and
distribution plans; including its vaunted Fair, where they sell as many
"crafts" and silly trinkets as they do books.
With few releases available, and most of them unappealing, and with
prices that, increasingly, the average person cannot afford, or has to
pay in CUC ... who joins, especially among college students, the circle
of readers? Reading has never been more elitist in Cuba, where there are
municipal libraries - like that in Manzanillo - that for years have
been calling for new books, and for their chairs to be fixed, and the
leaks to be repaired, and for free Internet access.
That distant era of the 1959 Revolution - around 1959, and 1968 or 1970
- was, perhaps, that with the most readers in the history of Cuba. The
National Printing House, headed by Alejo Carpentier, Ediciones R, the
importation and sale of affordable Spanish books, the strong network of
libraries and bookstores, free education for young people and also for
adults under the pedagogical axioms of continuing education, with
reading at their center ... seem to support this hypothesis. Hence, the
contrast with the present is all the more pathetic. And the material
poverty is such a shame, and the repression such an outrage. Repression
in Cuba has censored not just dissident writers, like the late
Guillermo Cabrera Infante, but those in other languages: Milan Kundera,
Vasili Grossman ...
And what about the habit of reading among Cuban exiles? It seems that
none of us have come from another galaxy. Rather, we've been cut from
the same "revolutionary" cloth. Thus, especially the most recent
arrivals suffer from the same vices. Then there is the broader range of
leisure options and diversions, most as trivial as they are seductive.
In addition, children and young people whose mother tongue is Spanish
here in the US soon read and write only in English, such that the
statistics are different, though, for complex reasons, not too different.
So, how many Cubans read? Few! I would argue that the percentage isn't
even half that in Spain. If the Revolution went to pot along time ago,
reading as a shared pastime went with it. And let there be no praising
or seeking shelter in the past (a habit of mental dinosaurs, like Castro
Ruz) because the neither the avalanche of entertainment for imbeciles,
nor the absurdities imposed by pragmatic pedagogues in study programs
and school textbooks should stop us from facing a crisis that threatens
to eradicate the most beautiful and effective way there exists of
nurturing one's intelligence and sensitivity.
Because the truth - despite white the doomsayers would have you believe
- is that today more is read than any time in human history, which does
not preclude recognizing crises, setbacks, mistakes ... Efforts to
increase the amount and the percentage of reading should also address
another question: what are those who read reading?
I'll leave it there. Because sometimes, in my experience, it would be
preferable not to read.
Source: How many Cubans read? | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1472821912_25038.html
Saturday, September 3, 2016
Friday, September 2, 2016
Zika Reveals the True Character of the Cuban Health Service
Zika Reveals the True Character of the Cuban Health Service / Juan Juan
Almeida
Juan Juan Almeida, 18 August 2016 — While wards 3-A (they have also
prepared 3-B) and 4-A, on the third and fourth floors of the "Lucía
Iñiguez Landín" Clinical Surgery Hospital in Holguín, notable for their
absence of basic health care requisites, welcome Cuban patients with
confirmed and suspected cases of Zika, Dengue Fever and Chunkunguya,
ward 5F of the same hospital accommodates foreigners with similar
symptoms, in very different conditions.
"The photos I sent you reveal that this is a health service focussed on
showing a face which is acceptable to international opinion, and that
the enormous difference between the service received by sick foreigners
and Cubans has nothing to do with the everlasting claims of lack of
resources due to the blockade, but rather the indifference of the
government, the state, and MINSAP (Public Health Ministry) toward the
health of Cubans." I have copied the exact words written to me by of one
of the doctors working in that hospital.
"The laboratory tests, which are carried out on each patient who is
admitted with suspected Zika, Dengue Fever or Chikunguya, are sent to
the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK) in Havana,
because," he added, "it is the only place where there is the technology
to confirm, or not, the existence of Zika. And this, along with the
constant holdups in transport and institutional bureaucracy, means
patients have to stay too long in hospital waiting for the results."
"But the most bizarre part," adds the doctor indignantly, "is that the
unexpected increase in patient admissions, and the time they are there
waiting for results, have generated a lot of extra work at Lucía Iñiguez
in Holguín, especially cleaning, which is, inexplicably, being covered
by female prisoners, who have, basically, been tried for prostitution,
with the service contracted to the provincial office of the Ministry of
the Interior Prison Directorate."
Translated by GH
Source: Zika Reveals the True Character of the Cuban Health Service /
Juan Juan Almeida – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/zika-reveals-the-true-character-of-the-cuban-health-service-juan-juan-almeida/
Almeida
Juan Juan Almeida, 18 August 2016 — While wards 3-A (they have also
prepared 3-B) and 4-A, on the third and fourth floors of the "Lucía
Iñiguez Landín" Clinical Surgery Hospital in Holguín, notable for their
absence of basic health care requisites, welcome Cuban patients with
confirmed and suspected cases of Zika, Dengue Fever and Chunkunguya,
ward 5F of the same hospital accommodates foreigners with similar
symptoms, in very different conditions.
"The photos I sent you reveal that this is a health service focussed on
showing a face which is acceptable to international opinion, and that
the enormous difference between the service received by sick foreigners
and Cubans has nothing to do with the everlasting claims of lack of
resources due to the blockade, but rather the indifference of the
government, the state, and MINSAP (Public Health Ministry) toward the
health of Cubans." I have copied the exact words written to me by of one
of the doctors working in that hospital.
"The laboratory tests, which are carried out on each patient who is
admitted with suspected Zika, Dengue Fever or Chikunguya, are sent to
the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK) in Havana,
because," he added, "it is the only place where there is the technology
to confirm, or not, the existence of Zika. And this, along with the
constant holdups in transport and institutional bureaucracy, means
patients have to stay too long in hospital waiting for the results."
"But the most bizarre part," adds the doctor indignantly, "is that the
unexpected increase in patient admissions, and the time they are there
waiting for results, have generated a lot of extra work at Lucía Iñiguez
in Holguín, especially cleaning, which is, inexplicably, being covered
by female prisoners, who have, basically, been tried for prostitution,
with the service contracted to the provincial office of the Ministry of
the Interior Prison Directorate."
Translated by GH
Source: Zika Reveals the True Character of the Cuban Health Service /
Juan Juan Almeida – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/zika-reveals-the-true-character-of-the-cuban-health-service-juan-juan-almeida/
The Ordeal of a Cuban Family Trapped in Panama
The Ordeal of a Cuban Family Trapped in Panama / 14ymedio, Mario Penton
14ymedio, Mario Penton, Miami, 1 September 2016 — Fernanda and Fabio do
not know why they are far from home. They are six and three, but eleven
months ago they left their kindergarten in Holguin, in eastern Cuba.
They have suffered the rigors of the altitude of the Andes, and the
humidity of the tropical forests. They are two children, like dozens of
others, stranded with their parents in Panama, after escaping from a
warehouse in the coastal area of Colombia.
"When we arrived at the airport in Panama, with $20 in our pockets, a
lady gave the children a chocolate and a peanut candy. I remember she
told us, "Some day you have to write down everything you went through to
reach freedom," recounts the children's father, Johans Tamayo Molina, 38.
Tamayo is one of the more than 500 Cubans who are within Panamanian
territory as part of an operation that the government of that country
implemented to assist migrants who managed to get through the jungle or
to enter informally from the sea. Now they are refugees in the shelters
set up for the humanitarian emergency by Caritas Panama, an organization
of the Catholic Church.
"We do not divulge the numbers or locations of the Cubans, because we
fear for their safety. Several have been arrested by Panama Immigration
when they leave the Caritas facilities," explains Iris, a secretary for
Caritas in the country's capital.
So far, through donations, the NGO offers food, water and clothing to
the migrants. In addition, they arrange baths and distribute the people
among various churches. The Red Cross and the Panamanian Health Service
have also collaborated to assist those stranded. After being in areas
prone to tropical diseases some Cubans have become ill, as is the case
with Ubernel Cruz, who is hospitalized with malaria. There are also
reports of deaths in the jungle crossing, such as that of Carmen Issel
Navarro Olazabel, 49, who died on August 20.
According to Tamayo, the journey to the Panamanian city has been one of
the most difficult times of his life. "My wife and I came with the
children from Ecuador. We arrived in Turbo, where an elderly lady took
us into her home. She had nothing of value, even the floor was just
dirt. There we shared in her misery, and we ate the little she had. This
affected us strongly," he says.
Following the decision of Columbia's Foreign Ministry and Immigration to
intervene in the warehouse and surroundings, where more than 1,400
Cubans were taking refuge in Turbo, the Tamayo family embarked for
Sapzurro, a village on the border from where they though they could
enter Panama.
"We crossed by sea, fearing that the Panamanian Coast Guard would shoot
us, because those were the rumors we heard. There were moments of great
tension in boats crammed with immigrants." Tamayo remembers how, in the
middle of the crossing, the tiny son of Aderelys Ofarril, the baby whose
birth in the Turbo shelter made news, was covered by a wave and
"miraculously" saved from drowning.
"When we though the worst was over, the Colombian sailors explained to
us they couldn't take us to the beach because it was Panamanian
territory. They left us on the reefs, with water up to our chests. We
had to carry the children and let the luggage get wet. Everything was
soaked, including our documents."
Once at the Panamanian border area they had to find the town of La Miel,
where Cubans were gathering. "Some told us it was three days away,
others that it was right there. We finally found the town and afterwards
they let us continue toward Panama," he explains.
"The problem now is that we have nowhere to go and no way to get there,"
he says, troubled by the decision of the countries in the area to not
allow the passage of "irregular" migrants, among whom are Cubans.
In an interview with 14ymedio, Costa Rica's Minister of Communication,
Mauricio Herrera Ulloa, explained that his government had not changed
its policy toward irregular Cuban migrants. "In essence, the policy
continues. We are not going to receive irregular migrants."
Herrera explained that as of this week 173 Cubans had been
administratively rejected and three were apprehended trying to enter the
country surreptitiously. "Those who are arrested by the Police have
several possibilities, which range from deportation to their country of
origin to the granting of asylum, on a case by case basis."
The minister was emphatic in stressing that his country would not
negotiate a new airlift with Mexico. The Costa Rican government has
asked the United States to repeal the Cuban Adjustment Act (1966), and
Washington has refused to do so. In response to a question from this
newspaper regarding whether his government had discussed with Cuba the
conditions that cause thousands of Cubans to try to escape the country
every year, the minister said, "There is no prospect that the existing
situation is going to change."
Panama's Foreign Ministry declined to answer the same question. Panama
Immigration explained that more and more migrants have been coming, but
they are being dealt with in a controlled way, with between 100 and 150
taken to the capital. In statements to this newspaper, the director
general of Panama Immigration, Javier Carrillo, explained that if
migrants enter the country in an irregular manner, the law is clear. "We
are not going to allow anyone to remain in our territory without having
documents. We will initiate the process for deportation to the country
of origin, to Colombia or to the country they came from on leaving their
own."
At the same time, Carrillo explained the Controlled Flow program: "A
humanitarian operation for people continue their journey to the north,
as the Haitians do. In the case of Cubans they want to stay and exert
pressure for an airlift, something that isn't going to happen."
With regards to Costa Rica's policy on returning migrants, the official
explained that "this is not Panama's issue."
"They have to know how to continue, because when they started this
journey they knew they would have to pass through many countries
irregularly," he added.
It is Wednesday. The temperature in the capital of Panama is close to 85
degrees. Fernanda and Fabio are playing on the floor, thousands of miles
from home. Along with their parents, they dream of stepping on US soil
"to reach freedom."
"If they refuse to let us pass in Tapachula and return us to Cuba, at
least we have done our best so that our children can live in a free world."
Source: The Ordeal of a Cuban Family Trapped in Panama / 14ymedio, Mario
Penton – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-ordeal-of-a-cuban-family-trapped-in-panama-14ymedio-mario-penton/
14ymedio, Mario Penton, Miami, 1 September 2016 — Fernanda and Fabio do
not know why they are far from home. They are six and three, but eleven
months ago they left their kindergarten in Holguin, in eastern Cuba.
They have suffered the rigors of the altitude of the Andes, and the
humidity of the tropical forests. They are two children, like dozens of
others, stranded with their parents in Panama, after escaping from a
warehouse in the coastal area of Colombia.
"When we arrived at the airport in Panama, with $20 in our pockets, a
lady gave the children a chocolate and a peanut candy. I remember she
told us, "Some day you have to write down everything you went through to
reach freedom," recounts the children's father, Johans Tamayo Molina, 38.
Tamayo is one of the more than 500 Cubans who are within Panamanian
territory as part of an operation that the government of that country
implemented to assist migrants who managed to get through the jungle or
to enter informally from the sea. Now they are refugees in the shelters
set up for the humanitarian emergency by Caritas Panama, an organization
of the Catholic Church.
"We do not divulge the numbers or locations of the Cubans, because we
fear for their safety. Several have been arrested by Panama Immigration
when they leave the Caritas facilities," explains Iris, a secretary for
Caritas in the country's capital.
So far, through donations, the NGO offers food, water and clothing to
the migrants. In addition, they arrange baths and distribute the people
among various churches. The Red Cross and the Panamanian Health Service
have also collaborated to assist those stranded. After being in areas
prone to tropical diseases some Cubans have become ill, as is the case
with Ubernel Cruz, who is hospitalized with malaria. There are also
reports of deaths in the jungle crossing, such as that of Carmen Issel
Navarro Olazabel, 49, who died on August 20.
According to Tamayo, the journey to the Panamanian city has been one of
the most difficult times of his life. "My wife and I came with the
children from Ecuador. We arrived in Turbo, where an elderly lady took
us into her home. She had nothing of value, even the floor was just
dirt. There we shared in her misery, and we ate the little she had. This
affected us strongly," he says.
Following the decision of Columbia's Foreign Ministry and Immigration to
intervene in the warehouse and surroundings, where more than 1,400
Cubans were taking refuge in Turbo, the Tamayo family embarked for
Sapzurro, a village on the border from where they though they could
enter Panama.
"We crossed by sea, fearing that the Panamanian Coast Guard would shoot
us, because those were the rumors we heard. There were moments of great
tension in boats crammed with immigrants." Tamayo remembers how, in the
middle of the crossing, the tiny son of Aderelys Ofarril, the baby whose
birth in the Turbo shelter made news, was covered by a wave and
"miraculously" saved from drowning.
"When we though the worst was over, the Colombian sailors explained to
us they couldn't take us to the beach because it was Panamanian
territory. They left us on the reefs, with water up to our chests. We
had to carry the children and let the luggage get wet. Everything was
soaked, including our documents."
Once at the Panamanian border area they had to find the town of La Miel,
where Cubans were gathering. "Some told us it was three days away,
others that it was right there. We finally found the town and afterwards
they let us continue toward Panama," he explains.
"The problem now is that we have nowhere to go and no way to get there,"
he says, troubled by the decision of the countries in the area to not
allow the passage of "irregular" migrants, among whom are Cubans.
In an interview with 14ymedio, Costa Rica's Minister of Communication,
Mauricio Herrera Ulloa, explained that his government had not changed
its policy toward irregular Cuban migrants. "In essence, the policy
continues. We are not going to receive irregular migrants."
Herrera explained that as of this week 173 Cubans had been
administratively rejected and three were apprehended trying to enter the
country surreptitiously. "Those who are arrested by the Police have
several possibilities, which range from deportation to their country of
origin to the granting of asylum, on a case by case basis."
The minister was emphatic in stressing that his country would not
negotiate a new airlift with Mexico. The Costa Rican government has
asked the United States to repeal the Cuban Adjustment Act (1966), and
Washington has refused to do so. In response to a question from this
newspaper regarding whether his government had discussed with Cuba the
conditions that cause thousands of Cubans to try to escape the country
every year, the minister said, "There is no prospect that the existing
situation is going to change."
Panama's Foreign Ministry declined to answer the same question. Panama
Immigration explained that more and more migrants have been coming, but
they are being dealt with in a controlled way, with between 100 and 150
taken to the capital. In statements to this newspaper, the director
general of Panama Immigration, Javier Carrillo, explained that if
migrants enter the country in an irregular manner, the law is clear. "We
are not going to allow anyone to remain in our territory without having
documents. We will initiate the process for deportation to the country
of origin, to Colombia or to the country they came from on leaving their
own."
At the same time, Carrillo explained the Controlled Flow program: "A
humanitarian operation for people continue their journey to the north,
as the Haitians do. In the case of Cubans they want to stay and exert
pressure for an airlift, something that isn't going to happen."
With regards to Costa Rica's policy on returning migrants, the official
explained that "this is not Panama's issue."
"They have to know how to continue, because when they started this
journey they knew they would have to pass through many countries
irregularly," he added.
It is Wednesday. The temperature in the capital of Panama is close to 85
degrees. Fernanda and Fabio are playing on the floor, thousands of miles
from home. Along with their parents, they dream of stepping on US soil
"to reach freedom."
"If they refuse to let us pass in Tapachula and return us to Cuba, at
least we have done our best so that our children can live in a free world."
Source: The Ordeal of a Cuban Family Trapped in Panama / 14ymedio, Mario
Penton – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-ordeal-of-a-cuban-family-trapped-in-panama-14ymedio-mario-penton/
Cubans Continue To Arrive In Panama and About 300 Take Refuge in Churches
Cubans Continue To Arrive In Panama and About 300 Take Refuge in
Churches / 14ymedio
EFE (14ymedio), Panama, 29 August 2016 – About 300 Cubans took refuge in
several churches in the Panama capital and at the site of Pastoral
Caritas in hopes that the governments of the region will again reach an
agreement for a special operation and they will be transferred to Mexico
to get to the United States.
"At the Caritas headquarters we have about 80 Cubans, but our parishes
are looking after 300 people in total," Denia Manguelis, a
representative of Caritas Panama told EFE.
The situation, he added, highlights the migrant crisis, which erupted in
November of last year when Nicaragua decided to close its borders on the
grounds of national security, which still has not been solved.
"Our obligation as Catholics is to welcome them. Every day new Cubans
arrive, but last Wednesday there was a massive influx," said Manguelis.
