CUBA NEWS
La Tienda de Cubanet

SEPTEMBER 2003

September 30

FROM CUBA
Cuban man arrested; his Italian friend warned to keep his distance
"Verdome protested when they took me to the patrol car. I told them that we are friends and why we were at the airport. But they charged me and warned me to keep away from foreigners or I would end up in prison."
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
My neighbor's grief
Film stars and intellectuals including Catherine Deneuve, Sophie Marceau, Pedro Almodovar and Jorge Semprun attended a soiree here supporting the Cuban people and hitting out at repression by leader Fidel Castro.
HAVANA

Stars and intellectuals hit out at Castro in Paris event
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who inherited numerous problems, has done a fine job managing tough domestic issues while satisfying international creditors. But he fumbled badly on his visit to Cuba last weekend.
Yahoo!

The Miami Herald
• Exiles' entry rule is lifted
• Albright defends Clark, lauds Payá
• Anger of new Cuban exiles is in music
• Cheap Cuban medicines fill Miami cabinets

Yahoo! News
• Cuba Says Cubans in U.S. Can Visit
• Editor Quits After Castro Column Killed
• Cuban Frogs Pushy
• Cubans on Floating Truck Denied Visas
• Old friends Lula, Castro work on improving business ties
• Isolated Castro gets a diplomatic boost from Lula visit

Lula's missed chance
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who inherited numerous problems, has done a fine job managing tough domestic issues while satisfying international creditors. But he fumbled badly on his visit to Cuba last weekend.
The Miami Herald

External links

Most Cubans on floating truck turned down for U.S. visas
The Cubans who converted a pickup truck into a boat in an illegal attempt to reach Florida said Monday their attempts to emigrate legally had failed as well. So far, 10 of the 12 people in the group that made the unusual and well-publicized attempt to reach American soil have been turned down for U.S. immigration visas, the passengers on the floating boat said, showing copies of their rejection letters.
Sun-Sentinel, FL .

LETTERS FROM CUBA : From chalk to Powerpoint
Will Jordan, a 20-year-old University of Arkansas student and a Fayetteville native, is attending the University of Havana in Cuba this semester as part of a Sturgis Study Abroad Grant. He is the first UA student to study in Cuba through the grant program. During his time there, Jordan will write occasional diary entries for the benefit of Northwest Arkansas Times readers.
Will Jordan / Northwest Arkansas Times.

Small Biz Barges into Cuba
A small South Carolina company has done something no American business has in over 40 years--sailed a U.S.-registered barge into Havana. Previously, the few American companies that shipped goods to Cuba chartered foreign vessels.
Inc.com.


September 29

FROM CUBA
Exploding ordnance kills four in Cuba
The trash pickers were trying to separate the projectile from its shell to sell the metal to a raw materials recycling facility nearby. The explosion was heard for several miles around, witnesses said.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Police question Varela activist for third consecutive week
For the third week in a row, Varela project activist Lidiel Martínez was called in for questioning at the Fourth police unit in El Cerro.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Cuban Prison Bans the Bible
Prison authorities in Camaguey, Cuba, have banned the Bible from inmates' cells, according to Aid to the Church in Need.
Zenit, Italy

The Miami Herald
• Nations' leaders sign business agreements

Yahoo! News
• Old friends Lula, Castro work on improving business ties
• Albright Says Bush Should Do More To Bring Democracy To Cuba

CPJ to present annual international press freedom awards
Abdul Samay Hamed (Afghanistan), Aboubakr Jamai (Morocco), Musa Muradov (Russia), and Manuel Vázquez Portal (Cuba) have suffered serious reprisals for daring to report with independence and authority in countries where dissent is not easily tolerated. .
Committee to Protect Journalists
Socialite whose love affair with Castro produced a daughter prefers not to linger on her past .
Unlike most Cubans, too, Naty is stylishly dressed, heavily bejeweled. The blonde hair is gone, the green eyes faded, but she remains gracefully beautiful, striking. She uses a gold cigarette holder and holds her coffee cup with her thumb and index finger.
The Miami Herald.

External links

Cuban jumps ship
A Cuban national seeking asylum was rescued from the Delaware Bay after he jumped ship late Friday afternoon. According to local authorities, electrician Felix Urbano Zulueta Linares jumped at least 40 feet from an identified ship in his attempt to reach American soil. A private vessel picked Lineres out of the water after he had been treading water for at least 1 1/2 hours without a life vest.
Bridgeton News, NJ.

Brazil and Cuba: Hugs, Deals and Tears
Most of the Brazilian press seems convinced that at closed doors the theme of human rights would inevitably be discussed between the two leaders. For some, Lula is the only world leader to whom Castro would listen at this moment.
Brazzil.com, Brazil.

Brazilian president evades human rights issue on visit to Cuba
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva praised closer trade ties with his longtime friend and leftist supporter Fidel Castro while predictably sidestepping Cuba's human rights record during a short visit to Havana. On Saturday morning the two leaders presided over a signing ceremony for commercial agreements worth $200 million, an "exceptional step for Cuba and Brazil," Lula said.
Sun-Sentinel, FL.

Food sales soar in face of political strains
So far this year, Cuba has bought $124 million in U.S. foods, mostly corn, soybeans, rice and poultry. In May, the month after the dissidents' one-day trials and the executions of three men who attempted to hijack a ferry to South Florida, sales totaled $21 million, about 260 percent higher than last May. American executives who continue cultivating relationships with Cuban officials despite the political chill repeat the same refrain they did last year at the food fair: Business is business and politics is politics.
Sun-Sentinel, FL.

Some Cuban-Americans softening stance on US embargo
The Florida National Summit on Cuba, organized by the World Policy Institute's Cuba Project and Cuban-Americans who oppose the U.S. embargo, will feature former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whom analysts think will suggest a different approach to relations with Cuba.
Sun-Sentinel, FL.

Cuba: Now Or Never?
The major hotels offer satellite TV, but the only news show for ordinary Cubans airs for a half-hour or so on Sunday night and is repeated all week. It makes you feel a little guilty to be enjoying the lack of homogenization. Cuba, unlike so much of the world, does not seem bland and familiar. Its isolation, bad for the locals, makes it fresh and fascinating for tourists. The police stir similar mixed emotions: Cubans must find them oppressive. For tourists, they mean that you can safely walk even the poorest streets of Havana anytime, day or night, without fear.
The Washington Post.

Cuba in the Blood, Author explores life in exile
Like many descendants of Cubans who left their Caribbean island, Andrea O'Reilly Herrera longs for a homeland she never knew.
The Salt Lake Tribune .

Artist paints for change
The ultimate destination here is Cuba, but the first stop is Robert Porcher's house in Rochester.
The Detroit News.


September 26

FROM CUBA
Police shut down independent library in Cuba
The Cuban political police searched the home of dissident Lorenzo García in Holguín Tuesday, confiscating more than 250 books from an independent lending library García operated there.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Prison inmates in Cuba decry conditions
"Only the absence of fire keeps us from thinking we are in Hell," reads a message from a prisoner at the Valle Grande prison in Havana.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Young man threatened for refusing to collaborate with Cuban police
Joany Hernández, 25, was threatened by police after he refused to cooperate in a police investigation of a presumed attempt to leave the island illegally.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
17-year-old student takes her life in Guantánamo
A 17-year-old student of the "José Maceo Grajales" vocational school in Guantánamo hung herself with a sheet at the school.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Brazilian president seeks to keep today's visit low-key
• Aznar's views on Cuba hailed
• Cuban banker and longtime community leader, Luis J. Botifoll, dies at age 95

Yahoo! News
• Brazilian President to Meet Castro in Cuba

College Speaker Challenged on Cuba
Judith Krug and the ALA's credentials as defenders of intellectual freedom are being publicly questioned by the Friends of Cuban Libraries.
The Friends of Cuban Libraries
In jail or free, dissidents determined to stay
A little more than a year ago, poet and journalist Raúl Rivero wrote that he refused to let America's embargo against Cuba define the international debate over the fate of the island's 11 million people.
Lydia Chavez. The Miami Herald.
Analyst Rejects Notion of Major Changes Anytime Soon in Cuba
A leading United States expert on Cuba Tuesday unveiled a new book examining prospects for U.S.-Cuban relations in the years ahead. Scholar and policy analyst Mark Falcoff rejects the notion that after Fidel Castro Cuba will become a free market democracy.
VOA News.
An exemplary Miamian
South Florida has lost an activist who crossed ethnic divides to give back to his adopted community. For decades Luis J. Botifoll stood out as a uniter of Hispanics and non-Hispanics. A passionate advocate for a free Cuba to the end, he died Wednesday night at age 95. Only hours earlier he had attended an exile meeting with Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar.
VOA News.

September 24

FROM CUBA
Consumers unhappy about egg price rise in Cuba
A new government measure set the price of eggs imported from the U. S. at two pesos each throughout the island, provoking grumbling in the provinces, where eggs usually sold for less than in Havana.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Equal? Not even dead
Just past noon August 16, the jeep arrived at the polyclinic of the former Orozco sugar mill in Pinar del Río province, carrying the first secretary of the local Communist Party apparently suffering from a heart attack.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Aznar, exiles to meet

Yahoo! News
• U.S. Tourists Not 'Fine' With The Cost Of Visiting Cuba

No need to fear, says Cuban official
A CUBAN official is suggesting that Barbados and other Caribbean countries need not be adversely affected in the event of the removal of the American blockade against Cuba. However, Cuba's Ambassador to Barbados said that for this to happen a system of multi destinations where visitors will spend two or three days in Cuba before moving on to another regional destination will have to be worked out.
Barbados Advocate
Cuba's prisons: A Devil's Island
Intolerably hot and cramped cells. Contaminated water and food. Rats, bugs and medical neglect. Is this the notorious 1850s French penal colony on Devil's Island? No, it is what some 100,000 prisoners in Cuba live every day.
The Miami Herald.

External links

Wave of repression fuels rumours that Fidel Castro is losing his mind
To Cuba's propagandists, the current wave of repression is like the final part of an heroic four-act drama: in which Mr. Castro's internal enemies are led off in chains, and his secret moles within the opposition step forwards to take their bows. Cubans know differently. They are living in a tragedy, with a fifth act to come, in which the tyrant dies, leaving unknown chaos in his wake. "This place is in semi-paralysis," said one diplomat. "[Government] is his very personal vision now, and very few of his officials know where this is going.
Telegraph.co.uk, UK.

Coleman: Human rights trumps trade in Cuba (reg. reqd.)
The Minnesota Republican had planned to meet with Cuban President Fidel Castro, but the meeting was canceled after Coleman announced that he doesn't support ending the Cuban trade embargo or lifting travel restrictions now.
Minneapolis Star Tribune, MN.

From ropa vieja to riches
When Josefa Gonzalez-Hastings and her parents fled Castro's Cuba in the mid 1960s, they left nearly everything behind except the clothes they could carry in flimsy cardboard suitcases.
St. Petersburg Times, FL .

Contreras' effort gives Bombers a start
Jose Contreras made his best start as a Yankee last night, pitching a season-high eight innings and striking out a career-best nine in the Yanks' division-clinching victory over the White Sox.
New York Daily News, NY.

Visiting the Devil
It is a step characterized in the presidential entourage as "controversial" and politically risky, as revealed by the well informed columnist Dora Kramer, of the newspaper Jornal do Brasil. She adds that one of the purposes of the trip, according to its defenders - Lula, the chancellor Amorim and the minister José Dirceu, a former guerrilla who lived several years in Cuba - would be that of "preserving bonds of affection with the past".
Armando F. Valladares / FrontPage Magazine.

An exile's revolutionary move
Eloy Gutierrez-Menoyo helped topple a dictatorship and then took up arms against his former comrade, Fidel Castro. He endured more than two decades in Cuban prisons and 17 more years in exile. Then, at the end of a family vacation here last month, the 68-year-old Gutierrez-Menoyo shocked Cuban dissidents and exiles alike by declaring that he was staying in Cuba to work peacefully toward establishing a democracy.
Gary Marx / Chicago Tribune.

'Anna in the Tropics' seduces with poetic dreaminess
The Nilo Cruz play "Anna in the Tropics" is a charming ode to infidelity, great literature and a good smoke. Set in 1929, in Ybor City outside Tampa, Cruz's drama has wafted its way onto the stage of the Victory Gardens Theater. Earlier this year it won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, which sets up all sorts of false expectations of Meaning and Stature most plays have no interest in meeting, let alone exceeding. In that regard "Anna in the Tropics" is like most plays. It's modest and apolitical, especially by the standards of Cruz's earlier work.
Chicago Tribune.

Letter to a Friend's Daughter
If media here in Florida accused Israel of genocide, we could express our outrage through letters and phone calls, organize protests, etc. Cuban Jews can't do that. As the Cuban Jew Tony Fune has courageously said, "I understand that we have no freedom of speech, no freedom of the press, no freedom to travel, no freedom to choose how we will educate our children. And I understand that's not right." (Cuba doesn't even have a rabbi.).
Myles Kantor, NewsMax.com.


September 23

FROM CUBA
Mother of Cuban political prisoner threatened
The mother of political prisoner Arturo Sanchez says the State Security Ministry threatened to transfer her son to a remote prison if she continued her human rights activities.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Wife of Cuban political prisoners visits relatives of other jailed dissidents
At the request of her husband, jailed activist Librado Linares Garcia, Magalys Broche de la Cruz has been visiting the relatives of some of the 75 political prisoners imprisoned in April.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Spanish prime minister schedules two-day Florida visit

Yahoo! News
• US says Cuba not meeting migration accord commitments
• Almiqui found in Cuba

Open letter from Reporters Without Borders to Lula
In an open letter, Reporters Without Borders calls on president "Lula" to meet with the families of the imprisoned journalists.
RSF, France
'Democracy Delayed' - Post-totalitarianism and Sultanism
When Juan José López, PhD, a political scientist, proudly dedicated "Democracy Delayed - The Case of Castro's Cuba" (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002) - his first book - to his wife Myrna and son Juan Carlos, he could not have anticipated that he would indeed need every bit of their moral and physical support.
Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D. NewsMax.com

External links

Cats president finally going to Cuba Minor
Cats president Marty Scott was nearly the first manager to take an American professional baseball team to Cuba since Fidel Castro came to power. Instead, Scott will have to settle for being second when he manages Team USA in the World Cup next month in Cuba, 4 1/2 years after his first trip to the island country was scheduled.
Star-Telegram. TX.

15 Ghanaian students to study in Cuba
Fifteen Ghanaian students were on Tuesday awarded scholarships to study engineering, humanities and para-medicals for four to five years in Cuba. The scholarship comes under an educational exchange programme between Ghana and Cuba.
GhanaWeb, Ghana.

