NotiCuba

Unprecedented Destruction and Solidarity

2008-09-16T07:34:00.000-07:00

Cubans congratulate themselves for having survived two killer hurricanes thanks to government prevision and its massive evacuation program, considered a great success.

No one was left untouched in one way or another. Over a million people who lost their houses together with family belongings look forward to a long recovery period, while all the 11 million inhabitants of this country see their dreams of change and improvement postponed.

According to official reports, only seven persons lost their lives in these severe climate events called Gustav and Ike, due to negligent acts at that.

Over half a million houses and apartments have been damaged in less than two weeks. But if the sequels of Michelle in 2001 are added, then the total count of houses damaged by weather events surpasses one million units, or 29 percent of all existing houses in the country, according to Victor Ramirez, president of the National Housing Institute, reported official newspaper Granma.

While the first storm Gustav, hurricane force three, was still pummeling Pinar del Rio province, a long line of trucks was already on its way with building material and food for the victims. Little could they imagine that 72 hours separated them from a second, more devastating strike.

The loads were taken directly to the ravaged localities, eliminating all bureaucratic red tape and the people responded with discipline when receiving the donations.

Personal losses, greater in spiritual value than money, are below those in agriculture, industrial plants and facilities, as well as roads and bridges. In a brief paragraph among the damages, Granma reports devastation in crops like bananas, coffee, yucca or mandioca, corn, not to mention sugar cane plantations, poultry farms and roofing, covers of tobacco, green vegetable community orchards and warehouses.

A hike in gasoline and diesel prices was enforced just as Ike was sweeping the island´s geography. That measure immediately shot up private taxi tariffs and will soon extend to foodstuff in farmer markets, whose trucks will have a higher operational cost.

Officials point to a drop in health and education services due to damages suffered by hospitals, clinics and schools. Classes resumed on September 15 throughout the country, although many students whose schools were destroyed had to be transferred to other educational centers or to spaces available as classrooms.

Office workers, journalists and others have been advised that more strict power measures have been applied in public buildings and that those who can work from home are welcome to do so.

Power and water services have also been severely disrupted. Electricity is already being supplied to 96 percent of Havana city consumers, while Granma and Santiago de Cuba provinces are at 99 percent. Pinar del Rio and Isla de la Juventud , worst hit territories, are still at 55 and 67 percent of their consumers. In a still worse situation are Las Tunas, Camaguey and Holguin, with about 30 percent of the service restored.

As for water supply to the cities, the service was restored in many cases as soon as pumping stations had power, but in some cases supply was interrupted due to the turbidity of the water like the one received from Presa El Gato in Havana and others.

Out of over 200 water reservoirs, 87 were alleviating due to the heavy rains. Although the increase in water stored was beneficial, it also caused rivers like those surrounding the city of Matanzas and Guane in Pinar del Rio, to cut them away from the rest of the country.

A total of 96 communication towers collapsed, including five TV antenna towers. Twenty-seven localities were incommunicated and delayed recovery is expected while another 26 were isolated but with a sooner recovery perspective through satellite phones.

Of the seven persons killed, two were electrocuted when trying to take down a TV antenna and it fell on power lines; another two abandoned their evacuation facilities to check up on their homes, one went out from his neighbor´s house into the night and drowned in a nearby river, while two denied to be evacuated and their houses collapsed on them.

According to official figures, a total of 160,000 volunteers and over 2,800 members of the armed forces participated in the rescue and evacuation of 2.7 million Cubans, of whom 2.1 million went to houses of relatives and friends.

The yearly military maneuvers "Bastion" were postponed for next year due to the fact that the armed forces are actively taking part in recovery tasks. That gives analysts the dimension of the damage left by the hurricanes.

Acts of great solidarity and humane behavior are seen everywhere during these difficult days, like a town in Pinar del Rio where all houses but three were left on the ground and the families of the three more solid structures gave shelter to the rest of the neighbors.

Assistance has begun to flow from abroad and domestically. Parishes in Havana have taken by their own means clothing and money directly to the worst hit areas in Pinar del Rio. Publications in the United States are promoting where to send donations. Flights are constantly coming in from Russia, Venezuela, China, Vietnam, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, but also from little and worst off nations like Honduras and Timor Leste.

Cuba´s solidarity with nations in distress is being recognized, its selflessness reciprocated.

Another Cold War Brewing?

2008-08-28T14:36:00.000-07:00

There has been increased rattling about Russia wanting to “restore” its position in Cuba, referring not only to trade and economic cooperation predominant in the island´s economy back in the 80s, but still farther back to the times of the “October Missile Crisis”.

The return of that ghost to Washington corridors responds, in my opinion, to the every day nearer situation when Cuba´s oil wealth in the Gulf of Mexico will be untapped.

But criminals, as the saying goes, think everyone is of their kind and White House gurus say Russia plans a military comeback to Cuba because it wants to get even with the United States for the missile defense shield it is setting up in Eastern Europe.

So-called experts on Russia and Cuba policy in Washington go as far as taking for a fact that cooperation between Moscow and Havana include use of the Caribbean nation as a refueling stop for long-range bombers and for reconnaissance ships and aircraft, as well as reopening the surveillance facility at Lourdes, near Havana.

For one, the buildings once venues to the Soviet monitoring facility are now home to the University of Computer Sciences (UCI). On the other hand, Cuba is not prone to give the US an excuse for war as was confirmed by the abandoned dream to build a nuclear plant.

Another thing is the still numerous industries in Cuba equipped with outdated technology of the Soviet era, transportation parks and others that Russia is eager to update with more efficient and modern equipment, including the military sector.

The visit to Havana last July of the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin was considered by some analysts as a confirmation of Washington´s worries, but in fact it was investment-related. Talks dealt mainly with the possibility of Russian Zarubezhneftgas taking part in exploration for oil and gas in Cuba´s Exclusive Economic Zone in the Gulf and the generation of electricity.

As the Russian economy becomes more solid, Moscow is also interested to expand its trade and economic relations with Latin America, goal in which Cuba can become a springboard for Russian deals with the continent.

Since 2001, when a door opened –though not widely- to US sales of agricultural products to Cuba, the island has scaled up its importance in the US export market that sells foodstuff to Cuba for $600 million or more each year.

More recently, the US government added restrictions to these operations, bringing the flow down to a trickle, to the dismay of US agribusiness and shipping companies, but it has been all the same lifesaving to many small and medium US companies.

The stone in the shoe for Washington, however, seems to be the huge potential of oil reserves located deep offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, which the Cuban government has opened to foreign risk capital including US companies. Alas, the latter are forbidden by their government to take part in the rush.

Companies from near and far have concession parcels in the area. As far as China, Vietnam, India and Russia, close by like PDVSA and Petrobras and in-between like Norway and Spain have their share in this modern gold rush.

As world fossil fuel reserves are dropping fast, and powers like the United States invade countries with oil at the head of their arguments list, it is not hard to imagine the increasing pressure there will be surrounding the drilling in Gulf waters.

Let´s hope then for victory of peace and fair business over a cold war with scrambles, dirty deals, sabotage and aggressions. But then in Cuba, we are accustomed to that over the last 50 years.

Quick and Profound Changes Expected

2008-05-28T08:05:00.000-07:00

Cuba has given the world a unique literacy method, doctors of the island save lives from the Caribbean to the South Pacific, while Cuban trainers take their pupils of other nations to the winners podium, sometimes even over Cuban athletes.

In the right side of the accounts sheet there are assets like pharmaceuticals, vaccines, medical equipment, monoclonal antibodies and biotech advances only achieved by the most developed countries. Health and education indicators equal or surpass those of the region and many of the First World.

Technologies and scientific results in agriculture have been applied successfully in Mexico, Brazil, Central America, but not in the island. With Cuban technical assistance in coffee plantations, Vietnam has become in a short period one of the leading exporters of the aromatic seed.

However, almost half a century later, the Cuban economy is still the most vulnerable point of this socialist project. Seventy-two percent of all nutrients currently eaten by Cubans are imported, even when the country has fertile lands and a privileged climate to grow them.

No wonder, as it has been found that 51 percent of the agricultural land is idle and from that figure, 33 percent is covered with a thornbush called “marabu” and 17 percent are pastures.

Key concepts like land in usufruct and individual property, which includes housing, cars and other belongings, is restricted by prohibitions that nothing have to do with the Constitution or the laws of the economy.

Blessed with other resources like minerals –Cuba has the second largest reserves of nickel in the world-, plenty of human and technological potential for the development of renewable sources of energy, besides promisory oil and gas deposits to be exploited in Cuba´s part of the Exclusive Economic Zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Then one has to conclude that the Cuban economy is like an unpolished diamond, whose owners don´t seem to agree on which tools to use in order to enhance its beauty and durability.

Sovereignty must be Urgently Recovered

All this happens very near to stalking enemies. Although they could not achieve their objective in half a century of smothering the Revolution with a rightfully called blockade in almost every field, even when Cuba lost practically overnight its main political, economic and trading partner, still there is no room for complacent behavior.

It is necessary to resolve distorsions, incentivate and liberate productive forces, as well as relaunch the small and medium cooperative and private enterprise, thinks Omar Everleny Perez, senior researcher at the Center of Studies on Cuban Economy (CEEC)

Reactivate foreign investment, adding new priorities, transiting gradually from product to personal subsidies, are among the academic´s recommendations for this process of changes put in place by President Raul Castro.

Before updating salaries to current cost of living levels, academics warn there must first be a significant increase in the offer of products and services to avoid inflation pressures.

The main shot should be aimed at increasing the real salary or buying power of the Cuban peso through the reduction of prices in the hard currency stores and by rewarding higher productivity among workers.

Cuba has become, in the last decade, a services economy, with 76 percent of its Gross Domestic Product occupied by this sector. This happens in many Caribbean nations depending on tourism as first income-earning activity as is Switzerland withy its powerful financial sector.

But the neglect imposed on the agricultural and livestock sector –only 4 percent of the GDP- is very dangerous. Reason why over 1.7 billion dollars are spent in buying foodstuff that as Armando Nova, also specialist at the CEEC indicates, could be domestically produced.

Every penny earned should go to productive investment in order to become self-sufficient in food, recover Cuba´s historic capacity of producing sugar cane and its by-products, which at the end, is an excellent energy provider, for humans, livestock and industry.

Doctor Anicia Garcia, researcher of the CEEC, recalls there are only seven branches of the economy, out of more than 20 in the Cuban economy that today reach or surpass the level they had in 1989, year before last from the beginning of the economic crisis of the 90s, still felt until today.

Among the challenges she sees in the future are finding a solution to the problem of decapitalization, reducing energy consumption, achieving greater cooperation among industrial branches and higher competitivity that would boost exports.

Finally, there is the need to prevent extreme measures without falling short of what is needed, and what is hardest of all, shun dependence on one or two countries commercially or economically, however friendly they may be, because the world is constantly moving and may take a sharp turn.

Changes are Underway

2008-04-02T12:03:00.000-07:00

Cubans awoke the last week in March to the lifting of restrictions on cellular phone use, the distribution of previously banned household appliances like microwave ovens, DVDs, electric bikes and personal computers.
Changes continued the first day of April with the opening of hotels and rent-a-car bookings for Cubans, although the measure has only been confirmed in person by hotel staff, still not by the local media.
In a note published by the Granma and Juventud Rebelde newspapers on
March 28, the Cuban Telecommunications Company S.A. (ETECSA) explained its expansion plans with investments in credits and technologies facilitated by friendly countries.
Cell phone service was introduced in 1991 in Cuba, mostly to meet the needs of tourists and foreign residents. According to the National Statistics Office, there were 198,252 permanent cellular line users in the country.
It points out that priority will be given to municipalities with low telephone density and settlements with more than 300 people that still do not have telephone service. Cuba has still a low density telephone coverage, amounting to 11 per every 100 inhabitants.
In addition, ETECSA announces that it will offer the mobile phone service to the population through personal contracts.
According to the note, ETECSA will soon announce the procedures that Cubans should follow to own mobile phone lines, which until now had been obtained indirectly through foreign nationals.
This mobile service will be offered in convertible currency (CUC) in order to defray the development of cable connectivity and to increase the introduction of new services in national currency.
Hotels and Car Rentals
As for the opening of hotels and car rentals to Cuban citizens, most are still unaware of the fact that hotels and car rentals have been opened to them. Still their meagre budget –currently $17 to 20 dollars a month- is not enough to cover tariffs that go from $60 to $200 and more per night.
Luxurious villas with butler service, for example, charge $1,200 and more a day.
Capable or not of paying for a hotel and rental cars, people are satisfied with the lifting of the ban, as this measure returns to locals the right to use these facilities in their own country, without feeling as second-class citizens.
Workers at the Habana Libre Tryp Hotel say they have been authorized to honor any reservations by locals, although it has not been inforfmed by radio, tv or any of the national newspapers.
Cuba received over two million tourists in 2006 and 2007, making this sector the most dynamic and first income-earner of the nation´s economy.
Although there was a slight descent in visitors, of about 70 thousand in 2007 compared to the previous year, tourism-related income was a little higher, amounting to $2.236 billion.
Canadians made the biggest splash with 600 thousand of the 2.2 million visitors that arrived in 2007. Great Britain is second, Spain third, Italy fourth and Germany fifth in the list of main emitter countries.
More Food Supply
The Cuban government will invest more than six billion pesos ($1.08 dollars) in 2008, more than four times the figure invested between 1985 and 1988, announced Vice President of the Council of State Carlos Lage Dávila during a tour of Matanzas Province.
Lage said the country is in a period in which it is making more investments, adding that the organization of that process in an efficient and swift manner is vital in executing that work.
“What one can see in a tour such as this one is that an investment process
is underway that is much far-reaching than in previous years; this is of great
importance for the economy and for the public’s well being,” he noted.
Lage added that costs can lower and shorten the time of execution of these projects. We can do everything with much less resources, which means we can do more – expand our plans for public benefit.
At the Livestock Genetics Firm of Matanzas, the vice president took interest in how
the feeding of cows can increase the production of milk, which has become more expensive on the international market.
Among the steps taken to change senseless policies, TV prime news affirmed that 51 percent of the 7,413,162 acres of agricultural land in the country was improductive or deficiently cultivated. Thus, the government has authorized the cession of state-owned land to all cooperatives who are willing to expand their current plantations.
Prices paid to farmers have also been increased as, for example, $1 to $2.50 pesos for each liter of milk produced by cooperative or private-owned cows.
More buses, road repairs and new waterworks are additional evidence that changes are underway. The next big turnover expected is in the way of salaries, although economic authorities will be cautious not to provoke a wave of inflation. The return to one currency will also eventually be adopted.
During the inauguration of the new legislature on February 24 that elected Raul Castro president of the Council of State, he referred to the lifting of senseless restrictions and other changes to be introduced progressively by his administration.

Farewell to a Revolutionary Combattant

2008-01-28T12:44:00.003-08:00

Aleida Rodriguez Villavicencio, 77, passed away in Havana on January 24. Funeral service was held along the seaway drive and her ashes were spread in the tranquil sea, surrounded by relatives, friends and comrades in struggle.
Aleida was a priceless support of those who, like myself, were students at the University of Havana before the triumph of the Revolution and were involved in the resistance to the Batista dictatorship, not only by hiding our firearms and leaflets but also visiting those who were wounded during the protest rallies providing them with food and information, said doctor Hector Terry in his farewell speech.
These tasks did not prevent her, poor, black and a woman, from being at the front of student and civic demonstrations. After the March of the Torches in commemoration of Jose Marti´s birth centenial, on January 27, 1953, she was arrested and detained by the police.
From her humble job in the Hospital Calixto Garcia, she was an agitator in favor of the needy and disposessed. When the political history of that hospital is written, the name of Aleida Rodriguez has to be extolled, said doctor Terry.
After 1959, Aleida was a lifeline getting her comrades together, counseling and educating the young generation of youth and student leaders, never wavering before the revolutionary tasks and being a stalwart against corruption and wrongdoing.
The ceremony ended with the student identity slogan become a war cry before the Revolution. Who lives? Caribs, Who goes? University.
Personally, Aleida was one of my dearest friends for over 40 years. Modest, shunning privileges, she was one of those rare persons you can count on in the good, but above all, in the bad times. During her last months, barely three since she was diagnosed with colon cancer, she announced to her friends she would have a farewell party with friends and family. That takes a lot of courage and she gave us all a lesson of humanity to last us until death.

