My Marimbula

Piano Competition

More Cha-Chá

Cha-Chá Plays Rumba

I logged many a day in that room, though Cha-Chá is younger here than when I first met him in 1996. Video posted by Mark Sanders:

South Beach Santeria? (Or not)

From the Miami Herald Posted on Sun, Jan. 06, 2013 South Beach Santeria? Decapitated animals wash up near condo, horrify residents By Marc Caputo The Miami Herald A goat and three chickens were decapitated in an apparent sacrifice and dumped into Biscayne Bay where they washed up behind a luxury South Beach condominium to the horror of residents. “I don’t understand this – the mentality is savage,” said Kathryn Bookstaver, an 11-year resident of The Floridian condominium on West Avenue where the animals were found along the seawall. “It’s disgusting.” Bookstaver and her neighbors, also faulted Miami Beach officials who left the animals to rot throughout Saturday and into Sunday morning. A spokesman for Miami Beach police, Bobby Hernandez, said the department didn’t get involved because the dead animals didn’t appear to be sacrificed as a threat directed against any particular individual. “If this happened on private property and appeared to be targeting someone, we would investigate,” Hernandez said. “Unfortunately, this kind of thing does happen around here with all of the different cultures,” he said. The dead animals were finally attended to by Richard Couto, a founder and investigator of the Animal Recovery Mission, a nonprofit that helps expose and stop animal-abuse cases. He hauled the animals out of the water and waited for the sanitation department to arrive and remove the animals. Couto said the animals appeared to have been killed as part of a Santeria or Palo Mayombe rite. Santeria, which blends West African religious beliefs with Roman Catholicism, revolves around the worship of saints. Palo Mayombe, a more obscure religion, is associated with petitioning the spirits of the dead. Animal sacrifice is legal, protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Since it can’t stop the sacrifices, he said, his group tries to ensure that the animals are treated humanely. But sometimes, before they’re sacrificed, the creatures are hog-tied or kept in plastic bags or sweltering pens, he said. That’s a crime because it’s unlawful to abuse animals, though it’s legal to sacrifice them in a religious ceremony. The dead animals were found blocks from the section of South Beach which has been closed off to traffic to host Notre Dame and Alabama fans in town for Monday’s Orange Bowl game. Just blocks away, in an unrelated South Beach incident Saturday, police arrested a career criminal who shot and killed an acquaintance. Couto said ARM has helped investigate and respond to animal-sacrifice cases throughout Miami-Dade County, from Hialeah to Miami Beach. Nelson Reyes, a police officer who teaches a Miami police course in Afro-Caribbean religious practices, said the South Beach sacrifice could be related to Haitian Voodoo. He said it’s almost impossible to know more about the particulars of this sacrifice because other items associated with the ritual were washed away. Generally, Reyes said, decapitated chickens are associated with a “cleansing” ritual and decapitated goats, rams or other four-legged animals are a sign of a spell cast for a beneficial effect. Reyes said signs of Afro-Caribbean religious sacrifices can be found throughout Miami-Dade, from the Miami River to the train tracks at Flagler Avenue to the downtown courthouse to Sewell Park in Miami, where supplicants place apples near palm trees. Except for the location of the animals in South Beach, “this really isn’t that big of a deal,” Reyes said. But the sight and smell of four dead animals in the turquoise waters of the bay right near a condominium’s pool was a shock for residents of The Floridian. They were also outraged that the police, animal services and the sanitation department allowed the animals to rot for more than a day. “You don’t throw plastic bottles and garbage in the ocean,” said Bookstaver as she walked her adopted Lahsa Apso dog, Lexi, on Sunday morning. “Why would someone do this to animals?” Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/06/v-print/3170090/south-beach-santeria-decapitated.html#storylink=cpy

Illegal Cosmetic Surgury

A blog post by Yoani Sanchez (ingles) from her great blog HERE.

On Tipping In Cuba

2012 travel essay in The Walrus by Chris Turner. Read it HERE.

'Una Noche' Actors From Cuba Flee During Film's Tribeca Festival Premiere

Read about it HERE.

New Study on Remittances to Cuba

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.

