They apparently broke the $2 billion level last year.
Opening up on both shorelines helps increase remittances sent to Cuba in 2011 by about 20%
By Emilio Morales & Joseph L. Scarpaci (THCG).― While Cubans debate the future of their economic model, measures taken by Raúl Castro since the Sixth Cuban Communist Party Congress held last April, are correlated with nearly exponential growth in remittances reaching the island. Nearly $2.3 billion USD entered the island through this venue last year, up about 19.5% over 2010.
Table 1. Remittances sent to Cuba, 2000-2011 (millions USD).
Year Totals
2000 986.96
2001 1,010.87
2002 1,072.15
2003 1,100.46
2004 1,030.84
2005 1,144.12
2006 1,251.15
2007 1,362.71
2008 1,447.06
2009 1,653.15
2010 1,920.44
2011 2,294.54
Source: Calculated by The Havana Consulting Group LLC.
Remittances increased ten fold over the past six years compared to the 2000-2005 period.
A variety of measures confirm that remittances are the main source of hard currency reaching peoples’ pockets.
What factors have unleashed this growth in the past six years?
This time, both the Obama administration’s policy towards Cuba and the measured implemented by the government of Raúl Castro have made this growth possible.
Allowing Cuban Americans to go from visiting the island once every three years, to as often as they want, has been a major driver of these remittance increases. At the same time, the Obama regulations removed the $300 wiring maximum each three months, to sending $10,000 daily.
Factors carrying the greatest weight on the Cuban side include allowing cell phones for a mass market and the sale of private homes and cars.
The six most important factors behind these changes are:
1. Increase in trips to Cuba.
2. Opening the Cuban real-estate market.
3. More space for private enterprises.
4. Growth of cell phone usage.
5. Decreasing wire-transfer and package shipping costs.
6. Out-migration.
Read the full story HERE.
Showing posts with label politics--USA/Cuba. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics--USA/Cuba. Show all posts
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Monday, June 07, 2010
Silvio Rodriguez: Nostalgia Merchant
Cuban singer Silvio Rodriguez is touring the US for the first time in thirty years. Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez has an blog post at HuffPo
Silvio Rodriguez: Nostalgia Merchant
Yoani Sanchez
Award-Winning Cuban Blogger
Posted: June 2, 2010 09:52 PM
While young people around the world enjoyed the music of the sixties, for Cubans it was forbidden to hear anything that had imperialist echoes, including the Beatles. Just at that time there appeared in our island what ended up being called the Nueva Trova -- New Minstrel -- Movement. Silvio Rodriguez has been its signature performer with songs full of poetic lyrics and music that mixes the tonalities of our traditional minstrel songs with the chords of Bob Dylan.
Silvio's generation, touched by the euphoric effects of the Revolution, was considered anti-establishment, based on between-the-line meanings one could read into his lyrics. He was banned on some television programs and many of his songs were never broadcast. Little by little, before the eyes of followers and detractors, the Movement was absorbed by the ruling ideological apparatus to the point where there came a time when no political event lacked the accompaniment of his songs. He won admirers and spawned imitators, girls swooned over him, and requests for concerts came from all over Latin America.
.....
The 1980s, when at any hour of the day or night, you could turn the radio dial and hear Silvio's songs, are long gone. In those days he won every popularity contest and seemed like a star whose light would never fade. But the demands of tourism and Cubans' own weariness with protest songs, set the stage for the creation and spread of danceable music which, in all its rawness, is the anthem of these times: reggaeton. While Nueva Trova still has its adherents, it has been relegated to niche audiences.
Today, Silvio Rodriguez is the living representative of nostalgia for a utopia that never materialized. Some of his fans come to his concerts decked out in their Che Guevara T-shirts and sing the choruses as if they could roll back history; it's as if they are saying, "This is not dead." Increasingly rare are those who can reconcile his musical expression with his civic behavior, as few can forgive the many years he has been sitting in parliament without raising his hand to ask for an end to the immigration restrictions, the elimination of the dual currency system, or the decriminalization of political dissent.
......
Read the full post HERE.
Silvio Rodriguez: Nostalgia Merchant
Yoani Sanchez
Award-Winning Cuban Blogger
Posted: June 2, 2010 09:52 PM
While young people around the world enjoyed the music of the sixties, for Cubans it was forbidden to hear anything that had imperialist echoes, including the Beatles. Just at that time there appeared in our island what ended up being called the Nueva Trova -- New Minstrel -- Movement. Silvio Rodriguez has been its signature performer with songs full of poetic lyrics and music that mixes the tonalities of our traditional minstrel songs with the chords of Bob Dylan.
Silvio's generation, touched by the euphoric effects of the Revolution, was considered anti-establishment, based on between-the-line meanings one could read into his lyrics. He was banned on some television programs and many of his songs were never broadcast. Little by little, before the eyes of followers and detractors, the Movement was absorbed by the ruling ideological apparatus to the point where there came a time when no political event lacked the accompaniment of his songs. He won admirers and spawned imitators, girls swooned over him, and requests for concerts came from all over Latin America.
.....
The 1980s, when at any hour of the day or night, you could turn the radio dial and hear Silvio's songs, are long gone. In those days he won every popularity contest and seemed like a star whose light would never fade. But the demands of tourism and Cubans' own weariness with protest songs, set the stage for the creation and spread of danceable music which, in all its rawness, is the anthem of these times: reggaeton. While Nueva Trova still has its adherents, it has been relegated to niche audiences.
Today, Silvio Rodriguez is the living representative of nostalgia for a utopia that never materialized. Some of his fans come to his concerts decked out in their Che Guevara T-shirts and sing the choruses as if they could roll back history; it's as if they are saying, "This is not dead." Increasingly rare are those who can reconcile his musical expression with his civic behavior, as few can forgive the many years he has been sitting in parliament without raising his hand to ask for an end to the immigration restrictions, the elimination of the dual currency system, or the decriminalization of political dissent.
......
Read the full post HERE.
Monday, April 05, 2010
Elian Gonzalez update
Elian Gonzalez attends Cuba Youth Meeting
Huffpo
First Posted: 04- 5-10 05:04 PM | Updated: 04- 5-10 05:41 PM
Read More: Cuba, Cuba Communists, Elian, Elian Gonzales, Elian Gonzales Photos, World News
(AP) HAVANA — Cuba has released photos of one-time exile cause celebre Elian Gonzalez wearing an olive-green military school uniform and attending a Young Communist Union congress.
Gonzalez, now 16 with closely cropped black hair, is shown serious-faced with fellow youth delegates during last weekend's congress at a sprawling and drab convention center in western Havana. The images were posted Monday on Cuban government Web sites, then widely picked up by electronic, state-controlled media.
When he was 5, Elian was found floating off the coast of Florida in an inner tube after his mother and others fleeing Cuba drowned trying to reach the U.S. Elian's father, who was separated from his mother, had remained in Cuba.
U.S. immigration officials ruled the boy should return to Cuba over the objections of his Miami relatives and other Cuban exiles, creating a national furor that caused even presidential candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore to weigh in on the matter.
His relatives refused to give him up. Federal agents raided the Little Havana home of his uncle with guns drawn 10 years ago this month and seized the boy from a closet to return him to his father.
Elian was celebrated as a hero in Cuba upon his return and his father, restaurant employee Juan Miguel Gonzalez, was elected to parliament – a seat he retains today.
Cuba usually marks Gonzalez's birthday every Dec. 7 with parades and other local events, but such activities are not open to foreign reporters.
Gonzalez formally joined the Young Communist Union in 2008, making headlines across Cuba.
The green uniform with red shoulder patches he is seen wearing is common among island military academies. There is a military school in the city of Matanzas, near the boy's hometown of Cardenas, but it was unclear where he is attending school. Reports in state media provided no details.
"Young Elian Gonzalez defends his revolution in the youth congress," read the headline over Monday's photo posted on Cuba Debate, the same Web site where Fidel Castro has posted his regular essays since ceding power to his younger brother, Raul, for health reasons in 2006.
Revolution is what Cubans call the rebellion that toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista and brought Castro to power on New Year's Day 1959.
Elian and his father are closely watched by state authorities, who restrict their contact with the international press.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Obama answers questions from Yoani Sanchez
Yahoo Tech
Obama answers questions from top Cuban blogger
* By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer - Thu Nov 19, 2009 11:35PM EST
HAVANA -
President Barack Obama has answered questions submitted by a celebrated Cuban blogger, saying he isn't interested in "talking for the sake of talking" with Raul Castro and indicating he won't visit the island until the communist government changes its ways.
In an unusual written response to Yoani Sanchez, who has gained international acclaim for daring to criticize her government online, Obama also said it is up to Cuba to act if it wants normal relations with Washington, saying that a true thaw in nearly 50 years of deep-freeze "will require action by the Cuban government."
His comments were posted Thursday on Sanchez's blog, "Generacion Y," which like most sites critical of the Cuban government is blocked on the island.
Sanchez uses caustic, often witty posts to provide an inside look at a communist state, writing about such daily hardships as food shortages and tensions caused by a lack of freedom of expression and assembly.
Obama assured Sanchez that the United States "has no intention of invading Cuba," a Cold War concept that top Cuban officials insist is still a possibility.
Raul Castro, who took over the presidency from his ailing brother Fidel in February 2008, has said he would be willing to meet with Obama and has even suggested they should sit down at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Obama told Sanchez he doesn't want empty dialogue.
"I am not interested ... in talking for the sake of talking," he wrote. "In the case of Cuba, such diplomacy should create opportunities to advance the interests of the United States and the cause of freedom for the Cuban people."
Obama answered seven questions from Sanchez, with his responses running more than 1,000 words. Sanchez said he wrote in English but that his office provided a Spanish translation, which she posted. The White House confirmed the responses came from the president.
Reached at home, Sanchez declined to comment, referring all queries to her blog. But her husband and fellow blogger Reinaldo Escobar said that she had sent printed copies of her questions and electronic versions to the White House more than three months ago.
"We had very little hope (Obama) was going to answer," Escobar said. "He's the president. He is very busy with other things."
Escobar said Obama's response arrived Wednesday night but declined to give details, saying only that they came "through official channels," a possible reference to the U.S. Interests Section, which Washington maintains in Havana instead of an embassy.
...
Obama answers questions from top Cuban blogger
* By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer - Thu Nov 19, 2009 11:35PM EST
HAVANA -
President Barack Obama has answered questions submitted by a celebrated Cuban blogger, saying he isn't interested in "talking for the sake of talking" with Raul Castro and indicating he won't visit the island until the communist government changes its ways.
In an unusual written response to Yoani Sanchez, who has gained international acclaim for daring to criticize her government online, Obama also said it is up to Cuba to act if it wants normal relations with Washington, saying that a true thaw in nearly 50 years of deep-freeze "will require action by the Cuban government."
His comments were posted Thursday on Sanchez's blog, "Generacion Y," which like most sites critical of the Cuban government is blocked on the island.
Sanchez uses caustic, often witty posts to provide an inside look at a communist state, writing about such daily hardships as food shortages and tensions caused by a lack of freedom of expression and assembly.
Obama assured Sanchez that the United States "has no intention of invading Cuba," a Cold War concept that top Cuban officials insist is still a possibility.
Raul Castro, who took over the presidency from his ailing brother Fidel in February 2008, has said he would be willing to meet with Obama and has even suggested they should sit down at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Obama told Sanchez he doesn't want empty dialogue.
"I am not interested ... in talking for the sake of talking," he wrote. "In the case of Cuba, such diplomacy should create opportunities to advance the interests of the United States and the cause of freedom for the Cuban people."
Obama answered seven questions from Sanchez, with his responses running more than 1,000 words. Sanchez said he wrote in English but that his office provided a Spanish translation, which she posted. The White House confirmed the responses came from the president.
Reached at home, Sanchez declined to comment, referring all queries to her blog. But her husband and fellow blogger Reinaldo Escobar said that she had sent printed copies of her questions and electronic versions to the White House more than three months ago.
"We had very little hope (Obama) was going to answer," Escobar said. "He's the president. He is very busy with other things."
Escobar said Obama's response arrived Wednesday night but declined to give details, saying only that they came "through official channels," a possible reference to the U.S. Interests Section, which Washington maintains in Havana instead of an embassy.
...
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Selling trips to Cuba once was deadly, but no more
MH
Posted on Sun, May. 03, 2009
Selling trips to Cuba once was deadly
BY LUISA YANEZ, DOUGLAS HANKS AND LAURA FIGUEROA
lyanez@MiamiHerald.com
There was a time when advertising Viajes a Cuba on a storefront was an invitation to a pipe bombing.
In the politically charged Miami of the late 1970s and '80s, the FBI investigated more than a dozen blasts at Cuba travel agencies -- considered nests of Communist agents by staunch anti-Castro exiles.
Selling tickets to Havana could even get you killed. That's what happened to Carlos Muñiz Varela, a 26-year-old exile living in Puerto Rico who opened the first Cuba-approved travel agency. Thirty years ago this week, he was gunned down in San Juan.
But times have changed, and the travel agencies today worry little about political retribution.
''They want to call me a communist -- thank you very much,'' said a strident Francisco Aruca, the owner of Marazul Charters. Aruca, also a Miami radio host, is one of the more outspoken of the seven agency owners who book charters to Cuba. They all have permission from Cuba and the U.S. Treasury Department.
The long-standing and sometimes violent clashes between exiles who oppose anyone doing business with the island have disappeared -- welcome news to the agencies, where business has been booming since last month, when President Barack Obama lifted restrictions on Cuban Americans wanting to travel or send money to relatives on the island.
Armando Garcia, president of Marazul Charters, points no further than the windows of his Westchester storefront as indication that the climate for trips to Cuba has changed.
More than a decade ago, he had to install bullet-proof glass following a 1996 bombing that nearly gutted the store, which is across the street from The Falls on South Dixie Highway.
It was one of several bombing attempts against the company's three South Florida stores. ''People were scared for their lives,'' Garcia said. ``None of the employees wanted to tell relatives where they worked for fear of retribution. ''
OUT OF THE SHADOWS
Now customers sit in a row of chairs edged up against the window. Perception of those who travel to Cuba has also changed; it's no longer a dirty little secret.
''A lot of people were scared of telling their neighbors and friends -- they would lie about where they were going on vacation,'' Garcia said.
Miguel Saavedra, head of Vigilia Mambisa, a group that continues to picket those who do business with Cuba, said the travel agencies feed off Miami's poor exile community. ''Cuban exiles are victims of these agencies who prey off people traveling to see relatives by charging them exorbitant amounts of money that goes to the Cuba government,'' Saavedra said. ``These agencies make a pact with the devil.''
Bad blood between exiles and the Cuba travel agencies erupted in earnest in 1978 after a group of Miami Cubans, who became known as the Comité de 75, visited the island and negotiated with Fidel Castro for the release of 3,600 Cuban political prisoners.
NEW DEAL
More significantly, they also negotiated for travel to the island on what were called viajes de la comunidad -- for the first time, trips by exiles to visit Cuba.
The deal created a need for agencies to open for business in Miami, New Jersey and Puerto Rico. Cuba jumped in, creating Havanatur, a government agency charged with overseeing the venture with the U.S. travel agencies. But Aruca said Cuba originally had bigger plans. Cuban officials thought large American companies would jump in to book passage to the island -- much like they did before the 1958 Cuban revolution.
''They were ignoring the public relations aspect that many of these bigger companies would not want to get in the middle of U.S. and Cuban affairs,'' Aruca said. ``Once Cuba realized that no big travel outfits were signing on to coordinate trips, they realized they should work with the smaller Cuban-American businesses.''
The down side: The small agencies became a magnet for anti-Castro anger.
George Kiszynski, a special agent for the FBI in Miami during the late 1970s and '80s, was caught in the middle, assigned with stopping the rash of bombings. The bombings soon spread from the travel and packages-to-Cuba agencies to consulates of countries that did business with Cuba, and to persons believed to support the Cuban government and even the FBI and state attorney's offices in Miami.
