Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: prentice crawford on September 13, 2010, 07:48:59 PM
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Woof,
As we take the yellow brick road to socialism we pass by those coming the other way who now know better.
Cuba to eliminate 500,000 state jobs and spur's private sector.
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39152912/ns/world_news-americas
P.C.
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When next we meet ask me about my trip to Cuba , , , in January 1980 IIRC. (For the record folks, the trip was entirely legal and above board-- it was during a brief opening under Carter and was organized by my law school. It turned out to be about 2 months before the Port Mariel exodus.
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Woof Guro Craftydog,
You have got to be kidding me. You never cease to amaze me with your adventures! 8-) I was in the Corps at the time and felt lucky that I wasn't sent down to Florida to help with that mess.
P.C.
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I was there for about ten days and because of my comfort level in Spanish and my general way of going about things, most days I was able to escape the Potemkin tours (for those of you educated by progressives, google the term Potemkin Village) and wound up running with a bunch of musicians. One of them, Roberto, a dancer in the national folklore company, escaped during the Mariel exodus and looked me up in NYC. He asked me if there were any decent salsa clubs in NY. I said why yes, we had a few and took him to one. The band playing was Ticpica 73 with Alfredo de la Fey on electric violin and Nicky Marreror on timbales. We walked in and they knew my friend from when they toured Cuba on a cultural exchange a few years prior! Roberto chose the hottest chick dancing on the floor and began to dance with her. It was like a movie; he was so good the whole floor cleared for the two of them. Then the band invited us backstage to hang out and thus began an interesting chapter in my life.
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Woof,
That's very cool, I had a similar musical stint in my life but involving the Texas Two Step and my two boneheaded cousins that are country music stars today. Of course being from Kentucky I speak fluent country :wink: and when they were still playing the bars, I would show the ladies how to Two Step and occasionally I'd get up on stage, play a flat top and sing Long Haired County Boy. :lol: "People say I'm no good and crazy as a loon, cause I get stoned in the mornin(g) and get drunk in the afternoon."
Ah, the good ole days! :-D
P.C.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/report-hezbollah-sets-up-shop-in-cuba/
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Carta de Cuba, la escritura de la libertad
CUBA IN THE MIDDLE EAST
A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY
DOMINGO AMUCHASTEGUI (1)
Foreword By
Haim Shaked, Director
Middle East Studies Institute
July, 1999
Contents:
INTRODUCTION
CHRONOLOGY
GLOSSARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTION
After a close relationship with Middle Eastern groups and countries for forty years, Cuba enjoys today an exceptional position in the region with embassies in almost all countries, and with a wide variety of political connections within the ruling elites. Castro is engaged in a growing process of enlarging bilateral trade, financial assistance, involvement in joint ventures, and cooperation projects, as well as in diplomatic cooperation in the international system.
The context has changed over the years. While the priorities are not to channel weapons to groups within the region, there are still some specialized military assistance, training and cooperation, especially with the PLO. Yet Cuba's priorities now are to obtain investments, economic cooperation, and trade opportunities from Iran, Algeria, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, and others.
For U.S. interests, the closeness of the relationship with Iraq and some of the more militant terrorist groups in the Middle East is troublesome. Can Cuba be used to carry out terrorist acts against U.S. targets? Is there any cooperation between Sadam Hussein and Castro in the development of chemical and bacteriological weapons? What remains from the close cooperation between Castro and the more militant terrorist groups in the region? These and other questions are of critical importance to the security of the United States. Cuba's proximity to the U.S., the continuous flow of immigrants from the island and the increased travel from and to Cuba should make Castro's relationships a troublesome and worrysome issue to U.S. policymakers.
The Middle East and North Africa have been extremely important to Castro's foreign policy since 1959. It remains today as a region of special priority in Castro's redesign of his foreign policy after the collapse of Cuba's alliance with the former Soviet Union. Actually, there is not one single aspect of Castro's foreign policy in which the Middle East does not become important as:
1) A region connected to Cuba's non-aligned interests and policies.
2) An area where Cuba laid the foundations for the deployment of regular military forces and the establishment of military cooperation over the last 40 years.
3) A region from where to gain knowledge/connections/influence with "liberation movements" throughout Africa and the Middle East.
4) A base for triangular operations in connection with Intelligence/subversive activities in Latin America.
5) A source of influence with Arab communities in Latin America and the Caribbean.
6) A region in which trade, loans, cooperation, and diplomatic support has become very important, especially in the 1990's.
7) After Vietnam, a virtual laboratory, in the military field, in particular since the Six Day War (1967), for updating and upgrading Cuba's military capabilities, including technological and operational capacities.
8) A region where the Arab-Islamic states are extremely important due to their voting power within the UN system for Cuba's multilateral diplomacy.
It is within such a context that the relevance of the Middle East for Cuba's foreign policy should be understood. The following chronology is only meant to be illustrative of the depth and closesness of Cuba’s long-standing relationships with states, leaders, and groups in this troubled region.
CHRONOLOGY
1959-1963
* Relations developed with Gamal Abdel Nasser; Cuba joined the Non-Aligned Movement, sponsored by India, Yugoslavia, and Egypt. Efforts to buy weapons from Egypt failed.
* The Cuban government sent Captain José Ramón Fernández (currently vicepresident of the Cuban government) to Israel in the summer of 1959 to negotiate the purchase of light weaponry and artillery, but no agreement was reached. Instead, significant civilian assistance was granted by Israel to Cuba for more than 10 years in the field of citrus cultivation and diplomatic relations were normal until 1973.
* Raúl Castro and Che Guevara visited Cairo and established contacts with African liberation movements stationed in and supported by Cairo. Both Cuban leaders visited Gaza and expressed support for the Palestinian cause.
* Initial relations established with Baghdad under Karim Kassem. The Cuban government sent Commander William Galvez to purchase light weaponry, tanks and artillery. No agreement was reached.
* Castro established relations with the Algerian FLN through Paris and Rabat; official and public support was extended, large quantities of weapons were shipped to the FLN through Morocco (1960-1961); provided shelter, medical and educational services were provided in Cuba for wounded Algerians; political and military cooperation in the fields of counter-intelligence and intelligence were initiated. First Cuban deployment of regular military forces in support of the Algerian government against the Moroccan aggression of 1963. These forces remain to train the Algerian army for more than a year.
1964-1967
* With considerable hesitation and reluctance, Nasser cooperated with Che Guevara during his guerrilla operation in Congo-Kinshasa (former Zaire) in 1965.
* Cuba welcomed the founding of the PLO. First contacts with Palestinian FATAH between 1965 (Algiers) and 1966-67 (Damascus).
* The Tricontinental Conference was held in Havana in January, 1966 to adopt a common political strategy against colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism.
* Cuba sent weapons via Cairo, to the NLF in Southern Yemen. Cuban agents were sent on fact-finding missions to North and South Yemen (1967- 1968);
* Fidel Castro and other Cuban officials privately criticized in very harsh terms the shameful performance of the Egyptian leadership during the Six Day War in 1967. The war, as such, was thoroughly studied by the Cuban Armed Forces;
* Cuba and Syria developed a close alliance and supported FATAH and the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF).
1968-1975
* Cuba continued its military and political support for FATAH after the Syrians broke with the latter, and, later on, Cuban support was granted to other Palestinian organizations (Popular and Democratic fronts).
* Cuba sent military instructors and advisors into Palestinian bases in Jordan to train Palestinian fedayeen (1968); first high-level delegation from FATAH-PLO visited Cuba (1970).
* Several missions sent to Southern Yemen to support NLF / FATAH Ismail internally and externally, both politically and militarily.
* The Soviet Union and Cuba increased military and civilian cooperation with Southern Yemen (PDRY).
* Cuba commenced political and military cooperation with Somalia's Siad Barre (1969).
* Economic cooperation began with Libya in 1974, after serious bilateral tensions between 1969 and 1973.
* Closer connections with FATAH-PLO and other Palestinian organizations were reinforced, including training of Latin American guerrillas in Lebanon;
military support included counter-intelligence and intelligence training.
* Arafat visited Cuba in 1974.
* Arab and Non-Aligned countries pressured Cuba to break relations with Israel in 1973 and sponsor U.N. Resolution on Zionism "as a form of racial discrimination."
* Cuba provided military support and personnel to Syria during the Yom Kippur War (1973-1975).
* Cuba joined with Algeria and Libya on a diplomatic/political offensive in support of Frente POLISARIO (People's Front for the Liberation of Western Sahara and RÃo del Oro); later on provided military cooperation , medical services, and other forms of assistance.
1976-1982
* Cuba avoided any public condemnation of Syria's military intervention in Lebanon, although privately they did so in strong terms.
* Cuba supported the so-called "Steadfastness Front" against the U.S. backed Camp David accord.
* Additional military and political support provided to the Palestinian cause; Arafat attended the 6th Non-Aligned Conference in Havana (1979).
* At this stage, significant hard currency loans (tens of million) had been facilitated by Arafat-PLO to the Cuban government under very soft terms; Cuba granted diplomatic and political support to Arafat during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. In the 1980s, Cuban universities were graduating hundreds of Palestinian students in various fields, especially from medical schools.
* The Aden (South Yemen) regime decided to support the Ethiopian radical officers commanded by Mengistu Haile Mariam, sending Yemeni military units in support of the latter against Somali aggression, and asking the Cubans to do the same. Cuba joined in, first with a group of officers headed by General Arnaldo Ochoa, a move that was followed later on by the deployment of large Cuban forces against the Somali invasion. Also as part of the alliance with the Aden regime, Cuba granted some small-scale support to the Dhofaris in their armed struggle against the monarchy in Oman until the late 1970s.
* As part of Cuba's alliance with Mengistu Haile Mariam's regime in Ethiopia, the Cuban leadership decided to engage in active political and military support for more than 10 years to the Liberation Movement of Southern Sudan headed by John Garang against the Arab-Muslim regime in Khartoum (until today there are no diplomatic relations between Khartoum and Havana).
* Cuba developed closer ties with Iraq in various areas (medical services, construction projects, grants and loans).
* Cuban military advisory to Iraq in different fields began in the mid 1970s (it was cancelled after the Iraq invasion of Iran in late 1980).
* Cuba cooperated with Libya in the political founding of the World MATHABA in Tripoli, to provide political support and coordinate revolutionary movements throughout the world. Cuba supported also Lybia's stand on Chad and in its support to the FRENTE POLISARIO.
* Despite its close links with Baghdad, Cuba recognized and praised the Iranian Revolution, although with no significant increase in bilateral ties. Once Iraq attacked Iran, Cuba withdrew its military advisors from Baghdad and adopted a position of official impartiality, though more sympathetic to Baghdad, due to its past relations.
* Castro granted political recognition to the revolution in Afghanistan in 1978, but internecine conflict and civil war prevented any strengthening of bilateral relations. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 disrupted Cuba's Non-Aligned policies at a time when Castro was chairman of the NL Movement. While publicly supporting Moscow, Fidel Castro was very critical of the Soviet invasion, something that was bitterly discussed with Soviet officials.
1983-1991
* Declining economic cooperation between Cuba and Libya.
* New ties of alliance between Algeria and Libya with Morocco cut-off any further direct support from Cuba to FPOLISARIO.
* Libyan support to Latin American revolutionary movements, especially in Central America and the whole of the World MATHABA project, declined rapidly after the U.S.bombing of Tripoli in 1986; Cubans increasingly distant until MATHABA's last meeting in 1990 in Tripoli, where the termination of the Libyan project was pretty obvious for all the participants, including the Cuban delegation.
* The Palestinian Intifada increases Cuba’s support for Arafat and the PLO, both diplomatic and military.
* Cuba starts exploring other possibilities for increased diplomatic recognition and economic ties in the region, including Saudi Arabia (two Cuban ambassadors were sent for that purpose, but with no significant success); the Gulf States, Jordan, Turkey (with much better results: embassies were finally established in Kuwait, Turkey, Qatar, and Jordan); and even Israel (with no official success, but with promising inroads within the private sector and some political/religious forces).
* After the violent collapse of the Aden regime, the death of Fatah Ismail, andthe reunification with North Yemen, Cuban authorities negotiated with the government of Sanaa from which bilateral relations continued to develop, including areas of economic and political cooperation.
* After the negotiations leading to the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority, Cuban-Palestinian military cooperation was enhanced, including the areas of counter-intelligence and intelligence.
* Cuba condemned Iraq for its invasion and annexation of Kuwait, supporting the latter's sovereignty; it also condemned U.S. military operations in the Gulf and abstained from supporting the bulk of the sanctions imposed on Baghdad. A Cuban military delegation was sent to Iraq to learn and share what was considered vital information and experiences from U.S. combat operations in Kuwait and Iraq.
1992-1999
* Embassies were opened in Qatar, Turkey, Tunisia and Jordan; trade and joint ventures were developed. Diplomatic ties and trade relationships have increased discreetly with Egypt and Libya; Qatar supported Cuba in the 1999 sessions on Human Rights at Geneva.
* A high-level PLO military delegation including the new head of Intelligence paid a non-public visit to Cuba.
* Israeli firms provided capital, technology and markets to Cuba in the field of citrus cultivation and exports; religious and political delegations visited were exchanged..
* Lebanon's normalization in the 1990's allowed Cuba to reach important financial and trade agreements, including Lebanese participation in joint ventures and in establishing a branch of the Fransabank in Havana. Nabih Berri, in 1998, the Chairman of the Lebanese parliament paid a long and successful, visit to Cuba during the month of Ramadan, and more recently Adnan Kassar, president of the Fransabank and the International Chamber of Commerce paid an official visit to Havana.
* Iranian-Cuban relations have increased after several high-ranking delegations from Iran visited Cuba: the Vice-President, the Minister of Foreign Relations, the Minister of Public Health, and the Minister of Social Assistance. The Cuban Minister of Public Health visited Iran in 1998. In the last two years the number of Cuban doctors, paramedics, and medical services hired by Teheran have increased, together with additional purchases of Cuban pharmaceuticals and biotechnology products. A recent agreement (1999) was signed, establishing Cuba's assistance in setting up social security/social assistance networks in Iran.
* The recent election of Abdelaziz Bouteflika (April 1999) as President of Algeria, opens new opportunities for Cuba, given Bouteflika's close relationship with the Cuban government for more than 40 years.
* PLO leaders continue to have close relations with the Cuban leadership, having access to specialized military and intelligence training, either in Cuba or Palestinian territory, and in the sharing of intelligence.
* Cuba continues to actively undermine U.S. policies in the Middle East and North Africa in primarily three ways: a) Portraying U.S. actions and diplomacy in the region as those of an aggressor, seeking to impose hegemony by force such as the recurrent attacks on Iraq, violation of sovereign rights (no-fly zones), the perpetuation of unjustified economic sanctions to countries in the region (Iraq, Iran, Syria), open political intervention and the use of brutal force as acts of retaliation (the Bin Laden case/Yugoslavia); b) portraying the U.S. as the main obstacle to a peaceful settlement of the Israel/Palestine and the Gulf conflicts, and c) discrediting U.S. policies, especially by gaining support for Cuba's agenda at the U.N. These Anti-American views and policies are conveyed as a systematic message through a network of Cuban embassies in most countries of the region, at the U.N. and its multilateral system plus Cuban embassies and missions throughout the Western Hemisphere and other significant non-governmental political and cultural channels.
GLOSSARY
1. FLN. Front de Libération National, the political and military organization that led the war of national liberation against French colonial rule between 1954 and 1962. Ruling political party until the 1980s in Algeria.
2. PLO. Palestine Liberation Organization, founded in Cairo, in 1964, under the auspices of Egypt (then known as the United Arab Republic) to serve Nasser's manipulations of the Palestinian cause, composed mostly of conservative Palestinian intellectuals and bureaucrats serving Arab governments. An instrument of Nasser's foreign policy until the June War of 1967, when the old PLO leadership collapsed to be replaced by FATEH's leadership headed by Arafat.
3. FATEH. Acronym for Palestine National Liberation Movement, founded in 1959 by younger generations of Palestinians that had experienced the defeats of 1948 and 1956, strongly committed to a radical nationalist platform to fight for Palestine and against Arab intervention and manipulations of the Palestinian problem. Mostly an underground and not legally recognized organization until the June War in 1967; it transformed itself into the most powerful and influential party inside Palestinian and Arab politics, controlling the PLO effectively since 1969, when Arafat becomes its chairman.
4. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The most important branch of the Arab Nationalist Movement (known as the ANM, created in the 1950s as radical followers of Nasser). After the June War of 1967 splitting away from Nasser and focusing on building a more radical alternative within the Palestinians under the name of Popular Front, led by George Habash; a later off-spring, in 1969, was the Democratic Front led by Nayef Hawatmeh. Strongly based in Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, and the Gulf, until 1970 heavily engaged in terrorist methods. After 1970 dropped such tactics, became more active and open across the occupied territories and southern Lebanon, adopting Marxist-Leninist ideology.
5. Frente POLISARIO. Frente Popular de Liberación del SagÃa el Hamra y RÃo del Oro, inspired by the ANM tradition and the Algerian FLN, created to fight against the Spanish-Morrocan-Mauritinian arrangements to split the former colony of SaguÃa el Hamra/RÃo del Oro (known as Western Sahara) between the two African states. Enjoyed active support from Algeria and Libya together with a considerable number of African states until the 1980s.
6. NFL. National Front for the Liberation of South Yemen, another important, and successful, branch of the Arab Nationalist Movement. Created in 1962 in the course of the revolution in North Yemen, against the monarchy and supported by Nasser. Expanded to the south of Yemen and began armed struggle against British colonial occupation and local feudal lords (sultans and sheikhs). Broke with Nasser in 1966-1967 and finally forced the British to negotiate and evacuate Aden, followed by the defeat of the local feudal lords. Since 1965 it has had very close relations with Cuba. Main leader was Abdel Fatah Ismail. Internecine conflicts sine the late 1970s eventually led to open civil war in 1990 and the collapse of the regime, the death of Fatah Ismail, and integration with the north under the control of the government in Sanaa.
7. World MATHABA. A Libyan project from the late 1970s to promote political, financial, and military support for revolutionary movements throughout the world. Ghaddafi called on other "revolutionary governments" to support this project, which Cuba did although with extreme caution and distrust. Cuba could not refuse to join due to the fact that its major allies in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and even the Soviet Union had accepted to participate and that many of them were benefitting from Libya's abundant financial support. Although governments -like the case of Cuba- took part at the level of political deliberations and to coordinate common actions in the diplomatic and political fields, MATHABA was something else: essentially a tool in the hands of the Libyans to project their individual goals and agenda (Ghaddafi's Green Book, to reward his supporters, and to undermine his enemies). Financial and military assistance was never a collective decision, but responded for the most part to bilateral arrangements between Ghaddafi's regime and individual organizations, some of which resorted, at different stages, to terrorist methods like the IRA and ETA. Insurgencies in Central America, like the Sandinistas and others, were privileged beneficiaries along with the African National Congress, FRENTE POLISARIO, and others. Cuban leaders were always anxious to counterbalance Libyan attempts for unilateral actions, to influence Cuban allies or about Ghaddafi's hostility toward well-known Cuban allies such as Arafat. The dominant perception among Cuban leaders was that Ghaddafi posed too many unnecessary security risks the U.S. and too many complications within Cuban alliances.
8. People's Liberation Movement of Southern Sudan. The final outcome of different secessionist movements in southern Sudan during the 1960s and early 1970s (like the Anya-Nyas) fighting against Arab-Islamic control of the central government, allocation of resources, and religious, political, and ethnic intolerance.
9. Eritrean Liberation Front. The most influential Eritrean organization fighting for secession from Ethiopia in the 1960s, actively supported by the Syrian regime since 1965. Various internal divisions developed later on until the late 1970s, when a new front was built based on very different domestic and external alliances and, eventually led the Eritreans to victory. Cuba's support to Mengistu Haile Mariam's regime in 1978 meant the cessation of previous Cuban backing to the Eritrean cause.
10. PDRY. People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, official name adopted by the Southern Yemeni independent republic.
11. Gamal Abdel Nasser. A colonel in the Egyptian army, member of the Free Officers Movement formed after the defeat in 1948 at the hands of the newly-born state of Israel. Led the revolution that overthrew the monarchy in 1952. Undertook signficant economic, social, and political transformations, setting much of the basic tenets and role-model of Arab nationalsm after WWII. Co-founder of the Neutralist countries in 1956 and of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961. Defeated by Israel in 1948, 1956, and 1967.
12. Karim Kassem. A colonel in the Iraqi army and, at the beginning, a follower of Nasser. Led the revolution against the monarchy in 1958. A rival of Nasser later on, a bloody military coup inspired and mostly led by the Arab BAATH party, a strong and influential inter-Arab nationalist movement in the Middle East, overthrew him in 1963.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY ON CUBA'S POLICIES AND ACTIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
1. Anderson, Jon Lee (1997). Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, New York, Grove Press.
2. Baez, Luis (1996). Secreto de Generales, Ciudad de La Habana, Ediciones SI-MAR, S.A.
3. B'nai B'rith (1982). "PLO Activities in Latin America," New York, Anti-Defamation League.
4. Campbell, John C. "Soviet Policy in the Middle East." Current History Num.80 (January 1981).
5. Durch, William J. ""The Cuban Military in Africa and the Middle East: From Algeria to Angola."
Studies in Comparative Communism, Num. XI (Spring-Summer 1978).
