Posted on Saturday, 06.01.13
Mariel port expansion may be economic boost and ecological bust
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com
A $900 million project to expand the Cuban port of Mariel into a
strategic hub for shipping in the Atlantic has been painted in Havana as
the country's best opportunity in decades to set a new course for its
stagnant economy.
It might also be an ecological calamity, the latest in a series of
schemes by Cuba's all-powerful communist government to boost its
economic development at the expense of its nature, according to experts
on the island's environment.
The Mariel project has killed nearly 10 acres of mangroves in the bay
and silted the waters of the bay and one of the rivers that feeds into
it, said Eudel Cepero, a Cuba-born environmental consultant and activist
in Miami.
Working from satellite photos of Mariel available on Google Earth,
Cepero said he also measured 20 acres of coves within the bay filled in
to expand the port's container and other land operations, and 25 acres
of surrounding land quarried for fill.
Cepero acknowledged that without a first-hand study of Mariel — the
starting point of the 1980 boatlift that brought more than 125,000
Cubans to U.S. shores — he cannot definitively establish the
environmental damage.
"But if you kill 10 acres of mangrove in the Florida Keys, there's a
revolution," said Cepero, a lecturer at the University of Miami and
Miami-Dade College. "That would be like destroying an entire eco-system."
"What's going on (in Mariel) certainly seems alarming," said Sergio
Diaz-Briquets, a Washington-based consultant who co-authored a book on
the island's environmental record, "Conquering Nature."
Cuba usually gets high marks from the international environmental
community for its regulatory framework and the pristine condition of
many of its national preserves, especially along its southern coastline.
About one-quarter of its land and marine habitats are legally protected,
one of the highest percentages in the world. And Havana has signed many
of the key international agreements and declarations on the environment.
Yet, like other developing countries, the government at times has tossed
aside environmental and other concerns over projects considered to be
strategically needed for economic growth, said Diaz-Briquets.
"The reality is that in the situation that Cuba faces, with economic
difficulties, the question becomes whether that (regulatory) framework
can be enforced when the very survival of the revolution is at stake,"
he said.
The Mariel project is a "once in a century" chance to set a winning
development strategy for the country and "probably the biggest
investment project today in Cuba," Havana economist Pedro Monreal wrote
in a column last month.
Once completed next year, he argued, the mega-port could easily become a
hub for shipping all along the Atlantic, an area expected to grow
following the expansion of the Panama Canal that is due to be completed
in 2015.
Mariel will have space for 3 million cargo containers, a duty-free zone
that could serve the entire Caribbean and bonded assembly plants —
"maquiladoras" — that could produce goods for Latin America and Europe,
according to official Havana reports.
"No one is thinking about the environment. This is always about jobs and
money," said Dan Kipnis, a Miami activist who has fought the ongoing
dredging of the port of Miami. "Why would Cuba be any different?"
But Cuba is very different.
For one, the Western Hemisphere's lone ruling Communist Party runs a
top-down system in which agencies and the state monopoly on the media
can be ordered to overlook or hide any problems with the Mariel project,
said Diaz-Briquets.
Cuba also has no known independent environmental activists who can
monitor the project. Cepero started the Around Cuba Environmental Agency
in 1996 to report on such issues but fled the island four years later.
It was never recognized by the government.
"In Cuba it's the same government that's doing the construction and the
monitoring, so there's no independent review," said Cepero. "Where's the
independent check? Well it's in these satellite photos that anyone can
see on Google Earth."
Havana has not revealed any details on the environmental impact of the
Mariel project. And the Brazilian government, which is financing $640
million of the $900 million price tag, said last month its agreement
with Cuba requires the details be kept secret.
The environmental impact statement for the port of Miami dredging is two
inches thick and publicly available. A dozen federal and state agencies,
as well as non-government environmental activists, are monitoring the
project.
Brazil's state-owned National Bank for Economic and Social Development
(NBESD), which is providing the financing, did not answer El Nuevo
Herald's detailed questions about Mariel but emailed the newspaper a
brief statement.
"As in any operation that deals with exports of Brazilian goods and
services that we finance, in the case of the Mariel project we abide by
local environmental regulations," bank spokesman Paulo Braga wrote in
the statement.
The bank's web page asserts that a "responsible social and environmental
work is indispensable for development … Based on this vision (the bank)
embraces socio-environmental development as an issue that cuts across
all its activities."
Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction firm carrying out the Mariel
expansion — as well as the expansion of parts of Miami International
Airport, said the Cuban government was in charge of all pre-construction
research, such as environmental impact statements.
"Companhia de Obras em Infraestrutura (COI), an Odebrecht independent
special purpose entity engaged in the development and execution of
infrastructure projects in Cuba, is not responsible for any preliminary
study concerning the Port of Mariel. All previously researches of this
project were developed by the Cuban government," said a statement to El
Nuevo.
Cuban diplomats in Washington did not reply to requests for comment.
Brazil is Cuba's second-largest commercial partner in Latin America
after Venezuela, with bilateral trade topping $624 million in 2008.
Relations improved further after President Dilma Rousseff took power in
2011.
Mariel is a so-called "pocket bay" 28 miles west of Havana, with a
1,066-foot wide mouth opening into a bay 2.8 miles long and 2.3 miles
wide, and up to 31 feet deep. The town of Mariel, with a population of
about 43,000, sits on its southeastern end.
A 2008 report by Cuba's Ministry for Science, Technology and the
Environment ranked the bay as slightly contaminated, mostly by untreated
sewage from the town and spills from its port operations.
Cuba saw its share of environmental misadventures under former ruler
Fidel Castro, notorious for his recklessly impulsive ideas on economic
development throughout his nearly half-century in power.
Just six weeks after he seized power in 1959, Castro announced that he
was preparing to drain the Zapata Swamp, rich in myriad types of
wildlife, and turn it into farmland. A number of acres were drained, but
the project was shortly abandoned.
In the 1960s, Castro ordered virtually every river dammed for
irrigation, under the slogan "not one drop wasted." Diaz-Briquets said
it was likely that saltwater encroachment increased and brackish waters
receded, impacting coastal habitats.
In 1985, he ordered construction of a 65-mile "Southern dyke" along the
southern coast of Havana province to block the infiltration of saltwater
and the loss of freshwater. Pollutants from agricultural runoff
accumulated on the land side of the dyke, killing acres of mangrove.
And in the 1990s, a 12-mile stone causeway was built across the shallow
waters of the Bay of Dogs off the north central coast to make it easier
to shuttle larger numbers of tourists to the Cayo Coco resort. The
causeway cut off tidal flows, salinity spiked and oxygen dropped, and
the bay became a lifeless body. Later modifications reportedly improved
the water flow, but the results are not publicly known.
The bays of Moa and Nuevitas on the northeastern coast have been
reported to be highly contaminated by pollution from nickel processing
plants and other industries. The state news media monopoly has published
little on those cases.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/01/v-fullstory/3428522/mariel-port-expansion-may-be-economic.html
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Cubans Prefer Shortcuts to Get on the Web
Cubans Prefer Shortcuts to Get on the Web / Luis Felipe Rojas
Posted on June 1, 2013
Cuba's Ministry of Communications has announced the opening of a hundred
Internet cybercafes throughout the whole country for June 4. The
official press informs us there will be a doubling of the navigation
capacity and a reduction of 1.50 CUC in the price per hour (to 4.50 CUC,
or a little more than $4.50 US), if we compare it to the previous 6 CUC
per hour it cost for an access card.
