Odds and ends

• The voluble Pedro Alvarez, formerly in charge of Cuba’s food importing agency and host to innumerable American visitors, is now presumably talking to investigators. The Economist reported November 11 that in September he was “arrested at his home and taken away in handcuffs.”

• Radio Marti reports that Reina Luisa Tamayo, mother of the late Orlando Zapata Tamayo, will go to the cemetery where he is buried, will witness his exhumation, and will have his remains cremated. She and her family then plan to leave Cuba for the United States. “I ask God, I ask my Changó to give me the strength to see my dear son removed from where he is,” she told her interviewer. The story links to audio of the interview.

• With nearly a year gone by since the arrest of USAID contractor Alan Gross, Cuba’s top prosecutor says the investigative phase “still hasn’t concluded,” Reuters reports. His wife, Judy Gross, pleaded for his release earlier this month in an article in the Miami Herald, saying he “is being held as a political pawn by two governments that refuse to change course.”

• The Herald finds another area of affinity between the Communist Party of Cuba and Republicans: both want to cut spending, but defense is off the table.

• Juventud Rebelde has a web feature on Guanahacabibes, the peninsula on the island’s western tip that is a UN biosphere reserve and a protected area under Cuban law. Here in English is a one-pager (pdf) on the peninsula from the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory in Texas.