Domestic Cuban Tourism Growing on the Island / Ivan Garcia
Ivan Garcia, 31 August 2106 — Nothing pleases Germán more than having a
cold beer by a swimming pool or indulging in the all-you-can-eat buffet
at a resort hotel. The fifty-five-year-old blacksmith worker also likes
people calling him Sir, watching foreign TV channels and having
something for breakfast other than coffee with milk and bread with
mayonnaise.
Sitting in a large leather chair at the Memories Flamenco Beach Resort
in Cayo Coco, a small island in Ciego de Ávila province about 600
kilometers east of Havana, Germán confesses that is the seventeenth time
he and his family have stayed at a resort. "I do not have money to spare
nor am I rich. But we have the right to relax in a nice hotel and be
treated the same as foreigners."
The number of Cubans who are able to afford a stay at an all-inclusive
resort at various tourist spots across the island has been steadily
growing. In spite of sky-high prices, Eugenio — a tour promoter for the
military-run Gaviota chain — says that this year "the number local
tourists staying at three, four and five-star hotels is likely to
surpass one and a half million."
That figure would not be significant but for the fact that the average
worker makes only about twenty dollars a month. A three-night stay for
Germán, his wife and their three children costs 556 convertible pesos,
the equivalent of what a medical specialist earns in a year.
Where are Cubans getting that kind of money? It is a good question but
one that Giordano, a forty-year-old self-employed worker, prefers to
sidestep. "Not by saving a few kilos every month in a business curing
ham and sausages," he replies.
It would seem that things are going fairly well for Giordano. He and his
wife rent a hotel room twice month. If business is going well, I will
stay for four or five days. If not, we'll only come on the weekend."
Luis Alberto, a desk clerk at a hotel in Cayo Guillermo, says, "Many
Cubans stay for a week or more. They often tip more generously than
foreign visitors. I suppose they can afford it because they have
successful businesses, receive big remittances or have money saved from
working in medical missions overseas."
Gina is a dermatologist who has worked in South Africa as well as
Trinidad and Tobago. She acknowledges that, with the money someone like
herself saves from her job and treating affluent clients on the side,
she could spend six days in an "all-included" hotel with a nice beach.
"But this is the exception," she notes. "Usually, doctors have so many
pent-up needs that we use the money to repair or purchase a house or to
buy a car."
A source who works at a Havana branch of Western Union says, "Every year
more money changes hands, mainly from the United States to Cuba. Whether
it is to address a serious family problem or to buy a plane ticket for a
relative who wants to emigrate to the United States, the average Cuban
receives an average of two-hundred dollars a month."
For Daniel staying in a high-end hotel and being a tourist does not
represent an economic sacrifice. As the owner of a private publicity
firm, he can afford to stay up to five times a year at a resort spa. "Of
course, I am always on the lookout for promotions and good deals. There
is a segment of the population like me that can spend more than three
days in a first-class hotel."
Noel, a former manager with the state-run resort company Cubanacán,
says, "Clearly, a ton of money is coming into Cuba from Miami but let's
not forget that there are private businesses that also generate quite a
bit of money, which can make a resort vacation affordable. It's
incorrect to think every Cuban on holiday is there because his overseas
family is paying for it. Most people are broke but I estimate that about
ten percent of the population can afford a few short vacations within Cuba."
And the number of domestic tourists on the island is an important
figure. It exceeds the number of Canadian travelers, the largest foreign
contingent.
According to Eugenio, a tourism promoter, "within five years it could be
as high as two and a half million people. Cubans have an inferiority
complex because of mistreatment by service staff at some hotels. But
although local customers spend less, their money is just as good as that
of Spaniards or Italians. Before too long, the only contingent that will
be bigger than ours will be the Americans."
But that is yet to be seen.
Source: Domestic Cuban Tourism Growing on the Island / Ivan Garcia –
Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/domestic-cuban-tourism-growing-on-the-island-ivan-garcia/
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
‘Kaputt’ - The Dreams of a Goethe Institute in Havana
'Kaputt': The Dreams of a Goethe Institute in Havana / 14ymedio, Yoani
Sanchez
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 6 September 2016 – The word made me
smile. I read Kaffeeweißer – coffee whitener – on the tiny envelopes
near the coffee machine in a Berlin hotel, that promised to "whiten"
that dark beverage that was relieving my jetlag. I had forgotten how
direct and powerful the German language can be. For years, along with
the Cuban Germanophile community, I had awaited the inauguration of the
Goethe Institute on the island, but last week a report in Deutsche Welle
poured a bucket of cold water on our aspirations.
The longed for opening of the center that would let us observe German
culture was only a matter of time. In July of last year, the German
Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, made the first official visit
of a German chancellor to our country since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In May of this year it was followed by a visit of Cuba's Foreign
Minister, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, to the capital city of bears and
sausages.
Like a diplomatic dance, we waiting impatiently for a step here, another
there and the prodigal handshakes for the camera. Meanwhile, we counted
the days until the country of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Herta
Mueller and Gunter Grass would honor Havana with a center of the stature
and quality of the Alianza Francesa.
I've never found a word that is better at expressing the breakage of
something than the German word kaputt. To this, my language of dreams
and nostalgia, I owe the force of the verbal sledgehammer that Spanish
hides in sinuous constructions and compromises. This crack that means
"broken," and carries with it a sense of frustration, resonated in my
mind this Saturday when I read the declarations of the president of the
subcommittee on foreign policy for material culture, Bernd Fabius, about
the possible causes of the sine die – the indefinite postponement – of
the Goethe Institute among us.
"Cuba fears that with the Geothe Institute, which promotes the German
language and culture in the world, Germany will encourage the
counterrevolution," said Fabius, noting that the refusal "shows how
fragile the systems of such states perceive themselves to be."
The Cuban government has preferred that the "German dose" come through
its own educational institutions and under tight control. In the Faculty
of Foreign Languages at the University of Havana there is a lectureship
for teaching the German language, but the autonomy of a cultural center
– managed directly from Berlin – is not in its plans for now.
A real shame in a country where it is calculated that around 30,000
Cubans studied or worked in the German Democratic Republic while many
others have gone in recent years to live in this now united European
nation and there is a curiosity mixed with empathy for the Teutonic
culture, despite the distance and the marked differences in identity.
Bernd Fabius's conclusion about the fears of Cuban officialdom are not
too far from the real motive for freezing out the Goethe Institute's
project. Every place that is not under the strict rules of ideology,
that offers literature not filtered by the island's publishers, or
promotes a view beyond the borders of political blindness and the sea
that surrounds us, causes the Plaza of the Revolution to break out in hives.
Most instructive is that the German government has spent years "behaving
itself" so that it might make a sign with the name of the author of
Faust shine on a Havana street. More than five years of exploratory
feelers, plugged ears, caution, and maintaining a great distance from
any phenomenon that might upset the olive-green hierarchy. After all
this time invested to avoid hurting feelings, the Bundestag has received
a loud and clear nein, as can only be heard in the language of Nietzsche.
Source: 'Kaputt': The Dreams of a Goethe Institute in Havana / 14ymedio,
Yoani Sanchez – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/kaputt-the-dreams-of-a-goethe-institute-in-havana-14ymedio-yoani-sanchez/
Sanchez
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 6 September 2016 – The word made me
smile. I read Kaffeeweißer – coffee whitener – on the tiny envelopes
near the coffee machine in a Berlin hotel, that promised to "whiten"
that dark beverage that was relieving my jetlag. I had forgotten how
direct and powerful the German language can be. For years, along with
the Cuban Germanophile community, I had awaited the inauguration of the
Goethe Institute on the island, but last week a report in Deutsche Welle
poured a bucket of cold water on our aspirations.
The longed for opening of the center that would let us observe German
culture was only a matter of time. In July of last year, the German
Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, made the first official visit
of a German chancellor to our country since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In May of this year it was followed by a visit of Cuba's Foreign
Minister, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, to the capital city of bears and
sausages.
Like a diplomatic dance, we waiting impatiently for a step here, another
there and the prodigal handshakes for the camera. Meanwhile, we counted
the days until the country of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Herta
Mueller and Gunter Grass would honor Havana with a center of the stature
and quality of the Alianza Francesa.
I've never found a word that is better at expressing the breakage of
something than the German word kaputt. To this, my language of dreams
and nostalgia, I owe the force of the verbal sledgehammer that Spanish
hides in sinuous constructions and compromises. This crack that means
"broken," and carries with it a sense of frustration, resonated in my
mind this Saturday when I read the declarations of the president of the
subcommittee on foreign policy for material culture, Bernd Fabius, about
the possible causes of the sine die – the indefinite postponement – of
the Goethe Institute among us.
"Cuba fears that with the Geothe Institute, which promotes the German
language and culture in the world, Germany will encourage the
counterrevolution," said Fabius, noting that the refusal "shows how
fragile the systems of such states perceive themselves to be."
The Cuban government has preferred that the "German dose" come through
its own educational institutions and under tight control. In the Faculty
of Foreign Languages at the University of Havana there is a lectureship
for teaching the German language, but the autonomy of a cultural center
– managed directly from Berlin – is not in its plans for now.
A real shame in a country where it is calculated that around 30,000
Cubans studied or worked in the German Democratic Republic while many
others have gone in recent years to live in this now united European
nation and there is a curiosity mixed with empathy for the Teutonic
culture, despite the distance and the marked differences in identity.
Bernd Fabius's conclusion about the fears of Cuban officialdom are not
too far from the real motive for freezing out the Goethe Institute's
project. Every place that is not under the strict rules of ideology,
that offers literature not filtered by the island's publishers, or
promotes a view beyond the borders of political blindness and the sea
that surrounds us, causes the Plaza of the Revolution to break out in hives.
Most instructive is that the German government has spent years "behaving
itself" so that it might make a sign with the name of the author of
Faust shine on a Havana street. More than five years of exploratory
feelers, plugged ears, caution, and maintaining a great distance from
any phenomenon that might upset the olive-green hierarchy. After all
this time invested to avoid hurting feelings, the Bundestag has received
a loud and clear nein, as can only be heard in the language of Nietzsche.
Source: 'Kaputt': The Dreams of a Goethe Institute in Havana / 14ymedio,
Yoani Sanchez – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/kaputt-the-dreams-of-a-goethe-institute-in-havana-14ymedio-yoani-sanchez/
Guillermo Fariñas Returns Home After Hospital Visit For Fainting
Guillermo Fariñas Returns Home After Hospital Visit For Fainting / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Havana, 6 September 2016 — Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas,
after 47 days on a hunger and thirst strike, was transferred on Monday
afternoon to Arnaldo Milian Castro Provincial Hospital. The dissident
was discharged hours later because doctors felt that he did not meet the
"entry criteria for intensive care," he told 14ymedio activist Jorge
Luis Artiles Montiel.
Sources close to Fariñas detailed that the intake occurred at 2:45 pm
after he lost consciousness at his home in the neighborhood of La
Chirusa. Hours earlier, the daily report on his health issued by members
of the United Anti-Totalitarian Forum (FANTU), reported severe pain in
the "joints, knees, ankles and shoulders."
The note also explains that Fariñas was experiencing "dizziness,
weakness and fatigue" and said his weight was 151 pounds, according to
Dr. Yorkis Rodriguez Cardenas.
The winner of the European Parliament's Andrei Sakharov Prize for
Freedom of Thought is demanding that Raul Castro "publicly state that he
will put an end to the beatings of nonviolent opponents," and that he
will schedule a meeting with a member of the Council of Ministers and
"representatives of the Cuban opposition," to explain what the
government's strategy will be "to end the beatings."
A dozen Cuban dissidents have released a letter in which they call
themselves Fariñas' "brothers in the struggle" and say they share his
demands. However, they also state that they need him alive to continue
with them "on this path" until they "achieve freedom."
"We respect you and we are aware of your sacrifice, but we would ask you
to put an immediate end to your strike," says a letter from dissidents
Félix Bonne, Eduardo Díaz Fleitas, José Daniel Ferrer, Iván Hernández
Carrillo, Ángel Moya, Félix Navarro, Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique, Vladimiro
Roca, Martha Beatriz Roque and Berta Soler.
Since the beginning, Fariñas has reiterated that, in the event that
"Raul Castro will not yield to the demands" he will continue the hunger
and thirst strike "until the end."
Source: Guillermo Fariñas Returns Home After Hospital Visit For Fainting
/ 14ymedio – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/guillermo-farinas-returns-home-after-hospital-visit-for-fainting-14ymedio/
14ymedio, Havana, 6 September 2016 — Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas,
after 47 days on a hunger and thirst strike, was transferred on Monday
afternoon to Arnaldo Milian Castro Provincial Hospital. The dissident
was discharged hours later because doctors felt that he did not meet the
"entry criteria for intensive care," he told 14ymedio activist Jorge
Luis Artiles Montiel.
Sources close to Fariñas detailed that the intake occurred at 2:45 pm
after he lost consciousness at his home in the neighborhood of La
Chirusa. Hours earlier, the daily report on his health issued by members
of the United Anti-Totalitarian Forum (FANTU), reported severe pain in
the "joints, knees, ankles and shoulders."
The note also explains that Fariñas was experiencing "dizziness,
weakness and fatigue" and said his weight was 151 pounds, according to
Dr. Yorkis Rodriguez Cardenas.
The winner of the European Parliament's Andrei Sakharov Prize for
Freedom of Thought is demanding that Raul Castro "publicly state that he
will put an end to the beatings of nonviolent opponents," and that he
will schedule a meeting with a member of the Council of Ministers and
"representatives of the Cuban opposition," to explain what the
government's strategy will be "to end the beatings."
A dozen Cuban dissidents have released a letter in which they call
themselves Fariñas' "brothers in the struggle" and say they share his
demands. However, they also state that they need him alive to continue
with them "on this path" until they "achieve freedom."
"We respect you and we are aware of your sacrifice, but we would ask you
to put an immediate end to your strike," says a letter from dissidents
Félix Bonne, Eduardo Díaz Fleitas, José Daniel Ferrer, Iván Hernández
Carrillo, Ángel Moya, Félix Navarro, Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique, Vladimiro
Roca, Martha Beatriz Roque and Berta Soler.
Since the beginning, Fariñas has reiterated that, in the event that
"Raul Castro will not yield to the demands" he will continue the hunger
and thirst strike "until the end."
Source: Guillermo Fariñas Returns Home After Hospital Visit For Fainting
/ 14ymedio – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/guillermo-farinas-returns-home-after-hospital-visit-for-fainting-14ymedio/
Cuba lags behind in ICT
Cuba lags behind in ICT
OSMAR LAFFITA ROJAS | La Habana | 7 de Septiembre de 2016 - 11:57 CEST.
Of the 329 sections into which the "Conceptualization of the Economic
Model" document is divided, only number 110 refers to Communications. It
reads:
"Social communications are a strategic resource of the State,
institutions, companies and the media, at the service of participation -
including public debate - for which reason they are regulated and
controlled, taking into account the policy laid down by the PCC."
This section does even make reference to the application of Information
and Communications Technology (ICT).
According to the "2014 Measurement of the Information Society" report,
issued by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a
specialized agency of the United Nations (UN), based in Geneva, Cuba is
lagging quite behind in the use of ICT.
The second chapter of the report, containing the ICT Development Index
(IDI), reads as follows:
A) Access to ICT:
Landline subscribers per 100 inhabitants.
Cell phone subscribers per 100 inhabitants.
Percentage of households with a computer.
Percentage of households with Internet access.
B) Use of ICTs:
Percentage of people using the Internet.
Subscribers to broadband (wired) per 100 inhabitants.
Subscribers to wireless broadband per 100 inhabitants.
According to the ICT Development Index (IDI) in 2013, Cuba ranked 125
out of a total of 166 ITU member countries, with an IDI of 2.77, coming
in behind Ecuador, at 88th with a score of 4.56; Paraguay, ranked 109th,
with 3.71; El Salvador, 110th, with 3.61; and Guatemala, 118th, with
3.30. These countries, though featuring general development indexes
below that of Cuba, and yet to meet their Millennium Development Goals,
are more developed than Cuba when it comes to the application of ICT.
The ICT Development Index classifies countries based on findings with
regards to infrastructure and the degree of ICT acceptance and
implementation.
The data presented in Chapter 17, on Information and Communication
Technologies in the Cuba Statistical Yearbook suffices to explain the
country's 125th place in the place in the ITU report.
In Cuba there are 1,320,897 landline subscribers. In the residential
sector there are 996,063 subscribers, yielding a density of 41.3
telephones for every 100 inhabitants.
As for cell mobile telephones, at the close of 2015 there were 3,351,500
subscribers, for coverage of 85.3 per 100 inhabitants.
In Cuba there are 1,071,600 computers. Of them, 546,100 are connected to
the Internet. The number of users of Internet services at the end of
2015 was 3,912,600 at State agencies, scientific and medical facilities,
and universities.
The ONEI (National Statistical Institute) provides data does not
correspond to the facts. It claims that there are 348 Internet users and
95 personal computers for every 1,000 Cubans. The numbers don't add up,
as there are just over half a million computers connected to the
Internet alone.
The information provided by the ONEI does not account for the number of
subscribers to Nauta Internet services, provided at navigation
facilities supported by ETECSA, Cuba's Telecommunications Company, and
the Young Computer Users Club. Nor does it reflect the users of Wi-Fi in
public areas opened throughout the country.
As for broadband service, ETECSA does not report on the situation in
Cuba, which is shrouded in total mystery.
As reflected in the ITU's report, the growth of broadband was in the
double digits in 2014, with a global penetration rate estimated at 32%,
four times that recorded just five years earlier.
The poor figures with regards to ICT use reflect the policy of the Cuban
State, aimed at deliberate stonewalling.
With an investment of foreign capital it would be possible to modernize
the 689 digital telephone exchanges in Cuba, and to provide direct
Internet service to households – something that is still not part of
ETECSA's plans.
