Teniente Rey

Compañero Nguyen’s visit

Nguyen Phu Trong, head of Vietnam’s communist party, visited Cuba last week.  There was a joint statement where Vietnam expressed “invariable support for the just cause of struggle of the Cuban people,” where Cuba noted that Nguyen was decorated with the Order of Jose Marti, and where it was announced that Raul Castro accepted an invitation to visit Vietnam.  Separately, Cuban media reported that Vietnamese advisors are teaching techniques that are increasing rice yields at a UBPC cooperative in Sancti Spiritus province.

Much more interesting, there was an interview in Granma where Nguyen discussed his country’s economic “renovation,” called doi moi, and commented on Cuba’s economic policy changes.  Between the lines, his message to Cubans is to stick with it, accept that changes have to proceed slowly, changes will bring improvement, and if you haven’t adjusted your attitude yet about introducing more market mechanisms and incentives into the socialist economy, do so now.

He said:

Vietnam’s economic reform process “has not been simple.”  It started in 1986 but was preceded by four years of experimentation on the farm and in the factory.  Land grants to farmers began in 1981, for example, but only in 1986 was a policy adopted to pay farmers “by piecework” (which I take to mean based on output rather than based on a sum agreed in advance).

When the process started, “many thought that the country intended to abandon socialism, but history has “demonstrated the opposite.”  He uses the phrase, “market economy with socialist orientation.”

The reforms have “considerably improved people’s lives.”  The poverty rate dropped from 75 percent in 1986 to 9.5 percent in 2010.

The hardest part of the reform has been “to change the general and individual mentality in Vietnam, many thought that the transformations would move us away from socialism.  Some even talked of deviations, others are more conservative.” 

It seems that Cubans are “in the same phase.”  “The change in mentality must be achieved at all levels, from the top to the base.”

Coverage in La Jornada here.  And from just before the visit, here’s a Juventud Rebelde article that praises Vietnam’s reforms and their results; a “process that contemplates introducing the logic of markets into the economy, but with a socialist orientation.”

Odds and ends

• Yoani Sanchez on the sight of new, renovated, and spruced-up houses, more common in Cuba these days than before.  In English here.

• The Los Angeles Times, from Santiago, on the different outlooks encountered among members of different generations of Cubans, including youth who want more opportunity.

• AP: A Cuban trade oficial says exports of goods and services grew 20 percent in 2011.

• Some of the commentaries on the Ozzie Guillen “I love Fidel” incident are much more interesting than the incident itself: see this from Wright Thompson at ESPN.com on changes in Cuban Miami, this from Univision’s Jorge Ramos on what he calls the “Miami baptism,” this from Andrew Johnson at Minnesota Daily arguing that it’s not a cut-and-dried free speech issue, and this from Carlos Frias of the Palm Beach Post on long-ago losses that still, for some, feel like yesterday’s.

• The Sun Sentinel on U.S. response plans in the event of a Cuban oil spill: the priority will be not beaches, but rather “shielding inlets and intracoastal waterways to protect the most vulnerable parts of the state's coastline.”

Work in progress

The Hotel Palacio Cueto, off the southeast corner of the Plaza Vieja, is finally undergoing renovation and will again be a hotel.  Only the Art Nouveau facades are being preserved.  When restoration efforts began in this area, local officials found the building to be filled with people who had occupied it over the years without legal status.  Typically, residents in buildings such as these are offered other housing in the neighborhood or, more likely, new housing east of the bay.

President Santos on Cuba

Well, it was not a summit meeting where the United States just preached.

Instead, the Latin American nations at this summit, as elsewhere, are trying to lead the United States to think differently about the war on drugs that is ravaging many of their countries.  The host, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, pointed out that that war was declared by President Nixon in 1971, but in fact dates back 100 years to the International Opium Convention.

Santos also expressed what seems to be very close to a hemispheric consensus: that Cuba should be at the next Summit of the Americas regardless of the issue of Cuba’s suspended membership in the OAS and any steps it may take to regain its seat, regardless of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, regardless of anything.  Contrary to the U.S. position, the idea seems to be that it’s just a meeting, and Cuba should be there. 

Whether Cuba would want to attend if invited is another issue altogether.

This issue and that of Argentina’s claim to the Falklands caused the summit to end without a consensus declaration.  (New York Times story here.)

Santos’ opening address on Saturday was built in part around the theme of building bridges, a theme he invoked as he noted the failure of “isolation, the embargo, indifference, looking the other way” in his discussion of Cuba.  This passage in his address was interrupted by sustained applause:

Another example of the consequences of not overcoming the paradigms of the past – of the absence of bridges and creativity – is the case of Cuba.

Isolation, the embargo, indifference, looking the other way – these have all shown their ineffectiveness.

In today’s world this path cannot be justified.  It is an anachronism that keeps us anchored to a Cold War era that was overcome a few decades ago.

Just as it would be unacceptable to have another hemispheric meeting with an incapacitated Haiti, it would also be unacceptable without Cuba present.

We cannot be indifferent to a process of change inside Cuba that is becoming more and more broadly recognized; and also, this change should continue.

It is time to overcome the paralysis that comes from ideological stubbornness, and to look for minimal consensus so that this process of change may succeed.  For whose good?  Well, for that of the Cuban people.

And for that we need to build bridges.

Odds and ends

• Cuban political prisoners who went to Spain with their family members are having a hard time as government aid dries up, and they are beginning to protest.  With family members included, it amounted initially to nearly 800 people, although 32 of the former prisoners have since come to the United States.  Spanish-language media have covered this, and this IPS story from Malaga is the first good summation I have seen in English.  EFE reports today that ten of the former prisoners will go on a hunger strike in front of Spain’s foreign ministry.

• Cuba’s Catholic Bishops Conference issued a statement mourning the death of Bishop Agustin Roman of Miami, noting that he served as a priest in the Matanzas diocese until 1961, when he was “forced to leave his country.”

• The New York Times has a roundup of opinions on the question, “Are hard-line Cuban Americans strong as ever?”

Bejucal

The White House on Cuba and summits

In a briefing on this weekend’s inter-American summit in Cartegena, National Security Council official Dan Restrepo outlined the Obama Administration’s position on Cuba. 

In light of various hemispheric leaders’ statements that this will be the last such summit without Cuban participation, he made clear that for the Administration, the issue is not attendance at summits but rather Cuba’s return to the OAS.  That, in the Administration’s view, requires some political change in Cuba.

Agustin Roman, R.I.P.

Bishop Agustin Roman of Miami died yesterday, the first Cuban American bishop.  Here are notes from the Herald and Café Fuerte.

Odds and ends

• Mexican President Calderon made an official visit to Cuba yesterday, seeking to improve relations and, as he said on arrival, to “expand trade and investment between Mexico and Cuba,” including “bilateral cooperation in energy.”  Reuters story here, Granma’s brief note here.

• More on the Ozzie Guillen affair: from MLB.com and a Washington Post editorial.

• Mexican President Calderon made an official visit to Cuba yesterday, seeking to improve relations and, as he said on arrival, to “expand trade and investment between Mexico and Cuba,” including “bilateral cooperation in energy.”  Reuters story here, Granma’s brief note here.

• Reporter Kevin Hall of McClatchy newspapers found himself driving across Cuba, and driving across the island he picked up hitchhikers and wrote an interesting sample of public opinion.