Light blogging ahead

I had planned to take a break at 1,500 posts, but the timing didn’t work out. We’re now at 1,566, and it is probably still a bad time to shut down for a while, but I’m going to cut back anyway until after Labor Day, so things will be light to sporadic until then.

National Review, off the reservation (Updated)

There’s a stir going on because of a comment in the group blog of the conservative magazine National Review, where Mark Krikorian said that “continuity in Cuba’s government, along the lines of Vietnam or China, is probably the least-bad outcome for the United States.” Ouch. A provocative (and debatable) view based on a specific (and debatable) concern about use of Cuban territory for drug trafficking.

Penultimos Dias ran a strong letter to the magazine’s editor, Rich Lowry. Lord knows what Lowry thinks about “continuity,” but his view on Cuba policy, expressed four years ago, is as follows: “I think the Cuba policy is an anachronism, and I don’t support the embargo. I think, if it would have been lifted a long time ago, Cuba would be, you know, an American resort town, more or less, probably.” Ouch again.

Update: It gets worse: Mark Falcoff weighs in there today playing footsie with the idea of normalized relations with Cuba, citing Reagan envoy Gen. Vernon Walters: “If we had full diplomatic relations with Castro, he would be no more important politically than the president of the Dominican Republic.”

Odds and ends

• AFP: The image of Cuba’s patron saint has started a pilgrimage across Cuba, the first since 1952, that will end in Havana in December 2011. It began with a Sunday mass that was broadcast Monday night on state television. The prayer that accompanies the image, the article says, reads: “We pray to you for all your sons and daughters who, in and outside of the country, wish the best for Cuba.”

• A great story from AP on El Duque Hernandez, age “44,” playing in the Gulf Coast League and looking for another shot in the majors. Yesterday he was promoted to the Nats’ AA minor league team in Harrisburg, and the Nats Insider blog speculates he could be called up next month.

• Reuters: Cuba’s food production is down, in spite of large-scale distribution of land and other changes.

• The Havana Note takes note of a remark U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk made to a Senate committee, that Cuba is “an extraordinary opportunity for our farmers and ranchers.”

And whatever they decide, hey, I’m ok with that

“My role is to tell of things and events so that each one may decide, you should understand that the companeros are not people whom I should lead by the finger, by the hand, to do things, and what I want is for them to think.”

– Fidel Castro, quoted by AFP, in a Telesur interview broadcast yesterday

Will Obama ease travel regulations?

For some time there has been talk of a review of Cuba travel regulations by the Obama Administration.

The talk is now spilling out, not exactly in the most organized way, indicating that action is forthcoming to allow more travel by liberalizing regulations, to allow flights to Cuba from the top three dozen U.S. airports that handle international flights, and to change regulations again to increase communication.

We’ll see if and when it happens. All the reports are loosely sourced, putting us (my guess) somewhere above the level of rumor. We haven’t seen the usual trial balloon technique of an Administration official describing with some precision the actions under consideration and the reasons for them. Bloomberg broke the story, the most detailed report so far appeared in the Herald, and a reason to take it all seriously is this single line, an aside, from the Washington Post’s venerable Al Kamen: “And look for Obama administration action, after Congress leaves town, to loosen travel restrictions.”

Given the possibility that restrictions on educational travel may be eased, Victor Johnson of the Association of International Educators reviews the recent history of these regulations. Cuba is the only country with which the United States restricts educational travel, he points out, and if President Obama changes this, he argues, it will not be a favor to Cuba, but to ourselves.

Odds and ends

• Granma runs an Interior Ministry statement about four Cubans, two of whom work as guards at a “nautical base” east of Havana, who took possession of a boat and headed for the United States. Cuba communicated with the U.S. Coast Guard, which intercepted the vessel and returned it with all aboard.

• In the Washington Post, Yoani Sanchez on the recent appearances of Fidel Castro.

• Herald: Ana Margarita Martinez’ lawsuit to have her legal judgment against Cuba paid from funds owed Cuba by air charter companies is not over, and her lawyers are fighting to move it to Florida state courts.

• The Herald on the latest in the USAID Cuba program; but you read it here first.

• Sort of like watching a car crash in slow motion: the saga of Florida Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Greene and his yacht trip to Cuba.

Cardinal Ortega at the White House (Updated)

President Obama’s National Security Advisor, James Jones, received Cardinal Ortega at the White House yesterday, EFE reports.

Gen. Jones praised the Cardinal’s recent efforts, called for the release of all political prisoners, and – good for him – defended their right “to remain in Cuba.” NSC statement here.

