Cuba, U.S. to talk about mail service

Reuters: Cuba has accepted the U.S. proposal to talk about resuming direct postal service, and the talks will take place in Havana in mid-September. It is possible now to send mail between the two countries, but it goes through third countries such as Panama and Mexico, and takes three weeks or more to arrive.

Juventud Rebelde, still stirring the pot

It’s anyone’s guess whether or when the ideas, suggestions, and proddings in Cuba’s communist youth newspaper will make their way into the government’s policy machinery.

But in the meantime, Juventud Rebelde continues to make for interesting reading.

Yesterday’s paper ran a column by one Jose Alejandro Rodríguez calling for open criticism of socialism’s failings. He cited a “sick obsession” with protecting the image of the country or a ministry or an enterprise, at the expense of honest diagnoses that could make things better. He noted that “corruption” used to be a “bad word,” but now the Cuban government has established a special agency to stamp it out. He ridiculed the idea that honest internal criticism gives “weapons to the enemy.” Silence and conformity, he said, are “the most dangerous missile” that could be given to those who want to “dismantle the work of 50 years.” EFE story here.

Then there was this August 15 article on rice production in Vertientes, Camaguey province. Production has increased, but the article focuses on bottlenecks: lack of fuel deliveries to producers at the right time, lack of transportation capacity to move the harvested rice, and lack of capacity to dry the rice – the facilities to dry rice are capable of handling only 70 percent of the daily harvest. One UBPC cooperative, the article reports, has consequently lost 25,000 quintales of rice (a quintal being 100 pounds). That translates to a loss “equivalent to 15,000 pesos in expenses and 8,000 liters of fuel buried in the ground.”

Then there was this long August 22 piece that reads like a call to end excessive centralization. It opens with an anecdote about a local initiative where officials in Jatibonico, Sancti Spiritus, rescued a locomotive headed for the boneyard and used it to established passenger service for seven communities. But this type of effort is exceptional, the article says, because most localities wait for “decisions, solutions, and even initiatives” to come from above “in the same way in which manna was send to the Israelites in Biblical times.”

The article goes on to cite academics, officials, and farmers who have ideas about local initiatives. “Why do cooperatives have to be only in agriculture,” one asks, giving as an example an illegal car body painting enterprise whose four workers should be able to form a cooperative and pay taxes. Another notes that enterprises, stovepiped into different ministries, can’t offer services to each other even though there would be benefits for society and for the economy’s efficicency. And a farm cooperative president says that the agriculture bureaucracy is excessive; there’s “a lot of personnel that doesn’t produce any development and doesn’t decide much either.”

Richardson in Havana, Day Five (updated)

Sort of a triangular approach: Governor Richardson concludes his visit by saying he will report to President Obama and by offering to set up a dialogue between the Cuban government and Cuban Americans.

He urges Cuba to act, “especially in the humanitarian area,” and wants both Washington and Havana to ease travel restrictions. “Normalizing relations is going to take time, it is a complicated thing and there are a lot of issues to address…It will take time, but we have to do it,” he said.

He said that the United States has suggested that the two governments drop restrictions on their diplomats’ movements, and he urged Cuban officials to agree to the idea.

Update: Mexico’s La Jornada reported in more detail on Richardson’s presentation at the press conference, saying that the governor had presented a specific “plan of reciprocal actions to normalize relations with Cuban authorities.”

The plan would defer larger and more contentious issues and start with the two sides taking humanitarian steps. The United States would put into effect the announced Obama policy ending restrictions on family travel and remittances; allow greater sports, cultural, scientific, academic, and business exchanges; and allow Americans in general to travel to the island. Cuba would end “bureaucratic restrictions and high fees” that make family visits more costly, accept a U.S. proposal to end the restrictions that limit both sides’ diplomats to the Havana and Washington capital areas, and start an “informal dialogue” with Cuban Americans.

Richardson also said that he sees no need for a U.S. special envoy and doesn’t think he will have a role in U.S. diplomacy toward Cuba.

At Cubaencuentro, there’s some CBS video of the governor’s press conference.

Coverage here from AP, Reuters, AFP.

[AP photo]

Odds and ends

• In the New York Times, a call for U.S.-Cuba environmental cooperation.

• AP reports that with one month to go in fiscal year 2009, significantly fewer Cubans are arriving in the United States by sea or by crossing the Mexican border, or are being intercepted at sea. When the numbers go up, everyone says it’s a sign of desperation in Cuba – so does this mean everybody’s happy?

• Cuban rocker Gorki Aguila, now in Mexico, comments on the Juanes concert in this video posted at Cubaencuentro.

• A Miami radio personality, Javier Ceriani, says he will hold a freedom concert in Miami on the same day as the Juanes concert in Cuba.

