A $700-million nickel processing plant being built in Holguín by Cuba and Venezuela should be operating by 2011, Business News Americas reported, citing a source in the Venezuelan mining ministry.
The plant is expected to boost Cuba's output to about 100,000 tons per year, from its current average of 75,000 tons per year. Cuba will deliver part of its production to Venezuela, where it will be used for the production of stainless steel, the source said. Cuba earned $552 million in 2008 from the sale of 70,400 tons of unrefined nickel and cobalt byproduct. The country ranks fifth in worldwide nickel reserves and sixth as a producer.
A recent decline in world prices of nickel is bound to be a deterrent, however. Cuban Vice President José Ramón Machado Ventura said earlier this month that a drop to $9,000 per ton might make nickel production "unaffordable" -- a money-losing proposition. The metal dropped in price from $54,200 per ton in 2007 to $10,100 per ton this week.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
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Raúl: U.S. should expect no reciprocity
Cuba does not have to respond to Washington's relaxation of travel and remittance restrictions because Cuba has never restricted the actions of Americans, Raúl Castro said Wednesday.
Inaugurating a meeting of the Movement of Nonaligned Nations, Castro said that "Cuba has not imposed any sanctions against the United States or its citizens. [...] and, therefore, it is not Cuba that has to make gestures."
The partial lifting of rules by President Obama, "while positive, has only a minimum extent," he said. "The blockade remained intact. There is no political or moral pretext to justify the continuation of that policy."
"It is not Cuba that bars businessmen from that country to do business with ours; it is not Cuba that hounds the financial transactions made by American banks; it is not Cuba that has a military base in U.S. territory against the will of [the American] people," Castro said.
"We have reiterated that we are willing to talk about everything with the government of the United States, in equality of terms, but not to negotiate our sovereignty or our political and social system, the right to our self-determination or our internal affairs." For full text, in Spanish, click here. [RELATED STORY in The Herald: U.S. farmers are pressing for broader access to Cuba trade. Click here.]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
Travel from Mexico halted over flu fears
Cuba on Tuesday put a 48-hour hold on trips from and to Mexico, "except for exceptional cases," to prevent the spread into Cuba of the swine flu epidemic that is affecting Mexico. A message from Public Health Minister José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera, distributed through the official media, said that Cuba should "be ready to gradually apply other restrictions that reduce the possibilities of introducing the disease into Cuba." Among the measures taken:
• "To increase epizootiological and epidemiological vigilance in the entire country, especially in the City of Havana, and to apply measures of International Sanitary Control in the borders, especially at airports, marinas and ports."
• Provincial officials "must take all necessary measures to organize [...] vigilance and International Sanitary Control, and medical treatment [...] including measures of isolation, according to the standards and indications issued by the Ministry of Public Health."
As of Tuesday evening, Cuba had not reported any cases of swine flu on the island. [UPDATE: On Wednesday, Mexicana de Aviación suspended all its flights to Cuba. The airline's routes: MexCity-Havana-MexCity once a day, and MexCity-Cancún-Havana-MexCity twice a day.]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
Spain's Telefónica covets Italians' shares
Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica is offering to buy Telecom Italia's participation in Cuba's state-run telephone company ETECSA (Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba, S.A.), the Italian business newspaper Il Sol 24 Ore reported Tuesday, citing Spanish financial sources.
Telecom has not made as much money in Cuba as it expected and is willing to sell its shares to Telefónica, the sources said. The two companies have been holding talks since December 2008, when Telecom reportedly asked for $780 million for its 27-percent share in ETECSA and Telefónica offered $500 million.
(Il Sole last year reported that Telecom's worth in Cuba had dropped from $329 million in 2005 to $297 million in 2007.)
Two months ago, ETECSA announced that its wireless subscriber base had increased by 60 percent to 480,000, up from 300,000, since the government opened up the service to the public in April 2008. Until then, mobile phones had been available only to tourists and government officials. Nearly 8,000 subscribers were registered in the first 10 days after the restrictions were relaxed.