Afterwards, Cardinal Ortega received Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela at the Vatican’s embassy in Washington to discuss “the situation in Cuba.”

An interview with Cardinal Ortega by Catholic News Service is here, and his remarks to the Knights of Columbus are here.

Update: CNN Spanish interviewed Cardinal Ortega as he left the White House; here is the interview and a discussion with reporter Ione Molinares.

Headline in search of a story

An AFP story in today’s El Nuevo Herald looks back at how Cuba’s small entrepreneurs have been regulated and taxed over the years, now that the government has announced that the sector will be expanded.

The story contains not one word about Cuban attitudes toward the new announcement – not a word.

El Nuevo’s headline: “Skepticism among Cubans in face of new economic measures.”

More on Raul's speech

Raul Castro continues to be nonplussed about the Obama Administration, saying that “in essence nothing has changed” in his National Assembly speech: “Although less rhetoric exists and occasional bilateral conversations are held on specific and limited topics, in reality the blockade continues to be applied and we shall continue to act with the serenity and patience we have learned in more than half a century.”

That passage was translated by the tireless Renato Perez at Cuban Colada, where more excerpts of that speech are translated: on the economy (where Raul says that the payments backlog to commercial suppliers has been cut by two thirds); on employment and trabajo por cuenta propia; and on prisoner releases and the dissidents.

Real patriots leave their country (Updated)

Diario las Americas writes about a protest outside the venue of the Orquesta Aragon concert in Miami last week (italics mine):

“The protest was based on the fact that the members of Orquesta Aragon, which for generations has had great prestige and enormous international success, never went into exile and remained with the Fidel Castro regime on the island, contrary to many other Cuban artists.”

Update: At Babalu, Val Prieto objects, fair enough, but I still think that the sentiment that the reporter so starkly attributed to the protesters – that the musicians are to be criticized merely for not leaving Cuba – is ugly. Everyone would agree to the expressions of patriotism Val describes. In Cuba itself, there are those and many more, including many that have nothing to do with politics. While we’re at it, someone should send Val an Orquesta Aragon CD so he can see that they don’t do “soliloquies.”

Odds and ends

• Herald: Cardinal Ortega is back in Washington.

• Miami New Times: Rumors of a high-level official visit to Cuba.
  

• At Along the Malecon, Tracey Eaton summarizes Cuban attitudes and sums up impressions of a recent visit.

• Texas rice farmers need markets and would really like to sell to Cuba; that’s the gist of stories by the Voice of America and the Austin American-Statesman.

Entrepreneurs needed

For the second year in a row, Raul Castro gave a more substantial speech a few days after the 26^th of July celebration than he did at the celebration itself – which wasn’t hard this year since he didn’t speak at all on July 26.

Speaking yesterday at the National Assembly, he joked a little about his non-speech, saying it’s the content that counts, not the speaker, and in the event el compañero Machado had done a bang-up job. He snickered at news agencies and “self-appointed ‘analysts’ of the Cuba issue” who raised expectations that he was going to announce capitalist solutions to Cuba’s economic problems that day.

Well, here’s what he announced yesterday.

First, a “group of measures” has been decided upon to achieve, “in steps, the reduction of considerably bloated payrolls in the state sector.” The state will continue to care for those in need and lend a hand to those who need to find new work, but he indicated that changes are in store in early 2011 that will save the state money and eliminate disincentives to work. “We have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world where one can live without working,” he said.

He also announced that more space for private entrepreneurship will be opened up by changing the rules governing self-employment, or trabajo por cuenta propia.

He didn’t announce details – that usually comes in a new law, regulations, or ministerial resolution – but he said that the Council of Ministers agreed to expand the “exercise” of self-employment and its “use as one more alternative for employment for excess workers.” The changes will be discussed in detail “soon” with labor leaders, he said, and presumably they would be announced thereafter.

He said the changes would include: a) eliminating some “current prohibitions” for granting of new licenses for self-employment; b) eliminating prohibitions against the “sale of some productions;” and c) easing restrictions (“flexibilizando”) on contracting of labor.

The real story will be in the details. Points A and B above could mean marginal or expansive change; it’s just a question of how far the new regulations go.

As for point C, if more flexibility in labor contracting means that cuentapropistas will be able to hire workers beyond the few areas where this is now legal, then this will indeed be a big change. He called the measures a “structural change and a change of concept” – a description that would fit a policy that allows Cubans to hire each other.

