The Cuban government is to allow private individuals, including foreign residents and Cubans who moved abroad, to buy and sell homes and cars by the end of the year, the Communist Party daily Granma said Friday.
The Council of Ministers made the decision last weekend, as it sought to build on the economic recommendations made by the recent Communist Party Congress.
'The agreements that were made by the Congress will not be shelved away,' Cuban President Raul Castro was quoted in Granma as saying to government officials.
Castro has long insisted on the need for economic reform in communist Cuba, particularly to strengthen the private sector. He sees this as the best way to overcome the serious financial difficulties that currently affect the country.
Cubans who live on the island and foreigners with permanent residence within its borders will now be allowed to buy, sell, exchange or donate homes.
'It will be possible to transfer to partners, ex partners and relatives to a fourth degree of kinship the homes belonging to Cuban individuals who leave the country for good, as long as they have permanently lived with the owner for five years,' the report said.
The new policy, according to Granma, seeks among others 'to contribute to solving the home-deficit problem' in Cuba.
Praises of Chinese socialism have appeared with greater frequency in the Cuban press over the last few years.
The city buses that cruise the capital, the merchandise sold in hard-currency stores and the modern cars driven by military officers and state leaders are virtually all produced in China.
The media reports to us ordinary Cubans about the relations that are being established between the government of our country and that of the Asian giant.
These small details were enough to allow predictions on how the Cuban media would cover the actions that were commemorated around the world on June 4.
Twenty-two years have passed since the events of Tiananmen Square yet we can still note an embarrassing silence here on the island.
The Communist Party of Cuba (though I would prefer to be mistaken) seconded the position of the Chinese Communist Party (PCCh) in treating what happened in that plaza as an “inappropriate” issue.
Because of this, millions of Cubans went along with that assessment without knowing the true position of the government and party in China, which has become an economic partner with Cuba.
On June 4, 1989, that now world-famous square was the witness of a massacre where even today it’s impossible to conclude the true toll of the dead and wounded.
The Chinese government gave the order to dissolve a demonstration of an estimated hundred thousand protesters, the majority students and workers.
The method used for putting an end to the protest: armed soldiers and tanks.
At Tiananmen Square the demonstrators requested the removal of corrupt rulers, freedom of the press, freedom of expression and free association, the end of the layoffs in factories and inflation, among other demands.
The method used for protesting was the hunger strike.
The only response given was a hail of bullets.
China just
signed a letter of intent to redo a Cuban oil refinery. Business is business even for"communists"
The demonstrators were branded as counter-revolutionaries, criminals or agent provocateurs of the Western capitalist governments.
On several occasions those who were protesting sang the words of The International, recognized as the hymn of communism.
From this fact one could conclude that they were not aiming to renounce socialism.
But that wasn’t enough, as orders were given to squeeze the triggers.
Remembering the events in Tiananmen is a duty of all those on the left who are fighting against bureaucratic and totalitarian regimes around the world – those structures of individuals who attempt to smother people’s participation and leadership by perpetuating themselves in power at whatever the cost.
Cuban President Raul Castro turned 80 on Friday, vowing to rejuvenate the country's aging leadership and its sagging economy.
No official events took place as he joins Cuba's club of octogenarians, which already boasts his brother Fidel Castro, 84, and his second in charge, Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, who is 80.
At a recent summit of the Communist Party, Castro said one of his last duties as head of government would be to pave the way for successors.
“Today we face the consequences of not having a reserve of adequately prepared substitutes, with the experience and maturity to assume the new and complex work of leading the party, the state and the government,” he said.
But on Thursday when seeing off former Brazilian president Lula da Silva, Raúl insisted it was a shame he could not retire because he was less than half way through the first of two possible five-year terms, thus hinting he would stand again for the presidency in 2013.
If he were to retire his presumed successors are of the same generation -- vice-president Jose Ramon Machado is also 80, and close confidant Ramiro Valdes is 79.
However in a radical break from the past, Castro has paved the way for more private enterprise, encouraging Cubans to open small businesses and pay taxes on their endeavors.
Cubans have bought more than 200,000 licenses allowing them to go into business for themselves since last October. At the same time, Castro announced massive layoffs in the state sector that will eventually mean the elimination of more than 1 million jobs.
Reform has reached agriculture where families are allowed to farm their plots and sell directly to consumers at market prices. Cuba with ample farmland to feed its population is desperate to cut its imported food bill, mostly from the US and Brazil and which is two billion US dollars per annum.
In that line of action the scheme of free lunches for almost everybody has been gradually abolished and will be limited to the really needy.
