Updating Immigration Policy in Cuba

The mere fact of hearing it on television petrifies me, but listening to the president of my county has been illuminating, because in revolutionary Cuba there are issues so ethereal that they never find an appropriate occasion to be raised “procedurally,” taboos the single mention of which give one goosebumps, themes that cannot be approached without people looking at you, eyes wide with terror.

This is the case with the immigration policy the Cuban government has maintained over the last 50 years, one of the most traumatic and thorny issues in Cuban society. The twisted mechanisms created to impede the free flow of people, whether to travel or to emigrate, have turned what would normally be one more choice in the life of any Cuban, into a real ordeal.

During his speech delivered to the Cuban Parliament on August 1, 2011, Raul Castro announced that work was now underway “…to implement the upgrade of the current immigration policy…” While I welcome the proposal — given that Fidel Castro never announced anything like this in his entire time in government — I quickly curbed my enthusiasm when, a minute later, Raul specified that “…the flexibilization of the policy will take into account the right of the revolutionary State to defend itself from the interventionist and subversive plans of the United States government and its allies, and at the same time will include reasonable countermeasures to preserve the human capital created by the Revolution in the face of the theft of talent practiced by the powerful.”

Stated thus, is this a way of saying he’s going to put the usual patch over the tatters? Suddenly I sensed he was talking about me because, being a doctor, I am subject to the super-punitive Ministry of Public Health Resolution 54 — which places restrictions on the emigration of doctors — which hangs like a guillotine over professionals in my profession.

Until now, the Cuban citizen who desires to travel outside of Cuba has to overcome a whole string of obstacles: obtain a “letter of invitation” from a foreign citizen, getting a visa for the country in question, first having deposited thousands of dollars in a bank — a necessary condition for many countries — and then… ah! then… the terrifying “exit permit,” also called the “white card,” that can be issued or denied at will, and which also includes the “entry permit” — awarded by the immigration authorities of the Ministry of the Interior through Decree/Law 989 of December 5, 1961, which says it all.

This has one obvious consequence for Cubans within and outside the island, who for fifty years have been subjected to a tacit ban on travel abroad, because the above-mentioned mechanism functions like a narrow filter, unbreachable by anyone stigmatized for political reasons and especially anyone whom it is suspected might emigrate if given authority to travel. This monster, treacherously rationed, is subject to thousands of acts of extortion, bribery, corruption and moral degradation involving both officials and citizens throughout the country.

But as this is the land of magical realism, a government that has practiced, for so long, this policy of secrecy with regards to travel, has come to the point of cynically questioning the immigration policies of others. They cite repeatedly, for example, the government of the United States for prohibiting its citizens to travel to Cuba as a consequence of the embargo — which is certainly a violation of the rights of the American people — and even convene meetings with the diaspora where they poetically call for “normalization” of relations with emigrants, including, I suppose, those who left Cuba in 1980 under the rain of their blows and tossed eggs.
At these meetings not a word of apology is heard, nor is the need to reform immigration policy even mentioned; convened by the Cuban government, its representatives lash out, throwing stones from their glass house. When I hear news like this I turn off the television, because I was born with only one liver and my tolerance has its limits.

Shielded behind the argument of the “…legitimate defense against the aggressions we’ve been subjected to for more than 50 years…” — perpetrated by successive U.S. administrations, but for which my people bear no fault — the Cuban government lashed out indiscriminately against our freedom and extended this “immigration” war to the rest of the known universe.

Taking as a given that the U.S. administrations certainly haven’t rested, nor will they, in their attempt to overthrow the Revolution, there are still more than 180 other countries with whom Cuba maintains diplomatic relations, consulates, or full trade. This, if there’s no way we can consider ourselves an “enemy” of all humanity, then why don’t we have the right to travel freely in the rest of the world? Why does this ban remain even for countries with “friendly” governments like China, Bolivia, Ecuador and our Venezuelan ally? Why has this sick control been maintained over something so natural? This shows that the sealed-wall policy marks the hard line of a much wider control strategy. Maintaining this strategy fits like a glove with our condition as an archipelago. Our insularity greatly facilitates the wishes of the Cuban government, which has the luxury of trampling rights that it would not be able to monopolize so fully if we had land borders.

Raul added in his speech: “This sensitive issue has been subject to political and media manipulation over many years in an effort to denigrate the Revolution and create enmity with Cubans living abroad.” As if anyone needed to distort anything in relationship to this policy to show exactly what it is: the glaring and massive violation of a right inherent to every home sapiens on the earth. It is not possible to ethically defend such a posture, nor is it necessary exhaust oneself in any kind of “manipulation” to “denigrate” the guilty, because this policy is already, in and of itself, a sufficiently denigrating manipulation to universally discredit anyone who perpetrates it.

Nor was it necessary to “alienate” anyone from the Revolution, because this same policy led to truly bestial treatment of emigrants; it’s enough to remember those shameless repudiation rallies in 1980, the demonization of those who left, the social stigmatization of all those “lumpen” and “worms,” of all that “social scum” dragged through the streets everywhere in Cuba for their “sin” of emigrating, the confiscation of all their property, the total uprooting…

It was this brutality that kept families separated for five decades, and not just residents of “enemy” territory, but every Cuban resident in any country from Manchuria to Patagonia. This policy is at fault, in great measure, for thousands of lives lost at sea in the last two decades, a trail of death that could have been avoided with a policy supporting the natural flow of Cubans through legal means. No one, given a civilized alternative for travel, would have risked ending up adrift with the sharks.

Hopefully, for the good of everyone, sanity will finally be imposed, because once this policy of perpetual imprisonment is eliminated, maintained against the will of the Cuban people, its immediate and visible consequences will end — the illegal trafficking of people across the Gulf, for example — and then time will heal, bit by bit, its generational consequences — which are chronic and so, deeper — at the same time that the Cuban government casts off this serious stigma. For now, one conclusion is clear: “normal relations” cannot exist with immigration as long as there are not normal legal mechanisms that regulate the migratory phenomenon; as long as this isn’t the case every attempt to approach the subject will be a farce, as long as it is not accompanied by sincere political will.

The time has already come in my country when travel can no longer be entertainment earned by a privileged caste, or a gift rewarded uncritical or servile postures, but rather a strictly personal decision, without consultation, not subordinated to the authority of any minister.

Citizens must be left to their own devices, through binding and unequivocal laws that no authority would dare to break. They must guarantee full respect for the individual right and return to the national the wealth of the diaspora, the whole universe of Cubans beyond the sea that has been separated from us for far too long; a universe that in its time included the poetry of Gaston Baquero, the narrative of Cabrera Infante, or the lyrical prose of Reinaldo Arenas; the music of Sandoval and Willy Chirino,Celia’s lost voice that no longer vibrates with Los Van Van in the Piragua; the arms of Duque and Contreras, who don’t throw against their Cuban team, but are excluded from it in the World Baseball Classic; I speak of the generational painting José Bedia and many others, Cubans like me, who make an infinite cosmology that belongs to us. We all fit under the sky of our unique tricolor Cuban nation, but to realize this miracle will require that we forever swear off the doomed Dictionary of Absurd Analogies and admit, finally, that concepts such as travel and renounce, migrate and betray, abdicate and forgive… will never be synonymous.

There remains, however, the sting of uncertainty: In the event that the leadership of the country is certainly thinking about freeing foreign travel without conditions — something I sincerely doubt — will doctors and other professionals be excluded? Will they take “reasonable countermeasures” — words of a rare exoticism among us — or will they to back to the extremes?

Not to fall into sterile speculation, we can only hope. But for now I recover the hope of seeing old friends again, alienated by this wall of discord for over ten years, when they left for new horizons. Because they decided not to live under this government, the doors of their country closed behind them. I say their country, because that sacred spiritual possession that is one’s homeland is always carried within. These, my beloved beings who seek new paths, convince — I already said the most universal of Cubans — that homeland is also humanity.

By Jeovany J. Vega

Source: Translating Cuba

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Cubans Escaping Castro's Economic "Reforms"

Cubans continue to "vote" against the Cuban regime

The number of Cubans intercepted at sea trying to reach the coast of Florida more than doubled in the last fiscal year according to figures released by the Department of Homeland Security. In the previous fiscal year, 422 Cubans were intercepted at sea by the Coast Guard, while in the fiscal year 2011 (which just ended on September 30th), 1,000 Cubans were caught. Moreover, the number of Cubans who actually reached the U.S. shore increased by 70%, from 409 in fiscal year 2010 to 696 in fiscal year 2011. This is the first rise in illegal Cuban immigration by sea in 3 years according to authorities.

This is yet another sign that the much heralded economic “reforms” announced by Havana aren’t working. The massive layoffs of hundreds of thousands of public employees undertaken by the government of Raúl Castro were meant to be absorbed by Cuba’s almost non-existent private sector. The Communist regime tried to ease the pressure by allowing private employment in 178 economic activities, such as masseurs, clowns, shoemakers, locksmiths, and gardeners. However, as I warned over a year ago, it capped the number of permits for these private activities at 250,000 while also penalizing the new entrepreneurs with stiff tax rates. It doesn’t take a Nobel Prize winner in economics to realize that Cuba’s nascent private sector wouldn’t be able to make room for all of the newly unemployed. What then for these people?

Earlier this year I talked to an official from the U.S. Interest Section in Havana who told me that we shouldn’t be surprised if we see a steady increase of Cubans trying to escape the island towards the United States. Faced with a dilapidated economy, hundreds of thousands of unemployed, and growing social unrest, the Castro regime wouldn’t hesitate in letting more Cubans use the “escape valve” of emigration. We might be seeing the first signs of this.

by Juan Carlos Hidalgo

Source: Cato@ Liberty

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What about Cuba?

Cuba’s 52-year nightmare is about to end with the death of the last of Latin America’s old time dictators. In the long run it is hard to see how the demise of the old caudillo can be anything but good news, but the short term will be rough. The U.S. has a plan but no doubt so do regional nuisances such as Hugo Chavez.

All day I have been whistling that song from the “Wizard of Oz”. You, know, “ding-dong the witch is dead”. Whether Castro sups with the devil tonight or not, his reign is clearly through. An eighty-year-old guy who probably pees in his pants and cannot remember what he talked about yesterday is already knocking on hell’s door. How will he come back? His brother Raul has taken power.

Raul is known as the ruthless enforcer. He is the one who killed many of the regime’s opponents. He lacks his brother’s charisma, but may be a little more practical. He evidently advocated such radical capitalistic steps as allowing small farmers to sell produce at farmers’ markets during the hard times when the regime lost its Soviet sugar daddy. But after Hugo Chavez stepped in with subsidies to take the place of the Soviets Fidel was able to kill (sometimes literally) the farmers’ markets and roll back other reforms. One possible hope is that Raul will try to go the Chinese route when big brother is out of the picture. Ironic that the best case scenario would make Cuba only just a little more oppressive than China.

Beyond the geriatric Castro brothers, there is no heir apparent. The Castro boys killed, exiled or imprisoned any bright young man or woman with ambitions so Raul is what they get.

We have to remember that Cuba is not a democracy and not even as open a system as the latter day Soviet Union. The strength of a democracy is that it produces lots of leader and independent thinkers. Fidel’s did not go for this sort of idea. He executed even ideological allies if he suspected them of disloyalty and his paranoia made him suspect everyone except his brother. (Those who know say “Fidel only praises the dead,” many of whom he made that way.) That means Cuba has nobody accustomed to making decisions without asking Fidel first. Anyone with power derives it from a relationship with Fidel. When he is gone, so is that connection. The Cuban communist system will collapse, soon after he shuffles off this mortal coil. We need to be ready.

Cuba is a mess. Fidel really believed the Marxist-Leninist crap he was peddling. He opposed individualism, private enterprise, investments or any of the ordinary freedoms we take for granted. Cuba was more of a closed society than most E. European communist regimes under communism. We will find Cuba more like Albania than Poland or the Czech Republic. It is a long road ahead.

In 1959, Cuba was one of the most developed countries of Latin America. Now it is among the most backward. Most of the rest of Latin America shook off its dictators in the 1980s, but the Cuban socialist showboat managed to stay afloat, even listed a bit to the left. It will not be enough to get rid of Fidel and replace Havana’s 1950s vintage automobile fleet. The world will be surprised at the abysmal poverty and corruption when people are free to visit and take pictures all over the island.

The added complication will be Cuban Americans. More than 10% of the Cuban population left the country soon after Fidel se up his socialist paradise on the Pearl of the Antilles. Others followed as soon as they learned to sail small boats or float in inner tubes. Most went to Florida. They were Cuba’s best and brightest. Fidel kept their property, but their skills and intelligence were their real wealth. They took their human capital with them. In the U.S., where such things are valued, they were soon successful. They and their children are still interested in their country of origin. Some want to return. Expatriate skills and money will jump start Cuban development. A similar thing happened in Poland. The difference is that Cuban-American numbers are larger in comparison to the population of Cuba. Cubans in Cuba will probably come to resent these guys. There is a real possibility of a divided society, not only divided between haves and have nots, but also between skilled and skilled not.

Think of it like your rich and smart cousin who goes away to school at some nice place, while you stay at home and endure years of hardship. Then he comes back to tell you what to do. The worst part is that he is usually right.

So after Fidel has gone where the goblins go, below, below, below, expect a messy transition, but ultimately a successful one, this time w/o Myer Lansky (who it turns out was a less successful gangster than Fidel).

Source: China Online News

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Celebrating Life in Union

A story of resilience and brotherhood.

Our Story

Celebrating Life in Union is a 90-minute documentary (in post-production) of human resilience, community, and brotherhood. It follows a group of former Cuban political prisoners through their memory of imprisonment, physical and mental tortures and their half-century fight with the aging Castro regime. Having developed a strong community for themselves that now crosses three generations in Union City, NJ they struggle with the realization that their own mortality may come before they can return to their homeland.

Our intension is to give a platform to this group of courageous men and to send a message to the world that human rights and, and freedom of speech are a priceless commodity that should never be lost under any circumstance.

What We Need & What You Get

We have shot over 30 hours of footage in Union City New Jersey with these courageous men, their community, friends and families. We are in the post-production stage of the documentary. For this particular campaign we are trying to raise $3,500 for the post-production of the documentary.

Each supporter that gives $1,000 will receive a single credit thank you title in the credits of the film, and a copy of the edited documentary.

A $100 dollar donation gives each supported a copy of the edited documentary an invitation to events related to the documentary

Supporters from $50 and up will receive a copy of the edited documentary.

Supporters from $25 and up will receive special thanks from the producers, and information about the events related to the documentary.

Other Ways You Can Help

Please, please donate and get the word out. We need all the help we can get to finish and help. 