The headquarters of the Catholic organization, located in the capital
neighborhood of Ancon, is flooded with mattresses where Cubans rest and
await news from local authorities.
"We are waiting for the president (of Panama, Juan Carlos Varela,) to
help us to fulfill our dream and reach the United States," Odiky
Hernandez, who left Havana at the end of the year when things were still
"the same" on the island, admitted to EFE.
The migrants receive food but also health care, as many have skin
infections and foot ailments from walking, said the Caritas worker.
"My wife is eight months pregnant, it is a risky pregnancy. We crossed
part of the Darien jungle (on the border with Colombia), but she became
ill and the authorities of Panama decided to bring her to the city. I
stayed behind and we rejoined each other a few days ago," said Hernandez.
The decision of the Nicaraguan government to close its border caused,
late last year, about 8,000 migrants, mostly Cubans, to pile up in Costa
Rica and Panama and both countries came to an agreement with Mexico for
a special operation of direct flights to various Mexican cities.
But the flow of migrants has not ceased and both countries decided to
close their borders and prevent the passage of illegal immigrants. First
it was Costa Rica in December 2015 and later Panama, on 9 May of this year.
The passage of Cubans through Central America and through countries like
Brazil, Ecuador, Guyana and Colombia is a phenomenon that has grown in
recent years but has intensified with the restoration of relations
between the United States and Cuba.
Cubans fear that after normalization the Cuban Adjustment Act (1961),
which awards them many advantages in getting US residence, will be
eliminated.
Source: Cubans Continue To Arrive In Panama and About 300 Take Refuge in
Churches / 14ymedio – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/cubans-continue-to-arrive-in-panama-and-about-300-take-refuge-in-churches-14ymedio/
Churches / 14ymedio
EFE (14ymedio), Panama, 29 August 2016 – About 300 Cubans took refuge in
several churches in the Panama capital and at the site of Pastoral
Caritas in hopes that the governments of the region will again reach an
agreement for a special operation and they will be transferred to Mexico
to get to the United States.
"At the Caritas headquarters we have about 80 Cubans, but our parishes
are looking after 300 people in total," Denia Manguelis, a
representative of Caritas Panama told EFE.
The situation, he added, highlights the migrant crisis, which erupted in
November of last year when Nicaragua decided to close its borders on the
grounds of national security, which still has not been solved.
"Our obligation as Catholics is to welcome them. Every day new Cubans
arrive, but last Wednesday there was a massive influx," said Manguelis.
The headquarters of the Catholic organization, located in the capital
neighborhood of Ancon, is flooded with mattresses where Cubans rest and
await news from local authorities.
"We are waiting for the president (of Panama, Juan Carlos Varela,) to
help us to fulfill our dream and reach the United States," Odiky
Hernandez, who left Havana at the end of the year when things were still
"the same" on the island, admitted to EFE.
The migrants receive food but also health care, as many have skin
infections and foot ailments from walking, said the Caritas worker.
"My wife is eight months pregnant, it is a risky pregnancy. We crossed
part of the Darien jungle (on the border with Colombia), but she became
ill and the authorities of Panama decided to bring her to the city. I
stayed behind and we rejoined each other a few days ago," said Hernandez.
The decision of the Nicaraguan government to close its border caused,
late last year, about 8,000 migrants, mostly Cubans, to pile up in Costa
Rica and Panama and both countries came to an agreement with Mexico for
a special operation of direct flights to various Mexican cities.
But the flow of migrants has not ceased and both countries decided to
close their borders and prevent the passage of illegal immigrants. First
it was Costa Rica in December 2015 and later Panama, on 9 May of this year.
The passage of Cubans through Central America and through countries like
Brazil, Ecuador, Guyana and Colombia is a phenomenon that has grown in
recent years but has intensified with the restoration of relations
between the United States and Cuba.
Cubans fear that after normalization the Cuban Adjustment Act (1961),
which awards them many advantages in getting US residence, will be
eliminated.
Source: Cubans Continue To Arrive In Panama and About 300 Take Refuge in
Churches / 14ymedio – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/cubans-continue-to-arrive-in-panama-and-about-300-take-refuge-in-churches-14ymedio/
Cuba reports remarkable success in containing Zika virus
Cuba reports remarkable success in containing Zika virus
By Michael Weissenstein | AP September 2 at 12:25 AM
HAVANA — Six months after President Raul Castro declared war on the Zika
virus in Cuba, a militarized nationwide campaign of intensive mosquito
spraying, monitoring and quarantine appears to be working.
Cuba is among the few countries in the Western Hemisphere that have so
far prevented significant spread of the disease blamed for birth defects
in thousands of children. Only three people have caught Zika in Cuba.
Thirty have been diagnosed with cases of the virus they got outside the
island, according to Cuban officials.
Many are now watching to see whether Cuba is able to maintain control
of Zika or will drop its guard and see widening infection like so many
of its neighbors. The battle against Zika is testing what Cuba calls a
signal accomplishment of its single-party socialist revolution — a free
health-care system that assigns a family doctor to every neighborhood,
with a focus on preventive care and maternal and pediatric health. That
system has come under strain in recent years as thousands of specialists
emigrate to the U.S., Europe and South America for higher pay and the
allied government of Venezuela reduces the flow of subsidized oil that
has been keeping Cuba solvent.
U.S. government scientists fly to Havana in November for a two-day
meeting on animal-borne viruses such as Zika, the first conference of
its kind since the re-establishment of diplomatic relations a year ago.
American researchers say they are eager to learn more and help
incorporate Cuba into U.S.-backed international health programs after a
half-century without significant professional interaction.
"Probably in the last decade we've had two people that have gone down
there for anything," said F. Gray Handley, associate director for
international research affairs at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases. "It has been pretty much of a black box."
So far, there have been about 40 cases of Zika caused by mosquito bites
in Florida. Health officials don't expect widespread outbreaks in the
mainland U.S. but there are thousands of cases in Puerto Rico and
countries such as Brazil and Venezuela are struggling with large-scale
infection.
International medical experts familiar with Cuba say other countries can
learn from Cuba's intense focus on preventing disease, which led the
government to decimate the mosquito population by spraying virtually
every neighborhood in Cuba this spring.
"Cuba's response has been strong and effective," said Dr. Cristian
Morales, the World Health Organization's representative in Cuba. "It has
to do with the capacity to organize the population. Applying it to other
countries, other contexts, would be extremely difficult."
Other elements of Cuba's success so far against Zika may simply not
apply to other nations because they are inextricably tied to a form of
government unique in the Western hemisphere.
Most aspects of life in Cuba are controlled by a single-party state that
rigorously monitors citizens' activities. From neighborhood doctors to
reporters to block watch captains, most people in Cuba work for a
massive government apparatus whose components all ultimately answer to a
single unelected leader, Raul Castro, who heads the military, the state
and the Communist Party.
In February, as Zika spread through South America, Castro announced that
he would be deploying the army to spray homes and workplaces because of
the failings of civilian government fumigators, whom Cubans frequently
brushed off to avoid the smelly, noisy filling of their homes with
insecticidal fog.
"Our people will be able to demonstrate their ability to organize to
maintain the levels of health achieved by the revolution and avoid our
families suffering," he wrote. "As never before in similar efforts, we
must be ever-more disciplined and demanding."
In the following weeks, Cubans cities, towns and villages filled with
olive-clad soldiers moving door-to-door with handheld foggers, and using
sprayer trucks to blanket entire streets with clouds of insecticide.
Cuba's approach compares favorably to the effort in Florida, where
officials are spraying areas where Zika cases have already started
cropping up, said Carlos Espinal, director of the Global Health
Consortium at Florida International University in Miami.
"They started very early in advance of the Zika virus," he said. "Once
you start going behind the cases then it's complicated, you're just
detecting once the transmission is already in place."
The Cuban state has officials from immigration agents to neighborhood
doctors watching for Zika, especially in the thousands of doctors,
nurses and support staff who work overseas in programs that earn the
Cuban government billions of dollars a year in badly needed hard currency.
"The neighborhood family doctor is told, 'In your community there are 10
people who've gone to Jamaica. Two are doctors, three are nurses and the
other six or five are business people, tourists, whatever.' And he has
to keep an eye on them, go to their homes, call them," said Professor
Jorge Perez, director of the Pedro Kouri Tropical Medicine Institute in
Havana.
Perez said 1,700 people with fever or other symptoms had been
quarantined for 24-48 hours while being tested for Zika. All pregnant
women are tested for Zika in their first trimester, he said. Every
worker sent overseas on a government "mission" is quarantined and tested
before returning to the island.
"We're surrounded by Zika, everywhere," he said. "We've learned that
it's better to prevent than to treat."
The Cuban government holds regular video conferences among top health
officials, military officers, Communist Party officials and sanitation
and water experts in the capital and in Cuba's 14 provinces. Even
elementary- and middle-school students had been drawn into the campaign,
with teams of children as young as 10 sent door-to-door to check for
standing water where mosquitoes breed and distribute information about
Zika. Those who defy orders to eliminate standing water or trash or
allow inspections or fumigation are fined.
"In our neighborhood people watch out for surges of mosquitoes, keep
things clean and work with the neighborhood to raise their awareness,"
said Gerardo Olvera, 51, a self-employed vendor of phone cards in
Havana. "Meanwhile the authorities are visiting, fumigating. It's all
designed to get everyone involved."
_____
Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein
Source: Cuba reports remarkable success in containing Zika virus - The
Washington Post -
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/cuba-reports-remarkable-success-in-containing-zika-virus/2016/09/02/72d8a308-70c4-11e6-993f-73c693a89820_story.html
By Michael Weissenstein | AP September 2 at 12:25 AM
HAVANA — Six months after President Raul Castro declared war on the Zika
virus in Cuba, a militarized nationwide campaign of intensive mosquito
spraying, monitoring and quarantine appears to be working.
Cuba is among the few countries in the Western Hemisphere that have so
far prevented significant spread of the disease blamed for birth defects
in thousands of children. Only three people have caught Zika in Cuba.
Thirty have been diagnosed with cases of the virus they got outside the
island, according to Cuban officials.
Many are now watching to see whether Cuba is able to maintain control
of Zika or will drop its guard and see widening infection like so many
of its neighbors. The battle against Zika is testing what Cuba calls a
signal accomplishment of its single-party socialist revolution — a free
health-care system that assigns a family doctor to every neighborhood,
with a focus on preventive care and maternal and pediatric health. That
system has come under strain in recent years as thousands of specialists
emigrate to the U.S., Europe and South America for higher pay and the
allied government of Venezuela reduces the flow of subsidized oil that
has been keeping Cuba solvent.
U.S. government scientists fly to Havana in November for a two-day
meeting on animal-borne viruses such as Zika, the first conference of
its kind since the re-establishment of diplomatic relations a year ago.
American researchers say they are eager to learn more and help
incorporate Cuba into U.S.-backed international health programs after a
half-century without significant professional interaction.
"Probably in the last decade we've had two people that have gone down
there for anything," said F. Gray Handley, associate director for
international research affairs at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases. "It has been pretty much of a black box."
So far, there have been about 40 cases of Zika caused by mosquito bites
in Florida. Health officials don't expect widespread outbreaks in the
mainland U.S. but there are thousands of cases in Puerto Rico and
countries such as Brazil and Venezuela are struggling with large-scale
infection.
International medical experts familiar with Cuba say other countries can
learn from Cuba's intense focus on preventing disease, which led the
government to decimate the mosquito population by spraying virtually
every neighborhood in Cuba this spring.
"Cuba's response has been strong and effective," said Dr. Cristian
Morales, the World Health Organization's representative in Cuba. "It has
to do with the capacity to organize the population. Applying it to other
countries, other contexts, would be extremely difficult."
Other elements of Cuba's success so far against Zika may simply not
apply to other nations because they are inextricably tied to a form of
government unique in the Western hemisphere.
Most aspects of life in Cuba are controlled by a single-party state that
rigorously monitors citizens' activities. From neighborhood doctors to
reporters to block watch captains, most people in Cuba work for a
massive government apparatus whose components all ultimately answer to a
single unelected leader, Raul Castro, who heads the military, the state
and the Communist Party.
In February, as Zika spread through South America, Castro announced that
he would be deploying the army to spray homes and workplaces because of
the failings of civilian government fumigators, whom Cubans frequently
brushed off to avoid the smelly, noisy filling of their homes with
insecticidal fog.
"Our people will be able to demonstrate their ability to organize to
maintain the levels of health achieved by the revolution and avoid our
families suffering," he wrote. "As never before in similar efforts, we
must be ever-more disciplined and demanding."
In the following weeks, Cubans cities, towns and villages filled with
olive-clad soldiers moving door-to-door with handheld foggers, and using
sprayer trucks to blanket entire streets with clouds of insecticide.
Cuba's approach compares favorably to the effort in Florida, where
officials are spraying areas where Zika cases have already started
cropping up, said Carlos Espinal, director of the Global Health
Consortium at Florida International University in Miami.
"They started very early in advance of the Zika virus," he said. "Once
you start going behind the cases then it's complicated, you're just
detecting once the transmission is already in place."
The Cuban state has officials from immigration agents to neighborhood
doctors watching for Zika, especially in the thousands of doctors,
nurses and support staff who work overseas in programs that earn the
Cuban government billions of dollars a year in badly needed hard currency.
"The neighborhood family doctor is told, 'In your community there are 10
people who've gone to Jamaica. Two are doctors, three are nurses and the
other six or five are business people, tourists, whatever.' And he has
to keep an eye on them, go to their homes, call them," said Professor
Jorge Perez, director of the Pedro Kouri Tropical Medicine Institute in
Havana.
Perez said 1,700 people with fever or other symptoms had been
quarantined for 24-48 hours while being tested for Zika. All pregnant
women are tested for Zika in their first trimester, he said. Every
worker sent overseas on a government "mission" is quarantined and tested
before returning to the island.
"We're surrounded by Zika, everywhere," he said. "We've learned that
it's better to prevent than to treat."
The Cuban government holds regular video conferences among top health
officials, military officers, Communist Party officials and sanitation
and water experts in the capital and in Cuba's 14 provinces. Even
elementary- and middle-school students had been drawn into the campaign,
with teams of children as young as 10 sent door-to-door to check for
standing water where mosquitoes breed and distribute information about
Zika. Those who defy orders to eliminate standing water or trash or
allow inspections or fumigation are fined.
"In our neighborhood people watch out for surges of mosquitoes, keep
things clean and work with the neighborhood to raise their awareness,"
said Gerardo Olvera, 51, a self-employed vendor of phone cards in
Havana. "Meanwhile the authorities are visiting, fumigating. It's all
designed to get everyone involved."
_____
Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein
Source: Cuba reports remarkable success in containing Zika virus - The
Washington Post -
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/cuba-reports-remarkable-success-in-containing-zika-virus/2016/09/02/72d8a308-70c4-11e6-993f-73c693a89820_story.html
Cuban stripped of silver medal in 2008 discus for doping
Cuban stripped of silver medal in 2008 discus for doping
Yarelys Barrios of Cuba was stripped of the silver medal in the women's
discus from the 2008 Beijing Olympics on Thursday after testing positive
in a reanalysis of her doping samples.
The Associated Press
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND
Yarelys Barrios of Cuba was stripped of the silver medal in the women's
discus from the 2008 Beijing Olympics on Thursday after testing positive
in a reanalysis of her doping samples.
Barrios tested positive for acetazolamide, a banned diuretic and masking
agent, the International Olympic Committee said in the latest of a
string of doping cases from past Olympics.
The 33-year-old Barrios has been retroactively disqualified and loses
the silver medal, which she won with a throw of 63.64 meters. The silver
now stands to go to Olena Antonova of Ukraine, with China's Song Aimin
in line to move from fourth to bronze. Stephanie Brown Tratfton of the
United States won the gold with a throw of 64.74 meters.
Barrios also competed at the 2012 London Olympics, where she was
upgraded from fourth place to the bronze medal after Russia's Darya
Pishchainikova was retroactively stripped of the silver for doping.
The IOC asked track and field's governing body, the IAAF, to modify the
2008 discus results and consider any further action against Barrios, who
was also a two-time silver medalist at the world championships and
two-time gold medalist in the Pan American Games.
Also Thursday, Qatari sprinter Samuel Adelebari Francis was disqualified
from the Beijing Games after testing positive for the steroid
stanozolol. The Nigerian-born Francis was eliminated in the 100-meter
heats and did not start in the 200.
Francis was the 100-meter champion at the 2007 Asian Games in Amman,
winning in a personal best time of 9.99 seconds.
Barrios and Francis are the latest athletes sanctioned after retests of
more than 1,000 samples from the Beijing and London Olympics produced 98
positive cases. On Wednesday, six athletes — including four medalists —
were disqualified for doping in Beijing.
The IOC stores samples for 10 years to allow them to be reanalyzed when
improved methods become available. The latest tests can detect the use
of steroids going back weeks and months, rather than days.
Source: Cuban stripped of silver medal in 2008 discus for doping | In
Cuba Today - http://www.incubatoday.com/news/article99211137.html
Yarelys Barrios of Cuba was stripped of the silver medal in the women's
discus from the 2008 Beijing Olympics on Thursday after testing positive
in a reanalysis of her doping samples.
The Associated Press
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND
Yarelys Barrios of Cuba was stripped of the silver medal in the women's
discus from the 2008 Beijing Olympics on Thursday after testing positive
in a reanalysis of her doping samples.
Barrios tested positive for acetazolamide, a banned diuretic and masking
agent, the International Olympic Committee said in the latest of a
string of doping cases from past Olympics.
The 33-year-old Barrios has been retroactively disqualified and loses
the silver medal, which she won with a throw of 63.64 meters. The silver
now stands to go to Olena Antonova of Ukraine, with China's Song Aimin
in line to move from fourth to bronze. Stephanie Brown Tratfton of the
United States won the gold with a throw of 64.74 meters.
