Odds and ends

• The Herald has more on the Juanita Castro memoir.

• Carlos Miller of the blog miamibeach411, prompted by last week’s poll, takes a long and balanced look at the question, “Is Cuban Loyalty to the Republican Party Fading?”

• AP: New Bolivian passports will be of Cuban manufacture.

• The writings of dissidents Miriam Leiva and Oscar Espinosa Chepe are compiled here.

• In this story by the Herald’s Jordan Levin, Puerto Rican singer Olga Tanon reflects on the experience of performing in Cuba at the Juanes concert: “With all the respect in the world for Cuban exiles that have suffered tremendously, I think it's time to change.”

• The blog DCist reports on a gas leak that caused the partial evacuation of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington last week. D.C. firefighters responded, but not all were allowed in.

Odds and ends

• Former Congressional candidate and Miami-Dade Democratic party chair Joe Garcia received Senate confirmation Wednesday for his Energy Department post and resigned his position at the Cuban American National Foundation.

• “We felt citizens of the world” – Yoani Sanchez on the Juanes concert, in Poder360 magazine.

• AP: Santiago Alvarez was released from jail after serving time for refusing to testify in the case of Luis Posada Carriles, and El Nuevo Herald has an affectionate photo essay of his return home.

• Cuban Colada: Cuba’s Septeto Nacional has U.S. visas and will perform in the Bronx next month.

Odds and ends

• Veteran Latin American correspondent David Adams is leaving the St. Petersburg Times, another bad sign of the state of the news business, and in David’s case a real loss for readers. Here’s his last piece, on the Cuban American youth group Raices de Esperanza and its support for the Juanes concert. “They gambled on Juanes and they won big,” said Carlos Saladrigas. “It is quite understandable that young people would see music as a bridge between people,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

• The Associated Baptist Press news service reports that two church leaders are in custody in eastern Cuba.

• Luis Armando Pena Soltren, the accused hijacker who just returned to the United States after spending 40 years in Cuba, entered a not guilty plea in court yesterday. The New York Times reports that he had been talking to U.S. diplomats in Cuba for several years about his return.

• Antonio Guerrero, one of the Cuban Five, has his sentence reduced and can be out of jail in about seven years. Along the Malecon has the sentencing agreement and more.

• AP: A U.S. company says it has the green light from the U.S. government to lay a fiber optic cable to Cuba, but it has no deal with Cuba to do so. Meanwhile, Venezuela claims it is about to start work on its cable link to Cuba. An official expressed hope that the Venezuela-Cuba cable will be operational in two years; previous reports estimated that it would be functioning next year.

Miami changes its mind

Time will tell if Juanes changed anything in Cuba, but it seems his concert changed some minds in Miami.

A pre-concert poll (pdf) of Cuban American opinion, which to its great credit the Cuba Study Group released even though it showed that its own view was a minority view, showed that only 27 percent of Cuban Americans had a favorable opinion of it.

After the concert, a second poll (pdf) now shows that favorable opinion of the concert jumped to 53 percent. The survey also shows that 77 percent of respondents age 50 and higher watched the concert.

One Cuban American who changed his mind about the event was businessman Sergio Pino, who wrote in the Miami Herald that he was “skeptical” of the concert, “believing that somehow the presence of such a prominent artist would provide the Cuban dictatorship with useful propaganda.”

Mr. Pino continued:

“In my opinion the concert was a success. Juanes had good intentions – and they showed. He offered a message of love and unity for all Cubans. He shouted ‘Cuba libre’ more than once, and his song about an island in the middle of the sea, begging for liberty, jerked tears from everyone.

“Juanes opened the door to change; it is time to rethink our strategy. With three Cuban-American members of Congress, and one in the Senate, and many well-meaning Cuban-American leaders of hundreds of different political organizations in exile, it is time for one of them to come forward and unite us behind a new and more effective approach that focuses on the Cuban people first.”

When Mr. Pino addresses the Cuban Americans in Congress, he does so as a very substantial contributor to pro-embargo legislators and the major political action committees that support the embargo.

[TIME magazine photo.]

Odds and ends

• Author Achy Obejas says the real change spurred by last Sunday’s concert was in Miami. Carlos Saladrigas agrees: “The old policies of hurting the regime with collateral damage to the people need to give way to policies that help the people even when they may provide a collateral benefit to the regime.”