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Cuban Wretch "Escapes" Castro's Paradise

On Thursday, July 14, 2011, a young Cuban who tried to stow away inside the landing gear of a Spanish airliner died during the nine-hour flight from Havana to Madrid. It was, ironically, Lenin who invented the term “voting with their feet” during the Russian Civil War to describe people moving into areas controlled by the Communists. Collectivists have never found occasion to use that term again.


The flight of Cubans out of their horrific prison camp nation to anywhere else is a 60-year-old story. Fidel Castro inherited a nation that was among the most prosperous in the Western Hemisphere. Although there was much to dislike about Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban leader whom Castro ousted, there was also much to admire about Cuba before Castro.

Indeed, there was a great deal for collectivists to admire about Batista. Sumner Welles, Undersecretary of State under Franklin Roosevelt, actually described Batista as a communist. Batista, the first Cuban leader to bring members of the Cuban Communist Party into his Cabinet, described himself as a “progressive socialist.” When Castro attacked Batista in 1953, the Cuban Communist Party actually accused Castro of “Putchism,” another one of the surreal words invented by Marxists which onlinedictionary.com defines as "a method of revolution or overthrow involving secret planning."

Batista had won during a competitive election in 1940, although he later effectively usurped power. Nevertheless, after his first term as President, Batista left office peacefully. Unlike Castro, who came from an affluent upper-class family, Batista grew up in poverty. He worked in the sugar cane fields, on railroads, and in the hard labor that the poor must do to survive.

Fulgencio Batista was part black, part Chinese, part American Indian, and part European. Unlike Castro, Batista genuinely was a “man of the people,” and his rise to power — from a sergeant in the Cuban army to leader of his nation — reflected that connection with ordinary people. When he was elected in 1940 with about 60 percent of the vote, he was the first non-white Cuban to win that office (the Barack Obama of his nation).

Cuba before Castro is uniformly depicted by the establishment media as horrific. The reality is dramatically different. While Batista and others ruled Cuba, the nation flourished. (This is in spite of the socialist policies of Batista, not because of those policies.) How well off was pre-Castro Cuba?

The Cuban peso had the same value as the U.S. dollar. There were 101 privately owned newspapers. Cuba had one radio per five Cubans and one television set per 28 Cubans. One out of every 40 Cubans owned a car, and one out of every 38 owned a telephone. These were among the best rates of ownership in the world. The infrastructure of Cuba — highways, ports, etc. — was considered by the U.S. Commerce Department to be the best in Latin America.

How well was labor compensated? The average Cuban industrial worker earned $6 a day in 1958. Although that figure sounds low to us in our hyper-inflated world, that wage level can be understood only in comparison with nations’ average daily industrial compensation at the time: Sweden ($8.10), Switzerland ($8.00), New Zealand ($6.72), Denmark ($6.46), and Norway ($6.10.) Cuba also had the seventh-highest level of compensation for agricultural workers in the world, behind only Canada, America, New Zealand, Australia, Sweden, and Norway. Unemployment in Cuba was the lowest in Latin America.  Even the leader of the Cuban Communist Party until 1962, Anibal Escalante, said, “Cuba is one of the countries [in Latin America] in which the standard of living of the masses was particularly high.”

The per capita income was the third-highest in Latin America, after Argentina and Venezuela. Ginsburg’s 1959 Atlas of the World Economy placed Cuba at 22nd out of the 122 nations surveyed. Income surpassed that of Spain and Portugal and was comparable to that of Italy.

The Cuban public educational system received a higher percentage of the government’s budget than any other Latin American nation, with Costa Rica, a famously peaceful and orderly nation, second. Cuba also had 900 private schools and three private universities. Rural education received special attention and was supplemented by a mobile library system. According to the UN report of 1953, the literacy rate in Cuba was 82 percent, higher than in any other Latin American nation except Argentina and Costa Rica.

How healthy were Cubans before Castro? They ate quite well. Per capita consumption of meat was 65 pounds per year, exceeded only by England, Australia, and Denmark. Caloric intake was the third-highest in Latin America, after Argentina and Uruguay. The nation had the third-lowest mortality rate in the world — lower, in fact, than America or Canada. The infant mortality rate was 3.76 per thousand, while next in line in Latin America was Argentina at 6.11 and Venezuela at 6.56. In fact, the infant mortality rate in Cuba was lower than in France, Italy, Belgium, or Austria. Only Argentina had more doctors per citizen than Cuba. Life expectancy was significantly higher than in Latin America in general.

Cuba was doing well, but it was doing well in spite of the “progressive” policies of Batista, not because of Batista. What this nation needed was a return to free markets, the end of incessant government intervention on the side of labor, and public expenditures (which were often inefficient) to improve education and health. What Cuba did not need was a collectivist totalitarian such as Castro.

In the Never-Never land invented by Marxists which divides mankind into “progressives” and “reactionaries,” where was Castro? In his youth, Castro owned the complete works of Benito Mussolini. When he was tried in Cuban courts, his oral argument was virtually modeled on Hitler’s “History will absolve me” speech. When Francisco Franco died, after Castro had been in power over 15 years, Castro ordered a day of respect for the Spanish dictator.

Fidel Castro believes in power. The Cuban people have suffered grievously during the last 50 years. From 1959 to 1994, more than one million Cubans have left their island home for anywhere else. The horrors of Castro’s Gulag are as awful as anything in the ghastly history of modern totalitarianism. This nation that was once among the most affluent in the Western Hemisphere or, indeed, the world, now languishes in poverty and experiences persistent shortages of even the most basic items such as milk, soap, and clothing. Rationing is the norm.

The incidental byproducts of Castro’s Cuba are found in baseball players and other athletes who abandon their communist prison as soon as they can, in the grinding poverty of those who cannot leave, and in those desperate enough to hide in the landing gear of an airliner traveling across the Atlantic Ocean from Havana to Madrid.

by Bruce Walker

Source: New American

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CUBA: Preparing For Perestroika

El Capitolio, or National Capitol Building in Havana, Cuba.

Dividing Old Havana from Chinatown is Cuba’s Capitolio Nacional, a monumental edifice with a fateful past. El Capitolio was conceived during the Roaring ’20s, when the island led the world in sugar exports and the future seemed sky blue.

President Gerardo Machado dreamed of turning Cuba into the Switzerland of the Americas. He decided that his 4 million countrymen needed a domed capitol building even taller and more ornate than the one he toured in Washington. So Cuba’s Congress dutifully poured 3% of the country’s GDP into their new home. (This would be akin to the US Congress spending $420 billion for a new office today, but let’s not give them any ideas…)

It took 8,000 skilled Cuban laborers just three years to complete El Capitolio, which featured gilt ceilings, a giant diamond embedded into the pristine marble floor and the world’s third-largest indoor statue. However, the showy project couldn’t have been more poorly timed. Work completed in 1929, just as America’s stock market crashed and the Great Depression unfolded.

The Smoot-Hawley tariffs crushed Cuban sugar prices by 74%. When El Capitolio’s ribbon was cut in 1931, Cuba’s economy lay in tatters. Machado was forced out of office, and his dream building would perform congressional service for only 28 years before Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries swept into Havana and opted for more austere premises. I don’t need to recite the history from here, which you probably well know.

The winds of change are gathering in Cuba, though. Since Fidel Castro’s health nearly failed in 2006, power has passed to his younger brother, Raul Castro. Raul has quietly reshuffled more than 30 cabinet members to prepare his party and people for a sweeping economic policy overhaul – Perestroika al Cubano. Even the semi-retired Fidel seems to have glumly accepted that change is inevitable, candidly admitting to a visiting US journalist that “the Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.”

