CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Hard times force Cuban retirees to work

By Saundra Amrhein, St. Petersburg Times. Posted on Mon, Apr. 09, 2007.

HAVANA -- The woman with the popcorn bags traced the same path along the Malecón seaside boulevard, slowing to a stroll on arthritic feet. Roseta de maiz, she called out, offering her popcorn for sale to young Cubans dangling their legs off the seawall that fronts the Florida Straits.

Maria is 59 and retired -- at least in theory. For the past four years, she has held two jobs in the underground economy to supplement her government pension. Like many of her generation, she is finding that what was possibly once the most generous pension system in Latin America now struggles to sustain its oldest citizens.

''The poorest, most vulnerable group in Cuban society are pensioners,'' said University of Pittsburgh economist Carmelo Mesa-Lago, co-author of the 2004 book Cuba's Aborted Reform.

Now, throughout Havana, retired scientists and teachers drive cabs, hawk newspapers and guard parked cars for tourists in front of the lush Parque Central.

Here on the Malecón, Maria has competition.

''Mucha competencia,'' mutters Maria, who worked three decades in a factory that made drinking glasses and busts of independence hero Jose Marti.

Other gray-haired vendors add to the chorus of calls, the names of their wares swallowed in the echo of crashing waves below.

''Mani,'' one man cries, offering white paper cones full of peanuts to camera-toting tourists and Cubans drinking rum.

Another man with a shoulder sack sells caramels and lollipops in pink and purple wrappers. A woman peddles stuffed animals.

''Cubans are fighters,'' Maria says. "Everybody has su manera.''

That manera, or way of getting by, is often the booming underground economy.

Maria earns a pension equal to about $7 a month. But the monthly rations Cubans can buy in peso stores last about a week. Healthcare is free, but state-subsidized pharmacies sit bare.

If she can't find pills and food at pharmacies and peso stores, Maria must buy them in dollar stores or on the black market at higher prices.

Some seniors depend on money sent from families. Maria has no one outside Cuba.

Like most older Cubans, she lives with her whole family. She shares a two-room apartment south of the city with her husband, their son, pregnant daughter and twin 14-month-old granddaughters.

Her husband, retired, refuses to work anymore. They fight about her other jobs.

''Why are you working there?'' he yells. "You are a slave.''

''I'm not a slave,'' she answers. "I have to help our daughter.''

Their daughter's pregnancy has left her bedridden. The family sleeps in one room on two beds pushed together. Maria can't remember the last time she made love with her husband.

She has just one full day a week to spend at home, on Sunday. Instead of taking her granddaughters to the zoo or the National Aquarium, she needs that time to cook and clean the apartment.

She spends most of the rest of the week cleaning and washing laundry at a home where tourists rent rooms. It pays $15 a month, more than double her pension and equal to the average national salary.

And one day a week, she's here on the Malecón. On a good afternoon, after eight hours, she can make a $3 profit.

But Maria's enterprise carries a risk. She needs a license to sell popcorn, which is why she asked that her last name be withheld.

She never got a license because the flat tax that comes with it would wipe out more than half of what she earns selling popcorn. If the police catch her -- and they do check -- she faces a fine that would put her back nine months in pension payments.

Those payments were part of what's considered the most generous and costliest pension system in Latin America, Mesa-Lago said.

By the end of the 1980s, the plan implemented by Fidel Castro's revolution covered more than 90 percent of the labor force. Most workers don't pay into the system, and state businesses pay only a 12 percent payroll tax toward social security pensions.

Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba's chief trading partner, and the island's economy took a nosedive in the 1990s. Costs have skyrocketed, more so with the recent tightening of the U.S. embargo, and pensions have not kept pace.

More Cubans are retiring and living longer, and Cuba is proud of its long life expectancy. But that means retirees draw on the system longer. Employer contributions to pensions are not enough, Mesa-Lago said.

Last year's Cuban budget shows a deficit of 1.4-billion pesos, or $70 million, in the pension system. The government has plugged the hole and managed to make small increases to pensions. But it did so with cutbacks in other social priorities, like education and healthcare, Mesa-Lago said.

Complicating matters, Cuba's future work force is falling behind. The birth rate is plummeting as young couples leave the island or have fewer children because of economic hardships.

By 2025, experts predict that Cuba will have the oldest population in the region. And by then, the ratio of active workers to pensioners will drop to just 1.5.

Recent articles in Cuban newspapers have addressed the crisis and drawn attention to existing help, including nursing homes and ''grandparent circles'' that provide meals, medicine and social workers for the elderly.

The Cuban government is counting on families to go on caring for their parents and grandparents at home while the government provides additional soup kitchens and house calls to ease the burden, according to published reports.

Some government officials in Cuba have proposed offering incentives for workers to retire later in exchange for higher pensions. The minimum retirement age for women is 55; for men, it's 60.

The proposal was never approved.

Carlos Lage, a key member of the provisional government headed by Raúl Castro, said recently that the current communist system ''was not as ideal as the one we wished for, or achieved years ago.'' But, he said, "our people today enjoy rights that for billions of people on the planet aren't even imaginable. No one lacks the opportunity to study, or a job.''

For her part, Maria isn't going anywhere. She loves her country, the warmth of its people and their willingness to help each other, she said, even as she counted about $1 in sales for the day.

Business was as listless as the breeze, so as the sun moved behind a bank of clouds, she decided to head home.

She had to get up early for work.

Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report.

