Posted on 04/14/2002 4:36:10 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
In addition to the measures I've announced today, we continue to break the information embargo that the Cuban government has imposed on its people for a half a century. Repressive governments fear the truth, and so we're increasing the amount and expanding the distribution of printed material to Cuba, of Internet-based information inside of Cuba, and of AM-FM and shortwave radios for Cubans.
Radio and TV Marti are bringing the message of freedom to the Cuban people. This administration fully recognizes the need to enhance the effectiveness of Radio and TV Marti. Earlier this year, we launched a new satellite service to expand our reach to Cuba. On May 20th, we staged the historic flight of Commando Solo, an airborne transmission system that broke through Castro's jamming efforts. Tyrants hate the truth; they jam messages. And on that day, I had the honor of speaking to the Cuban people in the native language.
It's only the beginning of a more robust effort to break through to the Cuban people. This country loves freedom and we know that the enemy of every tyrant is the truth. We're determined to bring the truth to the people who suffer under Fidel Castro. (Applause.) Cuba has a proud history of fighting for freedom, and that fight goes on. In all that lies ahead, the Cuban people have a constant friend in the United States of America. No tyrant can stand forever against the power of liberty, because the hope of freedom is found in every heart. So today we are confident that no matter what the dictator intends or plans, Cuba sera pronto libre. (Applause.)
De nuevo, Cuba libre. Thank you all. (Applause.) ***
Actress Deneuve opened the event organized by the association Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders) at a theatre on the Champs-Elysees by reading from a speech made by Castro in Havana on January 8, 1959 just after the victory of the Cuban revolution.
"Fooling the people will have the worst consequences ... I shall do everything in my power to resolve the problems without shedding a drop of blood," the revolutionary leader promised.
Semprun, the Spanish writer and former culture minister, charged that 40 years later "the people are still on their knees in front of the rifles" and spoke of "the occultations of truth that have for so long been the prerogative of part of the European Left." ***
Bush said on Friday his administration would toughen enforcement of a ban on travel to Cuba by going after Americans who visit the island without special permits. He also promised to increase the number of visas granted to Cubans who want to "seek freedom" and emigrate to the United States, as demanded by anti-Castro Cubans in Miami who oppose the return of rafters leaving the island. ***
The Miami-based umbrella group of nearly all newspapers in the Americas said Cuba is the country where freedom of the press ``is violated most systematically and completely.''
''Twenty-eight independent journalist are serving prison sentences ranging from 14 to 27 years in subhuman conditions, far from their families, with no medical attention and no respect for their other basic human rights,'' the IAPA concluded in a report.
Venezuela was also mentioned as a concern for harassment of Venezuelan journalist by sympathizers of President Hugo Chávez.
A ''special distinction'' of the IAPA's award went to the 28 Cuban journalists.
Receiving the award on their behalf, Humberto Castelló, executive editor of El Nuevo Herald of Miami, asked Jack Fuller, the Chicago Tribune publisher IAPA president, ``not to allow Venezuela to become a new Cuba with the press.''
The IAPA also said national security is being used as a pretext to clamp down on the media in the United States. [End]
One Republican senator, Norman Coleman of Minnesota, visited Cuba a few weeks ago in a mind to vote for lifting the sanctions. But after meeting with dissidents, he changed his view. The crackdown in Cuba has also caused slippage of support in the House for lifting the US ban on travel to Cuba, which some economists think could funnel more than $500 million a year into that country. Last month, the House voted 227 to 188 to lift the ban, but support is down from 262 who favored it last year. The president is opposed to such liberalization and, last week, pledged tighter enforcement of the embargo.
"Cuba must change," Mr. Bush told Cuban exiles and anti-Castro groups, and he said he is setting up a government commission to help move Cuba to democracy whenever Castro leaves power. Cuban exiles are a critical Florida voting bloc in the upcoming presidential election.
This was not the softening in the US position that Castro deems essential if he is to ease his terrible financial crisis. One former confidant of Castro says the Cuban leader is now confronted by a dilemma. On the one hand, he could woo Bush by offering a carrot with the concessions apparently being advocated by some of the more pragmatic supporters in his entourage. This could involve going forward with the referendum urged by Oswaldo Paya and the other petition signatories.