Industry observers suspect that a possible future relaxation of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba and the interest in Cuba's telecommunications industry expressed by Mexican magnate Carlos Slim (América Móvil) have sharpened Telefónica's appetite.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
IMF is loathsome (but needful) to some
Brazil's bid for Cuban membership in the International Monetary Fund and Cuba's longstanding revulsion for the organization (see April 26 blog item "Brazil wants Cuba back in IMF") has drawn The Washington Post's attention to an organization that can bail out cash-strapped nations with big loans, fast. "The fund [can] step in, if the countries want, with our money -- and it's a wall of money," the IMF's Western Hemisphere director, Nicolás Eyzaguirre, tells The Post in an article titled "Latin America appears to warm to IMF." The fund handed out $803 million in loans to Latin American countries last year.
Of all the multilateral lenders, "the institution that has most of the resources and the flexibility to deploy them is the IMF," says Nora Lustig, an economics professor at George Washington University.
Like Cuba, other countries -- Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador -- refuse to turn to the IMF, but, in the case of Ecuador, that reluctance is waning. The country is burdened with a $3.5 billion trade deficit.
For an illuminating look at why some countries don't mind feeding from the hand they bite, click here.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
Cuban interlocutor is a seasoned diplomat
Representatives of the Cuban and U.S. governments have met twice in the past two weeks, State Department Robert Wood told reporters Monday. "This afternoon [Monday], Assistant Secretary Tom Shannon is going to meet with the head of the Cuba Interests Section for a meeting at a mutually convenient location," Wood said. "The last time they met was April 13, here at the State Department. Over the years, we have had periodic contact with representatives of the Cuban Interests Section."
Thomas Shannon Jr. is Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs.
His interlocutor, the chief Cuban diplomat in Washington, is Jorge Alberto Bolaños Suárez, 72, former Deputy Foreign Minister and ex-ambassador to Poland, Czechoslovakia, the United Kingdom, Brazil and Mexico. He assumed his current post in November 2007, replacing Dagoberto Rodríguez, who is now Deputy Foreign Minister.
Bolaños accompanied the seven members of the Congressional Black Caucus during their recent visit to Cuba and escorted them to a meeting with Raúl Castro on April 7, at which Rodríguez was also present.
The Las Tunas-born Bolaños has made diplomacy a lifelong career. In his youth, he studied political sciences and international law at the University of Havana and did postgraduate work in foreign relations at the University of London. After fighting in the guerrilla army that overthrew Fulgencio Batista in 1959, he joined the Foreign Affairs Ministry in 1963, where he reached the post of staff director. He has held ambassadorial posts ever since.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
Travel by homeland-bound Cubans soars
In the two weeks since President Obama relaxed the restrictions on travel by Cuban-Americans to Cuba, "demand for flights to the island has exploded," says an article Monday in The Washington Post. "Some of the seven charters companies that send roughly 35 flights to Cuba each week said reservation requests have nearly doubled. The need for excess luggage capacity has been so pressing [...] that one company [...] has had to send a small cargo plane, nicknamed 'El Mosquito,' to accompany its main flights."
"Some agencies report that flights are booked a month in advance," The Post reports, "but travelers at [Miami] airport last week complained bitterly of the $500 round-trip ticket price for the 40-minute flight, as well as the additional baggage fees tacked on by the charter companies and Cuban customs officials in Havana." To read the entire article, click here. Its title: "Hard Lines on Havana Soften in MIami."
--Renato Pérez Pizarro.
Brazil wants Cuba back in IMF (good luck)
Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega on Saturday asked for Cuba's readmission to the International Monetary Fund and admission to the World Bank, adding that Brazil's bid is not on behalf of the Cuban government. Mantega was addressing the IMF and WB's Joint Committee on Development, meeting in Washington.
Fidel Castro pulled Cuba out of the IMF in 1964, contending that the organization was a tool of U.S. capitalism, and so far has not stated a desire to rejoin the Fund or join the World Bank.
In a speech Jan. 28, 2000, Castro said Cuba survived a financial crisis in the 1990s precisely "because we don't belong to the IMF." He described the Fund then as "the executioner that pulls the string so the guillotine's blade falls on the heads of Third World nations."
