Hoping now that photo mentioned before has been successfully uploaded.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
L-R, Nephew Darrell, son Jonathan, daughter Stephanie, and me in Honolulu, July 2010
Hoping now that photo mentioned before has been successfully uploaded.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
East.Mkt. Sales, 24 Amazon Reviews, Mayor At B'day Bash, Hond. bk. in CA Alliance, Freed Cubans, Sudan, Immigrat. Ref. Allies, Cell Phones, Chavez
Ah, woe is me! Sat out in the heat and humidity at the Eastern Market for hours for the first time since my return from Hawaii—and it’s not like I have many hours to spare—and never sold a single book! Maybe I looked too wilted and sweaty or maybe everyone passing by was wilting too—a few stopped to chat and picked up some Peace Corps brochures, but, as for book sales, nada. That’s the first time that’s happened since I’ve tried sitting out there. Usually, at least one book is sold and then I feel vindicated. Direct selling is not my forte and I would not even try it unless absolutely necessary. But I now have a large inventory of books purchased in anticipation of several promised shared profit venues that proved overly optimistic. Also, had hoped my sales would help fund my Honduras health and education projects. So, at the moment, I’m still holding a number of large boxes of books at my home altogether containing at least 100 books. Over at Eastern Market, several people decades younger than me responded to my Peace Corps spiel with a laugh, “I’d thought about joining Peace Corps once upon a time, but now I’m too old.” Of course, if they consider themselves too old, they probably are. But they could still read my book and find out what they are missing! And at least a few copies are sold every week on Amazon.com, but please remind me never make a huge bulk order again.
Also, this weekend, when the temperature in DC is peaking at 100+ degrees, putting me in mind of southern Honduras, I didn’t even go out to the market to sell books. This non-stop east-coast heat wave has my short-term housemate Nancy from Kenya yearning to get back to moderate Nairobi, where she will return in early August. My kids’ suggestion that I move to Hawaii sounds more inviting than ever—no snow, no record heat, gentle ocean breezes, and light showers before dawn freshening the flowering trees, though there are occasional hurricanes and, at least on the Big Island, volcanic activity. Was unable to uplaod a photo of my family in Hawaii, but it does appear on my Facebook page.
On my book’s plus side, an e-mail message came in from a retired librarian in another state giving it somewhat exaggerated, but welcome, praise: I just finished your book…It is one of the best books I have ever read. Your story inspires me.
I also now have 24 reviews on Amazon, 22 5-star, 2 4-star. I wonder if potential readers actually look at the reviews? Also, how does Amazon organize the reviews’ listing? Not alphabetically or chronologically.
Neglected to mention that the U of Hawaii folks had given me a jar of passion fruit jam after my talk there, but I wasn’t allowed to bring it through airport security because it was considered a “jell.” I could have checked that bag, but that would have meant going through security again, making me late for my flight and cost $25 for a checked bag (Continental Airlines).
Friday evening, went to a Spanish-language poetry reading with Jose Manuel, who had come to live at my house in 1996. JM had been a librarian in Cuba who’d decided in 1995 to leave by raft—his boat included family members of Mario Chanes, the world’s longest serving political prisoner. They were intercepted by the US Coast Guard, which took them all to G’tmo, where they stayed for over a year until Pres. Clinton relented and let them come to the US. Jose, in addition to many other talents, is an accomplished poet and had five poems included in a recently published anthology, debuting that evening. Between musical interludes, each featured poet read one poem aloud to the gathered audience. To my surprise, a former lover also appeared there, someone I hadn’t seen since before I left for Peace Corps. He was wearing a white linen suit and was accompanied by a lady friend wearing stockings and nail polish (not my style). He looked much older than when I last saw him (as, indeed, is true also of me). Actually, he’s the very same guy who had predicted that I’d “be home by Christmas at the latest” from Peace Corps, part of my impetus to stay on, just to prove him wrong. I went up and shook his hand, much to his surprise, as he hadn’t noticed me,
Last night, at a friend’s birthday party, who should come by to have a bite and use the facilities but DC Mayor Adrian Fenty on a neighborhood campaign swing. He is being strongly challenged in the Sept. Democratic primary by City Council Chair Vincent Gray. I told Fenty how much I’d appreciated his office’s resolution of my longstanding tax problem with DC government, stemming from the time of my Peace Corps service. A young man in Fenty’s entourage pressed me to agree to put a Fenty sign in my front yard.
Lest this blog veer completely away from its main theme of Honduras, I am pleased to report that Honduras is back in the Central America regional political and economic fold after being expelled when Zelaya was removed, with only Nicaragua voting in contra. But Honduras has not yet been readmitted to the OAS.
Last time on this blog, I mentioned the pending release of 52 Cuban political prisoners, all considered by Amnesty International to be prisoners of conscience, that is, individuals incarcerated only for their peaceful opinions or associations. By the way, my report on the Cuban prisoner release last time had a portion missing, but you got the idea—and probably have read more ample accounts by now in the mainstream press.
Among the newly released prisoners is Normando Hernandez, a journalist whose mother has been a member of the Women in White and now lives in Miami. Normando had been hospitalized frequently during his incarceration, which originally carried a 25-year sentence. I phoned his mother to congratulate her, but had to leave my greetings on her answering machine as no one picked up. Probably she is in Madrid, welcoming her son to freedom after seven grueling years in prison. His wife and daughter were expected to be allowed to join him there. (See more items below from AFP, Agence France-Presse tying the prisoner release with the possible lifting of the US embargo against Cuba.)
Also, below, see about one of Hugo Chavez’s more bizarre performances (Washington Post).
Unfortunately, no surprise to get the following Amnesty International news about Sudan:
Sudan: Human rights defenders at risk in Sudan
The human rights situation in Sudan is critical. Armed clashes continue to escalate in southern Sudan, and the conflict in Darfur has intensified during 2010. In Sudan, human rights defenders play a crucial role, calling for human rights to be upheld and for those responsible for human rights violations to be held accountable. The National Security Act makes this role increasingly difficult. Human rights defenders in exile have the right to return home and freely practice their activities. Those who remain in Sudan need protection now.
Was heartened to read in the NYTimes that some evangelical preachers have united to support comprehensive immigration reform (“Obama Wins Unlikely Allies in Immigration”). About 15% of US-based Hispanics are evangelicals, comprising a growing segment within evangelical churches. Spokesmen for mainstream religions, Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish, have already come out in favor of immigration reform. However, any reform is unlikely to occur in this election year.
Heard an expert say in a radio interview that more people in the world have access to a cell phone than to a flush toilet. I do believe it. I’ve seen Honduran peasants with no hope of ever having a house with plumbing or electricity holding tightly onto their cell phone, providing their only communication link with family, friends, and beyond. Cell phones have a resulted in a worldwide communications revolution and some also have camera and mini-computer functions—all in a tiny portable apparatus.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Re Cuba prisoner release, from AFP, July 21, 2010
Cuba's release of all its political prisoners would improve its relations with Europe and United States, and could lead to the lifting of a US embargo, the Spanish foreign minister said on Wednesday.
Miguel Angel Moratinos welcomed as "good news" Cuban parliament chief Ricardo Alarcon's announcement to AFP on Tuesday that his "government's wish is to free all the people" not accused of murder.
The Spanish foreign minister said before parliament that such releases would yield "political consequences" for relations with the European Union and the United States, in particular a possible "lifting of the embargo" that Washington has maintained against Cuba since 1962.
In a Spain-brokered deal struck between the Catholic Church and Havana, Cuba agreed this month to free 52 of 75 detainees who had been sentenced in 2003 to prison terms of up to 28 years.
Eleven freed prisoners have already emigrated to Spain with their families. A twelfth prisoner arrived on Wednesday and another eight were expected to arrive in Madrid later on Wednesday as part of Cuba's biggest release of political prisoners in over a decade.
According to Cuban dissidents, 115 political prisoners remain in Cuba in addition to the 52 released.
In light of the releases, Moratinos urged the European Union to change its "joint position" linking dialogue with Cuba to progress on human rights. He told Spanish lawmakers that there was nothing "coincidental" in the releases and that they were the fruit of a six-year dialogue with the Cuban government.
Moratinos said he wanted to replace the EU's "joint position" on Cuba with a "cooperation accord" despite the reluctance of some countries, including Germany and France.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last five dissidents leave Cuba
July 23, 2010
AFP
[Accessed 24 July 2010 at http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/last-five-dissidents-leave-cuba-20100723-10o1y.html]
The last five of a group of recently freed Cuban dissidents left for Madrid on Thursday, the Spanish Embassy said.Jorge Luis Gonzalez, 39, Blas Giraldo Reyes, 54, Jose Ubaldo Izquierdo, 44, Jesus Mustafa, 66, and 47-year-old Antonio Diaz boarded a commercial flight that will arrive in the Spanish capital on Friday, an embassy spokesman said. Izquierdo, however, may take another flight out of Madrid for Chile, after Santiago on Monday said it would welcome him and his family.
The five dissidents completed the list of 20 who have accepted residency in Spain after Spain helped broker a deal reached on July 7 between the Cuban government and the Roman Catholic Church to gradually free 52 detainees.
The remaining prisoners will remain in Cuba or leave for the United States. The US Interest Section in Havana on Tuesday offered refugee status to all freed dissidents and their families who wish to travel to the United States and began interviewing prospective immigrants.
The deal, the largest release of Cuban prisoners since 1998 when 300 dissidents were spared jail time following a visit by then pope John Paul II, came after dissident hunger striker Guillermo Farinas nearly starved to death.
Havana wants to avoid a repeat of the death in detention of political prisoner Orlando Zapata on February 23, as it seeks closer international ties to improve its slumping economy. And Cuba's parliamentary chief Ricardo Alarcon has said the country was ready to release more detainees.
Elizardo Sanchez, the president of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights, a non-governmental organisation that is tolerated by the government, said a further 50 or 60 political prisoners could be freed.
Cuban dissidents said there were approximately 170 political prisoners in Cuban jails before the announced release.
--------------------------------------------------
Behind exhumation of Simón Bolívar is Hugo Chávez’s warped obsession
By Thor Halvorssen, Washington Post
Sunday, July 25, 2010
[Excerpt]
Shortly after midnight on July 16, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez reached back in time. He presided at the exhumation of the remains of Simón Bolívar -- Latin America's greatest independence hero, who helped liberate the region from Spain in the 19th century, and the object of Chávez's personal and political obsession.
The skeleton was pulled apart. Pieces were removed, such as teeth and bone fragments, for "testing." The rest was put in a new coffin with the Chávez government's seal. Chávez, who also tweeted the proceedings, gave a rambling speech in which he asked Christ to repeat his Lazarus miracle and raise the dead once more. He also apparently conversed with Bolívar's bones.
"I had some doubts," Chávez told his nation, paraphrasing the poet Pablo Neruda, "but after seeing his remains, my heart said, 'Yes, it is me.' Father, is that you, or who are you? The answer: 'It is me, but I awaken every hundred years when the people awaken.' "
By presidential decree, every television station in Venezuela showed images of Bolívar in historic paintings, then images of the skeleton, and then images of Chávez, with the national anthem blaring. The message of this macabre parody was unmistakable: Chávez is not a follower of Bolívar -- Chávez is Bolívar, reincarnated. And anyone who opposes or criticizes him is a traitor not just to Chávez but to history.
Also, this weekend, when the temperature in DC is peaking at 100+ degrees, putting me in mind of southern Honduras, I didn’t even go out to the market to sell books. This non-stop east-coast heat wave has my short-term housemate Nancy from Kenya yearning to get back to moderate Nairobi, where she will return in early August. My kids’ suggestion that I move to Hawaii sounds more inviting than ever—no snow, no record heat, gentle ocean breezes, and light showers before dawn freshening the flowering trees, though there are occasional hurricanes and, at least on the Big Island, volcanic activity. Was unable to uplaod a photo of my family in Hawaii, but it does appear on my Facebook page.
On my book’s plus side, an e-mail message came in from a retired librarian in another state giving it somewhat exaggerated, but welcome, praise: I just finished your book…It is one of the best books I have ever read. Your story inspires me.
I also now have 24 reviews on Amazon, 22 5-star, 2 4-star. I wonder if potential readers actually look at the reviews? Also, how does Amazon organize the reviews’ listing? Not alphabetically or chronologically.
Neglected to mention that the U of Hawaii folks had given me a jar of passion fruit jam after my talk there, but I wasn’t allowed to bring it through airport security because it was considered a “jell.” I could have checked that bag, but that would have meant going through security again, making me late for my flight and cost $25 for a checked bag (Continental Airlines).
Friday evening, went to a Spanish-language poetry reading with Jose Manuel, who had come to live at my house in 1996. JM had been a librarian in Cuba who’d decided in 1995 to leave by raft—his boat included family members of Mario Chanes, the world’s longest serving political prisoner. They were intercepted by the US Coast Guard, which took them all to G’tmo, where they stayed for over a year until Pres. Clinton relented and let them come to the US. Jose, in addition to many other talents, is an accomplished poet and had five poems included in a recently published anthology, debuting that evening. Between musical interludes, each featured poet read one poem aloud to the gathered audience. To my surprise, a former lover also appeared there, someone I hadn’t seen since before I left for Peace Corps. He was wearing a white linen suit and was accompanied by a lady friend wearing stockings and nail polish (not my style). He looked much older than when I last saw him (as, indeed, is true also of me). Actually, he’s the very same guy who had predicted that I’d “be home by Christmas at the latest” from Peace Corps, part of my impetus to stay on, just to prove him wrong. I went up and shook his hand, much to his surprise, as he hadn’t noticed me,
Last night, at a friend’s birthday party, who should come by to have a bite and use the facilities but DC Mayor Adrian Fenty on a neighborhood campaign swing. He is being strongly challenged in the Sept. Democratic primary by City Council Chair Vincent Gray. I told Fenty how much I’d appreciated his office’s resolution of my longstanding tax problem with DC government, stemming from the time of my Peace Corps service. A young man in Fenty’s entourage pressed me to agree to put a Fenty sign in my front yard.
Lest this blog veer completely away from its main theme of Honduras, I am pleased to report that Honduras is back in the Central America regional political and economic fold after being expelled when Zelaya was removed, with only Nicaragua voting in contra. But Honduras has not yet been readmitted to the OAS.
Last time on this blog, I mentioned the pending release of 52 Cuban political prisoners, all considered by Amnesty International to be prisoners of conscience, that is, individuals incarcerated only for their peaceful opinions or associations. By the way, my report on the Cuban prisoner release last time had a portion missing, but you got the idea—and probably have read more ample accounts by now in the mainstream press.
Among the newly released prisoners is Normando Hernandez, a journalist whose mother has been a member of the Women in White and now lives in Miami. Normando had been hospitalized frequently during his incarceration, which originally carried a 25-year sentence. I phoned his mother to congratulate her, but had to leave my greetings on her answering machine as no one picked up. Probably she is in Madrid, welcoming her son to freedom after seven grueling years in prison. His wife and daughter were expected to be allowed to join him there. (See more items below from AFP, Agence France-Presse tying the prisoner release with the possible lifting of the US embargo against Cuba.)
Also, below, see about one of Hugo Chavez’s more bizarre performances (Washington Post).
Unfortunately, no surprise to get the following Amnesty International news about Sudan:
Sudan: Human rights defenders at risk in Sudan
The human rights situation in Sudan is critical. Armed clashes continue to escalate in southern Sudan, and the conflict in Darfur has intensified during 2010. In Sudan, human rights defenders play a crucial role, calling for human rights to be upheld and for those responsible for human rights violations to be held accountable. The National Security Act makes this role increasingly difficult. Human rights defenders in exile have the right to return home and freely practice their activities. Those who remain in Sudan need protection now.
Was heartened to read in the NYTimes that some evangelical preachers have united to support comprehensive immigration reform (“Obama Wins Unlikely Allies in Immigration”). About 15% of US-based Hispanics are evangelicals, comprising a growing segment within evangelical churches. Spokesmen for mainstream religions, Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish, have already come out in favor of immigration reform. However, any reform is unlikely to occur in this election year.
Heard an expert say in a radio interview that more people in the world have access to a cell phone than to a flush toilet. I do believe it. I’ve seen Honduran peasants with no hope of ever having a house with plumbing or electricity holding tightly onto their cell phone, providing their only communication link with family, friends, and beyond. Cell phones have a resulted in a worldwide communications revolution and some also have camera and mini-computer functions—all in a tiny portable apparatus.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Re Cuba prisoner release, from AFP, July 21, 2010
Cuba's release of all its political prisoners would improve its relations with Europe and United States, and could lead to the lifting of a US embargo, the Spanish foreign minister said on Wednesday.
Miguel Angel Moratinos welcomed as "good news" Cuban parliament chief Ricardo Alarcon's announcement to AFP on Tuesday that his "government's wish is to free all the people" not accused of murder.
The Spanish foreign minister said before parliament that such releases would yield "political consequences" for relations with the European Union and the United States, in particular a possible "lifting of the embargo" that Washington has maintained against Cuba since 1962.
In a Spain-brokered deal struck between the Catholic Church and Havana, Cuba agreed this month to free 52 of 75 detainees who had been sentenced in 2003 to prison terms of up to 28 years.
Eleven freed prisoners have already emigrated to Spain with their families. A twelfth prisoner arrived on Wednesday and another eight were expected to arrive in Madrid later on Wednesday as part of Cuba's biggest release of political prisoners in over a decade.
According to Cuban dissidents, 115 political prisoners remain in Cuba in addition to the 52 released.
In light of the releases, Moratinos urged the European Union to change its "joint position" linking dialogue with Cuba to progress on human rights. He told Spanish lawmakers that there was nothing "coincidental" in the releases and that they were the fruit of a six-year dialogue with the Cuban government.
Moratinos said he wanted to replace the EU's "joint position" on Cuba with a "cooperation accord" despite the reluctance of some countries, including Germany and France.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last five dissidents leave Cuba
July 23, 2010
AFP
[Accessed 24 July 2010 at http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/last-five-dissidents-leave-cuba-20100723-10o1y.html]
The last five of a group of recently freed Cuban dissidents left for Madrid on Thursday, the Spanish Embassy said.Jorge Luis Gonzalez, 39, Blas Giraldo Reyes, 54, Jose Ubaldo Izquierdo, 44, Jesus Mustafa, 66, and 47-year-old Antonio Diaz boarded a commercial flight that will arrive in the Spanish capital on Friday, an embassy spokesman said. Izquierdo, however, may take another flight out of Madrid for Chile, after Santiago on Monday said it would welcome him and his family.
