Odds and ends

·         New York Times: GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, leaving his anti-embargo voting record behind, visited Versailles on Calle Ocho and explained how his Cuban-American colleagues helped him see the light.  And maybe they believe him.

 ·         Prensa Latina: Cuba’s justice ministry says it has handled the paperwork for 45,000 real estate transfers through the end of August – sales, swaps, and donations.

·         Venezuelan journalist Nelson Bocaranda says that representatives of the Venezuelan opposition candidate were received in Havana by President Raul Castro and Vice President Machado Ventura to discuss “future Cuban cooperation.”

·         Along the Malecon publishes the National Endowment for Democracy’s latest list of Cuba grants.  And USAID’s administrator told the Herald that he doesn’t see his Cuba program as “aid for the opposition.”

·         In the New York Times Magazine, a long article about a trip to Cuba by an American who married into a Cuban family.

·         The BBC’s Fernando Ravsberg says that widespread Internet access in Cuba is inevitable, whether provided by the government or by “its enemies.”

Odds and ends

·         A Colombian radio station published the purported text of the agreement reached between Colombia’s government and FARC guerrillas to start peace talks.  English here, with a link to the Spanish original at the bottom of the page.  More from EFE (English) and good historical background from the Wall Street Journal.

·         The spokesman for Oswaldo Paya’s Christian Liberation told Radio Marti that he and a colleague were told by Cayetana Muriel Aguado, a Spaniard resident in Sweden who is a member of that country’s Christian Democratic Party, that “political figures” in Sweden and Spain received text messages from the phones of Angel Carromero and Aron Modig “denouncing that they had been victims of an accident provoked by a car that was following them.”  The spokesman, Rene Iglesias, complained about the “hiding of the truth” that is occurring, he guesses, to spare Carromero some jail time, and he urged those who possess the text messages to release them.  He said the meeting with Aguado occurred the night of the July 22 crash.  The full string of earlier posts on this event is here. 

·         Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s Cuba convictions are now safely in cold storage.  But just for old times’ sake, Geoff Thale of the Washington Office on Latin America counts up the Cuba votes in Ryan’s record and finds 20 votes cast in favor of easing or ending the embargo out of 24 Cuba votes he cast between 2000 and 2007.

·         Yagruma, a crowdfunding site that offers the opportunity to support artistic projects in Cuba, had its PayPal account blocked because sending money to Cuba is an apparent embargo violation, and is working on setting up a payment mechanism that will not be affected by U.S. sanctions.

·         Café Fuerte:  Writer Raul Hernandez recounts, with some skepticism, a story told in Granma about a former Communist Party official who is now raising and selling pigs and making money hand over fist.

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.

The GOP platform's Cuba plank

The Los Angeles Times obtains the 2012 Republican platform language on Cuba:

“We affirm our friendship with the people of Cuba and look toward their reunion with the rest of our hemispheric family. The anachronistic regime in Havana which rules them is a mummified relic of the age of totalitarianism, a state-sponsor of terrorism. We reject any dynastic succession of power within the Castro family and affirm the principles codified in U.S. law as conditions for the lifting of trade, travel, and financial sanctions: the legalization of political parties, an independent media, and free and fair internationally-supervised elections. We renew our commitment to Cuba’s courageous pro-democracy movement as the protagonists of Cuba’s inevitable liberation and democratic future. We call for a dedicated platform for the transmission of Radio and TV Marti and for the promotion of Internet access and circumvention technology as tools to strengthen the pro-democracy movement. We support the work of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba and affirm the principles of the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, recognizing the rights of Cubans fleeing Communism.”

Romney in Miami

Governor Romney didn’t mention Cuba in his event at Miami’s Palacio de los Jugos, the Herald reports, but he gave an interview to Radio Mambi where he explained that his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, had changed his position on the Cuba embargo and now supports it (Univision story here, audio here).

Meanwhile, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel looks back at Paul Ryan’s record on Cuba.

Ryan on Cuba (Updated)

Herald political reporter Marc Caputo says the Ryan pick could be a “sore point in Miami-Dade” notwithstanding the assertions by Cuban American big shots that Ryan was “educated” and changed his position on Cuba.  And in El Nuevo, the headline is that Romney will “break tradition” today by visiting Miami and going not to Versailles on Calle Ocho, but to a very nice-sounding place called El Palacio de los Jugos. (Update: more from Sergio Valdivieso at Cafe Fuerte.)