The ideological librarians
A June meeting of the ALA provided an important clue of the organization's real priorities. It declined to pass a resolution -- even a tepid one -- supporting 14 jailed independent librarians in Cuba. These true martyrs to the free circulation of reading material held little interest for the ALA, since they are anti-Castro instead of anti-Ashcroft.
Townhall.com.


September 22

FROM CUBA
Cuban health authorities try to contain conjunctivitis outbreak
Cuban health authorities have taken several measures in an attempt to contain an outbreak of conjunctivitis throughout the island, including some cases of the hemorrhagic variety. Authorities have asked those suffering from the disease to stay off the streets or be fined.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Cuban government announces a new registry of deeds
The government called for all home owners to start registering their homes in a new registry of deeds, according to an announcement in the official dailies.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Claim against power company unresolved after five years
A man who filed a claim with the local power company in Villa Clara province for damages sustained by some domestic appliances has still not been totally paid after five years.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Cuba's many prisons may hold 100,000
• Cuban hijacker sentenced
• Salvat: A quiet, bookish guy with a militant history
• Hard line by U.S. halts some aid trips to Cuba

Yahoo! News
• Sen. Coleman Pays Cuba Human Rights Call
• Cuba Neighbors Rally During Eviction
• Sen. Coleman Meets With Cuban Activists
• Victor Manuelle Sings at Cruz Tribute

The Revolution and Racism
When the conversation turns to race, however, the black electrical technician stops laughing. "We are not free, he says. "Listen to me when I tell you that.
The Miami Herald.

The Pedro Pan Generation
They share a childhood trauma... and tremendous professional success.
The Miami Herald.
IJCHR criticises handling of Cuban asylum seekers
According to Nancy Anderson, IJCHR legal advisor, the Cubans, who were deported the day after their request for asylum was denied, had been robbed of a chance to appeal the ruling. This was a clear violation of the UN Convention and Jamaica's international obligations.
Observer Reporter. Jamaica.
I'm proud says doctor who spied for secret police
A couple recruited to work as double agents during Fidel Castro's campaign to hunt out dissidents meet David Rennie in Havana.
David Rennie, The London Telegraph.
Due process for Cuba's dissidents
Following are excerpts from a letter that Alfred P. Carlton Jr., American Bar Association president, sent last month to Fidel Castro.
The Miami Herald.

External links

Cuban exile leader won't fight return
Cuban exile activist Ramon Saul Sanchez said Thursday that he will not resist efforts by immigration officials to deport him to his native Cuba but will challenge any attempt to imprison him indefinitely in the United States should Cuba not accept him.
Sun-Sentinel, FL.

Getting personal with Cuba
Isolating Cuba has done nothing to break Fidel Castro's grip on power. Talking -- and trading -- might.
Herald Tribune, FL.

Editorial: Montana sets a better Cuba course
After 40 years of sanctions, we know what hasn't worked to foster democracy. Trade holds more promise.
Missoulian Opinion .


September 18

FROM CUBA
Outbreak of conjunctivitis in Havana
Although authorities did not release the number of those already infected, it is believed to be in the hundreds. Several live-in students have been sent home for treatment and to contain the infection.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Lawyers lobby for dissidents
• 3 European leaders urge fund for opposition
• Dissident honored in Spain
• Trade mission to Cuba sought
• Cuban man sentenced in plane hijacking
• Cuban hijacker gets minimum 20 years for air piracy

New Cuban Technicians to Work in the Country
A total of 291 Doctors and Nurses and 15 Professors to train trainers will work in the country, according to a protocol signed by the Governments of Angola and Cuba during a meeting on Thursday.
HAVANA
Editorial: Cuban trip opens market to Montanans
Baucus discussed human rights concerns with the Cuban dictator. Molt area rancher David Kelsey discussed the excellent quality of Montana cattle genetics and the potential for semen sales to Cuba. Those two topics, part of a 10 p.m. till 2:30 a.m. meeting in Castro's Havana offices illustrate the promise and the challenge of this amazing trade trip.
HAVANA

External links

President Lula's Cuba Test
Lula arrives Sunday in New York to address the United Nations as it opens its 58th session. He'll then tour Mexico, and his schedule calls for him to go next to Havana. How will left-leaning Lula position himself there vis-à-vis Communist dictator Fidel Castro? Lula must show the world just how different, in substance and style, he is from the hemispheric dinosaur.
LA Times.

Angola/Cuba: Bilateral Commission Signs Agreement On Plants Protection
The 11th session of Angola/Cuba bilateral commission closes Thursday, in Luanda, with the signing of an agreement on plants protection and other related to the conditions of arrival of Cuban technicians to the country. There is also the possibility of getting signed an action plan in the sector of civil engineering and roads repairing.
AllAfrica.com.

Port Manatee eager to establish Cuba ties
David McDonald wants to lead a trade mission to Cuba later this year. The executive director of Port Manatee would like to take people from four or five area businesses with him, tour ports in Havana and Mariel, and get to know Cuban trade representatives.
Sarasota Herald-Tribune, FL.

Trade panel focuses on Cuba, cars
State officials continue to beat the drum to get Alabama companies interested in exporting overseas. Their latest efforts include a two-day conference in October at what arguably is the state's most elaborate resort. The Alabama International Trade Conference, at Marriott's Grand Hotel in Point Clear on Mobile Bay, will feature seminars on doing business with Cuba, the automotive industry and the emerging impact of the cruise ship industry in Mobile.
Birmingham Business Journal, AL.

Pair hope to air Cuban programs from Naples-based TV network
A new Naples-based Cuban television network wants to herd the scattered flock of Cuban documentaries and dish them up to a satellite that transmits around the world. "We have a ton of programming, but no venue," said Kevin Adell, who hopes to launch the Cubana One Network with Pedro Prado, a Cuban exile.
Naples Daily News, FL .

From La Jolla to Havana ... and back again
The La Jolla High School varsity football team will not soon forget the opening game of the 2003 season. It was played in Havana, Cuba, against Bonita Vista high school from Chula Vista and was the first American rules football game played in Cuba since 1958.
La Jolla Light, CA.

GOP fund paid for Dolan's trip from Cuba
Dolan's travel expenses - which included chartering a private jet - came to almost $8,200 and were handled by aides to state Senate President Pro Tem Peter Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau. The total bill was paid by the Senate Majority Fund, a campaign committee set up to handle various expenses for the Legislature's Republican leaders.
St. Louis Post Dispatch, MO.


September 17

FROM CUBA
Wife fears for journalist husband on hunger strike in Cuba
"If they turned me into a hero, now they are going to have to turn me into a martyr," said imprisoned independent journalist Normando Hernández to his wife.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Cuban authorities confiscate several fishing boats in Holguín province
Several fishermen around Moa, in Holguín province, were issued fines of between 1,500 and 5,000 pesos and had their boats confiscated at the end of August after being charged with fishing without a license by fisheries inspectors.
HOLGUÍN

FROM CUBA
Police assign two neighbors to watch Havana dissident
Political police have assigned two neighbors to watch dissident and ex-political prisoner Javier García, warning him that "one more misstep" will land him in jail.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Cuban ingenuity applied to fuel conservation
Cuban ingenuity is equally at home improvising devices that render every day chores easier if not just plain possible in the face of asphyxiating scarcity, as it is to coming up with names for the said devices. Take the No-no, for instance.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• U.S. says it has filled annual quota for visas
• Break With Castro: Argentine singer says 'no más'
• Strong words for tough stance on Cuba
• Groups unveil rights proposal
• Support vanishing for Cuba's art showcase

IRI Launches New Website and Report on Cuba's Democratic Resistance
Six months after the Cuban government seized and imprisoned dozens of political dissidents, the International Republican Institute (IRI) unveiled new online and print resources on the progress and predicament of the pro-democracy movement in Cuba.
HAVANA

Don't weaken sanctions on Cuba
The aim is to promote a peaceful transition toward democracy and free enterprise. One way to do so is to support Cuba's persecuted internal opposition. Another is to reduce the fear of change among ordinary Cubans and reformers within the regime.
The Miami Herald.

External links

Building a Free Cuba
Exactly half a year ago, Fidel Castro's regime imprisoned 75 representatives of the Cuban opposition. More than 40 coordinators of the Varela Project and more than 20 journalists and other representatives of various pro-democracy movements landed in jail. All of them were sentenced in mock trials to prison terms ranging from six to 28 years -- merely for daring to express an opinion other than the official one.
The Washington Post.

East Europe grandees blast Castro
In a letter sent to several leading newspapers internationally, Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, Lech Walesa of Poland and Arpad Goencz of Hungary said European countries should set up a fund to help opposition groups within Cuba.
BBC, UK .

Trio rips Castro's regime in letter
In particular, they said Europe's "constructive engagement" with the regime was failing to change Mr. Castro's behavior. "Europe ought to make it unambiguously clear that Fidel Castro is a dictator, and that for democratic countries a dictatorship cannot become a partner until it commences a process of political liberalization," they said.
The Washington Times.

Coleman to visit Cuba this weekend
Coleman is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Western Hemisphere subcommittee. He said today that he plans to meet with both high-ranking Cuban government officials and political reform advocates. Coleman's office declined to say whether the senator will meet with Cuban President Fidel Castro.
KAAL, MN.

Cuba screams for American ice cream
What started as an idea to bring dinner to Cuba ended up being dessert. Havana, Cuba, is now receiving 240 tons of a soy-based ice cream mix from Savannah-based Y&Y Agriculture Corp. of Georgia.
Hartwell Sun, GA.

For sale: Condos with foreign intrigue
Built in 1912 and located across the street from the art deco mansion that belonged to former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, the former consulate is now a bustling renovation site. The Cubans sold the building in June to a Montreal developer who is converting it into upscale condos and townhouses. The consulate has relocated into more modest digs overlooking the Décarie Expressway.
Montreal Gazette, Canada.

Editorial: Cuba trade? Have a cigar
It's not a done deal yet, but the groundwork done by Sen. Max Baucus and Rep. Dennis Rehberg in Cuba eventually could lead to big things for Montana. Baucus and Rehberg just announced from Cuba that they have a "memo of understanding" that should lead to Cuba buying $10 million worth of Montana grains, live cattle and dry beans.
Montana Forum, Montana.

Author lectures on Cuban identity
There exists only 90 miles between Cuba and the United States - a short distance that outlines the proximity that has and will forever link the two nations, a professor of Latin American history said to a capacity crowd yesterday evening in Memorial Hall.
The Massachusets Daily Collegian.

Journalism students produce documentary after visiting Cuba
In a place not far from America there is a society filled with tension, poverty and, in some cases, turmoil. It is Cuba, a nation only 92 miles from the coast of Florida but a world away in terms of culture.
Daily Nebraskan.

Senators work for trade with Cuba
Montana and Wyoming legislators are moving forward with their quixotic efforts to open up trade between the United States and Cuba. Senators Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., have received a promise that legislation permitting U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba will be debated soon, and Baucus and Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., will be leading a trade delegation to Cuba on Friday.
The Casper Star Tribune, WY.

Foreign Correspondents Face Special Challenges in Cuba
Breaking the wall of silence that surrounds certain issues and events and finding a source who is willing to confirm news that everyone already knows about through the grapevine may be the biggest challenges facing foreign correspondents in Cuba.
IPSnews.net, Uruguay .


September 16

FROM CUBA
Prisoners made to work 12 hours a day in Cuba
Thirty-two inmates at the El Anoncillo minimum-security prison camp have been put to work more than 12 hours a day cleaning fields and planting them, under the orders of Omar Mora. The only incentive is the authorization of periodic visits by family members.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Pizza-parlor attendant fired
Tamayo had been fined 55 pesos by a quality-control inspector for selling underweight, poor quality pizzas. She said the cheese provided for making pizza by the government itself, is of very poor quality.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Notes on a crisis
From a young age, young people are sent to the schools in the countryside, thanks to the policy of the state. The eye of the relative becomes cloudy by the distance. The tutelage is left adrift. The children are growing up without the example of home.
PINAR DEL RIO

FROM CUBA
Wild children
The policeman was running after the child, shouting warnings. It involved a child of school age. Another policeman tried to explain to the tourists what had happened. He talked to them of new prohibitions against minors in the street. "They're too much now."
PINAR DEL RIO

FROM CUBA
Bar flies
Bars are like museums of daily life. In a bar you can see from the habitual drunkard (the type who has decided to die in the bottom of a bottle) to the type also who had the most hatred in his life for alcohol..
PINAR DEL RIO

The Miami Herald
• Caught-on-tape dissident admits falling into 'trap'


September 15

FROM CUBA
Eggs in short supply in Cuba
Although the ration book entitles everyone to buy five eggs a month, they've become scarce in some parts of Cuba.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Lobster catch is low
More than half way through the lobster season, fishermen say the catch is already US$6 million less than anticipated.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Visiting U.S. senator calls for an end to Cuba sanctions
• Websites ship world of goods home to Cuba
• Discrediting dissidents, enemies is common in Cuba
• From Cuba, with her treasured strings attached
• Cuban film director breathes much easier after defection

Yahoo! News
• US lawmakers sign 10-million-dollar food deal in Cuba
• U.S. Lawmakers Express Concerns Over Cuba
• US lawmakers visit Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya

External links

Cuba remains large trading partner with North Dakota
The Cuban dictator's harsh crackdown on pro-democracy dissidents has chilled the already frosty relations between the United States and its communist neighbor. But Castro's regime keeps filling its pantries with food from U.S. suppliers. The country spent $116.6 million in agricultural goods last year, ranking it as the 50th export market.
Bismarck Tribune, ND.

Cuba has a delicate balance between church and state
"For the first time I feel the church has made a strong impact," Pollan said. "At other times it has been very lukewarm. Now it talks about the dissidents. Whether or not [the bishops] think like them, they support them.
Sun-Sentinel, FL.

A nation of contradictions
In this wide-open square you talk of truth quietly. But in the narrow streets of Havana the talk is growing louder and more diverse. There, amid the salsa and stickball, between the tourists and the beggars, among the laughter, rum and rumba, that's where you attempt to piece together what the dead poet claimed to find so easily. A 32-year-old artist shakes his head. Good luck. You are standing at ground zero in his city that's the backbone of his country that's so very different from your own.
Matthew Hansen / Lincoln Journal Star, NE.

One student's experience shows racism alive in Cuba
On another day, I was verbally assaulted and even grabbed by security officials while in a club. That evening, I wrote: "I feel like a marked man, a criminal, and I have committed no crime other than being black and male." Later on Roberto de Armas explained, implying that people who looked like me were often known to be male prostitutes, drug traffickers and thieves in Cuban society, which is why I was being stopped repeatedly. "Black people are not being stopped in this country just for being black," he later said. "It is something that is simply nonexistent."
Dakarai Aarons / Lincoln Journal Star, NE.