''The interesting thing is that there were many bombers, not just one. That made it more difficult,'' said Kiszynski, now director of investigations for the Ackerman Group. It became so hectic, he created an ad hoc task force with other local law enforcement agents. ``We were pretty successful in arresting many of the bombers.''
Most of the bombs were set to go off in the early morning. ''If one had gone off during the day, it could have killed someone,'' he said. In Miami, no one was killed.
SHOOTING DEATH
In Puerto Rico, Muñiz was not as fortunate. With the blessing of Cuba, he had wasted no time scheduling the first flight through Viajes Varadero in December 1978.
Although he was only in his 20s, Muñiz was a dedicated political activist who supported Puerto Rican independence. He was a member of the leftist Antonio Maceo Brigade, said his best friend, Raúl Alzaga Manresa, current owner of the company.
Viajes Varadero made its inaugural flight with about 90 people aboard; Muñiz was among the passengers.
Four months later, he was shot in the head as he drove to his mother's house in San Juan. No arrests have ever been made. ''There had been threats, and our office had been bombed, but I guess we were too young to take the danger seriously; it was a mistake,'' Alzaga said.
The anniversary of Muñiz's death is being marked this week by Cuban government news sites.
''I don't like to use the word martyr, but I guess you can call Muñiz our martyr in the Cuba travel industry. He was the first and the only one directly killed over it,'' Aruca said.
For those agencies in business with Cuba, there are rules to follow. Initially, the travel companies had to follow conditions set by Havanatur -- among them, all flights had to be purchased with a seven-day stay in one of the state-run hotels.
Eventually agency owners were able to bargain to only require one night's stay in a hotel, and by the 1990s the hotel requirement was lifted.
Aruca said Marazul charged customers the cost of the flight and hotel stay, but barely broke even.
In the 1990s, travel agencies diversified by seeking out organizations, sports teams and schools that wanted to travel to Cuba for humanitarian and educational reasons, Aruca said.
Despite the domestic political controversy, winning permission from Washington for the flights is considered the easy part of the equation, said John Kavulich II, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. ''From the U.S. side, if you meet the criteria, you cannot be denied. There isn't a quota,'' Kavulich said.
On the Cuba side, it's another story.
''The Cuban government is going to favor those operators who have stated publicly that they oppose certain U.S. policies'' -- like Washington's trade embargo against the island, Kavulich said.
''They'll Google you,'' he added. ``Have you written letters, have you given testimony, have you been in the media opposing what the Cuban government feels are policies doing [Cuba] a disservice?''
Posted on Sun, May. 03, 2009
Selling trips to Cuba once was deadly
BY LUISA YANEZ, DOUGLAS HANKS AND LAURA FIGUEROA
lyanez@MiamiHerald.com
There was a time when advertising Viajes a Cuba on a storefront was an invitation to a pipe bombing.
In the politically charged Miami of the late 1970s and '80s, the FBI investigated more than a dozen blasts at Cuba travel agencies -- considered nests of Communist agents by staunch anti-Castro exiles.
Selling tickets to Havana could even get you killed. That's what happened to Carlos Muñiz Varela, a 26-year-old exile living in Puerto Rico who opened the first Cuba-approved travel agency. Thirty years ago this week, he was gunned down in San Juan.
But times have changed, and the travel agencies today worry little about political retribution.
''They want to call me a communist -- thank you very much,'' said a strident Francisco Aruca, the owner of Marazul Charters. Aruca, also a Miami radio host, is one of the more outspoken of the seven agency owners who book charters to Cuba. They all have permission from Cuba and the U.S. Treasury Department.
The long-standing and sometimes violent clashes between exiles who oppose anyone doing business with the island have disappeared -- welcome news to the agencies, where business has been booming since last month, when President Barack Obama lifted restrictions on Cuban Americans wanting to travel or send money to relatives on the island.
Armando Garcia, president of Marazul Charters, points no further than the windows of his Westchester storefront as indication that the climate for trips to Cuba has changed.
More than a decade ago, he had to install bullet-proof glass following a 1996 bombing that nearly gutted the store, which is across the street from The Falls on South Dixie Highway.
It was one of several bombing attempts against the company's three South Florida stores. ''People were scared for their lives,'' Garcia said. ``None of the employees wanted to tell relatives where they worked for fear of retribution. ''
OUT OF THE SHADOWS
Now customers sit in a row of chairs edged up against the window. Perception of those who travel to Cuba has also changed; it's no longer a dirty little secret.
''A lot of people were scared of telling their neighbors and friends -- they would lie about where they were going on vacation,'' Garcia said.
Miguel Saavedra, head of Vigilia Mambisa, a group that continues to picket those who do business with Cuba, said the travel agencies feed off Miami's poor exile community. ''Cuban exiles are victims of these agencies who prey off people traveling to see relatives by charging them exorbitant amounts of money that goes to the Cuba government,'' Saavedra said. ``These agencies make a pact with the devil.''
Bad blood between exiles and the Cuba travel agencies erupted in earnest in 1978 after a group of Miami Cubans, who became known as the Comité de 75, visited the island and negotiated with Fidel Castro for the release of 3,600 Cuban political prisoners.
NEW DEAL
More significantly, they also negotiated for travel to the island on what were called viajes de la comunidad -- for the first time, trips by exiles to visit Cuba.
The deal created a need for agencies to open for business in Miami, New Jersey and Puerto Rico. Cuba jumped in, creating Havanatur, a government agency charged with overseeing the venture with the U.S. travel agencies. But Aruca said Cuba originally had bigger plans. Cuban officials thought large American companies would jump in to book passage to the island -- much like they did before the 1958 Cuban revolution.
''They were ignoring the public relations aspect that many of these bigger companies would not want to get in the middle of U.S. and Cuban affairs,'' Aruca said. ``Once Cuba realized that no big travel outfits were signing on to coordinate trips, they realized they should work with the smaller Cuban-American businesses.''
The down side: The small agencies became a magnet for anti-Castro anger.
George Kiszynski, a special agent for the FBI in Miami during the late 1970s and '80s, was caught in the middle, assigned with stopping the rash of bombings. The bombings soon spread from the travel and packages-to-Cuba agencies to consulates of countries that did business with Cuba, and to persons believed to support the Cuban government and even the FBI and state attorney's offices in Miami.
''The interesting thing is that there were many bombers, not just one. That made it more difficult,'' said Kiszynski, now director of investigations for the Ackerman Group. It became so hectic, he created an ad hoc task force with other local law enforcement agents. ``We were pretty successful in arresting many of the bombers.''
Most of the bombs were set to go off in the early morning. ''If one had gone off during the day, it could have killed someone,'' he said. In Miami, no one was killed.
SHOOTING DEATH
In Puerto Rico, Muñiz was not as fortunate. With the blessing of Cuba, he had wasted no time scheduling the first flight through Viajes Varadero in December 1978.
Although he was only in his 20s, Muñiz was a dedicated political activist who supported Puerto Rican independence. He was a member of the leftist Antonio Maceo Brigade, said his best friend, Raúl Alzaga Manresa, current owner of the company.
Viajes Varadero made its inaugural flight with about 90 people aboard; Muñiz was among the passengers.
Four months later, he was shot in the head as he drove to his mother's house in San Juan. No arrests have ever been made. ''There had been threats, and our office had been bombed, but I guess we were too young to take the danger seriously; it was a mistake,'' Alzaga said.
The anniversary of Muñiz's death is being marked this week by Cuban government news sites.
''I don't like to use the word martyr, but I guess you can call Muñiz our martyr in the Cuba travel industry. He was the first and the only one directly killed over it,'' Aruca said.
For those agencies in business with Cuba, there are rules to follow. Initially, the travel companies had to follow conditions set by Havanatur -- among them, all flights had to be purchased with a seven-day stay in one of the state-run hotels.
Eventually agency owners were able to bargain to only require one night's stay in a hotel, and by the 1990s the hotel requirement was lifted.
Aruca said Marazul charged customers the cost of the flight and hotel stay, but barely broke even.
In the 1990s, travel agencies diversified by seeking out organizations, sports teams and schools that wanted to travel to Cuba for humanitarian and educational reasons, Aruca said.
Despite the domestic political controversy, winning permission from Washington for the flights is considered the easy part of the equation, said John Kavulich II, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. ''From the U.S. side, if you meet the criteria, you cannot be denied. There isn't a quota,'' Kavulich said.
On the Cuba side, it's another story.
''The Cuban government is going to favor those operators who have stated publicly that they oppose certain U.S. policies'' -- like Washington's trade embargo against the island, Kavulich said.
''They'll Google you,'' he added. ``Have you written letters, have you given testimony, have you been in the media opposing what the Cuban government feels are policies doing [Cuba] a disservice?''
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Blogger Yoani Sanchez comments on Obama's policy change
The interesting thing about her comment is that she is picked up and posted on the popular Huff ington Post blog:
Yoani Sanchez, award-winning Cuban blogger
Posted April 15, 2009 | 12:19 AM (EST)
Obama Threw the Ball, Now It's In Raul's Court
The ball is in Cuba's court after Obama threw it yesterday, as he announced new flexibility in his policies toward Cuba. The players on this side seem a bit confused, hesitating between grabbing the ball, criticizing it, or simply ignoring it. The context couldn't be better: loyalty to the government has never seemed more perverse and ideological fervor has never been as feeble as it is now. On top of that, few still believe the story that the powerful neighbor will attack us and the majority feel that this confrontation has gone on too long.
The next move is up to Raul Castro's government but we sense we will be left waiting. He should "decriminalize political dissent" which would immediately annul the long prison sentences of those who have been punished for differences of opinion. The ball we would like him to throw is the one that would open up spaces for citizens' initiatives, permit free association and, in a gesture of the utmost political honesty, put himself to the test of truly free elections. In a bold leap on the field "the permanent second" would have to dare to offer something more than an olive branch. We are hoping they eliminate the travel restrictions, which would put an end to that extortionary business of permission to come and go from the Island.
The game would become more dynamic if they let the Cuban people take hold of the erratic ball of change. Many would kick it to end censorship, State control over information, ideological selection in certain professions, indoctrination in education and the punishment of those who think differently. We would kick it to be able to surf the Internet without blocked web sites, to be able to say the word "freedom" into an open microphone without being accused of "a counter-revolutionary provocation."
Many of us have climbed down from the bleachers from where we were watching the game. If the Cuban government doesn't grab the ball, there are thousands of hands ready to take our turn to launch it.
Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.
Yoani Sanchez, award-winning Cuban blogger
Posted April 15, 2009 | 12:19 AM (EST)
Obama Threw the Ball, Now It's In Raul's Court
The ball is in Cuba's court after Obama threw it yesterday, as he announced new flexibility in his policies toward Cuba. The players on this side seem a bit confused, hesitating between grabbing the ball, criticizing it, or simply ignoring it. The context couldn't be better: loyalty to the government has never seemed more perverse and ideological fervor has never been as feeble as it is now. On top of that, few still believe the story that the powerful neighbor will attack us and the majority feel that this confrontation has gone on too long.
The next move is up to Raul Castro's government but we sense we will be left waiting. He should "decriminalize political dissent" which would immediately annul the long prison sentences of those who have been punished for differences of opinion. The ball we would like him to throw is the one that would open up spaces for citizens' initiatives, permit free association and, in a gesture of the utmost political honesty, put himself to the test of truly free elections. In a bold leap on the field "the permanent second" would have to dare to offer something more than an olive branch. We are hoping they eliminate the travel restrictions, which would put an end to that extortionary business of permission to come and go from the Island.
The game would become more dynamic if they let the Cuban people take hold of the erratic ball of change. Many would kick it to end censorship, State control over information, ideological selection in certain professions, indoctrination in education and the punishment of those who think differently. We would kick it to be able to surf the Internet without blocked web sites, to be able to say the word "freedom" into an open microphone without being accused of "a counter-revolutionary provocation."
Many of us have climbed down from the bleachers from where we were watching the game. If the Cuban government doesn't grab the ball, there are thousands of hands ready to take our turn to launch it.
Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.
U.S. Telecoms Eager to Get Cuba on the Line
WaPo
U.S. Telecoms Eager to Get Cuba on the Line
Firms Wait to See Plans for Infrastructure, Government's Approach to Access
By Cecilia Kang
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 15, 2009; A12
U.S. telecommunication firms could open up investment in Cuba now that the Obama administration will allow companies to operate there, a final global frontier for the Internet age.
But before cellphone and Internet providers rush in, they will closely study potential pitfalls in setting up shop in the Communist nation with one of the poorest populations in the region, analysts said.
The Cuban government has not been helpful in allowing its citizens access to communications technology, said David Gross, who was U.S. ambassador and coordinator for International Information and Communications Policy during the Bush administration. Now that the United States has opened the door, he said, "the question is whether the Cuban government will allow people to come inside."
Cuba has the lowest percentage of telephone, Internet and cellphone subscribers in Latin America, according to Manuel Cereijo, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Miami. About 11 percent of residents subscribe to land-line telephone service, and 2 percent have cellphone service.
Under President Obama's plan, U.S. telecom companies would be able to build undersea cable networks that connect the two nations. Cellphone carriers would be able to contract with Cuba's government-run wireless operator to provide service to its residents and offer roaming services to Americans visiting the island.
U.S. satellite operators such as Sirius XM Radio and Dish Network could beam Martha Stewart and MTV programs to the nation. Cubans could also receive cellphones and computers donated from overseas.
But with average monthly salaries of about $15, many citizens might not be able to afford service fees, according to experts on Cuban policy and telecommunications infrastructure. Others question whether residents would spend money on BlackBerrys and services such as video on demand, especially if the government restricts Web content.
"The infrastructure that exists there today is lousy, and the Cuban people are paid in pesos, which is worth nothing," Cereijo said. "They are thinking about buying food first."
Most telecom companies declined to comment yesterday about the administration's announcement because they are waiting for more details on how such business relationships would be implemented.
The Cuban government also has not yet responded to Obama's pledge to relax trade and travel barriers between the nations. But analysts and trade experts say President Raúl Castro, brother of longtime dictator Fidel Castro, has loosened the government's grip its people. Last year, he allowed Cubans to buy cellphones, computers and microwaves, in what appeared at the time to be a major step in allowing them to freely access information.
Currently, a government-run company provides all telecom services to Cuban citizens.
Gross, now a partner at Wiley Rein, said U.S. cellphone carriers will balk if the Cuban government tries to charge high fees for roaming contracts. He and others say that consortiums that build undersea cable networks in the Caribbean may see business opportunities in connecting to the island, but they will avoid any conditions that prevent them from offering video and other Internet content, for example.
"Everyone in the region has been wondering when Cuba might open up, and I think Cuba is trying to figure out ways to attract investment in a way that works with its political situation," said Michael Prior, chief executive of Atlantic Tele-Network, a wireless and Internet network carrier in the Caribbean.
Prior said the best return on investment would be for wireless services, which do not come with the hefty capital costs of laying cable and fiber-optic lines undersea.
Cereijo estimates it would cost $2.5 billion to upgrade the island's telecom infrastructure for basic high-speed Internet as well as more reliable land-line and cellphone service.
Some U.S. firms already have licenses with the Cuban government that allow calls from America to connect through the island's carrier.
U.S. Telecoms Eager to Get Cuba on the Line
Firms Wait to See Plans for Infrastructure, Government's Approach to Access
By Cecilia Kang
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 15, 2009; A12
U.S. telecommunication firms could open up investment in Cuba now that the Obama administration will allow companies to operate there, a final global frontier for the Internet age.
But before cellphone and Internet providers rush in, they will closely study potential pitfalls in setting up shop in the Communist nation with one of the poorest populations in the region, analysts said.
