Cuban Colada

Chile is offered as alternative destination for freed prisoners wishing to leave Cuba

Anti-Castro activists in Cuba are trying to convince more freed prisoners to resettle in Chile rather than Spain, the Chilean daily El Mercurio reported last week.
"Several persons in Havana, among them Oswaldo Payá and Laura Pollán, are passing on the [Chilean] Foreign Ministry's invitations to the relatives of the 52 prisoners being released," the paper said. "They're also probing the interest of at least 10 prisoners, or their wives, to resettle in Chile."
The activists' contact in Chile is Mijail Bonito, a Cuban-born but Chilean-naturalized lawyer who has been lobbying the Chilean government on behalf of the prisoners.
"To many of the freed political prisoners, it is much more advantageous to come to Chile than to remain in Spain or elsewhere, because of the political conditions in Chile, the organization of the State, the democracy, and the economy, which can facilitate their insertion" into Chilean society, Bonito told El Mercurio.
He admitted that "we are in conversation with the relatives and the Ladies in White." Pollán is the leader of that women's group; Payá is the promoter of the Varela Project to reorganize Cuban society.
Bonito has enlisted the aid of an influential senator, Christian-Democrat Patricio Walker, who told El Mercurio that the prisoners "have asked Mijail for information about their future in [Chile]. Oswaldo Payá is talking with prisoners and relatives, checking their profiles and their needs for jobs. We are also talking with mayors and businesses for job possibilities," Walker said.
On the phone from Havana, Pollán told the newspaper that "we are working with those who are interested in going to Chile, although it is difficult for us, because the prisoners cannot communicate among each other. We talk to wives and relatives, so they can propose [the resettlement plan] to each prisoner."
According to Pollán, "Chile is a prosperous country, without major unemployment, unlike in Spain, where it is 20.6 percent. Spain has the will but not the solvency, and most of the prisoners will take along 8 or 10 relatives – some, as many as 16."
Bonito said that Blanca Reyes, the wife of Cuban writer Raúl Rivero, is checking in Madrid "who wish to come to Chile, how many relatives they would bring, their level of education, their professions and the illnesses they have."
Juan Almeida García, son of the late revolutionary Juan Almeida Bosque, told El Mercurio that he hopes to deliver to the Chilean ambassador in Havana "a list with the names of some women who need asylum. They are some of those women dressed in white who the world saw marching with a gladiolus in hand [...] who endured blows and all kinds of alienation."
For background, read our blog items "Chile's prexy invites 'a reasonable number' of prisoners..." (July 18) and "Chile offers haven to prisoners..." (July 6).
–Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Defiant ex-prisoner says he plans to create a foundation in Chile to help liberate Cuba

Preparing to leave Madrid for Santiago, Chile, next Tuesday, released prisoner José Ubaldo Izquierdo Hernández said he is planning "to create a foundation for the liberation of Cuba."
Perhaps coincidentally, the Cuban American National Foundation's human rights director, Omar López Montenegro, was scheduled to arrive in Santiago from Miami last week to assist Izquierdo.
In a telephone interview with the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, Izquierdo said that "it is no secret that [the Castro brothers] are taking their last breaths."
The prisoner release "means nothing," the former inmate said, because the Castros "have emptied the jails over and again whenever they've felt a rope around their necks."
"Spain wants to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for [Raúl] Castro, who's under a lot of pressure," Izquierdo commented. "We are grateful to be free and thankful to [Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel] Moratinos for intervening between the Church and the Castro regime, but we know that there is an ulterior motive."
Izquierdo, a food technician, served seven years and four months of his 16-year sentence for writing articles for the foreign press. He told El Mercurio that in prison he met three dissidents who have expressed their intention to join him in Chile.
They are Miguel Galván Gutiérrez, Héctor Raúl Valle Hernández, and Alfredo Felipe Fuentes Valdés. For an article about them in El Mercurio, click here.
Izquierdo told the newspaper that he admires Chilean literature and its democratic system. "I only hope they will welcome me as just another Chilean," he said.
–Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Fidel:The Five will return before year's end

Almost unnoticed by the press this week was a comment made by Fidel Castro on Monday during a gathering with public and private personalities in Havana, where el Comandante predicted that the five Cuban conspirators imprisoned in the United States 12 years ago would be released before the end of this year.
Castro's comments on the subject took less than one minute, so I'm providing a translation of them, made from a video recording of the event. The dashes represent Castro's pauses.
"...Imagine – blockading Cuba – Do you imagine that the five comrades who are there separated, in jails – they haven't made the slightest gesture to release them – what would it cost them to send us back five human beings, who are, above all, separated from their families – well, as I said in Artemisa, they are elevating them to a place of honor – and they'll have to release them.
[TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: "Elevating them to a place of honor" is a reference to Fidel's Message to the Revolutionary Combatants, delivered July 24 in Artemisa, where Fidel said that the Americans "are unable to understand" that, by their very hatred of The Five, they "elevate" their Cuban prisoners "to high places."]
"I now believe, more than ever, that they're very close to being released – by the end of the year they can prepare what needs to be moved – how things are distributed – but a lot earlier than the end of the year.– I can tell you that – I take the responsibility of telling the families – so." [APPLAUSE]
[T.N.: The expression "how things are distributed" might be a colloquialism for "which way things go" or "how events develop." Castro gives a knowing smile after saying "a lot earlier than the end of the year."]
–Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Church backs self-employment, enterprise

On the eve of the plenary session of the Cuban National Assembly, the Cuban Catholic Church has come out in defense of a relaxation by "the paternalistic State" of the restrictions on self-employment and of other "excessive controls."
The call appears in an article titled "On Liberty and Liberalization," published in the July-August issue of Palabra Nueva, the magazine of the Archdiocese of Havana.
Although written by Orlando Márquez Hidalgo, the magazine's editor and chief spokesman for the Archdiocese, it presumably reflects the views of Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino, the Archbishop of Havana.
After several paragraphs dealing with the concept of individual freedom, Márquez writes:
"I do not believe that we are condemned to a constant struggle, not of classes as [Karl] Marx suggested, but only of personal interests and different aspirations.
"Can someone demonstrate that it is bad for a person to have entrepreneurial initiative while another prefers to be a wage earner? And if it is not possible to demonstrate it, who can be interested in putting the brakes on self-employment, which oxygenates the lungs of the State and the domestic economy?
"How can we call 'property' a house or a car that cannot be sold or given away by its legal owner? How can we convince an athlete that he cannot be signed up abroad after fulfilling certain national commitments but that his coach does have that right?
"How can I accept that a foreigner can invest in my country and I can't? Can anyone justify this infantile treatment that some of our laws deal the citizens? This is another painful manifestation of the paternalistic State.
"There are no reasons capable of explaining the limitations on the exercise of human liberty, nor arguments that justify the excess of unhealthy bureaucratic controls, in the same way that there is no discourse or ideology that can defend or justify economic and social formulas whose inefficacy has long been demonstrated and unnecessarily endured.

Journalist: Fidel's book will not be a tell-all

"Fidel Castro is about to publish a memoir," writes Stephen Kinzer in the British newspaper The Guardian.
"Few living figures could contribute as much as Castro to our understanding of the second half of the 20th Century," says the former New York Times reporter and author. "Don't expect him to do it, though."
To people like Castro, "truth is always malleable, always subservient to political goals," he writes.
In Kinzer's opinion, we are not "likely to find new insights into Castro's relationship with his brother, Raúl; with their highly popular comrade Camilo Cienfuegos, who died in a plane crash that Castro described as an accident but that some Cubans suspect was a political assassination; or with Che Guevara, who by many accounts broke with him over his decision to lead Cuba into the Soviet bloc."
"Castro cannot be reasonably expected to renounce his beliefs or implicate himself in killings or atrocities. Nonetheless it would be fascinating to learn whether he still believes it was necessary to execute hundreds of his countrymen without trial in the first weeks after his victory in 1959," the author writes.
"Few people in the world know as many explosive geopolitical secrets as Castro," Kinzer sums up. "Within him he is carrying a blockbuster best-seller. He is unlikely ever to write it."
The article is worthwhile; to read it, click here.
(Kinzer's books include Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua, All the Shah's Men: An American Coup, and Overthrow; America's Century of Regime Change.)

