Merry Christmas to all

Odds and ends

• If you ever doubted what $90 oil does for Venezuela’s foreign policy, or for Venezuelan and Cuban public diplomacy initiatives in the Caribbean, read this Reuters article on the reopening of the Cienfuegos refinery and the Petrocaribe summit taking place in Cuba now.

• An interesting Herald report on the recent custody case involving the daughter of Rafael Izquierdo of Cabaiguan and the Coral Gables foster family. The State of Florida’s actions were directed by the staffs of the former and current governors. Nothing wrong with that, considering that the Department of Children and Families works for the governor, but it may explain why the state’s actions were so unusual: it asked the court to strip custody from the father even as he was declared a fit parent, and it waited three months before contacting the father to tell him that his parental status was going to be at issue.

• From the Latin America Working Group, a useful scorecard and fact sheet on presidential candidates’ positions on Cuba. If you like the embargo and the family sanctions and all that, you’ll have to look at the scoring system upside-down, but the info is solid.

• On the road at Christmas, Charlie Bravo writes about Italy, where Cuban Americans can go to be with their Moms.

• Here’s the correct link for the English version of the terrific blog Generacion Y. Someone out there is doing a great favor by translating Yoani’s work.

Restoration solution

A better photographer would have taken before and after pictures of the entire building, and I’ll see what I can do in the future. But here are two pictures taken at the site of the old Ministry of Education building in Old Havana, just behind the Palacio del los Capitanes Generales.

The old building occupied a full block, and it was an eyesore of 1950’s architecture surrounded by colonial-era buildings. It posed a big challenge for the restoration effort of the area, led by the city’s historian, Eusebio Leal. He and his team spent a long time considering whether to tear it down or rehabilitate it.

They opted for a solution where they gutted the building, preserved its skeleton, and rebuilt. And considering that the site is where the University of Havana was founded in 1728, the new building now houses the “Colegio Universitario San Geronimo de la Habana.” Here’s the entrance and the commemorative plaque. Someday I’ll dredge up some full before-and-after pictures.

Carlos Otero en la yuma

Is Cuban Miami becoming more moderate politically?

If you want to argue the affirmative, you can cite data from this poll or anecdotes from stories such as this one from the Sarasota Herald Tribune (sub. req’d), citing pro-engagement sentiments among Cuban Americans of different generations.

If you want to argue the negative, you can cite the fact that Miami sends only hard-line legislators to the U.S. Congress. The community may be changing, but it’s indisputable that the new moderation has yet to make an electoral difference at the federal level.

And what does the interesting case of Carlos Otero tell us?

Otero, a famous television personality in Cuba, traveled to Canada with his family and last week entered the United States. No sooner had he crossed the border, it seems, than the entertainer signed a contract with Miami’s Channel 41.

If you roam the Spanish-language blogs, you’ll see that his defection sparked all kinds of questions. Why was he allowed to travel to Canada with his entire family? Es confiable? Can he be taken seriously when he says that his doubts about the communist system were triggered by watching Channel 41, and not by a life’s worth of experience living inside that system itself?

I don’t know Mr. Otero, I don’t know his work, and I don’t know the answer to those questions.

But what is clear is that these questions, and a comical recent call for a boycott of Channel 41 and a competing station that show too many ex-officials of the Cuban government, were cast aside completely by Channel 41.

That station’s management made a quick business judgment regarding their audience.

Clearly, they calculated that what matters to their audience is that Otero is a good entertainer. And that the audience will not hold his life and work in Cuba against him. And perhaps that a part of the audience will tune in because they enjoyed him on Cuban television. And that if Channel 41 didn’t sign him, someone else would.

That is a market response to the Cuban American audience that would not have occurred, I think, even a generation ago. It focuses on an audience of more recent immigrants that don’t reject everything about Cuba today, and probably don’t consider themselves exiles.

It’s not a predictor of political change, but I think it does mark a difference.

And Mr. Otero, welcome to America.

Escambray

Paya petitions National Assembly

Oswaldo Paya delivered petitions to the National Assembly calling for adoption of laws to give amnesty to political prisoners and to allow Cubans to travel abroad freely and to return home. Reportedly, he delivered the petitions with 25,000 signatures, more than the 10,000 required to put a bill initiated by citizens on the legislative agenda. (More detailed report in Spanish here.) But it’s pointed out that he may not have followed the somewhat onerous requirement of certifying that the signers are registered voters, which would allow the petitions to be dismissed on procedural grounds (see Los Miquis, here).