Excerpt: 'Anna in the Tropics'
Juan Julian, who is the central character in Nilo Cruz's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "Anna in the Tropics," has just arrived in Tampa, Fla., from his home in Cuba. He has been hired by the workers in a cigar factory to be their lector - to read to them while they roll cigars and, in so doing, to brighten their daily routine.
The New York Times.

Nilo Cruz's 'Anna Karenina' Lights the Cubans' Cigars
As Nilo Cruz's "Anna in the Tropics" begins, a mother and her daughters are waiting - with heightened anticipation - for the arrival of a ship from Cuba. On board is a lector, someone who will read to them and their co-workers at a cigar-rolling factory in Tampa, Fla. It is 1929, and lectors have long been a Cuban tradition, a way to enhance manual labor with a bit of culture.
The New York Times

Khrushchev Unplugged From the Middle East to Cuba
From 1954 to 1965, a faceless bureaucrat named Vladimir Malin was the official note-taker at meetings of the leadership of the Soviet Union. His handwritten minutes, kept in a ledger like that used by Western accountants, were the holy grail of the Central Intelligence Agency's unsuccessful efforts to penetrate the Kremlin. They remained closed until last week, when they were released by archivists at the Russian State Archives of Contemporary History in Moscow.
The New York Times, NY.

Documentaries With a Cuban Beat
Ask the documentary filmmaker Rogelio Paris about the role of music in his native Cuba, and he'll happily tell you how people walk down the streets of Havana with a musical rhythm, how they wake up with music and go to sleep with music, how it's present in the way they make jokes, in the way they make love. He'll talk about various Cuban musical traditions: son, rumba, mambo, conga, charanga.
The New York Times

Canadians help Cuba grow food
"It's just an amazing opportunity to be able to learn from them and how they look at food security and how they look at urban farming and how it fits into their culture and then bring that back here," Huizinga said. (Related) .
Times Colonist, Canada.

Rays of reason in Cuba policy
For decades, relations between Cuba and the United States have been as bitter and senseless as a family brawl. Dishes and frying pans keep flying back and forth across the Florida Straits with no other apparent strategic purpose than for Cubans in Havana and Miami to vent their loathing for one another.
Chicago Tribune (reg req).

Pulitzer catapults Cuban playwright into limelight
Like most unpublished plays, the manuscript version of "Anna in the Tropics" by Nilo Cruz has the unmistakable stamp of the personal home computer: typographical errors, the playwright's home address and telephone number, and a hurriedly scrawled "latest version" annotation on its front cover.
Chicago Tribune (reg req).


September 12

FROM CUBA
Officials threaten to take infant daughter of jailed Cuban opposition prisoner
The wife of a jailed opposition member says two state security officials threatened to remove her three months old daughter, born while her husband, Luis Enrique Ferrer Garcia, was in prison.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Religious march broken up in Cuba
A march by 17 dissidents to the shrine of the patron saint of Cuba, the Virgin of Charity, was broken up several miles from the religious site at El Cobre, according to one of the participants.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Cuban produce markets in short supply after government measure
Since September 1, many privately-operated produce markets either have been closed or have very little to sell. Apparently, the private vendors are reacting to a government measure enacted that day that lowers the price of most produce .
HAVANA

Cuban physician is transferred to a prison 6 hours away from his home with his hands and feet tied
Dr.Garcia Paneque, 38 years of age, is isolated in a punishment cell that measures 2.5 feet by 5 feet, suffering inhumane prison conditions. Undernourished, he has lost 30 pounds due to the decomposed food he is given and is suffering from asthma, allergies and skin fungus.
Coalition of Cuban-American Women

The Miami Herald
• New threat of sanctions against Cuba is called symbolic
• Videotape aims to discredit rights advocate
• Cuban Americans decry casino's Castro billboards

Yahoo! News
• U.S. takes new swipe at North Korea, Myanmar, Cuba

External links

Solidarity with Cuba in Brighton
Whether it was the fact delegates had backed a motion renewing TUC opposition to economic sanctions or the excellent free rum being handed out at the beginning of the meeting, there was a tangible sense of optimism among the gathered faithful.
BBC, UK.

No cigar: Casino agrees to alter Castro billboards
A casino that offended Cuban-Americans by using Fidel Castro's likeness on promotional billboards has agreed to alter them. Tropicana Casino and Resort will add a red circle with a slash through Castro's image and change the wording on the signs, spokeswoman Maureen Siman said Friday.
Newsday.com.

Man who flew to Cuba wants case moved to Miami
A Nevada man convicted of stealing a plane, which he crash-landed in Cuba on his first solo flight, wants a hearing on an alleged probation violation to be heard in Miami, his attorney said Wednesday.
Herald Tribune, FL .

24 Cuban migrants make it to U.S. soil
Twenty-four Cubans, including an athlete who defected during the Pan American Games in the Dominican Republic, were taken into custody Monday after their boat landed on an uninhabited Puerto Rican island.
Orlando Sentinel, Fl.

Two teens steal Islamorada powerboat for trip to Cuba
Two teen-age runaways from Miami were arrested in Islamorada on Thursday after they allegedly stole a 24-foot powerboat so they could travel to Cuba.
Sun-Sentinel, FL.


September 10

FROM CUBA
Abuse by undercover cops in Cuba
Three undercover police arrested a 70-year-old man with such force on Thursday morning, August 21, that a riled-up crowd got involved until uniformed officers intervened, apparently arresting one of the undercover cops.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Cuba bishops speak out about jailed dissidents
• Excerpts from letter released Tuesday by the Cuban Bishops Conference
• House attacks Cuba embargo by voting to lift travel ban

Yahoo! News
• House votes to lift US ban on Cuba travel
• Presidential Determination Regarding the Trafficking Victims Protection Act for 2003

Sapoa unhappy with Cuban imports
Sapoa has added its voice to the growing discontent over the housing department bringing 38 Cuban architects and engineers to SA. Kirchmann said young people were leaving university but could not find work because companies were finding there was not enough work to go around. "On what basis does the department deem these Cubans to be qualified? And what are their qualifications? ".
Business Day. SA

Pressure may smother dialogue
Of course, no Cuban performer was within 100 miles of the AmericanAirlines Arena last Wednesday night, thanks to the Castro regime's applying late for U.S. visas (and for only three nominees) and the State Department's taking its own sweet time processing them.
Michael Putney, The Miami Herald.

External links

Senate turns attention to Cuba
Amid veto threats from the Bush administration, the House on Tuesday again passed Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake's amendment to lift the 43-year-old ban on Americans traveling to Cuba.
Arizona Republic, AZ.

Amendment to preserve Cuba exchanges passes House
On Tuesday night, the U.S. House of Representatives passed by a vote of 246-173 an amendment to ensure the continuation of people-to-people educational exchanges between the United States and Cuba. The amendment, offered during debate on the Transportation Treasury and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, prohibits federal funds from being used to implement the Department of Treasury's plan to cease offering licenses for these exchanges.
The Business Journal, FL.

Cuba's bishops criticize jailings
In their strongest criticism yet of the Castro government's imprisonment of 75 peaceful dissidents, Cuba's Roman Catholic bishops on Tuesday called the crackdown a throwback to "methods used during the early years of the revolution" while reiterating the church's independence from the opposition movement.
Sun-Sentinel, FL.

Send in the Tourists: House votes to lift Cuba travel ban
The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved an amendment that would allow American tourists to travel to Cuba. Supporters say lifting the current travel ban will advance freedom in the communist nation, but opponents - including the Bush administration - say it will bolster the dictatorship of Fidel Castro.
CNSNews.com .


September 9

FROM CUBA
Cuban independent journalist sentenced
Independent journalist José Manuel Caraballo was sentenced to three years of "correctional labor," a Cuban sanction similar to serving time in a half-way house in the U. S. criminal system. Caraballo was sentenced by the Ciego de Ávila provincial tribunal for supposedly falsifying school records.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Schools for tourism industry provide escape hatch
Some of the choicest jobs in the Cuban economy are those related to tourism, so entry into the Formatur schools, which train industry workers, is highly sought after. Students are not only after the perks and benefits of working in the dollar economy, but sometimes look upon the job as a springboard out of the island.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Official: Bush veto sure on Cuba visits
• 24 Cubans found on U.S. island

Delay: Cuban travel will subsidize oppression; Castro, thugocracy only beneficiaries of amendment
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) today opposed an amendment to the Treasury and Transportation Departments appropriations bill that would lift the current prohibition of American tourism in Cuba.
Newswire

External links

Cuban refugees increasingly use Puerto Rico as a way to reach U.S.
Twenty-four Cubans, including an athlete who defected during the Pan American Games in the Dominican Republic, were taken into custody Monday after their boat landed on an uninhabited island off the west coast of Puerto Rico.
The Orlando Sentinel, FL.

Cuba's Catholic bishops call for clemency for jailed dissidents
Cuba's Roman Catholic bishops called Tuesday for the liberation of 75 dissidents serving long prison terms, and expressed concerns about a hardening ideological line within communist ranks.
The Ledger, Florida .

Candidate looks south for campaign funds
In her effort to become the first Latina in the U.S. Senate, Miriam Masullo of New Canaan is reaching out to fellow Cuban-Americans in south Florida to raise campaign funds. In next year's election, Masullo hopes to unseat U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., a vocal opponent of the nation's isolationist policy toward Cuba.
The Advocate.


September 8

FROM CUBA
Hunger strikers in Cuba scattered to separate prisons
Five political prisoners who declared a hunger strike August 31 were separated and reassigned to different prisons from the Boniato prison in Santiago de Cuba.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Wave of evictions in Eastern Cuba
The government is carrying out a wave of evictions in eastern Holguín province, a growing tourist destination. Those evicted are typically relocated by the authorities to Soviet-style apartment blocks.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Camagüey eviction appears violent and unjustified
Police launched a Rambo-style assault on a private home, climbing walls and dropping down from the roof, just to evict its occupants August 26. The owner of the home, Alexis Pérez, was not home at the time of the assault; only his son and mother-in-law were in when police broke the access door to the patio.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
7th and 8th graders no longer to work in agriculture during the school day
Students in the 7th and 8th grades will no longer do agricultural work as part of their schooling, as they have for several decades, but 9th graders will continue to do so. All three grades will face a long school day when classes resume Monday, September 8, said Education Minister Luis Ignacio Gómez.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Exiles to be tried on lesser charges
• Maintain sanctions on Cuba, Bush warns
• Europeans denounce Cuba's rights record
• Left-out Cubans hold own concert

Yahoo! News
• U.S. Football Coach Visits Old Cuban Home
• Rayo to publish posthumous autobiography of legendary salsa queen
• CANF praises presidential veto threat on Cuba anti-embargo amendments

On sanctions and sunbathing in Cuba
The 20-year policy of engagement with Cuba -trading and people-to-people contact-practiced by dozens of countries in Europe and Latin America has failed to transform repression into tolerant diversity, exploitation into fair labor practice, or tyranny into democracy. So, it begs the question: why will U.S. engagement and "gringo-to-asere" contact bring about any kind of improvement?
Ileana Fuentes / La Nueva Cuba
Cuba Shuns Frankfurt Book Fair
German businesses and private individuals may still travel to Cuba, but they will not be supported by the Foreign Ministry, so it's unlikely that many German authors or publishers will attend the Cuban fair in January.
Deutsche Welle

External links

Thirty Years On, a Chilean Laments 'We All Killed Allende'
Castro played a decisive role in wearing Allende down: first, by organizing and financing the Movement of the Revolutionary Left, a guerrilla group that aggressively pursued socialism through a campaign of bombings, assassinations and bank robberies during the Allende years, and, second, through the military training of ultra-left members of Allende's own Socialist Party and other small leftist parties.
The Washington Post.

Flake continues push to lift Cuban travel ban
Congress is back in session and East Valley Congressman Jeff Flake is renewing his efforts to get Cuban trade and travel bans lifted. The Republican is offering an amendment to a federal spending bill that would lift the ban on Americans traveling to Cuba.
The Business Journal, AZ.

Fool's gold, Cuban style
Since 2001, Cuba has purchased American grain, food and medicine on a cash-and-carry basis, but Fidel Castro is broke and would like the U.S. taxpayers to replace his lost Soviet subsidies. Under proposals being advanced in Washington, when Castro defaults on his purchases, American taxpayers will have to pick up the tab.
Frank Calzon / San Francisco Chronicle, CA.

Trojans to face Cuban national team
Southern California has been selected by the Cuban Baseball Federation to play in Cuba this January. The Trojans will travel with other USC students and faculty as part of an educational exchange and play three games against Cuba's No. 1 national all-star team - the first time the Cuban national team has faced a U.S. college team.
USA Today.

Castro's Cuba
He had fought alongside Che in these very mountains. We had hired Diego three days earlier to drive us from Havana to Santiago on the opposite side of Cuba, paying him by buying food and bed.
Times Picayune, LA.

Sherritt International sells stake in Cubacel
Sherritt International Corp. has sold its 40-per-cent indirect interest in Telefonos Celulares de Cuba SA, or Cubacel, to Telefonica Antillana SA, a Cuban government agency. Toronto-based Sherritt said it will receive 80 per cent of the $43-million (U.S.) selling price for its Cubacel interest, with the remaining 20 per cent going to the private holder of the minority interest in the Cubacel investment.
The Globe and Mail, Canada.

Senate Panel at Loggerheads Over Cuba Trade
Senators were divided along partisan lines Thursday over the issue of trade with Cuba. Democrats argued for easing the U.S. trade and travel embargos against communist dictator Fidel Castro's Cuba while Republicans, backed up by Bush administration officials, remained committed to the restrictions.
CNSNews.com.

Montanans to visit Cuba over trade
Members of Montana's congressional delegation are leading a small group of agricultural leaders to Cuba next week for meetings to learn about the potential for future trade and business dealings in that country, officials said Thursday.
Billings Gazette, MT.

Books take aim at Cuban dissidents' lifestyles
It's Cuban authorities' latest attempt to discredit and ultimately destroy the political opposition, analysts say. The idea is simple: Paint dissidents as shameless materialists who care more about money than ideas.
Tracey Eaton / The Dallas Morning News.

The Afro-Cuban story told on film
In one of Gloria Rolando's latest films, her hero has a tough time convincing others her story is worth telling. Imbued with nostalgia and a need to know her family's past, the character tackles misunderstanding and ignorance to unearth a long forgotten chapter in Cuban history.
Sun-Sentinel, FL.

Tobago to get 11 Cuban doctors
No Cuban doctors have yet been assigned to Tobago despite deployment to several health facilities throughout Trinidad. However, Secretary for Health and Social Services in the Tobago House of Assembly, Cynthia Alfred, said that within "a month's time," Tobago should get the 11 doctors that were requested to fill the various vacant positions. .
Newsday, Trinidad.

