Chronicle on Cuba - September 2004

US-Cuba Relations

September 1: Vermont's Secretary of Agriculture Steve Kerr is planning a trip to Cuba, to work on a deal to export the state's agricultural commodities and dairy cattle to the island, according to The Boston Globe. Kerr is following up on an April trade mission to Havana by Lt. Governor Brian Dubie, who returned home with plans to eventually sell apples, dried milk and cows from Vermont, the newspaper reports. The agriculture secretary said he hoped to return after his four-day trip with contracts in hand for the sale of five container loads of apples valued at approximately $100,000 and for 3,000 metric tons of powdered milk valued at $6 million. (Prensa Latina, 1/9/04)

September 1: The US has imposed a fine on Iberia, the Spanish airline, for breaking its embargo on Cuba. According to the US Treasury, Iberia - in which the Spanish government has a 5.35 per cent stake - was guilty of the "transportation and importations of Cuban goods to the United States". The fine, which was imposed in June but only is emerging now, threatens further to undermine relations between Washington and Madrid. (The Financial Times, 1/9/04)

September 2: Spanish airline Iberia said it had agreed to pay $8,000 to settle US government accusations that it broke the US embargo on Cuba. The events at issue in the case date back to 2000 when, according to the airline, Iberia carried tobacco originating in Spain's Canary Islands from Spain to Panama via its Miami hub. "It was Canaries tobacco, but they (the United States) insisted it was Cuban tobacco, although they were unable to prove it and finally we opted for a less costly settlement," an Iberia spokesman said. The settlement with the US Treasury was reached in June but has only now been made public. (Reuters, 2/9/04)

September 2: In the shadow of the best-known and most controversial result of the Cuban balsero crisis in 1994 - the wet-foot/dry-foot policy - more than 230,000 Cubans have legally immigrated to the United States in the past decade. That quiet inflow of Cubans represents nearly seven times the 35,000 would-be migrants who wound up at the US Navy base in Guantanamo Bay - another of the searing images from those days when Cubans by the tens of thousands took to inner tubes, homemade rafts and other flimsy vessels in desperate bids to cross the Florida Straits. (The Miami Herald, 2/9/04)

September 2: A hospital translator faces a federal immigration hearing after federal agents arrested him on allegations that he failed to disclose he once worked for Cuba's intelligence service. Juan Manuel Reyes-Alonso, 36, who lives in Chatham County, was held without bond in the Forsyth County jail while awaiting a meeting with an immigration judge in Atlanta. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents led him away in handcuffs outside UNC Hospitals, where Reyes-Alonso works in the pediatrics department. Reyes-Alonso, who was born in Cuba, failed to disclose that he was in "intelligence office training in June 1994 under the command of the Cuban Directorate of Intelligence," said Sue Brown, a spokeswoman for the immigration and customs enforcement office. (AP, 3/9/04)

September 3: The US has imposed fines on several European companies in the last few months, including Alitalia, the Italian airline, for breaking its Cuban embargo laws, raising fears of a new trade confrontation between Washington and Brussels. The fines follow the penalty imposed on Iberia, the Spanish airline, after it was accused of shipping Cuban goods through the US. The sanctions may force the European Commission, which has strongly criticised the extra-territorial application of the Cuban embargo laws, to protest to Washington. Brussels said it was studying the fine imposed on Iberia. "We are opposed to any extra-territorial measure (from the US government) that affects any European interest," said a spokeswoman for Pascal Lamy, the trade commissioner. (The Financial Times, 3/9/04)

September 4: Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon stated that Cuba did not expect the US to change its policy toward Havana, irrespective of the candidate who wins the November elections in the North American country. Alarcon said that the relaxation of travel prohibitions on Cuban immigrants was the only predictable change if Democrat candidate John Kerry won and kept his promise. According to the Parliament president, Kerry speaks about keeping the blockade and pressures, the same position but probably with a less aggressive rhetoric than President George W Bush: essentially the same policy. When Democrats opposed the travel bans on Cuban-Americans, they made clear they supported the document containing the Bush policy, Alarcon stressed. (Prensa Latina, 6/9/04)