The alternative, says this source familiar with Castro's thinking, is to brandish a stick at the US by "raising the ante." He could unleash a flood of Cuban refugees in the direction of the US, thus creating a "massive migration crisis" in the midst of the presidential election campaign. That is a prospect the president cannot afford to take lightly. ***
However, Cuba's estimated 180,000 self-employed work under tight control and in the face of constant pressure from the authorities.
Overall in spite of a steady recovery of economic growth, standards of living remain well below levels achieved before the collapse of the Soviet Union and infrastructure continues to crumble. Public transport is a particularly serious problem, with bus and train services running at less than a third of the level of 1989.
The study echoes the conclusions of similar research published earlier this year by the Centre for Study of the Cuban Economy, a Havana University think-tank, and suggests controls must be eased.
The earlier report, too, urged greater liberalisation, arguing that the reforms were "exhausted, and in need of new conditions (deregulation) to function."
However, all the indications are that the government intends to strengthen state domination of the economy, partly because rising nickel prices and a rebound in the tourism industry are easing immediate economic difficulties.
Juan Triana, director of the centre at Havana University, said the economy had demonstrated surprising resilience this year despite the foreign exchange shortage.
"Even with a tense foreign exchange situation and the sugar harvest's worse-than-expected results, the forecast growth of 1.5 per cent will be met, and perhaps a bit more. Next year we should see moderate recovery resume," he said.
Tourism - which accounts for about 42 per cent of economic output and close to 50 per cent of hard currency earnings - is recovering from the slump that followed the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks in the US. Tourist numbers have risen by 15 per cent so far this year. Nickel prices have doubled over the last 18 months to more than $10,000 per ton, boosting revenues from an industry that has tripled production over the last decade.
Business at Cuba's state-run dollar stores was up 15 per cent through June and should top $1.3bn (EU1.1bn, £779m) this year, according to an internal survey of the country's thousands of retail outlets. The stores were established in the 1990s to capture the family remittances, tips and bonuses that flowed into the population's hands after the US currency was made legal tender along side of the peso.
Mr Triana said high oil prices continued to drag down economic performance, as Cuba still imports 50 per cent of its minimum fuel requirements - although that is down from close to 100 per cent a decade ago. Oil and gas production are now the equivalent of between 80,000 and 90,000 barrels a day and local fuel powers 100 per cent of electricity generation. ***
Cuban ballet brings its charisma to the US (Two Defections in Daytona Beach)*** Cuban ballet dancers have brought their fiery passion and Russian-based technique to American audiences for decades, despite political tensions between the two countries.
That tradition continues this week when the Ballet Nacional de Cuba launches an American tour - its first since November 2001 - and Cuban superstar Jose Manuel Carreño debuts with the Boston Ballet in "Don Quixote."
Prima ballerina assoluta Alicia Alonso set the stage for Cubans dancing in the US in the late 1930s. She performed with Ballet Caravan, the predecessor of the New York City Ballet. Now she is general director and choreographer for the Ballet Nacional.
Performing abroad is a liberty that Cuban dancers enjoy today largely because of the high standard Alonso has set and her devotion to her native land. Dancers are given elite status in Cuba, and the government proudly sends them abroad as cultural assets, despite economic embargoes and travel restrictions.
Mr. Carreño, who marks his first performance with Boston Ballet this week, has also danced with the English National Ballet and the Royal Ballet in London. For eight years, he's been a member of American Ballet Theatre.
"I will always be Cuban but my dancing now is so international," says Carreño from his home in New York. "I spent four years in the company in Cuba, and I learned a lot those four years. But I had done everything in the classical repertoire. That's when I went to London."
Carreño says he was initially lured overseas by the opportunity to work with choreographers such as Jiri Kylian and William Forsythe. "I was hungry to do something else," he says. "In Cuba they cannot afford to bring in these huge and amazing choreographers."