UM exhibit adds flag to collection of Celia Cruz items
A collection of salsa queen Celia Cruz's albums, photos and even a pair of her favorite shoes are on display at the University of Miami.
Sun-Sentinel, FL.

Stofile University Officially Welcomes Cuban Professionals
Eastern Cape Premier Makhenkesi Stofile officially welcomed ten Cuban engineers and architects to the province on Wednesday night, saying they would "enhance" the government's housing delivery programme.
AllAfrica.com.


September 4

FROM CUBA
Hunger strikers transferred to an unkown place in Cuba
Monday morning, before sunup, prison guards transferred four political prisoners who were staging a hunger strike in Boniato prison, Santiago de Cuba, to a place or places unknown. The four, independent journalists Manuel Vázquez Portal and Normando Hernández, and government opponents Nelson Aguiar and Próspero Gaínza, had started a hunger strike the day before to protest prison conditions .
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Modernized money transfer service still deficient
Users complain that the recently modernized service for domestic money transfers still doesn't work as advertised. Previously, say users, either the transfers would get lost, or the receiving post office would not have any cash on hand to pay it. Disputes, they say, would usually be resolved in the government's favor.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Cuban customs officials confiscate Celia Cruz hats
Travelers visiting Cuba from the United States are reporting that Cuban customs officials are systematically confiscating hats sporting the likeness of recently-deceased Cuban salsa star Celia Cruz.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Matches disappearing from Cuban markets
Matches have not been available in Havana quota stores in the last four months and the prices in the black market are going up. "There are no matches in the dollar markets, either," said an employee of a grocery store in the Havana municipality of 10 de Octubre.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Strong rains cause flooding in Havana suburb
More than 20 houses had a foot and a half of water in the living areas, and residents reported seeing mattresses, refrigerators and even domestic animals being carried by the current.
HAVANA
CPJ concerned about journalists on hunger strike
According to family members, two imprisoned journalists, Manuel Vázquez Portal and Normando Hernández González, joined other jailed dissidents at Boniato Prison in a hunger strike that began on Sunday, August 31. The prison is in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba, where the journalists have been jailed since late April.
Committee to Protect Journalists

The Miami Herald
• Castro foe looks back on life, denies part in plot
• Miamian afraid to go to hearing
• Controversial dealer closes his art gallery
• Grammy performer goes from rags to verge of riches

Yahoo! News
• EU Condemns Human Rights Record in Cuba
• Air Canada to Expand Flights to Cuba
• 4 Linked to Castro Death Plot in Court

Hunger strike by Cuban political prisoners over 'cruelty'
Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya on Wednesday publicly denounced a "system of cruelty" against political prisoners on the island while family members announced that six detainees had begun a hunger strike.
Herald Tribune
$10M Cuba deal made
The World Trade Center Association Los Angeles-Long Beach along with a partner, Global Strategies Trading LLC, has concluded a week-long business trade mission to Havana. The mission resulted in an agreement with Alimport, the Cuban import company, to secure $10 million in business over the coming year.
Long Beach Press-Telegram
Air Canada says "Hola!" to Havana
New Cuba services include more flights, new routes and convenience of scheduled flights providing new air-only option.
CNW, Canada

External links

House Panel To Vote On Cuba Travel Ban
Despite a presidential veto threat, U.S. House members will try today to weaken the ban on travel to Cuba. Some lawmakers say now is the time to invade Cuba with ordinary Americans who can bring new ideas to the country. But opponents say the amendment will have a tougher road this year, thanks mainly to Fidel Castro's recent crackdown on dissidents.
Click10.com.

Latin Grammys Go On Minus Cubans
Juanes, a Colombian rocker whose songs merge romantic yearnings with hopes for better times in his homeland, was triumphant at the fourth annual Latin Grammy awards held here tonight and broadcast on CBS. .
New York Times.

Cuban Americans More Liberal Than Other Hispanics on Abortion
Cuban-American voters are only slightly more conservative than other Hispanics on a range of domestic issues, and are more liberal on the contentious question of abortion, according to a massive survey of voters released Tuesday. The survey of 79,000 Americans, including 4,676 Hispanics, was conducted in 2000 by the Annenberg Public Policy Center and is one of the largest examinations of voter attitudes.
HispanicBusiness.com .

Chileans take new look at Allende
Allende's daughter Isabel, who presides over Chile's lower house of Congress, confirmed last month what historians long contended: that her father committed suicide as Pinochet's forces approached the palace, using a rifle that his friend President Fidel Castro of Cuba had given him.
The Charlotte Observer, NC.

U.S. begins to isolate Venezuela
Imagine if Fidel Castro discovered enough oil in Cuba to permit his nation to become part of the powerful cartel known as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Some in U.S. intelligence and even the State Department believe something as bad or worse has indeed happened with the rise to power in Venezuela of President Hugo Chavez.
WorldNetDaily.

Cuban Grammy nominees plan Havana concert tonight over delayed, denied visas
Annoyed they couldn't attend the Latin Grammy awards in Miami, several nominated Cuban musicians planned a concert Thursday night in Havana that officials said would be available worldwide via satellite.
Sun-Sentinel, FL .


September 3

FROM CUBA
Police round up impaired street peddlers in Cuba
Police have been rounding up more than 20 peddlers this week around the Camagüey bus station, most of whom are old, blind or retarded. The peddlers, who sell home-made candy, peanuts, and newspapers, were arrested and fined 1,500 pesos.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Warehouse manager accused of embezzling 16,000 dollars in Cuba
Ramón Carro, the warehouse manager of the TRD Caribe dollar store in the Havana municipality of San Miguel del Padrón, was apprehended by border guards as he attempted to leave the island with his wife and children.
HAVANA

Three political prisoners on a hunger strike moved to unknown location
Sources at Combinado de Santiago, contacted Ileana Danger Hardy, wife of the political prisoner Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta and told her over the telephone that at 4 o'clock in the morning, three of the seven prisoners that had sent in recent days a letter of demand to the Officer in Charge at the "Boniatico" prison had been taken away and that their whereabouts were unknown.
Informartion Bridge Cuba Miami

Three more journalists on hunger-strike
Reporters Without Borders expressed great concern today about a hunger-strike begun by three independent Cuban journalists - Manuel Vázquez Portal, Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta and Normando Hernández González - in Boniatico prison, in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, to protest against their conditions of detention. Since they started the protest on 31 August, they have been transferred to another prison in an unknown location.
Reporters Without Borders, France

The Miami Herald
• Facts on those imprisoned in Cuba on Web
• Cuba releases Miami couple held in unusual espionage probe
• Cuba releases Miami couple held in unusual espionage probe
• Cubans wait for visas for Latin Grammys
Yahoo! News
• Libraries Founder Fights Castro From Afar
EU, Frattini, the Cuban human rights situation has worsened
The Cuban situation has further deteriorated, both at the level of political freedom and human rights as well as regarding the minimal openings of the economic sector towards private initiative. This was the evaluation expressed this morning also in the name of the EU presidency, by Italian Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini in the European Parliament chamber during a debate on EU-Cuba relations .
Italy On Line

External links

Soviet native tries to expose repressed Cuba
Born in the Soviet Union, Katia Tchourioukanova was raised on romantic ideas of communism and the Cuban Revolution. Now, at 30, she is helping to tell the story of 75 political dissidents who were arrested, convicted and imprisoned by the Cuban governmentin the spring as Fidel Castro launched one of his toughest crackdowns on critics.
Orlando Sentinel, FL

Latin Grammy Show Puts Miami to the Test
The Latin Grammy Awards will be broadcast from downtown Miami on Wednesday night in an internationally televised ceremony, more than three years after Latin music producers and civic leaders here first tried to transcend local politics over Cuba to lure the event from Los Angeles. .
NY Times.

UN conference on desertification closes in Cuba without agreements
The sixth UN conference on desertification closed here Tuesday with poor countries complaining about apathy among the richer ones in tackling a scourge that affects a third of the world's surface..
Terra Daily.


September 2

FROM CUBA
Cuban political prisoners at Boniato threaten hunger strike
Six political prisoners interned at Boniato prison in Santiago de Cuba threatened to go on a hunger strike unless prison administrators address their demand for redress of certain wrongs, and specifically, set aside a punishment that they call unjustified.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Residents in Cuba threatened for visiting independent library
Several residents of Herradura, a small community in Pinar del Río province, were threatened with long prison terms August 24 by the chief of State Security in the area. The three men involved in this case, Francisco Betancourt, Ramiro Gómez, and Frank Hernández, have no previous known affiliation with any political or dissident organizations.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Building inspector fines Cuban ex-political prisoner
An ex-political prisoner fined August 22 for building violations says he finds it odd that the fine comes on the heels of a workshop on civil disobedience he organized for a dissidents' group that meets in the city's Central Park.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Officials: Cuban documents show dissidents received no justice
• Grammy protesters get their space
• 'Dollarization' keeping Cuba afloat
• Keep Cuba sanctions, Democratic presidential candidate Kerry says
• Ex-champ Gomez starts over in the U.S.
• White House urged charges in 1996 Cuba shoot-down
• Celia tribute is opener
• The Latin Grammys' long, winding road to Miami

Yahoo! News
• Castro Closes Ranks With Friendly Leaders
• Scholar traces Milton Hershey's Cuban ties

In Cuba, agribusiness as usual
A year ago this month, Fidel Castro was mugging for the cameras with a bull named "Minnesota Red," and a cigar-chomping Jesse Ventura was dancing at the Club Habana in Cuba .
Star Tribune
Miami couple held in Cuba since spring allowed to return to Florida
A Miami couple held in custody in Cuba on cryptic accusations of espionage for almost half a year arrived at Miami International Airport Tuesday morning after being freed by Cuban authorities.
HAVANA

External links

Grammy invitations in mail - somewhere
From his doorstep, famed rumba performer Diosdado Ramos can see the shimmering waters of Matanzas Bay a few blocks down his narrow street. It's a straight shot to Miami. But it seems this bay view is as close as the Latin Grammy nominee is going to get to the Magic City's gala ceremony on Wednesday.
Sun-Sentinel, FL

Local businessman ships cattle to Cuba
A Naples business is leading the way in the drive to ship more food to communist Cuba. It's something the US wouldn't even allow until three years ago. Earlier this month J.P. Wright and company shipped 150 head of cattle to Havana. The company says it will aid poor Cubans and help Florida's economy, but critics say it will keep an evil dictator in power.
NBC2 News Online

Cuban-Americans aren't solidly in Bush camp for 2004
Stoked in part by Cuban-Americans angry with President Bush for not doing enough to end the four-decade rule of Fidel Castro, Democrats see an opportunity to cause trouble for the White House with a key constituency in a key state.
Rafael Lorente / Orlando Sentinel, FL.

Daring to dream in Cuba
In this kind of poverty, without the recourse of protest over government policies, an unceasing number of Cubans continue to slog through the frustrating bureaucratic steps to obtain "el bombo" - permission to emigrate to the United States. In whispers, they ask visitors, "Please, help us to get out of here." They also hash out their dissatisfaction out of earshot of the neighborhood brigades charged by the government with reporting dissent.
Denver Post, CO

The Havana Stat Kings
It was better late than never for the Yankees last week when José Contreras made his first start in the Bronx after sitting out much of the season with a strained shoulder. The Yankees beat Baltimore 7-0, and Contreras struck out five with an old-fashioned forkball. But it was also a victory for Contreras's fellow Cubans back home.
The Village Voice, NY

Cuba-US row over Grammy visas
Nominees including Latin jazz stars Chucho Valdes and Los Van Van are unlikely to attend Wednesday's ceremony because they have not been given visas. But US diplomats say visa requests were delayed by the Cuban government.
BBC

Feds expand charges against 6 admitted Cuban hijackers
Prosecutors have expanded charges in a politically sensitive case against six admitted Cuban hijackers by adding two counts carrying a possible life prison sentence. he six Cuban men already had been facing possible life sentences on air piracy and conspiracy charges. They now also are charged with interfering with a flight crew and a related conspiracy count.
Sun-Sentinel, FL


August 29

FROM CUBA
Imprisoned Cuban journalist describes conditions
"I'm in Pinar del Río in a cell with little ventilation from which I only go out for one hour a day Mondays through Thursdays," wrote imprisoned journalist José Ubaldo Izquierdo, 38, in a letter to a colleague, Dorka Céspedes.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Deficient medical care for imprisoned Cuban journalist
It took Bárbara Rojas and her five-year-old son six days' travel time to visit her husband, imprisoned journalist Omar Ruiz, at the Combinado de Guantánamo prison, about 400 miles from her home in Villa Clara.
SANTA CLARA

FROM CUBA
Prosecutors demand 20-year sentence for peaceful opponent in Cuba
At various times in the past, Pérez had staged non-violent demonstrations against government authorities who had denied him a ration card for more than a year and who had harassed his family, tried to evict them and to demolish their house.
SANTA CLARA

The Miami Herald
• Carter endorses Payá's nomination for prestigious Spanish prize
• Native American group honors Castro with its highest award
• Pro-Castro activists to join the fray at Latin Grammys
• Severo Alberto 'Lino' Borges, interpreter of Cuban bolero music

PEN USA Honors Raúl Rivero Castañeda
PEN USA, part of the 82-year old worldwide association of writers which promotes literacy and defends freedom of expression - will award the 2003 Freedom to Write prize to Raúl Rivero Castañeda. We honor him for his courage against overwhelming odds and his commitment to .
PEN USA
Yahoo! News
• Cuban Rolls World's Biggest Cigar
WSJ: Don't Forget the Victims In Castro's Gulag
It's a good time to remind Washington that, pros and cons of Wyoming beef sales to Fidel aside, the innocents rotting -- and getting beat up -- in Cuban jails must not be forgotten.
Net for Cuba International.
School Trade With Plantation Cuba?
The matter of Cuba's benighted revolution continues to grip the interest of Americans-or so one might conclude from the fact that a recent panel discussion on the U.S. embargo against Cuba drew a lunchtime crowd of some 400 persons to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.
David Landau. Accuracy In Media.

August 28

FROM CUBA
New antennas an effort to jam U.S.-based Radio Martí?
The Cuban government has installed four large parabolic antennas in Palma Soriano, in easternmost Cuba, which experts have said could be intended to jam transmissions of U. S. -based Radio Martí. It is widely known that at San Felipe, in southern Havana province, there are several such antennas, as well as in several other places on the island.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Free without permission
Today, the Cuban secret police lets us know that we may not practice journalism. For that reason, many of my colleagues, friends and brothers are serving long sentences in sub human prison cells.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Jose Delarra, sculptor of Guevara monument, dies
• Banking family patriarch was seen as a pioneer of Cuban-American Bar
• Exiled Cuban painter to visit Miami

Yahoo! News
• Powell's double joy over Pedroso failure

Cuban Doctors Feel Insecure Commissioner Soma Jobe Warns
The Commissioner of the North Bank Division was recently quoted as expressing disquiet over the knowledge that the Cuban doctors posted in his division no longer feel secured after a spate of thefts that left them deprived of their valuables and fearing for their lives.
AllAfrica.com

Cuban doctor visits DeVos Children's Hospital
"It would be like walking into a hospital in the 50's in the United States," says Marc Bohland, Vice President of First-Hand Aid. He says one of the group's main goals is getting medicine to hospitals and clinics in Cuba. Medicines like aspirin and cough syrup, which are easy for us to get, are difficult to obtain there.
WOOD-TV, MI.
Cuban railroad to freedom?
Cuban Americans see their migration to the United States as African-American former slaves saw the Underground Railroad to the North -- the only way to freedom. But it is almost impossible for other, well-intentioned Americans to see it the same way because the Cuban migration issue has been left in the hands of interest groups for too long.
Soren Triff, The Miami Herald.

External links

An Assist From Left Field
Garrett learned that Jose Piloto, a Cuban left-hander once nicknamed "Pototo" after a character from a Cuban television show, played professional baseball in about 10 countries and three continents during the 1940s and '50s. He pitched for the Memphis Red Sox in the Negro American League from 1948-1950, coming up one year short of qualifying for Major League Baseball's pension plan.
Dan Steinberg / The Washington Post.

No call yet on Castro
The European Union trading bloc has been upset with Cuba ever since a Cuban crackdown on democratic protesters during the spring. Greece, which hosts next year's Summer Olympics, is a member of that union. Fidel Castro, Cuba's president, reportedly wants to attend those Olympics. He last attended the Games in Barcelona in 1992.
Philadelphia Daily News.


August 27

FROM CUBA
Police confiscate 20 piglets from Cuban rural residents
Police confiscated 20 piglets belonging to four men, charging that they had bought them illegally. The four, José Luis Álvarez, William Mederos, and Edel García, residents of Cabaiguán, and Reinier Castellón, a resident of Yaguajay, said they bought the piglets for 8,287 pesos. They were transporting them home in a tractor when the chief of police for the Mayajigua sector arrested them.
CABAIGUAN, Villa Clara

FROM CUBA
Cuban dissident called a "threat to national security"
Padrón said that during their conversation, the officer told him: "You are a threat to national security; because of you and others like you the country could be bombed. What would you do if one of those bombs fell on the school your niece attends? If you continue with your activities, we will try you under Law 88."
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Celebration rubs Havana residents the wrong way
The government threw a street party in Palma Soriano, celebrating the successful production of books and school supplies destined for Cuba's cooperative effort with Venezuela and irked local residents pointed out that the same supplies are not available for Cuban children.
HAVANA

Yahoo! News
• Relatives: Cuban Dissidents Sick in Jail
• Cuban exiles get a place, but no more reason to protest Latin Grammy
• Four-time champion Pedroso out of long jump

The Travel Industry's Push to Unlock Cuba
Politicians who favor a change in U.S. policy toward Cuba are getting new ammunition from the travel industry. Still struggling to recover from the effects of September 11 and the economy's downturn, the travel trade is mounting an aggressive lobbying campaign to get restrictions on travel to Cuba lifted when Congress returns in the fall.
Yahoo!

33 Cuban Migrants Repatriated
The migrants were from two groups intercepted by the Coast Guard; one Saturday, another Sunday. Saturday evening, about 21 miles off Elbow Cay, Bahamas, the Coast Guard intercepted an overloaded 25-foot go-fast boat carrying 31 migrants and three suspected smugglers
Click10.com

No cars for Cubans
"For some time, the Cuban government has imposed a series of impediments, obstructions, denials of service, and unjustifiable costs upon the functioning of the U.S. Interests Section and living conditions of the Interests Section's employees and dependents," the department said.
The Washington Times


August 26

FROM CUBA
Cuban independent journalist denied exit visa
The refusal was due to “orders,” officials told González, without specifying from whom. González said he had gone to the migration office after receiving a summons from a major Enrique, who told him “for now, you can’t travel; your trip is canceled. When you can travel, we’ll call you on the phone.”
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Cuban authorities accede to meet with pedicab drivers union
The Cuban Office of Taxation agreed to meet with members of the pedicab drivers union after repeated appeals by the union to the Ministry of Transportation, and the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The meeting has been set for September 20 at the auditorium of the Hermanos Aimejeiras hospital in Havana.
HAVANA

Three jailed journalists on hunger strike
Mario Enrique Mayo, Adolfo Fernández Sainz and Ivan Hernández Carillo - who have been on hunger-strike for the past 10 days in the town of Holguin. They are demanding proper food and medicine for prisoners who have serious illnesses.
Reporters Without Borders

The Miami Herald
• Democratic contender Dean alters Cuba stand
• Memories of Cuba thrive in South Florida shops and beyond

Increased suppression of cultural expression in Cuba leads the Prince Claus Fund to withhold support
As a result of the arrest of 75 Cuban cultural and social activists in recent months and their being sentenced to harsh terms of imprisonment of up to 28 years, the Prince Claus Fund has decided not to provide financial support to the 8th Havana Biennial, which will be held in November 2003. All those sentenced were engaged in the critical Cuban cultural and social arenas.
Prince Claus Fund

External links

Scoops for the revolution
With a signed contract worth about $775,000, Young's Y & Y Agriculture is sending 420 tons of a soy-based dry ice cream mix to the island nation of 11.2 million residents. Though a vocal opposition to normalizing relations with the Republic of Cuba remains active in the United States, trade restrictions with the island have loosened to the point that small businessmen are now getting into the market.
Savannah Morning News, GA

Alabama products headed to Cuba soon
Alabama wood products worth $2.5 million will soon be shipped from Mobile to Cuba as the state takes advantage of a narrow opening in the trade embargo with the communist nation.
Atlanta Journal Constitution, GA

Havana
What a difference five years makes. Back then, there was a solitary boutique hotel in La Habana Vieja — Hostal Valencia — and virtually nowhere to get a decent meal. Today, there are almost 20 small hotels and scores of new restaurants. Old Havana is being gentrified — and without any loss of innocence or authenticity. The fabric of the place survives.
Times Online, UK


August 25

FROM CUBA
Motorcycle thefts on the increase in Cuba
Private owners who lose their motorcycles often do not report the theft to authorities. This peculiarity arises because if the stolen motorcycle is never found, the authorities annul the vehicle's registration. But to the owner, the registration papers, even without the underlying vehicle, have value. They could validate the existence of a subsequent machine, put together from spare parts and patience.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Police infiltrate young rock fans
Ever since the government initiated a broad campaign against civil society in January under the pretext of combatting drugs, the Ministry of the Interior has fielded more than 200 undercover agents to infiltrate groups of hippies of "freakies," as they are called in Havana.
HAVANA

Yahoo! News
• Angry US makes life more difficult for Cuban diplomats in Washington
• Yankees' Contreras Dominates in Return
• 3rd Cuban Defects at World Championships

A smear campaign
Cuba's smear campaign against Elizardo Sánchez reveals more about its own desperation than about the longtime human-rights activist. The regime wasn't satisfied with locking up 75 dissidents on prison terms totaling 1,454 years. Now, it is angling to finish the job by attempting to discredit the few critics it didn't jail -- most likely because, like Mr. Sánchez, they are internationally prominent. Who is next? Vladimiro Roca and Oswaldo Payá?.
The Miami Herald

Northern Cape Students to Study Medicine in Cuba
Ten students from previously disadvantaged areas in the Northern Cape have been chosen to study medicine in Cuba. The students left for Cuba last night, after the provincial health department held a function to see them off.
AllAfrica.com

External links

Dance keeps its foothold in Cuba
Dancing brings joy and camaraderie to Cubans in what otherwise might be somber situations. Salsa and son – even classical ballet – are alive and well in Havana, practiced in nightclubs, on street corners and in old, weathered ballet studios.
The Dallas Morning News y

For Contreras, a Victory; for the Yanks, Vindication
The knee buckled, the pitch knuckled and, in the stands at Yankee Stadium, Billy Connors might have chuckled. When José Contreras struck out the Orioles' Jay Gibbons on a forkball in the seventh inning yesterday, it delighted Connors, the Yankees' organizational pitching sage. This is what the Yankees had been waiting for.
New York Times

Doctors Rouse Suspicion in Venezuela
The Venezuelan Medical Federation, a trade group with 45,000 members, contends that it is Chavez who has undermined the public health system. Douglas Leon Natera, the federation's president, said the national health budget has declined 30 percent under Chavez, leaving many neighborhood clinics without adequate funding. Roughly 9,000 doctors are underemployed or without work.
The Washington Post


August 22

FROM CUBA
Imprisoned Cuban journalist in punishment cell
Imprisoned Cuban journalist Fabio Prieto has been confined to a punishment cell at Guanajay prison, presumably for insulting a Department of State Security officer known as Omar. Prieto, 41, is serving a 20-year sentence at the prison. Recently he had been transferred to a cell block holding hardened criminals serving 30-year and life sentences.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Cuban political police threaten government opponent
Political police in the Isle of Youth threatened to prevent government opponent and human rights activist Huber Rodríguez from leaving the island to be with his young son when he has surgery in the U. S.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Venezuelan court bars Cuban doctors
• Some criticize indictments as politics
• Indictment largely symbolic without a U.S.-Cuba treaty on extradition
• For fliers' relatives, indictments offer some relief

An outrage not forgotten
Seven and a half years after a cowardly ambush in the Straits of Florida, a federal grand jury finally has indicted a Cuban general and two fighter pilots responsible for the deaths of four Brothers to the Rescue fliers who occupied the unarmed planes that were shot down. For the families of the victims, the indictment provides a symbolic measure of solace and validates the outrage that has been felt in this community for years.
The Miami Herald

Another victim of the Castro regime
The subconscious betrays them. When all the lies and slander fail, when all the means of communication -- newspapers, radio, television, movies, books even -- are not enough to confuse the Cuban people, then come the desperate acts.
Oswaldo Paya / The Miami Herald


August 21

FROM CUBA
Cuban political prisoners denied regular visit
Relatives of two political prisoners were turned back at the gates of the Valle Grande prison August 13 and told the inmates they wanted to visit were in punishment cells.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
In Cuba not all quota goods are available all the time
The Cuban government's rationing system is supposed to at least guarantee consumers a minimum quantity of scarce domestic cleaning products and other goods. Lately, however, a number of products which consumers are entitled to buy under the system have not been available in distribution outlets.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Three Cuban airmen indicted for shooting down civilian planes
• Brothers to the Rescue founder says he'll invest money from shootdown court award in Cuba -- whenever he gets it
• TV Martí may soon switch to satellite
• Cubans' truck was sunk to prevent copycats
• U.S. seeks to improve transmission of TV Martí

Yahoo! News
• Cuban general, two pilots indicted in 1996 downing of two civilian planes
• CANF praises indictment of Cuban pilots, airforce commander

External links

Paradox regained: a conversation with an old comandante in Cuba
Since Cubans are not allowed to travel or even to question the state of the regime, it is hardly surprising the regime looks askance at the possibility of tourists bringing unwanted, provocative influence. So it started out as enclave tourism, with parts of the island given over to touristic ventures. That soon collapsed, but there are times when anyone who brings a Cuban into a hotel may be asked to leave their guest outside, on the possible grounds that they may be pimps extending their network of clients.
Bella Thomas, Open Democracy

FMLN candidate says would restore El Salvador ties with Cuba
Presidential candidate Shafick Handal told reporters on Thursday that he would restore El Salvador's diplomatic relations with Cuba and China if elected next year.
San Francisco Chronicle, CA


August 20

FROM CUBA
Cuban imprisoned journalist expecting disciplinary action
Imprisoned Cuban journalist Normando Hernández is expecting to be disciplined by prison authorities after a late-night argument days ago, said his wife Yaraí Reyes. Hernández is serving a 25-year sentence in Boniato prison, in Santiago de Cuba province.
HAVANA

Yahoo! News
• New NYC School Named for Legend Celia Cruz

Cuban Dissident Ramon Colas to Speak on Future of Human Rights in Cuba
The founder of Independent Libraries of Cuba, Ramon Colas, will discuss the future of human rights in Cuba in the new international context at the National Press Club.
U.S. Newswire

External links

For Cubans on birthright, a tie is formed to their ancestors' land
Cuba began allowing its Jews to emigrate in 1994 for a fee, paid by the Jewish state. By 2000, some 500 Cuban Jews had reached Israel under the behind-the-scenes arrangement, known as Operation Cigar. For most of those who remained in Cuba, however, a trip to Israel was out of the question - until birthright came along.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Group plans demonstration on behalf of Cuban artists at Miami Grammys
Alianza Martiana, which supports an end to the U.S. embargo of Cuba and dialogue between the United States and Cuba, also applied for a permit -- to demonstrate in support of the right of musicians from Cuba and all over the world to express themselves.
Sun-Sentinel

Knight Foundation Grant Supports Independent Journalism in Cuba
In the wake of Cuba's latest crackdown on free expression, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has awarded a grant to a nonprofit, nonpartisan Cuban-American organization that promotes independent journalism on the island.
PNN, VA

Second Group of Medical Students From Cuba Returns to Eastern Cape
The second group of students sent from Eastern Cape to study medicine in Cuba have returned to the province. Eastern Cape has since 1998 sent 30 students to study medicine in Cuba as part of bilateral agreement signed in 1995 between the South African and Cuban governments.
AllAfrica.com


August 19

FROM CUBA
Audits reveal multiple irregularities in Cuba's public sector
Nineteen recent audits of public-sector enterprises by the Ministry of Auditing and Control in Holguín province have uncovered multiple irregularities, prompting government officials to call for better controls.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Cuban health care worker fired for political reasons
Administrators of the Hygiene and Epidemiology Center in Niquero, Granma province, fired a worker, accusing him of fostering an unfavorable climate among his fellow workers and of expressing negative opinions about the government.
HAVANA

3 Cuban athletes defect at Pan Am Games
Three Cuban athletes have defected to the Dominican Republic, where they were competing in the Pan American Games, an official said Tuesday. The defections occurred during the international competition, which started Aug. 1 and ended Sunday, said Gen. Fernando Cruz, director of the Dominican intelligence agency.
Yahoo! News

The Miami Herald
• Cuban dissident disputes book's claim
• Antonio Navarro, 80, led resistance in Cuba
• Where to see Cuban artists

