New campaign urges easing of US travel regs

Remember in 2011 President Obama was convinced to issue an executive order that liberalized the United States’ Cuba travel regulations?

This action expanded general licenses for US academic and religious travel and re-instated specific licenses for people-to-people travel.  

Well, the folks at the Washington-based latin America Working Group want to push the envelope even further this time and try to push President Obama into granting general licenses for ALL purposeful categories of travel, doing away with the laborious license application process through the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Such a move would eliminate the majority of the bureaucratic red tape that prevents licensable travel to Cuba from actually happening. Representative Sam Farr (D-CA 20th) is leading this charge by circulating a “Dear Colleague” letter to members of the House of Representatives, asking them to join him in signing a letter to the President asking just that.

If you are a US citizen reading this blog:

Contact your House Representative TODAY to encourage her/him to sign on to Rep. Farr’s letter that supports granting general licenses for all of the current categories of travel to Cuba.

The next logical step that President Obama could take is (as the letter says) “[exercise his] executive authority to allow all current categories of permissible travel, including people-to-people, to be carried out under the general license.”

You can do YOUR part by clicking here to send a message to your member of Congress, asking her/him to sign Rep. Farr’s letter to the President. 

Now is the time! A year from now will be too late, as the country will already be in “election” mode and members of Congress will be thinking about what they can and can’t do to get re-elected. Sad, but true. It won’t happen without you. Your voice is important to your member’s vote and her/his priorities.

Contact Congress now and make this a priority.

Click here to read a copy of the "Dear Colleague" and the letter to President Obama. It is crucial that we act now to move forward with U.S.-Cuba policy before the opportunity is lost.

Cuban Americans for Engagement with Cuba ask the questions that Yoani refuses to answer

This article by two members of CAFE - Cuban Americans for Engagement was published a copuple of days ago on CounterPunch. It says what I would like to say more eloquently than I could:

The Cuban Blogger and the "Big Bad Wolf"

The Curious Case of Yoani Sanchez

by BENJAMIN WILLIS and MARIA ISABEL ALFONSO

Yoani Sanchez’ long-awaited arrival to the United States has been heralded as a victory for the opposition in Cuba and an example of how citizen journalists, armed with social media, can bring about democratic change in authoritarian societies. However, a closer look at the circumstances of her international journey and the difference of the receptions she has had so far in the United States and the rest of the world generates far more questions than it does answers.
Yoani’s meteoric rise as “award-wining” blogger has drawn as much suspicion as it has admiration. Her blog, Generación Y, has been championed by some members of the Cuban exile community and by certain opportunistic academic and journalistic circles because of her constant criticism of the Cuban government and its control over freedom of expression and assembly. Her confrontational discourse and blunt condemnation of Cuba’s official line is “red meat” for a great part of the exile community while her call for freedom of expression is an easy bandwagon for liberals to jump onto. However, not all of the historic exile community is in favor of her statements. The most recalcitrant faction has strenuously disapproved of the comments she has made from the beginning of her journey.
An historical understanding of Cuba’s reality in general, and its current and past relationship with the United States in particular, has led several intellectuals, journalists, and common citizens to question her motives and her resources. Hardly ever before has somebody with so little experience and output garnered so many international accolades so fast. The fact that so many of these awards come from countries that have actively pursued policies of usurping Cuban sovereignty only adds to the intrigue of Yoani’s legitimacy.
Salim Lamrani published “40 questions for Yoani Sanchez on her World Tour” in Opera Mundi on February 19th and many of them are exactly the type of queries that one must ask if one is to understand how Yoani could create so much of an international presence from a country that she repeatedly claims has such limited access to the internet. Here are some of the questions posed by Lamrani:

13. How can your blog accept Paypal, a payment system not available to any island resident because of economic sanctions that affect, among other things, e-commerce?
16. How are you able to register your domain through the U.S. company GoDaddy when this is formally forbidden under current economic sanctions?
17. Your blog is available in 18 languages including; English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, Lithuanian, Czech, Bulgarian, Dutch, Finnish, Korean and Greek. No other Web site in the world, not even the sites of important international agencies, such as the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, OECD or the European Union offers this degree of linguistic support. Not even the U.S. State Department or the CIA offers this degree of access to non-English speakers. Who finances the translations?
18. How is it possible that the site that hosts your blog offers bandwidth 60 times greater than the Internet access service Cuba offers to its users?
24. In 2011, you published 400 messages per month. The price of sending one SMS message from Cuba is $1.25. So, you spent $7,000 in one year of Twitter use. Who pays for this?

