New kids on the block

From London Metropolitan University, a new on-line journal with diverse content, The International Journal of Cuban Studies. And from the Canada-based organization Facilitación Digital Ciudadana, a new website, “Con Cuba,” that “aspires to contribute to bridge-building and the most effective cooperation between Cuban civil society and that of Latin America and the Caribbean.”

Malecon

Can we listen?

Hector Palacios, a Cuban dissident released from jail and allowed to travel abroad last fall for medical treatment, tells AP that he plans to return to Cuba next month along with his wife Gisela Delgado, leader of the independent libraries in Cuba.

Mr. Palacios was in Washington last month; he was here on the day that President Bush declared to be a global day of solidarity with Cuban dissidents, but he did not attend the White House ceremony. Here and elsewhere in his travels, his message boils down to a few basic points: the Cuban government is out of options, the opposition is strong and well positioned, and the United States would do well to change some of its policies toward Cuba.

Here’s what he told AFP May 30 (my translation):

“Without dialogue, there is no peaceful change,” he opined, before pointing out “a series of points that have to disappear from the embargo,” in his opinion. “First, that Cubans [Cuban Americans] may travel to their country any time they wish, that they may send their family what they want to send, and also that U.S. citizens may visit us…”

This comment comes on the heels of Martha Beatriz Roque’s direct appeal to President Bush, in a videoconference early last month, to end restrictions on family travel and remittances. Previously, Roque had been a steadfast supporter of President Bush’s policies.

Vladimiro Roca, another dissident leader, told EFE last week that Senator Obama’s position on Cuba policy:

“…breaks the ... state of siege that it tries to maintain to justify repression and narrow-mindedness…On the other hand, McCain would help the hard line…to maintain the approach that they are beseiged by the greatest power in the world.”

Then there was this article from Oscar Espinosa Chepe who, like Palacios, was arrested in 2003 as part of the group of 75 and is provisionally out of jail for health reasons. The article appeared last month in Spain’s El Pais (but the link there is dead). An excerpt (my translation):

“Democratic countries that wish to help the Cuban people should recognize the existence of a new situation that calls for new thinking. The policy of isolating Cuba and favoring confrontation, practiced for decades by U.S. authorities, should be replaced by mechanisms of contacts, fundamentally with [Cuban] society, without excluding eventual meetings with the Cuban government, as done by the Nixon and Reagan Administrations with the Soviet Union, the countries of Eastern Europe, China, and Vietnam, and now attempted with North Korea. The goal would be to contribute to creating a less tense atmosphere, where it would be difficult for the hardliners to obtain alibis to cultivate false nationalism and to block changes…Immediate steps could be taken such as permitting Cuban Americans to visit the island and help their family and friends economically without restriction…[this step] would make people who receive assistance more independent of the totalitarian state…It would also be very valuable to promote exchanges between the American and Cuban people in all spheres, including cultural, academic, scientific, and sports.”

It is not new for Chepe to oppose U.S. sanctions, but it is new for Palacios, Roque, and Roca to do so.

And it’s not surprising to see these opinions being expressed out loud; President Bush’s term is nearing its end, and in my experience at least, Cubans on the street are not fans of American sanctions. They already have a government, after all, that builds barriers between them and the outside world – and they don’t like the idea that other governments would join in that effort.

Yesterday Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez spoke to dissidents by phone (to whom, his statement doesn’t specify).

The same question comes to mind as in the Bush videoconference: Our leaders talk to the dissidents, but do they listen?

Secretary Gutierrez' amateur hour

When the Herald asked Secretary Gutierrez’ spokeswoman to explain his new allegation that Cuba “funds anti-American terrorist activities around the world” – a charge that isn’t contained in the State Department’s terrorism report – she talked about other things instead.

Maybe he just made it up.

Or maybe someone on his staff made it up for him.

At Babalu they have published a comment by a Gutierrez aide who takes issue with a recent column by Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, where Robinson criticized U.S. policy against Cuba as ineffective. The aide, Jorge Ponce, questions Robinson’s patriotism, calling him an “advocate of anything and anyone who is or pretends to be anti-Yankee,” and saying Robinson has a “longstanding honeymoon with the Castros.”

“I don't know about Eugene, but I'm all about God Bless America,” he concludes.

What class.

Odds and ends

• Cuba hands over an American who fled to Cuba to avoid federal charges of sexual abuse and child pornography.

• Another victory for the embargo: Responding to U.S. pressure, Lloyds bank tells its customers in Britain that if they do business in Cuba, they have to take their banking business elsewhere.