The global economic crisis whacked Cuba hard. Venezuela cut back on its largesse as its own economy worsened. Tourism and remittances softened, while nickel export prices tanked. Furthermore, three severe hurricanes left a wake of destruction in 2008. Unable to service Cuba’s estimated $21 billion foreign debt, and running out of generous leftist patrons to hit up, Raul Castro has, apparently, decided he has little choice but to pry open Cuba’s economy.

Castro’s wild card is Cuba’s oil and gas reserves. The island currently produces 60,000 bbl a day. But its US-facing northern waters hold an estimated 5-20 billion barrels of oil and 20 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. (Note: This compares with 29 billion barrels of oil reserves in the entire US.) Accessing this undersea oil requires the sophisticated drilling technology the US excels in. But as long as sanctions remain in place, the US oil majors are excluded from that bonanza. Amidst the applause of oil industry lobbyists, the dance for reengagement has begun, with both partners taking some unprecedented steps.

Raul Castro has issued a far-reaching five-year road map for Cuba’s future economic reform. The proposed changes would put Cuba on a very similar path to that taken by China in the 1980s and Vietnam in the 1990s. Here are some of the ideas: permit real estate transactions amongst Cubans, merge the two-tier currency system, close down inefficient state enterprises, decentralize state ownership, facilitate private ownership of businesses, distribute idle land to farmers, open state-owned wholesale markets and further encourage foreign investment – particularly in tourism.

In recent months, some planned reforms have already been implemented in an effort to delay Cuba’s impending insolvency. Costly subsidies on sugar and personal care products are being scaled back. The government announced plans to shed 500,000 state workers (that’s 10% of the country’s government work force in a country where 85% of workers work for the state) and guide them somehow into the private sector.

Cubans are being encouraged to grow and sell their own fruits and vegetables. The government is inviting foreign investors to develop 10 golf course estates in Cuba, with a new law allowing 99-year land leases to foreign buyers of plots in such projects. In the old days of Fidel’s revolution, such policies were unthinkable.

So what is the potential for a liberalized Cuban economy?

Just look 90 miles across the straits to Florida. A million Cuban-Americans call Miami home. Cuba has 60% of Florida’s population and 80% of its landmass, but greater natural resources and a much longer coastline, so one might conclude that the two are of comparable overall potential.

Perhaps to underscore their similarities, remember the fact that England and Spain cleanly swapped the two in 1763. Today, Florida’s economy is 12 times larger than Cuba’s. One reason is that Florida gets 20 times as many tourists as Cuba, plus an inflow of affluent retirees.

When the US government stops restricting its citizens from traveling to Cuba, the island will become an instant tourist magnet. Offering short flights, sunny beaches, cool music, “old world” architecture and cheap surgery, Cuba should have no problem drawing several million American tourists a year, as further-away destinations like Costa Rica have done.

Should reforms become comprehensive enough, agriculture seems an obvious investment play: Half the land is arable, labor is cheap and rain is plentiful. Cuba’s once-vaunted sugar industry stands in disarray, with 80% of the old mills shut down. However, today’s high sugar prices provide ample incentive to revive the sector, along with other traditional crops such as cigar tobacco.

Despite its long coastline, fisheries and aquaculture remain largely overlooked. Cuba is a world-class producer of nickel, but other mineral deposits remain underexploited. And then there’s the oil. The entire power system needs to be updated, financial services developed, retailing expanded – the opportunities seem endless.

Beyond the subsidized basics, most consumer goods have to be imported, and imports draw heavy duties. Telecom services are costly due to government monopolization and inefficiency. The list goes on. In this environment, it is tough for most Cubans to get by unless they receive remittances, tourist gratuities or tea money.

All in all, we eagerly await the implementation of Cuba’s economic reforms. As this process unfolds, Cuba could transform into one of the world’s most attractive frontier investment destinations. America has a long track record of turning bitter rivals into productive partners (a recent example being Vietnam), and re-engagement with Cuba could be one of Obama’s most notable foreign policy legacies.

Some frontier investors are not waiting for that and are already investing in Cuba. While 100% foreign ownership is permitted, most investors enter joint ventures with Cuban state enterprises, which typically contribute land, labor and sometimes capital. Over 250 such joint ventures exist, mostly for specific sectors or projects. Investments are made in foreign currency, eliminating exchange rate issues, and there are no restrictions on capital repatriation. Corporate income tax is 30% for joint ventures and 35% for wholly owned foreign companies, but tax holidays of five-seven years are available.

A few Cuba-focused investment groups have been established that non-US investors can access. Canada-listed Sherritt Group is a major player in Cuban nickel mining and, formerly, telecoms. A private investment group backed by European investors, Coral Capital has restored Havana’s historic Saratoga Hotel, which was recently ranked by Conde Nast as the 16th best hotel in the world. Coral is now planning a number of golf courses, marina, housing and hotel projects, as is Leisure Canada, a Canada-listed investment vehicle.

Douglas Clayton

Source: Business Insider

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Cuban artists expose revival of racism on the island

The Raft (2010), ARMANDO MARIÑO.

Rebellion is in the air. Whether in the cities of Africa and the Middle East, or within disparate communities of artists, people are examining the current status of human rights and finding it lacking.

While street crowds are forcing political change, the liter­ati are prodding more benign conversation about perceived inequities.

A case in point is the taboo-bashing exhibition "Queloides: Race & Racism in Cuban Contemporary Art" at the Mattress Factory. "Queloides" translates as "keloids," protruding scars caused by trauma, which exhibition curators apply to the wounds racism has inflicted upon the body politic.

This show, which opened last year at the prestigious Centro de Arte Contemporaneo Wifredo Lam in Havana, hit a nerve within the island's bureaucracy, which projects an image of social harmony. When Pittsburgh-based co-curator Alejandro de la Fuente tried to visit family in June, he, his wife and child were turned back at the airport by Cuban authorities.

The exhibition can be seen on multiple levels dependent upon one's familiarity with Cuban culture, history and contemporary politics. But none of that is necessary to be seduced by the effervescent artworks that herald it. In the museum parking lot is Armando Marino's classic 1950s Plymouth, its chassis replaced by multiple pairs of bare-footed, dark-skinned legs. Elio Rodriguez's inflated black protuberances -- a cross between alien invasion and suggestive body parts -- wind across the roof and upper story of the satellite gallery at 1414 Monterey. Both are startling, a bit surreal, and certain to stimulate the imagination -- vintage Mattress Factory.

The socialist state declared an end to racism as a part of the reforms instituted during the 1960s revolution. But whatever progress had been made disappeared in the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed, reducing funding to Cuba and resulting in the economic crisis of "The Special Period." As opportunities dried up, the already disadvantaged tended to suffer the most, an observation that makes the exhibition broadly applicable as economies shrink globally.

Artists who were educated in the egalitarian era before the turmoil began to reflect the issue of racism in their work. The first two "Queloides" exhibitions were held in Havana in 1997 and 1999. The time felt right for a third edition to Dr. de la Fuente, an authority on race in Cuba and a University Center for International Studies professor of history and Latin American studies at the University of Pittsburgh. A 2007 conversation with co-curator Elio Rodriguez sparked the process.

Enter the Mattress Factory, which has a history of giving voice to artists who would otherwise be unheard, from Eastern Europe to East Asia. In 2004-05, the museum presented "New Installations, Artists in Residence: Cuba," which included work by two artists in the current show, Meira Marrero and Jose Toirac, who collaborated with Loring McAlpin.

