Cuba Internal Reform

Business Perspective on Change

2012-01-25T21:01:00.000-08:00

Cuba and the slow road to reform

David Roberts

Is Cuba tiptoeing towards an open economy and even a form of genuine democracy?
Reforms enacted over the last year or so by President Raúl Castro have already gone further than many expected, or hoped for, when he took over from his brother Fidel some four years ago.

A degree of private enterprise has been introduced in agriculture and many former public employees performing services such as hairdressing are now effectively self-employed. Mortgage reforms have been introduced, along with subsidies to allow people to build their own homes. Many of the country's political prisoners have been released (a process marred by the recent death of dissident Wilmar Villar after a 50-day hunger strike), and the lifting of travel restrictions on Cubans wishing to go abroad, including the scrapping of the dreaded tarjeta blanca or exit visa, is said to be in the pipeline (although in late December the younger Castro brother poured cold water on hopes that the restrictions would be ended imminently saying it was too early). It's perhaps ironic, therefore, that US travel restrictions on those visiting the Caribbean island, although eased somewhat by Barack Obama, remain in place.

This may all sound rather paltry given the enormous distance the country still needs to go to become a western-style liberal democracy, but nevertheless it does represent some progress and the Cuban authorities need to be encouraged to go further down the reform road and to bring the Cuban people the standard of living they deserve. Figures often cited put the average monthly income in Cuba at US$20 at the official exchange rate. Clearly, this figure is somewhat misleading given the artificial exchange rate and the cost of living, and the CIA's World Factbook puts 2010 GDP per capita, on a purchasing power parity basis, at US$9,900 - higher than many countries in the region including the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, along with almost all of Central America.

In fact, the Cuban figure is very close to Brazil's US$10,800, and almost certainly comes with a much more uniform distribution of wealth than in most countries in Latin America.

None of the above is an attempt to make excuses for the dire economic situation that Cuba is in and has been in for many years, certainly since the demise of the Soviet Union, but it's merely to put things in some sort of perspective. The performance of the Cuban economy also needs to be seen in the context of the five decades-old trade embargo imposed by the US. Clearly the "logic" that in order to lift the embargo Washington needs to see substantial progress towards democracy in Cuba doesn't hold up - if it did there would be similar embargos against a whole slew of countries, including close allies of the US such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain (did someone mention oil?), all of which score worse than Cuba in the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2011 democracy index.

If anything the embargo hinders rather than encourages the process of democratization in Cuba, as the Castros can use the measure to defend their authoritarianism, as well as cite it as a reason (only partly justified) for the island's economic woes.

A full or even partial lifting of the embargo may not be politically feasible in the present electoral climate in Washington, but it is something that whoever wins in November should seriously consider for the wellbeing of ordinary Cuban people and for US relations with the region (the demand to lift the embargo is one of the few things that seems to unite Latin American leaders), not to mention the opportunities it would create for US trade and investment.

http://www.bnamericas.com/opinion_piece.jsp?idioma=I¬icia=1448003

A more open Cuba, blessed by the Pope

2012-01-08T21:00:00.001-08:00

By Nick Miroff
Created 1969-12-31 19:00
HAVANA, Cuba — In January 1998, Pope John Paul II made his landmark trip to Havana, meeting with Fidel Castro and memorably calling on Cuba to “open to the world,” and for “the world to open to Cuba.”
Fourteen years later, Pope Benedict XVI is preparing a second pastoral visit to the island, but the message of his trip is likely to be a different one: urging Cuba to open to itself.
When the 84-year-old Pontiff arrives March 26 for a three-day visit, his presence should bolster those who have been pressing for deeper reforms to the island’s one-party socialist system, especially from within Cuba’s church.
Benedict’s arrival is ostensibly timed to coincide with the 400-year anniversary of the appearance of Cuba’s Virgin of Caridad del Cobre, the island’s patron saint.
But the other purpose of his visit appears to be to extend his political blessings to the emerging role of Cuba’s church as a leading public advocate for greater political and economic freedoms — and to Raul Castro’s government for allowing that to happen.
“The changes are being put into practice by the government, not the church,” said Orlando Marquez, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Havana, in an interview.
“But the Church has been saying that the changes are good, that they are the changes that the people want, and that those changes must continue,” he said.
Benedict will find Cuba struggling with many of the same issues it faced when John Paul II visited in 1998, only without Fidel Castro to host him. At 85, Castro is now retired, rarely seen by the public, and no longer head of Cuba’s all-powerful Communist Party.
Instead the Pope will be received by Raul Castro, 80, who as president has afforded Cuba’s Church a degree of social and political prominence it has not held in a half century.
Though Cuba’s religious believers were once persecuted — even Christmas was frowned upon by authorities — Cuba’s church-state relations have improved markedly, and in recent public speeches, Raul Castro has warned fellow Party members that religious discrimination has no place in contemporary Cuba.
The Church today is the only major independent institution on the island that isn’t under government control, and has even consulted with the government on the scope of economic reforms. Carefully, delicately, and with much success, it navigates a tricky course between communist authorities on the island still wary of its intentions, and Cuban exiles abroad who want church officials to be more confrontational toward the Castro government.
In 2010, after repeated attacks by government-organized mobs against Cuba’s Ladies in White dissident group, church officials intervened to halt the abuse and went on to secure the release of the women’s jailed husbands over the following several months.
By the end of the process, nearly all of Cuba’s internationally-recognized political prisoners were freed — more than 100 in total. Since then, church leaders have been outspoken in supporting economic liberalization measures initiated by Raul Castro, while gently prodding his government to do more.
Cuba is one of only two countries the Pope will visit on the trip, his first to Spanish-speaking Latin America, though he traveled to Brazil in 2007. While Mexico, with nearly 100 million Catholics, is a fairly obvious destination, Cuba is not.
“Cuba is a Catholic country by tradition but it’s not a huge Catholic country compared to Mexico or Brazil,” Marquez said. “And nevertheless, the Holy Father has decided to come and be with Catholic Cubans and the Cuban people in this special moment in our history.”
The Pope will begin his visit in Santiago de Cuba, site of the shrine to the Virgin of Charity, and will celebrate an outdoor Mass in the public square of the island’s second-largest city.
He will then travel to Havana and celebrate Mass in the Plaza of the Revolution, the same place where Fidel Castro gave many of his marathon speeches, and where John Paul II addressed a vast crowd of Cubans in 1998.
With the Obama administration easing travel restrictions for Cuban Americans who want to return to the island, thousands of US residents are expected to make the trip to attend the Pope’s outdoor Masses.
“The Pope’s visit will open paths between the Cuban people and the government, the Church and the government, and among Cubans here and abroad,” said Roberto Veiga, editor of “Lay Space,” one of the Church-backed journals that has become a key forum for debates on political and economic topics, on an island where nearly all forms of media are still controlled by the state.
In advance of the Pope’s visit, Raul Castro announced last month the release of more than 2,900 Cuban inmates from the island’s jails, including several who were considered political prisoners.
But US subcontractor Alan Gross was not among them, and Benedict may also use the visit to privately urge Raul Castro to pardon the 62-year-old jailed American. Gross is serving a 15-year prison term for attempting to set up clandestine satellite internet networks on the island as part of a US-funded democracy program.
US officials and Gross’s lawyers say he was only trying to give better web access for Cuba’s small Jewish community. His imprisonment is now viewed as the biggest sticking point to improvements in US-Cuba relations, and anything the Vatican might do to ease tensions would be viewed as a diplomatic success.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/cuba/120106/more-open-cuba-blessed-the-church

Retail Sector Reform

2011-12-26T15:32:00.001-08:00

11:32 26Dec2011 RTRS-Cuba makes more reforms to retail sector

* Thousands of service outlets to be leased to workers

* In 2012, Cubans will be able to operate repair shops

* Reforms part of Cuban plans to "update" economy

By Marc Frank

HAVANA, Dec 26 (Reuters) - Cuba will open up more of the country's retail services to the private sector next year, allowing Cubans to operate various services such as appliance and watch repair, and locksmith and carpentry shops, official media reported on Monday.

The measures are the latest by President Raul Castro in his attempt to reinvigorate Cuba's struggling Soviet-style economy by reducing the role of the state and encouraging more private initiative.

A resolution published in the official gazette on Monday said the new reforms would take effect on Jan. 1.

Earlier this year, the Cuban government turned over some 1,500 state barbershops and beauty parlors to employees.

Former state employees now pay a monthly fee for the shop, purchase supplies, pay taxes and charge what the market will bear.

Shortly after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, all businesses in Cuba were taken over by the state. But since the former leader handed power to his brother in 2008, the policy has been openly criticized as a mistake.

Ordinary Cubans have long complained about dismal state services, including small retail services, which they say have deteriorated because of a theft of resources and a shortage of sufficient supplies from the government.

Cuba has been moving over the last year to liberalize regulations over private economic activity. Since then, tens of thousands of Cubans have taken out licenses "to work for themselves," a euphemism used by the government to describe operating mom-and-pop businesses.

Cuba plans to have 35 percent to 40 percent of the labor force working in the "non-state" sector by 2016, compared with 15 percent at the close of 2010.

Raul Castro, faced with stagnating production and mounting foreign debt, has made clear the economy must be overhauled if the socialist system he and his ailing brother Fidel installed is to survive.

Moving most retail services to the "non-state" sector is one of more than 300 reforms approved by the ruling Communist Party earlier this year to "update" the economy.

The measures aim to introduce market forces in the agriculture and retail services sectors, cut subsidies and lift restrictions on individual activity that once prohibited the sale and purchase of homes and cars.

On Monday, the Communist Party daily Granma said the moving of thousands of state retail services to a leasing arrangement would be done gradually throughout 2012.

Economy Minister Adel Yzquierdo Rodriguez told a year-end session of the National Assembly last week the number of state jobs would be reduced by 170,000 next year, with 240,000 new jobs likely to be added to the "non-state" sector.

Thousands of state taxi drivers are expected to move to leasing arrangements next year. Some state food services are also expected to be allowed to form cooperatives.

(Editing by Kevin Gray and Eric Beech)

Land leases extended plus inheritance rights

2011-12-22T06:29:00.000-08:00

Cuba sweetens pot for new private farmers

WASHINGTON, Dec 19 (Reuters) - * Size of leased plots increased five fold

* Leases lengthened from 10 to 25 years

* Land and improvements may now be passed on to family

By Marc Frank

HAVANA, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Cuba, trying to lure people back to the land and lift food production, has modified a land lease program so that private farmers can rent more land and keep it in their family as if they owned it, farmers said over the weekend.

The measures, adopted at a recent Council of Ministers meeting and not yet announced, are the latest loosening of the doctrinaire communism that has ruled Cuban agriculture policy for decades and were hailed by farmers as a step forward.

Farmers said in telephone interviews they were told in local meetings they will be able to lease up to 165 acres(67 hectares) from the state beginning in January, compared with the current maximum of 33 acres (13 hectares) mandated in a program

begun in 2008 .

They said the leases will extend for up to 25 years, compared with the current 10 years, and can be renewed and passed on to family members and in some cases laborers.

Farmers also will be allowed for the first time to build homes on the leased land and make other improvements under a regulation that guarantees the state will reimburse them if they lose their lease.

They had complained that the small size of the plots, short leases and other restrictions hampered production.

"These measures deal with many of the problems we face and give us security in terms of our work," Anselmo Hernandez, one of 150,000 people who have leased 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares) of land, said from eastern Cuba.

"Twenty-five years is a life-time of work and faced with whatever problem the family will be the benefactor of what we have done," he added.

Cuba nationalized most property after the 1959 revolution and the state owns more than 70 percent of the arable land on the Caribbean island. Private farmers, using only 24 percent of the land, were responsible for 57 percent of the food produced in Cuba in 2010, a local agricultural expert said.

The expert, asking for anonymity, said the new changes "amount to the state granting land to the private sector indefinitely under the guise of leasing, and no doubt most farmers expect that well before their lease is up they will get title to it."

STAGNATING ECONOMY

President Raul Castro has made agriculture the centerpiece of his efforts to reform the stagnating, Soviet-style economy in favor of more local and private initiative, but food production has increased only slightly since he replaced his brother, Fidel Castro, in 2008 and remains below 2005 levels.

The country imports a budget-busting 60 percent to 70 percent of the food it consumes and the average age of farmers and laborers is now 50 years old.

Castro has decentralized decision-making on agricultural policy, increased prices paid for produce and promised farmers more freedom to grow and sell their crops.

In November new measures were announced making it easier for farmers to get bank credits and allowing them to sell produce directly to the tourism sector, bypassing the state.

They are all part of more than 300 reforms adopted by the ruling Communist Party at an April congress to "update" the economy.

Oscar Palacios, president of the "Antonio Briones Montoto" agricultural cooperative in the central town of Florida, said the new farming measures were "of enormous importance."

"Now producers will feel much more motivated and secure that the fruit of their labor will be theirs," he said.

"They bring farmers and their families closer to the land they work. They make them feel the land is really theirs."

(Editing by Jeff Franks and Anthony Boadle)

Government to Contract to Private Sector

2011-11-28T13:32:00.001-08:00

Cuban government to contract with private sector

* New bank rules open door to private contracting
* Measure seen as key to consolidating new private sector
* Could lead to larger businesses

By Marc Frank
HAVANA, Nov 28 (Reuters) - The Cuban government will begin contracting out some services to the private sector next year in a break from the state-dominated past aimed at helping small business develop, government insiders said on Monday.
They said food and cleaning, construction and some transportation services, all of which are currently done by government workers, were among those that would be contracted out in the future as Cuban leaders push ahead with more than 300 reforms to modernize the island's Soviet-style economy.
President Raul Castro is encouraging private sector growth to create jobs for the one million employees he hopes to slash from bloated government payrolls over the next few years. His goal is to strengthen Cuban communism to assure its future.
More than 350,000 people are now self-employed, more than double the number of two years ago, although most are small operations based in homes.
Their ability to grow has been hindered partly by a lack of capital and access to government business, which is significant because the state controls most of the economy.
But new credit and banking regulations that take effect Dec. 20 will allow small businesses for the first time to obtain loans and, along with private farmers, to open commercial accounts, a prerequisite for doing business with the state.
The measures also lift a 100 peso- (roughly $4-) cap on business between state enterprises and private individuals.
"It is very positive for the development of the non-state sector that it now has at its disposal new financial instruments that before were available only to state companies and joint ventures with foreign companies," said a local economist, requesting anonymity due to a ban on talking with foreign journalists.
"It paves the way for business between the new non-state sector and the state."
Cuba expert Phil Peters at the Lexington Institute think tank in Arlington, Virginia, said the measures, in addition to helping the private sector, should make the government more efficient and were indicative of a larger change.
"It is another sign that the socialist state is shedding longstanding prejudice against private enterprise," he said.

Farm Sales Reformed

2011-11-25T07:38:00.000-08:00

Cuba OKs direct farm sales to tourism sector

By: The Associated Press | 11/21/11 12:20 PM

The Cuban government is authorizing farmers to sell their products directly to state-run tourist hotels and restaurants, eliminating the need to go through a government redistributor, authorities said Monday.

The measure also lets buyers and sellers negotiate their own prices, according to the Official Gazette, a government publication that disseminates new laws.

The latest in a series of economic changes pushed by President Raul Castro, it aims to "reduce losses by simplifying the links between primary production and the final consumer," according to the Communist Party newspaper Granma.

Beginning Dec. 1, independent growers, rural co-ops and state-run agribusinesses will be able to sell "agricultural products without industrial processing, rice for consumption and charcoal to hotel and restaurant establishments in the tourism sector," the Gazette said.

Payments will be collected in Cuban pesos, valued at 24 to the U.S. dollar, rather than the convertible currency, currently one-to-one with the greenback.

The measure does not authorize direct sales to the growing ranks of private restaurants and other small businesses that have mushroomed across the island as part of Castro's economic overhaul.

The government also recently legalized the sale of homes and automobiles for the first time since shortly after the 1959 revolution and is planning to slash state payrolls. Last week, the government reported a major reorganization of the sugar industry to eliminate bureaucracy.

Tourism is one of Cuba's top sources of foreign income, bringing in about $2 billion a year.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/entertainment/travel/2011/11/cuba-oks-direct-farm-sales-tourism-sector#ixzz1ejQSKLhQ

Ownership and Sale of Homes

2011-11-25T05:22:00.000-08:00

Cuba's Real Estate Law Shows a Changing Island
Published November 04, 2011
| Associated Press

The lot in teeming Central Havana used to be the neighborhood eyesore: The shattered ruins of an abandoned building was a breeding ground for mosquitoes and rats before it was cleared in favor of a dreary parking lot and government-run food stand.

Today, all of that is gone. Independent sellers hawk brightly colored clothing, wristbands and earrings as salsa music booms and a line of bicycle taxi drivers forms at the gate to wait for fares among the customers.

Newly empowered entrepreneurs, long held back by the socialist government, speak excitedly of changes that will allow them to buy and sell their homes and cars, and say the emerging new Cuba is here to stay.

This week's announcement establishing a real estate market for the first time in 50 years comes just a month after a similar opening for vehicles, and it is convincing even the island's many cynics that President Raul Castro's economic reforms, after decades of false starts and false hopes, are here to stay.

"I've been an independent worker two times, once before in the 1990s," said Andres Lambreto Diaz, a 38-year-old clothing seller at the Central Havana bazaar who has seen earlier free-market openings abruptly slammed shut when Fidel Castro reversed course. "I think this time it's for real."

Many of the reforms merely acknowledge what had long been black-market realities, and they still fall short of the fundamental free-market transformations seen in other communist countries such as Vietnam and China. But collectively, the changes have loosened the government's iron grip over all aspects of the economy and touched the lives of millions of islanders.

"The recent announcement that Cubans will be able to sell and buy houses and their used cars underscores how important the changes are," said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a Cuban-born economist who teaches at the University of Denver. "This is one of the most visible economic reforms, with a direct impact on Cuban lives.

A little over a year has passed since the government declared that many more people would be allowed to go into business for themselves and even hire employees. Some of the announced changes have been delayed, must notably a plan to eliminate 500,000 government jobs, extend bank credits and allow for mid-sized cooperative companies, but the housing and automobile laws have come in on schedule.

Officials have also shown some sensitivity to popular feedback, modifying the tax code to make things easier for new entrepreneurs and repeatedly changing laws to help new private restaurants be more profitable.

That kind of flexibility has been rare during Cuba's half-century-long embrace of Marxist theory.

Agricultural reform in the 1960s redistributed land from massive farms to medium-size ones and it enjoyed moderate success before being abandoned by the government, said economist Rafael Romeu.

In the 1980s a six-year experiment with private farmers' markets was scrapped, as Fidel Castro complained that unscrupulous middlemen were buying up the food and reselling at higher prices.
Castro grudgingly allowed independent workers to begin doing business for themselves after the collapse of the Soviet Union brought Cuba to the brink of economic ruin, then taxed and regulated them nearly into extinction in the late 1990s when the worst of the crisis was over.
But Fidel is no longer in charge. His brother Raul Castro has repeatedly said that while he has no intention of scrapping Cuba's socialist model, there's no turning back from his reforms.
Analysts say the changes so far do not do enough on a macroeconomic level. For example the housing law's immediate aim is to help redistribute existing stock among the population, allowing big families crammed into tiny apartments to move into larger homes currently occupied by just a few people. But without significant improvements in investment, supplies of construction materials and incentive to make money, it's not clear that there will be much new construction to solve the underlying problem: a housing deficit estimated at between 500,000 to 1.6 million units on an island of 11 million people.

"So far there hasn't been an all-embracing change in philosophy by the government in Cuba. What they're doing is really tinkering with sectors," said Paul Hare, a lecturer in international relations at Boston University and British ambassador to Cuba from 2001-2004. "Certainly the real estate and the car laws are major changes but there will be a lot of people wondering how they follow up. There is no philosophy of 'To get rich is good,' which is the philosophy in China and Vietnam."

Other reforms that were floated are still no more than ideas, such as proposals to relax travel restrictions and create a system of credit for the private businesses. Likewise there has been little visible progress on a wholesale market to supply the entrepreneurs, though officials said from the beginning that that would take years.

"The current reforms will deliver relief and are positive, but ... these are 'low hanging mangoes,'" said Romeu, head of the Washington-based Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy. "The real challenge is to deliver long-term sustainable growth."

Economists say it's not easy to right an economy that's been listing for decades. the 80-year-old Castro is walking a tightrope, eager to reform the country before it is too late, but cautious to not move so fast that the state loses control over the process, as happened in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc nations.

He has said repeatedly that the country would change "without pause, but without haste."
Nonetheless, several Cuba observers said that once started, reforms tend to snowball and could spill beyond the realm of pure economics.

"The liberalization of these markets will ignite new demands for reforms," Lopez-Levy said. "In the long run, the question will be: How long can the economic genie be out of the bottle without people asking for more substantive political reform?"

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lifestyle/2011/11/04/cubas-real-estate-law-shows-changing-island/print#ixzz1dF7O0a5e

Thursday, Nov. 03, 2011
Cuba to Allow Sale of Real Estate
By AP / PAUL HAVEN

(HAVANA) — Cuba announced Thursday it will allow real estate to be bought and sold for the first time since the early days of the revolution, the most important reform yet in a series of free-market changes under President Raul Castro.

The law, which takes effect Nov. 10, applies to citizens living in Cuba and permanent residents only, according to a red-letter headline on the front page of Thursday's Communist Party daily Granma and details published in the government's Official Gazette. (See TIME's video: "Eyeing a Cuba Travel-Policy Shift.")

The law limits Cubans to owning one home in the city and another in the country, an effort to prevent the accumulation of large real estate holdings. It requires that all real estate transactions be made through Cuban bank accounts so that they can be better regulated, and says the transactions will be subject to bank commissions.

Sales will also be subject to an 8 percent tax on the assessed value of the property, paid equally by buyer and seller. In the case where Cubans exchange homes of equal value in a barter agreement, each side will pay 4 percent of the value of their home. "This is a very big step forward. With this action the state is granting property rights that didn't exist before," said Philip J. Peters, a Cuba analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Virginia. "If you think about it from the point of view of a Cuban family, it converts their house from a place to live into a source of wealth or a source of collateral. It's an asset that can now be made liquid."

While the Gazette was available online, few Cubans have access to the Internet and most were waiting for the booklet to go on sale at kiosks around the country. A handwritten sign posted at Havana's main distribution center Thursday advised that the law booklet was not yet on sale.

On the streets of Havana, residents said they were thrilled by the news but anxious to see the fine print. "This is going to help me because I have some money and now I will be able to buy a better house," said Oscar Palacios Delgado, a 68-year-old office maintenance worker, adding he hoped the government would enact other changes to make it easier for Cubans to find building materials for home repairs. "This law will benefit many Cubans."

Cuban exiles will not be allowed to purchase property on the island since they are not residents. Still, they will be able to send money to help relatives buy new homes, and there was speculation some might try to buy homes themselves through frontmen, something the government would likely try to prevent.

The change follows October's legalization of buying and selling cars, though with restrictions that still make it hard for ordinary Cubans to buy new vehicles.

Castro has also allowed citizens to go into business for themselves in a number of approved jobs — everything from party clowns to food vendors to accountants — and has pledged to streamline the state-dominated economy by eliminating half a million government workers.

Cuba's government employs more than 80 percent of the workers in the island's command economy, paying wages of just $20 a month in return for free education and health care, and nearly free housing, transportation and basic foods. Castro has said repeatedly that the system is not working since taking over from his brother Fidel in 2008, but he has vowed that Cuba will remain a socialist state. (See TIME's Cuba covers.)

Cubans have long bemoaned the ban on property sales, which took effect in stages over the first years after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. In an effort to fight absentee ownership by wealthy landlords, Fidel enacted a reform that gave title to whoever lived in a home. Most who left the island forfeited their properties to the state.

Since no property market was allowed, the rules have meant that for decades Cubans could only exchange property through complicated barter arrangements, or through even murkier black-market deals where thousands of dollars change hands under the table, with no legal recourse if transactions go bad.

Some Cubans entered into sham marriages to make deed transfers easier. Others made deals to move into homes ostensibly to care for an elderly person living there, only to inherit the property when the person died.

The island's crumbling housing stock has meant that many are forced to live in overcrowded apartments with multiple generations crammed into a few rooms. Even divorce hasn't necessarily meant separation in Cuba, where estranged couples have often been forced to live together for years while they worked out alternative housing.

According to the Gazette, the new law will eliminate the need for approval from a state housing agency, meaning that from now on sales and exchanges will only need the seal of a notary.

Cubans will also now be allowed to inherit property from relatives without having to live in it first, and they will be able to take title of property of relatives or others who emigrate. Previously, such properties could be seized by the state.

Associated Press writers Andrea Rodriguez and Peter Orsi contributed to this report.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2098614,00.html

Reforms proceed: Loans for Self Employed, Brazilian Building Materials

2011-11-24T15:05:00.001-08:00

* Loans to provide much-needed capital to self-employed

* Latest reform in government effort to modernize economy

By Jeff Franks

HAVANA, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Cuba's growing number of self-employed may get bank loans starting next month as the government tries to inject capital into efforts to reform the island's communist economy, according to a decree published on Thursday.

The new regulations, put out in Cuba's Official Gazette, create a loan program that goes into effect on Dec. 20 and also will be available to small farmers and those who want to improve or construct their own homes.

The intent is to "stimulate national production of generators of foreign exchange or import substitutes," said Communist Party newspaper Granma.

Credits for farmers and home projects have been available previously but are new for the self-employed, a sector the government is trying to stimulate for the first time since the difficult economic times of the 1990s.

A recent media report said there are now 364,000 self-employed in Cuba, more than twice the number two years ago, but most are engaged in low-level street sales of food and items such as toys, pirated DVDs and plumbing supplies.

Lack of capital has been one factor preventing them from improving their business and dissuaded others from getting started.

"I've been waiting for this new credit system to have the opportunity to open a small place offering fast foods," said Eugenio Sanchez, as he read the news in Granma.

The loan program is one of 300 reforms approved by the ruling Communist Party in April with the goal of strengthening Cuban communism to assure its future.

It gives heft to state support of the self-employed, known in Cuba as "cuenta propistas," who have become critical to President Raul Castro's campaign to restore the country's debt-ridden economic modeled on the old Soviet Union.

He wants to cut a million workers from the bloated payrolls of the state, which controls most of the economy and employs most of the workforce.

But he needs jobs for them to go to and therefore is encouraging private job creation.

It remains to be seen how much impact the program will have because it will be administered by Cuba's state-owned banks, which are widely viewed as inefficient.

The decree requires that the self-employed take out loans of at least 3,000 Cuban pesos, equivalent to $125, with lower limits for farmers and home projects.

Cuban seeking loans will be evaluated by the banks for how much money they should receive and can be expected to pay back, Granma said.

In recent weeks, the pace of implementing the reforms approved in April has picked up, including recent decrees liberalizing the buying and selling of cars and houses for the first time in five decades.

Brazilian home improvement chain TendTudo plans to open in Cuba because the reforms there that permit the buying and selling of homes for the first time in decades may mean a strong market for its products.

Brazilian retailer takes first steps into Cuba
Wed Nov 23, 2011 7:10pm EST

* Company will export building materials to Cuba

* Reforms expected to increase Cuban demand

By Esteban Israel

SAO PAULO, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Brazilian retail chain TendTudo, which sells home improvement products and construction materials, has taken the first steps into what it believes could be a $400 million a year market in communist Cuba.

The company recently signed a contract to start supplying in the first half of 2012 a Havana store for Cuban state company Palco, modeled on TendTudo's "home center" stores in Brazil though much smaller.

TendTudo's interest in part lies in the prospect of a strengthening market for its products after a recent reform by the Cuban government to allow the buying and selling of homes for the first time in decades, said Carlos Christensen, president of TendTudo's international unit.

"Cuba has an important demand for tools, construction materials and articles for the home," he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"There are important challenges but for us it's a long-term objective. The idea is to start small and go accompanying the changes in the Cuban market," he said.

Cuba, a country of 11 million people, is in the midst of reforms liberalizing its troubled Soviet-style economy with the goal of assuring the survival of the communist system put in place after the 1959 Cuban revolution.

The housing reform is expected to increase demand for building materials, not only because the country has a housing shortage of more than 600,000 units but because so many of the existing homes are in bad shape after years of economic crisis and neglect.

Christensen believes that purchases just by the Cuban state, which controls 90 percent of the island's economy, would exceed $400 million annually for the electrical supplies, tools, paint, bathroom fixtures, tiles and myriad other products TendTudo sells.

Cuba's retail sector is still off-limits to private companies, but its opening would add to the island's potential, he said.

"But what happens if we establish ourselves there with a long-term vision, first looking at the corporate sector and then eventually the retail sector?" Christensen said. "The challenges are important but we are patient." (Reporting by Esteban Israel; Editing by Jeff Franks and Christopher Wilson)

Espacio Laical Editorial Urging Party to Consider Substantial Change

2011-11-21T08:02:00.000-08:00

Digital supplement No. 153/ November 2011

Editorial: Rectify the Course

For many years now the Cuban people have demanded substantial changes that would make life more prosperous and balanced. In this sense, the country has expected much of its authorities and has been quite generous. However, although there have been important changes, like the disbursement of land, the establishment of self employment, and the recent reforms related to the sale of automobiles and housing, the people feel like nothing significant has happened, capable of renewing livelihood and extinguishing hopelessness.

Important economic, social, political, spiritual, and even symbolic changes are lacking in Cuba. Such reforms, logically, must be done in an orderly way, which requires a degree of gradualism. However, we cannot give ourselves the luxury of confusing such gradualism with a lack of clarity and swiftness. The transformations must be orderly, unhurried, but without pause, that is, step-by-step without losing control, as urgently and a comprehensively as possible. It would be a shame for the current generations of Cubans to have to suffer the pain of seeing their aspirations truncated by a lack of opportunities for living a full life.

We reiterate: reforms have been made and we expect there are more to come. But so far the most important one is missing: the recasting of citizenship. It is essential that all Cubans can, and want, to participate in the promotion of proposals for national change, in the debate surrounding them, in the approval of those brought forth by consensus, and in the execution of the policies intended to implement them. In this way, change will be built upon the renewal of our social pact, and both (the pact as well as the overall changes) will be founded in citizen participation, in popular sovereignty.

Exercising said citizenship, we wish to emphasize that certain adjustments cannot wait. Among those are the institutionalization of all kinds of cooperatives as well as small and medium size businesses, along with everything that implies in terms of the market, infrastructure, and finances; and authorization for self employment in professional fields. These measures would be very effective in accelerating creativity and growth of production and services. However, this will not be enough. It will still be necessary to promote the participation of civil society by recognizing the autonomy of social organizations as well as by opening up the mass media to the nation's diverse opinions. We need to restructure the mechanisms of popular power so that each one of the institutions of public power possesses the authority that corresponds to it and so that the sovereignty of the country radiates out to the people in an increasingly effective way. The Cuban Communist Party (PCC) needs to be renovated and its relationship to society, the State, and the government redefined.

Many Cubans have expected, with demonstrated patience and certain confidence, that such measures along with the institutionalization of citizen participation and social dialogue will be announced. However, symbolic moments that could've launched -with the necessary intensity-a process of this nature have passed by without the expected changes. Historic dates that could've served to call for a reorientation of the nation's course have slipped by, such as the 26th of July celebrations or the Party Congress, where important but limited proposals for change were approved. Currently the First National Conference of the Cuban Communist Party is being organized to be held in January. A significant segment of society has great expectations for this event. But the publication of the Base Document, which is intended to orient the preparatory and the Conference discussions, have left those with hope of renewal a bit concerned.

The Base Document lacks numerous topics that the people had hoped to see on the agenda. On the contrary, it reveals a Party attached to dogmas that have failed on other occasions and clinging to a very vertical relationship with society. In Cuba, in order for any reform to become reality, political innovation is needed, and that will not happen if it doesn't begin with the CCP -the organization responsible for leading the changes that we want to see. Without a political will that demonstrates a commitment to building true national consensus, no reform can be successful, even if it is borne of the conviction of the highest authorities of government.

We urge the so-called historical generation to not miss their last opportunity, presented by the First National Conference of the CCP, to support substantial changes and to summons the people to carry them out. It would be disadvantageous to put the hope for important changes on hold and let time pass leaving it to others, in the future, to carry them out.

(Unofficial translation by Dawn Gable)

Suplemento Digital No.153 / Noviembre 2011
EDITORIAL
Rectificar el rumbo

Desde hace aÃ±os la sociedad cubana demanda grandes cambios que puedan hacer mÃ¡s prospera y equilibrada la vida nacional. En ese sentido, el paÃs ha esperado mucho de las autoridades, con bastante generosidad. No obstante -aunque se han logrado cambios importantes, como la entrega de tierra y el establecimiento del cuentapropismo, asÃ como las recientes reformas relacionadas con el traspaso de propiedad de los automÃ³viles y las viviendas-, el pueblo siente que no ocurre algo grande, capaz de renovar la vida y desterrar la desesperanza.

En Cuba hacen falta importantes cambios econÃ³micos, sociales, polÃticos, espirituales y hasta simbÃ³licos. Estas reformas, como es lÃ³gico, tendrÃ¡n que ser ordenadas y esto exige de cierta gradualidad. Sin embargo, no podemos darnos el lujo de confundir tal gradualidad con falta de claridad y de celeridad. Las transformaciones deberÃ¡n ser ordenadas, sin prisa pero sin pausa, o sea, paso a paso y sin perderse el orden, pero con el mayor apremio y hacia la mayor integralidad posible. SerÃa penoso que las actuales generaciones de cubanos tuvieran que sufrir el dolor de ver sus aspiraciones truncadas por la falta de oportunidades para acceder a una vida plena.

Reiteramos, se han hecho reformas, y suponemos que se efectuarÃ¡n otras, pero hasta ahora falta la mÃ¡s importante: la refundaciÃ³n de la ciudadanÃa. Se hace imprescindible que todos los cubanos puedan –y quieran- participar en la promociÃ³n de propuestas de cambios nacionales, en el debate sobre los mismos, en la aprobaciÃ³n de los que resulten consensuados y en la ejecuciÃ³n de las polÃticas que pretendan concretarlos. De esta manera, el cambio se estructurarÃa sobre la base de la renovaciÃ³n de nuestro pacto social y ambas realidades (tanto el pacto social como el cambio en todos los Ã¡mbitos) se fundamentarÃan en el desempeÃ±o de la ciudadanÃa, en la soberanÃa popular.

Haciendo ejercicio de dicha ciudadanÃa, deseamos exponer que ciertos ajustes no deben esperar. Entre ellos se encuentran la institucionalizaciÃ³n de las cooperativas de todo tipo, asÃ como la pequeÃ±a y la mediana empresa, con lo que esto implica en materia de mercado, de infraestructura y de finanzas; y la autorizaciÃ³n para el desempeÃ±o autÃ³nomo de las profesiones. Estas medidas serÃan muy efectivas para acelerar la creatividad y el crecimiento de la producciÃ³n y de los servicios. Sin embargo, con esto no bastarÃa. HarÃa falta tambiÃ©n promover el desempeÃ±o de la sociedad civil y para ello se hace necesario conseguir la autonomÃa de las organizaciones sociales, asÃ como la apertura definitiva de nuestros medios masivos de comunicaciÃ³n a la diversidad de criterios de la naciÃ³n. Requerimos de una reestructuraciÃ³n de los mecanismos del poder popular, para que cada una de las instituciones del poder pÃºblico posea la autoridad que le corresponda y radique en el pueblo, de forma cada vez mÃ¡s efectiva, la soberanÃa del paÃs; asÃ como la renovaciÃ³n del Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC) y el replanteamiento de su relaciÃ³n con la sociedad, el Estado y el gobierno.

MuchÃsimos cubanos han esperado, con demostrada paciencia y cierta confianza, que sean anunciadas mediadas como estas y que se convoque a institucionalizar la participaciÃ³n ciudadana y el diÃ¡logo social. No obstante, han ido pasando los momentos simbÃ³licos que hubieran podido desatar –con la intensidad requerida- un proceso de esta Ãndole, sin que ocurra lo esperado. Han quedado atrÃ¡s fechas que histÃ³ricamente sirvieron para convocar al pueblo a reorientar el camino nacional, como por ejemplo las celebraciones por el 26 de julio y VI Congreso del PCC, que aprobÃ³ importantes pero limitadas propuestas de cambios. Ahora se organiza la Primera Conferencia Nacional del PCC, que deberÃ¡ celebrarse el prÃ³ximo mes de enero. Grandes han sido las expectativas de un sector significativo de la sociedad en relaciÃ³n con este evento, pero la publicaciÃ³n del Documento Base, que pretende orientar las discusiones preparatorias del encuentro y las de la Conferencia misma, han dejado preocupados a muchos que poseÃan alguna esperanza de renovaciÃ³n.