The Cuban government has not been helpful in allowing its citizens access to communications technology, said David Gross, who was U.S. ambassador and coordinator for International Information and Communications Policy during the Bush administration. Now that the United States has opened the door, he said, "the question is whether the Cuban government will allow people to come inside."
Cuba has the lowest percentage of telephone, Internet and cellphone subscribers in Latin America, according to Manuel Cereijo, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Miami. About 11 percent of residents subscribe to land-line telephone service, and 2 percent have cellphone service.
Under President Obama's plan, U.S. telecom companies would be able to build undersea cable networks that connect the two nations. Cellphone carriers would be able to contract with Cuba's government-run wireless operator to provide service to its residents and offer roaming services to Americans visiting the island.
U.S. satellite operators such as Sirius XM Radio and Dish Network could beam Martha Stewart and MTV programs to the nation. Cubans could also receive cellphones and computers donated from overseas.
But with average monthly salaries of about $15, many citizens might not be able to afford service fees, according to experts on Cuban policy and telecommunications infrastructure. Others question whether residents would spend money on BlackBerrys and services such as video on demand, especially if the government restricts Web content.
"The infrastructure that exists there today is lousy, and the Cuban people are paid in pesos, which is worth nothing," Cereijo said. "They are thinking about buying food first."
Most telecom companies declined to comment yesterday about the administration's announcement because they are waiting for more details on how such business relationships would be implemented.
The Cuban government also has not yet responded to Obama's pledge to relax trade and travel barriers between the nations. But analysts and trade experts say President Raúl Castro, brother of longtime dictator Fidel Castro, has loosened the government's grip its people. Last year, he allowed Cubans to buy cellphones, computers and microwaves, in what appeared at the time to be a major step in allowing them to freely access information.
Currently, a government-run company provides all telecom services to Cuban citizens.
Gross, now a partner at Wiley Rein, said U.S. cellphone carriers will balk if the Cuban government tries to charge high fees for roaming contracts. He and others say that consortiums that build undersea cable networks in the Caribbean may see business opportunities in connecting to the island, but they will avoid any conditions that prevent them from offering video and other Internet content, for example.
"Everyone in the region has been wondering when Cuba might open up, and I think Cuba is trying to figure out ways to attract investment in a way that works with its political situation," said Michael Prior, chief executive of Atlantic Tele-Network, a wireless and Internet network carrier in the Caribbean.
Prior said the best return on investment would be for wireless services, which do not come with the hefty capital costs of laying cable and fiber-optic lines undersea.
Cereijo estimates it would cost $2.5 billion to upgrade the island's telecom infrastructure for basic high-speed Internet as well as more reliable land-line and cellphone service.
Some U.S. firms already have licenses with the Cuban government that allow calls from America to connect through the island's carrier.
Friday, April 03, 2009
Obama to abolish limits on U.S.-Cuba family ties
Reuters
Obama to abolish limits on U.S.-Cuba family ties
By Anthony Boadle Anthony Boadle Fri Apr 3, 8:10 pm ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In a move that could herald better ties between Cold War foes, the Obama administration is planning to abolish limits on family travel and cash remittances between the United States and Cuba, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
President Barack Obama has decided to fulfill a campaign promise and allow Cuban Americans and Cuban emigres to freely visit and send money to their families in the communist-led nation, the newspaper said, citing a senior administration official.
A White House official confirmed the administration's intentions to lift the restrictions, but said the measure was not a new policy statement and was not imminent.
"The administration has conveyed that our policy toward Cuba is being reviewed and the president has stated that there's a sense that restrictions on family visits and cash remittances should be lifted," the official told Reuters.
"Our focus remains on the need for democratic reforms and human rights" in Cuba, the official said.
The removal of limits on family travel and cash remittances would allow Cubans living in the United States to travel freely to the island, instead of once a year as at present. It would also remove the ceiling of $1,200 per person in cash remittances to needy family members in Cuba.
"This is a good humanitarian move that honors Cuban Americans' right to visit and aid their relatives as they see fit," said Cuba expert Phil Peters of the Lexington Institute.
"But it creates one class of Americans who can travel to Cuba at will, so it will add to the momentum in Congress to lift restrictions on all other Americans, who have a right to travel too," he said.
The Wall Street Journal said the move was probably meant to signal a new attitude toward both Cuba and other Latin American countries that have pressed Washington to end a trade embargo that has sought to isolate Havana for more than four decades.
TRAVEL AND REMITTANCES
During last year's presidential campaign, Obama favored easing U.S. restrictions on family travel and remittances, but said he would not eliminate the trade embargo until Cuba shows progress toward democracy and greater human rights.
The U.S. Congress is considering bills that would lift the ban on American citizens traveling to Cuba that was introduced with other sanctions in the early 1960s when Fidel Castro's revolution turned Cuba into a Soviet ally.
Obama is due to meet Latin American leaders at a summit in Trinidad and Tobago later this month.
The Wall Street Journal said Obama is not considering any specific diplomatic outreach toward Cuba, where Fidel Castro has been sidelined by illness and was succeeded as president last year by his brother Raul Castro.
U.S. lawmakers, who believe in increasing numbers that the embargo has proven ineffective in bringing political change to Cuba, have taken the initiative on the outreach front.
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives arrived in Havana on Friday to meet with Cuban officials in a sign of accelerating efforts to improve relations.
Representative Barbara Lee said the group of seven Democrats wanted simply to "see what the possibilities are" and carried no messages from Obama or proposals for the Cubans. "We're here to learn and talk," she told reporters.
The congressional delegation is the first from the United States to visit Cuba since Obama took office in January.
"Change is in the air and our president, of course, talks very clearly about bilateral relations with all countries in the world," said Lee.
(Additional reporting Jeff Franks in Havana and David Alexander in Washington; Editing by Chris Wilson)
Obama to abolish limits on U.S.-Cuba family ties
By Anthony Boadle Anthony Boadle Fri Apr 3, 8:10 pm ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In a move that could herald better ties between Cold War foes, the Obama administration is planning to abolish limits on family travel and cash remittances between the United States and Cuba, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
President Barack Obama has decided to fulfill a campaign promise and allow Cuban Americans and Cuban emigres to freely visit and send money to their families in the communist-led nation, the newspaper said, citing a senior administration official.
A White House official confirmed the administration's intentions to lift the restrictions, but said the measure was not a new policy statement and was not imminent.
"The administration has conveyed that our policy toward Cuba is being reviewed and the president has stated that there's a sense that restrictions on family visits and cash remittances should be lifted," the official told Reuters.
"Our focus remains on the need for democratic reforms and human rights" in Cuba, the official said.
The removal of limits on family travel and cash remittances would allow Cubans living in the United States to travel freely to the island, instead of once a year as at present. It would also remove the ceiling of $1,200 per person in cash remittances to needy family members in Cuba.
"This is a good humanitarian move that honors Cuban Americans' right to visit and aid their relatives as they see fit," said Cuba expert Phil Peters of the Lexington Institute.
"But it creates one class of Americans who can travel to Cuba at will, so it will add to the momentum in Congress to lift restrictions on all other Americans, who have a right to travel too," he said.
The Wall Street Journal said the move was probably meant to signal a new attitude toward both Cuba and other Latin American countries that have pressed Washington to end a trade embargo that has sought to isolate Havana for more than four decades.
TRAVEL AND REMITTANCES
During last year's presidential campaign, Obama favored easing U.S. restrictions on family travel and remittances, but said he would not eliminate the trade embargo until Cuba shows progress toward democracy and greater human rights.
The U.S. Congress is considering bills that would lift the ban on American citizens traveling to Cuba that was introduced with other sanctions in the early 1960s when Fidel Castro's revolution turned Cuba into a Soviet ally.
Obama is due to meet Latin American leaders at a summit in Trinidad and Tobago later this month.
The Wall Street Journal said Obama is not considering any specific diplomatic outreach toward Cuba, where Fidel Castro has been sidelined by illness and was succeeded as president last year by his brother Raul Castro.
U.S. lawmakers, who believe in increasing numbers that the embargo has proven ineffective in bringing political change to Cuba, have taken the initiative on the outreach front.
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives arrived in Havana on Friday to meet with Cuban officials in a sign of accelerating efforts to improve relations.
Representative Barbara Lee said the group of seven Democrats wanted simply to "see what the possibilities are" and carried no messages from Obama or proposals for the Cubans. "We're here to learn and talk," she told reporters.
The congressional delegation is the first from the United States to visit Cuba since Obama took office in January.
"Change is in the air and our president, of course, talks very clearly about bilateral relations with all countries in the world," said Lee.
(Additional reporting Jeff Franks in Havana and David Alexander in Washington; Editing by Chris Wilson)
Monday, October 20, 2008
20bn barrel oil discovery puts Cuba in the big league
Guardian
20bn barrel oil discovery puts Cuba in the big league
• Self-reliance beckons for communist state
• Estimate means reserves are on a par with US
* Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent
* The Guardian,
* Saturday October 18 2008
Friends and foes have called Cuba many things - a progressive beacon, a quixotic underdog, an oppressive tyranny - but no one has called it lucky, until now .
Mother nature, it emerged this week, appears to have blessed the island with enough oil reserves to vault it into the ranks of energy powers. The government announced there may be more than 20bn barrels of recoverable oil in offshore fields in Cuba's share of the Gulf of Mexico, more than twice the previous estimate.
If confirmed, it puts Cuba's reserves on par with those of the US and into the world's top 20. Drilling is expected to start next year by Cuba's state oil company Cubapetroleo, or Cupet.
"It would change their whole equation. The government would have more money and no longer be dependent on foreign oil," said Kirby Jones, founder of the Washington-based US-Cuba Trade Association. "It could join the club of oil exporting nations."
"We have more data. I'm almost certain that if they ask for all the data we have, (their estimate) is going to grow considerably," said Cupet's exploration manager, Rafael Tenreyro Perez.
Havana based its dramatically higher estimate mainly on comparisons with oil output from similar geological structures off the coasts of Mexico and the US. Cuba's undersea geology was "very similar" to Mexico's giant Cantarell oil field in the Bay of Campeche, said Tenreyro.
A consortium of companies led by Spain's Repsol had tested wells and were expected to begin drilling the first production well in mid-2009, and possibly several more later in the year, he said.
Cuba currently produces about 60,000 barrels of oil daily, covering almost half of its needs, and imports the rest from Venezuela in return for Cuban doctors and sports instructors. Even that barter system puts a strain on an impoverished economy in which Cubans earn an average monthly salary of $20.
Subsidised grocery staples, health care and education help make ends meet but an old joke - that the three biggest failings of the revolution are breakfast, lunch and dinner - still does the rounds. Last month hardships were compounded by tropical storms that shredded crops and devastated coastal towns.
"This news about the oil reserves could not have come at a better time for the regime," said Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, a Cuba energy specialist at the University of Nebraska.
However there is little prospect of Cuba becoming a communist version of Kuwait. Its oil is more than a mile deep under the ocean and difficult and expensive to extract. The four-decade-old US economic embargo prevents several of Cuba's potential oil partners - notably Brazil, Norway and Spain - from using valuable first-generation technology.
"You're looking at three to five years minimum before any meaningful returns," said Benjamin-Alvarado.
Even so, Cuba is a master at stretching resources. President Raul Castro, who took over from brother Fidel, has promised to deliver improvements to daily life to shore up the legitimacy of the revolution as it approaches its 50th anniversary.
Cuba's unexpected arrival into the big oil league could increase pressure on the next administration to loosen the embargo to let US oil companies participate in the bonanza and reduce US dependency on the middle east, said Jones. "Up until now the embargo did not really impact on us in a substantive, strategic way. Oil is different. It's something we need and want."
20bn barrel oil discovery puts Cuba in the big league
• Self-reliance beckons for communist state
• Estimate means reserves are on a par with US
* Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent
* The Guardian,
* Saturday October 18 2008
Friends and foes have called Cuba many things - a progressive beacon, a quixotic underdog, an oppressive tyranny - but no one has called it lucky, until now .
Mother nature, it emerged this week, appears to have blessed the island with enough oil reserves to vault it into the ranks of energy powers. The government announced there may be more than 20bn barrels of recoverable oil in offshore fields in Cuba's share of the Gulf of Mexico, more than twice the previous estimate.
If confirmed, it puts Cuba's reserves on par with those of the US and into the world's top 20. Drilling is expected to start next year by Cuba's state oil company Cubapetroleo, or Cupet.
"It would change their whole equation. The government would have more money and no longer be dependent on foreign oil," said Kirby Jones, founder of the Washington-based US-Cuba Trade Association. "It could join the club of oil exporting nations."
"We have more data. I'm almost certain that if they ask for all the data we have, (their estimate) is going to grow considerably," said Cupet's exploration manager, Rafael Tenreyro Perez.
Havana based its dramatically higher estimate mainly on comparisons with oil output from similar geological structures off the coasts of Mexico and the US. Cuba's undersea geology was "very similar" to Mexico's giant Cantarell oil field in the Bay of Campeche, said Tenreyro.
A consortium of companies led by Spain's Repsol had tested wells and were expected to begin drilling the first production well in mid-2009, and possibly several more later in the year, he said.
Cuba currently produces about 60,000 barrels of oil daily, covering almost half of its needs, and imports the rest from Venezuela in return for Cuban doctors and sports instructors. Even that barter system puts a strain on an impoverished economy in which Cubans earn an average monthly salary of $20.
Subsidised grocery staples, health care and education help make ends meet but an old joke - that the three biggest failings of the revolution are breakfast, lunch and dinner - still does the rounds. Last month hardships were compounded by tropical storms that shredded crops and devastated coastal towns.
"This news about the oil reserves could not have come at a better time for the regime," said Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, a Cuba energy specialist at the University of Nebraska.
However there is little prospect of Cuba becoming a communist version of Kuwait. Its oil is more than a mile deep under the ocean and difficult and expensive to extract. The four-decade-old US economic embargo prevents several of Cuba's potential oil partners - notably Brazil, Norway and Spain - from using valuable first-generation technology.
"You're looking at three to five years minimum before any meaningful returns," said Benjamin-Alvarado.
Even so, Cuba is a master at stretching resources. President Raul Castro, who took over from brother Fidel, has promised to deliver improvements to daily life to shore up the legitimacy of the revolution as it approaches its 50th anniversary.
Cuba's unexpected arrival into the big oil league could increase pressure on the next administration to loosen the embargo to let US oil companies participate in the bonanza and reduce US dependency on the middle east, said Jones. "Up until now the embargo did not really impact on us in a substantive, strategic way. Oil is different. It's something we need and want."
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Judge Overturns Florida's Ban on Academic Travel to Cuba
Chronicle for Higher Education
News Blog
August 29, 2008
Judge Overturns Florida's Ban on Academic Travel to Cuba
A federal judge has struck down a Florida law that restricts students, faculty members, and researchers at the state’s public colleges and universities from traveling to Cuba and four other countries that the U.S. government considers terrorist states.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida had challenged the law in court on behalf of the Faculty Senate at Florida International University, arguing that the statute violated faculty members’ First Amendment rights and impinged on the federal government’s ability to regulate foreign commerce.
The two-year-old law prevents students, professors, and researchers at public universities and community colleges in Florida from using state or federal funds, or private foundation grants administered by their institutions, to travel to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. Those at private colleges in Florida are forbidden to use state funds for that purpose.
The decision, issued Thursday by the U.S. District Court in Miami, reversed an earlier ruling upholding the ban. In her order, Judge Patricia Seitz upheld one aspect of the law: State funds may not be used for travel to those countries. But nearly all such trips rely on private funds.
Judge Seitz agreed with the ACLU’s argument that the state should not be allowed to regulate travel financed with private funds and that the Florida Legislature could not interfere with federal foreign-relations powers.
“It’s a blow for academic freedom,” Thomas Breslin, a professor of international relations and chairman of Florida International University’s Faculty Senate, said of the decision during a news conference this afternoon.
