Odds and ends

• In Global Post, Nick Miroff on Cuba’s sigh of relief after last Sunday’s Chavez victory in Venezuela.

• AFP: New data from the National Statistics Office (see public health section in right-hand column here) shows that consolidation and cost-cutting in the health sector are continuing.  There are 12,738 locations for health care delivery – including everything from the biggest hospital to the smallest one-doctor consultorio – 465 fewer than before.  There are 161 hospitals operating, 25 percent fewer than before.

• Reuters on the foreign executives arrested apparently as part of an anti-corruption crackdown, awaiting charges for more than a year.

• Scientific American: Looks like an opossum to me, but it’s called an almiquí, nocturnal and venomous, endemic to Cuba and thought to be extinct until a team of Cuban and Japanese researchers found a bunch out east in the Humboldt National Park between Moa and Baracoa. 

• Granma: An investigation into last month’s massive blackout finds that the cause was human error at a time when operators were scrambling to handle peak demand.

• Spain’s consul general in Havana attended the Carromero trial last week in Bayamo,  pronounced it “clean, open, and procedurally impeccable,” and said the accused was defended “very well.”  The BBC’s Fernando Ravsberg agrees, wrote down the defense lawyer’s name in case he ever needs a lawyer, and described the day-long session here.

• The BBC’s Sarah Rainsford on the new Cuban residential real estate market.

• One more from the BBC: as Cuba’s reform czar Marino Murillo visits Hanoi, the editor of BBC’s Vietnamese-language service on “What Cuba can learn from Vietnam.”

Odds and ends

·         Without specifying exactly what the convicts did, Granma reports the convictions and sentences of twelve individuals for “crimes associated with corruption during the process of negotiation, contracting, and execution” of the expansion of the Pedro Soto Alba nickel plant in Moa, which is part of a joint venture with Canada’s Sherritt International.  The convicts include three former vice ministers of basic industries and ranking state enterprise executives.  AP’s sources link these cases to those of arrested executives of a Canadian import-export company and a British investment company.  Reuters story here.

·         The new Cuban customs regulations that take effect next month were previously only explained in the Gaceta Oficial, none too clearly.  This new explanation is a big step forward.

·         Trabajadores: Private carriage drivers in Santa Clara have unionized.

·         Congressman Paul Ryan clarifies his position on Cuba.

Odds and ends

• Reuters: A Cuban official says that nearly half Cuba’s economic output will shift to the “non-state” sector in the next four to five years.  Earlier, the finance minister forecast that also within five years, the private sector is expected to grow by 1.8 million workers, which would put two in five workers in the private sector.

• Granma: In the first three months of 2012, there were 2,730 sales and 10,660 donations of homes, and 8,390 sales and 6,780 donations of cars.

• Cuban authorities arrested a British subject who was resident in Havana and directed Coral Capital, a business involved in major investment projects on the island.   Cuba Standard broke the news, and the Herald added some details.

• AFP: Cuban economics commentator Ariel Terrero chided the labor ministry for handling layoffs without “sufficient transparency,” leaving Cubans wondering precisely how many were laid off last year, and their characteristics.  As the layoffs proceed, he calls on the government to conduct a “broader discussion.”

• Judy Gross, wife of jailed USAID contractor Alan Gross, gives an interview to Café Fuerte, expressing disappointment that Gross has not been permitted to visit his ailing mother and saying, “I don’t understand the position of the Cuban government.”  The Forward reports that the public relations firm Burson Marsteller has taken up Gross’ case, and the current strategy includes pressure on both the Cuban and U.S. governments.

• El Tiempo (Bogota): OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza says Cuba should be invited to attend hemispheric summits.  “Having Cuba seated every three years in a Summit of the Americas does not weaken the [inter-American] system,” he said in Washington.  And it makes no sense that the largest country would exclude itself because the smallest is attending.”

• Senator Rubio gave an address on U.S. foreign policy that says nothing about Cuba.  As others have pointed out, he said nothing about Iraq either.

• A strange story: the Herald discovers that Cuba has complained about several cases of firearms arriving in checked luggage from Miami.