Stuck on stupid

In 2002, President Bush offered scholarships for “Cuban students and professionals who try to build independent civil institutions in Cuba, and scholarships for family members of political prisoners.” The Cuban government apparently saw it as an effort to train the next generation of its political opposition, and it didn’t go very far.

In the final months of the Bush Administration, the State Department made the smart move of removing the political criteria and offering scholarships just as we would in any other country. (In January, I wrote about this here.)

It hasn’t worked.

Wilfredo Cancio reports in El Nuevo Herald that 28 students were selected, but the Cuban government denied them permission to travel to the United States. The Cuban government said that while these students won’t be allowed to go, it may allow others to participate in the future, according to a State Department source cited in the article.

State Department spokeswoman Sara Mangiaracina says the scholarships will continue to be offered to Cubans. Whether Cubans will continue to apply on the hope that their government will change its mind, is another matter.

One can’t help but recall Cuban protests about the Bush Administration’s interference in academic freedom when it denied Cuban scholars visas to attend conferences of the Latin American Studies Association in 2004 and 2006.

It took six years for the Bush Administration to move off its dumb position with regard to this scholarship program. Let’s hope it takes the Cuban government much less time to move off its own.

Odds and ends

• Governor Richardson made clear yesterday that he is in Cuba on his own, not as an Obama Administration envoy, but he will report his impressions to the Administration when he returns. He also wants to see an end to travel restrictions: “There’s a link between Hemingway and the United States and Cuba, and now there’s a New Mexico link…I think enhancing cultural and artistic and educational ties is a prelude to diplomatic and commercial ties. It always happens that way…I’m for enhanced tourism travel for Americans.” AP coverage here.

• The Obama Administration fines an Australian bank 7 million Australian dollars for trade financing operations connected to transactions with Cuba and other countries subject to U.S. sanctions.

• El Nuevo Herald has a video in Spanish on yesterday’s poll (pdf) on the Juanes concert. It features remarks by the pollster, Sergio Bendixen, and the poll’s sponsor, Carlos Saladrigas of the Cuba Study Group.

• Livan Hernandez returns to the Washington Nationals and has a good outing against the Cubs.

• A short, silent video of 1932 Havana at Penultimos Dias.

Go, Juanes, go (continued)

• The concert is “not about politics,” Juanes explains in a Herald article that also covers other voices in the debate.

• Julio Iglesias says Juanes is a “great artist” who wants to bring “a message of affection and music” to Cubans.

• Gloria Estefan somewhat condescendingly says she knows Juanes’ “heart is in the right place,” explains her concerns about Cuba and the concert, and says she hopes Cubans will be able to enjoy the event and have uncontrolled access to it.

• The Cuba Study Group releases a poll (pdf) showing that only 27 percent of Cuban Americans support the concert, while 74 percent believe that last week’s Miami street demonstrations featuring the smashing of CD’s with sledgehammers were not good “for the image of Cuban exiles in the United States.”

Odds and ends

• The Catholic church’s relationship with the state in Cuba is “not what it should be, but it’s better than it has been,” says Orlando Bishop Thomas Wenski after a trip to Cuba, which he discusses on the Herald’s op-ed page.

• Anya Landau French on the trouble with waiting for Fidel.

• “Confusion reigns in the heart of American society,” Fidel Castro writes in a long commentary on the news from the United States. Fidel, who supported the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, says it is “an error” for President Obama to shift U.S. ground forces from Iraq to Afghanistan. “The Soviet Union sank there,” he says. English summary here.

Richardson in Havana, Day Three

At Along the Malecon, some speculation about Governor Richardson’s trip to Cuba, now in its third day, promoting farm sales and cultural exchange.

His five-day schedule leaves plenty of time left over for other matters after he has negotiated Cuban concerts in Santa Fe and sales of his state’s cattle and chili peppers to Cuba.

My hunch is that it doesn’t matter whether Richardson talked to the Obama Administration in advance or received an assignment from it. He knows the issue well enough that he will have useful things to say to Cuban officials there, and useful impressions to relate to the Administration when he returns.

Richardson did speak to Cuban American leaders in Miami on his way, Rui Ferreira reports.

[AP photo]

Quotable

“For honorable Cubans the concert of Juanes will be a grotesque spectacle…I don’t intend to politicize art; if the key is not to politicize music and art, then I call upon the Castro regime also to invite famous Cuban musicians in exile to the concert, such as Willy Chirino and Donato Poveda, who can surely sing for the peace, justice, and liberty that our people need so much.”

– Jorge Luis García Pérez, a.k.a. “Antúnez,”former political prisoner, quoted in Miscelaneas de Cuba

“Let [Juanes] sing in Cuba and then let him sing for peace in Miami, and may both concerts be so successful that they are repeated in both places. And in those concerts, let Juanes bring Gloria, Willie, and Albita to Havana and let him bring Silvio, Pablo, and Amaury to Miami. That would be a real bridge that the great majority of Cubans on both sides desire.”