The law was passed in 2006 after a Florida International professor and his wife, a university employee, were accused of spying for Cuba. —Karin Fischer
News Blog
August 29, 2008
Judge Overturns Florida's Ban on Academic Travel to Cuba
A federal judge has struck down a Florida law that restricts students, faculty members, and researchers at the state’s public colleges and universities from traveling to Cuba and four other countries that the U.S. government considers terrorist states.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida had challenged the law in court on behalf of the Faculty Senate at Florida International University, arguing that the statute violated faculty members’ First Amendment rights and impinged on the federal government’s ability to regulate foreign commerce.
The two-year-old law prevents students, professors, and researchers at public universities and community colleges in Florida from using state or federal funds, or private foundation grants administered by their institutions, to travel to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. Those at private colleges in Florida are forbidden to use state funds for that purpose.
The decision, issued Thursday by the U.S. District Court in Miami, reversed an earlier ruling upholding the ban. In her order, Judge Patricia Seitz upheld one aspect of the law: State funds may not be used for travel to those countries. But nearly all such trips rely on private funds.
Judge Seitz agreed with the ACLU’s argument that the state should not be allowed to regulate travel financed with private funds and that the Florida Legislature could not interfere with federal foreign-relations powers.
“It’s a blow for academic freedom,” Thomas Breslin, a professor of international relations and chairman of Florida International University’s Faculty Senate, said of the decision during a news conference this afternoon.
The law was passed in 2006 after a Florida International professor and his wife, a university employee, were accused of spying for Cuba. —Karin Fischer
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Funding for free Cuba is frozen
Miami Herald
Posted on Tue, Jul. 22, 2008
Funding for free Cuba is frozen
BY FRANCES ROBLES
Congress has put the U.S. Agency for International Development's $45 million Cuba program's 2008 funding on hold, following a series of troubling audits and cases of massive fraud, The Miami Herald has learned.
In a quest to get the funding hold lifted, U.S. AID on Friday ordered a bottoms-up review of all its Cuba democracy programs and suspended a Miami anti-Castro exile group that spent at least $11,000 of federal grant money on personal items.
Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., ordered a hold on the U.S. AID Cuba program funding last month, in part in response to a $500,000 embezzlement at the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington disclosed earlier this year, federal officials said.
In a memo sent Friday to various members of Congress, Stephen Driesler, AID's deputy assistant administrator for legislative and public affairs, said the agency recently implemented stricter financial reviews. That new review turned up irregularities at the Grupo de Apoyo a la Democracia (Group in Support of Democracy), a Miami group criticized in the past for using federal funds to send Nintendo games to Cuba.
The executive director of Grupo de Apoyo admitted that an employee used the organization's credit card for thousands of dollars in personal items and then billed them to the grant aimed at bringing democracy to Cuba, Driesler's memo said.
The group's funding has been suspended pending further review, and the money has been reimbursed, Driesler said. In a telephone interview, he declined to say what items were purchased.
'' U.S. AID has decided to conduct an immediate review of all the grants to determine where financial vulnerabilities exist and how best to address these vulnerabilities to strengthen the program for future success,'' his memo said. ``All grants are currently undergoing review, and pending the outcome of these reviews, some grants will be partially suspended.''
Grupo de Apoyo Executive Director Frank Hernández Trujillo did not return several messages seeking comment.
The announcement that U.S. AID would conduct a thorough review of its controversial $45 million program is considered a significant development that illustrates increased congressional oversight over the program.
A report by the Cuban-American National Foundation released in May showed that less than 17 percent of $65 million in federal Cuba aid funds spent during the past 10 years went to ''direct, on-island assistance.'' The bulk of the money, the report said, went to academic studies and expenses of exile organizations, mostly in Miami and Washington.
The report echoed findings by The Miami Herald in 2006 and a congressional Government Accountability Office audit that found lax oversight of the programs and came as the Bush administration prepares to dole out a record $45.7 million in Cuba democracy grants.
IMPORTANT SHIFT
In an important shift, the Bush administration this year ordered a major change in the grants, favoring international advocacy groups over Miami exile organizations.
''Yes, we were worried,'' Driesler said in an interview. ``When we have problems with two institutions within six months out of 11 active grantees, you say, `We hope this is not a pattern, but we better pause and check and make sure.'
``We are focusing on procurements, validating that purchases being billed are being delivered, that the purchase price on the invoice is accurate and that the purchase was legitimate for a government program.''
Frank Calzon, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, stressed that the $500,000 fraud at his organization was not discovered by a federal audit but by Calzon himself. He said Berman, who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, pushed for the audits because he is against President Bush's Cuba policy.
POLITICS CHARGED
''I think any additional oversight is fine; I don't have any problem with that,'' Calzon said. ``I would say that it is simply motivated by politics. If Mr. Berman were in agreement with the president's Cuba policy, he would not be on this fishing expedition.''
Berman's office did not return a call seeking comment.
Critics say AID's move did not go far enough.
''Those of us who have been following this issue are alarmed about the program,'' said Sarah Stephens, whose organization, Democracy in the Americas, lobbies for a change in Cuba policy.
``We are pleased that Congress has started asking questions and, given what we have learned about possible corruption and waste, we believe Congress needs to stop this funding and continue asking the hard questions.''
Posted on Tue, Jul. 22, 2008
Funding for free Cuba is frozen
BY FRANCES ROBLES
Congress has put the U.S. Agency for International Development's $45 million Cuba program's 2008 funding on hold, following a series of troubling audits and cases of massive fraud, The Miami Herald has learned.
In a quest to get the funding hold lifted, U.S. AID on Friday ordered a bottoms-up review of all its Cuba democracy programs and suspended a Miami anti-Castro exile group that spent at least $11,000 of federal grant money on personal items.
Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., ordered a hold on the U.S. AID Cuba program funding last month, in part in response to a $500,000 embezzlement at the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington disclosed earlier this year, federal officials said.
In a memo sent Friday to various members of Congress, Stephen Driesler, AID's deputy assistant administrator for legislative and public affairs, said the agency recently implemented stricter financial reviews. That new review turned up irregularities at the Grupo de Apoyo a la Democracia (Group in Support of Democracy), a Miami group criticized in the past for using federal funds to send Nintendo games to Cuba.
The executive director of Grupo de Apoyo admitted that an employee used the organization's credit card for thousands of dollars in personal items and then billed them to the grant aimed at bringing democracy to Cuba, Driesler's memo said.
The group's funding has been suspended pending further review, and the money has been reimbursed, Driesler said. In a telephone interview, he declined to say what items were purchased.
'' U.S. AID has decided to conduct an immediate review of all the grants to determine where financial vulnerabilities exist and how best to address these vulnerabilities to strengthen the program for future success,'' his memo said. ``All grants are currently undergoing review, and pending the outcome of these reviews, some grants will be partially suspended.''
Grupo de Apoyo Executive Director Frank Hernández Trujillo did not return several messages seeking comment.
The announcement that U.S. AID would conduct a thorough review of its controversial $45 million program is considered a significant development that illustrates increased congressional oversight over the program.
A report by the Cuban-American National Foundation released in May showed that less than 17 percent of $65 million in federal Cuba aid funds spent during the past 10 years went to ''direct, on-island assistance.'' The bulk of the money, the report said, went to academic studies and expenses of exile organizations, mostly in Miami and Washington.
The report echoed findings by The Miami Herald in 2006 and a congressional Government Accountability Office audit that found lax oversight of the programs and came as the Bush administration prepares to dole out a record $45.7 million in Cuba democracy grants.
IMPORTANT SHIFT
In an important shift, the Bush administration this year ordered a major change in the grants, favoring international advocacy groups over Miami exile organizations.
''Yes, we were worried,'' Driesler said in an interview. ``When we have problems with two institutions within six months out of 11 active grantees, you say, `We hope this is not a pattern, but we better pause and check and make sure.'
``We are focusing on procurements, validating that purchases being billed are being delivered, that the purchase price on the invoice is accurate and that the purchase was legitimate for a government program.''
Frank Calzon, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, stressed that the $500,000 fraud at his organization was not discovered by a federal audit but by Calzon himself. He said Berman, who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, pushed for the audits because he is against President Bush's Cuba policy.
POLITICS CHARGED
''I think any additional oversight is fine; I don't have any problem with that,'' Calzon said. ``I would say that it is simply motivated by politics. If Mr. Berman were in agreement with the president's Cuba policy, he would not be on this fishing expedition.''
Berman's office did not return a call seeking comment.
Critics say AID's move did not go far enough.
''Those of us who have been following this issue are alarmed about the program,'' said Sarah Stephens, whose organization, Democracy in the Americas, lobbies for a change in Cuba policy.
``We are pleased that Congress has started asking questions and, given what we have learned about possible corruption and waste, we believe Congress needs to stop this funding and continue asking the hard questions.''
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Generational gap found on Cuba travel
Miami Herald
Posted on Wed, Jun. 18, 2008
Generational gap found on Cuba travel
By ALFONSO CHARDY
There's a split between older and younger Cuban Americans on whether exiles should be allowed to travel more often to visit relatives on the communist island, according to new polls commissioned by a group seeking better U.S.-Cuba relations.
The polls released Wednesday by the Foundation for Normalization of US/Cuba Relations, a group formed in 2006, show that a majority of registered voters in the hotly contested 21st and 25th congressional districts support unfettered exile Cuba travel and money remittances to the island. Voters in both districts are less likely to support a candidate who favors travel and money restrictions, the polls indicate, though the gap is not sufficient to overcome the polls' margin of error of 4.9 percentage points. Another 11 percent of those polled were undecided.
Republican incumbents in both districts, Lincoln Diaz-Balart in the 21st and brother Mario Diaz-Balart in the 25th, favor restrictions President Bush imposed in 2004 limiting exile travel to once every three years instead of annually. The 2004 rules also limit money remittances to close family members like spouses, parents or children instead of any relative.
CHALLENGERS
The issue has become central to the Diaz-Balarts' reelection because their chief Democratic challengers, former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez and former Cuban American National Foundation executive director Joe Garcia, favor lifting restrictions.
Martinez is running against Lincoln and Garcia against Mario.
''This is now the latest in a series of polls done by third parties that show that Cuban Americans overwhelmingly disagree with the Diaz-Balart-Bush policy on Cuba,'' said Jeffrey Garcia of the Martinez campaign.
Ana Carbonell, Lincoln Diaz-Balart's campaign manager, said: ``It's amazing that with all the issues that need to be addressed, from healthcare to rising gas prices, the one issue this poll chooses to prioritize is how to offer economic relief to a state sponsor of terror.''
Carlos Curbelo, Mario Diaz-Balart's spokesman, said: ``It is regrettable that while Mario is fighting in D.C. for lower taxes, affordable healthcare and a solution to the housing crisis, the opposition is promoting push-polls to divide our community.''
TRAVEL
In samples of 400 registered Cuban-American and other voters in the two Diaz-Balart districts, older Cuban-Americans oppose travel to Cuba by fellow exiles while younger Cuban Americans favor lifting restrictions.
The polls were conducted by the Hamilton Campaigns, a Washington research and political strategy firm that on its website (http://www.hamiltoncampaigns.com/) says it helped Democrats ``take back control of Congress.''
Polling also was done in the 17th district, which is represented by Kendrick Meek, a Democrat who has remained neutral in the Diaz-Balart races.
Read more about Cuba and South Florida's exile community at http://www.miami herald.com/newsamericas/cuba/ and the blog http://miamiherald.typepadcom/cuban_colada/
Posted on Wed, Jun. 18, 2008
Generational gap found on Cuba travel
By ALFONSO CHARDY
There's a split between older and younger Cuban Americans on whether exiles should be allowed to travel more often to visit relatives on the communist island, according to new polls commissioned by a group seeking better U.S.-Cuba relations.
The polls released Wednesday by the Foundation for Normalization of US/Cuba Relations, a group formed in 2006, show that a majority of registered voters in the hotly contested 21st and 25th congressional districts support unfettered exile Cuba travel and money remittances to the island. Voters in both districts are less likely to support a candidate who favors travel and money restrictions, the polls indicate, though the gap is not sufficient to overcome the polls' margin of error of 4.9 percentage points. Another 11 percent of those polled were undecided.
Republican incumbents in both districts, Lincoln Diaz-Balart in the 21st and brother Mario Diaz-Balart in the 25th, favor restrictions President Bush imposed in 2004 limiting exile travel to once every three years instead of annually. The 2004 rules also limit money remittances to close family members like spouses, parents or children instead of any relative.
CHALLENGERS
The issue has become central to the Diaz-Balarts' reelection because their chief Democratic challengers, former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez and former Cuban American National Foundation executive director Joe Garcia, favor lifting restrictions.
Martinez is running against Lincoln and Garcia against Mario.
''This is now the latest in a series of polls done by third parties that show that Cuban Americans overwhelmingly disagree with the Diaz-Balart-Bush policy on Cuba,'' said Jeffrey Garcia of the Martinez campaign.
Ana Carbonell, Lincoln Diaz-Balart's campaign manager, said: ``It's amazing that with all the issues that need to be addressed, from healthcare to rising gas prices, the one issue this poll chooses to prioritize is how to offer economic relief to a state sponsor of terror.''
Carlos Curbelo, Mario Diaz-Balart's spokesman, said: ``It is regrettable that while Mario is fighting in D.C. for lower taxes, affordable healthcare and a solution to the housing crisis, the opposition is promoting push-polls to divide our community.''
TRAVEL
In samples of 400 registered Cuban-American and other voters in the two Diaz-Balart districts, older Cuban-Americans oppose travel to Cuba by fellow exiles while younger Cuban Americans favor lifting restrictions.
The polls were conducted by the Hamilton Campaigns, a Washington research and political strategy firm that on its website (http://www.hamiltoncampaigns.com/) says it helped Democrats ``take back control of Congress.''
Polling also was done in the 17th district, which is represented by Kendrick Meek, a Democrat who has remained neutral in the Diaz-Balart races.
Read more about Cuba and South Florida's exile community at http://www.miami herald.com/newsamericas/cuba/ and the blog http://miamiherald.typepadcom/cuban_colada/
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Some Cuban expats going back home
Miami Herald
Posted on Tue, Jun. 10, 2008
Some Cuban expats going back home
By MIAMI HERALD STAFF
Jorge's friends at work call him the ``Sixth Hero.''
Folks here figure Jorge must be the secret spy who got away. Why else would he have returned to Cuba after living in the United States for six years? The ''sixth hero'' reference relates to the five Cuban intelligence agents the Cuban government nicknamed ''the Five Heroes'' who are serving long U.S. prison sentences.
Despite the freedom Jorge enjoyed and the ability to earn a better living as a school custodian in Miami Beach, Jorge returned to Cuba in 2002 to face a government that mistrusted him, a year of probation and friends that assume he is a member of the intelligence service. He said he is one of a growing number of émigrés who after years of living abroad, yearn for the sounds and familiarity of home.
Either for love or family, or because they never felt quite at home, they pack a few things and come back to a country where they make in a month what they used to earn in an hour.
Jorge says he is now like a TV mute button -- because every time he walks into a room full of Cubans, everyone stops talking.
''The government here thinks you are CIA, and the people think you are state security who went to the United States and came back after completing your mission,'' said Jorge, a 47-year-old guitarist. ``The others just think you are crazy for coming back. But, you know, every now and then someone visiting from Miami passes by my house and asks me, `I want to come back, too. How did you do it?'''
It was not easy. Just like leaving Cuba legally is filled with bureaucratic red tape, so is returning.
Cubans who leave for longer than 11 months are considered permanent residents of someplace else, so they must report to immigration offices here and reapply for identity papers. They are forced to report monthly to immigration for a year until they are cleared.
It's unclear whether the option to return is available at all for the people who left Cuba illegally without the required exit papers.