Soaring Oil Prices don´t Worry Cubans

2008-01-09T13:10:00.000-08:00

Expensive oil and gas in world markets is at the bottom of Cuban worries, where food, housing and transportation are at the top of their daily agenda.
Maybe Cubans have begun applying energy-saving measures at home, because the electricity and phone bills are among the most pressing on the family budget. If you received a bank credit for one of the appliances recently distributed, like fridges, fans, and stoves, then salary money is not enough to buy food out of the ration card.
On the other hand, solidarious Venezuela sells Cuba about 100 thousand barrels of oil per day which can be paid with the thousands of doctors, teachers, sports trainers and other specialists now working in Venezuela. Forty-eight percent of the national energy balance is made up by oil and gas extracted at home, with the other 52 percent made up by imports.
Renewable energy sources are being quickly developed, mostly through solar panels, wind parks and mini-hydroelectric plants.
The new integration scheme of ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), an initiative of president Hugo Chavez, of which Cuba is a founding member together with Venezuela, and now benefits 14 nations in the Caribbean basin.
I, for one, own a Lada, model 2105, manufactured in 1984, sold to me as a journalist together with other professionals, in 1986. With great effort and money, my son-in-law has attended to all the needs of this veteran that has not gone to war, but treads over streets that look like Sarajevo after being bombed or maybe worse.
Other Soviet cars are the Moskvich and Volgas, which also roll on Cuban roads, although the latter have been mostly discarded because they need an oil well attached to the gas tank.
For a Russian tourist, a trip to Cuba could seem like a trip back in time, the opposite of what occurred in 1962 when I visited the Soviet Union for the first time and was surprised at people looking at US cars in awe when that was yesterday´s news for me, as Havana still had some new US models.
Desperate times call for desperate measures and Cubans have become mechanics of their own automobiles. Gas, however, can only be bought in Convertible Cuban Pesos (local equivalent of hard currency) or for 15 ordinary pesos a liter, about one US dollar (0.80 CUC).
State institutions also give monthly prepaid cards to present at service stations to professionals they employ and own vehicles. The cards cover from 25 to 50 liters each according to the post held and the distance from work to the car owner´s home. Some unions like the Cuban Journalists Union, also give their members 40 liters a month, charging 32 ordinary pesos for that amount of gas.
As a report on Soviet cars published recently says, modern technology seems to have bypassed this land where car parts are still being made and attached by hand. However,optimists as they are, Cubans refuse to succumb to gloom and extol the excellences of their vehicles that demand little from owners and render great services, sometimes even their livelihood.In sharp contrast to modern world politics, American oldies blend well with their Soviet-made peers, as Soviet spare parts are used frequently to repair American cars. So they reject gathering dust as exhibits and have made Cuba an auto museum come to life.

When Cuba was Reborn

2008-01-09T13:04:00.000-08:00

One week took the guerrilla caravan led by Fidel Castro to get from the Sierra Maestra mountains to Havana, where an apotheosis awaited the victors along each city, village and town those first days of 1959.
The New Year brought dawn on people who had lived in fear, anger and discontent for so long.
It was Havana´s turn on January 8, 49 years to date, to receive the bearded heros. The capital was like an expectant sweetheart, bathed in the light of a warm January morning, filled to the brims of joyful and boastful people waving flags, posters or just their hands.
The man known to some but stranger to most, was at the front of his men, on a jeep at times and on armoured vehicles, but never hidden, visible and stretching hands of thousands who greeted him by his name, Fidel.
From the start, his fearless and friendly attitude had a personal impact on people who watched in awe. He rejected going to Batista´s fortress of Columbia by helicopter, he felt disgusted when he stopped at the Presidential Palace and without the help of soldiers asked the crowd to open the way so he could continue.
To top the day, the rally in Columbia where he spoke of how difficult it would be from then on, as opposition would come from inside and outside the country. He turned to the second most loved officer in his army, Camilo Cienfuegos, to whom he asked, “How am I going, Camilo?” and a white pigeon nested on his shoulder, to forever become an icon.
Young and old Cubans present that day have carried that image with them for almost half a century.

Cuba: Growth at Household Level

2007-12-30T10:36:00.000-08:00

It cannot be said that hardships of daily life for Cubans have lessened, but living standards are each day farther away from the worst years of the so-called Specdial Period or critical years that began with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The 7.5 percent growth of the Gross Domestic Product achieved in 2007 fell short of a planned 10 percent and while food, housing and transportation continue being the main concerns for the average citizen, the country has recognized its shortcomings and is ready to do more to mend errors and deficiencies.

All this takes place in a world of financial turbulences, soaring oil and food prices and the ongoing US blockade on the island, lasting for almost half a century now.

A very important source of difficulties has been practically eradicated: power cuts were reduced by 87.5 percent compared to those in 2005, while 75 percent of low voltage zones have now normal levels of electricity.

Urban transportation had a modest increase of 10.1 percent in the capital and Minister of this branch Jorge Luis Sierra announced that over 800 buses will be added to the current fleet during 2008, also improving the situation in Santiago de Cuba and Camaguey, Isle of Youth and Holguin, formerly critical.

Housing construction closed the year with 51,790 new homes built and hundreds of thousands of repair actions, although it still falls short of demand.

Food quality is the main target now, as supplies mostly from urban agriculture patches and orchards and cooperative farms have met the basic needs, leaving extensive state agriculture behind all expectations.

Prices will also have to correspond to the average income of consumers, recognized First Vice President Raul Castro in his speech before the December 28 session of Parliament.

He reminded that the cost imposed by the US blockade summed up 499 million dollars, amount that otherwise the country would have spent in other necessary objectives.

The nutritional level of Cubans rose to 3,287 kilocalories and 89.9 grams of protein on average in their daily diet. From 62 to 64 percent of their intake was bought at subsidized prices, said Minister of the Economy and Planning, Jose Luis Rodriguez.

The average salary rose to 408 pesos a month. Over 820 thousand workers received Cuban convertible currency as an incentive for their labor, for an equivalent of 118 million dollars.

Still, authorities and deputies recognized there is much more to be done in order to satisfy peoples´ needs and make the economy work efficiently to achieve proposed goals which, in a centrally planned economy, means that each citizen gives according to his capacity and in turn receives according to his or her work.

Raul Castro Confirms Pragmatic Policy on July 26 Celebration

2007-07-27T08:20:00.000-07:00

In a speech of little over an hour, acting President Raul Castro confirmed his pragmatic stance, approaching the most urgent domestic issues, while extending again his willingness to negotiate to the next US administration, deeming the current one as “dangerous” and “reactionary”.

As for his brother´s absence from public life, Raul asserted his wisdom and guidelines are present in all decisions taken and the work carried on in priority tasks, making local observers confirm their opinion that Fidel Castro is leading backstage.

Among the issues requiring urgent attention in the national scene, Raul Castro highlighted low salary levels, housing, transportation and even tools and equipment with which to work in several areas of the economy.

For a long time now, salaries guard no relation to the amount or quality of the work they are supposed to be paying. He recognized salaries are also insufficient to buy the basic food and services.

As for agriculture, cattle and dairy farming, he lashed out at lack of organization and control, together with negligence to fight “marabu” –weed bush that displaces crop plants- and advanced the government has to make structural changes in that sector.

The land is there, he insisted, and two rainy years have filled water reservoirs, so the activity has to make available all the food that can be grown and produce enough milk not only for children from birth to 7 years, but for anyone who wants to drink a glass of milk.

In his straight-forward manner he reminded people that any hike in salaries or descent in prices has to be related to a higher and more efficient production of goods and services which increases revenues, as neitherthe state nor the people can spend more than they earn.

Raul Castro lashed out at internal problems like bureaucracy, negligence, lack of control and discipline which proliferated during the economic crisis period known as “Special Period”, which by the way, he said, is still not over like other officials have suggested.

There is still a lot of work and order to be achieved, he stressed, while he alerted that all the problems cannot be solved immediately.

Wars, political unstability and the new drive to produce more fuel out of food crops like corn, soy and other grains, have now shot up prices of oil and commodities. He mentioned that while the price of the barrel of oil was around $80, almost triple what it was only four years ago when it sold for about $28. This sets off hikes in practically every other good or service, because everything has fuel involved in its process.

For instance, milk powder sold in 2004 for about $2,100 per ton. In that year, Cuba paid $105 million for its imports of this commodity. This year of 2007, however, imports required $160 million, because powder milk sold for $2,450 per ton.

Only months after, milk powder now exceeds $5,200 per ton and if national production does not increase, imports in 2008 will go up to $340 million, more than triple what Cuba spent in 2004.

In the case of milled rice, this was sold at $390 a ton in 2006 and now it sells for $435. Cuba bought frozen chicken a few years ago at $500 a ton, authorities planned for it to go up to $800, but in fact it has gone up to $1,186.

The same thing happens with practically all the ítems imported by Cuba, mainly to cover the population´s needs, who receives these supplies at subsidized prices to keep hikes from affecting consumers.

The acting President recalled all these are crops liable to be grown in this country, where there is more than enough land to expand crops and two rainy years have filled water reservoirs throughout the island. In other words, drought cannot be allegad for not increasing food production.

The first Vice President also said one of the economic guidelines was to keep improving energy-saving measures, recover previous industrial levels and add new production lines that reduce imports or create new export possibilities.

In that sense, he said the government is studying ways to attract more foreign investment and profit from the potential it has for enhancing the country´s development. Referring to past experiences, Raul said they had been naive and ignorant as to how those mechanisms work and called to design a well defined legal framework for the association to foreign capital.

As for other issues of foreign policy, Raul Castro said cooperation with other countries would be strengthened with absolute respect to the domestic policy of each country. He put the examples of joint projects with Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua and solid links with China and Vietnam.

To Caesar or to God?

2007-06-24T07:59:00.000-07:00

It seems that returning relics to its original places is in vogue now. Italy will be returning the obelisque which was located in front of the FAO headquarters in Rome to Ethiopia and now there is talk about the Machu Picchu memorabilia found in Yale University being returned to Peru.

Their current owners have alleged that more people could admire the ingenuity of ancient peoples and learn about their culture in the great urban centers of the world like London, Paris, Rome and New York, but the truth is that descendants of those who made those relics cannot see and take pride of their ancestors´ works.

The Inca succumbed to Spanish conquest in the 16th century; and the explorer Hiram Bingham III stumbled into Machu Picchu during a travel in 1911 to Peru, while he was a professor of South American history in Yale. Like the stones of Machu Picchu, however, the voices of the Inca ruler and the American explorer continue to resonate., says Arthur Lubow in the New York Times on Sunday, June 24.

With the joint support of Yale and the National Geographic Society, Bingham returned twice to conduct archeological digs in Peru. In 1912, he and his team excavated Machu Picchu and shipped nearly 5,000 artifacts back to Yale. Two years later, he staged a final expedition to explore sites near Machu Picchu in the Sacred Valley.

Lubow says that the pottery of the Inca, which is mostly what Yale has on exhibit, lacks the drama and artistry of the ceramics of earlier civilizations of Peru like the Moche and Nazca.

That has not prevented, however, a bare-knuckled disagreement from developing over their rightful ownership. Peru says the Bingham objects were sent to Yale on loan and their return is long overdue. Yale demurs.

In many ways, the dispute between Yale and Peru is unlike the headline-making investigations that have impelled the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to repatriate ancient artifacts to their countries of origin.

Other countries besides Peru are demanding the recovery of cultural treasures removed by more powerful nations many years ago. The Greeks want the Parthenon marbles returned to Athens from the British Museum; the Egyptians want the same museum to surrender the Rosetta Stone and, on top of that, seek to spirit away the bust of Nefertiti from the Egyptian Museum in Berlin.

Where might it all end? One clue comes in a sweeping request from China. As a way of combating plunder of the present as well as the past, the Chinese government has asked the United States to ban the import of all Chinese art objects made before 1911. The State Department has been reviewing the Chinese request for more than two years.

In general, anything that is patrimony of the cultures of the world, whether in museums in Asia or Europe or the United States, came to be there during the times when the governments of origin were weak and there was no legal tools to defend their cultural patrimony.

It saddens Peruvians to go to museums abroad and see a Paracas textile. I am hopeful that in the future all the cultural patrimony of the world will return to its country of origin, said Hilda Vidal, a curator at the National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology and History of Peru in Lima

A clause in the agreement authorizing the historic Bingham 1912 excavation, while not time-specific, states that Peru “reserves the right of requiring of Yale University and the National Geographic Society of the United States the restitution of single and duplicate artifacts that might be extracted and have been extracted,” as well as copies of all research papers and reports.

US current depositaries of Peruvian relics allege the ancient Peruvian history is best served by them keeping the archaeological find, but the agreement written with the government of Peru is very clear, while national sentiment is all for keeping their cultural heritage.

Fidel Castro: Reflections on the Real World

2007-06-07T14:36:00.000-07:00

When the spokesman for the US State Department answered reporters´ queries on Fidel Castro´s TV interview on June 5, McCormack just repeated the same old transition song and the maintenance of the failed embargo policy.
In fact, the TV appearance and about ten articles published in the official newspaper Granma have not even touched the blockade issue or the half-century antagonism with the US government.
Peace-building issues are the core of these “reflections” as they have been called here. Warnings on the impact of climate change and the need to tackle the urgent issues of world hunger, AIDS, wasteful lifestyles that are rapidly conveying the world to a holocaust.
Less wishful thinking and more of the real world problems are at the forefront of his articles which advocate for severe cuts in weapons and war mongering.
Times are a´changing, man. But the White House is not aware of the change in the balance of power or the ebbing support for its Cuba policy, mainly by Agribusiness and the Oil sector.
The Cuban President´s name only rings the bell in US officials´minds to smother dissent to US policies and way of thinking, of eliminating that “bad example” set by Cuba with all its solidarity and continental expansion of health programs, now supported by Venezuela.
According to Robert Sandels of Cuba-L Analysis news service housed at the University of New Mexico, Cuba´s oil potential has put US oil giants on a collision course with the blockade policy as the global energy crisis marches on.
US agribusiness, also reined-in by sanctions and red-tape, has nevertheless done business with the island and for more than peanuts. In 2006, Cuba bought around $570 million in food from almost 30 states, in spite of burdensome and expensive regulations imposed by President Bush in 2004.
Cuba buys only about one-fifth of its food imports from its northern neighbor, turning to suppliers like Canada, Mexico, China, Vietnam, Spain and France for the rest of its needs, up to a total expected to reach $1.7 billion this year.
On the other hand, as the peak oil-horizon moves closer, Oil & Gas Review magazine warns that the struggle for oil would take place in poor countries, where the trend is toward tighter state control over their natural resources.
What is brewing then in the near future for the destitute, wars and occupation by foreign powers?
Oil & Gas predicts in a term of up to 20 years, most industrialized nations will be completely reliant on oil supplies from the Gulf states, Venezuela, Libya, Kazakhstan, Nigeria and other poor countries.
Soon after this article was published in 2005, Canadian group Sherritt International –which was already deep into nickel mining in Cuba- and its subsidiary Pebercan announced the discovery of high-quality oil in the Cuban part of the Gulf of Mexico Exclusive Zone.
The US Geological Survey estimates the oil potential of that zone at 4.6 billion barrels or more and natural gas at 9.8 trillion cubic feet.
Sherritt´s president Ian Delaney and other company officials have been punished by the Helms-Burton law by banning them and their families from entering the United States. The links between Sherritt and its Cuban counterparts, far from weakening, have tightened since then.
On June 6, acting President Raul Castro toured energy facilities east of Havana accompanied by Delaney and three Cuban ministers, in presence of who was signed an accord to put into operation phase-8 of the natural gas-producing plant of Energas (joint venture formed by Sherritt International, Cubapetroleo and the Ministry of Basic Industry) in Boca de Jaruco.
Cuba would be only too happy to open up to US investment in oil and other industries. The sanctions and restrictions come from an administration sequestered by the Miami-based mafia of hard-core exiles.
Cuba's oil potential has political, economic, and environmental implicationsfor the United States, says Sandels of Cuba-L Analysis. Legislations presented in Congress show the battle taking place concerning Cuba policy.
Instead of discouraging foreign companies, like the group of Florida Republicans has tried to do at all cost, a bill sponsored by Sens. Byron Dorgan, Jeff Flake (R-AZ), and Rep. Larry Craig (R-ID), would free US companies to compete by exempting them from the sanctions.
The bill would allow any US citizen or resident to engage in any transactionnecessary for the exploration for and extraction of hydrocarbon resourcesfrom any portion of any foreign exclusive economic zone that is contiguousto the exclusive economic zone of the United States, as long as they are carried out at least 45 miles from the US coast.
Cuba has an energy policy whose core concept is to rely less and less on hydrocarbons and give greater space in the energy balance to renewable sources like solar, wind, tide and water. Cuba has put in place a conservation system that starts at house level and continues to the public sector and cooperative farms, by substituting incandescent lamps by fluorescent bulbs, distributing energy-saving household appliances and revamping the national power grid.
In the United States, however, there are several approaches to energy policy. While backing up the construction of six new nuclear power plants, Bush is set on an ethanol-producing race that already has pushed up the prices of corn, cereals, eggs and meat.
He is trying to convince Central and South American countries to boost corn, sugar cane and any other ethanol-producing crop so they may supply the US market with that fuel which has already doubled the price of corn and tortillas in Central America while increasing the price of land in Brazil.
In conclusion, the current US energy policy mix favors the expanded use of coal; building nuclear plants; subsidizing ethanol made from food and drilling in the US Exclusive Economic Zone, all of them goals which render no favor to nature or to future generations.

