| CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald Cubans will unite to resist U.S.-style change,
Castro's brother vows A defiant Cuban Defense Minister
Raul Castro declared that Cubans will form a 'monolithic block' against efforts
to bring U.S.-style political and social change to Cuba. By
Vanessa Arrington, Associated Press. Posted on Sun, Mar. 13, 2005. HAVANA
- Demonstrating communist Cuba's defiance of societal divisions as it takes back
state control, Defense Minister Raul Castro said in remarks published Saturday
that Cubans form a ''monolithic block'' that will resist attempts to push the
island toward political and economic change. Castro, who is the designated
successor to his brother, President Fidel Castro, spoke Friday at a ceremony in
eastern Cuba to pay homage to combatants of Frank Pais Eastern Front II who died
in the Cuban revolution. 'In these times of growing threats and aggressive
charlatanry about 'transitions' and the 'restoration of capitalism,' it is opportune
to remind those staying up all night [plotting] that the people, the army, and
the party form an invincible monolithic block,'' Castro said in remarks published
in Granma, the Communist Party's daily newspaper. That unity is what has
protected the island from decades of aggressions by the United States, ''the mightiest
imperialist power,'' he said. ''Our people have shown they know how to confront
and defeat powerful enemies,'' he added. The United States has a long-standing
trade embargo against Cuba that has been repeatedly tightened by the administration
of President Bush in attempts to squeeze the island's economy and push out Fidel
Castro. Washington also has a blueprint that outlines the role the United
States could play in a transitional, post-Castro Cuba. Dissidents on the island
are working on projects as well to prompt political and economic change on the
island. The defense minister defended Cuba's current system and said there
was no reason for change. ''Our socialism is infinitely more democratic, just,
equitable, humane and supportive than the fierce imperialism planted in the brutal
and scrambled North, more dangerous now than ever,'' Castro said. He accused
the Bush administration of using money, war and falsehoods in a quest to "take
possession of the world.'' Castro's remarks come as Cuba is reasserting
state control over the nation's economy with moves including last fall's elimination
of the U.S. dollar from circulation and tighter limits on private sector workers. Castro
opponent says his life was threatened The founder
of Brothers to the Rescue said the Cuban government threatened his life his last
month in a message broadcast on television. By
Elaine D, Valle. edevalle@herald.com. Posted on Sat, Mar. 12, 2005. Brothers
to the Rescue founder José Basulto, a longtime opponent of Cuban President
Fidel Castro, said Friday that he had complained to the FBI about what he said
was a death threat from the Cuban government. The alleged threat came last
month on the Cuban television program Mesa Redonda Informativa. The program was
taped and aired locally by Miami Spanish-language station WJAN Channel 41. On
the program, which was aired on the anniversary of the 1996 shootdown of Brothers
to the Rescue planes, a panelist said: "Impunity won't be eternal, José
Basulto Leon. Even though the White House accepts you as a son, be careful, like
a hunter of terror, that your own arrow doesn't kill you.'' 'NOTHING ACTIONABLE' Basulto
-- who had a lunchtime news conference at Versailles restaurant Friday -- takes
the comments seriously. ''It is well known that there are many Castro operatives
working under the direct control of the Cuban Intelligence in the U.S.,'' he said. FBI
spokeswoman Judy Orihuela said the Miami FBI office was aware of the comments
on Cuban TV. ''There's nothing actionable,'' Orihuela told The Herald. "We're
aware of it, but we don't have any information, based on our sources, of an actual
threat.'' Basulto told The Herald that he would not hire bodyguards or tighten
security. ''The only thing I can do to increase my security is to make it
public, so that everyone knows if something happens to me, who is responsible,''
he said. ''The important thing is to see the reaction of the Cuban government
to our actions,'' he said, referring to the group's efforts to have Fidel Castro
and his brother, Raúl, indicted on murder charges for the 1996 shootdown. In
February 1996, three Brothers to the Rescue planes had set out on a humanitarian
search-and-rescue mission for Cuban rafters on international waters in the Florida
Straits. They were close to Cuban airspace when two were shot down without warning. TELEVISED
WARNING? Maria Fernanda Silva, a journalist on Channel 41, said the comment
did seem like a veiled threat because the commentator was directing himself at
Basulto. ''First they said he was the cause of the shootdown because he
had violated Cuban airspace,'' Silva told The Herald on Friday. "The end
seems like some sort of warning.'' Exile activist Orlando Gutierrez -- national
secretary of the Cuban Democratic Directorate, which works with opposition leaders
on the island -- said he, too, thought it was a death threat. ''This regime
has a long history of killing its opponents and a long history having a very sophisticated
spy network outside of Cuba,'' he said, noting the spies who were recently tried
and convicted in Miami federal court. "There have been too many mysterious
deaths of anti-Castro activists outside Cuba and I think he is right to be worried.'' Exile
group may visit Cuba The Cuban American National Foundation
is encouraging its directors and other exiles to travel to Cuba in May to show
solidarity with dissidents. A U.S. government official supports the idea. By
Oscar Corral. ocorral@herald.com. Posted on Fri, Mar. 11, 2005. For
the first time, the Cuban American National Foundation is encouraging its directors
to travel to Cuba -- to participate in a meeting of dissidents, diplomats and
journalists in Havana in May. CANF is urging other Cuban exile organizations
to do the same in a show of solidarity with Cuba's budding dissident movement.