Silvio Rodriguez Chastizes His Audience for Clapping Along

Cuban Santeros, ignored by John Paul II in 1998, cool to Benedict XVI as his visit nears

Chicago Tribune
Cuban Santeros, ignored by John Paul II in 1998, cool to Benedict XVI as his visit nears

ANDREA RODRIGUEZ
AP
10:49 AM CST, March 4, 2012

HAVANA (AP) — They cast snail shells to read their fortunes, proudly wear colorful necklaces to ward off illness, dress all in white and dance in "bata" drum ceremonies.

But although their Afro-Cuban Santeria religion owes much to Roman Catholicism, many are decidedly unenthusiastic about Pope Benedict XVI's March 26-28 tour of Cuba, even if it is being hailed as a watershed moment for a church seeking to boost its influence on this Communist-run island.

Santero priests still remember the last time a pontiff came to town — and flatly refused to meet with them. They are expecting no better treatment this time, and some are openly disappointed.

Their religion is by far the most popular on the island, with adherents outnumbering practicing mainstream Catholics 8-1. Yet as far as the Catholic church is concerned, "we live in the basement, where nobody sees us," said Lazaro Cuesta, a Santero high priest with a strong grip and a penetrating gaze.

"We have already seen one pope visit ... and at no moment did he see fit to talk to us."

Cuesta's bitterness stems from what many Santeria leaders see as an unforgivable snub by Pope John Paul II during his historic 1998 tour.

Before that visit, Santero high priests, or "babalawo," led a daylong ceremony to ask the spirits to protect John Paul and make his trip a success. As men, women and children danced to the throb of African drums, the priests blew cigar smoke and spat consecrated alcohol to salute the dead.

But while the pope met with Evangelicals, Orthodox leaders and representatives of the island's minuscule Jewish community, he never deigned to meet with the Santeria practitioners who had danced for his good health, nor even to acknowledge their faith.

Experts say as many as 80 percent of islanders observe some kind of Afro-Cuban religion, be it Santeria, which is more properly known as Regla de Ocha-Ifaor, or one of its lesser-known siblings. Practicing Catholics number fewer than 10 percent, and as elsewhere in Latin America, that share is under assault from conversions to Protestant and evangelical denominations.

The 84-year-old pope's schedule is considerably shorter than John Paul's five-day visit was, and it includes no events with Santeros, or leaders of any other religions for that matter.

A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Benedict's schedule could still be tweaked, but he absolutely ruled out a meeting with Santeria representatives.

Lombardi said Santeria does not have an "institutional leadership," which the Vatican is used to dealing with in cases when it arranges meetings with other religions.

"It is not a church" in the traditional sense, Lombardi said.

A decision not to meet with Santeros is in keeping with Benedict's history of vehement opposition to any whiff of syncretism — the combining of different beliefs and practices — on the ground that it could somehow imply that all faiths are equal.

Some also blame historical racism toward Santeria's Native American and African traditions. The pope may oppose these traditions, but they are an integral part of islanders' daily life, even that of its Catholics. All Cubans know that a woman dressed in yellow honors Ochum, a patron of feminine sensuality related in Catholicism to the Virgin of Charity. Believers crawl on hands and knees in processions of homage to Babalu-Aye, or St. Lazarus, protector of the sick.

Relations between Santeros and Catholics have improved since the early days of the island's 1950 revolution, when Afro-Cuban worshippers were ostracized by both the church and the Communist Party, and those who dared to attend Mass decked out in all-white Santero garb were routinely ejected. However, priests still give homilies critical of Afro-Cuban religious tradition.

The two faiths have arrived at a tense coexistence while inhabiting dramatically different spaces in island society. Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the head of the Catholic church in Cuba, consults with President Raul Castro on weighty political matters; Santero babalawos tend to the spiritual needs of the majority. Neither side talks to the other.

Scholars say Santeria, which was imported to Cuba through slaves brought from the Yoruba tribe of Nigeria, remains on the political margins due to its scattered, nonhierarchical nature, centuries of taboo and the latent racism that keeps Afro-Cuban faiths from being fully accepted in the fraternity of religions.

"Santeria is as much a religion as any other," said University of Havana ethnologist Maria Ileana Faguaga Iglesias. But "its structure is not vertical; it does not have a maximum leader, it has no buildings and it has never been part of any political power."

When it first emerged on the island, prohibitions forced Santeria practitioners to hide their worship of "orishas," or spirits, behind the names of Catholic saints.

During Spanish rule and in the early years of the republic, Santeros had no choice but to accept Catholic baptism since church parishes were the only ones keeping birth registries.