When asked about this list during her visit to Columbia University’s School of Journalism she joked that when she was in Brazil the list had grown to fifty questions and that she had already answered all of them. These questions though are not just for Yoani to brush off but are rhetorical questions that thinking people ought to ask when looking at her website and the production methods of “Team Yoani”.
Indeed, the first stop on her 80-day Phineas Fogg-like trip produced plenty of questions and Yoani’s answers belied the fact that maybe she wasn’t exactly “ready for primetime.”
Upon her arrival in Brazil, Yoani was greeted by the stark reality that many global citizens do not agree with her narrative. She was challenged by Brazilian journalists, students, and other citizens about her description of Cuban reality and her answers to three questions in particular caused her to backtrack almost immediately.
When asked about the U.S. embargo against Cuba, Yoani stated unequivocally that it was an interventionist policy and was a justification for the failings of the Cuban government. Most importantly she emphasized that this policy of economic strangulation was a “relic of the Cold War” and needed to be abandoned as soon as possible (“Ya!”). She also called upon the closing of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Not the detention center that has brought so much infamy to the United States government and has challenged our notion of due process, but the actual base which is a violation of Cuban sovereignty. Lastly, she called for the release of the Cuban operatives known as the Cuban Five arguing that the Cuban government has spent an unnecessary portion of its budget to campaign for their release.
When confronted by Miami Cubans who were incensed by such commentary Yoani began to backpedal by saying that her comments about the Cuban Five were “ironic” and that she believes that they are not innocent. This rationalization poses a problem for the legitimacy of her position.
For example, now that she has arrived in the United States her position towards the embargo and Guantanamo has been mitigated to a milquetoast generalization that there should be a “dialogue” about these issues. Why is she advocating for dialogue now instead of demanding for the termination of unilateral sanctions as she did in Brazil? Why does she not also decry the interventionist nature of USAID programs that are specifically aimed at “regime change” in Cuba? Why are these questions not being asked in New York, or more pointedly, why aren’t the institutions and academics not letting them be asked? The “guardians” at NYU and Columbia have shown a tendency to “cherry-pick” the questions directed towards Yoani. Why, in what is supposedly the freest nation on earth, is this happening? There have been protests and outbursts in her meetings but no direct challenge has been allowed that would put her in a position of explaining her vacillating views on such important topics.
Now, she has expounded on her desire to establish an independent online newspaper upon her return to the island. On the surface, this idea seems laudable and is far overdue to empower civil society in Cuba. But if one stops and ruminates upon what the basic necessities for setting up an organization like this entails then several more questions arise that must be added to the already long list for Yoani.
One person in New York held up a sign that read “Press isn’t free, It’s just cheap.” We are in an age where almost every “newspaper” on the planet is struggling to survive and where hegemonic corporate ownership of the airwaves, webpages, and what’s left of print media is almost complete. The few independent news sources remaining rely heavily on donations and subscriptions from their supporters and consumers. Also major funding comes from federal grants. Even Wikileaks and Counterpunch depend on donations. There is nothing wrong with this type of support but in the case of Cuba there simply isn’t the financial resources for this type of publication to operate with domestic funds. Most likely, she won’t receive any help from the Cuban government. So, in other words, the idea of an independent news source in Cuba, by default, has to be funded by foreign investment. Therefore, from the inception of such a project, “independent” is a questionable qualifier. Donations are a legitimate source of income for such an enterprise as long as they don’t come with strings attached.
Is Yoani so independently wealthy from the monetary awards that she is going around collecting on this trip that she can bankroll such an operation? The regulations of the U.S. embargo wouldn’t allow corporate control from the U.S. and would seriously deter a foreign corporation from backing the digital publication because of the extraterritorial ramifications of the Helms-Burton Act.
In an ironic twist of fate, will she have to depend on absolute communism for such a newspaper to succeed? Will her employees and associates work full time for free in order to bring such an ambitious project to fruition? Only in communist Cuba could that happen.
This past Tuesday Yoani was invited to Washington D.C. to meet with members of Congress and speak at the Cato Institute, where she again reiterated the need to end the embargo. But instead of making the obvious case that the embargo was a determent to the development of her people, she called it an “excuse” and stated at the Cato Institutue that: “I would love to see how the official propaganda apparatus would function without this big bad wolf. I doubt that it could.”
The reference to the “big bad wolf” may remind the reader of the fact that he was not the fictional wolf in the tale of the “Boy Who Cried Wolf” but a dangerous menace who repeatedly came to destroy the homes and lives of the three little pigs. That is exactly what the embargo has done. It has destroyed the lives, homes, and infrastructure of the Cuban nation while mockingly espousing that it fosters “democracy” and is intended to “help” those it harms.
If this cynical reasoning is what it takes to dismantle the embargo, then more power to her. The embargo may be a crutch for the Cuban government to lean upon but it also has had very real effects on the island’s populace and Yoani can’t claim to be a spokesperson for her people if she can’t articulate that very obvious fact.
Despite her tepid argument for lifting the embargo, she was more than pleased to have met with the very members of the Cuban-American faction of the House that have done everything in their power to continue that policy, who were more than happy to fawn over her in return. Their visceral hate for the Cuban government is enough for them to overlook the fact that they disagree about the “effectiveness” of the embargo. Will Yoani demand that the United States lift the embargo and stop financing regime change operations that put ordinary Cuban citizens in peril for the remainder of her trip? Will she call on president Obama to remove Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list while in the U.S.?
In April she is scheduled to be in Miami where a tribute will be paid to her work. She will be presented with a medal and will speak at the questionably named Torre de la Libertad (Liberty Tower). Will she exercise her freedom of speech and tell an audience that will include the most hardcore anti-Castro Cuban-Americans that the embargo is an interventionist policy and has to be lifted Ya!, that the Cuban Five be liberated, and that the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo be shut down and the land that it occupies given back to Cuba? Will she speak out against the historical oppression of diversity of thought within that same community towards notable figures such as the recently deceased Francisco Aruca, a victim of bomb threats and other heinous violence and character assassination? Will she denounce the violence that has been perpetrated by the radical factions within Miami’s exile community such as the bombing of Cubana flight 455 in 1976 and the other blatant acts of terrorism that have been linked to such vile characters as Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles? Will she ask Marco Rubio if he was serious when he compared Cuba to a zoo?
Will she plead for a Miami that allows pluralism and freedom of expression with the same conviction that she does in Cuba? Or, will she be a victim of her own self-censorship?

Havana's amazing art deco

I am fascinated by Havana's architecture. Because of the unique situation that Cuba has found itself in, the city remains almost as it was in 1959. There is considerable decay but little by way of the modern developments that beleaguer other capitals. The city has an immensely rich architectural past. Especially delightful are its art deco buildings. This week Havana hosts the 12th World Congress on Art Deco, bringing together world specialists to preserve the city's rich art deco heritage, with lectures, tours and exhibitions . Today;'s Guardian newspaper takes a tour of some of the city's finest buildings from the period. Check out this is wonderful picture gallery:

A spotlight on Havana's art deco heritage – in pictures

Pictured above is the Catalina Lasa and Juan Pedro Baró mausoleum: Married socialite Catalina Lasa fell in love with landowner and widower Juan Pedro Baró in 1905. Cuba had no divorce laws at the time, so the lovers escaped to Paris to continue their affair. On their return, in 1917, Baró built Catalina a neo-Italianate renaissance villa on Vedado’s grand avenue Paseo (Casa de la Amistad, between Calles 17 and 19) which features an art deco dining room (Primavera Restaurant). 
After her death, in 1930, French glassmaster René Lalique was 
commissioned to design this tomb.
• Cementerio Colón, Calle Zapata and 12, Vedado

Other art deco features in Havana’s cemetery include (right) the 1957 white marble pietà by Cuba’s most famous sculptor, Rita Longa (1912-2000), which adorns the black tomb of the prominent Aguilera family.