6. The Economist Foreign Report. "Castro's First Middle East Adventure: Part II."15 March, 1978.
7. Erisman, Michael H. (1985). Cuba's International Relations: The Anatomy of a Nationalistic Foreign Policy,Boulder, Westview.
8. Eran, Oded. "Soviet Middle East Policy: 1967-1973,"Rabinovich, Itamar and Haim Shaked, eds. (1978). From June to October: The Middle East Between 1967 and 1973, New Brunswick, Transaction Books.
9. Falk, Pamela S. (1986). Cuban Foreign Policy: Caribbean Tempest, Massanchussets/Toronto,
D.C. Heath and Company.
10. Fernández, Damián (1988). Cuba's Foreign Policy in the Middle East, Boulder, Westview Press. 11. Karol, K.S. (1971). Guerrillas in Power, London, Jonathan Cape.
12. Legum, Colim and Haim Shaked, eds. (1977-1980). The Middle East Contemporary Survey. Vols. IIII, New York, Holmes and Meir.
13. "Relations Between the palestinian Terrorists and Cuba." Reprinted from Lebanon: Selected Documents. Israeli, Raphael, ed., London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983.
14. Siljander, Mark. "The Palestine Liberation Organization in Central America."Mmeo., October 1983.
15. U.S. Department of State. "The Sandinistas and the Middle Eastern Radicals."Washington D.C., August 1985.
16. Viotti, Paul R. "Politics in the Yemens and the Horn of Africa: Constraints on a Super Power."Mark V. Kauppi and R. craig Nations, eds. The Soviet Union and the Middle east in the 1980s. Lexington, D.C. Heath, 1983.
[1] Mr. Amuchastegui is a research associate at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies and a Doctoral candidate at the School of International Studies, University of Miami. He was a professor at the Higher Institute of International Relations in Havana; Guest Professor at the Cuban National Defense College; Senior Researcher at Cuba's Center for Studies of Africa and the Middle East; and Intelligence Analyst and Head of the Organization Department at the Tricontinental Organization in the 1960s and 1970s. He traveled extensively through North Africa and the Middle East. He edited Palestine: Crisis and Revolution (Havana, 1970); Palestine: Dimensions of a Conflict Sociology and Politics in Israel Contemporary History of Asia and Africa (Four Volumes, Havana, 1984-1988), together with several other books and articles. He was a direct or indirect participant in most of the developments described herein until 1993.
Arriba (up)
English Articles 2005
Open Letter to Fidel Castro
Juragua: Fallout Threat
Castro and the Middle East
Castro and Terrorism
Proposed Sentences for Human Rights Activists
RSF Protests in Paris against Cuban Repression
RSF Denounces Repression
Oswaldo Paya's Speech
Purpose and History
Daily Life in Cuba
On the Case of Elián
THE HOMELAND BELONGS TO ALL
English News
P.C.
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Will the Pope Absolve Fidel Castro?
Posted By Humberto Fontova On February 10, 2012
Pope Benedict XVI will visit Cuba in March. Two of Italy’s top newspapers are reporting that Fidel Castro will avail himself of the visit to confess his sins and be accepted back into the Catholic Church, which excommunicated him in 1962.
“During this last period, Fidel has come closer to religion,” says Castro’s estranged daughter Alina who lives in Miami. “He has rediscovered Jesus at the end of his life. It doesn’t surprise me because dad was raised by Jesuits.”
A baptized and confirmed Catholic, but lifelong layman, I don’t claim expertise in ecclesiastical matters. But before granting absolution the Catholic Church, I’m fairly sure, still requires contrition—sincere contrition.
On his 1998 visit to Cuba, Pope John Paul II remarked that he was “reserving judgment on Che Guevara who had served the poor.” Upon greeting the Cuban ambassador to the Holy See in 2005, this same pontiff hailed Cuba’s “gains in health care and education.” The above makes patently obvious that, on matters Cuban, the Vatican references the same media and academic sources gleefully bestowed Havana bureaus and visas by the Castro regime. Heaven knows the Vatican is not alone on this.
So if the Italian papers are right–and with all due respect to whomever has been tasked with hearing Fidel Castro’s confession and granting his absolution—I offer the following educational items regarding Castro’s historical record of sincerity:
“Cuban mothers let me assure you that I will solve all Cuba’s problems without spilling a drop of blood.” Fidel Castro broadcast that promise into a phalanx of microphones upon entering Havana on January 7, 1959. As the jubilant crowd erupted with joy, Castro continued: “Cuban mothers let me assure you that because of me you will never have to cry.”
The following day, just below San Juan Hill in eastern Cuba, a bulldozer rumbled to a start, clanked into position, and pushed dirt into a huge pit with blood pooling at the bottom from the still-twitching bodies of almost a hundred men and boys who’d been machine-gunned without trial on the Castro brothers’ orders. Many of the victims’ mothers, wives and mothers wept hysterically from a nearby road as their loved ones were thus buried, some still alive.
Thousands upon thousands more Cuban men and boys (along with some girls) crumpled before Castro and Che’s firing squads in the days and months and years to come.
“Viva Cristo Rey!” (Long Live Christ the King) were the last words of many of the martyrs. Catholic youth groups were among the first to mount resistance to Castro and Che Guevara’s Stalinization of Cuba. Tragically for them, in the early ’60s the Castro regime’s KGB mentors were still flush from massacring thousands of Catholic (among many other) freedom-fighters during the Polish, Ukrainian and recent Hungarian rebellions against Soviet rule. Denied U.S. help (from 90 miles away) while the Soviets (6,000 miles away) lavished their Caribbean satraps with massive firepower and 40,000 “advisors,” Cuba’s anti-Communist rebels fared no better than did those in Eastern Europe.
In the process of extinguishing the freedom-fighters, Castro and Che Guevara’s regime jailed more political prisoners as a percentage of population than Stalin’s and executed more people (out of a population of 6.4 million) in its first three years in power than Hitler’s executed (out of a population of 65 million) in its first six. These figures come from the human rights group Freedom House and from the Black Book of Communism, authored by French scholars and translated into English by Harvard University Press, not exactly headquarters for “the vast-right wing conspiracy,” much less of “right-wing Cuban exile crackpots.”
“The defiant yells [“Viva Cristo Rey!”—“Viva Cuba Libre!”] from the bound and staked martyrs would make the walls of La Cabana prison tremble,” wrote eyewitness to the slaughter, Armando Valladares, who suffered 22 torture-filled years in Castro’s prisons and was later appointed by Ronald Reagan as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Modern history records few U.S. diplomatic tweaks as slick, or U.S. ambassadors as effective.
Given their defiance even during their last seconds alive, by mid-1961 the mere binding and blindfolding of Castro and Che’s murder victims wasn’t enough. The Left’s premier poster-boys began ordering that the freedom-fighters be also gagged. The shaken firing-squads demanded it. The yells were badly unnerving to the trigger-pullers, you see.
Rigoberto Hernandez was 17 when Che Guevara’s henchmen dragged him from his cell, jerked his head back to gag him, and started dragging him to the stake. Little “Rigo” pleaded his innocence to the very bloody end. But his pleas were garbled and difficult to understand. His struggles while being gagged and bound to the stake were also awkward. The boy had been a janitor in a Havana high school and was mentally retarded. His single mother had pleaded his case with hysterical sobs. She had begged and finally proven to his “prosecutors” that it was a case of mistaken identity. Her only son, a boy in such a condition, couldn’t possibly have been “a CIA agent planting bombs.”
“FUEGO!” The firing squad volley shattered Rigo’s little bent body as he moaned and struggled awkwardly against his bounds, blindfold and gag. Remember the gallant Che Guevara’s instructions to his revolutionary courts: “judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail.” And remember Harvard Law School’s invitation and rollicking ovation to Fidel Castro during the very midst of this appalling bloodbath. “We greeted each other as old friends,” gushed Jimmy Carter upon visiting Fidel Castro last year.
But back to Castro’s sincerity:
“And let me be very clear—VERY clear!” stressed Fidel Castro during his delirious reception by the cream of America’s media at the National Press Club on April 17, 1959. “We are not communists! And communists will never have influence in my country!”
Just a few things to keep in mind, Vatican officials, in the event of hearing Fidel Castro’s “confession,” and accepting his “contrition.”
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http://www.dickmorris.com/keep-castro-sympathizer-fulton-armstrong-out-of-the-state-department-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports
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http://www.dickmorris.com/john-kerry-offered-to-sell-out-democracy-programs-in-cuba-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports
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The Challenges of a U.S.-Cuba Reconciliation
January 8, 2013 | 0731 GMT
During U.S. President Barack Obama's second term, the United States will have an opportunity to reconsider its hands-off approach to Latin America, and the next four years could even yield an end to the embargo on Cuba. Since before the election, discussion has been growing in Washington about the potential for the Obama administration to walk away from the decades-long embargo. Monday's nomination of Senator John Kerry to the position of secretary of state makes such a possibility even more concrete. Kerry has long opposed the embargo, and the Democratic Party now has a chance to dispose of a divisive domestic issue. For Cuba, however, the end of the embargo would be far more complicated.
To understand this issue, it is important to start with the fact that while the U.S. embargo has at least threatened a great deal of economic exchange with Cuba, its deterrent effect has been limited. Indeed, despite the island's stubborn adherence to the fundamentals of communism, Italian hotels grace Cuba's beaches and serve imported Mexican Coca Cola to thousands of European tourists annually. Even in trade with the United States, Cuba is not as isolated as may initially appear. A 2000 amendment to the embargo signed into law by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush allows U.S. agricultural producers to export certain products to Cuba. Although Cuba initially refused to take advantage of the changes, exports -- mostly of corn and poultry -- began in 2002 and totaled more than $350 million in 2011.
What is a Geopolitical Diary? George Friedman explains.
The biggest restriction on Cuba's foreign economic interchange is not the embargo, but its own policies and limited resources. Restrictive government attitudes toward foreign companies limit the kinds of investments those companies can make. And although changes have been made in recent years to gradually implement liberalization measures, they have been incremental even at their most ambitious. Cuba's fundamental economic problem is that it lacks industrialization to produce high-value goods for export; even its agricultural sector has fallen into disrepair. The island's growing reliance on tourism has injected additional foreign exchange into the economy, but has simultaneously introduced social stresses along class and racial lines.
Regime survival has been Cuba's overriding concern since leader Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. No longer caught between the Soviet Union and the United States, the Castro government is still very concerned about maintaining a firm hold on power. The embargo has for decades been used to confirm the view that the U.S. government is the enemy of Cuba's political order. As in many countries whose foreign policy centers on vilifying an outside power, Cuba has used the embargo as a political justification for a range of challenges faced by Cubans, from goods shortages to poor overall economic conditions. Travel restrictions also make it easier for the Cuban government to isolate its population, a policy that helps to control influence from U.S. policy groups seeking to promote democratic change in Cuba through social organization. One such accused American social organizer, Alan Gross, remains jailed in Cuba, an unmistakable message to the United States that Cuba is not yet ready to mend relations.
Nevertheless, there are dangers ahead that may push the island nation to consider reconciliation. Though Cuba lost the sponsorship of the Soviet Union, Venezuela's provision of around 100,000 barrels per day of subsidized petroleum products is an allotment that, if lost suddenly as a result of Venezuelan instability, would leave Cuba scrambling for billions of dollars in foreign currency to keep the island economy afloat. Efforts to boost domestic production through offshore exploration have so far yielded no results, leaving the country highly vulnerable to what happens in Venezuela. As a result, Cuba remains heavily involved in Venezuelan politics and is playing a critical role in negotiating a political settlement to deal with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's deteriorating health.
Venezuelan subsidies have made it possible for Cuba to remain economically isolated from the United States. Though a political shift now, while Venezuela is in crisis, may be impractical, there is a real danger that a Venezuelan government without Chavez will suddenly or gradually cease oil deliveries to Cuba. So despite the social dangers to the Cuban regime, an alternative economic management strategy is almost certainly under consideration.
It would therefore not be surprising if Cuba began to approach the United States far more seriously than it has in the past about reconciliation. But the United States will have to be willing to offer assurances that it will respect the pace of Cuba's careful economic opening and help protect Cuba from the political influence of expatriates wishing to return to the island. If common ground can be reached, Cuba could see an influx of investment -- in the tourism sector, but also potentially in ethanol -- and a spike in tourists that may help provide the surge in foreign exchange that Cuba would need to balance out a decline in Venezuelan assistance
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Read more: The Challenges of a U.S.-Cuba Reconciliation | Stratfor
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When someone is killed in a civilized country and police slap around a witness and suppress evidence it is known as a cover-up. In Cuba it's called "reform." Viva Orwell.
Cuba's "ministry of truth" wants the world to believe that the Castro brothers are abandoning the use of state repression to maintain power. The Jay-Z-Beyoncé glam-tour of Old Havana last week was designed to help with the effort. But new details of the events surrounding theJuly 2012 deaths of prominent pacifist Oswaldo Payá—the winner of the European Parliament's 2002 Sakarov prize—and another dissident, Harold Cepero, suggest the opposite.
The U.S. press has reported on the March testimony of Ángel Carromero, the Spaniard who was driving the car that the two dissidents were riding in just before they died. Mr. Carromero was released from a Cuban prison in December and returned to Spain. He says that a red Lada had been tailing him and that the crash occurred because their car was rammed by another vehicle. He also claims that when he told this to Cuban authorities, they struck him, more than once.
But that's not the half of it. In an interview on Thursday at the Journal's offices, Payá's daughter, Rosa Maria, told me: "I must say that when I talked to Ángel, I didn't learn anything new. He confirmed things we already knew. We had the text message. We already knew that a car hit them from behind intentionally."
What she knew came straight from the mouth of Cuban police Capt. Fulgencio Medina, who took testimony from witnesses and read it aloud at the hospital in the eastern city of Bayamo where the victims were brought from the crash. Payá family friends were there, identified themselves as the family's representatives and reported by telephone back to Havana.
But the family was then denied access to that police report. The family was also denied the right to an independent autopsy, and they were told that all refrigeration chambers at all the hospitals in the area had broken down, so an autopsy had to be done immediately.
Doctors who were friends of the family were not allowed into the Bayamo hospital to inspect the body. The Payá family was denied a request for seats on a flight from Havana to Bayamo. The family has also been denied a copy of the autopsy report.
Putting Mr. Carromero on trial and hushing up the rest seemed like a tidy resolution. But the problem for the regime, says 24-year-old Ms. Payá, is "that in Cuba everyone talks."
The family has many friends in the Bayamo area and a few of those friends managed to get inside the hospital before the military locked it down; other sources who told them things seem to work there. "Our friends in the hospital talked a lot with the police in those first moments."
Ms. Payá says that the government never officially notified her family of the death of her father. But at the hospital Capt. Medina read the witness statements "in front of my friends and other cops and nurses, doctors."
The witnesses told of a red Lada, the same make and color of a suspicious car that Mr. Carromero described. They described seeing the occupants of the red Lada taking the foreigners [Mr. Carromero and Swedish politician Aaron Modig] out of their car almost immediately. The Spaniard was saying "Who are you? Why are you doing this to us?"
The statements did not say if Ms. Payá's father was "dead or alive," Ms. Payá told me. "But the witnesses said Harold [Cepero] was asking for help. I don't know if out loud or with his hands but they said he was touching his chest. So we know he was alive and conscious." Why then, Ms. Payá wants to know, did hospital personnel tell her family's friends that he was "brain dead," when they saw him lying on a gurney in a general area not receiving any form of intensive trauma care?
There is something else interesting about Capt. Medina's report of witness testimony, according to those who heard him read it: There was no mention of the car being smashed against a tree. This jibes with the testimony of the foreigners, who both have said that there was no crash with a tree.
Ms. Payá says that a journalist permitted to observe the trial on closed-circuit television told her that Capt. Medina testified against Mr. Carromero and never mentioned the red Lada or the questions witnesses had heard him ask as he was taken from the car.
This was supposed to be an open and shut case, with the emphasis on the shut. But now that the contradictions have become public knowledge, the regime's story is taking on a distinct odor. This is bad for the ministry of truth. Eight U.S. senators led by Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Richard Durbin (D., Ill.) have called for an investigation. Ms. Payá, who will return to Cuba next week, is worried about the safety of her family, and probably for good reason.
Write to O'Grady@wsj.com
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The Cuban Spy Network in the U.S. Government
May 2, 2013 | 1246 GMT
Stratfor
By Scott Stewart
Vice President of Analysis
On April 25, the U.S. government announced that it was unsealing an indictment charging Marta Rita Velazquez with conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of the Cuban government. Velazquez, a former attorney adviser at the U.S. Department of Transportation and a legal officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development, fled the United States for Sweden in 2002 and was indicted in 2004. Velazquez apparently selected Sweden because the country considers espionage to be a political offense, therefore it is not covered under its extradition treaty with the United States. She and her husband also lived in Sweden from 1998 to 2000, so the country was familiar to them.
Though the Velazquez indictment is several years old, it provides a detailed and fascinating account of Cuban espionage activity inside the United States. It also raises some significant implications about the daunting challenges facing American counterintelligence agencies.
The Story
According to the indictment, Velazquez was born in Puerto Rico. She graduated from Princeton University in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in political science and Latin American studies, obtained a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1982 and then received a master's degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington in 1984. She was hired by the U.S. Department of Transportation in August 1984.
The U.S. government alleges that Velazquez was first recruited by the Cuban intelligence service in 1983 while a student at Johns Hopkins. She reportedly traveled from Washington to Mexico City where she met with a Cuban intelligence officer and was formally recruited as an agent. During her studies at Johns Hopkins, the government claims that Velazquez served as a spotter agent who helped the Cuban intelligence service identify, assess and recruit people who occupied sensitive national security positions or who had the potential to move into such positions in the future.
The indictment asserts that in this role, Velazquez identified and befriended Ana Belen Montes, a fellow student at Johns Hopkins, in 1984. In addition to their Puerto Rican heritage, the two students reportedly shared a strong disdain for the Reagan administration's policy toward Nicaragua's Sandinista regime. Velazquez reportedly told Montes that she had friends (the Cubans) who could help Montes in her desire to help the Nicaraguan people.
During the early 1980s, a left-wing movement developed in many American universities. The movement opposed Reagan's Central American policies, such as opposition to the Sandinistas, support for the Contra rebels and support of the regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala. This movement was perhaps most readily seen in one of its larger and more active organizations, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. The movement radicalized some students who went on to work with Marxist groups in Latin America, such as Christine Lamont, who joined the Salvadoran Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, and Lori Berenson, who moved to Peru to join the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. According to the FBI, the Cuban intelligence service also recruited students like Velazquez and Montes from within this movement.
The indictment alleges that in the fall of 1984, while Montes was working as a clerk at the Department of Justice, Velazquez took her to New York to meet a friend who Velazquez said could provide Montes an opportunity to help the Nicaraguan people. The friend was an intelligence officer assigned to the Cuban mission to the United Nations. The women again traveled to New York together in early 1985 and met the Cuban intelligence officer a second time. He arranged for the two women to secretly travel together to Cuba via Spain.
In March of 1985, Velazquez and Montes traveled to Madrid, Spain, where they were met by a Cuban intelligence officer, who provided them with false passports and other documents. They then used these documents to travel to Prague in what was then Czechoslovakia. Once in Prague they were met by another Cuban intelligence officer who provided them with yet another set of false documents, as well as new sets of clothing. The Cuban officer they met in Prague then traveled with the women to Havana.
Once in Havana, the women reportedly received training in espionage tradecraft subjects, such as operational security and secure communications, including receiving and encrypting high frequency radio transmissions. The women were also allegedly subjected to practice polygraph examinations and taught methods to deceive polygraph operators.
Upon completion of their training, the women then returned to Madrid via Prague using their assumed identities. Once in Madrid they took tourist photographs of each other to support the story that they had been in Spain and then returned to Washington.
Upon returning to Washington, Montes applied for a job at the Defense Intelligence Agency using Velazquez as a character reference. She was hired by the Defense Intelligence Agency as an analyst in September 1985. Montes would excel at the agency and eventually became the Defense Intelligence Agency's most senior Cuba analyst. She served at that agency until the FBI arrested her in September 2001. Montes pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage charges in March 2002 and is currently serving a 25-year sentence.
Velazquez's trip to Havana with Montes occurred after she had been hired by the U.S. Department of Transportation in August 1984 and had been granted a Secret clearance in September 1984. In March 1989, Velazquez took a position as a legal adviser for Central America with the U.S. Agency for International Development. She was a regional legal adviser for the agency in Managua, Nicaragua, from 1990 to 1994, in Washington from 1994 to 1998 and in Guatemala City, Guatemala, from 2000 to 2002.