Even when there were no plans to mark Raul 80th birthday on Friday, officials anticipated that a grand celebrations is programmed for his elder brother Fidel's 85th in August. Former president Lula da Silva was in Cuba where he met with both Castro brothers, Raul and Fidel, to visit the construction of the Mariel port, 43 kilometres west of Havana. The port restructuring was subsided with a US$ 300 million credit line awarded during Lula da Silva’s term. Lula reported to be “happy” with his trip and his meeting with the Castros.
When Castro says that Cuba is the most democratic country in the world, I am uncertain if he is being serious or it is black humor. I can understand that a lifelong guerrilla, fiercely opposed to the capitalist model, does not appreciate at all the system of representative democracy in the Western world.
But from there to setting up a series of institutions, silent and obedient to the government, where the three branches of State are controlled by one person and to tell us that this is the only true democracy, confirms to me that all autocrats have that pathological mania to appear as democrats.
A dictator should state clearly that he is going to rule until his death, because he considers himself a superior being. Or because he does what the hell he wants.
Any resemblance is not purely coincidental
I’m sick of the lies. Perhaps true democracy does not exist. In countries where universally accepted laws operate and human rights are respected, failures occur in bulk, but people shout what they want against their government and no one will look at you with a mean face.
Also, there are independent courts and parliament is like a madhouse, where everyone disagrees with the package of measures released by the president. That’s what I mean by a democracy.
In Cuba, when the Castros talk nobody can go against them. Publicly, no one has ever been seen raising their hand to tell the comandante that he is pondering a load of nonsense.
On the island, everyone is wrong. The infallible are the Castros. If things in Cuba are crooked it’s not by their misrule. No, the ‘guilty’ are the negligent workers and certain talentless ministers.
General Raul Castro wants there to be disagreement. But when they end their speeches and the president of the dull and monotonous Cuban parliament asks the members whether they agree with the words of the leader, everyone, absolutely everyone, raises their hand.
I will believe in the Socialist democracy, as advocated by the regime in Havana, when you see a negative vote.
Cuban officials 'studying' how not to act like communists. Oh well, it's progress
Cuba has announced it is "studying" ways that Cuban residents can be allowed to travel outside the country as tourists.
Wow. That's a tall order. Let's hope they put the best minds in the Cuban government on this one.
We can imagine what that study committee's discussions might be like.
Chairman: "OK, folks, we've got to figure out ways Cubans can be
allowed to travel outside the country for tourism and actually have them
come back. And we don't have a lot of time to come up with an answer --
maybe only years, knowing the majestic efficiency of our great
revolutionary government comrades!"
Member: "Well, rather than reinvent the wheel, maybe we should
look at other countries. Is there any other country that actually allows
its people to leave whenever they want, for any reason?"
Silent pause.
"Nahhhhh," the group says in unison.
Don't get us wrong. We appreciate that Raul Castro, Fidel's brother
and now president, is loosening things up in Cuba. But the thing that
best shines a light on how insane communism is, and how stupid
communists are, is how they look when they start trying to weasel their
way out of the disaster they, themselves, have created.
So, how do you let Cubans go abroad as tourists?
Well, if you're not worried about whether they return -- and you
shouldn't be worried about it, unless you're running a prison rather
than a country -- then youjust do it !
A Cuban dissident, Juan Wilfredo Soto, died Sunday, days after allegedly being beaten by police and detained.
Three days before he died, Soto, 46, was beaten by police while being arrested in a park and then detained, human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez told AFP.
"There is not the slightest doubt that there was a cause and effect, and that Soto's death was related to the beating he was given," another dissident, Guillermo Farinas, said.
Soto died in the central Cuban city of Santa Clara. An official at the Arnaldo Milian Hospital told CNN that Soto died of pancreatitis.
About 80 people, including other prominent dissidents, attended his funeral Sunday, Reuters reports.
Relatives and other dissidents at the funeral of Juan Wilfredo Soto.
Anti-government activist Lizet Zamora told CNN she saw the beating of Soto on a cell phone.
Soto had previously served 12 years behind bars as a political dissident.
President Raul Castro said in April that dissidents are not welcome in Cuba.
"If we do not do something, so that the government changes its stand toward peaceful protestors, we are going to be reporting even more deaths," Farinas told AFP.
The Cuban government did not comment on the death.
The sixth congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC),
which was held in Havana from April 16 - 19, may have marked a major
turning point for the Cuban economic system, and for Cuban society at
large.
As detailed by the BBC,
party members approved measures to institute term limits for top party
and government leaders, legalize home ownership and sales, and
restructure state salaries so that they will be determined in part by
the amount and quality of labor performed by workers.
