2,848 more private taxis

It won’t solve all Cuba’s problems, but it’s positive news: Granma reports that the number of licensed private taxis increased from 3,486 to 6,334 nationwide, with 1,280 license applications in process. This follows the issuance of new regulations last January, covered here.

Raulonomics

If you sift through the economic policy record of Raul Castro in the past three years, you see a tough diagnosis of problems, significant moves in agriculture, and partial actions at best in other areas. A long discussion of this is here (pdf), and as always comments are welcome.

No diplomacy, no problem

Rep. Burton of Indiana files a straightforward amendment to the State Department funding bill to bar any spending “to carry out official or unofficial contact with officials or representatives of the Cuban Government.”

If for nothing else – and there’s plenty else – those contacts are used to get Cuban visas for U.S. diplomats, including those who serve in the big U.S. consulate in Havana, which would mean that the staff would gradually reduce to zero, meaning no visas for Cubans to come to the United States as visitors or as immigrants. On the flip side, it would do the same for the Cuban consulate in Washington, which would mean no visas for Cuban Americans’ family visits.

The effect of the amendment would probably be to close the U.S. Interests Section. Legally and practically, it’s impossible to have a diplomatic mission that refuses all contact with the host government.

The idea may not be as popular in Miami-Dade as the Congressman thinks, but he does know how to make a point.

Odds and ends

• Secretary of State Clinton gave an interview yesterday to Venezuela’s Globovision, speaking mainly about Honduras and other topics. In one question about Cuba, she expressed a desire “to see fundamental changes in the Cuban regime.” The State Department transcript is here, and Globovision’s in Spanish is here.
  

• The White House announces that former Congressional candidate and Miami-Dade Democratic Party chair Joe Garcia is going to the Department of Energy.

• Reuters: another postponement of plans for renewed drilling for Cuba’s offshore oil.

• Orioles announcer Gary Thorne writes in the Bangor Daily News about Cuban pitcher Aroldis Chapman and Oriole Danys Baez, in whose footsteps he is following.

• Cuba’a 2008 statistical yearbook is on-line.

Quotable

“We not only need a ‘reset’ button between the American and Russian government, but we need a fresh start between our societies – more dialogue, more listening, more cooperation in confronting common challenges. For history teaches us that real progress – whether it’s economic or social or political – doesn’t come from the top-down, it typically comes from the bottom-up. It comes from people, it comes from the grassroots – it comes from you.”

– President Obama, at a “civil society summit” in Moscow yesterday

78,113 land grants

Agriculture is the one area of the economy that is undergoing significant change under the Raul Castro government, if for no other reason than that the state is busy unloading parcels of the 1.7 million hectares of idle land into the hands of private farmers and cooperatives. They are getting land grants of ten years for individuals, 25 years for cooperatives. I wrote a little about this here, and will have more shortly.

An article in Trabajadores now whines that the foreign media have engaged in negative reporting on this subject (but so has Granma) and to set the record straight, discloses that 41 percent of this idle land have been handed out to 78,113 applicants since last September.

Well, whatever it takes to get the information out.

This is good news that seems to answer the reasonable questions that were posed at the beginning of this process, such as whether significant numbers of Cubans would be interested, and whether they can gather the equipment and other means necessary to work the land. The answer apparently is that they’ve got it covered.

It will be interesting to see the impact on 2009 farm production. The recently released data on 2008 production – the year of three hurricanes – showed declines in most crops.

Reuters coverage here.

Odds and ends

• In the post below on the visit of American Archbishop Timothy Broglio to Guantanamo and Santiago, I implied that he had made a pastoral visit to Guantanamo then departed directly from the base to visit those places. The Herald reports that he went to the base, flew to “another Caribbean country,” then flew to Havana.

• Added to the blogroll at right: the Council of the Americas’ Americas Quarterly Blog.

• The Herald covers an organization that delivers humanitarian aid to Cuba and refuses to seek U.S. government licenses for it – and helpfully gives the address where donations are being accepted: 530 Northeast 167^th Street in North Miami Beach.