The five dissidents completed the list of 20 who have accepted residency in Spain after Spain helped broker a deal reached on July 7 between the Cuban government and the Roman Catholic Church to gradually free 52 detainees.
The remaining prisoners will remain in Cuba or leave for the United States. The US Interest Section in Havana on Tuesday offered refugee status to all freed dissidents and their families who wish to travel to the United States and began interviewing prospective immigrants.
The deal, the largest release of Cuban prisoners since 1998 when 300 dissidents were spared jail time following a visit by then pope John Paul II, came after dissident hunger striker Guillermo Farinas nearly starved to death.
Havana wants to avoid a repeat of the death in detention of political prisoner Orlando Zapata on February 23, as it seeks closer international ties to improve its slumping economy. And Cuba's parliamentary chief Ricardo Alarcon has said the country was ready to release more detainees.
Elizardo Sanchez, the president of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights, a non-governmental organisation that is tolerated by the government, said a further 50 or 60 political prisoners could be freed.
Cuban dissidents said there were approximately 170 political prisoners in Cuban jails before the announced release.
--------------------------------------------------
Behind exhumation of Simón Bolívar is Hugo Chávez’s warped obsession
By Thor Halvorssen, Washington Post
Sunday, July 25, 2010
[Excerpt]
Shortly after midnight on July 16, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez reached back in time. He presided at the exhumation of the remains of Simón Bolívar -- Latin America's greatest independence hero, who helped liberate the region from Spain in the 19th century, and the object of Chávez's personal and political obsession.
The skeleton was pulled apart. Pieces were removed, such as teeth and bone fragments, for "testing." The rest was put in a new coffin with the Chávez government's seal. Chávez, who also tweeted the proceedings, gave a rambling speech in which he asked Christ to repeat his Lazarus miracle and raise the dead once more. He also apparently conversed with Bolívar's bones.
"I had some doubts," Chávez told his nation, paraphrasing the poet Pablo Neruda, "but after seeing his remains, my heart said, 'Yes, it is me.' Father, is that you, or who are you? The answer: 'It is me, but I awaken every hundred years when the people awaken.' "
By presidential decree, every television station in Venezuela showed images of Bolívar in historic paintings, then images of the skeleton, and then images of Chávez, with the national anthem blaring. The message of this macabre parody was unmistakable: Chávez is not a follower of Bolívar -- Chávez is Bolívar, reincarnated. And anyone who opposes or criticizes him is a traitor not just to Chávez but to history.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Honolulu, The Compassionate Friends, Burma, Honduras, Cuban Prisoner Releases & Economy
Hello, folks, I’m back from balmy, lush, flowery Honolulu with beaches and friendly people at every turn to hot steamy, Washington, DC, after visiting my kids, Stephanie and Jonathan there. They have suggested I move there, which is tempting, but I do have a job and house in DC and my older daughter, granddaughter, and great-grandson are all on the east coast. Real estate in Honolulu is more than pricey—I went to an open house with Steph to an ordinary one-story 3-bedroom bungalow with wall-to-wall carpeting on a small lot, asking price $600,000! (And remember, houses in Hawaii do not need insulation, heating, or A/C.) I’d have to pay capital gains on the sale of my house here in DC, hardly leaving enough for even a condo purchase in Hawaii. In Hawaii, there is little demand for Spanish interpreters and travel from there to Honduras would be long and costly. It’s a rugged trip even from here, at least 12 hours in the air and in airports, with a 6-hour time change at the other end.
In Honolulu, I spoke at the U of Hawaii’s Life Long Learning Center to an 50+ group, one of whose members expressed a possible in interest in future Peace Corps service. I also met with 16 returned PC volunteers, many who had served in Asia (perhaps because that region is closer to Hawaii?). I had brought along a few copies of my book, all of which proved in demand. One recipient was a man walking out on the street who commented on my Honduras-Peace Corps T-shirt, saying he had applied to the PC. He was an engineer in his 50s, originally from Viet Nam, who hoped to be posted to Asia, whereupon my son pulled out a copy of my book that he was carrying. The man asked to buy it and went away happy. (Actually, he offered to pay me $50 for the book, way too much!)
At The Compassionate Friends (TCF) conference held July 4th weekend in neighboring Virginia just before I left, I appeared on a panel on “writing and publishing your book.” As you will recall, TCF is an organization for people whose children have died. After the Sat. evening banquet, there was a very moving ceremony, performed while a professional sang “Blowing in the Wind” and other songs. After banquet room lights were turned off, one by one, participants, some 1400 in all, from all over the US, lit each other’s candles until hundreds of candles were glowing in the darkness, giving us a feeling of solidarity and shared loss.
Although the connection with Honduras is only that Burma occupies the same planet, there’s good news about my local AI group’s release of our Burmese prisoner, including this message:
Dear Barbara,
Much thanks to Group 211 for persevering for so many years on behalf
of U Win Htein. He was the longest held of the Myanmar POC's in AI's
IAR portfolio. As you know, this latest 14-year stint (1996 to last
week) followed a previous imprisonment from 1989 to 1995. He has only
been free for one out of the last twenty-one years.
In news from Honduras, several Garifuna musicians were detained by police on the north coast, their documents and instruments confiscated after they were told not to leave the area. Garifunas, as my book readers will recall, are Afro-Hondurans descended from escaped slaves who speak their own language in addition to Spanish and have distinct music, dress, and traditional dishes. A number now live in NY City. I’ve asked Amnesty International’s Honduras specialist to look into this report.
Most of you are already aware of the large political prisoner release brokered by the Cuban Catholic Church and Spain. Considerable credit belongs to hunger striker Farinas and to the Women in White, and, by extension, the Norwegian documentary of the same name in which I briefly appear. If anyone would like a copy of that DVD, please contact me at my Yahoo address, giving your name and mailing address. See also report below on possible job cuts in Cuba.
Euronews, July 9, 2010
Cuba has taken steps towards freeing 52 political prisoners with the Island’s Catholic church saying five would be released into exile imminently. The planned liberation Doctors say his condition remains serious, although he appeared in good spirits in his hospital bed. Farinas has threatened to restart his protest if Cuban’s hardline leadership fails to fulfil its pledge. The deal with the Catholic church should see the freedom of 52 remaining prisoners out of 75 jailed in a crackdown on dissent in 2003. It’s hoped the agreement may lead to better relations with the West with both Washington and Spain’s Foreign minister, who helped broker the deal, praising Havana’s decision.
While news media around the world have given wide coverage to the prisoner releases, Cuba's government-controlled newspapers, radio and TV reported nothing on the release and departure of the first seven.
Jobless in Cuba? Communism faces the unthinkable
By ANNE-MARIE GARCIA, Associated Press Writer July 18, 2010
HAVANA – At a state project to refurbish a decaying building in Old Havana, one worker paints a wall white while two others watch. A fourth sleeps in a wheelbarrow positioned in a sliver of shade nearby and two more smoke and chat on the curb. President Raul Castro has startled the nation lately by saying about one in five Cuban workers may be redundant. At the work site on Obispo street, those numbers run in reverse.
It's a common sight in communist Cuba. Here, nearly everyone works for the state and official unemployment is minuscule, but pay is so low that Cubans like to joke that "the state pretends to pay us and we pretend to work."
Now, facing a severe budget deficit, the government has hinted at restructuring or trimming its bloated work force. Such talk is causing tension, however, in a country where guaranteed employment was a building block of the 1959 revolution that swept Fidel Castro to power.
Details are sketchy on how and when such pruning would take place. Still, acknowledgment that cuts are needed has come from Raul Castro himself. "We know that there are hundreds of thousands of unnecessary workers on the budget and labor books, and some analysts calculate that the excess of jobs has surpassed 1 million," said Castro, who replaced his ailing brother Fidel as president nearly four years ago. Cuba's work force totals 5.1 million, in a population of 11.2 million.
In his nationally televised speech in April, Castro also had harsh words for those who do little to deserve their salaries."Without people feeling the need to work to make a living, sheltered by state regulations that are excessively paternalistic and irrational, we will never stimulate a love for work," he said. Indeed, the process of labor reform may already have started, albeit slowly.
Workers in the tourism sector say some of their colleagues have been furloughed during the lean summer months, while others have been reassigned to jobs on state-run farms."Since we are now in the low season, the hotel where I work has sent many workers home for two or three months," said Orlando, a chef in Varadero, a sand-and-surf enclave east of Havana.
"It's very hard because you're left with no salary at all," said Orlando, who like almost all state employees, didn't want his full name used to prevent problems at work. He added, "I'm lucky since I'm still in my job." Veronica, a receptionist at another Varadero hotel, said she feared she may be sent home in August, when her resort will be only half-occupied. "Sometimes they offer alternatives, to study in a particular course or another job," she said, "but sometimes, when (workers) ent into the agricultural sector for instance, they just quit."
With the government giving no details of its thinking, rumors have spread that as many as a fourth of all government workers in some industries could lose their jobs or be moved to farming or construction. But Labor Minister Margarita Gonzalez has promised that "Cuba will not employ massive firings in a manner similar to neoliberal cutbacks," using "neoliberal" as a description of free-market policies.
The government has moved to embrace some small free-market reforms. It handed some barbershops over to employees, allowing them to set their own prices but making them pay rent and buy their own supplies. Authorities have also approved more licenses for private taxis while getting tough on unlicensed ones.
The global financial crisis, and the $10 billion in damage inflicted by three hurricanes in 2008, have forced authorities to run a deficit of 5 percent of GDP, leaving them unable to pay back credits received from China and elsewhere. Cuba slashed spending on importing food and other basics by 34 percent to $9.6 billion in 2009, from $12.7 billion the previous year. But so far, the moves have not been enough to rein in the deficit.
Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a Cuba economics expert and professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, said Cuban officials have spent months debating cuts in the labor force and economic reforms. He said they know what's needed, but face "a problem of political viability."
Various government perks like cars, gas, uniforms and office supplies have become incentives to bloat the payroll, since they are based on the size of a company's work force. But low pay means low productivity. On Obispo street, a state-run cafeteria sells heavily subsidized soft ice cream and pork sandwiches for the equivalent of a few American pennies — meaning wages and tips are so tiny that the staff is complete indifferent toward customers.
Three waiters sit at the counter cracking jokes. A fourth is the only one working, making coffee for three tables. Nearby, a cashier stares into space, a cook flirts with a scantily clad teen and a supervisor sits idly by.
The state employs 95 percent of the official work force. Unemployment last year was 1.7 percent and hasn't risen above 3 percent in eight years — but that ignores thousands of Cubans who aren't looking for jobs that pay monthly salaries worth only $20 a month on average.
Salvador Valdes Mesa, secretary-general of the nearly 3 million-strong Cuban Workers Confederation — the only Cuban labor union allowed — has instead written that "reorganization" will ensure redundant workers are reassigned rather than fired. He said the government wants more jobs in construction and agriculture.
Still, 35-year-old computer engineer Norberto fears for his job. He thinks it's unfair to keep workers under communist domination and yet call them unmotivated. "I didn't graduate from college to now work as a day laborer or a peasant, he said. If he loses his job and gets an offer to work abroad, he said, "my question is 'Will the Cuban authorities put aside their paternalism and let me leave?'"
In Honolulu, I spoke at the U of Hawaii’s Life Long Learning Center to an 50+ group, one of whose members expressed a possible in interest in future Peace Corps service. I also met with 16 returned PC volunteers, many who had served in Asia (perhaps because that region is closer to Hawaii?). I had brought along a few copies of my book, all of which proved in demand. One recipient was a man walking out on the street who commented on my Honduras-Peace Corps T-shirt, saying he had applied to the PC. He was an engineer in his 50s, originally from Viet Nam, who hoped to be posted to Asia, whereupon my son pulled out a copy of my book that he was carrying. The man asked to buy it and went away happy. (Actually, he offered to pay me $50 for the book, way too much!)
At The Compassionate Friends (TCF) conference held July 4th weekend in neighboring Virginia just before I left, I appeared on a panel on “writing and publishing your book.” As you will recall, TCF is an organization for people whose children have died. After the Sat. evening banquet, there was a very moving ceremony, performed while a professional sang “Blowing in the Wind” and other songs. After banquet room lights were turned off, one by one, participants, some 1400 in all, from all over the US, lit each other’s candles until hundreds of candles were glowing in the darkness, giving us a feeling of solidarity and shared loss.
Although the connection with Honduras is only that Burma occupies the same planet, there’s good news about my local AI group’s release of our Burmese prisoner, including this message:
Dear Barbara,
Much thanks to Group 211 for persevering for so many years on behalf
of U Win Htein. He was the longest held of the Myanmar POC's in AI's
IAR portfolio. As you know, this latest 14-year stint (1996 to last
week) followed a previous imprisonment from 1989 to 1995. He has only
been free for one out of the last twenty-one years.
In news from Honduras, several Garifuna musicians were detained by police on the north coast, their documents and instruments confiscated after they were told not to leave the area. Garifunas, as my book readers will recall, are Afro-Hondurans descended from escaped slaves who speak their own language in addition to Spanish and have distinct music, dress, and traditional dishes. A number now live in NY City. I’ve asked Amnesty International’s Honduras specialist to look into this report.
Most of you are already aware of the large political prisoner release brokered by the Cuban Catholic Church and Spain. Considerable credit belongs to hunger striker Farinas and to the Women in White, and, by extension, the Norwegian documentary of the same name in which I briefly appear. If anyone would like a copy of that DVD, please contact me at my Yahoo address, giving your name and mailing address. See also report below on possible job cuts in Cuba.
Euronews, July 9, 2010
Cuba has taken steps towards freeing 52 political prisoners with the Island’s Catholic church saying five would be released into exile imminently. The planned liberation Doctors say his condition remains serious, although he appeared in good spirits in his hospital bed. Farinas has threatened to restart his protest if Cuban’s hardline leadership fails to fulfil its pledge. The deal with the Catholic church should see the freedom of 52 remaining prisoners out of 75 jailed in a crackdown on dissent in 2003. It’s hoped the agreement may lead to better relations with the West with both Washington and Spain’s Foreign minister, who helped broker the deal, praising Havana’s decision.
While news media around the world have given wide coverage to the prisoner releases, Cuba's government-controlled newspapers, radio and TV reported nothing on the release and departure of the first seven.
Jobless in Cuba? Communism faces the unthinkable
By ANNE-MARIE GARCIA, Associated Press Writer July 18, 2010
HAVANA – At a state project to refurbish a decaying building in Old Havana, one worker paints a wall white while two others watch. A fourth sleeps in a wheelbarrow positioned in a sliver of shade nearby and two more smoke and chat on the curb. President Raul Castro has startled the nation lately by saying about one in five Cuban workers may be redundant. At the work site on Obispo street, those numbers run in reverse.
It's a common sight in communist Cuba. Here, nearly everyone works for the state and official unemployment is minuscule, but pay is so low that Cubans like to joke that "the state pretends to pay us and we pretend to work."
Now, facing a severe budget deficit, the government has hinted at restructuring or trimming its bloated work force. Such talk is causing tension, however, in a country where guaranteed employment was a building block of the 1959 revolution that swept Fidel Castro to power.
Details are sketchy on how and when such pruning would take place. Still, acknowledgment that cuts are needed has come from Raul Castro himself. "We know that there are hundreds of thousands of unnecessary workers on the budget and labor books, and some analysts calculate that the excess of jobs has surpassed 1 million," said Castro, who replaced his ailing brother Fidel as president nearly four years ago. Cuba's work force totals 5.1 million, in a population of 11.2 million.
In his nationally televised speech in April, Castro also had harsh words for those who do little to deserve their salaries."Without people feeling the need to work to make a living, sheltered by state regulations that are excessively paternalistic and irrational, we will never stimulate a love for work," he said. Indeed, the process of labor reform may already have started, albeit slowly.
Workers in the tourism sector say some of their colleagues have been furloughed during the lean summer months, while others have been reassigned to jobs on state-run farms."Since we are now in the low season, the hotel where I work has sent many workers home for two or three months," said Orlando, a chef in Varadero, a sand-and-surf enclave east of Havana.
"It's very hard because you're left with no salary at all," said Orlando, who like almost all state employees, didn't want his full name used to prevent problems at work. He added, "I'm lucky since I'm still in my job." Veronica, a receptionist at another Varadero hotel, said she feared she may be sent home in August, when her resort will be only half-occupied. "Sometimes they offer alternatives, to study in a particular course or another job," she said, "but sometimes, when (workers) ent into the agricultural sector for instance, they just quit."
With the government giving no details of its thinking, rumors have spread that as many as a fourth of all government workers in some industries could lose their jobs or be moved to farming or construction. But Labor Minister Margarita Gonzalez has promised that "Cuba will not employ massive firings in a manner similar to neoliberal cutbacks," using "neoliberal" as a description of free-market policies.
The government has moved to embrace some small free-market reforms. It handed some barbershops over to employees, allowing them to set their own prices but making them pay rent and buy their own supplies. Authorities have also approved more licenses for private taxis while getting tough on unlicensed ones.
The global financial crisis, and the $10 billion in damage inflicted by three hurricanes in 2008, have forced authorities to run a deficit of 5 percent of GDP, leaving them unable to pay back credits received from China and elsewhere. Cuba slashed spending on importing food and other basics by 34 percent to $9.6 billion in 2009, from $12.7 billion the previous year. But so far, the moves have not been enough to rein in the deficit.
Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a Cuba economics expert and professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, said Cuban officials have spent months debating cuts in the labor force and economic reforms. He said they know what's needed, but face "a problem of political viability."
Various government perks like cars, gas, uniforms and office supplies have become incentives to bloat the payroll, since they are based on the size of a company's work force. But low pay means low productivity. On Obispo street, a state-run cafeteria sells heavily subsidized soft ice cream and pork sandwiches for the equivalent of a few American pennies — meaning wages and tips are so tiny that the staff is complete indifferent toward customers.
Three waiters sit at the counter cracking jokes. A fourth is the only one working, making coffee for three tables. Nearby, a cashier stares into space, a cook flirts with a scantily clad teen and a supervisor sits idly by.
The state employs 95 percent of the official work force. Unemployment last year was 1.7 percent and hasn't risen above 3 percent in eight years — but that ignores thousands of Cubans who aren't looking for jobs that pay monthly salaries worth only $20 a month on average.
Salvador Valdes Mesa, secretary-general of the nearly 3 million-strong Cuban Workers Confederation — the only Cuban labor union allowed — has instead written that "reorganization" will ensure redundant workers are reassigned rather than fired. He said the government wants more jobs in construction and agriculture.
