Online in Cuba

The cost of an hour of internet access in Cuba costs about a third of the average Cuban’s monthly salary.  Will the cost go down with more access points? The 118 new internet access points recently opened in Cuba seem to be working, and a very good place to follow the country’s slow path to connectivity is the blog The Internet in Cuba, whose author has been covering the issue since the 1990s. He writes

Cuba was one of the leading pre-Internet networking nations in the Caribbean. The small community of Cuban networking technicians was like that of other nations at the time. They were smart, resourceful, and motivated. They believed, correctly, that the Internet was important — that it would have a profound impact on individuals, organizations and society. They were members of the international community of Internet pioneers.  http://laredcubana.blogspot.co.uk/

For background on Cuba’s slow road to internet access, The Economist published this piece over two years ago: http://www.economist.com/node/18285798

Dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez recently visited the area in eastern Cuba where the undersea fiber optic cable from Venezuela joins the island: http://www.desdecuba.com/generationy/

And here’s a New York Times blog about a blogger, University of Havana journalism professor Elaine Diaz, who supports Fidel Castro but adopts a mildly critical view in some of her writing: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/cuban-blogger-who-reveres-castro-pushes-for-reform/?ref=world

Aftermath of a summit

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera with Cuba’s Raul Castro in Santiago.

Here’s a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMYpdHIpvMU of Raul Castro’s speech at the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the European Union, held this past weekend in Santiago. The Cuban leader has just received the pro tempore presidency of CELAC and had a warm exchange with Chilean President Sebastian Piñera, a conservative and business tycoon.  Castro’s tone makes it clear he’s no softer, gentler version of his brother Fidel. There are brief shots of Venezuela’s acting president Nicolas Maduro talking to someone while Castro is speaking, and of Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega stifling either a yawn or a cough.

Toward the end of his prepared speech Castro looked up and began some improvised comments about drug trafficking in Latin America, insisting there was no such activity in Cuba—aside from marijuana plants some Cubans grow in pots on their balconies.

“When tourism began to increase—and last year we had almost 3 million foreign visitors—Cuba became a target for drug traffickers,” he said. Castro said he met with various government agencies to unleash a “blood and fire” battle against the drug trade, and that more than 250 foreigners were imprisoned in Cuba on drugs charges. He made a reference to Mexico’s narcotraficantes, then began reminiscing about the voyage of the Granma yacht carrying 82 Cuban revolutionaries from Mexico to Cuba in 1956.

Piñera had a private meeting with Castro to discuss the 1991 killing of a Chilean senator, Jaime Guzman, who had worked closely with the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet and helped draft the regime’s 1980 constitution. Chilean investigators have linked five members of the now-disbanded Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodriguez, an armed leftwing group with close ties to Cuba, to Guzman’s murder and at least four of the five men are believed to reside in Cuba. According to Piñera, Castro promised to “study the background details and deliver his best cooperation.”  The story in El Nuevo Herald: http://www.elnuevoherald.com/2012/01/28/139769/raul-castro-se-compromete-ayudar.html.

But Cuba’s foreign minister offered a different version of the meeting, telling reporters in Santiago that “no document or specific information was delivered or received” and that Piñera had only offered to approach Cuban authorities.

“The Cuban government is awaiting this information which will be considered by judicial authorities in our country,” said Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla. He said the Castro-Piñera meeting was “fascinating, because a lot of time was spent talking about the insurrectional stage of the Cuban revolution” and that the Chileans showed “a surprising knowledge” of this history. http://cafefuerte.com/cuba/noticias-de-cuba/politica/2527-raul-castro-y-sebastian-pinera-hablan-del-moncada-y-la-sierra-maestra

And here is some background on the Guzman killing, courtesy of the U.S. State Department Electronic Reading Room.

1. A declassified cable from the U. S. Embassy in Santiago describes the scene at Guzman’s funeral—which was attended by both the American and Soviet ambassadors: http://foia.state.gov/documents/StateChile3/000089A7.pdf
2. A declassified Central Intelligence report describes how the Guzman assassination is fueling political tension just as Chile’s new civilian government completed an inquiry into human rights abuses under Pinochet: http://foia.state.gov/documents/Pcia3/00009232.pdf
3. Another, almost completely redacted CIA  report on the case is three pages long and begins with the words, “In mid-April 1991” and then is blacked out until the last page, with a text which reads, [          ] has information indicating that a cell of the dissident faction of the FPMR (FPR/DI, which is infiltrated by former national intelligence director General Manuel Contreras Sepulveda) carried out the April assassination of rightist Senator Jaime Guzman.  [           ]  angrily told [           ] this was disinformation.”: http://foia.state.gov/documents/Pcia3/0000925B.pdf

The Financial Times ran an editorial entitled “Silly in Chile”on the CELAC-EU summit: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9acf0624-663a-11e2-bb67-00144feab49a.html#axzz2JNIWEzY9

And Chilean political scientist Patricio Navia has this column , “An unnoticed absence,” on the summit and U.S. Latin American policy in the Buenos Aires Herald: http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/122858/an-unnoticed-absence

Apples in Cuba

In Habana Vieja, the historic center of the Cuban capital, American apples are on sale for half a convertible peso each.  This blogger bought one from a street vendor, inquiring where the apples came from.  The United States, she told me. What about the trade embargo, I asked.