• AP sums up the story of the concert that almost didn’t take place. Juanes complained that his driver turned out to be the same guy that served him breakfast, and was watching him as if he were a security agent (!). And he and others complained that the section closest to the stage was being reserved for a government-supplied crowd. Rui Ferreira has video of a scene in a hallway of the Hotel Nacional. Penultimos Dias notes Granma’s response: it was a big misunderstanding, the guy is a sommelier.

• Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon is invited to a U.S. Congressional event and is denied a U.S. visa.

• The United States beat Cuba 5-3 in World Cup baseball competition yesterday in Italy, and now heads to the Sunday final. Cuba has to beat Canada (in Florence, 7:00 p.m. local time tonight) to get into the final for a rematch with the Americans.

• The Herald reports on the torture suffered by the Cuban migrants in Mexico who were rescued by Mexican police. The mistreatment was apparently perpetrated by smugglers from both Mexico and Miami. Earlier story here.

• If U.S.-Cuba postal service is resumed, it will mean the resumption of service that began as early as 1767, a Spanish researcher reports.

"The Americano"

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich starts The Americano, “an Hispanic news service,” and features a commentary on the Juanes concert that is positive.

Juanes, the day after

• In today’s Herald, Lydia Martin and Jordan Levin round up the concert itself and the reaction in Miami.

• Some photos from the BBC.

• Yoani Sanchez comments on the concert at the Huffington Post: “It was a rare experience to be there, without shouting slogans and without having to applaud mechanically when the tone of the speech marked that it was the time to cheer…at least this Sunday afternoon we live something different.”

• Prompted by Univision’s Jorge Ramos to discuss a U.S. role in the event – “Did it get your blessing?” – President Obama played it cool: “I don’t think it’s a matter of us providing blessings…Let me be clear. The U.S. government isn’t a concert promoter…I certainly don’t think it hurts U.S.-Cuban relations, these kinds of cultural exchanges. I wouldn't overstate the degree that it helps…What I’d really like to see is Cuba starting to show that it wants to move away from some of the anti-democratic practices of the past.”

• At Versailles, the wonderful Calle Ocho bakery and restaurant, Vigilia Mambisa brought a steamroller to smash CD’s and photos of Juanes, AFP reports. Police intervened in a “brief confrontation” between Cuban Americans who supported the concert and those opposed.

• Also in Miami, Telemundo billed it the “Concert of Discord,” which would be the biggest stretch in this whole saga, were it not for the advent of Gorki Aguila of the band Porno para Ricardo on the Miami media scene. “I have my weak moments,” he told the Herald, “Sometimes I feel like Christ on the cross – ‘why did you abandon me’…But if I don’t do what I’m doing I’d lose much of the sense in my life.”

Juanes fills the Plaza

Looked to me like a nice afternoon of music that many thousands of Cubans enjoyed.

As I thought about all the huffing and puffing in Miami, I don’t know why I was reminded of H.L. Mencken’s description of Puritanism: “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

Odds and ends

• Governor Richardson clarifies his position on travel to Cuba: “Let anybody go to Cuba.” He spoke at the University of New Mexico about his effort to mediate a change in U.S.-Cuba relations. He engaged in some Cuba diplomacy in the 1990’s while serving in the House of Representatives; two accounts of that history are here and here.

• Reuters: Talks on the resumption of regular U.S.-Cuba postal service begin in Havana today.

• From a Herald article today: “Another exile group, Mambisa Watch [Vigilia Mambisa], announced that on Sunday evening it will use a steamroller in Little Havana to destroy CDs of artists who take part in the Juanes concert.”

Juanes, on his way to Havana

Well, he’s going.

The concert is on Sunday and the lineup, according to a statement released by Juanes and the Cuban music institute and published in Granma, is impressive:

Amaury Pérez (Cuba), Danny Rivera (Puerto Rico), Cucú Diamante y Yerbabuena (Cuba-Venezuela), Juan Fernando Velasco (Ecuador), Jovanotti (Italia), Juanes (Colombia), Luis Eduardo Aute (España), Miguel Bosé (España), Olga Tañón (Puerto Rico), Orishas (Cuba), Silvio Rodríguez (Cuba), Van Van (Cuba), Carlos Varela (Cuba), Víctor Manuel (España) y X Alfonso (Cuba)

The statement also says that the concert will be broadcast on Cuban television and the signal will be available “without restriction” to broadcasters and websites in any country. In the United States, the Hispanic Information and Telecommunications Network (HITN) has announced that it will carry the concert live.