Still, 35-year-old computer engineer Norberto fears for his job. He thinks it's unfair to keep workers under communist domination and yet call them unmotivated. "I didn't graduate from college to now work as a day laborer or a peasant, he said. If he loses his job and gets an offer to work abroad, he said, "my question is 'Will the Cuban authorities put aside their paternalism and let me leave?'"
Friday, July 2, 2010
July 4th, The Compassionate Friends, Cuba Travel Bill, Ducks and Geese, Hello Honolulu
Happy July 4 to all, a day I plan to spend with family, housemates, and friends, ending with an evening down at the mall watching the fireworks.
I’m registered at this weekend’s annual conference of The Compassionate Friends, a support group for people who have lost children, taking place across the Potomac River in Northern Virginia. I was over there last evening to deliver some of my books to be sold to benefit the organization. At registration, I met people from all over the US, wearing nametags and looking much like attendees at any annual conference, giving the gathering a feeling of normalcy. Many were also wearing large buttons bearing their child’s photo, but I am not in that category. One of our keynote speakers, I see on the program, lost her step-daughter during the Virginia Tech shooting. But the program is not all tears and sadness—there will also be a humorous skit performed by the zany satirical group, The Capitol Steps.
Tomorrow, Saturday July 3, I will appear on a conference panel about writing and publishing your book, presumably a book about or dedicated to the lost child. My book falls somewhat in that category, but appeals to a wider audience and, I hope, gives that wider audience a glimpse into the special feelings associated with such a severe loss, which, thankfully, is uncommon in this country these days. The other books I’ve seen being sold at the conference focus more directly and often exclusively on the particular deceased child and the author/parent’s grief. Many are frank tributes to that child, attempting to keep him or her alive, at least in memory.
Meanwhile, back in Honduras, marches in ten cities marked the anniversary of the Zelaya ouster. The Washington Post (June 29, 2010) reports that Manuel Zelaya, from his refuge in the DR, is blaming the US for engineering his ouster. Does he really believe that or is he just parroting Hugo Chavez? He’s undermining his own credibility by such statements, in my view. Hillary Clinton seemed genuinely surprised at the time of his ouster and called it a “coup.” Of course, conspiracy theories attributed to the US abound worldwide, everything from American agents killing foreign children to obtain their organs for transplant(not medically feasible) to blowing up the twin towers to shift the blame to Muslims. Everything that goes wrong is the fault of the United States. But if the US is so omniscient and all-powerful, why are we still struggling in a poor, underdeveloped country like Afghanistan?
Got a notice that Berta Caceres, apparently a strong Zelaya supporter, had been arrested in one of my old stomping grounds, La Esperanza, Intibuca, apparently charged with hurting a policeman. Then I heard that she had been released. I don’t know anything more.
A column in the Wall St. Journal by conservative commentator Mary Anastasia O’Grady (June 28, 2010) decries efforts to lift the Cuba travel ban, pointing out that travel by Europeans and Canadians has resulted in no change whatsoever in Cuban government policies. O’Grady is referring to H.R. 4645, a measure submitted by Democratic Congressman Collin Peterson of Minnesota, Agriculture Committee Chairman and voted out this week. Cuba imports the majority of its food, the bulk of it from the US. While it is true that tourism by Europeans and Canadians has resulted in no visible changes in repressive Cuban government policies, the wholesale arrival of American tourists would probably have a greater impact. More importantly, it would remove the major scapegoat for all of Cuba’s ills, namely US “aggression” in the form of the embargo and travel ban. Of course, having the measure voted out of the Agriculture Committee is only a first step.
Rumor has it that Cuba has appealed to China for economic assistance, but that China is demanding economic reforms along the Chinese model. If that happens, you heard it here first.
Every time I travel out to rural Prince Georges County for my interpretation work, I notice huge flocks of ducks and geese swimming in ponds and waddling together across parks and fields. In Honduras, they would have been eaten long ago.
The Obama recession reduction strategy, apparently, is to stimulate the economy to the point that it begins an upward instead of a downward spiral, generating more jobs and taxes, thereby reducing economic distress and the deficit both at the same time. Of course, stimulus means greater budget deficits in the short term, but without a turn around, matters will continue downward with ever more layoffs and furloughs, reduction of services, less buying power and sales, less tax revenue. How long should the stimulus continue? Obviously, it cannot go on forever. Too much borrowing and debt—too much economic exuberance--is what got us into this fix to begin with. Right now, it seems that we are facing the danger of a double-dip recession, so pulling back on the stimulus and raising interest rates right now would not be a good idea. The challenge is not only a matter of resources but of changing the collective mood, generating confidence and optimism to replace the current skepticism, caution, and pessimism.
Much of the anti-immigrant sentiment that seems to have turned ugly in many places is, I believe, related to the recession. People feel gloomy and angry and are venting their frustrations on the hapless Latinos doing much of our low-level work. However, as a recent NPR commentator so aptly put it, undocumented millions are already here and “You cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube.” As he observed, not only is deporting 11 million people completely impractical, it would create havoc in our economy and communities.
As mentioned in the last blog posting, I’m leaving for Honolulu on July 6 and not returning until July 16, so will not be posting meanwhile. If you have any comments, please e-mail me directly. It’s best to always respond to me via my e-mail address anyway (posted at this blog’s heading), as I do not always see your remarks made on the blog itself.
I’m registered at this weekend’s annual conference of The Compassionate Friends, a support group for people who have lost children, taking place across the Potomac River in Northern Virginia. I was over there last evening to deliver some of my books to be sold to benefit the organization. At registration, I met people from all over the US, wearing nametags and looking much like attendees at any annual conference, giving the gathering a feeling of normalcy. Many were also wearing large buttons bearing their child’s photo, but I am not in that category. One of our keynote speakers, I see on the program, lost her step-daughter during the Virginia Tech shooting. But the program is not all tears and sadness—there will also be a humorous skit performed by the zany satirical group, The Capitol Steps.
Tomorrow, Saturday July 3, I will appear on a conference panel about writing and publishing your book, presumably a book about or dedicated to the lost child. My book falls somewhat in that category, but appeals to a wider audience and, I hope, gives that wider audience a glimpse into the special feelings associated with such a severe loss, which, thankfully, is uncommon in this country these days. The other books I’ve seen being sold at the conference focus more directly and often exclusively on the particular deceased child and the author/parent’s grief. Many are frank tributes to that child, attempting to keep him or her alive, at least in memory.
Meanwhile, back in Honduras, marches in ten cities marked the anniversary of the Zelaya ouster. The Washington Post (June 29, 2010) reports that Manuel Zelaya, from his refuge in the DR, is blaming the US for engineering his ouster. Does he really believe that or is he just parroting Hugo Chavez? He’s undermining his own credibility by such statements, in my view. Hillary Clinton seemed genuinely surprised at the time of his ouster and called it a “coup.” Of course, conspiracy theories attributed to the US abound worldwide, everything from American agents killing foreign children to obtain their organs for transplant(not medically feasible) to blowing up the twin towers to shift the blame to Muslims. Everything that goes wrong is the fault of the United States. But if the US is so omniscient and all-powerful, why are we still struggling in a poor, underdeveloped country like Afghanistan?
Got a notice that Berta Caceres, apparently a strong Zelaya supporter, had been arrested in one of my old stomping grounds, La Esperanza, Intibuca, apparently charged with hurting a policeman. Then I heard that she had been released. I don’t know anything more.
A column in the Wall St. Journal by conservative commentator Mary Anastasia O’Grady (June 28, 2010) decries efforts to lift the Cuba travel ban, pointing out that travel by Europeans and Canadians has resulted in no change whatsoever in Cuban government policies. O’Grady is referring to H.R. 4645, a measure submitted by Democratic Congressman Collin Peterson of Minnesota, Agriculture Committee Chairman and voted out this week. Cuba imports the majority of its food, the bulk of it from the US. While it is true that tourism by Europeans and Canadians has resulted in no visible changes in repressive Cuban government policies, the wholesale arrival of American tourists would probably have a greater impact. More importantly, it would remove the major scapegoat for all of Cuba’s ills, namely US “aggression” in the form of the embargo and travel ban. Of course, having the measure voted out of the Agriculture Committee is only a first step.
Rumor has it that Cuba has appealed to China for economic assistance, but that China is demanding economic reforms along the Chinese model. If that happens, you heard it here first.
Every time I travel out to rural Prince Georges County for my interpretation work, I notice huge flocks of ducks and geese swimming in ponds and waddling together across parks and fields. In Honduras, they would have been eaten long ago.
The Obama recession reduction strategy, apparently, is to stimulate the economy to the point that it begins an upward instead of a downward spiral, generating more jobs and taxes, thereby reducing economic distress and the deficit both at the same time. Of course, stimulus means greater budget deficits in the short term, but without a turn around, matters will continue downward with ever more layoffs and furloughs, reduction of services, less buying power and sales, less tax revenue. How long should the stimulus continue? Obviously, it cannot go on forever. Too much borrowing and debt—too much economic exuberance--is what got us into this fix to begin with. Right now, it seems that we are facing the danger of a double-dip recession, so pulling back on the stimulus and raising interest rates right now would not be a good idea. The challenge is not only a matter of resources but of changing the collective mood, generating confidence and optimism to replace the current skepticism, caution, and pessimism.
Much of the anti-immigrant sentiment that seems to have turned ugly in many places is, I believe, related to the recession. People feel gloomy and angry and are venting their frustrations on the hapless Latinos doing much of our low-level work. However, as a recent NPR commentator so aptly put it, undocumented millions are already here and “You cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube.” As he observed, not only is deporting 11 million people completely impractical, it would create havoc in our economy and communities.
As mentioned in the last blog posting, I’m leaving for Honolulu on July 6 and not returning until July 16, so will not be posting meanwhile. If you have any comments, please e-mail me directly. It’s best to always respond to me via my e-mail address anyway (posted at this blog’s heading), as I do not always see your remarks made on the blog itself.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
World Cup, Best Books for Humanitarians, The Compassionate Friends Conference, Burma, Gaza, Jamaica, Cuba
Now Honduras and Spain have met on the soccer field and Honduras has lost again. Still, it was an achievement for Honduras to have even made it to the World Cup. Too bad the US lost to Ghana, but Africans must be happy to have a team still in the running. At least here in the DC area, World Cup fever ran pretty high as long as the US was in contention.
Got the following request, though sorry my own book is not among the 100 listed there, It’s a good list and I have read many of those books already. If anyone else has feedback on the list, please let me know on this blog or via e-mail (or directly to Online Classes): We at Onlineclasses.org recently came across your blog and were excited to share with you an article “100 Best Books for Humanitarians” was recently published on our blog at (http://www.onlineclasses.org/2010/06/17/100-best-books-for-humanitarians/), and we hoped that you would be interested in featuring or mentioning it in one of your posts. Your Feedback on this article will be greatly appreciated.
An interpretation client, age 23, with developmental disabilities and her mother came in for a work evaluation. The family had arrived only months before legally from the Dominican Republic, on the petition of the father, a US resident, after a wait of over 15 years. The young woman in question had been suffering seizures since infancy, probably the cause her apparent brain damage. She spoke little, but was able to answer questions put to her in Spanish, such as “How many brothers and sister do you have?” She was extremely overweight and kept snacking from her bag during the interview. However, what was most striking to me is that her mother said that for the last 5 years in the DR, she had been working in a sheltered workshop putting tops on bottles. The mother wondered if a similar opportunity might be available for her here. That indicated that the DR is way ahead of Honduras in terms of opportunities for the disabled, where no such workshops exist and where even the non-disabled might covet a bottle-top job.
At a recent meeting of our local chapter of The Compassionate Friends (TCF), a support group for those who have lost children, one woman said, “I’ve lost mother, father, sister, husband, survived cancer twice, but nothing hit me like the death of my son.” Yes, she’s right; there is no other loss quite as painful. We don’t expect our children to die before us; we expect them to carry on and be our tie to future generations. Probably their loss hits particularly hard for both genetic and cultural reasons. On July 4th weekend, the national TCF organization is holding an annual conference across the river in Virginia, where I will be a panel speaker. After that, I’m going to Honolulu to visit my kids Stephanie and Jonathan living there, so this blog will be silent for a couple of weeks. I will remind you again of my absence before I leave.
Well, the high temperature every day this week was predicted to reach into the 90’s, which it actually has, and, so, last Monday, I broke down and turned on my central A/C, which I do at least once a summer to make sure it’s still working. Until now, out of concern both for the environment and my pocketbook, I’ve survived with fans, the only option available to me in Honduras, whether I was living there as a volunteer or on my annual visits ever since, provided, of course, that the electricity is working. My housemates in DC do have window units that they can turn on as needed.
Though I’ve never been very handy, I’m proud to say that I fixed a plumbing problem with a toilet my housemates have been using. Despite hot steamy weather, I walked a number of blocks to a hardware store, found the right replacement part, and using tools such as a kitchen knife, installed the new part successfully. Who says that old dogs can’t learn new tricks?
Another country of particular concern for me personally is Burma (Myanmar) where our local Amnesty group has had a prisoner, an associate of Aung San Suu Kyi, for more than a dozen years. I do my duty by writing to Burmese authorities and US officials, but have not been active otherwise because I simply have to focus and can be most useful, first, regarding Honduras, where I go every year, second, re Cuba, where I have visited half a dozen times and have had many connections. Unfortunately, Burma is another country where the US is also not focused, saying the right things, but committing virtually no blood and treasure. We cannot be everywhere and fix everything in the world.
One of my correspondents has chided me on what she took, last time, to be my endorsement of Hamas: I was surprised to see you speak of sympathy for Hamas. I think this is a case where people feel great sympathy for the long-suffering population but disgust and hostility toward the government -- the way Americans hated the Stalin of the massacres but felt very bad for the Soviet people. Hamas are crooks of a different sort than Fatah, but they are still crooks, and they are shamelessly manipulating the situation in Gaza; few are fooled.
Last time, I had said: I am glad to hear that the Gaza blockade is being eased. It does not seem that ordinary Gazans should be punished by being deprived of non-threatening items because Hamas shoots rockets into Israel. Such collective punishment only foments distrust of Israel and sympathy for Hamas, not only among Gazans, but worldwide.
In saying that, I did not mean to imply that I am personally in sympathy with Hamas, condone rocket firing, or believe Hamas is not cynically manipulating the situation. Hamas rockets aimed at Israel are not only reprisals for what Hamas considers hostile Israeli actions, but also probably designed to provoke Israel’s further repression of Gazans and greater enmity toward Israel as a result, and to keep that cycle going.
Certainly, condemnation of the fatal Israeli raid on a Gaza relief ship was worldwide, as I’d contended, and the Israeli government seems to have acknowledged as much and responded by greatly expanding the items that can now enter Gaza. That implies that the previous restrictions were not strictly necessary and were a form of punishment against all Gazans and, rather than turning Gazans against Hamas, if that was their intent, they turned them against Israel. Now, I believe, in response to Israel’s easing of the blockade, it would be appropriate for Hamas to make a reciprocal gesture. If each side could continue in this vein, some progress toward peace might actually come about.
Of course, there are differences of opinion, both within Israel and in the world-at-large, about whether any sort of agreement with Hamas is possible or even desirable. But, like it or not, Hamas is in charge of the government in Gaza. Is it best never to trust Hamas and consider it a permanent pariah or to try to see if any dealings are possible and engage in a limited effort at cooptation and cooperation? It’s a problem similar to that confronting the US vis-à-vis Iran—and even little Cuba. And always, it’s a gamble. Any slight concession or opening may lead either to favorable reciprocity or to a complete double-cross. It’s the same in all human relations—how much can and should we trust others? We can try to wipe out or defeat our adversaries, avoid or ignore them if possible, or attempt to engage them for mutual benefit, however distasteful to either side. I don’t claim sufficient knowledge of Gaza to even dare express an opinion about the right course there. But I do stand by what I said last time and am glad that the blockade is being eased. In that respect, the flotilla and the resulting deaths did have a positive effect.
Reputed Jamaican drug lord Christopher Coke, whose attempt evade capture and extradition to the U.S. on drug and weapons charges resulted in over 75 deaths, apparently gave himself up or was intercepted at a checkpoint—in any case, he is now in custody in the US. Jamaica is one of the countries within my jurisdiction as Amnesty International’s volunteer Caribbean Regional Action Coordinator. That number of homicides (see article below at the end of today’s blog posting) in a population of less than 3 million is phenomenal--even worse than Honduras, which is pretty bad. (In Cuba, there may be bribery, black market activity, and petty theft, but at least homicides are rare in a heavily policed state where ordinary citizens cannot obtain firearms.)
From an AP report, June 20, 2010: Church officials hope Pope Benedict XVI can come to Cuba in 2012, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the image of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, Cuba's patron saint.
The Cuban prisoner whose release was announced last time, Ariel Sigler Amaya, incarcerated since 2003, was not only in poor health, but is a paraplegic using a wheelchair, making his health problems even more risky. His non-disabled brother, arrested at the same time and on the same charges, has not been released.
Another dissident was released, physician Darsi Ferrer (see article below), who had already served a year of a 15-month sentence for purchasing black market cement, a common offense often overlooked by authorities. However, Dr. Ferrer has been a government critic.
Message received from Amnesty International’s secretariat in London, June 24, 2010: In our conversation yesterday with Darsi and Yusnaimy, they sent these lovely words to AI members, please distribute to everyone involved in his case:
English: Darsi Ferrer: I am deeply grateful for the solidarity, the support and the work done by members of Amnesty International in my name. I was moved when I learned that I had been declared a prisoner of conscience, it gave me strength to continue my stay in prison. I would like to thank you for all your work during all this time. I am very happy to be out of prison and with my family and friends.
Yusnaimy Jorge Soca, his wife: We would like to give our eternal gratitude to all of you for being aware of what happened to Darsi and for supporting us in those difficult moments. You were of great help for us; you were continuously well-informed of his situation and this has helped for my husband to be among us now.
These prisoner releases, plus permission to march (with restrictions) being restored to the Women in White, may signal a slight softening of the regime’s treatment of dissent. Now may be the time for the US to reciprocate by further loosening of the embargo and travel ban.
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24 June 2010
Dissident doctor and reporter paroled after nearly a year in pre-trial detention
SOURCE: Reporters Without Borders (RSF/IFEX) - Darsi Ferrer, a dissident public health activist who contributes to independent news media, was finally tried on 22 June 2010 on charges of "irregularities" and "assault" and was granted a conditional release after being held without trial since July 2009. A physician who heads the independent Juan Bruno Zayas Health and Human Rights Centre, Ferrer angered authorities by gathering and disseminating information about the current state of the Cuban health system and the situation of political prisoners. Ferrer had been held in Valle Grande prison, west of Havana, since his arrest on 21 July 2009, for which the official reason was his "illegal" acquisition of building materials to repair his house. Prosecutors requested a three-year jail sentence, but the court sentenced him on 22 June 2010 to 15 months and said he could serve the remaining four months under house arrest. "We are obviously relieved by Ferrer's release even if he was finally given a jail sentence to match the time he already had spent behind bars," Reporters Without Borders said. "No one is fooled about the real reason for his detention as this is a country in which the authorities tolerate no public expression of dissenting views. His release was not in any way an act of clemency or, even less so, a sign of an improvement in respect for basic rights and freedoms."