• Reuters reporters ask Cubans on the street about the U.S. election, and most go for Obama.

• The EU’s foreign ministers, busy with other matters, will debate Cuba sanctions on Thursday.

• Someone hurry up and tell Secretary Gutierrez: Reports of UFO’s in Cuba, with eyewitness accounts and a photo.

Consulado

EU sanctions decision next week

Next week, the European Union will decide whether to drop a set of sanctions that it imposed on Cuba in 2003 and suspended in 2005. Spain wants them dropped, others aren’t so sure, and Mexico’s President Calderon just supported the Spanish position in a visit to Madrid.

Press reports lean toward predicting that the sanctions will be dropped. The British government, until now not a supporter of the Spanish position, may have moved to Madrid’s side, if British press reports are accurate, through parliamentary horse trading in a matter that had nothing to do with Cuba.

“Normalization” of relations by the EU would have a symbolic meaning; in this case the EU would be rejecting appeals from dissidents in Cuba and from the U.S. government to maintain its current posture. But in concrete terms I don’t see lots of impact from dropping measures that were shelved three years ago, and it’s not necessarily the case that European human rights advocacy would decline. It might even become more effective.

China and Cuba's oil

“Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to higher prices means more supply.”

That’s Vice President Cheney speaking earlier this week, joining a Republican chorus that argues, reasonably enough, that if we want lower gas prices we should produce more oil. We could begin by ending our own prohibitions on exploiting proven reserves in Alaska, off the Gulf coast, and elsewhere.

By “communists” he was referring to China and Cuba, claiming that China is drilling in Cuba’s Gulf waters. Not quite so. A Spanish-led consortium drilled in 2004, found oil but not in commercially viable quantities, and plans to drill again next year. No one else is drilling.

China is, however, involved in Cuban energy production, as shown in this photo of a rig on the coast east of Havana. (If someone can translate the Chinese sign, please do.)

From a Cuba policy perspective, what is interesting about the Republican discussion of Cuba’s Gulf oil strategy is that Cheney, the House Republican leaders, and others are not joining the calls from Florida legislators to stop Cuba from drilling. There are proposals to do that through new sanctions on foreign oil companies, or in Senator Nelson’s case, by ending American recognition of the U.S.-Cuba maritime border.

Instead, they are saying implicitly that it’s a reasonable strategy, it’s within Cuba’s sovereign rights, and we should imitate it.

For sale

There’s a sad story in the London Times about Finca Vigia, the Hemingway house in Cuba.

There has been lots of news coverage of the American organizations that obtained U.S. government licenses, at times with difficulty, to work on this house, providing technical assistance and training to help restore the house, and to preserve and create a digital archive of the documents it contains.

The house is a museum that one views from outside, through the windows and doorways.

I have seen the docents offer to let a small group inside for a small amount of money, when no other visitors were present. Harmless enough. I have also seen a docent offer to cut a page out of a book in Hemingway’s library – a page with his signature – and sell it for ten dollars.

The writer of this Times article has seen something far worse. So as some Cubans and Americans work to preserve this treasure, others are doing the opposite. Formally, the Ministry of Culture is in charge.

Odds and ends

• Here’s a new one: Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez says that Cuba “funds anti-American terrorist activities around the world.” That accusation didn’t make the cut in the State Department’s annual terrorism report.

• According to EFE, there will be a joint statement from the United States and the European Union today calling on Cuba to free all political prisoners.

• The Cuban American National Foundation report on the USAID Cuba program criticized the way the Directorio Democratico Cubano, a Miami organization, carries out its program. In El Nuevo Herald today, the Directorio’s director responds.

• AP looks at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs Museum and the plans to create another one in Miami.

• “Food production: a priority matter” – not the most enticing headline, but if you read down in the Granma article about a provincial Communist Party meeting, it says that the Havana party chief was sacked for “errors and indiscipline incompatible with his responsibilities.” And then Maria del Carmen Concepcion, a member of the party’s national secretariat, referring to the need to solve economic problems and to “multiply person-to-person ideological work,” is quoted as follows: “Either we solve these problems, or we ourselves destroy the Revolution that cost us so much blood and sweat.” EFE story here.

Calentando el brazo

Growing profits

AP has an interesting story on Havana’s organoponicos, the small cooperatives that grow and sell food in Cuba’s cities, and calls tham a “stunning success.”

These urban gardens are not going to transform Cuba’s economy, but they are a clear success in that they generate jobs and higher-than-average income, and they provide just-picked produce for urban consumers at zero transportation cost. Raul Castro promoted them for all these reasons; the AP story says they are modeled after a project in Shanghai. They began in Cuba in 1995.