Yahoo! News
• Another Cuban Gymnast Defects in Calif.
• Cuba says Iran was jamming US satellite broadcasts: State Department
• U.S. Rejects Cuba's Claim About Activist

External links

Cuba dissident accused of spying
Whatever the basis of the allegations, they do confirm the Cuban Government's determination to sow suspicion amongst its opponents. The Cuban authorities will no doubt be hoping that a dissident movement where no one can trust anyone becomes impotent.
BBC

Teammates reunite in Los Angeles
Charles Leon Tamayo joined teammate Michel Brito Ferrer, whose uncle Ramon Ferrer brought Brito Ferrer to his Los Angeles home Sunday. Attorney Luis Carrillo was at Ramon Ferrer's home Monday and said the athletes are "very exhausted. They're very tired. These are difficult times for them. "They're here because of the political repression, the political persecution for them in Cuba,'' he said.
ESPN


August 18

FROM CUBA
Cuban political prisoner forcibly given psychoactive drugs
Imprisoned Cuban political prisoner Oscar Espinosa Chepe complained to family members during a recent visit that he's been given psychoactive drugs that make it hard for him to concentrate at the military hospital in which he is interned.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Cuban government undertakes island-wide computer census
The Cuban government undertook an island-wide computer census last week. The measure, code-named "Operation Windows," seeks to inventory all computers, including those in government offices as well as the ones in private hands, and to confiscate any that are deemed of "dubious origin."
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Cuban police visit men who made floating truck
• Local Republicans write Bush urging new Cuba policy
• Exiles In Culture
• Anniversary of Mariel produces cultural jewel

Yahoo! News
• Cuban gymnast defects after team competition
• Castro Draws a Crowd in Paraguay

For coherent Cuba policy
The boisterous debate over the policies of the Bush administration toward Cuba should come as no surprise. The Cuban exile community is diverse, mature and increasingly sophisticated. It speaks with -- and has room for -- a variety of distinct voices. As long as no single group or person can claim the right to speak for all, robust debate is to be expected -- and encouraged.
The Miami Herald

Surer footing on Cuba
The wet-foot/dry-foot Cuba policy has created an equally crazy corollary that can be termed the Wet Tarp Rule. Five Cubans caught trying to land in Palm Beach County were stuck on a Coast Guard vessel's deck, huddled under a tarp to escape Wednesday night's storms. They couldn't come ashore -- where dry feet would mean sanctuary -- and security concerns kept them from going below.
Palm Beach Post

External links

Latin Grammy Party Draws Protesters
The Latin Grammys are still a month away, but the protests have already begun. Cuban exiles lined the streets of southwest Miami-Dade County Sunday. They are angry about Cuban artists set to perform at the show.
Click10.com, FL

Filmmaker and advocate seeks 'to be who I am'
The film deftly demonstrates the deficiencies in Cuba's policy with footage of a health minister vowing better assistance that cuts to scenes from a factory, where visually impaired people are sent to assemble razors -- Cuba's notion of independent living and "job placement."
Contra Costa Times, CA

Threat to Cuba's Aids success
In the mid-1980s, when little was known about the virus, Cuba compulsorily tested thousands of its citizens for HIV. Those who tested positive were taken to Los Cocos. They were not allowed to leave. The policy, perhaps only possible in a highly controlled communist society, was condemned by human rights groups across the world.
BBC News


August 15

FROM CUBA
Civic-minded protesters labeled "dissidents" in Cuba
A group of 37 intellectuals in the small port city of Batabanó, south of Havana, who signed a letter to the local government seeking to address certain municipal problems were labeled "dissidents" by a Communist party official.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Cubans banned from fishing
Police recently searched travelers going from the fishing port of Batabanó, in the south coast of Havana province, and the capital, and found several of them carried fish, shrimp, and about a dozen lobsters. The travelers and their seafood were taken to the police station.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Pleas made for dissidents' care
• Rancher ships 148 cattle to Cuba

Yahoo! News
• Cuban-Americans Hit Bush Policies
• DeLay: Happy Birthday to Who? Castro Celebrates as Cuba Suffers; Dictator Should Hold Free Elections
• Cubana One Network: Bright House Networks of Tampa Insensitive to Cuban American Heritage

Cuban doctors' fate unknown
Polokwane - The future of seven Cuban doctors who want to withdraw from the bilateral Cuba/South Africa agreement has yet to be decided by the medicine professions watchdog after it failed to take a decision early this month.
News24.com, SA

External links

SA medical students return from Cuba
The second group of 17 South African medical students has returned from Cuba. Welcoming them back today, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the Health Minister, said they would help contribute to provincial efforts to redress problems of scarcity and mal-administration in the medical field.
SABCnews.com, SA

Engagement with Cuba? Why not?
Some will ask, why should we engage with Cuba? It is not a democracy, after all; on the contrary, its government can be quite repressive. Yes, all the more reason to engage. The idea is not to reward Cuba, but to bring about change.
San Fransisco Chronicle

Away from theme park Havana
When we visited, it sometimes seemed as if the restored sections were an enclave or a theme park reserved for the Italians, French, Canadian and other foreign tourists. Near the San Francisco church, I made a phone call and Ariel drifted off on his own to visit a curious small garden dedicated to the memory of Princess Diana. But he was quickly warded off by a security guard. I could understand why so many Cubans quietly and despairingly grumble about "tourist apartheid".
Financial Times

Cuba in control en route to sweep
Cuba swept the United States in the Pan American Games semifinals of women's volleyball, using a powerful attack the Americans could not match. Cuba seldom trailed, en route to a 25-19, 25-19, 25-21 win on Thursday night.
ESPN


August 14

FROM CUBA
Cuban independent journalist held in solitary confinement
Independent journalist Omar Ruiz Hernández is being held in solitary confinement at the Guantánamo provincial prison in the eastern end of the island. Ruiz was sentenced to 18 years in April along with 74 other journalists and dissidents. He used to work with Grupo Decoro, one of several independent news agencies.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Venezuelans cheer and protest presence of doctors from Cuba
• Meet the narcos and 'capos' of the Cuban drug trade

Yahoo! News
• Cuba Sentences Hijackers to 7-10 Years

Grammys -- and Dissent
Miami and Cuban-exile groups have settled on a location where protesters can express themselves. They will stand about 260 feet from American Airlines Arena, and on the same side of the street. A coalition of exile organizations approved the agreement Tuesday night. This is heartening news.
The Miami Herald

Happy Birthday, Fidel
My cousin Pedro's birthday also comes this month. But the last one he celebrated was his 18th. That was in 1961, the year he fell into the custody of Fidel "Helluva Guy" Castro's secret police, for "questioning." Pedro was a frail, mild-mannered boy and member of the youth group Catholic Action.
Humberto Fontova / NewsMax.com

External links

Bury me in Cuba, Celia said
Her beloved Cuba may yet be the final resting place for Celia Cruz. The salsa legend's husband, Pedro Knight, told the Daily News yesterday that he dreams of someday taking his wife's remains from the Bronx to the island she fled when Fidel Castro seized power in 1960.
New York Daily News, NY

5 Cubans wait aboard Coast Guard cutter
Amid stormy conditions that could create 12-foot swells overnight, five Cuban migrants continued to bob about the ocean on the deck of a U.S. Coast Guard cutter Wednesday, awaiting word on their futures.
Palm Beach Post, FL

Florida cattlemen keen to keep doing business with Cuba
A group of Florida cattlemen said Thursday they remained dedicated to doing business with Cuba despite increasingly tough rhetoric from some of their state's politicians toward the island.
Herald Tribune


August 13

FROM CUBA
Cuban political prisoner offered freedom in exchange for collaboration with the government
Department of State Security officials told jailed dissident Leonardo Bruzón that he could be freed if he retracted his previous activities against the government in front of a camera. The officials had also requested Bruzón should speak on tape about how well he had been treated in prison, and about the medical care he had received.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Cuban workers unhappy with schedule change
"We have received complaints from the workers, who are unhappy with the measure, since it wasn't discussed with the workers," said Héctor Pacha, of the independent Workers' Federation. He said the workers also complain about their pay, 148 pesos a month.
NUEVA GERONA

The Miami Herald
• Report: Cuban requested asylum
• Venezuelans cheer and protest presence of doctors from Cuba
• Paraguay abuzz over Castro's arrival
• Collectors of Cuban art get costly education in forgeries
• One man's crusade against fakery

Yahoo! News
• Security Heightened at U.S.-Cuba Game• Fidel Castro Marks 77th Birthday Today
• Cuba Wins Pan Am Games Baseball Gold Medal

Gorbachev coming to Miami summit on Cuba
The National Summit on Cuba announced that former Soviet leader President Mikhail Gorbachev is coming to Miami to discuss historic perspectives on U.S. policy toward the island at the upcoming Florida National Summit on Cuba Oct. 4 at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables.
Tampa Bay Business Journal, FL

Trouble in Florida
Mr. Reich's mission went awry when, in an interview on WSCV-Telemundo 51, he explained that Cubans need to be screened like other immigrants to avoid opening the United States to criminals and terrorists. "What would Dade County do with a million more Cubans who don't speak English, who haven't been well-educated, that have lived under a totalitarian government where values don't exist, moral or economic ... ?" Mr. Reich asked.
The Washington Times

Changes among Cuban Americans
What are we to make of Eloy Gutiérrez-Menoyo's decision to remain in Cuba? To answer that, we first have to figure out what it was: A reverse defection? A re-defection? A courageous anti-Castro act? The act of a secret Castro collaborator?
Michael Putney / The Miami Herald

External links

Cubans who took boat get quick convictions
A panel of Cuban judges delivered a swift verdicts on Tuesday, finding six men guilty of stealing a government-owned vessel and sentencing them to jail -- less than 24 hours after their trial began. Four of the six defendants received jail sentences, ranging from seven to 10 years, requested by prosecutors at Monday's trial.
Sun-Sentinel, FL

G.O.P. Legislators in Florida Criticize Bush on Cuba
A song enjoying frequent airtime on a Spanish-language radio station here crystallizes the deepening discontent of Cuban-Americans with the White House. It ends, "All together, let's sing: Bush is betraying us."
The New york Times



August 12

FROM CUBA
A Cuban prisoner convicted of drug trafficking bears witness
Under the cover of waging war on drugs, the Cuban government has embarked on a campaign against any person who has managed to survive and perhaps even obtain minimal wealth as a self-employed worker.
BONIATO PRISON, CUBA / José Eduardo Girón Cabrera

FROM CUBA
Some drug lords!
On March 19, I was taken to Villa Marista, the State Security headquarters, where I was held in cell 47 until April 24. It was there I lost my name; they called me 239682. It was also there I saw my first Cuban drug lords: Mumúa, Cachirulo, and Hectico the butcher. My cellmates. The four of us were stuffed into the minuscule cell; we had to be careful when turning over in bed so as not to poke each other.
BONIATO PRISON, CUBA / Manuel Vázquez Portal

FROM CUBA
Operation Popular Shield in Cuba: sewing machines confiscated
Under the umbrella of Operation Popular Shield, last week State Security officials searched the homes of seven seamstresses in Güines, a small city south of Havana, and confiscated their sewing machines.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Legislators say Cuba letter may get results

Yahoo! News
• Candles burning at both ends, Castro to mark 77th birthday amid crises
• U.S., Cuba Compete for Pan Am Dominance

CPJ alarmed by deteriorating health of Cuban journalist
CPJ is alarmed by the deteriorating health of imprisoned journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who was transferred last week to a military hospital in the capital, Havana.
Committee to Protect Journalists

A letter to the president
This is a letter sent Monday to President Bush by several state Republican representatives from South Florida regarding U.S. policy on Cuba.
The Miami Herald, MIAMI

External links

Swiss open doors for Cuban film-makers
The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) has stumped up SFr550,000 ($405,000) to assist film-makers from poorer countries. The three-year "Open Doors" programme will allow Cuban directors to show their finished work at the Locarno International Film Festival and bring them face-to-face with European producers to pitch new projects.
swissinfo, Switzerland

Cuban film-makers pitch projects to Euro financiers
Daniel Diaz Torres, Humberto Solas and Humberto Padron were among ten Cuban filmmakers invited to launch the three-year project "Open Doors - World Producers Meet The World Cinema" which is to be devoted to promoting film industries which are going through a period of crisis.
Screendaily.com, UK

Health Concerns Raised Regarding Cuban Political Prisoners
The United States voiced "deep concern" Monday over the "ill health and poor treatment" of Cuba's political prisoners. The U.S. expressed particular worry.
GOPUSA, TX

Cuban criminal justice: Don't punish me with brutality
Journalist Héctor Maseda defied the Cuban government and got a 20-year prison sentence for his troubles. A half century earlier, young Fidel Castro led the July 26, 1953, rebel attack that killed 19 police and soldiers, and he spent less than two years in prison. "I wish Fidel Castro would show some mercy," said Mr. Maseda's wife, Laura Pollán. "I wish he would remember how he was treated 50 years ago."
Tracey Eaton / The Dallas Morning News

Envoy Called 'Scum' Skips Talks
In June, an intelligence analyst, Christian Westermann of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had felt pressure from Bolton after the two disagreed over whether Cuba had a biological weapons program. Bolton said last year that the U.S. believed Cuba had such a program.
CBS News

Cubans capture hoops title
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic- After surviving a protest by Brazil, the U.S. women couldn't handle their nemesis on the basketball court as Cuba won the gold medal at the Pan American Games.
Cleveland Plain Dealer, OH

For Cuban-Americans, more empty promises
It was nice and cozy while it lasted, but the Bush administration's honeymoon with Cuban-American exiles was never likely to endure. Cuban exiles are steaming over the White House's failure to deliver on its promises of a beefed-up policy toward Cuba. In particular, they are angry over the recent repatriation of Cuban asylum seekers picked up at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard.
St. Petersburg Times, FL

Roberto Forte's mother sent him to Duluth from Cuba in 1961 as part of Operation Peter Pan
The separation was supposed to last three months, but it would take four years for Manuela Forte to reunite with her son, Roberto. Roberto has not been back to Cuba since 1961, when, at 11 years old, he was one of 10 Cuban children sent to Duluth to begin a life in exile.
Duluth News Tribune, IA

Terror link to West Nile?
There is increasing suspicion that one of his labs is not in Iraq at all - but less than 50 miles from the Florida coast. Cuban defectors say that Fidel Castro's Biological Front studied ways of using migratory birds to spread infectious diseases to the U.S. Saddam Hussein was also known to have close ties to Castro.
WorldNet Daily

Analysis: Fla. Republican Unity Cracks
Florida's Republican politics is going to need some healing in the next year going into President Bush's bid for re-election in 2004. Florida was the most important state in his election in 2000 and that could well happen again. A united party could be essential next year, and right now, that's not the case.
NewsMax.com

