Odds and ends

·         A Colombian radio station published the purported text of the agreement reached between Colombia’s government and FARC guerrillas to start peace talks.  English here, with a link to the Spanish original at the bottom of the page.  More from EFE (English) and good historical background from the Wall Street Journal.

·         The spokesman for Oswaldo Paya’s Christian Liberation told Radio Marti that he and a colleague were told by Cayetana Muriel Aguado, a Spaniard resident in Sweden who is a member of that country’s Christian Democratic Party, that “political figures” in Sweden and Spain received text messages from the phones of Angel Carromero and Aron Modig “denouncing that they had been victims of an accident provoked by a car that was following them.”  The spokesman, Rene Iglesias, complained about the “hiding of the truth” that is occurring, he guesses, to spare Carromero some jail time, and he urged those who possess the text messages to release them.  He said the meeting with Aguado occurred the night of the July 22 crash.  The full string of earlier posts on this event is here. 

·         Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s Cuba convictions are now safely in cold storage.  But just for old times’ sake, Geoff Thale of the Washington Office on Latin America counts up the Cuba votes in Ryan’s record and finds 20 votes cast in favor of easing or ending the embargo out of 24 Cuba votes he cast between 2000 and 2007.

·         Yagruma, a crowdfunding site that offers the opportunity to support artistic projects in Cuba, had its PayPal account blocked because sending money to Cuba is an apparent embargo violation, and is working on setting up a payment mechanism that will not be affected by U.S. sanctions.

·         Café Fuerte:  Writer Raul Hernandez recounts, with some skepticism, a story told in Granma about a former Communist Party official who is now raising and selling pigs and making money hand over fist.