While many US and European news organizations viewed the changes as a
great stride towards a market economy, with headlines like “Havana frees up markets—with a caveat” (The Miami Herald) and “Raúl Castro apuesta por reformar la economía y el Partido Comunista en el VI Congreso” [es] [“Raúl Castro is committed to reforming the economy and the Communist Party at the VI Congress”] (El Pais), the rhetoric of the congress itself demonstrated a commitment to strengthening and modernizing, but not marketizing, Cuban socialism.
Bloggers in Cuba, and those who follow Cuba from other parts of the world, offered a diverse range of reactions.
Deisy Francis Mexidor, author of Kimbombo que resbala
[es], asked various Cubans for their opinions on the proposed changes.
Many were enthusiastic about the ideas proposed, but concerned about how
they would be implemented. A journalism student interviewed by Mexidor
commented that,
"[La] cuestión es cómo se logrará mantener el socialismo como proyecto sin caer en la economía de mercado.
The question is how we’ll be able to maintain the socialist project without becoming a market economy.
Another interviewee, the manager of a state-owned business, remarked,
"[D]ebemos ser capaces de lograr una mayor productividad,
de bajar los gastos y hacer las cosas con mayor eficiencia, de lo
contrario no se puede hablar de elevar salarios.
We should be able to achieve greater productivity, to lower production costs, and to do things with greater efficiency—if we can’t do this, we cannot talk about raising salaries."
Pedazos de la isla
[es] interviewed various bloggers and journalists who are known for
their criticism of the government, including Laritza Diversent, of Las leyes de Laritza
[es]. Diversent noted that while some Cubans closely followed and
opined on the Congress, many were ambivalent about the outcome because
of the lack of progress in years past.
"Desde mi punto de vista el Congreso fue totalmente
intranscendente, porque una cosa es lo que hablen ahí, y otra cosa es la
que se haga. […] No hay una restructuración del partido o una
restructuración democrática.
Pero nada de esto tiene ningún tipo de importancia entre los
ciudadanos dentro de Cuba. No tiene ninguna importancia como yo creo que
tiene afuera de Cuba. Por supuesto, es porque muy pocos cubanos le
interesa la política, o no la entienden, precisamente por estos “va y
bienes” de que hoy deciden algo, mañana deciden otra cosa, y entonces
vuelven a cambiar. Por toda esta inseguridad nosotros no le hacemos
ningún tipo de caso a ese Congreso.
From my point of view, the Congress was totally insignificant, because what they say is one thing, but what they do is another. There is no restructuring of the Party, nor is there democratic restructuring.
But none of this is important for the citizens of Cuba. It has no importance in comparison to the importance it has outside of Cuba. And this is precisely because very few Cubans are interested in politics, or they simply do not understand it. And they feel this way because of the “back and forth” of the government, while one day it says one thing, tomorrow it’ll say another, and so on. Because of this insecurity, we do not pay any attention to this Congress."
In the most radical change brought by the Congress, Raúl Castro
himself proposed that top-level positions be limited to two, five-year
terms. He emphasized the need for current leaders to encourage and
educate younger politicians who would ultimately form the next
generation of government on the island, and lamented the party’s
inability to do this in the past. Contrary to this rhetoric, the party
has elected the now 80 year-old Jose Machado Ventura, former party
secretary and an original member of the July 26th Brigade, to the vice
presidential seat that was left empty when Raúl took leadership of the
country in 2008.
The irony of this choice has been criticized by Cubans on various
sides of the political spectrum. Blogger Rogelio Díaz, author of Bubusopía
[es] criticized the government’s inability to move forward, in spite
of the consensus that this will be the only way for the original
revolutionaries to build a sustainable legacy.
"[Lo] más preocupante es que [el liderazgo] todavia está
en manos de los mismos sujetos estancadores de todo lo bueno y dinámico y
prometedor y renovador y revolucionario de etapas anteriores.
The most worrisome part is that leadership is
still in the hands of the same, now stagnating, originators of the great
and dynamic and promising and innovative and revolutionary developments
of past eras."
Octavo Cerco’s Claudia Cadelo
[es] expressed a similar sentiment, writing that the implementation of
the economic and political reforms agreed upon by the Congress could
only move forward with new leadership in place.
"[Raúl] sabe, tiene que saberlo, que sus promesas sólo se
cumplirán cuando él ya no esté en el Comité Central, cuando ya no sea el
Primer Secretario de ningún partido, cuando verdaderamente una nueva
ola de cargos públicos asuma los poderes.
[Raúl] knows, he has to know, that his promises
will be fulfilled only when he is no longer on the Central Committee,
when he is no longer First Secretary of any party, when a truly new wave
of public officials assume power."
