Cuban Colada

The ALBA's sucre bill is no such thing

Those who wonder what the ALBA's newly invented currency looks like need wonder no more.
The SUCRE (acronym for Unit System for Regional Compensation of Payments) is not a bill. It is "a unit of electronic accounting for the financial transactions among the countries that form the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America." It will come into existence in January.
In short, it's an intangible cybercurrency.
The explanation was given by Ernesto Medina, president of the Central Bank of Cuba, to the National Assembly's Committee on Economic Affairs and reported Friday in the daily Granma.
Medina gave the explanation to quell "unfounded rumors that have circulated recently about the imminent use of the sucre as a physical currency" in Cuba and to satisfy people's "interest in knowing its appearance in printed bill and fractional coins."
For the record, Grand Marshal Antonio José de Sucre (1795-1830) was a Venezuelan general and politician who liberated Ecuador and Peru from Spain and was President of Bolivia for two years before his assassination.
–Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Fidel gives Chávez a breakfast sendoff

Fidel Castro paid Hugo Chávez "the visit of the century" when he showed up Tuesday morning, unannounced, at the guest house in Havana where the Venezuelan president was preparing to travel to Denmark for the summit on world climate.
"Yesterday, Fidel arrived at the house where we were preparing the trip to Copenhagen. I had neither had breakfast nor showered," said Chávez in a phone call Wednesday to a Venezuelan radio station.
Chávez said he "flew" into the shower, dressed "in one minute" and then shared breakfast with Castro. The topic of the conversation was the summit in Denmark, he said.
The Cubadebate website, where this news tidbit was reported, did not show a picture of the meeting, using instead a photograph of the two made in January 2007. In fact, the Cuban media have not published any recent pictures of Castro and Chávez, despite their relatively frequent meetings this year.
The last officially released photos of the two were made in June 2008; one appears above. Since then, Chávez's visits to Havana have been illustrated with pictures of him and Raúl Castro.
–Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Chávez pays a 'lightning' visit to Raúl, Fidel after talks with a high-level Cuban mission

Hugo Chávez made an unannounced trip to Havana on Tuesday to meet with Raúl and Fidel Castro, the Venezuelan president said Wednesday in Caracas during a ceremony for the visiting president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“I made a lightning trip to Cuba and spent seven hours yesterday with Fidel going over various topics. We do this with considerable frequency," Chávez said, according to the Venezuelan daily El Universal.
"Fidel told me: 'Tell Ahmadinejad that going to Venezuela is like coming to Cuba, because they're one and the same country,'" Chávez said.
Chávez's trip to the island came two days after he met in Caracas with a top-level Cuban delegation, reportedly to make plans for the summit of ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America) set for Dec. 13-14.
The delegation, led by Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz, vice president of the Council of Ministers, included:
• Jorge Luis Sierra Cruz, vice president of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Transport
• Rodrigo Malmierca Díaz, Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment
• Salvador Pardo Guerra, Minister of the Iron and Steel Industry
• Yadira García Vera, Minister of Basic Industry
• Rogelio Sierra Díaz, Vice Minister of Foreign Relations
• Alberto Rodríguez, Vice Minister of Computer Sciences and Communications
• Rogelio Polanco Fuentes, Ambassador to Venezuela
The Cuban news agency Prensa Latina reported that Chávez's trip was to discuss ALBA-related matters. (PHOTO at left shows Chávez and Raúl Castro at the airport. No pictures of Chávez and Fidel were immediately released.)
–Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Machado attends ALBA parley in Bolivia; so does Russia's Security Council chief