"In every country, artists are addressing issues of fairness and social justice ... . They give a visibility to hidden problems in a way that affects one on a visceral level," write museum co-directors Barbara Luderowski and Michael Olijnyk in the exhibition catalog.

Ironically, the Bush administration denied visas to the artists of the 2004 show, so their "residency" was virtual and physical works were completed per instruction by Mattress Factory staff. The 2010 artists were permitted to travel to Pittsburgh to create additional works for this venue.

The 2010-11 "Queloides" comprises video, installation, painting, photography and works on paper by 13 artists, five of whom have been represented in all three shows. All were Cuban-born, but several now live and/or work outside Cuba. Two are deceased, Pedro Alvarez and Belkis Ayon.

The Cuban cultural authorities at first approved the Havana show, but later tried to rescind their decision. To save it, Dr. de la Fuente agreed not to attend the exhibition even as he encouraged the artists to carry on. It was the month after the show closed that he tried to re-enter Cuba.

There were three guidelines thought important for the current show: That it open in Cuba, that it travel outside the country, and that it be accompanied by a catalog. The latter has significance in that it documents all of the "Queloides." The previous shows had been ignored by the Cuban art world and press and thus lost to memory.

As fascinating as is the context, the work carries the exhibition, suspending the viewer between visual language that is familiarly contemporary and more exotic references.

Mr. Marino's "The Raft" gains dimensionality if read as commentary on, perhaps, the exploitation of blacks in the Cuban labor market, Cuba's economic plight which keeps consumer goods out of the reach of many, or the various means islanders have employed in often failed attempts to reach the U.S. mainland (www.floatingcubans.com).

Mr. Rodriguez's "Black Ceiba" conflates the Ceiba tree -- sacred to religious practices of indigenous peoples and Afro-Cuban syncretic cults -- with stereotypes of black sexuality and violent behavior.

Other senses come into play via the acrid smell of charred wood in Roberto Diago's solemn "Ascending City," and the kitchen sweetness of the walls of brown sugar bricks in Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons' transporting "Guardarraya." In this multimedia piece, viewers are guided to a projection that distorts like fun-house mirror reflections over a rectangle of refined white sugar on the floor. The video, and one on the wall, shows images of two women, one black and one white, embracing and exchanging a bouquet of flowers. Its sensuality is heightened by images of fruits, including several split pomegranates, a traditional symbol of feminine fertility in Western art.

As "Guardarraya" obliquely references the grassy passageways between thickly planted fields of sugar cane, Douglas Perez's imposing five-panel "Ecosystem" takes form from the large centipedes that populate those fields. But a closer look reveals rows of brown figures, some sporting clothing with brand logos, that morph into sickly and then skeletal shapes.

Fruit is one of the subjects that appears throughout the exhibition -- symbolic of Cuba's tropic lushness, of Latin stereotypes, of the offerings made by followers of Afro-Cuban religions. Alexis Esquivel designed tongue-in-cheek "Urban Sarayeye VAPROR -- 2059, Automatic Vehicle to Collect Religious Offerings," a robot to whisk away spoiling fruit left by devotees in public places more clinically than sanitation personnel who risk being accused of religious bias.

Religion is another thread that manifests through the exhibition. Marta Maria Perez Bravo uses her body as prop for powerful photographs that channel the mystical aura of Santeria, an Afro-Caribbean religion that combines Yoruba, Roman Catholic and Native Indian traditions.

In the stone-lined lower gallery is Mr. Toirac and Ms. Marrero's "Ave Maria," a table holding several versions of Cuba's patron Virgin of Charity of El Cobre, seemingly afloat on a blue sea of carpet. The statues, which range from kitsch to antique, each depict the Virgin Mary and the three Juans -- a Creole, an Indian and a slave -- that she saved during a storm, a display of folk belief that doubles as a plea for unity.

Manuel Arenas and Rene Pena more pointedly address race and the outsider status of the black male. On the far wall of Mr. Arenas' minimalist white cubical space are the words "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?," a phrase employed by the American abolitionist movement. Mr. Pena's photograph "Samurai" graces the catalog cover. The artist, nude save for a hat, holding a sword, and in a pose that references Donatello's "David," plays between Renaissance ideals of self-awareness and beauty, and cultural notions of blacks as threatening and unattractive.

There is more to explore, not the least being the many references to U.S. politics and culture that suggest Cubans are a lot more cognizant of what's happening here than we are of a country so near.

This "Queloides" continues a pluralistic and inclusive conversation on "racism, nation, history, and Cubanness" that began a dozen years ago, Dr. de la Fuente writes in the catalog. "From the island, some intellectuals cum bureaucrats are now trying to monopolize this conversation, to encapsulate it in sterile official commissions, and to hide it behind the mediocrity of patriotism and insularity. They are wasting their time.

" 'Queloides' proves it."

By Mary Thomas

From: Post-Gazette

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Two dissidents start hunger strike in Cuba

Two dissidents refusing to be forced into exile took on the Cuba's Communist government anew, launching hunger strikes to press their demand to be freed in their own country. The two are among 11 high-profile political dissidents who rejected a deal for foreign exile as pushed by Havana. Their move was rain on the political parade of the Americas' only one-party Communist regime, which -- by releasing prisoners to church officials -- is trying to portray itself as making progress on human rights even as it forces its opponents to emigrate. President Raul Castro's government, in desperate economic straits and seeking international cooperation, faced embarrassment and international outrage last year after a prominent dissident died following his hunger strike. Hunger strikers seem to be particularly noisome for Havana. Cuba maintains it has no dissidents, and calls most political opponents pawns in the pay of the United States. But more than 100 political prisoners remain in the Caribbean nation -- down from 201 in January 2010 -- according to Elizardo Sanchez, who leads the Cuban Committee for Human Rights and National Reconciliation. And the strikers' move Wednesday came just as the local Roman Catholic Church said Cuba would release four other prisoners charged with piracy and send them to Spain. Pedro Arguell The hunger strikers are part of a group of 52 political detainees who were to be freed in a deal brokered by the Catholic Church with Castro in July. Of the group, 40 agreed to emigrate to Spain with their families and one stayed in Cuba, but the remaining 11 are still in jail and refuse to be exiled. The agreed-upon deadline for their release expired on November 7. Sanchez identified the hunger strikers as Diosdado Gonzalez and Pedro Arguelles -- both considered prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International. The pair, who began a hunger strike Tuesday, has turned down the offer to move to Spain and is demanding to be released in Cuba. Gonzalez and Arguelles's protest is in solidarity with Gonzalez's wife Alejandrina Garcia, who has only been drinking water since Friday. "I will not stop this hunger strike until he is released," Garcia told AFP in a phone call from her home in central Cuba. Diosdado Gonzale "The government has made a mockery of these 11 men." Laura Pollan, leader of the Ladies in White -- a group of relatives of the jailed dissidents -- visited Garcia, a 44 year-old agronomist, on Wednesday. She said she failed to dissuade her from continuing the hunger strike. "The government has raised false expectations, because it said that everyone in the group would be released, including those who reject leaving the country, but that has all been a lie," said Pollan. Pollan's husband Hector Maseda is one of the jailed dissidents. The four prisoners heading to Spain face piracy charges and do not belong to the original group of 52, according to a note from the office of the Archbishop of Havana, Cardinal Jaime Ortega. Sanchez says the men are accused of using violence to hijack vessels in failed attempts to flee Cuba, as well as other acts of violence. "We are happy about to learn about the prison releases, but the government is using Spain's open door to get rid of prisoners that it does not want, while 11 prisoners of conscience remain in prison," Sanchez argued. Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas was awarded the European Parliament's Sakharov prize in October after his latest hunger strike, following the February death of fellow dissident Orlando Zapata. Zapata's mother charged government officials with allowing her son to die, which the Cuban government took the unusual step of denying repeatedly, and detailing the medical care he received. Farinas, who ended his latest hunger strike, was not allowed to travel to pick up the prestigious Sakharov prize. From: Capital News

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Cuba: Life After The Castro Brothers

The subject assigned to me, “Cuba: Life after the Castro Brothers”, poses quite a challenge. In the words of a renowned Danish physicist, “prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” And I would add: more so in the case of Cuba, where even predicting the present is very difficult.