Regardless, he made his point.

Your tax dollars at work: GAO on embargo enforcement

Responding to a Congressional request, the Government Accountability Office has done another report on Cuba embargo enforcement, focusing on U.S. agencies’ allocation of resources.

The full report (pdf) is here; the New York Times coverage is here.

The report finds an emphasis on Cuba enforcement that, in an environment of finite resources, has a cost:

“DHS’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP)…has increased intensive, “secondary” inspections of passengers arriving from Cuba at the Miami airport; in 2007, CBP conducted these inspections for 20 percent of arrivals from Cuba versus an average of 3 percent of other international arrivals. CBP data and interviews with agency officials suggest that the secondary inspections of Cuba arrivals at the airport may strain CBP’s ability to carry out its mission of keeping terrorists, criminals, and other inadmissible aliens from entering the country. Moreover, recent GAO reports have found weaknesses in CBP’s inspections capacity at key U.S. ports of entry nationwide.”

When it comes to Treasury enforcement of embargo violations, GAO found the following:

“Although the Cuba embargo is one of more than 20 sanctions programs that OFAC administers, OFAC penalties for Cuba embargo violations represented more than 70 percent of its total penalties in 2000-2005, falling to 29 percent in 2006.”

Also:

“Our analysis of OFAC data shows that from 2000 through 2006, the agency collected fines totaling about $8.1 million for 8,170 violations of the Cuba embargo—an average of $992 per violation. Most of these violations were relatively minor, such as purchasing Cuban cigars on the Internet. Over the same period, OFAC imposed fines totaling about $12.4 million for 3,054 violations of other sanctions programs, such as those on Iran, North Korean, and Syria—an average of about $4,071 per violation.”

U.S. officials interviewed by GAO also complained that embargo enforcement is difficult. One reason is that foreign governments, if you can believe it, sometimes decline the opportunity to act as chivatos for U.S. law enforcement by refusing to snitch on U.S. travelers to Cuba who pass through their territory:

“The unilateral nature of the embargo and a lack of multilateral cooperation hamper U.S. agencies’ diplomatic and enforcement efforts, according to agency officials. For example, some governments have actively opposed the U.S. embargo by refusing to identify U.S. travelers making unauthorized visits to Cuba via third countries, complicating agencies’ enforcement activities, or have declined to limit their trade, financial, and travel relations with Cuba, further undermining the embargo’s stated purpose.”

The feds also complain about other challenges that seem to be explained by Cuban Americans’ love for their own relatives in Cuba:

“Agency officials said that divided public opinion about the embargo has contributed to widespread, small-scale violations of restrictions on family travel and remittances and to an environment in which some individuals can profit from illegal activities… Also, financial services technologies, such as stored-value cards and online money transfer services, and widespread money laundering in southern Florida create opportunities for transferring funds to Cuba illegally.”

In the end, GAO could not determine how the Administration’s 2004 family sanctions and other tightened sanctions have affected Cuba’s economy:

“The impact of tighter restrictions implemented in 2004 and 2005 on travel, cash remittances, and gifts to Cuba cannot be determined because of an absence of reliable data.”

Hotel Florida

Odds and ends

• Two items from the Herald: Congress is set to approve $45 million for Cuba democracy programs, and an English version of yesterday’s article on fugitive Joanne Chesimard.

• It is announced that the Cienfuegos refinery, revamped with Venezuelan aid, is good to go.

• Stuck on the Palmetto hangs it up. A great Miami blog, occasionally about Cuba. Very sorry to see them go.

• Tired of politics? In Connie’s blog, and with illustrations by her own hand, “Letras en Guines 1965,” an essay of photos and illustrations about the “trabajo productivo” on the farm in 1965 by students of the Escuela de Letras y Arte.

The UN human rights agreements

Cuba announced last week that it will sign two UN agreements by May of next year – the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Fidel Castro differed from the government’s “political decision” to sign these pacts because of provisions on labor unions and education. Here are a few excerpts from them:

• “Anyone who is arrested shall be informed, at the time of arrest, of the reasons for his arrest and shall be promptly informed of any charges against him.”

• “Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release.”

• “Everyone lawfully within the territory of a State shall, within that territory, have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence…Everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his own…No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.”

• “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.”

• “The right of peaceful assembly shall be recognized.”

• “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests.”