To me, in today’s context, the organoponicos are most interesting for the precedent they have set.

They are simple cooperatives where workers keep profits after covering production costs, land rent (if any), and any monthly payments for loans that paid for start-up costs such as clearing land and building sales stands and small storage buildings. There’s some more detail in this study (pdf) on page 11.

Could these profitable, stand-alone cooperatives be a model for future reforms in Cuba’s cities, where new jobs with higher incomes are needed, and the state has by its own admission failed to manage of its own small-scale service enterprises?

Odds and ends

• Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage announced that investment projects will be delayed, and he exhorted everyone to work harder and more conscientiously in a speech to municipal council leaders. From the Reuters story:

“The country spent $1.47 billion last year to import 3.423 million tonnes of food and to import the same amount this year at current prices will cost $2.554 billion, a billion dollars more,” Lage said.

“The 158,000 barrels of oil per day that we consumed last year cost $8.7 million per day and this year costs 32 percent more, or $11.6 million per day,” he said.

• Last week there were stories in British newspapers, which I cited here, saying that a golf course/real estate development deal was about to be announced in Havana. A week passed, no announcement. My mistake, and I should have known; for a long time, the golf hype has been way ahead of the reality.

• Have you ever wondered about the guys in Havana with the red Havana Club vests with the words “parqueador estatal” across the back, the guys who charge you to park, and can never explain why you need to pay them to park on a public street? J.C. Orta Alonso wonders too, and wrote a letter about the issue that was published in Granma; I hope someone answers it.

Malecon & 23

Odds and ends

● Aleida Guevara, daughter of Che, says the commercialization of her father’s image is “embarrassing” and contributes to class tensions. Her comments came in an Internet forum to commemorate the 80^th anniversary of her father’s birth. [Photo at right from Havana’s Plaza de Armas.]

● A federal appeals court upheld the convictions of the “Cuban Five” but vacated the sentences of three, and ordered a Miami judge to re-sentence them. Herald’s coverage here.

● The U.S. Secretary of Commerce, in Kiev, urges the EU not to be taken in by “so-called changes” and not to change its posture toward Cuba, Reuters reports. “It is surprising that the world would rather talk about the fact that Cubans can now visit their own hotels and not talk about the fact that there are political prisoners starving in jails,” he said.

● Proof that you can find everything on the Internet: a forum on fishing in Cuba.

New Cuba poll from IRI [Updated x2]

The International Republican Institute will release a poll of Cuban public opinion today. An account of the poll appears in today’s New York Times.

The poll was in the field March 14-April 12, ending six weeks after Raul Castro took office.

On a scale of one to ten, Cubans gave Raul a 5.55 score. Younger Cubans were markedly more likely than those over 60 to support a shift to a democratic system with multiparty elections.

When asked to name the biggest problem they face, the Times account says that more than half of respondents “considered their economic woes to be their chief concern while less than 10 percent listed lack of political freedom as the main problem facing the country.”

IRI did a similar poll in October 2007 and released partial results.

[Update: IRI’s press release is here, and charts showing some of the poll results are here (pdf).]

[Update: A few comments about the poll and the results.

Polling in Cuba is not a simple proposition because a) foreigners aren’t allowed to do it, b) respondents aren’t accustomed to surveys, and c) this poll goes to sensitive subjects, to say the least.

Nonetheless, it looks like the pollsters did their best.

Assuming the results are in the ballpark, and they seem that way to me, what does the poll mean?

First, the poll was taken in weeks three through seven of the Raul Castro government, so I doubt it has much predictive value regarding Cuban opinion of Raul. Rather than use the “Do you approve/disapprove of the performance” question that gives us our presidential approval ratings (President Bush is around 31 percent now), it used a “pick a number on a scale of one to ten” question, and Raul scored 56 percent, slightly in positive territory. Regardless, in the long term it’s his performance that will matter more than first-impression numbers.

Second, the predominance of economic issues stands out. Asked to identify “the biggest problem in Cuba,” 64 percent cited cost of living/dual currency/food scarcity, which are essentially the same thing. Nine percent cited the political system. If you inflate the political number to account for fear or nervousness, you are still left with a very strong margin placing priority on fixing economics as opposed to politics.

Third, 71 percent do not believe the current government will solve the big problems in the next few years. But only a slight majority, 54 percent, believes that a democratic government would solve them, and 43 percent believe a democratic government would not.