• The Yankees may try to sign Cuban pitcher Aroldis Chapman, age 21 or maybe 26 according to the New York Times. A would-be agent says of Chapman: “If he polishes up his changeup and tightens up his slider, he can be a young Randy Johnson.”

Centro Asturiano...

...now the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes.

Odds and ends

• From a simpler time: A friend sent this article (pdf) from the New York Times, March 16, 1971, the day President Nixon unilaterally lifted restrictions on American travel to China. “It is the President’s policy to carefully examine further steps we may take for broader contact between Red Chinese and Americans,” said White House press secretary Ron Ziegler.

• Reuters: Rising import costs, including a $252 million increase in spending on food imports from the United States alone, drives Cuba’s trade deficit up 65 percent.

• In Harvard Magazine, Professor Jorge Dominguez looks at Raul Castro’s style and the pace of change in Cuba.

• Cuban pitcher Aroldis Chapman of Holguin, who reportedly has a 100-mph fastball, left the Cuban team in Rotterdam and wants to shoot for the major leagues.

• Reuters’ Esteban Israel on reggaeton in Cuba and official concern about its “excessive popularity.”

Across the fenceline

An American Catholic Archbishop who serves as Archbishop for the Military Services, Timothy Broglio, visited the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo and left the base to celebrate mass in the city of Guantanamo. He also visited Santiago and the shrine of the Virgen de la Caridad in El Cobre, just outside Santiago. Cuba’s Catholic bishops conference reports that the Archbishop, speaking “perfect Spanish” in his Guantanamo homily, expressed “the American people’s affection for you.” He also said that many of the military personnel on the base had wanted to accompany him across the fenceline to visit monuments and gravesites in the places where, “with the blood of both peoples,” the struggle for Cuban liberty was carried out. “We ask God that one day we can worship without separation.” (H/t Cubaencuentro).

Applause for the coup

The coup in Honduras is a little off topic, except that Cuba has joined the rest of the hemisphere’s governments in condemning it. (See this guide to the events in Honduras from the Council of the Americas.)

Nonetheless, I understand that people don’t like Hugo Chavez and his style of governance, and that recent events in Honduras look like the first reel of the movie that has played in Venezuela.

I understand that Chavez and his allies in other countries have figured out that the way to advance an authoritarian agenda is not head-on, but rather to get elected legitimately and start eroding democratic institutions and violating democratic norms from the inside. I understand that using referenda to end constitutional limits on presidential re-election, or on term limits, is a big part of this agenda. (Although Colombia’s President Uribe, no leftie, has chafed against term limits too.) I understand that President Zelaya, nearing the end of his term, was pressing to change the constitution to allow his re-election, starting with a nonbinding referendum, and that his efforts were rejected in Honduran courts.

What I don’t understand is how the Honduran military’s resolution of this situation – putting troops in the streets, seizing broadcast media, grabbing the President in his pajamas and putting him on a plane to Costa Rica – has earned so much applause on the right in the United States. Is a B-movie military coup the only tool or a legitimate tool to counter the advance of Chavez-style leftist politics in this hemisphere?

Odds and ends

• Another story on the Lage-Perez Roque video, in English from IPS, and the Herald translates Sunday's article in El Pais.
  

• A new law permits Cubans to work two jobs, and permits students to work part-time. EFE coverage in English here, Granma’s announcement here.

• Radio Marti: Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen says the Honduran military “respected the constitution” in removing President Zelaya from power. The Martinoticias website also reports on the Obama Administration’s rejection of the coup, Cuban dissidents’ criticism of it, and Senator Mel Martinez' statement that any interruption of the constitutional order is unacceptable.
  

• Bill Ratliff of the Independent Institute and the Hoover Institute calls for the end of the embargo.

• This looks to be a pretty accurate and complete chronology of U.S. restrictions on travel to Cuba.

Lage and Perez Roque: the Movie

Now we know why Cuban authorities gave out so little information, apart from a terse announcement and a cryptic Fidel Castro reflection, when Vice President Carlos Lage and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque left their jobs last March.