Hugo Chávez - too good to be true and to live?

A friend and colleague Professor Salim Lamrani has just posted '50 truths about Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution'. It will make uncomfortable reading for many who have spent years  villifying the Venezuelan leader. Here for example are the first ten:

1. Never in the history of Latin America, has a political leader had such incontestable democratic legitimacy. Since coming to power in 1999, there were 16 elections in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez won 15, the last on October 7, 2012. He defeated his rivals with a margin of 10-20 percentage points.

 2. All international bodies, from the European Union to the Organization of American States, to the Union of South American Nations and the Carter Center, were unanimous in recognizing the transparency of the vote counts.

 3. James Carter, former U.S. President, declared that Venezuela's electoral system was "the best in the world."

4. Universal access to education introduced in 1998 had exceptional results. About 1.5 million Venezuelans learned to read and write thanks to the literacy campaign called Mission Robinson I.

5. In December 2005, UNESCO said that Venezuela had eradicated illiteracy.

6. The number of children attending school increased from 6 million in 1998 to 13 million in 2011 and the enrollment rate is now 93.2%.

7. Mission Robinson II was launched to bring the entire population up to secondary level. Thus, the rate of secondary school enrollment rose from 53.6% in 2000 to 73.3% in 2011.

8. Missions Ribas and Sucre allowed tens of thousands of young adults to undertake university studies. Thus, the number of tertiary students increased from 895,000 in 2000 to 2.3 million in 2011, assisted by the creation of new universities.

9. With regard to health, they created the National Public System to ensure free access to health care for all Venezuelans. Between 2005 and 2012, 7873 new medical centers were created in Venezuela.

10. The number of doctors increased from 20 per 100,000 population in 1999 to 80 per 100,000 in 2010, or an increase of 400%.

Meanwhile, the idea that Chávez might have been murdered is gaining currency. The French investigative journalist who resides in Cuba, Jean Guy-Allard, has posted this article suggesting that the death of the Venezuelan leader was ordered by the anti-Castro crowd in Florida: "The assassins of Hugo Chávez have names." (in Spanish)

Cuba will survive the loss of Chávez

Once again the web is abuzz with stories of impending doom for Cuba now that Venezuela's Hugo Chávez has lost his battle against cancer.   However, as I have argued previously, I do not believe that the death of Chávez is as disastrous for Cuba as some suggest.
Two years ago, when the Venezuela leader's illness was treated for the first time, I was asked by some friends in Cuba if it would be as serious for the island if Venezuelan support disappeared as it was when the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 90s.
"Stephen, you are a person who has spent a lot of time studying Cuba," I was asked, "What is your opinion? Have we not transferred our dependency on the Soviet Union now to Venezuela? Will we not find ourselves in the same situation that we were in at the start of the 1990s if Chávez falls?"
As I wrote in the Guardian back then, when the question is put this way, the answer is emphatically no. Even if Venezuela were to completely disappear tomorrow (which is not going to happen), Cuba would have difficulties but it would survive. Here's why.
First, the dependency on Venezuela today is simply not as great as the dependency that Cuba had with Soviet Union and the former socialist countries. When they collapsed, Cuba lost 85% of its trade practically overnight. While Venezuela is by far the largest trading partner that Cuba has right now, the proportion of the trade exchange between the two countries has never amounted to a half of Cuba's total. Given that not all of Venezuela's relations with Cuba would disappear immediately, the initial shock to the Cuban system would therefore not be as great.
Second, unlike in 1989 when almost all of Cuba's trade was with the Soviet bloc countries, Cuba has diversified its trading partners enormously since then. China, Vietnam, Canada, Brazil, Spain and even the United States (under a food sales exception to the embargo) are now all very significant partners. These would be able to fill the gaps left by Venezuela. Whereas, in 1989, Cuba had to redirect its entire economic relations to face a completely new reality, it has already made that adjustment today. Recovery from the shock of the absence of its major partner would, therefore, be quicker.
This leads on to a related third point: Cuba has also diversified its economy. In 1989, about 90% of its export earnings came from the sale of sugar to the Soviet bloc. Now, Cuba is no longer dependent on one crop for its income and can count on a variety of industries that will remain largely unaffected by the demise of Venezuela. A look at the breakdown of Cuba's export earnings shows that nickel, biotech products and tourism make up a huge portion of its income. In 1989, Cuba could not count on any of these, so the country is in a better shape to face adversity than it was then.
The main threat from a collapse of Cuba's relationship with Venezuela is from a fall in cheap oil imports and a drop in earnings from the export of medical services to Venezuela. Venezuela supplies about half of Cuba's oil needs at a preferential price, and purchase of the services of Cuban doctors accounts for something like 20% of Cuba's current annual earnings. Losing these deals would be a significant blow to the country, but it would not be catastrophic – and certainly not as a bad as the loss of the partnership with the Soviet bloc in 1989.
Back then, all of Cuba's oil came from the Soviet Union at preferential prices and the effect of having to buy oil on the world market was to cut Cuba's oil imports by 75%. The consequence of that was severe rationing of electricity, sudden power cuts and the almost complete cessation of automobile transport. A crisis on that scale would simply not happen now. For one thing, Cuba would be able to buy more oil than it could in 1989 because its hard currency earnings are higher now; and for another, it now supplies half of its own oil needs and is completely self-sufficient in electricity production. While the price of gasoline would inevitably rise as a consequence of the disappearance of Venezuela, a shortage of electricity would not occur because Cuba now generates all its electricity from oil it produces itself.
None of this is to say that Cuba would not face a problem if the opposition won in Venezuela. It surely would. There would be something like 29,000 medical personnel who would be returned to the island, adding to the numbers of professionals there on the state payroll. There would be an oil shortage and there would be inevitable austerity imposed on a population that has suffered decades of hardship. The Cuba of today is vastly changed from the country it was in 1989. To say that it had a friend and ally in Chávez is undoubtedly true, but to say that the Cuban revolution needed him in order to survive is palpably false.