Barrios also competed at the 2012 London Olympics, where she was
upgraded from fourth place to the bronze medal after Russia's Darya
Pishchainikova was retroactively stripped of the silver for doping.
The IOC asked track and field's governing body, the IAAF, to modify the
2008 discus results and consider any further action against Barrios, who
was also a two-time silver medalist at the world championships and
two-time gold medalist in the Pan American Games.
Also Thursday, Qatari sprinter Samuel Adelebari Francis was disqualified
from the Beijing Games after testing positive for the steroid
stanozolol. The Nigerian-born Francis was eliminated in the 100-meter
heats and did not start in the 200.
Francis was the 100-meter champion at the 2007 Asian Games in Amman,
winning in a personal best time of 9.99 seconds.
Barrios and Francis are the latest athletes sanctioned after retests of
more than 1,000 samples from the Beijing and London Olympics produced 98
positive cases. On Wednesday, six athletes — including four medalists —
were disqualified for doping in Beijing.
The IOC stores samples for 10 years to allow them to be reanalyzed when
improved methods become available. The latest tests can detect the use
of steroids going back weeks and months, rather than days.
Source: Cuban stripped of silver medal in 2008 discus for doping | In
Cuba Today - http://www.incubatoday.com/news/article99211137.html
Thursday, September 1, 2016
JetBlue Ends Abusive Prices of Charter Flights to Cuba
JetBlue Ends Abusive Prices of Charter Flights to Cuba / 14ymedio,
Reinaldo Escobar
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Santa Clara, 31 August 2016 – Raul Caceres
was a bundle of nerves as he put the finishing touches on the JetBlue
Airlines office that opened this Wednesday in the airport in Santa
Clara, Cuba. A few hours before the arrival of the first commercial
flight between Cuba and the United States since 1961, the employee
answered questions from onlookers, as he fixed the company's blue logo,
while constantly looking to the sky.
The Airbus A-320 departed from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida at 10:06 am and
touched down at Abel Santamaria Airport at 10:56 am. A crowd of
relatives, foreign correspondents and security personnel waited at the
doors to the terminal. There was no lack of tears, shouts of welcome and
children scampering from side to side.
The blackboard showing the arrival times for each flight was removed
from outside the airport this Tuesday, where it is now possible to read
only the departure times. A measure that no employee could explain,
although some of those waiting commented jokingly that it was "to avoid
despair."
As word spread that JetBlue's Flight 387 had departed from Fort
Lauderdale the journalists jockeyed for the best spots at the terminal
door and excitement gripped the crowd.
Arriving in the plane was Anthony Foxx, US Secretary of Transportation,
but the biggest hugs went not to the officials but to the passengers
whose family and friends were waiting outside. The plane leaves for US
soil this Wednesday at 1:15 in the afternoon, so those booked on the
return flight were already at the airport.
Everyone was trying to make out the blue of the JetBlue logo, because
the Santa Clara sky was one of dense grey clouds, associated with the
ninth tropical depression of the season that has struck Cuba for several
days, especially in the central and western parts of the island.
"Right now you can't book a passage here," Caceres told this newspaper,
but "you can do it on the internet." A piece of information supported by
Nestor Nuñez, JetBlue's manager, who added that the Santa Clara airport
office is the company's "only one right now," on the island.
With a capacity for 220 passengers, the JetBlue flight marked a
milestone with a 99 dollar one-way fare, a price that includes the
insurance payment the Cuban government requires from visitors to the island.
"This is going to help put an end to the abuse," commented Silvia, who
was waiting for another flight outside the Santa Clara terminal, but who
out of curiosity joined the welcome for the passengers coming from Fort
Lauderdale. "For decades the prices for such a short trip have been
abusive," she explained. "My son travels frequently to the Caiman
Islands and it costs more than three times as much," complained the
woman. With the recently inaugurated JetBlue service, "our family will
be over the moon," she said.
Pedro, a taxi driver waiting for a couple of Americans coming in on the
flight, sees other advantages to direct commercial flights. "It will be
easier to bring luggage now, because before firms like Havanatur [one of
the companies managing charter flights to the island] took advantage of
it to set very high fees for every last pound."
Economy class tickets on JetBlue to Cuba carry a fee of $25 for the
first suitcase, $35 for the second and $100 for the third. So for a
total of $160, passengers can bring in around 90 pounds of luggage, good
news for those who are bringing donations, gifts and other products
unavailable on the island.
"If this continues," Pedro begins to say with a certain suspicion,
"we're going to see all those Cubans with Spanish passports going to
Miami and buying things to bring back on these flights." The route of
the "mules" is now through the Bahamas, the Caiman Islands or through
charter flights. "It's going to result in lower prices on the black
market," the taxi driver speculates.
A customs employee told this newspaper that "after a process of
improvement, the airport has the capacity to serve 600 passengers an
hour." A figure still far below the number of travelers that could
result from 110 daily commercial flights from the United States to Cuba,
approved by the US Department of Transportation.
Source: JetBlue Ends Abusive Prices of Charter Flights to Cuba /
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/jetblue-ends-abusive-prices-of-charter-flights-to-cuba-14ymedio-reinaldo-escobar/
Reinaldo Escobar
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Santa Clara, 31 August 2016 – Raul Caceres
was a bundle of nerves as he put the finishing touches on the JetBlue
Airlines office that opened this Wednesday in the airport in Santa
Clara, Cuba. A few hours before the arrival of the first commercial
flight between Cuba and the United States since 1961, the employee
answered questions from onlookers, as he fixed the company's blue logo,
while constantly looking to the sky.
The Airbus A-320 departed from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida at 10:06 am and
touched down at Abel Santamaria Airport at 10:56 am. A crowd of
relatives, foreign correspondents and security personnel waited at the
doors to the terminal. There was no lack of tears, shouts of welcome and
children scampering from side to side.
The blackboard showing the arrival times for each flight was removed
from outside the airport this Tuesday, where it is now possible to read
only the departure times. A measure that no employee could explain,
although some of those waiting commented jokingly that it was "to avoid
despair."
As word spread that JetBlue's Flight 387 had departed from Fort
Lauderdale the journalists jockeyed for the best spots at the terminal
door and excitement gripped the crowd.
Arriving in the plane was Anthony Foxx, US Secretary of Transportation,
but the biggest hugs went not to the officials but to the passengers
whose family and friends were waiting outside. The plane leaves for US
soil this Wednesday at 1:15 in the afternoon, so those booked on the
return flight were already at the airport.
Everyone was trying to make out the blue of the JetBlue logo, because
the Santa Clara sky was one of dense grey clouds, associated with the
ninth tropical depression of the season that has struck Cuba for several
days, especially in the central and western parts of the island.
"Right now you can't book a passage here," Caceres told this newspaper,
but "you can do it on the internet." A piece of information supported by
Nestor Nuñez, JetBlue's manager, who added that the Santa Clara airport
office is the company's "only one right now," on the island.
With a capacity for 220 passengers, the JetBlue flight marked a
milestone with a 99 dollar one-way fare, a price that includes the
insurance payment the Cuban government requires from visitors to the island.
"This is going to help put an end to the abuse," commented Silvia, who
was waiting for another flight outside the Santa Clara terminal, but who
out of curiosity joined the welcome for the passengers coming from Fort
Lauderdale. "For decades the prices for such a short trip have been
abusive," she explained. "My son travels frequently to the Caiman
Islands and it costs more than three times as much," complained the
woman. With the recently inaugurated JetBlue service, "our family will
be over the moon," she said.
Pedro, a taxi driver waiting for a couple of Americans coming in on the
flight, sees other advantages to direct commercial flights. "It will be
easier to bring luggage now, because before firms like Havanatur [one of
the companies managing charter flights to the island] took advantage of
it to set very high fees for every last pound."
Economy class tickets on JetBlue to Cuba carry a fee of $25 for the
first suitcase, $35 for the second and $100 for the third. So for a
total of $160, passengers can bring in around 90 pounds of luggage, good
news for those who are bringing donations, gifts and other products
unavailable on the island.
"If this continues," Pedro begins to say with a certain suspicion,
"we're going to see all those Cubans with Spanish passports going to
Miami and buying things to bring back on these flights." The route of
the "mules" is now through the Bahamas, the Caiman Islands or through
charter flights. "It's going to result in lower prices on the black
market," the taxi driver speculates.
A customs employee told this newspaper that "after a process of
improvement, the airport has the capacity to serve 600 passengers an
hour." A figure still far below the number of travelers that could
result from 110 daily commercial flights from the United States to Cuba,
approved by the US Department of Transportation.
Source: JetBlue Ends Abusive Prices of Charter Flights to Cuba /
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/jetblue-ends-abusive-prices-of-charter-flights-to-cuba-14ymedio-reinaldo-escobar/
A Menu To Suit Visitors
A Menu To Suit Visitors / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Viñales, 28 August 2016 — The tastes of visitors shape the
menu of the restaurants located in tourist areas of the country. While
menus targeted to Cuban customers prioritize pork, fried foods and the
always-popular pizzas, places with a more foreign clientele focus on the
Mediterranean diet and vegetarian dishes.
In the town of Viñales, in Pinar del Rio, the Aubergine Restaurant is a
clear example of how demand affects culinary options. The tourists come
to the place looking for salads, plates with a predominance of
vegetables and natural juices. The proprietors found this market niche
in the midst of an area where the majority of private restaurants offer
seafood and meat.
Tomatoes, avocado, yucca, rice pilaf and eggplant rule the premises, a
few yards from a state restaurant which does not reach beyond fried
chicken and steak. Experimentation and gastronomic innovation, in these
parts, belongs to the sector of the self-employed.
At the end of the last century vegetarian restaurants flourished
throughout the island in a campaign for a healthier diet that the
official press was quick to identify as "Fidel Castro's idea." Of those
premises, with subsidized prices, none remain and now only the most
select places, designed for tourists, put the flavors of the Cuban
countryside on their tables.
Source: A Menu To Suit Visitors / 14ymedio – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/a-menu-to-suit-visitors-14ymedio/
14ymedio, Viñales, 28 August 2016 — The tastes of visitors shape the
menu of the restaurants located in tourist areas of the country. While
menus targeted to Cuban customers prioritize pork, fried foods and the
always-popular pizzas, places with a more foreign clientele focus on the
Mediterranean diet and vegetarian dishes.
In the town of Viñales, in Pinar del Rio, the Aubergine Restaurant is a
clear example of how demand affects culinary options. The tourists come
to the place looking for salads, plates with a predominance of
vegetables and natural juices. The proprietors found this market niche
in the midst of an area where the majority of private restaurants offer
seafood and meat.
Tomatoes, avocado, yucca, rice pilaf and eggplant rule the premises, a
few yards from a state restaurant which does not reach beyond fried
chicken and steak. Experimentation and gastronomic innovation, in these
parts, belongs to the sector of the self-employed.
At the end of the last century vegetarian restaurants flourished
throughout the island in a campaign for a healthier diet that the
official press was quick to identify as "Fidel Castro's idea." Of those
premises, with subsidized prices, none remain and now only the most
select places, designed for tourists, put the flavors of the Cuban
countryside on their tables.
Source: A Menu To Suit Visitors / 14ymedio – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/a-menu-to-suit-visitors-14ymedio/
Extremist Today, Democrat Tomorrow
Extremist Today, Democrat Tomorrow / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez
14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 31 August 2016 – In the
nineties, this student was one of the most militant in his university
classroom, until he managed to get a fellowship in Spain, and today he
writes asking me, "Why do you put up with so much and not rebel?" From a
rabid militant of the Young Communist Union (UJC) he went on to carve
out a history as a clandestine fighter for the democracy he had to
escape to because on this island "little could be done."
The story of this colleague, who overturned his ideology at breakneck
speed, came to mind lately on reading the intense controversy over the
work sanction against the Radio Holguin journalist Jose Ramirez Pantoja.
The young reporter published on his digital diary a statement by Karina
Marron, deputy director for the newspaper Granma, where she defined the
current economic and social conditions as the basis for "a perfect storm."
Along with the disciplinary measure, which consisted in permanent
separation from his job at the station, Pantoja had to undergo a process
of public disqualification that reached its climax in a text signed by
Aixa Hevia, vice president of the Cuban Journalists Union (UPEC). The
official accused him of wanting to "create a history that allows him to
cross to the Miami media." Perhaps a projection of what she herself
would do if the opportunity presented itself.
It would not be the first time that a well-known face from Cuba's
official journalism ended up "crossing the pond" and declaring on the
other side that it was because "at that time I believed, but not any
more." The greatest extremists I have met in my life have ended up this
way: burying their red or olive-green attire, without intoning the
self-criticism that would give some relief to the victims they caused
with their outbursts.
Over time, if ever, the instruments of censorship such as Aixa Hevia
undergo a process of selective amnesia and forget all the damage they
did to those who demonstrated greater honesty and consistency. They
leave behind a trail of colleagues they have betrayed and helped to
depose, without even sending them a short note of apology or condolences.
It is not Pantoja, in this case, who is carving out a "history," but the
sectarians like the vice president of UPEC, who is capable of lashing
out against someone she should defend. As a representative of the
journalists' union, she should protect her colleague, instead of helping
to sink him. But she has preferred to act in harmony with the censors
rather than in solidarity with a professional who simply defended
freedom of the press, information transparency and the right of his
readers to be informed about what journalists think.
This is not about speculating whether Pantoja will exercise his right to
perform as a journalist in another country because he is prohibited from
doing so in his own. It seems more likely that someday it will be Aixa
Hevia who will shed her chameleon skin to change her color in turn, to
the dictates of the next power for whom she wants to behave as a mere
instrument.
Source: Extremist Today, Democrat Tomorrow / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez –
Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/extremist-today-democrat-tomorrow-14ymedio-yoani-sanchez/
14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 31 August 2016 – In the
nineties, this student was one of the most militant in his university
classroom, until he managed to get a fellowship in Spain, and today he
writes asking me, "Why do you put up with so much and not rebel?" From a
rabid militant of the Young Communist Union (UJC) he went on to carve
out a history as a clandestine fighter for the democracy he had to
escape to because on this island "little could be done."
The story of this colleague, who overturned his ideology at breakneck
speed, came to mind lately on reading the intense controversy over the
work sanction against the Radio Holguin journalist Jose Ramirez Pantoja.
The young reporter published on his digital diary a statement by Karina
Marron, deputy director for the newspaper Granma, where she defined the
current economic and social conditions as the basis for "a perfect storm."
Along with the disciplinary measure, which consisted in permanent
separation from his job at the station, Pantoja had to undergo a process
of public disqualification that reached its climax in a text signed by
Aixa Hevia, vice president of the Cuban Journalists Union (UPEC). The
official accused him of wanting to "create a history that allows him to
cross to the Miami media." Perhaps a projection of what she herself
would do if the opportunity presented itself.
It would not be the first time that a well-known face from Cuba's
official journalism ended up "crossing the pond" and declaring on the
other side that it was because "at that time I believed, but not any
more." The greatest extremists I have met in my life have ended up this
way: burying their red or olive-green attire, without intoning the
self-criticism that would give some relief to the victims they caused
with their outbursts.
Over time, if ever, the instruments of censorship such as Aixa Hevia
undergo a process of selective amnesia and forget all the damage they
did to those who demonstrated greater honesty and consistency. They
leave behind a trail of colleagues they have betrayed and helped to
depose, without even sending them a short note of apology or condolences.
It is not Pantoja, in this case, who is carving out a "history," but the
sectarians like the vice president of UPEC, who is capable of lashing
out against someone she should defend. As a representative of the
journalists' union, she should protect her colleague, instead of helping
to sink him. But she has preferred to act in harmony with the censors
rather than in solidarity with a professional who simply defended
freedom of the press, information transparency and the right of his
readers to be informed about what journalists think.
This is not about speculating whether Pantoja will exercise his right to
perform as a journalist in another country because he is prohibited from
doing so in his own. It seems more likely that someday it will be Aixa
Hevia who will shed her chameleon skin to change her color in turn, to
the dictates of the next power for whom she wants to behave as a mere
instrument.
Source: Extremist Today, Democrat Tomorrow / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez –
Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/extremist-today-democrat-tomorrow-14ymedio-yoani-sanchez/
They Wanted to be Like Che… and They Are
They Wanted to be Like Che… and They Are / Luis Felipe Rojas
Luis Felipe Rojas, 31 August 2016 — Abusers, they beat women in the
street, participate in acts of repudiation, and monitor those who think
differently. They are the kids of the feared Rapid Response Brigade.
Now they are thirty-somethings. They graduated from Cuban universities,
but before they were wearing red bandanas in school, raising their hands
to say "We will be like Che"… and they are.
The Honorary Officials (OH) of State Security are a wildcard of
repression in the service of the Castro tyranny. They started by
betraying their classmates for making a politically tinted joke, or the
neighbor who sold rice in the black market, and now they recycle
themselves in monitoring posts in the neighborhoods where dissidents and
opponents of the Havana regime live.
When the military whistle sounds they turn to kicking women and men who
have no more defense than their shouts of "Freedom for the political
prisoners! Down with Fidel! Laura Pollan lives!"
They wear tight shirts, cheap knock-off gold-colored watches made in
China, and they always wear a frown. This is how they appear in the
photos of the most well-known press agencies in the world, such as AP,
EFE and REUTERS, but no one can hold them to account. The majority of
the western democracies are too focused on picking up the crumbs that
let them get a foothold with those who grant permission in Cuba: to site
a hotel chain, operate flights, whatever it might be, a little corner of
the cake raffled off by the honchos of the Cuban Revolution…
They have traveled the world not precisely to make war like the assassin
Che Guevara, but to say they are persecuted politicians, to get a visa
to stay or work, and to return with a handful of bills to show off to
their fellow countrymen.
They are the sons of communism. Their prize is to sit themselves down in
the first little neighborhood joint and raise a national beer, a plate
with half a pound of pork and in some cases rent a third-hand car.
They wanted to be like Che… and they are. The shamelessness of the human
being has no limits.