Experts: U.S. spies are often in the dark on Cuba

For the U.S. intelligence community, obtaining reliable information on Cuba is a hard slog -- as shown by earlier reports that Fidel Castro was near death.

By Pablo Bachelet, pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com. April 9, 2007.

WASHINGTON -- As Fidel Castro appears to be growing more active, and U.S. reports that he has cancer increasingly seem off the mark, Cuba watchers are questioning just how much American spies know about what's happening on the island.

The U.S. intelligence community -- despite having spy satellites and ships -- is now too shellshocked from past intelligence setbacks on Cuba and the Iraq weapons of mass destruction debacle to aggressively spy on the island, some Cuba observers say.

Washington, as a result, is now largely ignorant of what is happening within the inner circles in Havana as Cuba undergoes a transfer of power from Castro to his brother Raúl, according to several people familiar with U.S. intelligence on the island.

The U.S. intelligence community's current assessment is that Castro is more ill than Havana is admitting, and that change in Cuba is unlikely in the near term, though a power struggle is possible further down the road.

But nearly a dozen people knowledgeable about U.S. intelligence on Cuba -- who all spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss classified materials -- painted a mixed picture of the capability to spy on Cuba.

U.S. spy satellites and ships can monitor such things as troop movements and some, mostly civilian, telephone conversations in Cuba, said one retired intelligence official. Occasional senior defectors can provide some insight into Cuba's inner workings.

Washington's spies also have good relations with friendly nations that operate in Cuba. One former U.S. government official said that Spanish intelligence agencies have obtained good information in Cuba, especially under conservative Prime Minister José María Aznar, who left office in 2004. The Canadians are also viewed as capable.

One person with access to U.S. intelligence materials on Cuba said Washington has a ''pretty good'' understanding of public sentiment in Cuba, thanks to interviews with arriving migrants and contacts with nongovernment groups in Cuba.

NOT MUCH AT THE TOP

But there is little credible information on events at the top levels of the government, the armed forces and security services, the person added.

And Cuban counterintelligence's tight monitoring of U.S. diplomats in Havana makes it difficult for them to meet privately with top Cuban officials.

The Bush administration's policy is to curtail all contacts with the Cuban government to a minimum, further isolating U.S. diplomats in Cuba.

''They are on the outside,'' said Phil Peters, a Cuba watcher at the conservative Lexington Institute in Virginia.

It is impossible to know the extent of U.S. intelligence capabilities on Cuba. Even senior government officials may not know such details as whether U.S. spies are operating in Havana or if Washington is listening to Fidel Castro's telephone chatter.

LESS THAN PRECISE

But some previous U.S. assessments on Cuba seem likely to have been off the mark.

After Castro underwent surgery in July for a still officially secret intestinal ailment, some U.S. intelligence officials looked at his dramatic weight loss and concluded he had cancer. But in December, a Spanish doctor who saw the Cuban leader flatly denied he had cancer.

In 2002, a top State Department official said Cuba ''has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort.'' But last year, a State Department report acknowledged that analysts were divided on the issue.

There has been no evidence to contradict a 2005 CIA assessment -- based largely on Castro's muffled speech, apparent stiffness and trouble with balance -- that he has Parkinson's disease. Neither Castro nor the Cuban government have denied that report.

Since Castro fell ill, the U.S. intelligence community has been trying to bolster its capabilities in Cuba.

Last year, President Bush instructed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to appoint a new ''mission manager'' for Cuba and Venezuela to oversee all U.S. spy agencies' efforts on the two countries. Norman Bailey, a former Reagan administration official, was named to the post but was later dismissed. No replacement has been named.

''There's no rigor, no drive. There's no motivation behind our collection,'' said Roger Noriega, a former assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere under President Bush.

John Sullivan, who spent 31 years with the CIA giving polygraph tests, including to many Cubans who were supposed to be spying for the United States, considers Havana's main spy agency, the Intelligence Directorate, as the most formidable U.S. foe after the former East German Stasi.

For instance, he said, the Cuban intelligence service would allow its double agents to give information to Washington ''that actually hurt them'' to bolster the agents' credibility.

U.S. spying on Cuba suffered a serious setback in 1987, when Florentino Aspillaga, a top Cuban intelligence officer, defected in Europe and revealed the names of hundreds of Cuban agents worldwide.

Castro retaliated by airing videos of CIA agents communicating with about 20 ''U.S. agents'' in Cuba who, in fact, were double agents working for Havana.

The CIA decided to wind down human espionage efforts in Havana after that, and has since relied more on information provided by defectors, according to one former U.S. intelligence community official.

But that is also problematic.

''Castro has planted a lot of phony defectors,'' said Otto Reich, a former special envoy to Latin America for the Bush White House who believes that Washington should step up its intelligence efforts against Cuba.

In the case of the five Wasp Network Cuban spies rounded up in Miami in 1998, Cuban officials have said that their spying was merely defensive, aimed at averting any attacks on the island by Cuban exiles in the United States.

CONVICTED SPY

But the biggest blow to U.S. intelligence capabilities against Cuba came from Ana Belen Montes, a former Cuba analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, convicted of spying for Havana in 2001.

During her 17-year career at the DIA, U.S. officials believe, Montes revealed the identity of numerous U.S. agents in Cuba, accessed hundreds of thousands of secret documents and provided Havana with highly valuable information on the United States' ability to intercept internal Cuban communications.

Scott W. Carmichael, a DIA counterintelligence agent who helped hunt down Montes and wrote a book on the case, says she used her position to produce reports that played down Cuba's threats to the United States and intimidated more junior analysts who did not agree with her conclusions.