Boston Ballet artistic director Mikko Nissinen hired Carreño to dance the lead in "Don Quixote" and to fill a temporary vacancy in the ballet's principal dancer ranks. Carreño joins two other Cubans in the company, Lorna Feijoo and Nelson Madrigal. In November, a fourth Cuban - the latest wunderkind, Rolando Sarabia - will join Boston Ballet. ***
Tourism workers must have good knowledge of a broad range of subjects, Castro told the group during the surprise encounter at Havana's convention center. ''If not, how will they speak with the tourists?'' he said. Castro told the Americans that Cuba depended on tourism to pay for its free healthcare and education programs.
The encounter with the Cuban leader was closed to all but a few international journalists who traveled here Sunday with the Americans. About 40 U.S. tour operators visited Cuba, ignoring the Bush administration's crackdown on American travel to the communist island. ***
Latin America, meanwhile, is again doing business with Castro. Silva last month led a delegation of Brazilian businessmen to Havana, where they signed $200 million in new business deals and an agreement to renegotiate Cuba's $40 million debt to the country.
In Havana last week, Argentine Foreign Minister Rafael Biesla announced a series of trade and cultural agreements with Cuba, and Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque said Kirchner himself could visit early next year.
''We are under a strict directive that Cuban-Argentine relations deepen and bear fruit,'' new Argentine Ambassador Raul Abraham Taleb told The Associated Press.
At 77, Castro himself still enjoys rock-star popularity throughout Latin America. Despite decades of dictatorship, he is seen by many as a champion of the poor and a symbol of defiance against an overbearing superpower.
At Kirchner's inauguration in May, just a month after the dissident trials, thousands of Argentines greeted the Cuban leader with chants of ''Fidel! Fidel! Fidel!'' at a speech that had to be moved outside to accommodate the masses.
That adoration exerts pressure on politicians in the region.
''Generally, Latin American leaders are farther to the right than the populace, but they have to be mindful of their public opinion,'' said Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington. ''Reaching out to Castro has always been a way for leaders to establish their bona fides with the left.''
The United States, meanwhile, has grown increasingly unpopular in the region. The mostly poor countries of Central and South America still are waiting for the promised benefits of the hard-medicine free-market reforms promoted by Washington over the last decade. The region has felt ignored by the administration since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, diverted American attention to the Middle East. Opinion polls showed overwhelming opposition in Latin America to the U.S. attack on Iraq.
''It's like when your daughter is mad at you, she goes out with the biker,'' said Joe García, executive director of the anti-Castro Cuban American National Foundation in Miami. ***
The White House said in a statement that unlicensed tourism "provides economic resources to the Castro regime while doing nothing to help the Cuban people."
In neither the Senate nor House did the Cuba vote reach the two-thirds margin needed to overturn a presidential veto. House and Senate leaders must negotiate afinal compromise on the spending bill; in the past, they have used this process to remove language approved earlier that would have eased penalties against Cuba.
But Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said the Senate vote was "a strong repudiation of the president's recent announcement that his administration plans to tighten and increase the travel restrictions." The Homeland Security Department announced this month that it was enhancing efforts to curtail illegal travel and transport of goods to Cuba.***
Senate defies White House, eases rules on travel to Cuba - By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS New York Times [Full Text]WASHINGTON -- In a rebuke to President Bush over Cuba policy, the Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly voted to ease travel restrictions on Americans seeking to visit the island.
The 59-38 vote came two weeks after Bush, in a Rose Garden ceremony, announced that he would tighten the travel ban in an attempt to halt illegal tourism there and to bring more pressure on the regime of Fidel Castro.
The House has repeatedly approved legislation to ease the travel ban, including a vote last month approving language virtually identical to that in the Senate measure by 227-188. But on previous efforts, the House leadership has been able to use backroom maneuvers to bottle it up.
Thursday's vote was the first time the Senate has loosened the ban.
The Senate vote placed the president and GOP congressional leaders uncomfortably on a collision course, leaving an angry White House threatening to veto an important spending bill that contained the provision easing the travel restrictions.