Cuba still has approximately 200 prisoners of conscience, who include 24 journalists. One of them is the Reporters Without Borders correspondent Ricardo González Alfonso, who has been held since the "Black Spring" crackdown of March 2003. Dissidents continue to be the target of harassment, repression and hate campaigns by the authorities and their supporters. Hablemos Press, a small independent news agency, reported that two more journalists, José Manuel Caraballo Bravo and Raúl Arias Márquez of the Agencia de Prensa Libre Avileña (APLA), were arrested on 21 June 2010. Reporters Without Borders reiterates its appeal to the community of Latin American countries to intercede on behalf of Cuba's imprisoned journalists and dissidents, some of whom have fallen seriously ill since their arrest. For more information:Reporters Without Borders47, rue Vivienne75002 ParisFrancersf (@) rsf.org Phone: +33 1 44 83 84 84Fax: +33 1 45 23 11 51Reporters Without Bordershttp://www.rsf.org
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Jamaica Gleaner Online June 24, 2010
Tuesday's capture of the fugitive Christopher Coke is a welcome and symbolic development for the rule of law in Jamaica which, hopefully, will translate into a lasting reversal of crime and violence in our country.
Not much more than a month ago, Coke was a powerful figure, a reputed crime boss and community don, who seemed to have the protection of the Jamaican Government. The Golding administration, it appeared, was willing to go to all lengths to prevent his extradition to the United States to answer charges of drug and gun smuggling.
Indeed, when pressure from civil society forced Mr Golding to buckle, militias loyal to Coke barricaded his west Kingston redoubt of Tivoli Gardens and openly challenged the authority of the Jamaican state. That aggression was beaten back and Prime Minister Golding, perhaps to salvage his reputation, has sought to assume the role of champion against crime in Jamaica.
Which is where Christopher Coke's capture is important. It is a signal that even the powerful and politically well connected are not immune from the law and should not assume that they can, as appeared to have been the intent with the west Kingston uprising, behave with impunity.
Coke's day in court
So, the Christopher Cokes of the world must have their day in court to prove their innocence, based on accepted principles of justice - not muscle.
Mr Golding, of course, has to be aware that although the Jamaican state may have won the initial skirmish, actual and figurative, the larger battle against criminality and violence is far from over. Neither the arrest of Coke nor the dismantling of his command and control apparatus in west Kingston achieved that.
There is much more to be done. For despite the seeming respite of violent crime over the past month, the decline in homicides, at more than 60 so far for the month of June, is significant only relative to our circumstance. That number remains far too high.
There are many gangs to be defeated across Jamaica - particularly in Kingston and St Andrew, St Catherine and St James.
In that regard, this newspaper, the reservations of civil liberties advocates notwithstanding, welcomes the decision by the administration to extend the state of emergency in Kingston and St Andrew for a second month and to widen it to the parish of St Catherine. Our concern, however, is that it was not made to cover the entire island and proclaimed until at least to the end of this year.
Special measures necessary
As we have observed before, it is not that we do not understand the bluntness of this instrument or do not care for civil liberties. We are aware, however, that Jamaica, with regard to crime, with its nearly 1,700 homicides a year, faces abnormal circumstances which will require special measures to return to a semblance of normality. The state of emergency has, in this regard, demonstrated its efficacy, which cannot be allowed to lapse.
Prime Minister Golding, however, has to assume full ownership of this project, displaying the kind of robust leadership he allowed us to glimpse in defending Coke's supposed constitutional rights against extradition. There are reports of resistance to the initiative by ruling party and even Cabinet members who operate in constituencies with powerful gangs. Mr Golding's oath, however, is to the people of Jamaica. And we demand better.
Got the following request, though sorry my own book is not among the 100 listed there, It’s a good list and I have read many of those books already. If anyone else has feedback on the list, please let me know on this blog or via e-mail (or directly to Online Classes): We at Onlineclasses.org recently came across your blog and were excited to share with you an article “100 Best Books for Humanitarians” was recently published on our blog at (http://www.onlineclasses.org/2010/06/17/100-best-books-for-humanitarians/), and we hoped that you would be interested in featuring or mentioning it in one of your posts. Your Feedback on this article will be greatly appreciated.
An interpretation client, age 23, with developmental disabilities and her mother came in for a work evaluation. The family had arrived only months before legally from the Dominican Republic, on the petition of the father, a US resident, after a wait of over 15 years. The young woman in question had been suffering seizures since infancy, probably the cause her apparent brain damage. She spoke little, but was able to answer questions put to her in Spanish, such as “How many brothers and sister do you have?” She was extremely overweight and kept snacking from her bag during the interview. However, what was most striking to me is that her mother said that for the last 5 years in the DR, she had been working in a sheltered workshop putting tops on bottles. The mother wondered if a similar opportunity might be available for her here. That indicated that the DR is way ahead of Honduras in terms of opportunities for the disabled, where no such workshops exist and where even the non-disabled might covet a bottle-top job.
At a recent meeting of our local chapter of The Compassionate Friends (TCF), a support group for those who have lost children, one woman said, “I’ve lost mother, father, sister, husband, survived cancer twice, but nothing hit me like the death of my son.” Yes, she’s right; there is no other loss quite as painful. We don’t expect our children to die before us; we expect them to carry on and be our tie to future generations. Probably their loss hits particularly hard for both genetic and cultural reasons. On July 4th weekend, the national TCF organization is holding an annual conference across the river in Virginia, where I will be a panel speaker. After that, I’m going to Honolulu to visit my kids Stephanie and Jonathan living there, so this blog will be silent for a couple of weeks. I will remind you again of my absence before I leave.
Well, the high temperature every day this week was predicted to reach into the 90’s, which it actually has, and, so, last Monday, I broke down and turned on my central A/C, which I do at least once a summer to make sure it’s still working. Until now, out of concern both for the environment and my pocketbook, I’ve survived with fans, the only option available to me in Honduras, whether I was living there as a volunteer or on my annual visits ever since, provided, of course, that the electricity is working. My housemates in DC do have window units that they can turn on as needed.
Though I’ve never been very handy, I’m proud to say that I fixed a plumbing problem with a toilet my housemates have been using. Despite hot steamy weather, I walked a number of blocks to a hardware store, found the right replacement part, and using tools such as a kitchen knife, installed the new part successfully. Who says that old dogs can’t learn new tricks?
Another country of particular concern for me personally is Burma (Myanmar) where our local Amnesty group has had a prisoner, an associate of Aung San Suu Kyi, for more than a dozen years. I do my duty by writing to Burmese authorities and US officials, but have not been active otherwise because I simply have to focus and can be most useful, first, regarding Honduras, where I go every year, second, re Cuba, where I have visited half a dozen times and have had many connections. Unfortunately, Burma is another country where the US is also not focused, saying the right things, but committing virtually no blood and treasure. We cannot be everywhere and fix everything in the world.
One of my correspondents has chided me on what she took, last time, to be my endorsement of Hamas: I was surprised to see you speak of sympathy for Hamas. I think this is a case where people feel great sympathy for the long-suffering population but disgust and hostility toward the government -- the way Americans hated the Stalin of the massacres but felt very bad for the Soviet people. Hamas are crooks of a different sort than Fatah, but they are still crooks, and they are shamelessly manipulating the situation in Gaza; few are fooled.
Last time, I had said: I am glad to hear that the Gaza blockade is being eased. It does not seem that ordinary Gazans should be punished by being deprived of non-threatening items because Hamas shoots rockets into Israel. Such collective punishment only foments distrust of Israel and sympathy for Hamas, not only among Gazans, but worldwide.
In saying that, I did not mean to imply that I am personally in sympathy with Hamas, condone rocket firing, or believe Hamas is not cynically manipulating the situation. Hamas rockets aimed at Israel are not only reprisals for what Hamas considers hostile Israeli actions, but also probably designed to provoke Israel’s further repression of Gazans and greater enmity toward Israel as a result, and to keep that cycle going.
Certainly, condemnation of the fatal Israeli raid on a Gaza relief ship was worldwide, as I’d contended, and the Israeli government seems to have acknowledged as much and responded by greatly expanding the items that can now enter Gaza. That implies that the previous restrictions were not strictly necessary and were a form of punishment against all Gazans and, rather than turning Gazans against Hamas, if that was their intent, they turned them against Israel. Now, I believe, in response to Israel’s easing of the blockade, it would be appropriate for Hamas to make a reciprocal gesture. If each side could continue in this vein, some progress toward peace might actually come about.
Of course, there are differences of opinion, both within Israel and in the world-at-large, about whether any sort of agreement with Hamas is possible or even desirable. But, like it or not, Hamas is in charge of the government in Gaza. Is it best never to trust Hamas and consider it a permanent pariah or to try to see if any dealings are possible and engage in a limited effort at cooptation and cooperation? It’s a problem similar to that confronting the US vis-à-vis Iran—and even little Cuba. And always, it’s a gamble. Any slight concession or opening may lead either to favorable reciprocity or to a complete double-cross. It’s the same in all human relations—how much can and should we trust others? We can try to wipe out or defeat our adversaries, avoid or ignore them if possible, or attempt to engage them for mutual benefit, however distasteful to either side. I don’t claim sufficient knowledge of Gaza to even dare express an opinion about the right course there. But I do stand by what I said last time and am glad that the blockade is being eased. In that respect, the flotilla and the resulting deaths did have a positive effect.
Reputed Jamaican drug lord Christopher Coke, whose attempt evade capture and extradition to the U.S. on drug and weapons charges resulted in over 75 deaths, apparently gave himself up or was intercepted at a checkpoint—in any case, he is now in custody in the US. Jamaica is one of the countries within my jurisdiction as Amnesty International’s volunteer Caribbean Regional Action Coordinator. That number of homicides (see article below at the end of today’s blog posting) in a population of less than 3 million is phenomenal--even worse than Honduras, which is pretty bad. (In Cuba, there may be bribery, black market activity, and petty theft, but at least homicides are rare in a heavily policed state where ordinary citizens cannot obtain firearms.)
From an AP report, June 20, 2010: Church officials hope Pope Benedict XVI can come to Cuba in 2012, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the image of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, Cuba's patron saint.
The Cuban prisoner whose release was announced last time, Ariel Sigler Amaya, incarcerated since 2003, was not only in poor health, but is a paraplegic using a wheelchair, making his health problems even more risky. His non-disabled brother, arrested at the same time and on the same charges, has not been released.
Another dissident was released, physician Darsi Ferrer (see article below), who had already served a year of a 15-month sentence for purchasing black market cement, a common offense often overlooked by authorities. However, Dr. Ferrer has been a government critic.
Message received from Amnesty International’s secretariat in London, June 24, 2010: In our conversation yesterday with Darsi and Yusnaimy, they sent these lovely words to AI members, please distribute to everyone involved in his case:
English: Darsi Ferrer: I am deeply grateful for the solidarity, the support and the work done by members of Amnesty International in my name. I was moved when I learned that I had been declared a prisoner of conscience, it gave me strength to continue my stay in prison. I would like to thank you for all your work during all this time. I am very happy to be out of prison and with my family and friends.
Yusnaimy Jorge Soca, his wife: We would like to give our eternal gratitude to all of you for being aware of what happened to Darsi and for supporting us in those difficult moments. You were of great help for us; you were continuously well-informed of his situation and this has helped for my husband to be among us now.
These prisoner releases, plus permission to march (with restrictions) being restored to the Women in White, may signal a slight softening of the regime’s treatment of dissent. Now may be the time for the US to reciprocate by further loosening of the embargo and travel ban.
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24 June 2010
Dissident doctor and reporter paroled after nearly a year in pre-trial detention
SOURCE: Reporters Without Borders (RSF/IFEX) - Darsi Ferrer, a dissident public health activist who contributes to independent news media, was finally tried on 22 June 2010 on charges of "irregularities" and "assault" and was granted a conditional release after being held without trial since July 2009. A physician who heads the independent Juan Bruno Zayas Health and Human Rights Centre, Ferrer angered authorities by gathering and disseminating information about the current state of the Cuban health system and the situation of political prisoners. Ferrer had been held in Valle Grande prison, west of Havana, since his arrest on 21 July 2009, for which the official reason was his "illegal" acquisition of building materials to repair his house. Prosecutors requested a three-year jail sentence, but the court sentenced him on 22 June 2010 to 15 months and said he could serve the remaining four months under house arrest. "We are obviously relieved by Ferrer's release even if he was finally given a jail sentence to match the time he already had spent behind bars," Reporters Without Borders said. "No one is fooled about the real reason for his detention as this is a country in which the authorities tolerate no public expression of dissenting views. His release was not in any way an act of clemency or, even less so, a sign of an improvement in respect for basic rights and freedoms."
Cuba still has approximately 200 prisoners of conscience, who include 24 journalists. One of them is the Reporters Without Borders correspondent Ricardo González Alfonso, who has been held since the "Black Spring" crackdown of March 2003. Dissidents continue to be the target of harassment, repression and hate campaigns by the authorities and their supporters. Hablemos Press, a small independent news agency, reported that two more journalists, José Manuel Caraballo Bravo and Raúl Arias Márquez of the Agencia de Prensa Libre Avileña (APLA), were arrested on 21 June 2010. Reporters Without Borders reiterates its appeal to the community of Latin American countries to intercede on behalf of Cuba's imprisoned journalists and dissidents, some of whom have fallen seriously ill since their arrest. For more information:Reporters Without Borders47, rue Vivienne75002 ParisFrancersf (@) rsf.org Phone: +33 1 44 83 84 84Fax: +33 1 45 23 11 51Reporters Without Bordershttp://www.rsf.org
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Jamaica Gleaner Online June 24, 2010
Tuesday's capture of the fugitive Christopher Coke is a welcome and symbolic development for the rule of law in Jamaica which, hopefully, will translate into a lasting reversal of crime and violence in our country.
Not much more than a month ago, Coke was a powerful figure, a reputed crime boss and community don, who seemed to have the protection of the Jamaican Government. The Golding administration, it appeared, was willing to go to all lengths to prevent his extradition to the United States to answer charges of drug and gun smuggling.
Indeed, when pressure from civil society forced Mr Golding to buckle, militias loyal to Coke barricaded his west Kingston redoubt of Tivoli Gardens and openly challenged the authority of the Jamaican state. That aggression was beaten back and Prime Minister Golding, perhaps to salvage his reputation, has sought to assume the role of champion against crime in Jamaica.
Which is where Christopher Coke's capture is important. It is a signal that even the powerful and politically well connected are not immune from the law and should not assume that they can, as appeared to have been the intent with the west Kingston uprising, behave with impunity.
Coke's day in court
So, the Christopher Cokes of the world must have their day in court to prove their innocence, based on accepted principles of justice - not muscle.
Mr Golding, of course, has to be aware that although the Jamaican state may have won the initial skirmish, actual and figurative, the larger battle against criminality and violence is far from over. Neither the arrest of Coke nor the dismantling of his command and control apparatus in west Kingston achieved that.
There is much more to be done. For despite the seeming respite of violent crime over the past month, the decline in homicides, at more than 60 so far for the month of June, is significant only relative to our circumstance. That number remains far too high.
There are many gangs to be defeated across Jamaica - particularly in Kingston and St Andrew, St Catherine and St James.
In that regard, this newspaper, the reservations of civil liberties advocates notwithstanding, welcomes the decision by the administration to extend the state of emergency in Kingston and St Andrew for a second month and to widen it to the parish of St Catherine. Our concern, however, is that it was not made to cover the entire island and proclaimed until at least to the end of this year.
Special measures necessary
As we have observed before, it is not that we do not understand the bluntness of this instrument or do not care for civil liberties. We are aware, however, that Jamaica, with regard to crime, with its nearly 1,700 homicides a year, faces abnormal circumstances which will require special measures to return to a semblance of normality. The state of emergency has, in this regard, demonstrated its efficacy, which cannot be allowed to lapse.
Prime Minister Golding, however, has to assume full ownership of this project, displaying the kind of robust leadership he allowed us to glimpse in defending Coke's supposed constitutional rights against extradition. There are reports of resistance to the initiative by ruling party and even Cabinet members who operate in constituencies with powerful gangs. Mr Golding's oath, however, is to the people of Jamaica. And we demand better.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
World Cup, GAO Fellows, Honduras’s Mosquitia, Violence in Mexico, Cuban Prisoner Release, 60th Anniversary Celebration, Arizona Anti-Immigrant Law
On June 16, Honduras played its first World Cup game, losing 1-0 to Chile. It still faces Spain or was that today? I know that Hondurans are glued to radio and TV these days, especially when the home team plays. It’s been a while since Honduras qualified to pay in a World Cup, way back before most Hondurans now living were born (the medium age there is under 20).
Had a patient this week scheduled to have an MRI scan on his heart through an NIH research program. However, years ago in El Salvador, he had been shot several times in the chest and although he was pretty certain any bullets had been removed, we had to make sure before he had an MRI scan, done with a huge magnet. When sitting inside the chamber with a patient, I’ve had my watch batteries zapped before and also my metro fare card erased when I’ve forgotten to leave them outside. Several x-rays were taken of this man’s chest, revealing two bullets and some fragments still inside, to his very great surprise. So his MRI was replaced with a CT scan, less precise for diagnosing cardiac problems, but the only option available to him.
Saturday, sitting out at the Eastern Market in 90+F heat, I sold only two books, but got into some interesting conversations, including with an RPCV (returned PC volunteer), an occupational therapist (OT) who’d been working in special education in Jordan. I hope to connect her with a rehab brigade in Honduras and she said she might also give me some used OT equipment, which would be very useful for the Choluteca rehab center. I learned from a couple of people who stopped by to chat that anyone who has once been in intelligence cannot join the Peace Corps, nor can someone who is HIV+.
