Odds and ends

• Richard Blanco, a Cuban-American poet, has been chosen to appear at President Obama’s inauguration.  Penultimos Dias has an excerpt of a Blanco poem on growing up in Miami.

• Herald: A call for nonviolent resistance from dissident Oscar Elias Biscet.

• Senators Kerry and Hagel, respectively the nominees for Secretary of State and Defense, expressed their views on Cuba policy in this 2008 letter written by Senator Max Baucus.  More from Hagel here, and more from Kerry here. 

• A UN body on arbitrary detention called on the Cuban government to release USAID contractor Alan Gross, saying that the courts that convicted him did not act in an “independent or impartial manner” and that the Cuban statute under which he was tried is too vague in its description of criminal conduct.  Herald story here, UN opinion here (pdf), letter from Judy Gross here.  The Cuban government’s response to the UN body’s allegation, issued last December, is summarized here by the Cuban foreign ministry.

Sorry, Mr. Gross

“This is a solution that had to be obtained through a diplomatic, not an ideological route.  With the ideological route we would have a martyr in a Cuban jail, and with the diplomatic route we have him in Spain.” 

– Spanish Partido Popular official Carlos Floriano on the Spanish government’s negotiation for the transfer to Spain of activist Angel Carromero, jailed in Cuba in connection with the deaths of dissidents Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero

Exit Alarcon

Ricardo Alarcon, Cuba’s National Assembly President, will be leaving that post because his name did not appear on the list of legislative candidates, AP reports.  Alarcon is a former foreign minister and UN Ambassador and has been Havana’s senior point man for relations with Washington, with broad U.S. contacts.  The detention of one of his top aides last year on apparent corruption charges has led to conjecture that Alarcon is being pushed out because of some connection to the case.  Absent evidence to back that up, it appears to be a retirement – he is 75 years old, has held his current job for 19 years, his career extends all the way back to the 1959 revolution, and this is a time when there is an effort to put younger officials into high-level posts.  Besides, when an official is removed for cause, the Cuban government’s practice is to say so.   

Other leadership news, also from AP: Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, 54, has been promoted to the Communist Party’s political bureau, the small, inner-circle body at top of the party’s organizational structure.  

(Photo from cubaindependiente.blogspot.com, captioned: “Alarcón con Fidel, Universidad Popular, 9 de abril de 1961.”)

Odds and ends

Lots of catching up to do:

• Granma has reported on the state of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’ health by running the text of Venezuelan government statements, and there has been no sugarcoating.  From the December 30 statement: “Nineteen days after the complex operation, the state of health of President Chavez continues to be delicate, presenting complications that are being treated in a process that is not without risks.”  The January 3 statement told of a “severe pulmonary infection.”  The Washington Post looks at the situation in Venezuela as January 10 approaches, the day that Chavez is to be sworn in to a new term in Caracas, and a day he will surely spend in Havana.  According to USA Today, it’s possible that Venezuela’s Supreme Court would travel to Havana to administer the oath.

• Herald: A David Rivera retrospective.

• A December 28 (April Fool’s) chronicle of the First Lady’s visit to Cuba.

• In last month’s Palabra Nueva, an article of mine recapping the U.S. election.

• Granma: The restoration of El Cristo, the statue that overlooks Havana from a promontory across the bay, is done.

• Herald: With the retirement of an office worker and a welder, there are no more Cubans crossing through the Guantanamo naval base gate to work every day.  Among their duties was to carry cash – more than $40,000 per month – to pay the pensions of Guantanamo retirees in their community.  In this story, the Herald’s Carol Rosenberg reports that the Navy has worked out a way to keep the pension payments flowing each month, but it won’t say what it is.

New EU policy toward Cuba?

Havana-based BBC correspondent Fernando Ravsberg interviewed the new EU representative in Cuba Herman Portocarrero, who says that the EU is prepared to negotiate a new framework for its relations with Havana over the next two years.  That includes six months to prepare the negotiation and up to 18 to carry it out, allowing enough time to bring along every EU member in a unanimous decision, which is necessary to end the Common Policy.

The interview is written up here and here.

The idea is to replace the unilateral Common Position with an agreement that provides for cooperation in “food security and support for economic modernization, taxation, cooperatives, and micro-credits.”

Portocarrero noted “the freedom of expression that exists in the economic sphere because the first step is always to open space for debate and our hope is that other intellectual spaces open up for debate about social matters.”

Carromero goes home

Spanish Partido Popular activist Angel Carromero is back in Spain, having served a few months of his four-year sentence for vehicular manslaughter (El Pais).  He drove the car in which dissidents Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero were killed last July near Bayamo in an apparent one-car accident. 

His return is pursuant to a 1998 agreement between Cuba and Spain that allows for nationals convicted of crimes in the other’s country to serve their sentences in their home country.  Carromero is en route to a Spanish prison and could in time be granted parole or some kind of conditional release.  Granma’s December 16 article on the transfer of Carromero says that Spain made a commitment that he would serve his sentence “in a penitentiary establishment in Spain.”

Reaction in Spain is polarized.  Carromero’s political colleagues welcome him back from his “nightmare” while others show no sympathy for a Spaniard whose driver’s license was revoked in Spain and whose mission to Cuba resulted in the death of two Cuban citizens.  Search Twitter for “Carromero” and get an earful.

Carlos Paya, Oswaldo’s brother, continues to allege that it was not a one-car accident, that a red Lada driven by Cuban government agents followed Paya’s car, rammed it, and caused the accident.  In an interview, he said that he has seen text messages to that effect from the phone of Aron Modig, the Swedish activist who was in the passenger’s seat.  He also said that the trip of Carromero and Modig was sponsored by a Swedish Christian Democratic organization.

Indeed, it is possible that Carromero will change his tune now that he is on Spanish soil.  In Cuba his account was of a one-car accident: he braked when he came upon an unpaved stretch of highway and lost control.  Modig, in interviews in Sweden, has claimed to have been sleeping and remembers nothing.  Maybe with Carromero home he too will change his tune, and those who are said to have received text messages will disclose them.  The questions that would then arise would include how they nearly reached Bayamo from Havana in eight hours after three stops, and why they would continue driving if they were being rammed by another car.

More complete background and discussion here. 

Other recent stories:

·         Ofelia Acevedo, Paya’s widow, sought to meet Carromero before he departed Cuba and presented her request to Spain’s ambassador in Havana.  The request was denied.  Carromero was transferred by Cuban police to Spanish police before departure.

·         This Spanish media report says, without sourcing, that discussions between representatives of Carromero’s family and representatives of the Cuban government resulted in a deal: a payment of $3 million (to whom, it doesn’t say) and “a promise that once on Spanish soil, Carromero will not speak about what happened in the accident.”

·         The Spanish foreign minister says that Spain “conceded nothing” to Cuba in return for Carromero’s transfer.  He noted separately that Spain supports a “flexible” interpretation of EU policy toward Cuba (the “Common Position”) that could lead to an economic cooperation agreement.

(Poster from this less-than-complimentary article, h/t Babalu.)