The statement also says, “There will not be presenters on stage,” just the musicians.

If you’re keeping score of the politics of this event, that means Cuba 1, Calle Ocho 0, game over.

“Cuba” meaning the Cubans who will simply enjoy an outdoor concert, as people do in any other great city.

And “Cuba” as in the government itself, because those who attend the event will know that many in Miami were opposed to it taking place. The Cuban government will be able to say, when those folks talk about freedom and their vision for Cuba’s future, that they are the same ones who even wanted to deny you an afternoon of music. Sad.

Just to make sure, a program will air on Cuban television tomorrow night showing “all the people who opposed the Cuban people having a good time on September 20.” That’s according to Amaury Perez, in an interview last week. Consider the program Vigilia Mambisa’s gift to the central committee’s propaganda team. Sadder still.

When I first wrote about this concert, I recognized some of the criticisms. But then and now, I side with those who decided not to make the perfect the enemy of the good, and who simply support a great musical event. For example, check out this young and wise Cuban American’s view on the “right to be inspired.” For all their years, those who warned the loudest about a Castro victory have handed him one on a silver platter.

Last week, Yoani Sanchez went out and recorded Cubans’ opinions of the concert on video, and put it on her blog with a brief comment that she’s happy to be in tune with her people.

Odds and ends

• Placido Domingo says, “Go, Juanes, go.” So does Dionisio García Ibáñez, president of Cuba’s conference of Catholic bishops. According to Cubaencuentro, he said of the concert: “It will be like a light, an opening, so artists from other parts of the world may come to Cuba and communicate with the Cuban people. Beyond any political content, we know that many will go see Juanes, and will appreciate his concert.” And six more jailed dissidents support the concert, according to this EFE report.

• Tracey Eaton interviewed American fugitive Charles Hill and writes about it in the current issue of CubaNews.

• Reuters: the transfer of retail operations to military control has cut pilferage and squeezed the black market.

• Speaking of the black market, the Herald reports on “mules” who have carried money and goods to Cuba in excess of U.S. regulatory limits, and whose business may be threatened.

Odds and ends

• Twenty-four dissidents signed a statement supporting the Juanes concert, calling it “a great opportunity to advance reconciliation among all Cubans, and to leave behind the hatreds that for so many years have poisoned our patria.” What a bunch of commies! (Reuters coverage here, excerpts and signatures here).

• Speaking of commies, the communist Chinese are giving Cuba a new $600 million line of credit, including $260 million for grain purchases.

• Two good reads at The Havana Note on the Amnesty International report: on the new ground it breaks in the human rights community’s discussion of the embargo, and on a decision President Obama has to make in the coming days on the embargo itself.

• AP: A Miami federal judge awarded a $27.5 judgment to the family of a Cuban political prisoner, to be paid by the Cuban government and Communist party, to compensate for the distress that the incarceration of Omar Rodriguez Saludes has caused.

Odds and ends

• In the New York Times, a call for U.S.-Cuba environmental cooperation.

• AP reports that with one month to go in fiscal year 2009, significantly fewer Cubans are arriving in the United States by sea or by crossing the Mexican border, or are being intercepted at sea. When the numbers go up, everyone says it’s a sign of desperation in Cuba – so does this mean everybody’s happy?

• Cuban rocker Gorki Aguila, now in Mexico, comments on the Juanes concert in this video posted at Cubaencuentro.

• A Miami radio personality, Javier Ceriani, says he will hold a freedom concert in Miami on the same day as the Juanes concert in Cuba.

Odds and ends

• Governor Richardson made clear yesterday that he is in Cuba on his own, not as an Obama Administration envoy, but he will report his impressions to the Administration when he returns. He also wants to see an end to travel restrictions: “There’s a link between Hemingway and the United States and Cuba, and now there’s a New Mexico link…I think enhancing cultural and artistic and educational ties is a prelude to diplomatic and commercial ties. It always happens that way…I’m for enhanced tourism travel for Americans.” AP coverage here.

• The Obama Administration fines an Australian bank 7 million Australian dollars for trade financing operations connected to transactions with Cuba and other countries subject to U.S. sanctions.