As mentioned previously, I have a visitor from Kenya staying at my house this summer, a government auditor called Nancy, attending an annual course given at GAO (Government Accountability Office). This year, there are 22 fellows from 20 countries and on June 16, they held a cultural information day in the main hall of GAO, each one with a table set up with artifacts, folk art, products, and brochures, with posters and maps hung on the wall behind them. Most wore native dress and many had a video running continuously. Nancy looked very cute in her tribal Kikuyu dress. Most of the African countries touted majestic mountains, waterfalls, and wildlife, as well as products like coffee. The spread of coffee cultivation around the world has lowered the earnings of Honduran coffee farmers, among other traditional growers in Latin America. I picked up a brochure for Zimbabwe, wondering what tourist attractions that beleaguered country might have to offer. On the brochure’s cover was a photo of a white man playing golf. Is that what you would think of when Zimbabwe is involved? Samoa’s brochure included a map showing the geographic relationship between Samoa’s two main islands and the nearby smaller islands of American Samoa. Why we still have American Samoa is probably an accident of history.
Have attended Amnesty International (AI) information sessions on Sri Lanka and DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), but don’t feel I can devote myself much to bettering human rights in those countries, however desirable, being already spread much too thin. Unfortunately, those conflicts are ones where the US government cannot afford to invest too much in resolving either, because our nation also is spread too thin. People in those countries will have to rely on civic organizations like AI and their own diasporas.
Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) is an island off the Indian coast where a 26-year civil war between the government-backed majority Sinhalese (ethnically related to a sector of the Indian population) and the minority Tamils finally ended in 2009, when the Tamils were defeated. The Tamils, who have a different language and religion, had been seeking to establish a separate homeland. Some 100,000 people died during the conflict and many Tamil civilians are still displaced. Civilians were used by the Tamils as human shields and many were killed in the last months of the conflict.
Three DRC women, at least one of whom reported suffering brutal rapes and said she was now
engaged in helping other women in similar circumstances, spoke to us at the local AI office (in French). This main spokeswoman told of recently taking a 90-year-old woman who had been serially raped to the hospital, where she died. Soldiers, both from government forces and rebels militias, engage in rape, she said, thinking that it makes them stronger. Impunity and corruption mean that perpetrators go free; victims who complain suffer reprisals. (All that is similar to what happens in rapes in Latin America, including Honduras.) Children of rape are sometimes not accepted by their mothers or their communities, she said. (In Honduras, rape was so common that the children were accepted, and sometimes there was a question of whether a rape had actually occurred or if a woman had invented it to explain her pregnancy.) One tactic DRC women have used to prevent being raped is to warn against the transmission of HIV (even though they are not HIV+ and HIV transmission from men to women is much more common than the reverse). Also, with the reduction in hostilities, rapes in the DRC have gone down as combatants have returned home. As one panelist put it, “War is the major cause of violence against women.”
However, stopping that violence or any established pattern is fraught with its own risks. Look at Mexico, where the campaign against impunity, corruption, and reprisals has stirred up a hornets’ nest amounting almost to a civil war, fueled by demand for illegal drugs on this side of the border and illicit arms shipments from here as well.
I am glad to hear that the Gaza blockade is being eased. It does not seem that ordinary Gazans should be punished by being deprived of non-threatening items because Hamas shoots rockets into Israel. Such collective punishment only foments distrust of Israel and sympathy for Hamas, not only among Gazans, but worldwide.
The other evening, went with a friend to a bar/restaurant on U St., fast becoming a trendy DC neighborhood, after being considered deep ghetto for many years. Actually, Ben’s Chili Bowl, where I ate lunch with my brother and company over Memorial Day weekend, is in the heart of the U Street neighborhood, a pioneer establishment in attracting tourists and young party-goers to the area. The evening in question, we were outside on the roof deck of a local restaurant. Young people wearing all sorts of interesting outfits, piercings, and hairstyles milled around carrying drinks and jiggling to very loud, extemporaneous music created by a disk-jockey putting his fingers on two spinning LP records and doing something with an Apple computer. Meanwhile two documentary filmmakers’ works were running continuously on large screens. I talked, as best I could over the din, to one filmmaker, Michael Bonfigli, whose scenes of the Feb. DC snow blow-out, which I had missed by being in Honduras, gave me a close-up look at that event, which had paralyzed the capital for days. Reportedly a native of Argentina, Michael must be a US citizen, as he said he had served in the Peace Corps in Honduras, spending three years in the remote Eastern Mosquitia, which he described as almost a separate country. Of course, he speaks Spanish, but he also learned to speak Misquito, the local indigenous language. Since he had once filmed Operation Smile, the harelip-cleft palate brigade in which I have participated in Tegucigalpa, I hope to get him interested in filming International Health Service’s October brigade to La Mosquitia. I’ve never joined that particular effort myself because I’ve been told it’s even more rugged that the Esperanza-area Feb. brigade that I normally join and, furthermore, takes place during the rainy season, which turns the ground into a muddy mess and causes mosquitoes to proliferate. Since I don’t speak Misquito, I would probably be more of a burden than a help. But Michael might really be useful because of his language skills. He seemed somewhat interested, but said he didn’t know if he had the time or money. Still, I planted the seed.
While on the subject of Honduras, the local Spanish-language press reports that a TV-reporter was shot and killed at point-blank range as he left his nightly news broadcast in Santa Clara de Danli and as associate of deposed president Manual Zelaya was shot and killed after an argument in a bar in San Pedro Sula.
On a more upbeat note, today, I attended the 60th wedding anniversary celebration of a couple belonging to our small church group, Communitas. Although in his 80s, the husband is still teaching graduate courses in sociology and doing research at Catholic University. They have six children and countless grandchildren, including a granddaughter adopted from China, and several great-grandchildren. Apparently, it’s possible to have a satisfying relationship that lasts that long. Bravo!
More than 90% of Cubans work for the government and although their monthly wages are less than $20, they have always had a free lunch at work. Now 5% are seeing that benefit cut and more such cuts are anticipated. No more free lunch.
According to the Cuban Catholic church, Ariel Sigler Amaya, convicted in 2003 is being released from prison in Cuba for health reasons. He was accused, among other alleged crimes, of gathering books for an independent library. He is the first prisoner released following the dialogue opened up between the government and the Cuban Catholic Church.
A rarely heard-from correspondent says this: It appears to me that Raul finally summoned up the courage to read the riot act to Fidel, banning him from criticizing Cuba's economic reforms while requiring him to stick to foreign policy themes in his Reflexiones [lengthy commentaries published in Granma, the official press]. In his latest, the Maximum Leader accused the U.S. of torpedoing the South Korean navy ship!And the voices of the "revolutionary reformers" (condemning the dissidents while cautiously calling for greater freedom of expression and economic reform) are growing stronger.
Cuba and the US are reported to be collaborating on oil spill containment preparations for the island. Such instances of cooperation can increase mutual trust and, let’s hope, lead to reduced hostility.
Finally, I was disheartened by the report of a survey that found a slight majority of Americans in favor of the new Arizona law allowing police to ask for proof of citizenship or residence from anyone they think may be in the country illegally. If I recall correctly, a somewhat smaller majority also believed that children born in the US of non-citizen parents should not be allowed automatic citizenship, which would be a major shift in longstanding American policy and against the norm in the rest of the world. There were few undecideds, indicating that immigration is a highly polarizing issue, with strong feelings on both sides. Denying citizenship to children born in the US is not going to happen, nor are 11 million people going to be deported, because it’s not logistically feasible and would have a seriously negative impact on our economy, also creating havoc in other countries sustained by remittances. We already have a deep recession that would only be aggravated by attempting such a disrupting tactic. Not only is it impractical, but how anyone can be so myopic and mean-spirited is beyond me; if only they knew these “illegals” as individuals, as I get to know some of them through my interpretation work, they might feel differently. But I suppose it’s not surprising that the recession has made people want to lash out and undocumented folks are an easy target. If folks were feeling more optimistic, they wouldn’t have look for scapegoats.
Had a patient this week scheduled to have an MRI scan on his heart through an NIH research program. However, years ago in El Salvador, he had been shot several times in the chest and although he was pretty certain any bullets had been removed, we had to make sure before he had an MRI scan, done with a huge magnet. When sitting inside the chamber with a patient, I’ve had my watch batteries zapped before and also my metro fare card erased when I’ve forgotten to leave them outside. Several x-rays were taken of this man’s chest, revealing two bullets and some fragments still inside, to his very great surprise. So his MRI was replaced with a CT scan, less precise for diagnosing cardiac problems, but the only option available to him.
Saturday, sitting out at the Eastern Market in 90+F heat, I sold only two books, but got into some interesting conversations, including with an RPCV (returned PC volunteer), an occupational therapist (OT) who’d been working in special education in Jordan. I hope to connect her with a rehab brigade in Honduras and she said she might also give me some used OT equipment, which would be very useful for the Choluteca rehab center. I learned from a couple of people who stopped by to chat that anyone who has once been in intelligence cannot join the Peace Corps, nor can someone who is HIV+.
As mentioned previously, I have a visitor from Kenya staying at my house this summer, a government auditor called Nancy, attending an annual course given at GAO (Government Accountability Office). This year, there are 22 fellows from 20 countries and on June 16, they held a cultural information day in the main hall of GAO, each one with a table set up with artifacts, folk art, products, and brochures, with posters and maps hung on the wall behind them. Most wore native dress and many had a video running continuously. Nancy looked very cute in her tribal Kikuyu dress. Most of the African countries touted majestic mountains, waterfalls, and wildlife, as well as products like coffee. The spread of coffee cultivation around the world has lowered the earnings of Honduran coffee farmers, among other traditional growers in Latin America. I picked up a brochure for Zimbabwe, wondering what tourist attractions that beleaguered country might have to offer. On the brochure’s cover was a photo of a white man playing golf. Is that what you would think of when Zimbabwe is involved? Samoa’s brochure included a map showing the geographic relationship between Samoa’s two main islands and the nearby smaller islands of American Samoa. Why we still have American Samoa is probably an accident of history.
Have attended Amnesty International (AI) information sessions on Sri Lanka and DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), but don’t feel I can devote myself much to bettering human rights in those countries, however desirable, being already spread much too thin. Unfortunately, those conflicts are ones where the US government cannot afford to invest too much in resolving either, because our nation also is spread too thin. People in those countries will have to rely on civic organizations like AI and their own diasporas.
Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) is an island off the Indian coast where a 26-year civil war between the government-backed majority Sinhalese (ethnically related to a sector of the Indian population) and the minority Tamils finally ended in 2009, when the Tamils were defeated. The Tamils, who have a different language and religion, had been seeking to establish a separate homeland. Some 100,000 people died during the conflict and many Tamil civilians are still displaced. Civilians were used by the Tamils as human shields and many were killed in the last months of the conflict.
Three DRC women, at least one of whom reported suffering brutal rapes and said she was now
engaged in helping other women in similar circumstances, spoke to us at the local AI office (in French). This main spokeswoman told of recently taking a 90-year-old woman who had been serially raped to the hospital, where she died. Soldiers, both from government forces and rebels militias, engage in rape, she said, thinking that it makes them stronger. Impunity and corruption mean that perpetrators go free; victims who complain suffer reprisals. (All that is similar to what happens in rapes in Latin America, including Honduras.) Children of rape are sometimes not accepted by their mothers or their communities, she said. (In Honduras, rape was so common that the children were accepted, and sometimes there was a question of whether a rape had actually occurred or if a woman had invented it to explain her pregnancy.) One tactic DRC women have used to prevent being raped is to warn against the transmission of HIV (even though they are not HIV+ and HIV transmission from men to women is much more common than the reverse). Also, with the reduction in hostilities, rapes in the DRC have gone down as combatants have returned home. As one panelist put it, “War is the major cause of violence against women.”
However, stopping that violence or any established pattern is fraught with its own risks. Look at Mexico, where the campaign against impunity, corruption, and reprisals has stirred up a hornets’ nest amounting almost to a civil war, fueled by demand for illegal drugs on this side of the border and illicit arms shipments from here as well.
I am glad to hear that the Gaza blockade is being eased. It does not seem that ordinary Gazans should be punished by being deprived of non-threatening items because Hamas shoots rockets into Israel. Such collective punishment only foments distrust of Israel and sympathy for Hamas, not only among Gazans, but worldwide.
The other evening, went with a friend to a bar/restaurant on U St., fast becoming a trendy DC neighborhood, after being considered deep ghetto for many years. Actually, Ben’s Chili Bowl, where I ate lunch with my brother and company over Memorial Day weekend, is in the heart of the U Street neighborhood, a pioneer establishment in attracting tourists and young party-goers to the area. The evening in question, we were outside on the roof deck of a local restaurant. Young people wearing all sorts of interesting outfits, piercings, and hairstyles milled around carrying drinks and jiggling to very loud, extemporaneous music created by a disk-jockey putting his fingers on two spinning LP records and doing something with an Apple computer. Meanwhile two documentary filmmakers’ works were running continuously on large screens. I talked, as best I could over the din, to one filmmaker, Michael Bonfigli, whose scenes of the Feb. DC snow blow-out, which I had missed by being in Honduras, gave me a close-up look at that event, which had paralyzed the capital for days. Reportedly a native of Argentina, Michael must be a US citizen, as he said he had served in the Peace Corps in Honduras, spending three years in the remote Eastern Mosquitia, which he described as almost a separate country. Of course, he speaks Spanish, but he also learned to speak Misquito, the local indigenous language. Since he had once filmed Operation Smile, the harelip-cleft palate brigade in which I have participated in Tegucigalpa, I hope to get him interested in filming International Health Service’s October brigade to La Mosquitia. I’ve never joined that particular effort myself because I’ve been told it’s even more rugged that the Esperanza-area Feb. brigade that I normally join and, furthermore, takes place during the rainy season, which turns the ground into a muddy mess and causes mosquitoes to proliferate. Since I don’t speak Misquito, I would probably be more of a burden than a help. But Michael might really be useful because of his language skills. He seemed somewhat interested, but said he didn’t know if he had the time or money. Still, I planted the seed.
While on the subject of Honduras, the local Spanish-language press reports that a TV-reporter was shot and killed at point-blank range as he left his nightly news broadcast in Santa Clara de Danli and as associate of deposed president Manual Zelaya was shot and killed after an argument in a bar in San Pedro Sula.
On a more upbeat note, today, I attended the 60th wedding anniversary celebration of a couple belonging to our small church group, Communitas. Although in his 80s, the husband is still teaching graduate courses in sociology and doing research at Catholic University. They have six children and countless grandchildren, including a granddaughter adopted from China, and several great-grandchildren. Apparently, it’s possible to have a satisfying relationship that lasts that long. Bravo!
More than 90% of Cubans work for the government and although their monthly wages are less than $20, they have always had a free lunch at work. Now 5% are seeing that benefit cut and more such cuts are anticipated. No more free lunch.
According to the Cuban Catholic church, Ariel Sigler Amaya, convicted in 2003 is being released from prison in Cuba for health reasons. He was accused, among other alleged crimes, of gathering books for an independent library. He is the first prisoner released following the dialogue opened up between the government and the Cuban Catholic Church.
A rarely heard-from correspondent says this: It appears to me that Raul finally summoned up the courage to read the riot act to Fidel, banning him from criticizing Cuba's economic reforms while requiring him to stick to foreign policy themes in his Reflexiones [lengthy commentaries published in Granma, the official press]. In his latest, the Maximum Leader accused the U.S. of torpedoing the South Korean navy ship!And the voices of the "revolutionary reformers" (condemning the dissidents while cautiously calling for greater freedom of expression and economic reform) are growing stronger.
Cuba and the US are reported to be collaborating on oil spill containment preparations for the island. Such instances of cooperation can increase mutual trust and, let’s hope, lead to reduced hostility.
Finally, I was disheartened by the report of a survey that found a slight majority of Americans in favor of the new Arizona law allowing police to ask for proof of citizenship or residence from anyone they think may be in the country illegally. If I recall correctly, a somewhat smaller majority also believed that children born in the US of non-citizen parents should not be allowed automatic citizenship, which would be a major shift in longstanding American policy and against the norm in the rest of the world. There were few undecideds, indicating that immigration is a highly polarizing issue, with strong feelings on both sides. Denying citizenship to children born in the US is not going to happen, nor are 11 million people going to be deported, because it’s not logistically feasible and would have a seriously negative impact on our economy, also creating havoc in other countries sustained by remittances. We already have a deep recession that would only be aggravated by attempting such a disrupting tactic. Not only is it impractical, but how anyone can be so myopic and mean-spirited is beyond me; if only they knew these “illegals” as individuals, as I get to know some of them through my interpretation work, they might feel differently. But I suppose it’s not surprising that the recession has made people want to lash out and undocumented folks are an easy target. If folks were feeling more optimistic, they wouldn’t have look for scapegoats.
Monday, June 14, 2010
South Africa’s World Cup, Gaza Aid Flotilla, Communitas Mass, Cuban Prisoner Negotiations
How about that? The US tied with England in the World Cup! Having hosted a number of foreign visitors from Africa, including from South Africa, site of this year’s World Cup, I find myself wishing I were there right now, not to see the matches, but just to get to know the people and soak up, however, briefly, that unique environment. Someone who grew up in Argentina and has traveled widely in Europe and Latin America once told me, with an expression of obvious distaste, that he had no interest whatsoever in visiting Africa. Probably his attitude is shared by many people who have never been there. Africa has the reputation of being poor, conflicted, and afflicted with AIDS, malaria, and other plagues; a number of African countries are governed by despots; and ethnic and religious violence is all too common. All that is true, but fails to capture the diversity and cultural richness of that amazing continent, which has fascinated me on visits there, regrettably few, mainly due to the cost and distance, but which have left me wishing for more. I’ve been twice to Kenya and once each to Morocco and Sudan. In all cases, it was an exhilarating experience and I could envision myself living in any of them—in fact, it was a matter of love at first sight always, even in hot, dusty South Sudan, despite the physical challenges and language barriers. However, since I have only one life to live—and probably not many years left at this point (at age 72)—I’ve chosen to stick with Honduras, which, given my connections there, language facility, and other responsibilities right here to family and local community, is a more practical choice. Still, I’m grateful to have had a taste of both Africa and Asia and a feel for those other worlds, each so different from those I’m more familiar with in North America and Latin America.
On Sat., over at the Eastern Market, a farmers' market near my house, I got to talking with a middle-aged woman, a little younger than me, wearing a "Free Gaza" T-shirt. She told me she had been on the aid flotilla and had been on the very vessel that was attacked, but a few hours before had transferred to another boat. She had just been released from jail and had flown home. I said I was very sorry about the deaths of her companions. She seemed a little shell-shocked, or maybe just shocked, and said they had expected to be stopped, but not killed. Israeli commandos really botched that one. Of course, I am no diplomat capable of solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but I tend to think it requires a "Nixon-to-China" type of intervention, either by the US or Israel. A really obvious and safe step that Israel could take to get the ball rolling and make amends, in my opinion, would be to stop all settlements. Of course, the Israelis may be waiting for the Palestinians to make the first move, but it would seem that the US would have more influence prodding our friend and dependent, Israel, than over the Palestinians. Anyway, if Israel wants to survive and if the US doesn't to be at perpetual war with Muslim forces, something has to be done about that impasse. Another knotty problem for Obama to try to solve.
