Latin bishops support Cuba's church

A Latin American conference of Catholic bishops concluded in Havana today. The bishops met Wednesday with Cuban vice presidents Carlos Lage and Esteban Lazo. They concluded their conference by expressing hope that church-state dialogue in Cuba would continue, and by calling on Cuban authorities to permit Cuba’s Catholic clergy to have greater access to Cuban jails and to offer, according to AP, “some type of religious education to youth.”

According to EFE, the new bishop of Holguin, Emilio Aranguren, expressed hope that the Cuban church will be able to undertake the same range of activities as its counterparts elsewhere in Latin America. “There are times when the mission of the church is limited and one thinks that it is only worship, preaching, giving catechism; however, the mission of the church has another dimension of charity, of service, of outreach, because the church is called to live in society, and in society it has a mission,” Aranguren said.

The conference received messages from Christian Liberation Movement leader Oswaldo Paya and from wives of political prisoners. The conference “put these situations in the hands of the Cuban Conference of Catholic Bishops” for discussions with Cuban authorities. The Radio Marti website ran a story with a distorted headline, "CELAM asks Cuban church to dialogue with the government about opposition's demands."

[Photo of Santiago cathedral]

In Vedado, guarding Lennon's statue

Guantanamo -- the base

Speaking of Guan- tanamo, there’s the issue of the U.S. naval base there, one of the peculiarities of U.S.-Cuba relations.

U.S. rights to the base were secured in a 1903 agreement signed by Presidents Roosevelt and Estrada Palma. The base consists of two land masses, one on each side of the entrance to the bay (map here).

The base has a website with lots of historical information; it notes that it is “the oldest overseas U.S. Naval Station and the only one in a country with which the U.S. does not maintain diplomatic relations.”

One could add that it’s the only military base we maintain in a country where we don’t care what the host country thinks about our activities there. Well, not quite – the U.S. base commander and the local Cuban military commander have long met monthly at the gate, and both sides say these exchanges are good to maintain.

But Guantanamo is known today for the non-Navy activities that take place on the base by virtue of the fact that it’s something of a no-man’s-land with respect to U.S. law. During the Clinton Administration, when thousands of Haitians took to sea attempting to reach the United States, the Coast Guard and Navy brought intercepted migrants there to care for them until they could be repatriated or, in some cases, to evaluate their claims to refugee status. It served the same purpose for Cuban rafters when thousands of them took to sea in 1994. And today, it hosts the “Detainee Mission of the War on Terrorism following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,” in the words of the base website.

The 1903 agreement provides that Cuba leases the base to the United States “for coaling and naval stations,” and that the United States is permitted “to do any and all things necessary to fit the premises for use as coaling or naval stations only, and for no other purpose.” Cuban officials have not been sticklers about that point. When Washington established the prison for detainees from Afghanistan, they offered support. Today, they enjoy and occasionally join the international argument about U.S. treatment of detainees there.

[U.S. Navy illustration of 1910 exercise at Guantanamo]

Guantanamo

A reader who left Guantanamo decades ago asked if I could post pictures of her city, because she wants to see what it looks like now. I’m sorry that I have none. I passed through Guantanamo once, ate lunch there, the temperature felt like 120 degrees, and I shot no pictures.

But while we’re on the subject, I have a question for readers. Why is Guantanamo the driest place in Cuba?

When you approach Guantanamo from the west, you leave the green landscape of Santiago and the last foothills of the Sierra Maestra. On the coastal highway, the green disappears and the landscape turns arid before you get to the city of Guantanamo, and you even see cactus on the side of the road. It remains that way well beyond the city, continuing to the east. Before you reach the eastern tip of the island, the road cuts to the north, heading into the mountains toward Baracoa – and once you make that turn to the north, within a few kilometers the landscape changes again and you are in a tropical forest.

Does anyone know what explains this microclimate? I found one article about efforts to cope with it, but have found nothing about its cause.

Odds and ends

• AFP’s report on yesterday’s Castro “Reflection” on inequality ties Castro’s comment to other party leaders’ recent “hard attacks” on past economic reforms. During the 1990’s, according to communist party culture chief Eliades Acosta, there emerged within Cuba “an undesirable, parasitic, ignorant, mediocre, defeatist, submissive to the foreigner, commercial [mercantilizada], consumerist, and de-politicized anti-Cuba” that “courts a hypothetical restoration of capitalism.” And surplus production of adjectives.