Asked how deeply Montes' spying could have influenced U.S. intelligence thinking on today's Cuba situation, Carmichael referred back to the United States' ''damage assessment'' carried out after her arrest.

''We had to go back,'' he said, "and reevaluate every single collection effort the U.S. had against Cuba.''

Related Content

Chronology of Castro health crisis

2005

o CIA believes Fidel Castro has Parkinson's disease.

2006

o July 31: Castro undergoes surgery for secret ailment.

o Nov. 12: U.S. officials say Castro has cancer and less than 18 months to live, The Associated Press reports.

o Dec. 13: Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte says Castro's death is ''months, not years'' away.

o Dec. 26: Castro does not have cancer, says a Spanish surgeon who saw him.

2007

o Jan. 16: Castro is wasting away from life-threatening complications following multiple surgeries, a Spanish newspaper reports, quoting the surgeon's colleagues.

o Jan. 30: He appears in a video, looking less thin than in earlier videos.

o Feb. 20: A Cuban official says Castro is "capable of returning and surprising us all.''

o Feb. 28: Castro phones Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on live radio.

o March 14: He phones Chávez and Haitian President René Preval during Chávez's visit to Haiti.

o March 19: Bolivian President Evo Morales says he believes Castro will return to public life during an April 28-29 summit in Havana with Morales, Chávez and others.

o March 20: The first photo of Castro outdoors since his surgery is published in Colombia.

o March 21: Tom Shannon, the top U.S. diplomat on Latin America, while not directly contradicting previous U.S. assessments that Castro was close to death, gives a more cautious view. ''I've tried to be very careful . . . about making it clear that the Cuban state is so opaque and that his health is treated as a state secret, and guarded in such a way that it's hard to assess what it is,'' he said.

o March 29: Castro's byline appears on a Granma newspaper article.

o April 4: A second bylined article appears in Granma.

o April 8: As of this day, the 80-year-old Castro has not made a public appearance for eight months and 13 days.

A Cuban woman's "trip to the moon''

By Saundra Amrhein, St. Petersburg Times. Posted on Fri, Apr. 06, 2007

HAVANA -- Ale sat pressed against the door in the back seat of a Russian Lada, leaving a strip of worn leather between herself and her new husband.

Ale, from a western suburb of Havana, is 28, a tall, dark-skinned woman with a perpetual look of skepticism. Her husband, a European, is 60. He is pale, graying, a tourist in long shorts and a fanny pack.

Ale married him not for love, but for an easier life outside of Cuba. It's a familiar story. Countless other women and some men have married foreigners and left the country since the economy crashed in the 1990s.

We met while I was in Havana working on a different story. Ale and her husband were on their way to an embassy in Miramar to drop off her emigration paperwork; my driver, who knew them, offered them a ride. I took the front seat and they sat, divided, in the rear.

Ale stared out the window at tree-lined boulevards as we drove. She and her husband didn't speak. They have no common language. They use a handheld digital translator to communicate, even when they argue.

I found Ale later in my trip, and she told me about her life.

Once she dreamed of dancing in the National Ballet of Cuba, of traveling the world. She dropped out of school in 11th grade, married and had a son, now 6. She divorced the boy's father because she couldn't bear her mother-in-law's meddling.

Ale met her current husband, the European, a few years ago in the city. She asked me not to use her last name or say what country he comes from, for fear of retribution from the government.

She was walking alone; he was in Havana on vacation. Prowling for a wife, she thought. One of many thoughts she never shares with him.

For some women, marrying a foreigner is ir a la luna, a trip to the moon, an escape. At the time, Ale was earning $3 a day in a family-run restaurant. Better than most, but a struggle.

She says she was not thinking about marriage. She also had no intention of being one of those women who sell themselves as ''girlfriends'' to foreigners -- Germans, Italians, Spaniards, even Americans. Ale knew women who had exchanged sex for money, clothes or food. Police threw many of them in jail.

She and the European man talked that first night.

''Cafe con leche,'' she remembered him saying, rubbing her arm, a shade of ice tea, and his, chalk white. In Cuba, many foreign men prize dark-skinned women as exotic.

The European made a second visit to Cuba just to see Ale. He took her to nice restaurants, places she couldn't afford.

On his third visit they became intimate; he rented a room in a building fronted by panes of broken glass and a view of the sea. At a hotel, Ale could be arrested if they weren't married.

Sex with him, she said, is like cooking rice and chicken: It's something to do because you need to eat, and because rice and chicken is fast.

They married in January at a civil ceremony downtown. Life would be easier this way, she thought. He sends her a few hundred euros a month, a small fortune here. She uses the money to buy toys and clothes for her son. Her husband brings her gifts, an iPod and a cell phone.

She told me she loves him, as a friend. He thinks she will join him abroad in two months.

On the drive to the embassy last month , he didn't realize she was stalling. She wasn't ready to go home with him. She told me she wants to wait until she has been initiated into espiritismo, her religion, which he opposes.

She also worries about her son. If he leaves the country with her, he'll lose a chance to study piano for free in one of Cuba's renowned music schools.

She's confused. She fears she'll miss Cuba, as hard as things are for her. She thinks maybe she'll travel back and forth until she can decide what to do.

This trip to the moon has left her feeling cold.

Government objects after bond granted to Cuban militant

The Associated Press. Posted on Fri, Apr. 06, 2007.