''I went to immigration and said, `I'm not going back. Like it or not, I'm staying,''' he said. ``They did not take it so well.''
The Cuban government does not publish statistics on people who return to the island. It's clearly a tiny portion of the tens of thousands of Cubans who leave each year for the United States and Europe. At least 20,000 Cubans migrate legally to the United States every year, and the vast majority return only to visit.
Well-known Havana blogger Yoani Sánchez said when she returned to Cuba from Zurich four years ago with her 8-year-old son in tow, friends advised her to rip up her passport, so the Cuban government could not force her to leave again.
In her Generation Y blog, she describes how she showed up at a provincial immigration office and was simply told to get in line -- behind all the other ``crazies.''
''A man who returned from Spain with his wife and daughter after living there five years told me, `Don't worry, they are going to try to force you to leave, but you have to refuse. The worst thing that happens is that they detain you for two weeks, but the jail is right here, and the mattresses are quite fine,''' she wrote.
Sánchez never did have to test the jail mattresses.
''People think it's weird for you to return, but in any other place in the world, leaving for a few years and coming back is the most normal thing,'' she said in a telephone interview. ``It's Cuban law that makes it absurd.''
She lived in Switzerland for two years with her husband and child, but came back for family reasons. She has encountered several people who did the same thing.
''Some people come back, because they had elderly parents who were alone. Some never adapted where they were or had property issues to deal with here,'' she said. ``Some come back for love, because they never could get their family member out of Cuba.''
Jorge left Cuba in 1996 with his wife when they won the visa lottery, and landed first in Oregon, where they stayed for two years. The couple eventually moved to South Florida, but never felt comfortable, in part because they found the exile community too politicized. Jorge liked the freedom, the right to speak out in public, and still misses the polite manners and cleanliness of the streets. But as a musician, he grew weary of mopping floors and washing dishes.
''It was hard to integrate,'' he said. ``I think I always knew I would come back. For me, it had nothing to do with politics. It has to do with being Cuban, the love I have for my people and my land.''
In 2002, the couple brought $20,000 in savings back to Havana and returned to stay, moving back to the home where Jorge's mother-in-law lives. They used the money to renovate the home, but the marriage was on the rocks and did not last.
Jorge's ex stayed in the renovated house, and he now lives in a tiny studio on the same property, a bit worse off than he did in Miami Beach. He makes a decent enough living off tips playing the guitar at a local tourist restaurant and has no regrets.
Andy Gomez, senior provost at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, said the cases of returnees are isolated. But 20 years ago, it was virtually unheard of.
''Some people left loved ones behind and just miss them. Others just can't psychologically adjust to a free society,'' Gomez said. ``The longer you live in that system, the more difficult it is to break the psychological barrier.
``You are trapped in two systems, so what do you do? You revert to the old.''
Katrin Hansing, the associate director of Florida International University's Cuban Research Institute, said in the dozen years she lived in Cuba, she met about nine people who had returned from living abroad. Most did so because they longed for a sense of community and could not fit in to the South Florida rat race, she said.
''There is a tremendous pressure to come here and make it; to go back is seen as failure,'' Hansing said. ``They feel weird. It's a tough decision and an internal struggle. When they go back, they keep a very low profile in Cuba. It breaks the myth that people come here and find bliss. Neither place is paradise.''
If the Cuban government made the process easier, she said, there would probably be more of them.
For Silvia, the daughter of government officials who lived a comfortable life in Cuba, the decision to return to the island after six months in the United States was easy: she ran out of money and had nowhere to go.
''I hate Fidel Castro, but does that mean I should work in a cafeteria?'' she said. ``I am 44 years old, and the first and only time in my life I went hungry was in the United States. Here, I live in a four-bedroom house and have a car. Over there, I had to live in an apartment the size of a table.''
Silvia did not suffer the bureaucratic hassles the others endured, because she was in South Florida and Los Angeles for less than 11 months.
''Coming back was the easiest decision I ever made. I had $20 and what was I going to do with that?'' she said. ``It was a question of simple mathematics.''
Once her paperwork was processed, the Cuban government told Sánchez, the blogger, she can never leave again. That is not an issue for her -- at least not now.
''I want to live many more years here, but I am not closed to anything,'' Sánchez said. ``I don't believe in false patriotism. I am a citizen of the world, and I feel happy anywhere. For now, I'm good here.''
Jorge says he is glad he came home, too.
''I have a lot of nice memories of Oregon,'' he said. ``It's a very beautiful place. But I always knew I was coming back.''
Posted on Tue, Jun. 10, 2008
Some Cuban expats going back home
By MIAMI HERALD STAFF
Jorge's friends at work call him the ``Sixth Hero.''
Folks here figure Jorge must be the secret spy who got away. Why else would he have returned to Cuba after living in the United States for six years? The ''sixth hero'' reference relates to the five Cuban intelligence agents the Cuban government nicknamed ''the Five Heroes'' who are serving long U.S. prison sentences.
Despite the freedom Jorge enjoyed and the ability to earn a better living as a school custodian in Miami Beach, Jorge returned to Cuba in 2002 to face a government that mistrusted him, a year of probation and friends that assume he is a member of the intelligence service. He said he is one of a growing number of émigrés who after years of living abroad, yearn for the sounds and familiarity of home.
Either for love or family, or because they never felt quite at home, they pack a few things and come back to a country where they make in a month what they used to earn in an hour.
Jorge says he is now like a TV mute button -- because every time he walks into a room full of Cubans, everyone stops talking.
''The government here thinks you are CIA, and the people think you are state security who went to the United States and came back after completing your mission,'' said Jorge, a 47-year-old guitarist. ``The others just think you are crazy for coming back. But, you know, every now and then someone visiting from Miami passes by my house and asks me, `I want to come back, too. How did you do it?'''
It was not easy. Just like leaving Cuba legally is filled with bureaucratic red tape, so is returning.
Cubans who leave for longer than 11 months are considered permanent residents of someplace else, so they must report to immigration offices here and reapply for identity papers. They are forced to report monthly to immigration for a year until they are cleared.
It's unclear whether the option to return is available at all for the people who left Cuba illegally without the required exit papers.
''I went to immigration and said, `I'm not going back. Like it or not, I'm staying,''' he said. ``They did not take it so well.''
The Cuban government does not publish statistics on people who return to the island. It's clearly a tiny portion of the tens of thousands of Cubans who leave each year for the United States and Europe. At least 20,000 Cubans migrate legally to the United States every year, and the vast majority return only to visit.
Well-known Havana blogger Yoani Sánchez said when she returned to Cuba from Zurich four years ago with her 8-year-old son in tow, friends advised her to rip up her passport, so the Cuban government could not force her to leave again.
In her Generation Y blog, she describes how she showed up at a provincial immigration office and was simply told to get in line -- behind all the other ``crazies.''
''A man who returned from Spain with his wife and daughter after living there five years told me, `Don't worry, they are going to try to force you to leave, but you have to refuse. The worst thing that happens is that they detain you for two weeks, but the jail is right here, and the mattresses are quite fine,''' she wrote.
Sánchez never did have to test the jail mattresses.
''People think it's weird for you to return, but in any other place in the world, leaving for a few years and coming back is the most normal thing,'' she said in a telephone interview. ``It's Cuban law that makes it absurd.''
She lived in Switzerland for two years with her husband and child, but came back for family reasons. She has encountered several people who did the same thing.
''Some people come back, because they had elderly parents who were alone. Some never adapted where they were or had property issues to deal with here,'' she said. ``Some come back for love, because they never could get their family member out of Cuba.''
Jorge left Cuba in 1996 with his wife when they won the visa lottery, and landed first in Oregon, where they stayed for two years. The couple eventually moved to South Florida, but never felt comfortable, in part because they found the exile community too politicized. Jorge liked the freedom, the right to speak out in public, and still misses the polite manners and cleanliness of the streets. But as a musician, he grew weary of mopping floors and washing dishes.
''It was hard to integrate,'' he said. ``I think I always knew I would come back. For me, it had nothing to do with politics. It has to do with being Cuban, the love I have for my people and my land.''
In 2002, the couple brought $20,000 in savings back to Havana and returned to stay, moving back to the home where Jorge's mother-in-law lives. They used the money to renovate the home, but the marriage was on the rocks and did not last.
Jorge's ex stayed in the renovated house, and he now lives in a tiny studio on the same property, a bit worse off than he did in Miami Beach. He makes a decent enough living off tips playing the guitar at a local tourist restaurant and has no regrets.
Andy Gomez, senior provost at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, said the cases of returnees are isolated. But 20 years ago, it was virtually unheard of.
''Some people left loved ones behind and just miss them. Others just can't psychologically adjust to a free society,'' Gomez said. ``The longer you live in that system, the more difficult it is to break the psychological barrier.
``You are trapped in two systems, so what do you do? You revert to the old.''
Katrin Hansing, the associate director of Florida International University's Cuban Research Institute, said in the dozen years she lived in Cuba, she met about nine people who had returned from living abroad. Most did so because they longed for a sense of community and could not fit in to the South Florida rat race, she said.
''There is a tremendous pressure to come here and make it; to go back is seen as failure,'' Hansing said. ``They feel weird. It's a tough decision and an internal struggle. When they go back, they keep a very low profile in Cuba. It breaks the myth that people come here and find bliss. Neither place is paradise.''
If the Cuban government made the process easier, she said, there would probably be more of them.
For Silvia, the daughter of government officials who lived a comfortable life in Cuba, the decision to return to the island after six months in the United States was easy: she ran out of money and had nowhere to go.
''I hate Fidel Castro, but does that mean I should work in a cafeteria?'' she said. ``I am 44 years old, and the first and only time in my life I went hungry was in the United States. Here, I live in a four-bedroom house and have a car. Over there, I had to live in an apartment the size of a table.''
Silvia did not suffer the bureaucratic hassles the others endured, because she was in South Florida and Los Angeles for less than 11 months.
''Coming back was the easiest decision I ever made. I had $20 and what was I going to do with that?'' she said. ``It was a question of simple mathematics.''
Once her paperwork was processed, the Cuban government told Sánchez, the blogger, she can never leave again. That is not an issue for her -- at least not now.
''I want to live many more years here, but I am not closed to anything,'' Sánchez said. ``I don't believe in false patriotism. I am a citizen of the world, and I feel happy anywhere. For now, I'm good here.''
Jorge says he is glad he came home, too.
''I have a lot of nice memories of Oregon,'' he said. ``It's a very beautiful place. But I always knew I was coming back.''
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Cuba: US embargo blocking wider internet access
AP/Miami Herald
Posted on Fri, May. 16, 2008
Cuba: US embargo blocking wider internet access
A top Cuban official said Friday that Raúl Castro's government would consider loosening Internet restrictions on ordinary citizens newly allowed to purchase computers -- but Washington's decades-old economic embargo makes it impossible.
''We aren't worried about the citizenry connecting from their homes,'' Telecommunications Vice Minister Boris Moreno told a small group of reporters.
''But problems with technology and resources have made it necessary to give priority to connections that guarantee the country's social and economic development,'' he said, referring to an islandwide network that lets Cubans receive e-mail and view domestic Web sites.
The rest of the worldwide Web is blocked to most citizens in Cuba, which has access controls far stricter than in China or Saudi Arabia. Only foreigners and some government employees and academics are currently allowed unfiltered home Internet service, and many Cubans turn to the black market for expensive, slow dial-up accounts.
Computers for home use were also not available until two weeks ago, when state stores began selling them to the public as part of a series of small quality-of-life changes since Raúl Castro replaced his elder brother Fidel in February.
But Moreno said the government is unable to offer Cubans comprehensive Internet for their new PCs, citing its long-standing complaint that the American embargo prevents it from getting service directly from the United States nearby through underwater cables. Instead, Cuba gets Internet service through less reliable satellite connections, usually from faraway countries including Italy and Canada.
''Free access is not on the table at the moment,'' Moreno said.
Moreno said that in the next two years authorities hope to link to fiber-optic service from Venezuela, which has replaced the Soviet Union as Havana's chief economic benefactor.
He also criticized Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, whose posts about the struggles of daily life on the island have drawn worldwide notice and recently won her Spain's Ortega y Gasset Prize for digital journalism.
Moreno said the 32-year-old Sanchez was deeply affected by coming of age during the 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union brought the Cuban economy to its knees. He said he found it sad that she ``speaks ill of a government that didn't close the university where she studied in a moment of crisis.''
Posted on Fri, May. 16, 2008
Cuba: US embargo blocking wider internet access
A top Cuban official said Friday that Raúl Castro's government would consider loosening Internet restrictions on ordinary citizens newly allowed to purchase computers -- but Washington's decades-old economic embargo makes it impossible.
''We aren't worried about the citizenry connecting from their homes,'' Telecommunications Vice Minister Boris Moreno told a small group of reporters.
''But problems with technology and resources have made it necessary to give priority to connections that guarantee the country's social and economic development,'' he said, referring to an islandwide network that lets Cubans receive e-mail and view domestic Web sites.
The rest of the worldwide Web is blocked to most citizens in Cuba, which has access controls far stricter than in China or Saudi Arabia. Only foreigners and some government employees and academics are currently allowed unfiltered home Internet service, and many Cubans turn to the black market for expensive, slow dial-up accounts.
Computers for home use were also not available until two weeks ago, when state stores began selling them to the public as part of a series of small quality-of-life changes since Raúl Castro replaced his elder brother Fidel in February.
But Moreno said the government is unable to offer Cubans comprehensive Internet for their new PCs, citing its long-standing complaint that the American embargo prevents it from getting service directly from the United States nearby through underwater cables. Instead, Cuba gets Internet service through less reliable satellite connections, usually from faraway countries including Italy and Canada.
''Free access is not on the table at the moment,'' Moreno said.
Moreno said that in the next two years authorities hope to link to fiber-optic service from Venezuela, which has replaced the Soviet Union as Havana's chief economic benefactor.
He also criticized Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, whose posts about the struggles of daily life on the island have drawn worldwide notice and recently won her Spain's Ortega y Gasset Prize for digital journalism.
Moreno said the 32-year-old Sanchez was deeply affected by coming of age during the 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union brought the Cuban economy to its knees. He said he found it sad that she ``speaks ill of a government that didn't close the university where she studied in a moment of crisis.''
Sunday, March 09, 2008
In New York, With Beliefs That Still Challenge Cuba
New York Times
March 10, 2008
Citywide
In New York, With Beliefs That Still Challenge Cuba
By DAVID GONZALEZ
Carmen Peláez is a liberal with a deep laugh and a great sense of the absurd. All of those qualities are tested when she encounters fellow New Yorkers who still admire Fidel Castro.
Ms. Peláez, a Cuban-American actress, was born in this country and raised in Miami. She came to New York in 1993 to study acting. In the mid-’90s, she traveled to Cuba to explore the world of her great-aunt, Amelia Peláez, a noted painter who died in 1968. All those experiences pulse through “Rum & Coke,” a one-woman show in which she channels relatives on both sides of the Florida Straits and weary Habaneros stuck on an island forgotten by the outside world.
The play was her retort to the fascination with Che T-shirts, solidarity tours to Cuba and the endless praise of the revolution’s twin pillars of health and education.
“When I started writing the play, I thought people just didn’t know what was happening in Cuba,” she said after the show closed its monthlong New York run last week. “But the longer I live here, the more I realized, they don’t care.”
She was reminded of that last month when Mr. Castro finally stepped down as president after nearly 50 years in power. The move prompted wistful reflections from old rabble-rousers and praise from some politicians. Representative José E. Serrano called Mr. Castro a “great leader” whose retirement ensured the future of the Cuban system and its achievements, which he said enjoyed “a broad base of support” on the island.
What really stumped Ms. Peláez was how the Bronx congressman’s only brickbats were against the “twisted policies” of the United States government.
