Photos are of my daughter Melanie, granddaughter Natasha, and great-grandson De’Andre on Thanksgiving Day and with visiting Va.
Beach friends Javier and family.
My Thanksgiving weekend was
disrupted somewhat by persistent furnace problems, as well as computer issues, all
of which I trust have now been fixed.
Very sweetly, the wife of a Guatemalan medical interpretation patient I had on Wed., the day before Thanksgiving, invited me to dinner at her house, an invitation I had to decline, but appreciated the gesture.
Vaclav Havel Tribute, Nov. 19, 2015, Washington, DC
While Vaclav Havel may seem far afield from my concerns as an Amnesty International volunteer in charge of the Caribbean and an advocate for human rights in Cuba, Havel and the Czech Republic have always understood and strongly supported Cuban dissidents in their struggle against tyranny. As a Czech citizen once commented to me at a Czech Embassy event on behalf of Cuba, “We know in our bones what Cubans are going through.” Therefore, I was honored to be invited to a celebration at the Library of Congress of the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution and Havel’s legacy. Among the speakers were former Sec. of State Madeleine Albright, who was born in Czechoslovakia, and Sen. John McCain, who shared Havel’s experience as a political prisoner. Havel’s white-haired brother also spoke, saying, “Totalitarian regimes live a lie.” In a short video clip of Havel’s life, he’s shown saying, “Evil triumphs because good people do nothing.” Havel also often used satire against the USSR. McCain warned of new threats from the Putin regime, which he sees as trying to revive the Soviet Empire. Albright, now age 77, one year older than I am, looked somewhat elderly, but was sharp and eloquent in her remarks. I had brought along 3 (heavy) copies of my Cuba book to the event, hoping to have a chance to give them to Albright, McCain, and the Czech ambassador, but they were mobbed by reporters on their way out, so I couldn’t get close enough. I’ve sent copies to several figures I thought might be interested, but only one has even acknowledged receipt. I suppose prominent individuals get many unsolicited items, mostly relegating them to the trash, which is why I had hoped to make a brief personal spiel while handing over a copy of my book. I am trying to create awareness of my new book, but perhaps need to do something dramatic to get it on social media—or at least figure out Twitter, which has so far eluded me.
Fooling the Sun, Not
Fooling the Rain: Housing and Shelter in Haiti 5 Years After the Earthquake was an all-day conference I attended at George
Washington University in Washington, DC, hosted by the Mennonite Central
Committee and Church World Service. Five years after the devastating Haiti
earthquake, housing is still lacking for many of those displaced. The program
did a good job of identifying problems, but was short on remedies. Most
speakers were Haitian and spoke in creole. Based on my limited experience in
Haiti 20 or more years ago, I expected them to speak in French, as back then,
educated people spoke French, which I do understand somewhat. However, creole
is pretty much beyond me and most spoke in creole, including a young Haitian
man studying in Montreal. We had simultaneous interpretation, fortunately, and
the interpreter turned out to be my own former Haiti assistant at Amnesty from
a few years back, Hyppolite Pierre, a young man who also was an interpreter of
French and creole for one of the agencies I still work for. However, he told me
that he was there working on his own, which was to his advantage, as agencies
typically take half our hourly pay for arranging an interpretation and for
having a contract with the payer. Simultaneous
interpretation takes a tremendous amount of concentration and, although I have
done it on occasion, I avoid it, even though it pays more than consecutive
interpretation. Besides being difficult, I find simultaneously interpreting for
a large group, such as we had, and using electronic equipment, intimidating. I
don’t mind doing it with a group of parents sitting together around a table
during a school meeting, but prefer just speaking to them directly, no
equipment. But Hyppolite was a real
trooper, although once when a creole speaker was going too fast, in a rapid
staccato-like cadence, he asked him to slow down. Although
I am certainly not able to judge his reliability in creole, I was
impressed that he never flagged at all during that long day. Usually
simultaneous interpreters take turns during an all-day session, but he never
stopped.