EL PASO, Texas -- A federal judge on Friday ordered Cuban militant Luis Posada Carriles set free on bail pending trial on charges he lied in a bid to become a U.S. citizen, and the government immediately asked that he remain jailed.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone didn't immediately rule on federal prosecutors' request, in which they argued Posada should remain in custody while they determine if they can appeal the decision.

Posada, 79, was arrested in Miami. He is wanted in Cuba and Venezuela on charges that he was in Caracas when the plotted the deadly 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner. He also has been ordered deported by a federal immigration judge, though U.S. authorities have been unable to find a country willing to accept the former CIA operative.

Cuban: System 'not ideal'

By Will Weissert. Posted on Fri, Apr. 06, 2007.

One of the most-visible faces of Cuba's caretaker government urged the island's young people to ignore capitalism's ''siren song,'' while acknowledging that the country's current communist system was not as ''ideal'' as had been desired.

Marking the 45th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Youth Union on Wednesday, Vice President and Cabinet Secretary Carlos Lage said the revolution that Fidel Castro led by toppling dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 will have to live on in a generation that may be unsure of what it is rebelling against.

''We always knew the biggest challenge of socialism is to instill in young people a communist conscience and rejection of capitalism, without having lived in it, without having seen the moral damage it produces,'' Lage said, addressing a packed house at Havana's Karl Marx Theater.

Part the union's job now, he said, is to help make young people ''immune to the siren song'' of capitalism.''

Lage is a key member of the provisional government headed by 75-year-old defense minister Raúl Castro, who took power when his brother Fidel stepped down temporarily following emergency intestinal surgery last summer.

Fidel Castro has not been seen in public since, but life on the island has been little changed and top government leaders have insisted the 80-year-old leader is on the mend.

Himself a former Communist Youth Union leader, Lage said today's Cuban teenagers were born in the lean years after the Soviet Union collapsed and generous subsidies and trade dried up, provoking chronic shortages.

Speaking frankly about the era known as the ''special period,'' Lage said the economic deprivations of that time brought a stark end to the 1980s, when the island flourished.

''You all were born or grew up when electricity was out for 10 hours or more a day, medicines were scarce, there was a dramatic shortage of food, and public transportation could barely be found, even on the streets of the capital,'' he said.

Lage said the limited free-market concessions the government made then to help stabilize the economy have since created ''bitter contradictions'' and forced Cuban society "to watch deformities and inequalities grow.''

He acknowledged that the current communist system was "not as ideal as the one we wished for, or achieved years ago.''

He continued: ''Even aware of our justified dissatisfaction, our people today enjoy rights that for billions of people on the planet aren't even imaginable,'' he said. "Free access to education and healthcare from one extreme of the island to the other. In our country, no one lacks the opportunity to study, or a job.''

Cuban baseball players smuggled out

Posted on Thu, Apr. 05, 2007

KEY WEST, Fla. -- (AP) -- Smugglers made repeated trips to take baseball players out of Cuba and into the U.S., all for their own financial gain, prosecutors have alleged at a federal trial in the Florida Keys.

According to the government, California-based sports agent Gustavo ''Gus'' Dominguez helped organize two smuggling trips across the Florida Straits in 2004. The first one failed; the second succeeded with the ballplayers reaching Big Pine Key.

Also on trial are former Cuban baseball coach Guillermo Valdez and go-fast boat driver, Roberto Yosvany Hernandez.

''The players are very valuable, so if at first you don't succeed, try again,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Daniel told jurors Wednesday in the Key West courtroom.

Dominguez and his co-defendants have pleaded not guilty to federal alien smuggling, conspiracy and other related charges.

Defense attorneys are seeking to paint Dominguez, who fled Cuba years ago, as a man dedicated to helping oppressed Cuban ballplayers. His first client was Rene Arocha, the first Cuban player to defect to the United States, and he has represented many more since then.

But prosecutors accused Dominguez of going beyond helping those who have reached the U.S. They said he hired five men to implement his smuggling operation. Two go-fast boat operators and an assistant to Dominguez have all pleaded guilty in the case.

Testifying against Dominguez on Wednesday was Ysbel Medina, a convicted drug trafficker who said that in exchange for his testimony, he was allowed to keep four real-estate properties and avoid tax evasion and smuggling charges. Medina testified that Dominguez asked him in June 2004 to bring in more baseball players, but that he refused until Dominguez paid him at least $100,000 he still owed for bringing Seattle Mariners shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt to the U.S. in 2003.

The case opened in Key West the same day that Betancourt agreed to a multimillion-dollar, three-year contract extension with Seattle. He was expected to testify Thursday.

According to a paper trail, Dominguez allegedly transferred $225,000 out of the bank account of his client, Chicago Cubs catcher Henry Blanco, to pay for the trips. Blanco testified Wednesday he had no knowledge of the transfer.

Among the group that came in 2004 were Osbek Castillo, a pitcher with the Arizona Diamondbacks' AA team in Alabama, and Francisely Bueno, a pitcher with the Atlanta Braves' AA affiliate in Mississippi.

Most Cuban dissidents spurn Spanish overture

By Andrea Rodriguez, Associated Press. Posted on Thu, Apr. 05, 2007

HAVANA --The Spanish Embassy on Wednesday offered to meet with opponents of Cuba's government after Madrid's top diplomat ended a three-day official visit to Havana without talking to dissidents.

But the offer was rejected by most dissidents, who said Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos spurned them during a trip to explore improving Spanish and European ties to communist-run Cuba.