In Cuba one hour of Internet access costs a dollar, making it the most
expensive in the world.
The regime's official media outlets insist that there is freedom of the
press in Cuba, which is a fallacy. All those who connect to the Internet
through the official Nauta server know that there are locked pages, and
others that are almost inaccessible, because they take so long to open,
costing one too much time online and, therefore, money.
The Government blocks uncensored pages tackling Cuban issues because it
is terrified of Cubans finding out through these sites what the military
dictatorship's official media hide, manipulate and distort.
Source: Cuba lags behind in ICT | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1473242275_25137.html
OSMAR LAFFITA ROJAS | La Habana | 7 de Septiembre de 2016 - 11:57 CEST.
Of the 329 sections into which the "Conceptualization of the Economic
Model" document is divided, only number 110 refers to Communications. It
reads:
"Social communications are a strategic resource of the State,
institutions, companies and the media, at the service of participation -
including public debate - for which reason they are regulated and
controlled, taking into account the policy laid down by the PCC."
This section does even make reference to the application of Information
and Communications Technology (ICT).
According to the "2014 Measurement of the Information Society" report,
issued by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a
specialized agency of the United Nations (UN), based in Geneva, Cuba is
lagging quite behind in the use of ICT.
The second chapter of the report, containing the ICT Development Index
(IDI), reads as follows:
A) Access to ICT:
Landline subscribers per 100 inhabitants.
Cell phone subscribers per 100 inhabitants.
Percentage of households with a computer.
Percentage of households with Internet access.
B) Use of ICTs:
Percentage of people using the Internet.
Subscribers to broadband (wired) per 100 inhabitants.
Subscribers to wireless broadband per 100 inhabitants.
According to the ICT Development Index (IDI) in 2013, Cuba ranked 125
out of a total of 166 ITU member countries, with an IDI of 2.77, coming
in behind Ecuador, at 88th with a score of 4.56; Paraguay, ranked 109th,
with 3.71; El Salvador, 110th, with 3.61; and Guatemala, 118th, with
3.30. These countries, though featuring general development indexes
below that of Cuba, and yet to meet their Millennium Development Goals,
are more developed than Cuba when it comes to the application of ICT.
The ICT Development Index classifies countries based on findings with
regards to infrastructure and the degree of ICT acceptance and
implementation.
The data presented in Chapter 17, on Information and Communication
Technologies in the Cuba Statistical Yearbook suffices to explain the
country's 125th place in the place in the ITU report.
In Cuba there are 1,320,897 landline subscribers. In the residential
sector there are 996,063 subscribers, yielding a density of 41.3
telephones for every 100 inhabitants.
As for cell mobile telephones, at the close of 2015 there were 3,351,500
subscribers, for coverage of 85.3 per 100 inhabitants.
In Cuba there are 1,071,600 computers. Of them, 546,100 are connected to
the Internet. The number of users of Internet services at the end of
2015 was 3,912,600 at State agencies, scientific and medical facilities,
and universities.
The ONEI (National Statistical Institute) provides data does not
correspond to the facts. It claims that there are 348 Internet users and
95 personal computers for every 1,000 Cubans. The numbers don't add up,
as there are just over half a million computers connected to the
Internet alone.
The information provided by the ONEI does not account for the number of
subscribers to Nauta Internet services, provided at navigation
facilities supported by ETECSA, Cuba's Telecommunications Company, and
the Young Computer Users Club. Nor does it reflect the users of Wi-Fi in
public areas opened throughout the country.
As for broadband service, ETECSA does not report on the situation in
Cuba, which is shrouded in total mystery.
As reflected in the ITU's report, the growth of broadband was in the
double digits in 2014, with a global penetration rate estimated at 32%,
four times that recorded just five years earlier.
The poor figures with regards to ICT use reflect the policy of the Cuban
State, aimed at deliberate stonewalling.
With an investment of foreign capital it would be possible to modernize
the 689 digital telephone exchanges in Cuba, and to provide direct
Internet service to households – something that is still not part of
ETECSA's plans.
In Cuba one hour of Internet access costs a dollar, making it the most
expensive in the world.
The regime's official media outlets insist that there is freedom of the
press in Cuba, which is a fallacy. All those who connect to the Internet
through the official Nauta server know that there are locked pages, and
others that are almost inaccessible, because they take so long to open,
costing one too much time online and, therefore, money.
The Government blocks uncensored pages tackling Cuban issues because it
is terrified of Cubans finding out through these sites what the military
dictatorship's official media hide, manipulate and distort.
Source: Cuba lags behind in ICT | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1473242275_25137.html
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
“Fidel Was Not A Very Good Lover,” Says The German Marita Lorenz
"Fidel Was Not A Very Good Lover," Says The German Marita Lorenz
14ymedio, Madrid, 5 September 2016 — Marita Lorenz's first kiss (1939)
came from Fidel Castro. Daughter of a ship's captain, she met the leader
of the Revolution at age 20, at a dock at the port of Havana. After she
showed him around the ship, the leader asked her where her cabin was
and, once they were there he pushed her inside and kissed her. But
Lorenz didn't feel intimidated, "I was enthralled. Fidel gave off an
enormous seductive power!" she said, in an interview with the French
weekly Paris-Match, subsequently translated by YoDona, a magazine
belonging to the Spanish daily El Mundo. In the interview, Fidel
Castro's ex-lover offers every kind of detail about the relationship
they maintained in 1959, before she joined the anti-Castro ranks.
Almost six decades later, Lorenz says that Fidel Castro was the great
love of her life, despite her claim that he wasn't a good lover. "He was
more interested during the caresses than during the sexual act itself.
But dictators are all like that," she says from experience, having also
had a relationship with the Venezuelan dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez.
"Fidel was a narcissist. He loved to look at himself in the mirror while
he stroked his beard. He lacked self-confidence, or rather, he needed
adulation and pampering, like a little boy," she told YoDona, denying
that she feels any resentment toward the leader of the Cuban Revolution.
Lorenz lived in Suite 2408 in the Havana Hilton (the hotel where Fidel,
Raul and Ernesto Che Guevara were also living) between March and
November of 1959, a time when Fidel Castro still had not broken off
relations with the United States nor become linked with the USSR.
Castro's lover was aware that the relationship would not end in
marriage. "I'm married to Cuba," he told her. However, she was soon
pregnant, and although her son was supposedly taken away from her, she
met him in 1981: "I saw him when I visited Fidel the last time, after 20
years of separation," she said. "They told me I'd undergone an abortion,
but the gynecologist in New York told me I had given birth. What they
said about an abortion was false. My pregnancy was almost full-term and
my son was born when I was in a coma in Cuba. He is a boy. He grew up
there and is called Andres Vazquez."
It was during her pregnancy when she came into contact with the CIA
indirectly through Frank Sturgis, an American who presented himself as
an ally of Fidel, although in reality he was allied with Batista and
defending the interests of the mafia in Cuban casinos.
"He said he could help me and, in return, asked me many things. To get
rid of him, I ended up giving him documents that Fidel threw in the
trash and that, in my opinion, were of no interest. But that seemed to
satisfy him," she recalls.
In October 1959, after a poisoning attempt she gave birth to her son and
after a few months hospitalized in the United States she returned to the
island at the end of the same year, having already become a spy.
During her convalescence, she joined the anti-Castro side motivated by
her conversations with the FBI, which supposedly asked her to
assassinate Castro in 1961. "Oh, my little German," Fidel greeted her,
knowing she was going to kill him. "He handed me his gun and I took it.
Then, looking into my eyes, he said to me… 'No one can kill me' He was
right I dropped the gun and I felt liberated."
Despite not meeting their expectations – "They explained that if he had
been killed would not have had to launch the Bay of Pigs operation" –
Lorenz remained linked for years to espionage: "I came to know in Miami,
at a meeting of those anti-Castro, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was implicated
in the Kennedy assassination. But he was not alone, I'm sure there was
someone else. In my view there was a plot to kill the president," she
believes.
At 76 years, the former spy lives in Queens (New York) in a
semi-basement and wants to return to Germany to reunite with her son
Mark, from her relationship with the Venezuelan dictator Perez
Jimenez. "He has a job there, because he is going to run a museum
devoted to the secret services."
Source: "Fidel Was Not A Very Good Lover," Says The German Marita Lorenz
– Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/fidel-was-not-a-very-good-lover-says-the-german-marita-lorenz/
14ymedio, Madrid, 5 September 2016 — Marita Lorenz's first kiss (1939)
came from Fidel Castro. Daughter of a ship's captain, she met the leader
of the Revolution at age 20, at a dock at the port of Havana. After she
showed him around the ship, the leader asked her where her cabin was
and, once they were there he pushed her inside and kissed her. But
Lorenz didn't feel intimidated, "I was enthralled. Fidel gave off an
enormous seductive power!" she said, in an interview with the French
weekly Paris-Match, subsequently translated by YoDona, a magazine
belonging to the Spanish daily El Mundo. In the interview, Fidel
Castro's ex-lover offers every kind of detail about the relationship
they maintained in 1959, before she joined the anti-Castro ranks.
Almost six decades later, Lorenz says that Fidel Castro was the great
love of her life, despite her claim that he wasn't a good lover. "He was
more interested during the caresses than during the sexual act itself.
But dictators are all like that," she says from experience, having also
had a relationship with the Venezuelan dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez.
"Fidel was a narcissist. He loved to look at himself in the mirror while
he stroked his beard. He lacked self-confidence, or rather, he needed
adulation and pampering, like a little boy," she told YoDona, denying
that she feels any resentment toward the leader of the Cuban Revolution.
Lorenz lived in Suite 2408 in the Havana Hilton (the hotel where Fidel,
Raul and Ernesto Che Guevara were also living) between March and
November of 1959, a time when Fidel Castro still had not broken off
relations with the United States nor become linked with the USSR.
Castro's lover was aware that the relationship would not end in
marriage. "I'm married to Cuba," he told her. However, she was soon
pregnant, and although her son was supposedly taken away from her, she
met him in 1981: "I saw him when I visited Fidel the last time, after 20
years of separation," she said. "They told me I'd undergone an abortion,
but the gynecologist in New York told me I had given birth. What they
said about an abortion was false. My pregnancy was almost full-term and
my son was born when I was in a coma in Cuba. He is a boy. He grew up
there and is called Andres Vazquez."
It was during her pregnancy when she came into contact with the CIA
indirectly through Frank Sturgis, an American who presented himself as
an ally of Fidel, although in reality he was allied with Batista and
defending the interests of the mafia in Cuban casinos.
"He said he could help me and, in return, asked me many things. To get
rid of him, I ended up giving him documents that Fidel threw in the
trash and that, in my opinion, were of no interest. But that seemed to
satisfy him," she recalls.
In October 1959, after a poisoning attempt she gave birth to her son and
after a few months hospitalized in the United States she returned to the
island at the end of the same year, having already become a spy.
During her convalescence, she joined the anti-Castro side motivated by
her conversations with the FBI, which supposedly asked her to
assassinate Castro in 1961. "Oh, my little German," Fidel greeted her,
knowing she was going to kill him. "He handed me his gun and I took it.
Then, looking into my eyes, he said to me… 'No one can kill me' He was
right I dropped the gun and I felt liberated."
Despite not meeting their expectations – "They explained that if he had
been killed would not have had to launch the Bay of Pigs operation" –
Lorenz remained linked for years to espionage: "I came to know in Miami,
at a meeting of those anti-Castro, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was implicated
in the Kennedy assassination. But he was not alone, I'm sure there was
someone else. In my view there was a plot to kill the president," she
believes.
At 76 years, the former spy lives in Queens (New York) in a
semi-basement and wants to return to Germany to reunite with her son
Mark, from her relationship with the Venezuelan dictator Perez
Jimenez. "He has a job there, because he is going to run a museum
devoted to the secret services."
Source: "Fidel Was Not A Very Good Lover," Says The German Marita Lorenz
– Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/fidel-was-not-a-very-good-lover-says-the-german-marita-lorenz/
Cuban State Media Monopoly Denounces Internet Freedom Conference
Cuban State Media Monopoly Denounces Internet Freedom Conference /
Hablemos Press, Eduardo Herrera
Hablemos Press, Eduardo Herrera, Havana, 30 August 2015 — During a
recent broadcast of Televisión Cubana's national news program, the
government denounced the first ever Cuba Internet Freedom Conference,
scheduled for 12-13 September in the city of Miami, which members of
Cuban civil society will attend to participate in the debate.
The argument utilized for the occasion is that, with the interest in
establishing the World Wide Web on the Island, the US is endeavoring to
topple the revolutionary government.
Of the millions of people interested in Cubans being able to fully enjoy
the Internet in our country, the most interested are we ourselves, who
for more than 50 years have been in the dark with regard to world
developments.
During his visit to the Island, among the points that Barack Obama
emphasized pertained to US assistance in communications, and
facilitating the use of the Internet—which is currently still immensely
restricted by the authorities.
The Cuban government's installation of fee-based WiFi service in many
areas of the country does not yet meet the needs of the citizenry.
The hourly charges for the service are 2 CUCs, equivalent to more than
two dollars. In a country where the average citizen's salary is less
than one dollar per day, this is a high price for a service that is
inexpensive for many people around the world, and in some cases is even
free.
One must also consider that access depends on a server, one which allows
the transmission of convenient information as well inconvenient
information, as well as the connection's low speed.
It was said that, some day, home service would be implemented, but this
promise has yet to be met—all developments take place at an exceedingly
slow pace. The State seeks to maintain its monopoly on information at
all costs, violating even the people's right to be informed.
Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison
Source: Cuban State Media Monopoly Denounces Internet Freedom Conference
/ Hablemos Press, Eduardo Herrera – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/cuban-state-information-monopoly-denounces-organizers-of-conference-on-internet-freedom-hablemos-press-eduardo-herrera/
Hablemos Press, Eduardo Herrera
Hablemos Press, Eduardo Herrera, Havana, 30 August 2015 — During a
recent broadcast of Televisión Cubana's national news program, the
government denounced the first ever Cuba Internet Freedom Conference,
scheduled for 12-13 September in the city of Miami, which members of
Cuban civil society will attend to participate in the debate.
The argument utilized for the occasion is that, with the interest in
establishing the World Wide Web on the Island, the US is endeavoring to
topple the revolutionary government.
Of the millions of people interested in Cubans being able to fully enjoy
the Internet in our country, the most interested are we ourselves, who
for more than 50 years have been in the dark with regard to world
developments.
During his visit to the Island, among the points that Barack Obama
emphasized pertained to US assistance in communications, and
facilitating the use of the Internet—which is currently still immensely
restricted by the authorities.
The Cuban government's installation of fee-based WiFi service in many
areas of the country does not yet meet the needs of the citizenry.
The hourly charges for the service are 2 CUCs, equivalent to more than
two dollars. In a country where the average citizen's salary is less
than one dollar per day, this is a high price for a service that is
inexpensive for many people around the world, and in some cases is even
free.
One must also consider that access depends on a server, one which allows
the transmission of convenient information as well inconvenient
information, as well as the connection's low speed.
It was said that, some day, home service would be implemented, but this
promise has yet to be met—all developments take place at an exceedingly
slow pace. The State seeks to maintain its monopoly on information at
all costs, violating even the people's right to be informed.
Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison
Source: Cuban State Media Monopoly Denounces Internet Freedom Conference
/ Hablemos Press, Eduardo Herrera – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/cuban-state-information-monopoly-denounces-organizers-of-conference-on-internet-freedom-hablemos-press-eduardo-herrera/
Deaf and Mute - Diary of a Returnee, Part 4
Deaf and Mute: Diary of a Returnee, Part 4 / 14ymedio, Dominique Deloy
A foreigner may have to pay five CUC to enter the Museum of Fine Arts,
while a Cuban disburses 1/24th of that in local currency. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Dominique Deloy, Havana, 5 September 2016 — Sometimes I have
the impression I'm talking to myself inside an aquarium: I can't open my
mouth without fear of drowning, no one wants to listen to me, my
questions are never answered. Some, of course, consider me indiscreet,
daring, even a comemierda (literally "shiteater") as they say here,
although I don't know what this word is really meant to convey,
untranslatable in French but pleasing to my ears: stupid, timid, naïve?
It is a fact that asking too many questions is frowned upon here. They
often reply to me, "I don't know, I haven't asked," implying that one
has to be very strange to ask about such things, almost suspicious.
And it is not just when it comes to politics. Politics? Who talks about
politics here? The word itself is… suspicious! How many people have said
to me, "I don't like to get into politics, it is of absolutely no
interest to me." To even talk about this here is like something obscene,
unseemly. Pity the French returnee, who adores politics and likes to
remake the world over and over talking with her friends! Almost a
national sport! Shut your mouth, poor little
fish-returned-to-her-native-waters, comemierda!
But that's how it is. The French returnee wants to know everything. Not
only why the monthly salary of her aunt Candita, architect and head of
Housing Services, isn't enough to buy a pair of shoes. Also why Cuba
still has two currencies: one called "national" and the other… what to
call it, then? "Foreign" perhaps? And how to know when to pull out which
one (when both the bills and coins are very similar)? Why is it that
sometimes you can pay with either, making the conversion, and sometimes
you can't: when there are two different prices for the different
currencies, one for real Cubans and the other for tourists, or "fake
Cubans," like me?
Yesterday I had to pay five CUC (Cuban convertible pesos, the "foreign"
currency) to enter the Museum of Fine Arts – even though its magnificent
roof is on the point of collapsing on the works of Courbet and Degas,
and you can see the sky through it – while my companion paid
one-twenty-fourth as much in national currency (CUP); with no
explanation, as if the teller was deaf, looking at me in silence when I
asked him why. Why, yes indeed, why? A real brainteaser.