– Silvia Wilhelm, Puentes Cubanos, from letter in El Nuevo Herald

Richardson to Cuba

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is en route to Cuba, AP reports. He is known as a diplomatic troubleshooter and negotiator, but this five-day trip is about “potential agricultural and cultural partnerships” between Cuba and New Mexico. His position on Cuba policy, expressed last year when he was a Democratic presidential candidate, is summed up here by the Council on Foreign Relations.

Odds and ends

• A nice (and long) Herald profile of blogger Yoani Sanchez.

• Allegiant Air of Nevada, a newcomer to the Cuba charter business, has decided to stop providing service to Cuba, its CEO announced, saying the flights were “exposing the airline and its people to operational complexity inconsistent with our operating philosophy.” Hmmm.

• New images of Fidel Castro: video on Cuban television (here, via BBC) and a photo here in a recent meeting with the president of Ecuador.

• More on the Sullivan case in Maine from Cubadebate, with translation at Cuban Colada.

Treasury all but deregulates Cuban American travel

Last April, President Obama announced that he would issue rules removing all restrictions on family travel. Lots of media reports say that policy is now in effect, but that’s not the case because the Treasury Department has not issued regulations to carry it out.

While we wait for those regulations to be issued, the policy that is in effect is one that was created by Congress last March. It repealed the Bush rules for family visits (once every three years, no exceptions for additional trips) and replaced it with a new rule allowing visits once every year no questions asked, and permitting additional trips if travelers obtain a license from the government.

Now the nice folks at Treasury have issued a directive (pdf) that defines the criteria for those additional trips, including a form where a traveler has to check two boxes. The criteria are not very daunting; they could have made it simpler with one box and a statement, “I’m Cuban American, I went once this year, and I feel like going again.”

The effect is that, except for having to fill out the form and wait for a license to arrive in the mail, travel has effectively been deregulated for Cuban Americans.

That’s nice, President Obama, but what about the rest of the country?

Odds and ends

• Elizardo Sanchez, head of the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, released this report (pdf, in English and Spanish) last week including 208 persons on its “partial list of persons sentenced or tried for political reasons.” Of these, 65 are prisoners of conscience recognized by Amnesty International. The report (see paragraphs 11 and 12) chides the government for surveillance of citizens and notes that if high officials such as Carlos Lage are surreptitiously filmed, no citizen can feel immune from surveillance.

• More on the Juanes concert: The singer went to police about a threatening message on his Twitter account, the concert picked up the support of some Cuban American groups yesterday, and Mambi Watch reports that Vigilia Mambisa is taking some heat from fellow opponents of the concert for its demonstration last week.

• The New York Times on the ongoing contact and exchange of information between meteorologists in the United States and Cuba regarding hurricanes.

• Cuba’s Policia Nacional Revolucionaria has issued a call for recruits to its undercover service; Cuban Colada translates here.

46 years, a missing father, no answers

Sherry Sullivan, a Maine woman who last saw her father in 1963 at age seven, won a lawsuit against the Cuban government for her father’s wrongful death. A Maine Superior Court judge awarded $21 million in damages, plus interest, ostensibly to be collected from the Cuban government. The Bangor Daily News report is here.

There’s a lot to this case that’s hard to figure out, not the least of which is the issue of evidence about the exact fate of the father, Geoffrey Sullivan, a pilot. (The judge’s decision doesn’t seem to be available on-line.) If you search for information about Geoffrey Sullivan, there’s no definitive account of his fate – something that his daughter, who has searched assiduously for years, is the first to admit.

This story quotes Ms. Sullivan’s lawsuit saying that her father and an associate, Alexander Rorke, “participated in various anti-Castro covert operations in Central America and Cuba” before they disappeared in October 1963 after taking off from Cozumel, Mexico. The story adds: “The suit says those activities may have included sabotage and subversion. It cites evidence that Sullivan was imprisoned after being shot down during a covert mission in Cuba.”

This 1993 court decision, which upheld the CIA’s rejection of an information request from Ms. Sullivan, said that she had “surmised that Rorke and her father were engaged in a CIA-sponsored mission to drop propaganda (or perhaps something more sinister) over Cuba. Despite appellant’s suspicions, the CIA steadfastly refused to acknowledge that it employed either man at any time.”

This report’s section on Americans “killed or missing in operations to monitor or counter the Castro regime” says that in April 1963, Rorke and Sullivan “had bombed an oil refinery in Havana, Cuba with homemade bombs, but the bombs had failed to explode.”

More information on the case is here and here.

