Odds and ends

• The gist of the State Department’s latest annual drug enforcement report (pdf) as regards Cuba: “Cuba’s intensive security presence and bilateral interdiction efforts have effectively reduced the available supply of narcotics on the island and prevented traffickers from establishing a foothold.”

• Who do you send to lead the delegation to Venezuela’s state funeral a few days after its government accuses you of injecting the late President with a substance that caused cancer?  A Congressman and ex-Congressman. (New York Times)  Like Vladimir Ilyich, the body will be embalmed and on public view “for eternity.”  (Reuters)

• In the World Baseball Classic on Wednesday, Cuba shut out Japan for eight innings and defeated the two-time champs 6-3.  A good blog writeup here, and Granma says it’s a win to savor.  After a loss yesterday to the Netherlands, Cuba faces an elimination game Saturday against Taiwan.  Update: Cuba plastered Taiwan 14-0, the game ending in the seventh inning by the mercy rule.  To be one of the four teams that advances to the final round that begins March 17 in San Francisco, Cuba needs to win Monday when it plays the loser of Sunday’s Japan-Netherlands game.

• Two Spaniards, both Partido Popular activists, tell El Nuevo Herald cloak-and-dagger tales of their 2007 visit to Oswaldo Paya, saying that Paya tried to go unnoticed when riding in their car by putting on a baseball cap and sunglasses.  Please.

• In Cubaencuentro, a very critical essay on Oswaldo Paya’s effectiveness as a dissident.

• Vietnam News Agency: A Vietnamese delegation visited Cuba and agreed with Cuban officials “to create favourable conditions for cooperation between Vietnam’s Viettel Telecoms Corporation and Etecsa, the Telecommunications Company of Cuba, targeting the goal of turning Viettel into Etecsa’s partner in upgrading the telecoms infrastructure in Cuba.”  Also: “The hosts spoke highly of Vietnam’s recent social-economic development achievements, saying that the doi moi (renewal process) is a good example for Cuba.”

• Spain’s foreign minister says he has no evidence supporting Partido Popular activist Angel Carromero’s version of the crash that killed Oswaldo Paya (El Pais).

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

·         AP’s Andrea Rodriguez takes a good look at Cuba’s demographic crunch and the urgency it gives to the economic reforms.  At the end, an interesting speculation that a future Cuba could be a destination country for immigrants, which would help the worker-to-dependent ratio.

·         At Havana Times, Samuel Farber writes a critical review (in English and Spanish) of my Viewer’s Guide to Cuba’s Economic Reform (pdf), followed by some reader comments. 

·         In Commonweal, Tom Quigley looks back at Pope Benedict’s visit to Cuba.

·         EFE: Venezuelan opposition candidate Henrique Capriles criticizes Venezuela’s “gift” of oil to Cuba and other countries, differentiating the aid from the payment for medical and other services rendered.

·         Granma covers Vietnam’s decision to reduce its state sector to a set of essential functions, to have about half the economy in enterprises with majority state ownership and significant foreign ownership, and the rest in a private sector providing goods and services.

Raul in Moscow

Raul Castro continues his foreign travel in Moscow, where he met President Putin and the two looked for ways to deepen economic ties.  Putin sent his regards to “our great friend” Fidel Castro.

His visit to Vietnam, EFE reports, included discussions of increased economic cooperation but no details were disclosed. 

More interesting, judging from this report and this one, it looks as if the American Secretary of State and the President of Cuba may have coincided briefly in Hanoi and missed a chance to meet.  Maybe next time.

Compañero Nguyen’s visit

Nguyen Phu Trong, head of Vietnam’s communist party, visited Cuba last week.  There was a joint statement where Vietnam expressed “invariable support for the just cause of struggle of the Cuban people,” where Cuba noted that Nguyen was decorated with the Order of Jose Marti, and where it was announced that Raul Castro accepted an invitation to visit Vietnam.  Separately, Cuban media reported that Vietnamese advisors are teaching techniques that are increasing rice yields at a UBPC cooperative in Sancti Spiritus province.

Much more interesting, there was an interview in Granma where Nguyen discussed his country’s economic “renovation,” called doi moi, and commented on Cuba’s economic policy changes.  Between the lines, his message to Cubans is to stick with it, accept that changes have to proceed slowly, changes will bring improvement, and if you haven’t adjusted your attitude yet about introducing more market mechanisms and incentives into the socialist economy, do so now.

He said:

Vietnam’s economic reform process “has not been simple.”  It started in 1986 but was preceded by four years of experimentation on the farm and in the factory.  Land grants to farmers began in 1981, for example, but only in 1986 was a policy adopted to pay farmers “by piecework” (which I take to mean based on output rather than based on a sum agreed in advance).

When the process started, “many thought that the country intended to abandon socialism, but history has “demonstrated the opposite.”  He uses the phrase, “market economy with socialist orientation.”

The reforms have “considerably improved people’s lives.”  The poverty rate dropped from 75 percent in 1986 to 9.5 percent in 2010.

The hardest part of the reform has been “to change the general and individual mentality in Vietnam, many thought that the transformations would move us away from socialism.  Some even talked of deviations, others are more conservative.” 

It seems that Cubans are “in the same phase.”  “The change in mentality must be achieved at all levels, from the top to the base.”

Coverage in La Jornada here.  And from just before the visit, here’s a Juventud Rebelde article that praises Vietnam’s reforms and their results; a “process that contemplates introducing the logic of markets into the economy, but with a socialist orientation.”

Odds and ends

· Lest anyone forget Raul Castro’s April speech about the centrality of the “economic battle,” decrying “bloated payrolls,” stressing the need for everyone to feel “the necessity to work in order to live,” and reminding Cubans that they have to rely above all on themselves to find “socially useful work,” Granma ran an excerpt on its front page last week.

· Babalu carries a press release from Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen about “reports that certain U.S. companies may be refusing to allow remittances to be sent to the families of political prisoners in Cuba.”

· EFE: The Cuban government is offering exit visas to the mother and other relatives of the late dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo.

· From Vietnam’s official news agency: The Vietnamese are for more trade and investment with Cuba, but exporters don’t like waiting “300-500 days” for payment.

Odds and ends

• AP: Senator Arlen Specter plans to go to Cuba, and seeks a meeting with Raul Castro.

• The New York Times on the Fidel-Raul relationship.

• If you read Frank Calzon’s letter to the Miami Herald, you come to realize that maybe we all have things backwards. One of Calzon’s employees embezzled half a million dollars in federal funds from his organization, and Calzon discovered it – so he should be congratulated. Congressional attention to the issue has nothing to do with the fact that taxpayer money went missing; rather, it’s a “political fishing expedition.” And the lack of a federal grant constitutes “punishment.”

• Al Kamen of the Washington Post uncovers a message from the office of Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, inviting legislators to discuss “the very troubling granting of a Treasury/OFAC license to a little league team to travel to Cuba in August.”

• At Oswaldo Paya’s website, a report on conditions of political prisoners.

• Former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castaneda, writing in Newsweek, takes an interesting look at Vietnam now, and muses about Cuba’s future.

• Penultimos Dias, a great blog and resource, celebrates its second anniversary. Congratulations to the indefatigable Ernesto.