I also met a woman who said she was from the Gulf and had poured oil over her head to make a point while visiting Congress. (Of course, most Americans don't know that we in DC have no voting members of Congress.)
Readers of my book may remember that when I came back from Honduras, instead of returning to my old parish, I joined Communitas, a small Catholic community in my neighborhood. We meet at a storefront church space, with priests from Catholic U. presiding. But last time I went, I asked Nancy, my Kenyan visitor, to go with me, although she is Anglican. No priest showed up, so Sister Rose took over. She’s a nun a little older than I am who has worked for decades in Haiti and with Haitians. She did an admirable job during the service and we all agreed that women could and should be priests.
The following is from my Cuban commentator regarding the negotiations between the Catholic Church and Cuban government regarding releases of ill political prisoners: The Cuban regime is Communist only in name. In reality, like any non-modern society, it is feudal in its outlook and its working principles. The basic cement in a feudal society is the loyalty that must exist between the top leadership and its minions in order to get things done.
This loyalty was already severely shaken in 1989 when Fidel Castro purged his closest most loyal subordinates to shake off a drug trafficking charge and is now being challenged once more by the fact that Castro snitched on his own agents when he gave information to the FBI that led to their later arrest and conviction. This fact is known to all his followers and there is a great deal of latent resentment due to it. It may not be expressed openly but the top government circles are aware of its existence and of its corrosive effect.For this reason, to ensure the internal morale of its forces, the regime is obligated to make an all out effort to get its five agents out of US prisons to attempt to revive a weakening loyalty. This means that to the Cuban government the primary objective of the present negotiations is obtaining the return of its five agents and that it is willing to do anything in its power to ensure that objective because it will strengthen its internal security...
Fidel Castro prefers to withhold all his incentives until the last minute to get the best possible deal that will suit his interests.
On Sat., over at the Eastern Market, a farmers' market near my house, I got to talking with a middle-aged woman, a little younger than me, wearing a "Free Gaza" T-shirt. She told me she had been on the aid flotilla and had been on the very vessel that was attacked, but a few hours before had transferred to another boat. She had just been released from jail and had flown home. I said I was very sorry about the deaths of her companions. She seemed a little shell-shocked, or maybe just shocked, and said they had expected to be stopped, but not killed. Israeli commandos really botched that one. Of course, I am no diplomat capable of solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but I tend to think it requires a "Nixon-to-China" type of intervention, either by the US or Israel. A really obvious and safe step that Israel could take to get the ball rolling and make amends, in my opinion, would be to stop all settlements. Of course, the Israelis may be waiting for the Palestinians to make the first move, but it would seem that the US would have more influence prodding our friend and dependent, Israel, than over the Palestinians. Anyway, if Israel wants to survive and if the US doesn't to be at perpetual war with Muslim forces, something has to be done about that impasse. Another knotty problem for Obama to try to solve.
I also met a woman who said she was from the Gulf and had poured oil over her head to make a point while visiting Congress. (Of course, most Americans don't know that we in DC have no voting members of Congress.)
Readers of my book may remember that when I came back from Honduras, instead of returning to my old parish, I joined Communitas, a small Catholic community in my neighborhood. We meet at a storefront church space, with priests from Catholic U. presiding. But last time I went, I asked Nancy, my Kenyan visitor, to go with me, although she is Anglican. No priest showed up, so Sister Rose took over. She’s a nun a little older than I am who has worked for decades in Haiti and with Haitians. She did an admirable job during the service and we all agreed that women could and should be priests.
The following is from my Cuban commentator regarding the negotiations between the Catholic Church and Cuban government regarding releases of ill political prisoners: The Cuban regime is Communist only in name. In reality, like any non-modern society, it is feudal in its outlook and its working principles. The basic cement in a feudal society is the loyalty that must exist between the top leadership and its minions in order to get things done.
This loyalty was already severely shaken in 1989 when Fidel Castro purged his closest most loyal subordinates to shake off a drug trafficking charge and is now being challenged once more by the fact that Castro snitched on his own agents when he gave information to the FBI that led to their later arrest and conviction. This fact is known to all his followers and there is a great deal of latent resentment due to it. It may not be expressed openly but the top government circles are aware of its existence and of its corrosive effect.For this reason, to ensure the internal morale of its forces, the regime is obligated to make an all out effort to get its five agents out of US prisons to attempt to revive a weakening loyalty. This means that to the Cuban government the primary objective of the present negotiations is obtaining the return of its five agents and that it is willing to do anything in its power to ensure that objective because it will strengthen its internal security...
Fidel Castro prefers to withhold all his incentives until the last minute to get the best possible deal that will suit his interests.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Gores’ Separation, World Cup, Honduras’ Lobo Declares Plot Against Him, Chavez as Songster, Cuba Again
A comment here on the Gores’ separation after 40 years of marriage, which is really none of our business, except that they are in the public eye. Maybe there’s a new secret squeeze on either or both sides, or maybe they just became bored with each other and increasingly headed in different directions. Long-term intimate relations do pose a challenge, especially these days, when we are living longer and are not so consumed by sheer daily physical survival, when mores are changing, and when self-realization, “happiness,” and independence are common personal goals. It’s all the more remarkable that some couples do manage to go the distance, like one in our little church group, Communitas, celebrating their 60th anniversary on Father’s Day. And happy Father’s Day to all my readers out there who are fathers.
The World Cup is dominating news elsewhere, if not so much here. It will be quite some time before the US hosts a World Cup, much less wins one. Three of my kids played soccer and daughter Melanie’s team even won a trophy. But soccer (called “football” elsewhere) doesn’t seem to have fully captured sports fans here, as in the rest of the world. In Honduras, from an early age, all boys—even blind boys and poor barefoot rural boys—kicked around whatever sort of ball or substitute (i.e. ball of string) they can find. In Peace Corps, we encouraged girls to play as well.
Honduras qualified for the World Cup for the first time since 1982. They will play against Spain, considered the stronger team, on June 21. When I was in Peace Corps during an earlier World Cup, everyone, men especially, congregated around radios and TV sets, eager to watch, whatever the hour. This year, matches will start about 7 am DC time and even earlier in Honduras, where people get up at dawn anyway. Since they often have little or no electricity and afternoons may become scorching, their lives follow the rhythms of the sun.
Honduran President Porfirio Lobo, according to our local Spanish-language press, is saying that three members of his own Nationalist Party want to overthrow him. More details were not available. It would be ironic if Lobo were now ousted in the same manner that Zelaya was. The same article reports that Zelaya remains living in the Dominican Republic, while Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela oppose recognition of Lobo and the re-entry of Honduras into the OAS, although that body will be sending a mission to Tegucigalpa on June 25, to investigate that possibility.
Perhaps feeling snubbed by Hillary Clinton on her tour of Latin America, Hugo Chavez has come up with a ditty sung over the airwaves saying that Hillary doesn’t love him and he doesn’t love her either. Chavez is quite the clown and Venezuelans are his captive audience.
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U.N. torture investigator says Cuba blocked visit
Wed Jun 9, 2010 9, Reuters
· U.N. torture sleuth says Cuba blocked visit
· U.N. envoy accuses rights forum of turning blind eye
Havana issued invitation last year
* Austrian lawyer known for tough talking
* Cuba seen as sensitive on political prisoner issue
GENEVA, June 9 - Cuba has told the United Nations special investigator on torture that he cannot visit the island on a fact-finding mission despite an invitation issued to him last year, the official said on Wednesday.
Austrian lawyer Manfred Nowak, known for his frank talking to both developed and developing countries on the issue, said Havana had told him it could not receive him before his mandate runs out at the end of October this year. "I regret that, in spite of its clear invitation, the government of Cuba has not allowed me to objectively assess the situation of torture and ill-treatment in the country by collecting first-hand evidence from all available sources," he said in a statement.
Cuba invited him to visit in February 2009, but since then had failed to agree on a date, his statement said. Diplomats at the council -- now holding a three-week session -- said Havana was showing special sensitivity over its jailing of dissidents, one of whom died in prison in February. Cuba says it has no political prisoners and jails only criminals.
Nowak has been six years in the post, formally titled special rapporteur to the world body's Geneva-based Human Rights Council, and has already made clear he will step down when his mandate is over. Earlier this year, he told reporters he had been frustrated by the lack of cooperation he had received in his investigations from many governments -- including some, like communist-ruled Cuba, who are members of the 47-nation council.
The World Cup is dominating news elsewhere, if not so much here. It will be quite some time before the US hosts a World Cup, much less wins one. Three of my kids played soccer and daughter Melanie’s team even won a trophy. But soccer (called “football” elsewhere) doesn’t seem to have fully captured sports fans here, as in the rest of the world. In Honduras, from an early age, all boys—even blind boys and poor barefoot rural boys—kicked around whatever sort of ball or substitute (i.e. ball of string) they can find. In Peace Corps, we encouraged girls to play as well.
Honduras qualified for the World Cup for the first time since 1982. They will play against Spain, considered the stronger team, on June 21. When I was in Peace Corps during an earlier World Cup, everyone, men especially, congregated around radios and TV sets, eager to watch, whatever the hour. This year, matches will start about 7 am DC time and even earlier in Honduras, where people get up at dawn anyway. Since they often have little or no electricity and afternoons may become scorching, their lives follow the rhythms of the sun.
Honduran President Porfirio Lobo, according to our local Spanish-language press, is saying that three members of his own Nationalist Party want to overthrow him. More details were not available. It would be ironic if Lobo were now ousted in the same manner that Zelaya was. The same article reports that Zelaya remains living in the Dominican Republic, while Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela oppose recognition of Lobo and the re-entry of Honduras into the OAS, although that body will be sending a mission to Tegucigalpa on June 25, to investigate that possibility.
Perhaps feeling snubbed by Hillary Clinton on her tour of Latin America, Hugo Chavez has come up with a ditty sung over the airwaves saying that Hillary doesn’t love him and he doesn’t love her either. Chavez is quite the clown and Venezuelans are his captive audience.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
U.N. torture investigator says Cuba blocked visit
Wed Jun 9, 2010 9, Reuters
· U.N. torture sleuth says Cuba blocked visit
· U.N. envoy accuses rights forum of turning blind eye
Havana issued invitation last year
* Austrian lawyer known for tough talking
* Cuba seen as sensitive on political prisoner issue
GENEVA, June 9 - Cuba has told the United Nations special investigator on torture that he cannot visit the island on a fact-finding mission despite an invitation issued to him last year, the official said on Wednesday.
Austrian lawyer Manfred Nowak, known for his frank talking to both developed and developing countries on the issue, said Havana had told him it could not receive him before his mandate runs out at the end of October this year. "I regret that, in spite of its clear invitation, the government of Cuba has not allowed me to objectively assess the situation of torture and ill-treatment in the country by collecting first-hand evidence from all available sources," he said in a statement.
Cuba invited him to visit in February 2009, but since then had failed to agree on a date, his statement said. Diplomats at the council -- now holding a three-week session -- said Havana was showing special sensitivity over its jailing of dissidents, one of whom died in prison in February. Cuba says it has no political prisoners and jails only criminals.
Nowak has been six years in the post, formally titled special rapporteur to the world body's Geneva-based Human Rights Council, and has already made clear he will step down when his mandate is over. Earlier this year, he told reporters he had been frustrated by the lack of cooperation he had received in his investigations from many governments -- including some, like communist-ruled Cuba, who are members of the 47-nation council.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Memorial Day, Flooding in Central America, Honduras not Welcome in OAS, Local Honduran Family, Cuban Perestroika?
My brother Bob and his significant other, Jean, were in town for Memorial Day, as Jean’s father had been killed in the Battle of the Bulge and she’d never seen the World War II memorial, to which my late mother donated in memory of my dad, who had also served in Europe, but came home to live on until age 82. On a computer search system, Jean found her father’s name and the date of his death, but little else. Apparently, the family has to post additional information. We looked up our own father, who was said to have been wounded, though, if so, it must have been minor as he didn’t get to come home and never mentioned it. We also visited the Viet Nam wall and other sites, including Ben’s Chili Bowl, on U St., located at quite a distance from downtown but doing a brisk business. Barak Obama, among others, has eaten there. On Sunday, evening, we met Jean’s cousin and several others on the west lawn of the Capitol, where we heard the touching Memorial Day concert, broadcast nationally. Colin Powell was one of the speakers, as he usually is on this occasion. Once, when I was attending the Memorial Day concert, my mother watching at home on television claimed to have seen me in the crowd. We did have a huge crowd this year and lots of security. I remember the days when we used to walk just onto the lawn with our picnic basket and bottle of wine, but now all alcohol is forbidden and concert-goers must pass through a metal detector and have their purses and backpacks searched.
On Sat. June 5, a friend hosted a Honduras party that featured my book and the Flores family, referred to previously on these pages. We attracted only a small crowd, mostly of people who already had the book, but it was a nice, intimate gathering featuring Latin American food.
While other news may have eclipsed it, there was massive flooding in Central America due to Tropical Storm Agatha, with Guatemala being hit hardest, though Honduras was not exempt.
Honduras is still not welcome in the OAS, though Secretary Clinton urged its reinstatement (see below).
Then, finally, speculations on the prospects for a Cuban perestroika.
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From AP, May 31, 2010
Thousands more have fled their homes in neighboring Honduras, where the death toll rose to 15 even as meteorologists predicted three more days of rain. Two dams near the capital of Tegucigalpa overflowed into a nearby river, and officials warned people to stay away from swollen waterways. ''The risk is enormous,'' Mayor Ricardo Alvarez said.
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Clinton urges OAS to let Honduras rejoin
By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, Monday, June 7, 2010
Last year's coup in Honduras, which took place shortly after the Organization of American States held a general assembly meeting in that country, continues to divide Latin America from the United States.
At Monday's meeting of the OAS, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged allowing Honduras to rejoin, saying new president Porfirio Lobo has shown "strong and consistent commitment to democratic governance and constitutional order." But a majority of ministers opposed even adding the question of Honduras to the agenda.
The Obama administration had joined with the OAS last year in ousting Honduras after then-President Manuel Zelaya was forced out of the country but shifted course after new elections were held, arguing it was time to move on. Washington's stance has split it from big players in the region, such as Mexico and Brazil, indicating how difficult it is to bridge regional divisions, even after Clinton talked with officials from Mexico and Brazil in Lima about Honduras.
Clinton has invested heavily in building ties with Latin America, making her second trip to the region this year. But the spat over Honduras -- as well as anger at Arizona's new immigration law and U.S. policy toward Cuba -- has made progress difficult. From Peru, Clinton later this week will travel to Ecuador, Colombia and Barbados.
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Regarding the following detailed Cuba observations of an anonymous correspondent, I said:
I agree with you, doing nothing is a risk to the Cuban government and trying to make controlled and contained reforms is a risk as well, as the USSR found out. And when Fidel is no longer around, with his iron will and labyrinthian mind, the risks to the regime increase. When he dies, I wouldn't be surprised if some now within the higher echelons of government, actually seek to surreptiously guide it toward a more market-oriented, democratic system. Sooner or later (I hope in our lifetime), we will see what the Miami exiles call "a free Cuba."
His observations below) refer to the following article, which is not reproduced here:
Cuba’s largest newspaper publishes critical letters on economy
By JUAN O. TAMAYO, jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com, 31 May 2010
[Accessed June 1, 2010 at http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/31/1657514/cubas-largest-newspaper-publishes.html]
Below are excerpts from my correspondent’s mailing, which was even longer in its entirety, responding to the previously mentioned article in the Miami Herald.
In answer to Raul Castro's request for ideas about how to fix the problems of Cuban socialism, a strong internal debate is going on which is being carried out not only in specialized magazines and web sites but also in the pages of Granma, the official organ of the Cuban Communist Party. When the debate spills out into the ruling party's newspaper, it means that it is raging throughout the country and that the totalitarian rulers want to stimulate it and guide it instead of suppressing it...Limits set by government censure could be sufficient to protect from immediate regime change but the resulting debate is counterproductive in the long run since it prepares the ideological conditions for reforms that go far beyond the original intentions of those who promote it.
The predominant point of view in the debate seem to be let us find a way to fix and reform our socialism making a few changes to it that will allow some elements of capitalism like:1- Allowing individual and cooperative ownership and control over land and small businesses.2- Extending the role of free markets...The contributors to the debate apparently want to combine these measures with central macroeconomic planning and with government ownership of the principal industries and label the new concoction as "Socialism of the XXI Century" and hope to solve all of Cuba's existing problems and to be able to carry on as usual with the ruling elite hanging on to all their positions of power and preserving their existing privileges.
There is something deja vu about all this because the existing debate seems to follow many of the same ideas both in favor and against reforms that were put up in the first stage of the debate held in the Soviet Union in the late eighties when Gorbachev was in power.The danger certainly exists that something similar could eventually occur in Cuba. In fact, if we stop and think about it, it is certain that this will someday take place. The question that we should ask ourselves should not be whether it will occur but rather when and how should we expect it to happen?In the midst of the limited debate taking place, an increasing proportion of the Cuban intelligentsia and the apparatchicks are slowly and privately coming to the conclusion that the basic tenets of socialism are flawed and that debating its internal reform is a fig leaf, a euphemism to cover up the reality that these reforms represent.
Scenario one is that all these debates will generate sufficient public backing to overcome the nomenklatura's opposition and end in serious reform or even in a return to capitalism as it happened during Gorbachov and Yeltsin's time in the Soviet Union.The second scenario is exactly the opposite. This is that after a short period of debate in which "a hundred flowers are allowed to bloom" and all the gardener's come out of the closet and are identified, the public debate is shut down completely and violently, no internal reform measures are taken, strong internal repression is renewed and the hundred flowers and the gardeners are simply mowed down to guarantee internal stability. This scenario follows closely what happened in China in the period prior to and during the Cultural Revolution.The third scenario is that the ruling circles procrastinate and fail to take any measures either in favor or against the reforms. The can is simply kicked down the road. This would mean that the public debate is formally closed down some half hearted watered down internal reform measures that do not solve any of the internal contradictions of the existing economic socialist system are taken. But at the same time there is no return to previous strong internal (Stalinist or post civil war) repression. At the same time a lighter version of internal repression is carried out to maintain the opposition in line and the ruling circle in power...In the period from 1985 to 1989, Castro conducted his own "counter reformation" in Cuba to avoid internal reformers from allying with pro-perestroika Soviet politicians to depose him and carry out reforms the country sorely needed. In this period the pro-perestroika Cuban sympathizers were members of the Cuban elite: high economic officials, middle ranking party functionaries, army and Cuban security officials.He purged the Army and the Ministry of Interior by executing all those high officials he thought capable of plotting against him and decommissioning most of the officers who had assumed high leadership positions between 1959 and 1989 and had received an education and training in the former Soviet Union where they had caught the perestroika virus.