Untrained 'lay judges' are sought to help impart justice 'and strengthen democracy'

Fifteen thousand "lay judges" are being selected from ordinary Cubans to sit on provincial and municipal benches between 2011 and 2015, according to the newspaper Juventud Rebelde.
The candidates need have no training in jurisprudence. They need not even be paralegals.
Alfredo Machado, president of the national commission that picks the "lay judges" told the Cuban News Agency that "although they don't have the professional attributes granted by the juridical sciences, they will represent the whole of society in the decisions that will be made to guarantee legality and impart justice."
Placing ordinary citizens on the bench "is a way to exercise and strengthen democracy," Machado said.
The candidates are selected from the Cuban Workers Central, the National Association of Small Farmers, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the Federation of Cuban Women, and the Federation of University Students.
The names are put forth during assemblies in work centers, communities, cooperatives and student and mass organizations.
The selection is made on the basis of "an adequate cultural level, a good attitude in the jobs they perform, and prestige in the community," Juventud Rebelde says.

Raúl's silence at July 26 fête was a sign of 'the fiercest immobility,' Spanish daily says

Editorial titled "No News From Cuba," published Wednesday in the Spanish daily ABC. Translated by Cuban Colada.
In recent days, some expectations had been raised over signs that the regime in Havana might send on the occasion of the celebrations of the anniversary of the assault on the Moncada barracks, in the context of the Spanish government's efforts to convince its European partners of the alleged existence of qualitative changes in the attitude of the dictatorship.
Indeed, after the agreement between Raúl Castro and the Cuban Church, which allowed the arrival in Spain of many dissidents and their families, many observers were prepared to analyze the nuances of the current Cuban president's speech and, of course, the statements of his brother Fidel.
However, the two Castros ignored the whole situation, as did the rest of the leaders of the dictatorship.
Raul's silence – compared with the speeches he made in previous years, in which he made weak promises – has been a loud argument for the fiercest immobility.

U.S. food sales to Cuba fall 35% this year; Havana turns to suppliers who give credit

United States food sales to Cuba experienced a sharp drop this year, as the island government cut imports and turned to countries that offer credit, Reuters reported, citing the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.
Food sales fell by 35 percent from January through May. The decline – from $278.2 million to $182.3 million – followed a 24-percent drop in sales in 2009 after record sales of $710 million in 2008.
Cuba imports about 60 percent of its food.
The Trade Council said Cuba is turning to countries like China, Russia, France, Canada and Brazil, which offer credit to their clients. Cuba is also buying more from state-run companies, rather than private firms, because it can get better terms.
To read the entire Reuters story, click here. An account by The Miami Herald is here.

Fidel holds court at Martí Memorial theater

For the record, Fidel Castro was up and around in Havana on Monday, placing flowers at the José Martí monument and being both host and guest of honor at a gathering in the Martí Memorial theater.
To the invitees, he recounted reminiscences and delivered predictions, all of which may be found, with photographs and videos, in the official Cubadebate website.
(In one photo, shown here, Castro is seen greeting relatives of his late comrade-in-arms Juan Almeida Bosque, whose son, Juan Almeida García, has been trying very hard to move abroad, alleging medical reasons. His exit visa has been denied.)
[UPDATE: "The Strategic Victory," a book by Fidel Castro, will be published "in a few short days," the author says in the Cubavisión website.
The book, about the final days of the Batista regime as seen from the Sierra Maestra, has 25 chapters, "abundant photographs of the quality possible under those circumstances, and the pertinent maps."
Click here and read all about it. PHOTO shows Castro and Almeida Sr. in Sierra Maestra days.]
–Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Excerpts from Machado Ventura's speech

Excerpts from speech by First Vice President José Ramón Machado Ventura. Translated by Cuban Colada.
• Comrade Hugo Chávez had planned to be here with the people of Cuba and to speak at this event. That could not be, but we do know that he today leads the heroic Venezuelan people who prepare to respond, as he denounced yesterday afternoon, to the empire's threats against Venezuela's national security and sovereignty, and against his own life.
We reiterate once again our unbreakable solidarity with Venezuela and our condemnation of the deployment of U.S. military bases in Colombia, which endanger peace in the region.
• As Raúl pointed out at the closing of the Congress of the Young Communists Union, "the economic battle constitutes today, more than ever, the main task and the center of the ideological work of the cadres, because the sustainability and preservation of our social system depends on it."
It is not idle to insist that the production of foodstuffs continues to be an essential front of the economic battle, therefore we should continue to give it the maximum priority.