"Historically, at some point all Santeros had some Catholic practice. The Catholic Church was power and was official, and others were persecuted," Faguaga said.

By the end of the 19th century, Santeria began emerging from underground. Today, it flourishes openly and has spread through emigration to the U.S., Puerto Rico, Venezuela and elsewhere.

Santeria "is very extended among the people, more so than when I was young," said Monsignor Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, vicar general of Havana and great-grandson of one of Cuba's founding fathers. "Not just in people of African origin, but also in people of European origin, whites, who today are also Santeros."

In the 1960s and 1970s, as the Communist government promoted atheism, Santeros risked jail if caught practicing rites. Like members of other religions, they were denied party membership until the 1990s.

Lawyers, doctors, engineers and blue-collar workers learned to hide their ancestral beliefs and traditions.

But the 1990s saw a boom in Santero consciousness, and for many it is now a focus of national pride and a fundamental part of the Cuban identity.

Though the Cuban Catholic Church acknowledges Santeria as a mass phenomenon, John Paul's decision not to meet the high priests reflected a judgment that since the faiths overlap, there was no need to treat them separately, according to church expert Tom Quigley.

"At the time of the 1998 visit, the official line of the cardinal, and I think the church generally, was that people who practice Santeria are Catholics," said Quigley, a former Latin America policy adviser at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "They are just another — maybe deviant, but not absolutely heretical or schismatic — form."

Santeros nevertheless took it as just another sign that on an island with a white majority, some still see it as a slave-barracks faith, an idea that goes against Cuban ideals of respect for diversity.

John Paul's decision to ignore the Santeros, Cuesta said, was a decision "to deny our national patrimony ... brought to us by men in chains who arrived as slaves in this country."
___

Associated Press writers Peter Orsi in Havana and Victor Simpson in Rome contributed to this report.

read the story HERE.

The Booming Havana Real Estate Market

From the NYT
February 15, 2012
Cuba Unleashes the Pent-Up Energy of Real Estate Dreams
By VICTORIA BURNETT

HAVANA — As fixer-uppers go, Carmen Martínez’s derelict shotgun house is no cakewalk. The living-room roof collapsed 15 years ago, and the porch soon followed suit, leaving two teetering columns with nothing to hold up. The bathroom is a squalid privy, and the kitchen consists of a sink with no taps and two oil drums full of water.

But roofs — even half-missing ones — are a hot commodity these days in Havana, which has been swept by a bout of real estate fever. So Yoél Bacallao, a 35-year-old entrepreneur, offered to repair Ms. Martínez’s dilapidated house for free on one condition: that she let him build an apartment of his own on top of it.

“It was as if a ray of light had come down from the sky,” said Ms. Martínez, 41, who would hang laundry in the roofless living room and sweep furiously during rainstorms to keep the rest of the house from flooding. “I have been watching this house fall apart around me for years.”

All over the capital and in many provincial towns, Cubans are beginning to inject money into the island’s ragged real estate, spurred by government measures to stimulate construction and a new law that allows them to trade property for the first time in 50 years.

The measures are President Raúl Castro’s biggest maneuver yet as he strives to get capital flowing on the island, encourage private enterprise and take pressure off the economically crippled state.

For decades, the government banned real estate sales and kept a jealous grip on construction. Materials were scarce, red tape endless and inspectors meddlesome. Black marketeers would deliver cinder blocks by cover of darkness, and purchasing a bag of sand was a furtive process akin to buying drugs.

But during the past two months the state has reduced paperwork, stocked construction stores, legalized private contractors and begun offering homeowners subsidies and credits.

On many streets, the chip of hammers and gritty slosh of cement mixing rises above the sparse traffic as Cubans paint facades, build extensions or gut old houses. Still, it is generally small-scale stuff: Mr. Bacallao, who has savings from his business repairing mobile phones, expects to spend about $10,000 on his project.

“Before, you had to sneak a bag of cement here, a bag of cement there,” he said. Mr. Bacallao, who rents a tiny apartment with his girlfriend, built a rooftop house three years ago, but the state confiscated it because he could not explain how he came by the materials. If this house works out, he will move his daughters to Havana from the provinces.

“Now I can explain where I got the materials,” he said. “I can explain where I got the money. No problem.”