En dicho Documento Base faltan innumerables temas que el pueblo esperaba que aparecieran en la agenda del evento. Por otro lado, presenta a un PCC apegado a dogmas fracasados en otras experiencias, y aferrado a una relaciÃ³n muy vertical con la sociedad. En Cuba, cualquier reforma que aspire a trascender tiene que pasar por la innovaciÃ³n polÃtica, y esta Ãºltima no ocurrirÃ¡ si no comienza por el PCC, organizaciÃ³n llamada a liderar los cambios que hemos de realizar. Sin una fuerza polÃtica que despliegue el quehacer de construir consensos a partir del paÃs real, no hay reforma que pueda tener Ã©xito, aunque la misma sea una convicciÃ³n de las mÃ¡s altas autoridades del gobierno.

Instamos a que la Primera Conferencia Nacional del PCC, Ãºltimo momento de la llamada generaciÃ³n histÃ³rica para aportar cambios sustanciales y convocar al pueblo a realizarlos, no pierda esta oportunidad. SerÃa inconveniente contener la esperanza en los grandes cambios y dejar pasar el tiempo para que otros, mÃ¡s adelante, sean quienes los lleven a cabo.

La revista Espacio Laical puede ser vista en www.espaciolaical.org
o adquirida en la Casa Laical, sita en Teniente Rey #152 (tercer piso) e/ Bernaza y Villegas, La Habana Vieja.

CRÃ‰DITOS:
Equipo de redacciÃ³n: JosÃ© RamÃ³n PÃ©rez, Roberto Veiga, Lenier GonzÃ¡lez y Alexis Pestano.// DiseÃ±o: Ballate

Co-ops to engage in food distribution

2011-11-20T22:34:00.000-08:00

In a partial step to unclog the food distribution bottleneck in Cuba, the government is preparing cooperatives to participate in an activity that has been a state monopoly for more than four decades, according to a Cuban expert on cooperatives.

The expansion of cooperatives beyond farming, into food distribution, gastronomic services, transportation, production of construction materials, art, trades and fishing is in a phase of “analysis, planning and training,” Alberto Rivera Rodríguez, an economist and director of a center for the study of cooperatives at the University of Pinar del Río, told Prensa Latina. ”Currently, we are creating the necessary framework.”

As part of a large economic reform package, the Communist Party Congress in April decided the government ought to promote the expansion of member-owned cooperatives beyond agriculture, but no framework regulations have been published yet. Under the outline of reform agreed by the Party, “secondary cooperatives” — subsidiaries of member-owned primary cooperatives — will be allowed to perform activities related to their original activity.

Meanwhile, the Party document passed in April only talked in broad terms about “transforming” food distribution.

Jumping into the breach, the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) — the Communist Party-affiliated private farmers’ association which also represents member-owned cooperatives — has been advocating a breakup of Acopio, the state food distribution monopoly.

Acopio remains an “unresolved topic,” ANAP President Orlando Lugo Fonte said in May. “If in Cuba there is private and diversified production, you can’t have monopolized distribution. We have to look for many ways of buying and selling.”

“If a cooperative wants to sell products and wants a sales point, let them have it,” Lugo said in May, referring to the state quota. “If a hotel wants to buy a product from a cooperative, why can’t it do so? Why do they have to do it forcedly through a company?”

Acopio, the state monopoly that buys and distributes food, is increasingly being blamed for the spotty recovery of Cuba’s food production after the government boosted the role of private farmers in production. Last year, the government rescued the organization from technical default with a cash infusion. Even so, farmers have been complaining about Acopio’s continued shortcomings, including late payments, and persistent lack of containers, trucks and fuel.

Farmers must sell their state quota — the bulk of their production — to Acopio. Producers can sell the crops they produce in excess of the state quota directly at roadside stands and on state markets; selling to private middlemen is not allowed, but the practice is widespread.

“The cooperative, as a form of socialist social property, together with state-owned enterprises, must turn into an element that speeds up the Cuban economic model,” Rivera, the economist, said. “It will contribute to reduce government expenses and increase the life quality of the population.”

http://www.cubastandard.com/2011/11/20/co-ops-to-engage-in-food-distribution/

Cardinal Hails Improved Relations with Cuban Government

2011-11-01T15:50:00.001-07:00

HAVANA – Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega said that the dialogue with President Raul Castro’s government remains open, that it affects all areas of national life including the process of economic reforms on the island, and that the Catholic Church has a “new relationship” with the state and the people.

In a statement Friday to reporters, Ortega also announced that Pope Benedict XVI has confirmed him as archbishop of Havana (he recently presented his resignation as canon law requires upon reaching age 75) and commented that “the door is not closed” on the possibility of a future papal visit to the communist-ruled island.

Cuba’s Catholic primate said the dialogue continues with the Cuban government that began last year to discuss the fate of the island’s political prisoners, though that chapter was closed when the process of freeing them was considered completed.

“There is always a dialogue about the role of the church with its pastoral activities and about the life of the nation under the economic changes planned for Cuba, changes that society is waiting for, that every Cuban hopes for and that the church has also encouraged, supported and wished for,” the cardinal said.

About these changes and the plan of economic reforms promoted by President Raul Castro, Ortega admitted that they could “go a little faster,” but said that the important thing is to aim for “sustained” adjustments and that they be “expanded” in the future and not restricted.

“It’s good that nothing goes back to what it was before but that every step leads to a new opening – that is my hope and my belief,” he said.

This October marks one year since the new regulations went into effect expanding self-employment on the island as part of President Raul Castro’s plan to “modernize” the socialist model.

Unlike the temporary character and ideological stigmatization that self-employment had in the 1990s, private employment is now encouraged in a wider range of activities and, more importantly, allows individuals to hire workers, which in turn has led to the rise of small businesses.

Over the last year the government granted some 190,000 new licenses for small businesses to make up for the drastic cuts in public workforces planned by Gen. Castro to trim inflated state payrolls.

Cardinal Ortega said that in Cuba the Catholic Church is in the process of “a new relationship, not only church-state but also between the church and the Cuban people.”

“The old relationship is being renewed and that is made possible thanks to the new climate that we also breathe in our pastoral affairs,” he said.

As for his continuing as head of the Archdiocese of Havana, he said it was an “honor” that the pope has confirmed him in the post, and explained that his work remains unchanged because there is no new mandate.

Asked if Benedict XVI will visit Cuba, he said “the door is not closed” on that possibility.

“It is neither affirmed nor announced, but a ‘no’ has never been said about such a trip,” he said.

Ortega recalled that he saw the pope in Rome last August while on a pilgrimage with a group of Cuban priests and laity, and that they asked the pontiff about the possibility of his visiting Cuba, to which Benedict XVI replied “If God wills it, if God wills it...”

Ortega made his statement after presenting in Havana several prizes awarded by the Catholic magazine Palabra Nueva.

http://laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=437144&CategoryId=14510

Globe & Mail on Agricultural Reform

2011-10-20T08:39:00.001-07:00

Fifty years later, an agricultural revolution
SONIA VERMA
SAN ANTONIO, CUBA— From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011 8:26PM EDT
Last updated Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2011 11:08PM EDT

For years the land lay fallow, swallowed by thorny weeds. Strangers called it a lost cause. Armando Aroche saw a golden opportunity.

It was 2008 and Raul Castro, in his first major speech as Cuban President, made a shocking admission: 50 years of state-controlled agriculture had failed, resulting in chronic food shortages. The island was importing 80 per cent of the food it subsequently rationed for public consumption.

Mr. Castro offered free, 10-year leases on idle land to anyone willing to try their hand at farming.

Mr. Aroche, a rotund, 53-year-old peasant, was among the first to queue in San Antonio, a small municipality a half-hour drive from Havana.

“I was not afraid of anything,” he recalled. He had a faint childhood memory of a well on the southwest corner of a particular stretch of land, which he requested. He was awarded 7.28 acres and named his farm “San Juan.” He borrowed his neighbour’s tractor and irrigation system and, against all odds, managed to coax 68 tonnes of sweet potatoes and tomatoes from the earth that year, which he sold back to the state at a profit.

Today, he gazes out on his fields from beneath his sunhat. Too much rain means his tomato plants are flowering. His 1952 Ferguson tractor is on its last legs. A team of oxen plow the land as if in slow motion.

But despite these hardships, farmers such as Mr. Aroche are being held out as shining examples of the new face of Cuban socialism. The cabbage, onions, carrots and lettuce he cultivates are described by government officials as the fruits of their “new and improved system” that has boosted food production by awarding more land to peasants who farm it for a profit.

Since Decree No. 259 was passed in 2008, 170,000 peasants across Cuba have been granted land. In San Antonio alone, 410 people have applied for land with 283 of those applications granted.

“Pretty soon we will run out of lands to grant,” confessed Georgina Gutierrez Jimenez, president of the local chapter of the National Association for Small Farmers.

Each farmer can apply for a land grant of 13.48 acres. If the farm proves successful, they can apply for another. Farmers can also use their profits to buy their own equipment, insecticides and fertilizer – something the state used to strictly control. Each farm owner pays a 5-per-cent income tax to the state, and 3 per cent to the local agricultural co-operative.

Mr. Aroche, a trained mechanic, used to work at the “state enterprise of assorted crops,” and earned the equivalent of $9 a month. He demurred when asked about his income today, but acknowledged it is exponentially higher. For the past few years, his family has been able to afford long holidays on the beach.

He employs six workers, who are each paid a monthly wage of $12, plus a yearly bonus. They help themselves to food grown on the farm and often receive a small cash “tip” at the end of each day.

The new agricultural policy has succeeded in boosting food production, officials say.

“There has been an enormous impact,” said Arturo Aleaga Cespedes, a lawyer with the National Farmer’s Association. He cites a 60-per-cent increase in the production of rice, milk, vegetables and root vegetables.

However, it’s still not enough to satisfy Cuba’s food needs.

“We produce a lot, but the demand and consumption are always increasing,” Ms. Jimenez said.

Another challenge is persuading a younger generation of Cubans to take up their leaders’ challenge and return to the land. Many, like Mr. Aroche’s own children, were educated for urban jobs in state offices that are under enormous pressure to trim their bloated payrolls.

The country’s public service is set to lose up to half a million jobs over the next five years.

Mr. Aroche’s 26-year-old daughter, Joseline, quit her job as an economist when her son was born three years ago. Now, as she contemplates returning to the work force, she faces “not a lot of options,” she said.

Her father believes the future of his family, and that of his country, lies in the land: “To work in the field is very hard. It’s something most people don’t like, but it’s work that needs to be done,” he said.

The agricultural reforms – considered radical at the time – have proved to merely foreshadow larger changes sweeping through Cuba as the government relaxes its communist grip on everything from private enterprise to real estate in an attempt to generate revenue.

“The only problem is that all of this should have been done sooner,” Mr. Aroche added.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/americas/fifty-years-later-an-agricultural-revolution/article2200697/

Globe & Mail Analyzes Economic Changes

2011-10-20T08:28:00.000-07:00

Small acts of free enterprise attest to reform looming large in Cuba

SONIA VERMA

HAVANA— From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2011 9:53PM EDT
Last updated Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2011 11:10PM EDT

Just off the Malecon, Havana’s famous seaside corniche, Omar Gatierrez strikes a deal to sell his ’56 Oldsmobile for the rough equivalent of $14,500. It’s the most money he’s ever made.

At a burger joint not far from there, Alfredo Garcia, an economist, shells out twice as much as he normally would for a strawberry milkshake just because it tastes good. Around the corner, Lazaro Rafael, a mechanic, haggles over the price of repairing an infirm Peugeot on the street near the sea where he lives.

These small acts of free enterprise would have been inconceivable in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Under his younger brother, Raul, however, they add up to dramatic economic reform that is quietly reconfiguring the country into something altogether different. Cuban authorities are careful to depict this restructuring as upgrading the revolution rather than forsaking it, yet underpinning it all is an overriding sense of urgency to change.

Floated by fickle Chinese credit and Venezuelan oil, the regime can no longer afford to finance the socialist ideals upon which it was founded. With Cuba at a crossroads, the future remains unclear. One path appears to lead to nowhere, should the regime prove too brittle to allow private enterprise to truly flourish. The alternative route, others worry, would morph the island into something resembling a Floridian mega-mall.

Both outcomes would be disastrous. Most analysts believe the country's true destiny lies in becoming a mixed economy where the state loosens its grip over some sectors but maintains leverage over others. The aim, Cuban sources said, is to have 35 per cent of the economy privatized by 2015. Achieving this elusive balance, however, will prove exceedingly difficult. The reforms that have been rolled out so far – such as allowing cars to be sold and licensing small businesses – have been relatively painless, eclipsing more agonizing ones that lie ahead.

For Cubans, many of whom have virtually no memory of life before the revolution, the reforms are confusing and their consequences unknown. The regime has vowed to implement a progressive tax structure to avoid a Russian-like result where vast amounts of wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few. But a schism of class – however minor – would symbolically violate Mr. Castro's symbolic contract with his people.

Over the next five years, for instance, the regime intends to lay off up to a million public-sector workers, equalling 10 per cent of its work force. Food rations, for which many Cubans rely on for their daily sustenance, are also due to be phased out. Betting on an increase in productivity, the government has promised to boost wages, but economists doubt it will be enough to keep pace with a rising cost of living, as goods are removed from the ration card.

“These larger state-led reforms are going to be wrenching,” said Christopher Sabatini, editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly. One of the biggest obstacles to real change in Cuba, he argues, is the awkward paradox the regime finds itself in: Downgrading its leverage in order to save itself from ruin.

“There’s an inherent tension in any economic reform that involves the Cuban state reducing its own authority over the economy, which is [Fidel] Castro’s real legacy,” Mr. Sabatini explained.

Another problem is that while Cuban authorities seem to have a clear idea of the main focus of the restructuring – reducing the state payroll, nourishing the private sector, boosting food production – the government is vague on its timeline for implementing the changes and even more so on how it plans to deal with any fallout. The haphazard transition means that whenever one of the 311 new decrees issued by the Communist Party at its April Congress becomes law, few people on the street in Havana seem to notice or understand why they should care.

Josefina Vidal, director of the North America Department for Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the protracted rollout is deliberate: “It’s a slow process because we are very much interested in avoiding any kind of social impact. We don’t want anybody to be abandoned or left behind,” she said in a recent interview with The Globe And Mail. Some measures, she acknowledged, were easier to implement than others.

When it comes to defining Cuba’s end goal, officials are equally open-ended, maintaining the state is not trying to emulate other countries – such as China or Vietnam – but rather aiming to pursue an entirely unique set of reforms. Observers, however, disagree.

“They want this to be a made-in-Cuba type of economic system. But if it is made in Cuba it certainly resembles the Chinese approach, and it’s moving more and more in that direction,” said Arch Ritter, an economist at Carleton University who specializes in Cuba.

As he points out, Cuba’s economy is nowhere near China’s in terms of scale or scope. Also, China’s ruling Communist Party is less ossified than Cuba’s, which is still dominated by octogenarians. The recent death Cuba’s minister of defence, Julio Casas Regueiro, at the age of 75, highlighted the frailty of the state’s older generation of leaders who are still firmly in charge.

Without political renewal, analysts say Cuba’s economic reforms are doomed. “They are trying to let the economic genie out of the bottle while keeping the political genie in. That’s not going to work,” predicted Arturo Lopez-Levy, a former political analyst in the Cuban Interior Ministry and a lecturer at the University of Denver.

Meanwhile it remains unclear how Cuban society, much less the regime, will deal with social changes that will inevitably follow the economic ones. How will the state prevent Cuba’s new generation of entrepreneurs from accumulating the kind of wealth that could give rise to a new upper class? How will it ensure all Cubans have access to capital, not just the ones with relatives in Europe or Miami? How will it provide incentives for productivity and initiative if it plans to heavily tax the rewards of that?

“Don’t be fooled,” Mr. Sabatini says. “They want to preserve the system in many ways ... at least the perks of the system.”

As sweeping as Cuba’s current economic reforms are, key enterprises such as mining, oil and sugar production will remain in the hands of the state. Cuba’s health system and its lucrative tourist industry will also remain unchanged, at least for now. The rebranding of the revolution, Mr. Sabatini argues, is still very much a work in progress.

“What was Castroism anyways? It was really about survival. Cuba’s future will boil down to whatever it needs for political and economic survival, rather than any principled commitment to the revolution,” he said.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/americas/small-acts-of-free-enterprise-attest-to-reform-looming-large-in-cuba/article2205850/page1/

More Land to Private Farmers

2011-10-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

Cuba to grant much larger plots to farmers

Reuters - Oct 19

By Marc Frank

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba will greatly expand the amount of land granted to private farmers, an agriculture official said on Wednesday, as the Communist-run country struggles to boost productivity in the sector.

Under new regulations expected to be approved this year, productive farmers will be eligible for temporary land grants covering as much as 165 acres (67 hectares), up from the current maximum of 33 acres (13 hectares) mandated in a 2008 decree, said William Hernandez Morales, the top agricultural official in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba.

"Those persons or lease holders that have really shown they can produce will be able to increase their land to five caballerias," he said on state-run radio. A caballeria is an old land measure still used in Cuba equivalent to 33 acres (13 hectares).

The state owns more than 70 percent of the arable land on the Caribbean island, of which some 50 percent lies fallow and the remainder produces less than the private sector.

A local agricultural expert said private farmers produce 57 percent of the food on only 24 percent of the land.

President Raul Castro has made increasing food production a top priority since taking over from his brother Fidel Castro in 2008, but with poor results.

In one of his key reforms, the government has turned over 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares) of land to 143,000 farmers and would-be farmers since October 2008, but farmers have complained that the small size of the plots and other restrictions hampered production.

They said bigger plots and a recent measure that makes it easier to employ laborers were positive steps.

"This is special. They should redistribute all the fallow land that's been overrun with brush," Roberto Hernandez, a farmer who leased 33 acres in 2009, said in a telephone interview.

"Now the land produces nothing, when it should be producing root vegetables, beans, rice or what have you," he added.

Central Camaguey farmer Jorge Echemendia agreed.

"This is what they have to do without waiting any longer. I don't know how they do it, but when the state gives the land to the people they manage to clean it up, even if with their fingernails, and put it into production."

Castro has also decentralized decision-making, increased prices paid for produce, opened stores where secondary farm supplies such as clothing and tools are sold and promised farmers more freedom to grow and sell their crops.

Agriculture output increased 6.1 percent through June, compared with the same period in 2010, a year that saw a 2.5 percent decline despite the reforms.

http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE79I5WH20111019?sp=true

NPR report on emerging private sector

2011-10-19T09:10:00.000-07:00

Entrepreneurs Emerge As Cuba Loosens Control

by NICK MIROFF, National Public Radio

September 20, 2011

Since Cuba's communist government loosened its grip on the economy, thousands of small private businesses have sprung up.

It's a new frontier for budding capitalists, but competition is fierce and advertising is still tightly restricted.

Snack bars and food stalls are now all over Havana, but there aren't many as distinctive as Tio Tito, or Uncle Tito. The first thing you notice is the uniformed employees, scrambling to serve up Hawaiian pizzas and fruit drinks as music videos play on a monitor behind the counter.

The napkins and the to-go containers carry the Tio Tito company logo, and there's even a slick website, which is hosted abroad. The red-and-gold color scheme is no coincidence either, says proprietor and would-be Cuban fast-food king Ivan Garcia. If those colors can work for McDonald's, he says, they just might work for him.

"Those are the colors that stimulate the appetite," Garcia says. "I didn't make that up, it's what the research shows."

Garcia's business is one of only two start-up food stands to make it in his Havana neighborhood. Six others have already gone under since last fall, when President Raul Castro let more Cubans go into business for themselves.

The Perfect Play, a baseball-themed snack bar, is quickly becoming famous among fans of Havana's beloved team, the Industriales. On the menu: coffee, milkshakes and sandwiches such as the "Dead Ball" (tuna).

Competing With The Government

These days it's no longer enough to hang a sign outside and sell sandwiches and coffee out the front door. Ismael Bello, another Havana entrepreneur, says the city has too many vendors trying to sell the same things, so he's trying something different.

With a new copy machine brought in from abroad, Bello and his family have started a printing and copy service called Avana, with an attractive, freshly painted storefront. He's competing directly with the Cuban government, setting prices at half of what state-owned copy shops charge.

"In five years, we could be a pretty big company," Bello says. "Next month we'll have our website, and if we keep adding products and services, we can grow."

It's not clear how big Cuban authorities will let these new businesses get as they try to build their brands and open new locations. The government's political messages and propaganda must now compete with more and more commercial signage, but advertising is still essentially banned.

So Cubans like Yanet Alvarez have found other ways to stand out. Her baseball-themed snack bar, the Perfect Play, is quickly becoming famous among fans of Havana's beloved team, the Industriales, attracting crowds to her converted garage.

Everything on the menu is named for something in the game, including a few rather unappetizing-sounding dishes like the Dead Ball and the Squeeze Play. But after toiling for years in drab state-run restaurants, Alvarez says it's exhilarating to be making her own business decisions.

"If a customer orders a sandwich, you have the freedom to say, 'Sure, I'll make it however you want it,' " Alvarez says.

That kind of choice is something of a novel concept in a country where nearly everyone still gets an identical government food ration. And the have-it-your-way ethos isn't the only formula being copied.

One new Havana establishment is calling itself Burger Rey — rey means "king" in Spanish. For now, with the U.S. embargo still firmly in place and no Whoppers to compete with, the market is wide open.

Globe & Mail Report on Emerging Private Sector

2011-10-17T05:56:00.000-07:00

CAPITALISM In Cuba, it's Viva la evolucion!
SONIA VERMA
HAVANA— From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2011 8:42PM EDT
Last updated Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011 9:21PM EDT

Barbershops, beauty salons, restaurants and car washes have sprung up across Cuba in the year since the Communist Party allowed citizens to open small, private businesses in an effort to save the country from ruin.

The government says more than 157,000 people have qualified for business permits and are currently self-employed. This new generation of Cuban entrepreneurs is quietly reshaping the island’s stagnant revolution in a way that was inconceivable when Fidel Castro was in control. The economic changes brought about by his brother Raul, however, are proving slow to take hold.

Many are being implemented by young Cubans with virtually no memory of life before communism. Some new entrepreneurs are struggling to understand how to pay small-business taxes or navigate the country’s labyrinthine bureaucracy. With virtually no access to bank loans or credit, most are relying on family living abroad to float their new ventures.

Still, Cuba is buzzing with new energy as people attempt, for the first time in their lives, to make money outside of the underground economy. Business owners are experimenting with novel concepts, such as advertising and open competition. It’s unclear, however, how far the Cuban authorities will allow the reforms to go – whether small business owners will be permitted to accumulate vast amounts of wealth, for example, or build empires.

At the moment, however, these new entrepreneurs seem content enough to turn a profit they can officially pocket.

IVAN GARCIA PENA

His idea for a restaurant might ring a bell: a fast-food joint with a red and yellow colour scheme where, for a couple of bucks, clients get a meal deal.

Mr. Pena, 39, spent a decade of his life as a poorly paid information officer in Cuba’s tourism department before he decided to open Tio Tito’s in January. He siphoned his savings, hawked his personal gym equipment and sold his mobile phone to finance the construction of a modest grill in his front yard, borrowing refrigerators and Tupperware from friends.

“Some of my friends thought I was crazy. Others encouraged me,” recalled Mr. Pena, his voice partially drowned out by the song Stand By Me blasting from a super woofer on a shelf, next to the mustard.

With no restaurant experience to speak of, he relied on what he gleaned as a customer from previous trips abroad, to Spain, Chile and Portugal. An American friend offered to design and build a website, which is hosted in Miami. He hired six employees, including his brother, Tito, who works as head chef, paying them the equivalent of $25 a month, plus a commission.

His inspired colour scheme? “If it works for McDonald’s it can work for me,” he reasoned.

The family has yet to recover their initial investment of $3,000. Business is brisk, however, and Mr. Pena is hopeful that soon he will turn a profit.

“I want Tio Tito franchises all over Havana,” he said.

He prefers the life of an entrepreneur to his previous existence as a bureaucrat.

“You’re obtaining profit from your own work. If you work more you will earn more. The disadvantage is that this is much more work than being an information officer.”

LAZARO RAFAEL

He’s led a double life since officially entering Cuba’s work force: During the day, he worked construction for a government ministry; by night he worked as an underground mechanic, fixing cars for friends and relatives at an unofficial workshop.

Between his two gigs, he earned about $15 a month.

His fortunes, however, changed in December when he quit his day job and applied for a business licence to open his own garage. Since officially opening shop, his income has tripled.

“I still have the same clients, but now I can do the work in the open,” Mr. Rafael, 31, said standing in the shade outside his seaside apartment in Havana’s quiet Miramar neighbourhood.

His wife, Rachel, is an economist in the provincial Communist Party office. Under Cuba’s new economic plan, her job could be in jeopardy as the country seeks to drastically trim its public service by half a million workers over five years.

With his own thriving business for them to fall back on, Mr. Rafael isn’t particularly worried. His biggest problem at the moment is finding a garage to rent – or even buy – when Cuba changes the law to allow people to purchase private property in the coming months.

For now he works on the street, which is strewn with cables and car parts.

Today, he is trying to coax an aging Peugeot to start. Five more cars await service with troubles ranging from a trunk failing to open to a broken headlight.

A team of government inspectors has paid a visit to demand proof he has paid his last instalment of taxes.

Mr. Rafael produced a bank receipt showing he paid the $40, but the inspectors said the government has not received it, and ordered him to pay it again.

“The system is not yet perfect,” he says, “but at least we are moving in the right direction.”

JANETTE ALVAREZ

When she worked as a cook in a state-run cafeteria, her kitchen was fully stocked when she arrived at work each morning. Now, as her own boss, she scrambles to find basic supplies in the shops.

“This is very hard,” the mother of two teenagers said, standing behind the counter of La Jugada Perfecta, her baseball-themed restaurant dedicated to the Industriales, Cuba’s wildly popular baseball team that was founded 50 years ago in the wake of the revolution. The restaurant name translates as A Perfect Play.

“We are not used to this and we have to go out and find everything we need. It’s not like working for the state,” she added.

Sometimes she comes up short. Unable to source proper kitchen appliances, she appealed to relatives in Miami who sent a brand-name blender and two bright orange coolers from Home Depot.

Ms. Alvarez’s husband, an accountant, helped set up the books, but the restaurant is women-owned and women-run.

Most days, clients line up all the way to the sidewalk to order an Extra Base (hamburger with fries) or a Strike (bacon burger). The prices are roughly twice that of a state-run cafeteria.

“I don’t mind paying for quality,” said a 26-year-old economist named Alfredo Garcia, sipping on a strawberry milkshake.

Ms. Alvarez used to earn the equivalent of $80 dollars a month. Now she pays $16 tax every month, as well as about $4 in social security for each of her two employees, both cousins.

She is ploughing all her profits back into the restaurant, and hopes to one day pay back the relatives in Miami who floated her.

“Up to this point I believe we made the right choice,” Ms. Alvarez said.

“This is a new thing for us, but as time goes by I hope we are going to be well,” she said.

WALKIS HERNANDEZ LEGRA

She’s a life-long bureaucrat who currently presides as director of the office for work and social services in Havana’s Plaza Revolucion.

She harbours no ambition to start her own business, but anyone in the neighbourhood who does must first receive the blessing of her staff, which issues all permits for the district.

Since the new law came into effect, about 40 people file through this crumbling building each day, searching for door No. 6, where a handful of state workers surrounded by broken filing cabinets sort through applications. The process takes about eight minutes.

Applicants submit their identity cards with two pictures and a written application. Five days later, they come back to pick up their permits. The process has been simplified from a few months ago, when applications had to be reviewed by the neighbourhood Committee to Protect The Revolution before permits could be issued.

On this day, Nara Creas, a 63-year-old who constructs costumes and pinatas for children’s birthday parties, has come to renew her license. Nelson Cruz, a 26-year-old taxi driver, is also applying for a permit, to turn his illegal taxi business into something official.

“Our department rarely takes five days to complete the application process. We can do it in one or two days,” Ms. Legra said with pride. Her office has processed roughly 6,000 applications since last October, when the decree came into effect.

Permit in hand, entrepreneurs then proceed to the local tax office for an assessment of how much they will pay per month.

After that, they can officially open for business.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/americas/in-cuba-its-viva-la-evolucion/article2199403/?from=sec431

Farmers Frustrated by Pace of Reform

2011-10-17T05:44:00.001-07:00

28Sep2011 RTRS-Cuban farmers impatient with pace of reform

* Farmers charge local bureaucrats undermine reform
* Land lease program proves insufficient
* State maintains monopoly on key farm inputs and sales

By Marc Frank
HAVANA, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Cuban farmers are frustrated with the pace of reform under President Raul Castro, charging that bureaucratic bungling and self interest are undercutting efforts to increase production, according to a telephone survey by Reuters this week.
They said some of the hallmark reforms they once applauded, such as a land grant program and decentralization of agricultural management, were turning out to be woefully insufficient in practice.
Decentralization had become a double-edged sword as some local officials protect their interests and undermine a pledge by Castro to lift the state's monopoly on farm inputs and the purchase and sale of what they produce, farmers said.
Castro began leasing fallow state lands soon after taking over for his ailing brother Fidel in 2008.
He also decentralized decisionmaking away from the central government, increased prices paid for produce, opened stores where secondary farm supplies such as clothing and tools are sold and promised farmers more freedom to grow and sell their crops.
But the communist-run country's agriculture remains in crisis and the state monopoly remains in place more than three years after the reforms began.
In recent speeches, Castro himself has expressed growing impatience with bureaucrats hindering the implementation of wide-ranging reforms he says are needed to ensure the survival of Cuban socialism.
"It is a diabolical system that will drive you crazy," Arsenio, a farmer in Holguin province said of the state's food contracting system.
"You first sign a contract covering when and what you are going to plant in exchange for supplies. Later, you have to confirm and ratify how much you will produce, something that's just about impossible," he said, like others requesting that his full name not be used.
"And if you come up short, they demand compensation and if you produce more, they don't come get your produce because it wasn't contracted," he said.

BUREAUCRATIC MANEUVERING
Ninety-seven of Cuba's 169 municipalities are rural, where those who control agriculture control the only business and money flow in town.
The farmers charged that Castro's reforms were being sabotaged by these local power structures.
"Agriculture officials at the intermediary levels think that if they apply these reforms they will lose their own importance, lose their power and the advantages and privileges they now enjoy," said a retired president and still active member of a cattle cooperative in central Camaguey.
"That is why they keep looking for ways to limit reform: yes the contracts, yes centralized supplies, defining the quality of products and many more measures they take to force the producer to come to them, to depend on them," he said.
Agriculture output increased 6.1 percent through June, compared with the same period in 2010, a year that saw a 2.5 percent decline despite the reforms. But food production remains below 2005 levels and food prices at farmers markets have increased 7.8 percent this year, according to the government.
The state owns more than 70 percent of the arable land on the Caribbean island, of which some 50 percent lies fallow and the remainder produces less than the private sector.
"Private farmers currently produce 57 percent of the food on only 24.4 percent of the land," a local agricultural expert said.
The cash-strapped government imports 60 percent to 70 percent of the population's food.
Some 4 million acres (1.2 million hectares) of land have been granted to 143,000 farmers and would-be farmers since the land lease program began in October 2008, according to the Agriculture Ministry, around 50 percent of what is available.

DECEPTIVE NUMBERS
Farmers said the numbers were deceptive because there was little financing to put land into production and the time, size and conditions of the leases undercut their purpose.
"The government says they have issued 13,000 bank credits, but the credits are very narrow, for example to buy livestock but not clear the land, purchase milking supplies or fencing," said Alfredo, a farmer in eastern Guantanamo province.
Plots of no more than 33 acres (13.42 hectares) are leased for ten years to new farmers under the land grant program, with the option to renew, but building homes on the land is prohibited.
Under Cuban land reform put in place after the revolution farmers could own up to 165 acres (67 hectares) of land, five times that offered under the land lease program.
"Only someone sitting in an office in Havana with no idea what goes on in the countryside would lease land for just ten years and prohibit building permanent structures on it," Jorge, the president of a group of private farmers in Camaguey who collectively receive credits and services from the state, said.
The Camaguey farm leader said the government should authorize building homes on the land and at the same time increase the size of land grants and make them indefinite.
Alfredo in Guantanamo agreed.
"It is absurd to try to work a plot of land and when the night arrives leave it till the following day. Who is going to protect your animals and crops?" he said.
(Editing by Jeff Franks and Jackie Frank)
((marc.frank@thomsonreuters.

MBA Program launched by Catholic Church linked NGO

2011-10-17T05:37:00.000-07:00

Cuba opens doors to MBA studies
By Marc Frank, Reuters

In what may well signal a slight political and economic thaw in the communist-run country, Cuba has opened its first MBA programme.

The part-time programme is an educational initiative of the Roman Catholic Church. Small businesses and the church’s educational mission have traditionally been thwarted in the country and the programme, by Cuban standards, is a remarkable event.

The MBA is being run from the 18th-century San Carlos y San Ambrosio Seminary in Havana, home to the Felix Varela Cultural Centre, which sponsors the MBA. Plans for the centre originated at the Pontifical Council for Culture at the Vatican, which wants similar centres to be built in other big cities.

Outside the seminary, on Chacón Street, private taxi drivers trawl for fares and snack and artisan shops compete with the state for tourist dollars, attesting to the changing retail scene on Cuba’s streets.

“Private business was not favourably looked upon in Cuba just a year ago. An entrepreneur was even viewed as a criminal, a delinquent,” says Father Yosvani Carvajal, director of the centre. “Today businessmen are viewed as contributing to society and the economy, but with what tools? We are going to provide those tools ... how to start and run a business, marketing and the like.”

Fidel Castro, the former president, took over the country’s retail sector in 1968 in what he called the “Revolutionary Offensive”. Raúl Castro, who replaced his older brother in 2006, recently described that decision as a “mistake that was perhaps unavoidable at the time”, and has repeatedly stressed the need for the state to withdraw from secondary economic activity.

Professors from the San Antonio Catholic University of Murcia in Spain will teach the MBA classes for a week each month, with students studying the curriculum under the direction of Cuban economists for the remainder of the time.

Father Carvajal, a lean, soft-spoken man with a serene and seemingly permanent smile, says the MBA programme is the first of its kind in Cuba and marks an important milestone for the church.

“The MBA is just the first course [that] the centre’s new Institute for Ecclesiastic Studies will offer, mainly in the humanities and theology, for example psychology, in conjunction with foreign universities and Cuban professors,” he says.

“We are not questioning the state’s role in education, but the church, as part of its calling, has always been a teacher and this is now seen as something positive.”

Esade business school in Barcelona, Spain is part of a project led by the European Foundation for Management Development and financed by the EU, aimed at improving the management skills of Cuban executives. The project was due to start last year but is currently on hold.

In recent months, Cuba has lifted a myriad of restrictions on what it calls “working for oneself”, a euphemism in many cases for running a small business. Working for oneself was first introduced during the 1990s, but subsequently regulated by Fidel Castro to the point of extinction.

Last year there were about 150,000 “self-employed” out of a workforce of about 6m. Today, the “non-state sector” consists of 350,000 licensed tradesmen, small businesses and their employees, according to the government, which plans to move 35 per cent of the labour force into such activities and private farming in the next few years.

When the MBA students gathered last week for their first classes, their dreams were of bigger ventures than the family operations on Chacón Street. Local economists believe competition and market forces will eventually lead to more sophisticated businesses in retail services, small-scale manufacturing and construction.

“These students will certainly emerge with more than a diploma. They will have the knowledge they need to compete and that’s what this country needs,” one economist said.

. . .

Sceptics however, wonder if Mr Castro’s reforms will be shortlived, given the fate of less comprehensive reforms in the past.

“These are surprising, really unthinkable changes for someone who has always lived in Cuba, so I understand the sceptics,” says Father Carvajal. He points to reforms that make it easier to go into business on a limited scale and include the right to hire workers, seek bank credit and do business with the state. “I think this time the door has been opened and will never again close. That is why we are offering the MBA course.”

Cuba designing management courses for private sector workers

2011-09-26T09:12:00.001-07:00

Havana – Cuba's ANEC economists association is designing a training program directed at private sector workers so that they can broaden their knowledge of basic principles of accounting, expenses, costs and taxes.

Official media outlets reported Thursday that the project takes into account the "needs" of the private sector, which includes more than 333,000 people and has been growing since in October 2010 the government of Raul Castro broadened opportunities for self-employment and small business.

ANEC Vice President Maria Victoria Berrace told the state-run AIN news agency that the aim of the training course will be "to contribute to the development and better performance" of people in the expanding private sector.

Berrace emphasized that entrepreneurs must "understand the laws, contribute to the state that which is established and achieve dividends that will return profits to them."
ANEC says that some surveys show that private sector workers face "the greatest difficulties" at the time they pay taxes, and the group emphasizes that "Cubans have very little (knowledge)" of those subjects.

The government broadened the scope of private employment last October as part of a package of economic reforms, a plan that also includes labor adjustments in the state sector and forecasts in the first phase the elimination of half a million state jobs to reduce bloated government payrolls.

As per a decision by the Cabinet, this month the number of activities that one can pursue privately to earn a living will be expanded to 181, and the hiring of people in all those areas has already been approved.