In June 2002, when it was announced that Montes had pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the U.S. government, Velazquez resigned from her position at the U.S. Agency for International Development and moved to Sweden, where she remains.
Cuban Intelligence
The Velazquez case, when studied in conjunction with those of Montes and Walter and Gwendolyn Myers, provides a fascinating window into the scope and nature of Cuban intelligence efforts inside the United States. With Velazquez at the U.S. Agency for International Development, Montes at the Defense Intelligence Agency and Myers in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Cubans had incredible coverage of the American government's foreign policy and intelligence community. Even after Montes was arrested and Velazquez fled to Sweden, Myers remained at the State Department until his retirement in 2007.
It is also quite interesting that all three of these cases are linked to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Velazquez and Montes were students in the program in the early 1980s, and Myers taught there until 1977, after receiving a Ph.D. from the school in 1972. He returned to the school following his retirement in 2007 and worked as a professor of European Studies until his arrest in June 2009. The school is a high-profile institution that has a proven track record of placing graduates in the American foreign affairs and intelligence communities -- and of hiring former government personnel to serve as professors. Still, it is not the only program with such a profile, and the Cubans would almost certainly have recruited a promising agent from Georgetown's Walsh School, Harvard's Kennedy School or any other program if provided the opportunity. The fact that there were three high-profile Cuban agents who penetrated the U.S. government and who were all associated with the School of Advanced International Studies would seem to be an incredible coincidence. The FBI is probably still looking for potential agents who Myers could have spotted for recruitment when they studied there from 2007 to 2009.
When considering espionage cases, we often refer to an old Soviet KGB Cold War acronym -- MICE -- to explain the motivations of spies. MICE stands for money, ideology, compromise and ego. Traditionally, money has proved to be the top motivation for Americans arrested for espionage, but as seen in the Velazquez, Montes and Myers cases, the Cubans were very successful in recruiting American agents using ideology. Like the Montes and Myers complaints, there is no indication in the Velazquez complaint that she had ever sought or accepted money from the Cuban intelligence service for her espionage activities. While Velazquez and Montes were both of Puerto Rican descent, Myers' recruitment shows that Cuban intelligence officers did not just confine their recruitment activity to Hispanics.
In addition to the Cuban preference for ideologically motivated agents, this case also shows that the Cuban intelligence service is very patient and is willing to wait years for the agents it recruits to move into sensitive positions within the U.S. government rather than just focus on immediate results. It took several years for Velazquez to get a job with access to Top Secret information. Although it must be recognized that this is often the case with ideologically motivated agents who are commonly recruited while students. It is also clear that Cuban espionage efforts against the United States did not end with the Cold War and continue to this day.
Perhaps the most disturbing revelation from the Velazquez case for American counterintelligence officials, though, is the fact that Velazquez was not caught due to some operational mistake or intelligence coup. The only reason she was discovered is because of Montes' arrest and confession, which uncovered her activities. This means that her espionage tradecraft was solid for the nearly 18 years that she worked as a Cuban agent within the U.S. government. Furthermore, the background investigations conducted for the security clearances she held with the Department of Transportation and the Agency for International Development did not pick up on her anti-American sentiments -- even the "full field" investigation that would have been conducted prior to her being granted a Top Secret clearance.
It is not surprising that the background investigations failed to uncover Velazquez's espionage activities. Background investigations often are seen as mundane tasks, and thus are not given high priority -- especially when there are so many other "real" cases to investigate. Furthermore, these investigations are most often done by contract investigators whose bureaucratic bosses emphasize speed over substance, meaning important leads are often ignored because of a case deadline. In fact, contractors who do attempt to dig deep are sometimes accused of trying to milk the system in an effort to acquire more points (the basis upon which contract investigators are paid) by running additional leads and interviewing additional people.
Quite frankly, when it comes to background investigations, the prevalent attitude is to do the minimum work necessary to check off the prerequisite boxes and get the investigation over as quickly -- and as superficially -- as possible. Background investigations have become perfunctory bureaucratic processes that lack the ability to uncover the type of information required to catch a spy who does not want to be caught.
Velazquez would not have been required to pass a polygraph at the U.S. Agency for International Development like Montes had to at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Nevertheless, the portion of the indictment that discussed the training in deceiving the polygraph that Velazquez and Montes received during their first trip to Cuba underscores the limitation of polygraph examinations -– they only work really well on honest people.
Finally, it is interesting to look at these Cuban cases in light of what they may tell us about the larger challenges facing U.S. counterintelligence officials. If a small, poor nation like Cuba can successfully recruit so many agents and place them in critical positions within the U.S. government for so long, what does this portend about the efforts and successes of larger or richer countries with aggressive intelligence agencies like China, Russia, Israel and India?
Read more: The Cuban Spy Network in the U.S. Government | Stratfor
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http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/lost-world-part-I
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Unusual Social Unrest in Cuba
Analysis
January 30, 2014 | 0532 Print Text Size
Unusual But Manageable Protests in Cuba
Fruit and vegetable vendors at a market in Havana in August 2013. (ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP/Getty Images)
Summary
Two unusual instances of protests by private vendors in Cuba are a security concern for the island's leaders. The demonstrations likely occurred because Cuba began enforcing recently approved laws to regulate the island's nascent small businesses. The government cannot suppress these protests as easily as those instigated by political groups because the protesters seemingly do not have an organizational structure that authorities can simply infiltrate.
For now, it is unclear whether established political dissidents will be able to co-opt growing economic frustration. However, as the government continues to manage a complex campaign to slowly incorporate private economic activity into the economic system, there will continue to be pressure on the relationship between private entrepreneurs and the government. This natural tension will create further opportunities for public unrest, but the Cuban government will be proactive in its efforts to prevent a repeat of recent protests.
Analysis
Several reports from media outside Cuba suggest that two notable instances of social unrest occurred when private vendors marched in separate protests in the Cuban cities of Holguin and Santa Clara. In Holguin, at least 100 vendors protested Jan. 21 near the municipal headquarters after municipal employees reportedly seized unspecified goods the vendors were selling in a public plaza. The Miami Herald claimed that the protesters threw rocks at police officers who came to disperse them. Marti Noticias reported Jan. 24 that 50 vendors selling wares near a hospital protested after being given 24 hours' notice to vacate an open-air market. Additionally, news site Cubanet released an unconfirmed report in October 2013 that claimed that vendors intended to hold a similar protest in Havana last November but that the government's security services thwarted it.
The reported protests are unusual because they involve vendors from the country's small businesses instead of the political opposition. Members of Cuba's anti-government political organizations frequently protest across the country, but protests that seemingly do not involve political dissidents are rare. However, Cuba's evolving economic management strategy is creating new social tensions, and though they were small, these two protests may herald a larger shift in public support for Cuban authorities.
The Cause of the Protests
The reason behind the protests seems to be the Cuban government's push to regulate the country's growing small businesses. Such enterprises expanded after Cuban President Raul Castro approved economic reforms in 2010 that allowed Cubans to legally own small businesses. Much of Cuba's previously illicit informal economy of private restaurants, small hotels and vendors registered with government authorities after Castro's decision. However, the rapid reform also created extensive areas of unregulated economic activity outside the state's control.
At the same time, however, illicit businesses have arisen alongside the newly licit. Local media reports have documented increased smuggling of goods from abroad for sale in Cuba. Others are reselling goods bought in state stores, and still others have continued to operate without government licenses and paying no taxes. Some firms were authorized to perform one specific economic activity but used the license to sell other services altogether -- licensed restaurants showing movies, for example. To counter this behavior, the government passed several laws regulating all private entrepreneurs legalized in the 2010 reforms.
New regulatory legislation that took effect in January sanctions most of the offenses reportedly committed by private businesses. The laws list the types of economic activity permitted by the state and the punishments for engaging in outlawed forms of business. The punishments prescribed by the laws range from verbal warnings to fines or imprisonment. According to Marti Noticias, municipal authorities enforcing some sanctions in these reforms sparked the Santa Clara protest.
Security Response
The protests present an unusual challenge for the Cuban government. Unlike the country's political groups, which tend to protest because of ideological opposition to the Castro government, private sector workers likely protested because the new laws threaten their livelihood. With these policies being enforced countrywide, there is a good chance that new sources of tensions between the public and the government are occurring throughout the island. Even when faced with the possibility of more unrest, the government cannot simply halt its enforcement of the laws and allow the private sector to grow unchecked. This dynamic is likely to cause further protests, and the government will use all its tools, including propaganda, intelligence assets and security forces, against them.
The Cuban government will direct its powerful security organizations against individuals and groups planning future protests. Its Intelligence Directorate maintains tight surveillance over opponents in the country, and the Interior Ministry and police forces traditionally have not hesitated to break up protests. Cuba appears in recent weeks to have relied on these security bodies to disrupt any planned demonstrations by private workers, and it will continue to do so. According to an opposition news site, police arrested 19 dissidents in Holguin after the Jan. 21 protest. Dozens of political opponents were also detained in Havana prior to a Latin American leaders' summit held Jan. 25-29. These measures will likely avert any widespread protest activity but cannot completely eliminate outbreaks of dissent.
The protests are not an immediate threat to the Cuban government, but it cannot afford to ignore them. With the country gradually preparing for a political transition, the leadership will attempt to forestall any complications, including domestic unrest. Because the protests involved only a few hundred people, they are unlikely to overwhelm Cuba's security apparatus. Therefore, further crackdowns on political groups and potential protesters can be expected.
Read more: Unusual Social Unrest in Cuba | Stratfor
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See #387 et seq
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1024.350
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/18/rand-paul-opening-up-cuba-probably-a-good-idea/
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By
Peggy Noonan
Dec. 18, 2014 6:49 p.m. ET
187 COMMENTS
If a change in policy is in the American national interest, then it is a good idea. If it is not, then it is a bad idea, and something we should not do.
In another era that would be so obvious as not to bear repeating. But seeing to our national interests (just as we expect other nations to see to theirs) has been rather lost along the way by our leaders the past dozen years, and now sounds almost touchingly quaint.
But with that guiding principle, some questions on establishing new and closer ties with Cuba:
Was it ever in our nation’s interests to have, 90 miles off our shore, an avowed and active enemy?
No.
Is it now in our nation’s interests to have, 90 miles off our shore, an avowed and active enemy?
No.
Is it in the national interest to attempt to change this circumstance, if only gradually and hopefully, but with a sense that breaking the status quo might yield rewards?
Yes. If the new policy succeeds and leaves an old foe less active and avowed we will be better off, and it’s always possible, life being surprising, that we’ll be much better off. If the policy fails we’ll be no worse off than we were and can revert back to the old order, yanking out our embassy and re-erecting old barriers.
Great nations are like people. We get in habits of affection and enmity. What is needed is a practice of detached realism. Sometimes those for whom you have affection are disappointing. Sometimes those toward whom you feel enmity are, you realize, an essentially defeated foe, and a new attitude might be constructive. The key is to keep eyes sharp for changed situations, and adapt.
Fidel Castro is a bad man who took an almost-paradise and turned it into a floating prison. In replacing a dictatorship whose corruption was happily leavened by incompetence, he created a communist totalitarian state that made everything in his country worse. He robbed it of wealth, beauty and potential freedom. He was also a thorn and a threat to the United States, which he hated and moved against in myriad ways. He did all this for more than half a century.
Soon he will die, and his brother supposedly has taken his place. That is a changed situation.
Normalizing relations with Cuba will not, as Sen. Marco Rubio passionately put it in these pages, grant the Castro regime “legitimacy.”
Nothing can grant it legitimacy.
Fidel Castro ruined his country for a dead ideology and the whole world knows it. It may be closer to the truth to see the Castro brothers’ eagerness for normalization as an admission that they’re run out their string. They’ve lost everything that kept them alive, from the Soviet Union to once-oil-rich Venezuela. The Castro government is stuck. Their economy is nothing. They have no strength. They enjoy vestigial respect from certain quarters, but only vestigial. They’ve lost and they know it.
So why not move now?
Nothing magical will immediately follow normalization. The Castro brothers will not say, “I can’t believe it, free markets and democracy really are better, I had no idea!” Nothing will make Cuba democratic overnight. But American involvement and presence—American tourists and businessmen, American diplomats, American money, American ways and technology—will likely in time have a freeing effect. With increased contact a certain amount of good feeling will build. And that could make Cuba, within a generation or even less, a friend.
And that would be good for the American national interest, because it’s better to have a friend 90 miles away than an active and avowed enemy.
The opening to Cuba may also spark a re-Christianizing effect among a people who’ve been denied freedom of religious worship for generations. That would be good too, for them and us.
There is no reason to believe increased engagement between America and Cuba would encourage a post-Castro government to be more antagonistic or aggressive toward the U.S. More movement and commerce, including media presence, will not give that government more motive to embarrass itself by abusing and oppressing its people. As for the military, it wouldn’t be long, with lifted embargoes, before captains in the Cuban army found out what managers in the new Hilton were making, and jumped into hotel services.
With a real opening, including lifted embargoes, all the pressure year by year would be toward more back-and-forth, greater prosperity, and more freedom squeaking in by Internet and television.
In a rising Cuba all the pressure will be toward freedom. It will not be toward dictatorship.
In America, attention has rightly been paid to the Cuban-Americans of Florida and their reaction. They were cruelly displaced by the communist regime and forced to flee Cuba. They lost everything, came here penniless, and through gifts and guts rose to economic and political power. The oldest, who came in 1960, feel bitterness—and are loyal to that bitterness. Their children, a little less so, and the next generation less still. Because everything changes. You can’t let a foreign policy be governed by bitterness even when that bitterness is legitimate. Advice to the U.S. government: Attempt in time to create some kind of U.S.-Cuban framework whereby those whose property was expropriated can reclaim it.
President Obama’s opening seems so far cleverly done and well wired. He has major cover from the involvement of the most popular pope in recorded history, and also from the government of Canada, an ever-popular country whose prime minister, the sturdy, steady Stephen Harper , is the most quietly effective head of government in the Northern Hemisphere.
It is to be stipulated that the particulars of the deal will prove, on inspection, to be unimpressive, because Mr Obama was the negotiator. Fair enough, but he said when he first ran for president, in 2008, that he hoped for a new kind of engagement with Cuba, and he is producing it.
Something to watch out for: When an administration goes all in on a controversial policy it tends to spend most of its follow-up time not making sure the policy works but proving, through occasionally specious data and assertions, that it was the right policy. All who judge how the new opening proceeds will have to factor that in and see past it.
A closing note: I always thought, life often being unfair, that Fidel Castro would die the death of a happy monster, old, in bed, a cigar jutting out from the pillows, a brandy on the bedside table. My dream the past few years was that this tranquil end would be disturbed by this scene: American tourists jumping up and down outside his window, snapping pictures on their smartphones. American tourists flooding the island, befriending his people, doing business with them, showing in their attitude and through a million conversations which system is, actually, preferable. Castro sees them through the window. He grits his teeth so hard the cigar snaps off. Money and sentiment defeat his life’s work. He leaves the world knowing that in history’s great game, he lost.
Open the doors, let America flood the zone and snap those pictures. “Fidel! Look this way!” Snap. Flash. Gone.
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Bill Ayers is very happy and very proud.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/12/19/rand-paul-just-blasted-marco-rubio-in-a-very-public-way/
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Castro Wins
I’m more on the fence about Obama’s unilateral decision to end as much of the Cuban embargo as he can manage (most of the sanctions require Congress’s approval to dismantle). I’ve long been open to the idea that the embargo should be lifted. I don’t think the Castro regime would be able to long withstand the gales of the global economy, and it’s entirely possible we will see a “Cuban Spring” shortly after the Castros finally go to Hell. (The funny part is that it will probably take them a while to realize it’s Hell given the similar policy -- and meteorological -- arrangements. “Socialism only works in two places,” Ronald Reagan famously said. “Heaven where they don’t need it and hell where they already have it.”)
It’s certainly true that the embargo has failed to get rid of the Castros -- a valuable and apparently un-learnable lesson for people who think that sanctions are a reliable tool for bending other countries to our will. But sometimes a policy that is implemented for one reason becomes useful for other reasons. When the Castros kick the bucket there will be an opportunity to exert leverage over the new leaders -- or at least there would have been. This is Marco Rubio’s point, and I think it’s a good one.
Obama went another way. It’s pretty clear that he wanted to lift the embargo without any serious conditions at all. Obama’s motivations are not hard to fathom. Ideologically, anything that smacks of the Cold War is an embarrassment to Obama. Politically, he’s like a Black Friday shopaholic throwing any legacy items in his cart he can put his hands on. Amnesty for illegal immigrants . . . end Cuba’s isolation . . . George Foreman Grill . . . whatever will fit in the cart will do.
Obama had a political problem in that Alan Gross was rotting in a Cuban dungeon. So it’s not quite right to say that Obama traded the store for one man, it’s that that one man got in the way of him simply giving the store away no strings attached.
Yes, part of my reluctance stems from spite. I hate Fidel Castro and all he represents. Doing this the day after Castro went down for the dirt nap would have been emotionally more acceptable to me. Giving the Castro the sense that he won bothers me. But more important than even my own sense of spite, waiting until the Castros moved on would have struck a terrible blow to Castroism. And that actually matters, not just in Cuba but beyond. Castro is loved by dictators and the like because he’s a symbol of defiance to the U.S. By blinking first, we not only lend power to the cult of Castro, we send the signal that we can be waited out. No doubt Iran is finding some encouragement here.
Personally, I think there are a lot of problems with the comparisons people on the left and the right are making between Cuba and China. The Left says if we could open to China, we should be able to open to Cuba. But Nixon didn’t go to China to help democratize it. He went to China to create a wedge with the Soviets. The Right says all of the arguments against engaging dictatorial Cuba should also apply to China. After all, China hasn’t democratized. Well, yes and no. I do think China has grown more free, and obviously more prosperous, since it opened to the West. But it’s still an authoritarian regime and the rulers are in many ways more powerful than ever. This argument is true enough (and a useful counter-example for those who think lifting the embargo will make Cuba free). My only objection is that Cuba and China are very different entities and any serious foreign policy has to be able to make distinctions between a huge nuclear power and a crappy Caribbean backwater.
But, hey, let’s say it all works out. Let’s say that the policy of constructive engagement -- so vilified by the Left when applied to South Africa -- succeeds beyond our wildest dreams in Cuba. Let’s say the place becomes rich, technologically advanced, and bourgeois in the blink of an eye. The people get their modern cars and Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises. Moreover, let’s assume that, post-Castro, the country becomes democratic, or at least democratizing. In short, let’s say everything Democrats (and some more committed leftists) say they want to happen in Cuba actually happens. What then? Well, here’s my prediction: Then the Left will start to hate Cuba.
In no time, we will start seeing wistful stories in the New York Times about the “lost” Cuba, when things were simpler and life’s pleasures were attained outside of grubby commerce and filthy lucre. Suddenly we will hear about the persistent problem of Cuban racism -- long on display, but ignored, in the lily-white upper echelons of the Cuban Communist Party. Nostalgia for a new “Old Havana,” where the lines were long, but the hearts were full, will erupt across Park Slope and Takoma Park. The Nation will run mournful memoirs and polemics from Naomi Klein or Naomi Wolf or some other person named Naomi, about the brutal alienation that capitalism brings. And I will laugh at them.
Oh, Don’t Forget
You do know that Castro is a fascist, right? Well, maybe not explicitly in his doctrine. But in nearly everything else, he fits the bill. Militarist? The guy uses the army to rule the country and has worn the same dingy army uniform for half a century. Nationalist? Check. Cult of Personality? Double check! Rhetorical defiance of the “international system”? That’s his bag, baby (just as it was Mussolini’s). It’s worth remembering that Castro loved Francisco Franco. When Franco died, Castro declared a national day of mourning (actually, it might have been three days of mourning). Whenever leftists try to tell me what a fascist dictator looks like, I always like to ask, “How does that differ from Castro?”
It’s rare that I get a good answer.
Some of you might remember Herbert Matthews. You know National Review’s long running joke about Castro “getting his job through the New York Times”? That was based on Herbert Matthews’s reporting. Matthews was a sucker for Castro and he let himself be played for one. Funnily enough, 30 years earlier, he was a sucker for Mussolini too.
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"Is it in the national interest to attempt to change this circumstance, if only gradually and hopefully, but with a sense that breaking the status quo might yield rewards?
Yes. If the new policy succeeds and leaves an old foe less active and avowed we will be better off, and it’s always possible, life being surprising, that we’ll be much better off. If the policy fails we’ll be no worse off than we were and can revert back to the old order, yanking out our embassy and re-erecting old barriers."
- No, it removes our only policy lever at the time when it finally could be used.
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"Normalizing relations with Cuba will not, as Sen. Marco Rubio passionately put it in these pages, grant the Castro regime “legitimacy.” Nothing can grant it legitimacy."
- Yes it does grant it an element of legitimacy. These rogue leaders LOVE to be seen with world leaders and speaking with legitimacy at the UN, etc. How about a State dinner for these thugs? Instead they will dress casually, share a few toasts and say it wasn't one.
