Odds and ends

• The voluble Pedro Alvarez, formerly in charge of Cuba’s food importing agency and host to innumerable American visitors, is now presumably talking to investigators. The Economist reported November 11 that in September he was “arrested at his home and taken away in handcuffs.”

• Radio Marti reports that Reina Luisa Tamayo, mother of the late Orlando Zapata Tamayo, will go to the cemetery where he is buried, will witness his exhumation, and will have his remains cremated. She and her family then plan to leave Cuba for the United States. “I ask God, I ask my Changó to give me the strength to see my dear son removed from where he is,” she told her interviewer. The story links to audio of the interview.

• With nearly a year gone by since the arrest of USAID contractor Alan Gross, Cuba’s top prosecutor says the investigative phase “still hasn’t concluded,” Reuters reports. His wife, Judy Gross, pleaded for his release earlier this month in an article in the Miami Herald, saying he “is being held as a political pawn by two governments that refuse to change course.”

• The Herald finds another area of affinity between the Communist Party of Cuba and Republicans: both want to cut spending, but defense is off the table.

• Juventud Rebelde has a web feature on Guanahacabibes, the peninsula on the island’s western tip that is a UN biosphere reserve and a protected area under Cuban law. Here in English is a one-pager (pdf) on the peninsula from the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory in Texas.

Focsa

After the wave

It seems almost absurd to look for the impact on Cuba policy on the morning after an election that spoke so sweepingly to economic issues.

But that’s our job.

The Obama Administration, Congressional Democrats, and Congressional Republicans – especially those now in charge in the House – all have to come to terms with a new landscape. It’s not hard to see that their policy work will center on job creation and the federal budget – and not on foreign policy, much less Latin America, much less Cuba.

As the current Congressional session wound down, the clock ran out on the main pro-engagement initiative regarding Cuba, which was the bill to end travel restrictions. It became clear that if a change in policy were to occur it would be not through legislation but rather through Executive action. Now, after the election, that is where we remain.

It is an open secret that the Administration wrote new regulations to liberalize non-tourist travel last summer, then failed to implement them out of political timidity.

My preference would be to end all travel restrictions regardless of Cuban behavior, but recent Cuban behavior adds a wrinkle to the discussion because President Obama has pegged his policies to change in Cuba. Raul Castro’s government is not creating a market economy or ending one-party socialism, but it is releasing political prisoners and embarking on economic policies that will expand the private sector. If President Obama doesn’t respond to incremental changes in Cuba with incremental changes of his own, his offer will at some point become a dead letter, and idea of constructive influence in Cuba (apart from unlimited Cuban-American travel) will be empty.

So the first new variable in the post-election equation is an old one, and it has to do with the Administration’s spine.

The second variable is in Congress, where Florida has sent Marco Rubio, a real class act, to the Senate, and where Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen will now chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee. We know that they will hold the line on Cuba sanctions; what remains to be seen is whether they want to change current policies, and if so, how. With a Democratic Administration and Senate, new Cuba legislation is not a simple proposition. However, they can cajole the Administration on specific aspects of the policy.

Which brings us back to variable #1, making it all the more pivotal.

Chucho takes Washington

Piano virtuoso Chucho Valdes and his band played Washington for the first time in seven years last Saturday night, and had their audience at the nearly packed Warner Theater riveted throughout a two-hour set.

Chucho reminded us how our American art form, jazz, is a combination of many musical streams, including some from the Caribbean and Africa – which means that it’s more just ours, and it’s “American” in the larger sense of the word. Players from Cuba can own the form as much as anyone born here – and in the case of this septet, did they ever, and did they ever swing.

Chucho showed reverence and affection for American artists and their work, dedicating a number to Joe Zawinul, playing a musical romp dedicated to New Orleans, quoting Gershwin’s An American in Paris, quoting Brubeck’s Blue Rondo with a little grin to the crowd, and playing a sweet medley of Duke Ellington’s songs.

The Ellington tribute was fitting, considering that he was sitting about a mile from the Duke’s birthplace. And like Ellington himself when he reached a certain age, Chucho is impish as can be at the keyboard, running circles around the young players with whom he fearlessly surrounds himself.

Above, an image of the band’s current CD.

Quotable

“Something has to change, the same thing can’t happen to my generation as happened to that of my parents.”

“The U.S. embargo of Cuba should end as soon as possible and the blockade that the Cuban government puts on its own people should also cease.”

– Yoani Sanchez, two tweets from earlier this week

Odds and ends

· Reuters: For the 19^th time, the UN General Assembly voted to call on the United States to end its embargo of Cuba. 187 voted in favor, the United States and Israel voted against, and the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau abstained.

· Agree with him or not, one has to admit that Cuban foreign minister speaks very clearly. From his UN speech yesterday: “The European Union is dreaming if it believes it can normalize its relations with Cuba, with the Common Position in existence.” Most of his speech was about U.S. relations.

· EFE: Spain will request extradition from Cuba of ETA member Jose Angel Urtiaga in connection with a Madrid court investigation of “the supposed collaboration between ETA, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the government of Venezuela.”

· Likely Florida Senator-to-be Marco Rubio’s closing appeal warns about the risk that America could become more like Cuba, but his script has Politico confused as to which Cuba – Batista’s, or Castro’s? Watching the video, it seems clear to me that he means both.

· AP: The wife of detained USAID contractor Alan Gross says telephone contact with her husband has become more frequent since her letter to Raul Castro.

· From South Florida Daily Blog, a wonderful slice-of-Miami-life video about a food palace called El Palacio de los Jugos.

· In Washington, we now have the “Epcot version of Havana,” according to this reviewer’s take on the new downtown restaurant Cuba Libre. “The real showstopper was the Arepa Rellena, a corn cake filled with short rib and mozzarella,” she says. Whatever.