'Moratinos' visit was a lack of respect, he came to support the tyranny,'' said Vladimiro Roca, a veteran opponent and former political prisoner who did not attend the embassy gathering.

The wives and mothers of political prisoners who form the Ladies in White also did not attend. Nor did writer Oscar Espinosa Chepe, one of 75 dissidents arrested in a March 2003 crackdown.

''Spain is not an interlocutor because it only hears some Cubans,'' said Espinosa Chepe, who was given a medical release from jail along with 15 others. "We don't want to be accomplices.''

Historian Manuel Cuesta Morua was one of the few dissidents who agreed to meet with the Spanish diplomats. ''The important thing is to plant a political agenda,'' he said.

Cuesta Morua also noted with satisfaction that Moratinos and his Cuban counterpart agreed during the visit to explore regular bilateral talks that could include a discussion of human rights.

''For the first time in many years the [Cuban] government has committed to a discussion of human rights,'' Cuesta Morua said.

Many governments and rights organizations around the world accuse Cuba of violating liberties by jailing critics and limiting speech and press freedoms.

Cuba's communist government rejects those charges, saying it respects human rights more than most nations by offering citizens a wide social safety net that includes free healthcare.

Members of Cuba's Communist Youth Union gather

By Will Weissert, Associated Press. Posted on Thu, Apr. 05, 2007

HAVANA -- One of the most-visible faces of Cuba's caretaker government urged the island's young people Wednesday to ignore capitalism's ''siren song,'' while acknowledging that the country's current communist system was not as ''ideal'' as had been desired.

Marking the 45th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Youth Union, Vice President and Cabinet Secretary Carlos Lage said the revolution that Fidel Castro led by toppling dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 will have to live on in a generation that may be unsure of what it is rebeling against.

''We always knew the biggest challenge of socialism is to instill in young people a communist conscience and rejection of capitalism, without having lived in it, without having seen the moral damage it produces,'' Lage said, addressing a packed house at Havana's Karl Marx Theater.

Part of the union's job now, he said, is to help make young people "immune to the siren song of capitalism.''

Lage is a key member of the provisional government headed by 75-year-old defense minister Raúl Castro, who took power when his better known brother Fidel stepped down temporarily following emergency intestinal surgery last summer.

Fidel Castro has not been seen in public since, but life on the island has been little changed and top government leaders have insisted the 80-year-old revolutionary is on the mend.

Himself a former Communist Youth Union leader, Lage said today's Cuban teenagers were born in the lean years after the Soviet Union collapsed and generous subsidies and trade dried up, provoking chronic shortages.

Speaking frankly about the era known as the ''special period,'' Lage said the economic deprivations of that time brought a stark end to the 1980s, when the island flourished.

''You all were born or grew up when electricity was out for 10 hours or more a day, medicines were scare, there was a dramatic shortage of food, and public transportation could barely be found, even on the streets of the capital,'' he said.

Lage said the limited free-market concessions the government made then to help stabilize the economy have since created ''bitter contradictions'' and forced Cuban society "to watch deformities and inequalities grow.''

He acknowledged that the current communist system was "not as ideal as the one we wished for, or achieved years ago.''

Despite the hardships and Washington's 45-year-old economic embargo against Cuba, ''the people saved their revolution, which continues with more strength and pride than ever,'' Lage added.

''Even aware of our justified dissatisfaction, our people today enjoy rights that for billions of people on the planet aren't even imaginable,'' he said. "Free access to education and healthcare from one extreme of the island to the other. In our country, no one lacks the opportunity to study, or a job.''

With Raul Castro among those in attendance, Wednesday's two-hour celebration mixed serious moments with lighter ones.

Noted Cuban folk singer Silvio Rodriguez performed several numbers, and at another point a group of small children danced, sang and hopped their way across stage, some wearing bee costumes, others in traditional Cuban dresses and suits.

Smuggling and baseball collide in the courtroom

For the first time, a sports agent is standing trial on charges of smuggling Cuban baseball players into the United States.

By Cammy Clark, cclark@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Thu, Apr. 05, 2007

KEY WEST -- Baseball and human smuggling came together Wednesday in a federal courtroom, where a respected sports agent is on trial on charges of masterminding and financing an operation that illegally brought five Cuban ballplayers to the United States.

The smuggling of ballplayers from Cuba has been an open secret in the baseball community for years. But the sport was rocked in October when Gustavo Dominguez, who is based in California, became the first sports agent to be charged with the crime.

Prosecutors say Dominguez orchestrated two smuggling trips in go-fast boats across the Florida Straits -- one that failed in July 2004 and a second that succeeded, reaching Big Pine Key the following month -- for his own financial gain.

''The players are very valuable, so if at first you don't succeed, try again,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Daniel told jurors in his opening statement.

The prosecution's first two witnesses demonstrated the diverse sides of the unique smuggling case. First up: Chicago Cubs catcher Henry Blanco, dressed in a black designer suit. Next was convicted drug trafficker Ysbel Medina, in faded blue prison garb.

Dominguez also is charged with arranging transportation to California and harboring the four pitchers and one shortstop in an apartment complex while trying to land them professional baseball contracts.

If convicted of the 21 felony counts, Dominguez faces decades in prison.

FAMILY MAN

Defense attorneys portrayed Dominguez as a compassionate family man who fled Cuba himself decades ago and has helped many oppressed Cuban ballplayers.