Cuba's First Vice President, José Ramón Machado Ventura, will substitute for Raúl Castro at the Seventh Summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for Our America (ALBA) that begins today Friday (Oct. 16) in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
Other participants are presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, as well as prime ministers Roosevelt Skerrit (Dominica), Ralph Gonsalves (St. Vincent & the Grenadines) and Baldwin Spencer (Antigua & Barbuda). (PHOTO ABOVE shows Machado, at right, and Morales.)
The overthrown Honduran administration of Manuel Zelaya will be represented by Patricia Rodas, Zelaya's foreign minister.
Although not a member of ALBA, Russia sent a group of observers led by Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev, head of the Russian Security Council and former chief of the Federal Security Service (FSB), successor to the KGB. (PHOTO SHOWS him arriving in Cochabamba). "I came to listen," he told Bolivian journalists at the airport.
Patrushev was accompanied by a delegation of Russian businessmen who are participating in a trade conference parallel to the ALBA summit.
–Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Author: Posada informed on Bosch, others

Luis Posada Carriles informed the CIA about the activities not only of Jorge Mas Canosa but also of fellow anti-Castroite Orlando Bosch, journalist Ann Louise Bardach tells in her new book, "Without Fidel."
News that Posada informed on his colleagues to the CIA in the 1960s surfaced this week, when the National Security Archive released CIA memos that say that, in June 1965, Mas Canosa had offered to provide explosives and demolition experts to blow up "a Soviet or Cuban vessel in Veracruz, Mexico."
(See our Oct. 6 blog item "National Security Archive releases new CIA-Posada docs.")
"On 25 June," the CIA documents say, Posada told the CIA "that he had received $5,000 from Mas Canosa [...] to cover the expenses of a demolition operation in Mexico."
In an e-mail Thursday to Cuban Colada, Bardach wrote that "an interesting complement to the NSA memo on Posada snitching on Mas Canosa is the fact that he also informed on Orlando Bosch, among others."
Bardach cited passages in her book (pp. 153-154) that quote a Posada associate, Joaquín Chaffardet, as saying that "Luis never trusted Bosch because he said there was nothing [Bosch] wouldn't do."
"According to Chaffardet, Posada often fretted that Bosch was dangerously out of control," Bardach wrote in her book. "So concerned, his friend said, that he alerted authorities in Caracas and in the U.S."
Chaffardet told Bardach that "he had 'no doubt' that Posada was the source of a chilling June 1976 CIA memo entitled 'Possible Plans of Cuban Exile Extremists to Blow Up a Cubana Airliner.'" The memo, which gave its source as a "usually reliable businessman," warned the agency that operatives led by Bosch "plan to place a bomb on a Cubana Airlines flight traveling between Panama and Havana."
"As it turned out, Posada had been providing information to the CIA and DISIP for years," the Bardach book said. DISIP is the acronym for Venezuela's Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services.
In her e-mail to Cuban Colada, Bardach wrote that "if the CIA or DISIP had listened to Posada, the Cubana Airlines bombing [Oct. 6, 1976] might not have happened." And she closed with an understatement: "It's a very curious matter and not a black-and-white deal."
To read the CIA memos, click here. For an Associated Press account of Posada's dual role, click here.
–Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Chávez tells of visit to 'great father' Fidel

Excerpt from article by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, published Sunday in the website of Radio Nacional de Venezuela. Translated by The Miami Herald. (For background, read previous blog item, "Chávez surprises Fidel with birthday visit.")
Having just marked his 83rd birthday on Thursday 13 August, Fidel remains on the first line of battle; he has never left it and never will. From the trench of ideas, this great father of the revolutionary men and women of Our America continues to guide us. His words are more than ever necessary and enlightening now, when the empire counterattacks.
We were there with him, as a family, in an enjoyable seven-hour chat, analyzing, reading, remembering, visualizing the horizon and its dangers, reviving the flame that encourages us in this hard struggle for the liberation of our homeland.
He told us about his childhood, about the time the three -- Ramón, Raúl and Fidel -- were expelled from school and the principal told his father that "they were the three biggest bandits that had ever gone through that school."
He remembered Caracas, the Plains of Venezuela, the Bolivarian people. He is more informed about what happens here than any of us.
It was early in the afternoon when we said good-bye, along with Raúl, that great comrade and efficient revolutionary leader. We left Fidel behind, standing, immense, his fist in the air and 83 years on his shoulders.
I recalled the poet: "Open your gates, history. We are going in with Fidel. With the horse."
And from afar we shouted as usual: "Motherland, socialism or death!"