This does not mean that Castro did not kill when it was necessary to preserve his power. He did it in 1989 when he shot General Ochoa and several Army or Ministry of Interior officials who were in a position to depose him and knew about his involvement in international drug trafficking. Only that Fidel Castro did his killing on a smaller scale and with more skill than his Georgian predecessor. The difference between them was like the one between a surgeon and a butcher.But even an evil political genius like Fidel Castro cannot stop the economic and political laws of society from eventually taking effect. Perhaps he can forestall them while he lives and holds on to power. But after he leaves to reunite with Friedrich, Karl, Vladimir, Joseph, Mao, Uncle Ho and Il Sung in the communist paradise, his own successors, without the respect and fear he commands and without his exceptional Machiavellian talent will be forced to deal with reality instead of sidestepping or evading it. . .In the final analysis anything that will result in the shortening of the existence of this regime will have been worthwhile because it will eliminate unnecessary human suffering and facilitate progress.
On Sat. June 5, a friend hosted a Honduras party that featured my book and the Flores family, referred to previously on these pages. We attracted only a small crowd, mostly of people who already had the book, but it was a nice, intimate gathering featuring Latin American food.
While other news may have eclipsed it, there was massive flooding in Central America due to Tropical Storm Agatha, with Guatemala being hit hardest, though Honduras was not exempt.
Honduras is still not welcome in the OAS, though Secretary Clinton urged its reinstatement (see below).
Then, finally, speculations on the prospects for a Cuban perestroika.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
From AP, May 31, 2010
Thousands more have fled their homes in neighboring Honduras, where the death toll rose to 15 even as meteorologists predicted three more days of rain. Two dams near the capital of Tegucigalpa overflowed into a nearby river, and officials warned people to stay away from swollen waterways. ''The risk is enormous,'' Mayor Ricardo Alvarez said.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clinton urges OAS to let Honduras rejoin
By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, Monday, June 7, 2010
Last year's coup in Honduras, which took place shortly after the Organization of American States held a general assembly meeting in that country, continues to divide Latin America from the United States.
At Monday's meeting of the OAS, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged allowing Honduras to rejoin, saying new president Porfirio Lobo has shown "strong and consistent commitment to democratic governance and constitutional order." But a majority of ministers opposed even adding the question of Honduras to the agenda.
The Obama administration had joined with the OAS last year in ousting Honduras after then-President Manuel Zelaya was forced out of the country but shifted course after new elections were held, arguing it was time to move on. Washington's stance has split it from big players in the region, such as Mexico and Brazil, indicating how difficult it is to bridge regional divisions, even after Clinton talked with officials from Mexico and Brazil in Lima about Honduras.
Clinton has invested heavily in building ties with Latin America, making her second trip to the region this year. But the spat over Honduras -- as well as anger at Arizona's new immigration law and U.S. policy toward Cuba -- has made progress difficult. From Peru, Clinton later this week will travel to Ecuador, Colombia and Barbados.
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Regarding the following detailed Cuba observations of an anonymous correspondent, I said:
I agree with you, doing nothing is a risk to the Cuban government and trying to make controlled and contained reforms is a risk as well, as the USSR found out. And when Fidel is no longer around, with his iron will and labyrinthian mind, the risks to the regime increase. When he dies, I wouldn't be surprised if some now within the higher echelons of government, actually seek to surreptiously guide it toward a more market-oriented, democratic system. Sooner or later (I hope in our lifetime), we will see what the Miami exiles call "a free Cuba."
His observations below) refer to the following article, which is not reproduced here:
Cuba’s largest newspaper publishes critical letters on economy
By JUAN O. TAMAYO, jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com, 31 May 2010
[Accessed June 1, 2010 at http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/31/1657514/cubas-largest-newspaper-publishes.html]
Below are excerpts from my correspondent’s mailing, which was even longer in its entirety, responding to the previously mentioned article in the Miami Herald.
In answer to Raul Castro's request for ideas about how to fix the problems of Cuban socialism, a strong internal debate is going on which is being carried out not only in specialized magazines and web sites but also in the pages of Granma, the official organ of the Cuban Communist Party. When the debate spills out into the ruling party's newspaper, it means that it is raging throughout the country and that the totalitarian rulers want to stimulate it and guide it instead of suppressing it...Limits set by government censure could be sufficient to protect from immediate regime change but the resulting debate is counterproductive in the long run since it prepares the ideological conditions for reforms that go far beyond the original intentions of those who promote it.
The predominant point of view in the debate seem to be let us find a way to fix and reform our socialism making a few changes to it that will allow some elements of capitalism like:1- Allowing individual and cooperative ownership and control over land and small businesses.2- Extending the role of free markets...The contributors to the debate apparently want to combine these measures with central macroeconomic planning and with government ownership of the principal industries and label the new concoction as "Socialism of the XXI Century" and hope to solve all of Cuba's existing problems and to be able to carry on as usual with the ruling elite hanging on to all their positions of power and preserving their existing privileges.
There is something deja vu about all this because the existing debate seems to follow many of the same ideas both in favor and against reforms that were put up in the first stage of the debate held in the Soviet Union in the late eighties when Gorbachev was in power.The danger certainly exists that something similar could eventually occur in Cuba. In fact, if we stop and think about it, it is certain that this will someday take place. The question that we should ask ourselves should not be whether it will occur but rather when and how should we expect it to happen?In the midst of the limited debate taking place, an increasing proportion of the Cuban intelligentsia and the apparatchicks are slowly and privately coming to the conclusion that the basic tenets of socialism are flawed and that debating its internal reform is a fig leaf, a euphemism to cover up the reality that these reforms represent.
Scenario one is that all these debates will generate sufficient public backing to overcome the nomenklatura's opposition and end in serious reform or even in a return to capitalism as it happened during Gorbachov and Yeltsin's time in the Soviet Union.The second scenario is exactly the opposite. This is that after a short period of debate in which "a hundred flowers are allowed to bloom" and all the gardener's come out of the closet and are identified, the public debate is shut down completely and violently, no internal reform measures are taken, strong internal repression is renewed and the hundred flowers and the gardeners are simply mowed down to guarantee internal stability. This scenario follows closely what happened in China in the period prior to and during the Cultural Revolution.The third scenario is that the ruling circles procrastinate and fail to take any measures either in favor or against the reforms. The can is simply kicked down the road. This would mean that the public debate is formally closed down some half hearted watered down internal reform measures that do not solve any of the internal contradictions of the existing economic socialist system are taken. But at the same time there is no return to previous strong internal (Stalinist or post civil war) repression. At the same time a lighter version of internal repression is carried out to maintain the opposition in line and the ruling circle in power...In the period from 1985 to 1989, Castro conducted his own "counter reformation" in Cuba to avoid internal reformers from allying with pro-perestroika Soviet politicians to depose him and carry out reforms the country sorely needed. In this period the pro-perestroika Cuban sympathizers were members of the Cuban elite: high economic officials, middle ranking party functionaries, army and Cuban security officials.He purged the Army and the Ministry of Interior by executing all those high officials he thought capable of plotting against him and decommissioning most of the officers who had assumed high leadership positions between 1959 and 1989 and had received an education and training in the former Soviet Union where they had caught the perestroika virus.
This does not mean that Castro did not kill when it was necessary to preserve his power. He did it in 1989 when he shot General Ochoa and several Army or Ministry of Interior officials who were in a position to depose him and knew about his involvement in international drug trafficking. Only that Fidel Castro did his killing on a smaller scale and with more skill than his Georgian predecessor. The difference between them was like the one between a surgeon and a butcher.But even an evil political genius like Fidel Castro cannot stop the economic and political laws of society from eventually taking effect. Perhaps he can forestall them while he lives and holds on to power. But after he leaves to reunite with Friedrich, Karl, Vladimir, Joseph, Mao, Uncle Ho and Il Sung in the communist paradise, his own successors, without the respect and fear he commands and without his exceptional Machiavellian talent will be forced to deal with reality instead of sidestepping or evading it. . .In the final analysis anything that will result in the shortening of the existence of this regime will have been worthwhile because it will eliminate unnecessary human suffering and facilitate progress.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Eastern Market Physician, Please Contact me, Movement on Cuban Political Prisoners
This post is reaching out to the young physician, mother of small children, visiting Eastern Market today. I’d sold all the books I'd brought, but told her a little about my book and about the Honduras medical brigades of International Health Service of Minnesota. She sounded as though she might be interested in participating, but I failed to get her name and contact information. She spoke some Spanish. She said she worked in a city clinic offering services to low-income Latino patients, but I don’t recall the name. I gave her a card for my book, showing this website address, so I do hope she will log on, see this appeal, and get back to me via my e-mail address, shown above. I was in a rush because my brother had just come into town, visiting from Florida.
Doctora, I’d like to tell you more about the brigade and you can read about it here and see photos, by going back to April 12. It takes some patience, clicking always on “older post,” to see all the photos from that trip and, before that, a narrative. ( I need a class in blogging!) So, please e-mail me if you see this notice—no obligation to attend an IHS brigade, I’d just like to tell you more about it. Sometimes, volunteers come for less than 10 days. This year, the dentists stayed only one week, for example.
With all quiet on the Honduras political front, this blog has turned temporarily almost into a Cuba blog because of events occurring there, Cuba being another country that I've visited several times and that's close to my heart.
A
Human Rights Watch researcher and a co-author recently wrote a candid report on a Cuba visit published in the New York Review of Books. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/may/27/cuba-a-way-forward/
Since I published something on Cuba in that same review years ago, I can attest to the close, word-by-word, vetting of anything that goes into that publication.
Cuba to transfer political prisoners
BY JUAN O. TAMAYO jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com, May. 24, 2010
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/23/1644727/cuba-to-transfer-political-prisoners.html
The Cuban government has promised to move sick political prisoners to hospitals, and other jailed dissidents closer to home, in a stunning concession to the recent avalanche of criticisms of its human rights record, an independent journalist said Sunday.
Guillermo Fariñas, who has been on a lengthy hunger strike demanding the release of 26 ailing political prisoners, said Havana Auxiliary Bishop Juan de Dios Hernández told him the changes would begin Monday, and that eventually some jailed dissidents could be freed.
Catholic church officials have been regularly keeping Fariñas and the Ladies in White protesters abreast of their negotiations with Cuban leader Raúl Castro on the fate of the political prisoners, currently estimated at about 190.
Cuba’s government remained silent on Fariñas’ comments, but Havana human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez said he had received reports from jailed dissidents that prison directors already had told some inmates to pack their personal items. The government’s gesture toward the prisoners, if true, would mark a rare gesture of good will by Cuba’s communist rulers, who are facing a barrage of domestic and foreign attacks on the country’s human rights record sparked by the February death of political prisoner Orlando Zapata after a nearly three-month hunger strike.
Fariñas told El Nuevo Herald by telephone from his hospital bed in Santa Clara, where he has been receiving intravenous nutrition to make up for his refusal to eat or drink, that Hernández gave him the information during a visit Saturday. Hernández told him that Homero Acosta, executive secretary of the ruling Council of State, telephoned church officials Friday and told them the government would begin on Monday to shift all the seriously ill jailed dissidents to hospitals, and others to prisons closer to their homes, Fariñas added.
RELEASE DEMANDED
Fariñas has been demanding the release of 26 political prisoners he says are so ill that they require hospitalization, but he said a separate church list of ailing prisoners of conscience contained 37 names.
Among the 190 political prisoners are 53 of the 75 dissidents sentenced to long prison terms in a 2003 crackdown known as Cuba’s Black Spring. Twenty-two of the 75 have been released, mostly for health reasons, and 17 of those still jailed are in prisons far from their families, Fariñas said. Hernández also said that Castro and Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega, who met for four hours last week, expect to meet again late this week “to discuss the release of some political prisoners,” according to Fariñas.
An Associated Press dispatch quoted Orlando Marquez, spokesman for the Havana archdiocese, as confirming that government officials had told the church that some prisoners would be moved to jails near home, but giving no further details.
‘WAIT FOR MONDAY’
One senior church official in Havana told El Nuevo Herald that he could not confirm all the details that Fariñas said he had obtained from Hernández, but added: “Wait for Monday.”
Fariñas said the Castro government’s decision to improve its treatment of jailed dissidents was “an attempt to dampen” the recent torrent of criticism of its human rights record that included strongly worded statements from European and Latin American leftists who traditionally support the island’s policies.“They don’t want to give credit to the peaceful opposition at home,” he said, referring to the Ladies in White’s Sunday protest marches and his hunger strike. “So they are negotiating with the church.”
Fidel Castro’s government freed about 300 political and common prisoners shortly after Pope John Paul II visited Cuba in 1998, when he urged officials to release dissidents jailed only for publicly criticizing the regime. Cuban officials regularly deny the country has any political prisoners, and brands them as “mercenaries” who have accepted U.S. funds to work toward undermining or overthrowing the government.
A ‘MERE GESTURE’
Elizardo Sánchez said he remained skeptical of the government’s intentions, and described the apparent agreement to ease the conditions of some political prisoners as a “mere gesture of condescension.”
Ladies in White spokeswoman Berta Soler said church officials had told her group only that Ortega had asked Raúl Castro to move the ailing political prisoners to hospitals and the others to prisons in their home provinces. “We were not told of any answers, but we are full of faith and hope,” she told El Nuevo Herald from Havana. “We hope that the answers will be positive.”
Fariñas, a 42-year-old psychologist and independent journalist, has lost more than 70 pounds since he launched his hunger strike Feb. 23, one day after Zapata died. A third dissident has vowed to refuse all food and drink should Fariñas die.
Although Raúl Castro had hinted that his government would allow Fariñas to die, saying it would not bow to “blackmail,” the dissident has been treated in an intensive-care ward of a government hospital, and is regularly allowed to give interviews to foreign reporters on the hospital’s phone.
He also has allowed the Ladies in White, so called because they wear all-white clothes, to stage their usual Sunday protest marches in Havana for the past three weeks, after several weeks in which State Security officials and government-organized mobs forced them to call of their protests.
Doctora, I’d like to tell you more about the brigade and you can read about it here and see photos, by going back to April 12. It takes some patience, clicking always on “older post,” to see all the photos from that trip and, before that, a narrative. ( I need a class in blogging!) So, please e-mail me if you see this notice—no obligation to attend an IHS brigade, I’d just like to tell you more about it. Sometimes, volunteers come for less than 10 days. This year, the dentists stayed only one week, for example.
With all quiet on the Honduras political front, this blog has turned temporarily almost into a Cuba blog because of events occurring there, Cuba being another country that I've visited several times and that's close to my heart.
A
Human Rights Watch researcher and a co-author recently wrote a candid report on a Cuba visit published in the New York Review of Books. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/may/27/cuba-a-way-forward/
Since I published something on Cuba in that same review years ago, I can attest to the close, word-by-word, vetting of anything that goes into that publication.
Cuba to transfer political prisoners
BY JUAN O. TAMAYO jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com, May. 24, 2010
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/23/1644727/cuba-to-transfer-political-prisoners.html
The Cuban government has promised to move sick political prisoners to hospitals, and other jailed dissidents closer to home, in a stunning concession to the recent avalanche of criticisms of its human rights record, an independent journalist said Sunday.
Guillermo Fariñas, who has been on a lengthy hunger strike demanding the release of 26 ailing political prisoners, said Havana Auxiliary Bishop Juan de Dios Hernández told him the changes would begin Monday, and that eventually some jailed dissidents could be freed.
Catholic church officials have been regularly keeping Fariñas and the Ladies in White protesters abreast of their negotiations with Cuban leader Raúl Castro on the fate of the political prisoners, currently estimated at about 190.
Cuba’s government remained silent on Fariñas’ comments, but Havana human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez said he had received reports from jailed dissidents that prison directors already had told some inmates to pack their personal items. The government’s gesture toward the prisoners, if true, would mark a rare gesture of good will by Cuba’s communist rulers, who are facing a barrage of domestic and foreign attacks on the country’s human rights record sparked by the February death of political prisoner Orlando Zapata after a nearly three-month hunger strike.
Fariñas told El Nuevo Herald by telephone from his hospital bed in Santa Clara, where he has been receiving intravenous nutrition to make up for his refusal to eat or drink, that Hernández gave him the information during a visit Saturday. Hernández told him that Homero Acosta, executive secretary of the ruling Council of State, telephoned church officials Friday and told them the government would begin on Monday to shift all the seriously ill jailed dissidents to hospitals, and others to prisons closer to their homes, Fariñas added.
RELEASE DEMANDED
Fariñas has been demanding the release of 26 political prisoners he says are so ill that they require hospitalization, but he said a separate church list of ailing prisoners of conscience contained 37 names.
Among the 190 political prisoners are 53 of the 75 dissidents sentenced to long prison terms in a 2003 crackdown known as Cuba’s Black Spring. Twenty-two of the 75 have been released, mostly for health reasons, and 17 of those still jailed are in prisons far from their families, Fariñas said. Hernández also said that Castro and Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega, who met for four hours last week, expect to meet again late this week “to discuss the release of some political prisoners,” according to Fariñas.
An Associated Press dispatch quoted Orlando Marquez, spokesman for the Havana archdiocese, as confirming that government officials had told the church that some prisoners would be moved to jails near home, but giving no further details.
‘WAIT FOR MONDAY’
One senior church official in Havana told El Nuevo Herald that he could not confirm all the details that Fariñas said he had obtained from Hernández, but added: “Wait for Monday.”
Fariñas said the Castro government’s decision to improve its treatment of jailed dissidents was “an attempt to dampen” the recent torrent of criticism of its human rights record that included strongly worded statements from European and Latin American leftists who traditionally support the island’s policies.“They don’t want to give credit to the peaceful opposition at home,” he said, referring to the Ladies in White’s Sunday protest marches and his hunger strike. “So they are negotiating with the church.”
Fidel Castro’s government freed about 300 political and common prisoners shortly after Pope John Paul II visited Cuba in 1998, when he urged officials to release dissidents jailed only for publicly criticizing the regime. Cuban officials regularly deny the country has any political prisoners, and brands them as “mercenaries” who have accepted U.S. funds to work toward undermining or overthrowing the government.