• El Nuevo Herald has a video in Spanish on yesterday’s poll (pdf) on the Juanes concert. It features remarks by the pollster, Sergio Bendixen, and the poll’s sponsor, Carlos Saladrigas of the Cuba Study Group.

• Livan Hernandez returns to the Washington Nationals and has a good outing against the Cubs.

• A short, silent video of 1932 Havana at Penultimos Dias.

Go, Juanes, go (continued)

• The concert is “not about politics,” Juanes explains in a Herald article that also covers other voices in the debate.

• Julio Iglesias says Juanes is a “great artist” who wants to bring “a message of affection and music” to Cubans.

• Gloria Estefan somewhat condescendingly says she knows Juanes’ “heart is in the right place,” explains her concerns about Cuba and the concert, and says she hopes Cubans will be able to enjoy the event and have uncontrolled access to it.

• The Cuba Study Group releases a poll (pdf) showing that only 27 percent of Cuban Americans support the concert, while 74 percent believe that last week’s Miami street demonstrations featuring the smashing of CD’s with sledgehammers were not good “for the image of Cuban exiles in the United States.”

Quotable

“For honorable Cubans the concert of Juanes will be a grotesque spectacle…I don’t intend to politicize art; if the key is not to politicize music and art, then I call upon the Castro regime also to invite famous Cuban musicians in exile to the concert, such as Willy Chirino and Donato Poveda, who can surely sing for the peace, justice, and liberty that our people need so much.”

– Jorge Luis García Pérez, a.k.a. “Antúnez,”former political prisoner, quoted in Miscelaneas de Cuba

“Let [Juanes] sing in Cuba and then let him sing for peace in Miami, and may both concerts be so successful that they are repeated in both places. And in those concerts, let Juanes bring Gloria, Willie, and Albita to Havana and let him bring Silvio, Pablo, and Amaury to Miami. That would be a real bridge that the great majority of Cubans on both sides desire.”

– Silvia Wilhelm, Puentes Cubanos, from letter in El Nuevo Herald

Odds and ends

• Elizardo Sanchez, head of the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, released this report (pdf, in English and Spanish) last week including 208 persons on its “partial list of persons sentenced or tried for political reasons.” Of these, 65 are prisoners of conscience recognized by Amnesty International. The report (see paragraphs 11 and 12) chides the government for surveillance of citizens and notes that if high officials such as Carlos Lage are surreptitiously filmed, no citizen can feel immune from surveillance.

• More on the Juanes concert: The singer went to police about a threatening message on his Twitter account, the concert picked up the support of some Cuban American groups yesterday, and Mambi Watch reports that Vigilia Mambisa is taking some heat from fellow opponents of the concert for its demonstration last week.

• The New York Times on the ongoing contact and exchange of information between meteorologists in the United States and Cuba regarding hurricanes.

• Cuba’s Policia Nacional Revolucionaria has issued a call for recruits to its undercover service; Cuban Colada translates here.

Go, Juanes, go (continued)

• Cuba Study Group leader Carlos Saladrigas supports the concert and addresses the Cuban American community, saying “we are quick to judge from the comforts of exile and rapidly close the door to limited opportunities for openness…It is also possible that the Cuban government is waiting for what has always been its safe formula: to let exile organizations do its dirty work.” His article was published in El Nuevo Herald; English and Spanish versions are here.

• Cuban American youth group Raices de Esperanza supports the concert too.

• At Babalu, a translation of Willie Chirino’s statement of support.

• At Cuaderno de Cuba, Alejandro Armengol’s Spanish-language blog, three posts: on the debate in Miami, on the Vigilia Mambisa protests last Friday, and on reaction from youths in Havana, who like the idea of a concert.

Odds and ends

• Mauricio Claver-Carone of the Capitol Hill Cubans blog and I will be on a PBS Blog Talk Radio discussion of the embargo at 11:00 this morning, hosted by veteran broadcaster Aaron Brown.

• Cheapflights.com canvasses its readers on travel to Cuba.

• In Palma de Mallorca, a confab of Cuba bloggers is under way.

• The Dallas Morning News writes about a Dallas medical student at Cuba’s Latin American Medical School.

And more on Juanes:

• Author Zoe Valdes writes to Miguel Bose, the Spanish singer who will join the concert, urging him to pull out.

• Writer Carlos Alberto Montaner thinks the concert is a positive initiative. What a commie!

