Cubans may hold more than one job, says Decree No. 268, approved June 26 by the Council of State and announced Monday in the Communist Party daily Granma.
The Council calls the concept "pluriemployment," explaining that "the workers, after fulfilling the duties of the post they hold, may enter into more than one work contract and receive the corresponding salary." The announcement does not say how many jobs a worker may hold.
Pluriemployment "is linked to the rational use of human resources and labor contracts" and is intended "to attenuate the effects of an aging population, stimulate work in society" and provide "the chance that the workers may increase their income."
There are some exceptions. Multiple jobs are out of the question for "cadres and functionaries, health technicians and professionals, researchers, professors, teachers and auditors, except in the case of teaching or scientific research posts or others that are approved" by their current employers.
High school and college students old enough to work may hold more than one job but only part-time and for a specific length of time.
The City of Havana is empowered to hire workers who live in other provinces "to cover its work needs on a temporary or permanent basis," the decree says, citing the need "to stimulate the productive forces, make possible an increase in income" and enable "work to be the principal source of satisfaction for [Cubans'] material and spiritual needs."
The average monthly salary in Cuba is 415 pesos, about US$19. While the Cuban government subsidizes many food products and provides education and health care at no cost, that amount is not sufficient for most wage earners. Decree No. 268 appears to be a way to help Cubans to help themselves. To read the announcement in Granma, in Spanish, click here.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
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Los Angeles-Havana flights have resumed
Charter flights from Los Angeles to Havana resumed on Tuesday after a 5-year hiatus. Continental Airlines Boeing 737s with capacity for 150 passengers will leave Los Angeles every Tuesday at 11 a.m. (PST) on a five-hour trip to the Cuban capital. Price of a round-trip ticket: $689. "We are excited to resume the nonstop flights out of LAX to Havana that were in such high demand" before President Bush imposed harsh travel restrictions in 2004, said Michael Zuccato, general manager of Cuba Travel Services, which charters the flights. President Obama relaxed those restrictions in April.
According to Zuccato, Cuba Travel hopes to attract journalists, government officials and researchers who qualify for travel, as well as sports teams, religious organizations, educational facilities and other organizations or individuals issued a license to travel to Cuba. The company has been in business since 2000.
About 100,000 Cubans live in California, 85,000 of them in Los Angeles County.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
Raúl to Obama: Don't back the putschists
Raúl Castro on Monday traveled to Nicaragua for a meeting of Latin American heads of state and delivered a speech about recent events in Honduras. Excerpts, as translated by The Miami Herald: • "The right of the Honduran people to express themselves politically was trampled. [...] Cuba forcefully condemns the brutal coup d'état against Honduras' constitutional government and its legitimate president and rejects the criminal attack on the popular sovereignty of this nation."
• "This is the moment to act consistently and not waste time and unmask those who condemn but later applaud under the table, as has happened so many times in our common history. In Honduras, there is -- and there can be -- only one President. José Manuel Zelaya must return immediately and unconditionally to the performance of his duties. [...] There can be no negotiation with the putschists or conditions or demands of any type placed upon the legitimate government of President Zelaya."
• The conflict "transcends the borders of Honduras and is an expression of the danger of returning to a past of military dictatorships that, with the support of the government of the United States [...] terrorized for decades the Latin American people, very especially those in Central America and the Caribbean, but with practically no exclusion.
• The coup leaders "will have to assume the responsibility for the crimes and abuses that have taken place in that sister nation. Also responsible, as accomplices, will be the mass communication media, which lend themselves to the putschist purposes and serve to confuse the people. [...] Also equally responsible are the oligarchic groups that attempt to legitimize a criminal act this size, and the reactionary sectors in the hemisphere who support the transgressors of constitutionality."
• "The government of the United States must act in correspondence with its pronouncements and assume them most seriously. I believe in the sincerity President Obama and his [secretary of State] can demonstrate, but they must demonstrate it with deeds, not with words. Without popular support, with the absolute rejection of Latin American and Caribbean governments, no putschist can resist and the [coup leaders] in Honduras, as Fidel said in yesterday's Reflection, can't even breathe without the support of the United States or of some of the powerful forces inside the government of the United States."
For the entire speech, in Spanish, click here. (PHOTO SHOWS: Castro and Zelaya Monday in Managua.)
Fidel: Honduran Army brass should resign
Fidel Castro has called on lower-ranking Army officers to assume military control and return Manuel Zelaya to the presidency of Honduras.
In an article titled "Suicidal error," written Sunday and published Monday in the Cuban media, Castro asks the current Army high command to resign and allow younger officers to take over. After a long description of Sunday's events in Honduras, Castro concludes by saying:
"With that putschist high command no one can negotiate. They must be told to resign and allow other officers, younger and not committed to the oligarchy, to take command of the military, or there will never be a government 'of the people, by the people and for the people' in Honduras. "Cornered and isolated, the putschists have no possible salvation if the problem is dealt with firmly.
" Even Mrs. [Hillary] Clinton declared this afternoon that Zelaya is the only President of Honduras, and the Honduran putschists can't even breathe without United States support.
"Wearing night clothes until a few hours ago, Zelaya will be recognized by the world as the only Constitutional president of Honduras."
(PHOTO SHOWS: Raúl and Fidel Castro with Zelaya in Havana on March 4, 2009.)
Havana daily flays Hondura's Micheletti
An editorial headline Monday in the newspaper Tribuna de La Habana describes Honduras' new leader as a "fascist lawbreaker." Here's the text, translated by The Miami Herald. The Honduran National Congress, in which the ultrarightist elite finds refuge, after violently kidnapping the constitutional president, Manuel Zelaya, appointed Roberto Micheletti as "president," flagrantly violating the people's sovereign will.
The putschists wield as an argument a letter with Zelaya's signature resigning the chief executive's post, an action denied by President Manuel Zelaya himself in a press conference held in San José, Costa Rica.
The elite that heads this brutal and unconstitutional coup against the law bases its decision on the "defense of the Constitution of Honduras," a gross falsehood with which they attempt to deceive national and international opinion.
Micheletti, like a good disciple of Adolf Hitler, resorts to savage repression to cling to power. Among the actions that typify the barbaric attitude of this gentleman who attempts to seize the Honduran presidency are the physical abuses inflicted on the ambassadors of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, and the kidnapping of Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas.
We denounce the kidnapping of the Honduran foreign minister and demand her immediate release and respect for her physical integrity. In the name of the international community, we call for a return of the rule of law in the sisterly Honduran land.
Cuba condemns army action in Honduras
The Cuban government on Sunday called on international organizations to intervene in the Honduran crisis and return José Manuel Zelaya, "the only and legitimate president," to his post. (See The Miami Herald's ongoing coverage of the coup. See also our June 26 blog item "Fidel writes in support of Honduran prexy.")
At a press conference in Havana, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla asked the United Nations, the Movement of Nonaligned Nations, the Group of Rio, and the Organization of American States to demand respect for constitutional guarantees in Honduras. "I denounce the criminal and brutal nature of this coup d'état," Rodríguez said, according to the Prensa Latina news agency. He also asked the Honduran Armed Forces to refrain from harming their foreign minister, Patricia Rodas, who was arrested Sunday morning while she conferred with the Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan ambassadors.
The soldiers who arrested Rodas violated international law and the Vienna Convention on diplomatic immunity and acted in the manner of the cruelest and most violent Latin American dictatorships, the minister said. Cuban Ambassador Juan Carlos Hernández complained that he and the Venezuelan and Nicaraguan ambassadors were roughed up by the soldiers who seized Rodas. The three diplomats were taken to an Air Force base in Tegucigalpa and released shortly thereafter. [For Hernández's account, in Spanish, click here.] Rodríguez said he was entrusting the integrity of the Cuban Embassy and the safety of the Cuban diplomats in Tegucigalpa to the Honduran Army. He also said that 484 Cuban civilians living in Honduras -- most of them medical personnel -- "are being protected by the people."