In the final dash to approve sweeping appropriations bills at the end of the fiscal year, it remains uncertain whether the White House threat is a negotiation ploy and whether supporters of looser travel restrictions could muster a two-thirds majority to override a veto.
The vote also highlighted a widening split between two important GOP constituencies: farm-state Republicans, who oppose trade sanctions in general or are eager to increase sales to Cuba, and Cuban-American leaders, who want to curb travel and trade to punish Castro.
The White House views Cuban-Americans as essential to Bush's re-election prospects in Florida. The Senate last rejected an easing of travel restrictions in 1999, by a vote of 43-55. But in an indication of how much the political and policy pendulum has swung, 13 senators who voted against easing the travel ban four years ago switched sides and voted for it on Thursday.
Several influential Republican senators voted against the president, including Sen. John Warner of Virginia, the chairman of the armed services committee, and Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, the chairman of the intelligence committee, as well as many conservatives from farming states, including Sens. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, Sam Brownback of Kansas, and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.
Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., who co-sponsored the amendment, criticized what he called a U.S. "stranglehold" on Cuba, a nation of 11 million less than 100 miles from the United States. The decades-old travel ban, he said, merely deepens Cubans' misery without providing fresh ideas to the communist nation.
"Unilateral sanctions stop not just the flow of goods, but the flow of ideas," Enzi said. "Ideas of freedom and democracy are the keys to positive change in any nation."
The White House countered that allowing unfettered American travel to Cuba would provide Castro's government with an economic bonanza, allowing him to cover up his shortcomings as a repressive dictator.
On Oct. 10, Bush defended tight restrictions, saying that U.S. tourist dollars go to the Cuban government, which "pays the workers a pittance in worthless pesos and keeps the hard currency to prop up the dictator and his cronies."
" Illegal tourism perpetuates the misery of the Cuban people," the president said.
The vote came on an amendment to the $90 billion spending bill for the Treasury and Transportation departments. The senior administration official said the president's advisers would recommend that he veto the bill if it emerges from a House-Senate conference committee with the amendment still in it.
The president's adherence to a hard-line policy identified with the most conservative exile groups has increasingly left him at odds with Congress. In 2000, lawmakers, under pressure from the farm lobby, approved the limited sale of food and medicines to the island; since then, Cuba has bought $282 million in agricultural goods, according to the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. [End]
They are also leading lights in Venezuela's modern art movement, one of the most important in Latin America. Zapata, in particular, has captured the public imagination with his fanciful murals and canvases that have recently taken on a distinctly anti-government shade.
Today, while still friends, Zapata and Perez are also antagonists in the political drama that is moving toward a climax.
Squinting behind thick, oval glasses, Zapata, 74, said the intense political debate compelled him to express his opposition to President Hugo Chavez in his painting, and he now uses the Venezuelan flag as "an emblem of opposition."
Perez, 73, running his fingers through a shock of gray hair, said he has tried to defend the president by using the flag as a "fascist symbol" in a series of paintings portraying the opposition movement as elitist and mercenary.
In art, as in life here, Chavez has become a challenge.
Once faithfully leftist and mostly detached from political life, Venezuela's modern art community is now deeply divided over Chavez and his populist program to lift up the country's poor. Not since the years after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, when the artistic left fractured over Venezuela's own short-lived guerrilla movement, has the insular art world here been so shaken. ***
*** Taking up the standard for the region's poor, the White House's chief envoy to Latin America said leaders must take steps to allow more people to participate in democracy and economic progress.
''This is a continent where the peasants and laborers work from dawn to dusk and end their lives in misery, and not for the lack of natural resources,'' said Otto J. Reich as he addressed The Herald's 2003 Americas Conference on Tuesday in Coral Gables.
``There is too much false nationalism and a lack of firm commitment to real development. The creative forces of all the population must be allowed to flourish.''
Reich said the formula for progress in the region was democratic governments, ''sound, pro-growth economic policies,'' and investments in health and education.
He also boosted the Bush administration's trade initiative, the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. ''The FTAA is the best route toward the goal of lifting people out of poverty,'' he said.