They were making a movie.

Two movies, actually, one three hours long and one six hours long, covering the demise of Lage, Perez Roque, party international relations chief Fernando Remirez, Otto Rivero, an official who was responsible for the Fidel initiative called the “Battle of Ideas,” and Carlos Valenciaga, a member of the Council of State and private secretary to Fidel Castro.

The movies haven’t been released, but they were covered in Spanish-language newspapers, whose Havana correspondents have spoken to Cubans who have seen them, and the three sets of accounts coincide. The videos have apparently been shown to top leaders, and then to Communist Party militants, to show where the dismissed officials went wrong. Each report says there is strict security at each showing of the videos; the audience is required to check cameras, cell phones, and even pens at the door.

The articles from La Jornada are here and here, from El Pais here and here, and from La Vanguardia here. The Herald’s Cuban Colada summarizes here.

Among the many details in the video, according to the reports:

• Two key figures, both now under arrest, are Conrado Hernandez, a Cuban national who represented Basque businesses in Cuba, hosted Lage and Perez Roque at his Matanzas farm where their talks were recorded, and admits on tape that he had worked with Spanish intelligence; and Raul Castellanos Lage, a physician and cousin of Carlos Lage.

• Castellanos is captured on tape saying it would have been “a service to la patria” if Vice President Machado Ventura had been allowed to die when he was treated for heart problems.

• Raul Castro confronted Lage, Perez Roque, Rivero, and Remirez with accusations at a March 2 Political Bureau meeting, portions of which are included in the video. Twenty members are present, but only Raul questions the four. He asks about favors given to Hernandez; Lage ordered that a river be diverted at Hernandez’ farm, and Perez Roque gave him a diplomatic passport.

• On February 23, 2008, the day before the National Assembly formally elected Raul Castro president and Machado Ventura first vice president, the Political Bureau of the Communist Party met to make the nominations. All in attendance, including Lage, were told to keep the nominations secret. Lage went from the meeting to a party on the rooftop terrace of the Ambos Mundos hotel, which was ostensibly to celebrate the wedding of Castellanos to the woman with whom he had been living for a decade, but in reality was to celebrate Lage’s nomination to the post of first vice president. A disappointed Lage broke the secret to those in attendance. Later he used a relief pitcher’s metaphor when he told Valenciaga by phone, “They didn’t hand me the ball.” Raul Castro described the scene, saying that what was to be a party “changed to an atmosphere of mourning.” Perez Roque was furious, and vowed to oppose Machado’s nomination in the National Assembly the next day, which he did not do.

• Conrado Hernandez left the party and informed Spanish contacts of the Machado nomination. The result is that Madrid knew of Machado’s selection before the National Assembly received the nomination or acted on it.

• In September 2006, Carlos Valenciaga held a raucous birthday party in the same Council of State building where Fidel Castro was living through the worst of his illness, “between life and death,” according to Raul.

A viewer told El Pais that the video has two objectives: to expose espionage, and to demonstrate that the accused “were disloyal, permitted abuses, and nurtured ambitions of power.” The government and party seem to be betting that viewers will absorb that message and agree with the removal of Lage, Perez Roque, and Remirez, rather than identify with the disappointment that these elites of Cuba’s next generation, promoted by Fidel and Raul to their top jobs, felt when they thought their moment had come.

Odds and ends

• Cuba is condemning the coup in Honduras and says that its ambassador in Tegucigalpa was “beaten” by Honduran soldiers. The ambassador, along with those of Venezuela and Nicaragua, was reportedly with the Honduran foreign minister when soldiers “broke into the place where they were” and detained them. Prensa Latina story in English here. “The place where they were” was later identified by Fidel Castro as the foreign minister’s home. The New York Times covers the coup here, and the region’s unanimous rejection of it here.

• Reuters reports on the low penetration of phone and Internet service in Cuba, based on new data released by Cuba’s statistics office.

• A report on ties between Spanish and Cuban universities from Granma International.