Share this:
Source: They Wanted to be Like Che… and They Are / Luis Felipe Rojas –
Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/they-wanted-to-be-like-che-and-they-are-luis-felipe-rojas/
Luis Felipe Rojas, 31 August 2016 — Abusers, they beat women in the
street, participate in acts of repudiation, and monitor those who think
differently. They are the kids of the feared Rapid Response Brigade.
Now they are thirty-somethings. They graduated from Cuban universities,
but before they were wearing red bandanas in school, raising their hands
to say "We will be like Che"… and they are.
The Honorary Officials (OH) of State Security are a wildcard of
repression in the service of the Castro tyranny. They started by
betraying their classmates for making a politically tinted joke, or the
neighbor who sold rice in the black market, and now they recycle
themselves in monitoring posts in the neighborhoods where dissidents and
opponents of the Havana regime live.
When the military whistle sounds they turn to kicking women and men who
have no more defense than their shouts of "Freedom for the political
prisoners! Down with Fidel! Laura Pollan lives!"
They wear tight shirts, cheap knock-off gold-colored watches made in
China, and they always wear a frown. This is how they appear in the
photos of the most well-known press agencies in the world, such as AP,
EFE and REUTERS, but no one can hold them to account. The majority of
the western democracies are too focused on picking up the crumbs that
let them get a foothold with those who grant permission in Cuba: to site
a hotel chain, operate flights, whatever it might be, a little corner of
the cake raffled off by the honchos of the Cuban Revolution…
They have traveled the world not precisely to make war like the assassin
Che Guevara, but to say they are persecuted politicians, to get a visa
to stay or work, and to return with a handful of bills to show off to
their fellow countrymen.
They are the sons of communism. Their prize is to sit themselves down in
the first little neighborhood joint and raise a national beer, a plate
with half a pound of pork and in some cases rent a third-hand car.
They wanted to be like Che… and they are. The shamelessness of the human
being has no limits.
Share this:
Source: They Wanted to be Like Che… and They Are / Luis Felipe Rojas –
Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/they-wanted-to-be-like-che-and-they-are-luis-felipe-rojas/
UNPACU Reaches 5th Anniversary Amid Achievements And Criticisms
UNPACU Reaches 5th Anniversary Amid Achievements And Criticisms /
14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Mario Penton
14ymedio, Luz Escobar/Mario Penton, Havana/Miami, 24 August 2016 – Five
years can be a long time in Cuba, when we're talking about an opposition
organization. In the complex kaleidoscope of dissident groups and
parties that make up civil society on the island, many are active for
only a few months or languish amid repression and illegality. The
Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) will reach its fifth anniversary on
Wednesday with several of its initial objectives completed and others
still in progress.
While the Cuban government classifies all opponents as "enemies" of the
nation and "hirelings of the Empire," UNPACU members have preferred to
describe themselves in their own words. They consider themselves "a
citizens' organization and a pro-democracy and progressive social
movement" interested in "freedom, sovereignty and prosperity." Their
epicenter is the city of Santiago de Cuba and other areas in Eastern
Cuba, although they also have a presence in Havana.
Organized around their leader and most visible head, Jose Daniel Ferrer,
UNPACU was born in 2011 after the process of the release of the last
prisoners of the 2003 Black Spring, among whom was Ferrer. Ferrer's
prior experience was in the ranks of the Christian Liberation Movement
(MCL), which was vital for his own political development, according to
what he has said in several interviews.
Over the years, several faces have stood out in UNPACU's ranks, such as
the young Carlos Amel Oliva, who recently led a hunger strike in protest
of the arbitrary arrests and confiscations of personal belongings.
However, UNPACU has also suffered, like the rest of the country, the
constant exodus of its members through the refugee program offered by
the United States Embassy and other paths of emigration.
Among those who have decided to stay on the island, is Lisandra Robert,
who never imagined she would join an opposition organization. Her future
was to be a teacher, standing in front of a classroom and reviewing
mathematical formulas and theories. However, her studies at Frank Pais
Garcia University of Teaching Sciences ended all of a sudden when she
refused to serve as an undercover agent for State Security. The
"mission" they demanded of her was to report on the activities of
several activists of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, among them two of her
family members.
Today, Robert is a member of UNPACU, and although she started with the
group as an independent journalist, with the passing of time she has
addressed the issue of political prisoners. "At first it was hard,
because the neighbors participated in the acts of repudiation, they
wouldn't look at us or speak to us." Something has changed because "now
they are the ones most supportive of us."
Among the characteristics that distinguish the work of UNPACU is the use
of new technologies. Through copies on CDs, USB memory sticks or
external hard discs, Cubans have seen the acts of repudiation from the
point of view of the opponents who have been victims of them, and they
have even used tools such as Twitter, which they teach in their Santiago
headquarters.
"This is a way to bring more people to all the work we do and they
receive it with love and great appreciation, because we also include
news that doesn't appear in the national media," says Robert.
Zaqueo Báez's face became known during the mass Pope Francis offered in
Havana's Plaza of the Revolution last September. Along with other
colleagues, the current UNPACU coordinator in Havana approached the
Bishop of Rome and demanded the release of the political prisoners. This
Tuesday he told 14ymedio that he felt "very proud" of belonging to the
movement dedicating "great efforts" to "social work undertaken directly
with people to involve those most in need."
Jose Daniel Ferrer, on a visit to Miami, said he was satisfied by what
has been achieved and feels that "in its first year UNPACU was already
the opposition organization with the most activists in Cuba." The figure
of 3,000 members stated publicly has been a center of controversy, such
as that sustained between Ferrer and Edmundo Garcia, a Cuban journalist
living in Florida. On this occasion, Garcia asked sarcastically, "How
many people (from UNPACU) can you introduce me to?"
Garcia also questioned the organization's source of funding and said the
United States government was the main source, through the National
Endowment for Democracy. Ferrer openly acknowledged that part of the
funding comes from the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) and
what he describes as "generous contributions from Cuban exiles."
Former political prisoner Felix Navarro belonged to UNPACU, but said he
had left the group "without grievance, without separation." He considers
it "the most representative organization in opposition to Castro within
the Cuban nation." In addition, "it is in the street and has created a
very positive mechanism from the point of view of the information to
immediately find out what is happening every minute."
For José Daniel Ferrer one of the biggest challenges is to achieve "a
capable and committed leadership" because many activists "scattered on
the island don't do better activism because of not having good
leadership." The limitation on resources such as "equipment, disks,
printers and the money it takes to bring more people into the work of
spreading information" also hinders the action of training, he adds.
The dissident Manuel Cuesta Morua considers UNPACU to be "one of the
most active organizations, especially in non-violent protests in the
streets, bringing light and giving relief to the demands of ordinary
people." A result of this activism is that in April of this year the
number of political prisoners belonging to the organization rose to 40
people.
When Jose Daniel Ferrer was asked if UNPACU can remain active without
him in the personal leadership position that has characterized Cuban
political movements, he responds without hesitation: "It has been
demonstrated very clearly in my absence."
Source: UNPACU Reaches 5th Anniversary Amid Achievements And Criticisms
/ 14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Mario Penton – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/unpacu-reaches-5th-anniversary-among-achievements-and-criticisms-14ymedio-luz-escobar-mario-penton/
14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Mario Penton
14ymedio, Luz Escobar/Mario Penton, Havana/Miami, 24 August 2016 – Five
years can be a long time in Cuba, when we're talking about an opposition
organization. In the complex kaleidoscope of dissident groups and
parties that make up civil society on the island, many are active for
only a few months or languish amid repression and illegality. The
Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) will reach its fifth anniversary on
Wednesday with several of its initial objectives completed and others
still in progress.
While the Cuban government classifies all opponents as "enemies" of the
nation and "hirelings of the Empire," UNPACU members have preferred to
describe themselves in their own words. They consider themselves "a
citizens' organization and a pro-democracy and progressive social
movement" interested in "freedom, sovereignty and prosperity." Their
epicenter is the city of Santiago de Cuba and other areas in Eastern
Cuba, although they also have a presence in Havana.
Organized around their leader and most visible head, Jose Daniel Ferrer,
UNPACU was born in 2011 after the process of the release of the last
prisoners of the 2003 Black Spring, among whom was Ferrer. Ferrer's
prior experience was in the ranks of the Christian Liberation Movement
(MCL), which was vital for his own political development, according to
what he has said in several interviews.
Over the years, several faces have stood out in UNPACU's ranks, such as
the young Carlos Amel Oliva, who recently led a hunger strike in protest
of the arbitrary arrests and confiscations of personal belongings.
However, UNPACU has also suffered, like the rest of the country, the
constant exodus of its members through the refugee program offered by
the United States Embassy and other paths of emigration.
Among those who have decided to stay on the island, is Lisandra Robert,
who never imagined she would join an opposition organization. Her future
was to be a teacher, standing in front of a classroom and reviewing
mathematical formulas and theories. However, her studies at Frank Pais
Garcia University of Teaching Sciences ended all of a sudden when she
refused to serve as an undercover agent for State Security. The
"mission" they demanded of her was to report on the activities of
several activists of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, among them two of her
family members.
Today, Robert is a member of UNPACU, and although she started with the
group as an independent journalist, with the passing of time she has
addressed the issue of political prisoners. "At first it was hard,
because the neighbors participated in the acts of repudiation, they
wouldn't look at us or speak to us." Something has changed because "now
they are the ones most supportive of us."
Among the characteristics that distinguish the work of UNPACU is the use
of new technologies. Through copies on CDs, USB memory sticks or
external hard discs, Cubans have seen the acts of repudiation from the
point of view of the opponents who have been victims of them, and they
have even used tools such as Twitter, which they teach in their Santiago
headquarters.
"This is a way to bring more people to all the work we do and they
receive it with love and great appreciation, because we also include
news that doesn't appear in the national media," says Robert.
Zaqueo Báez's face became known during the mass Pope Francis offered in
Havana's Plaza of the Revolution last September. Along with other
colleagues, the current UNPACU coordinator in Havana approached the
Bishop of Rome and demanded the release of the political prisoners. This
Tuesday he told 14ymedio that he felt "very proud" of belonging to the
movement dedicating "great efforts" to "social work undertaken directly
with people to involve those most in need."
Jose Daniel Ferrer, on a visit to Miami, said he was satisfied by what
has been achieved and feels that "in its first year UNPACU was already
the opposition organization with the most activists in Cuba." The figure
of 3,000 members stated publicly has been a center of controversy, such
as that sustained between Ferrer and Edmundo Garcia, a Cuban journalist
living in Florida. On this occasion, Garcia asked sarcastically, "How
many people (from UNPACU) can you introduce me to?"
Garcia also questioned the organization's source of funding and said the
United States government was the main source, through the National
Endowment for Democracy. Ferrer openly acknowledged that part of the
funding comes from the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) and
what he describes as "generous contributions from Cuban exiles."
Former political prisoner Felix Navarro belonged to UNPACU, but said he
had left the group "without grievance, without separation." He considers
it "the most representative organization in opposition to Castro within
the Cuban nation." In addition, "it is in the street and has created a
very positive mechanism from the point of view of the information to
immediately find out what is happening every minute."
For José Daniel Ferrer one of the biggest challenges is to achieve "a
capable and committed leadership" because many activists "scattered on
the island don't do better activism because of not having good
leadership." The limitation on resources such as "equipment, disks,
printers and the money it takes to bring more people into the work of
spreading information" also hinders the action of training, he adds.
The dissident Manuel Cuesta Morua considers UNPACU to be "one of the
most active organizations, especially in non-violent protests in the
streets, bringing light and giving relief to the demands of ordinary
people." A result of this activism is that in April of this year the
number of political prisoners belonging to the organization rose to 40
people.
When Jose Daniel Ferrer was asked if UNPACU can remain active without
him in the personal leadership position that has characterized Cuban
political movements, he responds without hesitation: "It has been
demonstrated very clearly in my absence."
Source: UNPACU Reaches 5th Anniversary Amid Achievements And Criticisms
/ 14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Mario Penton – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/unpacu-reaches-5th-anniversary-among-achievements-and-criticisms-14ymedio-luz-escobar-mario-penton/
THE AMERICAN FUGITIVES OF HAVANA
THE AMERICAN FUGITIVES OF HAVANA
By Jon Lee Anderson , AUGUST 31, 2016
When a cold war winds down, what happens to its spies and traitors? The
British double agents Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, and Donald Maclean were
able to see out their days in Moscow while it was still ruled by
Communists, without fears that their hosts might betray them and send
them back to an unforgiving Great Britain.
Other scenarios, such as that of the United States and Cuba, are more
complicated. On December 17, 2014, the same day that the United States
and Cuba announced the restoration of diplomatic relations, an exchange
of long-imprisoned spies and double agents also took place. Three Cuban
sleeper agents who had been imprisoned in the U.S. since 1998 were
released from U.S. federal prisons and flown home. Simultaneously,
Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, a C.I.A. double agent who had been held in a
Cuban prison since 1995, was flown to the U.S., as was Alan Gross, a
State Department contractor who was arrested in 2009 for smuggling
Internet equipment onto the island for dissident groups.
But the fates of many fugitive citizens who were given refuge in the
United States or Cuba remain in limbo. Among them are people sought back
home for crimes including murder, kidnapping, bank robbery, and
terrorism. Curious about such people, I recently asked an American
official what prevented the U.S. government from arresting, and possibly
extraditing, Luis Posada Carriles, an eighty-eight-year-old Cuban exile
living in Florida, on terrorism charges.
Posada, a former C.I.A. operative who spent most of the past half
century involved in efforts to violently destabilize the Castro
government, has been on the top of Cuba's most-wanted list for decades.
I ticked off the long list of his alleged crimes—most notably, the
bombing of Cubana de Aviación Flight 455, in 1976, which killed all
seventy-three passengers onboard, and a number of bombings and
assassination attempts across the Western Hemisphere. As recently as
1997, Posada admitted to planning the bombing of a Havana hotel, which
killed an Italian tourist.
The official listened calmly, nodding his head as I spoke. Eventually,
he told me, "The complication is that Cuba is also harboring people that
the United States would like to see face justice back home." He
mentioned Joanne Chesimard, who goes by the name Assata Shakur, the aunt
of the late rapper Tupac Shakur and a former member of the Black
Liberation Army, a short-lived offshoot of the Black Panther Party that
was devoted to armed struggle.
Shakur, a native New Yorker, has been living in Cuba since 1984. She
arrived there after several years on the lam, following her escape from
a prison in New Jersey, where she was serving a life sentence for the
1973 murder of a U.S. state trooper. (She was also tried for but not
convicted of crimes including bank robbery, kidnapping, and other
murders.) Shakur was granted political asylum in Cuba, where she was
given a job and a home. She is now sixty-nine, remains on the F.B.I.'s
Most Wanted list, and is the undisputed doyenne of the estimated
seventy-odd American fugitives living in Cuba. Her 1987 memoir, "Assata:
An Autobiography," whose cover features a photograph of her looking over
her shoulder at the camera, can be found in many of Havana's state-run
bookstores, alongside books about Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
Most of the American fugitives in Cuba are radicals of Shakur's era.
Charlie Hill, who is in his mid-sixties, was a member of a militant
group called the Republic of New Afrika, which sought to create an
independent black nation in the American South. Hill was accused, with
two comrades, of killing a policeman in New Mexico in 1971. Several
weeks later, the three men hijacked a passenger plane to Cuba, where
they were granted asylum. Both of Hill's comrades have died, but he
remains in Havana. And there is the Columbia University graduate Cheri
Dalton, who goes by Nehanda Abiodun, also a veteran of the Republic of
New Afrika. Abiodun is sought for her involvement in the armed robbery
of a Brink's armored truck in New York in 1981, in which two policemen
and a security guard were killed. She is also thought to have helped
Shakur break out of prison. Abiodun, who either fled to Cuba with Shakur
or followed shortly after, has reinvented herself there as a mentor to
rap artists.
Through the years, I've met several of the American fugitives in Cuba.
One of them, the quiet and unassuming William Lee Brent, was the
bodyguard of the Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver. After a 1968
shootout with police in San Francisco, Brent hijacked a jet to Havana,
where he went on to teach English in elementary and secondary schools.
When I met him, back in the nineteen-nineties, he expressed a
bittersweet nostalgia for life in the United States. Not long afterward,
he wrote a memoir, "Long Time Gone," about his life on the run. Brent
died, of pneumonia, in 2006.
I also ran into Robert Vesco, a flamboyantly wealthy American financier
who became an outlaw, in 1973, after the S.E.C. accused him of robbing a
mutual fund of over two hundred million dollars. Vesco moved between the
Bahamas, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica before fleeing to Cuba, in 1983.
Before long, he was rumored to be assisting the Castro government with
its international financial dealings. When I saw him, one day in 1994,
we were the only two people waiting at a baggage carousel in a tiny room
in the Havana airport terminal for Caribbean flights. I'd been advised
by Cuban officials not to show any interest in him, and so I tried my
best not to make eye contact. He seemed to have similar concerns, and
discreetly moved behind a nearby pillar.
Another day, I met Vesco's wife and two sons after giving a talk at an
international school in Havana. She and her boys came up to thank me for
my talk, and we chatted for a while. They went by the last name Quinn,
and had Costa Rican passports, but the faculty at the school knew who
they really were. Shortly after that, Robert Vesco fell afoul of the
Cuban authorities. In 1995, he was arrested, on suspicion of being a
spy; he was eventually convicted of "fraud and illicit economic
activity" and sentenced to thirteen years in prison. (In a curious
twist, Richard Nixon's nephew, Donald Nixon, Jr., who was visiting Vesco
at the time of his arrest and apparently doing business with him, was
also arrested and questioned by Cuban authorities, but was later
released and allowed to leave Cuba.) Vesco never made it out of prison;
he died, of an illness, in 2007, two years short of his release date.
A pair of rogue former C.I.A. agents also saw out their days in Havana.
After eleven years of covert service, from 1957 to 1968, Philip Agee was
apparently conscience-stricken by what he had seen and done, and became
a whistle-blower, publishing a tell-all book, "Inside the Company: CIA
Diary," in 1975. Agee was expelled, under U.S. pressure, from a handful
of Western European countries and finally ended up in Cuba. In the years
before his death, in 2008, Agee ran a Web site called cubalinda.com,
which helped Americans who wished to circumvent the travel ban.