“They would rather keep their little pop revolution instead of saying it is a dictatorship,” Ms. Peláez said. “I had somebody come to me after a show and say, ‘Don’t ruin Cuba for me!’ Well, why not? They’re holding on to a fantasy.”
This city has long attracted Cuban artists and intellectuals in exile. Many of those who now live here thrive on the city’s culture, its mix of people and even its weather (four seasons, instead of hot and hotter). Perhaps the greatest Cuban exile of all, José Martí, lived and worked in 19th-century New York as he rallied his countrymen in the fight for independence from Spain.
Exiles and refugees are still coming to New York, having decided that life in Castro’s Cuba — the only life they ever really knew — was not worth the sacrifice of personal freedoms. This month, some of them will observe the fifth anniversary of the Cuban government’s crackdown on 75 dissidents, independent journalists and librarians, who were sentenced to as many as 28 years. Most of them are still in prison.
Paul Berman, a writer in residence at New York University who has written critiques of the American left and Cuba, said the plight of these recent arrivals does not strike the same chord here it once did for those who fled the Soviet bloc.
“Back in the ’70s and ’80s, some mathematician would come out of the Soviet Union and there would be a meeting of intellectuals to greet him,” Mr. Berman said. “That kind of human rights zeal just seems to have disappeared.”
Cristina Martinez came of age in the Soviet Union, were she was sent to study electrical engineering in 1985 after graduating from high school in Cuba. Her extracurricular lessons were unavoidable, watching as perestroika and glasnost swept through society.
“The press was starting to bring to light everything they had hidden during 75 years of Communism,” she said. “It was a lesson, that this was the future we wanted to go to. This is the light. We had all toyed with the idea of changing the Cuban reality, to criticize it, to make it better.”
But as walls fell and borders opened, Cuba clung to its way. Disillusioned, Ms. Martinez fled to Spain, where she taught at a university for six years. Her politics were leftist enough that her Spanish friends joked she was “the reddest person they ever met.”
Maybe not in New York, where she has lived since 1996, working as a computer systems administrator at an Upper West Side school. Though she still considers herself a liberal who favors the underdog, she is puzzled by the image of Cuba as an international paladin.
“The image is one of the defender of the oppressed and defender of just causes,” she said. “People who understand the Cuban reality know it is not like that. It is not something they would want for themselves or their own country. Or, they are opportunists who use Cuba as a symbol knowing full well what is happening.”
Although Enrique Del Risco knows what has happened on the island where he was born 40 years ago, he still gets odd looks from college students when he tries to explain Cuba’s reality. He left Cuba in 1996 and settled in New York two years later, teaching Spanish at New York University.
“I grew up believing in the system,” he said. “Quite a believer. My parents, too.”
He, too, thought there would be change during the late 1980s. Instead, he found himself slowly suffocating, with his writings earning him reprimands.
“I was more scared of surrendering than being put in jail,” he said. “I was scared that I would stop being myself. I was someone who thinks independently and expresses that.”
Yet to try and tell that to some of his students, he said, was like talking about extraterrestrial life. He knows to expect a dual riposte — yes, but what about universal health care and education?
“At the root of that is a great belittling of Cubans,” he said. “It’s like we are some sort of little animals who only need a veterinarian and someone to teach us tricks and we’ll be fine.”
He is dismayed by the way Cuban officials deflect questions from university students who wonder why they cannot travel overseas or stay at Cuban hotels, which are essentially reserved for tourists. Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba’s National Assembly, told one such questioner that when he was a diplomat posted in New York during the 1960s and ’70s, shopkeepers would eject him the moment they learned he was Hispanic.
“There is a fear of the future that comes from control of information,” Mr. Del Risco said. “You can see that in what Alarcón said. You can only dare say what he said in a country that is disinformed.”
Mr. Del Risco’s New York is welcoming.
“I feel more at home in New York than in Madrid,” he said. “From the first day you get here you feel like you are from here. There is not that distance or someone asking you what you are doing here.”
He loves the variety. The rush. The chance to do it all. Or do nothing at all.
“I was always in love with New York,” he said. “Even when I was an anti-imperialist, I was pro-New York.”
March 10, 2008
Citywide
In New York, With Beliefs That Still Challenge Cuba
By DAVID GONZALEZ
Carmen Peláez is a liberal with a deep laugh and a great sense of the absurd. All of those qualities are tested when she encounters fellow New Yorkers who still admire Fidel Castro.
Ms. Peláez, a Cuban-American actress, was born in this country and raised in Miami. She came to New York in 1993 to study acting. In the mid-’90s, she traveled to Cuba to explore the world of her great-aunt, Amelia Peláez, a noted painter who died in 1968. All those experiences pulse through “Rum & Coke,” a one-woman show in which she channels relatives on both sides of the Florida Straits and weary Habaneros stuck on an island forgotten by the outside world.
The play was her retort to the fascination with Che T-shirts, solidarity tours to Cuba and the endless praise of the revolution’s twin pillars of health and education.
“When I started writing the play, I thought people just didn’t know what was happening in Cuba,” she said after the show closed its monthlong New York run last week. “But the longer I live here, the more I realized, they don’t care.”
She was reminded of that last month when Mr. Castro finally stepped down as president after nearly 50 years in power. The move prompted wistful reflections from old rabble-rousers and praise from some politicians. Representative José E. Serrano called Mr. Castro a “great leader” whose retirement ensured the future of the Cuban system and its achievements, which he said enjoyed “a broad base of support” on the island.
What really stumped Ms. Peláez was how the Bronx congressman’s only brickbats were against the “twisted policies” of the United States government.
“They would rather keep their little pop revolution instead of saying it is a dictatorship,” Ms. Peláez said. “I had somebody come to me after a show and say, ‘Don’t ruin Cuba for me!’ Well, why not? They’re holding on to a fantasy.”
This city has long attracted Cuban artists and intellectuals in exile. Many of those who now live here thrive on the city’s culture, its mix of people and even its weather (four seasons, instead of hot and hotter). Perhaps the greatest Cuban exile of all, José Martí, lived and worked in 19th-century New York as he rallied his countrymen in the fight for independence from Spain.
Exiles and refugees are still coming to New York, having decided that life in Castro’s Cuba — the only life they ever really knew — was not worth the sacrifice of personal freedoms. This month, some of them will observe the fifth anniversary of the Cuban government’s crackdown on 75 dissidents, independent journalists and librarians, who were sentenced to as many as 28 years. Most of them are still in prison.
Paul Berman, a writer in residence at New York University who has written critiques of the American left and Cuba, said the plight of these recent arrivals does not strike the same chord here it once did for those who fled the Soviet bloc.
“Back in the ’70s and ’80s, some mathematician would come out of the Soviet Union and there would be a meeting of intellectuals to greet him,” Mr. Berman said. “That kind of human rights zeal just seems to have disappeared.”
Cristina Martinez came of age in the Soviet Union, were she was sent to study electrical engineering in 1985 after graduating from high school in Cuba. Her extracurricular lessons were unavoidable, watching as perestroika and glasnost swept through society.
“The press was starting to bring to light everything they had hidden during 75 years of Communism,” she said. “It was a lesson, that this was the future we wanted to go to. This is the light. We had all toyed with the idea of changing the Cuban reality, to criticize it, to make it better.”
But as walls fell and borders opened, Cuba clung to its way. Disillusioned, Ms. Martinez fled to Spain, where she taught at a university for six years. Her politics were leftist enough that her Spanish friends joked she was “the reddest person they ever met.”
Maybe not in New York, where she has lived since 1996, working as a computer systems administrator at an Upper West Side school. Though she still considers herself a liberal who favors the underdog, she is puzzled by the image of Cuba as an international paladin.
“The image is one of the defender of the oppressed and defender of just causes,” she said. “People who understand the Cuban reality know it is not like that. It is not something they would want for themselves or their own country. Or, they are opportunists who use Cuba as a symbol knowing full well what is happening.”
Although Enrique Del Risco knows what has happened on the island where he was born 40 years ago, he still gets odd looks from college students when he tries to explain Cuba’s reality. He left Cuba in 1996 and settled in New York two years later, teaching Spanish at New York University.
“I grew up believing in the system,” he said. “Quite a believer. My parents, too.”
He, too, thought there would be change during the late 1980s. Instead, he found himself slowly suffocating, with his writings earning him reprimands.
“I was more scared of surrendering than being put in jail,” he said. “I was scared that I would stop being myself. I was someone who thinks independently and expresses that.”
Yet to try and tell that to some of his students, he said, was like talking about extraterrestrial life. He knows to expect a dual riposte — yes, but what about universal health care and education?
“At the root of that is a great belittling of Cubans,” he said. “It’s like we are some sort of little animals who only need a veterinarian and someone to teach us tricks and we’ll be fine.”
He is dismayed by the way Cuban officials deflect questions from university students who wonder why they cannot travel overseas or stay at Cuban hotels, which are essentially reserved for tourists. Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba’s National Assembly, told one such questioner that when he was a diplomat posted in New York during the 1960s and ’70s, shopkeepers would eject him the moment they learned he was Hispanic.
“There is a fear of the future that comes from control of information,” Mr. Del Risco said. “You can see that in what Alarcón said. You can only dare say what he said in a country that is disinformed.”
Mr. Del Risco’s New York is welcoming.
“I feel more at home in New York than in Madrid,” he said. “From the first day you get here you feel like you are from here. There is not that distance or someone asking you what you are doing here.”
He loves the variety. The rush. The chance to do it all. Or do nothing at all.
“I was always in love with New York,” he said. “Even when I was an anti-imperialist, I was pro-New York.”
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Travelocity fined $183,000 for booking trips to Cuba
MH
Posted on Tue, Aug. 14, 2007
Travelocity fined $183,000 for booking trips to Cuba
BY DOUGLAS HANKS
Travelocity was fined nearly $183,000 for booking roughly 1,400 Cuba trips between 1998 and 2004, apparently the first time Washington has cracked down on a major online travel provider for violating the 1963 embargo on the communist nation.
Travelocity blamed the 1,458 violations on technical issues that were corrected years ago. ''In no way did the company intend to sell trips to Cuba,'' the spokeswoman, Ashley Johnson, wrote in an e-mail Tuesday. ``The trips to Cuba . . . were unintentionally booked online because of a technical issue several years ago and it's just now being settled.''
Johnson said the trips were booked in the United States. But Travelocity's penalty comes amid conflicts over foreign arms of U.S. firms selling trips into the popular Caribbean vacation spot. And it touches on the complications of isolating a country commercially amid an increasingly global and digital economy.
Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control also fined American Express Travel for allowing its Mexican subsidiary to book two groups on Cuba trips in December 2002 and October 2003. But while American Express paid $16,625 for its two incidents, Travelocity was fined $182,750 for 1,458 violations, OFAC disclosed Saturday.
The Travelocity fine is the second-highest imposed by the OFAC during this fiscal year, ending Sept. 30. The highest fine -- $220,000 -- was levied on LogicaCMG of Lexington, Mass. Its predecessor, CMG Telecommunications, exported computers, electronic components and technical support knowing the goods were destined for Cuba in 2001.
FAMILIAR TERRITORY
The penalties do not seem to open up a new front in the Bush administration's energetic enforcement of laws designed to hurt Cuba's economy. Experts on the embargo said federal law is fairly clear that foreign subsidiaries of U.S. firms can't do business in Cuba, and that OFAC clarified the matter with travel companies five years ago.
At the time, an unknown Internet travel company had requested permission for its foreign website to book Cuba trips for people not subject to U.S. jurisdiction -- namely the 2 million people who vacation in Cuba each year.
The company, whose name OFAC did not disclose, noted travel providers had always been free to include information on Cuba flights, hotel rates and air fares on digital booking systems used by travel agents. Why should the online version be any different?
But in a 2002 letter, OFAC's director at the time, Richard Newcomb, said the Internet had transformed those booking systems into commercial ventures where financial transactions take place. As a result, the subsidiary was banned from selling Cuba trips. Clif Burns, an export lawyer specializing in Cuba, said the matter seemed settled with the letter. An OFAC official who did not want to be identified said Travelocity was the first large online travel provider to face an OFAC fine.
COMPLEX ISSUE
Still, the issue has gotten complicated amid the globalization trend.
Burns said European Union regulations bar companies operating in member countries from denying commerce to Cuba -- a rule that would apply to U.S. subsidiaries. He said EU regulators have not enforced the 1996 rule, so most U.S. companies adhere to Washington's protocol toward Havana.
And Kayak.com, a popular travel website operated out of Norwalk, Conn., does advertise Cuba vacations. Though Expedia, Travelocity and other large travel sites set their own prices, Kayak merely receives ''referral fees'' from travel providers who get business through the site, spokeswoman Kellie Pelletier said. Because of that, she said, it is free to post the Cuba offerings.
Founded in 1996, Travelocity is the sixth-largest U.S. travel agency; it ranks second in Internet sales. In 2006, the company booked $10.1 billion in travel worldwide.
Jorge Piñon, a senior research associate at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, said the issue of online Cuban commerce can get complicated when dealing with U.S. websites.
''There's a lot of other things you can do with Cuba vis-à-vis the Internet,'' he said. ``I could be buying Cuban cigars in Spain [but] using an Internet service provider which is owned by a U.S. corporation.''
El Nuevo Herald staff writer Wilfredo Cancio Isla contributed to this report.
Posted on Tue, Aug. 14, 2007
Travelocity fined $183,000 for booking trips to Cuba
BY DOUGLAS HANKS
Travelocity was fined nearly $183,000 for booking roughly 1,400 Cuba trips between 1998 and 2004, apparently the first time Washington has cracked down on a major online travel provider for violating the 1963 embargo on the communist nation.
Travelocity blamed the 1,458 violations on technical issues that were corrected years ago. ''In no way did the company intend to sell trips to Cuba,'' the spokeswoman, Ashley Johnson, wrote in an e-mail Tuesday. ``The trips to Cuba . . . were unintentionally booked online because of a technical issue several years ago and it's just now being settled.''
Johnson said the trips were booked in the United States. But Travelocity's penalty comes amid conflicts over foreign arms of U.S. firms selling trips into the popular Caribbean vacation spot. And it touches on the complications of isolating a country commercially amid an increasingly global and digital economy.
Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control also fined American Express Travel for allowing its Mexican subsidiary to book two groups on Cuba trips in December 2002 and October 2003. But while American Express paid $16,625 for its two incidents, Travelocity was fined $182,750 for 1,458 violations, OFAC disclosed Saturday.
The Travelocity fine is the second-highest imposed by the OFAC during this fiscal year, ending Sept. 30. The highest fine -- $220,000 -- was levied on LogicaCMG of Lexington, Mass. Its predecessor, CMG Telecommunications, exported computers, electronic components and technical support knowing the goods were destined for Cuba in 2001.
FAMILIAR TERRITORY
The penalties do not seem to open up a new front in the Bush administration's energetic enforcement of laws designed to hurt Cuba's economy. Experts on the embargo said federal law is fairly clear that foreign subsidiaries of U.S. firms can't do business in Cuba, and that OFAC clarified the matter with travel companies five years ago.
At the time, an unknown Internet travel company had requested permission for its foreign website to book Cuba trips for people not subject to U.S. jurisdiction -- namely the 2 million people who vacation in Cuba each year.
The company, whose name OFAC did not disclose, noted travel providers had always been free to include information on Cuba flights, hotel rates and air fares on digital booking systems used by travel agents. Why should the online version be any different?
But in a 2002 letter, OFAC's director at the time, Richard Newcomb, said the Internet had transformed those booking systems into commercial ventures where financial transactions take place. As a result, the subsidiary was banned from selling Cuba trips. Clif Burns, an export lawyer specializing in Cuba, said the matter seemed settled with the letter. An OFAC official who did not want to be identified said Travelocity was the first large online travel provider to face an OFAC fine.
COMPLEX ISSUE
Still, the issue has gotten complicated amid the globalization trend.
