“Romney…said that the Cuban situation exists because the United States has failed to honor commitments against Communist infiltration in the Western Hemisphere.
“‘By backing away from this basic principle,’ [Romney] said, ‘we still have the Cuban situation which was not corrected in the missile inspection situation or in the Bay of Pigs matter.’”
– The Miami News quoting Michigan Governor George Romney, February 9, 1964
Reuters raises the curtain on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s visit to Cuba next week, where she will continue her predecessor’s policy of economic cooperation with Cuba, including the major project of the port of Mariel.
Cuba Standard, meanwhile, found a Folha de Sao Paolo article where a Brazilian official, just back from Cuba, talked about the possibilities for Brazilian companies to invest in ethanol production in Cuba and declared, “Fidel’s resistance in this field is being overcome.”
Let’s hope that’s the case. Brazilian investment in Cuban ethanol production would bring world-class technology and know-how to Cuba, generate jobs, enable Cuba to cut oil imports and foreign exchange expenditures, and provide sorely needed revival to an economically and culturally important sector of the Cuban countryside.
Coincidentally, Brazil just granted Yoani Sanchez a visa to visit Brazil to attend a film screening.
Earlier notes on Brazil’s engagement with Cuba here and here. A Cuban promotional video on the Mariel port project is here. It’s a huge infrastructure project that expands Mariel’s capacity and allows for all the port and industrial facilities along the southern shore of the Bay of Havana to be dismantled and replaced with non-industrial development.
History repeats itself with another awful, hard-to-comprehend death of a Cuban prisoner. As in the case of Orlando Zapata, Wilman Villar died in a hospital after being in a prison in eastern Cuba; he is described as a dissident by his family but the government claims he was a common criminal.
The following is what I scanned after being away from the news.
Villar, who apparently joined a dissident group last fall, is reported to have been on a hunger strike and died from that. International human rights groups and many governments condemned Cuban authorities for allowing the 31-year-old to die; see this editorial from El Pais and the State Department’s statement.
The Cuban government issued a refutation (text here), claiming there is ample proof that he was neither a dissident nor on a hunger strike, that he received medical care, and his family was always apprised of it.
AFP reports that Villar’s mother, sister, and mother-in-law all “repudiated” him, while human rights monitor Elizardo Sanchez reports from Havana that those three are all married to Interior Ministry agents and are “partisans of the government.”
And regarding Zapata, Café Fuerte reports that his mother, who emigrated to the United States once she had her son’s ashes in her hands, is having a hard time in Miami finding work and economic support. She describes herself as “desperate.”
Lots of catching up to do:
· Illinois Senator Richard Durbin, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, talks to the Peoria Journal-Star about his trip to Cuba.
· The Herald has a story about the sentencia in the Alan Gross case. The document states that Gross used Americans who were traveling to Cuba on Jewish fellowship trips to carry parts of his satellite equipment, without telling them that his project was a U.S. government initiative.
· Reuters: Europeans opting for Cuba over North Africa are one factor driving Cuba’s tourism numbers up, and its hotels to capacity.
· The Repsol oil rig is in place in Cuban waters, ready to drill, and the Herald has a good overview of emergency response issues.
· EFE on the 150th anniversary of Bacardi, a company that dreams of returning to Cuba, and – well, why not? – does business in communist China.
· Vancouver Sun: Two first-stringers on the Cuban women’s soccer team hopped a cab, went to the U.S. border, pulled their carnets de identidad out of their shoes, and asked to stay. Welcome to el Yuma.
· The New York Times Magazine interviews Sen. Marco Rubio.
· Cuba travel Christopher Baker, author of the Moon’s travel guide to Cuba, has a theory about the scarcity of medicines in Cuba.