According to government figures, currently 10 percent of the workers in the private sector are employees.

The majority of the business licenses awarded since October have been in activities such as food preparation, passenger transport and the sale of "household items."

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2011/09/22/cuba-designing-management-courses-for-private-sector-workers/#ixzz1Z4joq9Yr

Growth of private business

2011-05-25T07:13:00.000-07:00

New entrepreneurs on the rise in socialist Cuba

Tue, May 24 2011
By Jeff Franks
HAVANA (Reuters) - The salvation of socialism in Cuba is taking some odd turns, with words like "competition," "marketing" and "opportunity" being heard for the first time in decades on the communist-led island.
Under reforms by President Raul Castro, a new entrepreneurial class is developing and with it some new ways of thinking in a country that has long resisted economic change.
The government reported recently that 310,000 Cubans are working legally for themselves, of whom 221,000 have received their licenses for self-employment since last fall, when Castro announced an expansion of the private sector.
The move was part of a broad package of reforms to modernize Cuba's sluggish Soviet-style economy with the goal of saving socialism, installed after the country's 1959 revolution, for future generations.
U.S. President Barack Obama recently dismissed the changes as too small, but on the island 90 miles from the United States many Cubans welcome them and believe they are just the first of many to come.
The reforms are "an opportunity for Cubans, they are a start," said Giselle Nicolas at her new paladar, or private restaurant, La Galeria in Havana's Vedado district.
"I think Cuba is already changing for the better," she said.
In Havana and elsewhere, there is no question the economic landscape is changing.
People are setting up shop in doorways and on sidewalks, selling a variety of items ranging from food to household goods and offering repairs on shoes, cell phones and watches.
They are giving haircuts on their front porches and walking through neighborhoods hawking flowers, pastries and farm products. State-run press reported this week there are now 1,000 independent retailers of construction materials.
The Council of Ministers recently expressed concern about the number of vendors clogging sidewalks and taking away from the beauty of Cuba's historic architecture. They may have to move off main streets and into rented spaces now occupied by moribund state-run businesses, it said.
PALADAR BOOM
The government said 49,000, or 22 percent, of the new self-employment licenses have gone to food vendors, which has touched off a boom in the number of paladares and growing competition among them.
Alejandro Robaina, owner of La Casa, one of Havana's oldest paladares, said the newly crowded market makes it necessary to offer new services and do as much marketing as possible in a country where traditional advertising is almost non-existent.
Since January, he has opened a website for his restaurant (restaurantelacasacuba.com), a blog and a Facebook account to reach out to the privileged few in Cuba with Internet access and to international visitors.
He gives regular customers a discount on their meals and is offering Cuban cooking classes to foreign tourists.
On the blog, he has a photo at La Casa of him, his mother, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and British actor Clive Owen.
Other paladares are offering 24-hour service, home delivery and frequent-diner plans -- once you've had $1,000 worth of meals, you get a free one worth $100.
"You always have to be one step ahead so the competition doesn't catch up to you," Robaina said. "Let the competition come."
Castro's reforms also aim to infuse new thinking in state-run enterprises.
The government recently took foreign journalists to state-owned plants and agricultural operations in central Ciego de Avila province where workers were paid based on production, not the usual state-set salary given to all whether they worked or not.
Most said they earned double or triple the country's average monthly salary equivalent to $20 and were pleased about it.
"I'm working six days a week, but I am very happy," said one female worker as she cleaned a recently harvested red cabbage.
"The key thing is that the one who works hard gets the benefits," said Jorge Felix Martin Iglesias, overseer of agricultural production for the provincial Communist Party.
STILL COMMUNIST
If all this smacks vaguely of capitalism, there are reminders that Cuba is still communist.
Nelson Blanco, chief executive of a large state-run farming and food processing operation, said his monthly pay was equivalent to about $40, which was less than most of his workers. It was only fair, he explained.
"The worker that does the most physical labor, the most work, is the one that earns most ... the one that's on the land under the sun with his hoe," Blanco said. "I am very much in agreement."
Cuba's malaise is tied in part to state domination of all aspects of the economy, so Castro hopes greater emphasis on private initiative will increase productivity and prosperity.
Castro has said it planned to hand out 250,000 self-employment licenses, but as that number quickly approaches it looks likely to go beyond it. Castro wants to cut 1 million workers, or 20 percent of the workforce, from government payrolls and needs something for them to do.
Whether his reforms will be sufficient to keep socialism afloat is unknown but a Cuban psychologist who asked not to be identified said they had had a positive effect on the population.
"People were dead before," he said. "Now at least they are thinking, trying to come up with ideas for businesses, even if they are small ones."
Government opponents complain that bigger economic changes are needed, along with political reform away from the one-party state now in place.
But there has been little talk of the latter by Cuban leaders and, according to Richard, a newly licensed shoe repairman, no need for it.
"The Cuban cares about partying, dressing well and enjoying life," he said as he worked on a pair of women's shoes. "The Cuban doesn't care about politics or things like freedom of the press."
(Editing by Jane Sutton and Cynthia Osterman)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/24/us-cuba-reform-entrepreneurs-idUSTRE74N6NL20110524

Bishops see democratic evolution in Cuba

2011-05-24T07:40:00.000-07:00

Emilio Aranguren y Juan de Dios Hernández, que se mencionan como posibles sucesores del cardenal Ortega, elogiaron en Uruguay los 'cambios' de Raúl Castro.

****************

El obispo de Holguín, Emilio Aranguren, afirmó en Montevideo que percibe determinados cambios y situaciones en el Gobierno de Raúl Castro, que tiende a una progresiva evolución hacia un Estado más democrático, informó el diario uruguayo La República.

"El país va dando pasos que no son exactamente iguales a los de antes. Esto es un indicador de que es posible que lleguemos hasta una democracia con nuestras características, con un modo de gobernar...", señaló Aranguren al término de la 33ª Asamblea Ordinaria del Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano (Celam), donde se renovaron las autoridades del organismo.

A la reunión también asistió Juan de Dios Hernández, obispo auxiliar de La Habana, delegado de la Iglesia cubana ante el Celam.

Aranguren y Hernández se mencionan como posibles sucesores del cardenal Jaime Ortega al frente del Arzobispado de La Habana. Ortega debe renunciar en octubre por límite de edad, aunque se desconoce si el Papa le mantendrá más tiempo en el cargo.

Según el diario uruguayo, Hernández habló con periodistas sobre la celebración del VI Congreso del Partido Comunista.

"Hay un sólo Partido y permanece un solo Partido. Cuando se habla de que en esta democracia tiene que haber diferentes partidos. Entonces, ¿cómo se va caminando hacia allá? Hace cinco años no se escuchaba mucho a quienes opinaban de manera diferente, y hoy se escucha, y se tiene en cuenta, en lo que opina una persona o algún grupo de personas", dijo el obispo auxiliar de La Habana.

'Cambios lentos'

Según los prelados, en la Isla "se vienen implementando cambios, lentos, pero cambios al fin".

Aranguren aclaró que la relación de la Iglesia con el gobierno de los hermanos Castro no comenzó hace un año, sino que en los últimos tiempos se ha dado de diferente manera.

"Esto fue caminando y fueron diferentes encuentros paulatinos. Fue caminando la situación de los presos, siempre con algunos puntos a superar, y a la misma vez se fueron conversando otros temas desde la visión de la Iglesia a través de la doctrina social, y de nuestra permanencia en Cuba en los últimos 500 años", afirmó el obispo de Holguín.

El religioso sostuvo que todavía quedan algunos presos, los que están sujetos al tratamiento del Estado y de la propia Iglesia.

Los dos obispos explicaron que la participación de la Iglesia en el intercambio con el Estado "es algo novedoso, en cuanto a que no se realizó antes de una manera, sobre todo con las máximas autoridades".

Hernández aclaró que la Iglesia viene desarrollando la función de "siempre tirar puentes, procurando para que la diversidad llegue también a los niveles de base. Esto es fruto de la postura que ha tomado la Iglesia en los últimos 50 años".

Uno de los obispos, que no fue identificado por La República, dijo que la población tomó el relevo de Fidel Castro "como algo normal, sin ningún tipo de estridencias", pues "no extraña esa manera de entregar el poder a su hermano Raúl, amén de que está avalado por el Parlamento".

También catalogaron de "inmoral y éticamente inaceptable" el embargo económico de Estados Unidos y señalaron que durante años la Iglesia hizo sentir su voz ante las autoridades norteamericanas para que levantaran la medida, pero sin una respuesta afirmativa del otro lado.

En la Asamblea Ordinaria del Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano (Celam) participaron 5 cardenales y 50 obispos de todo el continente.

'Cuando la fe es cultura no se puede aniquilar tan fácilmente'

En una entrevista con el diaro local El País, Juan de Dios Hernández señaló que "el sistema marxista cubano trató de buscar un modelo estalinista que está muy lejos de nuestra cultura, evidentemente".

"Durante décadas ese modelo se impuso a la población y con ello el ateísmo teórico y práctico. Ahí se observa que cuando la fe es cultura no se puede aniquilar tan fácilmente. Al darse una coyuntura favorable todo eso emerge, como está sucediendo en este momento", apuntó el obispo auxilar de La Habana.

Dijo que cada vez la Iglesia tiene "más libertad" en su acción pastoral.

"Ciertamente no es la que quisiéramos, aspiramos a más, ellos lo saben. Pero apostamos por la gradualidad, pienso que en el futuro habrá más posibilidades de que la Iglesia pueda estar en espacios", añadió.

Reiteró lo dicho por el cardenal Ortega en ocasiones anteriores: "La Iglesia no es un partido político, es una servidora del pueblo", y dijo que "ellos (los gobernantes) han captado la importancia del valor espiritual que la Iglesia puede dar en la población"

Hernández negó que actualmente la feligresía sea reprimida por su condición católica. "No, hubo momentos difíciles que en este momento no se producen. No hay represión por la fe. Ellos y el pueblo van dando posibilidades que, según como se expresen las cosas, se van a realizar".

A la pregunta de si los cubanos de a pie están pidiendo más espacios de libertad, contestó que "la gente lo va diciendo de una manera u otra. El mismo presidente ha pedido que la gente se exprese y que lo hará, a veces coincidiendo y otras disintiendo".

http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/4873-obispos-creen-que-la-isla-evoluciona-hacia-un-estado-mas-democratico

Private farming lifts output in Cuba rice province

2011-03-03T20:29:00.001-08:00

02Mar2011

* Rice output increasing in key province: official

* Castro reforms seen spurring rice production

* Private farming now producing most rice in Granma

By Marc Frank

BAYAMO, Cuba, March 2 (Reuters) - Cuba's most important

rice-producing province should more than double output this

year as new private farms and service cooperatives, improved

organization and higher local prices kick in, a senior

provincial official told Reuters on Tuesday.

President Raul Castro's cash-strapped government has

embarked on a program to cut food imports, and rice, which is a

Cuban staple -- and therefore a political matter -- is a top

priority.

The country's 11 million people consume a minimum of

700,000 tonnes of rice a year, one of the highest rates per

capita in the world.

Cuba imported 511,642 tonnes of rice in 2009 at a cost of

$238.5 million, most of it from Vietnam.

"Three years ago Granma produced approximately 17,000

tonnes of consumable rice, in 2010 we reached 27,000 tonnes and

in 2011 we should be at 62,000 tonnes," said Raul Lopez

Rodriguez, the province's vice president for economic affairs.

The eastern province was the site of a huge, state-owned

rice project under former President Fidel Castro, one of nine

in the country, but output rapidly declined with the demise of

the Soviet Union, once Cuba's top benefactor.

Castro's brother is revitalizing the projects, but under

agricultural reforms begun soon after he took over the

presidency in 2008.

The government has leased fallow state lands, raised prices

paid for rice and other produce, and decentralized decision

making, among other measures.

"Rice is now grown mainly by the non-state sector," Lopez

said.

"The state supplies resources, technological packets (seed,

fertilizer, etc.) under contract," he said, then buys 90

percent of what the farmers produce.

Agricultural services, such as mechanical harvesting, which

just a few years ago were monopolized by the state, are

increasingly being carried out by private agriculture service

cooperatives, he said. That is another Castro reform.

Lopez said higher prices paid for the rice allowed the most

efficient farmers to clear between 80,000 pesos and 100,000

pesos per year, the equivalent of up to $4,000, or 15 to 20

times Cubans' average annual income of 5,300 pesos ($238) per

year.

Arnaldo, who leased 33 acres of fallow land three years ago

in Yara, said he made around 40,000 pesos on each of the two

harvests in 2010, and expected similar results this year, using

mainly contracted services and labor.

"I bought the packet from the state and hired some workers

to help plant," he said. "They have offered me another 16 acres

and I think I'll take it."

Cuba's total rice production was 281,800 tonnes in 2009, up

50 percent over 2008.

But efforts to increase Cuba's rice production faltered

last year as output fell 12.2 percent to 247,000 tonnes.

Lopez attributed the decline to the growing pains of

Castro's reforms and a shortage of resources and water.

He said new equipment had arrived and the resources needed

this year were secured, though drying and shelling capacity

remained limited and the province was working on temporary

alternatives.

"We have an advantage over last year. Currently our water

resources are at 82 percent capacity and at this time last year

they were at 45 percent," he said.

(Editing by Jeff Franks and Walter Bagley)

Cuba Notes Practical Steps Not Taken by the Obama Administration

2010-09-23T15:13:00.000-07:00

Following is the introductory section of Cuba's annual documentation of the impact of the unilateral US embargo in preparation for the scheduled UN debate. It cites numerous reforms that lie within the exclusive authority of the Executive which the Obama Administration has declined to initiate, in effect Cuba's commonsense road map for the US if it wishes to achieve a more normal relationship.

CHAPTER I. THE ADMINISTRATION OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: CONTINUED POLICY OF THE ECONOMIC, COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL EMBARGO AGAINST CUBA

On March 28, 2009, US Vice President Joseph Biden, in the framework of the Summit of Progressive Leaders in Chile, made a press statement that the government of that country would not lift the embargo on Cuba. On April 7th of the same year, Robert Wood, the State Department spokesperson declared at a press conference: “I think that we have been very clear that we do not consider this is the right time to lift the embargo”.

On April 19, 2009, David Axelrod, Obama’s advisor, replied in an interview on CBS-TV when asked if the White House had any thoughts about lifting the “embargo”: “...we are far from that”.

That same day, President Obama’s economic advisor Lawrence Summers declared on an NBC-TV interview when referring to the lifting of the embargo: “That is not something for tomorrow and it will depend on what Cuba is going to do, Cuba knows what it should be doing for some time now, and it depends on them in terms of their policies, their democratization and all the steps they might take (...) it is a topic that will be decided on the basis of Cuba’s conduct”.

It is evident then that the US government does not harbour any intention of producing a change in its policy towards Cuba, or of complying with the reiterated resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly that ask the government of that country to put an end to the economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba. On the contrary, the US government continues holding on to inacceptable interfering conditions and demands as a condition for a change of policy towards Cuba.

Despite having considerable support in Congress, the press, public opinion and the business sector, that transcended any preceding consensus in American society regarding policy towards Cuba, something that would have allowed him to act with a high level of autonomy, President Obama has stayed well below the expectations created by his speech about the claims from different sectors in American society and the international community, as well as his prerogatives to change significant policy aspects, even without intervention from Congress.

By virtue of those prerogatives and if such political will for that were to exist, President Obama would have had sufficient authority to significantly make the embargo against Cuba more flexible. In that sense, and without the need for mediating congressional approval, the President would have been able to issue a broad range of permits to authorize the following measures:

* Substantially expand travel by Americans and foreigners residing in the US by a broad interpretation of the 12 categories for travel established by law (for example, expansion of educational travel, permits to participate in professional conferences, academic, scientific, student, cultural, sports, religious exchanges and authorization of humanitarian projects, just to name a few).

[These categories are: travel for official government business, foreign governments or international organizations; family travel; educational travel; religious; for public presentations, sports competitions and exhibitions; travel for activities in support of the Cuban people; for humanitarian projects; trips for private foundation, research institute or educational activities; travel for export, import or transmission of information or informative materials activities; and travel for activities relating to the export of agricultural products.]

* Eliminate limits on travel associated expenses such as accomodations, food and local transportation that Americans and Cubans residing in the US can make when they visit Cuba (Americans, including Cuban-Americans, after the amendment to the Budget Act for the 2009 fiscal year, cannot spend more than the limit set for travel expenses abroad for US government officials, today set at 179 USD per day).

* Eliminate the prohibition on use of credit and debit cards, personal cheques, travellers’ cheques, issued by both US and third country banks.

* Broaden the list of US airports authorized to operate charter flights to Cuba (at the present time, there are only three approved: Miami, New York and Los Angeles).

* Permit ferry service between the US and Cuba.

* Authorize all US travel agencies to organize trips to Cuba, or make the requisites and procedures in force more flexible so that travel agencies may obtain the necessary permits for this activity (today there are some 150 agencies authorized to do so, via specific licences).

* Authorize travelers visiting Cuba to buy Cuban products and take them to the US for personal use or as gifts, and eliminate the limit on their value (up to the present time they can only take information materials, including art objects).

* Eliminate the prohibition on Cuban companies to participate in the transportation of US visitors to and from Cuba, or Cuban visitors to and from the US.

* Permit certain bank relations, such as correspondent banks and the opening of accounts by Cuban entities in US banks to facilitate agricultural exports.

* Eliminate the prohibition that prevents vessels transporting agricultural products to Cuba from carrying goods in our country even though their destination may be a third country.

* Expand the list of products that may be exported to Cuba to include, for example, insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, agricultural equipment and even wooden furniture and objects manufactured with materials having animal or vegetal origins.

* Permit broader forms of collaboration in the development, marketing and supply of medicines and biomedical products originating in Cuba.

* Authorize the importing of medicines and medical products of Cuban origin and the payments corresponding to the Cuban exporters.

* Authorize the export of medicines and medical equipmentbb that may be used in the manufacture of Cuban biotechnological products.

* Instruct US representatives in international financial institutions not to block the authorization of loans or other financial facilities to Cuba.

* Loosen up or eliminate the prohibition on using the dollar for Cuba’s international transactions.

* Permit foreign subsidiaries of US companies to carry out certain transactions with Cuba, such as financial services, insurance, services and investments (The Torricelli Act prohibits commerce in goods but not the mentioned transactions).

* Lift the two prohibitions established in the Torricelli Act regarding vessels: the one forbidding entry to US ports for 180 days by vessels from third countries that have carried goods to Cuba; and the one making it impossible for vessels carrying goods or passengers to or from Cuba to enter US ports (the Torricelli Act and regulations for its implementation authorize the president to issue licenses for that).

*Exclude Cuba from the list of states sponsoring international terrorism. This list was first published in 1982 under the Reagan administration and has remained in effect until today. It involves the application of certain sanctions.

[Among the sanctions being applied to a State sponsoring terrorism, according to the list drawn up by the US, are: the prohibition on financial transactions without a permit, the prohibition on financial and direct technical aid by the US government, the prohibition on exports of certain goods such as heavy industrial products, high tech equipment, and products having dual usage, the prohibition on transfer of munitions, and the prohibition on granting temporary visas to nationals of the country without special decision of the Secretary of State.]

http://www.cubavsbloqueo.cu/Informe2010/InformeIngles/1.html

Interview with Esteban Morales

2010-09-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

Interview with Political Scientist and Internationalist Esteban Morales

Red Alert against Corruption

“I am one of those who think that sometimes it is healthier for us to recognize our shortcomings ourselves than for the enemy to throw them back in our face, or save them up against us, which is worse,” asserted Cuban political scientist and academician Esteban Morales during an interview with the International Press Service (IPS), reproduced by Cubanow. http://www.cubanow.cult.cu/pages/articulo.php?sec=40&t=2&item=8662

Patricia Grogg

“I still view corruption as an extraordinary danger to the country, since its “corrosive power” makes it a matter of “national security,” emphasized Esteban Morales, who was expelled from the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) after making his warnings public.

Morales appealed to the PCC, an option he’s entitled to according to the statutes of that Party, which is the only political party recognised in Cuba.

“A commission has to analyse the appeal and make a decision. If I am not satisfied with the answer, I can take the case as far as the Party Congress. I will continue to appeal, because I think I have reasons to do so,” he told the IPS news agency.

Meanwhile, he remains very active as an academic and researcher, although he will retire in September from the teaching staff at the Center for Hemispheric Studies on the United States (CEHSEU) of the University of Havana, which he helped found and to which he has devoted a large part of his professional life.

“I'm retiring at 68. I'll have more time and more freedom for my academic and research works,” added this doctor of Science and Economics and an expert on Cuba-U.S. relations, as well as the author of essays, books and numerous articles on the no less delicate issue of racism in his country.

IPS: After your separation from the PCC was made public, you preferred to avoid contact with the press, especially the accredited foreign press. What made you change your mind and agree to this interview?

EM: I think that clearing up certain points is healthy. Some people have said I was a privileged person, a state security (secret service) agent, and now I want to say these things. They will never find my privileges, because I have none. As for being a security agent, if I were, I would be proud of it, because in Cuba that is an honor.

My curriculum vitae speaks for me. I am a true academic, not an invented one. I have written dozens of works, not always on straightforward subjects, as well as doing a lot of teaching, lecturing at conferences and acting as an academic adviser. If anyone has any doubts, they only need to enter my name into Google.

Others have taken delight in the idea that I might change sides and go over to the 'dissidents.' Perhaps the counter-revolution, lacking as it is in leadership, thought that I would fill that gap for them. People who really know me know that that's impossible, and that I'm a firmly committed revolutionary. Furthermore, I have never had any pretensions to leadership or sought to be center stage.

IPS: Have you never wavered in your political convictions?

EM: No, never. Even the sun has its spots; different appraisals are always possible. I may have given room for wrong interpretations, although the spirit of my texts is clear and anyone can see they were written from a revolutionary stance.

I was a revolutionary before I was a party member, and I will continue to be one. It’s a political affiliation I decided over 50 years ago, my free choice. I have never liked to play the lying game.

I am not paralysed by what has happened. I will simply be much more careful when expressing myself and writing, but I won't stop doing it, as an intellectual who the Revolution has trained to warn with honesty about things that can damage us, and that is what I have always done. These are the risks one has to take.

IPS: Doesn't the fact that you were punished after publicly expressing your views on corruption and the risks it poses for the country's political and social stability contradict President Raúl Castro himself, who on August 1st said that unity 'is nurtured and harvested within the broadest possible socialist democracy and in open discussion of every issue, however sensitive, with the people'?

EM: I believe debate and criticism are encouraged by Raúl and the party leadership. But there may be circumstances in which someone at some level does not quite agree.

I would say that the process of exercising a critical approach is much more complex than the mere decision to do so. It has to do with the structures, with individuals and the different ways in which some people understand things sometimes. Or perhaps part of what I said could have been said in a different way. There's a big gap between intentions and the way they are put into practice.

IPS: What do you think is most worrying about corruption?

EM: Its corrosive effect from the moral point of view. When morality and ethics are affected, the prestige of our political system is undermined and everything goes downhill. That's why I agree with those who say corruption is a national security problem.

However, it won't be solved just through more inspections and paperwork, but by being very much on the alert and continuously creating mechanisms to prevent it, so that people who handle money and resources are constantly brought to book. Our country's assets really do belong to the people, it's not just talk.

IPS: You are very well known for your writings on the United States, its relations with Cuba, and racism. What prompted you to write about corruption, an issue that, according to some government sectors, encourages “campaigns to discredit” the country if ventilated in public?

EM: I wrote those articles because I believe these are the dangers we are facing now. I have a motto: amid the situation we have lived all these years, I think that whoever wants to be a revolutionary has to wage his own war, fight his own battles and run whatever risks there are. Otherwise, he should just stay home, under the bed.

The claim that the enemy will take advantage of things does not immobilize me either, because it isn't the enemy that is going to solve the problem for us, quite the opposite. I am one of those who think that sometimes it is healthier for us to recognize our shortcomings ourselves than for the enemy to throw them back in our face, or save them up against us, which is worse.

IPS: Whom are you referring to when you say 'enemy'?

EM: We cannot close our eyes to the fact that, since the late 1980s, the focus of the U.S. policy towards Cuba has changed. Nowadays, everything that is happening internally on the island is being observed and monitored by US politicians and especially by the US special services.

It is in this context that I view the problem of corruption, which I still see as an extraordinary danger.

Translated by Brenda Sheehan

Catholic Church Addresses Dissident Complaints

2010-08-23T18:56:00.000-07:00

Church in Cuba responds to open letter from dissidents

Havana, Cuba, Aug 23, 2010 / 10:11 am (CNA).- The Archdiocese of Havana issued a press release on August 20 in response to an open letter recently sent to Pope Benedict XVI by a group of Cuban dissidents. The archdiocese said its statement was in response to the uproar among Catholics concerning the letter, “which contains offensive content toward the Church in Cuba.”

The letter

The open letter from the dissidents was signed by 165 people, many of whom are Catholic and have been involved in the Varela Project. Many are also family members of the prisoners who “desperately want” the regime to disappear.

The dissidents stated that they are not in agreement with “the position the Cuban Church hierarchy has taken in its intervention in support of political prisoners,” which they call “unfortunate and embarrassing.” They believe that if the bishops had offered the “right mediation,” they would have listened to “the complaints of both sides” and would have reconciled them.

“However,” they continued, “the solution of exile, accepted by those who have been unjustly imprisoned for seven years only because of their ideas, only benefits the dictatorship,” as this “exodus” prevents them from continuing in their struggle for democracy in Cuba.

The response from the archdiocese

The press release from the Archdiocese of Havana pointed out that when the Church “accepted the mission of mediating between the family members of the prisoners ... and Cuban officials, it knew that this mediation could be interpreted in different ways, provoking various reactions: from insults to defamation, to acceptance and even gratitude. Remaining inactive was not a valid option for the Church because of her pastoral mission,” the statement said.

The archdiocese also noted that “the Church’s actions supporting respect for the dignity of all Cubans and for social harmony in Cuba has been ongoing for 20 years” and “has never and will never be based on political tendencies, whether of the government or of the opposition, but rather on her pastoral mission.”

The statement also indicated that “the Church in Cuba will not divert her attention from that which motivated her to act in this process: the humanitarian complaint from families who have suffered from the incarceration of one or more of their members.”

Demonstrating the Pope's awareness of the situation, the archdiocese quoted Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, who recently remarked that the crucial role assumed in the Cuban dialogue process by Cardinal Jaime Ortega and by Archbishop Dionisio Garcia, the president of the bishops’ conference, was possible because of the evident fact that the Catholic Church is profoundly rooted in the nation's people and is interpreted in the light of their spirit and their expectations.

The statement continued citing Fr. Lombardi, who said that the Church in Cuba “is not a strange reality, she does not escape in difficult times. She bears the sufferings and brings hope, with dignity and patience, ... but without trying to increase tensions or exacerbate feelings.”

She does this, he added, “with the constant commitment to opening paths to understanding and dialogue.”

The archdiocese concluded its statement again quoting Fr. Lombardi, who said the Holy See “supports the local Church with its spiritual solidarity and international authority,” and that “the Holy See has always declared itself against the embargo, and thus is united with the people in their suffering.”

The spokesman then spoke of the Church's willingness “to support any perspective on constructive dialogue ... with patience, important progress has been made in this direction. We all want it to continue.”

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/church-in-cuba-responds-to-open-letter-from-dissidents/

Cardinal Ortega's Washington Speech and Interview

2010-08-09T05:21:00.000-07:00

Cardinal Ortega of Havana, Cuba Receives Knights Highest Award

* By Randy Sly
* 8/6/2010
* Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

The Knights of Columbus Presented its Gaudium et Spes Award to Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino

During the States Dinner, Tuesday evening, of the Knights 128th Supreme Convention, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson presented the order's highest award, the Gaudium et Spes Award, to Cardinal Ortega of Havana for his tireless witness to the Gospel and his persistent defense of religious freedom.

Supreme Chaplain Bishop William E. Lori and Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson congratulate Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino of Havana, Cuba, Gaudium et Spes Award honoree.

WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) - At the States Dinner, Tuesday evening, for the Knights of Columbus 128th Supreme Convention, the order awarded its eighth Gaudium et Spes Award to Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino of Havana, Cuba.

Cardinal Ortega, 74, was born in Jaguey Grande, Matanzas, Cuba. After studying at seminaries both in Cuba and Quebec, Canada, he was ordained a priest in 1964. Like many of his fellow-priests, he was arrested and spent a period of time in prison for his faith.

He was appointed as the Bishop of Pinar del Rio and received episcopal consecration in 1979. Appointed Archbishop of Havana, in 1981, he was named to the Sacred College of Cardinals in 1994.

The citation read at the dinner stated, "For nearly 30 years as archbishop, our honoree has guided the Cuban Church through often rough waters. But in January 1998, a new era of hope dawned when he welcomed Pope John Paul II to his country. During that apostolic visit, Pope John Paul II asked for Cuba to open itself to the world and for the world to become more open to Cuba, as he underscored the central place that the Catholic faith has played in the lives of the Cuban people."

In his acceptance speech, Cardinal Ortega said it was "a duty to publicly say special words of gratitude for the services rendered by the Knights of Columbus in favor of our Church in Cuba. You, dear Knights of Columbus, have actualized the motto of this year's convention, I am My Brother's Keeper.

"Regardless of the distance and the differences in our social or political systems, you have been brothers to the Cuban Catholics and have shown us your solidarity."

Reflecting on the fact that the Knights of Columbus founded its first Cuban council in 1909, the Cardinal brought an optimistic report concerning the current work among the laity.

"I must say that the laymen of Havana are already organizing groups of men who wish to join the Knights of Columbus in the various parishes. I now convey to you an entreaty on their behalf and a very especial invitation from the Archbishop.

"I can assure you that nowadays the situation is more favorable for the action of charity services characteristic of the Knights of Columbus in the Cuban Church.

"Plenty of social works for the elderly people, for disabled children, parochial workshops to help those with learning difficulties, for youngsters and adults who wish to learn humanities or the Church Social Doctrine, etc., are some of the possibilities for a social presence of the Church in Cuba, which is exceeded by these efforts also carried out by numerous Mission Houses that gather communities of 60, 70 or even 100 people in family homes.

"Many times, these communities are looked after by catechist laymen who prepare the faithful to evolve from evangelized communities to Eucharistic communities. In my Archdiocese several of these communities have turned into parishes. Now we must build parish churches. We have already achieved some permits to build them, but our Church is poor and needs help."

Cardinal Ortega also indicated a new level of cooperation desired by the Cuban government with the Church.

"Lately, the Cuban government, responding to our request, has asked us to mediate between the political prisoners' relatives and the government authorities in order to know their proposals. In this way a process began, which has led to the recent announcement that fifty-two convicts, considered prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International, will be released in a period of three to four months. More than twenty of these prisoners have already traveled to Spain.

"These discussions conducted by the Church have been unprecedented, and they bring about a new situation of social appreciation for our Catholics. We hope that this process of dialogue, in which we are immerged now, ends successfully. We ask you to pray for this cause and for our Church in Cuba."

According to the Knights of Columbus Supreme Headquarters, the Gaudium et Spes ("Joy and Hope") Award was named for the landmark 1965 document that was released as part of Second Vatican Council. It is the highest honor bestowed by order and is awarded only in special circumstances to individuals of exceptional merit. The award recognizes them for exemplary contributions to the realization of the message of faith and service in the spirit of Christ. The Award comes with an honorarium of $100,000.

First given in 1992, when the late Mother Theresa of Calcutta was named as the recipient, the award has only been given eight times. Others who have been honored include Cardinal John O'Connor, former Archbishop of New York; the late Cardinal James Hickey, former Archbishop of Washington DC; Cardinal William Baum, former Archbishop of Washington, D.C. and Major Penitentiary of the Vatican; and Archbishop Michael Sabbah, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.

-----

Randy Sly is the Associate Editor of Catholic Online and the CEO/Associate Publisher for the Northern Virginia Local Edition of Catholic Online (http://virginia.catholic.org). He is a former Archbishop of the Charismatic Episcopal Church who laid aside that ministry to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church.

http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=37720

***************************

Prisoner releases, ongoing talks with Castro give Cuban cardinal hope

Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino of Havana speaks in an interview with Catholic News Service. He was in Washington to attend the Knights of Columbus Supreme Convention. (

By Patricia Zapor
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The release of the first 20 of 52 political prisoners the Cuban government has promised to set free is a hopeful sign for the country, said Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino.

While the government's release of prisoners certainly is popular in Cuba, where dissatisfaction with the economy and other issues has been growing, Cardinal Ortega told Catholic News Service Aug. 2 that the main benefit to the Castro government has been improved foreign relations. Cuba's treatment of political opponents has long been a key element in the nearly 50-year U.S. economic embargo of the nation.

"In the internal life of Cuba, this is not very important," Cardinal Ortega said. "But for foreign relations, it's very important."

Cardinal Ortega was in Washington to accept the "Gaudium et Spes" Award from the Knights of Columbus. It is the fraternal organization's highest honor.

The cardinal said Cubans have been especially grateful to the Catholic Church for its role in the prisoner releases. He said that as he went out to buy something for his trip to the U.S., "many, many people stopped me on the street, saying 'thank you, Cardinal.'"

He said before he and the president of the Cuban bishops; conference, Archbishop Dionisio Garcia Ibanez of Santiago met with President Raul Castro in May, tensions in Havana were threatening to become as volatile as they were around the 1980 Mariel boatlift. Then, at a time of economic downturn, the government opened the port of Mariel to all who wanted to leave Cuba, and boats from the United States quickly arrived to help them. About 125,000 Cubans ultimately resettled in the United States as a result of the Mariel releases.

Cardinal Ortega explained that he asked to meet with Castro amid a crackdown this spring on weekly silent marches by wives and mothers of political prisoners, known as the Ladies in White, who want freedom for their relatives. The usually quiet marches that begin after Sunday Mass were met by counter-protesters -- allegedly brought in by the government -- who shouted and blocked the women, harassing the group for hours.

"It was beginning to look like the time of Mariel," said Cardinal Ortega. "It was causing instability."

After several weeks of this, Cardinal Ortega said, he wrote to Castro. The letter went out on a Monday and by Thursday, he had been contacted by a government official, seeking to arrange a meeting with the Ladies in White. At that meeting, the women asked for relatives who were imprisoned far from their homes to be moved closer to their families and for the release of those who were in poor health. Those requests soon were being met, and the counter-protesters stopped harassing the women on the weekly marches.

"After that first meeting, we began a conversation (with the government)" said Cardinal Ortega.

After a follow-up meeting with Castro in July, the cardinal announced that Castro had promised to release a group of prisoners who had been held since a 2003 crackdown on political opposition.

Cardinal Ortega said he met with diplomats at the U.S. Interests Section, which serves in place of an embassy for some government functions. He said he was told the prisoners could not come immediately to the United States. The U.S. "wanted to take a low profile," he said, adding that the diplomats told him requests for political asylum would have to be processed individually.

In the meantime, the Spanish government agreed to allow the ex-prisoners to go to Spain, though nearly all would prefer to resettle in the United States, where they have relatives, the cardinal said. Some have said they would refuse to be sent out of the country, and it remained unclear whether that would affect their release. Cardinal Ortega added that he expected the remainder of the 52 to be released in the next couple of months.

He said the Cuban people's biggest current frustration is the weak economy. Castro announced some economic changes in a July 31 speech opening the biannual session of Parliament, including scaling back controls on small businesses, allowing more self-employment and laying off unnecessary government workers.

The cardinal said he had not read Castro's speech yet, but that he found the announcement encouraging.

Beyond their economic struggles, the cardinal said a high priority for most Cubans is that they have better means of communicating within the country and beyond. While people are allowed to use the Internet, for example, it's quite costly and runs poorly because of inadequate infrastructure, he said.

"To communicate easily with their relatives and to be able to go to the U.S. for visits and then return to Cuba," that's what people want, the cardinal said.

Cronología de la mediación del cardenal Jaime Ortega Alamino, Arzobispo de La Habana

2010-08-02T10:42:00.001-07:00

Espacio Laical brinda a sus lectores la segunda parte de la cronología de la mediación iniciada por el Cardenal Arzobispo de La Habana en relación con la delicada cuestión de las Damas de Blanco y los presos por motivos políticos. La cronología termina el día 21 de julio, momento en que enviamos la revista para la imprenta, y continuará en el próximo número.

14 de junio

·Los ministros de Relaciones Exteriores de la Unión Europea (UE) deciden posponer hasta septiembre las conclusiones sobre su examen anual de la política hacia Cuba, a la espera de los resultados del diálogo entre la Iglesia Católica y el gobierno de la Isla.

15 de junio

·El Secretario para las Relaciones con los Estados de la Santa Sede, Dominique Mamberti, llega a Cuba para presidir la X Semana Social Católica y sostener conversaciones con la jerarquía y el gobierno local.

16 de junio

·Monseñor Dominique Mamberti manifiesta su satisfacción por los resultados de las conversaciones entre la Iglesia Católica y el gobierno de Cuba, en conferencia de prensa. Mamberti señaló que «uno de los objetivos mayores de la diplomacia de la Santa Sede es el de favorecer el diálogo entre las Iglesias locales y las autoridades de los distintos países».