Burns said European Union regulations bar companies operating in member countries from denying commerce to Cuba -- a rule that would apply to U.S. subsidiaries. He said EU regulators have not enforced the 1996 rule, so most U.S. companies adhere to Washington's protocol toward Havana.
And Kayak.com, a popular travel website operated out of Norwalk, Conn., does advertise Cuba vacations. Though Expedia, Travelocity and other large travel sites set their own prices, Kayak merely receives ''referral fees'' from travel providers who get business through the site, spokeswoman Kellie Pelletier said. Because of that, she said, it is free to post the Cuba offerings.
Founded in 1996, Travelocity is the sixth-largest U.S. travel agency; it ranks second in Internet sales. In 2006, the company booked $10.1 billion in travel worldwide.
Jorge Piñon, a senior research associate at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, said the issue of online Cuban commerce can get complicated when dealing with U.S. websites.
''There's a lot of other things you can do with Cuba vis-à-vis the Internet,'' he said. ``I could be buying Cuban cigars in Spain [but] using an Internet service provider which is owned by a U.S. corporation.''
El Nuevo Herald staff writer Wilfredo Cancio Isla contributed to this report.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
US Med Students Graduate from Cuban school
Students graduate from Cuban school
Castro’s communist government paid for education for 8 minorities
The Associated Press
Updated: 9:36 p.m. PT July 24, 2007
HAVANA - Eight American students graduated from a Cuban medical school on Tuesday and said they planned to put six years of education paid for by Fidel Castro’s communist government to use in hospitals back home.
The four New Yorkers, three Californians and a Minnesota native, all from minority backgrounds, began studying in Havana in April 2001. They are the first class of Americans to graduate from the Latin American School of Medicine since Castro offered free training to U.S. students seven year ago following meetings with members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
“I’ve learned that medicine is not a business,” said Toussaint Reynolds, a graduate from Massapequa, New York. “I will be a better doctor in the United States for it.”
The 80-year-old Castro has not been seen in public since last July 31, when he announced that emergency intestinal surgery was forcing him to step down in favor of a provisional government headed by his younger brother Raul.
On Tuesday, about 2,100 students from 25 countries graduated from the medical school, including some 1,200 medical doctors, as well as dentists, nurses and medical technicians. More than 10,000 students attend the school that opened in 1999 to provide free training to foreign students from disadvantaged families.
Washington’s 45-year-old embargo prohibits most Americans from traveling to Cuba and chokes off nearly all trade between the countries. But the State Department has not opposed the medical school program, saying U.S. policy hopes to encourage contact between ordinary Cubans and Americans.
U.S. authorities have suggested it is unclear whether Americans who receive medical training in Cuba can meet licensing requirements in the United States. The graduates must pass two exams to apply for residency at U.S. hospitals, and then a third test, much like students who received medical degrees in other countries.
'Prepared clinically'
The six U.S. women and two men who graduated Tuesday all received degrees in medicine.
While they are the first graduating class of Americans, a U.S. student who began studying in the United States then transferred to the Cuban school graduated two years ago. He recently began his residency at a hospital in New York City.
Kenya Bingham, who graduated Tuesday and is from Alameda, Calif., said some might think less of a Cuban medical degree.
“Do I think there will be prejudices against us when we go back to the states and are looking for residences? Yes, I think there will be just due to the simple fact that there are political differences between the two countries,” Bingham said. “But I’m definitely confident that the eight of us are very well prepared clinically.”
The Rev. Lucius Walker, of the U.S. nonprofit Pastors for Peace, has worked closely with the graduating U.S. students and said that about 100 other Americans are enrolled at the school, and another 18 are scheduled to start next month
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19942866/
Castro’s communist government paid for education for 8 minorities
The Associated Press
Updated: 9:36 p.m. PT July 24, 2007
HAVANA - Eight American students graduated from a Cuban medical school on Tuesday and said they planned to put six years of education paid for by Fidel Castro’s communist government to use in hospitals back home.
The four New Yorkers, three Californians and a Minnesota native, all from minority backgrounds, began studying in Havana in April 2001. They are the first class of Americans to graduate from the Latin American School of Medicine since Castro offered free training to U.S. students seven year ago following meetings with members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
“I’ve learned that medicine is not a business,” said Toussaint Reynolds, a graduate from Massapequa, New York. “I will be a better doctor in the United States for it.”
The 80-year-old Castro has not been seen in public since last July 31, when he announced that emergency intestinal surgery was forcing him to step down in favor of a provisional government headed by his younger brother Raul.
On Tuesday, about 2,100 students from 25 countries graduated from the medical school, including some 1,200 medical doctors, as well as dentists, nurses and medical technicians. More than 10,000 students attend the school that opened in 1999 to provide free training to foreign students from disadvantaged families.
Washington’s 45-year-old embargo prohibits most Americans from traveling to Cuba and chokes off nearly all trade between the countries. But the State Department has not opposed the medical school program, saying U.S. policy hopes to encourage contact between ordinary Cubans and Americans.
U.S. authorities have suggested it is unclear whether Americans who receive medical training in Cuba can meet licensing requirements in the United States. The graduates must pass two exams to apply for residency at U.S. hospitals, and then a third test, much like students who received medical degrees in other countries.
'Prepared clinically'
The six U.S. women and two men who graduated Tuesday all received degrees in medicine.
While they are the first graduating class of Americans, a U.S. student who began studying in the United States then transferred to the Cuban school graduated two years ago. He recently began his residency at a hospital in New York City.
Kenya Bingham, who graduated Tuesday and is from Alameda, Calif., said some might think less of a Cuban medical degree.
“Do I think there will be prejudices against us when we go back to the states and are looking for residences? Yes, I think there will be just due to the simple fact that there are political differences between the two countries,” Bingham said. “But I’m definitely confident that the eight of us are very well prepared clinically.”
The Rev. Lucius Walker, of the U.S. nonprofit Pastors for Peace, has worked closely with the graduating U.S. students and said that about 100 other Americans are enrolled at the school, and another 18 are scheduled to start next month
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19942866/
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Report: If ban were eased, U.S. exports to Cuba could double
If ban were eased, U.S. exports to Cuba could double, report says
BY PABLO BACHELET
MH
pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com
WASHINGTON --
Lifting U.S. trade and travel restrictions on Cuba could boost agricultural exports to the island by between $175 million and $350 million per year, a U.S. government report released Thursday concludes.
The $350 million figure would be more than double current agricultural exports to the island.
Opponents of U.S. policy seized on the conclusions to argue that the Bush administration needs to ease the restrictions in order to benefit U.S. exporters.
''It's clearly time for Congress to curb the overzealous trade embargo on Cuba, so that American ranchers and farmers can benefit to the tune of over $300 million a year,'' said Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees trade issues.
The committee requested the study by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), an independent agency that reviews trade matters. The report is one of the most complete of its kind, with nine investigators conducting scores of interviews, including some in Cuba.
The report cautions that projections are difficult to make because of ``data limitations and the nonmarket aspects of Cuban purchasing decisions.''
It notes that agricultural goods are imported by the state trading agency Alimport, which considers both commercial and ''noncommercial factors'' when making its purchasing decisions, including diversifying suppliers and ``strengthening strategic geopolitical relations.''
So the study provides a range of $176 million to $350 million for additional Cuban purchases.
The 180-page report also estimates lifting travel restrictions would mean between 550,000 and one million U.S. citizens would travel to Cuba annually, against 170,000 that did so in 2005, most of them Cuban Americans.
U.S. commodity exports to Cuba were permitted in 2000 and the United States quickly became Cuba's biggest supplier of foodstuff, although farm state lawmakers like Baucus, who has proposed legislation to ease sanctions, argue that U.S. sales could be much higher.
The biggest gains would be for fresh fruits and vegetables, milk powder, processed foods and certain meats, ITC investigators concluded.
BY PABLO BACHELET
MH
pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com
WASHINGTON --
Lifting U.S. trade and travel restrictions on Cuba could boost agricultural exports to the island by between $175 million and $350 million per year, a U.S. government report released Thursday concludes.
The $350 million figure would be more than double current agricultural exports to the island.
Opponents of U.S. policy seized on the conclusions to argue that the Bush administration needs to ease the restrictions in order to benefit U.S. exporters.
''It's clearly time for Congress to curb the overzealous trade embargo on Cuba, so that American ranchers and farmers can benefit to the tune of over $300 million a year,'' said Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees trade issues.
The committee requested the study by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), an independent agency that reviews trade matters. The report is one of the most complete of its kind, with nine investigators conducting scores of interviews, including some in Cuba.
The report cautions that projections are difficult to make because of ``data limitations and the nonmarket aspects of Cuban purchasing decisions.''
It notes that agricultural goods are imported by the state trading agency Alimport, which considers both commercial and ''noncommercial factors'' when making its purchasing decisions, including diversifying suppliers and ``strengthening strategic geopolitical relations.''
So the study provides a range of $176 million to $350 million for additional Cuban purchases.
The 180-page report also estimates lifting travel restrictions would mean between 550,000 and one million U.S. citizens would travel to Cuba annually, against 170,000 that did so in 2005, most of them Cuban Americans.
U.S. commodity exports to Cuba were permitted in 2000 and the United States quickly became Cuba's biggest supplier of foodstuff, although farm state lawmakers like Baucus, who has proposed legislation to ease sanctions, argue that U.S. sales could be much higher.
The biggest gains would be for fresh fruits and vegetables, milk powder, processed foods and certain meats, ITC investigators concluded.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Havana: U.S. fugitives are no longer welcome
Havana: U.S. fugitives are no longer welcome
Cuba has said it will stop providing safe haven to U.S. fugitives who arrive on the island.
BY PABLO BACHELET
pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com
WASHINGTON --
A little-noticed passage in two State Department reports says Havana has stated that it will no longer provide safe haven to U.S. fugitives who enter Cuba -- a promise the Castro government has met twice since September.
The promise and deportations amount to a rare sign of cooperation by Havana. Some 70 U.S. fugitives are believed to be living in Cuba, including Joanne Chesimard, convicted in the 1973 murder of a New Jersey state trooper.
Cuba has refused to return them, generally arguing that the U.S. charges against them are ''political.'' The refusals were among the reasons the State Department used for including Cuba in its list of nations that support international terrorism.
But a brief passage in the State Department's voluminous 2005 and 2006 Country Reports on Terrorism -- the 2006 report was released April 30 -- that went largely unnoticed until now said Cuba ``has stated that it will no longer provide safe haven to new U.S. fugitives who may enter Cuba.''
State Department spokesmen declined comment on who made the promise, when or whether it involved any U.S. counter-promise. Havana has long demanded the return of five convicted Cuban spies jailed in Florida.
Such Cuban acts of cooperation have come under more scrutiny since Raúl Castro took the reins of power after his brother Fidel Castro fell ill last summer. However, the 2005 report on terrorism, the first to include the wording on ending the safe haven, was issued before the ailment was announced on July 31.
A NEW DIRECTION?
State Department officials noted Cuba's history of on-and-off collaboration with the United States makes it hard to know if Havana's promise is signaling a new stance.
''We have no way of knowing for sure what the Cuban government is trying to accomplish, if anything,'' said Eric Watnik, a department spokesman.
Cuba has demanded the United States extradite anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela, where he faces charges of masterminding the bombing of a Cuban jetliner in 1976 that killed 73. U.S. immigration fraud charges against Posada were dropped recently by a U.S. judge.
Cuba has returned at least two U.S. fugitives since the promise first appeared in the State Deparment report.
In September, a South Florida man kidnapped his son, stole a plane at a airport in the Florida Keys and flew to Cuba. The son was later returned to his mother in Mexico and the father was put on a plane to Miami, where he faces prosecution. That was the first time Cuba had returned a fugitive from U.S. justice, according to the 2006 U.S. report.
In April, Havana returned to Florida Joseph Adjmi, a fugitive sentenced to 10 years in U.S. prison for mail fraud in 1963.
Earlier this year Cuba also expelled to Bogotá Luis Hernando Gómez-Bustamante, wanted in Colombia as a leader of the Norte del Valle cartel. Colombia then extradited him to the United States.
Washington and Havana have long had tenuous communications on issues such as drug trafficking and migration. In early 2006, the Cubans briefed the Coast Guard officer based at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana on their counter-drug trafficking operations. But the Cubans refused to allow Drug Enforcement Administration agents to question Gómez-Bustamante while he was detained there on immigration fraud charges.
BILATERAL CONTACTS
An annual report on drug trafficking issued in March by the State Department said Cuban officials ''profess interest'' in more bilateral contacts with Washington on drug trafficking matters.
The Bush administration suspended biannual talks with Cuba on migration issues in 2004, and has refused any formal contacts with top Havana government officials.
Raúl Castro has on two occasions -- in August and December -- declared he would be willing to sit down and talk with Washington. The Bush administration replied that it was not interested in talks until Cuba takes the path of democracy.
Cuba has said it will stop providing safe haven to U.S. fugitives who arrive on the island.
BY PABLO BACHELET
pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com
WASHINGTON --
A little-noticed passage in two State Department reports says Havana has stated that it will no longer provide safe haven to U.S. fugitives who enter Cuba -- a promise the Castro government has met twice since September.
The promise and deportations amount to a rare sign of cooperation by Havana. Some 70 U.S. fugitives are believed to be living in Cuba, including Joanne Chesimard, convicted in the 1973 murder of a New Jersey state trooper.
Cuba has refused to return them, generally arguing that the U.S. charges against them are ''political.'' The refusals were among the reasons the State Department used for including Cuba in its list of nations that support international terrorism.
But a brief passage in the State Department's voluminous 2005 and 2006 Country Reports on Terrorism -- the 2006 report was released April 30 -- that went largely unnoticed until now said Cuba ``has stated that it will no longer provide safe haven to new U.S. fugitives who may enter Cuba.''
State Department spokesmen declined comment on who made the promise, when or whether it involved any U.S. counter-promise. Havana has long demanded the return of five convicted Cuban spies jailed in Florida.
Such Cuban acts of cooperation have come under more scrutiny since Raúl Castro took the reins of power after his brother Fidel Castro fell ill last summer. However, the 2005 report on terrorism, the first to include the wording on ending the safe haven, was issued before the ailment was announced on July 31.
A NEW DIRECTION?
State Department officials noted Cuba's history of on-and-off collaboration with the United States makes it hard to know if Havana's promise is signaling a new stance.
''We have no way of knowing for sure what the Cuban government is trying to accomplish, if anything,'' said Eric Watnik, a department spokesman.
Cuba has demanded the United States extradite anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela, where he faces charges of masterminding the bombing of a Cuban jetliner in 1976 that killed 73. U.S. immigration fraud charges against Posada were dropped recently by a U.S. judge.
Cuba has returned at least two U.S. fugitives since the promise first appeared in the State Deparment report.
In September, a South Florida man kidnapped his son, stole a plane at a airport in the Florida Keys and flew to Cuba. The son was later returned to his mother in Mexico and the father was put on a plane to Miami, where he faces prosecution. That was the first time Cuba had returned a fugitive from U.S. justice, according to the 2006 U.S. report.
In April, Havana returned to Florida Joseph Adjmi, a fugitive sentenced to 10 years in U.S. prison for mail fraud in 1963.
Earlier this year Cuba also expelled to Bogotá Luis Hernando Gómez-Bustamante, wanted in Colombia as a leader of the Norte del Valle cartel. Colombia then extradited him to the United States.
Washington and Havana have long had tenuous communications on issues such as drug trafficking and migration. In early 2006, the Cubans briefed the Coast Guard officer based at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana on their counter-drug trafficking operations. But the Cubans refused to allow Drug Enforcement Administration agents to question Gómez-Bustamante while he was detained there on immigration fraud charges.