Behind scruffy porticos and walls of bougainvillea, the wheels of the property trade are turning. Unofficial brokers — who are still outlawed in Cuba — say they have never been so busy, trawling the streets and the Internet for leads and fielding calls from prospective buyers.

Cubisima, an online classified service, said the number of hits on its real estate page tripled to an average of 900 per day after the new property law took effect on Nov. 10. The law allows Cubans to buy and sell their houses, and even own a second home outside the cities, though it still bars most foreigners from buying.

It is a crude market, where househunters rely on word of mouth and prices are based as much on excitement as on any clear sense of property values, according to interviews with homeowners, brokers and experts. Buyers, who at the top end are mainly Cuban émigrés and Cubans married to foreigners, often declare a fraction of what they pay, and money sometimes changes hands overseas, suggesting that the government’s hope of reaping significant tax revenues may be at least partly thwarted.

On a recent day, a stylish flight attendant showed a viewer around the pretty three-bedroom home she hopes will fetch $150,000; a mile away, an elderly widow held out for an offer of $500,000 for her big, unkempt 1950s house — to be deposited in Spain, please.

Many sellers plan to downsize, so they can live better or leave. Victoria Pérez, a retired doctor, put her spacious house and two-bedroom annex on sale last month for $80,000. She hopes to buy something smaller and put aside about $20,000 to live on and visit her daughter in the United States.

“To earn $20,000 would take 20 years,” she said. “This opens up a whole world of opportunities.”

Statistics are few, and brokers admit that the curious outnumber the serious. The National Housing Institute processed just 364 sales in the three weeks after the new law took effect.

“Prices are very inflated,” complained a Cuban-Canadian who was viewing a mint-colored four-bedroom house priced at $240,000 one recent afternoon. He said he would watch the market for a month or two to see how things shook out.

Steep price tags notwithstanding, experts and brokers say there are signs that the better-off are starting to migrate to areas like Miramar, Havana’s embassy district, and build vacation homes on the coast.

“There is definitely a rearrangement going on,” said Carlos García Pleyan, a sociologist who worked for decades for the Cuban government’s urban planning department.

Other than Cuban émigrés, he said, the gentrifiers were “the winners of the Cuba of recent years.”

“People who have made money legally, and people who have made money illegally,” he said. “Businesspeople, maybe a restaurant owner, maybe someone who owns taxis, maybe someone who has made money through corruption.”

“We shouldn’t be worrying so much about how people rearrange themselves,” he added. “We should be asking ourselves how such large social inequalities have happened.”

While the new market dynamics helped Ms. Martínez, some worry they will do little to solve the housing problems faced by many Cubans, whose wallets would not stretch even to buy a $3,000 one-bedroom apartment.

“It’s all very well for those who have money or who have a relative abroad; but if not, forget it,” said Luis Martínez, a construction worker (who is not related to Carmen). “My son is 18. The only way he’ll ever leave home is if he marries a girl who has a house.”

If anyone needed a reminder of Cuba’s critical housing problem, they got one in January, when a building collapsed in central Havana, killing four people. Miguel Coyula, an architect who specializes in urban planning, said an average of three buildings collapsed in Havana each day, victims of neglect, overcrowding and improvised construction. Well over 100,000 people are waiting to move to government hostels.

Mr. Pleyan estimated that it would cost about $3.6 billion to build the 600,000 houses Cuba needs, according to the government. Independent estimates are more than double that. The creation of construction and housing cooperatives is one step being discussed: such arrangements would reduce building costs and allow groups of individuals to build, say, a small apartment block.

But Mr. Pleyan said Cuba would also have to open wider to foreign investment and look for models that would balance public interests and private profit, by, for example, encouraging developers to build local infrastructure.

Such projects will not happen quickly — if at all — and Ms. Martínez feels lucky that she salvaged her home before she and her family had to abandon it. Once the roof is on, she said, she would like to get running water in her kitchen, replace the toilet and finish building a bedroom for her teenage son.

“I need taps, doors, windows, tiles; everything needs fixing,” she said, looking at the stained walls and rotten shutters of her bedroom.

“Little by little,” she added. “Little by little.”

Read the story and see photos HERE.

Aña La MAGIA del TAMBOR (1994 Cuban documentary)

Story on New Housing Regulations in Cuba

Cuba legalizes sale, purchase of real estate
Much-despised ban on these transactions took effect in stages over the first years after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959
MSNBC

By PAUL HAVEN
HAVANA — For the first time in a half-century, Cubans will be allowed to buy and sell real estate openly, bequeath property to relatives without restriction and avoid forfeiting their homes if they abandon the country.