·Abre sus puertas la X Semana Social Católica con participación de Obispos, más de 130 laicos de todas las diócesis del país y destacados intelectuales cubanos de la Isla y la emigración. Durante las jornadas de trabajo se abordan temas relacionados con el diálogo entre cubanos, los desafíos de la economía nacional, la reconciliación entre cubanos y la presencia pública de la Iglesia Católica en la sociedad cubana.

21 de junio

·Monseñor Dominique Mamberti, se reúne con el presidente Raúl Castro, pocas horas antes del fin de su visita oficial y pastoral a la Isla. Ambas partes conversaron sobre el 75 aniversario de las relaciones bilaterales, calificadas como “cordiales, respetuosas, continuas y en ascenso”.

·El Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Francia reitera su solicitud al gobierno de Cuba para que libere a todos los presos políticos, en especial a aquellos que permanecen enfermos, según declaraciones de un portavoz de la Cancillería del país europeo, que reconoció las gestiones de la Iglesia Católica a favor de los reclusos.

24 de junio

·El cardenal Francis George, presidente de la Conferencia Episcopal de Estados Unidos, inicia una visita de dos días a Santiago de Cuba para reforzar los nexos entre las Iglesias de los dos países. George, arzobispo de Chicago, viajó invitado por el presidente de la Conferencia de Obispos Católicos de Cuba (COCC) y arzobispo de Santiago de Cuba, Dionisio García, quien dijo a la AFP que aunque “la visita sea eclesial, siempre tiene un significado a nivel social”.

27 de junio

·El cardenal Jaime Ortega Alamino, arzobispo de La Habana, inicia una visita a Estados Unidos.

28 de junio

·Monseñor Arturo González, obispo de Santa Clara, visita a Guillermo Fariñas para interesarse por su estado de salud.

29 de junio

·El estado de salud de Guillermo Fariñas, en huelga de hambre desde hace más de cuatro meses, se complicó con el diagnóstico de una “trombosis en la vena yugular”. Alicia Hernández, la madre de Fariñas, indicó que el estado de su hijo es “grave crítico”, con un cuadro que incluye problemas hepáticos, una infección causada por un germen estafilococo, y la confirmación médica de un coágulo en la yugular. Hernández señaló que el equipo médico ya comenzó a suministrar a Fariñas un anticoagulante para tratar el trombo y le han recomendado que permanezca en reposo absoluto sin moverse para evitar que el coágulo se desprenda o desplace.

30 de junio

·El diario mexicano La Jornada informa que el cardenal Jaime Ortega, arzobispo de La Habana, viajó a Estados Unidos la semana anterior para sostener encuentros coordinados por la Conferencia de Obispos Católicos de Estados Unidos. El viaje del Cardenal no había tenido registro público, hasta que The Wall Street Journal especuló de posibles entrevistas del prelado en el Departamento de Estado y el Congreso.

1 de Julio

·El Comité de Agricultura de la Cámara de Representantes de Estados Unidos aprueba un proyecto de ley que ampliaría las exportaciones de alimentos a Cuba y permitiría los viajes de ciudadanos de ese país a la Isla, trascendió a medios de prensa en Washington. La iniciativa debe pasar aún por los comités de Finanzas y Relaciones Exteriores, antes de ser presentada en el pleno de la Cámara y el Congreso.

3 de julio

·El diario Granma publica una inusual entrevista con Armando Caballero, jefe de los servicios de terapia intensiva del Hospital de Santa Clara, (donde Fariñas está ingresado desde el 11 de marzo), en la que detalla se detalla su situación y los tratamientos y atención que está recibiendo.

5 de julio

·El ministro español de Exteriores arriba a Cuba para impulsar el proceso de diálogo abierto entre la Iglesia Católica y el gobierno cubano sobre los presos políticos. Fuentes españolas afirman que durante su visita de dos días a la Isla, Miguel Ángel Moratinos tiene previsto reunirse con representantes del Gobierno y de la Iglesia Católica. Confirman que no se entrevistará con ningún miembro de la disidencia cubana, incluido Guillermo Fariñas.

6 de julio

·En la mañana Miguel Ángel Moratinos es recibido por su anfitrión Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, en el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores. Por la tarde, el funcionario español y el embajador Manuel Cacho, visitaron al cardenal Jaime Ortega en la sede del Arzobispado de La Habana, donde conversaron durante una hora y media. En declaraciones a la prensa a la salida del Palacio Cardenalicio, Miguel Ángel Moratinos se mostró optimista de que su visita a Cuba ayudará a eliminar la Posición Común de la Unión Europea (UE), mientras que el cardenal Jaime Ortega consideró que el viaje refuerza la esperanza de liberación de prisioneros opositores.

7 de julio

·En horas de la mañana tiene lugar una reunión de trabajo entre el cardenal Jaime Ortega, el canciller cubano Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla y el canciller español Miguel Ángel Moratinos.

·En una nota de prensa, hecha pública en horas de la tarde, el Arzobispado de La Habana da a conocer que el gobierno cubano se ha comprometido a liberar a 52 presos políticos. La Iglesia Católica cubana asegura que la liberación de los primeros cinco presos podría producirse en el transcurso de las próximas horas. La noticia se da a conocer después de la reunión mantenida entre el presidente Raúl Castro y el cardenal Jaime Ortega, en la que también participaron el ministro de Asuntos Exteriores Miguel Ángel Moratinos y su homólogo cubano Bruno Rodríguez. Los presos que serán liberados forman parte del grupo de los 75 que fueron detenidos en marzo de 2003. En la nota se informa también de que en las próximas horas otros seis presos serán acercados a sus provincias de residencia.

8 de julio.

·Todos los medios de prensa cubanos dan a conocer la nota emitida por el Arzobispado de la Habana con motivo del anuncio de la liberación de los presos políticos.

·Guillermo Fariñas depone la huelga de hambre que mantuvo durante 135 días tras conocer la identidad de los cinco primeros presos, del grupo de 52, que serán liberados por el gobierno cubano, gracias a las gestiones de la Iglesia.

·En dos notas de prensa el Arzobispado de la Habana informa los nombres de 6 presos que serán acercados a sus provincias de residencia y de otros 5 que salen próximamente hacia España.

·La secretaria de Estado norteamericana, Hillary Clinton, y la Alta Representante de Política Exterior de la UE, Catherine Ashton, felicitan al ministro español de Asuntos Exteriores y de Cooperación, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, tras conocer el anuncio de liberación de los presos políticos. Clinton telefoneó al ministro español y le comunicó que el anuncio de las liberaciones supone una «muy buena noticia».

·El Cuba Study Group se mostró “sumamente complacido” con el anuncio hecho por la Iglesia Católica de que el gobierno cubano liberará a 52 presos políticos. En ese sentido, agradeció “el papel constructivo que ha jugado la Iglesia Católica en un proceso iniciado por la sociedad civil cubana”. Este grupo instó a la Iglesia a continuar en su papel de “mediadora” y reconoció que la solución de muchos de los problemas con que se enfrenta Cuba “requerirá necesariamente de un diálogo nacional en donde sectores de la sociedad civil cubana estén representados”. Emplazó además al Gobierno estadounidense a que “responda a estos pasos positivos en Cuba con medidas constructivas”.

·El líder del Partido Popular (PP), Mariano Rajoy, celebró “las gestiones de la Iglesia Católica” que permitirán la liberación de 52 presos políticos cubanos. En una rueda de prensa en el Congreso, el líder conservador atribuyó a la Iglesia esas gestiones, pero no mencionó el papel que el ministro español de Exteriores, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, ha desempeñado en ese proceso.

·Phil Peters, del Lexington Institute, afirma al diario The Washington Post: “Esto es algo nuevo, algo grande. No acaba con el problema de los derechos humanos en Cuba, pero representa un cambio dramático y seguro que provocará una reacción de Washington y de Europa”. Para Peters “lo elegante de este proceso es que el cardenal Ortega ha logrado establecer este diálogo con el gobierno, entre cubanos. Es un diálogo nacional y el factor que siempre tiene la capacidad de entorpecer cualquier éxito en Cuba, la presión extranjera, no está. Este es un aspecto muy prometedor del proceso”. Por su parte Wayne Smith, del Center for International Policy y ex máximo representante diplomático estadounidense en La Habana, coincidió a The New York Times: “La liberación de los presos debería llevar a la administración Obama a hacer algo para alentar esta tendencia”.

9 de julio

·El gobierno de México manifestó su gran satisfacción por el anuncio efectuado en Cuba, en torno a la liberación inmediata de cinco prisioneros, el traslado de otros seis a centros penitenciarios cercanos a sus lugares de origen, y la excarcelación en los próximos meses, de 47 personas más. En un comunicado de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores también se congratuló por la decisión de Guillermo Fariñas de levantar su huelga de hambre, tras 135 días en ayuno. Sin calificar el tipo de presos que serán liberados, el gobierno mexicano hizo un reconocimiento a la Iglesia Católica de Cuba por las gestiones que realizó para liberar a estas personas y al gobierno de Raúl Castro por su disposición y sensibilidad, para llegar a esa determinación.

·Julia Sweig, especialista en Cuba del Council on Foreign Relations, declara a la agencia DPA que “la Iglesia cubana está desempeñando un papel realmente importante en estos momentos, al crear un espacio que puede ser visto tanto por el gobierno como por la sociedad civil como seguro para el debate”.

10 de julio

·El asesor especial para Asuntos Internacionales de la Presidencia de Brasil, Marco Aurelio García, afirma que el Gobierno de su país participó en la decisión de Cuba para que fuesen liberados 52 presos políticos cubanos. “Nosotros ayudamos. Actuamos callados, sin alardes”, declaró al diario O Estado de Sao Paulo. Según García, Lula abordó el tema en la visita realizada a Cuba en febrero. Destacó también el papel de la Iglesia Católica en la negociación para conseguir la liberación: “La Iglesia estaba en el momento cierto y en el lugar cierto para hacer el gol”.

·El cardenal Jaime Ortega comienza personalmente las gestiones negociadoras con cada uno de los presos por vía telefónica.

·En dos notas de prensa el Arzobispado de La Habana informa los nombres de otros 5 presos que serán liberados y que saldrán del país rumbo a España y los nombres de otros 7 que serán excarcelados en los próximos días.

11 julio

·El diario estadounidense Los Angeles Times, uno de los más importantes del país norteño, exhortó al Congreso a aprobar un proyecto de ley que levantaría las restricciones de viajes a la Isla y aliviaría los obstáculos al comercio bilateral. En un editorial el periódico reconoció la liberación de 52 presos políticos, anunciada por La Habana, pero se cuestionó la permanencia en las cárceles de cualquier persona por esa razón.

·El padre Federico Lombardi S.I., director de la Oficina de Información de la Santa Sede dedica al proceso de diálogo entre la Iglesia y el gobierno cubano el editorial de Octava Dies, el semanario del Centro Televisivo Vaticano. “El comunicado oficial del arzobispado de La Habana sobre la liberación de más de cincuenta prisioneros detenidos en las cárceles cubanas, publicado también en el diario del Partido Comunista cubano, y la interrupción de la huelga de hambre de Guillermo Fariñas, son las buenas noticias de la Isla del Caribe que esperábamos desde hace algunas semanas”, reconoce el portavoz vaticano. “Son señales significativas y esperamos que indiquen un progreso estable hacia aquel clima de renovada convivencia social y política que todos deseamos a la nación cubana. El papel crucial asumido en el proceso de diálogo cubano por el cardenal Ortega Alamino y por monseñor Dionisio García, presidente del episcopado, ha sido posible por el hecho evidente que la Iglesia Católica está profundamente arraigada en el pueblo y es intérprete atendible de su espíritu y de sus expectativas”. La Iglesia cubana “no es una realidad extraña, no escapa en los tiempos de dificultad. Carga con los sufrimientos y trae esperanza, con dignidad y con paciencia, sin servilismo pero también sin tratar de aumentar las tensiones ni de exacerbar los ánimos, al contrario, con el compromiso constante de abrir caminos a la comprensión y al diálogo”. Por su parte la Santa Sede, aclara el portavoz, “apoya a la Iglesia local con su solidaridad espiritual y con su autoridad internacional”. “Desde el viaje de Juan Pablo II hasta a las recientes visitas del secretario de Estado Cardenal Tarcisio Bertone y del arzobispo Dominique Mamberti, hasta los contactos diplomáticos en el Vaticano sobre la situación de Cuba, la Santa Sede se ha declarado siempre en contra del embargo, y por lo tanto solidaria con los sufrimientos del pueblo, y dispuesta a apoyar toda perspectiva de diálogo constructivo”. Y añade: “con paciencia, se han hecho importantes progresos en esta dirección. Todos deseamos que el camino continúe”.

12 de julio

·Una nota del Arzobispado de la Habana anuncia la próxima liberación de otros 3 presos. Hasta el momento son 20 los presos que han comunicado el deseo de ser enviados a España, al menos de forma transitoria.

13 de julio

·El primer grupo de 7 presos excarcelados llega a Madrid en el vuelo 052 de Air Europa. En un comunicado preparado por los 7 y leído por Julio César Gálvez afirmaron que esta liberación “significa el inicio de una nueva etapa para el futuro de Cuba y de todos los cubanos. Tenemos la esperanza de que los que quedan en Cuba gocen de la misma libertad que nosotros”, formularon, y resaltaron “el papel importante” de la Iglesia Católica cubana en su liberación.

·La liberación de siete presos políticos es un “acontecimiento positivo” que debería representar una mejora de los derechos humanos en Cuba, declara el portavoz del Departamento de Estado norteamericano, Philip Crowley, en un comunicado.

14 de julio

·Llegan a Madrid otros dos presos cubanos excarcelados, acompañados por 17 familiares.

·El presidente de Brasil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, expresa su felicidad por la liberación de los presos políticos cubanos y comparó el sentimiento con lo vivido cuando estuvo arrestado por el Gobierno militar de su país en 1980. “Felicitaciones a la Iglesia Católica, felicitaciones al Gobierno cubano y felicitaciones a todos los que han luchado para liberar a algún preso político en el mundo. Dios quiera que todos los países suelten a presos que son considerados presos políticos”, dijo Lula.

18 de julio

·Cuba podría estar preparando una profunda reforma política y económica. Fuentes citadas por el diario español El País mencionan entre los posibles cambios la ampliación del trabajo por cuenta propia, la cooperativización de servicios, recortes en la plantilla de empleados estatales y la preparación para eliminar la doble moneda. A la vez, podría avanzarse en la renegociación de la deuda para aliviar las tensiones financieras.

19 de julio

·Una delegación del Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) podría viajar a Cuba en septiembre próximo, informó a la prensa en Madrid Elena Valenciano, secretaria de Política Internacional y Cooperación de esa organización. La funcionaria expresó su confianza en que “el camino de las reformas se abrirá paso en la Isla”, luego de la liberación de los presos anunciada por las autoridades cubanas.

·El secretario general de las Naciones Unidas, Ban Ki-Moon, saluda la liberación de presos políticos cubanos e instó a Cuba a tomar más “medidas de reconciliación”. “Seguí de cerca la reciente liberación de presos (...) y se trata de buenas noticias”, dijo a los periodistas Ban Ki-Moon.

20 de julio

· La Oficina de Intereses de Estados Unidos en Cuba anuncia que acogerá una serie de encuentros con familiares de los presos políticos liberados que no desean viajar a España, con el objetivo de informarles sobre los trámites consulares necesarios para entrar al país norteño.

· El jefe del Parlamento cubano, Ricardo Alarcón, afirma a la Agencia Francesa de Prensa en Ginebra, que podría haber más liberaciones de presos políticos que las 52 anunciadas y que los ex detenidos, si lo desean, pueden permanecer en la Isla. Alarcón recordó que en las conversaciones entre el gobierno de Raúl Castro y la Iglesia Católica “quedó claro que la voluntad del gobierno cubano es la de sacar de la cárcel a todas las personas” sobre las que no pesen crímenes de sangre. “Según Su Eminencia el Cardenal, en las conversaciones quedó claro que la voluntad del gobierno cubano es la de sacar a todas las personas” a condición de “que no pesen sobre ellos responsabilidades de la vida de otras personas”, dijo Alarcón, que participa en Ginebra en una reunión de líderes parlamentarios de todo el mundo. Al preguntársele si podía confirmar la posibilidad de liberar a personas que no estuvieran vinculadas a ese tipo de crímenes, Alarcón respondió: “Claro”.

21 de julio

·Otro preso político cubano y sus familiares llegan a Madrid, con lo que suman 12 los opositores excarcelados que emigraron a España en los últimos ocho días, informó una fuente del ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores español.

La revista Espacio Laical puede ser vista en www.espaciolaical.net
y adquirida en la Casa Laical, sita en Teniente Rey #152 (tercer piso)
e/ Bernaza y Villegas, La Habana Vieja.

Was Machado Laying the Groundwork for Change on July 26th?

2010-07-27T06:48:00.001-07:00

Cuba is not Afraid of Challenges Ahead says First VP

HAVANA, Cuba, Jul 26 (acn) Cuban First Vice President José Ramón Machado Ventura said that the Cuban people is not afraid of the challenges that lay ahead in the main speech at the ceremony marking Cuba's National Rebellion Day held this Monday in the central city of Santa Clara, Villa Clara

In front of a crowd of more than 90,000 people, headed by Cuban President Raúl Castro, Machado said "We are not afraid of the difficulties or challenges in front of us. To this end we count on the invincible strength of our people."

In his speech Machado said that the martyrs of July 26 did not die in vain, because we will continue to being faithful to the ideals they died for.

"In this historical moment, we will change everything that should be changed, without accepting external pressures, or our sovereignty being reduced, or renouncing a single one of our dreams of justice for Cuba and the world."

Machado also said that we will continue to study and analyze to overcome our deficiencies, but will act without populist or demagogic solutions because we will do so with a high sense of responsibility, without improvisations, or rushing, not to miss anything or take measures that do not meet the current conditions.

He added that food production is a top priority because it is one of the main aspects of the economic struggle that sustains our social system.

Machado said that saving, the reduction of expenses and the rational use of resources are of paramount importance in all sectors. "The sphere of Education has shown that costs can be reduced, without affecting the quality of the process, but the field of Health should continue to advance towards this end," he said.

Machado also said that Cubans have to continue saving energy and spoke about the systematic checks and discipline as indispensable principles to achieve this goal.

The Cuban first vice president spoke about the difficult circumstances Cuba is facing in the middle of the this economic struggle, the damage caused by the last three hurricanes that hit the island, and the impact of the economic and financial crisis, added to the anachronistic US blockade against Cuba and the effects of climate change.

Machado acknowledged the provinces of Ciego de Ávila, Granma and Havana for having achieved great results in the provincial emulation for July 26 and congratulated Villa Clara for the results that deserve it the venue for the celebrations of National Rebellion Day.

CBS Summary of Church Conference

2010-06-22T10:38:00.000-07:00

Catholic Church Sponsors Policy Debate in Cuba

Posted by Portia Siegelbaum June 18, 2010 8:48 PM
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20008235-503543.html

The need for economic reforms and for more cohesive changes so that desired reforms don't fall flat emerged in this week's Catholic Church sponsored debate on the current situation in Cuba.

"This is one of the most critical moments we have had," said Omar Everleny, researcher at the University of Havana's Center for Study of the Cuban Economy in a press briefing. However, the crisis, he said, has prompted the most theoretical discussion ever about what is going to happen in Cuba.

Everleny, along with other Cuban intellectuals, religious and non-religious, including three Cuban Americans, is participating in panels on everything from the economy to reconciliation between Cubans on the island and in the Diaspora during a four-day conference that winds up Saturday organized by the Cuban Catholic Church.

"Not even in '95 and '96 [when the collapse of the socialist camp plunged Cuba into an economic freefall] was there such a blunt analysis as there is now about an excess of a million workers and of where they are to go if no investments are made," he told reporters Friday morning.

Workers at the security company SEPSA tell CBS they are being merged with Transval and two other firms offering compatible services cutting employees from 30,000 to 12,000. Cuts such as these are taking place at government ministries and companies in all sectors, as the government tries to trim, what President Raul Castro told parliament were a million unnecessary workers from its payroll.

Everleny further revealed that representatives of the Spanish corporation Mondragon are in Cuba this week holding meetings with City of Havana officials as Cuba studies the possibility of cooperative ownership, part of its reexamination of property rights.

The Mondragon Corporation is a federation of worker cooperatives and is the seventh largest Spanish company in terms of turnover and leading business group in the Basque Country, employing 92,773 in 256 companies by the end of 2008.

The Government is already dabbling with cooperatives in small scale services. Beauty parlors and barber shops have been turned over to their workers in the last year. Typical is a small shop on 44th Street in the Playa neighborhood of Havana. The locale and all the modest equipment are now the property of the two hairdressers and one manicurist working there. As customers show up for their haircut, Yamila explains that she is now working for herself and has raised the cost of a cut from 3 pesos to 20. So far all her customers are willing to pay the new rate and, she says, wish her well.

"It was a shock when she first told me," says one customer who dropped in on her way home from work. "But, I like the way she cuts hair and I have to get it done so I'll pay."

Out of her earnings Yamila must pay the State 1,458.00 pesos a month in rent and taxes and buy the shampoo and other products she uses. But, she says, she is happier than before. Probably less happy is the administrator who formerly handled supplies and who has been laid off.

Until now the state has been the owner of all means of production and retail businesses, but in recent months the Friday edition of the Communist Party daily Granma has run letters from readers who have suggested that bringing in cooperative ownership would not be re-introducing capitalism--letters understood to be trial balloons to test the public reaction.

The current Church conference comes at a moment when relations between the Cuban Catholic Church and the Government are at a high point. The reason for this, one participant suggests, might well be President Raul Castro's desire to focus on problems--such as the economy with its declining growth rate--that are central to his office and remove others that distract from this.

"Raul Castro is a very practical man, he is a problem solver," says Jorge Dominguez, a Latin American studies expert and long time Cuba scholar at Harvard University.

The international outcry over Cuba's treatment of prisoners and the Ladies in White in the first half of this year, opines Dominguez, most likely forced Castro to consider "how do I solve problems that are getting in the way of other things that I would rather achieve...and the Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church turned out to have possible means to address them."

Last month, Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega had a more than four-hour face-to-face meeting with Cuban President Raul Castro in which Ortega expressed concern over the treatment of political prisoners and dissidents on the island. That meeting got unusual coverage from the official media with a photo of two men smiling on the front page of Granma.

Since then twelve political prisoners have been moved to jails closer to their homes--a long-time demand of their families--and one ailing prisoner Ariel Sigler has been released. And prior to this, Ortega had negotiated a halt in the government harassment of the Ladies in White, relatives of political prisoners, who had faced a heavy-handed attempt to stop their weekly protest march.

Not all dissidents are pleased with the situation. Several like Sigler and Oswaldo Paya have issued statements saying the government has not done enough and all political prisoners should be released. Paya, in a press release, expressed anger that visiting Vatican Foreign Minister Dominique Mamberti is not meeting with opposition forces during his visit here.

Not everyone is satisfied with the pace of change in the economy either. Everleny says things are being done "very gradually, and I'm not very much in agreement" with this. He admits however that the issues are very complex and things must be done "step by step."

Dominguez says that Cubans and anyone studying Cuba have "discovered is that it is difficult for the Cuban Government to actually implement measures of change, not because there is insubordination, not necessarily because there is active resistance but because it is a government not well accustomed to implementing some of the significant changes" that have been authorized. "This doesn't mean that the intention at the top from Raul Castro is any less genuine. It is that he too is discovering that it is difficult to govern Cuba as he would want," concludes Dominguez.

Dominguez and another participant, Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a Latin American scholar at the University of Pittsburgh, single out the government decision to turn over land from state farms to individuals to cultivate as a good decision that falls short.

Dominguez points out that "unless those farmers can purchase seeds, unless those farmers can purchase tools, unless those farmers can purchase tractors, unless they can get credit so that they get all of these things, unless they can sell them at prices that actually cover their costs, giving them the right to use land is not enough."

According to Dominguez, "measures that are isolated in that way, that are not accompanied by other complimentary measures will not work, not because they are bad decisions but because they are insufficient decisions." Castro, he says, has to "think strategically and not in terms of isolated decisions but as packages of decisions that necessarily build on each other" and only then will he be able to implement the policies that he has announced.

Mesa-Lago told reporters that the way the land is being given to individuals creates "uncertainty and a lack of initiative." People will be reluctant to invest in their land because the law is not clear on what happens to their investment once their ten-year lease runs out, he said. Cooperatives and State farms have contracts that last 20 years but, he suggested, it would be better if farmers were given open ended leases as has been done in China and Vietnam and allowed to decide what to plant, to whom to sell and to fix their own prices--all areas still decided by the Cuban State.

Cubans in general have been expressing disagreement with the lack of information coming from the Government on economic reforms. The debate going on in the Church conference is not being reported by the state-controlled media. Many young people say the uncertain economic future awaiting them when they finish their studies is the main reason they emigrate or dream of emigrating. Even parents of undisputed revolutionary pedigrees, who we spoke to, do not necessarily discourage their children from leaving. The consensus is that things are not working well.

Positive Vibes from Vatican Foreign Minister's Cuba Visit

2010-06-22T07:27:00.000-07:00

Vatican envoy ends Cuba visit with meeting with Raul Castro

Monday, June 21, 2010

By Catholic News Service

HAVANA (CNS) -- Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican's foreign minister, concluded an official and pastoral visit to Cuba June 20 saying relations between the Catholic Church and the Cuban government are on a healthy course.

Just hours before his departure, the archbishop met with President Raul Castro, saying afterward that bilateral relations are "cordial, continuing and on the rise."

An official release to various Cuban state-run news media reported on the meeting and said the president and the Vatican diplomat also discussed subjects of common interest on the international agenda.

"The visit of (Archbishop) Mamberti also showed the favorable development of relations between the state and the Catholic Church in Cuba," the government's note said.

The Vatican diplomat spent several days on the island, marking 75 years of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Cuba and participating in a national conference on the church's social teachings.

Archbishop Mamberti is considered an expert on Latin America, the United Nations, Africa, the Middle East and Islam. His visit took place at a time of church-state dialogue, focused primarily on the status of political prisoners, although other subjects have also been on the table.

As a result of these conversations, begun in May, the government recently released one jailed political opponent, Ariel Sigler, who had become ill, and moved another 12 prisoners to jails closer to their homes.

During his stay on the island, Archbishop Mamberti participated in several official programs, including a tribute to 19th-century Cuban hero Jose Marti and a meeting with the foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez.

At a joint press conference following their meeting, Archbishop Mamberti welcomed the results of the conversations between the church and the government and said he hoped his visit would contribute to strengthening such talks.

Archbishop Mamberti said one of the Vatican's diplomatic objectives was "to support the dialogue between local churches and the authorities of various countries."

Rodriguez emphasized the church's social programs and called its communications with the government "profound and constructive." He said the conditions were right to continue such "fruitful exchanges."

The archbishop's official visit included stops at various schools, a concert and a tour of Havana's historic district.

His pastoral visit opened with a session on the state and laity during a church social teaching forum that analyzed subjects like dialogue and reconciliation among Cubans, the economic situation of the island and the public role of the institutional church.

Archbishop Mamberti is the highest-ranking Vatican representative to visit the island since February 2008, when Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, represented Pope Benedict XVI for celebrations marking the 10th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's historic visit.

Cardinal Bertone was the first international dignitary received by Castro after he officially assumed the presidency, a few days after the announcement that Fidel Castro was turning over the role to his younger brother.

Copyright © 2010 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

Role of Catholic Church Expands

2010-06-21T08:47:00.000-07:00

Catholic Church plays politics in Cuba

By Nick Miroff http://www.globalpost.com/print/5560662
Created June 17, 2010 06:41

The church's role has changed abruptly. Will it help facilitate the release of political prisoners?

HAVANA, Cuba — For years, the Catholic Church has been a quiet presence in Cuban affairs, working carefully to regain a place in a communist-run system that formerly persecuted religious believers. Church leaders have succeeded largely by attending to Cubans’ spiritual needs, not their earthly politics.

But that role has changed abruptly in recent weeks. A new dialogue has opened up between Catholic officials and the Castro government, elevating the church’s role in Cuban society and raising expectations that it might secure the release of many jailed government opponents.

The conversations mark the first time communist authorities have engaged in talks about the island’s problems with another Cuban institution, opening a path to a so-called “Cuban solution” that might ease the government’s hard-line stance against dissent. The dialogue could also be a critical first step toward better relations with the Obama administration, which has conditioned changes in U.S. policy to reforms on the island.

Cuban authorities have long bristled at criticism and pressure from international human rights groups and foreign governments, especially the United States, but the island’s Catholic leadership is homegrown. Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the archbishop of Havana, was once sent to a communist re-education camp in the late 1960s.

So far talks with the church have only produced modest gestures from the Cuban government. It has transferred a dozen inmates to jails closer to their families, and paroled one wheelchair-bound prisoner, Ariel Sigler Amaya. But church officials characterize the dialogue with the government as part of a “process” that has no timetable but whose goals include an improvement in conditions for Cuba’s political prisoners, if not their release.

Read an opinion about the Catholic Church's Pope Benedict XVI. [2]

“We’ve always said that this is process, and like any process, it won’t necessarily move forward at the same speed and along a straight line,” said church spokesman Orlando Marquez at a recent Havana press conference. “The process has begun, and we hope it will continue,” he said.

The Castro government hasn’t commented on its plans, but it has long maintained that it holds no political prisoners. Many of the jailed dissidents given lengthy prison sentences were convicted of treason for engaging in political activities supported by U.S. officials and Miami exile groups that aim to topple the government. Amnesty International recognizes more than 50 “prisoners of conscience” on the island, while local activists put the number of Cuban political prisoners at about 190.

The new engagement with the church has already paid dividends for the Cuban government abroad. At a European Union meeting in Brussels Monday, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos reportedly told members that the Castro government would free more prisoners “in a week,” as he successfully urged the postponement of a key vote on a Spain-led push to ease EU policy toward the island. The vote will now be delayed until September, in order to allow the church more time to continue its dialogue with Cuban leaders.

Moratinos’ prediction of imminent prisoner releases may also be linked to an official visit this week to Cuba by the Vatican’s top diplomat, Dominique Mamberti. His trip coincides with the “Catholic Social Week,” and a church-organized conference in Havana that will bring together Cuban prelates and top Cuban scholars, including several from U.S. universities. Discussion topics include economic reform and national reconciliation.

Marquez, the church spokesman, said the conference would help inform the church’s “social mission,” not a political one.

Observers say the Castro government could gain other advantages by using the church as an interlocutor. The government may be looking to improve its image after triggering a wave of international condemnation when prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo died in February [3] after an 86-day hunger strike.

The church can also help the government soften its stance without appearing to bow to outside pressure. In turn, the Vatican may be able to nudge Washington at a time when a new bill in Congress proposes to lift travel restrictions on Americans visitors to the island. And Cuba continues to campaign vigorously for the release of the "Cuban Five," a group of Cuban intelligence agents serving long sentences in U.S. prisons who were sent to spy on anti-Castro militants in Florida.

“The church has always played a mediation role in Latin America,” said Enrique Lopez Oliva, a professor and religion expert who teaches at the University of Havana. “The Cuban government needs an interlocutor, and the church is an ideal one. It has international stature, but it’s a relatively weak institution here.”

The church’s role is not without risks, Lopez Oliva said. If the government fails to release a significant number of prisoners, it will add to criticism, particularly among Cuba exiles, that the church has been too accommodating and is helping the government buy time.

Still, for Julia Nunez, whose husband Adolfo Fernandez Sainz was moved to Havana last weekend from a rural prison 300 miles away, the church’s intervention has brought results, and at least a minor comfort. Nunez is one of the Ladies in White [4] made up of the wives and relatives of 75 dissidents who were rounded up in a 2003 crackdown. Fifty-two are still behind bars.

“It’s a relief for me, but these are small steps,” Nunez said. “Our main goal is to bring our husbands home. We won’t be satisfied until then.”

Variety of Viewpoints Expected at Church Conference

2010-06-12T08:08:00.000-07:00

By Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Jun 11, 2010 (IPS) - Cuban intellectuals, religious and non-religious, including three who live and teach in the United States, will take part in a four-day conference organised by the Catholic Church next week in the midst of a relaxed climate of dialogue between the Church leadership and the government of Raúl Castro.

"This conference is taking place against a favourable backdrop marked by progress in Church-State relations," sociologist Aurelio Alonso, who will take part in the "dialogue among Cubans" panel, told IPS.

His fellow panelists will be Jorge Ignacio Domínguez, a Latin American studies scholar at Harvard, and Catholic priest Carlos Manuel de Céspedes.

Alonso said the conference would not be an "apologia", would likely take on a critical tone at times, and would highlight unfulfilled hopes and expectations. "But that will be beneficial to the country, which has to evolve towards a greater openness," he said.

The Jun. 16-19 event in Havana will be the 10th edition of these conferences that are organised regularly by the Catholic Church. The current agenda includes issues that go beyond Church questions, such as the economy, migration and the relations between Cubans at home and abroad.

The panelists on economy and society will be Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva and Pável Vidal, prominent researchers at the University of Havana Centre for the Study of the Cuban Economy (CEEC), along with Carmelo Mesa Lago, Professor Emeritus of Economics and Latin America at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Rafael Hernández, director of Temas magazine, will discuss reconciliation among Cubans with Arturo López-Levy, a Ph.D. candidate in comparative politics and a lecturer at the University of Denver, Colorado, and Lenier González, editor of Espacio Laical, the publication of the Havana archdiocese's lay council.

"Under the present circumstances, it is important to listen to the views of these people who are experts in their various fields of politics, society or the economy and make use of that contribution in benefit of the Church's pastoral work," Catholic Church spokesman Orlando Márquez told journalists Thursday.

The Church as an institution is not removed or separate from social issues, said Márquez, who is also the director of the Havana archdiocesan magazine Palabra Nueva. Questions like migration, family break-up and economic difficulties are issues of concern to the Catholic Church, he added.

Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican's foreign minister, will also take part in the conference, during a Jun. 15-20 visit to Cuba. His schedule includes talks with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez and Cuba's bishops, and a possible visit with President Castro has not been ruled out.

Mamberti's visit to Havana will be the second by a senior Vatican official since Raúl Castro officially became president in February 2008 after taking over from his ailing brother Fidel in July 2006.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, secretary of state to Pope Benedict XVI, visited the island in February 2008 on the 10th anniversary of the late Pope John Paul II's historic visit to Cuba. Bertone was the first official envoy of a foreign state to meet with the new president.

Mamberti's visit is in response to an invitation by the Catholic Church in Cuba and the Cuban government, to participate in the commemoration of the 75th year of relations between Cuba and the Holy See.

Both this visit and the conference organised by the Church are taking place in a climate of warming of relations between the government and the Church since the lengthy May 19 meeting between Castro, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, archbishop of Havana, and Dionisio García Ibáñez, president of the Catholic bishops' conference of Cuba.

In the talks, the Church leaders expressed concern over the conditions of Cuba's political prisoners, which could eventually lead to the release of some, according to remarks by Cardinal Ortega.

In early June, six prisoners were moved to penitentiaries closer to their homes. The six form part of the original group of 75 dissidents handed lengthy sentences in 2003 on charges of treason for conspiring with the United States to destabilise the government. (Fifty-three are still in prison.)

According to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, headed by dissident activist Elizardo Sánchez, there are 200 people imprisoned for political reasons on the island. But the government claims that all dissidents are mercenaries in the pay of Washington and does not recognise the existence of political prisoners.

"We continue to hope for further gestures, although we do not know when they might occur," said Márquez, who pointed out that such processes are not always linear and do not always move ahead at a steady pace.

"We hope that what started will continue. There is nothing to indicate that the process has ground to a halt or has ended," said the spokesman for the Havana archdiocese

The sentencing of the 75 dissidents cut short a process of rapprochement with the European Union.

And although Havana and Brussels resumed political talks in 2008, Foreign Minister Rodríguez has repeatedly stated that the European bloc's "common position" on Cuba, which seeks "to encourage a process of transition to pluralist democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms," is "obsolete meddling" and is the final hurdle for the full normalisation of relations.

Rodríguez met this week in the French capital with his Spanish counterpart Miguel Angel Moratinos.

Spain will apparently end its six-month rotating presidency of the EU this month without fulfilling its aim of replacing the "common position", which dates back to 1996, with what it describes as a more "realistic" policy towards Cuba.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51800

A Cuban view of the dynamic within the church by Manuel Alberto Ramy can be read in the Progresso Weekly.

Cuba expands program cutting free lunches

2010-06-12T08:06:00.000-07:00

By WILL WEISSERT (AP)

HAVANA — Nearly a quarter million Cuban workers are discovering there's so such thing as a free lunch.

The government is dramatically expanding a program that shuts workplace cafeterias while giving people stipends to buy food on their own. It is part of a larger plan to chip away at the raft of daily subsidies that have long characterized life on the island.