Frank Terpil, the other former C.I.A. agent in Havana, died in March.
Not one to suffer from a guilty conscience, Terpil was a more colorful
personality than Agee, and happily told his story to various television
documentarians over the years. Terpil, who left the C.I.A. in 1971, was
reportedly fired for unspecified inappropriate activities, which may
have included making money on the side during a posting in India. Terpil
later sold his services to Muammar Qaddafi and the Ugandan despot Idi
Amin. In 1981, an American judge sentenced Terpil, in absentia, to
fifty-three years in prison for charges that included conspiring to
smuggle guns to South America. Terpil made it to Cuba, so the story
went, via the Cuban embassy in Beirut, where he asked for asylum in
1982, as the Israelis invaded Lebanon. Once in Cuba, he lived under the
pseudonym Robert Hunter and, if anyone asked, claimed to be Australian.
William Morales, a former leader of a radical Puerto Rican guerrilla
group that was known as the Armed Forces of National Liberation, or
F.A.L.N., is another longtime fugitive and Havana resident whom I have
met a couple of times through the years. Beginning in the
nineteen-seventies, the F.A.L.N. waged an armed campaign for Puerto
Rican independence. It carried out a number of bombing attacks in and
around New York, including the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing, which
killed four people and injured more than forty. Morales was the
F.A.L.N.'s bomb maker, and a bomb-making explosion in 1978, which blew
off most of his fingers and left his face badly scarred, led to his
arrest and made him easy to identify. Still, Morales somehow managed to
escape from the prison ward of Bellevue Hospital, where he was
undergoing treatment, and made his way to Mexico.
I first met Morales in 1983, in a Mexico City prison called Reformatorio
del Norte. He had been tracked down by Mexican federal police and
arrested, following a shootout in which one of the cops and Morales's
two companions had been killed. Because of his mangled hands, Morales
had not fired any weapons himself, but he was charged with aiding and
abetting the murder of the federale because he was heard to shout to his
sidekicks, "Mata el hijueputa" ("Kill the son of a bitch"). I spent most
of a day talking with Morales, in the hopes of being able to publish an
interview with him, and recall him as having a madcap sense of humor. He
spoke freely with me on the condition that I would not publish anything
until he had consulted on the matter with his comrades. (Later, through
an intermediary, I was sent word that the F.A.L.N.'s politburo
disapproved of the idea, so the interview had to remain off the record.)
In 1988, the Mexican government, which apparently wanted to thumb its
nose at the U.S. request for Morales's extradition, released him from
prison and allowed him to travel to Cuba.
I saw Morales again in 1999, at the University of Havana, where a throng
of journalists had gathered to listen to the recently installed
Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez give a speech to an audience that included
Fidel Castro, Castro's brother Raúl, and most of Cuba's politburo. It
was an extraordinary occasion, at which Chávez spoke for ninety minutes
and Fidel sat attentively, smiling and listening to him as if to a
prodigal son. At some point, I spotted Morales standing next to me; he
was instantly recognizable, of course, because of his mutilated face and
hands. When I introduced myself and reminded him of our previous
encounter, he lit up and shook my hand warmly, and we whispered to each
other as Chávez's speech dragged on.
At one point, Morales leaned over to me and quipped that, except for
Pope John Paul II, who had come to Cuba the year before, he had never
seen "el viejo," as he called Fidel, sit and listen to somebody else
talk for so long. What we were witnessing, it turned out, was the
beginning of a close friendship between the Cuban leader and the younger
Venezuelan man, a bond that ended only with Chávez's death, from cancer,
three years ago. That same day, the two men signed their first "oil for
doctors" deal, in which Cuba received much-needed shipments of
Venezuelan oil in exchange for tens of thousands of Cuban doctors going
to work in Venezuela's slums and countryside.
According to his F.B.I. rap sheet, which offers a hundred thousand
dollars for information leading to his arrest, Morales is now sixty-six
and "should be considered armed and dangerous and an escape risk."
The status of Morales, Shakur, and the other American fugitives has been
repeatedly raised by American diplomats in the negotiations that the
U.S. and Cuba have conducted since December, 2014. In June, there was
talk that Shakur and the others might be extradited, but both Hill and
Abiodun told journalists that their Cuban handlers had reassured them
that they were "safe." There was no word from Shakur, who has kept a low
profile for some time. Indeed, as long as Cuba's government continues to
claim to be a "revolutionary" one, it seems highly unlikely that its
officials would turn over the aging American radicals to the U.S.
criminal-justice system. To do so would be to betray the promise of safe
refuge it made them back in the days of the Cold War, when their acts of
violence had a political context.
In the U.S., meanwhile, Posada also seems to be on safe ground. In his
last known violent conspiracy, he and three accomplices were apprehended
in Panama, in 2000. They were in possession of two hundred pounds of
explosives and were plotting to kill Castro, who had arrived to attend a
regional heads-of-state summit. Posada and the others were duly tried,
convicted, and imprisoned, but, in 2004, in the final hours of her
administration, Panama's outgoing conservative President, Mireya
Moscoso, pardoned them and allowed them to slip away.
Soon enough, Posada reappeared in the United States, where he was
arrested, on charges of immigration fraud: he was accused, bizarrely
enough, of lying to U.S. immigration authorities about his involvement
with the bombings in Cuba. He was soon released on bond. In 2011, after
a trial in which his lawyer indicated that Posada was prepared to go
public with the details of his C.I.A. past as part of his defense, he
was found not guilty on all charges.
So Posada remains a free man, in Miami, where, by all accounts, he lives
peaceably. He is still regarded as a hero by some Cuban exiles for his
role in the anti-Castro cause. He may well be the mastermind of the
first terrorist bombing of a civilian passenger jet to have ever taken
place in the Western Hemisphere, but, as the American official told me,
"It's complicated."
Jon Lee Anderson, a staff writer, began contributing to The New Yorker
in 1998.
Source: The American Fugitives of Havana - The New Yorker -
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-american-fugitives-of-havana
By Jon Lee Anderson , AUGUST 31, 2016
When a cold war winds down, what happens to its spies and traitors? The
British double agents Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, and Donald Maclean were
able to see out their days in Moscow while it was still ruled by
Communists, without fears that their hosts might betray them and send
them back to an unforgiving Great Britain.
Other scenarios, such as that of the United States and Cuba, are more
complicated. On December 17, 2014, the same day that the United States
and Cuba announced the restoration of diplomatic relations, an exchange
of long-imprisoned spies and double agents also took place. Three Cuban
sleeper agents who had been imprisoned in the U.S. since 1998 were
released from U.S. federal prisons and flown home. Simultaneously,
Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, a C.I.A. double agent who had been held in a
Cuban prison since 1995, was flown to the U.S., as was Alan Gross, a
State Department contractor who was arrested in 2009 for smuggling
Internet equipment onto the island for dissident groups.
But the fates of many fugitive citizens who were given refuge in the
United States or Cuba remain in limbo. Among them are people sought back
home for crimes including murder, kidnapping, bank robbery, and
terrorism. Curious about such people, I recently asked an American
official what prevented the U.S. government from arresting, and possibly
extraditing, Luis Posada Carriles, an eighty-eight-year-old Cuban exile
living in Florida, on terrorism charges.
Posada, a former C.I.A. operative who spent most of the past half
century involved in efforts to violently destabilize the Castro
government, has been on the top of Cuba's most-wanted list for decades.
I ticked off the long list of his alleged crimes—most notably, the
bombing of Cubana de Aviación Flight 455, in 1976, which killed all
seventy-three passengers onboard, and a number of bombings and
assassination attempts across the Western Hemisphere. As recently as
1997, Posada admitted to planning the bombing of a Havana hotel, which
killed an Italian tourist.
The official listened calmly, nodding his head as I spoke. Eventually,
he told me, "The complication is that Cuba is also harboring people that
the United States would like to see face justice back home." He
mentioned Joanne Chesimard, who goes by the name Assata Shakur, the aunt
of the late rapper Tupac Shakur and a former member of the Black
Liberation Army, a short-lived offshoot of the Black Panther Party that
was devoted to armed struggle.
Shakur, a native New Yorker, has been living in Cuba since 1984. She
arrived there after several years on the lam, following her escape from
a prison in New Jersey, where she was serving a life sentence for the
1973 murder of a U.S. state trooper. (She was also tried for but not
convicted of crimes including bank robbery, kidnapping, and other
murders.) Shakur was granted political asylum in Cuba, where she was
given a job and a home. She is now sixty-nine, remains on the F.B.I.'s
Most Wanted list, and is the undisputed doyenne of the estimated
seventy-odd American fugitives living in Cuba. Her 1987 memoir, "Assata:
An Autobiography," whose cover features a photograph of her looking over
her shoulder at the camera, can be found in many of Havana's state-run
bookstores, alongside books about Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
Most of the American fugitives in Cuba are radicals of Shakur's era.
Charlie Hill, who is in his mid-sixties, was a member of a militant
group called the Republic of New Afrika, which sought to create an
independent black nation in the American South. Hill was accused, with
two comrades, of killing a policeman in New Mexico in 1971. Several
weeks later, the three men hijacked a passenger plane to Cuba, where
they were granted asylum. Both of Hill's comrades have died, but he
remains in Havana. And there is the Columbia University graduate Cheri
Dalton, who goes by Nehanda Abiodun, also a veteran of the Republic of
New Afrika. Abiodun is sought for her involvement in the armed robbery
of a Brink's armored truck in New York in 1981, in which two policemen
and a security guard were killed. She is also thought to have helped
Shakur break out of prison. Abiodun, who either fled to Cuba with Shakur
or followed shortly after, has reinvented herself there as a mentor to
rap artists.
Through the years, I've met several of the American fugitives in Cuba.
One of them, the quiet and unassuming William Lee Brent, was the
bodyguard of the Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver. After a 1968
shootout with police in San Francisco, Brent hijacked a jet to Havana,
where he went on to teach English in elementary and secondary schools.
When I met him, back in the nineteen-nineties, he expressed a
bittersweet nostalgia for life in the United States. Not long afterward,
he wrote a memoir, "Long Time Gone," about his life on the run. Brent
died, of pneumonia, in 2006.
I also ran into Robert Vesco, a flamboyantly wealthy American financier
who became an outlaw, in 1973, after the S.E.C. accused him of robbing a
mutual fund of over two hundred million dollars. Vesco moved between the
Bahamas, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica before fleeing to Cuba, in 1983.
Before long, he was rumored to be assisting the Castro government with
its international financial dealings. When I saw him, one day in 1994,
we were the only two people waiting at a baggage carousel in a tiny room
in the Havana airport terminal for Caribbean flights. I'd been advised
by Cuban officials not to show any interest in him, and so I tried my
best not to make eye contact. He seemed to have similar concerns, and
discreetly moved behind a nearby pillar.
Another day, I met Vesco's wife and two sons after giving a talk at an
international school in Havana. She and her boys came up to thank me for
my talk, and we chatted for a while. They went by the last name Quinn,
and had Costa Rican passports, but the faculty at the school knew who
they really were. Shortly after that, Robert Vesco fell afoul of the
Cuban authorities. In 1995, he was arrested, on suspicion of being a
spy; he was eventually convicted of "fraud and illicit economic
activity" and sentenced to thirteen years in prison. (In a curious
twist, Richard Nixon's nephew, Donald Nixon, Jr., who was visiting Vesco
at the time of his arrest and apparently doing business with him, was
also arrested and questioned by Cuban authorities, but was later
released and allowed to leave Cuba.) Vesco never made it out of prison;
he died, of an illness, in 2007, two years short of his release date.
A pair of rogue former C.I.A. agents also saw out their days in Havana.
After eleven years of covert service, from 1957 to 1968, Philip Agee was
apparently conscience-stricken by what he had seen and done, and became
a whistle-blower, publishing a tell-all book, "Inside the Company: CIA
Diary," in 1975. Agee was expelled, under U.S. pressure, from a handful
of Western European countries and finally ended up in Cuba. In the years
before his death, in 2008, Agee ran a Web site called cubalinda.com,
which helped Americans who wished to circumvent the travel ban.
Frank Terpil, the other former C.I.A. agent in Havana, died in March.
Not one to suffer from a guilty conscience, Terpil was a more colorful
personality than Agee, and happily told his story to various television
documentarians over the years. Terpil, who left the C.I.A. in 1971, was
reportedly fired for unspecified inappropriate activities, which may
have included making money on the side during a posting in India. Terpil
later sold his services to Muammar Qaddafi and the Ugandan despot Idi
Amin. In 1981, an American judge sentenced Terpil, in absentia, to
fifty-three years in prison for charges that included conspiring to
smuggle guns to South America. Terpil made it to Cuba, so the story
went, via the Cuban embassy in Beirut, where he asked for asylum in
1982, as the Israelis invaded Lebanon. Once in Cuba, he lived under the
pseudonym Robert Hunter and, if anyone asked, claimed to be Australian.
William Morales, a former leader of a radical Puerto Rican guerrilla
group that was known as the Armed Forces of National Liberation, or
F.A.L.N., is another longtime fugitive and Havana resident whom I have
met a couple of times through the years. Beginning in the
nineteen-seventies, the F.A.L.N. waged an armed campaign for Puerto
Rican independence. It carried out a number of bombing attacks in and
around New York, including the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing, which
killed four people and injured more than forty. Morales was the
F.A.L.N.'s bomb maker, and a bomb-making explosion in 1978, which blew
off most of his fingers and left his face badly scarred, led to his
arrest and made him easy to identify. Still, Morales somehow managed to
escape from the prison ward of Bellevue Hospital, where he was
undergoing treatment, and made his way to Mexico.
I first met Morales in 1983, in a Mexico City prison called Reformatorio
del Norte. He had been tracked down by Mexican federal police and
arrested, following a shootout in which one of the cops and Morales's
two companions had been killed. Because of his mangled hands, Morales
had not fired any weapons himself, but he was charged with aiding and
abetting the murder of the federale because he was heard to shout to his
sidekicks, "Mata el hijueputa" ("Kill the son of a bitch"). I spent most
of a day talking with Morales, in the hopes of being able to publish an
interview with him, and recall him as having a madcap sense of humor. He
spoke freely with me on the condition that I would not publish anything
until he had consulted on the matter with his comrades. (Later, through
an intermediary, I was sent word that the F.A.L.N.'s politburo
disapproved of the idea, so the interview had to remain off the record.)
In 1988, the Mexican government, which apparently wanted to thumb its
nose at the U.S. request for Morales's extradition, released him from
prison and allowed him to travel to Cuba.
I saw Morales again in 1999, at the University of Havana, where a throng
of journalists had gathered to listen to the recently installed
Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez give a speech to an audience that included
Fidel Castro, Castro's brother Raúl, and most of Cuba's politburo. It
was an extraordinary occasion, at which Chávez spoke for ninety minutes
and Fidel sat attentively, smiling and listening to him as if to a
prodigal son. At some point, I spotted Morales standing next to me; he
was instantly recognizable, of course, because of his mutilated face and
hands. When I introduced myself and reminded him of our previous
encounter, he lit up and shook my hand warmly, and we whispered to each
other as Chávez's speech dragged on.
At one point, Morales leaned over to me and quipped that, except for
Pope John Paul II, who had come to Cuba the year before, he had never
seen "el viejo," as he called Fidel, sit and listen to somebody else
talk for so long. What we were witnessing, it turned out, was the
beginning of a close friendship between the Cuban leader and the younger
Venezuelan man, a bond that ended only with Chávez's death, from cancer,
three years ago. That same day, the two men signed their first "oil for
doctors" deal, in which Cuba received much-needed shipments of
Venezuelan oil in exchange for tens of thousands of Cuban doctors going
to work in Venezuela's slums and countryside.
According to his F.B.I. rap sheet, which offers a hundred thousand
dollars for information leading to his arrest, Morales is now sixty-six
and "should be considered armed and dangerous and an escape risk."
The status of Morales, Shakur, and the other American fugitives has been
repeatedly raised by American diplomats in the negotiations that the
U.S. and Cuba have conducted since December, 2014. In June, there was
talk that Shakur and the others might be extradited, but both Hill and
Abiodun told journalists that their Cuban handlers had reassured them
that they were "safe." There was no word from Shakur, who has kept a low
profile for some time. Indeed, as long as Cuba's government continues to
claim to be a "revolutionary" one, it seems highly unlikely that its
officials would turn over the aging American radicals to the U.S.
criminal-justice system. To do so would be to betray the promise of safe
refuge it made them back in the days of the Cold War, when their acts of
violence had a political context.
In the U.S., meanwhile, Posada also seems to be on safe ground. In his
last known violent conspiracy, he and three accomplices were apprehended
in Panama, in 2000. They were in possession of two hundred pounds of
explosives and were plotting to kill Castro, who had arrived to attend a
regional heads-of-state summit. Posada and the others were duly tried,
convicted, and imprisoned, but, in 2004, in the final hours of her
administration, Panama's outgoing conservative President, Mireya
Moscoso, pardoned them and allowed them to slip away.
Soon enough, Posada reappeared in the United States, where he was
arrested, on charges of immigration fraud: he was accused, bizarrely
enough, of lying to U.S. immigration authorities about his involvement
with the bombings in Cuba. He was soon released on bond. In 2011, after
a trial in which his lawyer indicated that Posada was prepared to go
public with the details of his C.I.A. past as part of his defense, he
was found not guilty on all charges.
So Posada remains a free man, in Miami, where, by all accounts, he lives
peaceably. He is still regarded as a hero by some Cuban exiles for his
role in the anti-Castro cause. He may well be the mastermind of the
first terrorist bombing of a civilian passenger jet to have ever taken
place in the Western Hemisphere, but, as the American official told me,
"It's complicated."
Jon Lee Anderson, a staff writer, began contributing to The New Yorker
in 1998.
