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Cuba seeks deals to get around trade, travel restrictions

By James Cox, USA TODAY. Thu Sep 23.

The Castro regime is using its checkbook as leverage to get U.S. firms, trade groups and politicians to sign formal pledges agreeing to work for changes to U.S. laws that restrict travel and trade with Cuba.

Cuba's use of so-called advocacy agreements has prompted anti-Castro lawmakers to accuse signers of illegal lobbying. It also has forced at least one company to rethink its interest in selling to Cuba.

Last month, Sysco, the country's largest food-service provider, notified Cuban authorities it was tearing up an agreement signed a week earlier by a Sysco executive attending a convention in Havana.

The original deal called for Cuba's state-owned purchasing arm, Alimport, to buy Sysco products. For its part, the company agreed to act as an advocate for changes in the United States' hard-line policies toward Cuba, including the 45-year-old economic embargo.

The embargo was loosened in 1992 to permit sales of U.S. medical products to Cuba and in 2000 to allow for cash-only sales of food and farm products. Through July, U.S. companies had sold $277 million in food and agricultural goods to Cuba, along with $500,000 worth of health care products.

The Bush administration has sought to tighten the economic noose on Cuba with tough new restrictions on travel and money transfers by Cuban exiles.

Sysco has sold $500,000 worth of canned tomatoes, ice cream and frozen produce to Cuba, spokeswoman Toni Spigelmyer says. The Houston-based company tore up its agreement with Alimport because the executive who signed it "wasn't authorized to make a political statement," she says.

Cuba has carefully spread its spending among scores of congressional districts in dozens of states to build political support for an end to the embargo.

Others that have signed advocacy agreements: the Indiana Farm Bureau; Tampa's Port Manatee; economic development officials from Des Moines; and elected officials from Idaho, Montana, California, South Carolina and Kansas.

The agreements are "a corruption of the commercial process" and a setback for efforts to expand trade with Cuba, says John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, based in New York.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., and her sister, Rep. Linda Sanchez (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., signed to promote Cuba's purchase of California farm products, says Loretta Sanchez. She says the pledge is non-binding.

"We're trying to get our California products sold to Cuba. That's what I do as a congresswoman," Sanchez says. "I've already been vigorous and forceful in advocating a change in U.S. policy. ... The dissidents fighting the Castro regime want this embargo down."

Rep. Peter Deutsch, D-Fla., and other hardliners in Congress say the agreements might violate U.S. law, either as embargo-busting contracts or as illegal lobbying agreements. "Effectively, (those who sign) become agents of a foreign government," Deutsch says.

Last year, the State Department asked the Treasury, Commerce and Justice departments for opinions on the legality of the advocacy agreements. It has not received a formal reply.

Efforts to reach officials at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington were unsuccessful.

US House votes against ending Cuba embargo, but for trips to island

WASHINGTON, 22 (AFP) - The US House of Representatives refused to withhold funds earmarked for maintaining a US trade embargo against Cuba, but approved a private credit to finance sales of food and medicine to the island and protect students traveling to Cuba, congressional officials said.

By a vote of 225-188, the House rejected an amendment by Democratric Representative Charles Rangel to an appropriations bill financing the Departments of Treasury and Transportaion that would have defunded programs emforcing the more than four-decade-old US embargo, said a spokesman for the congressman, Emile Milne.

"I am pleased that this amendment was defeated in a bipartisan manner," said Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. "Our commitment to the oppressed Cuban people remains firm."

But the chamber approved by voice vote two other amendments that represent a small victory for supporters of the easing of the embargo.

The approved measures include one submitted by Democrat Barbara Lee that prohibits used of funds to enforce a ban on trips by students that go to Cuba for educational purposes.

An amendment put forward by Maxine Waters would allow private financing of sales of pharmaceutical and agricultural products to Cuba,

On Tuesday, the House approved 225-174 an amendment offered by Democrat Jim Davis that denies funds for new travel restrictions to the island introduced by President George W. Bush.

Under these measures, Cuban-Americans can now travel to Cuba only once every three years instead of once a year a before.

Moreover, they can now visit only immediate family members like parents, children and brothers and sisters. Uncles and cousins are not included in the rules.