“Yes, the embargo exists, but I don’t know how these come into the country,” she said.

Here’s a link to a BBC report on the state of Virginia’s apple exports to Cuba: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20802951  One of the apple growers interviewed describes his visit to Cuba, meeting Fidel Castro and describing him as “the smartest politician I’ve ever seen.”

Of course, the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, first enacted in 1960, is not exactly watertight.  In 1999 President Bill Clinton simultaneously tightened and loosened the embargo, prohibiting the foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies from trading with Cuba while allowing agricultural and medical products to be sold on a cash-up-front, no credit basis..  In addition to apples, here are some more American products I saw on sale in Cuba:

1. Coca-Cola (produced by the company’s Mexican subsidiary).
2. Jack Daniels whiskey
3. Head and Shoulders shampoo
4. Colgate toothpaste (produced in China).

Here’s a link to the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, which advises American exporters on trading with Cuba: http://www.cubatrade.org/

Hanukkah in Havana

American contractor Alan Gross, who has spent three years in a Cuban military prison, was visited this week by two leaders of Cuba’s Jewish community on Monday, December 17, the day after the eight-day festival ended.

“We spent a little more than an hour with him,” Jewish Community Foundation president Adela Dworin told the Spanish news agency EFE. “We lit the eight candles as tradition indicates, and we brought him latkes (potato pancakes), the main dish of the festival and other sweets.” http://www.laprensasa.com/309_america-in-english/1866749_alan-gross-celebrates-hanukkah-with-cuba-s-jewish-community.html

This blogger visited Havana’s Beth Shalom synagogue last month, transported by a cab driver who offered, without being asked, a suspicious amount of information about Fidel Castro’s health.  At the temple a caretaker happily showed his visitors the building, saying there was no anti-Semitism in Cuba and pointing out the photograph of film director Steven Spielberg’s visit in 2002:

And here is a link to a NY Times story on Cuba’s Jewish community:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/travel/04journeys.html?em&ex=1170824400&en=254a263b2686376e&ei=5087%0A&_r=0

 

The Strange Career of Max Marambio

Once a revolutionary, then a businessman, now wanted by Cuban authorities

“The revolutionaries of my generation had taken on death as something without great transcendence. This certainty gave us the strength to overcome our fears.”

So begins Las Armas de Ayer, or in English, Yesterday’s Weapons, the autobiography of Max Marambio, a Chilean guerrilla-turned-businessman whom a Cuban court this week sentenced in absentia to 20 years imprisonment for fraud, bribery and “falsification of banking or commercial documents, all of a continuing nature.”  Marambio had been a close friend of Fidel Castro, a bodyguard to socialist president Salvador Allende and co-owner of Rio Zaza, a food company he ran with the Cuban government since the early 1990s.  The court also sentenced a former Cuban food industry minister to 15 years for “bribery and acts detrimental to economic activity.”

In 1966 a 17-year old Marambio accompanied his father, Allende and other Chilean socialists on a trip to Cuba, where he was dazzled by Fidel Castro. The Cuban leader, he wrote, “was far from the Cuban stereotype” and appeared to be “a solemn man, with good manners, evoking the image of a Spanish gentleman who has had the best education.”  He underwent guerrilla training in Cuba, returned to Chile and joined a rather bumbling attempt at armed insurrection, became one of Allende’s paramilitary bodyguards and fled into exile after the 1973 military coup.

Marambio did not let his political background stand in the way of business opportunities, and over the years he built up sizeable holdings in real estate and construction. Rio Zaza was one of the first joint ventures the Cuban government set up with foreign companies, producing packaged juice and milk. He kept a large house in Havana where Fidel Castro was a frequent guest and in Santiago directed the 2009 presidential campaign of Marco Enriquez-Ominami, a filmmaker and son of a dead Chilean guerrilla.

About that time Cuban authorities began imposing stricter controls on the amount of money foreign businesses could withdraw from local banks. According to some accounts, Marambio had an angry confrontation with Cuban Central Bank officials, who responded by launching an investigation. With Raul Castro now in his brother’s place, Marambio had no strings to pull. In February of last year Cuban authorities closed two plants operated by Rio Zaza and froze $23 million in assets. Two months later a Chilean who had been the company’s manager and was interrogated three times during the investigation was found dead in his apartment; his body was flown to Chile and cremated without a complete autopsy. Cuban officials ordered Marambio, who had fled the island, to return to Havana by August 23 and when he refused, issued an international arrest warrant.

Marambio has filed an appeal with an international business tribunal in Paris and called the ruling “political persecution,” and said there was no legal basis for the Cuban authorities’ case against him. “I was never a saint of Raul Castro’s devotion, nor of his followers and the people around him,” he told Chile’s Radio Bio Bio. He suggested the younger Castro resented his youthful activities with the Cuban military, and was now carrying out a longstanding grudge against him.

The Cuban media have offered few details of the case, with Granma publishing the official court ruling and the English-language Havana Times commenting that Rio Zaza had enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the packaged fruit juice market and that the country has been hit by several high level corruption scandals in recent years. Blogger Yoani Sanchez wrote an interesting piece several months ago on the effect Rio Zaza’s closing has had on Cuban consumers.

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=43039

http://www.desdecuba.com/generationy/?p=1915