September 5: Cuban National Assembly President, Ricardo Alarcón, has expressed that there is a real threat of a US invasion of the island. Alarcon rejected that US authorities denied such a possibility after a denouncement made in a Cuban congressional statement in July. "I wouldn"t say US authorities have denied that. There has been a brief statement by US Interest Section chief in Havana, James Carson, but he is a fourth-class bureaucrat," the official stressed. He also recalled what President Bush said when he created a commission to draft a plan for a so-called Cuban transition -meaning the process that will start the day Cuban President Fidel Castro is gone- "we are not just talking, but working, acting to get that, and we have to do it in a quick, aggressive manner," Bush said then. No US government has ever been more explicit in developing and revealing its designs for intervention, Alarcon concluded. (Prensa Latina, 6/9/04)

September 6: According to relatives in Havana and sources with the Miami Coastguard Service, seven Cuban balseros who left the island illegally are currently missing at sea while a freighter on its way to the Bahamas picked up another 24. [For more on this, see also Foreign Affairs] (El Nuevo Herald, 7/9/04)

September 7: Antonio Guerrero, one of the five Cuban political prisoners in the United States, denounced in a public letter that prison authorities have forbidden him to collect stamps. The letter explains that after his stay in a punishment cell, he had accumulated more that 200 letters, kept for a month by the prison’s Security Department. Nevertheless, the official who gave him the letters objected to two coming from Slovenia with no name and address, and containing stamps from that country. As the Cuban prisoner is not authorized to receive them, they threw them out. (Prensa Latina, 7/9/04)

September 8: A US Senate subcommittee has authorized business trips to Cuba by U.S. citizens selling domestic agricultural products. The agricultural affairs subcommittee gave its unanimous approval to a joint proposal submitted by Republican Larry Craig and Democrat Byron Dorgan, who represents the agricultural states of Idaho and North Dakota, respectively. (AFP, 9/9/04)

September 8: A license for Southern Illinois University researchers to travel to Cuba has been renewed by the federal government. The license had expired in June and government officials did not renew the document. But university officials and local congressmen successfully convinced the US Department of the Treasury to restore the SIU's license for one year. (AP, 9/9/04)

September 8: An international working group comprised of analysts, former government officials and diplomats is "most troubled" to see that the recommendations to the U.S. president by a special commission on Cuba are more concerned with putting an end to Fidel Castro's rule than with a "peaceful transition," the long-avowed policy of the U.S. government toward the island. In an open letter addressed to Secretary of State Colin Powell, the working group of the Inter-American Dialogue -- a Washington-based think tank -- maintains that the recommendations to President George W. Bush "poorly serve U.S. interests in Cuba and the wider region." [An open letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, pdf] (IPS, 9/9/04)

September 9: Fidel Castro said he will not accept any humanitarian aid for victims of Hurricane Ivan from any country that has imposed economic sanctions on the island, insisting the only acceptable humanitarian aid is the lifting of the US embargo. "We will not accept assistance from those that have imposed economic sanctions on our country; they can spare themselves the hypocrisy of offering aid to Cuba," Castro said. "We won't accept any humanitarian assistance other than the lifting of the US economic embargo," said the leader, who spoke close to four hours on state-run television. (EFE, 10/9/04)

September 8: The chief US diplomat in Havana built a model of a Cuban prison cell in his backyard to draw attention to the island's human rights record, drawing critical comments by foreign diplomats. James Cason, head of the US Interests Section in Havana, presented the structure, a model of what he said is a typical solitary holding cell in a Cuban prison, during a small diplomatic reception at his home. Cason said the structure was based on a description that imprisoned dissident Oscar Biscet gave his wife. A little over six feet high and three feet wide, the holding cell of wood and metal features a drain on the floor for a toilet, a plastic bowl of food, a sheet for a bed and a fake rat. (AP, 8/9/04)

September 9: The president of the Cuban parliament, Ricardo Alarcón, criticized the decision by James Cason to build in his backyard a model of a Cuban prison cell. "I'm not surprised by any unsightly display that man makes," Alarcon said. "He lacks seriousness." “What he should do is mount an exposition of the holding areas of the base at Guantanamo," Alarcon said, referring to the prison in easternmost Cuba where the U.S military is holding hundreds of prisoners accused of links to Afghanistan's fallen Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror network. (El Tiempo, AP, 9/9/04)