Fifty-two years into the Revolution, Fidel Castro will have
achieved all the failings, real and perceived, that Cuba had under
Batista, and it will have retained few of the virtues.
Over at the Museo de la Revolucion, Fidel Castro's case against the dictator he overthrew 52 years ago is vividly on display.
Fulgencio Batista was evil incarnate, the museum earnestly instructs visitors in room after room of the once-magnificent building, formerly a presidential palace built in 1920 and decorated by Tiffany's of New York. Under Batista and his predecessors, we learn through photos and text, Cuba became a playground for crass tourists who came for sex, drink and gambling, and who crowded the country's pristine beaches to the detriment of ordinary folk. To drive home the immorality of pre-socialist times, the museum displays an original National Lottery of Cuba ticket from early in the century, a symbol of the country's fall from grace.
We learn that Batista was an illegitimate leader, the election he won stolen by manipulating the press. Worse, Batista intimidated, even jailed or killed, political opponents.
But Batista also failed Cuba by failing to invest government funds wisely. One damning display berates Batista's priorities with a list of budget line items that show government expenditures on frills such as roads, promenades and buildings. Batista's sky-high spending on telecommunications - which the display dubs as military - comes in for criticism. Another display lambastes Batista for failing to diversify the economy. Another still, which provides a year-by-year report of sugar output, accuses Batista of neglecting this all-important industry. The numbers show a downward trend, interrupted with some up-ticks, in the 1950s, and then a giant leap forward, as Castro mobilized the country to produce more sugar in one of his regime's grand economic plans.
The moral and economic rot under Batista led to humiliation and human tragedy, the museum tells us. "Many women who were denied jobs saw themselves forced to become prostitutes in order to survive," said one display. Said another: "According to a census in 1953, there were 200,000 shacks and misery huts." Said a third, also referring to the 1953 census: "40,939 people died due to lack of medical attendance and unsanitary living conditions."
The history the museum imparts is part truth, part fiction and all hypocrisy. Batista was indeed an unsavory character. He did oversee a corrupt administration in Cuba. He did undermine the halting democracy that the United States helped create after liberating Cuba from oppressive Spanish occupation at the turn of the century.
But Cuba and its U.S.-style constitution was also an economic powerhouse with potent social institutions and impressive accomplishments. A 1958 United Nations report ranked Cuba's vibrant free press eighth in the world, and first in Latin America. Despite its much smaller population, Cuba had 160 radio stations compared to the U. K.'s 62 and France's 50. It had 23 television stations compared to Mexico's 12 and Venezuela's 10. The tiny country supported 58 newspapers, fourth in Latin America behind populous Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.
Raul Castro (r), now the President of Cuba, in the hands of Fulgencio Batista (around 1938).
Cuba once installed telephones at a rapid rate. No more. It once ranked first in Latin America, fifth in the world, in television sets per capita, and also ranked high in radios, automobiles, and many other consumer goods. No more. With the population increased and the housing stock degraded, more people suffer inadequate housing today than ever before, and sanitary conditions have become a scandal through much of the country.
The information-hungry populace in the Batista era was well-educated, as it remains. Student registration at primary schools in 1955 was 1,032 students per 10,000 inhabitants, higher than the figures for 1990 of 842. The registration rate for higher education was an impressive 38 per 10,000, about the same as it was 10 years later (34 per 10,000) and 15 years later (41 per 10,000). The country, in fact, had a long history of high literacy levels: At the turn of the 20th century, only 28% of those 10 and over couldn't read or write, not that different from the current figure, 100 years later, of 16%.
But unlike today, Cuba's economy under Batista was powerful, both domestically and in exports, and it was becoming increasingly diversified. Under Castro, its economy is in tatters, nowhere more so than in the sugar industry that Castro once promoted so heavily. A few years ago, Castro announced a shut down of half of the country's sugar mills. "We had to act or face ruin," he explained. As he told NBC News at the time. "It cost us more to produce sugar than what we could sell it for."
But if Batista bested Castro in virtually every broad socio-economic indicator, he paled in comparison when it came to controlling either the electoral process or the populace. Castro executed thousands of political opponents after he came to power, imprisoned tens of thousands and caused hundreds of thousands to flee to exile. Where Batista won a disputed election, a Castro election leaves no room for dispute: Castro allows no opponents, no opposing viewpoints to appear in the press, and, because that might not be enough, his political machine ensures a good turnout by keeping tabs on who votes and who doesn't: In the 2003 national election, Castro managed a 90%-plus "yes" vote, not quite as impressive as Saddam Hussein's 100% but, among dictators, respectable enough.