Raul also said that changes in the taxation system for cuentapropistas are forthcoming. He gave no details but he described the goals: to assure that they pay for social security, pay taxes for income and sales, and for “use of the labor force,” which sounds like a tax that one would pay per employee.

As in any tax system, what matters is not what the tax is for, but how much the entrepreneur has to pay, and what is left of his or her incentives once the tax is paid.

A 2006 report of mine on Cuba’s entrepreneurs is here (pdf).

Here’s coverage of yesterday’s speech from the Guardian, La Jornada, and AP.

Very confusing

The State Department continues to appeal for the release of Alan Gross, who was arrested last December while working in Cuba on a USAID sub-contract valued at $595,000, according to the June issue of CubaNews (subscription required). Part of the State Department’s appeal is that Mr. Gross “was not violating any laws,” as Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela put it in this account by Reuters.

Let’s hope he’s right, and let’s hope Mr. Gross is released.

Meanwhile, the State Department’s page of Cuba travel advice – assembled by the consular affairs bureau, which is responsible for helping Americans who get in trouble overseas – points out the following, right after warning about Cuba’s tough criminal penalties for drug and alien smuggling offenses:

Cuba’s Law of Protection of National Independence and the Cuban Economy contains a series of measures intended to discourage some types of contact between foreign nationals and Cuban citizens to prevent and discourage opposition to the Cuban Government. The law provides for jail terms of up to 30 years in aggravated cases. U.S. citizens, including press and media representatives, traveling in Cuba are subject to this law.

That would be a reference to Cuba’s Law 88, which contains penalties for anyone who “distributes or participates in the distribution of financial, material, or other resources that come from the United States government, its agencies, subordinates, representatives, functionaries, or private entities” pursuant to the U.S. Helms-Burton law.

“We should focus on what works and what does not work”

Palabra Nueva, the magazine of the Havana archdiocese that circulates throughout Cuba, includes in its July/August issue a strong call for economic liberalization from its editor, Orlando Marquez.

The article, “On Liberty and Liberalization,” is here and as usual, Cuban Colada has done a great service by translating a big chunk of the text.

Once he gets through some personal observations about freedom based on his travels, and once he asserts that basic rights are God-given, Marquez’ argument – in favor of self-employment, freedom to buy and sell homes and cars, and more – is framed in opposition to “paternalism.”

Senior Cuban officials have argued against paternalism too, usually to push citizens to stop expecting the state to provide subsidies and benefits that may soon be on the chopping block. (See this example from the editor of Granma.) Marquez argues not against the paternalism of excessive state benefits, but against that of excessive state restrictions that make so many kinds of enterprise and transactions illegal.

It’s interesting to read this article at a time when the government itself is reviewing economic policies. It’s also interesting in the context of assertions that Cubans have no source of information except state media, or that the Church never stands up for the average Cuban.

Odds and ends

• Diario las Americas welcomes Orquesta Aragon, the “mother of Cuban charanga bands” with “the sound everyone remembers” to Miami for concerts tonight and tomorrow night. The group’s tour goes also to Tampa, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Puerto Rico.

• The Wall Street Journal: The American Ballet Theater will go to Cuba in November for the first time since 1960.

• Guillermo Farinas returns home from the hospital after ending his hunger strike earlier this month and gives an interview to the Associated Press in the royal plural: “We feel a bit run down physically,” the release of prisoners “makes us happy,” etc.

Legislature examines pilot projects

Cuba’s legislature convened its committees yesterday for days of discussions of lots of domestic and foreign policy issues – the need to improve coffee production and stop spending $50 million annually on imported coffee; veterans care; improvements in highway safety and the railroad system; and lots more. There are brief accounts of many of these discussions in Cuban media – see the list of articles at top of the Agencia Cubana de Noticias website.

Also on the agenda is a review of pilot projects in state retail and service businesses such as taxi companies, barbershops, and beauty shops, where the state has in a way turned the business over to workers. In the barbershops, for example, the workers pay rent and a license fee then set prices, buy their own supplies, and keep their profits.

This report says that the committee concerned with services will also examine experiments in the sale of farm products in Havana province and the nationwide experience in the sale of construction materials in the Cuban peso, not the hard-currency peso. Excerpt:

La comisión de Atención a los Servicios, en su primer día de sesiones, también trató sobre la aplicación del experimento de arrendar taxis a los choferes, iniciativa aplicada desde enero de este año con buenos resultados.

Mañana ese grupo parlamentario tratará, entre otros temas, la puesta en funcionamiento de la venta liberada para la población de materiales de construcción, en moneda nacional, iniciada en Sancti Spíritus en enero último y extendida a todo el país.