The Communist Party newspaper Granma reported Friday that a pilot program begun in October to eliminate free lunches for 2,800 government workers will grow to include another 225,000 as of July 1. The move will save the cash-strapped country $27 million.

The reform is being extended to state bank workers, employees at the tourism, transportation, foreign investment, natural resources and foreign relations ministries, as well as workers at the government retail giant CIMEX and the Office of the City of Havana Historian and the Cuban Chamber of Commerce.

The new round of cafeteria closings means that in all, about 5 percent of Cuba's official work force of nearly 5 million will have to fend for themselves at lunch time, though the government will provide about 70 U.S. cents per work day to help pay for it.

The government controls well over 90 percent of the economy and almost everyone works for the state. Education through college and health care are free and housing, utilities, transportation and food are heavily subsidized, but government workers earn an average of less than $20 per month.

The reform represents a change in philosophy for the government, which has traditionally micromanaged many aspects of Cubans' lives — from monthly ration books to determining who can own a car.

Cuba's always-fragile economy has been hit hard by the global financial crisis and President Raul Castro, who took over from his elder brother Fidel in February 2008, has said he wants to cut costs by streamlining the stifling bureaucracy and putting a measure of decision-making in the hands of citizens.

A simple meal like a pork sandwich from a street stand costs about 25 cents, while pasta bought from a vendor may run about twice that — meaning some workers could save money.

Still, some were dubious.

"It doesn't seem good to me," said Susana Garcia, a 35-year-old who has worked in the Havana City Historian's office since 1998. "If you don't go to work or you get there late they dock you, and what you get isn't enough to buy anything — it's two packets of chicken per month."

Others affected by the new rules told The Associated Press they were called to meetings at work last weekend and informed that their free-lunch days were numbered.

Interviews Friday with six state employees who will lose them yielded only complaints, though many declined to give their names for fear of landing in hot water at work.

Some said that even if they can find a way to bring food from home — no small feat in a country where things like plastic kitchenware are hard to come by — they have no way to heat it up without access to state cafeterias. Others said they work nontraditional hours and will have trouble buying food during the times they have to eat it.

Interview with Cardinal Ortega

2010-05-04T12:25:00.000-07:00

OUR VOICE IS A CALL TO DIALOGUE

Interview with Cardinal Jaime Ortega, archbishop of Havana

[Unofficial Translation, original Spanish at http://www.palabranueva.net/contens/pn_notic.htm#1011]

To anyone paying attention to what is happening in Cuba today, Cuban or foreigner, it is clear that we are experiencing one of the most unique moments in our history. However much we insist on the contrary, there are uncertainties in the economic, political, cultural and even religious aspects impacting our national life. To all this, we should add the place of the Church in the midst of Cuban society: while some people think that it says too much, others think that it says little.

In this interview with Cardinal Jaime Ortega, New Word presents not only a timely perspective from our archbishop and pastor in regard to the moment we are living, but his words, reiterating once again, the Church's call for dialogue and reconciliation among Cubans.
--Orlando Márquez

Palabra Nueva: Your Eminence, recently the national media gave wide publicity to a meeting attended by pastors and leaders of virtually all the religious denominations present in Cuba with President Raul Castro, Mrs. Caridad Diego, Head of the Office of Religious Affairs, other senior Cuban officials and the Brazilian Dominican friar Frei Betto. But there were no bishops or representatives of the Cuban Catholic Church at this meeting. This has generated many doubts or questions about the Church's position regarding the Cuban government. Why was the Catholic Church absent in these events?

Cardinal Jaime Ortega: For this event we received an invitation at the level of auxiliary bishops like me and other members of the clergy and certain religious orders, but declined to attend because it was a commemoration of two events not directly related to the Catholic Church. One is the anniversary of a meeting held by President Fidel Castro twenty years ago with the Cuban Council of Churches, in which the Catholic Church is not a member. The other event commemorated was the publication in Cuba of the book "Fidel and Religion" by Frei Betto. He did not directly involve us as a Church, although this book contains a number of useful responses from Fidel that have value even today with outstanding issues regarding church-state relations, including various aspects of Catholic education. But we did not judge as appropriate to the Church this broad gathering of various religious faiths, representatives from syncretic cults, spiritualists, and even leaders of Freemasonry, the latter which is not a religion.

I think the only thing they have in common, these religious manifestations, animists and other associations, is being treated all the same by the Office of Religious Affairs of the Cuban Communist Party’s Central Committee. But this office, which provides services to various religious groups or associations in Cuba, is not a kind of governing body that meets with the same purpose with all the various groups that are under its authority.

PN: At that same meeting were evoked the words of former President Fidel Castro in an interview with Frei Betto twenty years ago and described in the book you mentioned, specifically its call for a "strategic alliance" between Christians and Marxists to deal with Latin America's ills. But now the "strategic alliance" would be a permanent alliance between Cuban Christians and the authorities in Cuba to work, he said, for the good of society. As the Catholic Church was not in that encounter, what is the response to the invitation to establish a definitive strategic alliance with the government for the good of society?

CJO: Indeed, at that time there was talk of a strategic alliance with the Cuban state to oversee the well being of the people, by the various groups gathered there. I have never accepted these terms as describing the actual role of the Catholic Church in society and its relations with the powers of the State, because they have military or political resonances that are not appropriate for developing relations between Church and State, such as the possibility of acting in society, to serve men and women living in our country, not depending on an explicit or implicit social pact between Church and State.

The action of the Church in society belongs to the order of rights, and the right to religious freedom is clearly recognized by the Constitution in force in Cuba. It is within the constitutional framework itself, as in its identity and own way of proceeding, that the mission of the Catholic Church in Cuba is deployed towards the common good. In pursuit of the common good the Church could link official or private institutions with international aid agencies, etc., which can assist the general welfare of the Cuban nation; but either vertically or horizontally the action of the Church is not founded on a partnership but springs from the right of the church body to present the love of Jesus Christ in the world today, according to its own mission.

PN: When the Church speaks of the common good, it also speaks of a series of favorable conditions for the integral human development of the person living in society. In the difficult conditions facing the country today, how can the church help in finding the common good for society?

CJO: Our country is in a very difficult situation, probably the most difficult we have experienced in the twenty-first century. In the Cuban media there appear all kinds of opinions on how to find solutions for economic and social difficulties at this time. Many talk of socialism and its limitations, some propose a reformed socialism, others refer to specific changes that must be done to leave behind the old Stalinist-type bureaucratic state, others talk about the lack of enterprise of workers, the low productivity, etc. But there is a fundamental common denominator among almost all discussants: there is a need in Cuba to promptly make the necessary changes to remedy the situation. I believe that this opinion reaches something of a national consensus and postponing it produces impatience and uneasiness among the people.

The international financial and economic crisis made its appearance just at the time that three hurricanes affecting Cuba were leaving huge losses.

These new realities, together with the long lasting embargo by the United States, are added to the perennial economic problems of Cuba which flow from the limitations of the kind of socialism practiced here, and all these create sometimes a grim situation.

PN: Pardon ... Do you think really that the conflict with the United States makes a mark at determining the life of Cubans?

CJO: I believe that a Cuba-US dialogue would be the first step that is needed to break the cycle in which we find ourselves.

At the beginning of his administration, President Raul Castro suggested to the United States dialogue without conditions, and on all issues, including human rights, and has repeated his proposal in more than one occasion.

In his presidential political campaign, Barack Obama also said he would change the style used so far and will seek above all to talk directly to Cuba.

At that time there were growing expectations about a possible meeting between the two countries. However, after coming to power, the new American president has repeated the old pattern of previous governments: if Cuba makes changes regarding human rights, then the United States will lift the embargo and open up space for further dialogue.

While important steps were taken to modify some unwise measures imposed by the previous government, in time the pre-election proposals were altered. Once again the old politics prevailed: start at the end. I am convinced that the first thing must be to get together, talk and as the dialogue advances some steps would be taken that would improve the difficult situations or overcome the most critical points. This is the civilized way of dealing with any conflict.

PN: In recent weeks the situation has worsened, specifically from the death of the prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo due to a hunger strike. At least one Cuban citizen has joined this kind of protest, the wives and mothers of political prisoners are demonstrating on the streets for their loved ones, to which the Cuban government responds with firmness ... All of this further thinning the environment. Is it possible to have a dialogue in these conditions?

CJO : The tragic event of the death of a prisoner as he was on hunger strike has resulted in a verbal war by the media in the United States, Spain and other countries. This strong media campaign contributes to further exacerbating the crisis. It is a form of media violence to which the Cuban government responds in its own way.

In the midst of this, what can the Church do for the common good? Certainly the Church’s mission prevents her from simply joining one of the two warring parties, on the one side political goals of destabilization, and on the other the consequent defensive retrenchment. What belongs to us as the Church is to invite all to sanity and wisdom in order to pacify the spirits.

We know that a call to peace is historically irrelevant in the midst of war. But it is the call that the Church has always repeated in every time and in any conflict. Pope Paul VI coined a phrase that here has all its validity: "Dialogue is the new name of peace." Because amid the crossfire of words and arguments are the people, tired and anxious for a more peaceful present and a more prosperous future. If our voice was heard, it necessarily would contain a call for dialogue.

The bishops of Cuba made this call in our note lamenting the tragic death of Orlando Zapata, in which we asked "from the authorities who have in their hands the lives and health of prisoners to take appropriate measures so that situations are not repeated, and, at the same time, to create conditions for dialogue and appropriate understanding, to avoid reaching such painful situations that do not benefit anyone and cause suffering to many." This conciliatory provision, although it seems unfruitful, is what we repeated in the case of Guillermo Fariñas, the other Cuban citizen who has joined this mode of protest, asking him to abandon the hunger strike.

PN: In this action-reaction environment, we have seen increased among us the reactions of some form of violence against those in Cuba who have expressed their disagreement or demands, specifically in the highly publicized case of the Damas de Blanco. What do you think of this?

CJO: This is not the time to stir passions. That is why it is so sad to see the acts of repudiation to mothers and wives of several prisoners, which are now joined by another group of women, all known as the Ladies in White.

After the painful acts of repudiation that occurred during the exodus from Mariel in 1980, we thought that they would not return again to our national history. At that time, the bishops met with a senior government official who, after hearing our opinion of these acts, said, "You can relax, these acts will be over and very soon." Indeed, the acts of repudiation disappeared shortly afterwards. But we saw with surprise that some time later these actions began to appear again on the national scene, and among Cubans in South Florida against other Cubans of different thinking, and artists from Cuba, etc. Such verbal and even physical intolerance should not continue in our history as a people, as a characteristic of the Cuban person. In fact they are always a few who staged these events that do not indicate the feeling of the majority.

P.N.: Returning to the political prisoners. I remember that following the arrests and summary trials of 2003, both the Vatican and the Cuban bishops asked the authorities for a significant gesture of clemency, for humanitarian gestures with individuals who had received long sentences and were sent far from their homes. Does the Church continue expressing its interest in these people? Is there anything new about it?

CJO: With respect to prisoners held for political reasons, the Church has historically done everything possible for them to be released, not only for those who are sick but also others.

With the collaboration of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the United States in the 80s, there came out of jail a significant group of prisoners, and together with their closest relatives they left for the United States. Taken together, prisoners and their families, there were more than one thousand who left Cuba on flights paid for by the American bishops. Only those who had committed heinous crimes did not receive visas to the United States or other countries. At the request of Pope John Paul II during his visit to Cuba, also a good number of prisoners were released and those who received visas from various countries also emigrated, with the same reservations by recipient countries about those who had committed serious crimes.

This is what the Church always does with prisoners and every person affected with them such as their families. The same has been done with respect to the five Cubans imprisoned in the United States at the request of their families, making arrangements, so far unsuccessful, at least so that two of the wives who for nearly ten years haven’t seen their husbands may visit them. With respect to anyone who is in such deplorable situation, without analyzing the causes or grounds for their conviction, the mission of the Church has always been one of understanding and compassion, working discreetly but effectively so that the situation of those people affected be overcome for the good of themselves and of their relatives, although we have not always achieved the desired results.

In summary, in this difficult time, the Church in Cuba calls for prayer and action from all believers so that love, reconciliation, and forgiveness prevail among Cubans here and elsewhere.

Yoani Sanchez interviewed by Salim Lamrani

2010-04-27T09:35:00.000-07:00

An interview by Salim Lamrani, originally published on Rebelion Website as republished in The South Journal, translated into English.

A Conversation with Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez

French journalist and expert in relations between Cuba and the United States recently interviewed Cuba blogger Yoani Sanchez in Havana. The interview was posted on Rebelion website and on Cubadebate website. Yoani Sanchez is the new figure of Cuban opposition. Since she created her blog “Generation Y” back in 2007, she has been granted several international prizes, including the Ortega y Gasset Journalism Prize in 2008, the Bitacoras.com Prize in 2008, the Bob’s Prize in 2008, the Maria Moors Cabot Prize in 2008, granted by the prestigious US University of Columbia. Similarly, the Cuban blogger was selected among the world’s 100 most influential personalities by Time Magazine in 2008, along with George W. Bush, Hu Jintao and Dalai Lama. Yoani´s blog was included on the list of the 25 best blogs of the world by CNN and Time Magazine in 2008.

In November 30, 2008, Spain’s El Pais newspaper included her on its list of the 100 most influential Hispanic-American personalities of the year (a list where you can’t find Fidel or Raul Castro).

Foreign Policy magazine, on its part, included her among the 10 most important intellectuals of the year, while Mexico’s Gato Pardo magazine did the same in 2008.

This impressing landslide of distinctions, as well as their simultaneous occurrence, has raised numerous questions, so much so that Yoani Sanchez, according to her own confession, is absolutely unknown in her own country. How can a person, who is unknown to her neighbors—according to the blogger—, be on the list of the 100 most influential personalities in the world?

A diplomat from a western country, who is close to this atypical opponent of the Cuban government, had read a series of articles I wrote about Yoani Sanchez and that were somewhat critical. He showed the blogger my articles and she wanted to meet me to clear out some points I had referred to.

The meeting with the young dissident, of controversial fame, did not take place in any dark apartment with closed windows or in a remote site that could avoid the indiscrete ears of “the political police.” On the contrary, the meeting took place in the lobby of the Hotel Plaza, in the heart of the Old Section of Havana, and in a sunny afternoon. The place was packed with people, many foreign tourists wandering around the huge hall of the majestic building that opened its doors in the early 20th century.

Yoani Sanchez has close ties with western embassies. In fact, a simple call by my contact at midday allowed us to set the date just three hours later. And at 3 pm, the blogger showed up smiling, dressed in a long skirt and a blue jersey. She also wore a sports jacket to keep herself warm in the relatively fresh temperature of the Havana winter.

Our conversation lasted nearly two hours as we sat at a table in the bar and in the presence of her husband Reinaldo Escobar, who accompanied her for some 20 minutes before they left the place as they headed for another meeting. Yoani Sanchez appeared very cordial and friendly; she proved her great peace. Her voice was firm and she never showed being uncomfortable. Already used to meeting with the western media, she really masters the arts of communication.

This blogger, a person who looks weak, intelligent and astute is aware that, although hard for her to admit her western media relation is not by mere chance, but because it advocates the setting up of “sui generis” capitalism in Cuba.

The Incident on November 6, 2009

Salim Lamrani: Let´s start with the incident that occurred on November 6, 2009 in Havana. You explained on your blog that you were arrested along another three friends of yours by “three unknown hefty men” during “an afternoon stormed with beating, cries and insults.” You denounced the Cuban police for having committed violence against you. Do you maintain your version of the events?

Yoani Sánchez: Yes indeed, I confirm I was submitted to violence. They held me for 25 minutes. I was beaten. I managed to take a piece of paper that one of the men had in his pocket and I hid it in my mouth. One of them pressed his knee over my chest and the other, from the front seat would beat me in the kidney area and my head so that I opened my mouth and get the piece of paper. For a moment, I thought I would never get out of that car.

SL: the story on your blog is really terrifying. I quote: you spoke of “beats and pushes,” of “beating knuckles,” of “stream of beats,” “Knees on your chest,” beating your “kidneys and […] your head, “pulling you by your hair,” of your face “going red due to pressure and painful body, of “ beats that went on” and “ all those bruises.” However, when you met with the international press on November 9 all those marks had faded it out of your body. How can you explain that?

YS: They are beating professionals.

SL: Ok, but why didn’t you show the pictures of the marks?

YS: I got the pictures. I got the proving images.

SL: So you got the proofs?

YS: I got the proofs in the pictures.

SL: But, why haven’t you published them to reject all rumors saying you might have fabricated this attack so that the press told about your case?

YS: I rather keep them for the time being and not publish them. I want to present them to a court some day so that these three men are judged. I can perfectly recall their faces and I got the pictures of two of them at least. As to the third man, he is still to be identified but since he was the chief, he will be easy to spot. I also have the piece of paper I took from one of them, which has my saliva because I kept it in my mouth. The name of a woman was written in that paper.

SL: Fine. You publish many photos on your blog. It is not difficult to understand why you prefer not to release the pictures this time.

YS: As I told you, I rather keep them for justice.

SL: You are aware that your attitude gives credit to those who think that you fabricated the attack against you, aren’t you?

YS: It is my choice.

SL: However, even the western media, which quite favor you, took some unusual precautious measures when telling your story. BBC correspondent in Havana Fernando Ravberg wrote, for instance, that you “had no bruises, marks or scars.” France Presse news agency told the story by clarifying carefully enough that it is your own version and it gave it the title: “Cuba: Blooger Yoani Sanchez Says to have been Beaten and Briefly Arrested.” On the other hand, the reporter affirmed that you “were not hurt.”

YS: I wouldn’t like to evaluate their work. I am not who is supposed to judge them. They are professionals who face very complicated situations that I can not evaluate. The fact is that the existence or not of physical marks is not evidence of the event.

SL: But the presence of those marks would reveal that violence took place. That is why publishing the photos would be so important.

YS: You should understand that they are professionals in intimidation. The fact that three unknown men took me to a car without presenting any documents gives me the right to complaint as if they had broken all my bones. The photos are not that important because the illegal act has been committed. Now being so accurate as to say “if it hurts here or there” is just my internal pain.

SL: Ok, but the problem is that you presented it all as a very violent attack. You talked about “kidnapping you in the worst Sicilian Camorra style.”

YS: Yes, that is true, but it is my word against theirs. The fact of getting into these details, if I have bruises or not takes us far off the real subject, which is that they kidnapped me during 25 minutes illegally.

SL: Excuse my insistence, but I think this is important. There is some difference between an identity control, which lasts 25 minutes, and police violence. My question is very simple. You said and I quote: “I had a cheekbone and an eyebrow swollen all during the weekend.” Since you got the pictures, you can now show the marks.

YS: I just told you I rather keep them for court.

SL: You are aware that some people will find it hard to believe your version, if you do not publish the photos, aren’t you?

YS: I think that by getting into these details we miss the subject. The fact is that three bloggers accompanied by a friend of theirs were on their way to a place in the city, right on the corner of 23 and G streets. We had heard that a group of youngsters had called a march against violence there. They are alternative kind of people, hip hop and rap singers, artists. I would be there as a blogger to make pictures and post them on my blog and make some interviews. On the way to that site we were stopped by a “Geely” car.

SL: Was it an action to prevent you from taking part of the event?

YS: That was the reason, evidently. They never told us that formally, but that was their objective. They told me to get in the car. I asked them who they were. One of them took me by my wrist and I held back. That happened in a Havana zone which is centrally located, right at a bus stop.

SL: So there were people at the place then. I mean there were witnesses.

YS: Yes, there were witnesses but they do not want to talk. They are scared.

SL: Not even in an anonymous way? Why hasn’t the western media interviewed them anonymously as they usually do when they publish critical articles about Cuba?

YS: I can’t explain about the reaction of the press. I can tell them what happened. One of them, a man about fifty years old, with a strong body as if he had ever practiced free wrestling—I tell you this because my father practiced that sports and he has the same body shape-. I have quite weak wrists and I managed to get out of his grasp and I asked him who he was. There were three men plus the driver.

SL: So then, there were four men instead of three.

YS: Yes, but I couldn’t reach to see the driver’s face. “Yoani, get in the car, you know who we are.” I replied: “I don’t know who you are.” The smallest one said: “Listen, you know who I am, you know me well.” I answered him: “No, I don’t know who you are. Who are you? Let me see your papers or just any document.” The other one told me: “Get in the car, do not make things difficult.” Then I started to shout. “Help! Kidnappers!”

SL: Did you know that they were policemen wearing civilian clothes?

YS: I figured it out, but they never showed me any document.

SL: Then, what was your objective?

YS: I wanted things to be done legally; that is, that they showed me their documents and then they could take me although I suspected they really represented the authority. You can not force a citizen to get in a private car without presenting any documents, or else it is illegal and thus kidnapping.

SL: How did the people at the bus stop react?

YS: The people were astonished because “kidnapping” is not a common word in Cuba; such a phenomenon does not exist here. Then they wondered what was going on. We did not look like criminals. Some tried to approach us but one of the policemen shouted at them: “Do not get into this, these ones are counterrevolutionaries!” And this confirmed that they were part of the political police although I figured it out when I saw the Geely car, a new Chinese make, which has not been sold anywhere in Cuba. These cars only belong to people with the Armed Forces and the Interior Ministries.

SL: Do you mean that since the beginning you knew that they were policemen wearing civilian clothes because you identified the car they were driving?

YS: I sensed that. On the other hand I confirmed it when one of them called a uniformed policeman. A patrol made up of a woman and a man came and took two of us away. They left us in the hands of these unknown men.

SL: But at that point you did not have any doubt about who they were, did you?

YS: No, but they did not show us any documents. The policemen did not say that they represented Cuban authority. They said no word.

SL: It is hard to understand any interest of Cuban authorities in attacking at the risk of unleashing an international scandal. You are famous. Why would they do that?

YS: They wanted to make me radical so that I wrote violent articles against them, but they won’t get away with it.

SL: We can not say that you are soft about the Cuban government.

YS: I never use verbal violence or personal attacks. I never use hard adjectives like “bloody repression”, for instance. Their objective was that of having me radicalized.

SL: However you are very tough about the Cuban government. You can read in your blog that: “the ship taking in water is about to be shipwrecked.” You speak about “the shouts of the despot,” of “people in the shadows who, like vampires, feed from our human joy, inoculate us with fear through beating, threats and blackmail,” “the shipwreck of the process, the system, the expectations, the illusions. [It is] [total] shipwreck,” these are really strong words.

YS: Perhaps they are, though their objective was burning the Yoani Sanchez phenomenon by demonizing me. For that reason my blog was blocked for a long time.

SL: However, it seems surprising that Cuban authorities decided to physically attack you.

YS: It was clumsy. I can’t understand why they prevented me from attending the march since my thinking is quite different from those who use repression. I can’t explain. Perhaps they did not want me to meet with the youths. The police thought I would start a scandal or make an incendiary discourse.

Back to my arrest; the police took my friends away in an energetic and firm manner, but without any violence. When I realized they would leave us alone with Orlando, and with these three guys I held on tightly to a tree at the place and Claudia grasped my waist in an effort to prevent being separated from me just before she was taken away.

SL: What’s the use of resisting the police in uniform and run the risk of being accused for that and commit crime? In France, if you resist the police, you run the risk of being imposed sanctions.

YS: They took them away, anyhow. The police woman took Claudia. The other three persons took us to the car and I started to shout again: “Help! This is a Kidnap!

SL: Why? Did you know they were police men not wearing their uniforms?

YS: They did not show any documents. Then, they started to beat me and they pushed me inside the car. Claudia witnessed it and she told about it.

SL: But, You have just told me that the police patrol had taken Claudia away, haven’t you?

YS: She saw the scene from a distance while the police car drove away. I defended myself and launched beats like an animal that feels that its last hour has come. They drove around Vedado as they tried to take the piece of paper out of my mouth. I took one of them by his testicles and he increased his violence. They took us to a poor neighborhood, La Timba, which is near the Revolution Square. The man stepped down, opened the door of the car and asked us to get out. I did not want to get off. They took us out by force including Orlando and then they left.

A woman approached us and we told her we had been kidnapped. She took us for insane people and left. The car returned but did not stop. They threw out my purse in which I had my cell phone and my camera.

SL: Did they return your cell and your camera?

YS: Yes

SL: Doesn’t it sound funny to you that they bothered to return? They could have confiscated your cell and your camera, which are your work tools.

YS: Well, I don’t know. It all lasted 25 minutes.

SL: You are aware however, that as long as you do not publish the photos your version will be submitted to doubt and that will cast a shadow on the credibility of all that you say.

YS: I do not care about it.

SWITZERLAND AND THE RETURN TO CUBA

SL: In 2002 you decided to migrate to Switzerland. Two years later you returned to Cuba. It appears difficult to understand why you left the “European paradise” to return to the country which you describe as hell. My question is simple: Why?
YS: It is a good question. Firstly, I like to go against the current. I like to organize my life in my own way. What is absurd is not the fact of leaving and returning but the Cuban migration laws, which stipulate that any person who spends eleven months abroad loses his or her permanent resident status. Under different conditions, I could spend two years abroad and with the money earned I could return to Cuba to repair my home and do some other things. Then it is not the fact of deciding to return to Cuba that is amazing, but the Cuban migration laws.
SL: Surprising enough is particularly the fact that having the chance to live in one of the richest countries in the world, you had decided to return to your country, which you describe in quite an apocalyptic manner, nearly two years later you left.
YS: There are several reasons for that. First, I was not able to leave with my family. We are a small family but very united with my sister and with my parents. My father was sick during my stay in Switzerland and I was afraid that he could die and that I was not able to see him anymore. I also felt guilty for being living a better life than theirs. Every time I bought a pair of shoes, or that I logged on the Internet, I thought of them. I felt guilty.
SL: OK, but you could help them from Switzerland by sending them money.
YS: That is true, but there is still another reason. I thought that with all I learned in Switzerland I could change things when I returned to Cuba. You also feel this nostalgia for the people, your friends. It was not a well thought decision, but I do not regret it. I wanted to return and so I did. Actually, it’s something that could seem uncommon, but I Iike doing unusual things. I opened a blog and the people asked me why I was doing that, while the blog satisfies me professionally.
SL: That is alright, but despite all these reasons, it is still difficult to understand why you returned to Cuba while people in the West think that all Cubans want to leave their country. It is something even more surprising in your case because you present your country, I repeat, in an apocalyptic way.
YS: As a philologist I would consider that word, since “apocalyptic” is a grandiloquent term. There is something that characterizes my blog: verbal moderation.
SL: That is not always the case. For instance, you describe Cuba as “a huge prison, with ideological walls.” The terms are quite strong.
YS: I have never written that.
SL: Those were the words you used during an interview with France 24 TV Channel on October 22, 2009.
YS: Did you read that in French or in Spanish?
SL: In French.
YS: Do not trust translations because I never said that. Quite often I come across words I have not said. For instance, Spain’s ABC newspaper attributed words to me that I had never pronounced and I protested that. The article was withdrawn from the Internet site.
SL: Which were those words?
YS: “In Cuban hospitals, more people die from hunger than from diseases.” It was a total lie. I never said that.
SL: Then, did the western media manipulate what you had said?
YS: I wouldn’t say that.
SL: If they attributed words to you that you did not say; then it is manipulation.
YS: Granma newspaper manipulates reality further more than the western press when it say that I am the product of the Prisa media group.
SL: Exactly, Don’t you think that the western media uses you because you advocate “sui-generis” capitalism in Cuba?
YS: I am not responsible for what the media does. My blog is personal therapy, a kind of exorcism. I have a feeling that I am being more manipulated in my own country than in any other part. You know about this law in Cuba, Law 88 called the “Gag” law, which imprisons the people who do what we are doing.
SL: You mean?
YS: I mean that our conversation may be considered a crime and that you may be punished up to 15 years in jail.
SL: Sorry but, the fact that I interview you may take you to jail?
YS: Of course!
SL: I do not have the feeling that this worries you that much, since you are giving me this interview, in full day light, in the lobby of a hotel in the heart of Old Havana.
YS: I am not worried. This law states that any person that denounces the violations of human rights in Cuba cooperates with the economic sanctions, since Washington justifies the imposition of the sanctions against Cuba because of the violation of human rights.
SL: If I’m not wrong, Law 88 was passed in 1996 as a response to the Helms-Burton Law and particularly punishes those people who collaborate with the implementation of the American law in Cuba, for instance, by providing Washington information about foreign investors in Cuba so that they be taken to American courts. As far as I know, nobody has been condemned for that so far. Let’s talk about freedom of expression. You have certain freedom to speak through your blog. You are being interviewed this afternoon in a hotel. Don´t you notice any contradiction between your affirming that there is no freedom of expression in Cuba and the reality about your writings and activities, which show the opposite?
YS: Yes, but you can not see my blog in Cuba since it has been blocked.
SL: I can assure you that I visited it this morning before we had this interview, from this very hotel.
YS: It is possible, but most of the time it is blocked. Any way, at present, I can’t have the smallest space in the Cuban press, while I am a moderate person, no space in radio or television.
SL: However, you can publish whatever you want on your blog, can’t you?
YS: But I can not publish a single word on the Cuban press.
SL: In France, which is a democratic country, wide sectors of the population have no access to the media because most media outlets belong to private economic or financial groups.
YS: Yes, but it is different.
SL: Were you threatened because of your activities? Have you ever been threatened with prison for what you write about?
YS: No direct prison threats, but they do not allow me to travel abroad. I am currently invited to a Congress on the Spanish Language, in Chile; I did all proceedings, but they do not allow me to go.
SL: Have you received any explanation?
YS: None, but I´d like to put something straight. US sanctions against Cuba are atrocious. It is a failed policy. I have said this many times, but they do not publish it because it bothers them that I have this opinion, which is contrary to the archetype of any opposition member.

THE ECONOMIC SANCTIONS

SL: So you oppose the economic sanctions.
YS: Absolutely, and I say this in every interview. Some weeks ago, I sent a letter to the US Senate requesting that the American citizens be allowed to travel to Cuba. It is atrocious to see how they do not allow American citizens to visit Cuba, just like the Cuban government prohibits me to travel out of my country.
SL: What’s your opinion on the hopes sparked by the election of Obama, who promised a policy change towards Cuba, but has disappointed so many people?
YS: He came to power without the support of the Miami-based fundamentalist lobby, which backed the other candidate. On my part, I have already given my statement against the sanctions.
SL: This fundamentalist lobby opposes the lifting of the sanctions.
YS: You can discuss with them and expose my criteria, but I would not say they are enemies of the homeland. I don’t think so.
SL: A group of them participated in the invasion against their own country in 1961, at the orders of the CIA. Several of them are involved in terrorist actions against Cuba.
YS: The Cuban exiles have the right to think and take decisions. I favor their right to vote. Here, the Cuban exile has been very much stigmatized.
SL: Do you mean the “historic” exile or the ones that have emigrated for economic reasons?
YS: Actually, I oppose all extremes. But these persons who are in favor of the economic sanctions are not anti-Cuba people. Just think that they are defending Cuba according to their own criteria.
SL: Perhaps, but the economic sanctions affect the most vulnerable sectors of the Cuban population and not the leaders. Then, it is difficult to favor the sanctions and intend to defend the wellbeing of the Cuban people at the same time.
YS: That is their opinion. That’s it.
SL: They are not naive. They know that the Cuban people are suffering because of the sanctions.
YS: They are simply different. They think they will be able to change the regime by imposing sanctions. In any case, I think that the blockade has been the perfect argument for the Cuban government to keep its intolerance, control and internal repression.
SL: Economic sanctions have an impact. Or do you think that the sanctions are a mere excuse for Havana?
YS: They are an excuse leading to repression.
SL: Do they affect the country from the economic point of view, according to you? Or is it only a secondary issue?
YS: The real problem lies on the lack of productivity in Cuba. If they lift the sanctions tomorrow, I doubt that the result will show.
SL: In this case, why doesn’t the United States lift the sanctions and eliminate the excuse for the Cuban government? That way, it would reveal that economic difficulties are the result of domestic policy. If Washington insists that much on the sanctions, despite their anachronistic character, despite the opposition staged by the large majority of the international community, 187 countries in 2009, despite the rejection by a majority of US public opinion, despite the rejection by the world of business, there must be a reason, don’t you think?
YS: Simply because Obama is not the dictator in the United States and he can not eliminate the sanctions.
SL: He can not eliminate them totally because an agreement by the Congress is necessary; however, he can soften them considerably, what he has not done so far, since except for the elimination of the restrictions imposed by Bush in 2004, almost nothing has changed.
YS: No, that is not true, because he has also allowed US telecommunication companies to do business with Cuba.

INTERNATIONAL PRIZES, THE BLOG AND BARACK OBAMA

SL: You have to admit that this is all very little when we know that Obama promised a new approach of Cuba. Let’s go back to your personal case. How can you explain this landslide of prizes, as well as your international success?
YS: I can’t say much except expressing my gratitude. Any prize implies a dose of subjectivity on the part of the jury. Any prize can be questioned. For instance, many Latin American writers deserved the Nobel Literature Prize better than Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
SL: Do you say that because you think he is not as talented or due to his position favoring the Cuban Revolution? You do not deny his talent as a writer, or do you?
YS: It is my opinion, but I will not say that he took the prize and then accuse him of being an agent of the Swedish government.
SL: He obtained the prize for his literary work, while you have been rewarded for your political position against the government. That is the impression we have.
YS: Let’s talk about the Ortega and Gasset Prize granted by El Pais newspaper, which sparks more controversy. I won it in the “Internet” category. Some say that other journalists have not yet won the prize, but I am a blogger and a pioneer in this field. I consider myself a figure in the Internet. The Ortega y Gasset jury is made up of highly prestigious personalities and I would not say they took part of any conspiracy against Cuba.
SL: But you can’t deny that the El Pais newspaper maintains a very hostile editorial line towards Cuba. And some people think that the prize, which includes 15,000 Euros, was a way to reward your writings against the government.
YS: People think what they want to think. I think my work was rewarded. My blog has 10 million visits monthly. It is a cyclone.
However, that is not what an internationally recognized site measuring traffic says; a site like Alexa.com, of Amazon, which at the same time can not be taken as suspicious in terms of partiality in favor of alternative media sites from Cuba, Venezuela and Spain. A simple comparison of Yoani´s blog to other media outlets confirms that Generacion Y has much less traffic than the other websites to which it is compared, which have made their traffic public, below 10 million accesses monthly. Does Generacion Y alter its stats? I would seem it does. Another example, the Website with the largest traffic in the United States and one with the largest traffic in the world is The New York Times, which reports 17 million accesses every month.
SL: How do manage to pay the cost of the management of such a large proportion?
YS: A friend of mine in Germany would deal with that, because the site was hosted in Germany. It has been hosted in Spain for over a year now and I got and 18-month free management thanks to The Bob´s Prize.
SL: And how about the 18-language translation?
YS: They are friends and admirers who do it voluntarily and for free.
SL: Many people find it hard to believe that, because no other Web site in the world, even those of the most important international institutions -for example, the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the OECD, the European Union- has so many linguistic versions. Not even the Web sites of the US State Department or the CIA have such variety.
YS: I’m telling you the truth.
SL: Even President Obama responded to your interview. How do you explain that?
YS: First, I want to say they were not complacent questions.
SL: We can’t say either that you were critical, since you didn’t ask him to lift the economic sanctions that you say “are used as justification for the production disaster and to repress those who think differently.” That’s exactly what Washington says in that regard. The most daring question was when you asked him if he was thinking about invading Cuba. ¿How do you explain the fact that President Obama spent part of his time to answer you in spite of his extremely tight schedule, an unprecedented economic crisis, the reform of the health system, Iraq, Afghanistan, the military bases in Colombia, the coup d’état in Honduras, and hundreds of requests for interviews from the most important media in the world waiting for him?
YS: I’m a fortunate person. I’d like to tell you that I’ve also sent questions to President Raúl Castro and he has not responded yet. I don’t give up hope. Besides, he now has the advantage of having Obama’s answers.
SL: How did you reach Obama?
YS: I passed on the questions to several people who were coming to see me and could possibly contact him.
SL: Do you think that Obama answered you because you’re a Cuban blogger or because you’re opposed to the government?
YS: I don’t think so. Obama replied because he speaks with citizens.
SL: He receives thousands of requests everyday. Why to answer you, if you’re just a blogger?
YS: Obama is close to my generation, to my way of thinking.
SL: But why you? There are millions of bloggers around the world. Don’t you think you have been capitalized on in Washington’s media war against Havana?
YS: In my opinion, perhaps he wanted to address some aspects, like the invasion of Cuba. Perhaps I gave him the opportunity to express himself about a topic he wanted to deal with a long time ago. Political propaganda constantly talks about a possible invasion of Cuba.
SL: But there was one, wasn’t it?
YS: When?
SL: In 1961. And in 2003, Roger Noriega, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, said that any Cuban migratory wave to the United States would be considered a threat to national security and would require a military response.
YS: That’s another issue. Going back to the interview, I believe it made it possible to clarify certain aspects. I was under the impression that none of the sides wanted a normalization of relations, reaching an understanding. I asked him when we were going to find a solution.