Those who revile Batista often point to a decadent economy that relied on mafia-run casinos, prostitution and other demeaning jobs servicing tourists. Tourism was important under Batista - Havana was an east-coast alternative to Las Vegas, complete with the sex and gaming, and the same mafia owners - but never as important as tourism has become today. Cuba's once diversified economy is gone and Castro is now putting all of his hopes in attracting tourists.
To do this, Castro's Cuba now permits prostitution, it winks at sex tourism - tourist guide books even include sections on the country's once-taboo gay and bisexual scenes - and, as under Batista, the country unabashedly invests heavily in tourism. In 2003, Castro inaugurated a US$100-million resort on the island's northeastern coast, broadcast nationwide, to underscore the importance the government places on the new five-hotel complex of 944 rooms able to house 1,500 tourists.
Tourism is now Cuba's No. 1 source of foreign income, with 1.6 million visitors generating about US$2-billion in 2002. More tourists come from Canada than from other important sources of foreign exchange, chiefly Germany, Britain, Italy, France, and Switzerland. Castro, like Batista, is eyeing one other important tourist market.
"Our friends from the north are not in this list," Castro said once with a grin, referring to Americans that can't travel to Cuba due to U.S. government regulations.
Some day soon, perhaps, Castro's dream may be realized, and Cuba's economy may once again benefit from U.S. tourism. If it does, Cuba under Castro will have recovered one of the benefits that the country once enjoyed. Fifty-two years into the Revolution, Castro will have achieved all the failings, real and perceived, that Cuba had under Batista, and it will have retained few of the virtues.
With President Obama working to lessen Cuba Travel restrictions, the island risks getting caught up in a hurricane of clichés. Thinking travelers aren’t generally fooled by the shiny veneer of places plugged in a Lonely Planet, but don’t discard Cuba’s clichés. They’re what make this intriguing country so exotic, so vibrant and so darned colorful. A Jaunted special secret correspondent discovers the best of each, all this week.
If you want to go to Cuba without going to Cuba, you have two choices: Guantánamo or Varadero. It's a toss-up for me; Guantánamo gets a bad press, it's true, but I suspect the north coast beach resort of Varadero only gets good write-ups because tourist dollars depend on it.
There's a rumor that Cubans are not allowed in Varadero, but that's not true. There are plenty of Cubans, serving the food and cleaning the bathrooms in the vast resort hotels plonked side by side along the skinny white sand peninsula that pokes out into the Atlantic like a knobbly twig. The issue is that ordinary Cubans can't afford to stay there.
I did what you're not supposed to do, and stayed in a casa particular (guest house). You're not supposed to do it because casas particulares in Varadero are strictly only for Cubans, which is why they are located in the shabbier end of town. But I didn't know this when I arrived late on a cronky bus one evening and found there was no room at the inn. This was January—high season—and the Canadians and Eastern Europeans were out in force. In Cuba, if you speak a little Spanish and have a few Convertibles (the stronger of the country's two currencies, equivalent to a US dollar), you can always find a way.
There's a $5 open-top tourist bus that trundles up and down the peninsula's only road, stopping at all the hotels because there's nothing else to see. You can't even see the ocean, because there are too many hotels in the way.
I confess I'm not one for beach holidays and have never done an all-inclusive vacation package, so I don't know if this is normal, but all the guests were wearing mint green or baby pink hospital bracelets. At first I suspected they were medical tourists, come for a boob job or a face lift (some of them really didn't look real). But then I understood. They'd jiggle the bracelets at the waiter and out would pop a 'free' plastic cup of watery Tango with a miniature cocktail umbrella bobbing listlessly at the top.
I, of course, didn't have a hospital bracelet, but I'd rather drink a gallon of sea water than that small cup of chemical cocktail.
Varadero is the exception that proves the rule in Cuba. The shops are a little better stocked and a lot more over-priced. If you pay the all-inclusive rate, you can eat beef, and other food that isn't rice, beans and pork. The buildings are new and shiny, ugly hotels, not beautiful and old, crumbling mansions.
And as for Cuban principles of equality, fraternity and socialism...nada. In Varadero it's rampant, sunburned and rather tipsy capitalism that reigns supreme.
Cuba has stopped flying black flags in front of the U.S. diplomatic
mission in Havana, the latest step towards dismantling an in-your-face
confrontation that arose around the building during the George W. Bush
administration and brought always-contentious relations between the two
countries to the breaking point.
Former Cuban President Fidel
Castro ordered the parking lot in front of the U.S. Interests Section
dug up and the 100-foot-high flags installed in 2006.