MAIN PROBLEMS
Reich singled out corruption, inefficiency and marginalization -- particularly for indigenous peoples -- as problems impeding progress in the hemisphere.
''Seldom have we faced as many challenges and opportunities in the hemisphere as we do today,'' he said. ``There is far too much corruption.''
In a region marked by periodic social unrest that has forced presidents in Argentina, Ecuador and most recently Bolivia out of office, Reich questioned the leaders of the opposition in Bolivia.
Earlier this month, Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada resigned after days of violent protests over the plan to allow a foreign-owned consortium to export natural gas to Mexico and the United States. Bolivians were also unhappy with building a gas pipeline through Chile, which gained territory in a 19th century war that left Bolivia landlocked.
Speaking of the problems in the poorest South American country, Reich railed against political leaders who recommended leaving natural resources in the ground rather than using them to pay for development. ***
What's remarkable, what history will record as the truth, is the love of Cuba's political prisoners for their people and for freedom. It's the kind of unlimited courage that confuses their jailers. It's the fortitude of their spirit while at total disadvantage, their inner peace in the face of those who have only power, tyrannical power, and compensate for the strength of the powerless ones by inflicting pain upon them.
The prisoners of the Cuba spring and all other political prisoners in Cuba are sustained by their faith and the prayers and solidarity of all sensitive people inside and outside our island. But this should not be a spectacle for Cubans. Every drop in the torrent of pain that flows from these prisoners and their relatives is shed by every Cuban -- every elderly person and poor child, every disheartened youth who plunges into the sea, every family that suffers anguish and oppression and even by those who talk and only talk, complain or dwell on the subject but give no support.
Each drop of that suffering is shed by you. Don't pity the prisoners, because if they suffer hunger and thirst, they are blessed because they hunger and thirst for justice. There are no blessings, however, for those who show no solidarity because they don't want to get in trouble.***
While some see this as simply another populist revolt against an elected “neo-liberal” reformer in Latin America, some -- more accurately -- see it as one more defeat for the United States as well as for democracy and free markets in the region.
It is also a victory for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s dictator-in-waiting, Hugo Chavez.
..........Many see the decrepit Castro (who still has a huge, loyal following in Latin America developed and cultivated over the past four decades) as the brains behind this effort, with his alter ego Chavez (using Venezuela’s large territory and vast oil revenues) as the logistical and financial support for this new subversion campaign. Some of the coordination may also be conducted through the Sao Paolo Forum, the Castro-inspired anti-American movement founded in Brazil by Lula da Silva in 1990. ***
Just two monthly editions of the magazine were published before the March crackdown. Magazine editor Ricardo Gonzalez and adviser Raul Rivero were among 75 independent journalists, activists and others arrested and sentenced to long terms. Marquez and several other wives of imprisoned activists recently published a third edition, a compilation of stories carried by international media about the crackdown.***
Castro himself did not speak at the event, which was a part of the Havana Biennal, one of the most prestigious cultural shows in the Third World. The show lost European support this year because of protests over Cuba's imprisonment of 75 dissidents.
A series of 1960s documentaries shown on large screens before Castro's arrival recalled a socialist experience of the Beatles era and the U.S. antiwar movement that didn't quite match the spirit of Lennon's lyric: ``If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone, anyhow.''
One showed Cuban troops beating off the Bay of Pigs invasion, accompanied by stirring military music.
Another paid homage to Che Guevara.
A third showed North Vietnamese life under U.S. bombs, including shots of bodies and of U.S. prisoners of war being led away -- mockingly accompanied by the song They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Haaa!***
Of course, American lawmakers have the right to defend the freedom of movement for their citizens, and American farmers understandably want to sell agricultural products to whomever they wish. But the assertion by lawmakers that they want to lift the obstacles to travel and trade for the good of average Cubans rings false.
"Unilateral sanctions stop not just the flow of goods, but the flow of ideas," said Senator Michael Enzi of Wyoming, a sponsor of the bill. "Ideas of freedom and democracy are the keys to positive change in any nation." The problem is that when it comes to Cuba, the flow of ideas, not to mention people, is hardly free. Sharing ideas can land you in jail, and one has to ask the government for a permit to travel abroad - and if you are a dissident, the chances of getting one are almost zero. My husband, Osvaldo Alfonso Valdes, has always been denied travel because he has headed the Democratic Liberal Party of Cuba.