It is fortunate that they do not charge me for my bread ration in CUCs,
but I always go to the bakery with apprehension and a little shame, as
if I was thief trying to steal bread out of the mouths of real Cubans. I
feel the same when I travel alone in one of those fascinating machines,
my hair blowing in the wind, my nose filled with the smell of gasoline
and reggaeton thundering in my ears. I pay like the rest: 10 pesos in
national money, but I feel "clandestine, illegal," to quote Manu Chao's
song.
But it is not only the money, although this is the main topic of
conversation (along with finding out where you can get yogurt or chicken
today). I also want to know why the border between legality and
illegality is so thin here. For example, why, in front of everyone, in a
bakery with a French name, do they give me an open, half-empty package
of cookies, and especially why, when I ask for an explanation, do they
sneer at me instead of apologizing? It is the same for bottles of water
and packages of pasta, where the eye can discern the subtle and clever
slits used to remove a third of the product from its container while the
price remains the same.
Yes, the French returnee wants to know everything. She likes unambiguous
explanations, rational, direct words, clear.
Furthermore, in her aquarium, the returnee is deaf: there is no internet
here or very little. A few incredibly expensive minutes in a wifi zone,
as long as it hasn't crashed, in which case you can never know for how
long or why. It's clear you can't use the internet to be informed. And
don't even talk about the press… which says whatever it wants whenever
it feels like it. There's nothing left but Radio Bemba – Big Lip Radio –
word of mouth. So here you never know anything. The returnee is obliged,
therefore, to ask without any answers, to open and close her mouth in
her aquarium. With no results.
Source: Deaf and Mute: Diary of a Returnee, Part 4 / 14ymedio, Dominique
Deloy – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/deaf-and-mute-diary-of-a-returnee-part-4-14ymedio-dominique-deloy/
A foreigner may have to pay five CUC to enter the Museum of Fine Arts,
while a Cuban disburses 1/24th of that in local currency. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Dominique Deloy, Havana, 5 September 2016 — Sometimes I have
the impression I'm talking to myself inside an aquarium: I can't open my
mouth without fear of drowning, no one wants to listen to me, my
questions are never answered. Some, of course, consider me indiscreet,
daring, even a comemierda (literally "shiteater") as they say here,
although I don't know what this word is really meant to convey,
untranslatable in French but pleasing to my ears: stupid, timid, naïve?
It is a fact that asking too many questions is frowned upon here. They
often reply to me, "I don't know, I haven't asked," implying that one
has to be very strange to ask about such things, almost suspicious.
And it is not just when it comes to politics. Politics? Who talks about
politics here? The word itself is… suspicious! How many people have said
to me, "I don't like to get into politics, it is of absolutely no
interest to me." To even talk about this here is like something obscene,
unseemly. Pity the French returnee, who adores politics and likes to
remake the world over and over talking with her friends! Almost a
national sport! Shut your mouth, poor little
fish-returned-to-her-native-waters, comemierda!
But that's how it is. The French returnee wants to know everything. Not
only why the monthly salary of her aunt Candita, architect and head of
Housing Services, isn't enough to buy a pair of shoes. Also why Cuba
still has two currencies: one called "national" and the other… what to
call it, then? "Foreign" perhaps? And how to know when to pull out which
one (when both the bills and coins are very similar)? Why is it that
sometimes you can pay with either, making the conversion, and sometimes
you can't: when there are two different prices for the different
currencies, one for real Cubans and the other for tourists, or "fake
Cubans," like me?
Yesterday I had to pay five CUC (Cuban convertible pesos, the "foreign"
currency) to enter the Museum of Fine Arts – even though its magnificent
roof is on the point of collapsing on the works of Courbet and Degas,
and you can see the sky through it – while my companion paid
one-twenty-fourth as much in national currency (CUP); with no
explanation, as if the teller was deaf, looking at me in silence when I
asked him why. Why, yes indeed, why? A real brainteaser.
It is fortunate that they do not charge me for my bread ration in CUCs,
but I always go to the bakery with apprehension and a little shame, as
if I was thief trying to steal bread out of the mouths of real Cubans. I
feel the same when I travel alone in one of those fascinating machines,
my hair blowing in the wind, my nose filled with the smell of gasoline
and reggaeton thundering in my ears. I pay like the rest: 10 pesos in
national money, but I feel "clandestine, illegal," to quote Manu Chao's
song.
But it is not only the money, although this is the main topic of
conversation (along with finding out where you can get yogurt or chicken
today). I also want to know why the border between legality and
illegality is so thin here. For example, why, in front of everyone, in a
bakery with a French name, do they give me an open, half-empty package
of cookies, and especially why, when I ask for an explanation, do they
sneer at me instead of apologizing? It is the same for bottles of water
and packages of pasta, where the eye can discern the subtle and clever
slits used to remove a third of the product from its container while the
price remains the same.
Yes, the French returnee wants to know everything. She likes unambiguous
explanations, rational, direct words, clear.
Furthermore, in her aquarium, the returnee is deaf: there is no internet
here or very little. A few incredibly expensive minutes in a wifi zone,
as long as it hasn't crashed, in which case you can never know for how
long or why. It's clear you can't use the internet to be informed. And
don't even talk about the press… which says whatever it wants whenever
it feels like it. There's nothing left but Radio Bemba – Big Lip Radio –
word of mouth. So here you never know anything. The returnee is obliged,
therefore, to ask without any answers, to open and close her mouth in
her aquarium. With no results.
Source: Deaf and Mute: Diary of a Returnee, Part 4 / 14ymedio, Dominique
Deloy – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/deaf-and-mute-diary-of-a-returnee-part-4-14ymedio-dominique-deloy/
Can Cuba’s 1940 Constitution be Salvaged? (Part 1)
Can Cuba's 1940 Constitution be Salvaged? (Part 1) / Somos+
Somos+, Kaned Garrido, 24 August 2016 — Among vibrant speeches, spirited
debates, coalitions of power, changing sides, unthinkable alliances and
the dream of rebuilding the Republic, was born one of the most
progressive legal texts. The ambitious statements of the
1940 Constitution are as interesting as the story behind it.
The fall of Machado's dictatorship had left the country with a shaky
legitimacy of power. Parties and movements sought profound changes. The
revolutionaries wanted to slow the growth of monopolies, the size of the
large estates, inequality between classes, poverty in the countryside
and cities, and, above all: eventually form an independent nation.
Within the Constituent Assembly political leaders were battling it out
in intense discussions. In the upheaval of World War II Cuban politics
took sides in the movements of the great powers. Eduardo Chibas
criticized the support of Cuban communists for Moscow's
actions. Meanwhile, laws were proposed to reduce American dominance over
the island. Nationalism was the recurring and necessary theme.
The constitution has a strong liberal base, a deep respect for the
separation of powers and equality before the law. In addition it
proposed an ambitious social program.
Article 61 guaranteed that all Cuban workers would have a minimum wage
consistent with their material, moral and cultural needs. Commissions
would set salaries that should take into account economic activity, the
conditions of the region, and consider the worker the "head of household."
If we created a commission right now, would would be the estimated
minimum salary for a Cuban worker?
Article 67 gave every worker one month's rest for every eleven months
worked. If due to circumstances he did not complete the 11 months, the
rest was proportional to the time worked. But those were only benefits,
the true right resided in Article 71:
"The right of workers to the strike and the right of employers to the
lockout is recognized, in conformity with the regulations that the law
may establish for the exercise of both rights."
This was the law that would prevent the employers from ignoring the
workers. The mere threat of a strike is a reason to negotiate.
It is difficult to define the grammatical terms to talk about these
laws, to say how much they were held to. The years of that constitution
were plagued by corruption and ended with Batista's coup d'etat on 10
March 1952.
Today, a review by officialdom recognizes certain social conquests in
the text, but considers it a "bourgeois constitution" and "inferior" to
today's.
So we must create our own perception of what is salvageable and what is
not. Why is such an ancient text so important? Can we copy and paste it
into the twenty-first century?
Many constitutional scholars agree that only some amendments need to be
updated, because by its nature it is liberal and fair making it
applicable to our time.
Possibly this constitution written among the storms of the
nineteen-forties will be the basis of a new Cuban democracy. So we will
continue talking about it…
Source: Can Cuba's 1940 Constitution be Salvaged? (Part 1) / Somos+ –
Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/can-cubas-1940-constitution-be-salvaged-part-1-somos/
Somos+, Kaned Garrido, 24 August 2016 — Among vibrant speeches, spirited
debates, coalitions of power, changing sides, unthinkable alliances and
the dream of rebuilding the Republic, was born one of the most
progressive legal texts. The ambitious statements of the
1940 Constitution are as interesting as the story behind it.
The fall of Machado's dictatorship had left the country with a shaky
legitimacy of power. Parties and movements sought profound changes. The
revolutionaries wanted to slow the growth of monopolies, the size of the
large estates, inequality between classes, poverty in the countryside
and cities, and, above all: eventually form an independent nation.
Within the Constituent Assembly political leaders were battling it out
in intense discussions. In the upheaval of World War II Cuban politics
took sides in the movements of the great powers. Eduardo Chibas
criticized the support of Cuban communists for Moscow's
actions. Meanwhile, laws were proposed to reduce American dominance over
the island. Nationalism was the recurring and necessary theme.
The constitution has a strong liberal base, a deep respect for the
separation of powers and equality before the law. In addition it
proposed an ambitious social program.
Article 61 guaranteed that all Cuban workers would have a minimum wage
consistent with their material, moral and cultural needs. Commissions
would set salaries that should take into account economic activity, the
conditions of the region, and consider the worker the "head of household."
If we created a commission right now, would would be the estimated
minimum salary for a Cuban worker?
Article 67 gave every worker one month's rest for every eleven months
worked. If due to circumstances he did not complete the 11 months, the
rest was proportional to the time worked. But those were only benefits,
the true right resided in Article 71:
"The right of workers to the strike and the right of employers to the
lockout is recognized, in conformity with the regulations that the law
may establish for the exercise of both rights."
This was the law that would prevent the employers from ignoring the
workers. The mere threat of a strike is a reason to negotiate.
It is difficult to define the grammatical terms to talk about these
laws, to say how much they were held to. The years of that constitution
were plagued by corruption and ended with Batista's coup d'etat on 10
March 1952.
Today, a review by officialdom recognizes certain social conquests in
the text, but considers it a "bourgeois constitution" and "inferior" to
today's.
So we must create our own perception of what is salvageable and what is
not. Why is such an ancient text so important? Can we copy and paste it
into the twenty-first century?
Many constitutional scholars agree that only some amendments need to be
updated, because by its nature it is liberal and fair making it
applicable to our time.
Possibly this constitution written among the storms of the
nineteen-forties will be the basis of a new Cuban democracy. So we will
continue talking about it…
Source: Can Cuba's 1940 Constitution be Salvaged? (Part 1) / Somos+ –
Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/can-cubas-1940-constitution-be-salvaged-part-1-somos/
Cuba’s Hotel Challenges - A Guide to All the Projects in Process
Cuba's Hotel Challenges: A Guide to All the Projects in Process
Claire Boobbyear, Skift - Sep 06, 2016 6:00 am
Although Cuba won't say it, the country is ill-prepared for the influx
of new visitors and the necessary development.
— Jason Clampet
The surge in visitors to Cuba, brought on by the December 2014 detente
between the island and the U.S., caught the Caribbean nation unawares.
Hotels are overwhelmed and Cuba can't build new hotels fast enough to
cope with the boom in visitors from the US and around the world. Last
year 3,524,779 people visited Cuba, a 17 per cent increase on the year
before.
Over recent years Cuba has slowly been building mostly beach resorts for
Canadian and European tourists with a few pockets of urban hotel
activity in cities such as Santiago de Cuba (the much-needed city center
Hotel E Imperial has just opened) distant Baracoa and in central
Camagüey, a city not on the principal tourist circuit. In Viñales, where
the accommodation situation is acute, one new small hotel is under
construction opposite the church plaza to complement the existing
offering of just three state-run hotels in the valley.
In 2014, the Cuban government passed the Foreign Investment Law (FIL)
offering foreign companies a number of opportunities to build and
commercialize hotel developments in joint ventures with a Cuban partner,
construct golf courses in partnership with a Cuban company, sign hotel
administration contracts with Cuban hotel companies, and develop or
build new marinas in conjunction with a Cuban state partner.
None of the 56 tourism projects showcased in the 2014 law allow a 100
per cent foreign investment.
Richard E. Feinberg, nonresident senior fellow in the Latin America
Initiative at the Brookings Institution, and author of the newly
published book Open for Business: Building the New Cuban Economy spoke
to Skift about the rigid rules:
"As socialist states open to the international economy, it is common
that initially they require foreign investors to partner with powerful
state-owned enterprises protecting their turf. Over time, as market
mechanisms take hold and governments become more comfortable with
foreign firms, then 100 per cent foreign ownership is added to the
hybrid mix of investor relations and property ownership – but Cuba is
not there yet."
Resorts and Golfing
At the same time as the new FIL was passed, the Cuban government set up
CubaGolf, a subsidiary of state enterprise Palmares, to manage the new
business of joint ventures with foreign companies on building golf
courses with complexes of hotels, and condominiums and villas which
would be sold to foreigners. When ready for sale, these will be the
first accommodations available for foreigners to buy since the 1959
Revolution — apart from a small window, since shuttered, in the 1990s.
(Foreigners who hold Cuban permanent residency are entitled to buy.)
Below, Skift takes a look at where these proposed developments are — in
terms of progress — and the raft of new projects in the pipeline.
UK property magnates London + Regional signed a joint venture agreement
with Cuba's Palmares in February 2014 having acquired the UK's Esencia's
49 per cent interest in the Carbonera hotel/golf/villas project, some
115 km east from Havana, and 30 km west from Varadero. Esencia, itself,
drafted a plan in 2008 promising to break ground in 2009.
Desmond Taljaard, Managing Director for Hotels for L+R, plans to be the
first to break ground on the Carbonera Resort, which has development
costs of more than $500 million. The Carbonera Resort will see a
150-room hotel, IDG-designed 18-hole golf course, and 1,000 villas and
apartments sold on a perpetual lease (virtual freehold).
Mr. Taljaard told Skift: "We aim to break ground at the end of 2016 with
marketing to begin in 2017, and the first phase completed by 2020. This
first phase will include 200 residences, the hotel and the beach lagoon."
The second company due off the starting block is Canada's 360 VOX which
has partnered with large Cuban state hotel company Gran Caribe to build
a $1.2bn development on 12.5sq kms of land stretching from El Fraile up
to the borders of Memories Jibacoa, some 60 kilometers east of Havana.
The Village at Jibacoa is slated to have a 27-hole course, and four
hotels, villas, and apartments offering 3,474 accommodation units, and
leisure facilities. Its spokesman told Skift it was waiting for a local
authority approval and plans to break ground in fall 2017.
Beijing Enterprises Holdings Ltd signed a memorandum of understanding
with the Cuban government last year for Bellomonte, a $462 million
golf-hotels-condo project, at Guanabo, Playas del Este, east of Havana.
In June this year, Cuba's Ministry of Tourism said it was close to a
deal with a Spanish consortium La Playa Golf/Resorts S.L to build the
vast Punta Colorada Cuba Golf Marina in remote Punta Colorada in Pinar
del Río province, and close to a golf development deal with a Spanish
firm, west of Havana at El Salado. Spain's Urbas Grupo Financiero
announced in March it had begun to line up finance for a resort of 1,500
villas and 3,000 apartments with several golf courses at Rancho
Luna-Pasacaballos, near Cienfuegos, with a US$580 million investment budget.
A further $570 million investment opportunity, in partnership with
CubaGolf, is offered at Chorrera-Ancón near Trinidad for two 18-hole
golf courses, a hotel and 2,850 villas and apartments for sale on a
perpetual lease.
Other projects, drawn up in the first round of golf development news
about five years ago, appear to have been hit into the bushes. These
include coastal golf projects at Santa Lucía, Las Tunas, Colony (Isle of
Youth), Bacunayagua, and Guanahacabibes; La Altura in association with
starchitects Foster + Partners in western Cuba has been confirmed as on
hold, its London office told Skift; and Standing Feather International's
plan for the Holguín coast appears to have been abandoned.
The 2014 FIL detailed a golf development opportunity at Loma Linda,
Holguín, but this did not appear in the amended 2015 FIL document
suggesting that a potential deal may be under discussion.
Professor Feinberg explained: "The Cuban government's official
explanation for why some potential projects were dropped from the
amended FIL documents is that in those instances the government is
already in advanced conversations with potential investors."
On the new hotel front, numerous developments are afoot. Gaviota, the
largest tourism operator in Cuba, and the tourism wing of the Cuban
military, released a video last year showcasing its ambitious plans.
The Big Brand Deals
A number of international hotel companies have signed management
agreements with Cuban counterparts and Skift takes a look at some of the
biggest players in the hospitality field. (In 2014, the FIL offered 33
hotel management and commercialization contracts to foreign investors;
this had jumped to 59 opportunities in the amended 2015 FIL document.)
In Havana, Starwood became the first U.S. hospitality company to operate
in Cuba after a 60-year hiatus. Starwood signed a management contract
with Gaviota to run Four Points Havana by Sheraton (the former Hotel
Quinta Avenida). It opened its doors to the public in June 2016.
Starwood aims to open the Hotel Inglaterra under the Luxury Collection
brand on November 1 having pushed back the opening from August 31.
Starwood has also signed a letter of intent to run the historic Hotel
Santa Isabel on Plaza de Armas under the same luxury brand.
The centrally located Hotel Manzana de Gómez, opposite the Inglaterra,
was due to open this year. The Swiss hotel group Kempinski, touted in
Cuban and foreign press as the managing foreign partner, confirmed to
Skift it has not signed a management agreement with Gaviota for the
luxury hotel.