• “The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to submit reports on the measures they have adopted which give effect to the [civil and political] rights recognized herein and on the progress made in the enjoyment of those rights…”

• “The States Parties to the present [economic, social, and cultural] Covenant recognize the right to work, which includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his living by work which he freely chooses or accepts, and will take appropriate steps to safeguard this right.”

• “The States to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of just and favourable conditions of work which ensure, in particular:

Remuneration which provides all workers, as a minimum, with:

Fair wages and equal remuneration for work of equal value without distinction of any kind…”

• “The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians to choose for their children schools, other than those established by the public authorities, which conform to such minimum educational standards as may be laid down or approved by the State and to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.”

• “The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to submit in conformity with this part of the Covenant reports on the measures which they have adopted and the progress made in achieving the observance of the rights recognized herein.”

The retiring type?

Fidel Castro sent another message to the Mesa Redonda television program (text here), in which he gave his views on how the United States “maneuvered” in the Bali summit on climate change, and also addressed his future:

“My fundamental duty is not to hold on to positions, much less to block the way of younger people, but rather to bring experiences and ideas whose modest value come from the exceptional era in which I lived.”

Reuters story here, AP here, AFP Spanish here.

To my knowledge, this is the first time Fidel has addressed his future role. As President of the Council of State, President of the Council of Ministers, and head of the Communist Party, he has options. He seems to be hinting at an advisory, non-executive role, such as returning as a member of the Council of State – a decision he would have to make after the new National Assembly is seated next March – but not as its President.

Bay of Pigs post-mortem

A friend sent me this document, “Record of Paramilitary Action Against the Castro Government in Cuba” (pdf, 4.5 mb), a declassified CIA study of the Bay of Pigs operation. It was written by Jack Hawkins, a Marine Corps Colonel who was detailed to the CIA and participated in the planning of the operation. Simply put, it’s a detailed account of the organization, execution, and failure of the operation. The introduction summarizes Hawkins’ view as follows:

“…experience indicates that political restrictions upon military measures may result in destroying the effectiveness of such efforts. The end result is political embarrassment coupled with military failure and loss of prestige in the world. If political considerations are such as to prohibit the application of those military steps required to achieve the objective, then such military operations should not be undertaken.”

The final 18 pages of the paper are a Sep- tember 1961 article from Fortune magazine about the foreign policy context of the time and how President Kennedy and his people acted in this Cuba operation. The purpose was to aid and expand a counterrevolutionary movement in the mountains around Trinidad, and the plan was to land an amphibious force just west of Trinidad. But one week before the operation, this article details, the landing site was moved 100 miles west, to a beach on a swampy, barely inhabited peninsula, a world away from Trinidad.

The idea was to conceal the American role in supporting the operation – one of many decisions that produced a complete, tragic, and costly fiasco.

[Photos: a billboard near the invasion beach that proclaims victory over “Yanqui” forces, and one of many monuments to fallen soldiers on the road leading to the beach.]

Odds and ends

• Cuba fell short of its 2007 plan for housing construction and repair, an official announced, and in part she blamed the embargo.

• Cuba announces a five-year, $2 billion plan for investment in transportation, including more acquisitions of Chinese buses.

• In El Nuevo Herald, a story on American fugitive Joanne Chesimard’s life in Cuba.

• Here’s an unusual and enterprising case of immigration fraud. A Miami woman is charged with nine counts of bigamy – a Cuban American and a legal permanent resident, she married nine extra men so they could stay in the United States and acquire legal status, and she charged them for it.

San Rafael

"History will tell who is right"

Days after Cuba’s government announced that it would sign UN human rights conventions, Fidel Castro decided to remind the world why he declined to sign those accords seven years ago.

Granma published a note from Castro to Randy Alonso, moderator of the Mesa Redonda television program. Castro requests that Randy broadcast a statement he made in 2001 in which Castro explained why Cuba would not sign the convention on economic, social, and cultural rights, because of reservations about two provisions.

The section on labor union rights would provide “a pretext for imperialism to try to divide and fragment workers, create artificial unions, and reduce their political and social power and influence,” Castro said in 2001. A section on education would “open the doors to the privatization of teaching, which in the past allowed painful differences and irritating privileges and injustices, including racial discrimination.” (AFP Spanish story here.)

On Monday, Cuba nonetheless announced that it would sign this and another UN convention on civil and political rights.

Castro asked that the text of his 2001 statement be titled, “History will tell who is right.”

Maybe history will also tell us who is in charge.