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"So why not move now?"
- One reason is that we are a nation of laws that originate in Congress and not a nation with a King or dictator. Another reason is that acting now precludes us from doing this when these thugs die and give up power.
"Nothing magical will immediately follow normalization. The Castro brothers will not say, “I can’t believe it, free markets and democracy really are better, I had no idea!” Nothing will make Cuba democratic overnight. But American involvement and presence—American tourists and businessmen, American diplomats, American money, American ways and technology—will likely in time have a freeing effect. With increased contact a certain amount of good feeling will build. And that could make Cuba, within a generation or even less, a friend.
- We are doing fine with the Cuban people. They're still floating boats to here and taking refuge. But the money will go to the regime. What part of communist dictatorship is she not understanding? How about under "normalization" we send the protestors there to demand free elections now? If that was the plan, he could probably get Rubio's support.
"The opening to Cuba may also spark a re-Christianizing effect among a people who’ve been denied freedom of religious worship for generations. That would be good too, for them and us."
- Again, what part of communist, totalitarian dictatorship is she not understanding? Take this through Congress and couple it with at least some empty, public promises toward democracy and freedom that we can later seek to hold them to. Not just reward them for a half century of total oppression.
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On Christmas break 1980-81 (IIRC) I was in Cuba for nine days legally and openly as part of a trip organized via the Columbia Law School Society of International Law, on the board of which I sat. We flew directly from Miami to Havana.
This was a couple of months before what was to become the Port Mariel exodus (seen in the opening sequence of the Pacino version of "Scarface") which, unknown to most here in the US, was an outgrowth of events at the Peruvian Embassy granting asylum to thousands of Cubans. Some of us in the group managed to break away from the daily Potemkin tours to which we were being subjected and the "supervision" of the Committees for the Defense of the Revoluation (neighborhood spies for the Communist Party) and mingle with people.
There was a very strong sense of ferment in the air, which people attributed to the visits the year before that had been allowed by family members who had fled to the US in 1960. The Castro regime had taught about the terrible oppression of the Cubans in Amerika, but the conversations with their visiting family members put lie to it. Indeed, the Cuban-Americans, seeing that the Cubans got only one pair of pants and one pair of shoes a year, left all their clothes and shoes behind with "Don't worry! We have lots more at home! Their well-fed appearance also contrasted with the Cubans, who got one kilo of meat a month.
This, IMHO is why when the incident at the Peruvian Embassy went off, so many people were ready to jump in an instant. (Maybe GM can use his google fu to bring up the history here).
The general concept of undermining Castro Communism with interaction is not, IMHO, inherently unsound. What IS unsound, is the pathetic way in which Obama is going about it.
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"The general concept of undermining Castro Communism with interaction is not, IMHO, inherently unsound. What IS unsound, is the pathetic way in which Obama is going about it."
That's right. The point IS to undermine the regime. It is not about us needing another island to visit or a better cigar to smoke. The total oppression of the people there is wrong (understatement!) and we have only one lever available to us, assuming we are unwilling or unable to help in any other way. If Obama's opening is part of a full court campaign to undermine and end the regime, great. Now show us the rest of it.
We were discussing this subject on the Presidential 2016 thread. Marco Rubio is hellbent on seeing this regime end. After 8 years of a Rubio Presidency if we are so lucky, 10 years from now, both Castros will be dead from old age, Cuba will be a beautiful, free country, and holding out the carrot of free trade and other help from the US will play a role in that. Why give the perks of our freedom to this regime; give it to the people!
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Some source links from a post in the Presidential thread:
Rubio previously on Cuba and Venezuela (Feb 2014): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_wKhXurFyI
Maybe this will help clarify Rubio's view, a 14 minute radio interview with John Hinderaker (12/23/14):
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/12/marco-rubio-on-cuba.php
A Cuban exile writes in the Washington Post today: Betrayed by President Obama
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/22/as-a-cuban-exile-i-feel-betrayed-by-president-obama/
Recent News: Cuban Government Sinks Boat Carrying 32 Refugees, Including Children
The boat, said González, was carrying 32 people, including seven women and two children. One of the two children was her 8-year-old son. Her husband is still missing.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article4711515.html
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2014/12/23/cuban-government-sinks-boat-carrying-32-refugees-including-children/
Did anyone see that story?
(Doug) When Marco Rubio speaks passionately and in great detail about just how awful the Cuban regime is, is anyone saying that any of it is not true??
No. We are just tired of taking a stand.
Free trade is something you do with free people. Enriching enemies of the United States with either money or technology was illegal when I was in the export business. I fully support free trade but understand that caveat.
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If free trade with the US was what the Castros feared and opposed, then that is what we should be throwing at them. Instead we are giving them the lifeline they need to survive, just when they need it, for no concession in return, right while both of their sugar daddies, Venezuela and Russia, are being squeezed to death in the oil price collapse.
To Obama, the timing is all about HIM!
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http://abcnews.go.com/Archives/video/cuba-refugees-peruvian-embassy-9919806
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Thank you GM!
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-nylons-for-nothing/2015/01/01/babeaf84-912b-11e4-a412-4b735edc7175_story.html?wprss=rss_charles-krauthammer
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U.S. Easing Decades-Old Restrictions on Travel to Cuba
The United States government on Friday will begin making it easier for Americans to travel to Cuba than it has been for more than half a century, opening the door to a new era of contact between neighbors that have been estranged longer than most of their citizens have been alive.
The Obama administration announced on Thursday a set of new regulations to take effect on Friday easing decades-old restrictions on travel, business and remittances, putting into reality some of the changes promised by President Obama last month when he announced plans to resume normal diplomatic relations with Havana.
Under the new regulations, Americans will now be allowed to travel to Cuba for any of a dozen specific reasons without first obtaining a special license from the government. Airlines and travel agents will be allowed to provide service to Cuba without a specific license. And travelers will be permitted to use credit cards and spend money while in the country and bring back up to $400 in souvenirs, including up to $100 in alcohol or tobacco.
The new regulations will also make it easier for American telecommunications providers and financial institutions to do business with Cuba. Americans will be allowed to send more money to Cubans, up to $2,000 every three months instead of the $500 currently permitted.
“These changes will have a direct impact in further engaging and empowering the Cuban people, promoting positive change for Cuba’s citizens,” Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew, whose department oversees sanctions policy, said in a statement.
READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/world/americas/us-eases-decades-old-rules-on-travel-to-cuba.html?emc=edit_na_20150115
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Medicare fraud is huge in Miami. I don't know how much of it is from Cubans but I believe a substantial portion is.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/plundering-america-cubas-criminal-pipeline-exploits-us-laws/ar-AA8cShd
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http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article8520950.html
"Cuban President Raul Castro demanded on Wednesday that the United States return the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay, lift the half-century trade embargo on Cuba and compensate his country for damages before the two nations re-establish normal relations."
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As a student of contract law, I point out that any counteroffer is a rejection of Obama's offer of normalization, and makes the original offer no longer valid or binding. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offer_and_acceptance
What a joke, Barack Obama and Raul Castro negotiating what is in the best interests of their countries. If this wasn't real, it would make a good SNL skit - without help from comedy writers.
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JayZ promised Brock some kickbacks in his plan to do business in Cuba.
The JayZ cigar company.
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Guantanamo Bay's Place in U.S. Strategy in the Caribbean
Geopolitical Weekly
February 3, 2015 | 09:03 GMT Print Text Size
Stratfor
By Sim Tack
Last week, the Cuban government declared that for the United States and Cuba to normalize relations, the United States would have to return the territory occupied by a U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Washington clearly responded that returning the base is not on the table right now. This response makes sense, since quite a bit of politicking goes into the status of the base. However, the Guantanamo Bay issue highlights a notable aspect to the U.S.-Cuban negotiations — one that is rooted in the history of the U.S. ascension to superpower status as it challenged European powers in the Western Hemisphere.
U.S. Expansion in the Western Hemisphere
Cuba, the largest island in the Caribbean, has a prominent position at the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico, separating access to the gulf into two choke points: the Yucatan Channel and the Straits of Florida. It is also situated on the sea-lanes between the U.S. East Coast and the Panama Canal, the shortest route for naval traffic between the two coasts of the United States. Cuba thus has been pivotal to the U.S. strategy to safeguard economic activity in the Gulf of Mexico and naval transport routes beyond that. The evolution of U.S. naval capabilities, however, has changed the part that Cuba, and thus the base at Guantanamo, has played.
The United States began extending its ambitions into the Caribbean, challenging the classical European colonial powers and arguably starting its ascent to the rank of a global power, with the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. Named after then-President James Monroe, the doctrine sought to prevent intervention by European powers — most notably Spain and Portugal — in their former colonies as the colonies achieved independence. The doctrine largely was a hollow statement at first because the United States did not have the naval power it would need to enforce it and establish the hegemony that it sought to put in place with the doctrine. However, the United Kingdom, which at the time had considerable naval capabilities, supported the Monroe Doctrine and committed to enforcing it because it also secured British access to the markets in these former colonies as long as they were not recovered by their former rulers.
Although it was a notable shift in U.S. foreign policy toward the Western Hemisphere as a whole, the Monroe Doctrine did not affect Cuba directly. The doctrine did not seek to meddle in the affairs of existing European colonies, and the Spanish ruled Cuba and Puerto Rico until the Spanish-American War in 1898. At that point, after the Monroe Doctrine had set the stage, U.S. military capabilities were catching up with its foreign policy intent. It was during the Spanish-American War that U.S. naval power entered the global stage and eventually resulted in the United States' taking Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines from Spain.
However, Washington first needed a reason for intervention in Cuba. That opportunity came with the USS Maine explosion. The ship was deployed to Havana to protect U.S. business interests on the island. Moreover, news was spreading of atrocities committed by Spanish forces against the Cuban population. This intervention included the exact moment when U.S. forces arrived in Guantanamo Bay. In June 1898, a battalion of Marines landed at Fisherman's Point in the Bay of Guantanamo to pin down the Spanish forces in the city of Guantanamo, preventing them from reinforcing the Spanish positions on San Juan Hill as Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders led the charge there.
Several years after the U.S. victory against the Spanish, in 1903, the newly independent Cuban government signed an agreement with Washington for the perpetual lease of Guantanamo Bay as a naval base. Initially, the peace agreement with Spain had transferred sovereignty over the island to the United States, but Washington decided to leave the island under the control of the local Cuban leaders who had started the rebellion against the Spanish. The U.S. naval station at Guantanamo, the result of the first real show of U.S. expeditionary power, went on to become instrumental in the further deployment of U.S. naval power. In those days, the time that naval vessels spent at sea was limited significantly by the fuel they required: coal. Having access to forward deployed coaling stations such as the one at Guantanamo extended the U.S. Navy's ability to operate in the Caribbean.
Guantanamo's Changing Role
After World War II, during which Guantanamo also played a direct part in supporting merchant shipping convoys from the U.S. East Coast, the role of Guantanamo Bay changed considerably as a consequence of the Cuban Revolution. Throughout the revolution, Guantanamo Bay not only became a key element of U.S. resistance to the rebels led by Fidel Castro, it also became a pawn in the new bipolar world order pitting the United States against the Soviet Union. The relations between the new Cuban government and the Soviet Union made Cuba the Soviets' most forward position toward the continental United States — something made very obvious during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The naval base at Guantanamo did not necessarily play a leading role in this part of history, although the continued U.S. presence in Guantanamo Bay persisted as a major source of dispute between Washington and Havana.
After the Cold War, the base's military significance began to wane. The fall of the Soviet Union left Cuba a much less significant element in U.S. foreign policy, and the development of new technology had reduced the need for the base to support U.S. naval operations in the Caribbean. As much as geopolitics dictates history, the evolution of manmade technology can significantly alter states' physical limitations and capabilities. The use of new and more efficient fuels in naval vessels improved the range and speed of these vessels to the point where the Gulf of Mexico's security and naval movement beyond the U.S. coastline no longer required a logistical support node in Cuba.
The U.S. Navy continued using Guantanamo as a training ground, but the base's significance even in this regard evaporated. By the mid-1990s, activity at the naval base at Guantanamo was demoted to Minimum Pillar Performance (limiting the activities and presence there to only that which is necessary to maintain the existence of the facilities). The U.S. military has maintained this caretaker presence at Guantanamo, but it has done so mostly in the service of the State Department, which intends to retain Guantanamo as a bargaining chip or leverage in relations with Havana, rather than out of military need.
The United States also realized that other similar naval operating bases in Latin America lost their utility in a new geopolitical and technological reality. During World War II, the United States had established such a base in Rio de Janeiro, but after the war this base closed, having served its military purpose. Similarly, the United States managed a series of naval bases throughout former British territories in the Western Hemisphere that it obtained in return for 50 Town-class destroyers through the lend-lease agreement with London. Most of these bases also were shut down shortly after World War II or during the Cold War. The United States intends to use its forward deploying military capabilities without establishing full-blown bases, as seen in Eastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East, but even then Guantanamo falls outside of Washington's "places-not-bases" intent.
A new use for the base was discovered after 9/11, when it became host to a detention facility holding suspected terrorists. The ambiguous legal status of the base at Guantanamo Bay provided grounds for this sort of use because it is technically a base leased by the U.S. government located on foreign soil. Terrorism suspects are not subject to the same guarantees they would receive if held on sovereign U.S. soil, generating a useful dynamic in the complex issue of dealing with enemy combatants in the U.S.-jihadist war. Guantanamo served a similar purpose when it was used to hold HIV-positive refugees in the early 1990s.
The potential for Guantanamo Bay to be returned to Cuba will depend greatly on the negotiations between Washington and Havana, as well as the domestic U.S. politicking that is influenced significantly by the anti-Castro Cuban immigrant population of Florida, a swing state that is key in presidential elections. It is key, however, to see Guantanamo in its current context and not in its past role in the development and protection of U.S. power in the Caribbean and beyond. The part Guantanamo plays in U.S.-Cuba negotiations is defined by Washington's desire to play this card at will. The only constraint on Washington is the requirement to disband the detention camp at Guantanamo to accommodate Cuba's demands, though this does not mean that the United States will give up the naval base easily. Once played, the Guantanamo card will be gone and Washington's long-term leverage over Havana will be forever altered.
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The Geopolitics of U.S.-Cuba Relations
Geopolitical Weekly
December 23, 2014 | 09:00 GMT
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By George Friedman
Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro agreed to an exchange of prisoners being held on espionage charges. In addition, Washington and Havana agreed to hold discussions with the goal of establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries. No agreement was reached on ending the U.S. embargo on Cuba, a step that requires congressional approval.
It was a modest agreement, striking only because there was any agreement at all. U.S.-Cuba relations had been frozen for decades, with neither side prepared to make significant concessions or even first moves. The cause was partly the domestic politics of each country that made it easier to leave the relationship frozen. On the American side, a coalition of Cuban-Americans, conservatives and human rights advocates decrying Cuba's record of human rights violations blocked the effort. On the Cuban side, enmity with the United States plays a pivotal role in legitimizing the communist regime. Not only was the government born out of opposition to American imperialism, but Havana also uses the ongoing U.S. embargo to explain Cuban economic failures. There was no external pressure compelling either side to accommodate the other, and there were substantial internal reasons to let the situation stay as it is.
The Cubans are now under some pressure to shift their policies. They have managed to survive the fall of the Soviet Union with some difficulty. They now face a more immediate problem: uncertainty in Venezuela. Caracas supplies oil to Cuba at deeply discounted prices. It is hard to tell just how close Cuba's economy is to the edge, but there is no question that Venezuelan oil makes a significant difference. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government is facing mounting unrest over economic failures. If the Venezuelan government falls, Cuba would lose one of its structural supports. Venezuela's fate is far from certain, but Cuba must face the possibility of a worst-case scenario and shape openings. Opening to the United States makes sense in terms of regime preservation.
The U.S. reason for the shift is less clear. It makes political sense from Obama's standpoint. First, ideologically, ending the embargo appeals to him. Second, he has few foreign policy successes to his credit. Normalizing relations with Cuba is something he might be able to achieve, since groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce favor normalization and will provide political cover in the Republican Party. But finally, and perhaps most important, the geopolitical foundations behind the American obsession with Cuba have for the most part evaporated, if not permanently than at least for the foreseeable future. Normalization of relations with Cuba no longer poses a strategic threat. To understand the U.S. response to Cuba in the past half century, understanding Cuba's geopolitical challenge to the United States is important.
Cuba's Strategic Value
The challenge dates back to the completion of the Louisiana Purchase by President Thomas Jefferson in 1803. The Territory of Louisiana had been owned by Spain for most of its history until it was ceded to France a few years before Napoleon sold it to the United States to help fund his war with the British. Jefferson saw Louisiana as essential to American national security in two ways: First, the U.S. population at the time was located primarily east of the Appalachians in a long strip running from New England to the Georgia-Florida border. It was extremely vulnerable to invasion with little room to retreat, as became evident in the War of 1812. Second, Jefferson had a vision of American prosperity built around farmers owning their own land, living as entrepreneurs rather than as serfs. Louisiana's rich land, in the hands of immigrants to the United States, would generate the wealth that would build the country and provide the strategic depth to secure it.
What made Louisiana valuable was its river structure that would allow Midwestern farmers to ship their produce in barges to the Mississippi River and onward down to New Orleans. There the grain would be transferred to oceangoing vessels and shipped to Europe. This grain would make the Industrial Revolution possible in Britain, because the imports of mass quantities of food freed British farmers to work in urban industries.
In order for this to work, the United States needed to control the Ohio-Missouri-Mississippi river complex (including numerous other rivers), the mouth of the Mississippi, the Gulf of Mexico, and the exits into the Atlantic that ran between Cuba and Florida and between Cuba and Mexico. If this supply chain were broken at any point, the global consequences — and particularly the consequences for the United States — would be substantial. New Orleans remains the largest port for bulk shipments in the United States, still shipping grain to Europe and importing steel for American production.
For the Spaniards, the Louisiana Territory was a shield against U.S. incursions into Mexico and its rich silver mines, which provided a substantial portion of Spanish wealth. With Louisiana in American hands, these critical holdings were threatened. From the American point of view, Spain's concern raised the possibility of Spanish interference with American trade. With Florida, Cuba and the Yucatan in Spanish hands, the Spaniards had the potential to interdict the flow of produce down the Mississippi.
Former President Andrew Jackson played the key role in Jeffersonian strategy. As a general, he waged the wars against the Seminole Indians in Florida and seized the territory from Spanish rule — and from the Seminoles. He defended New Orleans from British attack in 1814. When he became president, he saw that Mexico, now independent from Spain, represented the primary threat to the entire enterprise of mid-America. The border of Mexican Texas was on the Sabine River, only 193 kilometers (120 miles) from the Mississippi. Jackson, through his agent Sam Houston, encouraged a rising in Texas against the Mexicans that set the stage for annexation.
But Spanish Cuba remained the thorn in the side of the United States. The Florida and Yucatan straits were narrow. Although the Spaniards, even in their weakened state, might have been able to block U.S. trade routes, it was the British who worried the Americans most. Based in the Bahamas, near Cuba, the British, of many conflicting minds on the United States, could seize Cuba and impose an almost impregnable blockade, crippling the U.S. economy. The British depended on American grain, and it couldn't be ruled out that they would seek to gain control over exports from the Midwest in order to guarantee their own economic security. The fear of British power helped define the Civil War and the decades afterward.
Cuba was the key. In the hands of a hostile foreign power, it was as effective a plug to the Mississippi as taking New Orleans. The weakness of the Spaniards frightened the Americans. Any powerful European power — the British or, after 1871, the Germans — could easily knock the Spaniards out of Cuba. And the United States, lacking a powerful navy, would not be able to cope. Seizing Cuba became an imperative of U.S. strategy. Theodore Roosevelt, who as president would oversee America's emergence as a major naval power — and who helped ensure the construction of the Panama Canal, which was critical to a two-ocean navy — became the symbol of the U.S. seizure of Cuba in the Spanish-American War of 1898-1900.
With that seizure, New Orleans-Atlantic transit was secured. The United States maintained effective control over Cuba until the rise of Fidel Castro. But the United States remained anxious about Cuba's security. By itself, the island could not threaten the supply lines. In the hands of a significant hostile power, however, Cuba could become a base for strangling the United States. Before World War II, when there were some rumblings of German influence in Cuba, the United States did what it could to assure the rise of former Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, considered an American ally or puppet, depending on how you looked at it. But this is the key: Whenever a major foreign power showed interest in Cuba, the United States had to react, which it did effectively until Castro seized power in 1959.
The Soviet Influence
If the Soviets were looking for a single point from which they could threaten American interests, they would find no place more attractive than Cuba. Therefore, whether Fidel Castro was a communist prior to seizing power, it would seem that he would wind up a communist ally of the Soviets in the end. I suspect he had become a communist years before he took power but wisely hid this, knowing that an openly communist ruler in Cuba would revive America's old fears. Alternatively, he might not have been a communist but turned to the Soviets out of fear of U.S. intervention. The United States, unable to read the revolution, automatically moved toward increasing its control. Castro, as a communist or agrarian reformer or whatever he was, needed an ally against U.S. involvement. Whether the arrangement was planned for years, as I suspect, or in a sudden rush, the Soviets saw it as a marriage made in heaven.