French company Accor has partnered with Gaviota on Sofitel So La Habana
currently under construction on the prominent corner plot of Prado and
Malecón. Accor also confirmed its plans for a stylish 112-room MGallery
in Havana and a 202-room Ibis.
Opposite the future So La Habana, the 300-room Hotel Packard is being
resurrected by Gaviota using French architects. Spain's Iberostar (a
current significant player in the hospitality market in Cuba) would not
be drawn on whether it has signed a management agreement on the prime
oceanfront property. However, prominent Spanish architect Rafael Moneo,
who did work with Iberostar on a proposal for the Packard, is no longer
associated with it he confirmed and said the project has passed on from
Iberostar.
Habaguanex, which runs the hotels in Old Havana has announced the
following openings between 2017-2019: Cueto (57 rooms on Plaza Vieja),
Marqués de Cárdenas de Monte Hermoso (21 rooms on Plaza San Francisco),
Catedral (24 rooms, one block east of the cathedral) and Real Aduana (on
Plaza San Francisco). Last month the Ministry of Tourism also announced
the building of Cuba's first airport hotel close to Havana's José Martí
International Airport. Wilton Properties, part of Canada's VOX 360,
plans to build modern, towering 363-room Hotel Arte in late 2017 next to
the 1830 salsa club and restaurant in a joint venture with Gran Caribe.
Outside of the capital, Singapore's Banyan Tree Resorts has partnered
with Gaviota for the Dhawa Cayo Santa María (opening delayed from July
2016 to later this year), the Angsana Cayo Santa María, Banyan Tree Cayo
Buba and Angsana Cayo Buba (Cayo Buba is off Varadero). Thailand's
Centara Hotels & Resorts will open Centara Grand Beach Resort Cayo
Guillermo in late 2017, the first resort in Cuba to feature over water
villas. Centara confirmed it has two other Cuba properties in the
pipeline. Iberostar confirmed its 11th hotel opening with the Iberostar
Playa Pilar on the formerly virgin beach of the same name on Cayo
Guillermo. Its 12th opening will be Iberostar Bella Vista in Varadero at
the end of this year.
Spanish hotel company Meliã, the largest hotel operator in Cuba,
confirms it will open the all-inclusive Meliã Internacional on the site
of the demolished mid-century Hotel Internacional in Varadero in 2018 in
conjunction with Gran Caribe. A 400-room Meliã Trinidad is in the
pipeline in partnership with state operator Cubanacán. Plenty of other
development is scheduled for the Trinidad Ancón Caribbean beach area
with further golf plans, hotels and an aquatic park slated. An 802-room
Paradisus Cayo Santa María, Meliã's luxury brand, is scheduled to open
in 2018 on the keys north of Santa Clara in partnership with Gaviota.
French company Pansea Hotels and Resorts does not yet have an opening
date for the luxury Pansea Trinidad, incorporated into the La Popa
church above Trinidad town. Its plans for a hotel next to the Partagás
cigar factory in Havana, and in the Viñales Valley remain in the
pipeline, its spokesman said.
And, it's not just large players that are taking advantage of Cuba's
extraordinary tourism boom and new private enterprise laws.
Boutique Moves
Locals and foreigners are starting to up the aesthetic stakes with
reworked old properties given design and architectural makeovers.
Malecón 663 will be a boutique casa-hotel right on the Malecón in Havana
with a café and concept store integrated into the colonial building.
It's due to open in December this year. Mansión Alameda, redesigned by
British-Cuban team Jonathan and Kendra Ashton is due to open in Trinidad
by spring 2017.
Caribbean Tours Ltd (formerly Cuba Real Tours) partnered with well-known
Cuban architect José Antonio Choy on stylish mezzanine rooms in Loft
Habana last year. The same team is working on a boutique casa in the El
Trianon building in Vista Alegre, Santiago de Cuba. Caribbean Tours Ltd
confirmed it is working on further private boutique casa-hotels in
Cienfuegos, Viñales and Camagüey and plans to open eight to 10 boutique
options in the next five years all with a minimum of 10 rooms.
And Cuban chemical engineer-turned-designer Ydalgo Martínez, and now a
new breed of Cuban hotelier, dare we say it? plans to open his third
stylish apartment for rent in Havana on December – the penthouse Marina
61 facing the Malecón.
Claire Boobbyer is a travel writer and Cuba travel expert. She is the
author of Frommer's EasyGuide to Cuba.
Source: Cuba's Hotel Projects: Status Updates for Golf and Resorts –
Skift - https://skift.com/2016/09/06/cuba-hotels/
Claire Boobbyear, Skift - Sep 06, 2016 6:00 am
Although Cuba won't say it, the country is ill-prepared for the influx
of new visitors and the necessary development.
— Jason Clampet
The surge in visitors to Cuba, brought on by the December 2014 detente
between the island and the U.S., caught the Caribbean nation unawares.
Hotels are overwhelmed and Cuba can't build new hotels fast enough to
cope with the boom in visitors from the US and around the world. Last
year 3,524,779 people visited Cuba, a 17 per cent increase on the year
before.
Over recent years Cuba has slowly been building mostly beach resorts for
Canadian and European tourists with a few pockets of urban hotel
activity in cities such as Santiago de Cuba (the much-needed city center
Hotel E Imperial has just opened) distant Baracoa and in central
Camagüey, a city not on the principal tourist circuit. In Viñales, where
the accommodation situation is acute, one new small hotel is under
construction opposite the church plaza to complement the existing
offering of just three state-run hotels in the valley.
In 2014, the Cuban government passed the Foreign Investment Law (FIL)
offering foreign companies a number of opportunities to build and
commercialize hotel developments in joint ventures with a Cuban partner,
construct golf courses in partnership with a Cuban company, sign hotel
administration contracts with Cuban hotel companies, and develop or
build new marinas in conjunction with a Cuban state partner.
None of the 56 tourism projects showcased in the 2014 law allow a 100
per cent foreign investment.
Richard E. Feinberg, nonresident senior fellow in the Latin America
Initiative at the Brookings Institution, and author of the newly
published book Open for Business: Building the New Cuban Economy spoke
to Skift about the rigid rules:
"As socialist states open to the international economy, it is common
that initially they require foreign investors to partner with powerful
state-owned enterprises protecting their turf. Over time, as market
mechanisms take hold and governments become more comfortable with
foreign firms, then 100 per cent foreign ownership is added to the
hybrid mix of investor relations and property ownership – but Cuba is
not there yet."
Resorts and Golfing
At the same time as the new FIL was passed, the Cuban government set up
CubaGolf, a subsidiary of state enterprise Palmares, to manage the new
business of joint ventures with foreign companies on building golf
courses with complexes of hotels, and condominiums and villas which
would be sold to foreigners. When ready for sale, these will be the
first accommodations available for foreigners to buy since the 1959
Revolution — apart from a small window, since shuttered, in the 1990s.
(Foreigners who hold Cuban permanent residency are entitled to buy.)
Below, Skift takes a look at where these proposed developments are — in
terms of progress — and the raft of new projects in the pipeline.
UK property magnates London + Regional signed a joint venture agreement
with Cuba's Palmares in February 2014 having acquired the UK's Esencia's
49 per cent interest in the Carbonera hotel/golf/villas project, some
115 km east from Havana, and 30 km west from Varadero. Esencia, itself,
drafted a plan in 2008 promising to break ground in 2009.
Desmond Taljaard, Managing Director for Hotels for L+R, plans to be the
first to break ground on the Carbonera Resort, which has development
costs of more than $500 million. The Carbonera Resort will see a
150-room hotel, IDG-designed 18-hole golf course, and 1,000 villas and
apartments sold on a perpetual lease (virtual freehold).
Mr. Taljaard told Skift: "We aim to break ground at the end of 2016 with
marketing to begin in 2017, and the first phase completed by 2020. This
first phase will include 200 residences, the hotel and the beach lagoon."
The second company due off the starting block is Canada's 360 VOX which
has partnered with large Cuban state hotel company Gran Caribe to build
a $1.2bn development on 12.5sq kms of land stretching from El Fraile up
to the borders of Memories Jibacoa, some 60 kilometers east of Havana.
The Village at Jibacoa is slated to have a 27-hole course, and four
hotels, villas, and apartments offering 3,474 accommodation units, and
leisure facilities. Its spokesman told Skift it was waiting for a local
authority approval and plans to break ground in fall 2017.
Beijing Enterprises Holdings Ltd signed a memorandum of understanding
with the Cuban government last year for Bellomonte, a $462 million
golf-hotels-condo project, at Guanabo, Playas del Este, east of Havana.
In June this year, Cuba's Ministry of Tourism said it was close to a
deal with a Spanish consortium La Playa Golf/Resorts S.L to build the
vast Punta Colorada Cuba Golf Marina in remote Punta Colorada in Pinar
del Río province, and close to a golf development deal with a Spanish
firm, west of Havana at El Salado. Spain's Urbas Grupo Financiero
announced in March it had begun to line up finance for a resort of 1,500
villas and 3,000 apartments with several golf courses at Rancho
Luna-Pasacaballos, near Cienfuegos, with a US$580 million investment budget.
A further $570 million investment opportunity, in partnership with
CubaGolf, is offered at Chorrera-Ancón near Trinidad for two 18-hole
golf courses, a hotel and 2,850 villas and apartments for sale on a
perpetual lease.
Other projects, drawn up in the first round of golf development news
about five years ago, appear to have been hit into the bushes. These
include coastal golf projects at Santa Lucía, Las Tunas, Colony (Isle of
Youth), Bacunayagua, and Guanahacabibes; La Altura in association with
starchitects Foster + Partners in western Cuba has been confirmed as on
hold, its London office told Skift; and Standing Feather International's
plan for the Holguín coast appears to have been abandoned.
The 2014 FIL detailed a golf development opportunity at Loma Linda,
Holguín, but this did not appear in the amended 2015 FIL document
suggesting that a potential deal may be under discussion.
Professor Feinberg explained: "The Cuban government's official
explanation for why some potential projects were dropped from the
amended FIL documents is that in those instances the government is
already in advanced conversations with potential investors."
On the new hotel front, numerous developments are afoot. Gaviota, the
largest tourism operator in Cuba, and the tourism wing of the Cuban
military, released a video last year showcasing its ambitious plans.
The Big Brand Deals
A number of international hotel companies have signed management
agreements with Cuban counterparts and Skift takes a look at some of the
biggest players in the hospitality field. (In 2014, the FIL offered 33
hotel management and commercialization contracts to foreign investors;
this had jumped to 59 opportunities in the amended 2015 FIL document.)
In Havana, Starwood became the first U.S. hospitality company to operate
in Cuba after a 60-year hiatus. Starwood signed a management contract
with Gaviota to run Four Points Havana by Sheraton (the former Hotel
Quinta Avenida). It opened its doors to the public in June 2016.
Starwood aims to open the Hotel Inglaterra under the Luxury Collection
brand on November 1 having pushed back the opening from August 31.
Starwood has also signed a letter of intent to run the historic Hotel
Santa Isabel on Plaza de Armas under the same luxury brand.
The centrally located Hotel Manzana de Gómez, opposite the Inglaterra,
was due to open this year. The Swiss hotel group Kempinski, touted in
Cuban and foreign press as the managing foreign partner, confirmed to
Skift it has not signed a management agreement with Gaviota for the
luxury hotel.
French company Accor has partnered with Gaviota on Sofitel So La Habana
currently under construction on the prominent corner plot of Prado and
Malecón. Accor also confirmed its plans for a stylish 112-room MGallery
in Havana and a 202-room Ibis.
Opposite the future So La Habana, the 300-room Hotel Packard is being
resurrected by Gaviota using French architects. Spain's Iberostar (a
current significant player in the hospitality market in Cuba) would not
be drawn on whether it has signed a management agreement on the prime
oceanfront property. However, prominent Spanish architect Rafael Moneo,
who did work with Iberostar on a proposal for the Packard, is no longer
associated with it he confirmed and said the project has passed on from
Iberostar.
Habaguanex, which runs the hotels in Old Havana has announced the
following openings between 2017-2019: Cueto (57 rooms on Plaza Vieja),
Marqués de Cárdenas de Monte Hermoso (21 rooms on Plaza San Francisco),
Catedral (24 rooms, one block east of the cathedral) and Real Aduana (on
Plaza San Francisco). Last month the Ministry of Tourism also announced
the building of Cuba's first airport hotel close to Havana's José Martí
International Airport. Wilton Properties, part of Canada's VOX 360,
plans to build modern, towering 363-room Hotel Arte in late 2017 next to
the 1830 salsa club and restaurant in a joint venture with Gran Caribe.
Outside of the capital, Singapore's Banyan Tree Resorts has partnered
with Gaviota for the Dhawa Cayo Santa María (opening delayed from July
2016 to later this year), the Angsana Cayo Santa María, Banyan Tree Cayo
Buba and Angsana Cayo Buba (Cayo Buba is off Varadero). Thailand's
Centara Hotels & Resorts will open Centara Grand Beach Resort Cayo
Guillermo in late 2017, the first resort in Cuba to feature over water
villas. Centara confirmed it has two other Cuba properties in the
pipeline. Iberostar confirmed its 11th hotel opening with the Iberostar
Playa Pilar on the formerly virgin beach of the same name on Cayo
Guillermo. Its 12th opening will be Iberostar Bella Vista in Varadero at
the end of this year.
Spanish hotel company Meliã, the largest hotel operator in Cuba,
confirms it will open the all-inclusive Meliã Internacional on the site
of the demolished mid-century Hotel Internacional in Varadero in 2018 in
conjunction with Gran Caribe. A 400-room Meliã Trinidad is in the
pipeline in partnership with state operator Cubanacán. Plenty of other
development is scheduled for the Trinidad Ancón Caribbean beach area
with further golf plans, hotels and an aquatic park slated. An 802-room
Paradisus Cayo Santa María, Meliã's luxury brand, is scheduled to open
in 2018 on the keys north of Santa Clara in partnership with Gaviota.
French company Pansea Hotels and Resorts does not yet have an opening
date for the luxury Pansea Trinidad, incorporated into the La Popa
church above Trinidad town. Its plans for a hotel next to the Partagás
cigar factory in Havana, and in the Viñales Valley remain in the
pipeline, its spokesman said.
And, it's not just large players that are taking advantage of Cuba's
extraordinary tourism boom and new private enterprise laws.
Boutique Moves
Locals and foreigners are starting to up the aesthetic stakes with
reworked old properties given design and architectural makeovers.
Malecón 663 will be a boutique casa-hotel right on the Malecón in Havana
with a café and concept store integrated into the colonial building.
It's due to open in December this year. Mansión Alameda, redesigned by
British-Cuban team Jonathan and Kendra Ashton is due to open in Trinidad
by spring 2017.
Caribbean Tours Ltd (formerly Cuba Real Tours) partnered with well-known
Cuban architect José Antonio Choy on stylish mezzanine rooms in Loft
Habana last year. The same team is working on a boutique casa in the El
Trianon building in Vista Alegre, Santiago de Cuba. Caribbean Tours Ltd
confirmed it is working on further private boutique casa-hotels in
Cienfuegos, Viñales and Camagüey and plans to open eight to 10 boutique
options in the next five years all with a minimum of 10 rooms.
And Cuban chemical engineer-turned-designer Ydalgo Martínez, and now a
new breed of Cuban hotelier, dare we say it? plans to open his third
stylish apartment for rent in Havana on December – the penthouse Marina
61 facing the Malecón.
Claire Boobbyer is a travel writer and Cuba travel expert. She is the
author of Frommer's EasyGuide to Cuba.
Source: Cuba's Hotel Projects: Status Updates for Golf and Resorts –
Skift - https://skift.com/2016/09/06/cuba-hotels/
The Sorry Tale Of Cuban Communism
The Sorry Tale Of Cuban Communism
Daniel J. Mitchell - September 06, 2016, 11:25 am
Before communism arrived in Cuba, it was one of the most prosperous
societies of the Americas. Now, its economy and society are both
severely crippled by it.
Communism should be remembered first and foremost for the death,
brutality, and repression that occurred whenever that evil system was
imposed upon a nation.
Dictators like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the North Korean Kim dynasty either
killed more than Hitler, or butchered higher proportions of their
populations.
But let's not forget that communism also has an awful economic legacy.
The economic breakdown of the Soviet Empire. The horrid deprivation in
North Korea. The giant gap that existed between West Germany and East
Germany. The mass poverty in China before partial liberalisation.
Today, let's focus on how communism has severely crippled the Cuban economy.
In a column for Reason, a few years ago, Steven Chapman accurately
summarised the problems in that long-suffering nation.
"There may yet be admirers of Cuban communism in certain precincts of
Berkeley or Cambridge, but it's hard to find them in Havana. The average
Cuban makes only about $20 a month— which is a bit spartan even if you
add in free housing, food, and medical care. For that matter, the free
stuff is not so easy to come by. Food shortages are frequent, the stock
of adequate housing has shrunk, and hospital patients often have to
bring their own sheets, food, and even medical supplies. Roger Noriega,
a researcher at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in
Washington, notes that before communism arrived, Cuba "was one of the
most prosperous and egalitarian societies of the Americas." His
colleague Nicholas Eberstadt has documented that pre-Castro Cuba had a
high rate of literacy and a life expectancy surpassing that in Spain,
Greece, and Portugal. Instead of accelerating development, Castro has
hindered it. In 1980, living standards in Chile were double those in
Cuba. Thanks to bold free-market reforms implemented in Chile but not
Cuba, the average Chilean's income now appears to be four times higher
than the average Cuban's. In its latest annual report, Human Rights
Watch says, "Cuba remains the one country in Latin America that
represses virtually all forms of political dissent."
The comparison between Chile and Cuba is especially apt since the
pro-market reforms in the South American nation came after a coup
against a Marxist government that severely weakened the Chilean economy.
Chapman points out that the standard leftist excuse for Cuban misery—
the U.S. trade embargo— isn't very legitimate.