The highly anticipated new rules instantly transform islanders' cramped, dilapidated homes into potential liquid assets in the most significant reform yet adopted by President Raul Castro since he took over the communist country from his brother in 2008.

But plenty of restrictions remain.

Cuban exiles continue to be barred from owning property on the island, though they can presumably help relatives make purchases by sending money. And foreigners can also hold off on dreams of acquiring a pied-a-terre under the Caribbean sun, since only citizens and permanent residents are eligible.

The law, which takes effect Nov. 10, limits Cubans to owning one home in the city and another in the country, an effort to prevent speculative buying and the accumulation of large real estate holdings. While few Cubans have the money to start a real estate empire, many city dwellers have struggled over the years to maintain title to family homes in the countryside, and the new law legalizes the practice.

The change follows October's legalization of buying and selling cars, though with restrictions that still make it hard for ordinary Cubans to buy new vehicles. The government has also allowed citizens to go into business for themselves in a number of approved jobs — everything from party clowns to food vendors and accountants — and permitted them to rent out rooms and cars.

While Castro has stressed that there will be no departure from Cuba's socialist model, he has also pledged to streamline the state-dominated economy by eliminating hundreds of thousands of state jobs and ending generous subsidies the state can no longer afford.

Cuba's government employs about 80 percent of the workforce, paying wages of just $20 a month in return for free education and health care, and nearly free housing, transportation and basic foods.

Economists and Cuba experts say the new property law will have a profound impact on people's lives, though probably will not be enough by itself to transform the island's limping economy.
>>>>>>>>

Read the full post HERE.

Viva la evolucion (Cuban private market story)

Globe and Mail

Capitalism
In Cuba, it's Viva la evolucion!
sonia verma
HAVANA— From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2011 8:42PM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2011 9:49PM EDT

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

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

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

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

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

Read the four profiles HERE.