• Willie Chirino issues a statement in support of the concert, recognizing Juanes’ “good faith” and explaining at length the “bad taste in my mouth.”

• The group 3 de la Habana is in favor too: “Juanes in Cuba can bring some oxygen to the people…[Other concerts] open up the vision of the younger generation a little and makes them see things from another point of view.”

• Puerto Rican singer Olga Tanon, who will perform in the concert, issues a statement explaining why, translated here by examiner.com.

• EFE talks to anonymous “show business sources” in Miami and says Juanes is under “strong pressure” to cancel the concert. EFE also reports that Vigilia Mambisa plans a Calle Ocho protest tomorrow “in rejection of this humiliation and Juanes’ provocation of the Cuban community.” Protesters will smash his CD’s with hammers, the group says.

Go, Juanes, go

The Colombian singer Juanes is moving ahead with his plans for a September 20 concert where he and other international artists will perform in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolucion.

In the process, he is making the rounds in Miami and colliding with the opinion that since politics pervades everything in Cuba, he is engaging in politics merely by going to Cuba – and if he doesn’t say certain things and conduct himself in a certain way, the entire enterprise will be immoral.

I hope Juanes’ headache wears off by September 19.

His concert won’t change the world, much less Cuba, but it has the makings of a great success, and thousands of Cubans will love it.

It’s a concert for peace, pure and simple, he says – a repeat of a “Peace Without Borders” concert he held on the Venezuela-Colombian border last year. His representative, Fernan Martinez, has said that the concert will be “completely apolitical, there will not be mentions of politics in favor of or against any government.”

Interviewed on Univision last night (story and video excerpt here), he spoke very much as an artist, not a politician. But he also expressed a faith that his idea of a concert in Havana is not only deeply right, but meaningful in a way that approaches the boundary of politics: “To go play in Cuba is sort of impossible…to go to Cuba is a symbol that it is time to change minds…I want to go to Cuba with my friends to tell the world from Cuba that people need to change.” As for the concert location, he sees it as neutral and open – when his interviewer noted that there’s an image of Che Guevara there, he countered that Pope John Paul II celebrated an important mass in that plaza, and that there’s also a monument to Jose Marti.

Juanes’ initiative is drawing a reaction in Miami. “When talking about Cuba, one can’t ignore politics,” Cuban American star Willie Chirino said on the same Univision program. And he’s got a point – Juanes’ claim that he’s not involved in politics, but he wants to change the world, is a little hard to grasp, even though it’s the kind of thing that artists say all the time.

Critics are right to point out that in Cuba, there are no private concert venues or promoters, so an event like this has to be approved by the government. Since it’s a government venue, there’s the possibility that a government official may appear on stage and make a speech. And there are those who are mystified about a concert for peace in Cuba, when Cuba is not at war. They’ve got a point too.

Some say Juanes shouldn’t go at all, and his concert will be immoral if he doesn’t bring Cuban American artists and use his platform to criticize the Cuban government’s human rights record. The event will be “shameless, thoughtless and heartless,” one Joe Cardona wrote in the Miami Herald, “one more tacit legitimization of the hemisphere’s most oppressive 50-year-old dictatorship.” Agence France-Presse interviewed two activists and proclaimed that Miami is “on a war footing.” Oh boy.

The Obama Administration seems to be supporting the concert. A State Department spokesman told El Nuevo Herald last week, “We are not officially supporting the concert, but the State Department is in favor of these kinds of cultural exchanges to the extent that they increase understanding between peoples…We fully respect Juanes and we wish him much good luck in his project.”

I cast my vote with Juanes.

My guess is that blogger Yoani Sanchez’ opinion – that the concert conditions may not be ideal but “Juanes should come and sing” nonetheless – will be that of the vast majority of Cubans. Her comments are here in English and in Spanish.

The worst-case scenario, I suppose, is that a Cuban official would make a speech, or an announcer would deliver a political message from the stage. If that happens, the thousands of Cuban kids of all ages in the plaza will either listen, or they will do what they often do, which is to zone out while they wait for the music to begin.

Surely, they will be there for the music. And if they find out that some opposed the concert because it didn’t include the right political message, then they will get the idea that the ideological rigidity that smothers all kinds of beneficial creativity, expression, and enterprise – not to mention just plain fun – is alive and well, not only in the buildings surrounding the Plaza de la Revolucion.