Had the Soviets never placed nuclear weapons in Cuba, the United States still would have opposed a Soviet ally in control of Cuba during the Cold War. This was hardwired into American geopolitics. But the Soviets did place missiles there, which is a story that must be touched on as well.
The Soviet air force lacked long-range strategic bombardment aircraft. In World War II, they had focused on shorter range, close air support aircraft to assist ground operations. The United States, engaging both Germany and Japan from the air at long range, had extensive experience with long-range bombing. Therefore, during the 1950s, the United States based aircraft in Europe, and then, with the B-52 in the continental United States, was able to attack the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons. The Soviets, lacking a long-range bomber fleet, could not retaliate against the United States. The balance of power completely favored the United States.
The Soviets planned to leapfrog the difficult construction of a manned bomber fleet by moving to intercontinental ballistic missiles. By the early 1960s, the design of these missiles had advanced, but their deployment had not. The Soviets had no effective deterrent against a U.S. nuclear attack except for their still-underdeveloped submarine fleet. The atmosphere between the United States and the Soviet Union was venomous, and Moscow could not assume that Washington would not use its dwindling window of opportunity to strike safely against the Soviets.
The Soviets did have effective intermediate range ballistic missiles. Though they could not reach the United States from the Soviet Union, they could cover almost all of the United States from Cuba. The Russians needed to buy just a little time to deploy a massive intercontinental ballistic missile and submarine force. Cuba was the perfect spot from which to deploy it. Had they succeeded, the Soviets would have closed the U.S. window of opportunity by placing a deterrent force in Cuba. They were caught before they were ready. The United States threatened invasion, and the Soviets had to assume that the Americans also were threatening an overwhelming nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. They had to back down. As it happened, the United States intended no such attack, but the Soviets could not know that.
Cuba was seared into the U.S. strategic mentality in two layers. It was never a threat by itself. Under the control of a foreign naval power, it could strangle the United States. After the Soviet Union tried to deploy intermediate range ballistic missiles there, a new layer was created in which Cuba was a potential threat to the American mainland, as well as to trade routes. The agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union included American guarantees not to invade Cuba and Soviet guarantees not to base nuclear weapons there. But Cuba remained a problem for the United States. If there were a war in Europe, Cuba would be a base from which to threaten American control of the Caribbean, and with it, the ability to transit ships from the U.S. Pacific Fleet to the Atlantic. The United States never relieved pressure on Cuba, the Soviets used it as a base for many things aside from nuclear weapons (we assume), and the Castro regime clung to the Soviets for security while supporting wars of national liberation, as they were called, in Latin America and Africa that served Soviet strategic interests.
Post-Soviet Cuba
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Castro lost his patron and strategic guarantor. On the other hand, Cuba no longer threatened the United States. There was an implicit compromise. Since Cuba was no longer a threat to the United States but could still theoretically become one, Washington would not end its hostility toward Havana but would not actively try to overthrow it. The Cuban government, for its part, promised not to do what it could not truly do anyway: become a strategic threat to the United States. Cuba remained a nuisance in places like Venezuela, but a nuisance is not a strategic threat. Thus, the relationship remained frozen.
Since the Louisiana Purchase, Cuba has been a potential threat to the United States when held by or aligned with a major European power. The United States therefore constantly tried to shape Cuba's policies, and therefore, its internal politics. Fidel Castro's goal was to end American influence, but he could only achieve that by aligning with a major power: the Soviets. Cuban independence from the United States required a dependence on the Soviets. And that, like all relationships, carried a price.
The exchange of prisoners is interesting. The opening of embassies is important. But the major question remains unanswered. For the moment, there are no major powers able to exploit Cuba's geographical location (including China, for now). There are, therefore, no critical issues. But no one knows the future. Cuba wants to preserve its government and is seeking a release of pressure from the United States. At the moment, Cuba really does not matter. But moments pass, and no one can guarantee that it will not become important again. Therefore, the U.S. policy has been to insist on regime change before releasing pressure. With Cuba set on regime survival, what do the Cubans have to offer? They can promise permanent neutrality, but such pledges are of limited value.
Cuba needs better relations with the United States, particularly if the Venezuelan government falls. Venezuela's poor economy could, theoretically, force regime change in Cuba from internal pressure. Moreover, Raul Castro is old and Fidel Castro is very old. If the Cuban government is to be preserved, it must be secured now, because it is not clear what will succeed the Castros. But the United States has time, and its concern about Cuba is part of its DNA. Having no interest now, maintaining pressure makes no sense. But neither is there an urgency for Washington to let up on Havana. Obama may want a legacy, but the logic of the situation is that the Cubans need this more than the Americans, and the American price for normalization will be higher than it appears at this moment, whether set by Obama or his successor.
We are far from settling a strategic dispute rooted in Cuba's location and the fact that its location could threaten U.S. interests. Therefore, opening moves are opening moves. There is a long way to go on this issue.
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second post
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/07/01/cuba-demands-return-of-guantanamo-end-of-us-tv-broadcasts-in-return-for-diplomacy/
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second post
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/07/01/cuba-demands-return-of-guantanamo-end-of-us-tv-broadcasts-in-return-for-diplomacy/
Just say no. It would make a good place to lock up the Castros, IMHO.
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After Baraq's self-castration negotiations with Iran and his restoration of diplomatic relations "negotiations" with Cuba, and his ongoing release of enemy combatants from Gitmo to go kill Americans again, it occurs to me there may be something even more insidious at play with Baraq's plan to empty Gitmo.
Apparently Gitmo is held by American AS A LEASE since 1903. The Castro regime has refused to cash the payments we have made since Castro took power. So, if Baraq empties Gitmo and orders our troops there home, it would appear that Cuba walks in and simply takes it over.
What might Cuba do with a quality navy base like Gitmo? Might it lease it Russia? China? Iran? North Korea?
They say the three most important things about property are location, location, and location. How much is a navy base located right in the neighborhood of the mouth of the Mississippi River?
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https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2016/02/u-s-removed-cuba-from-terrorist-list-after-hezbollah-opened-base-on-island/
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https://www.facebook.com/CUBA630/videos/963606547045378/
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Whatever the opposite of rest in peace is my wish here.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/farewell-to-cubas-brutal-big-brother/2016/11/26/d369affe-0eeb-11e6-bfa1-4efa856caf2a_story.html?utm_term=.f9c6a69db966
If this were a just world, 13 facts would be etched on Castro’s tombstone and highlighted in every obituary, as bullet points — a fitting metaphor for someone who used firing squads to murder thousands of his own people.
●He turned Cuba into a colony of the Soviet Union and nearly caused a nuclear holocaust.
●He sponsored terrorism wherever he could and allied himself with many of the worst dictators on earth.
●He was responsible for so many thousands of executions and disappearances in Cuba that a precise number is hard to reckon.
●He brooked no dissent and built concentration camps and prisons at an unprecedented rate, filling them to capacity, incarcerating a higher percentage of his own people than most other modern dictators, including Stalin.
●He condoned and encouraged torture and extrajudicial killings.
●He forced nearly 20 percent of his people into exile, and prompted thousands to meet their deaths at sea, unseen and uncounted, while fleeing from him in crude vessels.
●He claimed all property for himself and his henchmen, strangled food production and impoverished the vast majority of his people.
●He outlawed private enterprise and labor unions, wiped out Cuba’s large middle class and turned Cubans into slaves of the state.
●He persecuted gay people and tried to eradicate religion.
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Nov. 26, 2016 2:42 p.m. ET
Fidel Castro’s legacy of 57 years in power is best understood by the fates of two groups of his countrymen—those who remained in Cuba and suffered impoverishment and dictatorship, and those who were lucky or brave enough to flee to America to make their way in freedom. No progressive nostalgia after his death Friday at age 90 should disguise this murderous and tragic record.
Castro took power on New Year’s Day in 1959 serenaded by the Western media for toppling dictator Fulgencio Batista and promising democracy. He soon revealed that his goal was to impose Communist rule. He exiled clergy, took over Catholic schools and expropriated businesses. Firing squads and dungeons eliminated rivals and dissenters.
The terror produced a mass exodus. An April 1961 attempt by the CIA and a small force of expatriate Cubans to overthrow Castro was crushed at the Bay of Pigs in a fiasco for the Kennedy Administration. Castro aligned himself with the Soviet Union, and their 1962 attempt to establish a Soviet missile base on Cuba nearly led to nuclear war. The crisis was averted after Kennedy sent warships to intercept the missiles, but the Soviets extracted a U.S. promise not to invade Cuba again.
The Cuba that Castro inherited was developing but relatively prosperous. It ranked third in Latin America in per-capita daily calorie consumption, doctors and dentists. Its infant mortality rate was the lowest in the region and the 13th lowest in the world. Cubans were among the most literate Latins and had a vibrant civic life with private professional, commercial, religious and charitable organizations.
[object Object]
Castro destroyed all that. He ruined agriculture by imposing collective farms, making Cuba dependent first on the Soviets and later on oil from Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela. In the last half century Cuba’s export growth has been less than Haiti’s, and now even doctors are scarce because so many are sent abroad to earn foreign currency. Hospitals lack sheets and aspirin. The average monthly income is $20 and government food rations are inadequate.
All the while Fidel and his brother Raúl sought to spread their Communist revolution throughout the world, especially in Latin America. They backed the FARC in Colombia, the Shining Path in Peru and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Their propaganda about peasant egalitarian movements beguiled thousands of Westerners, from celebrities like Sean Penn and Danny Glover to Secretary of State John Kerry, who on a visit to Havana called the U.S. and Cuba “prisoners of history.” The prisoners are in Cuban jails.
On this score, President Obama’s morally antiseptic statement Saturday on Castro is an insult to his victims. “We know that this moment fills Cubans—in Cuba and in the United States—with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation,” Mr. Obama said. “History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.” Donald Trump, by contrast, called Castro a “dictator” and expressed hope for a “free Cuba.”
Mr. Obama’s 2014 decision to normalize U.S.-Cuba relations has provided new business opportunities for the regime but has yielded nothing in additional freedom. Americans can now travel and make limited investment in Cuba but hard currency wages for workers are confiscated by the government in return for nearly worthless pesos. In 2006 Forbes estimated Fidel’s net worth, based on his control of “a web of state-owned companies,” at $900 million.
The hope of millions of Cubans, exiled and still on the island, has been that Fidel’s death might finally lead to change, but unwinding nearly six decades of Castro rule will be difficult. The illusions of Communism have given way to a military state that still arrests and beats women on their way to church. China and Russia both allow more economic freedom. The regime fears that easing up on dissent, entrepreneurship or even access to the internet would lead to its inevitable demise.
Castro’s Cuba exists today as a reminder of the worst of the 20th-century when dictators invoked socialist ideals to hammer human beings into nails for the state. Too many Western fellow-travelers indulged its fantasies as long as they didn’t have to live there. Perhaps the influence of Cuba’s exiles will be able, over time, to reseed the message of liberty on the island. But freedom starts by seeing clearly the human suffering that Fidel Castro wrought.
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I notice you didn't put this in the "RIP" thread :wink:
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:evil:
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Burn in hell, Fidel.
Hillary's loss and now this. It's a rough time for the left.
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So, Fidel became a good communist on Black Friday , , , :evil:
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I feel terrible... for the Obamas.... they lost a close, personal, family friend today... well... not terrible.... Just pointing out the Obamas' loss.
I wonder if the flag will fly at half mast.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432680/myth-cuban-health-care?utm_source=nr&utm_medium=facebook%3Futm_content%3Dnordlinger%3Futm_campaign%3Dcastro
When I was in Cuba in 1980 the two pharmacies I saw were virtually devoid of anything.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432680/myth-cuban-health-care?utm_source=nr&utm_medium=facebook%3Futm_content%3Dnordlinger%3Futm_campaign%3Dcastro
When I was in Cuba in 1980 the two pharmacies I saw were virtually devoid of anything.
Strange how often bad luck strikes scientific socialism.
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Haven't read this yet, posting it for reference:
http://www.faithwire.com/2016/11/28/heres-a-handy-list-of-atrocities-for-everyone-glorifying-fidel-castro-today/
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http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/11/30/bret-baier-new-path-for-us-and-cuba-what-ike-and-jfk-might-tell-president-elect-trump.html
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Castro and Human Dignity
Five or six prisoners would be confined for days in very narrow 6-foot-long cells.
ENLARGE
A motorcade carries the ashes of Fidel Castro toward a cemetery in Santiago, Cuba, Dec. 4. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
By
MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY
Updated Dec. 4, 2016 9:38 p.m. ET
Notwithstanding the celebrations in the streets of Miami, the most widespread reaction among Cubans—at home and abroad—to the demise of Fidel Castro seems to be relief. One of the great narcissists of all time, father of nearly 60 years of national torment, has returned to dust. That alone is consolation.
Castro left a once-prosperous and promising land in dire poverty. But his legacy is far worse than the material ruin of a nation. His insatiable appetite for absolute power was manifest in an obsession with hunting down every last nonconformist, stripping away the human dignity of the population.
This reality is worth revisiting as the world offers retrospectives on Castro’s life, almost always adding that the tyrant gave Cuba great health care. If it were true it could not justify his brutality. And it is not true, as we learned in 2007 when Cuban doctors botched his treatment for diverticulitis and a Spanish specialist had to be flown in to save him. The truth is that the regime doesn’t give a fig about human life.
Castro thrived on a maniacal ambition to possess and dominate the Cuban soul, and nowhere are the consequences more visible than in the country’s sky-high abortion rates. In a Nov. 22 story for the news website CUBANET, independent journalist Eliseo Matos cited an abortion study by Cuban doctors Luisa Álvarez Vásquez and Nelli Salomón Avich. They found that since 1980, one-third of all Cuban pregnancies have been terminated.
Equally troubling, abortion rates are high among adolescents and often mandated by the state. You don’t have to be religious to see this as a national existential crisis—the reflection of a society struggling against nihilism.
This didn’t happen overnight. It is the output of decades of living under a dictatorship that demands nothing less than total surrender to the will of one person. In a 1986interview with the Los Angeles Times, Armando Valladares, who was a Castro prisoner for 22 years, described the regime’s use of the “drawer cells” in its dungeons. Five or six prisoners would be confined, for days, in these very narrow, 6-foot-long spaces. “They had to sit with their knees against their body. There was no room to move; prisoners had to urinate and defecate right there,” Mr. Valladares explained.
All torture was used “to break the prisoner’s resistance,” Mr. Valladares said. If a prisoner said “he had been wrong, if he denied his religious beliefs, saying they were from the obscure ages, and if he admitted that he now understood that communism was the solution to mankind’s problems and he wanted to have the opportunity to re-enter the new communist society, then he could escape the cell and be put in a re-education farm.”
There could be no higher power, no one revered more than Fidel. God was a problem so priests and nuns were imprisoned and exiled, religion was outlawed and the regime did all it could to destroy the Cuban family.
In 1997 Christmas was legalized and Catholic and Protestant churches have slowly been granted some space. But this is allowed only as long as teachings about the sacredness of human life don’t interfere with regime control. Thus Havana’s Cardinal Ortega distances himself from the dissident group of Catholic women known as the Ladies in White, even when they are regularly beaten on the streets.
In a system where all must bow to the state, it is not surprising abortion rates are especially high among adolescents. Children learn about human sexuality from their communist teachers, in purely mechanical terms of course. Generations of teens have been taken away from their families and sent to work camps in the countryside as part of their indoctrination.
As Mr. Valladares wrote in The Wall Street Journal in May 2000, “Away from all parental supervision for nine months at a time, children there suffer from venereal disease, as well as teenage pregnancy, which inevitably ends in forced abortion.” Another reason for high adolescent abortion rates is that teenage prostitutes now populate the streets of Havana, working for hard currency from tourists.
Abortion is also a key regime tool for “health care.” Any pregnancy considered risky is immediately terminated, a decision made by the state. This drives down infant mortality rates, which Cuba uses to impress the world about its “progress.”
Yet Cuba hasn’t achieved anything special in infant mortality. In a Dec. 1 blog post on the Cato Institute’s HumanProgress website, Marian Tupy pointed out that between 1963 and 2015 infant mortality in Cuba declined by 90% while it declined by 94% in Chile. In Latin America and the Caribbean overall it is down 86%.
Fidel Castro’s only unique accomplishment was 57 years of repression that sought to exterminate any meaning to life for those who lived under his boot.
Write to O’Grady@wsj.com.
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/12/04/castro-ashes-breaks-down-viva-la-revolucion/
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/12/04/castro-ashes-breaks-down-viva-la-revolucion/
But socialism is scientific! Andrez??
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They could also offer the job to Obama. He is free (or rather we are free of him! - thank God)
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/274558d9f2924a16958be4e47384953a/cuban-presidents-daughter-his-successor-may-be-surprise
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https://www.conservativereview.com/articles/rubio-thwarts-sabotaging-state-bureaucrats-to-get-cuba-reversal
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http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/republicans-divided-trump-reverses-obama-cuba-policy-48099973
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http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/republicans-divided-trump-reverses-obama-cuba-policy-48099973
Not continuing Obama's bowing to America's enemies is WRONG!
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/mystery-of-sonic-weapon-attacks-at-us-embassy-in-cuba-deepens
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/mystery-of-sonic-weapon-attacks-at-us-embassy-in-cuba-deepens
I wonder what the proper response is for - an act of war.
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"I wonder what the proper response is for - an act of war."
Obama would have sent them aid to show how nice we are and to express our deep empathy for what the horrible US did to them.
Clinton would have sent lawyers for more diplomacy and talks that would have done nothing .
No idea what Trump would do.
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Save As PDF
Highlights
Cuban President Raul Castro will hand power to a successor, likely Miguel Diaz-Canel, by February 2018. The new president will likely maintain Cuba's current policies toward Venezuela and the United States.
Cuba's government will attempt to wean itself off Venezuelan energy shipments while trying to diversify its import sources. In the meantime, Cuba will keep importing oil and fuel from Venezuela at current levels for as long as it can.
To accomplish this goal, the Cuban government will continue to try to keep pro-Cuban Venezuelan officials, such as President Nicolas Maduro, in key positions of power.
In Cuba, austerity is threatening to make an unwanted comeback. The island's government is planning for an immediate future of budget cutbacks with little chance of financial relief. At the root of Cuba's slide into austerity is the Venezuelan economic crisis. Cuba receives around 55,000 barrels per day of mostly crude oil from Venezuela — down from more than 100,000 barrels per day only five years ago — as well as an unknown amount of financial assistance. The decline in Venezuelan energy shipments has forced the Cuban government to seek to diversify its import sources and to cut back on imports of higher-grade gasoline and diesel.
In this sense, Cuba's new austerity is a far cry from the "special period" of the early 1990s, when its primary source of foreign assistance and trade, the Soviet Union, disintegrated and the Cuban government's income declined precipitously. In 1993 alone, Cuba's gross domestic product fell nearly 15 percent. Venezuela's economic crisis will not affect Cuba as dramatically or as rapidly as the Soviet Union's collapse did, but declining oil and fuel shipments from Venezuela will raise the financial burden on Cuba's central government.
Facing a New Necessity
Since 2000, when the two countries signed an energy cooperation agreement, Cuba has enjoyed access to low-cost (and often free) Venezuelan oil, gasoline, diesel and fuel oil, providing medical care and training in return. In addition, Cuban intelligence and internal security services have worked with their Venezuelan counterparts to monitor and thwart any threats from Venezuela's political opposition or armed forces. As a result of the agreement, Havana has not had to budget meaningfully for energy expenses for nearly two decades. This dependence was mutually beneficial as long as both governments were capable of keeping up their ends of the deal. But the steady degradation of Petroleos de Venezuela's oil production and refining capacity since the mid-2000s has loomed over Havana's relationship with Caracas, and once the collapse of global oil prices in 2014 plunged Venezuela into economic crisis, finding a new energy patron became a necessity for the Cuban government.
Cuba has several advantages when it comes to dealing with the domestic effects of Venezuela's economic decline. As an authoritarian state with virtually no private sector, it can quickly dial down energy consumption by refusing to import or distribute some fuel shipments. Subsequent shortages might breed discontent, but not necessarily to a point that would threaten the government. Private vehicle ownership in Cuba isn't as high as it is in other Caribbean or Latin American countries, and the government's reputation in managing dissent would keep most would-be protesters in check. Cuba likely will try to keep the decline in Venezuela's fuel shipments gradual, while Venezuela, for its part, will likely reduce shipments to other Caribbean states before cutting off Cuba's subsidized energy.