También incluye la comercialización de productos agropecuarios en las dos provincias habaneras, la aplicación del experimento de arrendar barberías y peluquerías y el cumplimiento del plan de circulación mercantil minorista del Ministerio del Comercio Interior.

A report from Europa Press here. My earlier notes on pilot projects here and here.

Odds and ends (Corrected)

• Canadian Press: The 19-year-old Canadian held in Cuba since an April traffic accident is now out on bail and free to return to Canada. He had been denied permission to leave Cuba while awaiting possible charges in connection with the accident. An earlier report on the foreign ministry’s efforts on his behalf is here. A Vancouver Sun editorial is here. (Correction: Earlier version said he was "jailed;" thanks to a reader for the correction.)
  

• Reuters: Cuban imports of U.S. agricultural products fell 35 percent in January-May 2010 compared to the same period last year.

• An inspirational quote from Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida), in 2006: “The freedom to travel is a part of our way of life and if we start denying legal travel abroad, then we give in to Osama Bin Laden, Hezbollah, and other terrorists who wish to change our way of life.”

• NBC Miami: Ariel Sigler Amaya, released from prison in Cuba, arrived in Miami for medical treatment.

• Voice of America: Fidel Castro plans to publish a new book, The Strategic Victory.

How many political prisoners?

Cuba has committed to release 52 political prisoners, and last week parliament chief Ricardo Alarcon said it was “very clear from the discussions that the government’s wish is to free all the people” as long as they were not involved in crimes of violence (see AFP English and Spanish).

So what would constitute release of all political prisoners?

There are differing counts.

Amnesty International counts 53 prisoners of conscience, so that if Cuba releases the 52, only one prisoner of conscience will remain in jail by AI’s count.

Elizardo Sanchez of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation is an independent monitor of human rights conditions. He counts 167 in jail for “political or political-social motives,” and his list is cited in many places as the definitive accounting of political prisoners. Some of the 167 have been released and are in Cuba or abroad. And some have been involved in violent crimes such as hotel bombings. It is a mystery to me why Sanchez would combine people who engage in nonviolent political action with those who attack civilians based on political motives (terrorism), but it’s his list and it is completely transparent.

And Human Rights Watch asserts that these lists understate the number of people jailed in Cuba for their beliefs because of the state’s abuse of the “dangerousness” charge (peligrosidad predelictiva) to lock up opponents based on specious accusations. Human Rights Watch does not have a concrete count.

At any rate, these issues are treated in detail in this report from the Associated Press.

Other information on this, if you want to sort it out yourself:

• The list of 167 from Elizardo Sanchez.

• The list of 52, compiled by AP.

• Amnesty International’s list (see “Anexo 1 julio 2010”).

• A Miami Herald article from last week.

• An earlier article from the New York Times.

Odds and ends

• Missed this one last week: Cuba’s health minister was replaced, with 78-year-old incumbent Jose Ramon Balaguer moving back to the Central Committee of the party and vice minister Roberto Morales Ojeda, 43, taking the top job. Here’s the official announcement.

• In the Houston Chronicle, the American Farm Bureau’s president makes the case for ending Cuba travel restrictions.

• The Root publishes two looks at race issues in Cuba, and promises more to come. These are from novelists Leonardo Padura and Achy Obejas.

• At Babalu, a reflection by Anastasio Blanco about a recent trip to Cuba. This sort of jumps off the page: “Barely anybody on the island knows of the political prisoners or the various democracy movements.” And this: “The satellite cards used to secure the [satellite television] signal had been smuggled into the country by some rather famous artists…many here in the U.S. have portrayed folks like those who took great risk to import the cards—and distribute them gratis—as lackeys for the regime. They are not, and we must think before making hasty accusations in the future.”

• The Washington Post’s ongoing web-based feature on leadership highlights the Ignacio Ramonet book on Fidel Castro, “cruel and charismatic” and still ticking.

• Tampa, I was reading recently, had a Cuban community that was called “little Havana” before Miami’s Calle Ocho even existed. (Later it became “Ybor City.”) Last week the Tampa Tribune sorted out the arguments about travel to Cuba, arguing that the United States out of step in “banging its drum for separation.”

26th in Santa Clara

Hugo Chavez couldn’t make it to Cuba’s 26th of July celebration in Santa Clara – an event dedicated this year to Bolivar – because of impending imperialist aggression across his western border. Fidel Castro didn’t make it, but he had marked the 26th on Saturday by traveling to Artemisa in “his olive-green shirt of a thousand battles,” as Granma noted, continuing to show that he’s in better shape than anyone thought.

