Regla

McCain and Obama engage on Cuba

It was in the cards, with last week's "appeasement" flap and both candidates scheduled to campaign in Florida this week -- Senators McCain and Obama have started their Cuba debate.

Today's McCain speech is here. Then there's a long document prepared by the Democratic National Committee, that seems to contain everything Senator McCain has ever said about Cuba. And here's a link to some Obama comments in an interview today; his jab at Senator McCain for "flip-flopping" is based on some of the comments in the DNC document.

Accusations

The Cuban government’s accusations against the U.S. Interests Section in Havana were made in a press conference and on the Mesa Redonda television program yesterday. The Herald’s coverage is here; Granma’s is here, with links to documents and video that allegedly tie dissidents to Santiago Alvarez of Miami, an associate of Luis Posada Carriles who was recently convicted of weapons charges. The information released yesterday, Cuban officials say, is just the beginning. Radio Marti’s website covers the allegations and the U.S. government’s response.

Meanwhile, in Florida, Senator McCain previews his speech on Cuba today, including a shot at Senator Obama for his willingness to engage in a dialogue with the Cuban government.

Odds and ends

▪ In an article that unfortunately has not appeared in English, Esteban Israel of Reuters provides a sketch of the emotion-laden flights between Miami and Havana.

▪ A Miami Herald reporter, in Cuba to gauge public opinion about the Raul Castro government, hears this from a Havana resident: “If one president prohibited drinking this glass of water and the second president comes and lets you have it, well of course you are going to think the new president is better.” Bottom line: the changes that have come to date have “stirred a new sense of hope” even though fundamental political and economic conditions have not changed.

▪ Sun-Sentinel correspondent Ray Sanchez writes about American fugitives living in Cuba; he interviews one (Charlie Hill) and reports that another, Joanne Chesimard, has “gone into hiding.”

▪ Dissident economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, writing in Spain’s ABC, talks about the need for solidarity from abroad. Recalling the 55 dissidents and independent journalists who were jailed in 2003 and (unlike himself) were not released, he says that the European Union should not drop its “diplomatic sanctions.” (Those sanctions were imposed in 2003 and suspended in 2005.) He says the changes occurring in Cuba are driven by internal factors, and policies that attempt to isolate Cuba are “more harmful than ever.” He wants the United States to allow Cuban American family visits and to renew people-to-people contacts.

The week ahead

Senators Obama and McCain will be in Florida this week and will give speeches about Cuba; the Bush Administration is planning to highlight the plight of political prisoners in Cuba, and the Cuban foreign ministry kicks things off tonight with a television program where they will reportedly present accusations that U.S. diplomats are delivering private funds to dissidents.

Odds and ends

• Cuban and Nicaraguan police are in Venezuela to train Venezuelan police, the Herald reports.

• El Nuevo Herald covers the Cuban American National Foundation’s report on the USAID Cuba program.

• McCain and Obama will give Cuba policy speeches as they campaign in Florida next week, the Herald reports. The same article links to the Foundation’s report and to a response by the Directorio Democratico Cubano, one of the orgaizations discussed in it.

• Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura is leading Cuba’s delegation to the Lima Ibero-American summit.

CFR report on Latin America relations

A Council on Foreign Relations task force report on U.S. relations with Latin American and the Caribbean, released yesterday, calls for renewed engagement with the region centered around “four critical issues” – “poverty and inequality, public security, human mobility, and energy security.” It also focuses on “four strategic relationships,” calling for “the deepening of the United States’ relations with Mexico and Brazil, and the redefining of relations with Venezuela and Cuba.”

The report is here (pdf, 96 pages).

These are the task force’s recommendations for U.S. policy toward Cuba:

“The United States should:

• Permit freer travel to and facilitate trade with Cuba. The White House should repeal the 2004 restrictions placed on Cuban-American family travel and remittances.

• Reinstate and liberalize the thirteen categories of licensed people-to-people “purposeful travel” for other Americans, instituted by the Clinton administration in preparation for the 1998 Papal Visit to Havana.