BILATERAL CONTACTS
An annual report on drug trafficking issued in March by the State Department said Cuban officials ''profess interest'' in more bilateral contacts with Washington on drug trafficking matters.
The Bush administration suspended biannual talks with Cuba on migration issues in 2004, and has refused any formal contacts with top Havana government officials.
Raúl Castro has on two occasions -- in August and December -- declared he would be willing to sit down and talk with Washington. The Bush administration replied that it was not interested in talks until Cuba takes the path of democracy.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Press Time
more anecdotes:
Miami New Times
Press Time
With Fidel on his death bed, journalist Carlos Otero is more critical than ever
By Our Woman in Havana
Published: January 11, 2007
Carlos Rios Otero is trying to write a note, but his black pen has run out of ink. He shakes it furiously, tries to scribble on a piece of thin white paper, and then tosses it on the table.
He shoots the pen a nasty glare, grabs it again, and flings it high into the air.
Carlos is frustrated. The pen is just one more thing that doesn't work in Cuba.
He is trying to change that, one word at a time. He is the rarest of rare on the island — an independent journalist.
But this writer doesn't work for a state-run communist-mouthpiece rag like Granma or Juventud Rebelde. His articles are penned sometimes by candlelight, always in longhand, on the unused side of printed sheets of paper. When he's finished, Carlos whispers his words across crackling phone lines to Miami, where Cuban exiles make sense of them and put them into magazines read by other exiles around the world. Sometimes he appears on Spanish-language radio stations like Radio Mambí (710-AM).
He hopes he doesn't get caught. "It's a brutal way to live," Carlos says matter-of-factly.
We're sitting around a table in the back yard of Carlos's house, a 100-year-old Mediterranean-revival with an iron gate, peeling paint, and pink roses growing in the courtyard. The dry pen is lodged in an overgrown bush. The table is covered with a threadbare red cloth that is pockmarked with holes.
Carlos's wife, Irene — shy and tired-looking — brings us coffee in delicate floral-patterned demitasse cups. She offers a glance that apologizes for not offering more.
It's a critical time for Carlos and all independent journalists in Cuba. As Fidel Castro's illness becomes more mysterious by the week — it's cancer, it's not cancer, he's got a colostomy bag, he's dead and cryonically frozen — Cuban exiles crave news from the island more than ever before.
Years ago Carlos and Irene were young professionals with a baby girl. They could graciously entertain guests — she was a teacher, he was a specialist in agriculture economics who once worked for the government. Carlos's father was a revolutionary, and Carlos himself fought in Angola.
He was rewarded with a post in the Ministry of Sugar — an important government office because sugar was, and remains, one of Cuba's few commodities. But in 1983, he criticized the regime, saying the communist model didn't work. At first, Castro overlooked Carlos's comments because of his family's revolutionary ties. But then the young man made similar remarks in 1986 and again in 1990. He had waded into the dangerous waters of activism in Cuba — he started and joined several groups calling for change.
The government began to pay attention. He was removed from his job and ostracized by the Cuban bureaucracy. The fallout extended to his wife's job and their daughter, now age 21, who has not been able to enroll in college because of her parents' activism — even though she's a top student.
If Hollywood were to film a movie about Carlos's life, he would be played by Lou Reed. When he dons his sunglasses, Carlos is a dead ringer for the singer (circa 1985 Honda scooter ads); he's cool and calm, and more than a bit paranoid about the world around him.
Carlos began his underground reporting sometime in the 1990s; all media in Cuba is state-run and has been for 48 years, so his dispatches are all on the down-low. He is published regularly on www.nuevaprensa.org, an exile-run Website in Miami. When his phone line isn't too fuzzy with interference, he calls dispatches into Miami radio stations and, on occasion, Radio Martí. This past year he was quoted in a report about the sorry state of Cuban journalism published by the international group Reporters Without Borders.
He achieved rock-star notoriety in Cuba and around the world this past December 10, when he and a dozen other dissidents marched in a Havana park to commemorate International Human Rights Day. A mob attacked the demonstrators, and a Spanish news agency photographed Carlos being restrained by a half-dozen government-supported thugs.
During our visit, Carlos shows me a photocopy of the picture and then pulls out a few dog-eared magazines. They contain his writing, but many of his articles are mere briefs about how conditions are deteriorating on the island. Longer stories just aren't easy to report or write. It's a bit sad and surprising to see that a man is risking his life for this.
"It's hard to have sources in Cuba," admits Nancy Perez Crespo, manager of Nueva Prensa Cubana in Miami. "And sometimes they don't even have paper to write on."
Like many of Cuba's journalists, Carlos doesn't usually see his own work, especially if it runs on a Website. He can't afford to use the Internet (it costs about six dollars per hour, about half of the average Cuban's monthly salary). Besides, the Internet is so tightly controlled on the island it's unlikely that Carlos would be able to get near a computer without harassment.
"He's risking his life every time he gives us information," says Perez Crespo.
Yet he writes. He writes about political prisoners who are slowly dying inside Cuba's jails; he writes about the failed distribution of rice cookers to citizens; he writes about the country's dengue fever crisis. He shows me a piece he is working on; this one is about Castro's health.
"His life is in limbo," Carlos says. Then he laughs, as it hits him. "Castro is in limbo, just like the Cuban people."
Carlos's house, located in Santo Suarez, a quiet and once gorgeous Havana suburb, is alternately grand and decrepit. It's filled with books, empty plastic jugs, and some withered root vegetables. At least one room is devoid of any furniture.
Carlos never knows when things will worsen in Cuba, and his stockpiles just might allow him to survive the next rough patch. Indeed this winter he couldn't afford meat for a traditional New Year's Eve meal, and he fretted about his phone bill. (Those dispatches abroad are costly; calls to the United States, for example, are about $2.80 per minute).
He's trying to amass a reference library for budding journalists and anyone interested in human rights. So far it fills three meager shelves.
After talking for a few hours, we decide to visit another independent journalist, Jaime Leygonier, who lives down the street. Carlos's neighborhood is something of a hotbed of dissident activity, with activist and doctor Darsi Ferrer also living nearby. Before we walk out the door, Carlos looks around outside. He wants to know if anyone is watching.
He continues to peer from side to side as we walk down the street together. When we arrive at Jaime's house — another once-great abode with tired furniture — the new host sums it up in a few words: "We're half-crazy with paranoia here."
Jaime used to be a teacher. That career disappeared when he was arrested for writing about Cuba for foreign publications. His relationship with his daughter was also affected by his anti-government stance; when he and his wife split up, they waged a nasty custody battle that was later published in international human rights journals.
"Due to Leygonier's dissident views, his daughter's elementary school has taken a position in the mother's favor and has refused to acknowledge his parental authority, denying him access to the school premises and the opportunity to speak with his daughter," wrote the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) in 2004.
These days Jaime also writes for publications around the world and receives a few dollars in return.
Jaime and Carlos are among the lucky independent reporters in Havana. They have phones, which means they can call their dispatches to people "outside."
Around the time I met with Carlos just before Christmas, acting Cuban President Raul Castro appeared on state-run television at an event at the University of Havana. He told students they should debate "fearlessly." Raul didn't say anything about freeing the journalists who "fearlessly" tried to report; indeed there are no indications he will encourage a free press.
Just days before my trip, the Cuban government issued new rules for foreign journalists — including an edict that said a reporting visa could be revoked "when [the reporter] carries out improper actions or actions not within his profile and work content; also when he is considered to have violated journalistic ethics and/or he is not guided by objectivity in his reports.''
The situation, of course, is worse for independent reporters in Cuba. The island jails more journalists than any other nation except China. There are 27 journalists currently imprisoned on the island, according to the IAPA. This past December, Raymundo Perdigón Brito was sentenced to four years in prison, convicted of "conduct that is in manifest contravention of the standards of socialist morality." Also that month, 21-year-old Ahmed Rodríguez Albacia was arrested at home in Havana, and according to the IAPA, police confiscated a mini tape recorder, a computer, a fax machine, two radios, a flashlight, cassette tapes, pencils, sheets of paper, CDs, books, and magazines during a raid on the man's house.
Maybe the fact that Carlos doesn't have notebooks, a computer, or a working pen is a good thing.
New Times is not disclosing the name of Our Woman in Havana because she traveled to Cuba without the proper visa required to report there.
Miami New Times
Press Time
With Fidel on his death bed, journalist Carlos Otero is more critical than ever
By Our Woman in Havana
Published: January 11, 2007
Carlos Rios Otero is trying to write a note, but his black pen has run out of ink. He shakes it furiously, tries to scribble on a piece of thin white paper, and then tosses it on the table.
He shoots the pen a nasty glare, grabs it again, and flings it high into the air.
Carlos is frustrated. The pen is just one more thing that doesn't work in Cuba.
He is trying to change that, one word at a time. He is the rarest of rare on the island — an independent journalist.
But this writer doesn't work for a state-run communist-mouthpiece rag like Granma or Juventud Rebelde. His articles are penned sometimes by candlelight, always in longhand, on the unused side of printed sheets of paper. When he's finished, Carlos whispers his words across crackling phone lines to Miami, where Cuban exiles make sense of them and put them into magazines read by other exiles around the world. Sometimes he appears on Spanish-language radio stations like Radio Mambí (710-AM).
He hopes he doesn't get caught. "It's a brutal way to live," Carlos says matter-of-factly.
We're sitting around a table in the back yard of Carlos's house, a 100-year-old Mediterranean-revival with an iron gate, peeling paint, and pink roses growing in the courtyard. The dry pen is lodged in an overgrown bush. The table is covered with a threadbare red cloth that is pockmarked with holes.
Carlos's wife, Irene — shy and tired-looking — brings us coffee in delicate floral-patterned demitasse cups. She offers a glance that apologizes for not offering more.
It's a critical time for Carlos and all independent journalists in Cuba. As Fidel Castro's illness becomes more mysterious by the week — it's cancer, it's not cancer, he's got a colostomy bag, he's dead and cryonically frozen — Cuban exiles crave news from the island more than ever before.
Years ago Carlos and Irene were young professionals with a baby girl. They could graciously entertain guests — she was a teacher, he was a specialist in agriculture economics who once worked for the government. Carlos's father was a revolutionary, and Carlos himself fought in Angola.
He was rewarded with a post in the Ministry of Sugar — an important government office because sugar was, and remains, one of Cuba's few commodities. But in 1983, he criticized the regime, saying the communist model didn't work. At first, Castro overlooked Carlos's comments because of his family's revolutionary ties. But then the young man made similar remarks in 1986 and again in 1990. He had waded into the dangerous waters of activism in Cuba — he started and joined several groups calling for change.
The government began to pay attention. He was removed from his job and ostracized by the Cuban bureaucracy. The fallout extended to his wife's job and their daughter, now age 21, who has not been able to enroll in college because of her parents' activism — even though she's a top student.
If Hollywood were to film a movie about Carlos's life, he would be played by Lou Reed. When he dons his sunglasses, Carlos is a dead ringer for the singer (circa 1985 Honda scooter ads); he's cool and calm, and more than a bit paranoid about the world around him.
Carlos began his underground reporting sometime in the 1990s; all media in Cuba is state-run and has been for 48 years, so his dispatches are all on the down-low. He is published regularly on www.nuevaprensa.org, an exile-run Website in Miami. When his phone line isn't too fuzzy with interference, he calls dispatches into Miami radio stations and, on occasion, Radio Martí. This past year he was quoted in a report about the sorry state of Cuban journalism published by the international group Reporters Without Borders.
He achieved rock-star notoriety in Cuba and around the world this past December 10, when he and a dozen other dissidents marched in a Havana park to commemorate International Human Rights Day. A mob attacked the demonstrators, and a Spanish news agency photographed Carlos being restrained by a half-dozen government-supported thugs.
During our visit, Carlos shows me a photocopy of the picture and then pulls out a few dog-eared magazines. They contain his writing, but many of his articles are mere briefs about how conditions are deteriorating on the island. Longer stories just aren't easy to report or write. It's a bit sad and surprising to see that a man is risking his life for this.
"It's hard to have sources in Cuba," admits Nancy Perez Crespo, manager of Nueva Prensa Cubana in Miami. "And sometimes they don't even have paper to write on."
Like many of Cuba's journalists, Carlos doesn't usually see his own work, especially if it runs on a Website. He can't afford to use the Internet (it costs about six dollars per hour, about half of the average Cuban's monthly salary). Besides, the Internet is so tightly controlled on the island it's unlikely that Carlos would be able to get near a computer without harassment.
"He's risking his life every time he gives us information," says Perez Crespo.
Yet he writes. He writes about political prisoners who are slowly dying inside Cuba's jails; he writes about the failed distribution of rice cookers to citizens; he writes about the country's dengue fever crisis. He shows me a piece he is working on; this one is about Castro's health.
"His life is in limbo," Carlos says. Then he laughs, as it hits him. "Castro is in limbo, just like the Cuban people."
Carlos's house, located in Santo Suarez, a quiet and once gorgeous Havana suburb, is alternately grand and decrepit. It's filled with books, empty plastic jugs, and some withered root vegetables. At least one room is devoid of any furniture.
Carlos never knows when things will worsen in Cuba, and his stockpiles just might allow him to survive the next rough patch. Indeed this winter he couldn't afford meat for a traditional New Year's Eve meal, and he fretted about his phone bill. (Those dispatches abroad are costly; calls to the United States, for example, are about $2.80 per minute).
He's trying to amass a reference library for budding journalists and anyone interested in human rights. So far it fills three meager shelves.
After talking for a few hours, we decide to visit another independent journalist, Jaime Leygonier, who lives down the street. Carlos's neighborhood is something of a hotbed of dissident activity, with activist and doctor Darsi Ferrer also living nearby. Before we walk out the door, Carlos looks around outside. He wants to know if anyone is watching.
He continues to peer from side to side as we walk down the street together. When we arrive at Jaime's house — another once-great abode with tired furniture — the new host sums it up in a few words: "We're half-crazy with paranoia here."
Jaime used to be a teacher. That career disappeared when he was arrested for writing about Cuba for foreign publications. His relationship with his daughter was also affected by his anti-government stance; when he and his wife split up, they waged a nasty custody battle that was later published in international human rights journals.
"Due to Leygonier's dissident views, his daughter's elementary school has taken a position in the mother's favor and has refused to acknowledge his parental authority, denying him access to the school premises and the opportunity to speak with his daughter," wrote the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) in 2004.
These days Jaime also writes for publications around the world and receives a few dollars in return.
Jaime and Carlos are among the lucky independent reporters in Havana. They have phones, which means they can call their dispatches to people "outside."
Around the time I met with Carlos just before Christmas, acting Cuban President Raul Castro appeared on state-run television at an event at the University of Havana. He told students they should debate "fearlessly." Raul didn't say anything about freeing the journalists who "fearlessly" tried to report; indeed there are no indications he will encourage a free press.
Just days before my trip, the Cuban government issued new rules for foreign journalists — including an edict that said a reporting visa could be revoked "when [the reporter] carries out improper actions or actions not within his profile and work content; also when he is considered to have violated journalistic ethics and/or he is not guided by objectivity in his reports.''
The situation, of course, is worse for independent reporters in Cuba. The island jails more journalists than any other nation except China. There are 27 journalists currently imprisoned on the island, according to the IAPA. This past December, Raymundo Perdigón Brito was sentenced to four years in prison, convicted of "conduct that is in manifest contravention of the standards of socialist morality." Also that month, 21-year-old Ahmed Rodríguez Albacia was arrested at home in Havana, and according to the IAPA, police confiscated a mini tape recorder, a computer, a fax machine, two radios, a flashlight, cassette tapes, pencils, sheets of paper, CDs, books, and magazines during a raid on the man's house.
Maybe the fact that Carlos doesn't have notebooks, a computer, or a working pen is a good thing.
New Times is not disclosing the name of Our Woman in Havana because she traveled to Cuba without the proper visa required to report there.
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