"The regime prefers to blame any problems on the Yankee imperialists,
who have enforced an economic embargo for decades. In fact, its effect
on the Cuban economy is modest, since Cuba trades freely with the rest
of the world."
Since the U.S. accounts for nearly one-fourth of world economic output,
I'm open to the hypothesis that the negative impact on Cuba is more than
"modest."
But it still would be just a partial explanation. Just remember that
communist societies have always been economic basket cases even if they
have unfettered ability to trade with all other nations.
Writing for the Huffington Post (hardly a pro-capitalism outfit), Terry
Savage also explains that Cuba is an economic disaster.
"…the economic consequences of a 50-year, totalitarian, socialistic
experiment in government are obvious today. Cuba is a beautiful country
filled with many friendly people, who have lived in poverty and
deprivation for decades. Socialism in its purest form simply didn't work
there. I was immediately reminded of that old saying: "Capitalism is the
unequal distribution of wealth – but socialism is the equal distribution
of poverty." Once-magnificent buildings are literally crumbling, plaster
falling and walls and stairways falling apart, as there are no ownership
incentives to maintain them – or profit potential to incent their
preservation. Every Cuban gets a ration book and an assigned "bodega" in
which to purchase the low-cost, subsidised food. The one I visited
looked like an empty warehouse, with little on the shelves. If the rice,
beans, eggs, and cooking oil are not in stock, the shopper must return
the following week. Allowed five eggs per month, the basics barely cover
a starvation existence. The economic results of their 50-year rule have
been abysmal. Cuba became a protectorate of the old Soviet Union
(remember the Cuban missile crisis) -and that worked until the early
1990s, when the USSR fell apart. No longer receiving aid from its
protector, Cuba entered a long period now remembered as "the special
times" when Cubans were literally starving, when there was electricity
only two hours per day, and people turned any patch of dirt into a
garden to survive. Cubans bear the scars of that terrible time, and for
many the current situation is still not that much better."
So Cuba was a basket case that was subsidised by the Soviet Union. When
the Evil Empire collapsed and the subsidies ended, the basket case
became a hellhole.
The good news, if we're grading on a curve, is that Cuba has now
improved to again being a basket case.
But that improvement still leaves Cuba with a lot of room for
improvement. It may not be at the level of North Korea, but it's worse
than Venezuela, and that's saying something.
My friend Michel Kelly-Gagnon, of the Montreal Economic Institute,
echoes the horrid news about Cuba's economy.
"As anyone who has spent any amount of time in Cuba outside the tourist
compounds can tell you, socialism, particularly the unsubsidised version
that we have seen since the fall of the Soviet empire, has been a
disaster. The hospitals which supposedly offer free care only do so
quickly and effectively to the politically connected, friends and family
of staff members, and to those who pay the largest bribes. That "free"
university education that many Cubans get in technical fields is rarely
worth much more than what students pay for it. There are few books in
the country's schools, and those that can be found are years, if not
decades old. The country's libraries are empty. The guaranteed jobs that
all Cubans have are fine, until you realise that the average salary is
in the range of $20 a month. Worse, the food and other staple allotments
that Cubans have long felt entitled to, have shrunk over the years.
Tourists often marvel at how thin and healthy Cubans look. Sadly, many
of them are outright hungry."
Though Michel includes a bit of optimism in his column, pointing out
that there's been a modest bit of economic liberalisation (a point that
I've also made, even to the point of joking about whether we should
trade Obama for Castro).
"Communist Cuba, beset with an oppressive bureaucracy, an anachronistic
cradle-to-grave welfare state, a hopelessly subpar economy, and
widespread poverty, is gradually shifting to private sector solutions.
Starting when Raul Castro "temporarily" took over power from his brother
Fidel six years ago and culminating with the Communist party's approval
of a major package of reforms, Cuba has taken a series of increasingly
bold steps to implement free market reforms. These range from providing
entrepreneurs with increased flexibility to run small businesses, and
use of state agricultural lands by individual farmers, to the
elimination of a variety of burdensome rules and regulations.
Ironically, there is a lot that Canadians can learn from that shift."
And there's a lot the United States can learn, particularly our
President, who is so deluded that he said there are (presumably
positive) things America can learn from Cuba.
One common talking point from Cuban sympathisers is that the country has
done a good job of reducing infant mortality. But, as Johan Norberg
explains, that claim largely evaporates upon closer examination.
The bottom line is that communism is a system that is grossly
inconsistent with both human freedom and economic liberty.
And because it squashes economic liberty (thanks to central planning,
price controls, and the various other features of total statism), that
ensures mass poverty.
Amazingly, there are still some leftists who want us to believe that
communism would work if "good people" were in charge. I guess they don't
understand that good people, by definition, don't want to control the
lives of others.
This piece was originally published on the author's personal blog and
has been republished here with permission.
Source: The Sorry Tale Of Cuban Communism -
http://swarajyamag.com/world/the-sorry-tale-of-cuban-communism
Daniel J. Mitchell - September 06, 2016, 11:25 am
Before communism arrived in Cuba, it was one of the most prosperous
societies of the Americas. Now, its economy and society are both
severely crippled by it.
Communism should be remembered first and foremost for the death,
brutality, and repression that occurred whenever that evil system was
imposed upon a nation.
Dictators like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the North Korean Kim dynasty either
killed more than Hitler, or butchered higher proportions of their
populations.
But let's not forget that communism also has an awful economic legacy.
The economic breakdown of the Soviet Empire. The horrid deprivation in
North Korea. The giant gap that existed between West Germany and East
Germany. The mass poverty in China before partial liberalisation.
Today, let's focus on how communism has severely crippled the Cuban economy.
In a column for Reason, a few years ago, Steven Chapman accurately
summarised the problems in that long-suffering nation.
"There may yet be admirers of Cuban communism in certain precincts of
Berkeley or Cambridge, but it's hard to find them in Havana. The average
Cuban makes only about $20 a month— which is a bit spartan even if you
add in free housing, food, and medical care. For that matter, the free
stuff is not so easy to come by. Food shortages are frequent, the stock
of adequate housing has shrunk, and hospital patients often have to
bring their own sheets, food, and even medical supplies. Roger Noriega,
a researcher at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in
Washington, notes that before communism arrived, Cuba "was one of the
most prosperous and egalitarian societies of the Americas." His
colleague Nicholas Eberstadt has documented that pre-Castro Cuba had a
high rate of literacy and a life expectancy surpassing that in Spain,
Greece, and Portugal. Instead of accelerating development, Castro has
hindered it. In 1980, living standards in Chile were double those in
Cuba. Thanks to bold free-market reforms implemented in Chile but not
Cuba, the average Chilean's income now appears to be four times higher
than the average Cuban's. In its latest annual report, Human Rights
Watch says, "Cuba remains the one country in Latin America that
represses virtually all forms of political dissent."
The comparison between Chile and Cuba is especially apt since the
pro-market reforms in the South American nation came after a coup
against a Marxist government that severely weakened the Chilean economy.
Chapman points out that the standard leftist excuse for Cuban misery—
the U.S. trade embargo— isn't very legitimate.
"The regime prefers to blame any problems on the Yankee imperialists,
who have enforced an economic embargo for decades. In fact, its effect
on the Cuban economy is modest, since Cuba trades freely with the rest
of the world."
Since the U.S. accounts for nearly one-fourth of world economic output,
I'm open to the hypothesis that the negative impact on Cuba is more than
"modest."
But it still would be just a partial explanation. Just remember that
communist societies have always been economic basket cases even if they
have unfettered ability to trade with all other nations.
Writing for the Huffington Post (hardly a pro-capitalism outfit), Terry
Savage also explains that Cuba is an economic disaster.
"…the economic consequences of a 50-year, totalitarian, socialistic
experiment in government are obvious today. Cuba is a beautiful country
filled with many friendly people, who have lived in poverty and
deprivation for decades. Socialism in its purest form simply didn't work
there. I was immediately reminded of that old saying: "Capitalism is the
unequal distribution of wealth – but socialism is the equal distribution
of poverty." Once-magnificent buildings are literally crumbling, plaster
falling and walls and stairways falling apart, as there are no ownership
incentives to maintain them – or profit potential to incent their
preservation. Every Cuban gets a ration book and an assigned "bodega" in
which to purchase the low-cost, subsidised food. The one I visited
looked like an empty warehouse, with little on the shelves. If the rice,
beans, eggs, and cooking oil are not in stock, the shopper must return
the following week. Allowed five eggs per month, the basics barely cover
a starvation existence. The economic results of their 50-year rule have
been abysmal. Cuba became a protectorate of the old Soviet Union
(remember the Cuban missile crisis) -and that worked until the early
1990s, when the USSR fell apart. No longer receiving aid from its
protector, Cuba entered a long period now remembered as "the special
times" when Cubans were literally starving, when there was electricity
only two hours per day, and people turned any patch of dirt into a
garden to survive. Cubans bear the scars of that terrible time, and for
many the current situation is still not that much better."
So Cuba was a basket case that was subsidised by the Soviet Union. When
the Evil Empire collapsed and the subsidies ended, the basket case
became a hellhole.
The good news, if we're grading on a curve, is that Cuba has now
improved to again being a basket case.
But that improvement still leaves Cuba with a lot of room for
improvement. It may not be at the level of North Korea, but it's worse
than Venezuela, and that's saying something.
My friend Michel Kelly-Gagnon, of the Montreal Economic Institute,
echoes the horrid news about Cuba's economy.
"As anyone who has spent any amount of time in Cuba outside the tourist
compounds can tell you, socialism, particularly the unsubsidised version
that we have seen since the fall of the Soviet empire, has been a
disaster. The hospitals which supposedly offer free care only do so
quickly and effectively to the politically connected, friends and family
of staff members, and to those who pay the largest bribes. That "free"
university education that many Cubans get in technical fields is rarely
worth much more than what students pay for it. There are few books in
the country's schools, and those that can be found are years, if not
decades old. The country's libraries are empty. The guaranteed jobs that
all Cubans have are fine, until you realise that the average salary is
in the range of $20 a month. Worse, the food and other staple allotments
that Cubans have long felt entitled to, have shrunk over the years.
Tourists often marvel at how thin and healthy Cubans look. Sadly, many
of them are outright hungry."
Though Michel includes a bit of optimism in his column, pointing out
that there's been a modest bit of economic liberalisation (a point that
I've also made, even to the point of joking about whether we should
trade Obama for Castro).
"Communist Cuba, beset with an oppressive bureaucracy, an anachronistic
cradle-to-grave welfare state, a hopelessly subpar economy, and
widespread poverty, is gradually shifting to private sector solutions.
Starting when Raul Castro "temporarily" took over power from his brother
Fidel six years ago and culminating with the Communist party's approval
of a major package of reforms, Cuba has taken a series of increasingly
bold steps to implement free market reforms. These range from providing
entrepreneurs with increased flexibility to run small businesses, and
use of state agricultural lands by individual farmers, to the
elimination of a variety of burdensome rules and regulations.
Ironically, there is a lot that Canadians can learn from that shift."
And there's a lot the United States can learn, particularly our
President, who is so deluded that he said there are (presumably
positive) things America can learn from Cuba.
One common talking point from Cuban sympathisers is that the country has
done a good job of reducing infant mortality. But, as Johan Norberg
explains, that claim largely evaporates upon closer examination.
The bottom line is that communism is a system that is grossly
inconsistent with both human freedom and economic liberty.
And because it squashes economic liberty (thanks to central planning,
price controls, and the various other features of total statism), that
ensures mass poverty.
Amazingly, there are still some leftists who want us to believe that
communism would work if "good people" were in charge. I guess they don't
understand that good people, by definition, don't want to control the
lives of others.
This piece was originally published on the author's personal blog and
has been republished here with permission.
Source: The Sorry Tale Of Cuban Communism -
http://swarajyamag.com/world/the-sorry-tale-of-cuban-communism
Mariel port head outlines Cuba’s long-term shipping prospects
Mariel port head outlines Cuba's long-term shipping prospects
Greg Miller, Special Correspondent | Sep 05, 2016 7:00AM EDT
Within maritime circles, there is tremendous interest in the promise of
Cuban trade and how shipping can navigate the political minefield of the
US embargo and the 180-day rule, which bars a vessel that calls in Cuba
from visiting the United States for six months.
To obtain an insider's perspective on current conditions and future
prospects, special correspondent Greg Miller interviewed Charles Baker,
the general director of the PSA International-operated container
terminal in Mariel, Cuba, on August 30.
Greg Miller: Let's start with how the port is performing now and then
move on to your big plans for the future. You did around 160,000
twenty-foot-equivalent units in fiscal year 2014, the first year of
operations for Mariel, then 330,000 TEUs in 2015, which equated to an
increase of 35 percent to 40 percent when you subtract out the volumes
that were simply shifted over from Havana. Back in May, you were
predicting that your throughput for this year would rise to around
360,000–370,000 TEUs. Is that still your forecast today?
Charles Baker: "Unfortunately, no. After a very, very good start, the
situation that the country faces economically has become much more
challenging. What we saw in the second quarter was a slowing down of
traffic. What we're now predicting is that our figures for this year
will be close to last year's. It's not the end of the world, but it's
not as exciting as it looked at the beginning of this year."
You're now in your third year of port operations in Cuba, so you must
have a strong view on the quality of Cuban labor. I've heard the theory
that because Cuban workers were brought up in a Communist society, they
won't be productive workers, so terminal operations in Cuba would be at
a disadvantage. How would you describe your workforce?
"What I would say is that if you could bottle the spirit of our
workforce and sell it, you'd have the next Red Bull on your hands. Now
that the terminal is doing good business and making a profit, we've
increased salaries significantly, but back before the terminal opened,
the salaries we were offering were in line with the country's general
averages, which are probably around $25–30 per month. Even so, we would
be working on some aspect of the development and would ask, 'Is anyone
willing to come in on Saturday and Sunday?' And people were always
willing to come in on Saturday and Sunday, for no additional money.
"Also remember, a lot of our workers live in Havana and it's a pretty
arduous journey to Mariel, about an hour and a half there and an hour
and a half back at the end of the shift. So we take our hats off to
these workers and sometimes we look on in awe of their tenacity. They've
also got a very, very good handle on the technology. The average crane
rates are around 27 moves per hour, so we're very happy with their
performance."
One of the issues you've faced is long dwell times for containers on
your property, driven by factors outside the port. How are you dealing
with this?
"There have been a number of elements involved. One of them was that
last year, there was a lack of truck availability on the island and this
has been addressed by the arrival of approximately 200 new trucks, with
the last batch just coming onto the roads recently. There have also been
new warehouses opening up in the Mariel area, so containers don't need
to be trucked all the way to Havana.
"I'd also say that some aspects of Cuban logistics are pretty
antiquated. Warehouses are not open even 16 hours, let alone 24 hours a
day. They also do a lot of cargo inspections — there are probably not
enough inspectors and too many inspections. There is also the fact that
we are obliged to offer 15 days of free storage, and in my experience,
anywhere in the world, if you offer it, people will take it. There is a
program to reduce the amount of free time over the course of the next
two years and bring it down to seven days.
"All of these things are going to take time to get sorted out. We're
talking about a wide modernization process for the whole logistics and
supply chain system in the country."
What about your rail connection? How is that affecting port operations?
"We've got two new rail-mounted gantry cranes arriving at the beginning
of September from Shanghai and that will give us more than enough rail
capacity for the foreseeable future. We're handling an average of one
train a day and there is more demand for rail. This is a very long, thin
island, so it lends itself to rail transport. The challenges involve the
efficiency of the country's rail network: how quickly those trains can
be discharged and reloaded and how quickly the trains can get back here.
There is also a need for more investments in wagons and locomotives.
That is under way, so there should be additional wagons and locomotives
arriving in 2017."
Who are the main shipping lines serving the port besides Melfi (the
Cuban government-owned carrier)?
"Melfi is the main customer. It has about 30 percent of the business.
Then following them, roughly in order, would be Maersk Line,
Mediterranean Shipping Co., CMA CGM, Hamburg Sud, Cosco Container Lines
– and now China Shipping after the merger – and then Hapag-Lloyd, Zim
Integrated Shipping Services, Evergreen Line, Nirint and Crowley.
How much of this is coming to Mariel through mainline services and how
much through feeders?
"Melfi has mainline services. Maersk has a mainline service coming from
North Europe that started in May. Hapag-Lloyd runs services from Mexico.
The rest are bringing in cargo by feeders, from Panama and Kingston and
the Bahamas and a little from Caucedo, much of it through Isla Bonita
Shipping." (Editor's note: Panamanian corporate records indicate that
the directors of Island Bonita Shipping are executives of X-Press Feeders)
Mariel currently has a capacity of 800,000 TEUs per year, with four
cranes and 700 meters (2,296 feet) of quay. You've previously indicated
that the next phase will be the development of an additional 300 meters
of quay. What's the timetable for that?
"We are in the process of talking about that right now with the Cuban
authorities and the partners we're working with. That means it wouldn't
be (coming online) until sometime in 2019. The 'crystal ball gazing'
element we've got to consider is how quickly and far-reaching any
changes to US legislation vis-à-vis the embargo and the 180-day rule
will be. If those rules disappear, then we're in the game and very well
positioned geographically, so we may want more than another 300 meters."
You also have an additional 1,400 meters that's possible to develop,
bringing the total potential quay length to 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles)
and the total future capacity potential to 3 million TEUs per year. I'm
assuming that this additional 1,400-meter stretch is earmarked for the
post-embargo era?
"Yeah, that's a long-term project."
It has only been a few months since the expanded Panama Canal has come
online and we're already seeing 10,000 TEUs neo-Panamaxes in the
Caribbean. Where are you now with dredging and what's the schedule for
further deepening?