Migration news

In Spain, AFP reports that police announced the breakup of a Cuban alien smuggling ring, with 46 arrests – 26 in Spain, 16 in Germany, four in Austria. Police allege that the ring paid for letters of invitation, ad the majority of those brought out of Cuba were eventually sent to the United States via Mexico.

In West Palm Beach, there’s a federal indictment of two Miami men in connection with an alien smuggling incident last November that left one person dead; El Nuevo Herald’s report says the men could face the death penalty.

In the Czech Republic, Cuban asylees are slowly disappearing from the housing provided for them, according to this English-language report from Prague. The Cubans “might have viewed the Czech Republic as a transit country,” the reporter notes.

Odds and ends

● General Rafael del Pino saw accounts of President Bush’s “Dear Mr. Chairman” letter to North Korea’s Dear Leader, and wrote an op-ed where he examines the situation in North Korea and the turnaround in U.S. policy toward that country, and muses about a possible “Dear Chairman Raul” letter. He also gave me an excuse to find another ridiculous photo of Kim Jong Il.

● A call for national dialogue and reconciliation in Cuba, from Commerce Secretary Gutierrez, in a statement he sent to Radio Marti. Did Radio Mambi get a copy too?

● Two men plead guilty to obstruction of justice in El Paso for refusing to testify in the case of Luis Posada Carriles. Three others entered similar pleas last month and early this month. Say what you will about Posada – the guy inspires loyalty.

● Rescued from extinction: the fishing bats of Sancti Spiritus. As the Spanish version of this same article explains, these bats glide near the surface of the water and catch fish, just like eagles I guess. Qué clase de país!

Opposition tactics

Two opposition leaders, Martha Beatriz Roque and Jose Luis Garcia (known as Antunez) issued a call for the Cuban opposition to unite and change tactics. (Pdf of statement here, via Penultimos Dias.)

Opposition unity has long been an elusive goal because of genuine and natural disagreements about policies and tactics, personal and political rivalries, suspicions, and disputes relating to connections with Miami and Washington.

Regarding tactics, the statement almost implies that the opposition has not connected with the public. It calls on each member of the opposition to do so now, one-on-one, to “win the street” and later “come out united.” The idea is to avoid repression and to open “many more contacts with the people.” The plan is for each member of the opposition to talk to three Cubans each day, people not a part of their family or circle of friends, and to explain three things. First, how the government violates each article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the need for political prisoners to be released. Second the need to engage in “non-cooperation” with the government. Third, “to make known the difficult economic, social, and political situation that the country is living and its ‘irreversible’ condition inside the totalitarian system, hence a change is indispensable.”

Odds and ends

• Cuba’s Catholic Bishops issue their Christmas message (see front page of this site) and expressed hope for “necessary changes that may improve and transform national life,” in the face of “difficulties that are oppressive and have lasted too long.” “It is necessary to give space for personal initiative and creativity,” they added.

• In Cancun, a murder apparently related to smuggling of Cubans. The Cuban-American victim was about to talk to authorities about the murder of his brother, also in Cancun, three months ago.

• In a Herald op-ed, the son of Jorge Mas Canosa examines his father’s legacy, and draws some lessons.

Domino

New blog from Cuba

A group of independent journalists in Cuba from the Asociación Pro Libertad de Prensa started a new blog last month.

At the top of the page is an editorial that comments on a videoconference that First Lady Laura Bush held last week with several independent librarians who gathered at the U.S. Interests Section. The editorial “deplores” the exclusion of some of the leaders of the independent library movement from that event and implies that the U.S. diplomats were playing favorites. The editorial opposes the “selection of political figures from outside Cuba,” as if the Interests Section’s invitations favored one faction only. The only split of which I’m aware among the independent librarians occurred a few years ago, when Martha Beatriz Roque convened an assembly of opposition groups and the leaders of the independent libraries did not attend so as to guard the apolitical nature of their work.

Odds and ends

• More on the Mexican complaints about human smuggling: an op-ed by Miguel Cossio in El Nuevo Herald says Mexico is abandoning its tradition of granting asylum and “has yielded to the blackmail of the Castro dictatorship.” And Armengol, unimpressed, reports on a Radio Mambi call for a boycott of Mexican products.

• At Penultimos Dias, a call from Los Angeles for dissidents to change their modus operandi.

• Senator McCain and Governor Huckabee, as their supporters in this Herald story tell it, would push for indictments of Fidel and Raul Castro in connection with the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown.