Cuban Colada

Defector joins pro team to stay in shape

The latest news on the four Cuban basketball players on Grand Canary Island is that one of them moved out of Grand Canary to a neighboring island, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and is training with Tenerife Rural, a professional, second-division team in the Spanish Basketball League.
As the Spanish website Marca.com tells it, Georffrei Silvestre left Grand Canary a week ago and moved in with a family in Tenerife whose son studied in Cuba.
Silvestre's host contacted the Tenerife Rural coach, who agreed to let Silvestre work out with his team, with the understanding that it's only so the Cuban player can keep in shape. Silvestre has been training there for the past four days.
Silvestre, known in Cuba as "el gato" ("gato silvestre" means wildcat), was a major reason for his team's conquest of the Cuban basketball crown in April. The Ciego de Avila Búfalos won the national title for the fifth consecutive year in a game against Capitalinos. Silvestre, who plays pivot, or center, was named the final game's most valuable player.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

The Cuban Three are back!

Call them the Cuban Three.

Three of the five convicted Cuban agents known as the "Five" are back in town from their respective farflung federal prisons. They were transferred to Miami to await resentencing Oct. 13.

Although a quest for a new trial flopped at the Supreme Court, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and Ramón Labañino won new sentencings. The appellate court ruled that Judge Joan Lenard erred when she enhanced their sentences. The court ordered a do-over.

"Friends of the Cuban Five" announced today new mailing info for the three defendants in case any of their pen pals want to keep in touch: 

Antonio Guerrero
#58741-004
FDC Miami
P.O. Box 019120
Miami, FL 33101

Unclear to me why, but Labañino and González's mail should be addressed to the names they jailed under.
For Labañino:
att: Luís Medina
#58734-004
FDC Miami
P.O. Box 019120
Miami, FL 33101

For González:
Att: Rubén Campa
#58733-004
FDC Miami
P.O. Box 019120
Miami, FL 33101

Labañino and Guerrero received life sentences for espionage conspiracy. González got 19 years for acting as an unregistered foreign agent.

Lenard, criticized by the appellate panel for handing down excessive sentences, could still send them to prison for a long time.

- Frances Robles

Chinese, Cuban officials exchange visits

China's top legislator, Wu Bangguo, left Beijing on Monday "kicking off his official good-will visits to Cuba, the Bahamas and the United States from Aug. 31 to Sept. 12," the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.
Wu, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and member of the Communist Party's Politburo, is the guest of Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba's National Assembly. In the United States, his host will be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
In June, Wu flew to Moscow to meet with President Dmitri Medvedev.
Cuba's Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, is traveling to Beijing for meetings with his Chinese counterpart, Tang Jiaxuan, and other officials, Sept. 1-3. On Thursday, he will go on to North Korea, where he will stay until Saturday. [UPDATE: Wu arrived in Vancouver, Canada, and will stay there Monday night before proceeding to Havana.]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Face reality, admit and fix flaws,writer says

Cuba's system must acknowledge, criticize and correct its flaws, a Cuban commentator stated bluntly in an article Sunday in the newspaper Juventud Rebelde.
Societies "need mirrors to see themselves and detect their wrinkles," writes José Alejandro Rodríguez in an article titled "Mirrors." Those wrinkles are reversible, "and our socialism requires systematic watching, without clinging to idyllic images or deceptive assumptions that we live in the best of all worlds."
"The sickly obsession to protect 'the image' of the country, the ministry, the business or the territory [...] sometimes is paranoia for the fate of your job, your post and other bagatelles, when the issue is to improve reality."
Many believe erroneously that "the problems of the country, the ministry, the business or the territory should not be aired publicly, because they take away from the real achievements of the Revolution. And that blindness [...] can feed the sensation that everything is going well. The most harmful result is that we mistake reality for wishes and -- clinging to the noble paradigms of our society -- fail to discover where, when and how intensely that daily reality runs afoul of [those paradigms.]"
"To fix something that is wrong, we must first acknowledge and elucidate it. For a long time, there was much resistance to acknowledging that the larvae of corruption were incubating in our society. [Corruption] was a bad word that seemed to condemn us. [...] We're finally creating a Comptroller General's Office."
Some see "the healthy exercise of criticism [...] as giving weapons to the enemy. The truth is that the most powerful weapon we can give those who wish to dismantle our work of 50 years is silence, simulation, a double standard, conformity," Rodríguez writes.
"European socialism disappeared because it lost the vision to see what was really happening and the compass to rectify its course. That lesson cannot be forgotten," the article concludes. "Cuba has enough light to look at itself in a mirror and fix its ugly spots."
To read the whole article, in Spanish, click here.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Spanish basketball team backs 4 defectors

A second-division basketball team in Spain has taken the first steps to bring four Cuban defectors into a professional league, the Spanish newspaper ABC reported Saturday.
Clínicas Rincón Axarquía, a team from Málaga, sent "an important and symbolic financial contribution" to the defectors, who are still in Grand Canary Island, waiting to be granted political asylum in Spain.
The team's president, Manuel Rincón Granados, told ABC he had asked the presidents of the Association of Basketball Clubs (Spain's top professional basketball league) and the Spanish Basketball Federation "to ease the situation and daily lives of the athletes."
Rincón said he is hopeful that, "medium or long-term, we can bring some of them into our team."
The Cuban players still need approval from the Spanish Foreign Ministry to establish residence in Spain and obtain work permits, a process that, according to ABC, could take several months. (See our Aug. 21 blog item "Cuban hoopers not sorry they defected" and other related entries this month.) [UPDATE: The Spanish newspaper El Pais describes a day in the life of the four Cubans in Las Palmas. Click here.]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Fidel phones Ortega during a public event, in an apparent effort to show improvement

Fidel Castro on Friday phoned Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega during a graduation ceremony in Managua for 44 Nicaraguan students who attended medical school in Cuba.
"It makes me happy, chico, makes me happy to know that 44 are graduating from the ELAM," Castro said, using the acronym for the Latin American School of Medicine. Ortega held the phone to a public-address system so the graduates could hear.
According to the newspaper El Nuevo Diario, Castro asked Ortega how many students attend Nicaraguan medical schools and how many of them graduate per year. Ortega was stumped, but got the answers from the minister of Health.
"It's very good news to learn that you have a great medical force," Castro said, according to the French agency AFP. He sent "a greeting and a hug" to Ortega, Ortega's wife Rosario, and the people of Nicaragua.
Seen in the context of Castro's several appearances this month and his conversation with visiting Venezuelan graduates at his home in Havana, this public phone call, though brief, appears to be a government effort to show that the First Secretary of Cuba's Communist Party is doing well and might do even better.
Raúl Castro mentioned his brother's condition on Friday, as he arrived at a public works project in Santiago de Cuba. "I bring you greetings from a friend," he told the workers, quoted by the Spanish news agency EFE. "Did you see how he looks [on TV]? Some people said he was almost dead. Well, if all the dead people were like him ..." Raúl quipped, without ending the sentence.
I wouldn't be surprised if Fidel soon participates by phone in a Round Table discussion, the radio and TV show he used to attend fairly regularly.
For an Associated Press look at the Cuban media blitz, click here. For an assessment of Fidel's physical condition by President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, who visited him Aug. 21, click here.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Governor talks with the #2 man at MINREX

Bill Richardson kept up a busy schedule in Havana by meeting Thursday with Cuba's Deputy Foreign Minister Dagoberto Rodríguez Barrera. On Wednesday, he met with Deputy Tourism Minister María Elena López; on Tuesday, with Chamber of Commerce president Pedro Alvarez.
And let's not forget that Monday night he dined with "my friend Ricardo Alarcón," president of the National Assembly and a senior expert on U.S.-Cuba relations.
The Cuban government's choice of Rodríguez as Richardson's interlocutor is interesting. An experienced diplomat, Rodríguez headed the Cuban Interests Section in Washington before being elevated to second-in-command at the Foreign Ministry, or MINREX, as it's known in Havana. He represented Cuba at the immigration talks with the U.S. held in New York City in mid-July.
Hardly the kind of functionary with whom Richardson would discuss the sale of farm produce.
My guess is that Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla will make an appearance if and when Raúl or Fidel Castro decides to grant Richardson an audience. But that will have to be soon. The governor plans to return to New Mexico on Friday.
(PHOTO SHOWS: Rodríguez Barrera, left, greeting Richardson outside the MINREX.)
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Newspaper acknowledges four defections; player says system stifles advancement

Official acknowledgment of the Aug. 17 defection of four Cuban basketball players in Grand Canary Island came Wednesday in the newspaper Juventud Rebelde.
At the end of an article about the upcoming elimination rounds for the 2010 Basketball World Championship in Turkey, the paper stated: "Two players from the capital, Taylor García and Grismay Paumier, defected from the national team some days ago in Spain. Also did Georffrie Silvestre and Georvis Elías."
In an allusion to comments made by Cuban sports chief Julio Christian Jiménez, the paper says: "In recent days, Cuba restated its principled position against the commercialization of athletes and professionalism in sports." (See our Aug. 25 blog item, "Sports czar rips hoopers who defected.")
Cuba will not compete in the elimination tournament, Juventud Rebelde notes. "Our team declined to participate in the event, because [officials] considered that its technical level was not adequate enough to assume a commitment of that magnitude." Cuba's place in the eliminations has been given to Panama.
Interviewed by the Spanish newspaper ABC, Taylor García said he and his fellow defectors "couldn't stand it anymore in Cuba. Back there, we couldn't develop in our work, which is basketball."
No one in the Cuban team tried to dissuade the defectors, García said: "When you make a decision like this, [your teammates] don't usually encourage you -- but they don't prevent you from doing it, either. It's as if they said 'It's up to you,' because this situation is beyond complex."
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Richardson calls trade talks 'very positive'

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico met Tuesday with Pedro Alvarez, president of the Cuban Chamber of Commerce and former director of the state-run food-import firm Alimport. Richardson told the press that his talks with Alvarez were "very positive." The nine-member New Mexican delegation is interested in selling Cuba wheat, beans, potatoes, apples, and other agricultural products, the governor said.
On Monday, the day of his arrival in Havana, Richardson met with the president of Cuba's National Assembly. "I dined last night with my friend Ricardo Alarcón," he told the press Tuesday, without going into detail.
Richardson also declined to speak about the possibility that he might meet with Fidel or Raúl Castro. He has scheduled a news conference for Wednesday.
As of Tuesday night, only the official website Cubadebate.com had reported Richardson's visit, but using an Associated Press news item, not a locally written account.
(PHOTO SHOWS: Richardson, left, being welcomed by Alvarez to the Chamber of Commerce building.)
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Sports czar rips hoopers who defected

The president of Cuba's National Institute of Sports (INDER) on Tuesday blasted Cuban athletes who defect while abroad and the talent scouts who woo them. Julio Christian Jiménez Molina did not mention the four basketball players who defected in Grand Canary Island on Aug. 17 but it was clear he had them in mind.
"We are attacked on all fronts. There's no Cuban delegation at an international event that is not trailed by the hounds of the empire," Jiménez told Radio Rebelde, according to the French news agency AFP. Jiménez -- himself a former basketball player -- also excoriated "the traitors who participate in this felony."
"We're engaged in a war that has lasted more than 50 years, and sports is involved in this war, because sports is an achievement of the revolution," he said.
Jiménez said that many people abroad don't understand how Cuba can be so successful in sports "without commercialization" and "without selling athletes as merchandise."
Meanwhile, in Las Palmas, the four basketball players continue to wait for official approval of their bids for political asylum. So far, the Cuban government has not acknowledged their defection. (PHOTO SHOWS three of them leaving City Hall after submitting their requests last week.)
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.