On April 12 of that year, Castro said that "it is high time for the Third World to strongly demand the removal of the IMF, which neither provides stability to the world economy nor delivers preventive funds to help debtors avoid their liquidity crises. It rather protects and rescues creditors."
In recent published ruminations, Castro has not been very charitable with either the IMF or the WB. "Both institutions [...] are part of the imperialist system," he wrote on April 6, 2008.
In an article April 10, 2008, he described the IMF as "the mainstay of the capitalist system imposed upon humanity." And in a broadside Nov. 16, 2008, he stated:
"The IMF, World Bank and the multilateral credit organizations [are] spawners of debt, outrageous bureaucratic spending, and investments aimed at furnishing raw materials to the big transnationals, which, to boot, are responsible for the [economic] crisis."
Given this background, Mantega may earn a sharp rebuke from the Comandante. Reminds me of the title of a 1949 movie by the popular Mexican comedian Tin Tan: "No Me Defiendas, Compadre" -- don't defend me, pal.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
Fidel is seen often in Siboney nabe
Some new insight on the condition of Fidel Castro was supplied Saturday by ABC News' Havana correspondent Marc Frank. Among his observations:
• "Havana spin masters are [...] projecting a brand new image of Fidel [...] at home, semi-retired and backing his brother Raúl's leadership of the country 100 percent, at least in public."
• Castro "is taking regular strolls in the isolated, sparsely populated and high-security neighborhood of Siboney, a few miles east of [Havana.] 'I couldn't believe it. The other day I looked up from my desk and there was Fidel, just walking into the building to see my boss,' the secretary of an important Cuban personality who works in his Siboney home told me the other day. 'He came over, said hi, asked what I was doing and meandered on,' she said. 'He did look very old and a bit hunched over, but otherwise seemed fine for his age.'"
• A friend of Marc Frank's said that her parents, "who live near Castro, see him often. My mom says they always know when the Comandante is coming, because bodyguards with AK-47s show up well before to check the area. Then he slowly walks by, usually in his track suit and with a couple more bodyguards. Sometimes he stops to say hello."
To read the entire article, click here. [PHOTO ABOVE was made on March 4.]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
Fidel: Dissident leader is a U.S. stooge
Havana-based human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez Santacruz is the latest target of Fidel Castro's ire. In a press release issued Thursday, Castro reviled Sánchez for telling The Associated Press on Tuesday that most political prisoners do not wish to be exchanged for the five Cubans held in U.S. prisons on espionage-related convictions.
Without using Sánchez's name, Castro wrote: "The purported mercenary leader was a member of a splinter group in the youth section of the former Communist Party, which later joined the new party created by the Revolution. When we found ourselves forced to disagree with the USSR because of its incorrect decision to negotiate an agreement about the October Crisis with the United States without prior consultation with our country, the fellow turned into an enemy of the Revolution. He served the superpower throughout Bush's mandate. Now, he enjoys the luxury of being an instrument to threaten Obama."
Sánchez heads the Cuban Committee for Human Rights and Reconciliation, a nongovernmental organization that, so far, has been tolerated by the Cuban government.
Castro's reference to a threat is related to a sentence in the AP's article about Sánchez, saying that Obama "might suffer serious political consequences if he agreed to swap the five communist agents sentenced for espionage in 2001."
"Isn't that [news item] a threat to the president of the United States?" asks Castro, in righteous shock.
Elsewhere in the article, Castro
• scorns the "discredited" Organization of American States in its "repugnant role [...] as an odious instrument" of the United States, and
• restates Raúl Castro's offer "to exercise clemency if the United States takes in" the imprisoned dissidents -- whom Fidel describes as "those sentenced to prison for their traitorous service to the United States" -- and "liberates the five Cuban antiterrorist heroes." To read the entire article, in English, click here. In Spanish, click here. [UPDATE: On Friday, Sánchez rejected Castro's allegations as "flat-out falsehoods." Castro "does not deserve an answer because this is nothing but another volley of harebrained attacks," Sánchez told El Nuevo Herald by phone, adding that Castro "uses slander as a political tool." Click here.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