The action
came after the United States turned on a five-foot-high news ticker that
ran across 25 windows on the outside of the fifth floor of the mission
on Havana's busy seaside Malecon Drive.
The Times Square-style
ticker streamed news, political statements and messages in crimson
letters blaming Cuba's problems on the country's communist system and
socialist economy.
The dozens of huge black flags, which Cuba
said represented more than 3,000 of its citizens killed over the years
by U.S. inspired violence, effectively blocked it from view.
The
bizarre scene, as the two old nemeses symbolically squared off in
Havana, became a tourist attraction and barometer of the rising level of
hostility between them.
The two countries do not have full diplomatic relations, but maintain lower level interests sections in each other's capitals.
"They
stopped flying the flags completely at least two weeks ago," a U.S.
diplomat said, adding he had no idea if the measure was permanent.
The
Cuban government hasn't commented on the flags disappearance. The huge
-- and now barren -- field of flag poles remains standing and at the
ready where cars once parked just yards from the building's front door.
Soon
after the Obama administration took over in Washington, anti-Bush
billboards around the building, depicting the former U.S. president as
Dracula, Hitler and a terrorist, were taken down.
The news ticker
went dark in June 2009 and the government of Raul Castro, who replaced
his brother in 2008, responded by reducing the size and number of flags,
but still kept some flying.
Number of prisons per province in Cuba. In total, about 550.
In December, when the European Parliament awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to Cuban independent journalist and longtime protester of the Castros' repression of thought, Guillermo Farinas, the Cuban dictatorship, as is done by the rulers of China, barred him from leaving the country to accept the award.
In his acceptance speech by video, Farinas, characteristically forthright, said: "In the minds of Cuba's current rulers, we Cuban citizens are just like the slaves from whom I am descended, kidnapped in Africa and brought to the Americas by force. For me or any other ordinary citizen to be able to travel abroad, I need a Carta de Libertad, that is a Freedom Card, just as the slaves did, only today it is called a Carta Blanca, a White Card."
His reference to the "white" card should also be a reminder of the long-imbedded racial discrimination against black Cubans by the Castro Revolution. In December 2009, I reported on the "Statement of Conscience by African-Americans" the month before by 60 prominent black Americans, including Cornel West, condemning the partnership of Jim Crow with the Cuban regime.
I have seen no further mention of that long-delayed protest from the actual signers of the declaration of conscience, and from hardly anyone else. Is this a self-imposed gag rule? I welcome any information about this strange silence, including from the Congressional Black Caucus.
Guillermo Farinas would have welcomed, I expect, some support from those prominent black Americans, and others of us. He thanked the European Parliament "for not abandoning the Cuban people in these more than 50 years of the struggle for democracy."
But he has been abandoned – despite his hunger strikes against the imprisonment of independent Cuban librarians, among other dissenters – by the American Library Association, which has yet to demand the release of these, among the other Castros' prisoners of conscience.
As Farinas delivered his acceptance speech, an empty chair draped in a Cuban flag was placed on the European Parliament stage.
Amnesty International has not abandoned him or any of the other Cubans treated like ungrateful slaves. Last summer, it called world attention to the harassment of Reina Luisa Tamayo, "who takes to the streets each Sunday with a small group of relatives to honor her son Orlando Zapta Tamayo who died Feb. 23 after refusing food and water for months."
Imprisoned since 2003 for "disrespecting authority," among other charges, Tamayo "became the first Cuban opposition leader in nearly 40 years to die after a hunger strike – an incident decried by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and European leaders" (Associated Press, Aug. 17, 2010, and foxnews.com).
Reina Luisa Tamayo told Amnesty "that pro-government mobs surrounded her house in the eastern Cuban city of Banes on Sunday and prevented her, her family and friends from marching and attending Roman Catholic Mass. She said Cuban security forces kept other women who planned to march from leaving their homes."
Previously, a typical Castro regime warning was delivered to this besieged mother, as reported by Amnesty International: "On Aug. 8, a mob blocked (Tamayo's) path and beat relatives and friends who were marching – while police nearby failed to act. She said six loudspeakers has been installed near her house, used to shout insults against her and the Ladies in White, a Havana support group for wives and mother of political prisoners."
Has Secretary of State Clinton informed President Obama of the ruthless subjugation of liberty-starved Cubans that led to Guillermo Farinas receiving the Sakharov Prize? Does he care that in 2005 this human-rights prize was awarded to the Ladies in White in Cuba and – dig this – in 2002 to dissenter Oswaldo Paya?