With the implementation of the 118 centers, government officials
announced an increase to more than 334 computers with internet access.
This is a ridiculous figure when taking into account that about 68,000
specialists from the Ministry of Health use email and the Internet, who
in turn sell it "under the table" at prices ranging between 30 and 60
CUC per month. The same applies to journalists, intellectuals and other
employees of ministries and state enterprises that have access to the
Internet from their homes and who, with this practice, earn extra money
while helping to scale up access to the network among Cubans.
For the small business owner in Cuba is still more profitable to rent
email accounts and Internet service "under the table" in the interstices
of the black market. At the distance of a click or a discreet phone call
it's possible to have sixty or ninety hours a month, according to their
needs. Use of public Internet sites for businesses such as real estate,
sales of various items, and rooms rentals is infrequent. A domestic
connection remains the ideal way.
Illegal Internet cafes, which operate at rates between 1 and 2 CUC per
hour, will not be affected by this measure that is announced as one more
reform of the Revolution, because payment rates, although they have
fallen by a third, will still be prohibitive for most people, if we
consider that the minimum wage is about 220 Cuban pesos per month and a
connection card cost 112 Cuban pesos for an hour.
Email service is commonly used for messaging with family and friends
abroad, in these rooms you can see the long lines of girls waiting for
their turn to communicate with their foreign boyfriends or suitors.
Those who want to have a more secure communication, rarely use the email
service sold by the State.
Another innovation is the implementation of the e-mail "@nauta" with
international reach with storage capacity of up to 50MB.
In the flood of information coming from the main official newspapers,
nothing appears about about the restrictions on sites opposing
government policies. Magazines and newspapers showing the daily life of
the Cuban reality are sometimes censored by the controllers of the
national servers.
The famous "Operation Truth," where restless kids from Computer Science
University launch daily attacks on the social networks in search of new
dreamers with the revolutionary project, has sharpened its weapons.
For over five years the "Hermanos Saiz" Association offered young
artists and writers the possibility of a fixed line, computer, and a fee
to pay the telephone bill in exchange for "combatting" inconvenient
intellectuals, wandering daily through the social forums to convince
Internet users around the world of the revolutionary benefits and to
submit a monthly report of their cybernetic fidelity.
With proceeds from one 11-hour session, the 118 Internet rooms should
report an average of half a million CUC at least, assuming a massive
influx to the connection spots, but with the rising cost of everyday
life, connecting to the Web is still a luxury that few can afford if
they use only the services the State provides.
30 May 2013
http://translatingcuba.com/cubans-prefer-shortcuts-to-get-on-the-web-luis-felipe-rojas/
Posted on June 1, 2013
Cuba's Ministry of Communications has announced the opening of a hundred
Internet cybercafes throughout the whole country for June 4. The
official press informs us there will be a doubling of the navigation
capacity and a reduction of 1.50 CUC in the price per hour (to 4.50 CUC,
or a little more than $4.50 US), if we compare it to the previous 6 CUC
per hour it cost for an access card.
With the implementation of the 118 centers, government officials
announced an increase to more than 334 computers with internet access.
This is a ridiculous figure when taking into account that about 68,000
specialists from the Ministry of Health use email and the Internet, who
in turn sell it "under the table" at prices ranging between 30 and 60
CUC per month. The same applies to journalists, intellectuals and other
employees of ministries and state enterprises that have access to the
Internet from their homes and who, with this practice, earn extra money
while helping to scale up access to the network among Cubans.
For the small business owner in Cuba is still more profitable to rent
email accounts and Internet service "under the table" in the interstices
of the black market. At the distance of a click or a discreet phone call
it's possible to have sixty or ninety hours a month, according to their
needs. Use of public Internet sites for businesses such as real estate,
sales of various items, and rooms rentals is infrequent. A domestic
connection remains the ideal way.
Illegal Internet cafes, which operate at rates between 1 and 2 CUC per
hour, will not be affected by this measure that is announced as one more
reform of the Revolution, because payment rates, although they have
fallen by a third, will still be prohibitive for most people, if we
consider that the minimum wage is about 220 Cuban pesos per month and a
connection card cost 112 Cuban pesos for an hour.
Email service is commonly used for messaging with family and friends
abroad, in these rooms you can see the long lines of girls waiting for
their turn to communicate with their foreign boyfriends or suitors.
Those who want to have a more secure communication, rarely use the email
service sold by the State.
Another innovation is the implementation of the e-mail "@nauta" with
international reach with storage capacity of up to 50MB.
In the flood of information coming from the main official newspapers,
nothing appears about about the restrictions on sites opposing
government policies. Magazines and newspapers showing the daily life of
the Cuban reality are sometimes censored by the controllers of the
national servers.
The famous "Operation Truth," where restless kids from Computer Science
University launch daily attacks on the social networks in search of new
dreamers with the revolutionary project, has sharpened its weapons.
For over five years the "Hermanos Saiz" Association offered young
artists and writers the possibility of a fixed line, computer, and a fee
to pay the telephone bill in exchange for "combatting" inconvenient
intellectuals, wandering daily through the social forums to convince
Internet users around the world of the revolutionary benefits and to
submit a monthly report of their cybernetic fidelity.
With proceeds from one 11-hour session, the 118 Internet rooms should
report an average of half a million CUC at least, assuming a massive
influx to the connection spots, but with the rising cost of everyday
life, connecting to the Web is still a luxury that few can afford if
they use only the services the State provides.
30 May 2013
http://translatingcuba.com/cubans-prefer-shortcuts-to-get-on-the-web-luis-felipe-rojas/
A specter is haunting Cuba
A specter is haunting Cuba
Analysis: Prosperity, once unthinkable in Cuba, looms as the largest
threat to the Castro regime.
CARDENAS, Cuba — A specter is haunting Cuba: the specter of prosperity.
This terrifies Cuban leaders.
"Prosperity" has an appealing sound. Many ordinary Cubans, especially
the young, yearn for it. Their Communist leaders have responded with
reforms that now give them more chance for material self-improvement
than they have known in decades.
The change is astonishing. Streets are lined with private businesses,
ranging from shops and cafes to computer schools to yoga and aerobics
studios. Along highways, vendors hawk fish and vegetables. This would
have been unthinkable a few years ago.
Few Cubans are happy with the change, though. Many think it is far too
limited. Regulations still make it difficult for them to hire employees
and buy supplies. Businesses must stay small; people call them "bonsai
businesses" after the Asian plants that never grow beyond miniature size.
This frustrates the remarkable number of Cubans who are eager to become
entrepreneurs. They wish the government would cast aside its fears and
liberate the economy.
"Something in the minds of our leaders makes them hate the thought that
someone might get rich," observed the barber who shaved me in the
provincial town of Cardenas.
He was right, but the regime's fears are understandable.
Senior Cuban leaders, symbolized by Fidel and Raul Castro, were forged
in the crucible of Marxist ideology and spent their lives considering
capitalism a cruel enemy of humanity. They rebelled against social
inequality as young men, saw the suffering that enveloped many
capitalist countries in Latin America, and were appalled by the
emergence of rapacious oligarchy in Russia after privatization in the 1990s.
Almost literally on the back of their necks, they feel the eager breath
of what some call the "Miami mafia," wealthy Cuban Americans who dream
that investing in Cuban businesses could be their path to power in their
ancestral homeland.
Legalizing larger-scale private business in Cuba would have profound
political consequences. It would lead to the emergence of a middle
class, and eventually a wealthy class. Such classes always seek to
transform their economic power into political power. Cuban leaders are
acutely aware that an open economy could be the greatest long-term
threat to their revolutionary order.
This makes the US trade embargo on Cuba even more self-defeating than it
has been for the last half-century. It is among the most bizarre
American foreign policies. No other country in the world has cut itself
off from Cuba. Lifting the embargo would hasten the kind of change most
Americans — and most Cubans — would like to see in Cuba. Paralyzed by
fear of the Cuban vote in Florida, however, generations of American
politicians have refused to take this eminently logical step.
In today's Cuba, life is shaped by access to hard currency. This has led
to a ludicrous distortion of the social order. A surgeon, who by the
nature of his profession may work only for the state, is paid in Cuban
pesos and earns the equivalent of $30 per month. A waiter in a tourist
restaurant, paid in hard currency, can earn that in a day. So can
performers who dress up in garish caricature of old Cuban dancers and,
for a fee, allow themselves to be photographed kissing tipsy tourists in
the colonial plazas of Old Havana.
Some Cuban parents, I was told, now discourage their children from
pursuing a profession like medicine or engineering because there is no
money in it. Bartenders live better. "Our pyramid is inverted," one man
told me.
Access to hard currency has made Cardenas, on Cuba's north coast, one of
the island's most prosperous towns. Its wealth comes from two sources.
Many local people work in one of the 50 hotels that comprise the nearby
tourist enclave at Varadero Beach, and bring home tips that place them
among the country's highest earners. In addition, the town's location
has tempted many local people to risk the boat or raft trip to Florida,
and those who have made it send dollars back to their relatives.
Yet this is a sobering kind of prosperity. Nearly every building in
Cardenas is somewhere between deteriorating and collapsed. The pace of
life is languid to the point of lassitude. As in the rest of Cuba, all
children attend school, are clothed, and eat reasonably well, and there
is no acute poverty — an irrefutable achievement. Yet Cardenas reflects
the poverty of hope and opportunity that grips much of Cuba today.
Strolling along the town's main street, Calle Real, I stopped to chat
with a young man named Alexei who was sitting at a makeshift table in
front of his bedroom window. A sign said he could repair and unblock
cellphones.
"I'm an engineer," he told me. "After I finished school, I did my two
years of social service at a radio plant. Now I'd like to keep working
as an engineer. It's humiliating to work fixing cellphones, but this is
the way to earn money. I have to think of my family."
I asked Alexei when he thought true change would come to Cuba. "Medium
term — 10 to 15 years," he estimated. Another Cuban, also around 30,
told me, "five years."
Alexei is forbidden to open a second shop, or to hire more than one
employee. This is supposed to prevent Cuba's new reforms from burgeoning
into full-fledged capitalism. In the same vein, it is now legal for
Cubans to buy and sell cars — but no one may open a lot at which cars
would be bought and sold in volume, since that crosses the line into
"big" or "exploitative" business.
Cubans do not appear to be in an angry or pre-revolutionary state. Many
seem complacent, submissive, or resigned. They are used to hard times.
Even their frustration at the limits of Cuban life has not blinded them
to the successes of their society. A young novelist who is a sharp
social critic told me after returning from a trip to France: "I saw some
very tough things, like people living in the street, and it made me think."
The expanding definition of what is tolerable in economic life has its
counterpart in a remarkable opening of the Cuban mind. Never in the last
half century has world culture crashed so fully into Cuba.
Gay life is flourishing. So is hip-hop culture. Kids play paintball.
There are cutting-edge Cuban tattoo artists, surfers, and installation
artists. Soccer is emerging to challenge baseball. The Union Jack is a
fashion icon. In Havana, crowds of hip young things congregate on
weekend evenings along the central blocks of 23rd Street, gravitating
into groups of "rockers" and "emos."
Cuba is settling into the pattern that will shape its national life for
the next few years. Private business will continue to flourish, but only
at a low level. Government will accommodate the public demand for change
to the minimum extent possible. The seeds of longer-term change are
being sown.
"This country is becoming more diverse and heterogeneous every day,"
Roberto Zurbano, a dreadlocked Cuban intellectual, told me at his
book-lined office near the Havana waterfront. "There is a closer
identification between social discourse and government discourse. We're
moving toward a single society with a coherent social and economic
project. Our challenge is to find a way to steer a socialist ship in a
capitalist sea."
It is a noble but daunting challenge. Strong forces, many born of
legitimate fears, hold Cuba back. A young man in the provincial capital
of Matanzas explained this to me indirectly but vividly.
"See that fishbowl?" he asked when I dropped into his office. "Those two
goldfish are more than 50 years old." I told him that sounded unlikely.
"Resisten y resisten," he assured me. "They go on and on."
Slow to get the joke, I told him I still doubted it.
"Their names," he said with a wry smile, "are Fidel and Raul."
Editor's note: This spring, Boston University journalism and photography
students made a weeklong trip to Cuba. By special arrangement,
GlobalPost is presenting six stories that emerged from their trip. The
introductory piece is by Stephen Kinzer, the former New York Times
foreign correspondent who was the students' journalism professor. The
five that follow were written by his students. Photos were taken by
students working under the guidance of prize-winning photographer
Essdras Suarez.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/cuba/130506/specter-prosperity-haunting-cuba
Analysis: Prosperity, once unthinkable in Cuba, looms as the largest
threat to the Castro regime.
CARDENAS, Cuba — A specter is haunting Cuba: the specter of prosperity.
This terrifies Cuban leaders.
"Prosperity" has an appealing sound. Many ordinary Cubans, especially
the young, yearn for it. Their Communist leaders have responded with
reforms that now give them more chance for material self-improvement
than they have known in decades.
The change is astonishing. Streets are lined with private businesses,
ranging from shops and cafes to computer schools to yoga and aerobics
studios. Along highways, vendors hawk fish and vegetables. This would
have been unthinkable a few years ago.
Few Cubans are happy with the change, though. Many think it is far too
limited. Regulations still make it difficult for them to hire employees
and buy supplies. Businesses must stay small; people call them "bonsai
businesses" after the Asian plants that never grow beyond miniature size.
This frustrates the remarkable number of Cubans who are eager to become
entrepreneurs. They wish the government would cast aside its fears and
liberate the economy.
"Something in the minds of our leaders makes them hate the thought that
someone might get rich," observed the barber who shaved me in the
provincial town of Cardenas.
He was right, but the regime's fears are understandable.
Senior Cuban leaders, symbolized by Fidel and Raul Castro, were forged
in the crucible of Marxist ideology and spent their lives considering
capitalism a cruel enemy of humanity. They rebelled against social
inequality as young men, saw the suffering that enveloped many
capitalist countries in Latin America, and were appalled by the
emergence of rapacious oligarchy in Russia after privatization in the 1990s.
Almost literally on the back of their necks, they feel the eager breath
of what some call the "Miami mafia," wealthy Cuban Americans who dream
that investing in Cuban businesses could be their path to power in their
ancestral homeland.
Legalizing larger-scale private business in Cuba would have profound
political consequences. It would lead to the emergence of a middle
class, and eventually a wealthy class. Such classes always seek to
transform their economic power into political power. Cuban leaders are
acutely aware that an open economy could be the greatest long-term
threat to their revolutionary order.
This makes the US trade embargo on Cuba even more self-defeating than it
has been for the last half-century. It is among the most bizarre
American foreign policies. No other country in the world has cut itself
off from Cuba. Lifting the embargo would hasten the kind of change most
Americans — and most Cubans — would like to see in Cuba. Paralyzed by
fear of the Cuban vote in Florida, however, generations of American
politicians have refused to take this eminently logical step.
In today's Cuba, life is shaped by access to hard currency. This has led
to a ludicrous distortion of the social order. A surgeon, who by the
nature of his profession may work only for the state, is paid in Cuban
pesos and earns the equivalent of $30 per month. A waiter in a tourist
restaurant, paid in hard currency, can earn that in a day. So can
performers who dress up in garish caricature of old Cuban dancers and,
for a fee, allow themselves to be photographed kissing tipsy tourists in
the colonial plazas of Old Havana.
Some Cuban parents, I was told, now discourage their children from
pursuing a profession like medicine or engineering because there is no
money in it. Bartenders live better. "Our pyramid is inverted," one man
told me.
Access to hard currency has made Cardenas, on Cuba's north coast, one of
the island's most prosperous towns. Its wealth comes from two sources.
Many local people work in one of the 50 hotels that comprise the nearby
tourist enclave at Varadero Beach, and bring home tips that place them
among the country's highest earners. In addition, the town's location
has tempted many local people to risk the boat or raft trip to Florida,
and those who have made it send dollars back to their relatives.
Yet this is a sobering kind of prosperity. Nearly every building in
Cardenas is somewhere between deteriorating and collapsed. The pace of
life is languid to the point of lassitude. As in the rest of Cuba, all
children attend school, are clothed, and eat reasonably well, and there
is no acute poverty — an irrefutable achievement. Yet Cardenas reflects
the poverty of hope and opportunity that grips much of Cuba today.
Strolling along the town's main street, Calle Real, I stopped to chat
with a young man named Alexei who was sitting at a makeshift table in
front of his bedroom window. A sign said he could repair and unblock
cellphones.
"I'm an engineer," he told me. "After I finished school, I did my two
years of social service at a radio plant. Now I'd like to keep working
as an engineer. It's humiliating to work fixing cellphones, but this is
the way to earn money. I have to think of my family."
I asked Alexei when he thought true change would come to Cuba. "Medium
term — 10 to 15 years," he estimated. Another Cuban, also around 30,
told me, "five years."
Alexei is forbidden to open a second shop, or to hire more than one
employee. This is supposed to prevent Cuba's new reforms from burgeoning
into full-fledged capitalism. In the same vein, it is now legal for
Cubans to buy and sell cars — but no one may open a lot at which cars
would be bought and sold in volume, since that crosses the line into
"big" or "exploitative" business.
Cubans do not appear to be in an angry or pre-revolutionary state. Many
seem complacent, submissive, or resigned. They are used to hard times.
Even their frustration at the limits of Cuban life has not blinded them
to the successes of their society. A young novelist who is a sharp
social critic told me after returning from a trip to France: "I saw some
very tough things, like people living in the street, and it made me think."
The expanding definition of what is tolerable in economic life has its
counterpart in a remarkable opening of the Cuban mind. Never in the last
half century has world culture crashed so fully into Cuba.
Gay life is flourishing. So is hip-hop culture. Kids play paintball.
There are cutting-edge Cuban tattoo artists, surfers, and installation
artists. Soccer is emerging to challenge baseball. The Union Jack is a
fashion icon. In Havana, crowds of hip young things congregate on
weekend evenings along the central blocks of 23rd Street, gravitating
into groups of "rockers" and "emos."
Cuba is settling into the pattern that will shape its national life for
the next few years. Private business will continue to flourish, but only
at a low level. Government will accommodate the public demand for change
to the minimum extent possible. The seeds of longer-term change are
being sown.
"This country is becoming more diverse and heterogeneous every day,"
Roberto Zurbano, a dreadlocked Cuban intellectual, told me at his
book-lined office near the Havana waterfront. "There is a closer
identification between social discourse and government discourse. We're
moving toward a single society with a coherent social and economic
project. Our challenge is to find a way to steer a socialist ship in a
capitalist sea."
It is a noble but daunting challenge. Strong forces, many born of
legitimate fears, hold Cuba back. A young man in the provincial capital
of Matanzas explained this to me indirectly but vividly.
"See that fishbowl?" he asked when I dropped into his office. "Those two
goldfish are more than 50 years old." I told him that sounded unlikely.
"Resisten y resisten," he assured me. "They go on and on."
Slow to get the joke, I told him I still doubted it.
"Their names," he said with a wry smile, "are Fidel and Raul."
Editor's note: This spring, Boston University journalism and photography
students made a weeklong trip to Cuba. By special arrangement,
GlobalPost is presenting six stories that emerged from their trip. The
introductory piece is by Stephen Kinzer, the former New York Times
foreign correspondent who was the students' journalism professor. The
five that follow were written by his students. Photos were taken by
students working under the guidance of prize-winning photographer
Essdras Suarez.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/cuba/130506/specter-prosperity-haunting-cuba
The "Secret Process" Against Graffiti Artist El Sexto
The "Secret Process" Against Graffiti Artist El Sexto / El Sexto –
Danilo Maldonado Machado
Posted on May 31, 2013
By Ernesto Santana
In his five years as a graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado, El Sexto (The
Sixth), has gone through violent and arbitrary arrests, the seizure of
his personal property, threats and other abuses, but has continued to
stamp his works throughout Havana.
State Security has kidnapped him and even taken him to visit Alexis
Leyva, Kcho, an "example of artist" according to them. In vain, El
Sexto, is backsliding and the direct and confrontational tone of his art
grows ever stronger. If at one time he used great ironies such as
"Return my five euros," he now puts "Down With Castro" on a bloody
background or paints a swastika over the face of Fidel Castro.
"I'm like a dog with a bone," says Danilo in conversation with this
reporter, "even though every time they erase my graffiti faster." When
they increased the pressure on him, he decided to combine the marginal
arts of tattoo and graffiti and began to draw on his own skin what he
wanted to denounce; and in addition, as an example of his persistence,
he wrote his signature over the police pink paint-outs over his previous
graffiti.
abajo-castro,,-741206A Spray Can as a Weapon
But they have to catch him in the act to stop him. Simply carrying a
spray can in his pocket, as happened on Friday May 17, when he went with
some friends to buy some beer at the corner of Twenty and G about nine
in the evening. A policeman asked for documentation and took him to the
station at Zapata and C, where he had to wait until the next day to meet
with the chief of the station.
"When I finally talked to him," Danilo said, "he asked me, 'So you're
the one who does all that out there?' I gave him a disc with my work, so
he would know what I was doing. " The reaction was take odor samples
(they tried to get him to give them urine samples, but he declined,
although they disrespected him with extreme rudeness) and they took him
in two patrol cars to make a search of his home.
"They started to take canvases, sprays, a laptop, a camera, memory
cards, discs and unused canvases, and put everything in nylon bags that
said 'Forensics'," El Sexto said. Then they took him back to the police
station and at midnight that same Saturday, the 18th, they returned to
take him to the office of the chief, now absent. "There was a woman who
behaved with very little respect. All my belongings were on a table, any
old way, all mixed up," says Danilo.
SP_A1069-779127The officer informed him that three of his paintings
would be confiscated, as well as templates for stencils, his artistic
projects, thirty-seven enamel spray cans and even four cans of oil paint
and even his resume, arguing that they were objects related to "a crime
under investigation." Then they handed him a record of what had been
seized and released him.
Not Unemployed: Artist
Two days later, El Sexto started a legal process with an attorney to get
them to return what they had seized him, because when they searched his
home and confiscated objects, he was not given a copy of what
confiscated, as dictated by the procedures. "Why did they return some
works and not others?" the graffiti artist asked. "Why did they keep the
spray paint that I bought at State stores? They did what they felt like,
violating many things," he said.
He had been branded unemployed and he had replied: "I am an artist,
although I am not your artist. I'm not here to worship any god. I have
the right to criticize and say what I want." And it was more clear when
he told the police: "You're not talking about some revolution, but a
phalanx who loves the F of Fidel. It is illegal for me to paint the
walls, but not to write "Long live Fidel" or "In line with Fidel"
without asking anyone. Why do I have to check with you to say something?"
fidel-fasisssta-729672The Secret Process
Determined not to be passed over, he will continue to demand the return
of his works. "I did not kill anyone, I am an honest person, I live in
my work and my wife is pregnant," he pointed out to the officer. "In
fact, my greatest endorsement is what you do, punishing me, which
confirms that I'm doing my job. How ironic."
When the informed his attorney that a file had been opened on his
client, the counsel asked what he was accused of, and the only response,
according to what Danilo said, "they told him they couldn't tell him,
because it was a secret process. I insisted, but the only thing they
told me was "soon" they would tell me what I was accused of. They
alleged that it was a falsehood that they'd made an accusation and that
I had refused to sign it. But we wrote letters of complaint and
delivered them to the appropriate places," Danilo Maldonado concluded.
escupeloThe Criminal Value of the Artwork
From these events, Otari Oliva, one of the project coordinators of
Christ the Saviour Gallery (which did a great series of exhibitions of
Cuban graffiti between September and November), wrote a text setting out
his concerns as an artist: "The situation of El Sexto makes me reflect:
a work of art can possess criminal value and this is referred to in the
criminal code of my country. Starting today I would like to be able to
determine, as I can determine the criminal value of certain acts, the
criminal value which may lie in a work of art." And then he made his
position clear: "Either the criminal code will be adequate and judgment
will be pronounced from an exercise in transparency, clarifying for
Danilo and everyone the reasoning of the authorities, or we are
dangerously close to a burning pyre of books, in addition to the hands
of our artists trembling perhaps a little more from now on."
Either way, El Sexto does not have among his plans, backing down. In the
coarse search they did of his home, the experts like a bag with the word
"Forensics" printed on it, which he now thinks of using to create a
work. A gift that they gave him to continue honing his art.
Photos courtesy of Ernesto Santana. Originally published on Cubanet.
30 May 2013
http://translatingcuba.com/the-secret-process-against-graffiti-artist-el-sexto-el-sexto-danilo-maldonado-machado/
Danilo Maldonado Machado
Posted on May 31, 2013
By Ernesto Santana
In his five years as a graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado, El Sexto (The
Sixth), has gone through violent and arbitrary arrests, the seizure of
his personal property, threats and other abuses, but has continued to
stamp his works throughout Havana.
State Security has kidnapped him and even taken him to visit Alexis
Leyva, Kcho, an "example of artist" according to them. In vain, El
Sexto, is backsliding and the direct and confrontational tone of his art
grows ever stronger. If at one time he used great ironies such as
"Return my five euros," he now puts "Down With Castro" on a bloody
background or paints a swastika over the face of Fidel Castro.
"I'm like a dog with a bone," says Danilo in conversation with this
reporter, "even though every time they erase my graffiti faster." When
they increased the pressure on him, he decided to combine the marginal
arts of tattoo and graffiti and began to draw on his own skin what he
wanted to denounce; and in addition, as an example of his persistence,
he wrote his signature over the police pink paint-outs over his previous
graffiti.
abajo-castro,,-741206A Spray Can as a Weapon
But they have to catch him in the act to stop him. Simply carrying a
spray can in his pocket, as happened on Friday May 17, when he went with
some friends to buy some beer at the corner of Twenty and G about nine
in the evening. A policeman asked for documentation and took him to the
station at Zapata and C, where he had to wait until the next day to meet
with the chief of the station.
"When I finally talked to him," Danilo said, "he asked me, 'So you're
the one who does all that out there?' I gave him a disc with my work, so
he would know what I was doing. " The reaction was take odor samples
(they tried to get him to give them urine samples, but he declined,
although they disrespected him with extreme rudeness) and they took him
in two patrol cars to make a search of his home.
"They started to take canvases, sprays, a laptop, a camera, memory
cards, discs and unused canvases, and put everything in nylon bags that
said 'Forensics'," El Sexto said. Then they took him back to the police
station and at midnight that same Saturday, the 18th, they returned to
take him to the office of the chief, now absent. "There was a woman who
behaved with very little respect. All my belongings were on a table, any
old way, all mixed up," says Danilo.
SP_A1069-779127The officer informed him that three of his paintings
would be confiscated, as well as templates for stencils, his artistic
projects, thirty-seven enamel spray cans and even four cans of oil paint
and even his resume, arguing that they were objects related to "a crime
under investigation." Then they handed him a record of what had been
seized and released him.
Not Unemployed: Artist
Two days later, El Sexto started a legal process with an attorney to get
them to return what they had seized him, because when they searched his
home and confiscated objects, he was not given a copy of what
confiscated, as dictated by the procedures. "Why did they return some
works and not others?" the graffiti artist asked. "Why did they keep the
spray paint that I bought at State stores? They did what they felt like,
violating many things," he said.
He had been branded unemployed and he had replied: "I am an artist,
although I am not your artist. I'm not here to worship any god. I have
the right to criticize and say what I want." And it was more clear when
he told the police: "You're not talking about some revolution, but a
phalanx who loves the F of Fidel. It is illegal for me to paint the
walls, but not to write "Long live Fidel" or "In line with Fidel"
without asking anyone. Why do I have to check with you to say something?"
fidel-fasisssta-729672The Secret Process
Determined not to be passed over, he will continue to demand the return
of his works. "I did not kill anyone, I am an honest person, I live in
my work and my wife is pregnant," he pointed out to the officer. "In
fact, my greatest endorsement is what you do, punishing me, which
confirms that I'm doing my job. How ironic."
When the informed his attorney that a file had been opened on his
client, the counsel asked what he was accused of, and the only response,
according to what Danilo said, "they told him they couldn't tell him,
because it was a secret process. I insisted, but the only thing they
told me was "soon" they would tell me what I was accused of. They
alleged that it was a falsehood that they'd made an accusation and that
I had refused to sign it. But we wrote letters of complaint and
delivered them to the appropriate places," Danilo Maldonado concluded.
escupeloThe Criminal Value of the Artwork
From these events, Otari Oliva, one of the project coordinators of
Christ the Saviour Gallery (which did a great series of exhibitions of
Cuban graffiti between September and November), wrote a text setting out
his concerns as an artist: "The situation of El Sexto makes me reflect:
a work of art can possess criminal value and this is referred to in the
criminal code of my country. Starting today I would like to be able to
determine, as I can determine the criminal value of certain acts, the
criminal value which may lie in a work of art." And then he made his
position clear: "Either the criminal code will be adequate and judgment
will be pronounced from an exercise in transparency, clarifying for
Danilo and everyone the reasoning of the authorities, or we are
dangerously close to a burning pyre of books, in addition to the hands
of our artists trembling perhaps a little more from now on."