Al Jazeera English story on Cuba

NYT: The Stomachs of Strongmen

NYT August 20, 2011 The Stomachs of Strongmen By ANN LOUISE BARDACH Ann Louise Bardach is a writer at large for Newsweek and the author of “Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington.” Santa Barbara, Calif. THE tribute concert Aug. 12 for Fidel Castro’s 85th birthday, at the Karl Marx Theater in Havana, was billed as the Serenata de la Fidelidad (the Serenade to Fidelity). In terms of flat-footed plays on the name of Cuba’s maximum leader, I prefer “The Fideliad” — which speaks to his epic, exhausting and endless run, which began in 1959. Some 5,000 concertgoers turned out for the homage by 22 singers, including Omara Portuondo of the Buena Vista Social Club, but the guest of honor was not present. Instead, he settled for a quiet celebration with family, his 80-year-old brother and presidential successor, Raúl, and his devoted disciple, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. The irrepressible Mr. Chávez broke the news on Twitter late Saturday: “Here with Fidel, celebrating his 85th birthday! Viva Fidel!” Over the last decade, the two leaders have celebrated quite a few birthdays together. For his 75th in 2001, Mr. Castro trooped to Caracas for a bash with Mr. Chávez, who hosted a Champagne gala, followed by a nautical tour of Venezuela’s rainforests. The visit, Mr. Chávez said, “gives us an opportunity to let him know how much we love him.” It’s unclear how many birthdays are left for either leader. Both are now facing their greatest challenges yet, not from opposition movements or dissidents, but from their own failing bodies. Mr. Castro nearly died in 2006 during a botched colon surgery to treat a pernicious case of chronic diverticulitis. He passed his 80th birthday lying in a hospital bed, connected to an antibiotic and nutrient drip. Sitting beside him was Hugo Chávez, who has been there at every stage of Mr. Castro’s five-year convalescence, casually jetting into Havana as if it were a stroll around the block. Now the 57-year-old Venezuelan is fighting for his own life, after a baseball-size tumor was removed from his abdomen in Havana’s top hospital in June. It was Fidel Castro, not an oncologist, surgeon or family member, who delivered the bad news to Mr. Chávez post-surgery, and who outlined his prognosis and treatment — along with his usual tips on public relations and political strategies. It is likely, based on his surgeries, symptoms and treatment, that Mr. Chávez has metastasized colorectal cancer. After surgery and radiation, he is probably undergoing at least six months of chemotherapy, again in Havana, where he just finished his second round. As it turned out, Mr. Castro spent much of his birthday giving his friend a pep talk. “We spoke about everything,” Mr. Chávez related upon his return to Caracas. “He said to me: Chávez, ‘You yourself can begin to convince yourself that everything’s over. ... No, no, it’s not over.’ ” Ironically, the hemisphere’s most indomitable strongmen and determined foes of the United States and free market economics have both been felled, at least for now, by abdominal woes — their guts, as it were. It’s just one more anomaly shared by the leader of the country with the world’s largest reserve of oil and that of a debt-saddled island in the Caribbean. The symbiosis between Cuba’s emeritus or former (and in most ways, still de facto) commander in chief and the Venezuelan colonel-turned-oil-sultan is the most powerful and fascinating political alliance in the Americas. Five years before becoming president in 1999 and two years after a failed coup attempt, Mr. Chávez was released from prison and flew to Havana in hopes of meeting his revolutionary hero. Waiting to welcome him at the airport was the man himself. It’s been a lovefest ever since, with Mr. Chávez declaring that Venezuela is sailing in Cuba’s “sea of happiness.” More crucially, after Cuba lost its Russian patron and plummeted into economic free fall, Mr. Chávez gave his friend one of the most magnanimous gifts in history — around 100,000 barrels of oil every day, gratis, with no strings attached — for as long as Cuba wanted it. In exchange, Mr. Castro sent thousands of doctors to Caracas — a deal derided by some critics as “oil for ointment.” No one doubts who got the better deal. Unlike the quid-pro-quo-demanding Soviets, who picked up most of Cuba’s tab for three decades, Mr. Castro now receives adoration from a leader who happily calls him “mi padre.” Not without reason. In 2002, when a coup appeared to have dislodged Mr. Chávez from power, it was Mr. Castro who spent night after night on the phone, tutoring his charge in a strategy to regain power and dispatch his enemies. “Don’t resign! Don’t resign! I kept telling him,” Mr. Castro recounted in his autobiography. Since then, Ramiro Valdés, Cuba’s pre-eminent policeman and spymaster, has made Caracas a second home, reorganizing Venezuela’s military, police force and Internet services (a fiber-optic cable connects the two countries like an umbilical cord). Cuban advisers are dotted throughout Venezuela’s ministries, offering counsel on everything from literacy to opposition movements and elections. There will not be another coup, or many more elections. “Deep down,” says the Venezuelan convalescent in chief, “we are one government.” They don’t call it “Venecuba” for nothing. Hence, if the health of either man further fails — and both are walking the razor’s edge — all bets are off. Read the full story HERE.

Cuba's black-market housing trade to go legit

MNBC/AP
Cuba's black-market housing trade to go legit:
Castro vows to end law prohibiting sale of private property
updated 7/24/2011 5:30:26 PM ET
By Peter Orsi

Each morning before the sun rises too high, Cubans gather at a shaded corner in central Havana, mingling as though at a cocktail party. The icebreaker is always
the same: "What are you offering?"

This is Cuba's informal real-estate bazaar, where a chronic housing shortage brings everyone from newlyweds to retirees together to strike deals that often involve thousands of dollars in under-the-table payments. They're breaking not just the law but communist doctrine by trading and profiting in property, and now their government is about to get in on the action.

President Raul Castro has pledged to legalize the purchase and sale of homes by the end of the year, bringing this informal market out of the shadows as part of an economic reform package under which Cuba is already letting islanders go into business for themselves in 178 designated activities, as restaurateurs, wedding planners, plumbers, carpenters.

An aboveboard housing market promises multiple benefits for the cash-strapped island: It would help ease a housing crunch, stimulate construction employment and generate badly needed tax revenue. It would attack corruption by officials who accept bribes to sign off on illicit deals, and give people options to seek peaceful resolutions to black-market disputes that occasionally erupt into violence.

It's also likely to suck up more hard currency from Cubans abroad who can be counted on to send their families cash to buy, expand and remodel homes, especially since President Barack Obama relaxed the 50-year-old economic embargo to allow unlimited remittances by Cuban-Americans.

"All these things are tied in," said Sergio Diaz-Briquets, a U.S.-based demography expert. "They want expatriate Cubans to contribute money to the Cuban state, and this is one big incentive for people who want to help their families."