In the 1990s, Dominguez pioneered the business of representing Cuban baseball players who fled Fidel Castro's regime. He co-founded the California-based Total Sports International. His first client was left-handed pitcher Rene Arocha, the first Cuban player to defect to the United States, in 1991.

But prosecutors say Dominguez crossed the legal line, hiring five men to help carry out the smuggling operation. Three of the men -- two go-fast boat operators and Dominguez's right-hand assistant who drove players to California -- have pleaded guilty.

PAPER TRAIL

Standing trial with Dominguez are Roberto Yosvany Hernandez, who drove the second go-fast boat, and former Cuban baseball coach Guillermo Valdez, who accompanied the players to California and trained some of them.

The prosecution laid out a paper trail that included $225,000 worth of wire transfers, all made from the bank account of Blanco, who was a client of Dominguez. The transfers were paid to either Medina -- the convicted drug trafficker -- or his friends and family members.

Blanco, who was subpoenaed by the prosecution and missed his team's game Wednesday night in Cincinnati, testified that he had no knowledge of the transfers, all of which were initiated and authorized by Dominguez, who, as Blanco's agent, had permission to use his bank account.

But Blanco also helped the defense, testifying that Dominguez was still his agent and close friend, and as trusted as ever during their 13-year relationship. Blanco said Dominguez's explanation for borrowing the money was satisfactory, although he didn't say what that explanation was.

Medina testified that he first met Dominguez in 2003 through friend Andy Morales, also a Cuban defector and baseball client of Dominguez. Medina said Dominguez asked him to smuggle two players, including Yuniesky Betancourt, now a shortstop with the Seattle Mariners. Betancourt is expected to testify.

Medina said Dominguez asked him in June 2004 to bring five more ballplayers to the United States.

Medina testified that he said he would, but not until Dominguez paid him $100,000 of the $140,000 he owed for bringing Betancourt to the United States.

Defense attorneys hammered at the credibility of Medina, who said he made as much as $3 million selling marijuana, took part in an insurance scam in Miami involving staged accidents and collected $24,000 from other passengers of the smuggling operation.

Medina said that for his testimony in the case, he has been allowed to keep four of his seven real-estate properties, avoided prosecution for tax evasion and is not being prosecuted in the smuggling case.

TWO TRIPS

In the failed trip in July 2004, 22 migrants were aboard the go-fast boat, stopped about six miles from Key West by U.S. officials.

On the successful second trip, 19 people were aboard. All had been on the first trip. None of the five ballplayers involved in this case -- Osmany Masso, Allen Guevara, Francisely Bueno, Osbek Castillo and Yoankis Turin -- faces criminal charges.

Two are playing professionally in the United States. Castillo is a pitcher with the Arizona Diamondbacks' AA affiliate in Mobile, and Bueno is a pitcher with the Atlanta Braves' AA affiliate in Mississippi.

Castro again blasts ethanol

By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer. Posted on Wed, Apr. 04, 2007.

HAVANA -- (AP) -- Cuba's government on Wednesday issued the second article in a week about ethanol production signed by Fidel Castro, with the ailing leader reiterating his charge that the use of food crops to produce biofuels for automobiles could leave the world's poor hungry.

''Where are the poor countries of the Third World going to get the minimum resources to survive?'' asked the article, Reflections of the Commander in Chief. "I'm not exaggerating or using unmeasured words. I am sticking to the facts.''

As for Brazil's continued support of ethanol production, Castro wrote: "It is not my intention to harm Brazil, nor get mixed up in affairs related to the internal politics of that great country.''

But, Castro wrote, key questions remained unanswered about plans for biofuel production following weekend talks between Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and President Bush on that and other trade matters.

''From where and who are going to supply the more than 500 million tons of corn and other cereals that the United States, Europe and the rich countries are going to need to produce the quantity of gallons of ethanol that the big companies of the United States and other countries demand in return for their many investments?'' he asked.

Castro's articles indicate he is increasingly anxious to have his voice heard on international matters eight months after being sidelined by illness.

On July 31, the 80-year-old revolutionary temporarily ceded his functions to his brother Raúl, the 75-year-old defense minister, after announcing he had undergone emergency intestinal surgery.

Castro's condition and exact ailment remain a state secret, but he is widely believed to suffer from diverticular disease, a weakening of the walls of the colon that can cause sustained bleeding. Senior Cuban officials have given increasingly optimistic reports about his health, and there is a growing expectation on the Caribbean island that he could soon make his first public appearance since falling ill.

Although some seem confident Castro will resume the presidency, others think he is more likely to take on a less physically demanding post as elder statesman, weighing in on international issues while Raúl and a new collective leadership handle daily domestic affairs.

Bolivian President Evo Morales said last month that he expects to see Castro in public on April 28 during a meeting in Havana with presidents celebrating a regional trade and cooperation pact. The Cuban government has not commented on Morales' statement.

Troops mobilized after Castro's surgery

From Miami Herald Wire Services. Posted on Wed, Apr. 04, 2007.

Interim Cuban leader Raúl Castro has confirmed that a massive mobilization of security forces was ordered after his brother Fidel underwent surgery eight months ago.

''This popular mobilization, in silence, without the least boasting, guaranteed the preservation of the revolution from any attempted military aggression,'' he was quoted as saying Friday by the Communist Party's Granma newspaper.

Addressing senior military leaders Friday, Raúl Castro said ''Operación Caguairán'' -- named after a hard Cuban tree also called ''ax breaker'' -- was ordered because he could not rule out that, in the face of his brother's ailment, someone in Washington could "turn crazy.''