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
Ousted officials were trailed for a long time
The three high-ranking government officials dismissed March 2 -- Vice President Carlos Lage, Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque, and Communist Party Foreign Relations chief Fernando Remírez de Estenoz -- were investigated by State Security for more than a year before their sacking, an article in the Spanish daily El País reported Sunday.
Among the revelations:
• Lage was crestfallen after the post of First Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers was given to José Ramón Machado Ventura on Feb. 23, 2008, and complained to Carlos Valenciaga, then-secretary to Fidel Castro, that "they didn't throw me the ball," using a baseball analogy. The conversation was recorded by the SS and used as "proof" of Lage's disloyalty to the regime in a video shown by Raúl Castro on March 2 to members of the Communist Party Politburo. Most of the information published by El País is based on accounts by Party sources who saw the video.
• Lage's cousin, Dr. Raúl Castellanos Lage, a director of Havana's Institute of Vascular Cardiology, was also distressed by news of Machado's promotion and, according to the video, said that it would have been better to allow Machado to die when he reported to the hospital with a heart problem. "The nation would have been better off," he is quoted as saying on Feb. 23, 2008. Castellanos was arrested by the SS on March 1, 2009.
• Upon learning of Machado's promotion, Pérez Roque reportedly said he would oppose it at the next meeting of the National Assembly. Actually, he did not.
• Conrado Hernández, a Cuban businessman who was close to Lage, Pérez Roque and Remírez, provided Spain's National Intelligence Center (CNI) with information about the health of Fidel Castro and other Cuban leaders, about the nation's energy program, and about Cuba's relations with the U.S., Russia, China and other countries. He was arrested Feb. 14, 2009. In a videotaped statement made after his arrest, he admits that he worked for the CNI, an admission buttressed by a wiretap recording made by Cuban intelligence of a conversation between him and two CNI agents in 2007.
• At parties hosted by Hernández at his country estate in Matanzas for Lage, Pérez Roque and others, unkind words were said (and surreptitiously recorded) about Machado, among them "living fossil" and "dinosaur."
• Hernández frequently asked his government friends for help. According to El País, he asked Pérez Roque "to help him obtain a diplomatic passport and [Pérez Roque] supplied it in 24 hours. He also got Lage to support him in his bid to divert a river past his estate in Matanzas."
To read the entire article, in Spanish, click here. See also our blog item of June 21, "Paper: Spanish agents goaded 2 officials..."
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
Fidel writes in support of Honduran prexy
Fidel Castro on Thursday ended an almost two-week silence "to express [his] solidarity with the constitutional president of Honduras, José Manuel Zelaya." Facing opposition at home for promoting a constitutional reform that might extend his one-term presidency, Zelaya on Thursday personally assumed control of the ballots and ballot boxes prepared for a referendum Sunday on his reform proposal. (To read The Herald's report, click here.)
Excerpts from Castro's article in the Cuban media follow.
• "It was impressive to watch him on Telesur, haranguing the people of Honduras. He forcefully denounced the clumsy, reactionary effort to impede an important popular consultation. That's the 'democracy' that imperialism defends. Zelaya has not committed the slightest violation of the law. He did not carry out an act of force. He is the President and Commander General of the Armed Forces of Honduras. What happens there will be a test for the OAS and the current administration of the United States."
• "Today, I listened to the solid arguments of President Hugo Chávez denouncing the putschist action [...] We don't know what will happen tonight [Thu 25] or tomorrow [Fri 26] in Honduras, but Zelaya's valiant conduct will go into history.'
