Odds and ends

• EFE: UN aid for hurricane relief stands at $8.6 million.

• Herald: U.S. officials are saying that Cuba has taken three Miami-Dade brothers into custody, all suspected of Medicare fraud and wanted by U.S. law enforcement. They reportedly fled to Cuba earlier this year.

• Cubaencuentro has an interview with Eliecer Avila, the student at the information technology university who challenged National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon at a question-and-answer session earlier this year.

• The Cuban American National Foundation says its license to provide hurricane relief aid was renewed, but with a new condition: donors cannot earmark contributions for specific individuals in Cuba, such as family members.

The whole thing

Alarcon and the students at UCI, 57 minutes, broken into 11 segments, here.

Eliecer Avila appears

I’m glad I used a question mark yesterday. The report of the arrest of Eliecer Avila, one of the students who questioned Ricardo Alarcon in the now-famous video of the university meeting, may not be true after all.

But what actually happened may not be so clear either.

“First reports are always wrong,” they say in the military, and from the beginning there were reasons for skepticism in this case. One was that the son of Carlos Lage reportedly traveled to the student’s batey in Las Tunas – is that an eight-hour drive from Havana? – to make the arrest.

The author of the original report, human rights activist Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva (whom I described as an independent journalist yesterday), stuck to his story yesterday, according to those who contacted him. But he had related it second-hand, and those who tried to substantiate the “arrest” story yesterday got nowhere.

To add to the doubts, the story got no coverage on Cubanet yesterday (today Cubanet has a Spanish newspaper story referring to a “possible arrest”); the Radio Marti website ignored it, and so did El Nuevo Herald. Today’s Miami Herald recounts the story told by human rights activists in Cuba but says there’s “no independent confirmation.” From Madrid, Encuentro referred to the Gonzalez Leiva report but wrote that he had been “driven” from Las Tunas to Havana, avoiding the word “arrested.”

So what actually happened?

It seems that Avila did go home, and he did return to Havana. He appears in a video produced by the “CubaDebate” website, whose modest motto is “Against Media Terrorism.” (A very ample discussion is at Penultimos Dias; Encuentro also has a good summary of Avila’s statements in the video.)

There was no arrest, he says in the video, he simply went home for health reasons. When he learned that his questions to Alarcon were being twisted as part of an international “campaign,” he contacted “el companero Cesar” (Cesar Lage, son of Cuba’s vice president and a student leader) to arrange a ride back to Havana so he could set the record straight. The fact that students are taking a critical look at Cuba’s policies and questioning Alarcon, Avila says, is due to a desire “to build socialism better, not to destroy it.”

Avila didn’t disavow the strong opinions in his questions to Alarcon. But now the critic is seen in the Revolution’s embrace, rejecting the idea that he had ever stepped out of it.

So what actually happened?

If you’re still asking, I don’t blame you.

Alarcon's town meeting [Updated]

Raul Castro said he wanted a debate. He told Cubans and young Cubans in particular that he wanted them to speak out, and they are obliging. National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon is the latest to find out.

Someone passed the BBC’s correspondent in Havana, Fernando Ravsberg, a video of a lively meeting between Alarcon and students of the Universidad de Ciencias Informaticas. Ravsberg’s story, in Spanish only on the BBC website, is here. Note that in the middle of the story there’s a link to a four-minute audio report where you can hear several students’ statements and questions.

It’s well worth a listen.

One student complains that candidates for the National Assembly don’t visit the University: “Who are they? Where did they come from?” Another complains that basic necessities are priced in hard currency and salaries are paid in Cuban pesos, worth “25 times less” than the convertible peso. There’s a call for more communication and interchange between government ministers and the people, so that the public can know how government is addressing problems and the people can be part of the solution.

Not included in the recording is a complaint that Cubans cannot travel freely abroad, but Alarcon’s answer is included, where he says that only a minority of people of any country travel internationally, and that Cubans travel based on merit rather than financial means, as was the case in the past. The story on the website reports that there were also questions about Internet access; Alarcon responded that he is not up to speed on that question.

What does this mean? I’m interested to know what readers think, especially those who know about the kind of debates Cuba has conducted in the past. Mr. Ravsberg deserves congratulations for his reporting, and maybe BBC London will find a way to put the video on its site so we can see it. [Update: video here, a four-minute clip.]

Not having been there, I’m hesitant to draw big conclusions. Events such as this could be a sign of a government that’s out of touch. Or they could mark a government that is confident that it can brook criticism, that benefits from an airing of criticism within the system, and has some responses up its sleeve. Time will tell.