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Exiles Concerned Over U.S. Plans in Cuba

AP, Saturday July 15, 206.

A presidential commission's report on U.S. plans to promote democracy in Cuba has earned applause from Cuban exiles, particularly for an $80 million commitment to bolster civil society and independent media. But while many expressed broad support for the commission's message, some were wary of how, and if, the promised funds will be spent.

The recommendations, released this week by the Presidential Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, would target money to help nongovernmental groups create change in Cuba. It was issued as Fidel Castro's government tries to maintain status quo.

"It would be very harmful if they said that money will come and then people didn't get it," said Orlando Gutierrez, the National Secretary of the Miami-based Cuban Democratic Directorate, which seeks to provide humanitarian aid to the pro-democracy movement on the island.

Some dissidents on the island have expressed concern that the money will only bolster the Cuban government's allegations that the opposition is on the U.S. government's payrolls. Communist officials accused 75 opponents captured in 2003 of being on U.S. payrolls, an allegation dissidents and Washington deny.

Ninoska Perez Castellon, of the conservative Liberty Council, said concerns about U.S. influence were unwarranted.

"Nobody questioned it when Europe was under communism, and it was the United States and Margaret Thatcher that provided the help," she said.

The report also recommends Interpol receive the names of Cuban officers who in 1996 shot down two private planes flying over international waters in search of Cuban rafters.

During a discussion with students at Florida International University on Wednesday, Jose Basulto, the lone survivor of the 1996 attack and a member of the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, recalled how CIA agents selected and trained him and others for the failed attack, and how at the last minute President Kennedy chose not to send in air support.

Basulto said he didn't want to see the history of false promises repeated. He also expressed concern that the $80 million could be used by the U.S. government to cultivate leaders inside and outside the island who might not represent the interests of the majority.

"I don't want to see Cuba polluted from without," he told the students.

The report follows up on recommendations the commission first made in 2004, including strengthening of U.S. trade, financial and travel restrictions on the island.

A growing number of Cubans in the U.S. have criticized the government's decision not to relax restrictions that allow Cubans to visit the island only once every three years. They argue that contact with family members outside the country brings valuable perspective and will help erode the regime from within.

Activist Ramon Saul Sanchez, head of the Democracy Movement, made a rare public acknowledgment of pressure on the exile community to present a unified front as he spoke Wednesday of the travel restrictions and the U.S. financial embargo Cuba has been under since 1961, two years after the Castro came to power.

Cubans in the U.S have to applaud the restrictions "or shut up because we are betraying our own countrymen," he said, adding, "If we have done something for 50 years, and it hasn't worked, logic tells you we should revisit it."

Cuba vows communist succession post-Castro

By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer Sun Jul 16, 2006.

HAVANA - What will Cuba be like when Fidel Castro is gone? Washington and Cuba have - no surprise - startlingly different versions of a post-Castro Cuba, and many dissidents on the island complain they will be caught in the middle.

In Washington's scenario, presented this week by a presidential commission, a democratic Cuba will endorse multiparty elections and free markets and become a new ally to be rebuilt with American assistance after nearly five decades of communism.

But Castro, who apparently enjoys good health and turns 80 on Aug. 13, has been fortifying the ruling Communist Party to ensure the status quo long after his death. He plans to hand over power to his 75-year-old brother Raul, the first vice president of Cuba's Council of State.

The key aim of the 93-page report by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba is to halt that succession, using diplomacy to enlist Cuban citizens and other countries to demand a new government after Fidel dies.

It recommends that the United States spend $80 million over two years to encourage that change, saying Cubans could appeal to the United States for food, water and other aid. It envisions U.S. technicians rebuilding schools, highways, bridges, financial specialists designing a new tax system and the United States helping Cuba join the International Monetary Fund.

"The greatest guarantor of genuine stability in Cuba is the rapid restoration of sovereignty to the Cuban people through free and fair, multiparty elections," says the report that was released July 10.

Other experts say the commission is being unrealistic.

"We need a reality check here," said Wayne Smith, America's top diplomat to Havana from 1979 to 1982. "Anyone who knows Cuba knows the Cuban people aren't going to rise up against a successor regime."

Dissidents in Cuba say they appreciate the gesture, but fear it will backfire and lead to more arrests. In 2003, 75 dissidents were arrested and accused of being "mercenaries" receiving U.S. aid - a charge the activists denied.

Opposition member Manuel Cuesta Morua called the U.S. offer a "poisonous embrace."

"Those are 80 million arguments for the Cuban government to make it seem all Cuban dissidents are financed by the United States," he said.

The dissident community has not fully recovered from the 2003 arrests, and no Cuban opposition leader has emerged with widespread support.

Cuba also lacks the powerful nongovernment institutions that existed in communist-era Poland, where the Solidarity movement, organized around a strong Roman Catholic church and labor unions, managed to topple the Communist leadership.

The U.S. report has been well-received in Miami, where U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (news, bio, voting record), a Cuban-born Republican, said it shows "the strong commitment of President Bush to help the Cuban people free themselves from the shackles of their brutal oppressor."

But Smith calls the U.S. report "pure pie-in-the-sky."

"The reality will end up being somewhere between those two visions, and probably closer to the Cuban succession plan - with the addition of popular pressure for economic reforms," said Smith, who heads the Cuba program at the Center for International Policy, a foreign policy institute in Washington.

Long a taboo topic, Cuba's planned succession has been discussed more openly in recent months with Raul Castro, the longtime defense minister, appearing frequently in state media to insist the party will continue its dominant role.

If Raul Castro does succeed his brother, the United States will likely be sidelined while other countries interact with Cuba's new leadership, said Philip Peters of the Lexington Institute, a think tank outside Washington.

That's because the United States in 1996 tightened its Cuba sanctions and prohibited aid to Cuba until multiparty elections are planned, political prisoners are released, and both Castro brothers are out of power.

Peters said the report only hardens Washington's position on Cuba.

"The report leaves no doubt that the administration will not support in Cuba the kind of change it applauds in China - economic liberalization without significant political change," Peters wrote this week.

Cuban parliament speaker Ricardo Alarcon said he believes the report's classified section contains plans to attack the island or assassinate its leaders.

"We have the right to expect the worst," said Alarcon, referring to the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and earlier U.S. assassination attempts against Fidel Castro.

On the Net:

Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba: http://www.cafc.gov/

Texas Port Extends Cuba Trade Agreement

Texas Port Renews Commitment to Keep Shipping Food to Cuba Despite Efforts to Tighten Sanctions

HAVANA, 7 (AP) -- The Texas port of Corpus Christi on Friday renewed its commitment to keep shipping American food to Cuba despite U.S. efforts to tighten sanctions on the communist-run island.

Ruben Bonilla, chairman of the Corpus Christi Port Commission, and Pedro Alvarez of the Cuban food import company Alimport, signed a letter of intent to maintain their trade relationship.

"We accept the commitment to broaden our relationship with Corpus Christi," Alvarez told a news conference. "And they, we are sure, will work to normalize" relations between the two nations, he added.

U.S. Representative Solomon Ortiz, a Texas Democrat, accompanied Bonilla on the trade mission.

The port of Corpus Christi signed its first agreement with Alimport three years ago, and since then more than 100,000 metric tons of U.S. agricultural goods has moved through the port on its way to Cuba, Alvarez said.

Most U.S. trade with Cuba is prohibited under a 45-year-old U.S. embargo designed to undermine Fidel Castro's government.

Under an exception to those sanctions created by a 2000 U.S. law, however, American food and other agricultural products may be sold directly to Cuba on a cash basis.

Cuba's Elmer Ferrer brings his brand of Latin jazz/electric blues to Canada

Celeste Mackenzie Thu Jul 6, 2006.