But its request was immediately rejected by CANF's archrival, the more conservative
Cuban Liberty Council. CANF's declaration came in response to an invitation
from dissidents planning the Assembly to Promote Civil Society on May 20. ''There
will be a presence of directors and members of the foundation there,'' CANF Chairman
Jorge Mas Santos said Thursday. "We think it's an opportune time.'' The
dissidents' invitation, dated Feb. 25, is from Felix Antonio Bonne Carcasses,
Rene de Jesús Gomez Manzano and Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello, three well-known
pro-democracy activists on the island. ''This event will mark the turning
point for the work that all the member entities in our coalition -- more than
350 -- are doing to help organize the development of a civil society in our country,''
the dissidents wrote. In the past, CANF directors who wanted to travel to
Cuba had to resign from the foundation on principle and for security reasons.
Thursday's announcement is the latest shift at a foundation that drove an especially
hard line under founder Jorge Mas Canosa, but has more recently come under fire
from mostly Republican critics for softening its approach toward Castro. The
assembly is set to occur in a period of communist retrenchment in Cuba and has
not been sanctioned by the Cuban government. Some skeptics believe Cuban President
Fidel Castro will never allow it to take place. But already, the assembly has
received broad international support and attention, and stopping it abruptly would
further tarnish Cuba's human rights record. MIGHT BE REJECTED Even
if Cuban Americans receive a license from the U.S. government to travel to the
meeting, the Cuban government can deny them entry. However, Mas Santos said
CANF directors will find ways to get to the island without challenging current
travel restrictions and without breaking U.S. law. For example, current
law allows U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba to visit family only once every three
years. Most foundation members have not been to Cuba in the past three years,
so they can probably get a license to travel there rather easily. Several CANF
directors and executive committee members live in other countries, which would
make it easier for them to go. CANF has a license from the U.S. Treasury
Department to send humanitarian aid to the island and may be able to use that
license to send representatives to the meeting for ''humanitarian'' reasons. U.S.
Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, R-Miami, said he respects exiles who want to
travel to Cuba legally to support the May 20 assembly, as well those who don't
want to go out of principle. A State Department official who spoke on condition
of anonymity said the U.S. government encouraged people to legally travel to Cuba
to support the conference despite Bush administration initiatives to curtail travel
to the island. The official said that U.S. citizens who apply for a travel
license under the context of ''support for the Cuban people'' have a good chance
of getting a visa. 'A RIGHT' ''Cubans in Cuba and Cubans in America
have a right to encourage democratic change in Cuba,'' the official said. "Anybody
who is undertaking these activities, from my perspective, is doing God's work.
From a political perspective, does this make sense? Absolutely.'' At least
one other exile group, Democracy Movement, said it plans to send representatives
to the meeting. President Ramón Saul Sánchez declined to give details. .