SL: In your opinion, who is responsible for this conflict between the two countries?

YS: It’s difficult to find somebody to blame.

SL: In this specific case, the United States is the one imposing unilateral sanctions on Cuba, and not the other way around.

YS: Yes, but Cuba confiscated properties from the United States.

SL: I get the impression that you’re acting as Washington’s advocate.

YS: Confiscations occurred.

SL: It’s true, but they were made in accordance with international law. Cuba also confiscated properties from France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and the United Kingdom, and indemnified those nations. The only country that rejected that compensation was the United States.

YS: Cuba also allowed the installation of military bases on its territory and of missiles from a far-off empire…

SL: …Just like the United States installed nuclear bases against the USSR in Italy and Turkey.

YS: Nuclear missiles could reach the United States.

SL: Just like the US nuclear missiles could reach Cuba or the USSR.

YS: It’s true, but I think there was an escalation of confrontation on the part of the two countries.

The five Cuban political prisoners and dissidence

SL: Let’s tackle another subject. A lot is said about the five Cuban political prisoners in the United Stated, sentenced to life imprisonment for infiltrating extreme right factions in Florida, involved in terrorism against Cuba.

YS: It’s not an issue the population is interested in. It’s political propaganda.

SL: But what is your point of view in this regard?

YS: I’ll try to be as neutral as possible. They’re agents from the Ministry of the Interior who infiltrated the United States to collect information. The Cuban government says they were not carrying out activities of espionage but that they had infiltrated Cuban groups to prevent terrorist acts. But the Cuban government has always said those groups were linked to Washington.

SL: Then the radical groups of exiles have bonds with the US government.

YS: That’s what the political propaganda says.

SL: Then it’s not true.

YS: If it’s true it means that the five were carrying out activities of espionage.

SL: Then, in this case, the United States has to admit that violent groups are part of the government.

YS: It’s true.

SL: Do you think the Five should be released or that they deserve their sentences?

YS: I think it would be worth re-examining their cases, but in a political context of greater calm. I don’t think that the political use of this case could be good for them. The Cuban government gives this issue too high a media profile.

SL: Perhaps because it’s a matter totally censured by the western press.

YS: I think that the situation of those persons could be salvaged, they’re human beings, with families and children, but there are also victims on the other side.

SL: But the Five have not committed crimes.

YS: No, but they provided information that resulted in the death of several people.

SL: If you refer to the events of February 24, 1996, when the two airplanes of the radical organization Brothers to the Rescue were downed after they violated Cuban airspace several times and dropped fliers inciting rebellion.

YS: Yes.

SL: However, the district attorney admitted that it was impossible to prove Gerardo Hernandez’s guilt in this case.

YS: It’s true. I think that’s what we get when politics interferes in matters of justice.

SL: Do you think this is about a political case?

YS: For the Cuban government, it’s a political case.

SL: And for the United States?

YS: I understand that there’s a division of powers there, but the political atmosphere could have influenced the judges and the jury, but I don’t think we’re talking about a political case led by Washington. It’s difficult to have a clear image of this case, since we have never been able to have full information in this regard. But the release of the political prisoners it’s a priority for Cubans.

The US financing of Cuban dissidents

SL: Wayne S. Smith, the last ambassador of the United States in Cuba [sic, Wayne was head of USINT in the Carter Administration, with several successors], declared that “sending money to Cuban dissidents was illegal and unwise.” He added that “no one should give money to dissidents and much less with the objective of overthrowing the Cuban government.” And explains: “When the United States declares that its objective is to overthrow the Cuban government and then affirms that one of the means to achieve that objective is to provide Cuban dissidents with funds, then they are, in fact, in a position of agents paid by a foreign power to overthrow their own government.”

YS: I think that the financing of the opposition on the part of the United States has been presented as a reality, which is not the case. I know several members of the group of the 75 dissidents arrested in 2003 and I very much doubt that version. I have no evidence that the 75 were arrested for that reason. I don’t believe in the evidence presented before the Cuban court.

SL: I don’t think it’s possible to ignore this reality.

YS: Why?

SL: The US government itself affirms that it finances the internal opposition since 1959. Suffice is to consult, besides the declassified archives, Section 1705 of the Torricelli Law of 1992, Section 109 of the Helms-Burton Law of 1996, and the two reports of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba of May, 2004, and July, 2006. All these documents reveal that the President of the United States finances internal opposition in Cuba with the purpose of overthrowing the government of Havana.

YS: I don’t know, but…

SL: If you allow me to, I will quote the laws in question. Thus, Section 1705 of the Torricelli Law stipulates that “the United States will provide assistance to non-governmental organizations suitable for support to individuals and organizations which promote democratic and non-violent change in Cuba.”

Section 109 of the Helms-Burton Law is also very clear: “The President [of the United States] is authorized to offer assistance and to offer all kinds of support to individuals and non-governmental independent organizations to organize forces with a view towards constructing a democracy in Cuba.”

The first report of the Commission for Assistance for a Free Cuba sets forth the establishment of “a solid program of support which favors Cuban civil society.” Among the measures announced were 36 million dollars in financing to “support the democratic opposition and the strengthening of the emerging civil society.”

The second report of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba sets forth a 31 million dollar budget to finance, even more, internal opposition. In addition, the financing of at least 20 million dollars a year for the following years, with the same objective, “until the dictatorship ceases to exist,” is also planned.

YS: Who told you that that money reached the dissidents?

SL: The US Interest Section affirmed it in a communiqué: “The US policy, for a long time now, is that of providing humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people, particularly the families of political prisoners. We also allow private organizations to do the same.”

YS: Well…

SL: Even Amnesty International, which recalls the existence of 58 political prisoners in Cuba, recognizes that they’re in prison “for having received funds or materials from the US government to carry out activities considered by the authorities as subversive and damaging for Cuba.

YS: I don’t know if…

SL: On the other hand, dissidents themselves admit they receive money from the United States. Laura Pollán, one of the so-called Ladies in White, declared: “We accept aid, support, from the ultra-right to the left, unconditionally.” Opponent Vladimiro Roca also confessed that Cuban dissidence is subsidized by Washington, claiming that the financial aid received was “totally and completely legal.” For dissident René Gómez, the economic support on the part of the United States “is not something that needs to be concealed or that we have to be ashamed of.”

Even the western press recognizes it. France Press agency reports that “dissidents, for their part, defended and accepted that economic aid.” The Spanish agency EFE refers to the «opponents paid by the United States.” And the British Reuters news agency points out: “the US government openly provides federal financial aid for the dissidents’ activities, which is considered by Cuba as an illegal act.” And I could give many more examples.

YS: All that is the Cuban government’s fault, which prevents the economic prosperity of its citizens, which imposes rationing on the population. People have to queue to obtain products. It’s necessary to judge the Cuban government first, which has led thousands of people to accept foreign aid.

SL: The problem is that dissidents commit a crime that Cuban law and all penal codes in the world severely punish. Being financed by a foreign power is a serious crime in France and in the rest of the world.

YS: We can admit that the fact of financing an opposition is proof of interference, but…

SL: But in this case the people you describe as political prisoners are not political prisoners, since they committed a crime when they accepted money from the United States, and Cuban law condemned them on that basis.

YS: I think that this government interfered many times in the internal affairs of other countries, financing rebel movements and the guerrilla. It intervened in Angola and…

SL: Yes, but it was a matter of helping pro-independence movements against Portuguese colonialism and South Africa’s segregationist regime. When South Africa invaded Namibia, Cuba intervened to defend that country’s independence. Nelson Mandela publicly thanked Cuba for that and was the reason for which he made his first trip to Havana and not to Washington or Paris.

YS: But many Cubans died for that, far from their land.

SL: Yes, but it was for a noble cause, whether in Angola, the Congo or Namibia. The battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988 made it possible to put an end to Apartheid in South Africa. That’s what Mandela says! Aren’t you proud of that?

YS: OK, but at the end of the day it’s my country’s interference abroad what bothers me more than anything else. It’s necessary to decriminalize prosperity.

SL: Even the fact of receiving money from a foreign power?

YS: People have to be economically autonomous.

SL: If I understand correctly, you advocate the privatization of certain sectors of the economy.

YS: Privatize? No, I don’t like that term, because it has pejorative connotation, but put them in the hands of private people, yes.

Social achievements in Cuba?

SL: It’s a question of semantics then. In your opinion, what are the social achievements of this country?

YS: Every achievement has had an enormous cost. All things that could look positive have had a cost in terms of freedom. My son receives a very indoctrinatory education and he’s taught a History of Cuba that does not correspond to reality at all. I would rather have a less ideological education for my son. On the other hand, nobody wants to be a teacher in this country because salaries are very low.

SL: OK, but that doesn’t prevent Cuba from being the country with the highest number pf professors per inhabitant in the world, with a maximum of 20 students per classroom, which is not the case in France, for example.

YS: Yes, but there was a cost for that, and that’s why education and health are not real achievements to me.

SL: We can’t deny something acknowledged by all international institutions. With regard to education, the illiteracy rate in Latin America is 11.7% and 0.2% in Cuba. The primary education rate is 92% in Latin America and 100% in Cuba, and as for secondary education level is 52% and 99.7%, respectively. These are figures from UNESCO’s Department of Education.

YS: I agree, but in 1959, although conditions were difficult in Cuba, the situation was not that bad. There was a flourishing intellectual life, a political thinking that was alive. Actually, most of the current supposed achievements presented as results of the system were inherent in our idiosyncrasy. Those achievements existed before.

SL: It’s not true; I’m going to quote a source free of any suspicion: a report from the World Bank. It’s a long quote, but it’s worthy to recall.

“Cuba has become internationally recognized for its achievements in the areas of education and health, with social service delivery outcomes that surpass most countries in the developing world and in some areas match first-world standards. Since the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and the subsequent establishment of a communist one-.party government, the country has created a social service system that guarantees universal access to education and health care provided by the State. This model has enabled Cuba to achieve near universal literacy, the eradication of certain diseases, widespread access to potable water and basic sanitation, and among the lowest infant mortality rates and longest life expectancies in the region. A review of Cuba’s social indicators reveals a pattern of almost continuous improvement from the 1960’s through the 1980’s. Several major indices, such as life expectancy and infant mortality, continued to improve during the country’s economic crisis of the 1990’s… Today, Cuba’s social performance is among the best in the developing world, as documented by numerous international sources including the World Health Organization, the United Nations Development Programme and other UN agencies , and the World Bank. According to 2002 World Development Indicators, Cuba far outranks both Latin America and the Caribbean and other lower-middle income countries in major indices of education, health and sanitation.”

Moreover, figures show this. In 1959, infant mortality rate was 60 per every one thousand live births. In 2009, it was 4.8. We’re talking about the lowest rate in the American continent, of the Third World; even lower than that of the United States.

YS: Well, but…

SL: Life expectancy was 58 years before the Revolution. Now, it’s almost 80 years, and it’s similar to that of many developed nations. At present, Cuba has 67,000 doctors, as compared to 6,000 in 1959. According to the English newspaper The Guardian, Cuba has twice the amount of doctors as compared to England, for a population that is four times smaller.

YS: OK, but in terms of freedom of expression there was a reduction with respect to Batista’s government. The regime was a dictatorship but there was a plural and open freedom of the press, radio programs of all political tendencies.

SL: It’s not true. Censorship also existed. Between December, 1956, and January, 1959, during the war against the Batista regime, censorship was imposed for 630 days, out of 759. And opponents were doomed as a rule.

YS: It’s true that there was censorship, intimidation and dead people in the end.

SL: Then you can’t say that the situation was better with Batista, since opponents were assassinated. That’s no longer the case today. Do you think that January 1st is a tragic date in Cuban history?

YS: No, no, not at all. It was a process that aroused a lot of hope, but that betrayed most Cubans. For many people, it was a bright moment, but they put an end to a dictatorship and established another. I’m not as negative as some.

Luis Posada Carriles, the Cuban Adjustment Act and migration

SL: What do you think about Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA agent and responsible for a large amount of crimes in Cuba and whom the United States refuses to trial?

YS: It’s a political issue people are not interested in. It’s a smokescreen.

SL: At least it interests the relatives of the victims. What’s your point of view in this regard?

YS: I don’t like violent actions.

SL: Do you condemn his terrorist acts?

YS: I condemn all terrorist acts, event those committed today in Iraq by an alleged Iraqi resistance that kills Iraqis.

SL: Who kills most Iraqis, the attacks of the resistance or the US bombings?

YS: I don’t know.

SL: A word about the Cuban Adjustment Act that stipulates that Cubans legally or illegally migrating to the United States automatically get the status of permanent resident.

YS: It’s an advantage the rest of the countries don’t enjoy. But the fact that Cubans seek to migrate to the United States is due to the fact that here the situation is difficult.

SL: And also the United States is the richest country in the world. There are also many Europeans immigrants there. You admit that the Cuban Adjustment Act is a wonderful tool of incitement to legal and illegal emigration.

YS: It is, indeed, a factor of incitement.

SL: Don’t you see it as a tool to destabilize society and the government?

YS: In this case we can also say that the fact of giving the Spanish citizenship to descendants of Spaniards born in Cuba is a destabilizing factor.

SL: That’s beside the point, since there are historic reasons for that and besides Spain applies this law to all Latin American countries and not only to Cuba, while the Cuban Adjustment Act is unique in the world.

YS: Yes, but there are strong relations. Baseball is played both in Cuba and in the United States.

SL: And also in the Dominican Republic and there’s no Dominican Adjustment Act.

YS: There is, however, a tradition of rapprochement.

SL: Then, why wasn’t this law approved before the Revolution?

YS: Because Cubans didn’t want to leave their country. At that time, Cuba was a country of immigration and not of emigration.

SL: It’s absolutely false, because in the 1950’s Cuba already ranked second among Latin American countries in terms of the number of migrants to the United States, only after Mexico. Cuba sent more emigrants to the United States than all of Central America and South America together, while today Cuba only occupies the 10th position, in spite of the Cuban Adjustment Act and the economic sanctions.

YS: Maybe, but that obsession of leaving the country did no exist.

SL: Figures show the opposite. Nowadays, I repeat, Cuba only occupies the 10th position in the American continent in terms of migratory emission to the United States. Then, the obsession you’re talking about is stronger in at least nine countries of the continent.

YS: Yes, but at that time Cubans left and returned.

SL: It’s the same things today, since every year Cubans abroad return to spend their vacation here. In addition, before 2004 and before the restrictions imposed by President Bush that limited the trips of Cubans from the US to 14 days every three years, Cubans constituted the minority in the United States that traveled more often to their country of origin, much more than Mexicans, for example, which shows that the vast majority of Cubans in the United States are economic émigrés and not political exiles, since they return to their country for visiting, something a political exile wouldn’t do.

YS: Yes, but ask them if they want to stay to live here again.

SL: But that’s what you did, right? Besides, in July, 2007, you wrote in your blog that your case was not an isolated one. And I quote: “Three years ago [...] in Zurich [...], I decided to return to my country to stay. My friends thought I was joking; my mother refused to accept that her daughter no longer lived in the Switzerland of milk and chocolate.” On August 12, 2004, you showed up before immigration authorities in Havanato explain your case. You wrote: I was surprised when they told me to mark in line, in the queue of ‘those who return’ [...]. So I found, all of a sudden, other ‘crazy people’ like I, each of them with his or her gruesome story of return.” Then, this phenomenon of returning to the country exists.

YS: Yes, but these are people who return for personal reasons. There are some who had debts abroad, others who couldn’t stand living abroad. Well, dozens of reasons.

SL: Then, in spite of difficulties and daily vicissitudes, life is not that terrible here, since some return. Do you think that Cubans have too much of an idyllic vision of life abroad?

YS: That’s due to the propaganda of the regime, which presents life abroad too negatively and that has caused the opposite effect on the people, who have overly idealized the western way of life. The problem is that, in Cuba, emigration for more than eleven months is definitive, when one could live two years abroad and return for a while and then leave again, etc.

SL: Then, if I understand correctly, the problem in Cuba is rather of an economic nature, since people want to leave the country to improve their standard of living.

YS: Many would like to travel and then be able to return but migratory laws don’t allow them. I’m sure that if that were possible many people would emigrate for two years, and then they would return to leave again and return, etc.

SL: There were interesting comments about it in your blog. Several émigrés spoke about their disappointments with respect to the western way of living.

YS: That’s very human. You fall in love with a woman and three months later you lose your enthusiasm. You buy a pair of shoes and two days later you don’t like them any more. Disappointments are part of human nature. The worst thing is that people can’t return.

SL: But people return.

YS: Yes, but only on vacation.

SL: But they have the right to stay all the time they want, even several years, although they lose some advantages related to their status of permanent resident, like the ration card, priority for housing, etc.

YS: Yes, but people can’t stay for several months here, they have their lives abroad, their jobs, etc.

SL: That’s something else, and it’s the same for all émigrés the world over. In any case, they can perfectly return to Cuba whenever they like and stay there all the time they want. The only thing is that if they stay for more than eleven months outside the country they lose some advantages. On the other hand, I find it hard to understand, if reality is so terrible here, if someone has the opportunity to live abroad, in a developed country, why would he or she like to return to live in Cuba again?

YS: For numerous reasons, their family bonds, etc.

SL: Then reality is not that dramatic.

YS: I wouldn’t say that, but some people have better living conditions than others.

SL: What are in your opinion the objectives of the US government with respect to Cuba?

YS: The United States wants a change of government in Cuba, but that’s also what I want.

SL: Then you share a common objective with the United States

YS: Like many Cubans.

SL: I’m not convinced of that, but, why? Why is it a dictatorship? What does Washington want from Cuba?

YS: I believe it’s a geopolitical issue. There’s also the will of the Cuban exile, which is taken into account, and that wants a new Cuba, the well-being of Cubans.

SL: With the imposition of economic sanctions?

YS: It all depends on whom you’re referring to. As for the United States, I think they want to prevent the migratory bomb from exploding.

SL: Is that so? With the Cuban Adjustment Act that incites Cubans to leave their country? That’s not serious. Why don’t they repeal that law then?

YS: I think that the real objective of the United States is to finish with the Cuban government in order to have a more stable space. A lot has been said about David against Goliath to talk about the conflict. But to me the only Goliath is the Cuban government, which imposes control, illegality, low wages, repression, limitations.

SL: You don’t think that US hostility has also contributed?

YS: I not only think it has contributed to it but also that it has become the main argument to say that we live in a besieged fortress and that all dissidence is treason. Actually, I think that the Cuban government fears the disappearance of this confrontation. The Cuban government wants the maintenance of economic sanctions.

SL: Really? Because that’s exactly what Washington says in a somewhat contradictory way, because if that were the case, it should lift the sanctions, thus leaving the Cuban government to stand up to its responsibilities. The excuse of the sanctions to justify problems in Cuba wouldn’t exist.

YS: Every time the United States has tried to improve the situation, the Cuban government has had a counterproductive attitude.

SL: When has the United States tried to improve the situation? Sanctions have been strengthened since 1960, with the exception of the Carter period. It’s difficult then to maintain this discourse. In 1992, the United States voted the Torricelli Law with an extraterritorial reach; in 1996, the Helms-Burton Law, extraterritorial and retroactive; in 2004, Bush adopted new sanctions and increased them in 2006. We can’t say that the United States has tried to improve the situation. Facts show the opposite. Besides, if sanctions are favorable to the Cuban government and it’s only a matter of an excuse, why not eliminate them? Leaders are not the ones who suffer as a consequence of sanctions, but the people.

YS: Obama took a step in that regard, insufficient perhaps, but interesting.

SL: He only eliminated the restrictions Bush imposed on Cubans, which prevented them from travelling to their country for more than 14 days every three years, at the very best, and provided that they had a direct member of their family in Cuba. He even redefined the concept of family. Thus, a Cuban in Florida who only had an uncle in Cuba couldn’t travel to his country because he was not considered to be a “direct” family member. Obama didn’t eliminate all the sanctions imposed by Bush and we didn’t even return to the status that existed under Clinton.

YS: I think the two parties should lower their tone about everything, and Obama has done that. Obama can’t eliminate sanctions, since it takes congressional approval.

SL: But he can alleviate them significantly, by signing simple executive orders, which he refuses to do for the time being.

YS: He’s busy on other issues, like unemployment and the heath reform.

SL: However he took time to respond to your interview.

YS: I’m a fortunate person.

SL: The position of the Cuban government is the following: we don’t have to take steps before the United States since we don’t impose sanctions on the United States.

YS: Yes and the government also says that the United States should not ask for domestic changes, because that’s interference.

SL: That’s the case, right?

YS: Then if I ask for a change it’s also interference?

SL: No, because you’re Cuban and for that reason you have the right to decide the future of your country.

YS: The problem is not who is asking for those changes but the changes in question.

SL: I’m not sure, because as a French citizen I wouldn’t like the Belgian or the German government to interfere with France’s internal affairs. As a Cuban, do you accept that the US government tells you how to govern your country?

YS: If the objective is an aggression to the country, it’s obviously unacceptable.

SL: Do you consider economic sanctions an aggression?

YS: Yes, I consider them an aggression that hasn’t had results and that it’s a mummy of the cold war, that it makes no sense, that it affects the people and that has made the government stronger. But I repeat that the Cuban government is responsible for 80% of the current economic crisis and the remaining 20% is due to the economic sanctions.

SL: Once more, I repeat, it’s exactly the position of the US government and figures show the opposite. If that were the case I don’t think that 187 countries in the world would bother to vote a resolution against the sanctions. This is the 18th consecutive time that the vast majority of the UN member nations declare themselves to be against this economic punishment. If it were marginal issue, I don’t think these nations would bother to vote.

YS: But I’m not a specialist in economics; it’s my personal feeling

SL: What do you advocate then for Cuba?

YS: I think the economy needs to be liberalized. That can’t be done overnight, because it would cause a fracture and social differences that would affect the most vulnerable people. But it has to be done gradually and the Cuban government has the possibility of doing it.

SL: A “sui generis” capitalism, like you say.

YS: Cuba is a sui generis island. We can create a sui generis capitalism.

SL: Yoani Sánchez, thank you for your time and your availability.

YS: Thank you.

Salim Lamrani is a professor in charge of courses at the Paris-Sorbonne -Paris IV University and at the Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée University. He’s a French journalist and a specialist on relations between Cuba and the USA. He has just published lamranisalim

http://lchirino.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/yoani-sanchez-washington-wants-a-change-of-government-in-cuba-thats-what-i-want-too-fourth-and-last-part/

Published response by Yoani:

I don’t enjoy going through life defending myself against attacks, perhaps because I have spent most of it in the crossfire of criticism. I’ve learned that at times it is better to digest the insult and move on, because denigration sullies the one who does it more than the victim. Everything, however, has its limits. It is a very different thing to put words in my mouth that I did not say, as has happened with the interview published by Salim Lamrani in Rebelión. As I started to read it I didn’t note much distortion, but by the second part I couldn’t recognize myself. It’s true that in the introduction he tries to generate an aversion for me in his readers, but it is the right of any interviewer to describe how he sees the object of his questions.

The big surprise has been noted, in the way in which he presents the text: enormous omissions, distortions and even invented phrases attributed to me. It would have been just another attempt, among many thousands, to attribute to me positions I don’t share and declarations I never made, if it weren’t for the fact that the official Cuban media was prepared to quickly echo the rearranged interview. Yesterday, when I saw the presenter of the most boring program on official television refer, without ever mentioning my name, to a series of questions that had “stripped me naked,” I began to understand everything. The reason for the adulteration was not haste in transcription nor the desire of the journalist to prove his hypothesis at all cost, even distorting the words of the interviewee to do so. Something major is brewing with this semi-apocryphal text, and I now make a stop along the way in my blog to warn of it.

I have a very vivid memory of that afternoon almost three months ago - curiously Mr. Lamrani has waited all this time to publish our conversation - and of the words we exchanged. I remember his stereotypical questions, at times uninformed about our reality, and with very little resemblance to those, as documented, that he has reworked to appear to be a specialist. I would not characterize myself as one who responds in monosyllables, and I had a hard time finding myself among so much parsimony. As our interchange at the Hotel Plaza advanced, I could sense the sympathy he had for my position growing. In the end, I felt that all the barriers had fallen and he understood that we were not opponents, simply people who saw the same phenomena from different viewpoints. A final hug on his part confirmed it. But, evidently, his discipline for “the cause” was stronger than his journalistic ethics, and the professor from the Sorbonne ended up - visibly in the second part of the interview - falsifying my voice. On his painfully hip iPhone my moderate phrases must have been like a computer virus, eating away at the stereotypes, a call to end the confrontation that people like him prefer to feed.

Presumably one or both of them have a tape which could be made public.
--J McA

Cuban Medical Aid to Haiti

2010-04-25T09:44:00.000-07:00

One of the World’s Best Kept Secrets:Cuban Medical Aid to Haiti

By EMILY J. KIRK and JOHN M. KIRK

Media coverage of Cuban medical cooperation following the disastrous recent earthquake in Haiti was sparse indeed. International news reports usually described the Dominican Republic as being the first to provide assistance, while Fox News sang the praises of U.S. relief efforts in a report entitled "U.S. Spearheads Global Response to Haiti Earthquake"-a common theme of its extensive coverage. CNN also broadcast hundreds of reports, and in fact one focused on a Cuban doctor wearing a T-shirt with a large image of Che Guevara–and yet described him as a "Spanish doctor".

In general, international news reports ignored Cuba’s efforts. By March 24, CNN for example, had 601 reports on their news website regarding the earthquake in Haiti-of which only 18 (briefly) referenced Cuban assistance. Similarly, between them the New York Times and the Washington Post had 750 posts regarding the earthquake and relief efforts, though not a single one discusses in any detail any Cuban support. In reality, however, Cuba’s medical role had been extremely important-and had been present since 1998.

Cuba and Haiti Pre-Earthquake

In 1998, Haiti was struck by Hurricane Georges. The hurricane caused 230 deaths, destroyed 80% of the crops, and left 167,000 people homeless.[1] Despite the fact that Cuba and Haiti had not had diplomatic relations in over 36 years, Cuba immediately offered a multifaceted agreement to assist them, of which the most important was medical cooperation.

Cuba adopted a two-pronged public health approach to help Haiti. First, it agreed to maintain hundreds of doctors in the country for as long as necessary, working wherever they were posted by the Haitian government. This was particularly significant as Haiti’s health care system was easily the worst in the Americas, with life expectancy of only 54 years in 1990 and one out of every 5 adult deaths due to AIDS, while 12.1% of children died from preventable intestinal infectious diseases.[2]

In addition Cuba agreed to train Haitian doctors in Cuba, providing that they would later return and take the places of the Cuban doctors (a process of "brain gain" rather than "brain drain"). Significantly, the students were selected from non-traditional backgrounds, and were mainly poor. It was thought that, because of their socio-economic background, they fully understood their country’s need for medical personnel, and would return to work where they were needed. The first cohort of students began studying in May, 1999 at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM).

By 2007, significant change had already been achieved throughout the country. It is worth noting that Cuban medical personnel were estimated to be caring for 75% of the population.[3] Studies by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) indicated clear improvements in the health profile since this extensive Cuban medical cooperation began.

*************************

Improvements in Public Health in Haiti, 1999-2007[4]

Health Indicator 1999 2007

Infant Mortality, per 1,000 live births 80 33
Child Mortality Under 5 per 1,000 135 59.4
Maternal Mortality per 100,000 live births 523 285
Life Expectancy (years) 54 61

Cuban medical personnel had clearly made a major difference to the national health profile since 1998, largely because of their proactive role in preventive medicine-as can be seen below.

Selected Statistics on Cuban Medical Cooperation
Dec. 1998-May 2007[5]

Visits to the doctor 10,682,124
Doctor visits to patients 4,150,631
Attended births 86,633
Major and minor surgeries 160,283
Vaccinations 899,829
Lives saved (emergency) 210,852

****************************

By 2010, at no cost to medical students, Cuba had trained some 550 Haitian doctors, and is at present training a further 567. Moreover, since 1998 some 6,094 Cuban medical personnel have worked in Haiti. They had given over 14.6 million consultations, carried out 207,000 surgical operations, including 45,000 vision restoration operations through their Operation Miracle programme, attended 103,000 births, and taught literacy to 165,000. In fact at the time of the earthquake there were 344 Cuban medical personnel there. All of this medical cooperation, it must be remembered, was provided over an 11-year period before the earthquake of January 12, 2010.[6]

Cuba and Haiti Post-Earthquake

The earthquake killed at least 220,000, injured 300,000 and left 1.5 million homeless.[7] Haitian PrimeMinister Jean-Max Bellerive described it as "the worst catastrophe that has occurred in Haiti in two centuries".[8]

International aid began flooding in. It is important to note the type of medical aid provided by some major international players. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), for example, an organization known for its international medical assistance, flew in some 348 international staff, in addition to the 3,060 national staff it already employed. By March 12 they had treated some 54,000 patients, and completed 3,700 surgical operations.[9]

Canada’s contribution included the deployment of 2,046 Canadian Forces personnel, including 200 DART personnel. The DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team) received the most media attention, as it conducted 21,000 consultations-though it should be noted they do not treat any serious trauma patients or provide surgical care. Indeed, among the DART personnel, only 45 are medical staff, with others being involved in water purification, security, and reconstruction. In total, the Canadians stayed for only 7 weeks.[10]

The United States government, which received extensive positive media attention, sent the USNS "Comfort", a 1,000-bed hospital ship with a 550-person medical staff and stayed for 7 weeks, in which time they treated 871 patients, performing 843 surgical operations.[11] Both the Canadian and US contributions were important-while they were there.

Lost in the media shuffle was the fact that, for the first 72 hours following the earthquake, Cuban doctors were in fact the main medical support for the country. Within the first 24 hours, they had completed 1,000 emergency surgeries, turned their living quarters into clinics, and were running the only medical centers in the country, including 5 comprehensive diagnostic centers (small hospitals) which they had previously built. In addition another 5 in various stages of construction were also used, and they turned their ophthalmology center into a field hospital-which treated 605 patients within the first 12 hours following the earthquake.[12]

Cuba soon became responsible for some 1,500 medical personnel in Haiti. Of those, some 344 doctors were already working in Haiti, while over 350 members of the "Henry Reeve" Emergency Response Medical Brigade were sent by Cuba following the earthquake. In addition, 546 graduates of ELAM from a variety of countries, and 184 5th and 6th year Haitian ELAM students joined, as did a number of Venezuelan medical personnel. In the final analysis, they were working throughout Haiti in 20 rehabilitation centers and 20 hospitals, running 15 operating theatres, and had vaccinated 400,000. With reason Fidel Castro stated, "we send doctors, not soldiers".[13]

A glance at the medical role of the various key players is instructive.

Comparative Medical Contributions in Haiti by March 23[14]

MSF Canada United States Cuba
No. of Staff
3,408 45 550 1,504

No. of Patients Treated
54,000 21,000 871 227,143

No. of Surgeries
3,700 0 843 6,499

These comparative data, compiled from several sources, are particularly telling as they indicate the significant (and widely ignored) medical contribution of the Cubans. In fact, they have treated 4.2 times the number of patients compared with MSF (which has over twice as many workers, as well as significantly more financial resources), and 10.8 times more than the Canadian DART team. (As noted, Canadian and US medical personnel had left by March 9). Also notable is the fact that the Cuban medical contingent was roughly three times the size of the American staff, although they treated 260.7 times more patients than U.S. medical personnel. Clearly, there have been significant differences in the nature of medical assistance provided.

It is also important to note that approximately one-half of the Cuban medical staff was working outside the capital, Port-au-Prince, where there was significant damage as well. Many medical missions could not get there, however, due to transportation issues. Significantly, the Cuban medical brigade also worked to minimize epidemics by making up 30 teams to educate communities on how to properly dispose of waste, as well as how to minimize public health risks. Noted Cuban artist Kcho also headed a cultural brigade made up of clowns, magicians and dancers, supported by psychologists and psychiatrists, to deal with the trauma experienced by Haitian children.

Perhaps most impressively, following the growing concern for the health of the country, due to a poor and now largely destroyed health care system Cuba, working with ALBA (the Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América) countries, presented to the WHO an integral program to reconstruct the health care system of Haiti. Essentially, they are offering to rebuild the entire health care system. It will be supported by ALBA and Brazil, and run by Cubans and Cuban-trained medical staff. This is to include hospitals, polyclinics, and medical schools. In addition, the Cuban government has offered to increase the number of Haitian students attending medical school in Cuba. This offer of medical cooperation represents an enormous degree of support for Haiti.[15] Sadly, this generous offer has not been reported by international media.

While North American media might have ignored Cuba’s role, Haiti has not. A pointed remark was made by Haitian President Mr. René Préval, who noted, "you did not wait for an earthquake to help us".[16] Similarly, Haiti’s Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive has also repeatedly noted that the first three countries to help were Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

Sadly (but not surprisingly), while Cuba’s efforts to assist Haiti have increased, international efforts have continued to dwindle. The head of the Cuban medical mission, Dr. Carlos Alberto García, summed up well the situation just two weeks after the tragedy: "many foreign delegations have already begun to leave, and the aid which is arriving now is not the same it used to be. Sadly, as always happens, soon another tragedy will appear in another country, and the people of Haiti will be forgotten, left to their own fate". Significantly, he added "However we will still be here long after they have all gone."[17] This in fact has been the case. Canadian forces, for example, returned home and the USNS Comfort sailed several weeks ago. By contrast, Cuban President Raúl Castro noted: "we have accompanied the Haitian people, and we will continue with them whatever time is needed, no matter how many years, with our very modest support".[18]

A representative of the World Council of Churches to the United Nations made the telling comment that "humanitarian aid could not be human if it was only publicized for 15 days".[19] Today Cuba, with the support of ALBA and Brazil, is working not to build a field hospital, but rather a health care system. And, while international efforts have been largely abandoned, the Cuban staff and Cuban-trained medical staff will remain, as they have done for the past 11 years, for as long as necessary. This is a story that international media have chosen not to tell-now that the television cameras have gone. Yet it is an extraordinary story of true humanitarianism, and of great success in saving lives since 1998. Moreover, in light of Cuba’s success in providing public health care (at no cost to the patients) to millions of Haitians, this approach to preventive, culturally sensitive, low cost and effective medicine needs to be told. That significant contribution to this impoverished nation, and Cuba’s ongoing commitment to its people, clearly deserve to be recognized. Until then it will sadly remain as one of the world’s best- kept secrets.

Emily J. Kirk will be an M.A. student in Latin American Studies at CambridgeUniversity in September.

John Kirk is a professor of Latin American Studies at Dalhousie University, Canada. Both are working on a project on Cuban medical internationalism sponsored by Canada’s Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Professor Kirk co-wrote with Michael Erisman the 2009 book "Cuba’s Medical Internationalism: Origins, Evolution and Goals" (Palgrave Macmillan). He spent most of February and March in El Salvador and Guatemala, accompanying the Henry Reeve Brigade in El Salvador, and working with the Brigada Medica Cubana in Guatemala.

Notes

[1] "Audit of USAID/HAITI Hurricane Georges Recovery Programme". USAID. 15 May, 2001. Retrieved 10 March, 2010 from

[2] See entry for "Haiti" on the Pan American Health Organization website, found at http://www.paho.org/english/dd.ais/cp_332.htm. Accessed February 2, 2010.

[3] William Steif, "Cuban Doctors Aid Strife-Torn Haiti." The State. April 26, 2004, and found athttp://havanajournal.com/culture/entry/cuban_doctors_aid_strife_torn_haiti/Accessed June 21, 2007.

[4] See entry for "Haiti" on the Pan American Health Organization website, found at http://www.paho.org/english/dd/ais/cp_332.htm. Accessed February 2 2010.

[5] Anna Kovac, "Cuba Trains Hundred of Haitian Doctors to Make a Difference," August 6, 2007. Located on the MEDICC website athttp:www.medicc.org/cubahealthreports/chr-article.php?&a=1035. Accessed February 2, 2010.

[6] Ibid., "Haitian Medical Students in Cuba". Medical Education Cooperation With Cuba. 12 January, 2010. Retrieved 12 January, 2010 from , "La colabaración cubana permanecerá en Haití los años que sean necesarios", Cubadebate. 24 February, 2010. Retrieved 9 March, 2010 from , "Fact Sheet: Cuban Medical Cooperation With Haiti". Medicc Review. 15 January, 2009. Retrieved 2 February, 2010 fromhttp://www.medicc.org/ns/index.php?s=104.

[7] "Haiti Earthquake: Special Coverage". CNN. 20 March, 2010. Retrieved 22 March, 2010 from

[8] Tyler Maltbie, "Haiti Earthquake: The Nations That Are Stepping Up To Help", The Christian Science Monitor, Posted January 14, 2010 onhttp://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print273879. Accessed January 28, 2010.

[9] "Two Months After the Quake, New Services and New Concerns". MSF. 12 March, 2010. Retrieved 17 March, 2010 from

[10] "Canada’s Response to the Earthquake in Haiti: Progress to Date". Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. March 17, 2010. Retrieved 17 March, 2010 from

[11] "USNS Comfort Completes HaitiMission, March 9, 2010". American Forces Press Service. 9 March, 2010. Retrieved 11 March, 2010 from

[12] John Burnett, "Cuban Doctors Unsung Heroes of Haitian Earthquake", National Public Radio report, January 24, 2010, and found athttp://www.npr.org/templates/story.ph?storyID=122919202. Accessed 28 January, 2010.

