On the orishas

If like me you know nothing about santería, you should read this from Denise Oliver Velez at Daily Kos: a wonderful primer on the worship of West African deities in the Americas, “often hidden behind a mask of Catholicism or practiced in conjunction with other faiths.”

"What would you people have done with Frank Pais?"

Raul Castro gave an interesting speech in the National Assembly yesterday. As usual, it was not long. He pointed out all the other speeches made in the legislature and other venues in recent days, and the topics they covered. Rather than put his own twist on what everyone else had said, he was content to be brief and not to repeat.

Most interesting to me was his discussion of a “painful incident” suffered by a woman who lost her job last February and took a 40 percent reduction in her income because she had not disclosed to her employer and her local Communist Party unit that she “professed religious beliefs and attended religious services some Sundays.”

The woman appealed the decision to the Council of State. An investigation ensued. Raul described her as a “victim” of a “flagrant violation” of rights guaranteed by the constitution, which he quoted. The party’s Central Committee took up her case July 30 and called upon the local government to ensure that she could return to her job if she so desires. Raul said he hopes his words serve “as an act of moral vindication” for her.

He went on to use the incident to instruct: “More than once I have said that our worst enemy is not imperialism, much less its salaried employees on our soil, but rather our own errors, and these, if they are analyzed deeply and honestly, will turn into lessons on how not to repeat them.”

He recalled a Communist Party decision in 1991 that opened its membership to religious believers and more recent statements, including that of this year’s Congress. He then moved beyond religion to tell officials at all levels that the greatest obstacle to change lies in “the psychological barrier formed by inertia, immobility, simulation or doble moral, indifference and insensitivity.”

Then this, referring to the recent Communist Party Congress that approved the economic reform blueprint: “We will be patient and persevering in the face of all resistance to change, conscious or not. I warn that all bureaucratic resistance to the accords of the Congress, massively supported by the people, will be futile.”

Making reference to the attack that started the socialist revolution and then to a hero of the anti-Batista movement in Santiago, he concluded:

“Let’s clear our heads of all kinds of stupidity, don’t forget that the first decade of the 20^th century has ended, it’s time.

“In concluding remarks the day before yesterday to the Central Committee and guests, when I broached this topic and suggested that I say these words here, in this way, I recalled that this compañera was born in January 1953. Then I recalled that that was the year of the attack on Moncada and I told the members of the Central Committee, ‘I didn’t go to Moncada for that.’

“Also, we recalled that on July 30, the day of that meeting, it was 54 years that Frank Pais and his loyal aide Raul Pujol were assassinated. I met Frank in Mexico, I saw him again in the Sierra, I don’t recall having met such a pure soul as he, so brave, so revolutionary, so noble and modest. And addressing one of those responsible for that injustice committed [against the woman who was fired from her job], I told him: ‘Frank believed in God and practiced his religion, as best I know he never stopped practicing it. What would you people have done with Frank Pais?’”

Odds and ends

• The United States and Mexico are in talks to improve the environmental standards for oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the Houston Chronicle reports. Cuba was not included in the talks, because (we can guess) that would have been a concession to the Castro regime. Meanwhile, Spain’s Repsol is talking more concretely about its plans to drill again in Cuban waters; it will be in August or September (Reuters). The Reuters story gives us the first indication that another of the companies that have leased blocs in Cuba will actually drill: Malaysia’s Petronas has an option on the Repsol exploration rig when Repsol is done with it, and will use it in its bloc.

• AP: Ho-hum, a concert featuring Cuban artists is canceled in the Miami-Dade autonomous region, this time with a few twists: One reason for the cancellation is that the concert was too close to the Bay of Pigs anniversary; the venue owners claimed they thought they were getting Mexican music, not Cuban; and this quote from a county commissioner: “We understand free speech and will defend free speech but not when public facilities and public funds are being utilized.”

• The Forward on Cuba’s very small Jewish community, where one member says, “We have good relationships with the goyim. This is a paradise for religions. You can’t find anti-Semites [here]. No one cares.”

• Palabra Nueva editor Orlando Marquez writes that it’s time to face up to the problems in Cuba’s health services, and for authorities to be open to new approaches in a system that still has great professionals, but was built with Soviet bloc resources that long ago stopped flowing.

• A March 17 commentary (in English) on the Razones de Cuba television programs on the USAID/State Department Cuba democracy programs by BBC correspondent Fernando Ravsberg. He’s nonplussed, and waiting for an Alan Gross episode.

Odds and ends

• Telecom Italia, the foreign partner in the Cuban wireline and cellular phone monopoly Etecsa, has sold its share of the business to a state enterprise, Rafin S.A. (Bloomberg)

• Politico says Rep. David Rivera’s “political condition has been downgraded from ‘vulnerable’ to ‘likely one-termer’ to ‘possible half-termer’ amid deepening corruption investigations, and [he] looks like a growing liability for the new GOP majority.” At Penultimos Dias, Ernesto Hernandez Busto says he’s hurting the cause.

• From Wikileaks, a 2009 report from Embassy Caracas that Spain’s Repsol had canceled its plan to drill in Cuba’s Gulf waters.

• The text of Rep. Buchanan’s bill to dissuade international oil companies from participating in Cuba’s energy development.

• El Nuevo on a new documentary on Cuban Jewry.

• Don’t say you weren’t warned: Juventud Rebelde explains that the government means business when it puts up “no parking” signs. Your car can get towed or booted, and there are fines to pay (in hard currency for foreigners or Cubans residing abroad).

• Amphibian invasion from Cuba.

Odds and ends

• Mariela Castro, daughter of Raul Castro, in an interview in Spain’s La Vanguardia: “It is not necessary to deprive people of their right to leave. I think we should grant permission to all those who want to leave. People can leave, but with a great amount of difficulty.” Interesting that she calls it a “right” as opposed to a privilege. (As reported in the Sun Sentinel.)

• From Mike Williams of Cox News Service, a report on Cuba’s Jewish community, based on a visit to the synagogue in Vedado. He mentioned the religious services and the synagogue’s library; there’s also a pharmacy upstairs, full of medicines donated by visitors from abroad, where doctors, nurses, and patients come twice weekly to get medicines they can’t otherwise find.

• This guy thinks he found “a volcano in eruption somewhere in Cuba.” (On Google maps, on the coast south of Ciego de Avila.)
  

• A photo essay on the Malecon from a student recently returned from study in Cuba.