Cuba Libre
Why is the Bush administration clinging to a Clinton policy that's a matter of presidential discretion, not federal law? Five words: fear of another Mariel boatlift. In 1980, Castro cleaned out his jails and insane asylums and sent a flotilla of some 125,000 refugees to Florida. The sudden influx created some havoc in Miami and even in Arkansas, where violence and rioting by Cubans held at Fort Chafee contributed to Bill Clinton's defeat for reelection as governor.
Fred Barnes / The Weekley Standard

Editorial: End the embargo
Plainly put, it's materialism that draws Cubans across the Straits, the belief that a land of plenty lies just over the horizon. More Americans are shoppers than voters, and the same impulse is evident in Cuba.
Concord New Hampshire News

In Cuba's Tropical Gulag
Our plight is very small indeed compared to what Cubans face every day. The latest crackdown on political dissidents and independent journalists and the execution on April 11 of three young men who had tried to hijack a ferry in order to reach the coast of Florida set off a wave of condemnation and even got the European Union to rethink its cooperation with Cuba. It was high time. It remains for those who regularly visit the Cuban beach resort of Varadero to ask what is going on out of view in the backyard of Latin America's last dictatorship.
Free Republic


August 12

FROM CUBA
A Cuban prisoner convicted of drug trafficking bears witness
Under the cover of waging war on drugs, the Cuban government has embarked on a campaign against any person who has managed to survive and perhaps even obtain minimal wealth as a self-employed worker.
BONIATO PRISON, CUBA / José Eduardo Girón Cabrera

FROM CUBA
Some drug lords!
On March 19, I was taken to Villa Marista, the State Security headquarters, where I was held in cell 47 until April 24. It was there I lost my name; they called me 239682. It was also there I saw my first Cuban drug lords: Mumúa, Cachirulo, and Hectico the butcher. My cellmates. The four of us were stuffed into the minuscule cell; we had to be careful when turning over in bed so as not to poke each other.
BONIATO PRISON, CUBA / Manuel Vázquez Portal

FROM CUBA
Operation Popular Shield in Cuba: sewing machines confiscated
Under the umbrella of Operation Popular Shield, last week State Security officials searched the homes of seven seamstresses in Güines, a small city south of Havana, and confiscated their sewing machines.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Legislators say Cuba letter may get results

Yahoo! News
• Candles burning at both ends, Castro to mark 77th birthday amid crises
• U.S., Cuba Compete for Pan Am Dominance

CPJ alarmed by deteriorating health of Cuban journalist
CPJ is alarmed by the deteriorating health of imprisoned journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who was transferred last week to a military hospital in the capital, Havana.
Committee to Protect Journalists

A letter to the president
This is a letter sent Monday to President Bush by several state Republican representatives from South Florida regarding U.S. policy on Cuba.
The Miami Herald, MIAMI

External links

Swiss open doors for Cuban film-makers
The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) has stumped up SFr550,000 ($405,000) to assist film-makers from poorer countries. The three-year "Open Doors" programme will allow Cuban directors to show their finished work at the Locarno International Film Festival and bring them face-to-face with European producers to pitch new projects.
swissinfo, Switzerland

Cuban film-makers pitch projects to Euro financiers
Daniel Diaz Torres, Humberto Solas and Humberto Padron were among ten Cuban filmmakers invited to launch the three-year project "Open Doors - World Producers Meet The World Cinema" which is to be devoted to promoting film industries which are going through a period of crisis.
Screendaily.com, UK

Health Concerns Raised Regarding Cuban Political Prisoners
The United States voiced "deep concern" Monday over the "ill health and poor treatment" of Cuba's political prisoners. The U.S. expressed particular worry.
GOPUSA, TX

Cuban criminal justice: Don't punish me with brutality
Journalist Héctor Maseda defied the Cuban government and got a 20-year prison sentence for his troubles. A half century earlier, young Fidel Castro led the July 26, 1953, rebel attack that killed 19 police and soldiers, and he spent less than two years in prison. "I wish Fidel Castro would show some mercy," said Mr. Maseda's wife, Laura Pollán. "I wish he would remember how he was treated 50 years ago."
Tracey Eaton / The Dallas Morning News

Envoy Called 'Scum' Skips Talks
In June, an intelligence analyst, Christian Westermann of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had felt pressure from Bolton after the two disagreed over whether Cuba had a biological weapons program. Bolton said last year that the U.S. believed Cuba had such a program.
CBS News

Cubans capture hoops title
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic- After surviving a protest by Brazil, the U.S. women couldn't handle their nemesis on the basketball court as Cuba won the gold medal at the Pan American Games.
Cleveland Plain Dealer, OH

For Cuban-Americans, more empty promises
It was nice and cozy while it lasted, but the Bush administration's honeymoon with Cuban-American exiles was never likely to endure. Cuban exiles are steaming over the White House's failure to deliver on its promises of a beefed-up policy toward Cuba. In particular, they are angry over the recent repatriation of Cuban asylum seekers picked up at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard.
St. Petersburg Times, FL

Roberto Forte's mother sent him to Duluth from Cuba in 1961 as part of Operation Peter Pan
The separation was supposed to last three months, but it would take four years for Manuela Forte to reunite with her son, Roberto. Roberto has not been back to Cuba since 1961, when, at 11 years old, he was one of 10 Cuban children sent to Duluth to begin a life in exile.
Duluth News Tribune, IA

Terror link to West Nile?
There is increasing suspicion that one of his labs is not in Iraq at all - but less than 50 miles from the Florida coast. Cuban defectors say that Fidel Castro's Biological Front studied ways of using migratory birds to spread infectious diseases to the U.S. Saddam Hussein was also known to have close ties to Castro.
WorldNet Daily

Analysis: Fla. Republican Unity Cracks
Florida's Republican politics is going to need some healing in the next year going into President Bush's bid for re-election in 2004. Florida was the most important state in his election in 2000 and that could well happen again. A united party could be essential next year, and right now, that's not the case.
NewsMax.com

Cuba Libre
Why is the Bush administration clinging to a Clinton policy that's a matter of presidential discretion, not federal law? Five words: fear of another Mariel boatlift. In 1980, Castro cleaned out his jails and insane asylums and sent a flotilla of some 125,000 refugees to Florida. The sudden influx created some havoc in Miami and even in Arkansas, where violence and rioting by Cubans held at Fort Chafee contributed to Bill Clinton's defeat for reelection as governor.
Fred Barnes / The Weekley Standard

Editorial: End the embargo
Plainly put, it's materialism that draws Cubans across the Straits, the belief that a land of plenty lies just over the horizon. More Americans are shoppers than voters, and the same impulse is evident in Cuba.
Concord New Hampshire News

In Cuba's Tropical Gulag
Our plight is very small indeed compared to what Cubans face every day. The latest crackdown on political dissidents and independent journalists and the execution on April 11 of three young men who had tried to hijack a ferry in order to reach the coast of Florida set off a wave of condemnation and even got the European Union to rethink its cooperation with Cuba. It was high time. It remains for those who regularly visit the Cuban beach resort of Varadero to ask what is going on out of view in the backyard of Latin America's last dictatorship.
Free Republic


August 12

FROM CUBA
A Cuban prisoner convicted of drug trafficking bears witness
Under the cover of waging war on drugs, the Cuban government has embarked on a campaign against any person who has managed to survive and perhaps even obtain minimal wealth as a self-employed worker.
BONIATO PRISON, CUBA / José Eduardo Girón Cabrera

FROM CUBA
Some drug lords!
On March 19, I was taken to Villa Marista, the State Security headquarters, where I was held in cell 47 until April 24. It was there I lost my name; they called me 239682. It was also there I saw my first Cuban drug lords: Mumúa, Cachirulo, and Hectico the butcher. My cellmates. The four of us were stuffed into the minuscule cell; we had to be careful when turning over in bed so as not to poke each other.
BONIATO PRISON, CUBA / Manuel Vázquez Portal

FROM CUBA
Operation Popular Shield in Cuba: sewing machines confiscated
Under the umbrella of Operation Popular Shield, last week State Security officials searched the homes of seven seamstresses in Güines, a small city south of Havana, and confiscated their sewing machines.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Legislators say Cuba letter may get results

Yahoo! News
• Candles burning at both ends, Castro to mark 77th birthday amid crises
• U.S., Cuba Compete for Pan Am Dominance

CPJ alarmed by deteriorating health of Cuban journalist
CPJ is alarmed by the deteriorating health of imprisoned journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who was transferred last week to a military hospital in the capital, Havana.
Committee to Protect Journalists

A letter to the president
This is a letter sent Monday to President Bush by several state Republican representatives from South Florida regarding U.S. policy on Cuba.
The Miami Herald, MIAMI

External links

Swiss open doors for Cuban film-makers
The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) has stumped up SFr550,000 ($405,000) to assist film-makers from poorer countries. The three-year "Open Doors" programme will allow Cuban directors to show their finished work at the Locarno International Film Festival and bring them face-to-face with European producers to pitch new projects.
swissinfo, Switzerland

Cuban film-makers pitch projects to Euro financiers
Daniel Diaz Torres, Humberto Solas and Humberto Padron were among ten Cuban filmmakers invited to launch the three-year project "Open Doors - World Producers Meet The World Cinema" which is to be devoted to promoting film industries which are going through a period of crisis.
Screendaily.com, UK

Health Concerns Raised Regarding Cuban Political Prisoners
The United States voiced "deep concern" Monday over the "ill health and poor treatment" of Cuba's political prisoners. The U.S. expressed particular worry.
GOPUSA, TX

Cuban criminal justice: Don't punish me with brutality
Journalist Héctor Maseda defied the Cuban government and got a 20-year prison sentence for his troubles. A half century earlier, young Fidel Castro led the July 26, 1953, rebel attack that killed 19 police and soldiers, and he spent less than two years in prison. "I wish Fidel Castro would show some mercy," said Mr. Maseda's wife, Laura Pollán. "I wish he would remember how he was treated 50 years ago."
Tracey Eaton / The Dallas Morning News

Envoy Called 'Scum' Skips Talks
In June, an intelligence analyst, Christian Westermann of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had felt pressure from Bolton after the two disagreed over whether Cuba had a biological weapons program. Bolton said last year that the U.S. believed Cuba had such a program.
CBS News

Cubans capture hoops title
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic- After surviving a protest by Brazil, the U.S. women couldn't handle their nemesis on the basketball court as Cuba won the gold medal at the Pan American Games.
Cleveland Plain Dealer, OH

For Cuban-Americans, more empty promises
It was nice and cozy while it lasted, but the Bush administration's honeymoon with Cuban-American exiles was never likely to endure. Cuban exiles are steaming over the White House's failure to deliver on its promises of a beefed-up policy toward Cuba. In particular, they are angry over the recent repatriation of Cuban asylum seekers picked up at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard.
St. Petersburg Times, FL

Roberto Forte's mother sent him to Duluth from Cuba in 1961 as part of Operation Peter Pan
The separation was supposed to last three months, but it would take four years for Manuela Forte to reunite with her son, Roberto. Roberto has not been back to Cuba since 1961, when, at 11 years old, he was one of 10 Cuban children sent to Duluth to begin a life in exile.
Duluth News Tribune, IA

Terror link to West Nile?
There is increasing suspicion that one of his labs is not in Iraq at all - but less than 50 miles from the Florida coast. Cuban defectors say that Fidel Castro's Biological Front studied ways of using migratory birds to spread infectious diseases to the U.S. Saddam Hussein was also known to have close ties to Castro.
WorldNet Daily

Analysis: Fla. Republican Unity Cracks
Florida's Republican politics is going to need some healing in the next year going into President Bush's bid for re-election in 2004. Florida was the most important state in his election in 2000 and that could well happen again. A united party could be essential next year, and right now, that's not the case.
NewsMax.com

Cuba Libre
Why is the Bush administration clinging to a Clinton policy that's a matter of presidential discretion, not federal law? Five words: fear of another Mariel boatlift. In 1980, Castro cleaned out his jails and insane asylums and sent a flotilla of some 125,000 refugees to Florida. The sudden influx created some havoc in Miami and even in Arkansas, where violence and rioting by Cubans held at Fort Chafee contributed to Bill Clinton's defeat for reelection as governor.
Fred Barnes / The Weekley Standard

Editorial: End the embargo
Plainly put, it's materialism that draws Cubans across the Straits, the belief that a land of plenty lies just over the horizon. More Americans are shoppers than voters, and the same impulse is evident in Cuba.
Concord New Hampshire News

In Cuba's Tropical Gulag
Our plight is very small indeed compared to what Cubans face every day. The latest crackdown on political dissidents and independent journalists and the execution on April 11 of three young men who had tried to hijack a ferry in order to reach the coast of Florida set off a wave of condemnation and even got the European Union to rethink its cooperation with Cuba. It was high time. It remains for those who regularly visit the Cuban beach resort of Varadero to ask what is going on out of view in the backyard of Latin America's last dictatorship.
Free Republic


August 11

FROM CUBA
Corruption in Cuban jails extends to medical personnel
From Ariza prison, in Cienfuegos province, prisoner of conscience Jorge Luis García denounced rampant corruption among medical personnel assigned to the facility.
VILLA CLARA

FROM CUBA
Prisoner dies without medical attention
In a letter from Boniato prison, Santiago de Cuba, independent journalist and prisoner of conscience Juan Carlos Herrera revealed that an inmate who died last month was refused medical attention for his condition.
HAVANA

Yahoo!
• US wants international supervision of Cuban prisoners
• Cuba Starts Trial for 6 Repatriated Ment
• US firm on Cuba sanctions, on returning Cubans found at sea: diplomat
• U.S. Seeks Ideas for Cuban Democracy

The Miami Herald
• State GOP legislators urge action on Cuba
• Cuban officials contact exile who has come home to live
• Opposition leader planned Cuba move for months

One more dissident in Havana
In a letter from Boniato prison, Santiago de Cuba, independent journalist and prisoner of conscience Juan Carlos Herrera revealed that an inmate who died last month was refused medical attention for his condition.
The Miami Herald

Cuba: No Social Club for Journalists
In raids March 18, Cuban secret police arrested 28 journalists who practiced their craft in defiance of the draconian "Law 88" and other anti-press statutes. Castro may have calculated that world public opinion would be too distracted by the impending Iraq war to care. Instead, furious protests only increased after the journalists were tried in secret and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 14 to 27 years.
Mark Fitzgerald / Editor & Publisher

External links

6 Cubans repatriated after hijacking attempt go on trial in Camaguey
The six men charged in last month's hijacking of a government-owned boat went on trial Monday in the central-eastern provincial capital of Camaguey, authorities here confirmed.
Sun-Sentinel, FL