Source: The American Fugitives of Havana - The New Yorker -
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-american-fugitives-of-havana
Cuba Turns to Foreign Investors as Cheap Venezuelan Oil Fades
Cuba Turns to Foreign Investors as Cheap Venezuelan Oil Fades
Ezra Fieser - Vanessa Dezem
September 1, 2016 — 1:00 AM CEST
Nearly two years after presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro announced
a thaw in relations, Cuba's communist government is turning to foreign
investors to boost renewable energy as it faces cutbacks in cheap oil
imports from Venezuela.
The government formed by Fidel Castro in 1959 and led by his brother,
Raul, is pitching large wind and solar projects and biomass plants that
run on sugar cane to foreign companies at conferences like one opening
Thursday in Havana. The goal: Bring billions of dollars into sectors
that until recently were controlled by state-run entities, and lift the
amount of electricity produced by renewables to 24 percent by 2030 from
4 percent today.
The shift is less about ideology than supply and demand. The island
nation relies heavily on oil-burning power plants that run on subsidized
imports from Venezuela. With an economic crisis in that country
threatening those supplies, Cuban officials fear a return to the
turbulence of the early 1990s when funding from the former Soviet Union
began drying up.
"It's unprecedented for the government to be making an open presentation
of this scale to international companies like this," said Andrew
MacDonald, director and vice president of Havana Energy, which is
building biomass plants at sugar refineries. "This is a top priority for
the Cuban government."
A decade-old initiative by Fidel Castro to improve energy efficiency and
introduce renewable power has failed to reduce Cuba's reliance on oil,
natural gas and diesel fuel, which supply 95 percent of its electricity,
according to a 2015 annual report from the government's National Office
of Statistics and Information.
A new goal to add 2.1 gigawatts of capacity from biomass plants, wind
farms, solar projects and hydroelectric generators will cost about $3.5
billion, according to government estimates. To get there, Cuba recently
said it will allow foreign companies in some circumstances to own
projects rather than requiring them to form joint ventures with
state-owned companies. The Obama administration has also carved out
exemptions from a U.S. economic embargo to allow companies to export
products and technology to the island.
"The opportunities there are huge," said Bernardo Fernandez, Mexico
director of operations for Hive Energy, a U.K. company that has agreed
to build a 50-megawatt solar project in the Mariel Free Zone outside of
Havana. "They don't really need to attract anyone. They just need to
clear the path for companies."
Banking Challenge
Banking in the country remains a challenge. In June, Florida-based
Stonegate Bank became the first U.S. bank to issue a credit card that
can be used in Cuba.
"They have ambitious goals with respect to renewable energy and its
going to involve heavy investment," said Lee Ann Evans, senior policy
adviser at Washington-based Engage Cuba, a coalition of companies and
organizations pushing to lift economic and travel restrictions. "It's
not as simple as replacing light bulbs."
And, while Cuba also needs to reassure international investors, change
is in the air. JetBlue flight 387 from Fort Lauderdale touched down in
Santa Clara Wednesday, the first scheduled, commercial flight from the
U.S. in more than half a century. Passengers included U.S. Secretary of
Transportation Anthony Foxx, according to Cuban officials.
Oil Bounty
"Cuba needs to develop a clear plan for energy development that can
serve as a guideline for investors," Ramon Fiestas Hummler, chairman of
the Latin America Committee at the Global Wind Energy Council, said in
an interview in Rio de Janeiro. "The country is changing its policies,
but confidence still doesn't exist."
Meanwhile Cuba, one of the largest beneficiaries of the late Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez's policy of sharing his country's oil bounty, may
be facing a reckoning. Under an agreement with Venezuela, Cuba receives
more than 90,000 barrels of oil a day, which it partially pays for by
sending doctors, teachers, and military advisers to Venezuela.
In a July address to the Communist party, Raul Castro said Cuba has seen
"a contraction in fuel shipments" from Venezuela, without detailing the
size of the cut. It had racked up about $15 billion in debt as of the
end of 2015, according to a February report by Bank of America Merrill
Lynch.
The circumstances have rekindled memories of Cuba's so called Special
Period, a euphemism for the economic crisis that began in 1989 with the
breakup of the Soviet Union characterized primarily by oil shortages.
The crisis led to the introduction of sustainable agriculture, the
decreased use of automobiles and other industry overhauls as people were
forced to live without many goods they had become used to.
"Cuba wants to open its frontiers," said Jean-Claude Fernand Robert,
general manager for renewables in Latin America for General Electric Co.
"The country still has a lot of work to do."
Source: Cuba Turns to Foreign Investors as Cheap Venezuelan Oil Fades -
Bloomberg -
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-31/cuba-turns-to-foreign-investors-as-cheap-venezuelan-oil-fades
Ezra Fieser - Vanessa Dezem
September 1, 2016 — 1:00 AM CEST
Nearly two years after presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro announced
a thaw in relations, Cuba's communist government is turning to foreign
investors to boost renewable energy as it faces cutbacks in cheap oil
imports from Venezuela.
The government formed by Fidel Castro in 1959 and led by his brother,
Raul, is pitching large wind and solar projects and biomass plants that
run on sugar cane to foreign companies at conferences like one opening
Thursday in Havana. The goal: Bring billions of dollars into sectors
that until recently were controlled by state-run entities, and lift the
amount of electricity produced by renewables to 24 percent by 2030 from
4 percent today.
The shift is less about ideology than supply and demand. The island
nation relies heavily on oil-burning power plants that run on subsidized
imports from Venezuela. With an economic crisis in that country
threatening those supplies, Cuban officials fear a return to the
turbulence of the early 1990s when funding from the former Soviet Union
began drying up.
"It's unprecedented for the government to be making an open presentation
of this scale to international companies like this," said Andrew
MacDonald, director and vice president of Havana Energy, which is
building biomass plants at sugar refineries. "This is a top priority for
the Cuban government."
A decade-old initiative by Fidel Castro to improve energy efficiency and
introduce renewable power has failed to reduce Cuba's reliance on oil,
natural gas and diesel fuel, which supply 95 percent of its electricity,
according to a 2015 annual report from the government's National Office
of Statistics and Information.
A new goal to add 2.1 gigawatts of capacity from biomass plants, wind
farms, solar projects and hydroelectric generators will cost about $3.5
billion, according to government estimates. To get there, Cuba recently
said it will allow foreign companies in some circumstances to own
projects rather than requiring them to form joint ventures with
state-owned companies. The Obama administration has also carved out
exemptions from a U.S. economic embargo to allow companies to export
products and technology to the island.
"The opportunities there are huge," said Bernardo Fernandez, Mexico
director of operations for Hive Energy, a U.K. company that has agreed
to build a 50-megawatt solar project in the Mariel Free Zone outside of
Havana. "They don't really need to attract anyone. They just need to
clear the path for companies."
Banking Challenge
Banking in the country remains a challenge. In June, Florida-based
Stonegate Bank became the first U.S. bank to issue a credit card that
can be used in Cuba.
"They have ambitious goals with respect to renewable energy and its
going to involve heavy investment," said Lee Ann Evans, senior policy
adviser at Washington-based Engage Cuba, a coalition of companies and
organizations pushing to lift economic and travel restrictions. "It's
not as simple as replacing light bulbs."
And, while Cuba also needs to reassure international investors, change
is in the air. JetBlue flight 387 from Fort Lauderdale touched down in
Santa Clara Wednesday, the first scheduled, commercial flight from the
U.S. in more than half a century. Passengers included U.S. Secretary of
Transportation Anthony Foxx, according to Cuban officials.
Oil Bounty
"Cuba needs to develop a clear plan for energy development that can
serve as a guideline for investors," Ramon Fiestas Hummler, chairman of
the Latin America Committee at the Global Wind Energy Council, said in
an interview in Rio de Janeiro. "The country is changing its policies,
but confidence still doesn't exist."
Meanwhile Cuba, one of the largest beneficiaries of the late Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez's policy of sharing his country's oil bounty, may
be facing a reckoning. Under an agreement with Venezuela, Cuba receives
more than 90,000 barrels of oil a day, which it partially pays for by
sending doctors, teachers, and military advisers to Venezuela.
In a July address to the Communist party, Raul Castro said Cuba has seen
"a contraction in fuel shipments" from Venezuela, without detailing the
size of the cut. It had racked up about $15 billion in debt as of the
end of 2015, according to a February report by Bank of America Merrill
Lynch.
The circumstances have rekindled memories of Cuba's so called Special
Period, a euphemism for the economic crisis that began in 1989 with the
breakup of the Soviet Union characterized primarily by oil shortages.
The crisis led to the introduction of sustainable agriculture, the
decreased use of automobiles and other industry overhauls as people were
forced to live without many goods they had become used to.
"Cuba wants to open its frontiers," said Jean-Claude Fernand Robert,
general manager for renewables in Latin America for General Electric Co.
"The country still has a lot of work to do."
Source: Cuba Turns to Foreign Investors as Cheap Venezuelan Oil Fades -
Bloomberg -
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-31/cuba-turns-to-foreign-investors-as-cheap-venezuelan-oil-fades
DOT awards routes from U.S. to Havana
DOT awards routes from U.S. to Havana
BY MIMI WHITEFIELD
mwhitefield@miamiherald.com
On the day the first scheduled flight to Cuba in more than half a
century took off, the U.S. Department of Transportation gave final
approval to eight U.S. airlines to begin service on coveted routes to
Havana.
There were 20 daily frequencies to Havana up for grabs, and 12 U.S.
passenger airlines and one cargo airline had applied for the flights.
The big winners were American Airlines, which will be able to fly four
times daily from Miami and once daily from Charlotte, and JetBlue
Airways, which has been authorized to fly to the Cuban capital from Fort
Lauderdale, New York's JFK and Orlando.
JetBlue will be able to serve the Havana route twice daily from Fort
Lauderdale — except Saturday when it is permitted only one flight, and
once daily from both JFK and Orlando.
Other airlines that received Havana routes were Delta Air Lines, Alaska
Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Spirit Airlines and
United Airlines. Departure cities also include Los Angeles, Atlanta,
Tampa, Newark and Houston.
In addition to American and JetBlue, four other airlines will serve
South Florida. Delta and Frontier were given daily flights from Miami,
and Southwest and Spirit were authorized to fly twice daily to Havana
from Fort Lauderdale.
The airlines are expected to begin scheduled service to Havana as early
as this fall. DOT requires that carriers begin their service within 90
days of its final order, which was Wednesday.
Despite strenuous objections from some airlines that were left out in
the cold on the Havana routes or that wanted more frequencies or
different gateway cities, DOT allowed preliminary approvals that it
issued in July to stand.
"Today's actions are the result of months of work by airlines, cities,
the U.S. government, and many others toward delivering on President
Obama's promise to reengage with Cuba," U.S. Transportation Secretary
Anthony Foxx said in Cuba Wednesday after arriving on JetBlue's
inaugural Fort Lauderdale-Santa Clara flight.
"Transportation has a unique role in this historic initiative and we
look forward to the benefits these new services will provide to those
eligible for Cuba travel," Foxx said.
In addition to the Havana routes, DOT has already given six airlines,
including JetBlue and American, authority for up to 90 daily flights to
Cuban cities outside Havana.
Airlines pretty much got the routes they asked for outside Havana, but
the carriers applied for far more than the 20 Havana frequencies that
DOT is allowing, and the gloves came off as they tried to make their own
cases and disparage the requests of their rivals.
Silver Airways, which will begin service to Santa Clara on Thursday and
did not get any Havana routes, contended in a filing with DOT that the
applications of several of its rivals were "based on excessive,
unrealistic demand expectations with capacity levels that could never be
sustained."
It said awarding "daily routes to Havana from non-Florida gateways with
relatively small populations of Cuban-Americans should be avoided."
Eastern Air Lines, which did not receive any Cuba routes, took issue
with carriers awarded multiple daily flights to Cuba, saying in a DOT
filing that some of the applicants "espouse a level of greed or
monopolistic thinking that is awkward as the administration urges Cuba
to adopt capitalist, free-market ways." It said that American's proposal
in particular "is antithetical to American values of open competition
and market forces on which our economy is built."
On Wednesday, American said with the final DOT approval on its proposed
Havana routes, it was poised to remain the leading airline between the
United States and Cuba. It plans 91 weekly flights to Cuba, more than
any other carrier.
American, which has long leased its planes for charter flights to Cuba,
plans its first scheduled flights to Cienfuegos and Holguín next Wednesday.
Source: DOT awards eight U.S. airlines 20 daily frequencies from U.S.
cities to Havana | In Cuba Today -
http://www.incubatoday.com/news/article99080607.html
BY MIMI WHITEFIELD
mwhitefield@miamiherald.com
On the day the first scheduled flight to Cuba in more than half a
century took off, the U.S. Department of Transportation gave final
approval to eight U.S. airlines to begin service on coveted routes to
Havana.
There were 20 daily frequencies to Havana up for grabs, and 12 U.S.
passenger airlines and one cargo airline had applied for the flights.
The big winners were American Airlines, which will be able to fly four
times daily from Miami and once daily from Charlotte, and JetBlue
Airways, which has been authorized to fly to the Cuban capital from Fort
Lauderdale, New York's JFK and Orlando.
JetBlue will be able to serve the Havana route twice daily from Fort
Lauderdale — except Saturday when it is permitted only one flight, and
once daily from both JFK and Orlando.
Other airlines that received Havana routes were Delta Air Lines, Alaska
Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Spirit Airlines and
United Airlines. Departure cities also include Los Angeles, Atlanta,
Tampa, Newark and Houston.
In addition to American and JetBlue, four other airlines will serve
South Florida. Delta and Frontier were given daily flights from Miami,
and Southwest and Spirit were authorized to fly twice daily to Havana
from Fort Lauderdale.
The airlines are expected to begin scheduled service to Havana as early
as this fall. DOT requires that carriers begin their service within 90
days of its final order, which was Wednesday.
Despite strenuous objections from some airlines that were left out in
the cold on the Havana routes or that wanted more frequencies or
different gateway cities, DOT allowed preliminary approvals that it
issued in July to stand.
"Today's actions are the result of months of work by airlines, cities,
the U.S. government, and many others toward delivering on President
Obama's promise to reengage with Cuba," U.S. Transportation Secretary
Anthony Foxx said in Cuba Wednesday after arriving on JetBlue's
inaugural Fort Lauderdale-Santa Clara flight.
"Transportation has a unique role in this historic initiative and we
look forward to the benefits these new services will provide to those
eligible for Cuba travel," Foxx said.
In addition to the Havana routes, DOT has already given six airlines,
including JetBlue and American, authority for up to 90 daily flights to
Cuban cities outside Havana.
Airlines pretty much got the routes they asked for outside Havana, but
the carriers applied for far more than the 20 Havana frequencies that
DOT is allowing, and the gloves came off as they tried to make their own
cases and disparage the requests of their rivals.
Silver Airways, which will begin service to Santa Clara on Thursday and
did not get any Havana routes, contended in a filing with DOT that the
applications of several of its rivals were "based on excessive,
unrealistic demand expectations with capacity levels that could never be
sustained."
It said awarding "daily routes to Havana from non-Florida gateways with
relatively small populations of Cuban-Americans should be avoided."
Eastern Air Lines, which did not receive any Cuba routes, took issue
with carriers awarded multiple daily flights to Cuba, saying in a DOT
filing that some of the applicants "espouse a level of greed or
monopolistic thinking that is awkward as the administration urges Cuba
to adopt capitalist, free-market ways." It said that American's proposal
in particular "is antithetical to American values of open competition
and market forces on which our economy is built."
On Wednesday, American said with the final DOT approval on its proposed
Havana routes, it was poised to remain the leading airline between the
United States and Cuba. It plans 91 weekly flights to Cuba, more than
any other carrier.
American, which has long leased its planes for charter flights to Cuba,
plans its first scheduled flights to Cienfuegos and Holguín next Wednesday.
Source: DOT awards eight U.S. airlines 20 daily frequencies from U.S.
cities to Havana | In Cuba Today -
http://www.incubatoday.com/news/article99080607.html
It’s time to change Cubans’ special immigration status
It's time to change Cubans' special immigration status
As a new wave of Cuban refugees floods Florida and Central America, the
U.S. government should consider a letter by nine Latin American foreign
ministers demanding that Washington change its special status for Cuban
refugees, which they say encourages mass migration from Cuba. But Latin
American nations should do their part, too.
BY ANDRÉS OPPENHEIMER
aoppenheimer@miamiherald.com
As a new wave of Cuban migrants floods Florida and Central America, nine
Latin American nations have asked the Obama administration to end the
U.S. special immigration privileges for Cuban refugees. And while some
of these countries have dubious human rights credentials, they may be
partly right.
In an Aug. 29 letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the foreign
ministers of Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru expressed their "deep concern" that
the United States' so-called wet-foot, dry-foot policy is creating a
regional refugee crisis.
Ecuador — which released the letter — and Nicaragua are ruled by
repressive governments with little moral authority to lecture anybody
about political or humanitarian issues.
But the letter should draw attention because it comes at a time when
Cubans are fleeing the island in record numbers. The euphoria over the
reestablishment of U.S.-Cuba diplomatic ties has faded, and many Cubans
have lost faith that there will be a political opening on the island.
Others are fleeing now because they fear that the U.S. special status
for Cuban refugees will be terminated after the November elections.
At least 46,000 Cuban refugees were admitted by the United States during
the first 10 months of the 2016 fiscal year, almost twice the 24,000 who
were allowed into the country in 2014, according to the Pew Research
Center. Thousands of others have flocked to Nicaragua, Costa Rica,
Panama and other countries, hoping to make their way into U.S. territory.
Under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act and its 1995 revision — known as the
wet-foot, dry-foot policy — Cubans are granted residency and eventually
citizenship if they set foot on U.S. land. If they are caught at sea,
they can be returned to Cuba.
The special U.S. status for Cubans has been significantly abused in
recent years. Under a 1980 provision that expedites economic assistance
for Cuban refugees, large numbers of Cuban refugees return to Cuba, and
live the good life there with U.S. taxpayers' dollars.
