El Tumbao Cubano - El Blog de Cuba en el Exilio

Martinez breaks rank on snubbing Cuban aid

LINK    By DAVID ADAMS, Times Latin America Correspondent. Published September 11, 2005
WASHINGTON - Hurricanes have a way of bringing out the best in people. Include U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., in that category.

When Fidel Castro offered to send 1,100 Cuban doctors and 26 tons of medical supplies to help out in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, South Florida's Cuban-American members of Congress rudely rejected it.

Martinez, who is also Cuban-American, was more graceful.

"If we need doctors and Cuba offers them and they provide a good service, then of course we should accept them and we're grateful for that offer," he told reporters.

What might seem like ordinary words of common sense to most people came like an astonishing breath of fresh air to longtime Cuba observers. Sadly, it's rare that anyone as highly placed as Martinez is willing to respond to Cuba in such a civilized manner...

Cuban defector's long wait for a team

LINK   Jack Curry, New York Times. Sunday, September 11, 2005.

Michel Abreu defected from Cuba 18 months ago with endless expectations. He figured he would gain residency status in Mexico, perform in a tryout camp for 30 major league teams and sign a lucrative contract to play first base in the United States.

But Abreu's path from defecting to agreeing in principle to a $425,000 signing bonus with the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday was more circuitous. Abreu bounced between agents and sacrificed two years of his career for that modest bonus. He also had to live in two countries as he chased a contract in the United States. Abreu, one of Cuba's best power hitters, could compete for a spot on Boston's 25-man roster in 2006...

Truth about Cuba’s economy lies in middle

LINK  Saturday 3rd September 2005 (18h19) by Paolo Spadoni=

Last February, Fidel Castro proudly stated that Cuba is recovering from the ashes of its post-Soviet economic recession and "rising again like the phoenix." Conversely, U.S. Interests Section Chief James Cason recently said that the island is facing severe economic problems and that Castro’s government "is on its last legs."= What is the truth about the current status of Cuba’s economy?

The economic situation in Cuba is not as bad as U.S. officials would have us believe. The country’s economy grew 3 percent in 2004, mainly thanks to a substantial increase in revenues from tourism and nickel exports, rose by approximately 6 percent in the first half of 2005, and is expected to end the year with a 5 percent growth.

Apart from an aging Fidel Castro, who just turned 79, there is little reason to assume that the present government in Havana is on the verge of collapse, especially after its recent and extremely beneficial agreements with Venezuela and China...

Flow of funds to Cuba holds steady

The amount of money sent to Cubans by relatives in the United States has not changed a year after new restrictions were implemented, according to pollsters.

Herald.com Posted on Thu, May. 26, 2005 BY NANCY SAN MARTIN.  WASHINGTON.

Cubans living in the United States still send an estimated $460 million a year to relatives on the island despite restrictions tightened by the Bush administration last summer, according to a poll released by a Coral Gables firm Wednesday.

But a portion of the Cubans on the island who receive the cash transfers believe they are getting less money, according to a separate and less scientific survey conducted inside the island by a Washington-based think tank.

The assumption: That Fidel Castro's government is taking a bigger bite of the remittances, one of the key sources of income in an island where the economy was devastated by the 1990s collapse of Soviet subsidies.

''Now that it is clear to them how much money is arriving, [the Cuban government] is now getting a higher and higher percentage of that money,'' said pollster Sergio Bendixen of Bendixen & Associates.

The results of the Bendixen survey, presented during a forum at the think tank Inter-American Dialogue, indicate that 69 percent of respondents continue to send the same amount of money as before President Bush tightened restrictions on remittances to Cuba last June as part of a larger effort to keep U.S. dollars out of the government coffers and hasten a transition to democracy....

Cuba Goes to Extremes

Story.   May 21, 2005. PLAYA MEGANO, Cuba (AP)

In a land where amateur sport is king, some people go to extremes.= Surfboards, skateboards, parachutes — let alone kitesurfing kits — you just can’t buy that kind of stuff in Cuba. Yet on a sunny, blustery weekend at Playa Megano, a beach a few miles east of Havana, there they are: surfing, kitesurfing and ripping the rails on skateboards.

At one moment, four kitesurfers — there are only about a dozen on the island — three windsurfers and a scattering of plain old surfers skitter across the waves and whitecaps. In a nearby parking lot, skaters and BMX bikers tackle a rare ramp.

It’s a sort of X Games, Cuban-style.