The Cuban Liberty Council said that it rejects the idea of traveling to Cuba for
any reason while Castro remains in power. CLC Executive Director Luis Zuñiga
said that the council is giving ''economic support'' for the assembly but declined
to provide details. Cuba reinstating economic controls Cuba
is gradually returning to tight state control of its whole economy. Some analysts
say it's preparing for a day when Fidel Castro no longer rules. By
Nancy San Martin, nsanmartin@herald.com. Posted on Mon, Mar. 07, 2005. As
Cuban leader Fidel Castro put it recently, the revolution will no longer allow
any blandenguería -- wimpiness -- at home to go unpunished. More
and more, the Cuban government is tightening its political and economic controls
-- from ordering tourism workers to spy on clients to canceling foreign companies'
checkbooks -- in what analysts believe is a campaign largely designed to prepare
the island for Castro's eventual death. ''This is a very well thought-out
policy. In the long term, it sets up the state for succession,'' said Hans de
Salas del Valle, a researcher at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban
and Cuban-American Studies. ''It works like this: They tighten the screws
politically, improve the economic situation slightly and, thereby, ensure control''
when Castro passes on, de Salas added. The 78-year-old Castro, who has ruled Cuba
for 46 years, has suffered a couple of fainting spells in recent years and a fall
in which he shattered a kneecap and broke an arm. The new restrictions hark
back to the Cuba of the 1960s, '70s and '80s, when the central government controlled
virtually everything, took a dim view of foreign tourists and investors and outlawed
the holding of U.S. dollars. The end of the Soviet Union's massive subsidies
forced Havana to open its economy somewhat in the early 1990s, legalizing the
dollar, encouraging foreigners to visit and invest and giving managers of state
enterprises more leeway to grow profits. BENT ON CONTROL But now Castro
is bent on regaining control of a population and government agencies that grew
accustomed to a measure of independence -- and on cracking down on the widespread
corruption and black-market activities that the economic reforms fueled. Castro
emphasized those points in a recent six-hour speech to economists in which he
asserted that the Cuban economy had finally come out of its post-Soviet abyss
-- in essence arguing that the 1990s reforms were no longer needed. The
U.S. dollar had been recently ''dishonorably discharged'' from circulation --
shops no longer accept them from Cubans -- and control of the economy was shifting
back to the the hands of central government planners where it belongs, Castro
said. Cuba's economic ''motor,'' he added, would be revved up not by open-market
reforms but by deals with China and Venezuela -- the former ruled by the Communist
Party, the latter by President Hugo Chávez, Castro's top ally and a regional
economic powerhouse while oil prices remain high. In a separate speech to
health workers three days later, Castro angrily complained about an increase in
the street availability of medicines -- at dollar prices -- that are difficult
to find at government-subsidized peso prices. ''Don't let anyone believe
that la blandengueria can continue without repercussions,'' Castro said, according
to a report by the news agency EFE. "We will not stay with our arms crossed.'' Indeed,
Castro has been busy in recent weeks and months putting more controls on his people
and his economy. Effective in mid-February, the Tourism Ministry ordered
all workers in the industry to report to state security agents any critical words
or actions by their clients, to reject all tips and to avoid personal interaction
with foreign visitors -- all to protect the purity of Cuba's socialist values. At
the same time, the Central Bank began requiring prior approval for most foreign
exchange transactions. Cuba analysts saw the move as an attempt to increase the
government's control of foreign currencies and attack corruption, but predicted
it would also slow Cuba's already sluggish international business relations. A
few weeks earlier, all state enterprises were ordered to deposit all the U.S.
dollars they obtain -- usually through exports -- into a single government bank
account, then request bank permission to withdraw dollars when needed for imports. Controls
on the dollar accounts of foreigners in Cuba were also tightened and some of the
checkbooks were withdrawn, apparently to force the foreigners to physically go
into the banks to do their business. FEWER JOINT VENTURES Insiders
say some economic tightening adopted in 2003, and other factors, had led foreigners
to shut down many of their companies in Cuba -- all joint investments with the
government -- even before the latest round of controls. One report issued in 2004
said the number of active joint ventures had fallen from a high of 585 to 342,
but analysts say the number today is now even lower. In November, U.S. dollars
in circulation were replaced with government-created ''convertible pesos'' --
pegged at one-to-one but worthless off the island. The government also slapped
a 10 percent fee on converting dollars to pesos. And in October, the Labor
Ministry strengthened its controls over the labor market by halting the issuance
of new licenses for about 40 categories of self-employment -- from magician to
used-book vendor and funeral wreath maker. Cubans' ability to work for themselves
and not the state, legalized in 1993, at one point allowed up to 209,000 people
to earn a living outside some government controls. The number was down to 150,000
last year. Cuba analysts say the governments is putting aside the sort of
small-scale economic reforms that helped it through the 1990s in the belief that
the island will be better off if it makes larger deals with the likes of China
and Venezuela. ''The investors that Cuba wants now are those that can bolster
the state sufficiently in order to sustain political stability,'' said UM's de
Salas. "They won't sacrifice the political system for the sake of economic
growth. . . . The political system is not negotiable.'' Paolo Spadoni, a
University of Florida professor who closely follows Cuba's economy, agreed that
Castro is now betting that he can improve the economy by recentralizing the government's
controls rather than adopting new reforms. ''The path is clear: recentralization,''
Spadoni said. "It's been incremental with more restrictions and more control.'' But
analysts say the new regulations are short-sighted and risk even tougher times
ahead for the already struggling nation. ''What they are doing does not
make economic sense,'' said St. Thomas University economist María Dolores
Espino. "They have decided that what is important is [domestic] efficiency
and not the [foreign] markets. The problem is you can't be efficient without the
markets.'' ''The bottom line is that it looks very bad in the long term,''
Espino added. But not if Castro cares only about a peaceful assumption of
power by his successors once he dies, de Salas said. ''I think where it's all
headed is a likely authoritarian succession modeled after China and Vietnam,''
he said. "Time is on the regime's side. All they have to do is stay afloat.'' Herald
translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report. | 