Ethanol Fuels International Debate

2007-04-11T06:41:00.000-07:00

Ethanol has become a celebrity. You must have heard the widest spectrum of people referring to it. Farmers and agrobusinesses who started to be subsidized by the US Ethanol Program in order that they produce more grain destined to manufacture ethanol as fuel accompany car manufacturers whose vehicles will use a mixture of ethanol with gasoline.
But has anyone besides the hungry of this world started to worry about what will become of the corn and soy to feed people and livestock when it is converted into fuel?
David Pimentel, a leading Cornell University agricultural expert, has proved Cuban president Fidel Castro right in his denounce of using food to make ethanol, as he calculated that to power all cars in the United States with ethanol would require the whole territory of the US to be planted with corn.
The Economist of the UK and The New York Times have also warned like the Cuban president that converting food into fuel and planning on using ethanol instead of gasoline in a wasteful lifestyle will be equal to genocide, as it will demand increasing extensions of corn and other foods in detriment of land to feed people and livestock.
On the other hand, subsidized corn results in higher prices for meat, milk and eggs because about 70 percent of corn grain is fed to livestock and poultry in the United States.
Increasing ethanol production would further inflate corn prices, Pimentel says, noting: "In addition to paying tax dollars for ethanol subsidies, consumers would be paying significantly higher food prices in the marketplace".
As soon as corn-based ethanol began to gain momentum, so did the international prices of corn and other cereals, of which over a hundred poor nations are net importers. Dairy economists in the US said higher demand for ethanol has spiked corn prices up to nearly $4 a bushel.
Only in the US consumers had to pay last week a lot more for their eggs due to the surge in demand for corn to make ethanol, says The Ithaca Journal. A dozen large eggs ran on average for $1.51, about 43 cents higher than a year ago, the second-biggest price since the American Farm Bureau Federation began collecting data in 1989.
Rising corn and soybean prices have led to increased costs for feed. Prices were up 119 percent in February, versus the same period a year ago, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
The same source informed that the area planted with corn this year is the largest since 1944, but the demand of grain to produce ethanol is equally bigger, so that will not translate into lower prices for corn destined to human or animal feed.
Fortunately there are other more rational forces in the quest for an alternative fuel.
More than 200 people gathered April 4 at South Dakota State University for the two-hour field hearing of the Senate Agriculture Committee's energy subcommittee.
Much of the prepared testimony at Wednesday's hearing focused on the possibility of the industry's transition from corn-based to cellulosic ethanol.
Making ethanol from cellulose or biomass sources such as switchgrass and wheat straw isn't yet profitable, and such efforts need governmental help to develop, he said. Another expert doubted that corn-based ethanol would eventually deliver the grandiose promise of biofuel in quantities big enough to meet demand.
Ray Wallace, retired from publishing, investment-banking research, and landmarks preservation, says in an article posted April 6, it's more than animals, plants, the food chain, news, truth, and citizens that our country abuses nonstop.
"It's also our land, water, and the very air we breathe. Not to mention the fact that ethanol is perhaps the most expensive and energy-wasting fuel ever envisioned."
"We're more than our own worst enemies. We're marketing to the entire world - and imposing our costly, suicidal savagery on it as well," concludes Wallace.
Now, Venezuela and Cuba have signed collaboration agreements to make ethanol out of crop waste, specially bagasse from sugar cane, when most nutrients have been already extracted. Together with efforts to develop other renewable energy sources like the sun, the wind and the tides is the way to independence from fossil fuels.
In spite of higher oil and gas prices, these efforts would be null if they are not accompanied by other energy-saving measures like changing incandescent lightbulbs for fluorescent ones, keeping energy consumption in every household and workplace under control and driving cars that are more fuel-efficient.
So next time you see ethanol mentioned, look deeper into the matter and think if future generations will join the already unsustainable amount of hungry people of the planet.

Cuba and Religious Tolerance

2007-04-06T07:51:00.000-07:00

Thousands of believers took part in Holy Week processions in Cuba organized by Catholic Church parishes throughout the country. For one, in my parish the march over six blocks was filled almost to that extension and many more neighbors stood supportingly from their porches.
When I read the news of how many people had died during the commemoration of this week in Central America and also in Spain, I said to myself that they were not protected like they were in my parish, where policemen stood to stop cars from interrupting the march and there was an ambulance tailing behind to pick up anyone who felt sick.
It is that time of the year when millions of people in the world, regardless of their religious or political beliefs make their very personal conscience exam. Holy Week promotes this behavior. It has become obvious, however, that a globalized world has not brought us any closer to the better human beings we should be.
The Pope Benedict XVI for one, has announced the publishing of his book "Jesus of Nazareth" with very surprising harsh criticisms of the wealthy of the world who have plundered and looted the poor as those in Africa and Latin America, harming them not only physically but also spiritually, trying to deprive them of their traditions and autoctonous culture.
In the first ten chapters that will see the light in Germany, Italy and Poland on April 16, date of the Pope´s 80th birthday. he meditates on the parable of the Good Samaritan that takes care of a stranger who was assaulted by robbers. At this point he proved right what Karl Marx had said about the alienation of the human being. Although he finds Marx too harsh in his consideration of the issue, he says that is exactly what has happened, as rich countries are trying to impose their godless society on the poor people of the world.
It may come to be that Benedict XVI will make a mark in his mandate as Pope. Let´s hope so.

Latin America, Backyard No Longer

2007-03-03T06:04:00.000-08:00

As US President George W. Bush is about to start his Latin American tour, he will find a region very different to what it was when he took over the White House.
Free Trade FTAA (ALCA) style, conceived for the benefit of US companies and the nation´s hegemonic plans is no longer an option. The scheme that should have begun operating in 2005 is practically dead. Only the bilateral agreements between Washington and some fearful or allucinating governments are left to show no benefits for the poorer of the sides.
On the other hand there is an awakening of independent integration alternatives like ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas -on Venezuela´s initiative´that already counts surprising achievements and four member countries: Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua, with the possible addition of Ecuador.
A shining example has been the story of economic, cooperation and trade links between Cuba and Venezuela from 2000 to date.
The agreements from that first session were valued in 28.5 million dollars. Now, at the conclusion of the 7th session, the budget for the joint projects approved reaches 1.5 billion dollars.
At the first meeting of the joint commission, 31 projects were approved. Now the figure shot up to 355, all of them concerning strategic decisions in both nations´development plans.
The last agreement between both countries has brought about concrete achievements, such as: the uninterrupted supply of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment to Venezuela, technical assistance to develop sports in the South American nation.
On the other hand, Venezuela supports endogenous development plans in the Havana province, in the Sandino, Marti and Bolivar communities in Pinar del Rio and on this occasion the municipality of Venezuela in Ciego de Avila province has been added.
Assistance from Cuba has also helped Venezuelan sugar industry and the endogenous development programs in Fundos Zamoranos. Computer science development programs have also helped develop this sector in Venezuela.
Eleven ethanol processing plants are to be set up in Venezuela, based on the sugar industry, using not only molasses but also bagasse to produce the fuel meant to be mixed with gasoline to run motor vehicles.
A plant to produce drinks from soya will soon open in the state of Anzoategui in Venezuela.
Venezuela, for its part, gives Cuba technical assistance in the production of oil and gas, besides supplying fuel in preferential terms. It is estimated that around 90 thousand barrels of Venezuelan oil are supplied daily to the island.
Social achievements have made cooperation with Cuba very popular in Venezuela. Medical assistance in the Mission Barrio Adentro was accompanied by the construction and setting up of 307 diagnostic centers, 406 rehabilitation wards and 11 state of the art technology centers.
According to official sources, by next July these figures will reach 600, 600 and 35, respectively.
It has been estimated that just from increased medical assistance, a total of 84,962 lives have been saved.
Mission Miracle, aimed at curing eye diseases by surgical means, has already helped 315,000 persons recover their eyesight.
Now bilateral cooperation has extended to several countries in South and Central America, by way of literacy campaigns using a Cuban method for learning to read and write in 70 lessons.
It even transcends the limits of integration scheme ALBA (Alternativa Bolivariana para las Americas), created only three years ago and to which already belong four countries: Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua.
The Awakening
The ripple effect of bilateral cooperation since 2000 has now adopted a regional level through ALBA and made Latin American and Caribbean governments more independent.
Awareness has increased several folds among the people. Thousands will soon become millions of those who have benefited from literacy campaigns, education programs, improved medical assistance and housing projects.
The money to support this social development revolution comes mainly from increased oil and gas sales income cashed by Venezuela, together with the highly qualified human resources formed by Cuba.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, president George W. Bush is highly worried because a region so docile to US policy as this was during the best part of the 20th century is now slipping from the hands of Washington at a fast pace.
Now the latest Washington scheme to perpetuate domination of the region by US companies is practically dead. The ALCA or FTAA as is known in both Spanish and English will never be born, according to specialists. The best shot for the US has been the bilateral agreements with Central America, Chile, Colombia and other countries in the region.
ALBA displays its wings
In the preps for the Cuba-Venezuela joint meeting held in Caracas last January, nine joint ventures were created in the areas of civil construction, telecommunications, sugar industry, naval construction, transport, oil and gas, culture, construction and the banking system.
Accords that lay out strategic cooperation in 15 areas were signed last January. Trade for one, has increased from 912 million dollars in 2000 to the new record of 2.6 billion dollars in 2006.
A comprehensive energy-saving program is not exclusive of Cuba. Venezuela, too, has undertaken that ecological goal in spite of being a country rich in fossil fuel resources. Now the renewable energy sources like sun, wind, water and biomass are to be developed at a fast pace.
Since November 17, 2006 when the Energy Revolution was put in motion in Venezuela, 35 million saving-light bulbs of the 52 million programmed have been changed for old incandescent ones and already maximum electricity demand has dropped by 550 MW, while generating capacity is to be expanded in 1,000 MW.
Task forces of both countries evaluated the existing 4 energy projects while another six are to be started this year, according to the final declaration signed on February 28 by the co-presidents of the Joint Commission, Marta Lomas, Minister for Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation of Cuba and Rafael Ramirez, president of PDVSA.
The accomplishments shown by Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia in such a short period are sure to expand the ALBA membership in no time.

Who Says the Majority is Silent?

2007-02-22T08:57:00.000-08:00

Much of what is written on Cuba by the mainstream commercial media spreads the idea that Cubans are gagged and cannot express their opinions openly. Any visitor to the island can confirm just the opposite.

But just in case there remains doubt, another channel has now opened to criticize or suggest to improve the work of government institutions and everyday paperwork.

The new version of the portal of the Cuban citizen, developed by Desoft S.A. aimed to serve the common citizen. Today the site www.ciudadano.cu can inform users about 200 types of paperwork procedures in 20 entities and 10 institutions, as those related with Housing and Social Security. This site offers 71 services in all to Cuban citizens.

Now Cubans will be able to submit their claims and suggestions to state institutions and receive answers to their proposals and demands.

As a small segment of the population has access to Inter or Intranet connections, those writing to the government can do so through the 600+ Computer Youth Clubs, outlets where anyone can go for computer lessons or communicating reasons.

Also at the Informatica 2007 convention and exhibition recently held in Havana, a system was presented to help internauts sort out the increasing number of .cu domains. It may not be Yahoo or Google that have planetary reach, but the new Cuban search engine revealed the system known as 2x3 (version Beta) is the result of a revision of over 100,000 Cuban sites on Internet.

Among its virtues, creators of the system stress it can conduct general searches in the country´s media sites and special quests in speeches of president Fidel Castro, explained Leandro Silva, programmer of the state-run Office for Informatization.

For the moment it is being hosted by www.infosoc.cu /buscador / but it is being registered as an independent site under www.2x3.cu . The search engine makes a weekly revision of all Cuban websites in order to expand the engine´s searching skill.

Cuba: No More Blackouts?

2007-01-15T06:11:00.000-08:00

The Cuban power industry produced the economy´s most outstanding achievement in 2006: the elimination by 90 per cent of damaging and annoying electricity shortages.

In less than a year, over 1,000 Megawatts of generating capacity have been installed. The electrogen groups responsible for the increase were distributed in 116 of the 169 municipalities of the island.

Investment in the diesel power generators (for 1,311 MW) is practically completed. They will supply all the needed electricity in the hours of highest demand.

The annual report of the Ministry of Basic Industry confirmed that 6,301 electrogen groups have arrived in the country. Of that figure, 3,798 generators are already in operation.

But equipment, together with more oil and gas production cannot alone do the trick of covering the country´s energy demand.

The power grid, poles and wiring have been an important source of electricity losses. In 2006 total losses were reduced from 18 to 11 per cent. The rehabilitation of networks will cost 262 million dollars but it will allow to considerably reduce expenses and improve the quality of electricity supply.

Over the last year, 67,319 old poles were changed for new ones, transformer capacity was increased in 10,400 of those units and new wiring was installed at residential inlets.

Also, 2.3 million breakers were installed in houses, to replace obsolete ones.

Domestic industry also increased transformer manufacturing, which together with imports permitted to install 11,700 new ones throughout the country.

More Household Appliances

Residential consumers account for 45 per cent of power consumption. However, in spite of the millions of new household appliances distributed over the last year, families only spent eight kilowatts per hour more a month than before having the new kitchenware.

Eight out of ten Cuban families can today cook with electricity, besides manufactured gas consumers and the gradual elimination of kerosene stoves, harmful for the environment and human health.

Millions of electric cookers and stoves have been sold, supported by credits given by the Banco Central de Cuba, amounting to 4.2 billion pesos.

In general, power consumption only grew by 7 per cent, while the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) advanced 12.5 per cent the last year.

More Oil and Gas

Domestic oil and gas production achieved the record figure of 3.9 million tons, while exploration and drilling of new oil wells assure further growth in 2007.

In the promising Exclusive Economic Zone in the Gulf of Mexico, 16 parcels have been contracted by foreign enterprises covering an area of 30 thousand square kilometers, according to Yadira Garcia, Minister of that sector.

Over the last year 25 wells were drilled and work is underway in another eight, said the Cuban official.

Electricity produced with gas has an installed capacity of 405 Megawatts, most of which comes from Canadian joint venture Energas plants. In 2007, 70 MW more are to be installed and continue to grow further in 2008.

As for alternative energy sources, Cuba has a potencial of at least 1,700 hours per year of solar radiation, which can be transformed in 6 kwh day per square meter. There are 7,000 solar panels already installed in the island. Energy from the wind is also beginning to be used.

Cuba looks ahead to the time when fossil energy is depleted, an example to be followed by most developing energy-dependent countries.

Cuba: Problems Don´t Mar Economic Growth

2006-12-29T12:07:00.000-08:00

A particularly intense session of the Cuban parliament has just ended with the commitment for more honest appraisals of the country´s economic situation. From his seat as head of the Council of State, First Vice President Raul Castro rejected attempts by Ministers and other officials to give a complacent picture of their sectors and none of the black spots.
Transportation and food production were the targets of harsh criticism. Officials of the first sector came out of his predicament with flying colors because they are well on the way of solving the lack of transportation -which together with housing and food are the main causes of dissatisfaction among the population-, but the interim Agriculture Minister tried to give a sunny picture and raised the wrath not only of the presiding table, but also from many deputies on her.
The presentations, requested by Raúl Castro, dealt with issues like housing construction and rehabilitation; the situation of transport; control measures taken in connection with fuel distribution and sale; food production; the payment to farmers for their crops; and the payment by the population of new home appliances acquired in the framework of the on-going national energy saving campaign known as the Energy Revolution.

The debate around those issues resulted in the Cuban parliament setting forth five main work lines for 2007: the Energy Revolution, the housing program, food production, transportation and social and work discipline, explained Ricardo Alarcón who stressed that these work lines finge around active people´s participation.

An average Cuban may ask where does the 12.5 per cent economic growth rate comes from and why does he does not yet see his daily life significantly improved. Wages have gone up but also the electrical tariffs and staples like coffee, rice, eggs.
Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban parliament highlighted that the highest economic growth in the country´s history is all the more commendable because it was achieved in spite of an escalation of Washington´s aggressive policy. To work for the change of such policy visited Cuba recently a delegation of 10 congresspeople headed by William Delahunt, Democrat for Massachusetts and Jeff Flake, Republican for Arizona.
The Year of Energy Revolution in Cuba ends with a significant reduction of power cuts by 90 per cent compared to 2005, as well as considerable savings in the energy bill.
Carlos Lage, Secretary of the Council of Ministers Executive Committee, rounded oil and gas production to over 3.9 million tons which is 50 percent of the domestic consumption that helped to half imports.