A sudden change of government in Caracas or a shift in priorities from the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela could alter these likelihoods. The first scenario would require a coup, and the second would occur only if party factions hostile to Cuban interests were able to decisively influence Caracas' stance toward Havana, if, for example, a political figure such as Diosdado Cabello, a former military officer not closely linked to Cuba's government, pressed for a quicker reduction in Venezuelan assistance to Cuba. To mitigate these risks, Cuba will continue to support the efforts of Venezuelan intelligence services to detect threats from within, to protect pro-Cuba political figures, such as President Nicolas Maduro, and to defend their influence over the National Constituent Assembly and other government institutions.
A Steady Extraction
For Havana, the trick will be managing Cuba's energy consumption amid Venezuela's economic decline and growing political instability. A gradual decline in Venezuelan oil supplies would allow the Cuban government to slowly wean itself off that source and steadily substitute imports from other state and private companies. That effort could become easier if a plan by Mexico's government to substitute Venezuelan energy shipments with its own comes to fruition. On the other hand, the financial burden of a sudden loss of Venezuelan oil and fuel lifeline would be extremely high. At current prices, losing Venezuela's energy shipments would cost an extra $1 billion to cover. That amounts to about 50 percent of the Cuban central government's entire budgeted income.
Miguel Diaz-Canel, a career politician and member of Cuba's Politburo, is in line to succeed the aging Raul Castro as president by February 2018. There is no reason to expect Diaz-Canel to significantly change Cuba's policy toward either Venezuela or the United States. The lifting of the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba is off the table for the foreseeable future, given that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump moved to tighten sanctions on the Cuban government and pulled its diplomats from Havana after a series of suspected sonic attacks against them by an unknown actor. This deterioration in political ties means that Cuba's finances are unlikely to receive a sudden windfall from a further influx of U.S. tourists in coming years. The Cubans will keep supporting the Venezuelan administration because its energy consumption and domestic finances depend on the survival of Maduro's government.
For Cuba, the near future presents major financial obstacles that it will attempt to overcome by trying to steadily extract itself from its relationship with Venezuela. But cementing a new trade relationship with the United States is likely off the table for now. The upcoming leadership transition in Havana is unlikely to change that situation. Instead, Cuba will try to steadily supplant Venezuelan oil and fuel with shipments from other sources while hoping its energy patron doesn't suddenly cut off its energy supply.
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/were-the-cuban-sonic-attack-victims-actually-poisoned
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Miguel Díaz-Canel won an astonishing 605 to 0 election of the National communist manifesto Assembly yesterday.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-43823287
He is a staunch ally of Raúl Castro and is not expected to make any radical changes.
His most vocal opponents are either dead or in prison.
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another foreign policy success of Obama's
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Miami Cubans would not buy this sales pitch:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/11/03/cuba-first-barack-obama-says-florida-democrats-help-make-cuba-great-again/
no mention Cuba is Communist. (like obama)
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Summary
During a speech outlining U.S. policy in Latin America in November, U.S. national security adviser John Bolton branded Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua a “troika of tyranny.” Bolton criticized the prevalence of poverty, violence and oppression in these countries, stressed that the U.S. would increase pressure on their autocratic governments, and vowed that Washington would stand with those fighting for freedom. It was no coincidence that he delivered the address in Miami, the home of many expats from these nations.
For Cuba, the United States’ new hard-line approach has meant intensifying economic pressure, and, in many ways, the timing couldn’t be worse. The Cuban economy has been struggling for the past few years with sluggish growth and disappointing investment levels. Its closest allies are also struggling with their own domestic challenges and disputes with the U.S. and are in no position to come to Cuba’s aid. This Deep Dive will look at the history of U.S.-Cuba relations and the new efforts of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to squeeze the Cuban government.
Cuba’s Strategic Value
Cuba is an island that stretches 780 miles (1,250 kilometers) long and lies about 100 miles south of the U.S. state of Florida and 125 miles east of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Because of its location, between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, it plays a major role in U.S. maritime interests. Cuba, or whoever controls it, could block access to the Gulf of Mexico and leave exports departing vital ports like New Orleans with no way to access international markets. The prospect was dire enough that in 1823 U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams told U.S. diplomats Washington intended to annex Cuba within half a century for fear that another foreign power would claim it.
(click to enlarge)
Cuba’s location cemented its status as a subject of competition among regional and global powers. As a Spanish colony, it served as a major port for ships arriving from Spain whose cargo needed replenishing and whose crews needed rest before moving on with their journey. It also served as a military hub in Spain’s quest to fend off other powers, such as Britain and France, that wanted to establish colonies in the Americas. When anger against Spain started growing in Cuba, the U.S. and Mexico began to court pro-independence groups on the island. Mexico was already much weaker than the U.S. by this time, and Washington managed to align with independence movements to more or less control the island in the early years of its statehood. After Cuba’s revolution, however, Cuban leader Fidel Castro allied the country with the Soviet Union to dry to deter U.S. aggression and influence.
With the end of the Cold War, Cuba’s place in great power competition diminished. Russia was a shadow of the former Soviet Union, and the U.S. solidified its dominance in the Americas, turning its attention and resources to other parts of the world. But nearly three decades later, countries outside the Western Hemisphere, particularly those the U.S. sees as rivals, are once again looking to project power and influence in the Americas. Though they don’t represent much of a challenge to U.S. ascendancy in the region, they are nonetheless a source of frustration that Washington can’t afford to ignore. The scenario may well lead to a revival of the Monroe Doctrine, the 19th-century U.S. policy of opposing foreign (at the time, European) interference in the Americas.
U.S.-Cuba Relations Over Time
Economics have always played a key role in U.S.-Cuba relations. Trade ties between the two, in fact, were a decisive factor in ending Spanish rule over the island. As a colony, Cuba officially traded with only Spain (though it carried out illicit trade with other countries), but as Spanish control over the island declined, it opened up trade with the United States. Their economic ties boomed in the 19th century, so much so that some Cubans pushed for U.S. annexation of the island.
Once Fidel Castro’s Communist Party took power in Havana, relations between the U.S. and Cuba deteriorated. Washington imposed a range of sanctions against the Cuban government starting in 1960, when President Dwight Eisenhower cut Cuba’s sugar quota to the U.S. in response to the nationalization of U.S.-owned refineries on the island. Eisenhower then banned all exports to Cuba except for food and medicine. President John F. Kennedy expanded the embargo, banning all imports from and business transactions with Cuba unless explicitly approved by the executive branch. Trade with the United States fell from 68 percent of total Cuban trade in 1958 to zero percent in 1962, while trade with the Soviet Union jumped from less than 1 percent to 49 percent over the same period. President Lyndon Johnson then led a broader effort to isolate Cuba from Western Europe and Latin America.
In the 1970s, the U.S. began to ease these efforts after realizing they weren’t having the desired effect, since the Soviet Union continued to prop up the Cuban economy. President Gerald Ford started backdoor talks with Cuba to try to normalize relations, exempting foreign-based subsidiaries of U.S. companies from the embargo and helping to relax restrictions imposed on Cuba by the Organization of American States. U.S. President Jimmy Carter also tried to normalize relations – even though Cuba sent troops to Angola to back a leftist movement there – and eased measures such as a ban on U.S. travel to the island. But in the 1980s, as several leftist revolutions in Central America turned the tide of U.S. foreign policy, these efforts stalled. President Ronald Reagan reinstated the travel ban, restricted the flow of hard currency and remittances, and banned the import of products containing nickel (one of Cuba’s top exports) from Cuba or the Soviet Union.
Following the Soviet Union’s collapse, Cuba’s economy became more vulnerable to U.S. economic pressure. From 1989 to 1993, Cuba’s gross domestic product fell by 35 percent, its real income decreased by 75 percent and its capacity to import fell by 74 percent. The U.S. decided the time was right to intensify the pressure in an attempt to bring down the government. President George H.W. Bush once again barred overseas subsidiaries of U.S. companies from trading with Cuba and restricted access to U.S. ports for ships that had docked in Cuba. During his administration, Congress passed the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act, which promoted “a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba through the application of sanctions.” The administrations of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush redoubled measures to limit business ties, remittances and tourism to Cuba before Barack Obama’s administration reversed many of them. Obama opened up travel between the two countries, allowed for business and remittance flows, called for an end to the embargo, and removed Cuba from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Trump Changes Course
Over the past two years, the Trump administration has, in turn, reversed the Obama-era moves to warm relations with Cuba. Trump outlined his position on the country in October 2017, stating that the purpose of his Cuba policy was to further the United States’ national security and foreign policy interests and to empower the Cuban people. He introduced two major changes targeting Cuba’s tourism sector, one of the country’s most lucrative industries. First, he restricted travel to Cuba for U.S. citizens. Second, and more important, he restricted U.S. companies from doing business with certain firms linked to the Cuban military – which is heavily involved in tourism. (The initiative built on legislation – introduced in 2015 but never ratified – that would have prohibited dealings with companies tied to Cuba’s military and government.) The U.S. State Department released a list of firms banned from doing business with the U.S. in November 2017 and updated it last year. All of them are tied to tourism.
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Just last week, the U.S. also signaled that it may implement the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. The controversial legislation enables U.S. citizens to sue companies profiting from property the Cuban government seized from them after the 1959 revolution and also allows those who were Cuban citizens when their property was confiscated to sue. When the bill – whose implementation could affect all businesses operating in Cuba, including cruise companies that dock there – first passed, major U.S. trade partners that still do business with Cuba, such as the European Union, Canada and Mexico, condemned it. Every administration since its passage has suspended the key clause, Title III, to avoid angering allies. Then on Jan. 16, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned that the Trump administration would suspend the clause for only 45 days, instead of the usual six months. Pompeo added that the government would use the waiver period to carry out a review of all articles of the law “in light of the national interests of the United States and efforts to expedite a transition to democracy in Cuba.”
Cuba’s Transition
These moves come at a time when Cuba is undergoing a political and economic transition. Its president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, became the first person outside the Castro family to lead Cuba in nearly six decades, after taking over for Fidel Castro’s brother, Raul, in April 2018. The Diaz-Canel administration has proposed a series of constitutional reforms, including measures to introduce a prime minister to oversee the government’s day-to-day management, along with provincial governors, who would replace the presidents of provincial assemblies. Under the proposed changes, which will be put to a referendum Feb. 24, the president could serve a maximum of two five-year terms and would have to be under 60 years old on taking office. (Raul Castro was 76 when he stepped in for his brother in February 2008.)
One of the goals of the changes is to move the country away from a governing style dominated by one leader while still maintaining a single-party system – similar to the systems in place in China and Vietnam today. (The new constitution, if passed, may increase the military’s role in government, too, which explains why the Trump administration has targeted firms with ties to the armed forces.) In addition, many of the changes aim to improve efficiency in the economy. The draft constitution acknowledges recent economic reforms aimed at improving the business environment, streamlining government and reducing debt. It also allows for more transparent foreign investment, gives state-owned companies more autonomy and introduces a tax system. It even recognizes private property and the role of markets, though it maintains the primacy of the state in land ownership, production and economic planning. According to the government, these changes will help Cuba attract sorely needed foreign capital.
Many of these changes build on reforms that Raul Castro introduced in 2011, to little avail. Diaz-Canel hopes his government can succeed where its predecessor did not and is shooting to achieve 1.5 percent economic growth in 2019 by boosting foreign direct investment, increasing exports and reducing imports. (Annual imports are already on the decline, down to $11.3 billion in 2017 from $15.6 billion in 2013.) He also wants to pay down Cuba’s external debt – which hit $15.8 billion in 2015, the last time official figures were released – by implementing austerity measures and using inventory and emergency reserves. And to reduce fuel imports, the government plans to cut fuel consumption, a risky move considering that energy helps drive the economy.
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The U.S. plans to target the tourism sector, one of Cuba’s top sources of foreign currency, could damage the Cuban economy. The Cuban government made an estimated $3 billion through tourism last year, while private businesses related to the sector, such as taxi services and restaurants, pulled in an estimated $1 billion. Canada and the U.S. were the top two tourist markets for Cuba, followed by various Western European countries. It seems the Trump administration’s moves to tighten travel restrictions haven’t deterred U.S. tourists yet: U.S. visitors to the island increased last year by about 20,000 – admittedly a more modest bump than in previous years – to reach 630,000. Still, restrictions on business with certain companies in the tourism industry and the uncertainty surrounding the Helms-Burton Act may make U.S. tourists and businesses think twice about spending their dollars in Cuba.
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External Factors
Complicating matters for Havana is the lack of an external benefactor it can rely on for financial support. After the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russia was too weak to be a reliable economic partner, and courting the U.S. wasn’t an option. Cuba thus looked to strengthen ties with an array of countries, rather than to depend on a single power, as it had for much of its history. It maintained good relations and economic ties with Russia, as well as with like-minded nations such as China and Venezuela. It also increasingly opened up to Western Europe. The problem now is that many of Cuba’s allies are dealing with political and economic problems at home that prevent them from being the country’s patron.
Venezuela, for example, is in the midst of a crisis. Its oil exports to Cuba have fallen by at least 40 percent since 2014, and that’s a generous estimate. Meanwhile, a political scandal in Brazil, and the election of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, mean that Cuba can no longer rely on the country for support. Brazil has scrapped plans for new investments in Cuba and has sent the thousands of Cuban doctors it hosted, whose salaries went to the Cuban government, back home. Making matters worse, Cuba recently defaulted on a loan from Brazil’s development bank.
Though Russia has stepped up to help Cuba with oil shipments and small loans, these measures have had a limited effect. Russia is facing economic problems of its own and can’t offer to sell Cuba large amounts of oil at a favorable price. Of course, it wants to support Cuba as much as it can so that it has an ally in the United States’ backyard. Moscow, in fact, sent a delegation of advisers to the island just a couple of months ago. But it has too many bigger concerns, in places like Syria and Ukraine, to spend much of its time or resources propping up the Cuban economy. Similarly, China is too busy managing the fallout from its economic slowdown and the U.S. trade war to come to Cuba’s aid.
As for the European Union, it has taken a renewed interest in Cuba over the past couple of years. Western Europe is Cuba’s leading source of FDI, and many Spanish companies, in particular, are involved in Cuban tourism and infrastructure. Europe, however, may be one of the regions most affected by the Helms-Burton Act, if the Trump administration decides not to suspend it past March. Furthermore, the European Union is already engaged in disputes with the U.S. over trade, the Iran nuclear deal and energy projects involving Russia. It likely wouldn’t want to put a possible deal on these issues at risk by backing the Cuban government against Washington’s wishes. Cuba, then, will have to hope its political and economic reforms will help it weather the storm of the U.S. crackdown on the “troika of tyranny.”
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https://townhall.com/columnists/humbertofontova/2019/04/20/john-bolton-honors-the-bay-of-pigs-freedomfighters-who-obama-apologized-for-n2545064
reminds me of GH Bush encouraging the Kurds to go up against Saddam only to me massacred
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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/12/02/havana-cuba-collapsing-buildings-housing-unesco/1998606002/
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https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/fidel-castro-did-not-give-cuba-literacy-or-better-healthcare
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https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/26/everything-you-think-you-know-about-cuba-is-a-lie/
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https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/02/08/trump-defeats-castro-communists-cuba-set-to-open-up-its-economy-n1424105
as we move to more and more corporate - government fascist style control
:-(
what. a weird turn of events
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Cuba Is on the Clock
The island is in dire need of a new patron.
By: Allison Fedirka
Cuba may be a geostrategically valuable country, but its value far outweighs its actual power. The island’s proximity to the rest of North America’s coastlines, as well as its position in the Gulf of Mexico, which gives it influence over all maritime traffic in the northern part of the Western Hemisphere, has made it both a prize and a power broker for anyone with interest in this region of the world. Yet, its small size and limited resources prevent Cuba from projecting much power on its own.
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Havana’s solution to this historic dilemma has been to offer itself to a patron who in return can offer economic prosperity and security guarantees. The Spanish first established this client-patron relationship in the 15th century, using Cuba as a critical resupply station between the Old World and the New. As the Spanish Empire faded, so too did Cuba’s economic prosperity. Tired of sacrificing for a patron that could no longer meet their needs, the Cubans rose up against the Spanish and allied with the United States. The new relationship was a boon to the Cuban economy, but Washington’s heavy-handed political control led to another revolution, after which the Cuban government, then led by Fidel Castro, quickly aligned with the Soviet Union. After it collapsed, the Cuban economy again fell into disrepair. (Unlike Cuba's break from Spain and the U.S., the split with the Soviets was not initiated by Havana, which was therefore unprepared for it.) Foreign aid, strong security forces and state-sponsored initiatives to promote tourism allowed the Castro government to remain in power until a new patron could be found.
Cuba, a communist country in a post-Cold War world, didn’t have a lot of options. Enter Hugo Chavez. His rise to power in oil-rich Venezuela in 1999 made Caracas a viable patron for Havana. Chavez had the Bolivarian ideology that meshed nicely with Cuba’s. Venezuela gave Cuba subsidized oil, and in return Cuba supported Venezuela with intelligence and security cooperation. Their partnership, however, was short-lived. Chavez died in 2013, leaving Venezuela’s government accounts distorted with high social spending bills and a population dependent on government services. Oil prices tanked in 2014. Since then, Venezuela’s ability to lend support to Cuba has dramatically declined. Caracas can no longer feed its own population, let alone prop up a foreign government. Russia has attempted to fill the void by canceling Cuba’s debt, initiating a railway modernization project and giving Cuba modest grain exports. These efforts were enough to forestall a crisis but not to fundamentally change the direction in which Cuba was heading.
It's now 2021, and Cuba’s behavior over the past few months leads only to one conclusion: that the economy is reaching a breaking point and the government is therefore looking for a patron to ensure its survival. For over a year, there have been anecdotal reports of fuel shortages. Economic problems in the agriculture sector have compromised domestic production and led to shortages. (President Miguel Diaz-Canel has even acknowledged the situation publicly.) Between reduced Venezuelan oil shipments and the high price of alternative oil imports, transportation on the island is also breaking down. The brief influx of U.S. dollars after travel restrictions for Americans were lifted in 2015 ended in 2017, when the Trump administration reinstated past restrictions and introduced more severe sanctions against Cuba. The COVID-19 pandemic killed international travel to the island and thus its lucrative and crucial tourism industry.
The government is looking for answers. It put in a request with the Paris Club for a two-year moratorium on paying its debt; the club granted it a one-year reprieve last month. It has accelerated a raft of economic reforms meant to spark economic activity by reducing distortions and attracting investment. In July, the government made U.S. dollars more accessible so that they can be used to buy a wider range of basic goods. In November, it streamlined the process by which foreign investment was approved and started to experiment with expanding digital services to further reduce processing times. The next month, the Foreign Trade and Investment Ministry announced that the government would no longer be required to have a majority share in joint business projects in the areas of tourism, biotechnology and wholesale trade. This was followed by the end of select subsidy programs and the convertible Cuban peso. More recently, in early February, Cuba announced that it would expand opportunities for private businesses to operate, lifting restrictions on private enterprise in 1,873 of 2,000 sectors. The government also increased fines for those that engage in price speculation.
Mounting social pressure has amplified the government’s sense of urgency. Last November, there was the first of many protests staged by artists who spoke against the government by occupying the palace plaza and going on a hunger strike. The government intervened, made some arrests and offered an empty invitation to engage in dialogue. Since then, supporters and sympathizers have come together to form the San Isidro and 27N movements. Their most high-profile activity so far was the Feb. 9 delivery of a letter intended for President Joe Biden to the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, in which they asked him for help ending some of the recent sanctions placed on the island.
Havana subtly broadcast last week that it was in the market for a new patron. It came in the form of a letter from the Cuban Embassy in Bogota warning the Colombian government of a possible upcoming attack by the National Liberation Army, the paramilitary organization better known as the ELN. The ambassador submitted a document saying outright that the Cuban Embassy had received the information but had not verified it. Given Cuba’s long-standing relationship with the group, the announcement was interpreted as Cuba looking for a political opening.
Among the leading candidates are the U.S. and China. The Biden administration has put nearly all foreign relations under review, and many expect it to revitalize President Barack Obama’s efforts to normalize ties with Cuba. Through executive powers, a U.S. president can unilaterally control, to a degree, anyway, the extent to which the U.S. opens to the island. But it remains a highly contentious issue in U.S. politics; these kinds of changes require a lot of political capital, and Biden is currently in short supply. Cuba-watchers – those for and against closer ties with the island, and those inside and outside elected office – have already started mobilizing to get their way. For now, though, the U.S. government does not appear positioned to make any significant changes to its Cuba policy.
China, meanwhile, has been slowly gaining economic influence in Latin America over the past decade and recognizes Cuba’s strategic position relative to the United States. China needs some leverage against the U.S. similar to the kind Washington has against Beijing in the South China Sea. Improved ties with Cuba would go some way toward getting that leverage. Beijing has certainly used shared ideological beliefs to politically align with the Cuban government, and on the economic front, China is now Cuba’s second-largest trading partner. Important advances have also been made in Cuba’s telecommunications systems. Huawei helped establish public Wi-Fi hot spots throughout the island and is now helping increase household connectivity. China’s Haier now assembles laptops and tablets in Cuba, and the China Communications Construction Company operates in Cuba’s Mariel Special Development Zone.