A ‘MERE GESTURE’
Elizardo Sánchez said he remained skeptical of the government’s intentions, and described the apparent agreement to ease the conditions of some political prisoners as a “mere gesture of condescension.”
Ladies in White spokeswoman Berta Soler said church officials had told her group only that Ortega had asked Raúl Castro to move the ailing political prisoners to hospitals and the others to prisons in their home provinces. “We were not told of any answers, but we are full of faith and hope,” she told El Nuevo Herald from Havana. “We hope that the answers will be positive.”
Fariñas, a 42-year-old psychologist and independent journalist, has lost more than 70 pounds since he launched his hunger strike Feb. 23, one day after Zapata died. A third dissident has vowed to refuse all food and drink should Fariñas die.
Although Raúl Castro had hinted that his government would allow Fariñas to die, saying it would not bow to “blackmail,” the dissident has been treated in an intensive-care ward of a government hospital, and is regularly allowed to give interviews to foreign reporters on the hospital’s phone.
He also has allowed the Ladies in White, so called because they wear all-white clothes, to stage their usual Sunday protest marches in Havana for the past three weeks, after several weeks in which State Security officials and government-organized mobs forced them to call of their protests.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
May 26 Book Reading, Mia Farrow on Sudan, Cuba & the Catholic Church
About a dozen people attended my book reading last night at Riverby Books, a local bookstore. Wine snacks, and strawberries were served. I reconnected with a couple of old friends in the neighborhood. Three people bought my book and one bought another book for sale at the store. Two of my books had been sold there prior to the event, for a total of five, so far. A couple of attendees already had the book. It was fun, but this is a slow way of selling books and, of course, the bookstore takes its cut.
On Sat., May 22, my daughter Melanie called me to say that her father-in-law, diagnosed with liver cancer just last January, had died at noon. Melanie and her husband took his 9-year-old daughter, for whom he had custody, to live with them.
My brother Bob from Florida, his girl friend, and her cousin will be visiting for Memorial Day weekend, which should be a pleasant respite from my usual frenetic routine. I will have to take at least some “down time” while they are here.
Not too sound too self-congratulatory, but the gulf oil spill reinforces my decision not to own a car and to rely on public transportation, though sometimes that’s time-consuming and inconvenient.
African hopes are fading as the U.S. lets President Omar al-Bashir escape justice. So says Mia Farrow in an op-ed in the Wall St. Journal (May 25, 2010). She reports that the people of Darfur’s high hopes when Obama was elected have faded.
A correspondent concerned with Cuban labor rights has suggested that Pope Benedict make a visit there, something the Cuban government would probably welcome, despite reservations, because of the revenue it would bring in. When John Paul II went to Cuba in 1998, it caused quite a stir. Even Fidel attended Mass. It would be good if Pope Benedict could go now, though he’s not as popular as John Paul. Maybe it would help his popularity, both in Cuba and abroad, if he did, though he might not want to be a copycat.
Here’s an observation from my Cuban correspondent regarding negotiations on the freeing of ill political prisoners there (Fariñas, the man he refers to, has been on an extended hunger strike to promote their release). The Catholic Church is coordinating the negotiating positions of Fariñas and the Damas de Blanco and neither of them is willing to do anything that might create difficulties for the Church's negotiating position. As for possible negotiating links between the Church and the US government, the basic objective of the Cuban government is using the imprisoned dissidents to swap for the five Cuban spies and it is highly improbable that it would pay that much attention to the Cuban Catholic hierarchy if it did not believe that it could somehow contribute to that goal.
This logically requires the Catholic Church (Cuban , US or Vatican or all of the above) to somehow be an intermediary or a mediator in the indirect negotiations between the Cuban and US governments that are probably going on. All this is, of course, speculation, but it is not totally illogical speculation. In short we will soon see what are the results of the negotiations that are obviously going on!
He adds this: In Cuba, the Catholic Church’s role was minimized by the Castro government, which took away its schools, many of its properties, and deported or exiled a great proportion of its priests and made believing in God a disadvantage in life. Cardinal Ortega himself was subject to persecution. In his youth he was accused of being a homosexual and sent to UMAP camps.
Regarding a possible prisoner swap between Cuba and the U.S., another correspondent says,
A precedent of releasing the Cuban spies in the US could be an election problem as I see the voters. Perhaps, improving their conditions in prison would be much better and could be worked out. Setting a precedent of releasing Cuban spies poses other problems for the US over the long term. What if now we catch Pakistani spies or others? Could be a bad double standard to set.
I agree, letting the "Cuban Five" go before the elections, if at all, would be problematic. I just had an inquiry, asking why the wives of the five have not been given visas to let them visit their husbands in prison? It does seem that could be granted, although, of course, they would also speak out about their husbands' innocence in a way that the wives of political prisoners in Cuba cannot.
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Cuban cardinal wants political prisoners freed
By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press,Thursday, May 20, 2010
HAVANA -- Cuba's Roman Catholic cardinal called for the liberation of some of the island's 200 political prisoners on Thursday after a rare sit-down with President Raul Castro, and said he thought his encounter with the Cuban leader was a "magnificent start" to serious dialogue.
"The church is interested in an alleviation of the situation (of the political prisoners) - the liberation of some of them, for example," Cardinal Jaime Ortega said, a day after he and another church leader, Archbishop Dionisio Garcia, held a four-hour discussion with Raul Castro at the Palace of the Revolution, the seat of Cuba's government. The church has called previously for freedom for the island's prisoners of conscience, but doing so right after such a high profile meeting was unusual.
Ortega said in a news conference that he had also brought up the government's decision to bar the dissident Ladies in White from holding weekly marches. The group - comprised of the wives and mothers of jailed political prisoners - were stopped from protesting for three straight weekends in April and pro-government counter-protesters were brought in to shout abuse at them. The standoff ended after Ortega's mediation, when the government agreed to allow the quiet protests to resume in return for assurances the women would not expand their activities.
The cardinal made clear that no deal on any prisoner releases or easing of measures against the opposition had been struck. "We are not talking about any commitments. We are talking about conversations with the government, conversations that had a magnificent start yesterday (Wednesday) and that ought to continue in the near future," Ortega said. The meeting was a sign of the church's growing influence on the island.
Garcia, who is archbishop of Santiago and leader of the Conference of Bishops of Cuba, said it was the first time the head of the bishops' group has met with the country's leader in five years, when Fidel Castro was still in charge. Fidel stepped down formally in 2008, turning power over to his brother. "It was a very positive meeting," he told The Associated Press.
Garcia said that he thought "that there was good will" on the part of the government on the issue of dissidents. A photo of a beaming Raul Castro with the two church leaders was printed on the front page of Thursday's Communist-party daily Granma, but the caption said little about what was discussed and made no mention of dissidents or political prisoners.
The government denies it holds political prisoners, and says dissidents are paid mercenaries of Washington, which has been at odds with Cuba since shortly after Fidel Castro overthrew dictator Fulgencia Batista in 1959.
Ortega has waded into politics several times in recent months, telling a church magazine in April that Cuba was in its worst crisis in years and that its citizens were clamoring for political and social change sooner rather than later.
The meeting between Castro and the church leaders comes a month before Vatican Foreign Minister Dominique Mamberti is scheduled to visit Cuba for talks on the island's economic challenges and the effects of emigration and the families torn apart by it. Mamberti is the first top Vatican official to come since Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, secretary of state to Pope Benedict XVI, visited Cuba in February 2008.
Relations between the church and Cuba's government have often been strained. Tensions eased in the early 1990s when the government removed references to atheism in the constitution and allowed believers of all faiths to join the Communist Party. They warmed more when Pope John Paul II visited Cuba in 1998.
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Editorial, Miami Herald, May 24, 2010
Leadership, at last, for Cuba's people
OUR OPINION: Catholic Church can be a catalyst for change
Finally, after a long silence, Cuba's Catholic Church is taking a stand, calling on the Castro regime to free 26 political prisoners who are in failing health.
About time.
Cardinal Jaime Ortega and Santiago Archbishop Dionisio García, head of the island's Bishops' Conference, met with Raúl Castro last week -- the first in an expected series of talks to deal with the dictatorship's abysmal treatment of Cubans, in and out of prison. The meeting, the first in five years between the regime's officials and church leaders, comes after the cardinal last month acknowledged in a Catholic magazine that Cuba is in economic crisis and noted that people are desperate for political and social change.
Ladies in White abused
It also comes after Spain, the European Union and many Latin American leaders have challenged the Castro government's mistreatment of the Ladies in White, women who walk peacefully in protest of their loved ones' imprisonment. The Obama administration and world leaders also condemned Cuba's horrid prison conditions following the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died after more than 80 days in a hunger strike seeking better treatment of prisoners of conscience.
And it's happening as dissident journalist Guillermo Fariñas has made headlines worldwide in a hunger strike calling for the release of the 26 ailing prisoners -- a demand that Gen. Castro labeled ``blackmail'' in April.
For now the Ladies have resumed their marches, but the Castro regime is pressuring them to split from a group of female supporters who have been walking with them. In typical Orwellian doublespeak the regime claims those supporters ``distort'' the issue.
Cardinal should speak up
In truth, Cubans have stepped up their quest for rights after 51 years of fear inspired by firing squads and "defense of the revolution'' block captains who report to the government on neighbors' every move.
Cardinal Ortega has remained mum for too long. He has tried to collaborate with the regime in hopes of getting an opening, as Pope John Paul II called for during his 1998 visit to the communist island. But even as the world has opened to Cuba with more trade and tourism, Cuba has cracked down on its people, unable to accept dissent without imposing violent consequences.
This would not be the first time Cuba has freed prisoners, of course. The Castro brothers have a long history of making small moves in an attempt to score big points abroad.
That's why the cardinal and bishops' efforts are so important. They have to seize this opportunity when key leaders and trading partners with Cuba are watching and demanding action.
In a country run by old revolutionaries, stuck in a time warp of failed policies, Cuba's youth are restless. The Church, as it did in Poland and other nations during the Cold War, can play a pivotal role in being a voice for those the regime wants to silence.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/24/1644729/leadership-at-last-for-cubas-people.html?story_link=email_msg#ixzz0oxc6ZIQO
On Sat., May 22, my daughter Melanie called me to say that her father-in-law, diagnosed with liver cancer just last January, had died at noon. Melanie and her husband took his 9-year-old daughter, for whom he had custody, to live with them.
My brother Bob from Florida, his girl friend, and her cousin will be visiting for Memorial Day weekend, which should be a pleasant respite from my usual frenetic routine. I will have to take at least some “down time” while they are here.
Not too sound too self-congratulatory, but the gulf oil spill reinforces my decision not to own a car and to rely on public transportation, though sometimes that’s time-consuming and inconvenient.
African hopes are fading as the U.S. lets President Omar al-Bashir escape justice. So says Mia Farrow in an op-ed in the Wall St. Journal (May 25, 2010). She reports that the people of Darfur’s high hopes when Obama was elected have faded.
A correspondent concerned with Cuban labor rights has suggested that Pope Benedict make a visit there, something the Cuban government would probably welcome, despite reservations, because of the revenue it would bring in. When John Paul II went to Cuba in 1998, it caused quite a stir. Even Fidel attended Mass. It would be good if Pope Benedict could go now, though he’s not as popular as John Paul. Maybe it would help his popularity, both in Cuba and abroad, if he did, though he might not want to be a copycat.
Here’s an observation from my Cuban correspondent regarding negotiations on the freeing of ill political prisoners there (Fariñas, the man he refers to, has been on an extended hunger strike to promote their release). The Catholic Church is coordinating the negotiating positions of Fariñas and the Damas de Blanco and neither of them is willing to do anything that might create difficulties for the Church's negotiating position. As for possible negotiating links between the Church and the US government, the basic objective of the Cuban government is using the imprisoned dissidents to swap for the five Cuban spies and it is highly improbable that it would pay that much attention to the Cuban Catholic hierarchy if it did not believe that it could somehow contribute to that goal.
This logically requires the Catholic Church (Cuban , US or Vatican or all of the above) to somehow be an intermediary or a mediator in the indirect negotiations between the Cuban and US governments that are probably going on. All this is, of course, speculation, but it is not totally illogical speculation. In short we will soon see what are the results of the negotiations that are obviously going on!
He adds this: In Cuba, the Catholic Church’s role was minimized by the Castro government, which took away its schools, many of its properties, and deported or exiled a great proportion of its priests and made believing in God a disadvantage in life. Cardinal Ortega himself was subject to persecution. In his youth he was accused of being a homosexual and sent to UMAP camps.
Regarding a possible prisoner swap between Cuba and the U.S., another correspondent says,
A precedent of releasing the Cuban spies in the US could be an election problem as I see the voters. Perhaps, improving their conditions in prison would be much better and could be worked out. Setting a precedent of releasing Cuban spies poses other problems for the US over the long term. What if now we catch Pakistani spies or others? Could be a bad double standard to set.
I agree, letting the "Cuban Five" go before the elections, if at all, would be problematic. I just had an inquiry, asking why the wives of the five have not been given visas to let them visit their husbands in prison? It does seem that could be granted, although, of course, they would also speak out about their husbands' innocence in a way that the wives of political prisoners in Cuba cannot.
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Cuban cardinal wants political prisoners freed
By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press,Thursday, May 20, 2010
HAVANA -- Cuba's Roman Catholic cardinal called for the liberation of some of the island's 200 political prisoners on Thursday after a rare sit-down with President Raul Castro, and said he thought his encounter with the Cuban leader was a "magnificent start" to serious dialogue.
"The church is interested in an alleviation of the situation (of the political prisoners) - the liberation of some of them, for example," Cardinal Jaime Ortega said, a day after he and another church leader, Archbishop Dionisio Garcia, held a four-hour discussion with Raul Castro at the Palace of the Revolution, the seat of Cuba's government. The church has called previously for freedom for the island's prisoners of conscience, but doing so right after such a high profile meeting was unusual.
Ortega said in a news conference that he had also brought up the government's decision to bar the dissident Ladies in White from holding weekly marches. The group - comprised of the wives and mothers of jailed political prisoners - were stopped from protesting for three straight weekends in April and pro-government counter-protesters were brought in to shout abuse at them. The standoff ended after Ortega's mediation, when the government agreed to allow the quiet protests to resume in return for assurances the women would not expand their activities.
The cardinal made clear that no deal on any prisoner releases or easing of measures against the opposition had been struck. "We are not talking about any commitments. We are talking about conversations with the government, conversations that had a magnificent start yesterday (Wednesday) and that ought to continue in the near future," Ortega said. The meeting was a sign of the church's growing influence on the island.
Garcia, who is archbishop of Santiago and leader of the Conference of Bishops of Cuba, said it was the first time the head of the bishops' group has met with the country's leader in five years, when Fidel Castro was still in charge. Fidel stepped down formally in 2008, turning power over to his brother. "It was a very positive meeting," he told The Associated Press.
Garcia said that he thought "that there was good will" on the part of the government on the issue of dissidents. A photo of a beaming Raul Castro with the two church leaders was printed on the front page of Thursday's Communist-party daily Granma, but the caption said little about what was discussed and made no mention of dissidents or political prisoners.
The government denies it holds political prisoners, and says dissidents are paid mercenaries of Washington, which has been at odds with Cuba since shortly after Fidel Castro overthrew dictator Fulgencia Batista in 1959.
Ortega has waded into politics several times in recent months, telling a church magazine in April that Cuba was in its worst crisis in years and that its citizens were clamoring for political and social change sooner rather than later.
The meeting between Castro and the church leaders comes a month before Vatican Foreign Minister Dominique Mamberti is scheduled to visit Cuba for talks on the island's economic challenges and the effects of emigration and the families torn apart by it. Mamberti is the first top Vatican official to come since Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, secretary of state to Pope Benedict XVI, visited Cuba in February 2008.
Relations between the church and Cuba's government have often been strained. Tensions eased in the early 1990s when the government removed references to atheism in the constitution and allowed believers of all faiths to join the Communist Party. They warmed more when Pope John Paul II visited Cuba in 1998.
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Editorial, Miami Herald, May 24, 2010
Leadership, at last, for Cuba's people
OUR OPINION: Catholic Church can be a catalyst for change
Finally, after a long silence, Cuba's Catholic Church is taking a stand, calling on the Castro regime to free 26 political prisoners who are in failing health.
About time.
Cardinal Jaime Ortega and Santiago Archbishop Dionisio García, head of the island's Bishops' Conference, met with Raúl Castro last week -- the first in an expected series of talks to deal with the dictatorship's abysmal treatment of Cubans, in and out of prison. The meeting, the first in five years between the regime's officials and church leaders, comes after the cardinal last month acknowledged in a Catholic magazine that Cuba is in economic crisis and noted that people are desperate for political and social change.
Ladies in White abused
It also comes after Spain, the European Union and many Latin American leaders have challenged the Castro government's mistreatment of the Ladies in White, women who walk peacefully in protest of their loved ones' imprisonment. The Obama administration and world leaders also condemned Cuba's horrid prison conditions following the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died after more than 80 days in a hunger strike seeking better treatment of prisoners of conscience.
And it's happening as dissident journalist Guillermo Fariñas has made headlines worldwide in a hunger strike calling for the release of the 26 ailing prisoners -- a demand that Gen. Castro labeled ``blackmail'' in April.
For now the Ladies have resumed their marches, but the Castro regime is pressuring them to split from a group of female supporters who have been walking with them. In typical Orwellian doublespeak the regime claims those supporters ``distort'' the issue.
Cardinal should speak up
In truth, Cubans have stepped up their quest for rights after 51 years of fear inspired by firing squads and "defense of the revolution'' block captains who report to the government on neighbors' every move.
Cardinal Ortega has remained mum for too long. He has tried to collaborate with the regime in hopes of getting an opening, as Pope John Paul II called for during his 1998 visit to the communist island. But even as the world has opened to Cuba with more trade and tourism, Cuba has cracked down on its people, unable to accept dissent without imposing violent consequences.
This would not be the first time Cuba has freed prisoners, of course. The Castro brothers have a long history of making small moves in an attempt to score big points abroad.
That's why the cardinal and bishops' efforts are so important. They have to seize this opportunity when key leaders and trading partners with Cuba are watching and demanding action.
In a country run by old revolutionaries, stuck in a time warp of failed policies, Cuba's youth are restless. The Church, as it did in Poland and other nations during the Cold War, can play a pivotal role in being a voice for those the regime wants to silence.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/24/1644729/leadership-at-last-for-cubas-people.html?story_link=email_msg#ixzz0oxc6ZIQO
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