Lage toured ENERGAS Cuban-Canadian joint venture and the thermoelectric plant in Santa Cruz del Norte that filters the accompanying gas. The official said Cuba now enjoys another 400 MW installed capacity after some 140 MW were added in 2006, plus an expected 70 MW addition in 2007.

Lage, accompanied by Basic Industry Minister Yadira Garcia, witnessed the connection of a near 9.32 mile long gas pipeline from deposits along north Havana coast to the Puerto Escondido gas plant. The official recalled that producing power with gas is cost-effective and environment-friendly.

The Cuban official said Cuba enlarged its gas processing capacity, supplying manufactured gas plants and drilled 30 new oil wells, six Cuban and the rest in joint ventures, which should allow for more growth in production next year.

Housing, still short

According to Vice President Lage, this year will end with 110 thousand lodgings completed and the rehab of another 98 thousand. To achieve this boost in housing construction, 57 lines of the building materials industry were refurbished and another 36 units created.
The goal for 2007 will be to construct 70 thousand houses, 40 thousand of which will belong to those that were well advanced or begun this year, putting at the top of the list housing affected by hurricanes, the need for workers of big factories, doctors and other sectors, where demand is more pressing.
Although the plan is under this year´s target, greater efforts will be done to repair or improve construction of 150 thousand homes and all this requires more people´s participation, even though some parts will require qualified work force.

Agriculture, ouch!

Based on a brief account from Interim Agriculture Minister Maria del Carmen Perez, other reports and information voiced by deputies, Raul Castro descried a possible lack of economic discipline in the sector and warned of the danger if farmers are not paid, or not paid fairly, by the State due to intermediaries acquiring products and raising prices.
Council of Ministers Executive Committee secretary, Carlos Lage, pointed out that the government has taken considerable measures to prevent this situation, also seen in the sugar sector.
Raul Castro was emphatic that this problem could not continue and repeated that imprecision and vagueness would not be acceptable in the reports. The plenary unanimously approved including this topic in its next session as well as to receive concrete solutions to the deficiencies.

Power to the People

Education and health services will receive 22.6 per cent of Cuba´s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), that is four times more than the average destined by any country in Latin America, according to 2007 budget figures.
Georgina Barreiro, Minister of Finances and Prices, presented before the plenary session of the Cuban parliament the 2007 State budget, where the resources destined to public health, education and culture sectors are due to increase, together with retirement and social security pensions, the country s defense and home security.
The eighth ordinary period of sessions of the Cuban parliament, presided over by first Vice President and Minister of Defense Raul Castro, Barreiro announced that the budget assigns 4.8 billion pesos to support investments related to the education and health sectors, housing construction, infrastructure for transport, energy and water resources.
She also stressed significant resources will go to subsidize regulated products sold to the population in which the country spends around one billion dollars in order to guarantee the products included in the basic food basket.
Minister Barreiro said it was considered convenient to provide 300 million pesos as an emergency fund for possible natural disasters for the next fiscal year. State control will focus on the money destined to its economic and social improvement, in order to obtain the most from available resources.
Barreiro said it is estimated national income will grow by 9.8 per cent next year, mostly due to export of services, retail sales and the increase of managerial efficiency, while expenses will grow 9.1 per cent, reflecting a positive trend.
The balance between income and expenses for the year 2007 is expected to leave a 1.9 billion pesos deficit, equivalent to 3.2 per cent of the GDP, trend consolidated over the last years that helps to maintain the deficit in a sustainable rank.
The Minister also reported that pensions will amount to 3.9 billion pesos, 330 million beyond the figure planned for the current year, while social security will reach 1.2 billion pesos, allowing to attend 588 thousand 097 beneficiaries.

Billion Program for Transportation

In response to public and governmental discontent with transportation, Cuban Transport Minister Jorge Luis Sierra announced a billion dollar investment in the sector next year to correct the serious problems it faces.
At the urging of First Vice President Raul Castro, who pointed out transportation ranks with housing and food for citizens as the most pressing problems, also recognized transportation had been a few feet from total collapse.
Immediate priorities include reorganization and strengthening of his ministry s role for a more efficient use of investment, and better discipline and energy saving, the minister said.
In 2007 the plan is to buy 200 buses from China, 50 used Mercedes Benz, and 344 school buses, as well as trucks for moving both human and cargo in the mountains while the railroads undergo major renovation to the tune of 230 million dollars.

The Bottom Line, 12.5 per cent Growth

The Minister of Economy and Planning, Jose Luis Rodriguez, assured the economy had grown 12.5 per cent this year, compared to 11.8 in 2005, and 5.4 per cent in 2004.

The report was short on figures of economic branches performance, but most of the growth came from nickel, tourism, biotech products and export of professional services. In spite of the program to substitute food imports, the country spent 948 million dollars in buying products for the regulated basic basket, mainly subsidized by the government.

Work productivity was said to be low as well as total hours worked not only in the agricultural sector, but also in industry and manufacturing. This may well be improved by better working conditions, more transportation facilities and improved organization at the workplace.

According to Minister Barreiro, the deficit for the next fiscal year was estimated at 1.7 billion pesos, representing 3.2 per cent of the GDP, considered “manageable” for an economy as the Cuban.

Russia, Second Time Around

2006-11-24T12:19:00.000-08:00

Cuban economic links with Russia and other ex Soviet Republics did not disappear completely with the dissolution of the USSR, although they were sharply cut as of 1992. Russia kept on being the island´s number one market for its sugar exports and main oil supplier until Venezuela came along to take its place.
Almost 15 years after Cuba´s worst trade quake, Russian companies are trying to take over where they left off. After all, most cars, trucks and tractors rolling on the island´s roads and fields are Russian, Bielorussian or Ukrainian-made. Dozens of factories and power plants have Russian technology and machinery installed, with its load of inefficiency and higher energy consumption than international standards allow today.
Russian businesses have learned their lesson. Unable to compete in the world market without meeting those standards, Russian industry is now offering updated equipment and vehicles which have been seen in the last two Havana International Trade Fairs. No more freebies for Cuba, but contracts on reasonable terms and supported by credits, more than can be said for many other suppliers.
The recent visit of executives from 30 enterprises among the largest in Russia in the energy, aviation, mechanical industry, tourism, land and sea transportation sectors confirmed the interest in doing business with Cuba and eventually, use the island to introduce their products and services to the Latin American market.
Vilem Hakobian, representing the Russian part in the bilateral Business Committee, said trade turnover could be much higher and cooperation potential as well as investments are not negligible. According to Alejandro Mustelier, chair of the Cuban part, reported there are 79 Cuban companies participating in negotiations with their Russian counterpart.
Already 30 areas of cooperation have been defined, suppliers of consumer goods, raw materials and spare parts, among others. Mustelier also advanced there are Russian companies interested in investing in tourism, health and telecommunications. Cuba is receiving offers from the oil and mechanical industries, as well as from land, air and naval transport companies.
Another unwritten commitment is that the Russian military industry is interested in updating Cuban weaponry and substitute the old equipment for new, subject taken up during Mijail Kalashnikov´s trip earlier this year. On that occasion, Kalashnikov also signed an agreement with Venezuela to supply 100,000 rifles that bear his name. Contracts with Venezuela amount to $3 billion dollars.
These actions promoted Russian weapons before other Latin American countries, region that has become the first client of the Russian military industry. Over the last six years, Russian exports of weaponry and equipment have doubled.
Aiming to consolidate their part in this market, Moscow will supply fighter planes Sukhoi to Mexico and Brazil, reported RIA Novosti news agency on November 7.
As for Asia, the second Weapons and War Material Exhibition in Jakarta in November stresses the presence of Russian weapons and equipment for naval forces, according to the company Rosoboronexport.
In Africa, the president of Rosoboronexport also recently signed contracts with Algeria for 7.5 billion dollars.
Since Cuban military involvement in Africa, with victories in the Ethiopia-Somalia conflict and the Angola war, Russian weapons went up in the preference of developing countries, on very favorable payment conditions.

Cuba Va! is no Jingle

2006-11-03T06:32:00.000-08:00

Cuban state TV runs a spot reminding people how much has the country lost after 45 years of US sanctions and restrictions, followed by the question, have you stopped to think, otherwise, how much has been done in spite of the blockade?

Terrorist actions and the effects of the blockade have taken a toll of over 3,000 lives. There was no need for human or material losses, but Washington wanted to make the Cuban Revolution pay for being outspoken and serve as example of defiance before Latin American countries and the rest of the Third World.

Now for the 14th consecutive year, a resolution will be voted at the UN General Assembly demanding the US to stop the blockade, or embargo, as they call it to downsize its reach and effects.

In 2005, a total of 182 nations voted for stopping the blockade. This year it is expected to go over that number. How many votes are needed to make the US comply with the opinion of the international community?

The US considers issues related to Cuba as domestic policy. That line of thinking includes 600-odd attempts on the life of Fidel Castro, terrorist acts against hotels and tourist resorts, the blowing up of a civil airplane with 73 persons on board, bombing of several Cuban embassies in Europe and Latin America, shooting of Cuban officials and the most recent plan Bush to annex and run the island in a so-called Post-Castro era.

Ten US administrations have gone by since the triumph of the Revolution in Cuba and still, Washington has learned no lessons from the outcome of events. Using a policy of force and bullying against the island has only made Cubans outsmart their aggressor and defend even more steadfastly the social advantages given them by the government they chose of their own free will.

Three thousand lives, many more wounded and $86 billion dollars in material damages later, Cubans have a lot to show for themselves: outstanding world-level indicators in health, education, life expectancy, attention to the disabled, the elderly and children.

Through international cooperation, Cuba has managed to expand literacy campaigns in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Over 30 thousand doctors work abroad saving millions of lives and now engages with Venezuela in one of the most humane projects ever accomplished: helping hundreds of thousands of Latin American and Caribbean people recover their eyesight.

The Cuban economy has also thrived under pressure. A biotech and pharmaceutical industry has gained international recognition, trade is flourishing in spite of having to pay more than is usual for other developing countries due to the blockade, without financial support as is the case of US agricultural exports to Cuba.

After President Fidel Castro took ill last July and had to undergo intestinal surgery, once again they mistook the consequences. Three months after leading responsibilities were passed on to Raul Castro, first vicepresident and Minister of Defense, Cubans go about their lives as usual.

The situation is calm, conventions like the World Sports for All Congress are taking place, the Havana International Trade Fair and the International Ballet Festival, as usual, attract thousands of visitors these days.

Members of the US intelligence community, Pentagon gurus, the most famous think-tanks and prestigious experts have denounced the futility of the blockade policy and the need to change course, but on both sides there is wide skepticism that change would come under this administration, which has been kidnapped by the Miami mafia.

Thus, the club will once again precede the carrot in US policy and make Cubans even stronger.

Best Health System in the World?

2006-09-18T06:49:00.000-07:00

Best Health System in the World, referring to Cuba may sound chavinist and exxagerated coming from a local, but used by the British media, the true dimension is clearly understood.

On the issue of how Britain delivers essential services, Newsnight of the BBC invited guest reporters to argue the case for the most interesting, innovative and thought provoking examples of public service provision in the world.

John Harris of the Guardian travelled to Cuba to examine its health system, only to discover that the country has achieved extremely impressive healthcare indicators, primarily by focusing on prevention and establishing doctor and nurse teams at the heart of the local community.

He found that even if the person has a clean bill of health, the local physician will still pay the person a visit once a year to check on your lifestyle and home environment.

As John Harris reported, Cuban leader Fidel Castro is recovering after illness forced him to temporarily delegate his government and party responsibilities. "He is lucky to be able to count upon some of the best healthcare in the world", said the journalist.

I worked in London for a year and a half as correspondent for Prensa Latina. While there, the doctor I subscribed to was a fervent admirer of our health service. That´s when I really started to appreciate it. As he looked at an X-ray of my mother´s femur operation, he said in Britain could not have been done better.

Nevertheless, I extolled the British health system for being one of the patterns taken as example for the Cuban system. He told me in confidence that had been true at the beginning but really deteriorated fast under Margaret Thatcher´s rule. Privatization started eliminating the benefits of universal medical attention and prevention ceased to be a priority.

As for education, the Newsnight highlighted Qatar and its innovative system. John Harris could have also evaluated the island for that public service, as it has been awarded by UNESCO for its method of teaching illiterates.

The method Yes, I can, currently used in dozens of countries from Central America to New Zealand, using local teachers, in their national languages through 65 classes of 30-minute duration each has already taught 1.9 million people to read and write in 15 countries and is now underway for 2.3 million in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and the Pacific, is due to expand to five more nations.

The other public services reviewed by Newsnight were prisons and transport. The places highlighted were Denmark and Portland, Maine in the United States, respectively.

Two Ways of Getting a College Education

2006-09-06T15:54:00.000-07:00

Cuban students have the privilege of having access to university careers whatever their social standing, they must simply have the aptitude and knowledge required by the specific field chosen.

Six hundred thousand of them started classes on Monday; double the proportion in any Latin American country. They were all given the books, pencils, notebooks and markers necessary for the school year, complete for the first time in decades, due to sufficient resources available.

According to William Chace, former college president in California, for most of the students graduating from their careers today in the US, diplomas accompany a substantial debt of $20,000 dollars on average, whether for private or public institutions.

This fall, says Chace in an op-ed contribution to The New York Times Tuesday, tuition plus room and board average almost $32,000 for Laudable and other private colleges, and more than $15,000 for public ones.

This year Laudable will spend more than $41,000 to educate each student. At public institutions, it will be more than $31,000 per student. Some schools have huge endowments that help them generate the money they need to educate students (Harvard has more than $26 billion to count on). But most schools are like Laudable, they need students´ tuition dollars.

On the side of universities´ management, most don´t have enough government or private endowment money and rely on tuition income to function. Financial aid is also not enough for many students who must take odd jobs to make ends meet. It´s all about money.

Here in Cuba, it´s all about learning. Although the island is still underdeveloped in the economic sense, it manages to open its higher education centers to foreign students by extending scholarships which have only one condition, that of returning to their countries and contributing to their development.

Cuban higher education reports more than 620,000 new registrations in different academic fields, at 3,000 municipal universities in the country's 169 municipalities.

From a scientific-technological viewpoint, Cuban universities have managed to raise the quality of research despite the deterioration accumulated over several years in biological, chemical, physical, and pharmaceutical laboratories. Academic institutions and research centers within higher education received 32 awards from the Cuban Academy of Science, mainly in the areas of energy and biotechnological development.

Washington can´t Figure It Out

2006-08-23T06:24:00.000-07:00

For three weeks now, Cuba has been governed by Raul Castro. As with the demise of the Eastern-European socialist community, many political gurus predicted doom-day had come for the Cuban Revolution. This has not been the case. Cuban daily life goes on much the same as before.
The reason why there has been no revolt, no dramatic changes, is very well explained in an article published August 22 by the International Herald Tribune. This is more or less what is happening in Cuba and why.

"Sticking with Raúl
by William Pfaff

PARIS -- American analysts of Cuban affairs are surprised that Fidel Castro's "temporary" transfer of power to his brother Raúl has not produced unrest in Cuba - or even a revolution.

The U.S. government was ready. The State Department said it had a plan "to aid Cuba" if Castro "moves along in a natural way" (President George W. Bush's words). The White House said there are no plans "too reach out to Raúl." Policy is to "undermine" him. But nothing has happened.

Philip Peters, an expert at the conservative Lexington Institute in Virginia, said, "There is this predicate in our policies that the Cuban system is one that can be pushed over with one finger."

"We were ill prepared for the eventuality of continuity rather than change," says Damian Fernandez, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University. "All our policies have been built on a foundation of wishful thinking."

Wishful thinking usually characterizes the thinking of political exiles, and of the governments that back them, but in this case it would seem to owe less to bias than to a profound misunderstanding of nationalism.

This underestimation of nationalism persistently makes itself felt in U.S. foreign policy. It comes from a failure of political imagination and sense of history, but is also a consequence of American ideology, which assumes that American values are universal values: that they are the ideals that everyone would adopt if political constraints and repression were removed. They override national commitments and emotions.

This illusion has been taken up by America's allies in Israel, who went to war against Lebanon a month ago thinking that ordinary Lebanese would be grateful to Israel for attacking and (as the Israelis supposed) defeating Hezbollah, which was thought to owe its power to its backing by Syria and Iran.

One would think the Israelis would have taken a lesson from the absence in Iraq of the predicted popular wave of gratitude after the United States overturned Saddam Hussein. There was not much gratitude in Afghanistan after B-52s and an American-led coalition liberated the Afghans from the Taliban, which is now on the return.

One might think the Cubans are ready for change, after 47 years of absolute rule by Fidel Castro and persisting or worsening penury, due less to Castro than to a congressionally mandated U.S. blockade and persecution of the Cubans, to punish them for allowing Fidel Castro to rule them.