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A U.S. Homeland Security report indicated that China’s telecommunications presence on the island already impedes U.S. firms from entering the Cuban market. Chinese financing now supports port modernization projects in Santiago, and investments are planned in pharmaceuticals and tourism. Cuban officials have also highlighted renewable energy, cybersecurity, technology and biotechnology as areas in which they’d like to work more closely with China. These projects help Cuba, of course, but more will be needed to stabilize the economy, let alone change its current trajectory. How much China comes through will depend in part on how secure its foothold is in Cuba – and how well it will be able to keep the U.S. on edge.
Cuba has made overtures, and though the U.S. and China are the leading options for Cuba, both face constraints in terms of how they can respond. Either way, Havana is on the clock.
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jul/11/cuba-protesters-rail-against-communist-dictatorshi/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=YpYajunU3gPrgCMFA%2BYtzC239EH%2B5LYKOLbyZRMiUFH77clvo3v%2BXfr2kjDl2z8m&bt_ts=1626045091668
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https://www.foxnews.com/world/cuban-anti-government-protesters-wave-american-flags-during-march
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NR PLUS MEMBER FULL VIEW
Have the Cuban People Reached Their Breaking Point?
On the menu today: The people of Cuba take to the streets in revolt; a New Yorker vandalizes the gallery that will sell Hunter Biden’s paintings; and Richard Branson technically travels to space — with a bit of irritating talk about how he’s doing it all to help protect the environment.
A Key Step on the Road to a Free Cuba?
The protests and clashes that exploded across Cuba yesterday probably do not yet mark the end of that country’s authoritarian, Communist regime. But that regime no longer has quite such an uncontested grip over the country — and an authoritarian regime’s ability to hold onto power is often dependent upon a monopoly of force and the ability to deliver goods and services that people can’t get anywhere else. Cubans always had to deal with rampant corruption, the U.S. embargo, and the fact that the country’s most driven and independent citizens keep risking their lives by jumping into rafts and attempting to cross 90 miles of ocean full of sharks. Now throw in COVID-19 and the long lapse in the tourism industry, and the immiseration of the Cuban people has reached an intolerable point.
The New York Times summarizes today that, “in a country known for repressive crackdowns on dissent, the rallies were widely viewed as astonishing. Activists and analysts called it the first time that so many people had openly protested against the Communist government since the so-called Maleconazo uprising, which exploded in the summer of 1994 into a huge wave of Cubans leaving the country by sea.”
The Associated Press reported from Havana:
Although many people tried to take out their cellphones and broadcast the protest live, Cuban authorities shut down internet service throughout the afternoon.
About 2 1/2 hours into the march, some protesters pulled up cobblestones and threw them at police, at which point officers began arresting people and the marchers dispersed.
AP journalists counted at least 20 people who were taken away in police cars or by individuals in civilian clothes.
“The people came out to express themselves freely, and they are repressing and beating them,” Rev. Jorge Luis Gil, a Roman Catholic priest, said while standing at a street corner in Centro Habana.
About 300 people close to the government then arrived with a large Cuban flag shouting slogans in favor of the late President Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution. Some people from the group assaulted an AP videojournalist, disabling his camera, while an AP photojournalist was injured by the police.
Deutsche Welle stated that, “President and head of the Communist Party Miguel Diaz-Canel attended one of the protests in San Antonio de Los Banos, which is located west of Havana. Social media footage showed protesters shouting insults at the president.”
Protests that seem to explode out of nowhere usually have a long fuse. Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote in the Wall Street Journal on December 20, 2020, about the dissident-artist San Isidro Movement:
As the San Isidro Movement gains street cred in the barrio, support from other dissident groups, and recognition abroad, the question on the minds of long-suffering Cubans is whether this time things are different. There are good reasons to remain cautiously pessimistic about the odds of political change. But it’s also true that Cuban civil society seems to be undergoing a revival, and that makes the landscape markedly different than it was even 10 years ago.
And Agence France-Presse, among others, spotlighted a particularly popular and controversial protest anthem on February 25 of this year:
In Cuba, where music and revolution are intertwined, a song by rappers boldly denouncing the communist government has found viral appeal online — but angered a regime that keeps close tabs on culture.
Entitled “Patria y Vida” (Fatherland and Life) — a positive spin on the slogan “Patria o Muerte” (Fatherland or Death) coined by Fidel Castro in 1960 — the song has racked up more than two million views since its release on YouTube on February 16.
It boasts nearly 130,000 likes — but also 4,400 dislikes.
The track does not pull any punches.
Singers sporting gold chains, hoodies and backwards baseball caps rattle off a long list of grievances about poverty, repression and misrule before declaring: “It is over” and “We are not afraid.”
It didn’t generate a ton of attention, but Raul Castro stepped down as the head of the Cuban regime in April. Whether or not you buy into the “great man theory” of history, leaders are not interchangeable. Ayman al-Zawahiri cannot inspire followers the way Osama bin Laden could. Our Jay Nordlinger observed at the time of Castro’s retirement that odious, repressive regimes often outlast their most charismatic leaders — but not always.
Back at the end of June, Human Rights Watch detailed that, “Cuban authorities have jailed and prosecuted several artists and journalists who are critical of the government. Police and intelligence officers have routinely appeared at the homes of other artists and journalists, ordering them to stay there, often for days and even weeks. The authorities have also imposed temporary targeted restrictions on people’s ability to access cellphone data.”
After a while, the oppressed citizens of an authoritarian state just don’t have that much more to lose.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-cubas-communists-cling-to-power-11626128117
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This system didn’t make the island prosperous, but it kept the Castro brothers in control. Backed by the army, the Communist Party, which maintains a nationwide network of snoops and enforcers, protects the regime.
**
Simply substitute the work purge in the military we see now (backed by the army), the DNC ( for Communist Party) ; CIA NSA , USPS and many other agencies for network of snoops an Antifa , the Democrat law machine for enforcers , leaks to the MSM ....
and the perfect analogy is complete.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-cubas-communists-cling-to-power-11626128117
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This system didn’t make the island prosperous, but it kept the Castro brothers in control. Backed by the army, the Communist Party, which maintains a nationwide network of snoops and enforcers, protects the regime.
**
Simply substitute the work purge in the military we see now (backed by the army), the DNC ( for Communist Party) ; CIA NSA , USPS and many other agencies for network of snoops an Antifa , the Democrat law machine for enforcers , leaks to the MSM ....
and the perfect analogy is complete.
ccp, I had the same reaction to that.
"This system didn’t make the island prosperous, but it kept the [regime] in control. Backed by the ['government and social' networks] which maintain a nationwide network of snoops and enforcers, protects the regime."
- I was going to say, they had the same experience in Cuba. I thought they were describing the US.
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It's in progress here.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-cubas-communists-cling-to-power-11626128117
**
This system didn’t make the island prosperous, but it kept the Castro brothers in control. Backed by the army, the Communist Party, which maintains a nationwide network of snoops and enforcers, protects the regime.
**
Simply substitute the work purge in the military we see now (backed by the army), the DNC ( for Communist Party) ; CIA NSA , USPS and many other agencies for network of snoops an Antifa , the Democrat law machine for enforcers , leaks to the MSM ....
and the perfect analogy is complete.
ccp, I had the same reaction to that.
"This system didn’t make the island prosperous, but it kept the [regime] in control. Backed by the ['government and social' networks] which maintain a nationwide network of snoops and enforcers, protects the regime."
- I was going to say, they had the same experience in Cuba. I thought they were describing the US.
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Cuba eases limits. The Cuban government said it would ease import restrictions to facilitate the flow of medicine, food and hygiene products into the island following widespread protests over basic goods shortages. Travelers will be allowed to bring unlimited amounts of these products tariff-free into the country. Previously, there was a 10-kilogram (22-pound) limit before taxes kicked in. The changes do not apply to travelers entering Cuba from Cayo Coco and Varadero airports.
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ANALYSES
U.S. Sanctions Dim Hopes for Cuba’s Economic Opening
New U.S. sanctions indicate President Joe Biden will take a harsher-than-anticipated approach to Cuba, which will hamper Havana’s efforts to attract new private investment. On July 22, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Cuba’s defense minister and entire special forces unit, dubbed the Black Berets, following the violent crackdown on protests that erupted earlier this month. The sanctions were applied under the Global Magnitsky Act, which enables the U.S. government to target perpetrators of serious human rights abuses and corruption around the world. Biden has since warned the measures were “only the beginning” of his administration’s response to the Cuban government’s heavy-handed handling of the unrest, which resulted in mass arrests, collective trials and a social media blackout.
This is the second time that the United States has sanctioned a Cuban entity under the Global Magnitsky Act since it went into force in 2012. During its final days in office in January, the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump used the act to impose limited sanctions on the same elite Black Beret forces.
The sanctions are unlikely to deter the Cuban government from using similar heavy-handed tactics to quell future protests — portending further U.S. actions. On July 11, thousands of Cubans took to the streets to protest against food shortages, the high prices of goods and the country's weak health care system. Black Beret forces attempted to quell demonstrations with military tactics, leading to violent clashes between police and protesters. Several journalists were attacked and internet access was shut down for several days in the wake of the unrest. One man died on the outskirts of Havana and several hundred people remain missing after demonstrations calmed on July 12 due to lack of organization. Police forces have since detained over 160 people who participated in the protests. The regime has since carried out mass trials in which activist leaders are tried in small groups at the same time without access to legal defense.
On July 10, protests began around noon in the municipality of San Antonio de Los Banos, located 26 kilometers (roughly 16 miles) from Havana. Other rallies then began springing up in Havana before ultimately spreading throughout the country as people took to the streets after seeing social media posts.
The July 10 demonstrations were the largest Cuba has seen since a similar uprising against government policies in 1994.
The majority of the detained activists were charged with inciting unrest, vandalism or assault, which could carry up to 20-year prison sentences.
The shift in Biden’s Cuba policy will likely deter foreign investment, which will raise the risk of additional episodes of unrest by prolonging the economic issues that triggered the July 11-12 protests. The sanctions mark a significant shift in the White House’s approach to Cuba, as Biden had promised to lift some U.S. sanctions on the island during his 2020 presidential campaign. There was also hope that the Biden administration would end aspects of the trade embargo and restore diplomatic relations with Cuba, which would in turn enable Western investors to fund business endeavors on the island. But as the White House leans on more restrictive sanctions against Cuba, the majority of investors will likely view business opportunities in the country as a liability. This will, in turn, risk impeding Havana’s recent efforts to open its economy by limiting foreign investment to businesses and stakeholders without ties to the United States — namely those in Venezuela and Iran, which traditionally have less readily available access to expendable capital.
On June 2, Cuba’s Council of Ministers authorized private sector involvement in additional areas of the economy. The reforms allow Cubans to legally own and operate private businesses in more than 2,000 different sectors, expanding a previous list of only 127 sectors.
Biden has promised some relief for the Cuban people — currently experiencing a humanitarian crisis — in the form of pressuring the Cuban government to release political prisoners and restore internet access. The White House is also reviewing the current remittances policy, which, if reversed, would allow Cubans living in the United States to send money to relatives on the island, who are more likely to be against the government regime.
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17599/cuban-people-deserve-freedom
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Brief: 3 Cuban Generals Are Dead
Their deaths come after the mass protests on July 11.
By: Geopolitical Futures
Background: The Cuban government’s staying power rests on its ability to maintain social order, often through repressing dissent and controlling the economy. Its control over all aspects of island life has enabled it to outlive the Cold War and Soviet Union itself. The protests from July 11, however, call its staying power into question.
Locations of Protests in Cuba
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What Happened: On July 25, the Cuban Ministry of the Armed Forces announced the death of Gen. Ruben Martinez Puente, who was 79 years old. This marks the third death of high-ranking military brass since July 11. Gen. Agustin Pena Porrez (57) died July 17, and Gen. Marcelo Verdecia Perdomo (80) died July 21. The government did not provide cause of death, and the generals’ bodies were cremated.
Bottom Line: It’s hard to be certain what exactly happened. It's true that they were old. It’s true that COVID-19 could be to blame, as some Cuban media reports claim. But it’s also true that July 11 was a wake-up call for the government, which would be expected to clean house after a mass uprising. Maybe their loyalty was questioned, or maybe the government needed someone to blame for the protests. For Havana to appear strong, it’ll need at least a couple of scapegoats.
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Cuba Signs ‘Belt and Road’ Agreement With China
By Frank Fang December 27, 2021 Updated: December 27, 2021 biggersmaller Print
Cuba and China have signed a cooperation plan to push forward construction projects under Beijing’s controversial overseas infrastructure program, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has saddled many participating countries with heavy debt loads.
The Chinese Embassy in Cuba announced the agreement on its website on Dec. 26, saying that the deal was inked two days earlier by He Lifeng, head of China’s top economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, and Cuban Vice Prime Minister Ricardo Cabrisas.
The agreement implemented a memorandum of understanding the two nations signed in 2018, when Cuba agreed to become a BRI participating nation.
Under the agreement, the two nations aimed to work together on projects in several key sectors, including communications, education, health and biotechnology, science and technology, and tourism, according to the Agencia Cubana de Noticias news agency.
The Chinese Embassy also stated that a timetable and a roadmap had been proposed to implement the projects, without giving details.
China launched the BRI in 2013 in an effort to build Beijing-centered land and maritime trade networks by financing infrastructure projects throughout Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. In recent years, critics have denounced Beijing for using “debt-trap diplomacy” to lure countries into its initiative.
Many countries have surrendered pieces of their sovereignty after failing to pay off Chinese debts. For example, China Merchants Port Holdings is now running Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port on a 99-year lease, after the South Asian country converted its owed loans of $1.4 billion into equity in 2017. Seizing the port has allowed Beijing to gain a key foothold in the Indian Ocean.
The Chinese regime has also sought to partner with countries rich in natural resources—such as African BRI participants Ghana and Zambia—in order to gain access to these raw materials to drive the Chinese economy.
It appears that China has its eyes set on Cuba’s natural resources, as a Chinese researcher told China’s state-run media outlet Global Times on Dec. 26 that the BRI agreement was good because China and Cuba “have strong economic complementarity.”
The researcher was quoted as saying that “Cuba is rich in mineral and oil resources, and is a major source of nickel ore for China.” Cuba has one of the world’s largest nickel deposits in the world.
China has been Cuba’s important energy partner. Chinese companies have supplied wind turbines to Cuba’s wind farms and overseen the construction of Cuba’s first biomass-fired power plant at Ciro Redondo.
The U.S.-based organization American Security Project, in an article published in March, warned about Cuba’s energy dependency on China and Venezuela as having “serious implications for hemispheric security.”
In addition, the Chinese paramilitary has also provided “counter-terrorism” training to the Cuban military and police forces responsible for suppressing anti-government protesters.
In fact, China has an ambition that goes beyond just Cuba. During a Senate hearing in March, Craig Faller, a retired admiral and a former commander of the U.S. Southern Command, warned (pdf) that Beijing seeks to “establish global logistics and basing infrastructure in our hemisphere in order to project and sustain military power at greater distances.”
Faller told (pdf) lawmakers at the hearing that China was on a “full-court press” in order to achieve its ambition.
“I look at this hemisphere as the front line of competition,” Faller said. “Our influence [in this hemisphere] is eroding. … It is important that we remain engaged in this hemisphere.”
During a press briefing following the hearing, Faller described the Chinese regime’s influence as “insidious,” “corrosive,” and “corrupt.”
“Some examples include their pursuit of multiple port deals, loans for political leverage, vaccine diplomacy that undermines sovereignty, state surveillance I.T., and the exploitation of resources such as illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing,” Faller said.
A month after Faller’s warning, Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) introduced a bill requiring several U.S. federal agencies, including the State Department, to put together a report for Congress. The report would assess China’s influence in Latin America and the Caribbean.
One of the issues the report would examine is China’s relationship with Cuba and Venezuela. Another is China’s efforts to exploit natural resources in the region.
“It is critical for U.S. policymakers to understand what China is doing in the region and to have an effective strategy in place to counter China’s aggressive conduct and to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for its actions,” Murphy said, according to a statement from her office.
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August 15, 2022
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A Small Window for the US and Cuba
The war in Ukraine has magnified the island’s economic problems.
By: Allison Fedirka
The war in Ukraine is a truly global conflict. Citizens of faraway regions may not themselves be in physical danger, but any country that is sensitive to fluctuations in food or oil prices, both of which have risen since the conflict started, have become its victims.
Such is the case with Cuba. Its economic problems are well-documented, as are the government’s limited means of solving them. But the war in Eastern Europe has amplified the situation, and any kind of reconciliation between Havana and Washington will depend to some degree on the outcome of broader global crises sparked by the war in Ukraine.
Hardships
Recent comments by Cuban officials show that Havana is feeling the pressure already. In mid-June, the state sugar company announced that the 2021-22 sugar crop produced only half the expected yield, marking the lowest harvest in a century. The following month, Energy Minister Livan Arronte Cruz said on state-run television that Cuba’s 20 power plants were largely obsolete, largely because of delayed maintenance and lack of funding. Days later, a member of Cuba’s national assembly publicly questioned the veracity of Economic Minister Alejandro Gil’s statements regarding the island’s economic health, saying the government was not, in fact, satisfying the population’s needs. In a country like Cuba, where official data is generally tightly controlled and criticizing the government is fairly rare, these kinds of statements stand out and suggest the government knows more trying times lie ahead.
Partly that’s because Cuba is highly reliant on imports for energy, and thanks to the war in Ukraine and the sanctions that followed, the rising cost of oil has made it impossible for cash-strapped Cuba to purchase sufficient supplies (the discounts it receives from Venezuela and Russia notwithstanding). Rising commodity prices have also curbed the island’s ability to import food and fertilizers. But perhaps more important, the war has deprived Cuba of the attention of its most important benefactor, Russia, which can provide only short-term relief that treats Cuba’s symptoms but not its problems.
The war has also undermined Cuba’s ability to remedy these problems. The government can no longer rely on its plan to leverage tourism for the influx of foreign currency it uses to buy imports. Indeed, the importance of tourism cannot be overstated. It accounts for roughly 10 percent of gross domestic product, employs half a million public workers, and is the second largest source of foreign currency for the government. In 2022, the government hoped to bring in $1.6 billion through tourism from roughly 2.5 million visitors. But by the end of June, only 682,297 tourists had visited the country. High inflation throughout the world reduced disposable income, and consumers have been forced to downgrade consumption habits, which includes vacations. Furthermore, strong sources of Cuban tourism – Russia and wealthy European countries – have been disproportionately affected by the conflict in Ukraine. Currently, Canadians and Cubans residing outside the island account for half of all tourism.
(click to enlarge)
The government has taken steps to create alternative sources of foreign currency, but all of them come with some political costs. For example, the government intensified its policy of holding wages of foreign-employed workers, a practice meant to ensure equitable wages among private and public employees but one that ends up providing more money for the government at the expense of workers. Havana has also altered its relationship with the island’s thriving black market in an attempt to solve market shortages and collect foreign currency. It created special grocery stores where clients who pay in hard currency can purchase food products that are difficult or impossible to come by in regular shops. The problem is that foreign currency is not universally accessible, often reserved for families receiving remittances or with coveted jobs (often determined by the government) that provide access. Most recently, the government decided to embrace the black market by changing the official exchange rate to meet the black market value of 1:120. The move aimed to take foreign currency off the black market and place it under government control. The preferential rate is available only to hotels, banks and currency houses willing to sell, since buying foreign currency is not an option.
In addition to currency problems, the Cuban government appears to have reached its limit on what it can do about energy prices. The high cost of oil and the dilapidation of electricity generation plants present an immediate threat that can be met only by time and massive funding – two things the Cuban government does not have. Chronic power shortages became notably worse in recent months. The government canceled public celebrations to save energy, encourages the use of wood stoves for cooking, and had to introduce regular rolling blackouts across the island. In the second week of August, the daily electric deficit ranged from 650-950 megawatts, with peak shortages at night reaching 750-1071 megawatts, according to UNE.
Disruptions and Maintenance at Cuban Thermal Electric Plants (CTE)
(click to enlarge)
Energy drives economic activity, so electricity and fuel shortages naturally constrain economic growth. But the shortages have also already begun to affect the everyday lives of Cubans. Since March, the government has been diverting fuel supplies to generation plants to keep as much electricity online as possible. This intensified fuel shortages across the island, limiting people’s ability to work and conduct normal business, including much-needed agriculture production. Electricity shortages resulted in water shortages in rural areas at elevation because there was no electricity to pump the water.
Naturally, these economic problems have had social consequences. Last year, when large-scale anti-government protests erupted across the island, leaders in Havana had no trouble cracking down and sending agitators to jail – some sentences were as along as 30 years, just to show the new generation what it was capable of. This is very much in keeping with Cuba’s rich history of suppressing political dissent. The problem is that suppression can’t fix the underlying problems that led to protests in the first place. The current demonstrations are not an expression of ideological difference but the direct result of nearly unfixable economic hardship.