• AFP: the Colombian singer Juanes says he wants to do a public concert in Havana.

Quotable

“If they swear in Micheletti, or Peleletti or Gafetti or Goriletti, we will overthrow him.”

– Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, June 28, referring to Roberto Micheletti, who was indeed sworn in as President of Honduras after military forces seized President Zelaya and put him on a plane to Costa Rica.

Bicitaxi

The hole in the Bush strategy

The Bush Administration never used the term “regime change” with regard to Cuba, but its intentions (“transition,” “hasten the end of the dictatorship,” etc.) were always clear enough. President Bush’s beefed-up sanctions backed up those intentions, but his maintenance of longstanding U.S. immigration policy toward Cubans went in the opposite direction, and was one of several factors that made me believe that his intentions were more rhetorical than real.

The reason is simple: our exceptional immigration policy toward Cubans tells them that if they want to come to the United States, they will be admitted even if they have no visa, and once they arrive they will receive federal benefits. One can argue that this makes sense on humanitarian grounds, but the policy and the message it sends strongly undercuts any impetus toward political change. In effect, it encourages Cubans who are discontented and want to do something about it, to leave their country rather than stay and work for change.

The details of this policy, including the federal benefits, are explained in an excellent report (pdf) published last month by the Congressional Research Service. It gathers lots of useful data; for example, in fiscal year 2008, 49,500 Cubans became legal permanent residents, 4,100 were admitted as refugees after being processed at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, 11,278 were admitted after appearing without a U.S. visa at a port of entry (Laredo, Texas for the vast majority), 3,351 were apprehended by the Border Patrol, mostly in coastal areas, and 2,199 were interdicted at sea.

Odds and ends

• Herald: Another day, another set of indictments for $100 million in Medicare fraud, another set of suspects that has fled to Cuba.

• Spain may extend the period of applications for citizenship under its “ley de nietos” for another year, according to this article in Spanish from Europa Press. Under that law, children and grandchildren of Spanish emigrants are applying for citizenship, and in Cuba and some other Latin American countries, demand is high. In Spain’s consulate in Havana, 325 applications are being received by appointment every day, a pace that will continue through the end of next year. Presumably, Cubans who hold Spanish passports will be able to use those passports to travel to the United States without getting a visa, since Spain is under the visa waiver program. Another benefit, when these new Spanish citizens reach retirement age, is a monthly stipend under Spain’s program of “pensiones asistenciales.”

• EFE: Cuba announces that it has developed a new variety of plantain plant that grows no taller than two meters and will better survive hurricanes; the first harvest is expected in July.

Iran Through Cuban Eyes

A fascinating essay by Penultimos Dias’ Ernesto Hernandez Busto at RealClearWorld.

Odds and ends

• EFE: a new report says Cuba’s population is stagnant and will decrease by 100,000 by 2025.

• Wired: Cuba as a potential IT outsourcing powerhouse.

• From London Metropolitan University, a new issue of the International Journal of Cuban Studies, including an interview with Britain’s current ambassador to Cuba, sketches of Cuba from a former ambassador, and a 1963 essay on the socialist revolution and the roots of Cuban nationalism.

• The distribution of idle farmland in Matanzas province “is not going well,” Granma reports. About 5,000 applications for land have been approved, more than 7,000 are in process, and 4.6 percent of applications have been denied so far.

• Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon says an exchange of jailed dissidents for the Cuban Five should be possible because the dissidents “committed the same offense as the five compañeros, being agents [of the United States], albeit to do different things.”

• Spain’s La Vanguardia visits Havana’s Calle G, Avenida de los Presidentes, where 20-somethings hang out en masse on weekend nights, and the scene “begins around nine o’clock and stretches toward dawn.”

• The Herald’s Cuban Colada translates excerpts of an article in ABC (Madrid) on the goings-on at the Matanzas farm of Conrado Hernandez. Hernandez, reportedly in detention, is a Cuban who worked for Basque businesses in Cuba and reportedly hosted Carlos Lage and Felipe Perez Roque for some relaxed weekend get-togethers – with microphones.