Change will come; second-generation revolutionary regimes are not notable for stability or longevity. (Although with Raúl, Cuba remains under the first revolutionary generation, as he is one of the last of the original band of rebels from the Sierra Maestra.)

Nationalism was the most important political force at work in the 20th century, and may prove the most important in the 21st. This often fails to be understood because nationalism's expression is often mistaken for something else. Nationalism picks up autonomous movements and exploits them because they augment its power.

Communism in Asia was a negligible force until the 1930s, mostly confined to Western-educated intellectuals. Marx himself, and Lenin, maintained that Communism could succeed only by mobilizing an industrial working class, which did not exist in Asia.

The genius of Mao Zedong was to redefine the ideology to give leadership to the abused peasantry, and that turned it into a fighting doctrine that mobilized the peasant nationalism of both China and Vietnam, kindled by more than a century of Western colonial exploitation.

The bitterness of Muslims in Asia and the Middle East at Western control and manipulation has today found its expression in radical religion and a utopian notion of expelling the West from the Islamic world and recreating the Islamic empires of the Middle Ages. It provides a dream that justifies sacrifice.

Americans went into Cuba in 1898 to back a nationalist uprising against Spanish imperial control. This followed an earlier 10-year nationalist revolt that had ended in 1878 with promises to banish slavery, which happened, and of political reforms, many of which Spain did not carry out.

After Spain's defeat in 1898, Cuba, under U.S. military occupation, became a republic, but its sovereignty was limited by a constitutional provision, insisted upon by Washington, giving the United States right to military intervention. This was invoked in 1906 and again in 1912.

From 1933, the country was dominated by a populist, American-trained army sergeant, promoted to general, Fulgencio Batista, who enjoyed varying degrees of U.S. patronage until 1958, when the U.S. withdrew military aid from his government. In 1959 he fled the country and Castro and his men took power, which they have not given up.

Confronted with the current U.S. government's plan to "aid" Cuba to become a democracy, it may be that Cubans will be inclined to rally to the side of Raúl Castro."

Now Washington scrambles to get the facts straight. I suggest they read one of their own papers.

Prescriptions for a President´s Recovery

2006-08-05T08:07:00.000-07:00

As soon as the news was out about Fidel Castro´s illness, so were the prescriptions from the U.S. as how to deal with the situation. The first dictate was for the Cubans in Miami not to move and those living in Cuba to "work for democratic change" accompanied by all sorts of promises of U.S. aid, i.e. intervention, in the island´s domestic affairs.
Repercussion has been overwhelming, mostly wishes for a speedy recovery of the President´s health, from the own Cuban people and from abroad. Others, the few, prematurely rejoicing and bluntly saying they were packing their bags to recover their abandoned (and put to better use) properties in the island.
Rhetoric about a "pacific transition" is accompanied by calls on the Cuban military to bring about the change, i.e. carry out a coup d´etat. Alienating all internal support, the current Administration even includes in the Bush Plan for Transition in Cuba the radical cut in social expenditures like retirement benefits and pensions to the disabled.
Who is going to enforce such actions? The Miami hard-core terrorists or the Marines? Whichever force they pick, there has to be an expert, analyst or the like in the dozens of think-tanks and University institutions in the U.S. who is rational enough to tell Washington they will only obtain the opposite effect by using force.
Living in Cuba for the past six decades, having experienced the before and after of the Revolution, I can tell you that resistance to any foreign intervention, be it rhetorical or physical will only bring about more suffering and a meaningless bloodbath.
In spite of the hardships endured, domestic or imposed from abroad, Cuba surprises the world with its achievements in health and education, egalitarian system, protection of the most vulnerable segments of society, making every resource count. That´s why the same people who fight corruption, demand more transport and food on their tables will take a stand beside the Revolutionary government, because it has delivered the goods, those of a dignified human living.
The majority is convinced Fidel will recover his health. If he assumes command of his previous posts or decides to retire because of ill health or old age, that will not cause an upheaval in their life.
That explains why for the last week, this small still underdeveloped country, has gone about its daily activities as usual, a little sadder, but confident that the people in charge will put their interests first.

Will You Still Love Me when I´m 80?

2006-06-06T15:33:00.000-07:00

Four decades ago, old people were rarely seen in a Cuban crowd. Not any more, because according to demographic statistics, barely nine years from now they will outnumber the economically active population.
And no wonder, as life expectancy in the island rose from the 60-year level to 80 in a few more years. In spite of the hardships Cubans have been through, they are among the healthiest population in Latin America only compared to some industrialized nations.
Now the elderly can be seen from early in the mornings, doing Tai-Chi or ordinary warmups, shopping, keeping houses, queuing for newspapers (a scarce commodity because of the high demand), picking up their grandchildren at elementary schools or day-care centers and time to spare to give an advice to a friend or neighbor.
The problem and not a small one at that, is posed to the Cuban state that currently spends over 2 billion dollars in old age, handicap and retirement pensions. This money comes mainly from contributions made by the working people, so when they are outnumbered, where will the money to pay for social security come from?
The elderly, however, can be a vast source of wisdom, knowledge and experience, much in need by a country developing at a fast pace.
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) statistics indicate that by 2025 Cuba will have the oldest population in the hemisphere, with 25.9 percent of the population over 60, followed by Barbados (25.4 percent), Trinidad and Tobago (20.5 percent), Uruguay (20 percent) and Chile (18.4 percent).
In Cuba, the growing population of citizens over 60 already reach 1.7 million, including 300 thousand persons over 80. More than 1.5 million citizens are covered by the social security system, 700,000 of whom receive monthly retirement and old-age pensions of $164.00 pesos and over.
To care for the increasing number of elderly, the Cuban government has put up different schemes to expand their socially useful and intellectual activities.
There are more than 14 thousand "grandparent groups" (círculos de abuelos in Spanish) offer recreation and day care services at neighbourhood level. There are 170 retirement homes, as well as a system of home-based care, which serves 100 thousand elderly who live alone.
Some church parishes help in this field by serving them meals at their own houses and providing transportation to medical appointments and excursions.
An educational alternative to expand the intellectual activity of the aged is the Faculty for the Elderly (Cátedra del Adulto Mayor) working in dozens of educational centers around the country, which has graduated some 30 thousand persons.
Another initiative for the older segment of the population was founded two years ago by the Caribbean Medical Association, a Cuban non-governmental organization, called the "120 Year Club". The Association is part of the Association of Caribbean States and has a special consultative status in the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
The president of the Club, Dr. Eugenio Selman, has informed the group has already 6,700 members from 34 countries, some of whom are over 100 years of age.
The reason why this happens in Cuba, told Selman to the press, is the government "guarantees education and healthcare free of charge; full access to sports and culture; it promotes healthy eating and keeps elderly people motivated through their association with senior citizen centers," Selman noted.
In 2004, life expectancy stood at 77 years and demographers estimate a rate of 80 is around the corner. They worry however over a low reproduction rate - the average number of female babies born per woman during her reproductive life - and the
steadily declining birth rate, which dropped from 1.54 children per woman in 2004 to 1.49 in 2005.
When the time comes, Cuban elderly will still make themselves useful and be the pride of society, unlike other nations where the aged are discarded like old household appliances.

Miracles You Can Touch

2006-05-26T17:15:00.000-07:00

It is no act of faith. Cuba has spread miracles over the Caribbean and Latin America. Around a quarter of a million persons have recovered their eyesight over the past year, thanks to Operation Miracle, carried out by joint efforts of Cuba and Venezuela. One patient from Vincent and the Grenadines said to Cuban TV he wondered how Caribbean people had become worthy of such love from Cubans who made them see the light once more.
People are learning to read and write in dozens of countries in their own languages thanks to a Cuban method named "I can do it". For that the island has received recognition from UNESCO and, most of all, from people who have benefited from literacy campaigns which have extended the fame of Cuban teachers from Central America to New Zealand.
That is hardly all that Cuba is doing to make this a better world. Scientists of the island have made great advances in finding cures for head and neck cancers with monoclonal agents that are now undergoing clinical tests in Germany, Italy, Canada, China and India. In particular, the HR-3 is a product now patented and sold in Colombia, Argentina and Brazil.
Nothing material ties Cuban intelligentsia. Their personal pride and joy is to help other peoples besides their own countrymen, make their mark for generations to come. Being a country poor in energy and other natural resources, the Cuban government dedicated all its efforts to develop the country´s human resources and the love for all those who suffer over the world.
The big media does not care very much to reveal that face of Cuban reality. On the contrary, they find it more interesting to highlight if President Fidel Castro has so much money in bank accounts abroad. Coming from a landtenant family, Fidel and his brother Raul renounced their relatives´ wealth to fight for that which they thought was right. His modesty and austere lifestyle are proverbial. People would not have it otherwise, he has been an example in their strive to resist aggression, economic blockade and discredit campaigns.
Like a Cuban song goes, we don´t have a perfect society but try to improve our quality of life each day. Life expectancy is almost reaching 80 years, while infant mortality is below 6, health indicators similar or higher than those of many developed nations.
Our greatest wealth is passing on to other peoples what little knowledge we have or, when necessary, helping them rid themselves from something so denigrating as the apartheid regime.

Three for a Real Integration Alternative

2006-05-19T14:45:00.001-07:00

At the beginning there was only a dream. Bolivar passed it down to younger generations and now Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has started to make it come true, a real alternative for Latin American and Caribbean countries to unite in cooperation and solidarity.
The Free Trade Agreement for the Americas (FTAA) led by the United States is on life support. The wolf showed its large ears and voracious appetite and peoples in the region were fooled no longer. There is the good example of Mexico, whose agriculture was overrun in the last 10 years by subsidized American products.
A country full of natural resources is being sucked out of its riches. That is the reason for so many marches and protests all over the region, millions of people against ALCA (FTAA in Spanish).
The word of order now is ALBA -Alternativa Bolivariana para America Latina y el Caribe as it is known in Spanish- proposed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Already formed by Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba, ALBA has showed it works and short-term too.
Venezuela boasts today practically no illiteracy, universal medical attention, low unemployment rate, more profits from the oil industry to develop social programs, among other benefits of a socialism-oriented government.
Cuba has grown at unprecedented rates over the last two years, while participating in multinational entities like PetroCaribe to alleviate the energy bill of the region and in medical programs like Operation Miracle that has given back their sight to over a hundred thousand patients in a little more than a year, besides the literacy campaigns in Venezuela, Bolivia and a dozen other countries.
Now Bolivia will begin to profit from cooperation under ALBA and from the nationalization of its oil and gas industries.
The road to development is not free from obstacles. Domestic right-wing sectors favoring Washington´s interference, corporations hit by nationalist policies and the wide assortment of obstacles put forward by US policy are more than enough. But the desire to build a better world for these peoples will lead the way forward.

Goliath, an All-Time Loser

2005-11-08T12:58:00.000-08:00

For 14 years in a row, a modern David bashed Goliath with only evidence and reason as its major weapons at the UN General Assembly Tuesday, when 182 members voted yes to a resolution demanding the end to the US blockade against Cuba.
Even though victory was expected, many were surprised when the voting list at the General Assembly hall showed the results: 182 countries voted to put an end to the blockade against Cuba, while 4 said No and only one abstained. Last year’s record figure of 179 countries in support of the island was considered difficult to beat.
Cuba’s unfaltering diplomacy and solidarity explains the overwhelming support received in New York. So many were the number and quality of sympathetic speeches from country members that the US withdrew its name from the list of speakers and left the plenary, said Cuban foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque in a telephone interview from Havana.
Perez Roque mentioned numerous examples of how the blockade harms not only the Cuban economy, but its people and business partners all over the world. The resolution voted today at the UN highlights the principles and norms violated by the US when applying laws with extraterritorial reach like the Helms-Burton Act approved in 1996.
The irrational US policy even hurts its own national interests. A recent Southern Alabama study showed that eliminating the blockade would generate 100,000 new jobs and seven billion dollars in additional income to the US economy.
Instead of broadening the scope of medical attention programs, as over 38 million of its citizens have no access to medical insurance, the United States expends ever greater amounts of money in persecuting Americans who travel to Cuba or buy Cuban products in third countries, including cigars and rum.
Three hundred sixteen US residents were fined last year by the Office of Foreign Assets Control for infringing regulations of the blockade and, as of August of this year, 477 have been fined with up to one million dollar fines for corporations, and for individuals, 250 thousand dollars and ten years in jail.
In spite of the prohibition to visit Cuba, however, US travel magazine readers chose it as the best island in the Caribbean, and among the 115 best destinations in the world.
Thus, the country once identified as the champion of liberty and cradle of pragmatism, is today more isolated internationally for upholding a failed policy that is also self-destructive.

Wilma Gone, Cuba Recovering

2005-10-26T06:22:00.000-07:00

Havana, Oct 25 (Prensa Latina) Cuba began recovery works Tuesday after 10 days of hurricane Wilma roaring off the Island, with no death reports but large damage to agriculture due to torrential rains and floodings.
Pinar del Río, the most ravaged province, returned to normal life after four days of heavy rains and strong winds.
The western Cuban province is facing a very complex situation due to the heavy rains on land that is already saturated with water.
The Cuban capital has already started to recover, where the sea flooding was more intense, chiefly in those areas close to the Havana´s sea drive wall.
Pinar del Rio province´s Defense Council reported damages in agriculture, mainly in the banana and yucca crops, as well as in tobacco and vegetable seedbeds.
After more than three days of heavy rains, strong winds and sea flooding, the Isle of Youth also started its recovery phase.
The massive mobilization is focused on the recovery of agricultural products found in flooded fields or damaged plantations and their distribution to the population. Over 2,600 tons of grapefruit are expected to be picked up.
Power service was totally restored on the Isle of Youth and most evacuated residents returned to their homes. Sea and air transport was restored Tuesday in that special Cuban municipality, as well as the phone service.
National long distance and international phone service is also working with no difficulty.
The Ministry of Education decided to start classes again Tuesday, except in those schools still damaged by flooding.

New Auction of Cuban Artworks

2005-10-08T08:33:00.000-07:00

The Cuban capital will host the 4th Havana Artworks Auction through Internet in early October.

Officials from the National Council of Fine Arts pointed out that 46 lots of paintings from different periods and styles will be auctioned.

At the same time, 64 lots will be auctioned at the Taganana Hall at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba. The previous edition of the auction, which has attracted galleries and private collectors from all over the world, raised 725,000 dollars, said official sources.

At this year's event, dedicated to the artist Fidelio Ponce de León, artworks by Valentín Sanz Carta and Antonio Rodríguez Morey, in addition to paintings from the 18th century, including a Nazarene by Armando Tarazona, will be open to bidding.

Among the artists whose works will be auctioned for the first time are Mirta Cerra, Carlos Quintana, López Derube, Carmelo González, Jorge Rigol, Cleva Solís and Conrado Massaguer.

Proceedings from these sales go to cover part of state expenses in arts education and materials. For more details on the auction´s catalogue, see website www.cubarte.cu

The Embargo Works both Ways

2005-10-08T08:17:00.000-07:00

The unprecedented escalation of the US economic, commercial and financial blockade of Cuba during the 2nd Bush administration not only causes social and economic harm to the Cuban people (more than $82 billion in the over 40-year-blockade), but seriously damages the US people as well.
Last year Washington augmented the extraterritorial nature of the siege in its attempt to destroy the Cuban Revolution, and applied more regulations, sanctions, and threats that limit the rights of citizens and businesses, both within and outside the US.
As only one example: on September 30, 2004 the Treasury Department declared that citizens or permanent residents in the US may not legally buy any products that originate in Cuba, including tobacco and drinks, even in a third country.
Such restriction includes buying articles for personal use only in a foreign country.
The penal sanctions for violation of this restriction could be fines of up to one million dollars for corporations, and for individuals, 250 thousand dollars and ten years in jail.
Three hundred sixteen US residents were fined last year by the Office of Foreign Assets Control for infringing regulations of the blockade and, as of August of this year, 477 have been fined.
US research centers and universities assert that elimination of the blockade could generate 100,000 jobs and six billion dollars for the US economy. In agriculture and other exports, the US loses some 1.24 billion dollars annually from the blockade.
The University of Florida estimated that, ten years after lifting the blockade, US exports to Cuba would range between 6 billion and 9 billion dollars a year.
In spite of the prohibition to visit Cuba, US magazine readers chose it as the best island in the Caribbean, and among the 115 best in the world.
If they were allowed to travel to Cuba, 66.8 percent of people in the US (in 2001) said they would go; roughly 2.8 million US citizens and 289,000 Cuban residents ann ually.
Analysts in both countries indicate the great potential gains for US companies if they were not limited in trade with Cuba, particularly in energy, food, agriculture, pharmacology, and biotechnology.
In sum, final elimination of the economic, commercial and financial blockade of Cuba would result in a notable enhancement of US income, expansion of its economy, increase in employment, and the pleasure of visiting this most beautiful island.
(Written by Cira Rodriguez of Prensa Latina, published on Oct.8,2005)

In Spite of Dennis, Cuba will grow 9 per cent this Year

2005-08-05T12:26:00.000-07:00

In spite of suffering heavy losses due to drought ($1.2 billion dollars) and hurricane Dennis ($1.4 billion), president Fidel Castro announced a sturdy growth rate of 7.3 per cent for the first half of 2005 and an estimated 9 per cent for the whole year, speaking at the Moncada Fortress attack´s 52nd anniversary commemoration.
He denied gloomy versions published by international media about the economy´s performance, taking into account the frequent and prolonged power cuts that affect the industrial and service sectors since last year.
According to official statistics, the most outstanding performances corresponded to branches as mining, oil production and tourism. It was said that 13 of 22 economic activities showed increase during the first half of the year.
Nickel production reached 38,200 metric tons in the first six months and export earnings that were the highest in the Cuban economy, while income from the tourism sector increased by 5 per cent with 66.9 percent occupation level. Over 1,920 rooms will be made available this year to the island´s hotel capacity.
Software production and assembly of TV sets doubled as compared to the same period of 2004. Domestic crude oil production went up by 9.2 per cent, but generation of electricity was down by more than 4 per cent due to delays in plant repairs, deficit of installed capacity and damages left by Dennis.
However, the Cuban president assured that present power generation capacity, around 2,000 MW would be doubled by the middle of next year due to the expansion of present plants and construction of new ones.
As to the country´s housing deficit, Fidel Castro assured that next year´s plan would amount to 100,000 homes, more than double this year´s estimate. Besides the 7,300 houses built before July´s hurricane, another 10,000 would be built for those who lost their homes in the storm and 30,000 additional lodgings will be made available, he said, before the end of 2005.