[13] José Steinsleger. "Haiti, Cuba y la ley primera," La Jornada, February 3, 2010., Data in this section came from the address given by Ambassador Rodolfo Reyes Rodríguez on January, 27, 2010 inGeneva at the 13th Special Session of the U.N. Human Rights Council on Haiti. It can be accessed at "Cuba en Ginebra: ‘Ante tan difícil situación humanitaria en Haití no puede haber titubeos ni indiferencia," on the Cubbadebate website:

[14] Connor Gorry. "Two of the 170,000 + Cases". Medicc Review. March 8, 2010. Retrieved 10 March, 2010 from , "Cooperación con Haití debe ser a largo plazo." Juventud Rebelde. 23 March, 2010. Retrieved March 23, 2010 from , "Haiti: Two Months After The Quake, New Services and New Concerns". MSF. 12 March, 2010. Retrieved 17 March, 2010 from http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article_print.cfm?id=4320>, "Haiti-USNS Comfort Medical And Surgical Support". U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 11 March, 2010. Retrieved 11 March, 2010 from , Brett Popplewell. "This HaitianTown Is Singing Canada’s Praise". The Star. 26 January, 2010. Retrieved 17 March from , "USNS Comfort Leaves Haiti". 13 News. 11 March, 2010. Retrieved 11 March, 2010 from

[15] In a March 27, 2010 meeting in Port-au-Prince between President Préval and the Cuban and Brazilian ministers of health (José Ramón Balaguer and José Gomes), details were provided about what Balaguer termed "a plot of solidarity to assist the Haitian people". Gomes added "We have just signed an agreement-Cuba, Brazil and Haiti-according to which all three countries make a commitment to unite our forces in order to reconstruct the health system in Haiti. An extraordinary amount of work is currently being carried out in terms of meeting the most basic and most pressing needs, but now it is necessary to think about the future [.] Haiti needs a permanent, quality healthcare system, supported by well-trained professionals [.] We will provide this, together with Cuba-a country with an extremely long internationalist experience, a great degree of technical ability, great determination, and an enormous amount of heart. Brazil and Cuba, two nations that are so close, so similar, now face a new challenge: together we will unite our efforts to rebuild Haiti, and rebuild the public health system of this country". See "Cuba y Brasil suman esfuerzos con Haití," Juventud Rebelde, March 28, 2010 (Translation to English provided by authors).

[16] "Presidente Preval agradece a Fidel y Raúl Castro ayuda solidaria a Haití". 8 February, 2010. Retrieved 9 February, 2010 from

[17] María Laura Carpineta, "Habla el jefe de los 344 médicos cubanos instalados en Haití desde hace doce años". Página 12 [Argentina]. February 4, 2010, found at CUBA-L [18] Ibid. [19] "Press Conference on Haiti Humanitarian Aid," held at the United Nations on March 23, 2004 and found at htto://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2004/CanadaPressCfc.doc.htm. Accessed November 21, 2008.

This commentary was written for Cuba-L Analysis and CounterPunch.

Corruption: The true counter-revolution?

2010-04-22T11:09:00.000-07:00

By Esteban Morales

From the UNEAC website

When we closely observe Cuba's internal situation today, we can have no doubt that the counter-revolution, little by little, is taking positions at certain levels of the State and Government.

Without a doubt, it is becoming evident that there are people in positions of government and state who are girding themselves financially for when the Revolution falls, and others may have everything almost ready to transfer state-owned assets to private hands, as happened in the old USSR.

Fidel said that we ourselves could put an end to the Revolution and I tend to think that, among other concerns, the Commander in Chief was referring to the questions relative to corruption. Because this phenomenon, already present, has continued to appear in force. If not, see what has happened with the distribution of lands in usufruct in some municipalities around the country: fraud, illegalities, favoritism, bureaucratic slowness, etc.

In reality, corruption is a lot more dangerous than the so-called domestic dissidence. The latter is still isolated; it lacks an alternative program, has no real leaders, no masses. But corruption turns out to be the true counter-revolution, which can do the most damage because it is within the government and the state apparatus, which really manage the country's resources.

Otherwise, let us look at something very simple. When is there powdered milk in the black market (which has been rising in price to 70 pesos per kilogram)? When the powdered milk reaches the state-owned warehouses. There's no better example than that. And so it is with the products acquired in the black market by part of a majority of the population. In other words, at the expense of the state's resources, there is an illegal market from which everyone benefits, except the State.

And what can you tell me about the street vendors, outside the large hard-currency stores, offering to sell everything. It is a corruption in which almost everyone participates, generated by the corruption of state functionaries. Because, as far as we know, in Cuba there is only one importer – the State. I don't think that what comes in the packages from Miami can generate a market that big, much less a market of lasting products.

Observe, too, the movement of pork meat from state-run stores to private outlets, the prices of beverages and water sold at the various tourism chains. The suspicious differences in prices that we stumble on so frequently.

In other words, it is evident that there is an illegal flow of products between the state's wholesale trade and the street commerce. An entire underground economy that the State is unable to control and will be impossible to set aright as long as the big imbalances between supply and demand that today characterizes our economy exists.

This economy is, then, a form of counter-revolution that does have concealed leaders, offers alternatives to the State's offerings, and has masses that practice it.

But the situation sketched above is not the most dangerous part of the affair we are now dealing with. That's only its popular surrounding.

What was recently learned regarding the weaknesses of a group of functionaries at a very high level – having to do with favoritism, the buddy system, certain acts of corruption and carelessness in the handling of sensitive information, as well as some evidence of a struggle for power waged by those functionaries – was information that, lamentably, was passing into the hands of the Spanish intelligence services, even though those services were very careful not to enlist the officials' participation. Those are extremely serious matters.

In other words, matters as sensitive as the hunger and hope for power, favoritism, corruption and unseemly statements about the country's top leadership, which were already known by the foreign special services. A real “political merchandise” with extremely high added value in the hands of the enemies of the Revolution.

When the Cuban government turned over to the FBI all the information it had about the activities of the counter-revolution in the United States, activities that included even the possibility of assassination attempts against the U.S. president, what did the FBI do? Instead of taking steps against the counter-revolution, instead of acting against the Cuban-American Mafia, they sought to find out, like hound dogs, where the information that Cuba had given them came from, what were the sources. And there we have our five devoted, heroic compatriots who have spent more than 11 years serving unjust sentences in U.S. prisons.

After the statements made by Fidel about how we ourselves can destroy the Revolution, about the existence of reasons to think that our Revolution may be reversible, what the U.S. special services must be doing is looking for information that corroborates Fidel's concerns.

They're looking for confirmation for the words of the Commander in Chief, watching closely what happens every day in Cuba, digging into everything that may allow them to find out where is the real counter-revolutionary force in Cuba, a force that can topple the Revolution, a force that appears to be not below but above, in the very levels of government and the state apparatus.

It is formed by the corrupt officials, not at all minor, who are being discovered in very high posts and with strong connections – personal, domestic and external – generated after dozens of years occupying the same positions of power. Note than none of the men “defenestrated” until now (at least since Trials 1 and 2) was a simple employee.

Very recently, General Acevedo, director of the IACC (Institute of Civil Aeronautics of Cuba) was removed, and what is making the rounds in unofficial circles about the reasons for his ouster is enough to keep people awake at nights.

There must be some truth in what they say, because this is a very small and familial country. The affair still has not had an exhaustive public explanation, as the people expect, because – if it's like the rumors say – the people's money and resources were squandered amid an economic situation that's quite critical to the country. So, either to vindicate Acevedo or to condemn him, you have to explain it to the people, the people the Revolution has created and formed, technically and scientifically, and who are prepared and with sufficient ability.

In reality, I must say, as a hypothesis, that what happened in the IACC is not unique. It has been discovered in other places and there may still be companies where the same is happening, i.e., where the chiefs are receiving commissions and opening bank accounts in other countries. Which is a working theory valid enough to open other investigations so that such affairs will not catch us by surprise. In economics, there is a “surprise audit” that is not meant to offend anyone and should not annoy anyone. To audit is not to offend; it is a mechanism of precaution that contributes to honesty.

An element we mustn’t fail to consider is that the focus of the United States' policy toward Cuba changed long ago (1986-1994). Today, basic attention is paid to Cuba's domestic reality. It is not an absolute orientation but it is fundamental and prioritized. Everything that's happening domestically in Cuba is being observed, monitored by the American politicians and particularly by the U.S. special services.

For obvious reasons that need not be explained, the Americans know better than us what Cubans and how many Cubans have bank accounts abroad. Who receive commissions and what business they're in. Because all the companies with which Cuba does business have intelligence apparatuses and almost all of them coordinate with the U.S. services. And if they don't, there are officials who, as soon as they get hold of sensitive information about Cuba, link up with the American services, which, by the way, pay handsomely for that information.

What's most lamentable is that the American services are better informed than we are about all the possible movements of our businessmen. And that's information that, if left to run, in other words, accumulate, is an excellent conduit for bribery, blackmail and the recruiting of any Cuban official. This doesn't mean it always works; there may be someone who becomes corrupt but doesn't allow himself to be recruited, because it is a very subtle matter. But whoever turns to corruption to enrich himself will find it difficult to retain other values.

Any Cuban functionary who, in his relations with any foreign enterprise, becomes corrupt, should know that that information could fall into the hands of the special services of any country, and from there to the hands of the American services it's but an instant. A dossier is immediately opened, and it is filled with information until it is considered necessary or pertinent to subject that functionary to bribery, blackmail or recruitment.

This is not being paranoid. Only fools fail to realize that any sensitive information about Cuba, its activities abroad or regarding any Cuban functionary, that is considered to be useful is very well paid by the special services of the United States. And if we don't know this by now, we're finished.

It is, then, a covert area of the subversion against Cuba that, particularly in the medium and long run, produces very good political dividends. It is an area of the counter-revolution that has nothing to do with the so-called dissidence, the piddling groups or the ill-called “ladies in white.”

Observe how the weaknesses of some Cuban functionaries were being transferred to the Spanish intelligence services. Cubans in the FAR and the MININT involved in drug trafficking. Discovered by Cuba in 1989, but that was already privileged information in the hands of the DEA, the FBI and the rest of the American special services.

Actions of that type seriously affect the ability of the country to press forward. It is as clear as a mathematical algorithm that the ability of any nation to deal with international confrontation is measured, in the first place, by its internal fortitude.

If at least Cuba could discover its corrupt officials early, the damage could be slighter.

Esteban Morales, a Cuban academician, is honorary director of the U.S. Studies Center at the University of Havana.

Cuban Environmentalist Wins Award

2010-04-19T08:33:00.001-07:00

Cuban scientist wins U.S.-based environmental prize
Mon Apr 19, 2010 8:02am BST

By Jeff Franks

HAVANA (Reuters) - A singing scientist who says the key to Cuba's agricultural future lies in its agrarian past has become the first Cuban to win a U.S.-based Goldman Environmental Prize, the world's biggest award for grassroots environmentalism.

Humberto Rios, 46, was announced as a prize winner on Monday in San Francisco along with five other activists from around the world. They will each receive $150,000, a huge sum in Cuba where the average annual salary is equivalent to $240.

Rios said the award initially was met with suspicion by his government because it came from the United States, Cuba's longtime ideological foe. But Cuban officials eventually embraced it and he hopes it contributes to improving U.S.-Cuba relations.

"I think there's a new vision, which is to cool a little bit the hostile environment," he said. "I think we have common problems -- maybe different solutions, but also common solutions," he told Reuters recently.

He will use his prize money for such things as house repairs, but some will go toward funding his work, Rios said.

The prize was begun in 1990 by philanthropists Richard and Rhoda Goldman to encourage environmental protection.

Rios won for his work promoting a return to more traditional farming techniques focusing on seed diversity, crop rotation and the use of organic pest control and fertilizers to both increase crops and improve the communist-led island's environment.

Rios is also a musician and has found music to be a useful tool in spreading his message. At local events, he sings folk and salsa songs that promote biodiversity and good environmental practices -- "Recycle, papi, recycle" is one -- and get the farmers dancing in the fields.

Traditional farming methods fell out of favor in Cuba as agriculture, dominated by sugar production, became industrialized in the last half of the 20th century, particularly after the Soviet Union took the island under its wing following Cuba's 1959 revolution.

Flooded with pesticides and fertilizers from the Soviet bloc nations, Cuba in the 1980s became the highest-per-capita user of agrochemicals in Latin America.

At the same time, farmers, dependent on the government for seeds and supplies, had little choice in what they could grow.

POST-SOVIET CUBA

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Cuba was stuck with an agricultural system dependent on agrochemicals it could no longer get and an environment damaged by their heavy use.

Rios, then a doctoral student in agricultural sciences, began to see positive results as farmers, out of necessity, turned to traditional ways. In the late 1990s he launched a program to encourage their broader use.

His biggest emphasis, he told Reuters in a recent interview, was to simply give farmers more seed choices and to let them, not distant bureaucrats and scientists, decide which ones to use.

He began organizing "seed fairs" in farming communities where farmers could choose from a broad selection of seeds. They were encouraged to share information on the results so that each farm became a micro-experimental station.

The key was that farmers chose seeds suited to their specific conditions, he said, instead of everyone getting the same ones.

In different regions of the island, "the criteria for seed selection are completely different," Rios said.

He said yields began doubling and tripling, and soil damaged by years of overuse and chemicals began to recuperate as crops were rotated and agrochemicals abandoned.

"When you use a diversified system, over the years it increases the amount of protein per area, the amount of vitamins per area, it diminishes the amount of work per area and above all, it increases the smiles of the people," he said.

He says 50,000 farmers are involved in his Program for Local Agricultural Innovation, which is backed by the National Institute of Agricultural Sciences, but much work remains.

Most land and agriculture is under state control in Cuba, but the island has 250,000 small farmers and 1,100 private cooperatives who, together, produce 70 percent of agricultural output on less than a third of the available land.

Cuba is dependent on imports for most of its basic foods, which drains its fragile economy and has forced President Raul Castro to put more land in private hands and -- as Rios advocates -- decentralize decision-making to local levels.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Taxi Drivers and Retail Changes

2010-03-10T12:13:00.000-08:00

* Havana taxi drivers leasing vehicles

* Beauty parlors told to prepare to become cooperatives

* Experiments viewed as harbinger of retail reform

By Marc Frank

HAVANA, March 10 (Reuters) - Cuba nationalized all retail business in 1968, down to the shoe-shine shops, but in an attempt to stimulate the stagnant economy and reduce bureaucracy, it is experimenting with giving some of it back in a form of legal private enterprise.

By leasing some retail services to state employees, the government is testing cautious change in how the communist country operates small-scale business.

"We have begun experiments and are working on others to ease the burden on the state of some services it provides," Economy Minister Marino Murillo told the National Assembly at the close of 2009, without elaborating further.

Authorities have remained mum about their efforts, but a number of experiments are under way or about to be launched in Havana, a source with knowledge of local government activities, said.

The CubaTaxi office on Palatino Street in the Cerro municipality of the capital is home to one such experiment.

Thirty of the more than 2,000 state taxi drivers in the capital are leasing their vehicles rather than working for a wage, a small percentage of the tips and whatever they can pocket on the sly.

"You pay 595 convertible pesos for the car and then after a month 39 convertible pesos plus 40 pesos a day," said Elio, one of the drivers.

"You are responsible for maintaining the taxi and gas, but can buy parts and services from the state," he said.

The government pegs the convertible peso at $1.08 or 24 pesos.

"Overall the drivers are happy. There is still control over what we charge, but we are freer and earning more," Elio, who began driving a cab in 1986, said.

"I think this system is also better for the state which is guaranteed a net income with few headaches," he added.

The project will be evaluated in June, before being applied to other dispatch offices.

CASTRO FOSTERS DEBATE

President Raul Castro has fostered debate on what to do with the retail sector since taking over from brother Fidel Castro two years ago, but has ruled out a shift back to capitalism.

The debate has spilled over into the official media with exposes over irregular supplies, low wages, employees jacking up prices and pocketing proceeds, all the while delivering poor service despite layers of bureaucracy designed to control such activities.

"The government is simply accepting what already exists, adopting new structures to legalize what was before viewed as theft and instead of spending a fortune on useless bureaucrats has begun collecting taxes," a local economist said, asking his name not be used.

In Central Havana and 10 de Octubre municipalities, beauty parlor employees were recently called to meetings and informed they would be leased their shops as cooperatives on an experimental basis.

"They said the hairdressers would be leased the premises without the administration and service employees," a participant said.

"You have to pay rent for the shop, costs such as water, electricity, materials and the wages of anyone you contract, for example a receptionist or to clean up," she said.

"You can charge whatever on the basis of supply and demand and have to pay taxes on your profits," she added.

The project was scheduled to begin this month but was postponed in part to consider objections and proposals put forward by the beauticians, she said.

State-subsidized materials arrive sporadically at the parlors and services cost anywhere from the equivalent of $0.20 (five pesos) for a shampoo to between $1 and $2 (25 pesos to 50 pesos) for hair-dyeing.

"We buy shampoo, conditioner, dye or what have you at state foreign exchange shops with a 240 percent mark up, or get our friends to bring it in from Miami or Madrid," another beautician, who also asked her name not be used, said.

"Then we tell our clients there are no state supplies, but we bought them ourselves and will have to charge accordingly," she said.

(Editing by Jeff Franks and Cynthia Osterman)

Economy Minister Calls for Reforms

2010-03-08T21:19:00.000-08:00

* Economy minister says paternalistic state unaffordable

* Raul Castro aide slams resistance to retail sector reform

* Pilot projects readied in Havana in taxis, beauty salons

By Marc Frank

HAVANA, March 8 (Reuters) - Cuba's economy minister is pushing for less state intervention in one of the world's last Soviet-style economies, saying the government can no longer afford its all-encompassing control and paternalism, Communist Party sources say.

The drive by minister Marino Murillo appears aimed at overcoming resistance to new reforms under President Raul Castro, who has made extensive changes in agriculture since taking over in 2008 from ailing brother Fidel Castro and is thought to want change in other economic sectors.

Murillo told armed forces and interior ministry officials in January "the gigantic paternalistic state can no longer be, because there is no longer any way to maintain it," according to a Communist Party source who saw a video of the Jan. 16 event shown to party and government cadres.

Sensitive strategy and policy meetings are often not immediately made public in Communist-ruled Cuba, but videos of them are sometimes later shown to certain selected officials.

Cuba is grappling with a financial liquidity crisis triggered by the global recession which forced it to slash imports by 37 percent last year. Inefficiencies in the centralized economy have also reduced productivity.

Murillo said the Caribbean nation could no longer afford, for example, to pay tens of thousands of people to control state barber shops, beauty parlors and services such as appliance and watch repair shops. He suggested they could be administered differently by leasing them to workers, according to two people who also saw the video of his speech.

The economy minister, a former military officer appointed to the post a year ago, denounced those who might resist the changes, which appear to be underway in small experiments.

"I was called to a meeting last month and told the premises would be leased to employees soon as part of an experiment in the area," the administrator of a state-run beauty parlor in central Havana said, asking that her name not be cited.

A pilot project in Havana, the capital, has some state taxi drivers leasing their vehicles at a daily rate instead of receiving a wage, drivers said.

DECENTRALIZATION, COOPERATIVES, LEASING

Universities in a number of provinces have been asked to draw up proposals to transform local state-run services and minor production activity into cooperatives.

Professors who attended a similar presentation by Murillo at Havana University earlier this year said he made clear that economic necessity, not ideological choice, was driving change and that reforms already underway in agriculture were a model for what would come.

"He pointed to decentralization of agriculture and the various forms of property such as cooperatives and land leasing as a model for local production and services," said one of the professors, who, like the others, asked not to be identified due to restrictions on communication with foreign journalists.

President Castro has bemoaned the state-run economy's inefficiency and called for decentralization, local initiative and new forms of property management in non-strategic sectors. He also has said numerous state subsidies are no longer sustainable, a point Murillo repeated, the sources said.

"Raul Castro has no illusions about how the all-embracing paternalism of the past has left the Cuban economy in ruins," Brian Latell, a former CIA analyst who closely follows Cuban affairs, said.

"His dilemma is in the implementation of decentralizing reforms. Doing nothing, or proceeding too quickly could both have destabilizing consequences," Latell said.

MILITARY TECHNOCRATS

Raul Castro has appointed a number of military officers to the Economy and Planning Ministry, which insiders say is now the operational headquarters for his economic reform efforts.

When he was appointed minister, Murillo came with a new first deputy minister, General Adel Izquierdo, who was head of the military's economic department when Raul Castro served as defense minister.

Murillo quickly named Colonel Amando Perez Betancourt, the architect of efforts to make the military's state-run suppliers more efficient, as another deputy minister.

The minister, in both speeches, said the proposed solutions to Cuba's economic problems must come from the local level, and will differ from place to place and sector to sector.

"He said that while taxi drivers, beauticians and others might lease their equipment or places of work in the capital, that would not necessarily apply to other cities or state-run eateries where different solutions might prove more beneficial," one of the two people who saw the video said.

(Editing by Jeff Franks,

Cuba's public "privatization" debate

2010-02-12T07:49:00.001-08:00

Cuba's Communist Party newspaper has been publishing unusually frank criticisms of Cuban socialism.

By Nick Miroff
Published: February 9, 2010 06:29 ET

HAVANA, Cuba — Something unusual has been stirring lately in the pages of Granma, this country’s largest newspaper and the official mouthpiece of the Cuban Communist Party.

Lacking commercial advertising and printed entirely in red and black ink, Granma typically carries eight tabloid-style pages devoted to fawning coverage of Cuba’s top officials and the latest iniquities of Yankee imperialism. Its primary function is to promote the Cuban government, rather than cover it, offering an Orwellian chronicle of life on the island as a never-ending series of socialist triumphs.

But in recent months, Granma has become an unlikely forum for a debate that seems to portend much-expected reforms to Cuba’s state-run economy.

A flurry of op-ed columns have appeared lately in the paper’s “letters to the editor” section, staking out positions for and against something Cubans are calling “privatization” — small-scale liberalization measures that might allow more entrepreneurship and private business. At its roots, it is an argument over how to revive Cuba’s anemic economy, which was already woefully inefficient and unproductive before the global recession hit.

Most surprising, at least for the pages of Granma, is that many of the editorials contain rather frank criticisms of Cuba’s economic ills, which include petty corruption, the widespread theft of state goods and a low-wage system that pushes Cubans into black-market activity to make ends meet.

“What would it mean for the State to eliminate the ongoing farce of state-owned property?” asked one letter, signed by D. Gonzalez de la Cruz. Pilfering is so rife at state-run businesses that they’re already being privatized, he argued.

“In our current situation, privatization is already happening” Gonzalez wrote. “Only instead of a rational and well-thought-out process, it’s chaotic and perverse. What kind of social benefits do we get from state-run business and restaurants where the State pays the bills but the profits — obtained fraudulently and illegally — go into the pockets of the those who prey off the people and the State?”

The letters in Granma appear to be part of a broader re-examination of Cuban socialism called for in speeches by President Raul Castro, raising hopes and expectations among Cubans who struggle with constant shortages and a system that officially bans most forms of private commerce. Of course, the debates are bound by certain unspoken parameters, and do not contain calls for free-market capitalism nor any direct political criticism of Cuba’s leaders.

Rather, they are framed as a discussion about the best way to save Cuban socialism and its vaunted social safety net from an underachieving economy choked by excessive centralization and bureaucracy.

“I’m concerned about the future of my country, and it worries me that some still blindly believe that the old economic model we have is perfect,” wrote J. Gonzalez Fernandez in another Granma editorial, saying that he is a 28-year-old whose views are shared by “almost all young people.”

“We can’t keep living in the past. We have to think about the present and future of our country,” he wrote, adding that he believed “adjusting” socialism was needed to ensure its survival.

What’s not clear is when economic reforms may be enacted, nor how extensive they may be. With frustrations running high, many insist changes can’t wait. Even Cuba’s Catholic Church weighed in last week, publishing an editorial written by priest and economist P. Boris Moreno, who warned of “socioeconomic collapse” if reforms aren’t made.

And yet, if “privatization” is being floated in Granma and other official newspapers, does it indicate some package of liberalization measures have already been decided upon by the Castro government?

“I think these are changes that almost everyone supports, including many Communist Party militants, but I don’t know when they may occur” said dissident economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who said he has been followed the debates “with great interest.”

“Raul Castro raised a lot of expectations, and people are growing frustrated he hasn’t done anything,” he said.

Since Raul Castro officially took over Cuba’s presidency from his elder brother in 2008, his government has enacted modest reforms to Cuba’s agricultural sector, putting unproductive state land in the hands of private farmers and cooperatives. But many services and small businesses — from watch repair to fast-food restaurants to bakeries — remain in state hands.

And not everyone seems eager for that to change, as other editorials appearing in Granma have urged “not to give capitalism an inch.”

“Now is not the time to create the conditions for the reintroduction of clever and treacherous capitalism into our homeland,” wrote J.L. Valdes Carrasco, exhorting readers to work harder, produce more food, and “place absolute trust in the leaders of the Revolution,” while calling on young people to “lead in the decisive stage of the Revolution,” the term used on the island to refer to the Castros’ socialist system.

One interesting feature of the Granma debates is that many of those who have submitted letters for and against economic reforms try to bolster their arguments by borrowing quotes from Fidel Castro’s speeches. Gonzalez, the 28-year-old, cited Castro’s words from a 2000 May Day speech in making his case: “Revolution is everything that should be changed.”

That partisans on both sides would quote Castro may be a preview of the political debates likely to ensue once he, Raul, and their generation of Cuban leaders is gone, and younger Cubans are left to sort out the island’s problems.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/cuba/100205/privatization-granma-liberalization

Cuban Resistance to Reform

2010-02-10T07:21:00.001-08:00

Cuba slow to ease its grip on shopkeepers
By Marc Frank in Camagüey

Published: February 10 2010 02:00 | Last updated: February 10 2010 02:00

Three years after Cuba's Rebel Youth newspaper published "The Big Old Swindle" - a scathing series calling for reform of a state-managed retail sector beset by poor management, corruption and abysmal service - debate is still raging over liberalisation. The authorities have yet to act.

Rumours abound in Havana that the state will soon cede control over its thousands of barber shops, cafeterias, bakeries and domestic appliance and car repair businesses, opting to regulate and tax rather than administer, along the lines of the Chinese or Vietnamese model.

Yet the state appears to be doing the opposite, remodelling and opening numerous restaurants, shops and other retail outlets in city after city.

Raúl Castro, president, has insisted that Cuba's Soviet-style command economy needs fixing. He has hinted that ways must be found to reform the retail sector since taking over from his ailing brother, Fidel Castro, two years ago.

"State companies must be efficient and so must have resources to be so. The rest should adapt to more adequate forms of property given the resources available," stated a report by the economy ministry last year soon after Mr Castro replaced the minister and his top deputies.

Mr Castro has been short on specifics. However, commentators, economists and analysts propose raising the small number of family businesses and allowing employees to form co-operatives like those long established in agriculture.

There is apparently fierce resistance within the ruling Communist party, especially in the provinces.

"Cuba is not Havana," a provincial-level party official in eastern Cuba quipped when asked to square the new government-run retail outlets with the idea that the state should get out of the sector.

Pressed, he conceded that the state did not need to run some services, such as every barber shop. But he opposed letting go of larger establishments, such as car repair shops.

"Most cars and trucks in this country are owned by the state," he said.

A mid-level party cadre who administered eateries in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba insisted the retail sector's poor performance was not systemic but subjective. Fixing it was just a matter of improving party discipline, she said.

Cuba's second city has opened more restaurants, bars, stores and other establishments during the past year than any other.

The administrator, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the province's new party leader, Lazaro Exposito Canto, had improved the sector. "Since his arrival the retail sector has been completely turned round. It is a matter of caring about the people and being demanding with subordinates," she said.

The debate has spilled into the pages of Granma, the Communist party daily, which has carried letters to the editor for and against reform. "We have to shake off the stereotype developed over many years that private property is always evil," González de la Cruz wrote in a recent edition.

"Property, state or private, is valid when it serves a social purpose," he said.

The opposing view was best expressed in Granma by Guerra González, another correspondent.

"The solution of creating new owners and co-operatives and making current employees into supposed collective owners [in the retail sector] will only lead to uncontrolled free competition and capitalism," he wrote, adding, "this would represent not only an economic step backward but a political, social and ideological one".

For the first time since all retail activity - right down to shoe-shine boys - was nationalised in the "revolutionary offensive" of 1968, licences are being handed out to food vendors in the interior who have played cat-and-mouse with police in city streets for decades, saving residents a long walk to state markets.

But that appears to be part of reform already under way in the agriculture sector, where decision-making and food distribution has been decentralised and state lands leased to more than 100,000 farmers.

Authorities, in an apparent concession to popular frustration, are also granting family farms and cooperatives permission to sell a part of what they produce directly using kiosks and horse and bicycle-drawn carts. But not a single state-run retail outlet has been handed over to employees as a co-operative, let alone privatised.

Americans Learning from Cuban Medical System

2010-02-09T08:37:00.000-08:00

Americans Are Learning Medicine the Cuban Way
By Julia Landau, East Bay Express
Posted on February 5, 2010, Printed on February 9, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145523/

Melissa Rose Mitchell was discouraged. After taking the Medical College Admission Test, she was uneasy about applying to medical schools. In prep courses for the exams, she had glimpsed her future as a doctor, and she didn't like the environment she saw. "People were like, 'What kind of doctor do you want to be?' and it was all based on how much money you make," the Oakland resident recalled. "It was a really scary moment, because this thing that all my life I had wanted to do without question, all of a sudden I'm thinking, 'I don't know if I want to do this.'"

Mitchell had scraped together the money to prepare for and take the med-school admissions test, but even as she studied, she had begun to waver. "It had taken me over a year to save the $1,400 for the test and prep course and they said, 'We recommend that you apply to no less than twenty schools,' at about $200 each." And there were still the costs of plane tickets and a proper suit to interview at schools. She did well on the exams, but Mitchell was spending a lot of money to fulfill her goal of serving the poor.

But then her boyfriend saw a blurb in a church newsletter that appeared to assuage her growing worries. It was a unique offer to study in Cuba, the impoverished nation 90 miles from Florida that is internationally known for its training and use of doctors. She applied through the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization in New York, a group whose mission is to "increase minority participation in medicine" and therefore increase the doctor-patient ratio for underserved areas.

Cuba began educating American medical students after members of the Congressional Black Caucus met with Fidel Castro in 2000. Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi told Castro about areas in his district that suffer from extreme doctor shortages. The Cuban president responded by promising scholarships for 500 Americans to attend medical school in Cuba, under the umbrella of the Latin America School of Medicine. To qualify, the students would have to show aptitude and a commitment to work in underserved communities in the United States. Since then, 34 have graduated, and more than 160 are currently enrolled.

The Bay Area, it turns out, is something of a hub for the Cuba school of thought, where Cuba-trained students, unencumbered by the massive debt that plagues grads from US medical schools, have the luxury to do the kind of medicine that Cuba instructs — family medicine. The island's medical schools focus on nutrition and other preventative approaches. Cuba also is well known for its focus on the "social determinants of health."

The Cuban experience also may provide important lessons for our current health-care crisis. With a fifth of our per capita GDP, Cuba has health statistics comparable to those of industrialized nations. In the shabby, eroding, and commodity-deprived neighborhoods of Old Havana, Cubans also enjoy a better doctor-patient ratio than Americans: 59 doctors per 10,000 people compared to 26 for us.

Cuban life expectancy also matches that of the United States, its infant mortality rate is lower, and the island's HIV/AIDS transmission is among the lowest worldwide. Cuba's aggressive health-care delivery system also costs much less — around $200 per capita annually, compared to our $7,000. And it provides timely and primary care for every citizen — near universal accessibility. To the Cuban government, health care is a right.

This fact highlights a gap in the health-care reform initiative proposed by Congress and President Obama. Those currently without insurance, who will receive coverage with the bill, will feel the lack of family practitioners as basic care continues to be undervalued in favor of more profitable types of medicine.

At a White House forum early last year, the president spelled out the problem bluntly: "We're not producing enough primary-care physicians," he said, pointing to a daunting chain of obstacles. "The costs of medical education are so high that people feel that they've got to specialize."

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the average debt for a US medical school graduate in 2008 was $154,607. American doctors, as a result, feel forced to take up specialized practice, because ultimately the higher pay will ease their enormous student debt. Yet without enough primary care doctors, experts say, health-care costs grow exorbitant, end-stage care increases, and thousands of family practice residence positions go unfilled every year.

Doctors graduating in Cuba have no such excuse to specialize, and the island does not graduate members of an elite profession. Instead, it's a veritable doctor-producing machine with more than 70,000 physicians for a population of just 11 million.

And after medical school in Havana, Mitchell would return to the United States debt free.

Many students enter American medical schools wanting to do family care but get discouraged, said Dr. Richard Quint, retired faculty at UC San Francisco and a medical consultant to the Oakland nonprofit group Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba. American medical schools deem primary care as having secondary import, he contends. "The overall structure of our 'non-health system' is fragmented and skewed toward specialty practices," he said. "Faculty in medical schools make comments suggesting you shouldn't go into primary care because it's not stimulating or high-achieving enough." It also no secret that physicians are reimbursed highly for procedures and surgeries rather than for preventive medicine and diagnoses. And the need for primary care in underserved areas often doesn't make it into the textbooks or the classroom.

When it comes to preventative care, the shortcomings in American medical education mirror the failings in our health-care system as a whole. "There's nothing the Cubans are doing that people couldn't think of here — it's just they are looking upstream" at prevention, explained Dr. Lynn Berry, chronic disease program manager at Oakland's Highland Hospital, who has conducted research in Cuba.

Berry pointed out that Alameda County has "pretty strong" community health care. "We have La Clínica de La Raza, the Ethnic Health Institute, Native American Health Services," which emphasize prevention and education to avoid the costs, medical and financial, of end-stage care. But "ours is a market system," Berry said, a system "organized around insurance and payer source, not necessarily the long-term health of the patient."

Cuba redesigned its medical system out of financial necessity following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Faced with a supply crisis brought on by the lack of Soviet funding, Cuba revamped its medical education system towards primary care. By the mid-Nineties, they had established a comprehensive neighborhood-based family medicine standard: a consultario (neighborhood clinic) in every locale, and a revised medical school curriculum to embed family care into the model.

The island's health care starts with a top-down mandate for a "bottom-up" approach to health care. Too poor to rely on high-tech equipment or expensive, invasive procedures, the Cuban model stresses prevention and spreads health-care responsibility beyond doctors — into schools, work sites, and neighborhoods. A national network of polyclinics ensures the mandate. People in all walks of life are expected to cooperate in health publicity campaigns and other measures to prevent disease.

The United States' fifty-year-old embargo on goods to the island also has played a role in shaping Cuba's medical care system. The embargo prohibits or restricts the sale of some medical equipment and punishes other countries that deliver essential cargo. Drugs and medical supplies are sporadic, especially in Cuba's rural areas, where clinics work with outdated X-ray machines. And because US pharmaceutical companies develop most major new drugs, Cuban physicians don't have access to many new medicines on the world market. Countries like Spain and Venezuela donate, but routine medical supplies remain scarce or absent from some Cuban clinics.

Still, Dr. Davida Flattery, an internist at Highland Hospital, was struck by Cuba's "bottom-up" approach when she observed their health system last year. "What really impressed me about Cuba was their focus on the non-medical determinants of health," she said. It's standard in Cuba, she added, to engage the psycho-social factors of a patient — level of sanitation, presence of abuse or addiction, and food habits. Doctors and nurses, in fact, make home visits to evaluate these things personally.

Americans trained in Cuba see firsthand the glaring differences between the two medical education systems. Melissa Rose Mitchell learned, for example, that Cuba highlights rural medicine. "In lots of situations the professor will ask, 'What's the best test?' We'll say 'CT scan, ultrasound.' They'll say 'Well you don't have ultrasound, you're in the middle of nowhere, in the mountains, you have no electricity or phone. ... What are you going to do?'"

Many past and current students of the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, where Mitchell attended, had lived or worked in poor and underserved neighborhoods in the United States, and were chosen to study in Cuba so they could take what they learned back home. And their Cuban education equipped them to deal with health problems of the poorest communities in the United States far better than if they had gone to Harvard.

Havana medical students, for example, are trained to stabilize people in places with no electricity or potable water. One might think those skills irrelevant in the wealthy United States, but a number of poor American communities have come to resemble sections of Third World countries — especially after a disaster (see Hurricane Katrina).

The lack of doctors in America's neediest communities is exactly what the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization wanted to remedy as they began recruiting for the Cuban scholarships. The resulting program also is quite diverse — far more diverse group than any US med school. The majority of students in Latin American School of Medicine in Havana are African Americans from New York or California, 85 percent are minorities, and 73 percent are women.