Jose Miguel Vivanco, head of the Human Rights Watch advocacy group's
Americas department, told me that "Cuba is a unique case in the region,
where those who challenge the government are punished harshly. But the
United States and all democratic countries already have obligations to
offer protection and asylum to Cuban political refugees."
He added that ending the special status for Cubans "would not amount to
a human rights setback, as long as the United States and other
democratic countries, including the nine that signed that letter, offer
refuge and protection to those who are persecuted in Cuba."
Others, such as Marcell Felipe, head of the Inspire America Foundation,
support changing U.S. laws to end abuses by those who return to Cuba,
but without eliminating the overall special status for Cuban refugees.
"Cuba is a special case, because everyone in Cuba who does not actively
support the dictatorship is subject to repression," Felipe says. "If
Cubans didn't have a special U.S. immigration status, most Cubans would
not qualify for U.S. asylum."
My opinion: It's time to revise the U.S. government's special status for
Cuban refugees. But it should be done as part of a new commitment by all
countries in the region to grant asylum to Cuba's political refugees,
and to press Cuba to abide by international human rights laws.
Kerry should meet with the nine foreign ministers who signed the letter
and ask them: Are you ready to accept Cuba's political refugees? Are you
ready to press Cuba to free its political prisoners, stop arresting
peaceful dissidents, and respect political pluralism, as is Cuba's duty
under the Viña del Mar convention it signed in 1996?
It's time for all sides to end Cuba policies that are relics of the Cold
War. Washington should change its much-abused laws giving special status
to all Cuban refugees, and Latin American countries should end their
shameful silence on Cuba's repressive dictatorship, which is at the root
of Cuba's main problems. These are new times that require new policies
by all countries.
Source: U.S. should change special immigration status for Cuban refugees
| In Cuba Today - http://www.incubatoday.com/news/article99028642.html
As a new wave of Cuban refugees floods Florida and Central America, the
U.S. government should consider a letter by nine Latin American foreign
ministers demanding that Washington change its special status for Cuban
refugees, which they say encourages mass migration from Cuba. But Latin
American nations should do their part, too.
BY ANDRÉS OPPENHEIMER
aoppenheimer@miamiherald.com
As a new wave of Cuban migrants floods Florida and Central America, nine
Latin American nations have asked the Obama administration to end the
U.S. special immigration privileges for Cuban refugees. And while some
of these countries have dubious human rights credentials, they may be
partly right.
In an Aug. 29 letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the foreign
ministers of Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru expressed their "deep concern" that
the United States' so-called wet-foot, dry-foot policy is creating a
regional refugee crisis.
Ecuador — which released the letter — and Nicaragua are ruled by
repressive governments with little moral authority to lecture anybody
about political or humanitarian issues.
But the letter should draw attention because it comes at a time when
Cubans are fleeing the island in record numbers. The euphoria over the
reestablishment of U.S.-Cuba diplomatic ties has faded, and many Cubans
have lost faith that there will be a political opening on the island.
Others are fleeing now because they fear that the U.S. special status
for Cuban refugees will be terminated after the November elections.
At least 46,000 Cuban refugees were admitted by the United States during
the first 10 months of the 2016 fiscal year, almost twice the 24,000 who
were allowed into the country in 2014, according to the Pew Research
Center. Thousands of others have flocked to Nicaragua, Costa Rica,
Panama and other countries, hoping to make their way into U.S. territory.
Under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act and its 1995 revision — known as the
wet-foot, dry-foot policy — Cubans are granted residency and eventually
citizenship if they set foot on U.S. land. If they are caught at sea,
they can be returned to Cuba.
The special U.S. status for Cubans has been significantly abused in
recent years. Under a 1980 provision that expedites economic assistance
for Cuban refugees, large numbers of Cuban refugees return to Cuba, and
live the good life there with U.S. taxpayers' dollars.
Jose Miguel Vivanco, head of the Human Rights Watch advocacy group's
Americas department, told me that "Cuba is a unique case in the region,
where those who challenge the government are punished harshly. But the
United States and all democratic countries already have obligations to
offer protection and asylum to Cuban political refugees."
He added that ending the special status for Cubans "would not amount to
a human rights setback, as long as the United States and other
democratic countries, including the nine that signed that letter, offer
refuge and protection to those who are persecuted in Cuba."
Others, such as Marcell Felipe, head of the Inspire America Foundation,
support changing U.S. laws to end abuses by those who return to Cuba,
but without eliminating the overall special status for Cuban refugees.
"Cuba is a special case, because everyone in Cuba who does not actively
support the dictatorship is subject to repression," Felipe says. "If
Cubans didn't have a special U.S. immigration status, most Cubans would
not qualify for U.S. asylum."
My opinion: It's time to revise the U.S. government's special status for
Cuban refugees. But it should be done as part of a new commitment by all
countries in the region to grant asylum to Cuba's political refugees,
and to press Cuba to abide by international human rights laws.
Kerry should meet with the nine foreign ministers who signed the letter
and ask them: Are you ready to accept Cuba's political refugees? Are you
ready to press Cuba to free its political prisoners, stop arresting
peaceful dissidents, and respect political pluralism, as is Cuba's duty
under the Viña del Mar convention it signed in 1996?
It's time for all sides to end Cuba policies that are relics of the Cold
War. Washington should change its much-abused laws giving special status
to all Cuban refugees, and Latin American countries should end their
shameful silence on Cuba's repressive dictatorship, which is at the root
of Cuba's main problems. These are new times that require new policies
by all countries.
Source: U.S. should change special immigration status for Cuban refugees
| In Cuba Today - http://www.incubatoday.com/news/article99028642.html
Clear skies?
Clear skies?
FRANCISCO ALMAGRO DOMÍNGUEZ | Miami | 1 de Septiembre de 2016 - 14:09 CEST.
What seemed impossible just a few years ago is about to come true: today
the airline JetBlue begins a Fort Lauderdale-Santa Clara flight route
this week. In this way regular flights between several US and Cuban
cities - except for Havana - will be opened up. According to the
low-cost carrier based in New York, they will have daily routes to
Camaguey and Holguín from the same Floridian airport.
American Airlines, now probably the largest carrier in the world, is
preparing to compete on routes from Miami to Cienfuegos, Holguín and
Varadero, this last destination in September. It is known that there
are other American companies vying for the "skies of Cuba," but nothing
official has been announced yet. Air transport executives can smell the
cake, just miles away, and this Wednesday will see the breaking of an
economic blockade that for more than half a century has isolated the
island.
As usual, news of the direct flights sparked disparate opinions in Miami
and Havana. If we look coldly at the political factors surrounding the
restoration of commercial flights between the two countries, nothing
could be better for both. Havana, at times called the Key to the Gulf,
is a natural stopover point in the Americas; it was when maritime
navigation was the only means of transport, and remained so when
aircraft began to supersede commercial shipping.
Miami is America's leading cargo airport and one of its most important
for passengers too. Havana, Varadero, Santa Clara and Santiago de Cuba
boast excellent weather conditions all year round. And, despite their
very ramshackle infrastructure, there is still a lot of space to build
on. Moreover, the ground staff, when properly trained and well paid, has
demonstrated professionalism. Although there have been more than a few
serious accidents in recent times, let us not forget that Cubana de
Aviacion, founded almost 90 years ago, was the first Latin American
line to fly to both North America and Europe.
The direct flights will certainly benefit the ordinary passenger.
Charter airlines and Cuban companies operating aerodromes have exploited
travellers for five decades now. It can be argued that many Cubans
return to Cuba because they want to, but there is a good number who go,
and will continue to go because they have children, parents and siblings
there. As a friend says, one must do what's right because filial love
prevails over any other consideration. One might say that Cuban travel
companies "take advantage" of these trips, and are "colluding" with the
regime in Havana. But we must also demand from the US laws flexibility
in taxes and risks for allowing such companies.
Thus, the dilemma of regular flights is not economic. The Cuban traveler
who comes and goes from the Island benefits; US companies earn more
money when daily flights are increased, almost 30 a day to more than a
dozen Cuban cities have been calculated; and, logically, the Government
of the Island, which would receive not only Cubans, but tourists in
transit, though it will have to repair and modernize all its air
terminals to meet the very stringent requirements of Northern civil
aviation, and respect the "nine freedoms of the air."
However, as was the case with the famous cruises to Cuba, the scope of
the controversy remains political/legal and ethical. And it goes both
ways. To start, it would be worth asking the US government a question:
Will JetBlue, American or Delta be able to deny passage to a Cuban for
political reasons, that is, if he is not welcome in Santa Clara and
Havana? Will the company be willing to issue a refund, as happens
relatively often, when a passenger is unable to get off the plane, or is
forced to return on the same flight, because his name "appears on the
computer"? And what will the US company do when it realizes that in
today's Cuba nothing functions, workers are demoralized, and do not
respect rules and schedules? And what about the Helms-Burton Law and
travelers who do not fall into one of the 12 categories of permitted
passengers?
There would also be questions for the Cuban Government. Could we travel
to our country just getting a ticket on JetBlue, American or Delta and
with an American passport? If our names are on a "blacklist" of the
Cuban government, would it send that list to these companies, so that
they do not lose money? Or would it suffice for us not to be
"authorized," like branded livestock that still belongs to the herd, for
us to be denied passage? Before going for the ticket, will they charge
some minion with finding out what "crimes" (such as writing in this
publication) bar us from travelling to Cuba?
There may be no doubt that President Obama's intentions were good, aimed
at resolving the conflict. But he engaged the wrong parties. The problem
is not with the US or its presidents. The problem is with the Cubans
themselves. And maybe Obama has been right to step aside, as an
executive power. But from the ethical and legal perspective he has left
many dark clouds in the air. The skies of Cuba and the United States are
not clear. Incredible. Less than a 30-minute direct flight away.
Source: Clear skies? | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1472731774_25013.html
FRANCISCO ALMAGRO DOMÍNGUEZ | Miami | 1 de Septiembre de 2016 - 14:09 CEST.
What seemed impossible just a few years ago is about to come true: today
the airline JetBlue begins a Fort Lauderdale-Santa Clara flight route
this week. In this way regular flights between several US and Cuban
cities - except for Havana - will be opened up. According to the
low-cost carrier based in New York, they will have daily routes to
Camaguey and Holguín from the same Floridian airport.
American Airlines, now probably the largest carrier in the world, is
preparing to compete on routes from Miami to Cienfuegos, Holguín and
Varadero, this last destination in September. It is known that there
are other American companies vying for the "skies of Cuba," but nothing
official has been announced yet. Air transport executives can smell the
cake, just miles away, and this Wednesday will see the breaking of an
economic blockade that for more than half a century has isolated the
island.
As usual, news of the direct flights sparked disparate opinions in Miami
and Havana. If we look coldly at the political factors surrounding the
restoration of commercial flights between the two countries, nothing
could be better for both. Havana, at times called the Key to the Gulf,
is a natural stopover point in the Americas; it was when maritime
navigation was the only means of transport, and remained so when
aircraft began to supersede commercial shipping.
Miami is America's leading cargo airport and one of its most important
for passengers too. Havana, Varadero, Santa Clara and Santiago de Cuba
boast excellent weather conditions all year round. And, despite their
very ramshackle infrastructure, there is still a lot of space to build
on. Moreover, the ground staff, when properly trained and well paid, has
demonstrated professionalism. Although there have been more than a few
serious accidents in recent times, let us not forget that Cubana de
Aviacion, founded almost 90 years ago, was the first Latin American
line to fly to both North America and Europe.
The direct flights will certainly benefit the ordinary passenger.
Charter airlines and Cuban companies operating aerodromes have exploited
travellers for five decades now. It can be argued that many Cubans
return to Cuba because they want to, but there is a good number who go,
and will continue to go because they have children, parents and siblings
there. As a friend says, one must do what's right because filial love
prevails over any other consideration. One might say that Cuban travel
companies "take advantage" of these trips, and are "colluding" with the
regime in Havana. But we must also demand from the US laws flexibility
in taxes and risks for allowing such companies.
Thus, the dilemma of regular flights is not economic. The Cuban traveler
who comes and goes from the Island benefits; US companies earn more
money when daily flights are increased, almost 30 a day to more than a
dozen Cuban cities have been calculated; and, logically, the Government
of the Island, which would receive not only Cubans, but tourists in
transit, though it will have to repair and modernize all its air
terminals to meet the very stringent requirements of Northern civil
aviation, and respect the "nine freedoms of the air."
However, as was the case with the famous cruises to Cuba, the scope of
the controversy remains political/legal and ethical. And it goes both
ways. To start, it would be worth asking the US government a question:
Will JetBlue, American or Delta be able to deny passage to a Cuban for
political reasons, that is, if he is not welcome in Santa Clara and
Havana? Will the company be willing to issue a refund, as happens
relatively often, when a passenger is unable to get off the plane, or is
forced to return on the same flight, because his name "appears on the
computer"? And what will the US company do when it realizes that in
today's Cuba nothing functions, workers are demoralized, and do not
respect rules and schedules? And what about the Helms-Burton Law and
travelers who do not fall into one of the 12 categories of permitted
passengers?
There would also be questions for the Cuban Government. Could we travel
to our country just getting a ticket on JetBlue, American or Delta and
with an American passport? If our names are on a "blacklist" of the
Cuban government, would it send that list to these companies, so that
they do not lose money? Or would it suffice for us not to be
"authorized," like branded livestock that still belongs to the herd, for
us to be denied passage? Before going for the ticket, will they charge
some minion with finding out what "crimes" (such as writing in this
publication) bar us from travelling to Cuba?
There may be no doubt that President Obama's intentions were good, aimed
at resolving the conflict. But he engaged the wrong parties. The problem
is not with the US or its presidents. The problem is with the Cubans
themselves. And maybe Obama has been right to step aside, as an
executive power. But from the ethical and legal perspective he has left
many dark clouds in the air. The skies of Cuba and the United States are
not clear. Incredible. Less than a 30-minute direct flight away.
Source: Clear skies? | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1472731774_25013.html
Is the Government involved in the marketing of separate human body parts?
Is the Government involved in the marketing of separate human body parts?
ELOY A. GONZÁLEZ | Fort Worth | 31 de Agosto de 2016 - 18:16 CEST.
As part of extensive testimony before the US Congress, researcher Maria
Werlau has denounced the Cuban State for its involvement in human
trafficking in many aspects.
The information from the Cuba File indicates that in 2005 the Cuban
Government began to engage in mysterious exports to Brazil, under the
administration of Lula da Silva, of human tissue and other glands and
human body parts of unknown origin. Sales grew very rapidly, topping out
at $88.4 million in 2013. Meanwhile, reports began to arrive from Cuba
of suspicious deaths and the plundering of human body parts, which seem
to suggest the hand of the State, meriting serious investigation.
The issue of the marketing of separate human body parts is well known
and of interest to many countries, not exclusively applying to Cuba.
What complicated this was that, in the case of Cuba, the question of
secrecy (confidentiality?) arose when the Brazilian representative
Arolde de Oliveira requested information from Brazil's Minister of
Health, Arthur Chioro, and he refused to disclose it, violating the
applicable federal law.
At this point we might ask: what are the governments of Brazil and Cuba
hiding in relation to the transfer of biological products?
Trade in separate parts of the human body is now a global business, and
employs Internet communication mechanisms to offer a varied range of
products, used not only as organs and tissues for transplantation, but
also in areas such as research and the development of new medical
techniques.
A body of regulations and legal procedures is being developed to govern
the acquisition and use of human body parts, a lucrative and important
business worth billions of dollars. Human body parts are used to develop
medical equipment, improve surgical techniques, and even to create
cosmetics. Doctors use them for complex surgical procedures. This being
the case, the obvious question is: how are these parts obtained,
processed, marketed and used?
This issue has been addressed by journalist Annie Cheney in her book
Body Brokers: Inside America's Underground Trade in Human Remains. The
author points out the complicated network underlying these practices,
which have become a thriving business, protected by legal vacuums where
profit is the main goal, oversight is nonexistent, and corruption is
rampant. In the US the Government regulates the acquisition of
transplantable organs and tissues, but not human body parts used for
educational and research purposes, and this is where it all starts.
If this is the case in the US, one can imagine the surprising things
occurring in Asian countries. Trafficking in organs and tissues in Asia
is an increasingly thriving and horrendous business. While seeking
mechanisms to prevent "transplant tourism," no one can guarantee that
the same mechanisms developed to provide organs for transplants are not
used for trade in separate parts of the human body for other purposes.
One shocker was a newspaper article about a medical institute in Ukraine
selling body parts of fetuses on its website, arguing that otherwise the
parts would simply be discarded. The products on offer included: "fetal
spleen cells, fragments of fetal backbones, fetal liver cells ..." [5].
The demand for fetal body parts stems from the growing interest in stem
cell and cosmetic research, and is a very sensitive issue that involves
not only ethical considerations related to the handling and use of
fetuses for such purposes, but also interests a large part of the
population who, out of religious convictions, are committed to the
prolife movement.
The scandal sparked by the marketing of fetal tissues by the
organization Planned Parenthood reveals how delicate this issue is.
The case of Cuba
In Cuba the use of fetuses, or parts of them, in research carried out at
the International Center for Neurological Restoration (CIREN) has been
the subject of much controversy. Apart from the merits of attempts,
deliberate or not, to impugn the reputations of those who have
participated in these studies, the fact is that parts of human fetuses
were used for research purposes and the development of treatments, which
appalled many.
I do not doubt the Cuban State's widespread trafficking in separate
parts of the human body in order to use them in biological research
programs being carried out in Cuba, and also marketing to other
countries, as is done with Brazil through an agreement that is kept secret.
There is an entire infrastructure in Cuba, encompassing hospitals,
forensic services, research institutes and biopharmaceutical companies,
along with highly qualified personnel. In the year 2011 alone 18,765
autopsies were performed, representing 53.3% of deaths in the country.
To this can be added the parts obtained from abortions in a country in
which 27 out of every 1,000 women have one. But there are many more
sources of human parts, and procedures we may not know to obtain them.