Che Alejandro Pando has enough rings on his ears, lips and nose to form the Olympic symbol. He makes a living as a self-employed tattoo artist.= But he shares one thing with his more traditional colleagues: passion.

“My knees hurt. I’ve broken a lot of bones. But I love what I do,” said Pando, 32, who said he took up skateboarding at age 10.

He started with metal skates nailed to a board. A few years later, a friend gave him a real skateboard that he suspects had been stolen...

Americans For Humanitarian Trade With Cuba

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Americans For Humanitarian Trade With Cuba (AHTC), a national organization that includes blue-ribbon leaders such as David Rockefeller, Frank Carlucci, Carla Hills and Paul Volcker, endorsed legislation introduced today by a powerful and unprecedented group of Republican Senators meant to head-off recent Bush Administration moves to cut back agricultural trade and travel to Cuba.

The Agricultural Export Facilitation Act was introduced today by U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) with other leaders including Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and U.S. Senator Max Baucus, Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, for a total of 20 cosponsors, half Republican, half Democratic.

The legislation would: grant a ’general license’ (similar to what journalists have now, which basically assures the freedom to travel without specific U.S. government authorization) for Americans traveling to Cuba to sell, market, or service agricultural products: facilitate visits from Cuban agricultural trade officials and inspectors; allow direct banking relations for agriculture trade-related transactions; and repeal Section 211, widely viewed as a law that protects certain Cuban exile interests while jeopardizing a far larger pool of American trademarks registered in Cuba.

A companion bill is expected to be introduced by Republican House leaders in the weeks ahead. Other bills in the House (and Senate) to lift all restrictions on Americans’ ability to travel to Cuba have enjoyed majority support.= Congress passed the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act (TSRA) of 2000 under the leadership of then U.S. Senator John Ashcroft (R-MO) to open Cuba’s market to American agricultural products. Since that time, U.S. agricultural sales to Cuba have reached almost $1 billion making Cuba the 22nd largest market for U.S. agricultural exports.

"This bill reflects the clear position of the Republican leadership in the Senate and the business community as a whole that current Cuba trade is important, should be protected and made as easy as possible," said Kirby Jones, an AHTC Board Member and President of Alamar Associates, a leading Cuba business consulting firm.= AHTC is a national association of American leaders committed to securing normal humanitarian trade and travel to Cuba for the benefit of the Cuban people and American interest at large. A complete list of AHTC Advisory Council members can be found at our website http://www.ahtc.org/, but includes: Dwayne Andreas, Chairman Emeritus, Archer Daniels Midland; Phil Baum, American Jewish Congress; Peter Coors, Chairman, Coors Brewing Company; Richard Feinberg, Former NSC Chief for Latin America; James Schlesinger, Former Secretary of Defense, William D. Rogers, Former Assistant Secretary of State; General John Sheehan, former Supreme Alllied Commander, Atlantic (NATO); John Whitehead, Former Assistant Secretary of State, and a broad consortium of U.S. ports, business and religious leaders and Cuban exiles.

CONTACT: Lissa Weinmann, +1-718-416-1653, for Americans For Humanitarian Trade With Cuba

The Bush Regime's Economic Blueprint for Cuba

by Tim Anderson; September 20, 2004
Hidden behind the rhetoric of 'democracy' in the 458 page report titled 'Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba', and underlying the Bush Regime's plan for a 'transition', are all the major features of a US economic blueprint for Cuba. These features can be read in conjunction with packages administered by the US controlled World Bank, in a wide range of indebted developing countries...

The Cuban Connection

Cuban-American Money in U.S. Elections, 1979-2000
This study traces 22 years of federal campaign contributions flowing from the Cuban-American community, and examines how this relates to legislation. In many ways the patterns in Cuban-American political giving revealed in this report confirm common perceptions of the community's ideological leanings. However, the results also show some disparity between perception and reality...

Roots of the Cuban-American Political Movement

MIAMI: It's Not Just for Republicans Anymore!

Signals a "New Day" for Cuban-Americans and Democrats.
Washington, DC - The New Democrat Network (NDN) announced today that prominent Cuban-American leader Joe Garcia is leaving his post as Executive Director of the Cuban American National Foundation and will join NDN as a Senior Advisor and director of NDN's efforts in South Florida...

Cuba's Lonely Dissident

Oswaldo Paya's struggle for democracy in Cuba is so lonely that he can't even count on the support of Florida's Cuban American community.
“I’m not a Democrat or a Republican. I’m a Cuban and what I want is for Cubans to have their own parties and their own free elections.”...