Raul Castro made it, but didn’t give a speech. This broke long precedent established by his brother, and it frustrated expectations of many that he would use his talk to define current policies more sharply.

Is there deep meaning here?

I don’t think so. Raul Castro is plainly not concerned about oratory; he gives fewer speeches, and for much shorter durations, than his brother. Today he went so far as to have his #2 and the local party chief give the speeches while he watched and later handed out some awards. He clearly doesn’t view July 26 as an occasion that requires a major policy address. Last year he gave a much more interesting and substantive speech a few days after the 26th than he did at the July 26 ceremony itself.

The top-ranking official to speak was Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura. (Granma coverage here, Reuters story here.) “We will proceed with a sense of responsibility, step by step, at the rhythm we determine, without improvisation or haste so as not to make mistakes,” Reuters quoted him during his economic discussion. “We will not conduct ourselves by campaigns of the foreign press.”

As ever, actions are what count, and the coming months will tell if the lines of action already suggested – in state enterprises, government downsizing, agriculture, and more – are followed.

[Photo from Granma.]

USAID's world of intrigue

The U.S. Agency for International Development is looking to make grants to promote grass-roots economic development in Cuba, but under a scheme that seems unlikely to work for the same reasons that landed contractor Alan Gross in jail.

The idea is contained in a request for grant applications for USAID’s “non-presence assistance program for Cuba.” This document says $3 million has been set aside for a program to “foster the development of Civil Society Groups (CSGs), especially those focused on promoting self-employment and entrepreneurial initiatives, and to pilot the establishment of Savings and Credit Groups among marginalized segments of the population.” (The meat of the document is in “Section B, Program Description.”)

In the second component, the “marginalized” Cubans would pool their savings in a lending pool and the USAID grantee would be permitted to match those savings.

This is part of USAID’s larger effort, the document explains, to provide “material support to targeted beneficiaries throughout the island to support the [U.S. government’s] foreign policy goals.”

Also: USAID “will be in frequent communication with the U.S. Interests Section, in Havana, in both soliciting and sharing information during the programmatic analysis and subsequent design of this activity.”

And USAID issues a warning: “Given the nature of the Cuban regime and the political sensitivity of the USAID Program, USAID cannot be held responsible for any injury or inconvenience suffered by individuals traveling to the island under USAID grant funding.”

Here we go again.

Starting with the positive, I like the idea that the Administration is interested in promoting economic development through credits to Cubans to support entrepreneurial activity.

But the warning to grantees would seem to indicate that the plan is to carry out the project covertly. Regardless of what one thinks about the Cuban government, the U.S. program, or its intentions, such a scheme has severe practical problems (discussed here and here regarding the Alan Gross case) and poses risks both to USAID’s operatives and those they contact in Cuba.

More on the prisoner releases

• AP: Three more dissidents, released from prison, arrived in Spain today. That makes 15.

• AFP: The Cuban government’s first official statement on the prisoner releases came from legislative chief Ricardo Alarcon, now traveling in Europe, and he seems to affirm that those who say they want to stay in Cuba will indeed be released: “The agreement says that they could travel abroad…but in Cuba there are people who have been freed from prison several years ago and who stayed in their homes. As in this case,” he says.

• Juan Tamayo of the Miami Herald examines political prisoner numbers, now that there is word that more than 52 could be released. The frequently cited list of 167 compiled by Elizardo Sanchez’s organization is often described as a list of political prisoners, but its title says it is composed of those tried or sentenced for “political or political-social motives,” and includes some convicted of crimes such as terrorism, as the article mentions.

• AP: U.S. consular officials in Havana are explaining the procedures and timelines for immigration and asylum applications to the families of political prisoners. Bottom line: if their wish is to settle in the United States, they should stay in Cuba and apply in Cuba rather than go to Spain where they would have to apply as immigrants, not refugees, and things will take much longer.
  

• Spain’s foreign minister got a little carried away predicting that the U.S. embargo’s days are numbered because of the prisoner releases.

• BBC: The first group to arrive in Spain is opposed to EU repeal of its “common position.”

• El Universal: Arturo Pérez de Alejo, a dissident released from jail and now in Spain with his wife, daughter, and four other relatives, says he is in “forced exile.” He wouldn’t speculate about the future of the U.S. embargo but said it “has not caused any effect on the Cuban government, but yes on the Cuban people, because it has been fifty-something years with the same policy, and what has it solved?”