• A day in the life of the migration accords: Coast Guard intercepts three vessels, returns 70 migrants to Cuba, hands over two suspected alien smugglers to law enforcement.

• Costa Rica’s President Arias makes clear that he is not seeking to re-establish diplomatic ties with Cuba, and his priorities are elsewhere.

Havana's cathedral

"Irritating privileges"

Fidel Castro’s “Reflections” published today, titled “Self-criticism of Cuba” (English here), begins with a discussion of student work brigades and ends with a long call for belt-tightening and conservation of resources. In between, it includes a three-paragraph comment on income inequality in Cuba.

Where does the inequality come from? Castro cites three examples.

First, Cubans in some enterprises receive incentive-based bonus pay in hard currency. This has not always been done legally, he points out, without making clear if he is referring to state enterprises or joint ventures with foreign investors.

Second, some receive remittances from abroad in hard currency – “something which is not illegal, but at times creates inequality and irritating privileges.”

Third, there are those who make large profits in black-market transportation activities. From earlier speeches, I assume he means unlicensed taxi drivers.

The result, Castro says, is that the “real and visible lack of equality and the lack of relevant information gives rise to criticism, above all in the neediest sectors.”

And the problem with this, he goes on to imply, is that those who have higher incomes nonetheless receive subsidized government services. But those services and their subsidies will continue as a matter of commitment, Castro says, and because “we are not a consumer society.”

Fair enough. I too would look askance, in Cuba or anywhere, at a system that provides government subsidies to people who don’t need them.

But another way of looking at all this is to say that Cuba’s real problem is not that some Cubans earn higher incomes, but that too many work hard and earn incomes that aren’t enough to cover their basic needs. And that the most important challenge for economic policy – if your goal is to wipe out inequality, black marketeering, and pilferage of state resources – is to raise the incomes of Cubans in the lower income segments.

Cuban policymakers are aware of this challenge and there is some public discussion of it.

Someday, if Cuba’s dual-currency system is ended and depending on how it is ended, lower-income Cubans could benefit (see discussion here). And Cuba’s labor minister says there is a new pay policy in the works, a counterpart to regulations tightening labor discipline, that is to tie pay to output and “guarantee” that workers “may live from their work” (more here).

We’ll see. I have no doubt that this debate will continue, and my guess is that it will frame the major decisions of the post-Fidel Castro government.

Bay of Pigs coastline

Questions of loyalty

Are you really a communist deep down inside?

Do you worry when you read Frank Calzon saying that those who want to end travel restrictions are “inclined to give tyranny the benefit of the doubt” and are “willing to make concessions to Havana?”

And when Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen writes that legislation to permit unrestricted travel, or just to open up educational travel to Cuba, are “pro-Castro amendments,” do you think she could be right?

Well, you can relax.

Just read and take to heart this generous closing line of a Diario las Americas editorial:

“Incidentally, it is fair to say that there are individuals who are not communists, even very worthy persons, who oppose the embargo.”

Rice on Cuba (updated)

In remarks to reporters yesterday, Secretary of State Rice toughened up the rhetoric on Cuba, saying that “we’re not going to tolerate the transfer of power from one dictator to another.”

She did not say what “not tolerate” means. Her full remarks are here.

A transfer of the presidency from Fidel Castro to Raul Castro, like it or not, would follow the succession mechanism in Cuba’s constitution. With Fidel Castro out of office now for nearly one year, it seems that a de facto succession has already been accomplished.

The Administration has not been effective in matching ends and means in its Cuba policy, and it is doubtful it would take the action required to prevent Raul Castro from fully assuming the presidency once Fidel Castro goes.

In his most recent remarks on Cuba, President Bush indicated that when Fidel Castro passes from the scene, the United States will orchestrate international calls for a change of political system in Cuba. Those remarks did not play well in Miami, it seems Rice is responding.

In Cuba, it’s a safe bet that Rice’s remarks make the senior leadership circle the wagons even more, increasing cohesion among senior officials and suppressing the emergence of any differences that might eventually lead to change.

Some toughness.

Will Fidel run?

An October 21 date is set for nationwide municipal elections in a Council of State order signed by Raul Castro. Provincial and national legislative elections will follow at a date to be determined.