Cuba did not publicly reveal the mobilization when it was ordered, just hours after it was announced on July 31 that Fidel Castro was ''temporarily'' surrendering power because of the surgery. He remains largely absent from public view eight months later, but is reported to be recovering.

The mobilization covered 200,000 Cubans, according to Hal Klepak, a Canadian academic and an expert on the Cuban armed forces who spoke last month at a University of Miami conference on Cuba.

Klepak did not explain whether the number was for Aug. 1 alone or a total for rotating call-ups.

Raúl Castro said the mobilizations were carried out successfully. Large numbers of uniformed but unarmed soldiers and extra police were visible in the streets of Havana immediately after the July 31 announcement.

Granma earlier last week reported that mobilized soldiers had been practicing combat tactics, firing antiaircraft rockets, using computer simulators and sniping, but gave no numbers.

''Never before, except in the times of the Bay of Pigs [1961] and the Missile Crisis [1962] had Cuba undertaken in its national territory such a mobilization of its troops in such a scale,'' the newspaper said.

Excerpts from Castro's article

Posted on Tue, Apr. 03, 2007.

These are excerpts from the article by Fidel Castro published Wednesday in the Cuban daily Granma. They were selected and translated by The Miami Herald.

The meeting at Camp David has just ended. We all listened with interest to the press conference by the presidents of the United States and Brazil, as well as the news about the meeting and the opinions expressed.

When Bush was confronted by the demands made by his Brazilian visitor about import tariffs and subsidies that protect and support U.S. production of ethanol, he made not the slightest concession at Camp David.

President Lula blamed these for the rising cost of corn, which -- according to him -- had increased more than 85 percent. Yet earlier, The Washington Post published an article by Brazil's highest authority [Lula], where he proposed the idea of converting food into fuel.

It is not my intention to harm Brazil, or involve myself in matters related to the domestic policies of that great country. It was precisely in Rio de Janeiro, the site of the International Conference on the Environment, exactly 15 years ago, where I vehemently denounced, in a seven-minute speech, the environmental dangers that threatened the existence of our species. . . .

Nobody at Camp David has answered the fundamental question: From where and who is going to furnish the more than 500 million tons of corn and other cereals that the United States, Europe and the rich countries need to produce the number of gallons of ethanol that the big companies from the U.S. and other countries need as compensation for their substantial investments? Where and who is going to produce the soy, the sunflower and rape seeds whose essential oils those same rich countries are going to turn into fuel? . . .

The five principal producers of corn, barley, sorghum, rye, millet, and oats that Bush wants to turn into raw material for the production of ethanol furnish the world market, according to recent data, with 679 million tons. In turn, the five principal consumers, some of which are also producers of those grains, at present need 604 million tons per year. The available surplus is reduced to less than 80 million tons.

This colossal waste of cereals to produce fuel, not including the oil-producing seeds, would only serve to save the rich countries less than 15 percent of the annual consumption of their voracious automobiles.

At Camp David, Bush has declared his intention to apply this formula on a worldwide scale, which means nothing less than the internationalization of genocide. . . .

China would never use a single ton of cereals or leguminous plants to produce ethanol. It is a nation with a prosperous economy that sets records of growth, where no citizen fails to receive the income necessary for his basic consumer goods, despite the fact that 48 percent of the population, which exceeds 1.3 billion people, works in agriculture.

On the contrary, [China] is intent on achieving considerable savings of energy by eliminating thousands of factories that consume unacceptable amounts of electricity and hydrocarbons. Many of the foods mentioned above [China] imports from all corners of the world, transporting them thousands of kilometers.

Dozens and dozens of countries do not produce hydrocarbons and cannot produce corn and other grains, or oil-producing seeds, because they don't have enough water to even cover their most basic needs. . . .

The worst may be still to come: a new war to ensure the supplies of gas and crude oil that will place the human species on the brink of a total holocaust. Some Russian press agencies, crediting intelligence sources, have reported that the war against Iran began to be prepared in all its details more than three years ago, the day the government of the United States decided to totally occupy Iraq, unleashing an interminable and odious civil war. . . .

To demolish every single Iranian factory is a technical task that is relatively easy for a power like the United States. The difficult part may come later, if a new war is launched against another Islamic belief that deserves our total respect, as well as the other religions of the peoples of the Near, Middle or Far East, prior or subsequent to Christianity.

The arrest of the English soldiers in the jurisdictional waters of Iran seems to be a provocation exactly alike the one staged by the so-called "Brothers to the Rescue," when, violating the orders of President Clinton, they ventured into the waters of our jurisdiction. The defensive action taken by Cuba, absolutely legitimate, served as pretext to the government of the United States to promulgate the famous Helms-Burton Act, which violates the sovereignty of other countries.

Powerful advertising media have buried that episode into oblivion. Many attribute the price of crude oil, almost $70 on Monday, to fears of an attack on Iran.

Where will the poor countries in the Third World obtain the minimal resources to survive? I do not exaggerate or use disproportionate words. I stick to the facts.

Cuba's tourist economy in trouble

Economically crucial visits by foreign tourists are free-falling, with flight costs, infrastructure issues and the exchange rate all playing a role.

By Wilfredo Cancio Isla, El Nuevo Herald. Posted on Tue, Apr. 03, 2007

Cuba's tourism industry, the island's main economic engine for the past 15 years, is in a steep fall amid a mix of factors that range from rising air ticket prices to changes in tour ownerships and crumbling tourist facilities.