OTTAWA (CP) - Thirty or 40 years ago, a rock musician with dyed-blond hair and a couple of silver hoop earrings would have been viewed with great suspicion in Cuba.

Back then, long hair was considered anti-social, and English-language music counter-revolutionary. But things are different now. There's a statue of John Lennon in a Havana park, and bleach-blond blues-rocker Elmer Ferrer is Cuba's best-known electric guitarist.

The Elmer Ferrer Band kicked off its current Canadian tour Tuesday with a show at the Black Sheep Inn in Wakefield, Que. Owner Paul Symes said the show sold out, and the crowd was left wanting more.

Ferrer will perform this weekend at Ottawa's Blues Fest, and has dates lined up in Toronto, London, Ont., and Mont Tremblant, Que., as well. He hopes to add more in August.

"His music is so far advanced - a mix of Cuban jazz with electric blues," said Symes. "When you put those two things together, it was so ridiculously fast and beautifully played to the point it was almost unbelievable."

Symes said he booked the band without even hearing Ferrer's CDs.

"He was highly recommended, and I am really disposed to anything Cuban. . . . Along with Brazil, Ireland, Senegal and Jamaica, it has such a depth of musical culture ... I hire about 500 bands a year, and this one was in the top five."

Ferrer's band will be based for the summer in Ottawa, a city with which it has a special relationship. Local producer Bill Johnston put together the band's first CD, Fango Dance, after seeing Ferrer perform in Havana in 2004. And one of its four members is Ottawa vocalist Anders Drerup. In addition to playing backup guitar, Drerup sings in English, the idea being to give the band a more North American blues feel.

But like just about any blues musician, Ferrer dreams of performing in the U.S., something he says is virtually impossible these days.

"Some years ago Cuban groups, musicians used to go to U.S.A. and play, but now it is almost impossible. Just one or two more famous groups can get a U.S. visa," Ferrer said between sips of Cuban espresso.

"I play blues rock, I play jazz too, and my idols of this music are almost all Americans - Pat Metheny, John Scofield, B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughn. For me it would be a dream to go and see this country that has guitar in the blood and in the air."

Ferrer began studying classical guitar at age 12 at a music school in his hometown of Sanctus Spiritus. At 16 he enrolled at Havana's National School of Arts to continue classical studies. Soon after he saw the film Crossroads, about a classical guitarist who wants to become a blues musician.

"I studied one year, and the next year I saw the electric guitar player in the movie, and I enjoyed it far too much, and it made me switch to electric and popular guitar," Ferrer said.

Hooked, he began studying electric guitar on his own during his spare time. Although the prejudice against rock had basically passed, there was no school yet for electric guitar in Havana.

These days, in addition to his own band, Ferrer collaborates with other young Cuban stars such as Yusa, Roberto Fonseca, and Maraca, and teaches. He was also part of Interactivo, the group whose CD Goza Pepillo won the 2006 grand prize at Cubadisco, Cuba's version of the Junos.

Strong government support for the arts in Cuba means the 32-year-old has been able to study and work full-time as a musician.

"The only thing I do is play. I have time to do my own music. Playing with other musicians is something I love to do because you can refresh and you can change. Sometimes you are playing rock and roll, sometimes on a pop CD, then you refresh and then play on a salsa CD."

Still, musicians are paid Cuban salaries of about $20 a month (and buy subsidized basic food), so performance fees and CD sales overseas can be a big boost to artists - even though the Cuban government takes a cut of concert ticket sales. The financial importance of touring abroad, however, is something Ferrer is uncomfortable talking about.

"If I haven't first talked about something in Cuba, I don't feel good about that. For example, if someone inside of Cuba asks me about the music life, for sure I would say that there are lots problems with that, but I prefer to talk of that in Cuba," he said.

Having done shows abroad for more that 10 years, Ferrer says that touring is the most important thing in a musician's career.

"Your CDs are travelling the whole world, but (touring) is the only way the people can see you play. It is the real thing - they are not only listening to you, they are seeing you."

On the web: www.elmerferrer.com

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