Either way, El Sexto does not have among his plans, backing down. In the
coarse search they did of his home, the experts like a bag with the word
"Forensics" printed on it, which he now thinks of using to create a
work. A gift that they gave him to continue honing his art.
Photos courtesy of Ernesto Santana. Originally published on Cubanet.
30 May 2013
http://translatingcuba.com/the-secret-process-against-graffiti-artist-el-sexto-el-sexto-danilo-maldonado-machado/
BBC Analyzes What "Expanded Internet Access" Really Means For Cuba
BBC Analyzes What "Expanded Internet Access" Really Means For Cuba
Posted on May 31, 2013
This post is from the Havana Times, and is an authorized translation
prepared by that site of an article that appeared in the BBC's El Mundo.
A summary is the statistics is as follows:
In a country of over 11 million people, the new internet (mostly
intranet) access will consist of:
1 cybercafe for every 65,000 people (assuming 8 million potential users).
334 computers for the entire country, operating 11 hours a day, for
3,674 hours of computer time, daily, for the entire nation.
If only 10% of the population wants to get on-line, each individual will
be able to do so once every six months.
If 8 million of the 11+ million Cubans want to get on-line, each person
will be able to do so once every 5 years.
If one individual could connect for one hour a day, it would cost them
$135/month (U.S.) — nearly 7 times their monthly wages (or more, for
lower wage workers).
All use will be monitored, and any user who violates the "norms" will be
cut off. No politics, no sex.
Revolico.com — Cuba's "Craiglist" — is blocked.
No one under 18 will be admitted. (Forget homework help, students.)
Cuba's New Cybercafés: A Piecemeal Strategy
HAVANA TIMES — Next month, 118 public Internet access points will open
across Cuba, something which Cubans, one would expect, ought to regard
as rather good news. Though any step in the right direction should be
applauded, it would be remiss not to gauge the real impact this measure
will have on the island.
Supposing that there are 8 million young people and adults across Cuba
who are interested in using the Internet, we would have one cybercafé
for every 65 thousand people. You would see line-ups of people longer
than those that would gather outside bodegas if they began handing out
beef rations again.
With a total of 334 computer consoles around the country, the cybercafés
will be open 11 hours a day. If every user were to navigate for only an
hour, a mere 3,700 people would be able to access the Internet a day. If
we maintain our initial figure of 8 million potential Internet users,
people would get to connect once every 5 years.
Even if we assume I am exaggerating and that only 10% of this
hypothetical population wants to use the Internet, each person would
have access to the web only once every six months. And Cuba's phone
company, ETECSA, needed all of two years to take this bold step, from
the date in which the installation of an underwater fiber-optic cable
between Cuba and Venezuela was completed.
Though the company's directives offer some hope, claiming that, "in the
future", they will attempt to expand their services to meet demands with
Wi-Fi networks, Internet service for mobile phones and even homes, they
play it safe and conclude by saying they "cannot give any specific dates."
People, however, can do their own math. If, in the time since the
sub-aquatic cable was installed, the capacities created can accommodate
a mere 3,700 users a day, it will take centuries before all Cubans of
age and deserving of Internet access have this privilege.
In addition to this, they have announced that rates will be lowered to
US $5.00 (4.50 CUC) for every hour of Internet use, a price which proves
affordable if one connects to the web once every six months, but which
would entail spending US $135 a month if one wanted to do so, for 1
hour, at least once a day.
A Cuban's average monthly salary is of US $20. Supposing that, in a
given family, there are two people earning this salary and a couple of
pensioners receiving US $10, plus a relative in Miami who sends them US
$50 every month, they would have to devote the family's entire income to
pay the cybercafé bill.
The problem, apparently, is that ETECSA requires substantial sums of
money, "significant investments", to modernize the country's
technological infrastructure. It shouldn't take long to put together
such money, considering that, with these new cybercafés, they can take
in US $16 thousand a day, some 6 million dollars a year.
Strict Rules on Users
In addition to being expensive, cybercafés will impose strict rules on
users, and authorities will reserve the right to block the account of
any individual who employs the web to carry out actions that "undermine
public safety or the country's integrity, economy, independence and
sovereignty."
ETECSA will also "immediately suspend the service if it detects that,
during the navigation session, the user has violated any of the ethical
norms of behavior which the Cuban State has established."
In a nutshell, no politics and no sex. I imagine that the slogan of
these cybercafés will be something along the lines of "A healthy
Internet for the Cuban family." A system of filters which block access
to a number of ideologically or morally "offensive" sites is already in
place.
Political censorship on the web is rather "tropical": though some sites
operated by Cubans living in Miami are blocked, the main newspaper of
Cuban exiles can be freely accessed by cybernauts on the island. In the
case of Spain, one anti-Castro page is blocked and another isn't, though
both publish pretty much the same information.
When it comes to moral matters, however, censors evince the puritanism
of a small-town parish priest. In their crusade against pornography,
they block new pages containing videos, photographs, contacts, stories
or any kind of eroticism – literally nothing gets past them.
They are also particularly intolerant of any commercial use of the web.
Cuba's main classifieds page, Revolico.com, is blocked. There isn't a
single Internet user in Cuba, however, who does not know how to use a
proxy to evade the official filters and access these ads.
The most surprising restriction, however, is that people under 18 will
not be allowed to navigate the Internet at these cybercafés. It looks as
though junior and senior secondary school students will have to
cultivate a good deal of patience and wait until they reach university
to get to know what the Internet is all about.
We would well be justified in describing Cuba's current strategy for the
expansion of Internet services, which leaders in the sector insist will
lead to a luminous future of web connectivity, as a piecemeal tactic.
30 May 2013
http://translatingcuba.com/bbc-analyzes-what-expanded-internet-access-really-means/
Posted on May 31, 2013
This post is from the Havana Times, and is an authorized translation
prepared by that site of an article that appeared in the BBC's El Mundo.
A summary is the statistics is as follows:
In a country of over 11 million people, the new internet (mostly
intranet) access will consist of:
1 cybercafe for every 65,000 people (assuming 8 million potential users).
334 computers for the entire country, operating 11 hours a day, for
3,674 hours of computer time, daily, for the entire nation.
If only 10% of the population wants to get on-line, each individual will
be able to do so once every six months.
If 8 million of the 11+ million Cubans want to get on-line, each person
will be able to do so once every 5 years.
If one individual could connect for one hour a day, it would cost them
$135/month (U.S.) — nearly 7 times their monthly wages (or more, for
lower wage workers).
All use will be monitored, and any user who violates the "norms" will be
cut off. No politics, no sex.
Revolico.com — Cuba's "Craiglist" — is blocked.
No one under 18 will be admitted. (Forget homework help, students.)
Cuba's New Cybercafés: A Piecemeal Strategy
HAVANA TIMES — Next month, 118 public Internet access points will open
across Cuba, something which Cubans, one would expect, ought to regard
as rather good news. Though any step in the right direction should be
applauded, it would be remiss not to gauge the real impact this measure
will have on the island.
Supposing that there are 8 million young people and adults across Cuba
who are interested in using the Internet, we would have one cybercafé
for every 65 thousand people. You would see line-ups of people longer
than those that would gather outside bodegas if they began handing out
beef rations again.
With a total of 334 computer consoles around the country, the cybercafés
will be open 11 hours a day. If every user were to navigate for only an
hour, a mere 3,700 people would be able to access the Internet a day. If
we maintain our initial figure of 8 million potential Internet users,
people would get to connect once every 5 years.