The first alarm rang late last year, when Ministry of Tourism (MinTur) figures showed 2.2 million people had visited the island in 2006, down from 2.3 million in 2005.

The decline has accelerated so far this year. January and February indicators show a combined drop of 7 percent compared to the same months in 2006, according to the most recent MinTur figures, with February visitation falling 13 percent.

Spanish tourists, historically the island's third-largest group, dropped by 45 percent over both months.

Cuba's tourism industry has been generating more than $2 billion per year in recent years, and provides direct and indirect employment to about 300,000 people.

Cuban authorities explaining the drop have cited a rise in air fares, due to the cost of fuel, currency exchange rate shifts and the scares of the notoriously violent 2005 hurricane season. Also mentioned are the Bush administration tightening of restrictions on Cuban-American trips to the island, which according to Cuban news media reports dropped from 100,000 in 2004 to about 30,000 a year since.

On the plunge in Spanish tourism, MinTur officials focused blame on the suspension of three weekly flights by the Iberojet charter airline and the sale of the cruise line Pullmantur to Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruises. A Pullmantur ship used to sail every week from Havana after picking up tourists who had flown in from Madrid, but the company was forced to end its Cuba stops under the new owners because of the U.S. trade embargo.

LEFT UNSAID

But internal MinTur documents obtained by El Nuevo Herald, independent experts and tourism-sector workers on the island show there are other serious problems not mentioned by MinTur.

Most of Cuba's tourism facilities were built in the 1990s and have received little maintenance since then, said a MinTur official who asked for anonymity out of fear of government punishment.

''The structure created for years in the tourism industry is crumbling piecemeal,'' the employee said. "Tourism in Cuba is headed for chaos and it will take years to revert the present situation.''

The MinTur documents also point to the inability of the Tourism Construction Enterprise (Emprestur) to repair hotels because of the lack of materials.

The employee said there's also widespread dissatisfaction with the way Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz and leading managers are running things. Marrero, former president of the Gaviota Group, run by the Cuban armed forces, and a trusted aide to Cuban interim leader and Defense Minister Raúl Castro, was appointed to the post in early 2004 after the removal of Ibrahim Ferradaz amid reports of a corruption scandal.

''What's happening in tourism is a reflection of a behavior that has spread nationwide,'' said dissident economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe on the phone from Havana. "People are disgusted with the economic situation at home, workers don't take pride in their work and inertia corrupts the entire organization.''

PRICEY PESO

Also affecting tourism was the Cuban government's decision in late 2004 to effectively increase the value of its currency by 20 percent, making foreigners' hotel stays and meals in Cuba that more expensive.

"It was logical that a devalued dollar would cause a drop in tourism from Latin America and Canada, because the visitors from those countries buy very cheap packages, said Carmelo Mesa Lago, professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh and a long-time Cuban economy watcher.

With 44,000 hotel rooms, Cuba had an occupancy rate of 63.5 percent in 2004 and only 55.7 percent in 2005, according to the United Nation's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. The average daily expenditure per visitor dropped from $175 in 2003 to $97 in 2005.

MinTur has not released occupancy statistics for 2006, but the MinTur official estimated it at 50 percent.

Trying to reverse the trend, MinTur announced a strategic plan for 2007 that involves support for investments, construction of new facilities and repairs of existing hotels. The plan also envisions improved highways and road signs, and guarantees of electricity and water for the tourism industry.

Marrero has announced a ''total change in the philosophy of promotion and advertising for the island,'' and in January unveiled a campaign named ''Viva Cuba,'' designed to present a new image of the country, at the International Tourism Fair in Madrid.

Spain hopes for better ties with Cuba

By Andrea Rodriguez, Associated Press Writer. Posted on Tue, Apr. 03, 2007.

HAVANA -- (AP) -- Spain's foreign minister said Monday that Madrid wants to improve relations with Cuba that have been strained since the start of the Iraq war.

Miguel Angel Moratinos said in Havana that the two countries should try to understand each other better. ''It's unthinkable that Spain, the government of Spain, cannot maintain and defend an intense, constructive and open policy toward Cuba,'' he said.

''Today, we turn over a new leaf,'' said Moratinos, the highest-ranking Spanish official to visit the island since 1999.

Moratinos met Monday with his Cuban counterpart, Felipe Perez Roque. It was unclear if he will see acting Cuban President Raúl Castro, who temporarily took power after emergency intestinal surgery forced his 80-year-old brother, Fidel, to step aside last summer.

Conservative former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was a chief supporter of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. His administration also helped prompt a decision by the European Union to impose sanctions on Cuba in 2003 after Cuban authorities detained 75 dissidents accused of working with the United States to undermine Castro's government.

Washington denied the charges, as did the dissidents, who were sentenced to long prison terms. Cuban authorities have since released 16 of the prisoners for medical reasons, and in January 2005, the EU lifted its sanctions, which had included shunning high-level talks with Cuban officials.

EU foreign ministers have said they will seek a long-term strategy on pushing for democratic change here.

Moratinos did not mention the EU policy on Cuba or any plans to modify it.

Moratinos is a member of the socialist administration of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who replaced Aznar in March 2004 and has sought more cordial relations with Cuba.

Perez Roque did not speak to reporters, though an article published Monday in the Communist Party daily Granma stated that Cuba would like to expand bilateral relations with the EU, based on mutual respect.

CubaNet does not require sole rights from its contributors. We authorize the reproduction and distribution of this article as long as the source is credited.