A leader of the Christian Liberation Movement and several times nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, Paya founded the still-continuing Varela Project aimed at establishing by referendum such scandalous heresies as freedom of press and religion and free elections. The only time I met the still-idolized-by-many Che Guevara (at the Cuban Mission to the United Nations), he professed to understand no English and was accompanied by a translator. As I asked him if he could conceive there ever being free elections in Cuba. Guevara, not waiting for the translator, broke into derisive laughter.
Last year, the Latin American Democratic Bridge Network awarded its first Prize for Democratic Openness to the doggedly surviving Varela Project (catholicnewsagency.com, May 20, 2010, reported again on CNA, Jan. 12, 2011). Because such freedom warriors as Oswaldo Paya do not give up, resistance is rising in Castroland.
The most accurate reports on Cuba come from Mary Anastasia O'Grady of the Wall Street Journal. On Dec. 27, she told those of us who care: "A new generation of angry, young Cubans now vents on blogs and through music, mocking the old man and his ruthless little brother. On Nov. 28, in the city of Santa Clara, hundreds of students launched a spontaneous protest when they were denied access to a televised soccer match they had paid to watch.
"What began as a demand for refunds soon turned to shouts of 'freedom,' 'down with Fidel' and 'down with socialism.'" These seeds may yet bring revolutionary liberty to Cubans. O'Grady provides more of the context:
Michael Moore notwithstanding, she writes that "Food, water, transportation, access to health care, electricity, soap and toilet paper are all hard to come by. ... The government tries to put the lid on through repression. But in private, among Cubans there are no limits to the derision of the brothers Castro."
On Nov. 28, 2007, Laura Bush held a video conference with members of the independent library movement with whom she expressed solidarity (Friends of Cuban Libraries). Your turn, Michelle Obama. President Obama has eased travel restrictions to – and the sending of money to Cubans – with restrictions, while calling for the return of freedom to Cubans. What will happen to any of these American travelers if they demand to see any prisoners of conscience?
A watchmaker in Havana reading the "Granma", the official newspaper of the Communist Party.
The Cuban government will spend 130 million U.S. dollars next year in importing goods and raw materials to ensure supplies for the country's emerging private sector as a result of its current economic reform, a trade official said Friday.
Enrique Ramos, the economy ministry's trade director, said that supplies are the major concern for Cubans interested in the new self-employment options.
Wholesale markets with different prices can not be created in short term to ensure the supplies, so retail sales markets in the two currencies circulating in the country (the convertible peso CUC and the Cuban peso CUP) will remain in place, he added.
To ensure supplies to the self-employed sector, the Cuban government will "refocus" the imports and 130 million dollars will be spent to buy different products abroad in 2011, including 36 million spent on food.
Ramos warned that "these supplies will not appear by magic" and stressed the need to strengthen the supply market by increasing domestic production. The official added that the existing inventories of raw materials in the state warehouses will be moved to the network of shops in the country.
Raul Castro's government also plans to incorporate the sale of products in "different formats" for the private sector, so it could be possible to buy raw materials like oil, detergents and soft drinks in containers of more capacity at a relatively lower price."
"To encourage self-employment without guaranteeing the proper supplies would be irresponsible," the official said.
Last September, the government authorized the opening of small businesses to absorb the most of the half million jobs to be eliminated until next March, the first stage of a plan to reduce staff levels in the state bloated sectors. It was also agreed to implement a tax system for the "self-employed" sector to "respond" to the current economic changes.
Raul Castro's government will expand the self-employment to 178 activities in their plan to "upgrade" the socialist model and try to overcome the acute economic crisis affecting the country. The economic adjustment program will be ratified at the sixth edition of the Communist Party of Cuba congress scheduled for late April 2011.
HAVANA - Cuban leader Fidel Castro has suggested he may resign as Communist Party chief, his last leadership post, as he praised his brother Raul's management of the country.
"I got sick and did what I had to do - delegate my powers. I cannot do something that I am not capable of dedicating full time to," Castro told a group of students on Wednesday, state-run press said Thursday.
Castro said he was not speaking to them as first secretary of the ruling communist party but rather as a "soldier of ideas."
"I did not hesitate even a second to put aside my responsibilities," said the 84-year-old, who has kept busy writing and participating in academic meetings in recent years.
After ruling Cuba for nearly half a century, Castro provisionally ceded power to his younger brother, Raul Castro, in July 2006 following intestinal surgery, and officially resigned the presidency in February 2008.
For now, Castro officially remains head of Cuba's only legal political party, which will meet in April to discuss future economic policies for the Caribbean nation. He has held the post since 1965 after seizing power during the 1959 communist revolution.
Castro also praised his 79-year-old brother and successor, saying he was "pleased, because the country is working, despite of all the challenges." He also pointed to communist China, which has steadily grown in recent years, as a model for development.