And most of the students are trained as "médicos de la familia," or family practitioners. But, as the students saw, medical supply shortages plague the system, and despite diabetes intervention and screening programs in schools and workplaces across the country, the Cuban national diet remains high in fat and sugar. Like the US poor, Cubans don't have easy access to fresh fruits and vegetables — or the habit of eating them — and this hinders their health. Cuba's food distribution system from the countryside to the cities is substandard. The nation imports more than 50 percent of its food.

Mitchell said the training and experience suited her. "They train us just like they train Cubans," she said. "Every Cuban, regardless of specialty, has to do two years of family medicine. Until you can deal with basic, vital situations, you are not allowed to mess with other parts of the body."

After graduating last summer, Mitchell settled in Oakland to work and prepare for the boards, but she says her calling is rural medicine. She used her summer breaks from medical school, in fact, to work in a mobile health-care clinic serving rural populations outside of Birmingham, Alabama, a conservative city with stark wealth disparities. "Every two weeks or once a month, this clinic on wheels visited parts of the state where some of the houses did not have electricity or indoor plumbing. Not because it couldn't be gotten, but because people didn't have the money to invest in it." When asked if the poverty compared to that of rural Cuba, she responded: "The poverty was more intense" in some areas of rural Alabama than in rural Cuba, she said, "because there were no social services."

Yet back home Mitchell faced disapproval — even hostility — for deciding on a nonspecialized practice. "My first experience going home, my aunt and I had a heated argument — me saying I didn't want to specialize and if I did it would be family medicine or rural medicine. Her argument was anybody who had any sense would become a neurosurgeon or a cardiologist. But my image of a doctor is someone who can handle any situation that comes up."

And having witnessed the obstacles facing Cuba, the returning American doctors are scandalized with the state of health care at home. Mitchell works as a part-time medical assistant at a Bay Area clinic and doesn't have insurance herself. "There have definitely been a couple of times I've been sick and couldn't afford to see a doctor," she said.

"A friend did me a favor by seeing me, but I had to pay $60 for antibiotics — that was with the clinic's discount."

Before moving to Oakland as a teen, Pasha Jackson saw firsthand on the streets of South Central Los Angeles the power of nonmedical, psychosocial factors to spread disease — both physical and mental. Violence, joblessness, and addiction merge with poverty to leave many residents out of the health-care system. "What does primary care mean for the people around me?" he said. "It's self-medication. Junk and drinking. These people really need attention, and insurance will deny them for a list of reasons."

But Jackson didn't know he wanted to study medicine until he sustained a football injury. Recruited from City College of San Francisco by the University of Oklahoma, he went on to play for the San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders. But academic advisors throughout high school and college, he said, actively discouraged his interest in science. "They said it was too hard," and that his best chances were with football.

Reassigned by the Raiders to NFL Europe, Jackson tore his left pectoral — "a huge injury for a linebacker," he noted. "Once I left the NFL my health care ended, and to go to Cuba I needed shots and checkups to travel internationally. I couldn't believe what I had to go through. After calling around to public clinics, I had to wait for weeks and miss a day of work to see a doctor that didn't want to see me."

Jackson spent a year recuperating and getting physical therapy. And during that time, the effects of Hurricane Katrina reminded him of the deep connection between poverty and disease. "I knew I didn't want to play football anymore," Jackson said. "In the NFL there's so much waste, the playing with the money and power. I saw how much a part it was of the capitalist system."

Disgusted with professional football, Jackson went to the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization's web site and applied. The Cuba program "had me in Cuba, where I could learn Spanish; covered me financially; and got me back to science." With that, Pasha Jackson went socialist.

On summer break from his studies in Cuba, Jackson and more than a dozen other students from the Latin American School of Medicine visited deprived American communities to deliver basic health services and expand their own cultural competency. Los Angeles' Skid Row, a place with "ridiculous numbers of homeless people," was one stop on the trip, Jackson recalled. "Mora County [New Mexico] has hardly any doctors." They stopped at Pajarito Mesa, "where the Pueblo Indians live, with no potable water and no electricity. It shows you," Jackson said. "There's the Third World — right here. There are no national boundaries."

<"When the earthquake hit in Haiti, over 400 Cuban medical personnel were already there - they've been there for years," said Dr. Nelson Valdez, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of New Mexico and Director of Cuba-L, which monitors news related to Cuba. According to Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba, some 700 Haitian medical students in Cuba study at the Santiago de Cuba campus of the Latin American Medical School. Cuba is sending doctors and students in droves to treat tens of thousands Haitians lying wounded in hospitals with zero or few doctors. "No one is reporting on the Cuban presence in Haiti," commented Valdez, though he said he wasn't surprised. "The additional doctors being sent are part of the same team that was offered to the United States by Cuba when hurricane Katrina hit." The assistance was refused. Valdez also said the Cuban doctors, solidly trained in disaster medicine, provide psychological as well as physical attention to victims.

The State Department announced that U.S. aid workers would cooperate with Cubans on the ground in Haiti. Those who've observed what we can learn from the Cuban medical approach -- scholars and physicians, new and veteran -- all agree that cooperation and conversation with Cuba, at least in this respect, might bring us all some relief.

© 2010 East Bay Express All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/145523/

New Agricultural Reforms

2010-02-07T08:35:00.001-08:00

Cuba looks to suburban farms to boost food output

* Plan aims to ring cities and towns with small farms

* Objective is more food production at lower costs

* State monopoly on sales eased a little

By Marc Frank

CAMAGUEY, Cuba, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Cuba has launched an ambitious project to ring urban areas with thousands of small farms in a bid to reverse the country's long agricultural decline and ease its chronic economic woes.

The five-year plan calls for growing fruits and vegetables and raising livestock in 4-mile-wide (6.5 kilometer) rings around 150 of Cuba's cities and towns, with the exception of the capital Havana.

The island's Communist authorities hope suburban farming will make food cheaper and more abundant, cut transportation costs, be less reliant on machinery and encourage urban dwellers to leave bureaucratic jobs for more productive labor.

But the government will continue to hold a monopoly on most aspects of food production and distribution, including its control of most of the land in the Communist-run nation.

The pilot program for the project is being conducted in the central city of Camaguey, which the Cuban agriculture ministry has said eventually will have 1,400 small farms covering 52,000 hectares (128,490 acres), just minutes outside the town.

The farms, mostly in private hands but also including some cooperatives and state-owned enterprises, must grow everything organically, and the ministry expects they will produce 75 percent of the food for the city of 320,000 people, with big state-owned farms providing the rest.

On a recent day, dozens of people were hard at work plowing fields, hoeing earth, posting protective covering for crops and putting up fencing as the sun came up.

"This land they gave to us, the private farmers. I have four hectares (10 acres) and now they have leased me eight (20 acres) more," one of the farmers, Camilo Mendoza, told Reuters.

"Look, on this side and the other side are other plots, and over there another. Here they have given quite a bit of land and support to private farmers," he said.

The project is modeled after the hundreds of urban gardens developed by then-Defense Minister Raul Castro during the deep economic depression of the 1990s that followed the collapse of Communism in eastern Europe.

BEANS, NOT CANNONS

He proclaimed at the time that beans were more important than cannons, marking a strategic shift towards a more domestic focused agenda by Cuban leaders after decades of active support for liberation movements and leftist guerrillas overseas.

The suburban project dovetails with other steps introduced by President Raul Castro since he took over the day-to-day leadership from his ailing elder brother Fidel Castro in 2008.

These have included the leasing of fallow state lands to 100,000 mostly private farmers, raising prices for farm products and allowing farmers to sell part of their crops directly to the people instead of to the state.

On the other side of Camaguey and a few miles up Cuba's central highway, Armando, the head of a cattle cooperative, said his group was persuaded to join the plan by the offer of land to raise garden and root vegetables and the chance for direct sales to the public.

Stands have been set up every mile or so along the city's ring road for the sales, but Armando said they are taking their products to the customers.

"They assigned us a district where we can sell our produce. We are using a mobile system, a bicycle cart, and sell out every day," he said.

"In December we produced around five tonnes. The root vegetables we had to sell to the state, but we were free to sell the garden vegetables directly," he said.

The changes are tweaks to Cuba's centralized socialism, not a major step away from it, keeping with Raul Castro's vow to protect the system put in place after his brother took power in the 1959 Cuban revolution.

He has balked at more sweeping, market-oriented changes that many expected when he took power and without which many economists say Cuba will not significantly increase agricultural output.

Cubans have seen many past government efforts to transform the country's agriculture fail, so the farmers at Camaguey said they were taking a wait-and-see attitude on this latest one.

"For sure there will be more food around here if you come back in a few years," Camilio Mendoza said about his expectations.

"More than that, I can't say." (Editing by Jeff Franks and Paul Simao)

Licensing Private Vendors

2010-02-02T10:23:00.001-08:00

Cubans Thank God and Communist Party for Small Favors

Cuban Communist Party Makes it Easier to Acquire Food Vending License

By MARC FRANK

SANTIAGO, Cuba, Feb. 2, 2010

Wherever one travels in Cuba chances are you'll be offered some kind of local produce. In the west of the country men dart out from behind lush foliage brandishing strings of garlic and onion. In the central plains they leap from sugar cane bearing cheese and Guava paste while in the eastern Sierra Maestra mountain range they jump out of the jungle holding up fruits and fowl.

These stealthy hawkers often risk the wrath of the Cuban police who guard the state's monopoly on food distribution in the Communist-run nation. As they haggle over price with passers-by they keep a close eye out for the highway patrol.

The cops in their green Jeeps are usually easy to spot. The 60- mile roadway boasts little traffic.

But around 60 miles outside of eastern Santiago de Cuba, in the Sierra Maestras, the scene is different. Dozens of small kiosks offering strings of tangerines, grapes, bananas and tropical fruits with exotic names such as Mame, Guanabana and Nispero appear, and the game of cat and mouse suddenly ends.

These kiosks are government sanctioned.

The "delinquents," as they are known, proudly sell their fruit and other produce, and customers happily munch while enjoying the spectacular view. The highway patrol attends to what one would hope would be more important matters and the government collects taxes from those it used to persecute at a cost.

Soon after Lazaro Exposito Canto took over the local Communist party in 2009, he ordered the kiosks built and allowed local residents to sell what they produce in their often extensive yards.

"I thank God for this opportunity and also comrade Exposito," said a passionate Edilberto Fernandez, one of a group of young men working a kiosk.

"For a long time when you picked fruit from your patio and went to sell it on the highway, the police would appear, jump all over you, and take it away, when really we were doing nothing wrong," he said.

"You can imagine what it means to be able to bring our fruit here and not have that struggle. The fruit no longer rots on the trees, the animals no longer eat it, Cubans eat it."

Fernandez said his kiosk was open 24 hours a day, and demand was so strong that he and his neighbors were planting as many fruit trees as they could -- good news in this semi-tropical land where nature's bounty is remarkably scarce.

And the idea is catching on.

A former party official in neighboring Granma province said a similar measure recently took affect in the mountains there, followed by Holguin province.

Farmers in the lowlands of central Cuba said plans were afoot to set up kiosks along roadways around Cuba's third city, Camaguey, where they could directly sell produce.

Camilo, the head of a cooperative in the area, said the cooperatives were each assigned a district in and around the city where they could directly sell produce from horse- and bicycle-drawn carts.

Vendors Roam Cities

Similar breakthroughs are occurring in Cuban cities. In a further concession to individual initiative and consumer complaints over the state's monopoly on food distribution Cuban authorities have granted licenses to street vendors of fruits and vegetables who previously risked fines and confiscations.

President Raul Castro has made food production and distribution his top priority since taking over from ailing brother Fidel Castro two years ago, amid an agricultural crisis that has left the cash-strapped country importing between 60 percent and 70 percent of the food it consumes.

Castro decentralized decision-making, raised prices paid to farmers, leased state lands to 100,000 mainly new farmers and urged local officials to improve distribution. As a result, most residents in central and eastern Cuba insist there is more food and a greater variety.

After two powerful hurricanes devastated crops in 2008, city produce vendors, illegal but semi-tolerated since they were banned in 1968, were literally driven from Cuba's streets. Today they are back in various interior cities, often with licenses, drawing cheers from local residents.

The state controls more than 90 percent of Cuba's economic activity, and engaging in any kind of individual economic initiative outside of small farming is illegal without licenses, which are rare.

Men and women still prowl Camaguey's side streets on foot and bicycle, selling their illegal wares. But there are now licensed vendors hawking pineapples, squash, onions, tomatoes and other produce from carts along quaint colonial avenues and streets where bicycles and horse drawn carriages easily outnumber the cars.

"These measures allow me to buy root and garden vegetables at my door, without walking to the market which is far away," retiree Yolanda Santos said.

Cuba's second city, Santiago de Cuba, nestles in the foothills of the Sierra Maestras as they meet the sea. Local authorities here have begun accepting license applications from the owners of horse-drawn carts called Carretilleros. These carts, often laden with produce, have plied the city's hilly streets for centuries.

"The police were always all over us. They didn't let us work," said Ruben, his cart loaded with oranges. "Now, we are at peace. We can sell more without any problems."

Regulations for the licenses include keeping carts and wagons painted and covered, improved dress, healthy animals and paying taxes, he said.

Cuba's List of Important Bilateral Issues

2009-09-30T08:32:00.000-07:00

SPEECH DELIVERED BY THE MINISTER OF
FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA,
H.E. BRUNO RODRIGUEZ PARRILLA
GENERALJDEBATE OF THE 64™ SESSION OF THE
UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY
New York, 28 September 2009

section on US-Cuba relations

As for Cuba, which has suffered the US aggression for half a century, the new
US government announced some new measures on April last to abolish some
of the most brutal actions taken by the George W. Bush administration which
prevented any contact between Cubans resident in the United States and their
relatives in Cuba, particularly, the possibility to visit them and send them some
assistance without any limitation. These measures are a positive step, but they
are extremely limited and insufficient.

The announced measures included the authorization to some US companies to
carry out certain telecom operations with Cuba, but other restrictions that
prevent their implementation have not been modified. Neither has there been
any signal indicating that the US government is ready to put an end to the
immoral practice -quite expanded in recent days- of misappropriation of the
Cuban funds that remained frozen at American banks, and of other goods,
based on orders issued by venal judges who violate their own laws.
The crucial thing is that the economic, commercial and financial blockade
against Cuba remains intact.

The US President, despite the existence of laws such as the Helms Burton Act,
still has broad executive powers, such as the ones required to grant licenses,
by means of which he could modify the implementation of the blockade.
Should there be a true desire to move towards change, the US government
could authorize the export of Cuban goods and services to the United States
and vice versa.

The United States could allow Cuba to buy any product containing more than
10 per cent of US components or technology anywhere in the world, regardless
of its trademark or country of origin.
The US Treasury could abstain from persecuting, freezing and confiscating
third countries transfers -whether in US dollars or in any other currency- to
Cuban nationals or entities.

Washington could lift the ban that prevent third countries vessels from
entering any US port until 180 days after touching any Cuban port.
The persecution unleashed by the US Treasury Department against financial
institutions and companies that trade or carry out operations with Cuba could
also be suspended.

President Obama could allow American citizens, by means of a license, to
travel to Cuba, the only country in the world they are not allowed to visit.
The report submitted to this Assembly by the UN Secretary-General abounds
with examples. In the course of 2009 numerous actions have been taken to
impose fines, confiscate and hinder transactions carried out by Cuba or by third
countries with Cuba.

As has been reported by the very US Treasury Department, since January this
year, almost half of the funds collected by its Office of Foreign Assets Control
came from the sanctions imposed on American and foreign companies for
alleged violations of the economic blockade against Cuba.

The truthful and indisputable fact is that the new US government continues to
ignore the overwhelming appeal that is launched by this General Assembly
year after year to put an end to the blockade against Cuba.

Contrary to what all the American public opinion polls reflect, two weeks ago
President Obama instructed the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the
Treasury that "it was in the US national interest" to maintain the economic
sanctions against Cuba under the Trade with the Enemy Act approved in 1917
to cope with war situations, which is only applicable to Cuba.

The US blockade against Cuba is an act of unilateral aggression that should be
unilaterally terminated.

For many years Cuba has expressed its willingness to normalize relations with
the United States.

On August 1st last, President Raul Castro publicly reiterated Cuba's disposition
to sustain a respectful, arm's length dialogue with the United States, without
overshadowing our independence, sovereignty and self-determination. He
emphasized that we should mutually respect our differences and that we do not
recognize in the government of that or any other country, or in any other group
of States any jurisdiction over our sovereign affairs.

The government of Cuba has suggested the US government a set of essential
topics it considers must necessarily be discussed during a future process of
dialogue aimed at improving relations, namely, the lifting of the economic,
commercial and financial blockade; the exclusion of Cuba from the spurious list
of countries that sponsor terrorism; the abolition of the Cuban Adjustment Act
and the "wet foot/dry foot" policy; the compensation for economic and human
damages; the return of the territory occupied by the Guantanamo Naval Base;
the end of all radio and television aggressions from US territory against Cuba;
and the cessation of the funding of domestic subversion.

An essential topic in that agenda is the release of the five Cuban anti terrorism
fighters who have been unjustly imprisoned in the United States for eleven
years. President Obama has the constitutional prerogatives to set them free,
as an act of justice and of commitment by his government against terrorism.
Furthermore, we made a proposal to the United States to begin talks in order to
establish cooperation to fight drug-trafficking, terrorism and human smuggling,
to protect the environment and cope with natural disasters.

It has been in that spirit that the Cuban government has held talks on migration
and the resumption of direct postal services with the US government. These
talks have been respectful and fruitful

full text http://www.un.org/ga/64/generaldebate/pdf/CU_en.pdf

Raul Castro pushes Cubans to rethink socialism

2009-09-22T11:31:00.001-07:00

* Cubans urged to look inward, improve efficiency

* Paternalism and centralization on national debate agenda

* Relations with the United States also to be discussed

By Marc Frank

HAVANA, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Cubans began taking a hard look this week at entrenched customs like food rationing, pilfering on the job, cradle-to-grave subsidies and black market trading in a national debate called by President Raul Castro.

Authorities have circulated a ten-point agenda for thousands of open-ended meetings over the next month at work places, universities and community organizations to rethink Cuban socialism, focused on the economic themes highlighted by Castro in a speech to the National Assembly in August.

The discussion guide, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, makes clear that questioning the communist-ruled island's one-party political system established after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, or calling for a restoration of capitalism, are off limits.

But the guide said: "It is important that the meetings are characterized by absolute freedom of criteria, the sincerity of participants and respect for differing opinions".

The possibility of eliminating one of the world's longest-standing food ration systems, heavily subsidized utilities, transportation and meals at work and universities, among other items, would be debated at the meetings.

Alicia, a communist party militant who will lead the debate in her Havana work place next week but who asked that her last name not be used, said the purpose was "to call on everyone to do what they have to do and stop looking up into the sky and screaming that there are problems."

"Of course there are problems, lots of them, what's needed is that everyone begins taking care of their own," she said.

A similar round of meetings was held in 2007, during which Cubans were asked to air their complaints and what they wanted from the government.

At this round of discussions, the guide says participants were being asked to look in the mirror and apply Castro's speech to their own "radius of action," identify problems in the context of his words and come up with a list of proposals to solve them.

"Nobody, no individual nor country, can indefinitely spend more than she or he earns. Two plus two always adds up to four, never five," Castro said in his August speech. "Within the conditions of our imperfect socialism, due to our own shortcomings, two plus two often adds up to three," he added.

Cubans have mixed feelings about the debate. Some say it is a sincere effort to involve them in changing their lives, while others suspect it is a maneuver to get them to buy into austerity measures that have already been decided on.

"The monthly ration lasts about 15 days and now it won't last 10," Jorge, a construction worker, glumly predicted.

EGALITARIANISM AND CENTRALIZATION

Castro, in his August speech, said a foreign currency shortage had forced drastic cuts in imports and budgets and postponement of payments to foreign creditors and suppliers.

He said egalitarianism had no place under socialism, except in the area of opportunity, and more resources should flow to those who produce and less to those who do not. He has often expressed this refrain since taking over the presidency from his elder brother, Fidel Castro, 18 months ago.

The discussion guide includes excerpts of an earlier Castro speech in which he said reversing the country's dependence on food imports was "not a question of yelling 'fatherland or death, down with imperialism, the blockade is hurting us ...'", but working hard and overcoming poor organization.

Cuban leaders routinely call the 47-year-old U.S. economic embargo against the island a "blockade" and frequently blame it for Cuba's economic woes.

Castro called for decentralization of the state-dominated economy, new forms of property ownership and an end to all government gratuities and subsidies except in health care, education and social security, though these also had to had to cut waste and inessential services.

The president also said in his speech to the National Assembly that Cuba recognized a change in tone from U.S. President Barack Obama's administration and was open to trying to solve the standoff with the United States.

"We are ready to talk about everything, I repeat everything, but in terms of here in Cuba and over there in the United States, and not to negotiate our political and social system," he said.

Obama has eased some slight aspects of the longstanding embargo on Cuba, and initiated talks with the Cuban government on immigration and postal services. But he has called on Cuban leaders to respond by becoming more democratic, freeing detained dissidents and improving human rights.

State Employee Lunchrooms Closing

2009-09-01T11:04:00.000-07:00

Cuban lunchrooms closing, food service boom looms

* Cuban ministries to close lunchrooms, others to follow

* Workers to receive stipend boosting food service demand

* Theft, waste and inefficiency seen as cause

By Marc Frank

HAVANA, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Cuba plans to close state-run office lunchrooms, put more money in employees' pockets and let them fend for themselves as it cuts budgets and food imports and works to wean people off the dole, government sources said.

"The order is already out to close the lunchrooms of the ministries in Havana and pay the employees 15 pesos more per day," a mid-level government administrator said this week, asking that his name not be used.

"If all goes well many more will close in the city and around the country," he added.

The plan, in its pilot phase and which could involve hundreds of workplace cafeterias by next year, will fuel demand for food services provided by private vendors and other state-run food services.

On the always crowded market-lined Tulipan Street in the Nuevo Vedado neighborhood, state and private vendors said they had heard of the measure and some were preparing for the increased demand from employees of the nearby agriculture and transport ministries.

"I'm training two people to help me as I can't meet the demand that's coming. I have to think big," pizza maker Jorge Perez Diaz said.

Roselia, an employee at a state-run cafeteria who asked that her last name not be used, was less enthusiastic.

"They are going to have to give us more resources and employees because what there is now will not do even to start," she said.

Cuba, like other Caribbean countries, has been hit hard by the global financial crisis, which has slashed revenue from key exports and tourism, dried up credit and reduced foreign investment.

The government has cut imports by 30 percent and local budgets by around 10 percent, implemented energy savings and adopted other measures this year to cope with the crisis.

President Raul Castro has railed against government inefficiency, pilfering and hand outs since taking over from his ailing brother Fidel Castro last year. Last month he called for "elimination of free services and improper subsidies -- with the exception of those called for in the constitution (healthcare and education)."

BLACK MARKET

The decision to close lunchrooms comes even as the government considers turning over some retail food services to workers as cooperatives and perhaps increasing licenses issued for private food vendors, frozen in recent years.

Popular state television commentator Ariel Terrero recently suggested that sectors such as food services could perform better if they were run in a new way.

Terrero pointed to Castro-led reforms in the island's agriculture that include decentralization of decision-making, greater emphasis on private cooperatives and farms, and the leasing of state lands to about 80,000 individuals.

"The leasing of state lands, which in the end is the placing of state property in the hands of producers, could be applied in other sectors, for example food services ..." he said.

The lunchrooms are a major source of black market activity, with a minimum 20 percent of the tons of imported food assigned every day stolen, the government believes. Waste is also rampant.

A local economist said the plan killed numerous birds with one stone, from theft and employee grumbling over poor lunchroom meals to the need to transport supplies and supervise the lunchrooms, but what still needed working out was how the new demand for food on the street would be met.

"The daily lunch stipend represents a doubling of Cuba's average base pay of just over 400 pesos per month and will greatly increase demand on the street for state and family-based food service providers," he said, asking his name not be used.

The economist said many employees were expected to bring a meal to work, but others would buy the sandwiches, pizzas or bigger box lunches of rice, beans and pork or chicken typically offered by private vendors and state-run food services for 10 to 20 pesos.

Cubans Enjoy Luxury Resorts

2009-08-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

After long ban, some Cubans sample tourism luxury

Fri Aug 14, 2009 By Esteban Israel

VARADERO, Cuba (Reuters) - Floating, cocktail drink in hand, in the pool of a five-star hotel in Cuba, Alexis basks in a holiday experience that for years was out of reach for him in his own homeland.

The pastel-colored hotel buildings, the well-ordered gardens, the turquoise waters and the perpetually smiling waiters -- all just 84 miles east of his home in Havana. So near, and yet for many years, so far away.

Until last year, Cuba's communist government prevented its citizens from entering hotels reserved for hard currency-paying foreign tourists. It argued that tourism was a strategic revenue sector and that widening access would create inequalities in a socialist society, where most earn inconvertible Cuban pesos.

The tourist hotels, whose services, shops and restaurants are a world away from the hardships and shortages experienced by most Cubans, remained largely out of bounds for ordinary citizens. This prohibition angered most Cubans, who considered it made them second-class citizens in their own homeland.

But when President Raul Castro took over from his ailing older brother Fidel Castro last year, one of his first acts was to end the ban and open all facilities to Cubans. The change was widely popular even though most islanders still can not afford to stay at the tourist hotels.

"Let me tell you, this is great," said Alexis, an employee of a state-run Havana hard currency store who declined to give his full name, as his girlfriend returned from the bar with more "mojito" cocktails -- a tropical mix of lime juice, Cuban rum, and mint leaves.

In the years immediately following the 1959 revolution, Cuban workers were allowed into the island's premier resorts, yet the need to earn much-needed hard currency led to the development again of a more exclusive foreign tourism sector, especially over the last 15 years.

But the global financial crisis has taken a big bite out of Cuba's international tourism, so the Cuban travel industry, seeking to boost occupation in half-empty hotels, has begun offering reduced-price package deals to Cubans.

At $70 a night for an all-inclusive hotel in Varadero, Cuba's premier beach resort, prices are well below what foreigners pay, but still out of reach for most Cubans struggling to make ends meet on state salaries that average less than $20 a month.

According to Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero, Cubans have accounted for 10 percent of occupancy at Cuba's high-end hotels this summer.

THE SWEET LIFE

The opening of a domestic market is giving more visibility to an emerging class of wealthier Cubans who have hard currency in their pockets and are eager to sport the colored wristbands of the fancy all-inclusive hotels.

The new Cuban internal tourists are professionals, technicians working for foreign joint ventures and people receiving dollar remittances from relatives living abroad.

"Before a foreigner would ask us about Varadero and we did not know what to say," recalls Roberto Garcia, a 43-year-old engineer who arrived from Havana with his family of six.

"Now, if you have the money, you can do it."

Without precise official figures on revenue from internal Cuban tourism, it is difficult to gauge just how much of a boost this new access is giving to the cash-strapped economy.

But to the extent that Cuban tourist spending increases the flow of dollars to the island -- by, for example, family members in Miami financing a trip to Varadero for their Cuban relatives -- it is helpful, said Cuba expert Paolo Spadoni.

"Financing from abroad might also play quite an important role," said Spadoni, a post-doctoral fellow at Tulane University's Center for Inter-American Policy and Research.

Some Cubans interviewed on a recent trip to Varadero said expenses were paid by relatives visiting from the United States, a flow which is up 20 percent since U.S. President Barack Obama lifted travel restrictions in April on Cuban-Americans visiting the island.

But Obama has made clear he will keep a 47-year-old U.S. trade embargo on Cuba in place for the moment to press Cuban leaders to improve human rights and political freedoms. Havana, while agreeing to talks on migration and other issues, has said it will not make "concessions" for improved ties.

With the help of foreign investors, Cuba reluctantly developed its tourism industry in the mid-1990s in response to the deep economic crisis that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, its chief benefactor and ally for decades.

"All the money made here is for the people," proclaims a banner at the entrance to Varadero, a 12-mile-long peninsula of white-sand beaches lined with big hotels.

This slogan reflects the long-used government argument that tourism revenues are employed to benefit all of Cuba's people by helping to pay for free health care and education.

Cuba has some 55,000 hotel rooms managed by the state, many in association with foreign hotel heavyweights such as Sol Melia of Spain, the French firm Accor or Jamaica's Sandals Resorts.

Attracted by its beaches and enduring revolutionary mystique, 2.3 million foreign tourists, mostly from U.S. allies Canada and in Europe, visited Cuba last year, which brought the island $2.5 billion in revenues and made tourism one of Cuba's main sources of hard currency.

President Raul Castro said in a speech earlier this month that the number of international tourists is up, but revenues are down compared to last year.

Both numbers are expected to grow if the U.S. Congress approves a proposed bill that would allow all Americans to freely visit Cuba, currently prohibited by the U.S. embargo against the island 90 miles from Key West, Florida.

But for now, Cuba is looking to Cubans to keep its hotels humming, and people like Alexis are happy to help.

"This is just fantasy. Real life starts again on Monday when we get back to Havana," he said between sips of a last "mojito" as the sun set over Varadero.

(Editing by Jeff Franks and Pascal Fletcher)

http://in.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idINTRE57C4QY20090813?sp=true

Anti-corruption Campaign

2009-08-11T08:45:00.001-07:00

Cleaning House in Cuba

Posted By the editor On August 10, 2009 @ 6:49 pm

By Circles Robinson
Unity, Firmness & Victory is once again a battle cry, this time to fight corruption. Photo: Caridad

HAVANA TIMES, August 10 - The Cuban government’s answer to the rampant theft and corruption problem plaguing the socialist economy is a new comptroller’s office, something that exists in many countries.

The lax administrative and accounting controls present in much of the country’s state-run economy are no secret to anyone, much less to the nation’s leaders.

With a major drive taking place to improve work efficiency and productivity and to cut imports at a time of international economic crisis, confronting a problem that has permeated all strata of Cuban society is an urgent but equally difficult task.

President Raul Castro sounded the alarm when he took office in February 2008, when he made it known that tolerance of misuse of state resources was on the out. Since then, little guys scraping to get by, on up to several of the country’s top ministers and political figures in much larger illicit operations, have fallen from grace after being accused of theft or corruption.

The president has made battling such un-revolutionary behavior a priority, while also recognizing that low salaries and a lack of incentives for greater initiative have affected job motivation and efficiency.

Trusting more in the businesses run by the military, Castro has put several former Army administrators in key positions in the civilian state economy.

Nonetheless, neither the military nor the civilian economy are held accountable to the public as neither the workers nor the general population are privy to the economic performance information that would make possible an educated evaluation of efficiency.

Instead, Cubans are accustomed to being told to blindly trust the judgment of their leaders and the administrators they in turn appoint to manage public resources.

The other catch-all factor has been the ever present “enemy to the north” with its blockade and other attempts to strangle the island’s economy, which serve corrupt officials as a shield.

The New Watch Dog

Last weekend the government announced that the Comptroller’s Office - conceived as a watch dog over the use of state funds and resources - would be a place where citizens can file complaints on such abuses and expect to get action. The office is headed by legislator Gladys Maria Brejerano Portela, just appointed a week ago.
Castro has put several former military administrators in key positions in the civilian state economy. Photo: Caridad

Castro has put several former military administrators in key positions in the civilian state economy. Photo: Caridad

Created by the legislature, the office will receive and follow up on complaints filed by citizens on the misuse of public resources and other illegalities and acts of corruption, said Jose Luis Toledo Santander, president of the parliament’s Constitutional and Juridical Affairs Committee.

Virtually every Cuban, foreign resident or visitor is in one way or another regularly taken in by the different income-supplement scams that have grown to become as normal as rice and beans for most people, whether they like it or not.

In everyday life, very few people even bother to complain about being overcharged or getting taken on the weight or quality of a product. Instead, they often show understanding or even sympathy toward whoever is doing the taking to make a sorely needed buck.

At the same time, many people speculate privately that for so much theft to take place so rampantly on the ground level, there have to be accomplices higher up - from supervisors to managers, to executives, on up to ministers.

Will people now take advantage of the opportunity to file a complaint that supposedly could bring some action? Or will they continue to avoid picking a fight with a boss or higher up that in the past has often had the cards stacked in their favor?

Article printed from Havana Times.org: http://www.havanatimes.org

URL to article: http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=12552

Silvio Rodriguez Reaffirms Support for Cuban Freedom to Travel

2009-05-20T07:45:00.000-07:00

REBELION
May 11, 2009

Silvio Rodriguez calls for the right of all Cubans
to be allowed to enter and leave their country at will

http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs2434.html
A CubaNews translation by Mercedes Rosa Diaz.
Edited by Walter Lippmann

The news that Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodriguez was denied a visa to enter the United States to attend a tribute to U.S. musician Pete Seeger prompted a letter that was published in the Dominican press. The letter, which was addressed to Rodriguez, was written by a Cuban residing in the Dominican Republic. Rodriguez quickly responded to the letter; the content of both letters is published below.

An open letter to singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez
Published in the newspaper El Nuevo Diario,
Dominican Republic, on Sunday, May 10, 2009

The person writing this is Cuban just like you. First, I support you in your complaint against the U.S. officials who denied your request to legally enter the U.S. to attend the tribute for Pete Seeger. It's a loss to all that you were unable to play your music during the celebration that took place in New York city. Like most Cubans, I too, resent those foreign laws created to threaten the sovereignty of the Cuban people.

Now that we have established that, I want to share with you a another reality that is even sadder than the fact that a country's officials refused a foreigner's request to visit their country.

Over the past 50 years, thousands of Cubans have been unable to enter Cuba, not even to attend the funeral of loved ones as close as a mother or a son. Among these are musicians, artists who have settled abroad for the sake of their careers, and who are prevented from reentering their own country despite the fact that they have praised Cuba at every turn. Celia Cruz is a classic example.

My mother is 80 years old. I'm prevented from entering Cuba to see her, which means that my human rights have been trampled as badly and as unfairly as yours. You are no threat to the United States or its society. Likewise, I'm no threat to Cuban society. Neither of us is a terrorist or a murderer.

You can't cloak justice in political ideology. There is only justice. The first and most important belief is that all human beings are entitled to their respect and their dignity.

Unfortunately, our native land practices a policy called a "permanent exit," and it's an inhuman abomination. It is anti-Cuban and a threat to the legacy of our Mambi ancestors, who fought for Cuba's freedom so that all Cubans could enjoy the fruits of a free society. They were guided by Marti's dream of a country "for all, and for the good of all."

Silvio, my countryman: my freedom ends where yours begins. One must give respect to earn respect; rest assured that I write these words while holding you in the highest respect as a human being and a fellow Cuban. By the same token, I would expect you to do the same for me. It is with this in mind that I now approach you as an artist who is known for having dedicated his life to promoting social justice and progressive ideals during these turbulent historical times in which we live.

I ask that you use your voice and your guitar to intone a song promoting harmony and a respect for diversity between all Cubans. Sing for the unification of divided Cuban families and for the repeal of this harmful "permanent exit" policy that is a shame to the sacrifices made and the blood spilled by our ancestors. I am not asking you to sing a song of protest. I would rather that you make it a love song that should touch the hearts of all Cubans, especially those which most need to hear it.

If you want, invite other artists to sing along with you, anyone who might be sympathetic to the cause of those who cannot be there. Sing for those of us who are absent by necessity, but who hope to one day return to sing at your sides. Invite Fito Páez, Ana Belén, Serrat, Pablo, Chico, Mercedes Sosa, and anyone else who wants to open their hearts to this endeavor. Sing for the freedom and the right for all Cubans to be able to spend time in our native land.
Written by: Adrián Leiva

An open response to Cuban citizen Adrián Leiva.

Havana, May 10, 2009, 5:00 p.m.

Mr. Adrián Leiva:

To begin with, I've made no complaint about being denied entrance to the United States. I just sent an email to my sister in which I told her that since I had not yet received a visa to travel to the United States to attend the tribute to Pete Seeger to which I had been invited, I would simply return to Cuba to continue work. The organizers of the Seeger tribute asked her permission to publish the email, so we gave it to them. That's why this came out. About two days later, during the tribute, I wrote to the Maestro Seeger directly and asked him to forgive my absence even though I had originally pledged that I would be there. I explained to him—as well as I could and to my understanding—why I could not keep my word to him. Somehow the press somewhere got hold of the letter, resulting in all this controversy.

However, I understand; I've spoken out about what I consider to be an error in our migration policies, like the so-called "white letter" and the fact that permission is needed to enter and leave our own country. It's an archaic policy that is obsolete and should be repealed. I am convinced that when that absurd obstacle is removed, our country will be a better place and we will all feel better about it and one another.

I can't promise I'll write a song about it, because, quite frankly, I'm not alone when I do that—I do rely on the Muses as well. But I will promise you this: no matter where I am, I will continue to promote the belief that Cubans should have the right to enter and leave their country at will, providing, of course, that they do it legally.

Silvio Rodríguez Domínguez.

ORIGINAL
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=85129