Mario's Maginot Line, translated

CubaEncuentro has kindly published this post in Spanish translation.

Just a simple Saturday wedding

This we can say for sure: best wishes to the happy couple.

From there, it gets confusing.

A gay man and a male-to-female transsexual married Saturday in Havana, three months after they met. Not exactly a gay wedding because the bride legally became a female and same-sex marriage is not permitted in Cuba, but some see it as a breakthrough of sorts.

Reuters coverage here.

The groom is said to be a dissident, which led to a falling out between the bride and her employer, the sexual education center Cenesex run by Mariela Castro.

The wedding took place August 13, Fidel Castro’s 85^th birthday. Yoani Sanchez was maid of honor, some of the Damas de Blanco attended, and some U.S. diplomats were reportedly in attendance.

All that, plus the fact that the Obama Administration is dedicating some of its Cuba democracy funding to Cuba’s gay community, led Mariela Castro to say the blessed event was a U.S. show, or was hijacked to make it so.

It is reasonable to raise that question, and in fairness one has to say that if the U.S. government paid for the car, the dress, the hair, the nails, the tux, the drinks, and a roast pig and sides, then more was accomplished than with the Alan Gross operation, which cost more than $600,000 and put one guy in jail and lots of nice equipment in the hands of the Ministry of Interior. Algo es algo.

Ms. Castro nonetheless congratulated the happy couple.

The couple took a long drive through Havana. They arrived at the Plaza de la Revolucion and encountered a “tremendous operation” mounted by the police; the area was “completely blocked” and the couple could not enter, tweeted Yoani Sanchez here and here.

Paris-based writer Zoe Valdes viewed the entire event as a show of a different kind, one mounted to distract from human rights abuses by the Cuban government. “Pure propaganda of Raulismo light and Cenesex,” she calls it.

Valdes posts a photo of the couple in their convertible, right in the middle of the Plaza de la Revolucion, asking where was the police deployment that Yoani described.

With that I’m going to leave all the political questions aside and wish the couple a happy honeymoon.

A concert that must be stopped

Singer Pablo Milanes will perform August 27 in Miami, and his concert is drawing protests because Milanes is allegedly an “agent” of the Cuban government. (See Herald story; info on tour venues including Washington, August 26, is here.)

Other artists and protests have come and gone, but what is interesting here is that Milanes has a few things to say.

Milanes supports socialism, for starters, and doesn’t apologize for sending a message to Fidel Castro in 2006 that mixed get-well-soon wishes with some revolutionary fervor.

He gave an interview to El Nuevo Herald in which he criticized the “caste” system maintained by the Cuban government, as well as discrimination against blacks and self-censorship by Cuban media.

Also: “When one thinks of reforms, one believes that they are going to come together with a series of freedoms, such as freedom of expression, but it doesn’t occur that way.” He lamented that Cubans do not feel secure in their right to protest.

Reuters has a report in English.

In the Central Committee, I’m sure they’re cheering the protesters on.

[Reuters photo.]

Beginning of a turnaround?

Juventud Rebelde writes up recently issued data on January-June farm output, up 6.1 percent overall over last year. The table above shows production by product category as a percentage of output in the same period last year; production of corn and potatoes are down, and all other categories are up.

The article does not sugar-coat the situation: “Let’s hold the applause,” it says. Prices paid by consumers were up and shortfalls in certain areas caused Cuba to have to spend an unexpected $300 million extra on food imports.

Odds and ends

• If the idea is to identify the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance is a Cuban organization, and to counter Havana’s charge that the opposition is fabricated and financed from abroad, why issue its pronouncements from Miami?

• The Herald’s Juan Tamayo reports on Cubans who live abroad and are not permitted to return.

• AP: To cut farmers’ cost of doing business, retail prices of agricultural implements are being cut by as much as 60 percent. Granma article here. This is similar to the price cuts for goods for small entrepreneurs.

• An investigation of corruption in the phone monopoly ETECSA has resulted in a few arrests and the decision of one executive not to return from a trip to Panama. Here are reports from Reuters and the Herald, with the latter crediting bloggers who broke the story: Diario de Cuba, based in Madrid.

• Mariela Castro, daughter of Raul Castro, tells visiting Americans that “President Obama’s first term failures should be forgiven and he should be supported for a second term, which would give him the opportunity to do better things.”

• Washington Post: Livan Hernandez is not done yet.