And the big question is whether, when the National Assembly election is held, the ballot in Santiago will bear the name of candidate Fidel Castro Ruz.

AP’s coverage here, Reuters’ here, and Prensa Latina English’s just-the-facts story is here.

"Resistance"

We report, you decide, as they say on TV.

“Tomas Estrada Palma in Annapolis, Maryland,” great-grandson of the Cuban president of the same name, offers a Fourth of July video message “bringing you the state of the Cuban resistance” on his blog.

Addressing the Cuban people – in English – he shows the steaks on the grill that the Cuban people can have “any day you want” once they gain their independence.

In the blog, he says it’s time to “crush” the Cuban economy, and time to stop sending remittances to Cubans, a step that will have “barely any effect on average Cubans.”

Or at least no effect that you can see from Annapolis, Maryland.

And there are also a series of prescriptions for the Cuban “resistance” that I’ll leave without description. See for yourself.

Odds and ends

• Oscar Espinosa Chepe gives the recent agriculture policy moves a mixed review: positive, but palliative, like “aspirins for cancer.”

• Page Six does Havana: the New York Post’s Cindy Adams’ July 4 impressions.

• Your tax dollars at work: Radio Marti reports on a June trip to Budapest, Hungary by eleven members of Miami’s Cuban Democratic Directorate. The organization’s director said, according to the report, that it is necessary to strengthen those persons who, at different levels inside the Cuban government, also want a change.

Holguin, August 2005

The cathedral, a statue inside, a statue of Pope John Paul II in the courtyard outside, and then down the street halfway to the agro, a rehearsal in progress.

Cuba, Colombia, and terrorism

I’ll leave it to others to figure out what exactly is happening in Cuba with regard to negotiations between the Colombian government and Colombia’s FARC and ELN guerrillas – but there’s no disputing that something has been going on over the past month.

Since December 2005, representatives of the ELN guerrillas and the Colombian government have had on-again, off-again meetings in Havana. Last month, talks resumed and the ELN said there’s a possibility that a framework accord (“acuerdo base”) could be reached by the end of July, including a ceasefire and release of hostages. Colombia’s interior minister dangled the possibility that with such an accord, the government might drop ELN’s “terrorist” label.

And Rodrigo Granda, the “foreign minister” of the FARC guerrillas, traveled to Havana – reportedly, for health reasons – and was said to have had talks with a Colombian government negotiator.

Colombia’s guerrilla wars are older than Cuba’s revolution, so no one should jump to optimistic conclusions about the diplomacy taking place in Havana. The ELN effort could sputter, and contacts with the FARC, a group with which Cuban officials have claimed to have limited contacts and influence, have been sparse.

But it is interesting to watch all this in light of the State Department’s perennial assertion that the presence of Colombian guerrillas in Cuba justifies the designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism.”

President Bush is a big fan of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. This is how he began his answer to a general question about the “situation in South America” last month (from the White House transcript):

THE PRESIDENT: Sí, thank you. First, I am a big admirer of mi amigo, Presidente Uribe. He’s strong -- that's the President of Colombia. (Laughter and applause.) He’s strong, he’s courageous, and he believes in democracy. And he was -- he started off in a really very tough problem, and that is dealing with a very rich group of people who are violent, but didn't necessarily agree with democracy. And I admire the way he has led his nation.

This is what President Uribe said July 3 while discussing the potential for an accord with the ELN: “I have to thank President Castro for all the help Cuba has given.”

Odds and ends

• The Economist on tourism in Cuba: a slump last year that continued into the early 2007 high season, “one of the lowest rates of return visits in the travel business,” and possible upcoming measures beyond those already announced – allowing Cubans to stay in Cuban hotels, and re-pegging the convertible peso at par with the dollar.

• Spain’s ABC: Mexican and Cuban legislators met in Havana, talked about repairing relations, did not discuss human rights and Cuban debt to Mexico. Mexico’s ambassador suggests talks on a migration accord.

• In Cuba, the advent of round-the-clock television broadcasts.

• A new Cuban website, in English and Spanish, on Cuba’s programs of international health care assistance.

On alert, Playa Giron

The threat of invasion decades in the past, here’s who defends the beaches at the Bay of Pigs today.

Looking for a new horse?