"At the moment, we have a Panamax access channel. The maritime authority
has literally just published new navigational regulations for Mariel
that represent the culmination of the investments in dredging that have
taken place through today. These regulations allow for vessels of up to
295 meters length overall, 32.3 meter beam, and up to 12.1 meter draft.
There's probably about 15 meters of actual water depth in the channel
and the channel itself is somewhat wider than it would need to be under
international guidelines for a Panamax vessel, so they're also now
reviewing whether or not that (vessel allowance) can be increased.
Dredging is ongoing with a view to completing a neo-Panamax-dimension
channel sometime in 2017."
The big potential for the future of Mariel is transshipment. Even with
the embargo and the 180-day rule, couldn't you start up an international
transshipment business serving mainliners on, for example, a
Europe-South America route, and transshipping to the Caribbean but not
touching the US?
"There is a possibility, but it's very challenging for a number of
reasons. First, all of the different shipping lines in these alliances
need to agree that they will include Mariel in their route and some of
them have a greater degree of difficulty in making that decision.
Earlier, I gave you the list of our customers and you might ask, 'Where
are NYK Line, "K" Line, MOL, and the Koreans?' The answer is that some
shipping lines have purposefully decided not to do business with Cuba so
they don't jeopardize their interests in the United States.
"Another aspect is that you have to consider who owns the ships. If half
of the ships are chartered, then who are they chartered from? If it's
from a company listed on the US stock exchange, that ship cannot
participate. Another question is: who insures the vessel? If an owner is
using an American-based insurance plan, there's another difficulty.
"And finally, if you have ships in a service that comes to Mariel and
for whatever reason you need to change the configuration of your
service, those ships cannot be deployed into a service that touches the
US for 180 days. You have black-listed your ships from US service for
six months after your call in Cuba."
From what you're saying, it sounds like the challenge to your
transshipment potential is not just the 180-day rule, it's also the
embargo, even in cases where the transshipment doesn't touch the US.
"Yes, it's a mixture of the two."
I know you've been to Washington and lobbied for repealing the 180-day
rule prior to the end of the embargo. I'm trying to understand why
Congress would be interested in doing that. I can see how it would
benefit European and Asian carriers, a Singaporean terminal operator and
the Cuban economy, but wouldn't it create direct competition for
US-based carriers operating out of US ports and carrying US exports to
Caribbean buyers? What's in it for US voters, which is what Congress
cares about?
"We believe that as far as international transhipment, the US is not in
that business. We're talking about doing transhipment in Mariel as
opposed to a place like Kingston, Jamaica. We also believe that if we
can provide a more efficient system (than other hubs), US-based
importers and exporters could reduce their transportation costs — and
that is favourable to US companies and therefore US voters.
"Another aspect we think is very interesting is that if you allow
transshipment to take place from Mariel to US ports, you could open up
service to Tampa, which is the closest port to Orlando, which is of
course a huge area for distribution centers serving the state of
Florida. Supply chain costs would be reduced and you'd also get the
cargo closer to the distribution centers, so you could reduce emissions
from trucks that would otherwise have to run the cargo up from Miami or
Ft. Lauderdale.
"The final consideration is that you've got a lot of federal and state
budgets under discussion for dredging projects to increase the
vessel-size capabilities of ports along the US Gulf and Eastern
Seaboard. If you create a transshipment hub in Mariel, where we're
already putting the capital expenditures into the ground and into the
channel to receive the bigger vessels, US ports could receive goods in a
timely and efficient fashion without having to spend hundreds of
millions of dollars on their channels. We would argue that you could
actually save capital investment dollars in US ports by handling
transshipment in Mariel."
I thought the potential for Mariel was transshipping to non-US ports if
the 180-day rule was lifted prior to the end of the embargo, but I'm
hearing you talk a lot about the potential for transshipment involving
US ports. Wouldn't a box from Asia that was transhipped from Mariel to
Florida be considered a Cuban export and therefore illegal under the
embargo?
"No, it would be transit cargo and not covered under the embargo. Our
interpretation is that if you remove the 180-day rule and the Torricelli
Act (the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992] that goes with it, you could
perform international transhipment in Mariel for US import and export
cargoes. You still couldn't trade freely between Cuba and the US, so you
wouldn't be exporting US goods to Cuba or Cuban goods to the US, but you
could create a transshipment network for international transshipment cargo.
"On whether or not this is feasible, I'd point out that there's a lot
going on politically and I think we can read between the lines of some
of the recent developments outside the shipping industry. The first
development is the advent of cruises by Carnival from Miami to Havana
and then to Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba. These cruises are taking
place even while the 180-day rule is in place and US tourists are not
permitted to visit the island. The second development is that starting
tomorrow, we have the first scheduled airline flights from the US into
Cuba in 55 years and within the next three months there will over 25
such flights per day, even though we are still in the same situation
where US citizens are not free to travel to Cuba as tourists. So why are
the airlines putting so many flights into the island?
"If exceptions are being made for those types of industries, is it
really so unrealistic to think that if we lobby in the right corners, we
might be able to find a similar solution for the 180-day rule and
container ships? I don't know the answer, but we're certainly going to
keep trying."
OK, final question: what is your thinking on the timing of the lifting
of the trade embargo? What I've been told is that even with a new US
president coming in and a new Congress convening in January 2017, any
action will effectively have to wait until February 2018, when Cuban
president Raul Castro retires. So we should really be looking not to
next year but to the year after. Does that make sense?
"It does. And if you look at the Helms-Burton Act (the Cuban Liberty and
Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996), it actually names Fidel and Raul
Castro and specifically states that the US will not do business with a
government that involves these individuals. So if Raul retires in early
2018 as he says he will, it will be easier for Congress to get rid of
the embargo.
"I am not a betting man, so I would not bet on it, but if I was a
betting man, I would bet on 2018."
Contact Greg Miller at greg.miller@ihsmarkit.com and follow him on
Twitter: @GMJournalist.
A version of this story originally appeared on IHS Fairplay, a sister
product of JOC.com within IHS.
Source: Mariel port head outlines Cuba's long-term shipping prospects -
http://www.joc.com/port-news/terminal-operators/psa-international/mariel-port-head-outlines-cuba-long-term-shipping-prospects_20160905.html
Greg Miller, Special Correspondent | Sep 05, 2016 7:00AM EDT
Within maritime circles, there is tremendous interest in the promise of
Cuban trade and how shipping can navigate the political minefield of the
US embargo and the 180-day rule, which bars a vessel that calls in Cuba
from visiting the United States for six months.
To obtain an insider's perspective on current conditions and future
prospects, special correspondent Greg Miller interviewed Charles Baker,
the general director of the PSA International-operated container
terminal in Mariel, Cuba, on August 30.
Greg Miller: Let's start with how the port is performing now and then
move on to your big plans for the future. You did around 160,000
twenty-foot-equivalent units in fiscal year 2014, the first year of
operations for Mariel, then 330,000 TEUs in 2015, which equated to an
increase of 35 percent to 40 percent when you subtract out the volumes
that were simply shifted over from Havana. Back in May, you were
predicting that your throughput for this year would rise to around
360,000–370,000 TEUs. Is that still your forecast today?
Charles Baker: "Unfortunately, no. After a very, very good start, the
situation that the country faces economically has become much more
challenging. What we saw in the second quarter was a slowing down of
traffic. What we're now predicting is that our figures for this year
will be close to last year's. It's not the end of the world, but it's
not as exciting as it looked at the beginning of this year."
You're now in your third year of port operations in Cuba, so you must
have a strong view on the quality of Cuban labor. I've heard the theory
that because Cuban workers were brought up in a Communist society, they
won't be productive workers, so terminal operations in Cuba would be at
a disadvantage. How would you describe your workforce?
"What I would say is that if you could bottle the spirit of our
workforce and sell it, you'd have the next Red Bull on your hands. Now
that the terminal is doing good business and making a profit, we've
increased salaries significantly, but back before the terminal opened,
the salaries we were offering were in line with the country's general
averages, which are probably around $25–30 per month. Even so, we would
be working on some aspect of the development and would ask, 'Is anyone
willing to come in on Saturday and Sunday?' And people were always
willing to come in on Saturday and Sunday, for no additional money.
"Also remember, a lot of our workers live in Havana and it's a pretty
arduous journey to Mariel, about an hour and a half there and an hour
and a half back at the end of the shift. So we take our hats off to
these workers and sometimes we look on in awe of their tenacity. They've
also got a very, very good handle on the technology. The average crane
rates are around 27 moves per hour, so we're very happy with their
performance."
One of the issues you've faced is long dwell times for containers on
your property, driven by factors outside the port. How are you dealing
with this?
"There have been a number of elements involved. One of them was that
last year, there was a lack of truck availability on the island and this
has been addressed by the arrival of approximately 200 new trucks, with
the last batch just coming onto the roads recently. There have also been
new warehouses opening up in the Mariel area, so containers don't need
to be trucked all the way to Havana.
"I'd also say that some aspects of Cuban logistics are pretty
antiquated. Warehouses are not open even 16 hours, let alone 24 hours a
day. They also do a lot of cargo inspections — there are probably not
enough inspectors and too many inspections. There is also the fact that
we are obliged to offer 15 days of free storage, and in my experience,
anywhere in the world, if you offer it, people will take it. There is a
program to reduce the amount of free time over the course of the next
two years and bring it down to seven days.
"All of these things are going to take time to get sorted out. We're
talking about a wide modernization process for the whole logistics and
supply chain system in the country."
What about your rail connection? How is that affecting port operations?
"We've got two new rail-mounted gantry cranes arriving at the beginning
of September from Shanghai and that will give us more than enough rail
capacity for the foreseeable future. We're handling an average of one
train a day and there is more demand for rail. This is a very long, thin
island, so it lends itself to rail transport. The challenges involve the
efficiency of the country's rail network: how quickly those trains can
be discharged and reloaded and how quickly the trains can get back here.
There is also a need for more investments in wagons and locomotives.
That is under way, so there should be additional wagons and locomotives
arriving in 2017."
Who are the main shipping lines serving the port besides Melfi (the
Cuban government-owned carrier)?
"Melfi is the main customer. It has about 30 percent of the business.
Then following them, roughly in order, would be Maersk Line,
Mediterranean Shipping Co., CMA CGM, Hamburg Sud, Cosco Container Lines
– and now China Shipping after the merger – and then Hapag-Lloyd, Zim
Integrated Shipping Services, Evergreen Line, Nirint and Crowley.
How much of this is coming to Mariel through mainline services and how
much through feeders?
"Melfi has mainline services. Maersk has a mainline service coming from
North Europe that started in May. Hapag-Lloyd runs services from Mexico.
The rest are bringing in cargo by feeders, from Panama and Kingston and
the Bahamas and a little from Caucedo, much of it through Isla Bonita
Shipping." (Editor's note: Panamanian corporate records indicate that
the directors of Island Bonita Shipping are executives of X-Press Feeders)
Mariel currently has a capacity of 800,000 TEUs per year, with four
cranes and 700 meters (2,296 feet) of quay. You've previously indicated
that the next phase will be the development of an additional 300 meters
of quay. What's the timetable for that?
"We are in the process of talking about that right now with the Cuban
authorities and the partners we're working with. That means it wouldn't
be (coming online) until sometime in 2019. The 'crystal ball gazing'
element we've got to consider is how quickly and far-reaching any
changes to US legislation vis-à-vis the embargo and the 180-day rule
will be. If those rules disappear, then we're in the game and very well
positioned geographically, so we may want more than another 300 meters."
You also have an additional 1,400 meters that's possible to develop,
bringing the total potential quay length to 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles)
and the total future capacity potential to 3 million TEUs per year. I'm
assuming that this additional 1,400-meter stretch is earmarked for the
post-embargo era?
"Yeah, that's a long-term project."
It has only been a few months since the expanded Panama Canal has come
online and we're already seeing 10,000 TEUs neo-Panamaxes in the
Caribbean. Where are you now with dredging and what's the schedule for
further deepening?
"At the moment, we have a Panamax access channel. The maritime authority
has literally just published new navigational regulations for Mariel
that represent the culmination of the investments in dredging that have
taken place through today. These regulations allow for vessels of up to
295 meters length overall, 32.3 meter beam, and up to 12.1 meter draft.
There's probably about 15 meters of actual water depth in the channel
and the channel itself is somewhat wider than it would need to be under
international guidelines for a Panamax vessel, so they're also now
reviewing whether or not that (vessel allowance) can be increased.
Dredging is ongoing with a view to completing a neo-Panamax-dimension
channel sometime in 2017."
The big potential for the future of Mariel is transshipment. Even with
the embargo and the 180-day rule, couldn't you start up an international
transshipment business serving mainliners on, for example, a
Europe-South America route, and transshipping to the Caribbean but not
touching the US?
"There is a possibility, but it's very challenging for a number of
reasons. First, all of the different shipping lines in these alliances
need to agree that they will include Mariel in their route and some of
them have a greater degree of difficulty in making that decision.
Earlier, I gave you the list of our customers and you might ask, 'Where
are NYK Line, "K" Line, MOL, and the Koreans?' The answer is that some
shipping lines have purposefully decided not to do business with Cuba so
they don't jeopardize their interests in the United States.
"Another aspect is that you have to consider who owns the ships. If half
of the ships are chartered, then who are they chartered from? If it's
from a company listed on the US stock exchange, that ship cannot
participate. Another question is: who insures the vessel? If an owner is
using an American-based insurance plan, there's another difficulty.
"And finally, if you have ships in a service that comes to Mariel and
for whatever reason you need to change the configuration of your
service, those ships cannot be deployed into a service that touches the
US for 180 days. You have black-listed your ships from US service for
six months after your call in Cuba."
From what you're saying, it sounds like the challenge to your
transshipment potential is not just the 180-day rule, it's also the
embargo, even in cases where the transshipment doesn't touch the US.
"Yes, it's a mixture of the two."
I know you've been to Washington and lobbied for repealing the 180-day
rule prior to the end of the embargo. I'm trying to understand why
Congress would be interested in doing that. I can see how it would
benefit European and Asian carriers, a Singaporean terminal operator and
the Cuban economy, but wouldn't it create direct competition for
US-based carriers operating out of US ports and carrying US exports to
Caribbean buyers? What's in it for US voters, which is what Congress
cares about?
"We believe that as far as international transhipment, the US is not in
that business. We're talking about doing transhipment in Mariel as
opposed to a place like Kingston, Jamaica. We also believe that if we
can provide a more efficient system (than other hubs), US-based
importers and exporters could reduce their transportation costs — and
that is favourable to US companies and therefore US voters.
"Another aspect we think is very interesting is that if you allow
transshipment to take place from Mariel to US ports, you could open up
service to Tampa, which is the closest port to Orlando, which is of
course a huge area for distribution centers serving the state of
Florida. Supply chain costs would be reduced and you'd also get the
cargo closer to the distribution centers, so you could reduce emissions
from trucks that would otherwise have to run the cargo up from Miami or
Ft. Lauderdale.
"The final consideration is that you've got a lot of federal and state
budgets under discussion for dredging projects to increase the
vessel-size capabilities of ports along the US Gulf and Eastern
Seaboard. If you create a transshipment hub in Mariel, where we're
already putting the capital expenditures into the ground and into the
channel to receive the bigger vessels, US ports could receive goods in a
timely and efficient fashion without having to spend hundreds of
millions of dollars on their channels. We would argue that you could
actually save capital investment dollars in US ports by handling
transshipment in Mariel."
I thought the potential for Mariel was transshipping to non-US ports if
the 180-day rule was lifted prior to the end of the embargo, but I'm
hearing you talk a lot about the potential for transshipment involving
US ports. Wouldn't a box from Asia that was transhipped from Mariel to
Florida be considered a Cuban export and therefore illegal under the
embargo?
"No, it would be transit cargo and not covered under the embargo. Our
interpretation is that if you remove the 180-day rule and the Torricelli
Act (the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992] that goes with it, you could
perform international transhipment in Mariel for US import and export
cargoes. You still couldn't trade freely between Cuba and the US, so you
wouldn't be exporting US goods to Cuba or Cuban goods to the US, but you
could create a transshipment network for international transshipment cargo.
"On whether or not this is feasible, I'd point out that there's a lot
going on politically and I think we can read between the lines of some
of the recent developments outside the shipping industry. The first
development is the advent of cruises by Carnival from Miami to Havana
and then to Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba. These cruises are taking
place even while the 180-day rule is in place and US tourists are not
permitted to visit the island. The second development is that starting
tomorrow, we have the first scheduled airline flights from the US into
Cuba in 55 years and within the next three months there will over 25
such flights per day, even though we are still in the same situation
where US citizens are not free to travel to Cuba as tourists. So why are
the airlines putting so many flights into the island?
"If exceptions are being made for those types of industries, is it
really so unrealistic to think that if we lobby in the right corners, we
might be able to find a similar solution for the 180-day rule and
container ships? I don't know the answer, but we're certainly going to
keep trying."
OK, final question: what is your thinking on the timing of the lifting
of the trade embargo? What I've been told is that even with a new US
president coming in and a new Congress convening in January 2017, any
action will effectively have to wait until February 2018, when Cuban
president Raul Castro retires. So we should really be looking not to
next year but to the year after. Does that make sense?
"It does. And if you look at the Helms-Burton Act (the Cuban Liberty and
Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996), it actually names Fidel and Raul
Castro and specifically states that the US will not do business with a
government that involves these individuals. So if Raul retires in early
2018 as he says he will, it will be easier for Congress to get rid of
the embargo.
"I am not a betting man, so I would not bet on it, but if I was a
betting man, I would bet on 2018."
Contact Greg Miller at greg.miller@ihsmarkit.com and follow him on
Twitter: @GMJournalist.
A version of this story originally appeared on IHS Fairplay, a sister
product of JOC.com within IHS.