If there are some misgivings about all this, and there is no legislation
in this respect, there is the argument of the US "blockade" to justify
everything.
To prevent trafficking in human material, the World Health Organization
(WHO) has established a set of guiding principles. We must remember that
this trafficking in human body parts is aimed primarily at obtaining
cells, tissues and organs for transplants. The parts that can be used to
obtain biological products (for cosmetic purposes, for example) are not
considered.
We wanted, at least, to cite the guiding principle that addresses
considerations on the sale of human body parts. Guiding Principle 5
states that cells, tissues and organs should only proceed from
voluntary, non-compensated donations. The purchase, or offering for
purchase, of cells, tissues or organs for transplantation purposes, as
well as their sale by individuals, or relatives of deceased persons,
should be prohibited. The prohibition on the sale or purchase of cells,
tissues and organs does not preclude defraying reasonable and verifiable
expenses that may be incurred by donors, such as lost income, or the
coverage of costs incurred by the acquisition, processing, conservation
and provisioning of cells, tissues or organs for transplantation.
These WHO guiding principles are subsequent to the only binding law in
Cuba governing the acquisition and use of cells, tissues and organs;
that is, the regulation of the Public Health Law, Decree 139 of 1988.
A comparative study of legislation for Latin American countries, drafted
by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) , shows that Cuban
legislation is not consistent enough in these respects. However, we can
point out some problematic aspects of said legislation with regards to
trafficking in human body parts.
In Cuba the will of the deceased donor is respected, and no family
member or individual can revoke a donation endorsed during one's life.
This consent is indicated on one's donor ID card. Persons older than 18
years of age can donate their organs and tissues without so indicating
on their identity cards. Parents or legal guardians may authorize the
removal of organs and tissues from minors and those who are legally
incapacitated.
However, there is a murky gap between what has been legislated and can
be legislated, and what is done or is usually done. In practice, more
than a few autopsies are carried out without the consent of the deceased
patient or his family. The material obtained can be sent to other places
and used for other purposes that are not necessarily diagnostic. The law
is very general and vague, as it dates back to the 80s. Since then this
field has grown far more complicated, involving issues like the handling
and possible commercialization of cells, cell lines, stem cells, blood,
organs, substances, proteins , enzymes, hormones, antibodies, tissues
and genetic material, making the human body a source of raw material for
industry.
Taking into account all the scientific resources available, and the
commercial opportunity at stake, it does not surprise me that Cuba
negotiated with Brazil for the sale of more than 80 million dollars in
body parts in just one year, but we cannot know how this raw material
was obtained.
Dictatorships legislate, but there is no transparency, and certainly no
dedication to governing in accord with the law; the dark intricacies
between what is right and what is demanded are confused, and never take
into account the common good. It should be noted, however, in order to
salvage a positive assessment, that the Cuban scientific community,
professionals who work with dedication, defined by their decorum and
nobility, usually agree to do their job in an honest way.
The Cuban government should reconsider its policies and adapt its
legislation to bring it into line with the guiding principles
established by the WHO. It should draw upon comparative jurisprudence
and, above all, recognize that trafficking in body parts, though some
might not wish to concede it, should never be a road to riches.
What is in the best interest of health and the development of medical
research, and human dignity is what should and must engage the attention
and efforts of not just the health authorities, but also the
professional community forming part of this scenario.
Dr. Eloy A. González (Buenavista, Villa Clara, 1949) is a specialist in
Oncology and was a Professor of Pharmacology at the University of
Havana. He is the author of El Blog de Medicina Cubana.
Source: Is the Government involved in the marketing of separate human
body parts? | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1472660198_24992.html
ELOY A. GONZÁLEZ | Fort Worth | 31 de Agosto de 2016 - 18:16 CEST.
As part of extensive testimony before the US Congress, researcher Maria
Werlau has denounced the Cuban State for its involvement in human
trafficking in many aspects.
The information from the Cuba File indicates that in 2005 the Cuban
Government began to engage in mysterious exports to Brazil, under the
administration of Lula da Silva, of human tissue and other glands and
human body parts of unknown origin. Sales grew very rapidly, topping out
at $88.4 million in 2013. Meanwhile, reports began to arrive from Cuba
of suspicious deaths and the plundering of human body parts, which seem
to suggest the hand of the State, meriting serious investigation.
The issue of the marketing of separate human body parts is well known
and of interest to many countries, not exclusively applying to Cuba.
What complicated this was that, in the case of Cuba, the question of
secrecy (confidentiality?) arose when the Brazilian representative
Arolde de Oliveira requested information from Brazil's Minister of
Health, Arthur Chioro, and he refused to disclose it, violating the
applicable federal law.
At this point we might ask: what are the governments of Brazil and Cuba
hiding in relation to the transfer of biological products?
Trade in separate parts of the human body is now a global business, and
employs Internet communication mechanisms to offer a varied range of
products, used not only as organs and tissues for transplantation, but
also in areas such as research and the development of new medical
techniques.
A body of regulations and legal procedures is being developed to govern
the acquisition and use of human body parts, a lucrative and important
business worth billions of dollars. Human body parts are used to develop
medical equipment, improve surgical techniques, and even to create
cosmetics. Doctors use them for complex surgical procedures. This being
the case, the obvious question is: how are these parts obtained,
processed, marketed and used?
This issue has been addressed by journalist Annie Cheney in her book
Body Brokers: Inside America's Underground Trade in Human Remains. The
author points out the complicated network underlying these practices,
which have become a thriving business, protected by legal vacuums where
profit is the main goal, oversight is nonexistent, and corruption is
rampant. In the US the Government regulates the acquisition of
transplantable organs and tissues, but not human body parts used for
educational and research purposes, and this is where it all starts.
If this is the case in the US, one can imagine the surprising things
occurring in Asian countries. Trafficking in organs and tissues in Asia
is an increasingly thriving and horrendous business. While seeking
mechanisms to prevent "transplant tourism," no one can guarantee that
the same mechanisms developed to provide organs for transplants are not
used for trade in separate parts of the human body for other purposes.
One shocker was a newspaper article about a medical institute in Ukraine
selling body parts of fetuses on its website, arguing that otherwise the
parts would simply be discarded. The products on offer included: "fetal
spleen cells, fragments of fetal backbones, fetal liver cells ..." [5].
The demand for fetal body parts stems from the growing interest in stem
cell and cosmetic research, and is a very sensitive issue that involves
not only ethical considerations related to the handling and use of
fetuses for such purposes, but also interests a large part of the
population who, out of religious convictions, are committed to the
prolife movement.
The scandal sparked by the marketing of fetal tissues by the
organization Planned Parenthood reveals how delicate this issue is.
The case of Cuba
In Cuba the use of fetuses, or parts of them, in research carried out at
the International Center for Neurological Restoration (CIREN) has been
the subject of much controversy. Apart from the merits of attempts,
deliberate or not, to impugn the reputations of those who have
participated in these studies, the fact is that parts of human fetuses
were used for research purposes and the development of treatments, which
appalled many.
I do not doubt the Cuban State's widespread trafficking in separate
parts of the human body in order to use them in biological research
programs being carried out in Cuba, and also marketing to other
countries, as is done with Brazil through an agreement that is kept secret.
There is an entire infrastructure in Cuba, encompassing hospitals,
forensic services, research institutes and biopharmaceutical companies,
along with highly qualified personnel. In the year 2011 alone 18,765
autopsies were performed, representing 53.3% of deaths in the country.
To this can be added the parts obtained from abortions in a country in
which 27 out of every 1,000 women have one. But there are many more
sources of human parts, and procedures we may not know to obtain them.
If there are some misgivings about all this, and there is no legislation
in this respect, there is the argument of the US "blockade" to justify
everything.
To prevent trafficking in human material, the World Health Organization
(WHO) has established a set of guiding principles. We must remember that
this trafficking in human body parts is aimed primarily at obtaining
cells, tissues and organs for transplants. The parts that can be used to
obtain biological products (for cosmetic purposes, for example) are not
considered.
We wanted, at least, to cite the guiding principle that addresses
considerations on the sale of human body parts. Guiding Principle 5
states that cells, tissues and organs should only proceed from
voluntary, non-compensated donations. The purchase, or offering for
purchase, of cells, tissues or organs for transplantation purposes, as
well as their sale by individuals, or relatives of deceased persons,
should be prohibited. The prohibition on the sale or purchase of cells,
tissues and organs does not preclude defraying reasonable and verifiable
expenses that may be incurred by donors, such as lost income, or the
coverage of costs incurred by the acquisition, processing, conservation
and provisioning of cells, tissues or organs for transplantation.
These WHO guiding principles are subsequent to the only binding law in
Cuba governing the acquisition and use of cells, tissues and organs;
that is, the regulation of the Public Health Law, Decree 139 of 1988.
A comparative study of legislation for Latin American countries, drafted
by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) , shows that Cuban
legislation is not consistent enough in these respects. However, we can
point out some problematic aspects of said legislation with regards to
trafficking in human body parts.
In Cuba the will of the deceased donor is respected, and no family
member or individual can revoke a donation endorsed during one's life.
This consent is indicated on one's donor ID card. Persons older than 18
years of age can donate their organs and tissues without so indicating
on their identity cards. Parents or legal guardians may authorize the
removal of organs and tissues from minors and those who are legally
incapacitated.
However, there is a murky gap between what has been legislated and can
be legislated, and what is done or is usually done. In practice, more
than a few autopsies are carried out without the consent of the deceased
patient or his family. The material obtained can be sent to other places
and used for other purposes that are not necessarily diagnostic. The law
is very general and vague, as it dates back to the 80s. Since then this
field has grown far more complicated, involving issues like the handling
and possible commercialization of cells, cell lines, stem cells, blood,
organs, substances, proteins , enzymes, hormones, antibodies, tissues
and genetic material, making the human body a source of raw material for
industry.
Taking into account all the scientific resources available, and the
commercial opportunity at stake, it does not surprise me that Cuba
negotiated with Brazil for the sale of more than 80 million dollars in
body parts in just one year, but we cannot know how this raw material
was obtained.
Dictatorships legislate, but there is no transparency, and certainly no
dedication to governing in accord with the law; the dark intricacies
between what is right and what is demanded are confused, and never take
into account the common good. It should be noted, however, in order to
salvage a positive assessment, that the Cuban scientific community,
professionals who work with dedication, defined by their decorum and
nobility, usually agree to do their job in an honest way.
The Cuban government should reconsider its policies and adapt its
legislation to bring it into line with the guiding principles
established by the WHO. It should draw upon comparative jurisprudence
and, above all, recognize that trafficking in body parts, though some
might not wish to concede it, should never be a road to riches.
What is in the best interest of health and the development of medical
research, and human dignity is what should and must engage the attention
and efforts of not just the health authorities, but also the
professional community forming part of this scenario.
Dr. Eloy A. González (Buenavista, Villa Clara, 1949) is a specialist in
Oncology and was a Professor of Pharmacology at the University of
Havana. He is the author of El Blog de Medicina Cubana.
Source: Is the Government involved in the marketing of separate human
body parts? | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1472660198_24992.html
Ni libertad económica ni libertad política
Ni libertad económica ni libertad política
OSMAR LAFFITA ROJAS | La Habana | 1 de Septiembre de 2016 - 09:44 CEST.
Luego de que el general Raúl Castro asumiera la presidencia en el año
2008, mediante varias disposiciones legales fue autorizado el desempeño
de la actividad económica privada. Gracias a ello, medio millón de
cubanos ejercen alguna de las 201 actividades que están amparadas en la
Resolución 42 del Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social (MTSS). Pero
a ninguna de esas personas se les reconoce personalidad jurídica, sino
que son consideradas personas naturales. Por tanto, los principio del
Derecho Mercantil, las leyes que regulan los mecanismos del mercado,
todavía están a la espera de que se apliquen en Cuba.
Es exagerado afirmar que el restablecimiento de las relaciones
diplomáticas entre Washington y La Habana significa el cierre de un
ciclo y el comienzo de otro. Poco ha cambiado. Hay que tener presente
que las leyes Helms-Burton y Torricelli están codificadas por el
Congreso de EEUU y su derogación dependerá de que el Gobierno cubano
inicie un proceso de reformas, tanto políticas como económicas, que
conduzcan al establecimiento de un Estado de derecho, hoy ausente en Cuba.
En la Conceptualización del Modelo Económico y en el documento que
recoge los 267 lineamientos económicos, ambos aprobados en el VII
Congreso del Partido Comunista (PCC), queda bien claro que la dirección
de la economía se rige por la planificación centralizada y no por las
leyes del mercado.
En la Conceptualización del Modelo se dice que "la presencia de
diferentes actores de propiedad y gestión forma parte de los elementos
que condicionan la necesidad objetiva del reconocimiento del mercado". Y
en los Lineamientos se reconoce "la existencia de las relaciones de
mercado".
En ninguno de los dos documentos se hace mención a la economía
socialista de mercado como la que desarrollan China y Vietnam.
Tanto China como Vietnam son países dirigidos por partidos comunistas,
pero en lo económico, el Estado ha aceptado las reglas del mercado. Sus
sostenidos crecimientos económicos responden a las reglas que imponen
las empresas capitalistas presentes en estos dos países, que han
alcanzado altos niveles de crecimiento del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB).
La Conceptualización del Modelo y los Lineamientos Económicos reconocen,
por primera vez en 56 años, que la propiedad privada cumple una función
social, cuyos titulares son personas naturales o jurídicas, tanto
cubanas como extranjeras, pero solo en determinadas actividades.
No hay duda de que el VII Congreso del PCC fue el escenario que cimentó
el poder de la ortodoxia. Esto quedó refrendado en el artículo 54 (1.1),
acápite 59 del documento de la Conceptualización del Modelo, que
plantea: "El papel dirigente del PCC, único y vanguardia organizada de
la nación, fuerza dirigente de la sociedad y del Estado, tal como
aparece recogido en el artículo 5 de la Constitución de la República".
Contrario a lo que ocurre en China y Vietnam, el VII Congreso del PCC
patentizó que en la economía cubana predominará la planificación
centralizada y que no habrá espacio al libre mercado, que se reforzará
el control vertical del Gobierno sobre la política y la economía.
Los militares que detentan el poder en Cuba, a quienes les aterroriza la
democracia tanto como a los vampiros la cruz, y que no aceptan el
multipartidismo, la libertad de información y de expresión, lograron
imponer en los documentos programáticos acordados en el VII Congreso del
PCC el cierre a todas las bandas de todo lo que tenga que ver con la
libertad política y la libertad económica.
Source: Ni libertad económica ni libertad política | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1472715861_24998.html
OSMAR LAFFITA ROJAS | La Habana | 1 de Septiembre de 2016 - 09:44 CEST.
Luego de que el general Raúl Castro asumiera la presidencia en el año
2008, mediante varias disposiciones legales fue autorizado el desempeño
de la actividad económica privada. Gracias a ello, medio millón de
cubanos ejercen alguna de las 201 actividades que están amparadas en la
Resolución 42 del Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social (MTSS). Pero
a ninguna de esas personas se les reconoce personalidad jurídica, sino
que son consideradas personas naturales. Por tanto, los principio del
Derecho Mercantil, las leyes que regulan los mecanismos del mercado,
todavía están a la espera de que se apliquen en Cuba.
Es exagerado afirmar que el restablecimiento de las relaciones
diplomáticas entre Washington y La Habana significa el cierre de un
ciclo y el comienzo de otro. Poco ha cambiado. Hay que tener presente
que las leyes Helms-Burton y Torricelli están codificadas por el
Congreso de EEUU y su derogación dependerá de que el Gobierno cubano
inicie un proceso de reformas, tanto políticas como económicas, que
conduzcan al establecimiento de un Estado de derecho, hoy ausente en Cuba.
En la Conceptualización del Modelo Económico y en el documento que
recoge los 267 lineamientos económicos, ambos aprobados en el VII
Congreso del Partido Comunista (PCC), queda bien claro que la dirección
de la economía se rige por la planificación centralizada y no por las
leyes del mercado.
En la Conceptualización del Modelo se dice que "la presencia de
diferentes actores de propiedad y gestión forma parte de los elementos
que condicionan la necesidad objetiva del reconocimiento del mercado". Y
en los Lineamientos se reconoce "la existencia de las relaciones de
mercado".
En ninguno de los dos documentos se hace mención a la economía
socialista de mercado como la que desarrollan China y Vietnam.
Tanto China como Vietnam son países dirigidos por partidos comunistas,
pero en lo económico, el Estado ha aceptado las reglas del mercado. Sus
sostenidos crecimientos económicos responden a las reglas que imponen
las empresas capitalistas presentes en estos dos países, que han
alcanzado altos niveles de crecimiento del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB).
La Conceptualización del Modelo y los Lineamientos Económicos reconocen,
por primera vez en 56 años, que la propiedad privada cumple una función
social, cuyos titulares son personas naturales o jurídicas, tanto
cubanas como extranjeras, pero solo en determinadas actividades.
No hay duda de que el VII Congreso del PCC fue el escenario que cimentó
el poder de la ortodoxia. Esto quedó refrendado en el artículo 54 (1.1),
acápite 59 del documento de la Conceptualización del Modelo, que
plantea: "El papel dirigente del PCC, único y vanguardia organizada de
la nación, fuerza dirigente de la sociedad y del Estado, tal como
aparece recogido en el artículo 5 de la Constitución de la República".
Contrario a lo que ocurre en China y Vietnam, el VII Congreso del PCC
patentizó que en la economía cubana predominará la planificación
centralizada y que no habrá espacio al libre mercado, que se reforzará
el control vertical del Gobierno sobre la política y la economía.
Los militares que detentan el poder en Cuba, a quienes les aterroriza la
democracia tanto como a los vampiros la cruz, y que no aceptan el
multipartidismo, la libertad de información y de expresión, lograron
imponer en los documentos programáticos acordados en el VII Congreso del
PCC el cierre a todas las bandas de todo lo que tenga que ver con la
libertad política y la libertad económica.
Source: Ni libertad económica ni libertad política | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1472715861_24998.html
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