After all, who would have foreseen the “resurrection” of the Narcissist-Leninist Fidel Castro, who was near death not too long ago and has now resumed the role of Maximum Pontificator?

Before venturing into Cuba’s cloudy future, let me share with you a few key facts to provide some perspective. Cuba is facing today the worst economic and financial crisis since the end of Soviet life support in the early 90s. Agriculture is in such dire straits that Cuba has to import 80% of the food it consumes, including sugar.

To secure subsidized oil and generate hard currency, the cash-strapped Castro regime has contracted out to Venezuela and other countries more than a third of its licensed doctors and teachers, along with hundreds of Communist experts in espionage and repression. Last year, the regime, bordering on insolvency, froze bank deposits of foreign investors in Cuba and deferred payment of a large number of overdue accounts.

To pare costs, the Raul Castro regime slashed imports, rationed electricity, and started to phase out workplace lunches as well as the subsidized food basket (ration card). Recently, it announced the layoff of 500, 000 government employees out of a total of 1,000,000 unproductive state jobs, or 20% of the workforce, which will be cut over 2 to 3 years.

To revamp agriculture, the regime distributed fallow lands to some 100,000 small farmers, but only on lease, without providing fertilizers, tools and bank credits. One year later, two thirds of the distributed lands remain unproductive.

The regime is now stepping up the granting of licenses to individuals and hired staff to render a variety of services on their own, ranging from quasi restaurants at home, with a cap of 20 chairs, to barber shops to artisan work in small ateliers. Many of these activities have been going on in the black market for some time. The government now expects them to come out in the open. But to avoid what it calls “concentration of wealth”, the mini businesses will be saddled with four different taxes, including an income tax as high as 50% if the income exceeds $2000 a year.

The proclaimed objective of Raul Castro’s reforms is not to scrap or transform the failed Communist system, but to make it more efficient. Although some believe that Cuba is approaching a China-type opening, the fact is that the bulk of the economy remains under the control of mega State enterprises led by loyal army officers. To quash growing discontent, Raul has intensified repression and exiled most of the prisoners of conscience who were recently released.

The reforms under way signal the beginning of the end of State paternalism in Cuba; the unraveling of the unaffordable government support system that meagerly supplements the average salary of $20 a month. But what is being offered as a solution is nothing more than stopgap measures that do not significantly deregulate the centralized economy, unleash the entrepreneurial spirit of the Cuban people, and cure the dire crisis.

The bankrupt regime may hang on for some time, particularly if it’s bailed out with U.S. tourist dollars and financing. But it will not survive the Castro brothers. The totalitarian grip will eventually splinter and slacken, the fear will wane, and all those yearning for freedom, including the marginalized reformists within the government and the army, will emerge, weigh in and prevail.

Liberation could and should, in my view, be hastened by providing support to the dissident movement, as the U.S. did with Solidarity in Poland, and applying U.S. technology to penetrate Castro’s censorship firewall and overcome the jamming of Radio and TV Marti.

When Cuba truly opens up, I foresee a phased, negotiated transition, culminating in a government of national unity that will install the rule of law, restore individual rights, and pave the way for multi-party elections. The process is bound to be bumpy and messy, but Cubans on the island can draw on the do’s and don’ts of the post-Communist transitions in Eastern Europe and the post-Franco transition in Spain.

Cuban-Americans, with their business experience, contacts and resources, can be very helpful, if they return to the island with a forward-looking mentality—not with the greed of recovering, but with the zeal of rebuilding.

Cuba will definitely resurge post Castro brothers, but it will take some time for the wounds to heal and for the country to settle down. Recovery will require revitalizing the Cuban heritage, dismantling the stifling regulatory system, and renegotiating the country’s huge external debt ($30 billion to the Paris Club of creditors– the largest on a per cap basis).

It will also call for the reconstruction of the island’s dilapidated infrastructure, the shoring up of its social services, and the creation of a business-friendly environment that will attract responsible foreign investors willing to partner with Cuban entrepreneurs.

Investment opportunities will then abound in such areas as tourism, agro-processing, minerals and oil, biotechnology, assembly or maquila, banking, and IT outsourcing.

By Nestor T. Carbonell

From: The Americano

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Pedro Pan flight veterans mark 50th anniversary

Some of the Cuban children sent to the US.

The last thing 13-year-old Mercedes Argiz's father told her before she boarded the plane from Cuba to the U.S. was: "I will see you for Christmas."

That was nearly half a century ago, just days before the Cuban Missile Crisis. She never saw him again.

Argiz was one of more than 14,000 Cuban children spirited out of the country between late 1960 and 1962 on the so-called Pedro Pan flights organized by Catholic Church leaders following the Cuban revolution. On Friday, she flew from northern Virginia to join more than 100 other Cuban-Americans in Miami to mark the 50th anniversary of their exodus and tour the South Florida refugee camps they first stayed in.

Operation Pedro Pan effort was organized at the behest of Cuban parents, fearful of the new communist government's efforts to take control of their children. Most of the refugees spent time in one of several Florida refugee camps before they moved into foster homes or orphanages around the country. The effort drew its name from the fictional character Peter Pan and an unaccompanied minor named Pedro who came to the attention of Bryan O. Walsh, a priest who headed the Catholic Welfare Bureau.

The children thought they would be reunited with their parents within a few weeks. But heightened tension between the two countries following the missile crisis — the nuclear standoff over missile sites on the island — meant many had to wait years to see their parents again. Some never did.

On Friday, dozens of Pedro Pan veterans cheered and shouted as they hugged friends they had not seen since childhood. They waved American and Cuban flags and sang the camp songs they learned upon their arrival, Spanish children's tunes exhorting communists to leave Cuba while promising "Americans" they would be friends.

Cuban officials and some researchers have long maintained the effort was a CIA-backed plot to create a brain-drain from the island. The U.S. government denies those accusations.

Argiz, who now goes by her married name Precht-Matuschek, says it was her own experience that prompted her departure. After the government shut down her Catholic school, she was transferred to a communist-run public school where she excelled. Asked to recite a poem at the school year's closing ceremonies, she planned to thank her family, friends and God, she says. A teacher warned her to replace God with the name of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. Precht-Matuschek didn't, and the local dignitaries in attendance were not pleased.

A short time later, her family was informed she was selected to go to Russia to continue her studies.

Precht-Matuschek's family was able to get her a temporary visa, promising she would soon return. After a brief stay in the camps, she ended up with a wealthy family in Cincinnati until she was reunited with her younger brother and mother five years later. She says her father, who had owned a canning company before the revolution, was not allowed to leave.

At Camp Matecumbe in the south Miami suburb of Kendall, the former Pedro Pan children walked the grounds of what were once dorms for the newly arrived teenage boys. Julio A. Martinez, now a Miami-Dade County civil engineer, recalled sleeping in tents as the number of children arriving outpaced dormitory space, unable to fall asleep because he was terrified of the rattle snakes that haunted the nearby pine and palmetto tree woods.

