Odds and ends

• El Pais reports on an increase in the number of Spaniards living outside Spain last year – a jump of 128,655, or 8.2 percent. A large part of this number is explained by foreign nationals acquiring Spanish nationality under the generous Ley de Memoria – in 2010, 23,864 in Argentina and 22,795 in Cuba.

• El Nuevo Herald: The “The Streets Belong to the People” campaign (in Cuba) of the Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Front for Civic Resistance and Civil Disobedience is announced in a Miami press conference.

• The Economist on a scandal at Habanos S.A. that has landed eleven in jail on charges of graft.

• The New York Times on the musical legacy of the late Chico O’Farrill, living through his son and grandsons.

• At the Municipalities of Cuba in Exile, there’s new leadership.

Orlando Bosch, R.I.P.

“He was a freedom fighter for Cuba and passed away without seeing his beloved homeland free of the Castro dictatorship.”

– House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (AP)

“Orlando has been a patriot who dedicated his life and sacrificed his profession to try to return liberty to the Cuban people”

– Francisco Hernandez, President, Cuban American National Foundation (El Nuevo Herald)

“A few days following the fund-raising dinner, Posada was overheard to say that, ‘We’re going to hit a Cuban airplane,’ and that ‘Orlando has the details.’”

“Following the 6 October Cubana airline crash off the coast of Barbados, Bosch, Garcia, and Posada agreed that it would be best for Bosch to leave Venezuela.”

– From an October 14, 1976 CIA cable on Bosch’s activities in Venezuela

“According to Morales Navarrete, arrested suspect Hernan Ricardo Lozano telephoned Bosch from Trinidad stating ‘a bus with 73 dogs went off a cliff and all got killed.’”

– From a November 5, 1976 FBI memo to Secretary of State Kissinger “in connection with the loss of Cubana Airlines Flight Number 455 in the Caribbean Sea on October 6, 1976,” relaying information from FBI confidential sources. Morales Navarrete was a Venezuelan intelligence official.

“We must look on terrorism as a universal evil, even if it is directed toward those with who we have no political sympathy.”

– Bush Administration Justice Department official Joe D. Whitley, defending the indefinite detention of Bosch in 1989 (NY Times)

This 1990 article from the New York Times presents Bosch’s history and the story of President George H.W. Bush’s action that allowed Bosch to live freely in the United States.

Here are stories and obits from AP, the Herald, Miami New Times.

Quotable

“There is a question I’ve formulated on more than one occasion, and that I have recently revived. It goes more or less like this: ‘If I, who detests with every particle of my being the North Korean dynasty, for example, suddenly gathered my intentions and provoked an attack that killed dozens of North Korean civilians, would this effort be enough to call myself, from now on and proudly, an anti-Kim fighter?’

“And if, for example, my firecracker in Pyongyang causes collateral damage and sacrifices a European tourist, then can I call myself anti-dynastic, a fighter against Kim-the-father or Kim-the-son, and be treated like a hero, even though I haven’t touched a single petal on the iron dictatorship, which continues on its course without the least disturbance?”

– “El Pequeno Hermano” blogger Ernesto Morales Licea; his blog is in Spanish and English

Regla and Casablanca

Odds and ends

• The Spanish Foreign Minister tells the Senate that 115 of the 127 recently released Cuban political prisoners were welcomed in Spain. (Some have since come to the United States.) The 115 were joined by 647 family members.

• Blogger Ernesto Morales Licea applauds Senator Kerry’s demand for information on USAID’s Cuba democracy programs.

• Juventud Rebelde: One tremenda gallina lays a 230 gram, 9 cm egg in Las Tunas.

• Herald: John Caulfield, the U.S. charge d’affaires in Caracas, will lead the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. Incumbent Jonathan Farrar is nominated to be Ambassador to Nicaragua.

• Ted Henken, in Havana, shows us the business card for Robertico Robaina’s paladar (presumably the Robaina who is a former foreign minister), La Paila in Marianao.

• Tracey Eaton has some shots of the Paseo del Prado as a water slide.