Even if we assume I am exaggerating and that only 10% of this
hypothetical population wants to use the Internet, each person would
have access to the web only once every six months. And Cuba's phone
company, ETECSA, needed all of two years to take this bold step, from
the date in which the installation of an underwater fiber-optic cable
between Cuba and Venezuela was completed.
Though the company's directives offer some hope, claiming that, "in the
future", they will attempt to expand their services to meet demands with
Wi-Fi networks, Internet service for mobile phones and even homes, they
play it safe and conclude by saying they "cannot give any specific dates."
People, however, can do their own math. If, in the time since the
sub-aquatic cable was installed, the capacities created can accommodate
a mere 3,700 users a day, it will take centuries before all Cubans of
age and deserving of Internet access have this privilege.
In addition to this, they have announced that rates will be lowered to
US $5.00 (4.50 CUC) for every hour of Internet use, a price which proves
affordable if one connects to the web once every six months, but which
would entail spending US $135 a month if one wanted to do so, for 1
hour, at least once a day.
A Cuban's average monthly salary is of US $20. Supposing that, in a
given family, there are two people earning this salary and a couple of
pensioners receiving US $10, plus a relative in Miami who sends them US
$50 every month, they would have to devote the family's entire income to
pay the cybercafé bill.
The problem, apparently, is that ETECSA requires substantial sums of
money, "significant investments", to modernize the country's
technological infrastructure. It shouldn't take long to put together
such money, considering that, with these new cybercafés, they can take
in US $16 thousand a day, some 6 million dollars a year.
Strict Rules on Users
In addition to being expensive, cybercafés will impose strict rules on
users, and authorities will reserve the right to block the account of
any individual who employs the web to carry out actions that "undermine
public safety or the country's integrity, economy, independence and
sovereignty."
ETECSA will also "immediately suspend the service if it detects that,
during the navigation session, the user has violated any of the ethical
norms of behavior which the Cuban State has established."
In a nutshell, no politics and no sex. I imagine that the slogan of
these cybercafés will be something along the lines of "A healthy
Internet for the Cuban family." A system of filters which block access
to a number of ideologically or morally "offensive" sites is already in
place.
Political censorship on the web is rather "tropical": though some sites
operated by Cubans living in Miami are blocked, the main newspaper of
Cuban exiles can be freely accessed by cybernauts on the island. In the
case of Spain, one anti-Castro page is blocked and another isn't, though
both publish pretty much the same information.
When it comes to moral matters, however, censors evince the puritanism
of a small-town parish priest. In their crusade against pornography,
they block new pages containing videos, photographs, contacts, stories
or any kind of eroticism – literally nothing gets past them.
They are also particularly intolerant of any commercial use of the web.
Cuba's main classifieds page, Revolico.com, is blocked. There isn't a
single Internet user in Cuba, however, who does not know how to use a
proxy to evade the official filters and access these ads.
The most surprising restriction, however, is that people under 18 will
not be allowed to navigate the Internet at these cybercafés. It looks as
though junior and senior secondary school students will have to
cultivate a good deal of patience and wait until they reach university
to get to know what the Internet is all about.
We would well be justified in describing Cuba's current strategy for the
expansion of Internet services, which leaders in the sector insist will
lead to a luminous future of web connectivity, as a piecemeal tactic.
30 May 2013
http://translatingcuba.com/bbc-analyzes-what-expanded-internet-access-really-means/
Dissidents' return to Cuba an act of courage
Posted on Friday, 05.31.13
Dissidents' return to Cuba an act of courage
By Fabiola Santiago
fsantiago@MiamiHerald.com
Here's Cuba, post-travel "reform," round one.
In short lines sent from her cellphone — one could say guerrilla-style,
for the way a word, a smiley face, a phrase began in one tweet and ended
in another — the celebrated blogger Yoani Sánchez reported on her return
to Havana.
"Back to blindly tweeting via SMS," she wrote Thursday night to her
504,534 Twitter followers as soon she landed.
Sánchez remarked on her 30-minute path through customs, her reunion with
loved ones, and on Friday, posted similarly truncated snippets on Facebook.
They began bittersweet with the rain — "like it's the end of the world,
but the sun will shine" — and by day's end were critical of the limited
digital TV the government says it will allow, of the outrageously priced
Internet cafés that block most information China-style, and for the lack
of accessibility to the average Cuban.
"My grandchildren will have Internet wi-fi sometime in 2032," she wrote.
Without missing a beat, the 37-year-old dissident who traveled for 103
days through Europe and the Americas giving testimony about life in Cuba
and denouncing human rights violations was back to describing what it's
like to endure a country where the most mundane possessions, including
peace of mind, are inaccessible or forbidden, or both.
Sánchez, by far the most famous of Cuba's traveling bloggers and
dissidents — able to leave the island under liberalized travel rules
after years of denials — is not the first to travel widely and return.
Ladies in White leader Berta Soler, Rosa María Payá, daughter of the
late dissident leader Oswaldo Payá, and the young activist Eliécer Avila
also recently went home.
On the day she returned, Payá was threatened by a pro-government blogger
who accused her of defaming Cuba and breaking the law by calling for an
international investigation into her father's death.
Avila was detained at customs and his luggage searched for four hours.
The government confiscated 26 books about culture, human rights and
democracy, and photographed all his electronics.
He said he had no regrets.
"I was absolutely certain that [returning] was what I wanted; the
sentimental ties I left in Cuba and the sense of responsibility with the
future were powerful reasons," he wrote in an essay in the digital
Diario de Cuba. "In fact, I didn't feel sad, I was happy to return."
Whether Sánchez will face reprisals is yet to be seen. But a
pro-government blogger attacked her arrival, calling her " la
vacacionista," the vacationer, and saying she had received "90 days of
training to topple the island's government."
It takes guts and commitment to take on a dictatorship from inside, and
by returning to continue their fight for democratic change, Cuba's brave
traveling dissidents have proven their worth.
While in exile, in Miami or elsewhere, they would be one more among us.
Their credibility lies in the strength of their voice from inside Cuba.
Their return home closes a historic chapter — but also opens a new, and
more important one perhaps, for the island's future.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/31/3426922/fabiola-santiago-dissidents-return.html
Dissidents' return to Cuba an act of courage
By Fabiola Santiago
fsantiago@MiamiHerald.com
Here's Cuba, post-travel "reform," round one.
In short lines sent from her cellphone — one could say guerrilla-style,
for the way a word, a smiley face, a phrase began in one tweet and ended
in another — the celebrated blogger Yoani Sánchez reported on her return
to Havana.
"Back to blindly tweeting via SMS," she wrote Thursday night to her
504,534 Twitter followers as soon she landed.
Sánchez remarked on her 30-minute path through customs, her reunion with
loved ones, and on Friday, posted similarly truncated snippets on Facebook.
They began bittersweet with the rain — "like it's the end of the world,
but the sun will shine" — and by day's end were critical of the limited
digital TV the government says it will allow, of the outrageously priced
Internet cafés that block most information China-style, and for the lack
of accessibility to the average Cuban.
"My grandchildren will have Internet wi-fi sometime in 2032," she wrote.
Without missing a beat, the 37-year-old dissident who traveled for 103
days through Europe and the Americas giving testimony about life in Cuba
and denouncing human rights violations was back to describing what it's
like to endure a country where the most mundane possessions, including
peace of mind, are inaccessible or forbidden, or both.
Sánchez, by far the most famous of Cuba's traveling bloggers and
dissidents — able to leave the island under liberalized travel rules
after years of denials — is not the first to travel widely and return.