Source: Mariel port head outlines Cuba's long-term shipping prospects -
http://www.joc.com/port-news/terminal-operators/psa-international/mariel-port-head-outlines-cuba-long-term-shipping-prospects_20160905.html
Cuba government filtering mobile text messages, dissidents say
Cuba government filtering mobile text messages, dissidents say
September 5, 2016
By Marc Frank
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba's Communist government is filtering mobile phone
text messages for key words such as "democracy" and "human rights" and
then blocking them, dissidents said on Monday.
An investigative report by blogger Yoani Sanchez and journalist Reinaldo
Escobar concluded that text messages failed to reach their destinations
if they contained Spanish words for democracy, human rights or hunger
strike, among others, as well as the names of some dissidents.
Eliecer Avila, head of opposition youth group Somos Mas, which
participated in the investigation, said 30 key words that triggered the
blocking had been identified but there could be more.
"We always thought texts were vanishing because the provider is so
incompetent, then we decided to check using words that bothered the
government," he said.
"We discovered not just us but the entire country is being censored," he
said. "It just shows how insecure and paranoid the government is."
It was not clear for how long the filter had been in place.
The full report was published by Sanchez's online newspaper, 14YMedio.com.
State telecommunications monopoly ETECSA could not be reached for comment.
Cuba has repeatedly charged that the United States wants to use
telecommunications to subvert the government and brands Sanchez and
other opponents as mercenaries working with Washington.
Reuters on Monday unsuccessfully tried to send messages containing the
words "democracy," "human rights," "Somos Mas" and Yoani Sanchez. Other
messages containing the Spanish word for "protest" went through. The
messages that did not reach their destinations appeared as "sent" on the
users' telephone.
Cuba arrived late to modern telecommunications, authorizing mobile
phones in 2008 and Wi-Fi internet access only last year. Online, it
blocks dissident websites and media it believes to be funded by the
United States, but permits the websites of critical newspapers such as
El Nuevo Herald and El Pais.
There currently are about 3 million mobile telephone accounts with local
provider CubaCell, which is part of ETECSA.
Despite efforts by the Obama administration to link U.S. internet
providers with the country as part of a detente begun in December 2014,
Cuban authorities appear more interested in working with Russia on
cyber-security, while China provides most of the Caribbean island's
communications technology.
Experts estimate that between 25 percent and 30 percent of Cuba's 11.2
million residents has some Internet access, mainly through Wi-Fi, though
it is sparsely used because of high rates.
Some 5 percent of the population enjoys home-based Internet, which
requires special government permission.
(Editing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Bill Trott)
Source: Cuba government filtering mobile text messages, dissidents say -
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/cuba-government-filtering-mobile-text-messages-dissidents-185202766.html
September 5, 2016
By Marc Frank
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba's Communist government is filtering mobile phone
text messages for key words such as "democracy" and "human rights" and
then blocking them, dissidents said on Monday.
An investigative report by blogger Yoani Sanchez and journalist Reinaldo
Escobar concluded that text messages failed to reach their destinations
if they contained Spanish words for democracy, human rights or hunger
strike, among others, as well as the names of some dissidents.
Eliecer Avila, head of opposition youth group Somos Mas, which
participated in the investigation, said 30 key words that triggered the
blocking had been identified but there could be more.
"We always thought texts were vanishing because the provider is so
incompetent, then we decided to check using words that bothered the
government," he said.
"We discovered not just us but the entire country is being censored," he
said. "It just shows how insecure and paranoid the government is."
It was not clear for how long the filter had been in place.
The full report was published by Sanchez's online newspaper, 14YMedio.com.
State telecommunications monopoly ETECSA could not be reached for comment.
Cuba has repeatedly charged that the United States wants to use
telecommunications to subvert the government and brands Sanchez and
other opponents as mercenaries working with Washington.
Reuters on Monday unsuccessfully tried to send messages containing the
words "democracy," "human rights," "Somos Mas" and Yoani Sanchez. Other
messages containing the Spanish word for "protest" went through. The
messages that did not reach their destinations appeared as "sent" on the
users' telephone.
Cuba arrived late to modern telecommunications, authorizing mobile
phones in 2008 and Wi-Fi internet access only last year. Online, it
blocks dissident websites and media it believes to be funded by the
United States, but permits the websites of critical newspapers such as
El Nuevo Herald and El Pais.
There currently are about 3 million mobile telephone accounts with local
provider CubaCell, which is part of ETECSA.
Despite efforts by the Obama administration to link U.S. internet
providers with the country as part of a detente begun in December 2014,
Cuban authorities appear more interested in working with Russia on
cyber-security, while China provides most of the Caribbean island's
communications technology.
Experts estimate that between 25 percent and 30 percent of Cuba's 11.2
million residents has some Internet access, mainly through Wi-Fi, though
it is sparsely used because of high rates.
Some 5 percent of the population enjoys home-based Internet, which
requires special government permission.
(Editing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Bill Trott)
Source: Cuba government filtering mobile text messages, dissidents say -
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/cuba-government-filtering-mobile-text-messages-dissidents-185202766.html
Returning to Cuba still not easy
Returning to Cuba still not easy
Posted Sep 5, 2016 at 6:41 PM
Updated Sep 5, 2016 at 8:23 PM
Share
Cuba does not recognize dual citizenship, leading to separate guidelines
for Cuban-born American citizens who travel to the island.
By Yadira Lopez yadira.lopez@heraldtribune.com
As far as the Cuban government is concerned: Once a Cuban, always a Cuban.
Americans have found it easier to visit the island after Obama began
easing restrictions in 2014. But citizens born in Cuba must still take
extra steps before they can travel to their birth country. The Cuban
government does not recognize dual citizenship, forcing Cuban-born
American citizens to renew the island's passport.
On its website, the U.S. embassy in Havana warns travelers: "The
Government of Cuba does not recognize the U.S. nationality of U.S.
citizens who are Cuban-born. These individuals will be treated solely as
Cuban citizens and may be subject to a range of restrictions and
obligations."
The cost of a Cuban passport is in the $350-$450 range. It can take up
to four months to process. While it remains valid for six years, it must
be stamped every two years, for an additional $230 each time, in order
to remain active.
Travelers must still use a valid American passport when departing and
entering the U.S.
Although Americans born in the states need a visa to travel to Cuba,
they can easily obtain one for $25-$30 from automated machines available
at airports prior to arrival on the island.
"You'll get there before I do," is what Rick Gomez tells friends who ask
him when he's going to Cuba. Gomez, a senior vice president at the
wealth management company Northern Trust in Sarasota, said the passport
requirements are a big deal.
"They impose a barrier on native-born Cubans returning to the island,"
he said. Gomez came to the U.S. as a child and has never returned. He
said the requirement has delayed his decision to visit Cuba.
There is one caveat to the passport regulation. Cubans who left the
island before Dec. 31, 1970, can travel solely with their American
passports, but they must obtain a travel visa. The fees are in the $200
range.
Applicants often complain that the visa takes too long to process and
that, since they're only valid for a one-time entry for 30 days and
expire 90 days after they're issued, it can wreak havoc on travel plans,
particularly for those who may need to visit sick or elderly relatives
at any given moment.
Such is the story of Bradenton resident Josefina Carranza, who came to
the U.S. in 1961 disguised as a nun to avoid detection. Carranza, 73,
went back to Cuba for the first time in 1995. The wait for the visa was
so long that she eventually decided to just apply for the passport. Now
she travels back to Cuba yearly to visit her elderly mother.
Every now and again there are rumors that the government will lift the
passport requirement. Fat chance, according to Carranza and many other
Cubans. The revenue is too good to pass up, particularly now that Cuba's
economy, highly dependent on Venezuela's, is once again facing uncertain
times.
Source: Returning to Cuba still not easy -
http://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20160905/returning-to-cuba-still-not-easy
Posted Sep 5, 2016 at 6:41 PM
Updated Sep 5, 2016 at 8:23 PM
Share
Cuba does not recognize dual citizenship, leading to separate guidelines
for Cuban-born American citizens who travel to the island.
By Yadira Lopez yadira.lopez@heraldtribune.com
As far as the Cuban government is concerned: Once a Cuban, always a Cuban.
Americans have found it easier to visit the island after Obama began
easing restrictions in 2014. But citizens born in Cuba must still take
extra steps before they can travel to their birth country. The Cuban
government does not recognize dual citizenship, forcing Cuban-born
American citizens to renew the island's passport.
On its website, the U.S. embassy in Havana warns travelers: "The
Government of Cuba does not recognize the U.S. nationality of U.S.
citizens who are Cuban-born. These individuals will be treated solely as
Cuban citizens and may be subject to a range of restrictions and
obligations."
The cost of a Cuban passport is in the $350-$450 range. It can take up
to four months to process. While it remains valid for six years, it must
be stamped every two years, for an additional $230 each time, in order
to remain active.
Travelers must still use a valid American passport when departing and
entering the U.S.
Although Americans born in the states need a visa to travel to Cuba,
they can easily obtain one for $25-$30 from automated machines available
at airports prior to arrival on the island.
"You'll get there before I do," is what Rick Gomez tells friends who ask
him when he's going to Cuba. Gomez, a senior vice president at the
wealth management company Northern Trust in Sarasota, said the passport
requirements are a big deal.
"They impose a barrier on native-born Cubans returning to the island,"
he said. Gomez came to the U.S. as a child and has never returned. He
said the requirement has delayed his decision to visit Cuba.
There is one caveat to the passport regulation. Cubans who left the
island before Dec. 31, 1970, can travel solely with their American
passports, but they must obtain a travel visa. The fees are in the $200
range.
Applicants often complain that the visa takes too long to process and
that, since they're only valid for a one-time entry for 30 days and
expire 90 days after they're issued, it can wreak havoc on travel plans,
particularly for those who may need to visit sick or elderly relatives
at any given moment.
Such is the story of Bradenton resident Josefina Carranza, who came to
the U.S. in 1961 disguised as a nun to avoid detection. Carranza, 73,
went back to Cuba for the first time in 1995. The wait for the visa was
so long that she eventually decided to just apply for the passport. Now
she travels back to Cuba yearly to visit her elderly mother.
Every now and again there are rumors that the government will lift the
passport requirement. Fat chance, according to Carranza and many other
Cubans. The revenue is too good to pass up, particularly now that Cuba's
economy, highly dependent on Venezuela's, is once again facing uncertain
times.
Source: Returning to Cuba still not easy -
http://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20160905/returning-to-cuba-still-not-easy
Castroist nepotism steadily spreads
Castroist nepotism steadily spreads
PEDRO CAMPOS | La Habana | 5 de Septiembre de 2016 - 22:58 CEST.
Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro,alias "El Cangrejo" ("The Crab"),
grandson of President/General Raúl Castro, has just been named Personal
Security Chief, replacing General Humberto Omar Francis Pardo, one of
the few holdovers from the old guard at the Ministry of the Interior
(MININT).
"The Crab" is the son of Débora Castro Espín and Luis Alberto Rodríguez
López-Callejas, considered one of the economic czars of Armed Forces
(FAR), and president of GAESA (the FAR's Business Administration Group),
and director of the El Mariel Special Economic Zone.
The position of Personal Security Chief is quite low-profile in terms of
its public visibility, nor does it figure prominently in the Party and
Government's hierarchy – at least officially. But any expert or scholar
who knows how Cuba really works is aware that, under Fidel's model,
characterized by despotism and nepotism, it is actually a post of the
greatest significance, even more important than being a member of the
Political Bureau, the secretary of a Province, the head of a department
of the Central Committee, or the commanding general of one of the three
armies.
He will head up the apparatus responsible for guaranteeing the life,
security and comfort of the Cuban Government's top leaders; or, as they
call themselves, "the historical leadership," and their close relatives
in Cuba and abroad.
Some in the US believe that it is analogous to the Presidential Secret
Service, charged with the security of the president, his family and
former presidents. However, in the two countries the positions'
strategic importance to the system is decidedly different.
In the US a failure by the Secret Service that costs the life of the
president or vice president would not mean the collapse of the entire
American empire, because the president and his vice, while key and
top-ranking figures in the political system, are not intrinsic or
essential components of it, and far less are they pivotal to the
economic system, which would remain intact.
However, in Cuba an event of this magnitude would have different
implications, due to the leader's close identification with the
country's history for over the past 60 years, and its political and
economic system, and the absolute role played by the caudillo, whose
cult of personality has permeated the nation and its national symbols.
In Cuba, the Communist Party (PCC), the National Assembly of Popular
Power and the country's major institutions, including the Constitution
itself, called "socialist," constitute a kind of Holy Trinity, gods
amongst the people, as the Party-Government-State serves exclusively the
interests of the legendary leader and his determination to wield all
power, perpetually.
It should come as no surprise that the commander-in-chief was the first
secretary of the PCC, president of the Council of Ministers and
president of the State Council as long as his health allowed, and only
when this faltered did he turn over all his self-appointed positions to
his brother, save for that of commander-in-chief. And it was he, despite
his old age, who closed the last congress of the PCC, where all the
regime's bigwigs gathered, so as to leave no doubts about who was in
control over the entire political-economic governmental apparatus.
Everything in Cuba has been made in his image and likeness, and in
accordance with his interests and considerations, from his momentous
decision to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, to the color of school
uniforms, to his macro and micro economic plans and social experiments,
their costs being recorded and tracked in nothing but his mind.
Let us not forget the leader's extreme measures and their implications
for all of Cuban society when he felt threatened by the potential
joining of two lower-ranking figures back in 1989: General Ochoa, who
was to take command of the Western Army, and Interior Minister José
Abrantes. The former boasted great prestige and power within the FAR,
while the latter was "contaminated" with the ideas of perestroika, going
so far as to publicly state that Cuba ought to start thinking about
implementing some sort of glasnost. An authentic witch hunt of reform
sympathizers was unleashed, lasting several years, marginalizing,
sacking or assigning to "other important tasks" thousands of officers,
officials and specialists at the PCC, the Cuban Foreign Ministry, the
MININT and MINFAR. This was a purification process worthy of Stalin;
less strident and more "diplomatic," but no less effective.
Let nobody forget either the national commotion when the leader fell
seriously ill in 2006, and its subsequent aftermath.
Here the leader's disappearance would be devastating to Cuba's entire
political-economic and social framework, which is structured based on
his interests and absurd, megalomaniacal aspirations to dominate not
just a country, or a region, but an entire age.
All Cuba's high-ranking yes men, who have spent more than half a century
praising him, subordinated to and defending fidelismo, know that without
him there will be no way to sustain the whole scheme, propped up on
pillars of voluntarism, populism, foreign aid and his imagination.
These processes and appointments of family members and loyal lackeys to
important positions , violating established mechanisms and rights,
simply evidence the absence of any institutional maturity in Castro's
Cuba, where the only way to be assigned important functions is through
subordination and unconditional loyalty to the Boss, convincing him or
one of his cohorts that one is useful. This "cadre policy" has not
changed under Raúl.
And this is the cause of the overconcentration of power amassed in the
hands of the FAR's generals, apparently controlled by the General and
President, those closest to power, and up-and-comers loyal to Castro.
This is not the kind of normal generational transition that occurs in
any democratic society, in which established institutions, a balance of
power between parties, and the popular vote determine who holds public
positions.
The perpetual replenishment of powerful posts, along with a shift from
State-based monopolistic capitalism to corporate and private capitalism,
under the guise of "modernization," is the plot the elite have devised
to avert their eventual collapse and to maintain the "royal" family and
its cronies in power after the historic leader's passing.
But such appointments, like that of "The Crab," or that of Alejandro
Castro Espín, to centrally control the intelligence of all Cuba's
special agencies, like a sort of National Security Council, this
entailing a greater concentration of power, evidences how the
contradictions inherent to Fidel's model are growing more and more
egregious. Now in its terminal phase, it is a structure that continues
to exclude many other actors from the process.
Source: Castroist nepotism steadily spreads | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1473109080_25050.html
PEDRO CAMPOS | La Habana | 5 de Septiembre de 2016 - 22:58 CEST.
Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro,alias "El Cangrejo" ("The Crab"),
grandson of President/General Raúl Castro, has just been named Personal
Security Chief, replacing General Humberto Omar Francis Pardo, one of
the few holdovers from the old guard at the Ministry of the Interior
(MININT).
"The Crab" is the son of Débora Castro Espín and Luis Alberto Rodríguez
López-Callejas, considered one of the economic czars of Armed Forces
(FAR), and president of GAESA (the FAR's Business Administration Group),
and director of the El Mariel Special Economic Zone.
The position of Personal Security Chief is quite low-profile in terms of
its public visibility, nor does it figure prominently in the Party and
Government's hierarchy – at least officially. But any expert or scholar
who knows how Cuba really works is aware that, under Fidel's model,
characterized by despotism and nepotism, it is actually a post of the
greatest significance, even more important than being a member of the
Political Bureau, the secretary of a Province, the head of a department
of the Central Committee, or the commanding general of one of the three
armies.
He will head up the apparatus responsible for guaranteeing the life,
security and comfort of the Cuban Government's top leaders; or, as they
call themselves, "the historical leadership," and their close relatives
in Cuba and abroad.
Some in the US believe that it is analogous to the Presidential Secret
Service, charged with the security of the president, his family and
former presidents. However, in the two countries the positions'
strategic importance to the system is decidedly different.
In the US a failure by the Secret Service that costs the life of the
president or vice president would not mean the collapse of the entire
American empire, because the president and his vice, while key and
top-ranking figures in the political system, are not intrinsic or
essential components of it, and far less are they pivotal to the
economic system, which would remain intact.
However, in Cuba an event of this magnitude would have different
implications, due to the leader's close identification with the
country's history for over the past 60 years, and its political and
economic system, and the absolute role played by the caudillo, whose
cult of personality has permeated the nation and its national symbols.
