Another Elian?

The elements are all there in this Herald report: the child is in the United States, the mother deceased, the father in Cuba and described in the press as the mother’s husband, he wants custody and a Miami relative has it temporarily. One difference is that the child, born in the United States, can become a U.S. citizen by birth and a Cuban citizen by parentage. Another difference may be that the father would rather live here than there; from the Herald story, it seems that a visa application was in the works.

The Elian case turned into a political battle, but what mattered in the end was the principle – which the U.S. government asserts all around the world when American parents are separated from their kids – that if a minor child has one fit parent, then parent and child should be united.

We’ll see how this one turns out.

Odds and ends

• Senator Menendez vows to filibuster any Cuba travel bill that comes his way, and Senators Dorgan and Enzi say they have the 60 votes they need to overcome a filibuster. Their bill, S. 428, has 40 sponsors.

• A column in last week’s Wall Street Journal reported indirectly that Cardinal Ortega had been in Washington, and rumors of meetings he had here. There’s lots of talk about that trip, very little concrete or on the record. But the June 21-28 trip itself has been confirmed by his spokesman Orlando Marquez; see Progreso Weekly and La Jornada.

• AP: Cuba is closing more workplace cafeterias. The experiment that initially affected 2,800 workers is now expanding to cover 225,000, all in Havana, all of whom receive 15-peso daily stipends to go buy their own lunch. Earlier discussion here.

• The Wall Street Journal advances the Cuba oil story, quoting a Repsol spokeswoman saying the company plans to resume drilling next year in its concession in Cuba’s Gulf waters. Its rig is under construction in China. Also: “A Treasury Department spokeswoman said some U.S. firms involved in oil cleanup have been issued licenses to travel to Cuba in case oil from the continuing spill hits beaches there.”

• The understatement of the year from Elian Gonzalez, who holds no ill feelings against his Miami relatives but says they “just didn’t make their best effort” to reunite him with his father. If that’s the way he remembers it, it’s probably not a bad thing. Herald story here.

• From a reader: video of one number, “Demasiado,” at Silvio Rodriguez’ Washington concert.

Odds and ends

• The Herald has a terrific report on Humberto Rios, a Cuban who won a prize for innovating and spreading organic farming techniques. He accepted the award in San Francisco, but it’s not clear if his $150,000 in prize money can be wired to him.

• The Economist looks coolly, and former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castaneda a little less so, at la coyuntura.

• Cubaencuentro: Arturo Lopez Levy looks at the exchange between Carlos Alberto Montaner and Silvio Rodriguez and finds Montaner’s “laundry-list” approach wanting.

• TIME: A look back at the Elian Gonzalez saga, ten years later.

• LA Times: Casa Don Rolando, a restaurant well worth visiting.

• Livan teaches us: old guys can still play.

• Europa Press: A Spanish official visits Cuba and gets assurances that 23 million Euros owed to companies from Asturias will be paid. Payments to these and other companies were frozen last year.

• Another hunger strike has begun, this one by Yamil Dominguez, a Cuban American with U.S. citizenship who is in Cuban prison. According to CubaNet and Spain’s El Mundo, he was convicted in 2007 of offenses related to alien smuggling, but he claims that he only took his yacht to Cuba because a storm forced him off his Miami-Cancun course. Dominguez’ demand is for his own freedom.

• Progreso Weekly translates the article (cited earlier here) by Cuban historian Esteban Morales about corruption.

Odds and ends

• Cuba’s Olympic baseball team, preparing for Beijing, hosts a weekend series with the Santa Barbara Foresters of the California Collegiate league.

• Bring back “the Miami relatives” – Delfin Gonzalez, great-uncle of Elian, holds a press conference today to “denounce,” as the Herald puts it, two Obama advisors who were involved in the saga, one as attorney for Elian’s father, the other as Deputy Attorney General.

• “Senator Barack Obama made history…” – the U.S. Interests Section’s big electronic signboard’s June 4 message, announcing the results of the Democratic primaries and two other news items.

• Interested in taking stock of 50 years of Cuban socialism? Queen’s University in Ontario is announcing a conference on that theme next spring, and issued a call for academic papers.