This conference reawakened my nostalgia for Haiti. If I spoke
creole and weren’t already so invested in Honduras and also Cuba, I’d be
tempted to try to do something for Haiti, such a colorful country with such
quirky, but engaging people. However, my personal time, energy, and money are
necessarily limited.
As
for the substance of the meeting, Haiti’s history was reviewed, including that
Simon Bolivar once sought asylum in Haiti. There was a synopsis of the Duvalier
days, 1990 election of Aristide, and situation of the country after his ouster,
all of which I witnessed in Haiti at the time. (During my 1990 visit, I was an
election observer and stayed the Victorian-style Hotel Oloffson immortalized by
Graham Greene.) Haiti has a
winner-take-all political system; an election winner installs his friends, as
the speakers pointed out.
Haiti
was moving forward before the earthquake, according to several speakers; in
2005, the army was disbanded (does Haiti really even need an army?). Slides were shown of the current situation:
dirt roads leading to hillside tent camps with women walking along carrying
bundles on their heads, rubble strewn along the way from the wreckage of
destroyed dwellings, and evidence of deforestation. Housing is more than a
matter of building codes and architecture, but of health and human rights as
well. Links were made between housing and children’s, women’s, and LGBT rights.
Housing must include education and cultural awareness; people need to be
involved in creating their new habitats. Chaos and informality have dominated
the housing sector, especially after the earthquake. Criminals and robbers
still hide out in the camps. People need health services, education and jobs,
not just housing; unless they have work, new homeowners cannot pay property
taxes. An IDB representative in the audience said displaced people have been
offered either housing or financial compensation.
A
few other highlights from the day-long event:
Only
a small proportion of promised aid has actually arrived.
Aid
has steadily diminished.
People
in transitional housing have not been able to move into permanent housing.
Haiti’s
legal system is deficient; there is a lack of coordination between government
agencies and unregulated NGOs; who is actually in charge? (Corruption, waste,
lack of transparency.)
2.5 million people
are still living in tents 5 years later; 50% of the population lives on less
than $1 per day.
Families
are being forcibly evicted from tent camps.
Haitian homes may be brightly painted, but many lack water, sanitation, and electricity and are plagued by termites.
Housing
for the elderly and those with disabilities is particularly lacking, as well as
for families with more than 5 children.
When
new housing actually becomes available, it is better than what went before.
Legal
issues abound, including competing claims and lack of a good land registry
system.
In summary, many
problems were identified but few remedies were offered.
The
local Hispanic press reacted swiftly to
Obama’s temporary immigration order. The Washington Hispanic’s headline said, “Some laugh, others cry.”
Parents of “dreamers” had hoped to be included, but were not. El Tiempo Latino featured a dramatic
front-page story of a Honduran father actually on the deportation plane when he
was abruptly taken off and reunited with his wife and kids in time for
Thanksgiving, giving them a lot to be thankful for. But he reportedly had to
post an immediate bond with Homeland Security of $4,500—not sure why, but
friends and in-laws were able to come up with the money.
Obviously, quite apart from my many connections with undocumented immigrants, I feel personally invested in the immigration fight. My Dad was born in Canada, a country whose immigrants to the US don’t arouse particular hostility. My late foster son Alex was an unaccompanied minor from Cuba. And my son Jonathan was adopted from Colombia. I made sure that Alex and Jon became US citizens and, of course, my Dad did too. Maybe Obama can trade approval of Keystone for approval by Republicans of a more permanent immigration fix. It would be wise for Republicans to find a face-saving way out of their implacable opposition to immigration reform. The oil is going to be squeezed out of Alberta (my Dad’s original home) anyway, but the question is: will it be sent by ship or pipeline? Either method is risky and, in both cases, fossil fuel is going to be producing energy, like it or not. So maybe some political horse-trading is in order on that issue. It would be great if we could find a viable alternative to oil. I’ve now signed up for a program whereby all my electricity will come from wind, but wind is not going to replace oil most places any time soon.