Dennis´s Toll: Sixteen dead and 1.4 billion dollars in damages

2005-08-05T12:16:00.000-07:00

An economic insight into hurricane Dennis´s damages to Cuba is barely one indicator of the meteor´s impact. Its path of destruction exposed sensitive areas of the island´s economy as power generation and electric lines, together with the lack of independent energy sources for water and gas distribution networks.
A preliminary assessment of losses reaches 1.4 billion dollars, only 10 months after the extensive damages inflicted by hurricane Charlie in 2004.
Around 1.5 million people were evacuated from their living areas, the highest figure ever. From these, 245 thousand were given shelter and the rest went to houses of friends and family.
In spite of the extensive preventive measures, the toll of 16 fatal victims shows that resources for the people´s own protection are missing, such as building materials to secure roofs, storm lanterns, kerosene to light them, ropes and candles.
The official report says that 13 victims lived in the province of Granma, 2 in Santiago de Cuba and one in Sancti Spiritus, dying mostly due to landslides and flooded rivers. These would have practically been doubled if army amphibious vehicles had not saved dozens of dwellers in rural Havana areas, many of which had been evacuated and returned to their homes only to be surprised by a sudden surge of water from overflowed dams.
A total of 120 thousand homes were severely damaged, of these 15 thousand total collapses, 25 thousand suffered partial collapse, 24 thousand lost their roofs and another 60 thousand lost part of their covers. Hurricane Dennis came only ten months after the devastation left by Charlie and when replacement of houses destroyed by that storm was still incomplete.
Sugar cane, banana, rice and other plantations were ravaged. Chicken farms were practically blown away, killing 73,000 birds.
In spite of harsh difficulties, people started immediately to repair damages. Main power lines are connected again and hope for the next hurricanes in a season that lasts until November, miss Cuba in their destructive path.

Posada: Profile of Terrorism with Possible Link to the JFK Murder

2005-05-21T15:35:00.000-07:00

Declassified documents of the CIA and the FBI on Luis Posada Carriles confirmed his connection to the bombing of a Cuban civil plane in 1976, the advance intelligence handed to the CIA four months before the explosion and a link that could eventually lead as far back as the murder of John F. Kennedy.
The first report is dated June 22, 1976 on "Possible Plans of Cuban Exile Extremists to Blow Up a Cubana Airliner." The second warning on the terrorist plan was given to US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger by the State Department´s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. The report noted that a CIA source had overheard Posada in late September, stating that "We´re going to hit a Cuban airliner."
According to the National Security Archive, a non-government US organization in Georgetown University in Washington, there is no indication that the CIA alerted Cuban government authorities to the terrorist threat against Cubana planes.
Still classified CIA records indicate that the informant might have been Posada himself who at the time was in periodic contact with both the CIA and FBI agents in Venezuela. Another source "all but admitted that Posada and (Orlando) Bosch had reengineered the bombing of the airliner." The posting includes several documents relating to Bosch and his suspected role in the downing of the jetliner.
An article published by The New York Times on May 10, refers to the declassified documents and traces the Agency´s recruitment of Posada to the 1960s and was in regular contact with the CIA at least until June 1976.
One of the declassified documents says the CIA states that Posada "has been of operational interest to this Agency since April 1965".
Before that date, Posada had already done a lot for Uncle Sam, since the CIA trained him for the abortive 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of his native Cuba, although the ship he was supposed to take never touched Cuban territory because events quickly turned the balance in favour of the island´s forces, victorious in less than 72 hours.
Two years later, researcher Wim Dankbaar of Holland (dank@xs4all.nl) shows through a series of links to more evidence that places Posada and other terrorists of Cuban origin in Dallas, exactly at the time of John F. Kennedy´s killing. There is also photographic evidence of another familiar face in Daley Plaza, that of George H.W. Bush, scarcely-known businessman who many assure began his commitment to the CIA long before he was appointed director of the Agency in 1976.
Posada appears in a document of April, 1972 as a high level official at the Venezuelan intelligence service, DISIP, in charge of demolitions. Some of the plastic explosives used then may have assisted him in carrying out the bombing of the Cuban plane.
In 1985, Posada escaped from prison in Venezuela where he had been incarcerated after the plane bombing and remains a fugitive from justice. He went directly to El Salvador, where he worked, using the alias "Ramon Medina" on the illegal Nicaraguan contra resupply program run by Oliver North in the Reagan National Security Council.
In 1998, Posada was interviewed by Ann Louise Bardach of The New York Times in some secret location of Aruba, where he claimed responsibility for a string of hotel bombings in Havana hotels that caused the death of a young Italian tourist, Fabio di Celmo.
After that, he was arrested and condemned in Panama when he and other three accomplices tried to assassinate Fidel Castro in December, 2000 when they planned to blow the university´s main hall with 33 pounds of C-4 explosives where the Cuban president was supposed to speak.
In September, 2004 two days before the end of president Mireya Moscoso´s mandate, she indulted them, in coordination with high US officials and representatives of terrorist groups based in Miami. Posada went then to Honduras.
Peter Kornbluh, director of the Archive´s Cuba Documentation Project, says that Posada´s presence in the United States "poses a direct challenge to the Bush administration´s terrorism policy.
The declassified documents, he said, "leaves no doubt that Posada has been one of the world´s most unremitting purveyors of terrorist violence."

There is No Such Thing as a Little Voice

2005-05-18T23:30:00.000-07:00

Over 1.2 million Havana residents marched on Tuesday through the sea drive -malecon- in another great occasion for demanding the arrest and extradition to Venezuela of notorious terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.
Surprisingly, that same day shortly after the giant march got underway, things were happening in Miami. The confessed terrorist gave a press conference in some warehouse in Hialeah, denied having anything to do with the bombing of a Cuban civil airplane in 1976 and declared the US as his best ally in the war against Cuba.
Soon after that and the interview published by The Miami Herald that same day, authorities were compelled to do "something" and thus agents of the Home Security Department, took him "gently and friendly-like" to some migration detention center, obviously to buy time until the White House decides what it will do with this embarassing "creature" of its own creation.
Victims of the numerous terrorist actions perpetrated by Posada and his accomplices, as well as the families of those killed by them have been claiming for justice, not vengeance, after more than 30 years. They now fear as the rest of Cubans that they may never see justice served.
A month ago, however, when versions got around that Posada had managed to enter US territory and was hiding out in Miami until he was given formally asylum, Fidel Castro engaged on a real communications crusade, with TV and radio broadcasts from the Convention Palace every second day or at least three times a week. People wondered if this would have any bearing at all on the case.
Now things are moving through international pressure. Not only Venezuela claims extradition, Chile wants Posada and Bosch´s relation to Pinochet´s DINA and the murder of Orlando Letelier be clarified. Other serious research on the JFK case even place Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Guillermo Novo Sampol, Felix Rodriguez and others in the Dallas plaza where John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Nearby, George Bush senior was watching the magnicide unfold. Everything smells so fishy, it´s frightening, to say the least.

Sixty years after, symptoms of Fascism gain ground

2005-05-09T09:07:00.000-07:00

The surrender of German arms on this day of 1945 did not do away with fascism, in spite of the dozens of millions of human beings that lost their lives in the Second World War.
Helped by the world´s unipolarity, an hegemonic system is imposed today on the six billion persons inhabiting the planet. Torture flourishes, terrorism is fanned by fundamentalist beliefs, not only in Islamism or Sionism but also among Christians, like the ones who backed George W. Bush and helped reelect him.
A culture of violence is trying to override pacifism and the solution of world differences at the negotiation table. No arguments are needed to invade Iraq, Afghanistan or have prisoners tortured in the US Base of Guantanamo or any hidden detainment centers throughout the world´s geography.
Rational, peace-loving people, of any creed or political affiliation, are summoned to prevent Fascism from gaining a stronghold once again. Thousands of personalities of the culture, legislative bodies, science and the business communities have already called to avert the threat.
Don´t lag behind, express yourself and join the voices that cry out against war and violence in any of its forms, from home to armed confrontation in any of the world´s hot spots.

Cuban Webs gain Visibility in Internet

2005-04-29T16:05:00.000-07:00

For Cubans, the most popular search motor in the world-wide web has come to be Google, although most of the e-mail accounts are found in Yahoo!.
To get the most out of their connection to Internet, journalists are catching up with the latest news on the web. Victor A. Fernandez, webmaster of Transtur, company of rent-a-car and taxi services, said that key words like Cuba in Google register 37.8 million entries daily in 2005, compared to 10 million last year.
In a lecture given as part of a course on Digital Journalism at the International Institute of Journalism "Jose Marti" in Havana, Fernandez said that searches under Cuba-Habana registered 1.830 million visits, while Cuba-Press had 156.8 million and Cuba-Prensa 9.7 million.
Among the most visited sites by those who searched Cuba were Lami, a Texas directory of links to Cuba-related websites, cubaweb, cubatravel and down in the list some Cuban media.

Real Joy for Workers´ Day in Cuba

2005-04-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

Salary raise has always been good news for workers everywhere and 1.6 million or about four out of every ten Cuban workers will see their income significantly increased, even doubled for many.
After the first announcement in March by president Fidel Castro of raising pensions for retired or disabled people, to a minimum of 150 pesos per month, in April came the news of a raise in minimum wages, from 100 to 225 pesos per month.
This will represent additional expenses for the national budget of over two billion pesos this year, but economic recovery has been sturdy enough to finance it. Budget deficit should still be under or about three per cent of the Gross Domestic Product, considered a manageable figure.
Hikes in nickel mining, oil and gas production, power generation and a boost in access to foreign credit, given by the agreements signed with China and Venezuela, support the decision to increase salaries and pensions, as well as the distribution at subsidized prices of household appliances.
That is why the May 1st parade next Sunday is expected to be one of the most colorful and enthusiastic ever.

Havana Club: 18 million bottles of rum to 170 countries

2005-04-24T17:41:00.000-07:00

The star product of French-Cuban joint venture Havana Club International, sponsored by Cuba Ron and Pernaud-Ricard, is gaining space in this very competitive market.
Founded in 1993 and after international court litigations still in process to obtain the right of distribution in the United States, Havana Club sold last year 18 million bottles of rum to 170 countries, said Regla Jimenez, Marketing Director of Cuba Division of the company at a conference on occasion of the fifth anniversary of the Rum Museum in old Havana.
Located facing the Avenida del Puerto in Havana docks, the oldest part of the city, the Museum has had over 424 thousand visitors from 60 countries. It hosts a wide variety of aged rums, from the traditional 7 and 15 years to the new Cuban Barrel Proof and solera San Cristobal de La Habana.
The museum introduces visitors to the mysteries of distillation based on sugar cane molasses, as ancient as the four-century-old sugar industry.
Jimenez said they are working on linking rum to other Cuban products like habanos (hand-rolled cigars) and coffee.
Other options open to visitors are the Havana-Club gallery with samples of Cuban contemporary art, a bar-restaurant, a souvenir store and the patio, where you may drink guarapo (sugar cane juice) alone or combined with rum.
Albert, prince of Monaco together and local prima ballerina assoluta, Alicia Alonso and singer Cesar Portillo de la Luz are among the famous who have visited the museum.

Hot Potato on Bush´s Court

2005-04-16T00:34:00.000-07:00

People in Cuba can´t help but wonder what is the use of International Law and multilateral organizations if they contribute to and support violations of basic principles as the right of prisoners to a fair trial and not be tortured as they have been lately in Iraq and Guantanamo, no less than is usual practice in US prisons.
Take the UN Commission on Human Rights for instance. An increasing movement in member countries against a US resolution accusing Cuba of human rights violations, which has included politicians, personalities of the cultural and scientific communities, businesspeople, trade unions and parliaments all over the Western hemisphere has demanded their governments to vote against the spurious document introduced by the US delegation in Geneva.
One of the most evident cases of protecting a terrorist, while proclaiming a crusade against terrorism, is intending to give Luis Posada Carriles´ an asylum status, after all that has been said, published and sanctioned by a court in Venezuela which found him guilty of masterminding and making a Cubana airplane explode in 1976 after leaving Barbados for Havana with 73 passengers on board.

If there was any room left for doubt about the terrorist nature of these extreme-right murderers, a conversation was screened today over the TV between Santiago Alvarez, Posada Carriles´ alleged lawyer and a man who was already under arrest by Cuban authorities on Alvarez´ instructions to engage in sabotages to different objectives in the island, in particular the famous Tropicana cabaret.
There is a lot more evidence in possession of the Cuban government that demanded from Washington an answer to the abundant and serious charges made by president Fidel Castro in three TV appearances this week.
The hot potato is now in Bush´s court.

Nothing Strange about the Cuban Peso´s Revaluation

2005-03-19T05:31:00.000-08:00

After four years at an exchange rate of 26 per dollar, the Cuban Peso (CUP) began to edge up as of Friday, March 18. It is now set at 24 for sale and 25 for buying to the Convertible Peso (CUC), whose value equals officially to the US dollar.

In that period of time, the country withstood the impact of world economic recession. According to the official website of the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC), the existence of a double circulation (of the US Dollar and the Cuban Peso until November, 2004 and since that date with the CUC, because USD circulation was suspended from all domestic transactions) makes monetary policy more difficult to conduct.

The goal of the BCC has always been to return to one currency, the CUP, in which salaries and most commercial transactions are carried out. A solution to this was offset by the world economic recession and its impact on the Cuban economy.

Over the last months, more exactly in the last quarter, several positive factors have developed to make the return to one-currency circulation possible. An oil deposit discovery, together with favorable agreements signed with China and Venezuela have given the island a more solvent financial situation.

In Central Bank´s terms, the money made available by the improved conditions in the countrys foreign finances can help to reduce the deficit in Cuba´s current account of the Balance of Payments, particularly in the middle and long terms, conveying a gradual increase in International Reserves to acceptable levels.

As this situation improves, so will the access to foreign credit. And contrary to what has been the experience through Latin America, it is the first time the value of national currency recovers after a nasty fall.

Double circulation was allowed in Cuba in 1993, when the country´s economy hit rock bottom in the worst crisis of its history. The US dollar had reached an informal exchange rate of 150 pesos to the dollar. As the country´s economy began edging up in 1994, so did the peso and by the end of the last decade it had stabilized at 20 pesos to the dollar.

Washington had banned Cuba from using the US currency in foreign transactions, but dollars kept coming into the country from family remittances and tourism. European banks and private companies doing business with Cuba accepted the US currency in payment, until the US Treasury Department fined the SBS of Switzerland for 100 million dollars for including Cuba in a dollar-bill exchange of the US Federal Reserve.

Persecution of Cuban exports and money transactions was heightened by the Bush administration and this determined the Cuban government to ban the dollar from circulating inside the country and to get rid gradually of its greenback reserves, which by the way, were losing its value by the day facing the euro, the yen and other hard currencies.