Cuba has 600 doctors and health experts in Haiti

HAVANA, (AFP) Sep 22, 2004 - Cuba has more than 600 doctors and health advisors in Haiti helping victims of major floods that have killed hundreds, officials said Wednesday.

A government statement said there were 16 Cuban doctors in the city of Gonaives which was worst hit by the floods. More than 600 people have died in the city.

It said the doctors were distributing supplies and medecines to help the Haitian population.

The Cuban contingent includes 525 doctors and technicians, 30 anti-malnutrition experts and 20 health teachers, said the statement.

Cuba Sure of Future Friendship With U.S.

By Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press Writer, September 24, 2004.

UNITED NATIONS - Despite U.S. efforts to topple Fidel Castro, Cuba is certain its communist government will be preserved and is optimistic that Cubans and Americans can be friends once the U.S. embargo is lifted, Cuba's foreign minister said on Thursday.

In an interview with The Associated Press during his visit to the U.N. General Assembly, Felipe Perez Roque made a sharp distinction between the U.S. government's hard-line toward the Cuban leader and the American public's and Congress' support for easing the sanctions.

"We rely on the nobility and the sense of justice of the American people," he said. "We don't hold them accountable for our suffering. We believe that just like us they have fallen victims to a policy that has been designed to serve the interests of a small minority."

Perez Roque said if Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) defeats President Bush in November and "lifts some of the blockade measures that would be positive, but it would not be enough."

"What needs to be done is to lift the blockade completely because it is rejected by the United Nations, both houses of the U.S. Congress, by the American people - and it affects the interests and the rights of all the Cubans living in the United States," he said.

Kerry, like Bush, supports the U.S. embargo but has said he wants a review of American policy toward the island, including a long-standing travel ban.

The Bush administration tightened restrictions on travel to Cuba in June as part of a package of measures aimed at squeezing the communist country's economy and pushing out Castro. Cuban authorities called it an electoral ploy to placate anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Florida.

Perez Roque said the new measures were having a "tremendous impact," especially on Cuban families in both countries.

"However, they are useless in trying to defeat the Cuban people," he said. "They will not meet their objectives. They are an indication of a failed policy that has no future."

The Cuban minister called this week's votes by the U.S. House of Representatives to nullify the Bush administration's rules restricting family travel to Cuba and removing barriers to agriculture sales and student exchanges "a positive decision." It shows the embargo is only supported by the U.S. government "and by a small portion of the Cuban-born extremist right wing in the United States," he said.

As in past years, actions by both houses of Congress to ease economic and social sanctions are expected to make little headway against the Bush administration's determination not to make life easier for the Castro government. It has threatened to veto a $90 billion spending bill if it contains any language weakening sanctions.

Despite Bush's policy of working for regime change, Perez Roque said: "We feel optimistic and we are certain about our future."

"We believe that we have the strength, the unity and the passion to preserve our country, to continue building a more just society than we have now," he said. "We feel optimistic about the fact that when the blockade will be lifted, both the people of Cuba and the people of the United States will be friends once again."

Taking aim at the Bush administration, Perez Roque said he wondered how it was that in the relatively wealthy United States 40 million people have no health insurance while in Cuba health care is free.

Before returning to Havana, he said he would meet with groups representing wide sectors of the Cuban community that are in favor of normalizing relations - both American- and Cuban-born.

"We have been saying ... that we are in favor of the normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States," the Cuban minister said. "We are not against the American people. We don't feel that the American people is our enemy. On the contrary, we admire (their) culture."

'Che' Legacy Still Strong In Cuba

The film is based on the personal writings of Guevara and fellow Argentine Alberto Granado about their travels across Latin America on a Norton motorbike in 1952.

HAVANA, Sept. 23 (AP) - The luminous gaze of revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara is almost a constant presence in communist Cuba, his dark eyes staring out from beneath a black beret on office walls and pro-government billboards.

Nearly four decades after his death during an abortive attempt to export revolution to Bolivia, the Argentine-born physician remains a beloved national hero, almost a secular saint, to many on this Caribbean island.

With a biopic about Guevara's early years, "The Motorcycle Diaries," opening in the United States on Friday, his relatives hope the film will show Americans another dimension of the man they may know only as an iconic image.

"It will be very interesting for Americans," said Camilo Guevara, the 42-year-old son of the late revolutionary and a project director at Havana's Che Guevara Studies Center.