Many eyes trained on Cubans' trial in boat theft
The first time Yosvel Chávez Novo tried to slip away from his rural port town, U.S. Coast Guard officials intercepted his sputtering fishing boat and repatriated him with little fanfare. Back in his hometown of Nuevitas, in central Cuba, the young bakery worker promised his sobbing mother he would not risk another illegal trip.
Sun-Sentinel, FL

Cuban music you listen to with your hips
Red hot salsa music leaks out on to Dufferin at Dundas in the dry hot afternoon. The music is made by nine Cuban girls. Some of them have long, thick, dark, wavy hair like so many quattrocento madonnas. Some of them have pigtails like so many cute camp counsellors.
Toronto Star, Canada


August 8

FROM CUBA
Cuban rafters held in Jamaica
Nine Cuban rafters, two of them government opponents, have been held by Jamaican immigration authorities since they reached the island three weeks ago.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Local government officials constitute "prophylactic" group against dissidents in Cuba
Three local government officials in the town of Güines, south of Havana, have constituted themselves into a group they call "Support prophylactic group against government opponents."
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Foe back in Cuba to oppose Castro
• Leap of fate

Yahoo!
• U.S. Seeks Ideas to Promote Cuba Change
• US says Cubans have not applied for visas to attend Latin Grammys
• Largest Shipment of U.S.-Bred Cattle Departs for Cuba; First Cattle Shipments from Florida in over 40 Years

Cuban political prisoner Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello without family visits at the Hospital since Friday
The security officer indicated that although she would not be able to see Martha Beatríz on this occasion, she would be able to bring clean clothes and food for Martha Beatriz. The niece asked about Martha Beatriz' health condition and was told by the security agent that "she was fine".
M.A.R. Por Cuba

External links

U.S. to bolster Cuba broadcasts, aid to dissidents
Washington · Otto Reich, President Bush's chief adviser on Latin America, said on Thursday that the administration will step up efforts to pressure the Fidel Castro regime, aid dissidents and hasten the political transformation of the island.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel, FL

Breaking the Cuban Spell
Last week, Roger F. Noriega became the State Department's first Latin American policy chief to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate in seven years. President Bush's previous nominee to the highest ranking diplomatic post for the region was blocked in large measure due to the same single issue that delayed Noriega's own confirmation for months: Cuba.
The Washington Post

Sandoval Summons Plenty Of Horns
Sandoval chronologically surveys a full century of trumpet playing -- mostly jazz, but some classical as well -- in the style of, and through signature tunes associated with, 19 standard-bearers. The resulting album is a sterling tribute to influences and innovators by a man many consider the most technically gifted and versatile trumpeter.
The Washington Post


August 7

FROM CUBA
Three dissident groups issue liberal manifesto in Cuba
The Liberal Democratic Party, the Cuban Change Liberal Movement and the Democratic Solidarity Party have issued a "Liberal Manifesto of Havana" in which they oppose the death penalty. The document said the three groups consider the current economic crisis to be of national origin and not caused by external factors, an allusion to the U.S. trade embargo.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Cuban independent librarian threatened
Two state security officers visited the Jorge Mas Canosa independent library and told librarian Librada Alvarez Leyva, a former political prisoner, that her conditional liberty will be withdrawn if she continues to accept visits by "counter-revolutionaries" in her home.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Dangers in Cuba policy shift seen
• Grammy visas for Cubans unlikely
• Gladys Gutíerrez Menoyo arrives in Miami, says husband's decision to stay in Cuba was a surprise

The Miami Herald
• Cuban Hijacker Confessions Can't Be Used
• Cuban doctors sent to Venezuela living in harsh conditions
• Cuban Jews Make Historic Visit to Israel

Cuban government could reconsider economic measures
After seeing how managers and foreign companies doing business in Cuba got upset by the announce of new controls of foreign exchange in state-run enterprises, Cuban government could reconsider the measures, said Reuters in a dispatch from Marc Frank in Havana.
MIAMI

External links

Amid fear, dissidents' kin in Cuba pray
Their husbands or sons have been locked behind bars for criticizing the government. Their homes have been ransacked. They say they've been threatened with imprisonment themselves. With few places to turn, many wives and mothers of Cuban dissidents seek solace each Sunday in the Church of St. Rita, named for a patron saint of desperate causes.
Boston Globe, MA

Exile leader stays in Cuba
He opposes the U.S. embargo and has given up calls for an armed resistance in favor of working for movement toward democracy, even if Castro remains leader. Gutierrez Menoyo has criticized exiles for having a too cozy relationship with the United States and has called on them to keep a distance from U.S. leadership to have what he calls a truly homegrown opposition movement. Some exiles call him a virtual agent of Castro.
CNN

Venceremos Brigade Returns from Cuba
About 80 Americans walked across the Peace Bridge from Fort Erie this morning. The groups travelled from Cuba without a Treasury Department license to challenge the U.S government's restrictions on travel to the communist country.
WNED, NY

Cuban exile leader returns 'for peace'
He told reporters he wanted to work "for a legal space for the opposition from which we can build a future based on pluralism and cohabitation". But he said his calls for legalisation of opposition parties in Cuba should not be seen as an open challenge to Mr Castro.
BBC


August 6

FROM CUBA
Cuban prisoner of conscience in bad shape
The wife of independent union leader Nelson Molinet Espino says he has lost 40 pounds since his imprisonment four months ago. Molinet, the secretary general of the Confederation of Democratic Workers of Cuba, is serving a 20-year sentence in the Kilo 8 ½ prison in Pinar del Rio province.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Light bulb denied to Cuban political prisoner
When the brother of Miguel Galván Gutiérrez brought him a light bulb to illuminate his cell at the Aguica prison in Matanzas province, he was told it could not be given to him.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• 6 of 12 hijackers sent back by U.S. are freed in Cuba
• Rights activist imprisoned in Cuba is honored

Yahoo!
• Bush under attack from Cuban Americans who helped elect him
• Havana launches web site to "fight media terrorism"

It's time to fulfill promises on Cuba
The Cubans are finally rebelling. But it's the Cubans in Miami, not in Havana, who are up in arms. Simmering doubts in the Cuban-American community about President Bush's unexpectedly anemic Cuba policy have erupted into open discontent with the recent decision to negotiate the return of refugees to Cuba to face potential summary trials.
Paul Crespo / The Miami Herald

External links

Iran and Cuba Zap U.S. Satellites
State sponsors of terrorism not only threaten U.S. interests on land, at sea and in the air, but now they have teamed up to attack U.S. assets in space. By successfully jamming a U.S. communications satellite over the Atlantic Ocean, the regimes of Cuba and Iran challenged U.S. dominance of space and the assumptions of free access to satellite communication that makes undisputed U.S. military power possible.
Insight on the News, DC

Myriam Marquez: Devil is in details of hypocrisy in Cuba
The 12 Cubans figured that, even if they didn't reach Florida and the U.S. Coast Guard caught them at sea, their contraption was so outrageous, their creativity so amazing, that the United States would be hard-pressed to send them back. They figured wrong.
The Tallahasee Democrat, FL

Casting West "CUBA FILM"
Claude Brickell (dir.) is accepting submissions for Cuba Film, a digital production set in Havana during the Revolution. Shoot starts Sept. 15. There is pay.
Back Stage, NY


August 5

FROM CUBA
Self-employed coachmen march to protest abuses
Thirty-four self-employed coachmen marched on the headquarters of the Camagüey municipal government Wednesday to protest perceived abuses perpetrated on them by police and government inspectors.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Independent labor leader held for two days, threatened
An independent labor leader here said he was detained July 25 and brought under heavy pressure by Department of State Security officials to cease his organizing activities before being released two days later.
HAVANA

Wife of jailed journalist Raúl Rivero attacks "unacceptable" prison conditions
The Castro regime has long targeted the United States for intensive espionage activities. Castro himself told CNN in an interview in 1998, "Yes, we have sometimes dispatched Cuban citizens to the United States to infiltrate counter-revolutionary organizations, to inform us about activities that are of great interest to us. I think we have a right to do this."
Reporters Without Borders

The Miami Herald
• 7 Cubans from boat receive safe haven
• Truck lovers mourn the sinking of migrants' floating Chevy
• Fate of 14 held by Coast Guard raises concerns

Cubans-American leaders outraged by repatriation of Cubans
US authorities said they repatriated a dozen Cubans intercepted at sea, prompting outrage among Cuban-American leaders who claimed the group included known dissidents who risked severe punishment.
Yahoo! News


August 4

FROM CUBA
Cuban independent journalist's daughter pressured
Officials of the Department of State Security in Pinar del Río summoned the daughter of independent journalist Adela Soto to the department's provincial headquarters and grilled her for more than four hours.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Blackouts damage Cubans' appliances
Electric service blackouts and, more frequently, fluctuations in voltage, damage their hard-to-get and hard-to-repair appliances, Cubans say. Refrigerators become the biggest headache, because they are the most necessary domestic appliance, and since they are always plugged in, are most often damaged by variations in the line voltage.
HAVANA

Cuba's Political Prisoners
It is contemptible that the Cuban regime imprisons people for activities such as speaking their minds, meeting with others or using typewriters. Yet the regime compounds its discredited policies with cruel inhumanity. It withholds medical treatment, denies family visits and subjects prisoners to subhuman conditions. The international community must continue to insist that Cuba release these political prisoners.
The Miami Herald

Administration officials debate Cuban repatriation
A growing controversy about the fate of 19 Cuban migrants aboard a Coast Guard cutter has prompted a debate within the Bush administration about its policy of repatriating most Cubans intercepted at sea, according to several administration officials.
The Miami Herald

Yahoo!
• Cuba Tops U.S. in Pan Am Women's Hoops
• Cuba Wins Seven Pan Am Wrestling Golds

Squandering the Cuban vote
As the paper went to press last night, 19 Cubans were awaiting their fate aboard a U.S. Coast Guard ship. They had been picked up in a rag-tag boat after escaping Cuba for Florida on Monday. Some are relatives of a man executed for trying to escape Cuba in April. As members of pro-democracy opposition groups, the 19 face time in Mr. Castro's prisons if they are sent back. This should offer enough justification for asylum.
The Washington Times

External links

Repatriation of Cubans sparks a family feud
When the Bush administration decided last month to repatriate a group of Cuban refugees intercepted in a Cuban government boat, it highlighted a season of atypical political turmoil in Florida for President George W. Bush and his brother Jeb, Florida's governor, and the state's dominant Republican party.
Financial Times, UK

One-time revolutionary seeks peaceful move to democracy in Cuba
At one end of the Havana hotel's Internet café, Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, former rebel fighter-turned-counterrevolutionary, sips a café con leche and reflects optimistically on possibilities for a democratic change in Cuba.
Sun-Sentinel, Fl

Cuban officials free 6 hijack suspects
Six of the 12 accused Cuban hijackers whose repatriation last week launched a firestorm of criticism of the Bush administration have been released by the Cuban government while others remain at state security headquarters. Yosvel Chavez Novo, 22, remains at the Villa Marista security headquarters in Havana, apparently accused of leading the group that stole the government-owned Gaviota 16 on July 15, Perez Novo said. No trial date has been announced.
The Boston Globe

Cuba libre
Since 1959, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro has outlived eight presidential administrations. Even the loss of billions of dollars of aid caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union was not enough to loosen his grip on power.
The Washington Times

Politics on Cuba Changing
Cuban politics around the world has always been a tangle, and now it seems to be unraveling and tangling again. It's happening in Cuba itself, in Europe and in the United States.
NewsMax.com

Azucar!
It seemed as if his entourage, and then the whole room, and by extension, the whole Latino universe, was showering me with love. Everywhere I turned I was met with smiles and unimaginable warmth created by the expectation of Cruz's performance. It was that kind of love that spilled out onto the streets about two weeks ago when Cruz's faithful wished her a final good-bye outside of St. Patrick's Cathedral.
Ed Moralez / Newsday

Cuba embarks on an 'educational revolution'
Youth are key to the socialist government's survival, analysts say, yet many grew disillusioned in the '90s. They dropped out of society. They left school. And some turned to the black market to survive.
Tracey Eaton / The Dallas Morning News

Forget the cigar -- get a guayabera
Dozens of 1960s-era sewing machines hum in the room off a cobblestone street in Old Havana, the drone mixing with strains of salsa music and the chatter of elderly women at work. Hunched over their tables, seamstresses twist and shape long strips of linen and cotton, stitching together a tropical shirt that is a symbol of Cuban pride.
The Globe and Mail, Canada


August 1

FROM CUBA
Cuban government advocate censured for turnabout
"Give the people what belongs to the people," said Committee for the Defense of the Revolution member Olga Lidia Arboláez at a meeting held to censure her for having signed on to Project Varela, an initiative advocating change in Cuba's government through peaceful means, such as elections.
HAVANA

FROM CUBA
Cuba's Batabanó smothered in its own waste
Batabanó, a small fishing town about 30 miles south of Havana, has a waste-disposal problem: garbage pickups and septic tank cleaning services are so inadequate that refuse is growing in the streets.
HAVANA

The Miami Herald
• Cubans' return 'just not right,' Gov. Bush says
• Some Cuban dissidents are heading to U.S. base
• Dozens of migrants land in Keys
• Cuban defector reaches Miami destination

Cuba: Espionage
The Castro regime has long targeted the United States for intensive espionage activities. Castro himself told CNN in an interview in 1998, "Yes, we have sometimes dispatched Cuban citizens to the United States to infiltrate counter-revolutionary organizations, to inform us about activities that are of great interest to us. I think we have a right to do this."
U.S Department of State

Independent journalist in Guantánamo detained and whereabouts unknown
His wife explains that her husband was supposed to appear at the police unit on July 24, but he didn't go. Then the next the morning the Sector Chief showed up at their home and took her husband away to an undisclosed location. She has visited all the police units and the only response she gets is that they don't know where he is and that they have nothing to do with that matter.
Information Bridge Cuba Miami

External links

Going Loco For Mojitos
You wouldn't know it in the moist heat of midsummer, but Washington is a long way from Cuba. Maps don't lie, and the quest to find an authentic mojito in the area is a sure way to measure the distance .
The Washington Post

A taste of Cuba
When forced to discard a piece of his freshly baked bread, Palomino, the new operator of the Sandwich Market & Deli, must first show a small sign of respect. "I never throw away a piece of bread without giving it a little kiss," he said. It's a tradition, he says, within his Cuban family that was passed to him from his mother, Migdalia.
Fort Pierce Tribune, FL

KU wins U.S. approval to do research in Cuba
Now, thanks to a travel license granted to Kansas University, Berg will have the opportunity to see the Caribbean island nation for himself and to research its arts scene.
Lawrence Journal World, KS


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