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What goes from Macho to Woman Power

2005-03-07T15:35:00.000-08:00

International Women´s Day has taken roots in Cuba and not only because women, young and old, are given flowers or candy like on Valentine´s Day.
A lot of changes have taken place in the minds of men in this country and you can see them when a young father cleans his house, handles the family´s washing machine, or takes the baby for a walk around the block.
I come from Spanish families on both sides, one born in Spain and the other first-generation Cuban-born of Spanish origin. That may look the same, but it isn´t. Changes began slowly taking place since the wars for Independence in the 19th century. My mother´s family, for instance, was very dependent on one man. My grandfather worked at a tailor shop first and later put up his own business of shoe-making and repairs. He was tender with his grandchildren, which did not hide the fact that his three daughters were only allowed to work at home until they were married.
My mother took to sewing not because it was what she liked best, in fact what she really loved was teaching, but her contribution to the family´s income came from the dresses, bedspreads and lingerie she sewed. She and her sisters were allowed to study but then they had to work -at home. For example, my mother took shorthand and stenography lessons but could never work in an office. First, my grandfather forbid it and then, my father.
After my father´s premature death (36), however, she was confronted with a very hostile environment for a woman to work in. My dad had a retail store where animal feed and farm tools were sold for the small farms near the town of San Francisco de Paula, on the outskirts of Havana.
In 1959, everything began to change. A year later, to help my mother and younger sisters, I began to work before the authorized age of 18, for I was only 16, as a secretary. Reticent as she was to let me "out into the world", my mother gradually understood times were changing, for one could feel a new environment of respect for working people.
The sister following me volunteered for the Literacy campaign to teach farmers and their families to read and write. She was only 14. Then my younger sister chose a military career.
My own mother saw all her youth dreams of women taking their place in society come true. My father´s side of the family was more open to change and one of my aunts became my paradigm of women´s liberation. She taught us to defend our rights as women and demand respect to our beliefs.
Although Cuba had one of the more progressive constitutions in Latin America since the 1940´s, it was not until 1959 that it really began to mean something. Women could vote, could get divorced, which was not possible for our gender in most Latin American countries and became professionals.
Now, equality is a constitutional right, most of our scientists are women, there are women Ministers, Party officials, Members of Parliament. No barriers stand in the way of feminine ingenuity, on the contrary, it is stimulated.
Of course there are many vestiges of macho attitudes resisting change. Women are battered and harassed at home and at the workplace, but it becomes an ever less frequent reality.
Like a popular song goes, "we don´t live in a perfect society" but people in general are perfecting it every day.

Sandinista Congress Demands Release of Cuban Five

2005-03-07T15:20:00.000-08:00

Havana, Mar 7. The Congress of the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) approved a resolution of solidarity with Cuba, demanding the immediate release of five Cubans imprisoned in the US for trying to thwart terrorist actions against the island.
The text denounces the worsening the US blockade against the Caribbean island as of a group of measures adopted June 30, 2004 by the US government aimed to reduce the entry of dollars here, restricting Cuban-Americans from travel to their native land and reducing ways to send remittances and packages.
The document also alerts against the dangers of an aggression against Cuba as a result of that aggressive policy, and calls for the people of the world to redouble their solidarity with the largest of the Antilles.
Another aspect of the resolution is the collaboration benefits between Havana and Nicaragua in education and health fields, and the return to the homeland of the first 178 Nicaraguan physicians graduated in Cuba.
Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez, Ramon Laba¤ino and Rene Gonzalez were arrested in 1998 in the United States, charged with conspiracy and convicted by a Miami court to harsh sentences ranging from 15 years to double life imprisonment.
Their real crime was gathering information about terrorist plots by anti-Cuban organizations in Miami, Florida, in an effort to prevent the deaths of Cuban and even United States citizens.
The FSLN top meeting appointed Daniel Ortega as candidate of the FSLN and National Convergence Party to the presidential elections scheduled for November 2006.
For more information, visit the Prensa Latina English website at: www.plenglish.com

Arthur Miller: Literature Myth and Man of Conscience

2005-02-14T12:18:00.000-08:00

Broadway may have dimmed its bright lights in respectful good-bye to one of its greates playwrights, but Arthur Miller, dead at 89, is praised and recognized the world over, including Cuba, where his visit in the year 2000 is still remembered.
Daily Granma published Saturday an obituary note whose last paragraph recalls Miller´s visit to Havana, together with other eight US cultural figures and the defense he made of the Cuban´s right to self-determination.
Lisandro Otero, vice president of the Cuban Writers and Artists´Union and awarded novelist said Miller will remain as the writer which with greater audacity bashed the intolerance that spread in the US during the Cold War, for fear that socialism overtook the world.
An article under his signature for on-line review Cuba Literaria, Otero says Arthur Miller dared say rigid fanatism was not only of post-war years but it had also shown itself in other times like the setting of The Witches of Salem, New England.
His work shook the conscience of intellectuals in the US at a time when a trial on the so-called “Hollywood Ten” was a display of ideological repression, says Lisandro Otero who recalls having met the playwright in October 1986 when Kirguizian novelist Chinguiz Aitmatov led a group of intellectuals at the invitation of Mikhail Gorbatchev.
From the US attended Arthur Miller, black novelist James Baldwin, Nobel Prize winner Claude Simon, Russian playwright Peter Ustinov and futurologist Alvin Toffler and we were to witness the first hints of Gorbatchev´s theories on “perestroika”, to have such disastrous consequences for socialism in Eastern Europe.
Contrary to Truman Capote and Norman Mailer, Miller succeeded in judging and condemning the two most conspicuous monsters of his time: intolerance and the cruelty of daily life in a hostile environment, asserts Otero.
US newspapers like the Chicago Tribune compared Miller to Eugene O´Neill and Tennessee Williams. Another consulted playwright even said Miller´s work is as significant as Anton Chekhov´s.
Whatever rank he may be given in theater and literature history, Arthur Miller will be remembered as an undisputed man of conscience.

Go Puff Somewhere Else!

2005-02-07T14:41:00.000-08:00

Cuba has just put into effect a ban on smoking in public places, but also, has forbidden the sale of cigarettes and cigars less than 100 meters away from schools, children´s day-care centers, young computer clubs and the like. The campaign makes intensive use of TV, radio and the media, highlighting the harm produced by smoking on people´s health.
About three years ago, I was having problems with my teeth. I had blamed it on work stress, very common in journalists like myself. But the dentist identified another scoundrel, smoking. I defended myself saying I really didn´t smoke that much, maybe four or five cigarettes a day. But he said something smokers rarely think of, that is, puffing away in a closed environment on other non-smokers´ breathing space.
I then reflected on the fact and quit altogether. I can tell you I began sensing a whole variety of aromas I was missing when I was a smoker, but also foul smells like bad breath and smoke taking away the oxygen my lungs and others´should be taking in.
Take my sister, for instance. She really puffed-away, in the range of two packets a day for too long. A smoking-related emphysema and the accompanying asthma reduced her oxygen intake progressively until a bad cold almost took her life. It is surprising how she is recovering just after two months. She has even gained weight and although nobody has made her promise she won´t take a cigarette again in her mouth, she is beginning to take this into her system.
The new Cuban regulations take into account that smoking is strongly rooted in a country land to the best tobacco the world over. There will not be any fines against violations, instead there will be a lot of persuasion.
Health authorities have revealed that while heart and vascular diseases have receded, lung cancer has increased, including among non-smokers that are compelled to inhale the tar and nicotine smokers puff out. If not for yourself, think about those other lifes you are putting in danger.
So go puff somewhere else!

DairyAmerica Inc. Sells Powder Milk to Cuba for USD$22 million

2005-02-07T13:14:00.000-08:00

Keith Murfield, president of DairyAmerica, Inc. a US dairy products company based in Fresno, California, ratified here on February 3 the interest of US entrepreneurs in establishing normal commercial links with Cuba.
Murfield advocated for establishing two-way commercial relations with Cuba based on mutual respect and favored the elimination of restrictions.
Cuban food import company ALIMPORT signed an agreement for the purchase of 10,000 tons of powder milk from Dairy America, for more than 22 million dollars. ALIMPORT president, Pedro Alvarez signed for the Cuban part.
Murfield said that both parties have fulfilled their commitments and his visit contributes to let know about the Cuban market"s potential in the US.
Alvarez was thankful for the work of congressmen and businesspeople from the US who promote the establishment of commercial relations in normal conditions.
Under the administration of US President George W. Bush, restrictions have been tightened. In June 2004, he limited chances for travelling to Cuba even more, among other unilateral measures.
Since the beginning of this incipient one-way trade in 2001, up to now, Cuba has imported US farm products for more than 1.4 billion dollars, with a volume of more than 3.918 million metric tons. Cuba has made its payments on time, despite the inexistence of direct banking relations.
According to official sources, since the beginning of the conversations, ALIMPORT has contacted more than 3,900 companies from 45 US states, and more than 3,000 US businessmen have visited Cuba.

Cuba Strengthens Links with Another Powerful Ally

2005-02-07T13:05:00.000-08:00

Havana and Tehran decided to step up cooperation in banking, food production, biotechnology, sports and education and snubbed Washington, whose new Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice ranks them both as “outposts of tyranny”.
The documents signed January 21 in Havana, have strengthened their bilateral links by signing several cooperation, trade, scientific and economic agreements. The accords were the result of the Tenth Mixed Intergovernment Commission for Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation, held in the Cuban capital and signed by Cuban government minister Ricardo Cabrisas and Iranian minister of Agriculture and Reconstruction, Mahmud Hojjati.
The agreement, according to sources from the Ministry for Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation, and the Iranian embassy includes a credit of $20 million euros (about 26 million USD) for the production of food and the acquisition of equipment and means to help reduce the effects of the lengthy drought that of late has spread to all the country. Cuba alreay had a credit line from Iran which is used to finance imports for the sugar and light industries.
Minister Mahmud Hojjati as saying the credit line could be increased. Other areas included water resources, transport, construction, sports and education, said minister Cabrisas to local media. The agreement is open, he stated, to include any other branch of the economy that might be of interest for both parts.
Iran will gain, among other, greater cooperation from Cuba, technological transfer on biotechnology that will enable Iran to begin operating facilities to produce the Cuban vaccine against Hepatitis-B, as well as Interferon and other state-of-the-art pharmaceuticals.
Havana´s biological potential and Iran´s nuclear capacity are both heading the list of worries expressed but not proved by Washington on the two countries, both in the administration´s “black list”.
Analysts and international observers consider US accusations have made Cuba and Iran grow closer. Havana is interested in Iranian experience to increase farming productivity and irrigation networks, as the Islamic nation has very dry weather, but most important, it has modern power plants and long-dating experience in oil extraction and refining as well as a developed petrochemical sector.

Cuba expressed interest in auto transport and railroads. Iran set eyes on the sugar industry from previous years and bilateral cooperation marches smoothly. Several Iranian businessmen will come to Cuba for negotiations on the development of sugar cane by-products. There is also interest from both parts of exchange of experiences in the oil sector, as minister of the Basic (Heavy) Industry, Yadira Garcia, informed the press.
Iran has also received Cuban know-how since 1980 in health care, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, and grown over the last 25 years also in the sugar industry and sports.
Hojjati advanced there would be more credits coming and an Iranian exhibition in Havana.
The financial framework, said Hojjati, would ensure the broadening of cooperation and credits according to the needs of the projects.
There will be a boost in banking relations, said Cabrisas, with the next visit to Havana of the president of the Iranian Bank for Export Development, in order to improve mechanisms to make efficient use of the credit line and speed up the execution of contracts negotiated on that basis.
It was also known that over the last few weeks, a Preferential Trade Agreement will be signed as well as the Mutual Promotion and Protection of Investment protocol. Hojjati highlighted his country and Cuba are on an expansion trend and revealed that in a few months there will be an Exhibition of Iranian products to be held in the Cuban capital.
In August, 2004, Francisco Soberon, president of the Central Bank of Cuba, held a meeting with the Iranian ambassador here who expressed his government had the intention of increasing trade flows with Havana through joint ventures to produce and invest in Cuba.
These plans could point to an increase in Iranian production of detergent and cosmetics, which reached two billion dollars in 2004, items of high demand for the hotel and tourism sector in Cuba. Iran is precisely on the verge of completing one of the world´s biggest plants in aromatic petrochemicals with an installed capacity of 4.8 million tons per year.
All these steps will help make trade grow. Trade turnover over the last years has swinged between 30 and 50 million dollars a year to make Iran an important trading partner for Cuba, while the biotech factories could help the island to launch its products in the Middle East market.

Cuba´s Dollar Measure: Timely, not Desperate

2004-10-30T14:54:00.000-07:00

The US currency circulated freely in Cuba for more than half a century, until 1959. A few more years and the Cuban peso would have been discarded as is Panama´s currency, where the US dollar is king.
At the display of sovereignty and self-determination shown by the Revolutionary Government, the Eisenhower and later, the Kennedy administrations overreacted by placing a siege on this island that lasts to this day, made more inhumane and disregardful of international law over the years.
The Torricelli amendment (1992) and the Helms-Burton Law (1996) took care of that.
The US dollar was part of this aggression. It started by tthe ban on the use of the dollar by US banks, companies and citizens in connection to Cuba. The Department of the Treasury and in particular, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) was then assigned the task of persecuting and confiscating all Cuban assets in the United States.
Ten administrations have served their terms and this normalization is a long way off. The US extreme right sectors not only have made sure sanctions and more noose tightening are applied on Cuba, but have achieved that the blockade be extended to extraterritorial limits in violation of international law.
Since the US dollar was again accepted as legal tender in 1993, due to the drastic changes in Cuban foreign trade partners and the opening of the economy to foreign investment and tourism, Cuban economic authorities always said it was adopted as a temporary measure, until a more comprehensive monetary reform could be put in place.
In ten years, the Cuban economy underwent an economic upheaval, introducing some mechanisms of market economy, going through a decentralization process while keeping state control over the most important areas of industry and agriculture, health, education and social security.
From a free exchange rate of 150 pesos to the dollar in 1993, the Cuban currency began gaining strength in the domestic market, to stabilize in the 20-26 range for more than five years now.
The same cannot be said of the dollar. Its fate has been more uncertain each day over the last two years, while its rival the euro, European common currency, has made the European Union stronger.

Red Alert

As Lord William Rees-Mogg, former editor of The Times of London put it recently, “the world´s exchange system should be regarded as completely out of control”, and in the midst of the turmoil, the dollar.
Since economic recovery in the US was announced over two years ago, the unemployment rate is still high, consumer confidence reaches all-time lows and interest rates have ceased to be an option to incentivate growth because they are at their lowest level.
Budget deficit is reaching all-time highs, trade has not been boosted as expected by the weak dollar, and the war on Iraq has also taken its toll.
Anyone using dollars began to loose money, but the United States is still the biggest partner for countries in the greenback zone. The monetary restrictions on Cuba began touching foreign partners, like the Union de Banques Suisses (UBS), demanded by US courts for sending and receiving dollars from countries in Washington´s terrorist list, like Iran, Lybia, Cuba and Yugoslavia.
Probably fearful of losing assets in the United States, UBS agreed to pay a 100 million USD fine, never admitting to its operations as a crime, being as they are, a normal international banking practice.
Long before this UBS case, about two years ago, Cuba withdrew US coins from circulation, leaving only the fractions of the Cuban Convertible Peso, equivalent to one dollar.
Later, the dollar was banned from payments between enterprises. The business sector was only allowed to make payments between entities in Convertible Pesos.
As part of the plan to gradually withdraw the dollar from Cuba´s economy, came the October 25 announcement. On that same day the greenback came close to its lowest value facing the euro and other hard currencies, 1.29 per euro.
As for the 10 per cent tax imposed by Cuba to all dollars changed in the country after November 8, it is not meant to punish anyone, but to cover part of the country´s losses in this currency´s value abroad and the handling charge of international banks.
Nothing so desperate about that, just timely.

Fidel Castro: Business as Usual

2004-10-22T08:47:00.000-07:00

In public, Fidel Castro, 78, has only had three bad moments. The three were quickly accounted for by himself. The first was a voice failure back in 1960, during a Latin American youth gathering in the Havana stadium. There, his brother Raul continued the speech in his place, explaining he had faringitis. The second was decades after, about a year or so ago, when he fainted after a whole day without sleep and scarcely eating while delivering a speech in an open rally meeting and almost at midday under a scorching sun. Not five minutes had passed when he told the people there that he would be back on TV that evening, and so it was. The fall he had last Wednesday, October 20th, was no different. After speaking at a graduating ceremony of Art Instructors, he went to sit down again to greet people who were in the public. Suddenly, he stumbled on a ledge higher than he expected and fell headlong. He immediately knew he had broken his left knee-bone and injured his right arm. He said so over the microphone to the people still gathered there, assuring them he was in one piece, asking them to go on with the artistic part of the ceremony, and almost without showing the pain he must have been enduring. In his own words contained in a letter read over the news on TV Thursday night and published in Granma on Friday, the President tells how he was first driven to a house to assess the physical damage, given pain-killers and then moved to Havana by ambulance. The trip from Santa Clara to Havana usually takes little less than two hours by car. In the ambulance, the letter with his signature says, the occupants had a work session. They called Havana asking for information on what news agencies were saying about the accident and what would be needed to perform surgery on the patient. One phone call came in while still at the house in Santa Clara from Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who spoke with Foreign Relations Minister, Felipe Perez Roque and later, directly with Fidel, to inquire about his health. Once in Havana, he was taken to the Palace of the Revolution where a small medical center for emergencies is located. There they made the usual clinical tests and took X-Rays, after which it was confirmed that the most important complications were the fractured rotula (eight pieces) in the left knee. Doctors informed the patient they would have to operate, and with the patient´s nuance, they used spine fluid as anesthetic so he would be conscious during the surgery that lasted three hours and 15 minutes. The surgeons brought together all the rotula pieces with stainless steel thread. During surgery, says the letter, the president kept in touch with his chief assistant and kept on receiving information and giving instructions on how to handle the situation. Finally, after surgery his left leg was put into a cast and his right shoulder immobilized. Fidel Castro stresses, in conclusion, that at all times he kept handling state affairs as usual and that Cuban revolutionaries know what to do at every moment.