Just who is Yoani Sanchez? - Radio Prague and Pravda go head to head

As Yoani Sanchez arrives in the Czech Republic, the main opponent of Cuba's government in the EU, on the first leg of her European tour, it is interesting to counterpose two articles about her that are currently available. The first to read is this one from Radio Prague entitled:

Dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez urges Czechs to keep up pressure on Cubangovernment

Reading this you get the flavour of the fauning way in which she praises a country that rejected Communism and became the United States' favourite within the former eastern bloc European countries. In this article she is quoted as saying: "The reality is that repression continues on the island, and that human-rights and opposition activists continue to be violently oppressed."

She adds: "The position of the Czech government towards the opposition – one of solidarity, collaboration and support, is very important at this moment. It seems that for many, Cuban affairs are beginning to lose importance because many people believe that Cuba is changing. Maintaining the pressure is crucial.”

The scariest thing for her might of course be that her 'cause' would lose importance, because it is the way she makes a very comfortable living. According to this article from Radio Pravda, she earns the equivalent of 1,488 years of an average Cuban salary every year from her 'foreign' mentors:

Yoani Sánchez - Blogger, mercenary or traitor?

It is noticeable that Yoani has not chosen to include Russia on her travels. There, they seem to take a different view from their erstwhile 'satellite.' In this article, Yoani is seen as at best an opportunist and at worst a cynical traitor. I quote it at length:

"... if Cuba is so oppressive, why did the authorities allow her to pass unhindered from José Marti airport, Havana, on her world tournée, knowing full well what she intended to do?

"And let's be honest here. In the USA, she would have been imprisoned for doing the same thing, for 20 years (instigating the overthrow of the Government or established order), or 10 years (proffering declarations affecting the relationship of the country with others) or 3 years (maintaining correspondence with foreigners with the intention to influence regarding a conflict or controversy with the USA). In Italy her activities would have seen her incarcerated for between 3 and 10 years, in Spain, between 4 and 15.

"So how can this Yoani Sánchez, who claims the Cubans are repressed but manages to go globe-trotting with income higher than any average mortal, who claims that the Cuban people don't have access to the Internet but manages to make hundreds of thousands of dollars by slagging off her country, be taken seriously?"

Who and what is Yoani Sanchez? I leave it up to you, dear reader, to decide. Just ask yourself: Whom does she benefit?