Odds and ends

• Your tax dollars at work: American Express pays a $5.2 million fine because its offices overseas sold airline tickets from third countries to Cuba – 14,000 tickets over six years.  AP notes that the Cuban government has complained about this and other fines, including one against an Italian bank for transactions it made between 2004 and 2008, before President Obama took office.

• Former players for the Industriales, the Havana baseball club, plan to play two games in Miami to celebrate the team’s 50^th anniversary.  The games will be part of a reunion celebration, with former players from Cuba coming to join others who now live in the United States.  Florida International University agreed to allow the use of its ballfield, but cancelled meekly at the last minute due to “contractual” reasons.  Pathetic.  The U.S. organizers are determined to find another venue but the dates and the event itself are in doubt.  (AP, El Nuevo Herald)  Attorney Jose Palli sums it all up in Diario las Americas.

• Dissident Oscar Elias Biscet, in El Nuevo, argues that Cuba should join NATO someday.

• In Juventud Rebelde, Fidel Castro writes a letter to the foreign delegations visiting Cuba for the celebration of the 60^th anniversary of the attack on the Moncada Barracks.  He gives a long account of the events of 60 years ago.  He also makes brief reference to the North Korean ship detained in Panama: “In recent days slander has been attempted against our Revolution, trying to present the chief of state and government of Cuba as tricking the United Nations and other chiefs of state, imputing two-faced conduct.”

• The International Court of Arbitration issued a $17 million judgment in favor of Chilean businessman Max Marambio, who ran a food company in Cuba, was accused of corruption in 2010, and was convicted in absentia in a Cuban court.

• For the record, here are the statements issued at the end of the U.S.-Cuba migration talks that took place in Washington earlier this month: the Cuban and the U.S. statement.  The migration accords provide for periodic talks to discuss migration issues and the functioning of the accords.

• Reuters: Just-published data on 2012 farm production show mixed results that are not enough to reduce food import costs significantly.  Looking at the data, production of root vegetables was up 4.5 percent over 2009, plantains up 32 percent, garden vegetables down 17 percent, grains up 15 percent, beans up 15 percent, citrus down 51 percent.  Sugar production remains low by historical standards at 1.4 million tons, but that amount is grown on one third the land in sugar production a decade ago and the yield per acre, while lower than that of the 1980’s, is higher than at any time in the past 20 years.

New guidelines on people-to-people travel

Following complaints by Senator Rubio and others, the Treasury Department changed the rules governing people-to-people travel programs.  I don’t see that the actual regulations have changed; rather, the description of the licensing criteria has been changed in Treasury’s guidelines for applicants (see here [pdf], scroll down on left to “educational activities – people-to-people”).

I am not finding a plain English, side-by-side comparison of the old and the new.  In the absence of that, my reading is that the change consists of adding the following:

·         A clarification of an existing requirement that licensees have an employee or consultant accompanying each group of travelers; i.e. a licensee cannot send a group to Cuba to be led by a Cuban guide or a foreign national.

·         A clarification that the program activities must serve one or more of these objectives: enhancing contact with the Cuban people, supporting civil society, promoting independence from Cuban authorities.

·         A requirement that applicants (or licensees seeking renewal) explain, if their itineraries include meetings “hosted by” high-level government or Party officials, how such meetings serve one or more of the objectives listed above.

Senator Rubio objected to some programs because they appeared frivolous and because they did nothing to promote political change.  Actually, the regulations in this category of travel never included a government requirement that Americans promote political change as a condition of their travel license.  The requirements were, and they remain, that the travel involve full-time educational programs with lots of interaction with Cubans, and the predominant portion of that interaction cannot be with high-level government or Party officials.  What has been added are explicit mentions of optional objectives regarding civil society and independence.

The people-to-people category is the way most Americans not of Cuban descent travel to Cuba.  Cuban Americans travel without restriction, and no one has taken to the floor of Congress to talk of their “abuses” or to impose a requirement that they engage in political activity as a condition of their license to travel to Cuba. 

This would all be a lot easier, and a lot more American I would say, if we simply allowed Americans to travel freely and did not employ executive branch agencies in regulating their activity.  But Cuba policy is a big-government policy, not a limited-government policy.

For his part, Senator Rubio himself does not go to Cuba, for visits or politics or otherwise.

Herald story here.

Odds and ends

• While reading recent discussion of the Pope’s upcoming visit to Cuba, this message to the Pope from Guillermo “Coco” Farinas, a Santa Clara opposition figure, stood out.  He writes “in the name of the Cuban nation.”

• What to make of this story by Alfonso Chardy of the Herald?  A Cuban doctor who served in Venezuela and availed himself of an immigration program that the Bush Administration created especially for Cuban doctors was denied permanent residence here because he was a member of the mass organization for young communists (UJC).  I’m not a big fan of the program for several reasons, one being that those Cubans who can find asylum in one country (granted, not all can) should be able to stay in that country, and there’s no need to create an entitlement to come to the United States.  But after enticing this doctor to come to the United States, the denial of permanent resident status puts him in immigration limbo, and his UJC membership seems a very flimsy reason.  His lip-service loyalty to the communist cause became clear when he deserted his post 15 days after arriving in Venezuela.

• Talk about a win-win-win situation – if pressures from Cuba’s friends had led to Cuba’s attendance at the April Summit of the Americas in Colombia, Havana et al. could have claimed victory, and Washington would have been left to figure whether to attend.  It turns out Cuba will not attend and never asked to attend, its foreign minister informs us, and now the President of Colombia is thanking Cuba for “generously saying it did not want to create a problem for the Summit or for Colombia.”  At the summit itself, it remains to be seen if Cuba’s friends will cause a little stink and force President Obama to deal with the issue of Cuba’s exclusion.  The Cartagena summit is an OAS show, and Cuba is not a big fan of the OAS.

• The Treasury Department clarifies rules for advertising educational people-to-people travel.

And dumber still (Updated)

The Hilton in Port of Spain, owned by the Trinidadian government and managed by the U.S. company, was to be the venue for tomorrow’s Cuba-Caricom summit. But such a use would involve “services that benefit the Cuban government” contrary to U.S. embargo regulations, so Hilton sought a license from the Treasury Department. The request was turned down and the summit will be moved. Local stories here and here.

Update (12/8): The U.S. Embassy in Port of Spain says Treasury didn’t make a decision on the license application, which was received November 28, so it is wrong to say that the application was rejected. In fact, the U.S. spokesman says, the application is “pending.” The summit is today.