The film is based on the personal writings of Guevara and fellow Argentine Alberto Granado about their travels across Latin America on a Norton motorbike in 1952.

"The film appears to be very faithful to the documents, respectful to the subjects and esthetically beautiful," the younger Guevara said this week. "I liked it very much."

Producer Robert Redford traveled to Cuba in January to privately screen the film for Guevara's widow, Aleida March, and other close relatives.

The film's Brazilian director Walter Salles and Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal, who plays Guevara, traveled here in June when the movie opened to enthusiastic audiences.

Nicknamed "Che" for the Argentine expression he used to address people, Guevara is remembered by older Cubans as a leader who rejected privilege and celebrated hard work.

"We will be like Che," uniformed boys and girls recite each school day when pledging to be "pioneers for communism."

Images of Guevara hang in schools, medical clinics and food ration centers. His visage is on postage stamps and the 3-peso coin beneath the words "Patria o Muerte" - "Homeland or Death."

Guevara himself evidently sensed his ideals would live on after he died.

"Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man," Guevara told his Bolivian executioner, according to revolutionary legend.

Dead at 39, Guevara became an icon to leftists worldwide, especially Latin Americans who made him a symbol of their struggles against U.S. interference and poverty and corruption in their own nations.

"Why did they think that by killing him, he would cease to exist as a fighter?" former comrade-in-arms and President Fidel Castro asked in October 1997, when Guevara's remains were enshrined in a mausoleum built beneath an 18-foot bronze statue in his likeness in the central city of Santa Clara. "Today he is in every place, wherever there is a just cause to defend."

If still alive today, Guevara would be 76, two years younger than Castro, whose beard has grown gray during his 45 years in power. Castro discourages public display of his image, thus few photographs - and no statues - of him are seen in Cuba except for official portraits in government offices.

The men met in 1955 in Mexico, where Guevara drifted after his motorcycle sojourn.

Turned increasingly radical by the poverty and injustice witnessed on his travels, Guevara joined Castro's invasion of Cuba a year later. They were among the few who survived the disastrous landing of the rebels' yacht, Granma.

From Cuba's Sierra Maestra, the rebels launched their guerrilla war on Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship. In 1958, Guevara led the rebels' capture of Santa Clara, a victory that drove Batista into exile and secured Castro's triumph on Jan. 1, 1959.

Several months later, the best known image of Guevara was captured by Cuban photographer Alberto Diaz Gutierrez, better known as Alberto Korda.

In it, Guevara gazed into the distance during a memorial service for more than 100 crew members of a Belgian arms cargo ship killed in an attack Cuba blamed on U.S.-backed counterrevolutionaries.

The portrait of the man who went on to promote armed revolution across the Americas and Africa was emblazoned on posters and T-shirts. Even former Argentine soccer great Diego Maradona, who returned to Cuba this week to resume treatment for his cocaine addiction, sports a "Che" tattoo on his arm.

Guevara's family and Korda, before his death in 2001, were enraged four years ago when the image was used to advertise Smirnoff vodka. Guevara, who didn't drink, would have hated the commercialization of his memory, they said. Korda later won copyright protection for the image from a British court.

Guevara assumed Cuban citizenship shortly after Castro's revolution and went on to become the nation's top economic planner, steering the country toward central planning and sending aid to South American revolutionary movements.

But Guevara's efforts to export revolution failed in the Congo and in Bolivia, where he was captured and shot to death by soldiers in October 1967.

The whereabouts of the remains of Guevara and six comrades were unknown for three decades until identified by an international forensic team in Bolivia and brought to Cuba.

Seven years after the interment, Argentine lawmakers last month asked for Guevara's remains to be taken to the country of his birth. His relatives refused.

"The decision that they stay where they are is the will of his family, as well as the loved ones of many of his fellow fighters," Camilo Guevara said at the time.

The 1997 ceremonies for Guevara's interment in Cuba on the 30th anniversary of his death resembled a state funeral.

Hundreds of thousands of people lined the 180-mile route from Havana to Santa Clara as his small flag-draped casket traveled to its final resting place.

Cannons thundered, air raid sirens shrieked and schoolchildren sang a popular song recalling Guevara's farewell message to Cubans: "Hasta siempre" - "Until forever."

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