The Day US Supremacy was Only Second Best

2004-10-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

A day like today 47 years ago, the whole world had chance to hear, over radio and TV news programs, the first beep-beep of a man-made satellite in space. Scientists and engineers of the Western world were in shock. The Russians, the reds, the commies, had taken the virginity out of space travel. There had been an atom bomb, a hydrogen bomb and a powerful weapon called V-rockets, but in contrast with those weapons of mass destruction, this was the first invention born without a directly lethal purpose. That was until spy satellites and star wars devices came along. I was only 13 years old then, living in Miami, but I still remember the awe and debate which arose in our eighth-grade class. It was long before I knew what socialism and communism was all about, yet I felt such satisfaction that US supremacy had failed where underestimated Russian science had excelled. After all, I had already seen in movies, the press and on TV what American bombs had done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, one year after I was born. A new era was being born with incredibly good and bad consequences for the human race. The globalization process took giant steps forward by multiplying telecommunication options, bringing a world unknown out of the shadows and into the light, making distances so short as the movement of your hand to dial a phone number. The planet was something more than the United States, Europe and Japan. Knowledge and research results spread like wildfire. Even ferocious transnational corporations or hegemonic powers cannot prevent the truth from being known any more. According to Cuban scientist J. Alvarez Pomares, guest in Reinaldo Taladrid´s popular Sunday TV Program: Passport to the Unknown, the sputnik (it means travel companion in Russian) put into orbit by the former Soviet Union was very small, weighing a few pounds. Almost half a century later, there are 5,000 tons of metal debris orbiting in space at fantastic speeds of almost 20,000 miles per hour. This means that a piece the size of a marble might do the same damage as a heavy half-a-ton safe falling from a 10-story building. Only one company, the ATT has over 20 Intelsat satellites hovering the earth, military sats are capable today of detecting a softball from a height 22,000 miles up and tracking every move or conversation of persons and vehicles all over the world. A complex network of radars is responsible of keeping track of every particle of metal, operational satellite or space station, so they won´t hit any rocket launched or device put into orbit. There is a new project of an orbit lift, held by plaited giant wires, inside of which persons or satellites can be lifted to orbit without the launching of rockets, held to one point on the equator. This plan already in the stage of feasibility studies may prevent contamination from burning fuel, leaving no debris and much more secure. The catch is there are only a few places in the earth´s equator from which such a lift can be built. Alvarez Pomares even believes this elevator can become operational in about 20 years. Four years after the sputnik, there was another “first” for the USSR, the first man to orbit the earth and return alive after something more than an hour. Four decades after these momentous events, the situation changed radically. Russia cannot surprise us now, or challenge Washington´s arrogance, to mankind´s sorrow. Her wings were cut by the Western powers, but there still is China and India, which have come to achieve notable scientific development. Anyway, let´s just hope that scientific goals prevail over the military, that will only take us to global destruction.

Looking for my Classmates in the US

2004-10-03T07:28:00.000-07:00

There comes a time when, after raising a family and having done something with one´s life, people like to return to childhood friends and, in most occasions, turns out they will never get in touch with them again. In my case, I would love to find some of those who I remember the most among my classmates in the United States. I lived in the US from June, 1953 to May, 1958, one year in New York and four in Miami. From New York I don´t remember the names of my friends, just that of the school, The Good Shepherd, in a neighborhood called Washington Heights, I believe. My address was Vermilyea Avenue, near 200 St. and Broadway, that is all I recall. When I arrived at New York in the summer of ´53, to live with my aunt and uncle, I had recently lost my father from a heart attack, at the peak of his vitality, for he was 37. My mother had to get used to the idea of having me and my two sisters living with different relatives so that she could work. I was the eldest, 8, the middle one was 6 and the youngest a year and a half, so they were very difficult times for my mother, a widow at 36. Brave and foolish, she never married again because she couldn´t bare the thought of leaving her three girls alone with a stranger, even if he was her husband. Our status in Cuba at the time of my father´s death, 1952, was that of a low middle-class family. He owned a small retail store for selling animal feed and farming implements, near the town of San Francisco de Paula, made famous for having Ernest Hemingway, the Literature Nobel Prize winner, as one of its neighbors. Though I never got to meet him, I did go to his villa, La Vigía, during the early 50´s and, luckily, it remains today much the same as I remember it, very visited as a museum. In a New York State of Mind I am sorry now to have lived in New York for only one year, but the environment of the Vermilyea Avenue apartment, near 200 St. and Broadway, was beginning to get violent. I went to the Good Shepherd School and already when the school year started, I had learned enough English to make myself understood, thanks to watching TV programs, in particular cartoons and reading comic strips. Aside from English and Catechism, I learned very little that year. School programs had nothing new to teach me in third grade, because I had already finished fourth in Havana. My most exciting activities were the Saturday shopping trip downtown with my aunt and some picnics on Sundays to the Cloisters and Catskill mountains. About three years earlier, when I was six, I had been in New York to visit the relatives with whom I later lived for five years. On that occasion I went with my grandmother and had a great time, I visited the Zoo and the Museum of Natural History. I went to Radio City Hall and the Empire State building, Central Park and Fifth Avenue, the usual round of tourists. But most of all, I remembered passing the United Nations building and saying that someday I would work there. The prophecy has not come true, although I have been around a lot. Comparing my recollection with London, where I also lived for a year, working as correspondent for Prensa Latina, I still prefer New York. Today, still some of my cousin Jose Antonio Quintana´s children (already with families of their own) live in New York. I sent them a letter about nine years ago which they never answered. I invited them to come down and visit me in Havana. Beach and Biking in Miami Miami was a completely different experience. At the beginning of my stay there, 1955 and 1956, it was like living in a beach town, full of retired people, mostly Jewish. I often saw kids barefooted and thought: if I saw children like that in Havana they would surely belong to the poorest families or were probably orphans, street kids. Maybe that is why whenever I came to Cuba on vacations, I would walk the house barefooted and my mother would get angry and say I looked like a homeless kid, not a well educated girl like I was supposed to be. It was a time when movies and music encouraged the otherwise natural rebellious spirit in the young generation. James Dean and Sal Mineo were my heroes for a long time, not to say the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. Enough of “I Love Lucy” and other “family” series. I loved Dragnet and Sargent Friday and the westerns, more Alan Ladd than Roy Rogers. In 1957 and 1958, movies like the French “And God made Woman”, “The Karamazov Brothers”, forbidden by the Catholic Movie Guide, were a must-see for all the girls in my class. From the Gesu School, I remember Emil Tracy, Tommy Cheehan, Kino Sakamura and Kathleen Ostuni in 5th and 6th grade. I moved to St. Peter and Paul´s School in the South West area and passed 7th and 8th grade there. The latter belonged to the Order of St. Joseph. Priests and nuns were so natural there, they participated in school repairs, baseball and football games with the students and even joked with us girls about our boyfriends. In Cuba, I had been baptized and took my First Communion, but my family was not church-going. However, in Miami I made it a habit of going to mass on Sundays and even took my Confirmation vows. From that time I remember Carol Lundeen and my Cuban friends, Caridad Carballosa and Acacia Carreras. Their parents had fleed Cuba during the Batista dictatorship. In 1956, my mother sold our retail store in San Francisco de Paula and joined me in Miami together with my middle sister, Elina. My aunt found her a job in the same clothing workshop where she worked and rented a small apartment in the back of my aunt´s house. I became very money-conscious then, because we had to manage with a low salary of about $40 a week, $15 of which went to pay the rent. And if I told those were the most happy years of my childhood after my father´s death, nobody would believe it. Our main entertainment on weekends would be going to the beach with our aunt and uncle and on Sundays, walking all the way to downtown looking at the shop windows and dreaming of what we were going to buy when we saved enough money. Our family broke up again in October, 1957, when my mother had a gallbladder crisis and had to leave with my sister to Havana to have surgery, all in one hectic day. In the morning, she went to the doctor in Miami, who told her she needed to be hospitalized immediately and by nightfall, she was already being operated on in Havana, at a clinic to which we had continued paying our monthly fees. It took her over a month to recover and, as she had lost her job and my sister had to continue her school year, they both stayed in Havana and never went back to Miami. For that reason and already feeling homesick for Cuba, I decided to stay definitely at home that summer of 1958. One thing I still remember today when I pondered whether to go or to stay were the discrimination blacks were subjected to in the States, not even in Cuba did one see such actions as to segregate public transport, toilets and water fountains. While I was on the winning side, I felt ashamed of such behavior. Also, because American culture was so overpowering I felt it threw away all of our Latino living habits, customs and traditions. If anyone reading this piece in my blog happens to know or finds out about my friends, I would appreciate you tell them to get in touch with me.

2004-09-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

Fotos de mi familia

US-CUBA: The Least Common of all Senses

2004-09-23T01:25:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine always says that common sense is the least common of all senses. And that is dead true when it comes to describing US policy toward Cuba. Even though its launching was highlighted and well publicized, very few people in and out of the United States, even four months after May 6, 2004, know what the Commission for a Free Cuba really proposed in full to president George W. Bush. Again, it has been said that some parts of this report are kept secret. What has come to light from that 500-page Frankenstein is that it lacks common sense. While the White House has said once and time again that it wants to promote domestic opposition in Cuba, the outlay of changes in the document does not count on those people –maybe because they´re few, not respected and not qualified for the task? A brief look at the chapters of the Commission for a Free Cuba report, exposes why dissenters, even jailed ones, or Miami hard-core exiles are not good enough to carry out the transition Washington wants. Chapter One: Deals on measures to accelerate the “downfall” of the Cuban government. Except for the intention mentioned in the text to develop internal dissent, everything comes in neatly prepared modules, all made in the White House. Cubans seem not worthy even of some innovation in foreign democracy pret-a-porter implants. The one tagged Cuba is like a water drop to another with the one manufactured for Iraq. There is also a Coordinator of Transition, not yet appointed. The Coordinator to be named by the State Department is accompanied by a government fingered by Washington and a ready-made reconstruction plan to fatten corporations like Halliburton, close to the President´s and the Vice President´s hearts, or is it pockets? All institutions and government agencies must be modeled 100 percent to Washington´s likeness. As for ethics, no scruples. Everyone who denounces a breach of travel regulations or sending of remittances will be rewarded. Independence and sovereignty are hollow words once the reader gets to chapter 3. Chapter Two: Displays steps to satisfy basic needs of the population in health, education, housing and personal services remind me of the flagrant ignorance of what has gone on in this country for the last 45 years. Authors of the report did not even heed the information published by correspondents of US media in Havana. If it were not so serious, because this plan implies –and of that you can be sure- the virtual annexation of Cuba, it would make the most long-faced laugh. Children in Cuba are protected from birth with shots against the most common diseases, from TB, polyo, to mumps and small pox, eleven in all. Medical attention and education are free and now the “liberators” are going to make us pay for everything. Too bad if you belong to the vulnerable sectors of society like the handicapped, the aged or children below working age. Those who now receive state pensions, 1.2 million people in all, will lose the secured future they now have, having to pay for medical care, medicines and food without any subsidies. The example is near, over 45 million citizens in the United States lack medical insurance and other benefits Cubans take for granted. The part where it says the US will “organize programs to reeducate and requalify teachers and professors” made me remember the years when I studied in the US –one in New York and four in Miami- when I was astonished at the low level of elementary schools and the distorted facts in book of universal history. For instance, the French Revolution was mostly about how Lafayette and other Frenchmen had previously fought for the independence of the U.S. The Cuban war for independence was mentioned as the conflict where the intervention of Teddy Roosevelt´s rangers had saved the day and freed Cuba from Spanish rule. Even before 1959, Cuban schools were more advanced in Math and History than their equals in the U.S. This chapter speaks of creating a “Corps of Retirees” which would give work to those without any resources if they were in good health. Nothing is said about the sick and needy. They even plan to establish a Central Service for Child Adoption. No thanks, not to follow the fate of the “Peter Pan” children sent by their parents to the U.S. Chapter Three: All about how democratic institutions should be. Maybe we can be taught how millions of voters in the U.S. who cast their ballot for one candidate may mean nothing if the majority of that state´s electoral votes go to the rival candidate. Then that state is considered “all” Republican or “all” Democrat, while in the nation´s total the losing candidate gets more votes than the victorious one. Even if it is a fair election and not like the 2000 edition. For one, the State Department will have the responsibility of organizing and running a police corps. “Process former officials and members of the government, the party, security forces, mass organizations and other pro-government citizens”. That leaves only a few people out, if one takes into consideration the over one million just in Havana who have marched before the U.S. Interests Section to protest for issues like the return of Elian, or the freedom of the five anti-terrorists unjustly sentenced in the U.S. All legal institutions will be restructured in correspondence with the US judicial system, which lets terrorists go free like the Bin Laden family and the men who blew up a Cuban plane in 1976 and tried to kill the Cuban president in Panama several years ago, to just mention two actions. Allegedly “free” elections are going to be planned according to the USAID 1998 manual, or Transition Election Planning Manual for Cuba. At least this was planned before the Iraq invasion, but with the same consequences: a fierce and bloody opposition to occupying forces. Chapter Four: On the establishment of a free market economy. First things, first. “The government of the United States will encourage an early declaration by Cuba of solving the assets (those nationalized by Cuba from US and national big landholders, utility companies, refineries) issue as soon as possible.” Here goes the first money and asset extraction from the country they are supposed to help. There will be a Commission on Restitution of Property Rights (CRDP) to accelerate this process. Of course there is also a US Permanent Committee for Economic Reconstruction of the country. Here come in the Pentagon contractors and suppliers. “The US government will be ready to encourage Cuba to liberalize prices on the short term, including energy products”. This means the US companies will be sole suppliers of oil and gas at high market prices while Cuban domestic production must compete with subsidized US food produce, farm machinery and others. Ask Mexico about it. Plans include of course a privatization program and plans to prepare industries and enterprises for the change of owners. Where will the money come from for reconstruction? That’s easy. More indebtedness, thanks to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Interamerican Development Bank, though nothing is said of giving Cuba credit facilities, just of returning to the cage of their rules. Chapter Five: Deals on the “Modernization of Infrastructure.” The U.S. government will support Cuba “in the search for assistance and donations from the international community and the World Bank, the IDB and the like. All the consultants necessary will come from the U.S. while public transport will be developed, run and given maintenance by U.S. companies. Roads will be planned by consultants of the U.S. government, and in air travel there will be an agreement of open skies (no mention of new planes). Much will be studied and evaluated, but nothing concrete will be done with U.S. government money. The latter is needed to occupy and run the country, the economy is left in the hands of banks and companies. Nothing is said about present foreign investors or international licitations for any project. Maybe European, Asian and Latin American investors will run the same fate of the government officials or given the option to close up and go home. Chapter Six: It´s about “Identification and Correction of Environmental Damage”. How can any country with the pollution record of the U.S. can counsel any other on “ecological protection policies”? The authors have no idea of what has been done not only in cleaning up rivers, beaches, bays and legislating on these issues. There are strict rules set up today for any investment in tourism, industry or housing. Cuba has also signed 26 international treaties, conventions and protocols on biological diversity, of which the Kyoto Protocol and the Convention on Biological Diversity, not signed by the United States. This chapter even offers training for Cubans in protection of coral barriers, sanitize water resources, environmental management, all areas where Cuba has received international recognition. When I returned to Cuba in May 1958, shortly before the triumph of the Revolution, I was grateful for having taken in that pragmatism and common sense proverbial of US idiosyncracy. While most citizens of the US still fit that description, I think ten administrations have shown the opposite in their policy toward Cuba. On the contrary, the Cuban government has known when to be flexible and when to stand firm. US companies can vouch for that. They have expressed their desire for normalization and so has the House of Representatives by approving an amendment that would lift travel restrictions. Now they have an important support in the Cuban-American community, after the near-sighted decision of harming their family relations. As an old Cuban (probably international) saying goes: it´s peeing against the fan. Ef/