In Cuba, the Communist Party (PCC), the National Assembly of Popular
Power and the country's major institutions, including the Constitution
itself, called "socialist," constitute a kind of Holy Trinity, gods
amongst the people, as the Party-Government-State serves exclusively the
interests of the legendary leader and his determination to wield all
power, perpetually.
It should come as no surprise that the commander-in-chief was the first
secretary of the PCC, president of the Council of Ministers and
president of the State Council as long as his health allowed, and only
when this faltered did he turn over all his self-appointed positions to
his brother, save for that of commander-in-chief. And it was he, despite
his old age, who closed the last congress of the PCC, where all the
regime's bigwigs gathered, so as to leave no doubts about who was in
control over the entire political-economic governmental apparatus.
Everything in Cuba has been made in his image and likeness, and in
accordance with his interests and considerations, from his momentous
decision to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, to the color of school
uniforms, to his macro and micro economic plans and social experiments,
their costs being recorded and tracked in nothing but his mind.
Let us not forget the leader's extreme measures and their implications
for all of Cuban society when he felt threatened by the potential
joining of two lower-ranking figures back in 1989: General Ochoa, who
was to take command of the Western Army, and Interior Minister José
Abrantes. The former boasted great prestige and power within the FAR,
while the latter was "contaminated" with the ideas of perestroika, going
so far as to publicly state that Cuba ought to start thinking about
implementing some sort of glasnost. An authentic witch hunt of reform
sympathizers was unleashed, lasting several years, marginalizing,
sacking or assigning to "other important tasks" thousands of officers,
officials and specialists at the PCC, the Cuban Foreign Ministry, the
MININT and MINFAR. This was a purification process worthy of Stalin;
less strident and more "diplomatic," but no less effective.
Let nobody forget either the national commotion when the leader fell
seriously ill in 2006, and its subsequent aftermath.
Here the leader's disappearance would be devastating to Cuba's entire
political-economic and social framework, which is structured based on
his interests and absurd, megalomaniacal aspirations to dominate not
just a country, or a region, but an entire age.
All Cuba's high-ranking yes men, who have spent more than half a century
praising him, subordinated to and defending fidelismo, know that without
him there will be no way to sustain the whole scheme, propped up on
pillars of voluntarism, populism, foreign aid and his imagination.
These processes and appointments of family members and loyal lackeys to
important positions , violating established mechanisms and rights,
simply evidence the absence of any institutional maturity in Castro's
Cuba, where the only way to be assigned important functions is through
subordination and unconditional loyalty to the Boss, convincing him or
one of his cohorts that one is useful. This "cadre policy" has not
changed under Raúl.
And this is the cause of the overconcentration of power amassed in the
hands of the FAR's generals, apparently controlled by the General and
President, those closest to power, and up-and-comers loyal to Castro.
This is not the kind of normal generational transition that occurs in
any democratic society, in which established institutions, a balance of
power between parties, and the popular vote determine who holds public
positions.
The perpetual replenishment of powerful posts, along with a shift from
State-based monopolistic capitalism to corporate and private capitalism,
under the guise of "modernization," is the plot the elite have devised
to avert their eventual collapse and to maintain the "royal" family and
its cronies in power after the historic leader's passing.
But such appointments, like that of "The Crab," or that of Alejandro
Castro Espín, to centrally control the intelligence of all Cuba's
special agencies, like a sort of National Security Council, this
entailing a greater concentration of power, evidences how the
contradictions inherent to Fidel's model are growing more and more
egregious. Now in its terminal phase, it is a structure that continues
to exclude many other actors from the process.
Source: Castroist nepotism steadily spreads | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1473109080_25050.html
A highly educated population?
A highly educated population?
MIGUEL SALES | Málaga | 6 de Septiembre de 2016 - 05:20 CEST.
Since 1959 the Government of Cuba has allocated considerable resources
to its national educational system. The literacy campaign of 1961, the
appropriation of private schools, intervention at universities and the
creation of new, specialized institutions were, according to the
official propaganda, measures to transform the island into a "world
power in education." At the same time, the aim was to create a system of
indoctrination that would shape the people's thinking, right from early
childhood, into Marxist-Leninist-Castroist ideology.
Ever since throughout the world the regime's chorus of kowtowers has
touted the spectacular development of education as one of the Cuban
Revolution's "achievements." These triumphalist proclamations are based
more on slogans and manipulated statistics disseminated by the
Government in Havana than on objective and verifiable data provided by
international organizations.
Without considering the anthropological damage they have inflicted on
several generations of Cubans through the incessant indoctrination
practiced over the years in classrooms, and the need to feign an
enthusiastic adherence to "revolutionary" values in order to continue to
study, it is possible to evaluate the results of the Castroist
educational system based on objective and measurable criteria.
The first thing that jumps out is the poor quality of university
education. Whatever the international classification system consulted
(Shanghai, Oxford or CSIC), Cuba's top institution, the University of
Havana does not even stand among the top 1,000 in the world. For
example, in the most recent ranking by Spain's Superior Council of
Scientific Research (CSIC), the University of Havana is ranked 20th in
the Caribbean, behind institutions in Mexico, Jamaica and Puerto Rico,
and 1,741st in the world. That is, the world features some 1,740
universities, some in very poor countries in Asia and Africa, topping
Cuba's best institution of higher learning.
It should be noted that these entities' ranking systems are becoming
more and more sophisticated each year, taking into account cultural
differences, the economic context, and internal organization. The
assessment, addressing visibility, impact and activities, is determined
by a wide range of indicators of institutional and academic prestige,
such as articles in specialized publications, research results, the
publishing of high-level material, the use of new technologies,
international recognition, etc. These scores, combined on a weighted
basis, yield a numerical index that determines the institution's rank in
the international hierarchy. It would be absurd to think that these
ranking agencies operate in a coordinated manner, beholden to the CIA,
with the intention of discrediting the Cuban government. The Island's
universities simply do not measure up and meet the educational and
research needs of the contemporary world.
This is the despite more than half a century of colossal investments,
preferential attention lavished on the education sector, "pedagogical
innovation" along the lines of Makarenko and Castro I, and systematic
efforts to create the "new man," an objective now hardly spoken about on
the Island. It should not be forgotten that that the starting point for
Cuba's educational system in 1960, both public and private, was
relatively advanced for a country of intermediate development and that,
with an illiteracy rate approaching 20%, hardly scandalous for the time.
In that year the global average was 40% (Mexico: 30%; Puerto Rico: 11%,
Chile: 10%, Argentina: 9%). Although one will be able to find Castroist
websites stating that during the Republic "each year the army of
illiterate adults increased," the fact is that since 1902 the number of
Cubans who could read and write increased from 30% to 80% of the population.
The deficiencies in university education do nothing more than
encapsulate and reflect the problems plaguing the Cuban education system
and society as a whole. Essentially, Castroism's educational policy has
been based on extension and massification, at the expense of quality.
The main objective has been to make everyone capable of reading, even if
only a handful of political slogans, and to sign their names, in order
to proclaim the Island "a territory free of illiteracy," and then fight
the "battle of the sixth grade" to give everyone a certificate; and,
finally, place a college diploma in the hands of the greatest possible
number of young people, without stopping to consider academic standards
and students' true vocations.
This policy has given rise to some very curious situations. In 1980, two
decades after the Castro government declared that the entire population
was literate, some 35,000 exiles reached Key West from the Port of
Mariel. US authorities found that about 7% of those forming part of the
Mariel boatlift were functionally illiterate; that is, they were not
able to read and understand a simple form and complete it.
When considering this fact it must be borne in mind that the vast
majority of these emigrants were from urban areas, and were adults
between the age of 20 and 40. What must have been the real literacy
among people over the age of 50 living in rural areas on the Island?
This is not known, among other reasons because the Cuban government has
never conducted a follow-up study to determine the effectiveness of its
famous literacy campaign of 1961, and the likely relapses into
illiteracy due to disuse among older adults living in the countryside,
who received summary educations for a few weeks and then did not crack
another book for the rest of their lives. This is just one example of
many that merits skepticism when it comes to the regime's triumphalism
about education in Cuba.
The general assessments issued by the ranking agencies, which use
statistical criteria to comparatively score educational systems –
something which may seem very abstract – are borne out, in my particular
experience, by the empirical data from almost 20 years of work at the
UNESCO. As everyone knows, the UNESCO is the UN organization dealing
with Education, Science and Culture.
During the performance of my duties at the headquarters of this
organization I often had to deal with professionals who had graduated
from Cuban universities. Except for some scarce and commendable
exceptions, these graduates stood out for their astonishing ignorance of
the most basic topics, their anachronistic knowledge and their lack of
general cultural literacy. Some of them had even been university
professors, but did not know the most elementary facts in the fields of
History, Geography and other subjects normally studied in primary
school. They wrote poorly in Spanish, could not spell correctly, and
exhibited obvious limitations when it came to working in other languages.
Due to their pervasiveness, these deficiencies cannot be attributed to a
set of Cuban university graduates' lack of intelligence or ability, but
rather highlight gaps in the educational system's content and methods.
The quality of higher education on the Island has also suffered due to
the lack of academic freedom, comprehensive politicization, and the
imposition of Marxist orthodoxy, an anachronistic ideology whose
erroneous predictions and weak arguments had been exposed as early as
the 19th century. To all the above must be added the low educational
level from which students suffer right from primary education throughout
the secondary level, destining them to enter college with the
aforementioned deficiencies.
This characteristic is, in turn, linked to shortages of teachers and
their poor training. Although in the past decade the school population
has decreased each year as a result of migration and the demographic
crisis, there are barely enough primary school teachers, and the
Government has had to resort to retired teachers to cover the gap.
Apparently there is not much interest among young people in studying
Pedagogy and undertaking careers in teaching.
The situation is exacerbated by the scant career prospects that the
system offers its graduates. Massification and "free" university studies
have ended up creating several generations of frustrated people adorned
with devaluated degrees that are of little use because a) they lack the
knowledge necessary to occupy the positions their degrees should qualify
them for and b) the country's socioeconomic structure cannot offer them
employment commensurate with their qualifications anyway. This is why
there are engineers in Cuban cities driving taxis, ex-architects serving
up mojitos at restaurants, and biologists now working as tour guides, as
well as a multitude of sex workers who, as Fidel said in 1998, "are the
most educated in the world."
The idea that in the future, once Castro is gone, Cuba will be able to
rapidly develop, because it has "a highly educated population," is a
form of wishful thinking. Like so many other aspects of the regime, the
education system is a gigantic fraud serving the propaganda needs of the
State, which draws inspiration not from Makarenko or Lunacharski, but
rather Grigori Potemkin, Catherine the Great's lover, who adorned the
country's impoverished villages like theatre stages, with flowers placed
in the windows and dapper peasants smiling as they waved to the imperial
procession passing by.
Source: A highly educated population? | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1473110842_25103.html
MIGUEL SALES | Málaga | 6 de Septiembre de 2016 - 05:20 CEST.
Since 1959 the Government of Cuba has allocated considerable resources
to its national educational system. The literacy campaign of 1961, the
appropriation of private schools, intervention at universities and the
creation of new, specialized institutions were, according to the
official propaganda, measures to transform the island into a "world
power in education." At the same time, the aim was to create a system of
indoctrination that would shape the people's thinking, right from early
childhood, into Marxist-Leninist-Castroist ideology.
Ever since throughout the world the regime's chorus of kowtowers has
touted the spectacular development of education as one of the Cuban
Revolution's "achievements." These triumphalist proclamations are based
more on slogans and manipulated statistics disseminated by the
Government in Havana than on objective and verifiable data provided by
international organizations.
Without considering the anthropological damage they have inflicted on
several generations of Cubans through the incessant indoctrination
practiced over the years in classrooms, and the need to feign an
enthusiastic adherence to "revolutionary" values in order to continue to
study, it is possible to evaluate the results of the Castroist
educational system based on objective and measurable criteria.
The first thing that jumps out is the poor quality of university
education. Whatever the international classification system consulted
(Shanghai, Oxford or CSIC), Cuba's top institution, the University of
Havana does not even stand among the top 1,000 in the world. For
example, in the most recent ranking by Spain's Superior Council of
Scientific Research (CSIC), the University of Havana is ranked 20th in
the Caribbean, behind institutions in Mexico, Jamaica and Puerto Rico,
and 1,741st in the world. That is, the world features some 1,740
universities, some in very poor countries in Asia and Africa, topping
Cuba's best institution of higher learning.
It should be noted that these entities' ranking systems are becoming
more and more sophisticated each year, taking into account cultural
differences, the economic context, and internal organization. The
assessment, addressing visibility, impact and activities, is determined
by a wide range of indicators of institutional and academic prestige,
such as articles in specialized publications, research results, the
publishing of high-level material, the use of new technologies,
international recognition, etc. These scores, combined on a weighted
basis, yield a numerical index that determines the institution's rank in
the international hierarchy. It would be absurd to think that these
ranking agencies operate in a coordinated manner, beholden to the CIA,
with the intention of discrediting the Cuban government. The Island's
universities simply do not measure up and meet the educational and
research needs of the contemporary world.
This is the despite more than half a century of colossal investments,
preferential attention lavished on the education sector, "pedagogical
innovation" along the lines of Makarenko and Castro I, and systematic
efforts to create the "new man," an objective now hardly spoken about on
the Island. It should not be forgotten that that the starting point for
Cuba's educational system in 1960, both public and private, was
relatively advanced for a country of intermediate development and that,
with an illiteracy rate approaching 20%, hardly scandalous for the time.
In that year the global average was 40% (Mexico: 30%; Puerto Rico: 11%,
Chile: 10%, Argentina: 9%). Although one will be able to find Castroist
websites stating that during the Republic "each year the army of
illiterate adults increased," the fact is that since 1902 the number of
Cubans who could read and write increased from 30% to 80% of the population.
The deficiencies in university education do nothing more than
encapsulate and reflect the problems plaguing the Cuban education system
and society as a whole. Essentially, Castroism's educational policy has
been based on extension and massification, at the expense of quality.
The main objective has been to make everyone capable of reading, even if
only a handful of political slogans, and to sign their names, in order
to proclaim the Island "a territory free of illiteracy," and then fight
the "battle of the sixth grade" to give everyone a certificate; and,
finally, place a college diploma in the hands of the greatest possible
number of young people, without stopping to consider academic standards
and students' true vocations.
This policy has given rise to some very curious situations. In 1980, two
decades after the Castro government declared that the entire population
was literate, some 35,000 exiles reached Key West from the Port of
Mariel. US authorities found that about 7% of those forming part of the
Mariel boatlift were functionally illiterate; that is, they were not
able to read and understand a simple form and complete it.
When considering this fact it must be borne in mind that the vast
majority of these emigrants were from urban areas, and were adults
between the age of 20 and 40. What must have been the real literacy
among people over the age of 50 living in rural areas on the Island?
This is not known, among other reasons because the Cuban government has
never conducted a follow-up study to determine the effectiveness of its
famous literacy campaign of 1961, and the likely relapses into
illiteracy due to disuse among older adults living in the countryside,
who received summary educations for a few weeks and then did not crack
another book for the rest of their lives. This is just one example of
many that merits skepticism when it comes to the regime's triumphalism
about education in Cuba.
The general assessments issued by the ranking agencies, which use
statistical criteria to comparatively score educational systems –
something which may seem very abstract – are borne out, in my particular
experience, by the empirical data from almost 20 years of work at the
UNESCO. As everyone knows, the UNESCO is the UN organization dealing
with Education, Science and Culture.
During the performance of my duties at the headquarters of this
organization I often had to deal with professionals who had graduated
from Cuban universities. Except for some scarce and commendable
exceptions, these graduates stood out for their astonishing ignorance of
the most basic topics, their anachronistic knowledge and their lack of
general cultural literacy. Some of them had even been university
professors, but did not know the most elementary facts in the fields of
History, Geography and other subjects normally studied in primary
school. They wrote poorly in Spanish, could not spell correctly, and
exhibited obvious limitations when it came to working in other languages.
Due to their pervasiveness, these deficiencies cannot be attributed to a
set of Cuban university graduates' lack of intelligence or ability, but
rather highlight gaps in the educational system's content and methods.
The quality of higher education on the Island has also suffered due to
the lack of academic freedom, comprehensive politicization, and the
imposition of Marxist orthodoxy, an anachronistic ideology whose
erroneous predictions and weak arguments had been exposed as early as
the 19th century. To all the above must be added the low educational
level from which students suffer right from primary education throughout
the secondary level, destining them to enter college with the
aforementioned deficiencies.
This characteristic is, in turn, linked to shortages of teachers and
their poor training. Although in the past decade the school population
has decreased each year as a result of migration and the demographic
crisis, there are barely enough primary school teachers, and the
Government has had to resort to retired teachers to cover the gap.
Apparently there is not much interest among young people in studying
Pedagogy and undertaking careers in teaching.
The situation is exacerbated by the scant career prospects that the
system offers its graduates. Massification and "free" university studies
have ended up creating several generations of frustrated people adorned
with devaluated degrees that are of little use because a) they lack the
knowledge necessary to occupy the positions their degrees should qualify
them for and b) the country's socioeconomic structure cannot offer them
employment commensurate with their qualifications anyway. This is why
there are engineers in Cuban cities driving taxis, ex-architects serving
up mojitos at restaurants, and biologists now working as tour guides, as
well as a multitude of sex workers who, as Fidel said in 1998, "are the
most educated in the world."
The idea that in the future, once Castro is gone, Cuba will be able to
rapidly develop, because it has "a highly educated population," is a
form of wishful thinking. Like so many other aspects of the regime, the
education system is a gigantic fraud serving the propaganda needs of the
State, which draws inspiration not from Makarenko or Lunacharski, but
rather Grigori Potemkin, Catherine the Great's lover, who adorned the
country's impoverished villages like theatre stages, with flowers placed
in the windows and dapper peasants smiling as they waved to the imperial
procession passing by.
Source: A highly educated population? | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1473110842_25103.html
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