Odds and ends

·         Raul Castro proposed, and the Council of State agreed, to remove Abel Prieto as culture minister, a post he has held for 15 years, and to replace him with his deputy.  Prieto, whose work was described as “positive” in this nota oficial, now becomes an advisor to Raul.

·         El Espectador: Colombian President Santos will go to Cuba tomorrow, he said, “to have the opportunity to talk personally, as good friends talk with each other, with the Cuban government, with Raul Castro, about the matter of the summit.”  He refers to the upcoming Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, an event where Cuba’s friends in the hemisphere are making an issue of Cuba’s exclusion.

·         The Environmental Defense Fund will administer a Pew Fellowship awarded to a Cuban marine scientist, Dr. Fabian Pina, for three years of research that he will conduct in Cuba (see EDF press release).  This is a step forward in environmental collaboration and a good move by the Obama Administration.

·         Digging into a case covered by Granma, the Herald identifies a Cuban who once lived in Hialeah as the subject of an investigation into the operations of a farm in Matanzas that benefited from reportedly illegal acquisition of supplies.

The party conference

Cuba’s Communist Party met over the weekend and decided that top party and government officials will be limited to two five-year terms, which would have put Fidel and Raul Castro themselves into retirement decades ago.

If you are among who might have been anticipating major political reforms or even the dismantling of the socialist system, Raul Castro’s message is that you are confusing your “most intimate hopes with reality.” Clear enough.

The President and party chief also made a frank admission that the party and government do not have a cohort of new leadership ready to take over from his own generation of historicos. But the only decision I see to address this is to replace one fifth of the Central Committee’s membership over the next five years, which sounds like a pace that is only marginally quicker than natural attrition.

His discussion of corruption happened to put U.S. democracy promotion programs into perspective. He said that corruption is “far more damaging than the programs of subversion and interference of the United States government.” He also signaled that major corruption prosecutions are forthcoming, and that legislators have been briefed on the results of investigations that are soon to come to light.

Here’s coverage from the Herald and La Jornada.

Odds and ends

• Juventud Rebelde notes the death of North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, reporting that the statement read on North Korean television said he died of “physical and mental exhaustion while on a train trip outside the capital.”

• Granma: A Vatican delegation visits Cuba to prepare the visit of the Pope, meets Raul Castro, no date announced.

• The State Department called on Cuba to respect Human Rights Week activities.

• Imagine: the Obama Administration retained the Bush director of Radio/TV Marti, and he carried out a personnel reduction in 2009 that shielded supporters and fired critics. That’s the conclusion of an independent arbitrator; Washington Post story here.

• Trabajadores: Cuba hit the record for arrivals of foreign visitors in one year last Tuesday. 2.53 million and counting.

• Reuters: Fernando Noy, a military officer who ran an important importing company is arrested on charges of corruption.

• AP goes to the Malecon to see how new economic policies are changing the neighborhood.

• “It would be a disgrace if the Obama administration broke with tradition and used a penny of that critical funding to reward political cronies,” said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart in a Herald article on “complaints” about a USAID grant to the Cuban American National Foundation.

Odds and ends

• If the idea is to identify the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance is a Cuban organization, and to counter Havana’s charge that the opposition is fabricated and financed from abroad, why issue its pronouncements from Miami?

• The Herald’s Juan Tamayo reports on Cubans who live abroad and are not permitted to return.

• AP: To cut farmers’ cost of doing business, retail prices of agricultural implements are being cut by as much as 60 percent. Granma article here. This is similar to the price cuts for goods for small entrepreneurs.

• An investigation of corruption in the phone monopoly ETECSA has resulted in a few arrests and the decision of one executive not to return from a trip to Panama. Here are reports from Reuters and the Herald, with the latter crediting bloggers who broke the story: Diario de Cuba, based in Madrid.

• Mariela Castro, daughter of Raul Castro, tells visiting Americans that “President Obama’s first term failures should be forgiven and he should be supported for a second term, which would give him the opportunity to do better things.”

• Washington Post: Livan Hernandez is not done yet.