Ladies in White leader Berta Soler, Rosa María Payá, daughter of the
late dissident leader Oswaldo Payá, and the young activist Eliécer Avila
also recently went home.
On the day she returned, Payá was threatened by a pro-government blogger
who accused her of defaming Cuba and breaking the law by calling for an
international investigation into her father's death.
Avila was detained at customs and his luggage searched for four hours.
The government confiscated 26 books about culture, human rights and
democracy, and photographed all his electronics.
He said he had no regrets.
"I was absolutely certain that [returning] was what I wanted; the
sentimental ties I left in Cuba and the sense of responsibility with the
future were powerful reasons," he wrote in an essay in the digital
Diario de Cuba. "In fact, I didn't feel sad, I was happy to return."
Whether Sánchez will face reprisals is yet to be seen. But a
pro-government blogger attacked her arrival, calling her " la
vacacionista," the vacationer, and saying she had received "90 days of
training to topple the island's government."
It takes guts and commitment to take on a dictatorship from inside, and
by returning to continue their fight for democratic change, Cuba's brave
traveling dissidents have proven their worth.
While in exile, in Miami or elsewhere, they would be one more among us.
Their credibility lies in the strength of their voice from inside Cuba.
Their return home closes a historic chapter — but also opens a new, and
more important one perhaps, for the island's future.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/31/3426922/fabiola-santiago-dissidents-return.html
British businessmen await Cuba's verdict as graft trial ends
British businessmen await Cuba's verdict as graft trial ends
By Marc Frank
HAVANA | Fri May 31, 2013 7:50pm EDT
(Reuters) - The two-day trial of two top executives of a British
investment fund ended in Havana on Friday with a five judge panel
expected to deliver its verdict within 10 days.
The sentences of two other foreigners tried a week ago have yet to be
announced, as the government presses forward with an unprecedented
crackdown on corruption.
In this week's trial on the communist-run island, Amado Fakhre, a
Lebanese-born British citizen and chief executive officer of Coral
Capital Group Ltd, faced various bribery charges related mainly to the
fund's import business.
Chief Operating Officer Stephen Purvis, who headed various investment
projects, faced lesser charges, such as operating outside the bounds of
the fund's license, sources close to the case said on condition of
anonymity.
The defendants' lawyers and British consular officials had no comment
upon leaving the court, an old mansion, surrounded by an iron fence, in
an outlying Havana neighborhood.
The trial was closed to the media.
There are only a few foreign investment funds in Cuba. Coral Capital
said it invested some $75 million and had more than $1 billion of
projects in the works.
The company was caught up in an investigation of Cuba's international
trading sector, part of a broader crackdown on corruption by President
Raul Castro after he replaced ailing brother Fidel in 2008.
Fakhre has been jailed since the company's offices were raided and
closed in October 2011. Purvis was arrested and imprisoned in March 2012.
In September 2011, authorities shut down one of the most important
Western trading companies in Cuba, Canada-based Tokmakjian Group, after
doing the same in July to another Canadian trading firm, Tri-Star Caribbean.
The owner of Tri-Star Caribbean, Sarkis Yacoubian, originally from
Armenia, was tried last week at the same court. He and an associate,
Lebanese citizen Krikor Bayassalian, were charged with bribery, tax
evasion and damaging the economy.
DOZENS ARRESTED
Dozens of Cuban officials and businessmen have reportedly been arrested,
tried and sentenced in the anti-corruption sweep.
Cuba's state-run media has not yet reported the trials, nor mentioned
the arrests and crackdown on foreign trade.
Castro established the comptroller general's office in 2009, even as he
began implementing market-oriented economic reforms.
That step marked the start of the anti-corruption campaign that
uncovered high-level graft in sectors ranging from the cigar, nickel and
communications industries to food processing and civil aviation.
Coral Capital, registered in the British Virgin Islands in 1999, was
best known in Cuba as the joint venture partner in Havana's upscale
Saratoga Hotel and another hotel complex on the resort key of Cayo Coco.
It had plans to build golf courses and related real estate developments
near Havana.
The fund branched into trade financing and importing heavy equipment and
other merchandise and this may have led to its problems, foreign
business sources said.
The company represented various international brands in Cuba, among them
Liebherr Earth Moving, Yamaha Motor Corporation and Peugeot Motorcycles,
according to its website, now defunct.
(Reporting by Marc Frank. Editing by Andre Grenon)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/31/us-cuba-corruption-trial-idUSBRE94U1B920130531
By Marc Frank
HAVANA | Fri May 31, 2013 7:50pm EDT
(Reuters) - The two-day trial of two top executives of a British
investment fund ended in Havana on Friday with a five judge panel
expected to deliver its verdict within 10 days.
The sentences of two other foreigners tried a week ago have yet to be
announced, as the government presses forward with an unprecedented
crackdown on corruption.
In this week's trial on the communist-run island, Amado Fakhre, a
Lebanese-born British citizen and chief executive officer of Coral
Capital Group Ltd, faced various bribery charges related mainly to the
fund's import business.
Chief Operating Officer Stephen Purvis, who headed various investment
projects, faced lesser charges, such as operating outside the bounds of
the fund's license, sources close to the case said on condition of
anonymity.
The defendants' lawyers and British consular officials had no comment
upon leaving the court, an old mansion, surrounded by an iron fence, in
an outlying Havana neighborhood.
The trial was closed to the media.
There are only a few foreign investment funds in Cuba. Coral Capital
said it invested some $75 million and had more than $1 billion of
projects in the works.
The company was caught up in an investigation of Cuba's international
trading sector, part of a broader crackdown on corruption by President
Raul Castro after he replaced ailing brother Fidel in 2008.
Fakhre has been jailed since the company's offices were raided and
closed in October 2011. Purvis was arrested and imprisoned in March 2012.
In September 2011, authorities shut down one of the most important
Western trading companies in Cuba, Canada-based Tokmakjian Group, after
doing the same in July to another Canadian trading firm, Tri-Star Caribbean.
The owner of Tri-Star Caribbean, Sarkis Yacoubian, originally from
Armenia, was tried last week at the same court. He and an associate,
Lebanese citizen Krikor Bayassalian, were charged with bribery, tax
evasion and damaging the economy.
DOZENS ARRESTED
Dozens of Cuban officials and businessmen have reportedly been arrested,
tried and sentenced in the anti-corruption sweep.
Cuba's state-run media has not yet reported the trials, nor mentioned
the arrests and crackdown on foreign trade.
Castro established the comptroller general's office in 2009, even as he
began implementing market-oriented economic reforms.
That step marked the start of the anti-corruption campaign that
uncovered high-level graft in sectors ranging from the cigar, nickel and
communications industries to food processing and civil aviation.
Coral Capital, registered in the British Virgin Islands in 1999, was
best known in Cuba as the joint venture partner in Havana's upscale
Saratoga Hotel and another hotel complex on the resort key of Cayo Coco.
It had plans to build golf courses and related real estate developments
near Havana.
The fund branched into trade financing and importing heavy equipment and
other merchandise and this may have led to its problems, foreign
business sources said.
The company represented various international brands in Cuba, among them
Liebherr Earth Moving, Yamaha Motor Corporation and Peugeot Motorcycles,
according to its website, now defunct.
(Reporting by Marc Frank. Editing by Andre Grenon)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/31/us-cuba-corruption-trial-idUSBRE94U1B920130531
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