• Hold talks on issues of mutual concern to both parties, such as migration, human smuggling, drug trafficking, public health, the future of the Guantánamo naval base, and on environmentally sustainable resource management, especially as Cuba, with a number of foreign oil companies, begins deep water exploration for potentially significant reserves.

• Work more effectively with partners in the western hemisphere and in Europe to press Cuba on its human rights record and for more democratic reform.

• Mindful of the last one hundred years of U.S.-Cuba relations, assure Cubans on the island that the United States will pursue a respectful arm’s-length relationship with a democratic Cuba.

• Repeal the 1996 Helms-Burton law, which removed most of the executive branch’s authority to eliminate economic sanctions. While moving to repeal the law, the U.S. Congress should pass legislative measures, as it has with agricultural sales, designed to liberalize trade with and travel to Cuba, while supporting opportunities to strengthen democratic institutions there.”

Nuevo Vedado

"Cuba's green gold"

From Jorge Pinon, a former Amoco executive now at the University of Miami, here’s an evaluation of Cuba’s energy potential, based on the possibilities of oil and ethanol development, and based on partnerships with foreign capital and a “free-market agricultural economic model.” A future surge in Cuban energy production would have strategic consequences, not the least of which would be to make it unnecessary for Cuba to receive cut-rate oil supplies from Venezuela. (Pinon estimates that Cuba could reach half a million barrels of oil production per day.) Meantime, a Cuban official tells Reuters that there’s little likelihood of foreign investment in the agriculture sector, “for now.”

Brent Scowcroft, off the reservation

…national security advisor to the first President Bush, thanks to Steve Clemons, The Washington Note, who asked the question and recorded it.

Note: This video has apparently been removed from YouTube. Here is what Scowcroft said:

“My answer on Cuba is Cuba is not a foreign policy question. Cuba is a domestic issue. In foreign policy, the embargo makes no sense. It doesn’t do anything. It's quite clear we cannot starve Cuba to death. We learned that when the Soviet stopped subsidizing Cuba and they didn’t collapse. It’s a domestic issue.”]

"Material de estudio"

Last Friday AP’s Havana bureau wrote about a Communist Party study guide regarding Cuba’s dual-currency monetary system. This kind of document is distributed to party members as a basis for discussions in local-level party meetings. My impression, based on having read one years ago on another topic, is that they are a means for the party to impart information, its analysis, and its point of view – and to establish support and a common set of expectations regarding future action.

Based on the AP’s account (English here, Spanish here; there is different information in the two articles) the message seems pretty clear: a) the party recognizes that Cubans want the dual-currency system to end, b) it wants the public to understand that change will be gradual, and c) the key is increased productivity.

The paper is based, AP says, on the Central Bank’s view of the situation. It recommends gradually increasing the pesos’s value relative to the convertible peso, with gains in productivity, not a pre-cooked timetable, setting the pace.

Moving gradually, the central bank figures, it can avoid setting off inflation or a run on merchandise in stores.

“The elimination of the dual currency will lead to better measurement of economic efficiency and will be a positive factor to promote our development…but it is not a measure that will in itself create wealth,” the paper says.

So the bottom line in terms of the party’s message is that action on the peso will be gradual, and the faster production increases, the faster it will happen – similar to messages we have seen in articles such as this. And in policy terms, the bottom line seems to me to be that the government is setting the bar high for its own action in raising production throughout the economy.

What interested me more was a secondary point: the Central Bank wants to see a reduction in “indiscriminate” subsidies, because a reduction in government spending will make its currency transition easier.

There are a number of “indiscriminate” subsidies in Cuba, but my guess is that this is a reference to the biggest of all, the distribution of food to every household on the island through the ration book (libreta de abastecimiento), regardless of income.

As discussed here, if Cuba has decided to drop the ration book and target food assistance to the needy only, then we have a sign of major change in government and in the agricultural sector.

The agriculture ministry enterprises that collect, warehouse, and distribute products that are the state’s exclusive domain – potatoes, dairy products, etc. – would have no more reason to exist.

So what would be in play would be a more rational approach to public assistance, a big reduction in the agriculture ministry bureaucracy, and a reduction of the state’s role in that sector as these intermediary enterprises disappear.