Chávez 'surprises' Fidel with birthday visit

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela visited Fidel Castro on his birthday, Chávez said Friday and the daily Granma reported Saturday.
Chávez delivered to Castro a birthday present, charcoal portraits of Cuban patriots José Martí and Francisco de Miranda by Venezuelan painter Edgar Alvarez Estrada.
He also delivered "a few trunks full of Venezuelan products made by socialist factories."
According to the website Cubadebate, the men toasted with Venezuelan "country wine."
Speaking to students at Carabobo University, Chávez said that his arrival Thursday in Havana was a  "surprise" to Fidel. "We were [at his home] until eight at night, with his children, his grandchildren, his wife, and Raúl," he said. "We ate cake, of course."
The visit had not been previously announced.
On Friday, the leaders were joined by Raúl Castro for two working sessions that lasted until early afternoon, when Chávez returned to Caracas, Granma said, without describing the subjects discussed. However, Cubadebate quoted Chávez as saying that "one of the topics we talked most about was the ecology, and we wondered if we still have time to save the earth from the disaster created by the madness of capitalism."
Despite speculation about Fidel's health, the Cuban leader "is absolutely enjoying his mental faculties," Chávez said.
No photographs were immediately released of this meeting. Chávez last visited Fidel on Feb. 20-21 and no pictures were released then.

Editor is appointed envoy to Venezuela

Rogelio Polanco Fuentes, editor of the newspaper Juventud Rebelde, was appointed Cuba's Ambassador to Venezuela, the daily Granma reported Wednesday. Polanco replaces Germán Sánchez Otero, who served in Caracas for 15 years. Sánchez did "an outstanding job" and "will be assigned other tasks," the paper said.
"In the past five years, Polanco Fuentes has carried out important missions related to the Bolivarian Revolution" in Venezuela, Granma said, without providing details.
Polanco holds a degree in International Political Relations from the Raúl Roa García Institute of Foreign Relations (1990). He represented Cuba in the International Students Union and headed the International Relations Department of the Young Communists Union. He is a National Assembly deputy for Holguín province.
Polanco has been identified by Cuba-watchers as one of "the Talibans," or Communist Party leaders in their 30s or 40s who are hardline followers of Fidel Castro. He appears regularly on TV, expounding the gains of the Revolution. Here's an excerpt from an interview in May 2006 with the BBC World Service. The host was Nick Caistor.
Polanco: We think that in five, ten years, we'll find more equality, more justice. We will find more participation in the decision-making [process], we will find --
Caistor: More participation by your generation, will they be more in positions of power, do you think?
Polanco: We are already part of the decision-making. You will find very young ministers, very young people in the Assembly. Me, myself, I'm a member of the Cuban Parliament.
Caistor: When do you think that the real change of generation in power will happen?
Polanco: I think this is already happening, and this is the most important thing. We are not having the problem that other socialist countries had. There was a problem of generation. Now, this is the strength of the Cuban revolution.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Chávez compares Fidel to Simón Bolívar

Fidel Castro is "one of the 20th-Century liberators," just like Simón Bolívar was in the 19th Century, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez told university graduates in Caracas on Tuesday, as he corrected a slip of the tongue.
"I was telling Bolívar ... no, Fidel ... well, Fidel is like Bolívar," Chávez said, according to the Venezuelan daily El Nacional. "Fidel is like Bolívar, one of the 20th-Century liberators, one of the fathers of the revolution, father of the peoples, father of the motherland."
Chávez frequently cites Venezuelan patriot Simón Bolívar (1783-1830), who earned the title of "El Libertador" for his leadership during the wars of emancipation from Spain in which Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia achieved their independence.
Chávez also refers to Castro as his "ideological father" and visits him whenever he goes to Cuba. They last met in Havana on Feb. 20-21. No pictures of that meeting were released; the photo here is from their previous get-together, in June 2008.
---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.