Obviously Ryan will support the pro-embargo Romney position and my bet is that he will have to find a public opportunity to do so.  Politics being politics, he will put his convictions in storage and swallow words such as these from 2002, when he argued in the House for unrestricted travel to Cuba:

Mr. Chairman, the greatest antidote to totalitarianism is an informed mind. I would like to read a quick passage from an independent journalist, a dissident in Cuba, Oscar Espinosa Chepe:

“The passage of the House amendment last year to end the travel ban reflects a public opinion that every day understands more clearly that the effort to isolate Cuba has only increased the suffering of the Cuban people and strengthened the positions of the most recalcitrant elements in the Havana regime. Experience demonstrates that isolationism breathes life into totalitarianism. It helps it exercise control over citizens subjected to its power and to reinforce its monopoly over their minds. On the other hand, contact between peoples free individuals from falsehoods and from the lies without dignity to which they are obliged to lead.”

Mr. Chairman, it has been the American policy from Republican presidents and Democrat presidents that we engage; it has been in the American policy that we engage the Soviet Union, that we engage China, that we, just a few minutes ago, voted to engage Vietnam.

We should do the same with Cuba. The simple reason is that it has been a bedrock principle of American policy that travel is a device that opens closed societies. American travelers are our best ambassadors. They carry the idea of freedom to people from communist countries. There is no reason to make this exception for Cuba.

We want Americans to go down and exchange ideas, to show them the taste of freedom, to know what kind of brutal totalitarian regime they are living under. A people cannot rise up and ask for alternatives if they are not acquainted with those alternatives.

We are simply saying this 42-year practice of turning our backs, of looking inward, of being hypocrites while we go to China and Russia and Vietnam, must be ended.

Odds and ends

• MSNBC: Miami-Dade delivered big for Romney in Tuesday’s GOP primary.

• From the publication Insight Crime, a note on U.S.-Cuba drug enforcement cooperation.

• AP: Cuba’s trade with Venezuela up, with United States down in 2010.

The Republicans in Florida

Let’s start with Ron Paul who, asked in last night’s debate what he would say if he found himself talking to Raul Castro in the Oval Office, responded: “I’d ask him what he called about.”

Apart from that, the Brian Williams question about Fidel Castro’s death in the first debate has continued to frame what has become an odd discussion.

The question focused on what will surely be a big moment in history, but one that I do not believe to be foremost in people’s minds in Cuba, or in Miami for that matter. On Calle Ocho, after all, they celebrated Fidel’s death five years ago only to find that our Maker had a different plan.

Nonetheless, we have had days of Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney talking about Fidel meeting his Maker, or not, verging on pop theology.

Here’s Romney at a Miami event on Wednesday: “If I’m fortunate to become the next President of the United States it is my expectation that Fidel Castro will finally be taken off this planet. I doubt he’ll take any time in the sky. He’ll find a nether region to be more to his comfort…We’ve waited a long, long time for the opportunity that is represented by a new president, and by new leadership, or by old leadership finally kicking the bucket in Cuba. And I want to take advantage. I want to be the American president that is proud to be able to say that I was president at the time that we brought freedom back to the people of Cuba.”

With that, Romney also released a policy paper. Lifting a phrase from President Obama, who said in 2009 that freedom in Cuba is “our lodestone, our North Star,” Romney’s paper declares: “The North Star that guides Mitt Romney’s policy toward the island is the realizable dream of a free Cuba.”

Romney sees Gingrich on the issue of travel (back to the Bush rules), Helms-Burton (allow Title III to go into effect), and looking into the possibility of indicting Messrs. Castro, and raises him on a few scores:

· Romney will “fully fund and effectively implement” U.S. government democracy promotion programs

· He will beef up broadcasting, Internet, and social media communications

· He will “publicly identify by name those police officers, prison officials, judges, state security personnel, and regime officials who mistreat, torture, and oppress the Cuban people so they know they will be held individually accountable.”

Gingrich, is you’re still with me, elaborated on his earlier tough talk. From AFP:

Mr. Gingrich was asked to explain comments that if elected, he would “not tolerate four more years of a Cuban dictatorship.”

If the US planes bombed Libya, should they do the same with Cuba?

“If there was a genuine, legitimate uprising, we would, of course, be on the side of the people,”Mr. Gingrich told Spanish-language network Univision.

“In that sense, I don’t see why Cuba should be sacrosanct, and we should say, ‘Oh, don't do anything to hurt’ - you know, we’re very prepared to back people in Libya. We may end up backing people in Syria. But now Cuba? Hands off Cuba. That’s baloney.

“People of Cuba deserve freedom.”

The audience at the Miami venue where Univision held the interview broke into applause.

Ernesto Hernandez Busto, Spain-based editor of Penultimos Dias, is following it all in Miami and attended the Romney event. He liked Romney’s remarks and those of his wife, he found Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen “enthusiastic and predictable,” but found something lacking in the whole lineup and in all the other candidates: “an understanding of the Cuban situation that goes beyond the traditional topics.”

Welcome to the club, Ernesto.