Is this kind of “structural change” possible? Maybe so – officials have talked about the possible disappearance of the libreta, the central bank seems to be voting in favor of it now, and stories from the agriculture sector hint in that direction. Like this one, about how milk producers in Havana province are increasingly selling directly to consumers, not through a state enterprise. Or this one, which reports that the closing of 104 enterprises in the agriculture sector is planned, and most of those that remain after this bureaucratic bloodbath will have a change of mission, to provide services to producers.

Finally, the paper contained this nugget: 59 percent of Cubans’ bank savings are in pesos, 36 percent in convertible pesos, and five percent in dollars. So if you exclude mattress money, the action taken by the Central Bank in 2004 succeeded in soaking up dollar liquidity.

Odds and ends

• EFE interviews a vice minister of communications: wider Internet access for Cubans will have to wait; Cuba lacks resources and bandwidth; poor-quality phone line connections to many homes is another impediment. But a future fiber optic cable link to Venezuela may help.

• At Los Miquis, a video of a son returning to his Havana home after 13 years living in New York. And a very rough dinner table conversation. With English subtitles; decide for yourself if it's a dramatization.
  

• A tribute to the Cuban Adjustment Act, in El Nuevo Herald.

Showtime

Cuban television ran a story about the Bush-dissidents teleconference and reportedly included video that was portrayed as showing a U.S. diplomat delivering a package to the home of one of the Damas de Blanco. I don’t know that the video is available on the web, but Gramna ran its own story and cranked up the rhetoric (the opposition is “congenitally servile” to the United States, the videoconference was “a show to wake up a corpse that cannot be revived,” etc.).

Martha Beatriz Roque, interviewed by Radio Marti, says there’s always a reason for attacks like this and is waiting for the other shoe to drop (story here with link to two minutes of audio from her). AP coverage here, AFP in Spanish here.

Odds and ends

• Mariela Castro, daughter of Raul Castro, in an interview in Spain’s La Vanguardia: “It is not necessary to deprive people of their right to leave. I think we should grant permission to all those who want to leave. People can leave, but with a great amount of difficulty.” Interesting that she calls it a “right” as opposed to a privilege. (As reported in the Sun Sentinel.)

• From Mike Williams of Cox News Service, a report on Cuba’s Jewish community, based on a visit to the synagogue in Vedado. He mentioned the religious services and the synagogue’s library; there’s also a pharmacy upstairs, full of medicines donated by visitors from abroad, where doctors, nurses, and patients come twice weekly to get medicines they can’t otherwise find.

• This guy thinks he found “a volcano in eruption somewhere in Cuba.” (On Google maps, on the coast south of Ciego de Avila.)
  

• A photo essay on the Malecon from a student recently returned from study in Cuba.

Jovellanos

Abandoned locomotive at a closed sugar mill.

Odds and ends

• Radio silence: Radio Marti covered the Bush-dissidents videoconference, but neither the story on the website nor the story broadcast on the air, which featured interviews with the three Havana participants, mentioned Martha Beatriz Roque’s request to President Bush that he ease travel and remittance restrictions. Story here, with link at bottom to the audio.

• Yoani takes it with a grain of salt, calling the government’s refusal to allow her to travel to Spain to receive her award a “second decoration.”

• From the world of sports: The Herald covers the Cuban judo team competing in Pan American championships in Miami, and The New York Times on the Cuban soccer players who stayed in the United States a few months ago and are trying to break into major league soccer. (Speaking of Generacion Y, the players include Yenier and Yordany.)

• The European parliament calls on the Cuban government to allow the Damas de Blanco and Oswaldo Paya to travel to Brussels, respectively to collect their 2005 human rights award and to provide briefings on the situation in Cuba.

President Bush on Cuba

President Bush gave a speech on Latin America yesterday and began with a discussion of Cuba.

In contrast to his last speech where he said we are seeing “the dying gasps of a failed regime” in Havana, the President was not triumphalist and did not even hint that the Cuban government’s hold on power is at risk.