Add it all up – and add caveats and grains of salt – and it looks like the government has a political opportunity to seize, and it is in the driver’s seat. Simply put, if it solves day-to-day economic woes, it will be addressing Cubans’ top concern, and it will accumulate political credit.

The opposition, meanwhile, would only stand to benefit from this public opinion landscape if the government fails to improve the economy, or if improvements are followed by expectations that spin out of control – and if it were to acquire a means to connect broadly with the Cuban public and take advantage of the situation.]

Prado y Neptuno

Odds and ends

• Who says there’s no real estate market in Cuba? The St. Petersburg Times covers the ins and outs of the permuta.

• Next week the European Union will discuss its position on Cuba, and whether to abandon altogether the “diplomatic sanctions” that were imposed in 2003 and suspended in 2005. All the background is in this EFE report in Spanish, including a comment from the Czech delegation that democracy in Cuba is a priority, but Prague “doesn’t want to threaten” a blockade. Against whom? Spain?

• A Cuban vice minister of agriculture, Juan Perez Lamas, gave a speech at a rice conference in Havana. According to Granma, he said Cuba’s goal is to cut rice imports by 50 percent over five years. AFP reports that he predicted a five to ten percent reduction in Cuba’s food imports next year. Cuba has been able in 2008 to do without some imports it made in 2007, he said, including 10,000 tons of beans and 18,000 tons of fresh fruit (!).

Two superpowers

Sometime this year we may resolve the debate about allowing Cuban Americans to visit their relatives freely, or to send them money freely, and our Presidential candidates will debate whether some kind of diplomacy with Cuba might make sense. And soon the Administration will issue regulations to refine again the list of items Cuban Americans may send to relatives in gift packages. In 2004, President Bush determined that no more clothing, personal hygiene items, seeds, fishing equipment, soap-making equipment, and veterinary medicine and supplies would be allowed in those packages, while food, medicine, medical supplies and equipment; and receive-only radio equipment would be allowed. Now he will add cell phones to the list of permissible items.

Brazil, meanwhile, is up to something different.

If anyone doubts that Cuba is a priority in Brazil’s diplomacy, look at last week’s visit to Cuba by Celso Amorim, Brazil’s foreign minister.

Following up on the January visit of President Lula da Silva, Amorim’s agenda mixed political support and substantial economic assistance. He was accompanied by a delegation of businessmen.

Brazil wants to be Cuba’s “number one economic partner” and to participate in the modernization of the Cuban economy, Amorim said. He believes Cuba “will be a kind of Asian tiger of Latin America, we can compare it with Vietnam.”

The visit featured an announcement that Brazil will provide technical assistance and seed for an industrial-scale soy project, initially 30,000 to 40,000 hectares in size. Agreements to form joint ventures to grow soy are possible, Amorim said.

Amorim also said he expects agreement within “two or three weeks” on a $600 million, four-year credit package for industrial and agricultural equipment and highway construction.

Amorim met Raul Castro and he extended an invitation from his President for Raul to visit Brazil.

Finally, Amorim was quoted in the Cuban media saying that Brazil and Cuba “share many visions, especially regarding the integration of Latin American and Caribbean nations, a difficult process hindered by cultural resistance of people who are not used to seeing the region united.”

I wonder who he had in mind.

More coverage of Amorim’s visit from EFE here, from ANSA here.

Calle Neptuno

A golf course deal?

From London, in The Times and The Telegraph, comes word that Cuba will announce a deal with British investors to develop golf course/real estate resorts that are intended to make Cuba more competitive in high-end tourism.

For months, there have been rumors that a deal of this type was in the offing, but a major sticking point has been Cuba’s resistance to allowing foreigners to own property in Cuba. (In the early 1990’s there was a condominium development in Havana, but its owners were bought out by the Cuban government.) Apparently this problem was resolved, according to the Times report, by a 75-year lease on the land for the first resort, which will allow the sale of homes for $300,000 to $2 million.

The first resort will be called the “Carbonera Country Club,” but neither newspaper report says where the 150-hectare project is to be located.

Demographic crunch

For the third straight year, Cuba’s population is declining, El Pais reports.

As more young people emigrate and fewer women have babies, the proportion of elderly and retired (and frequently dependent) citizens is increasing. When you add the fact that many young people do not work in the formal economy because salaries aren’t worth it – a phenomenon covered recently in the state media and just last week in the Herald – this looks like the beginning of a demographic train wreck.

A Cuban population researcher told El Pais that the government has approved “economic, social, cultural, and legal” measures to restore population growth. We’ll see.