Cuba’s position in this and similar lawsuits seems to be to decline to respond in any way. One wonders what would have happened if Cuba had responded to the judge in Maine that Sullivan was captured and tried, if that was the case, on charges related to his flights and whatever he may have been dropping over Cuba.

One also wonders, for his daughter’s sake, why the U.S. government, after all these years, can’t answer her questions by saying whether her father was working for the CIA or another agency, and what it knows about his mission in October 1963, and his fate.

Pio pio

...for sale at the Cuatro Caminos market.

Odds and ends

• NPR reports on the tourism industry in Cuba and whether it’s ready for Americans. And this travel reporter from NY1 television points out Cuba’s casas particulares, the private homes that rent rooms to foreigners, as an alternative to Cuban hotels such as the “iconic but shabby” Hotel Nacional.

• In a Cubanet article datelined from Miami, writer Adrian Leiva supports the Juanes concert and asks: “Why recriminate against a musician who in good faith wishes to bring a concert for peace and national concord to the Cuban people, for something that isn’t his responsibility as a foreigner? It is an exclusive responsibility of the Cuban people to demand spaces of liberty and respect for our human rights. To transfer this responsibility to a foreign country or a musician is wrong and unworthy.”

• Snide Fidel: At the end of a commentary published yesterday, where he looks at the Empire’s defense posture and health care debate, Fidel Castro says this: “Better yet, scientists could design robots capable of governing; thus they would spare the government and Congress of the United States this horrible, contradictory, and confusing work. No doubt they would do it better and cheaper.”

Lincoln to Crist: No, thanks

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart has taken himself out of the running for appointment to the Senate seat being vacated by Senator Mel Martinez, the Herald reports.

Only yesterday, he was still thinking about it.

All kinds of speculation now comes to an end – about whether this was a clever move by Governor Crist to get his primary opponent Marco Rubio to drop out and run for the House; or whether it would have given Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart a shot at a safer seat; or whether it gave Joe Garcia another shot at a Congressional run; or even whether there was a circuitous House-to-Senate-to-House pathway for Lincoln himself to follow.

It was fun while it lasted.

Etecsa gets the message

Has someone been scratching out the Laffer Curve on the back of an envelope in Cuba’s communications ministry?

Cuba’s phone monopoly Etecsa has already cut activation fees for cell phone service to attract more subscribers (from 120 convertible pesos to 60 last December to 40 last June).

Now, to get more Cubans to call outside, Etecsa has cut rates charged to residential customers for international phone calls to one dollar per minute. This experimental rate is in effect until December 15. Reuters coverage here (Spanish), AP’s here.

Like the lower hotel rates for Cubans and the lower prices in hard currency stores, these moves by Etecsa will serve to soak up hard currency liquidity among Cubans. That helps state enterprises, and benefits Cuban consumers too. Let’s hope the idea continues to catch on.

Allen Johnson, off the reservation

“The policy of creating hungrier and poorer Cubans in hopes of bringing down their government has been tragically ineffective.” That’s the description of President George W. Bush’s Cuba policy by Bush’s former trade negotiator Allen Johnson, writing in the Des Moines Register. His recommendations on trade and travel are well received at The Washington Note, less so at Capitol Hill Cubans.

Odds and ends

• Reuters: a delegation of Catholic bishops in Cuba, led by Baltimore’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, aims to send a message to the White House: “Isolation doesn’t help change.”

• Sun-Sentinel: Gulfstream International, which operates charters to Cuba, saw its second-quarter charter business increase 71 percent over last year. Last March 11, the Bush rules regarding family visits were repealed, allowing Cuban Americans to visit once per year. The measures President Obama announced April 13 – unrestricted family visits and remittances – still have not been implemented.

• Hurricane season has started, and so have worries about Cuba and its Caribbean neighbors. A potentially big one (Bill) has shifted course so it threatens Bermuda rather than the Caribbean. If you want to follow storms and cut out the middleman, you can go here to get direct access to the U.S. government reports, projections, radar images, etc.

• Orlando Sentinel columnist Jane Healy writes about the impact of Senator Martinez’ early departure on GOP efforts to win Latino votes.

Go, Juanes, go (continued)

• Cuba Study Group leader Carlos Saladrigas supports the concert and addresses the Cuban American community, saying “we are quick to judge from the comforts of exile and rapidly close the door to limited opportunities for openness…It is also possible that the Cuban government is waiting for what has always been its safe formula: to let exile organizations do its dirty work.” His article was published in El Nuevo Herald; English and Spanish versions are here.

• Cuban American youth group Raices de Esperanza supports the concert too.

• At Babalu, a translation of Willie Chirino’s statement of support.

• At Cuaderno de Cuba, Alejandro Armengol’s Spanish-language blog, three posts: on the debate in Miami, on the Vigilia Mambisa protests last Friday, and on reaction from youths in Havana, who like the idea of a concert.