In addition, freedom to trade with the United States is a privilege reserved for those who belong to the Communist Party nomenklatura. Merely selling newspapers in the streets or refilling cigarette lighters without a permit can get you arrested and fined.
My husband's party's platform calls for freedom of movement and free markets. For the next 18 years, however, my husband's movement will be reduced to the two square yards of his cell in the high-security prison at Guanajay. He was one of the first of the 75 dissidents detained in March, just weeks after he had met with Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota and his family in Havana to talk about the Liberal Party and about the chances of freedom and democracy in Cuba. The next day my husband met with staff aides to six other senators, including Mr. Enzi. Two other Cubans at these meetings were also condemned: Oscar Espinosa Chepe, an economist, to 20 years and Hector Palacios, founder of the Democratic Solidarity Party, to 25 years.
Senator Conrad is not the only American politician to have shown an interest in Cuba. In April, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa came to promote agricultural products from his state. Senator Max Baucus came in September with farm leaders from Montana; Senator Evan Bayh came last month to sign food accords advancing the agricultural interests of Indiana.
Of course, all these senators voted in favor of easing the travel restrictions. Could they not see the irony in that meeting with Senator Conrad and with the Senate staffers were central accusations against many dissidents, because talking to American officials can be considered an "act against the security and the territorial integrity of the state"?***
Leaders of a House-Senate conference committee removed the provision on Wednesday before the bill reached the president, who had threatened to veto any legislation that lifted sanctions against Cuba, the officials said.
"You're not going to put a bill on the floor that potentially embarrasses the president," said a senior Republican staff member. Referring to the Cuba provision's bipartisan supporters, he added, "I'm sure there will be some gnashing of teeth."
The provision, which would bar Treasury Department authorities from enforcing a ban on travel to the island, was approved by the House in September 227 to 188, and by the Senate last month 59 to 38. Last week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 13 to 5 to scrap the ban outright.
Since the language of the Cuban travel provision approved by the House and Senate was identical, it would not ordinarily have been subject to action by the conference committee, which sought to reconcile differences in bills that finance the Treasury and Transportation departments, advocates say. But Republican committee leaders, including Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska and Representative C. W. Bill Young of Florida, were determined to remove the Cuba measure, aides said.
The legislation might have drawn Mr. Bush's first veto, and risked derailing important appropriations for highway construction, Amtrak, election reform and other programs.
Some Congressional officials said they were appalled that the will of Congress could be thwarted in the back-room negotiations that drive conference committees. Republican leaders have removed Cuba-related language at the same juncture in previous years, though never against such an overwhelming mandate from their colleagues.
"The fact that it could be undermined is mind-blowing, and more reminiscent of the Politburo than Congress," said Steven C. Schwadron, the chief of staff of Representative Bill Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat, who has been a driving force behind lifting the travel ban. "It suggests that a handful of people can vaporize the will of the majority." ***
The decision was a blow to a program that President Hugo Chávez has hailed as a cornerstone of his professed ''revolution'' for Venezuela's poor majority. The program is one of several initiatives into which the government has poured millions of dollars ahead of a possible recall referendum on Chávez's rule next year.
The ruling was a victory for Venezuela's medical establishment, which argues the so-called ''Inside the Slum'' program violates laws requiring foreign doctors to pass equivalency exams before practicing here. Chávez's political foes claim the program seeks to indoctrinate the poor with socialist ideals, charges the government denies.
Former Health Minister María Urbaneja and Freddy Bernal, the mayor of the Caracas district where most of the Cuban doctors work, had challenged the lower court's Aug. 21 decision to suspend the program until about 1,000 Cuban doctors working in Caracas take equivalency exams.
The Supreme Court declined to hear their appeal, arguing neither official was qualified to file cases in representation of collective interests, according to a statement released by the Supreme Court. [end]
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.