Senator John McCain has $2 million in cash on hand. In the last reporting period he raised about one third the amount raised by Senator Barack Obama, and his campaign spent lots more money than it took in. He is laying off dozens of campaign staff members, and speculation is starting that he may end his campaign.

If that comes to pass, Miami’s three Cuban American representatives, who endorsed McCain, will soon be looking for a new horse to ride, if they are not doing so already.

Thompson and Cuban migrants -- the real issue got lost

The flap over Senator Thompson’s remarks linking immigration from Cuba to the threat of terrorism has just about played itself out.

It gave Senator Clinton an opportunity to wax indignant at a candidates’ forum in Florida last weekend: “I was appalled when one of the people running for or about to run for the Republican nomination talked about Cuban refugees as potential terrorists.”

It gave Senator Thompson a chance to clarify his original statement by stating that Cuba should continue to be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism, and expressing solidarity with the Cuban American community and the contributions of Gloria Estefan and others to America.

Some didn’t buy it. At Babalu, this reader is one among many Cuban Americans who are still smarting:

“…stand him [Thompson] before an anti-immigrant crowd in South Carolina (where I believe the Confederate Flag still flies over the State Capitol), and he does not hesitate to lump all Cuban ‘immigrants’ together with other ‘terrorists’ sneaking suit case bombs into the country. It was plain old fashioned racist pandering of the worst kind. His attempt to clarify was less than satisfying.”

Others bought it, hook, line, and sinker, such as this blogger at 26^th Parallel, who ignored the fact that Ana Belen Montes did not sneak across the Rio Grande – she is American by birth:

“I came to the conclusion that his comments weren’t directed at Cubans fleeing castro but at the spies such as Ana Belen Montes that we’ve come to know so well.”

What the flap has not done is lead to a discussion about U.S. policy toward Cuban migrants.

In his clarification, Senator Thompson says he is worried about Cuba sending “agents and provocateurs” who could “slip through” our “porous southern border.”

What the Senator misses is that Cubans, unlike people of any other nationality who arrive at the border without a visa, don’t have to “slip through.”

Every day of the week, they walk right in.

They present their Cuban passport at the border station and they are simply admitted – they are granted “parole,” which waives all the rules that would keep an illegal immigrant out, and has nothing to do with refugee or asylee status or any demonstration of a fear of persecution if returned to Cuba. The same thing applies to those who have no visa and reach our shores in boats.

If Fidel Castro wanted to infiltrate operatives into the United States, we could hardly design a better system for him.

Agree with it or not, it is a policy that responds entirely to humanitarian and/or electoral impulses, not to U.S. national security interests.

In other words, we could build a fence along the entire border, electrify it, and station a half million troops there – but as long as current policies toward Cuban migrants are maintained, the supposed danger against which Senator Thompson warned would remain.

So Senator Thompson raised a question that still has not been answered: If Cuba is a threat to U.S. national security, and if there is a risk that Cuba would infiltrate terrorists or intelligence agents posing as everyday Cuban migrants, how would he change U.S. immigration policies to address that threat?

Odds and ends

• Cuba’s legislature calls for a “more coherent” judicial system that relies less on prison sentences. “We can’t go on believing that the sentences stipulated in criminal statutes are going to be the solution to all crime problems,” said a committee chairman.

• Via the Miami Herald, an account of a BBC interview with Gerardo Hernandez, one of the Cuban Five who is in federal prison in California.

• Canton-to-Cuba highway project faces new delays.

In Baracoa, ready for her quinceanera

Raul 1, Bureaucracy 0

Last December, Raul Castro said the revolution is “tired of excuses” given for chronic problems in transportation and agriculture. In a National Assembly session, he asked how farmers can be expected to produce and deliver to market if the state fails to pay them for the goods they deliver.

They system responded. Last week, Cuba’s finance minister said the government paid 550 million pesos to settle debts with farmers, clearing all debts from the last six months, and it refinanced debts totaling another 863 million pesos. A system to track payments and prevent late payments has also reportedly been instituted.

Additionally, prices paid to farmers for beef and milk have been increased by 250 percent.

AP reports that farm production was down seven percent last year.

These new measures fix problems within the current system, rather than reform the system. Yet they should produce results. If the state pays farmers more promptly and reliably, and if beef and milk prices go up, one can expect that producers will respond, just as they responded to the incentives they received in 1993 when they were permitted to sell their surplus on the open market.