• "His words reminded us of the speech by [Chilean] President Salvador Allende while warplanes bombed the presidential palace, where he died heroically on 11 September 1973. This time, we saw another Latin American president entering an air base with the people to reclaim the ballots for a popular referendum, which had been spuriously confiscated. That's how a President and Commander General behaves. The people of Honduras will never forget that gesture!" At their most recent meeting in Havana, on March 4 (see photo), Zelaya expressed to Castro his frustration over being a one-term president, telling him: "Only four years in my entire life can I be President of Honduras." In a March 5 article, Fidel recalled responding, "That doesn't offer a nation's leader not even one second to search for the efficient government any society needs today more than ever." Other impressions left by Zelaya on Fidel:
• "Like Hugo Chávez, [Zelaya] found in the ideas of Christ the source of inspiration that feeds his conception of justice. He cannot be accused of being a Marxist or a communist."
• "To Zelaya, 'the capitalist system is the most repugnant concept of justice that a human being may have.'"
• "Zelaya is a man who deeply suffers the abuses of the Empire. [...] Through his thoughts, one could appreciate his deep aversion to the economic system of the United States."
For continuing coverage of the situation in Honduras, read The Miami Herald.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
Cuba is ready for U.S. tourists, official says
If Congress allows the unrestricted travel of Americans to Cuba, Cuba will be ready, a Tourism Ministry adviser says.
Interviewed in Havana by the Bloomberg news agency, Miguel Figueras said about 835,000 Americans would flock to the island every year after the travel ban is lifted -- a number that doesn't include cruise-ship tourists and Cuban-Americans returning to their homeland for family visits.
Cuba is preparing to build 30 new hotels with 10,000 rooms and 10 golf courses within the next five years, regardless of any changes in U.S. policy, Figueras told Bloomberg.
"The Americans are welcome here," he said. "You have to be prepared for [the influx] but you can't make your development plans depend on whether" the ban is lifted.
Tourism provides 7 percent of Cuba's GDP, according to Figueras, who added that revenue increased 11 percent to $1.8 billion last year. He said talks between U.S. and Cuban tourism developers are already under way.
"Every month an American company comes," he said. To read the Bloomberg item, click here. [RELATED NEWS: The Tourism Ministry is sending a promotional caravan to Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Peru to whip up business. Click here.]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
Raúl a last-minute no-show at ALBA talks
Raúl Castro did not represent Cuba at the special summit of ALBA held today, Wednesday 24 June, in Maracay, Venezuela. The task was performed by First Vice President José Ramón Machado Ventura, Minister-Without-Portfolio Ricardo Cabrisas and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, according to a Radio Habana newscast this morning. No explanation was given for the substitution.
Last Thursday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said during a televised appearance that "Raúl Castro is coming" to the gathering of the Alternativa Bolivariana para las Américas (ALBA), at which Antigua & Barbuda, Ecuador, and St. Vincent & the Grenadines will be admitted to the group. ALBA, a Chávez-inspired trade bloc, is formed by Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras and Dominica.
As late as Tuesday, sources at the Venezuelan Embassy in Havana had confirmed to the Mexican news agency Notimex that Castro would attend. And Radio Nacional de Venezuela stated in its website on Tuesday that "representing Cuba will be the president of that nation, Raúl Castro, as well as Yilian Jiménez, Deputy Foreign Minister, and Germán Sánchez Otero, the Cuban Ambassador to Venezuela."
Castro's absence is puzzling to some, because this ALBA summit would have given him a good forum for important pronouncements. At the ALBA summit held in mid-April in Cumaná, Venezuela, Castro grabbed headlines with some extemporaneous comments about U.S.-Cuba relations. (Photo shows: Machado, left, being welcomed by Hugo Chávez. At center is Evo Morales, President of Bolivia.)
[UPDATE: In its official declaration, issued Thursday, ALBA announced that it will henceforth be called the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, Treaty of Commerce for the Peoples. The acronym will be ALBA-TCP. To read the entire declaration, in Spanish, click here.]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