Housing developments and shopping malls have displaced most of the tangled forest. The camp is now an activity center for children with disabilities. But for Martinez and his friend Andres Garcia Fernandez of San Francisco, returning for the first time in 50 years, it was as if time had stood still.

They recalled desperately trying to help their parents leave Cuba as they were bounced from camp to camp.

They were both eventually able to help get their parents out as part of the 1963 prisoner exchanges between the U.S. and Cuba following the failed CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of the island by Cuban exiles. Martinez said he was able to convince a Bay of Pigs veteran to claim his stepfather as family because the two shared a last name.

"We had to survive. We had to figure it out. We were adults at the age of 15," he said, blinking away tears.

Martinez says he is ever grateful to the U.S. for giving him the chance to remake his life and raise his two daughters and grandchildren.

Nearby, Garcia's adult daughter, sporting a video camera and nose ring, watched her father protectively.

"It is so good for my dad to be here with his friends," said Rachel Garcia, 22. "He's always talked about it. And he carries so much sadness and grief from that time, but no one where we live in San Francisco has any idea about it. It's just not history people know about."

Precht-Matuschek, a retiree who lives in Spotsylvania, Va. near her two daughters, says her father was forced to work once a week cutting sugar cane after she left as punishment. Years later, she moved to Germany with her husband, and in 1973 became pregnant with their daughter. Her father was finally granted a visa to visit her there.

He died of a heart attack at age 47 before he could make the trip.

From: Sify News 

Escape from Havana 1/5

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Cuba Offers Release, Exile to Select Political Prisoners

Óscar Elías Biscet was sentenced to 25 years for "disorderly conduct" and "counter-revolutionary activities" in 2002. Still in prison, he refuses to leave the country

According to leading human rights activists, Cuba's government has offered early release to about a dozen inmates so long as they go into exile. The islanders must chose between prison and their homeland. If such a deal is in fact realized, it would be the government's second major release of political prisoners this year. While the Cuban government's motives for implementing such actions are still uncertain, it might be viewed as an attempt to mend relations with the United States.

In recent days, agents from the Ministry of the Interior visited the inmates and proposed the conditions of their possible freedom, said Elizardo Sanchez, head of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

 This past July, Cuban president Raul Castro agreed to the release of 52 political prisoners, including community organizers, human rights activists, agitators, and journalists who have defied state regulation on local papers. This historical event was supported by officials from the Cuban Roman Catholic Church and Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino, archbishop of Havana, who supported the deal in favor of better conditions for prisoners of conscience. Since July, 39 prisoners have been released and sent to Spain with their families, with the exception of one who was exiled to Chile. With the remaining few awaiting tentative release, this could mean that all 75 of the top activists imprisoned during the "Black Spring," a period of government crackdown on organized disobedience in March 2003, would be freed.

Cuba's Roman Catholic cardinal, Jaime Ortega, reports that at least five of the prisoners who were given release under the July agreement are reluctant to leave. This may possibly harm the prospect of future releases. However, if all 52 are finally freed, the only other prisoner that will remain unreleased is a lawyer named Rolando Jimenez Pozada. He is considered to be a "prisoner of conscience" by Amnesty International after he was arrested in 2003 for dissidence, disrespect for the law, and unveiling government secrets.

While the number of political prisoners unacknowledged by the Cuban government is always up for debate, Sanchez released a list of about 105 other names. Only about 40 of them, though, could be defined as nonviolent political prisoners, while others have been charged with more violent crimes, such as hijacking and murder. Sanchez's list includes the name of three men: Francisco Reyes Rodriguez, Lazaro Avila Sierra, and Leudia Arce Romero. They are serving life sentences for hijacking a plane from Cuba's Isla de la Juventud in 2003. The one exception to the list was Pavel Hernandez, who was sentenced to six years in jail for attempting to flee the island illegally.

At least five of the 12 prisoners to be newly released are reluctant to accept the offer if it is finalized. According to a founder of the Ladies in White group, the prisoners say they refuse to be forced to move to Spain as a condition of the agreement, but that some say they will accept release solely for reasons related to their age and health. Hector Maseda, who will serve his full 20 years, has decided that he will remain on the island. His wife, Pollan, reports that many sectors of the internal opposition are charging the Cuban authorities with manipulating what is supposed to be a better situation for the prisoners and their families by granting their release only if they leave to Spain.

Berta Soler, spokeswoman for the Women in White, told reporters, "The government is applying psychological pressure to those remaining in prison because they want to see them out of the country." Her husband, Angel Moya, is staying to serve his 20-year sentence.

Of the group of five prisoners who plan to turn down the release under such conditions, three men are suffering from critical health issues. Among them is Pedro Arguelles Moran, who has arthrosis, advanced cataracts, and circulatory problems. The advanced age of some of the inmates is also a critical issue. Ramos, who at the age of 68 is the oldest of the group of 52 being released, is anxious to be freed but is worried about being forced to travel to Spain because he and his wife are too old, his wife told reporters. The remaining prisoners want to be released, but without the condition of having to leave Cuba. This includes Oscar Elias Biscet, who in absence received the Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2007, and is still serving his 25-year sentence. In a telephone conversation from Biscet's house in Havana, Biscet's wife told reporters, "My husband has suffered many pains and health complications, but he is holding his ground. He is a man of his word." The government's refusal to release the prisoners who wish to stay on the island has caused their families much pain and anxiety.

Elizardo Sanchez told reporters that the release will allegedly take place during the first weeks of October. He has also added that there may be yet another release of a larger group of prisoners, but only under the condition that they leave Cuba. Therefore, the issue of potential future releases also depends on the European Union Council, who should meet this month to discuss the issue. However, this may not be a definitive priority for the EU in terms of global scope, says Joaquin Roy, director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami, told reporters

By Gabriela Lorido

From: The Heights

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Wanted Americans still hiding in Cuba don't need changes

Like Fidel Castro, who will lose his enemy, they are not very interested in an improvement on the relations between USA and Cuba.

For years they provided political support, and in some cases money, to Castro's regime. Recent changes on the island could pose a danger for them. Together with other criminal refugees from Europe and the Americas they are believe to have some influence - although difficult to say to what extent - on the Cuban politics related to their respective countries.

This is an FBI report from last year:

There are believed to be dozens of other Americans living in Cuba beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement. Most of them have been holed in Cuba for decades, with many living casually in plain sight. Others, however, are taking no chances and living deep underground.
The best known American fugitive still hiding out in Cuba is JoanneChesimard, 62, also known as Assata Shakur.
Chesimard, a member of the radical activist organization the Black Liberation Army, was found guilty of first degree murder in the shooting death of a New Jersey state trooper in 1977. She escaped from prison in 1979 and was last seen in Cuba in 1984. She is widely believed to still be living underground in Cuba. …
Among the FBI’s 10 most wanted fugitives — a list that includes Osama bin Laden — is Victor Manuel Gerena. Gerena has been on the lam since 1984 after being accused of stealing $7 million in the heist of the Wells Fargo armored car depot in Connecticut to finance a Puerto Rican separatist group.

Joanne Chesimard is wanted for escaping from prison in Clinton, New Jersey, while serving a life sentence for murder. On May 2, 1973, Chesimard, who was part of a revolutionary activist organization known as the Black Liberation Army, and two accomplices were stopped for a motor vehicle violation on the New Jersey Turnpike by two troopers with the New Jersey State Police.