Lingering Protests in Cuba
(click to enlarge)
Make or Break
The backdrop for Cuba’s latest economic meltdown, coupled with the absence of a benefactor like Russia, creates a small window of opportunity for the U.S. and Cuba to improve ties. Cuba needs a strong patron to survive economically, and Washington could at least partially fill the void. Migration has become an important area for improving diplomatic ties. From November 2021 to July 2022, an estimated 140,000-150,000 Cubans have entered the U.S., the highest number in 40 years. The influx coincides with Nicaragua’s lifting visa restriction on Cubans, which opened up the Central American land route. While Cubans represent a small percentage of migrants on the U.S. southern border, their presence in a hotly contested area forces Havana and Washington to engage on the matter.
In May, the U.S. government launched a rapprochement strategy toward Cuba. The strategy prioritizes working closely with the Cuban government for issuing visas as part of the family reunification program. Washington has made it clear that it has no plans to soon resume its political refugee program or fast-track political prisoner emigration. So by prioritizing families over politicians, the U.S. is letting a contentious point lie rather than undermining the Cuban government.
Another part of the strategy indirectly helps Havana by eliminating limits on remittances from the U.S. to Cuba, which account for approximately 90 percent of all remittances to the island. Remittances rank as the third largest source of foreign currency on the island and support household incomes where the government falls short. On both accounts, the Cuban Foreign Ministry said these were limited steps in the right direction.
The potentially problematic portion of the U.S. strategy – support for entrepreneurs – is the one that has remained untouched. This provision was meant to help entrepreneurs by improving internet access, cloud technology and e-commerce. It could be a boon to small businesses, yet increased internet access is a threat to Havana because it can popularize and fuel unrest.
How the U.S. pursues this portion of its Cuba strategy can make or break its relationship with Havana, and Washington is unlikely to burn any bridges before getting a clearer picture of how the world will take shape in the wake of Ukraine and global economic chaos.
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Cuba on the way to Castro! I wish our children's generation would reflect on this.
Since 1829, Cuba was the first country in Ibero-America (including Spain and Portugal) to begin using steam ships for sea transportation.
1837 - the third country in the world (after England and the USA) in which a railway was built.
1847 is the first country in America to start using air in anesthesia during surgical operations.
1877 was the first country in the world to demonstrate the use of electricity in industrial areas.
1881 - Cuba solved the most terrible tropical disease of that time - yellow fever - and the medicine used until now was invented. The opener was the Cuban doctor Carlos Finlay.
1889 - Cuba installed the first in Ibero-America (including Spain and Portugal) and the second in the Americas, after the United States, street lighting.
Between 1825 and before independence in 1898, Cuba was the source of 60-75% of Spanish Treasury revenue. In the Spanish-American War of 1902, after Spain's invasion of Cuba and the island's request to the United States to protect the country, Spain lost the war. The United States, under the terms of the peace treaty with Spain, receives the island of Puerto Rico as compensation from Spain, paying ALL Spanish businessmen and merchants who wished to leave Cuba and Puerto Rico (there were few willing) through Spanish government the fir tree in total is 3 million dollars.
1900 - the first cars in Latin America appear in Cuba. The first female driver in America and Spain was the Cuban Rene Mendes Capote.
1900 - the first Olympic champion in Latin America was the Cuban fencer Ramon Fonts.
1906 - Havana was the first city in the world to install a direct-drive telephony (not through the "lady operator", but with disk-drive telephones).
1907 - X-ray department opens in Havana for the first time in Latin America (including Spain).
On May 19, 1913, the first flight in Latin America takes place in Cuba. The first pilots were Cubans Agustin Parla and Domingo Rosillo. The flight lasted 2 hours and 40 minutes, between Havana and Cayo Hueso in Florida, USA.
From 1915 to 1959, the Cuban peso (peso cubano) was the only currency in the world that depreciated against the US dollar by only 1 cent in 44 years.
1918 was the first country in America, including Spain and Portugal, to legalize divorce.
The third world chess champion and the only one from 1921 to 1927 was Jose Raul Capablanca.
1922 - the second country in the world to open a radio station and the first in the world to broadcast a radio concert and regular news.
The first radio presenter in the world was the Cuban Esther Perea de la Torre.
In 1928, Cuba already had 68 radio stations, 43 of which were in Havana. According to this indicator, Cuba was ranked 4th in the world after the United States, Canada and the USSR, and the first in the world in terms of the number of radio stations per population and such a small area.
Cuba is the first country in the world to produce a radio production (radioshow), which became the pioneer of radio series and in the future - television series. Thus, Cuba is considered the home of TV shows. The author of the first production is Felix Cainet from Cuba
1929 - Cubana de Aviació n airline was founded, one of the first commercial airlines in the world.
1935 - Cuba becomes the largest Hispanic country in terms of export of radio series and radio scripts.
1937 - Cuba was the first in Latin America to adopt a law on an 8-hour working day and a minimum wage.
1940 - the world's first president - a mulat (from a black mother and a mulat father), elected by the absolute majority of Cubans. Meanwhile, in Cuba then, as now, the majority of the population is white. Strangely enough, they became the future dictator - Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar.
1940 - Cuba adopted the most advanced constitution in Ibero-America (including Spain and Portugal), among its achievements: for the first time in Latin America, equal rights between men and women, between races, etc. d. In Spain, a woman received equal rights with a man only in 1976.
1950 - the second country in the world to open a television station and a studio. Cuba becomes television center of Latin America, Havana becomes show business center of Latin America (now the center is Miami).
1952 - the world's first concrete residential building was built in Havana (El Focsa building).
1954 - Cuba - the country with the largest number of cows and bulls per capita in the world - one per capita. At the same time, Cuba is the third country in the world in meat consumption per capita (after Argentina and Uruguay).
1955 - the second country in Latin America (including Spain) after Uruguay with the lowest rate of infant mortality (33.4 per thousand newborns).
1956 - The UN recognized Cuba as the Latin American country with the lowest number of illiterate population (23%, at that time it was a low number). Haiti was 90% illiterate, Spain, El Salvador, Guatemala, Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Dominican Republic - just over 50%.
1957 - The UN recognizes Cuba as a country with one of the best medical indicators in the world and the best in Latin America and Spain. In Cuba, there was 1 qualified specialist doctor for 957 residents.
1957 - the most electrified country in Latin America with the highest number of electrified residential buildings (83%) and homes with a toilet and all amenities (80%). These indicators were among the highest in the world.
1957 - the number of calories consumed daily per Cuban - 2870 - Cuba was second after Uruguay.
1957 - Havana - the second city in the world with a 3D cinema and a multi-store cinema opened. Havana was the city with the largest number of cinemas in the world — 358 — overtaking New York, Paris, London and all the other cities in the world.
1958 was the second country in the world to start broadcasting color TV and mass sale of color TVs (many homes still have these TVs).
1958 - the third country in Latin America by the number of cars (160 thousand, that is, one car for 38 Cubans). The first country in LA for the number of electrical appliances in Cuban homes. The first place in the world in terms of railway length per square meter. km and by the number of radio receivers in the world (1 per 2 people).
From 1950 to 1958, Cuba was second/third in terms of income in Ibero-America, overtaking Italy and more than twice Spain. Despite its small area and a population of only 6.5 million people, in 1958, Cuba ranked 29th among the world's economies, far ahead of all Latin American countries, Spain, Italy, and Portugal.
1958 - according to the International Labor Organization, Cuba was eighth in the world by average salary of workers (after the United States, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, New Zealand, Denmark and Norway), and seventh in the world in terms of peasant income. The unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the world - 7.07%. The total working population in Cuba in 1958 was 2204,000.
In addition to all this, by 1958 Cuba was the country with the best road coverage in Latin America, with the largest number of supermarkets in Latin America, the most modern airport (Havana), with the most foreign investment and with the largest budget for the preservation of historical and architectural monuments in America.
And then socialism won ...
Cuba on the way to Castro!
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don't forget Cuba gave us Ricky Ricardo
:-D
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Great post Crafty. People forget or weren't born yet to remember how rich Cuba (and Venezuela) were before fascist Socialism came to town and bankrupted all but the leaders and their families.
Lucky that can't happen here? Why can't it?
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Cuba to Host Secret Chinese Spy Base Focusing on U.S.
Beijing agrees to pay Havana several billion dollars for eavesdropping facility
By Warren P. StrobelFollow
and Gordon LuboldFollow
June 8, 2023 7:00 am ET
The Biden administration has taken steps to pull closer to the government in Havana. PHOTO: YANDER ZAMORA/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCk
WASHINGTON—China and Cuba have reached a secret agreement for China to establish an electronic eavesdropping facility on the island, in a brash new geopolitical challenge by Beijing to the U.S., according to U.S. officials familiar with highly classified intelligence.
An eavesdropping facility in Cuba, roughly 100 miles from Florida, would allow Chinese intelligence services to scoop up electronic communications throughout the southeastern U.S., where many military bases are located, and monitor U.S. ship traffic.
Officials familiar with the matter said that China has agreed to pay cash-strapped Cuba several billion dollars to allow it to build the eavesdropping station, and that the two countries had reached an agreement in principle.
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The revelation about the planned site has sparked alarm within the Biden administration because of Cuba’s proximity to the U.S. mainland. Washington regards Beijing as its most significant economic and military rival. A Chinese base with advanced military and intelligence capabilities in the U.S.’s backyard could be an unprecedented new threat.
“While I cannot speak to this specific report, we are well aware of—and have spoken many times to—the People’s Republic of China’s efforts to invest in infrastructure around the world that may have military purposes, including in this hemisphere,” John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, said. “We monitor it closely, take steps to counter it, and remain confident that we are able to meet all our security commitments at home, in the region, and around the world.”
U.S. officials described the intelligence on the planned Cuba site, apparently gathered in recent weeks, as convincing. They said the base would enable China to conduct signals intelligence, known in the espionage world as sigint, which could include the monitoring of a range of communications, including emails, phone calls and satellite transmissions.
Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Singapore last week. PHOTO: VINCENT THIAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Chinese Embassy in Washington had no comment. Cuba’s Embassy didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Officials declined to provide more details about the proposed location of the listening station or whether construction had begun. It couldn’t be determined what, if anything, the Biden administration could do to stop completion of the facility.
The U.S. has intervened before to stop foreign powers from extending their influence in the Western Hemisphere, most notably during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The U.S. and the Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear war after the Soviets deployed nuclear-capable missiles to Cuba, prompting a U.S. Navy quarantine of the island.
The Soviets backed down and removed the missiles. A few months later, the U.S. quietly removed intermediate-range ballistic missiles from Turkey that the Soviets had complained about.
The intelligence on the new base comes in the midst of the Biden administration’s efforts to improve U.S.-China relations after months of acrimony that followed a Chinese spy balloon’s flight over the U.S. earlier this year.
China in 2017 marked the opening of a military base in Djibouti, in eastern Africa. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Last month President Biden sent Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns on a secret trip to Beijing, and national security adviser Jake Sullivan held talks with a top Chinese official in Vienna. It couldn’t be determined whether the planned Chinese eavesdropping station figured in those exchanges.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to travel to Beijing later this month and possibly meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Biden said in May that he believed there would be a thaw in U.S.-China relations despite recent public tensions.
Beijing is likely to argue that the base in Cuba is justified because of U.S. military and intelligence activities close to China, analysts said. U.S. military aircraft fly over the South China Sea, engaging in electronic surveillance. The U.S. sells arms to Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province, deploys a small number of troops there to train its military, and sails Navy ships through the Taiwan Strait.
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An eavesdropping facility in Cuba would make clear “China is prepared to do the same in America’s backyard,” said Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a national-security think tank in Washington.
“Establishing this facility signals a new, escalatory phase in China’s broader defense strategy. It’s a bit of a game changer,” Singleton said. “The selection of Cuba is also intentionally provocative.”
China’s only declared foreign military base is in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa. It has embarked on a global port-development campaign in places including Cambodia and the United Arab Emirates. U.S. officials say that effort is aimed at creating a network of military ports and intelligence bases to project Chinese power around the globe.
An aerial view of the Lourdes signals intelligence facility near Havana about a year before Russia said in 2001 that the site was closing. PHOTO: MAXAR
Security relations between Washington and Beijing have grown tense in recent weeks after close encounters between U.S. and Chinese ships in the Taiwan Strait and between the two nations’ military aircraft over the South China Sea.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and China’s defense minister, Gen. Li Shangfu, traded barbs at a conference in Singapore last weekend, though the two shook hands in a widely publicized gesture. Austin complained about Beijing’s lack of communication on military matters and Li’s refusal to meet with him. China has said it won’t agree to such a meeting until Washington lifts sanctions it placed on Li in 2018.
The Biden administration has attempted to pull closer to Havana, reversing some Trump-era policies by loosening restrictions on travel to and from Cuba and re-establishing a family-reunification program. The administration has also expanded consular services to allow more Cubans to visit the U.S. and has restored some diplomatic personnel who were removed after a series of mysterious health incidents affecting U.S. personnel in Havana.
Moscow has historically been Cuba’s closest partner among major world powers, supporting Havana with economic and military aid. But Beijing has been building closer diplomatic and economic ties to the island. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel met with Xi in Beijing in November.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union operated its largest overseas signals intelligence site at Lourdes, just outside Havana. The site, which closed down after 2001, reportedly hosted hundreds of Soviet, Cuban and other Eastern Bloc intelligence officers.
There were reports in 2014 that Russia would reopen the Lourdes station, but that doesn’t appear to have happened, and its current status couldn’t be determined.
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the only problem with the bay of pigs is we did not support them
enough to win
yet we spent yrs in Vietnam on the other side of the world
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August 28, 2023
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Will Cuba Open Up Again?
Efforts from the U.S., Brazil and others are encouraging but not without risk.
By: Allison Fedirka
Diplomatic exchanges don’t carry much geopolitical weight by themselves. Even the truly monumental moments in international affairs are made possible by months if not years of inconspicuous meetings, third-party consultations, and high- and low-level consultations that, eventually, prove greater than the sum of their parts. Such is the case in Cuba. There has been a flurry of talks of late among the United States, the Vatican, Brazil and Cuba, and all available evidence suggests Washington is trying to make another opening with the government in Havana.
The U.S. has a permanent interest in who controls Cuba. The island’s position in the Caribbean provides a layer of protection to the Gulf Coast and serves as a strategic launch point for any activities against the U.S. Cuba’s small size and limited natural resources mean that the country needs the support of a foreign benefactor. Naturally, the U.S. played this role until the Cuban revolution, at which point it was replaced by the Soviet Union and now, to a lesser degree, Russia. (Venezuela is also an important patron.)
The current global conditions are ripe for the U.S. to make a move on Cuba. The island’s economy has all but collapsed. Its current patrons cannot meet the island’s needs. The country’s population has few revolutionaries. There is growing public discontent against the government, which faces increased political pressure amid threats of protest.
But it’s unclear how exactly the U.S. will engage Cuba. It has plenty of tools at its disposal. For the past 65 years, the U.S. has cycled through open hostility and overt reconciliation. And over the past year, the Biden administration has gradually been improving bilateral ties through low-level government talks and some easing of a handful of economic restrictions, such as the amount of money people can send relatives on the island.
However, the use of back-channel talks and the presence of certain officials suggest Washington may have bigger plans in mind. Indeed, President Joe Biden’s diplomatic engagement closely resembles President Barack Obama’s from 2014. Prior to the opening with Cuba, there were a series of meetings between U.S. officials, then-Uruguayan President Jose Mujica, Panamanian officials, representatives from the Vatican, and, of course, Cuban officials. After the successful restoration of diplomatic ties with Cuba, it became clear how important Mujica and the Vatican were as mediators and messengers. Mujica was an ideal candidate to bridge the political divide between the U.S. and Cuba. His work with the Tupamaros and subsequent imprisonment during the military dictatorship resonated with the Castro regime. Politically, he followed left-leaning ideology and held office at the height of the Pink Tide era. However, he also openly spoke out against human rights violations in ways that resonated with Washington. The Vatican was essential, too, given its importance to Cuban Catholics and the pope’s advocacy for human rights.
The similarities to the current diplomatic engagement suggest another attempt at reopening is in the works. Back on June 20, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel met separately with Pope Francis and the Vatican’s secretary of state, both of whom were involved in the diplomatic offensive in 2014. Afterward, he went directly to Paris to attend President Emmanuel Macron’s Summit for a New Global Financial Pact on June 22-23. He met with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on the sidelines of the gathering.
Activity steadily increased the next month. On Aug. 16, Biden and Lula held a phone call to discuss areas of cooperation. Two days later, Lula’s top adviser, Celso Amorim, paid a visit to Cuba and delivered to Diaz-Canel a letter that expressed Brazil’s interest in improving ties with Cuba. Then, on Aug. 21, Amorim spoke directly with U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan about “the importance of continuing to build upon joint efforts to expand Atlantic cooperation.” Lula is expected to meet Biden on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly and with Diaz-Canel on the sidelines of the G77 meeting. Both events are in New York in late September.
Tying this all together is an Aug. 17 report in Busqueda, the Uruguayan newspaper that had publicized Mujica’s involvement in 2014. According to the report, Lula invited Mujica to travel with him to Cuba before the end of the year to work with the Cuban government to open its economy and international relations. They are expected to meet with both government officials and members of civil society, which could include businesspeople and opposition figures.
Facilitating these back-channel talks puts Brazil in a position to serve as a patron for Cuba and raises the possibility of political transition in Cuba. Without a reliable benefactor, Cuba’s economy is in disarray, and Brazil has shown that it is willing to help solve some of its major problems. In fact, after his meeting with Diaz-Canel, Lula announced his country’s interest in reviving relations with Cuba and reassessing Cuba’s resumption of debt payments to Brazil. Brasilia plans to send multiple missions to Cuba in the coming weeks, including business delegations, health specialists and technical missions for sectors such as agriculture. The Brazilian government noted the importance of investing in places like Cuba and not being “left behind” as other major countries make strategic investments overseas.
The Cuban government is struggling to find effective solutions to its economic problems in a way that preserves its primacy. Over the past few years, Havana has introduced measures that ease state controls and open up small sectors of the Cuban economy. The island now has 8,000 micro, small and medium-sized companies that are not state-owned. These private companies account for 14 percent of the island’s gross domestic product and 15 percent of its employment. However, the government has discovered it cannot rely on the private sector to complement its priorities. In the first half of the year, U.S. food products and agricultural commodities exported to Cuba totaled $37 million, up 11 percent from the previous year. The Cuban government imported basic staples like chicken and corn. The private sector imported many novelties such as coffee creamers, ice cream, chocolate, cookies and potato chips – treats that don’t do much to solve the food crisis. (The private sector has brought in some critical goods the government has not been able to, such as toilet paper, soap, construction materials and industrial machinery.)
Havana’s latest moves to address its economy threaten to hamper the budding private sector. Earlier this month, the central bank started to dramatically restrict the amount of cash in local currency that private businesses can withdraw from their accounts. Private companies can withdraw only 5,000 pesos ($22 on the parallel market) per day for payments related to contracted goods and services. While they can continue cash transactions, they must offer alternative payment systems with banking cards and authorized digital platforms. Small private businesses are also required to deposit all cash revenue in their bank accounts the day after a sale, a major setback given that cash is king in Cuba. The government eliminated the first-year tax exemptions for micro, small and medium-sized companies, which must now pay 35 percent on profits. According to the central bank, the measures mean to promote the use of banks for transactions that have evaded the system. A secondary consequence of the measures, however, is that they threaten the ability of private companies to continue imports.
The country’s economic problems have already raised concerns within the Cuban government. At the end of July, Diaz-Canel warned that outside forces were trying to sow seeds of discontent. There are also increased anecdotal reports of discontent rising among the citizens and a growing threat of demonstrations. Havana has embraced the BRICS, particularly because of its supposed potential to transform an international financial system that has taken advantage of the Global South. In this regard, Cuba sees Brazil as an attractive economic and political patron.
The U.S. strategy to include Brazil in back-channel talks with Cuba is not without risk, and its options aren’t without constraints. Washington has to strike a balance between supporting the Cuban people and getting money into the island without empowering the regime or sparking a revolution. All this means that the U.S. needs Brazil's participation to help seize this unique opportunity. Washington sees Brazil playing a transition role, helping to open up the island gradually in both economic and political terms. The idea would be that the U.S. would then step in once the time is right. But Brazil has its own interests in extending its influence into the Caribbean. Even if the U.S. gets what it wants from the Brazil-led transition, there’s a potential for future confrontation if and when Washington makes its move to become Cuba’s patron.
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GPF:
China and Cuba. Chinese President Xi Jinping held a meeting with Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz on Monday. Xi welcomed closer ties with Cuba on agriculture, tourism, health, technology and communications.
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Odd that an Asian paper is reporting on what’s going on in our backyard regarding an issue American MSM has not noted, perhaps due to the failure of communism on full display here:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2024/03/20/world/communist-cuba-collapse/?fbclid=iwar1wq4jxcvvkoaozed2fppv4bh1mutwppjgi7dfqvaig2vdr4__70trnngg