Raul Castro has said Cuba's economic model, which has survived two decades since the Soviet Union dissolved, must be "updated" without copying patterns from other countries.
His proposed raft of economic reforms is up for debate at the Cuban Communist Party Congress, the first since 1997.
The reforms, which including cutting more than a million government jobs, represent a major management shakeup for the communist island.
They provide for an influx of foreign capital, an opening for private enterprise and reduced government role in the market - all steps away from the Soviet-style communist system currently in force that gave an overarching role to the state.
The proposals make efficiency a vital part of economic management, aim to do away with state subsidies, including food rations, and foresee starting a tax system.
Following up on his pledge on subsidies, president Castro is eliminating subsidies on materials to build and repair homes, with all such products due to be sold at higher prices free of government intervention from January.
Since Februrary, a few materials have been sold free of subsidies in over 300 stores, but subsidized sale prices remained in effect for most building products, trade ministry official Pilar Fernandez told Juventud Rebelde newspaper.
Shortly after he took charge of Cuba from his ailing brother, Fidel, in 2006, Raúl Castro declared that his country’s moribund communist economy needed to change. But his failure to make anything more than marginal adjustments disappointed hopes that he would follow Chinese and Vietnamese communist leaders in combining capitalist economics and growing social freedom with continued party control.
Now, at last, Mr Castro is showing signs of boldness. Over the past few weeks he has launched some potentially far-reaching changes. By April 1, 500,000 Cubans will be laid off from their state jobs and encouraged to make their own living in small businesses. Over the next two or three years, another 800,000 are likely to join them. Eventually up to two Cubans in five will no longer work for the state.
This week Mr Castro convened a much-postponed Congress of the Communist Party for late April: its job will be to bless the new economic model. Meanwhile, the government has released more than 50 political prisoners. Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is Cuban communism finally on the way out?
Any answer must be hedged about with caveats. The economists advising Mr Castro are barred from talking of “reform”. In its guidelines for the party congress, the leadership declares that “only socialism [ie, communism] is capable of overcoming our difficulties and preserving the gains of the revolution” and that in the new economy “planning will be paramount, not the market.” No Cuban official has matched Deng Xiaoping’s embrace of “market socialism”, let alone his (perhaps apocryphal) injunction that “to get rich is glorious”. The welcome release of prisoners seems merely to have been a move to deflect outside criticism after the death of one of them in a hunger strike, rather than a first step in dismantling the island’s police state. Indeed the army is playing a bigger role in the economy and in government.
Yet Raúl’s reforms go much further than Fidel’s reluctant acceptance of foreign investment and limited self-employment after the collapse of the Soviet Union, partially reversed on the appearance of a new benefactor, Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela. For the first time since the 1960s Cubans will be able to employ other Cubans (even though the constitution bans such “exploitation”). Many of the rules under which these new businesses will operate are still being drawn up. But it seems that Cubans will now be able to get loans and rent and buy property. Other changes are likely to follow. Mr Castro talks of gradually eliminating the free food rations that Cubans get, and moving towards targeted social assistance (as elsewhere in Latin America). The corollary is that wages will have to go up — and increasingly they will be set in the market.
In all this Mr Castro is bowing to reality. He has been withering in his criticism of the featherbedding that has bankrupted the state. He has also refused to blame the American economic embargo for problems which he rightly says are self-inflicted. His pragmatism has finally won out against his brother’s doctrinaire Utopianism.
Apart from the economy, the other big task facing Mr Castro, who is 79 (and Fidel 84), is to start handing over power to a younger generation. That may come after the party congress next year. In the meantime, his new boldness represents an opportunity for those who hope that Cuba will eventually join the rest of Latin America in accepting democracy and the market economy, for once the market’s green shoots appear they tend to flourish.
How to help kill communism
Outsiders should take their lead from the common position that Europe adopted in 1996, which allows it to help in “the progressive and irreversible opening of the Cuban economy” while predicating closer friendship on moves towards democracy. Offering training and credit — as Brazil has done — to Cuba’s incipient private sector would be a good move. Rewarding Cuba for releasing prisoners who should never have been locked up in the first place — as Miguel Moratinos, Spain’s recently sacked foreign minister, wanted — would not.
America’s embargo remains as futile and counter-productive as ever. Although Barack Obama has commendably reversed George W. Bush’s restrictions on visits and remittances by Cuban-Americans, Republican control of Congress will make it even less likely that the embargo will be dismantled. That’s a great shame. The embargo has allowed the Castros to pose as proud Cuban nationalists standing up to a bullying hegemon and thus helped them cling to power. If change is at last under way it is despite the embargo, not because of it.