JoanneChesimard, AKA Assata Shakur

At the time, Chesimard was wanted for her involvement in several felonies, including bank robbery. Chesimard and her accomplices opened fire on the troopers, seemingly without provocation. One trooper was wounded and the other was shot and killed execution-style at point-blank range.

Chesimard fled the scene, but was subsequently apprehended. One of her accomplices was killed in the shoot-out and the other was also apprehended and remains in jail.In 1977, Chesimard was found guilty of first degree murder, assault and battery of a police officer, assault with a dangerous weapon, assault with intent to kill, illegal possession of a weapon, and armed robbery. She was sentenced to life in prison.

She escaped in 1979 and fled to Cuba, where she lives openly, in defiance of US authorities who want her returned to prison.

In fact, as one might guess, the fugitives suspected of living in Cuba comprise a who’s-who of radical leftist politics in the 1960s and 1970s.  Fidel Castro certainly offered his hospitality to those who hated the US and didn’t mind using violence to show it.  Oddly, though, one prominent rogue capitalist is also on the list: Robert Vesco, who stole as much as $200 million from investors before being discovered in 1982, and who also contributed illegally to the re-election campaign of … Richard Nixon.

Maybe Castro likes having Vesco there as an example.  Or, perhaps, Castro liked Vesco’s money more than his politics.

If the US wants to pursue normal relations with Cuba, these fugitives should be part of the transaction.  The Castros need to quit sheltering those who killed and maimed here in the US if they want access to American markets and American consumers.

Sources: FBI, HotAir

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Cuba expands free-market reforms

The Cuban government has issued two free-market reforms aimed at boosting its struggling economy, including allowing foreign investors to lease state-owned land for up to 99 years.

The moves, announced in the official Gazette newspaper on Thursday and Friday, are considered a significant shift for the country as Raul Castro, the country's president, promises to scale back government control of businesses.

The government has said it was modifying its property laws "with the aim of amplifying and facilitating" foreign investment in tourism, and that doing so would provide "better security and guarantees to the foreign investor".

A small group of investors in Canada, Europe and Asia have been waiting to crack the market for long-term tourism in Cuba, built on drawing wealthy visitors who could live part-time on the island instead of visiting for a few days.

Golf tourism

It may also help the country embrace golf tourism.

Investment firms have for decades proposed building 18-hole courses ringed by luxury housing under long-term government leases.

Cuba currently has just two golf courses nationwide, but the tourism ministry has said it wants to build at least 10 more.

"I think this is huge. This is probably one of the most significant movesin recent years relative to attracting foreign investment,'' Robin Conners, CEO of Vancouver-based Leisure Canada, told the Associated Press.

The company plans to begin construction next year on a luxury hotel in Havana and also wants to build hotels, villas and two championship golf courses on a stretch of beach in Jibacoa, 60km to the east.

Cuba has allowed leases of state land for up to 50 years with the option to extend them for an additional 25, but foreign investors had long pressed tourism officials to endorse 99-year deals to provide additional peace of mind to investors.

The longer leases also mean lower interest rates on international banking mortgages.

Self-employment

Another decree put forward allows the expanded sale of farm products, and could have far greater impact on ordinary Cubans.

It authorises them to produce their own agricultural goods - from melons to milk - and sell them from home or in kiosks.

They must pay taxes on any earnings.
 

It is also the first major expansion of self-employment rules since Castro said in an address before parliament on August 1 that the government would reduce state controls on small businesses - a significant development in a country where about 95 per cent of people work for the state.

The new rules are consistent with other efforts by Castro's government, which has allowed minor free-market openings while also seeking to eliminate black-market income.

It has also been made easier to obtain permits for home improvements and increased access to building materials, while more strictly enforcing prohibitions against illegal building.

From: Aljazeera

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Raul Castro wants “an opening” with Washington to help with the economy

Cardinal Jaime Ortega, Roman Catholic archbishop of Havana, told The Washington Post that Cuban President Raul Castro wants “an opening” with the United States.

“He has a desire for an opening with the US government,” Ortega was quoted as saying. “He repeated to me on several occasions that he is ready to talk to the United States government directly, about every issue”.
Ortega and the Catholic Church led negotiations with the Cuban government that secured in recent weeks the release of more than 50 dissidents who have been jailed for years.
The church official made the comments in an interview with the columnist Jackson Diehl, who published them in Monday's edition of the US daily.
According to Ortega, Castro's motivation to improve relations with the United States lies in the chance that Cuba's economy can be revived by US trade and investment.
When asked whether such talks could include democratic reform as requested by the administration of US President Barack Obama, the cardinal said things need to be taken “step by step.”
“It's not realistic to begin at the end. This is a process. The most important thing is to take steps in the process” Ortega said.
He highlighted the current situation as “something new” and as something that is set to “open possibilities” in the communist island.
Ortega was in Washington last week to collect a prize, in what was his second visit to the US capital in a little over one month.
He met with high officials of the Obama administration, including Obama's National Security Adviser Jim Jones and Arturo Valenzuela, the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. In his first visit to Washington in late June, he had already met with Valenzuela.

From: MercoPress

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Cuba tries armed men tied to US anti-Castro group

Santa Clara streets

Three armed men who were intercepted by Cuban border guards in 2001 and have been awaiting trial since then on charges they planned acts of sabotage went to court behind closed-doors Friday, according to a veteran human rights activist.
Elizardo Sanchez, head of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said that during a roughly eight-hour hearing in the central city of Santa Clara prosecutors presented their case against the three Cuban-born exiles: Ihosvani Suris de la Torre, Santiago Padron Quintero and Maximo Pradera Valdes, also known as Maximo Robaina.
Authorities are seeking 30-year prison sentences for Padron and Pradera, and life behind bars for Suris. A judge will now rule on their guilt and determine an appropriate sentence for each — though it was not clear when that decision would come.
"The trial is ready for sentencing," Sanchez said by phone Friday night. He said the three men were transferred from a maximum-security prison in Havana to Santa Clara for their day in court.
Island border agents first intercepted the men on the northern coast of Villa Clara province, of which Santa Clara is the capital. After exchanging gunfire with Cuban authorities, the three fled to Jutia Key Island, where they were arrested April 26, 2001.
They were armed with four AK-47 assault rifles, an M-3 rifle, three Makarov pistols and night goggles, all purchased openly at stores in Miami, according to evidence Cuban prosecutors detailed on state television in the months following the arrests.
In Miami, Andres Nazario Sargen, leader of anti-Castro paramilitary group Alpha 66, said in 2001 that Suris and Robaina were active members of the group but went to Cuba independently. He said back then that Padron had been a member years ago, but had not been active lately.
The three have long featured prominently in a video shown several times a week on Cuban state television, where the voice of Suris is apparently heard, confessing that the group arrived in Cuba to commit acts of violence. That same presentation includes a bugged phone conversation between Suris and a man identified as a leader of the anti-Castro, Cuban-American community, detailing a plan to detonate an explosive inside the Tropicana, Havana's best-known cabaret.
Cuban authorities did not comment on Friday's proceedings, and rarely discuss such matters publicly.
Sanchez's commission is not recognized by Cuba's communist government, but largely allowed to operate.
Sanchez said he did not know exactly why it took eight years for the three to go to court, but that he suspected it was no coincidence that authorities held a trial a day after the U.S. State Department again included Cuba on its list of state sponsors of terrorism. Cuba has bristled at that charge, which Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez dismissed as "two-faced and hypocritical."

WILL WEISSERT (AP)

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