You’ve
already heard that Miss Honduras and her
sister were murdered by her sister’s boyfriend, a rare Honduran murder that
actually reaches US news.
Now US travelers to Havana can fly directly from NYC, as well as from Miami. The travel ban exists only in theory.
Moreover, in recent weeks the New
York Times has published several editorials in support of closer US-Cuba
ties, all of which have been reproduced verbatim by Cuba’s government-run press
— something never seen before.
A
Cuban doctor working in West Africa has come down with Ebola and is being sent
to Geneva for treatment, according to Michael Weissenstein on http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8efa135a706943ec917e225df7f3a871/cuba-says-doctor-catches-ebola-sierra-leone. Someone
commenting on the story, asks why isn’t he being sent to Havana if Cuban health
care is so superior?
While Cuba issues are not of
paramount importance to most Americans, ever since Ernesto Londoño (apparently originally
from Colombia) came on board only on
Labor Day as a NY Times editorial writer, he has
been ceaselessly criticizing US Cuba policies. This must have been something he
had been itching to do and was not allowed to do on his previous job at the Washington Post, which has taken a much
more critical stance toward the Castro regime. He never evaluates the Cuban
regime’s own policies and is apparently trying to counter criticisms of the
regime coming from rival papers, both the Wall
St. Journal and the Washington Post.
The latest, 6th in the
series by my count, is: A Cuban Brain Drain, Courtesy of the U.S., NY Times editorial,
11-17-2014. It berates the U.S. for giving immediate asylum to defecting
doctors and other medical personnel working abroad. There is no apparent
questioning as to why such personnel might want to defect from their homeland,
especially when they probably don’t know English and most will be unable to
work in their field in the US, in part because the Cuban government will not
release their educational transcripts. A few do manage to take courses and
exams in the US and end up as doctors again, though they more commonly work as
nurses or physicians assistants after taking courses here. This recent Times article seems to acknowledge, for
the first time, that most payment for the doctors’ services abroad goes to the
Cuban government. If the Ebola doctors themselves are receiving a stipend of
$240 a day from WHO, that’s as much as they might earn at home in several
months or a whole year, but I sincerely doubt they get all that. If all actual payment
for their services went directly to them, the government could always tax it
fairly heavily, because the Cuban government has given them an excellent
medical education—which I don’t dispute. The editorial repeats the Cuban
government’s assertion that everyone sent to the Ebola fight is going
voluntarily. Yes, perhaps in part because of the chance to defect, a problem
that has plagued Cuba’s medical diplomacy for decades. Usually passports are
seized by the mission’s director “for safekeeping.”
Although perhaps no unilateral
action on the embargo by the US is warranted, sometimes unilateral actions do have
positive consequences. Remember Nixon to China? So Obama to Cuba might open up
that country, or even more so, if a Republican president did it.
In Cuba, now that the Communist Party has been
largely discredited in the eyes of the population, new entities need to be developed to replace
Fidel Castro and the party. Civil society must be allowed to grow. Also, I
eventually hope to live to see the day when the Peace Corps works to help restore much of what is lacking now in
Cuba, if luck is with me, myself among its volunteers there. I can see a future
role for IT specialists, English teachers, and agricultural advisors, among
other Peace Corps volunteers in Cuba.
An Amnesty representative working on Venezuelan
issues has had his London flat
broken into and his laptops stolen while other items were left intact. Video
footage shows 3 guys entering the building, one of whom left his cellphone
behind with conversations recorded in Spanish. This doesn’t look like an
ordinary burglary. The victim has been increasingly outspoken about the human
rights abuses of the Venezuelan government. Photos of him with his children,
snapped when they were walking outside have also surfaced, which is pretty scary.
So Pope Francis is planning a US visit next Sept., perhaps including
Washington, DC. I was so not eager to meet Benedict when he was here, but would
like to actually meet Francis in person, not just his cardboard cut-out, though
I wouldn’t particularly want to be part of a huge crowd just seeing him from
afar.
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