But few changes are likely to be as complex and hard to implement as real estate reform.

Read the full post HERE.

Racism remains an issue in Cuba

Miami Herald
Posted on Fri, Jun. 03, 2011
Racism remains an issue in Cuba, officials say

Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@elnuevoherald.com
WASHINGTON The Cuban government will soon cast a media spotlight on the issue of racism on the island, although some programs to improve the lives of black Cubans had to be cut because of economic restraints, a Havana official said Thursday.

Heriberto Feraudy, who heads the quasi-official Cuban Commission against Racism, also said the popularity of Afro-Cuban religions is soaring and indicated that Raúl Castro’s economic reforms may not help blacks as much as whites.

Feraudy, who served 15 years as ambassador to five African nations, and Esteban Morales, a well-known Havana economist who writes often on race, addressed a conference on the issue sponsored by the Center for International Policy, a think tank.

Their unusually frank comments — for decades Cuba officially denied the existence of discrimination on the island — seemed to reflect the growing concern over race issues as the country drops some of its socialist policies and embraces more private enterprise.

Feraudy and Morales — both black — argued that the Fidel and Raúl Castro governments have done more for Cuban blacks since 1952 than any other government in the previous centuries.

“The problem of a division in Cuba (due to racial issues) is not possible,” said Morales, who was reportedly suspended from the Communist Party last year after he wrote a column complaining about the island’s burgeoning official corruption.

But both also agreed that racism persists on the island, and that the issue needs to be discussed and confronted even though “many people” in Cuba argue that the Castro revolution did away with racial discrimination.

Feraudy said some programs adopted under Fidel Castro to help blacks “had to be terminated” because of a shortage of resources — he gave no further details — but added that his commission is pushing for a broad discussion of the race issue.

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Golf Courses Return to Cuba

NYT
May 24, 2011
Revolutionary Cuba Now Lays Sand Traps for the Bourgeoisie
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

MEXICO CITY — One of Fidel Castro’s first acts upon taking power was to get rid of Cuba’s golf courses, seeking to stamp out a sport he and other socialist revolutionaries saw as the epitome of bourgeois excess.

Now, 50 years later, foreign developers say the Cuban government has swung in nearly the opposite direction, giving preliminary approval in recent weeks for four large luxury golf resorts on the island, the first in an expected wave of more than a dozen that the government anticipates will lure free-spending tourists to a nation hungry for cash.

The four initial projects total more than $1.5 billion, with the government’s cut of the profits about half. Plans for the developments include residences that foreigners will be permitted to buy — a rare opportunity from a government that all but banned private property in its push for social equality.

Mr. Castro and his comrade in arms Che Guevara, who worked as a caddie in his youth in Argentina, were photographed in fatigues hitting the links decades ago, in what some have interpreted as an effort to mock either the sport or the golf-loving president at the time of the revolution, Dwight D. Eisenhower — or both.

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who maintains close ties with Cuba, has taken aim at the pastime in recent years as well, questioning why, in the face of slums and housing shortages, courses should spread over valuable land “just so some little group of the bourgeois and the petit bourgeois can go and play golf.”

But Cuba’s deteriorating economy and the rise in the sport’s popularity, particularly among big-spending travelers who expect to bring their clubs wherever they go, have softened the government’s view, investors said. Cuban officials did not respond to requests for comment, but Manuel Marrero, the tourism minister, told a conference in Europe this month that the government anticipates going forward with joint ventures to build 16 golf resorts in the near future.

For the past three years, Cuba’s only 18-hole course, a government-owned spread at the Varadero Beach resort area, has even hosted a tournament. It has long ceased to be, its promoters argued, a rich man’s game.

“We were told this foray is the top priority in foreign investment,” said Graham Cooke, a Canadian golf course architect designing a $410 million project at Guardalavaca Beach, along the island’s north coast about 500 miles from Havana, for a consortium of Indians from Canada. The company, Standing Feather International, says it signed a memorandum of agreement with the Cuban government in late April and will be the first to break ground, in September.

Andrew Macdonald, the chief executive of London-based Esencia Group, which helps sponsor the golf tournament in Cuba and is planning a $300 million country club in Varadero, said, “This is a fundamental development in having a more eclectic tourist sector.”
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Read the full story HERE in the NYT.