Odds and ends

• CELAC, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, just concluded a summit meeting in Chile where EU heads of state also participated.  The body, which excludes Canada and the United States, named Raul Castro president for the next year (Granma, Herald).  In the summit’s final declaration, the countries in attendance “firmly reject” the U.S. embargo and the Helms-Burton law (see paragraph 6).  Chile’s president met Raul Castro and asked for Cuban cooperation in a political murder case; the 1991 assassination of a Chilean senator who served in the Pinochet government, and whose assassins are alleged by some in Chile to be living in Cuba (AP, La Segunda).

• Herald: Pedro Alvarez, former head of the Cuban food importing agency Alimport, is now flipping houses in Tampa.

• Café Fuerte on the Cuban community in Ecuador and Ecuador’s decision to make it harder for Cubans to travel there by requiring them to get a letter of invitation by someone who assumes responsibility for them during their stay.