Also in contrast to his last speech where he valued freedom over stability and seemed indifferent to the possibility of violent confrontation, yesterday he called on the Cuban government to “begin a process of peaceful democratic change.”

He dismissed recent changes in Cuba: “Cuba will not become a place of prosperity just by easing restrictions on the sale of products that the average Cuban cannot afford.” Fair enough.

And this: “Until there's a change of heart and a change of compassion, and a change of how the Cuban government treats its people, there’s no change at all.”

“No change at all?” I could understand “limited change.” Or “changes that are irrelevant to most Cubans.” Or “changes that do not affect the fundamental human rights situation.”

But this seems to be an effort to dismiss reality. Improved public transit, an end to “tourism apartheid,” sales of DVD players and computers, an end to cell phone restrictions, and especially the distribution of additional land to private farmers, are real changes, with real political impact inside Cuba.

President Bush placed Cuba outside “the community of civilized nations,” which is another step outside reality. It is simply ridiculous to suggest, as Cubans will surely take this statement, that the Cuban nation is not civilized. If the President meant that Cuba is isolated in international affairs, he is wrong on that too.

Without fanfare, the Raul Castro government is renovating its international relationships with nations large and small, whether we like it or not. The latest example involves the relationship with Mexico, which Fidel Castro blew up during the Vicente Fox presidency. The two governments normalized relations in March and are reportedly making progress toward a new migration agreement. This week, there was a meeting of Cuban and Mexican businesses in Havana, and Mexico opened a $21 million line of credit to jump-start trade.

Most intriguing was the President’s statement about his videoconference with dissidents the day before: “It reminded me about how much work the United States has to do to help the people in Cuba realize the blessings of liberty.”

In that conversation, President Bush was asked to ease restrictions on family visits and remittances. Which leads me to wonder – beyond moral and material support for the dissidents, does the “work the United States has to do” include listening to them?

Museum field trip

Martha Beatriz, off the reservation? [Updated]

In an item below, I cited a Reuters story from Havana that covered the Bush-dissidents videoconference based on statements of dissidents who participated. In that story, Martha Beatriz Roque was said to have urged President Bush to make it easier for Cuban Americans to send remittances.

An AP story, including reporting from Havana, includes this:

Some of what Bush heard echoed the challenges to his Cuba policy that he hears from some at home. Roque asked Bush to make it easier for Cuban Americans in the United States to visit family members on the island and send money to their relatives here.

The U.S. Interests Section in Havana, where the activists went to participate in the conference, did not say what, if anything, Bush said in response to Roque's request.

For Roque, this is a new position. In general she has been in favor of American sanctions against Cuba, and when it comes to travel, she has called for easing restrictions only for those who carry aid to dissidents.

If this is Roque’s position, it is fair to ask: Can there be a single Cuban in Cuba who is in favor of the Bush family sanctions?

A sign of the trouble that Roque’s statement is already causing was reported by Alejandro Armengol on his Cuaderno de Cuba blog. He says that the videoconference received scant mention on Radio Mambi, and that Roque is barely mentioned on that station since April, when she joined other dissidents in a call for a Cuban transition that takes place in “an atmosphere of national reconciliation.”

Armengol says Roque now suffers “double censorship” – from the Havana government and the “extreme right in Miami that until recently exalted” her.

Update: The dissidents’ press release about the videoconference said nothing about U.S. policy toward travel and remittances. But as a reader pointed out, NPR’s Tom Gjelten, in Havana, interviewed Martha Beatriz Roque and confirms that she asked for a change in U.S. policy regarding remittances and family visits.

Here, from AP, is how Berta Soler (one of the participants in the videoconference) described it:

“Ella (Roque) le pidió que fuera flexible sobre las visitas (de cubanoamericanos) a Cuba y el envío de las remesas en lo que representó un cambio a su anterior apoyo al endurecimiento de las sanciones contra la isla”, comentó Soler.

My translation:

“She [Roque] asked him to be flexible regarding visits [of Cuban Americans] to Cuba and the sending of remittances, in what represented a change in her earlier support for the strengthening of sanctions against the island,” Soler commented.

Prado and Malecon