September 9: Vermont Agriculture Secretary Steve Kerr is bringing home from Cuba seven million dollars worth of business for the state. Kerr met with Fidel Castro before Kerr signed the agricultural deals. Kerr says he and Castro talked about everything from the importance of education to Parkinson's disease and eye surgery. He described his meeting with Castro as "remarkable." Kerr signed agreements to send dairy cattle, apples and powdered milk to Cuba. The American food sales to Cuba are an exception to US trade sanctions against the island. (AP, 9/9/04)

September 13: With Hurricane Ivan just hours away from passing over or near the western tip of Cuba, Fidel Castro repeated his stand that he wouldn't accept any assistance from the US. Castro said Cuba wouldn't accept a penny from the US or any country that has imposed economic sanctions against his country. “Not only from the US, but from other countries whose names I don’t want to mention”, Castro said. Castro said the US could save itself the hypocrisy of trying to help Cuba in this situation. (CNN, La Jornada, 14/9/04)

September 13: A key lawmaker renewed his criticism that the Bush administration was dedicating too many resources to squeezing the communist government in Cuba rather than tracking down terrorists. Senator Max Baucus (Democrat-Montana), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee and a critic of the Cuba embargo, said that the Office of Foreign Assets Control devoted "more personnel resources to prevent US citizens from vacationing in Cuba than it does to root out the international sources of terrorist financing in Iraq, Afghanistan or Iran.'' OFAC deploys 21 employees to enforce the Cuba travel ban. That compares to 16 employees who track the financial support networks of Iraqi insurgents and another 16 who pursue the al Qaeda terrorism network, Baucus' office said in a statement. (The Miami Herald, 14/9/04)

September 14: The head of the federal agency charged with enforcing US economic sanctions against other countries, including Cuba, is leaving his post after 17 years, the Treasury Department announced. Richard Newcomb, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, leaves his position in the Treasury Department as OFAC's workload was expected to increase sharply after President Bush decided earlier this summer to tighten US restrictions on travel to Cuba. OFAC, in charge of enforcing all of the United States' economic sanctions against other countries, also plays a role in pursuing those who finance terrorists. (The Miami Herald, 14/9/04)

September 15: Opponents of US restrictions on travel to Cuba suffered a defeat when an amendment that would have denied funding for enforcement was withdrawn from a House of Representatives bill, the first such setback in five years. Representative Jeff Flake (Republican-Arizona), the sponsor of the initiative, blamed election-year politics for his decision to withdraw the amendment. ''Unfortunately, the timing of this legislation this year does not lend itself to a reasoned and thoughtful debate about our policy toward Cuba, '' he said. A similar amendment passed the House and Senate last year, but was later dropped in a conference committee under a veto threat from the White House. (The Miami Herald, 15/9/04)

September 15: In separate trials, a US judge gave 1-year prison sentences to four individuals charged with conspiracy to smuggle 62 illegal aliens from Cuba into the US territory. The Miami-based Office of the US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida informed that the accused would also serve one year's probation. (EFE, 16/9/04)

September 15: The Department of State released the sixth Annual Report on International Religious Freedom, which examines the "status of religious freedom around the world." In the case of Cuba, the reports signals that, the “Ministry of Interior continues to control and monitor religious activities and to use surveillance, infiltration and harassment against religious groups, clergy and laypersons.” [International Religious Freedom Report: Cuba] (Washington Files, 15/9/04)

September 15: The number of people visiting Cuba from the United States has dropped 25 percent since new US travel restrictions took effect this summer, Cuba's tourism minister said. That trend isn't expected to change before the US presidential elections on November 2, Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero said. "These measures have really pressed down the flow of American tourists (...) and Cubans residing in the United States," Marrero told a news conference. "We are hoping for recovery after November." (AP, 15/9/04)

September 16: The B'nai B'rith Cuban Jewish Relief Project is collecting clothing, medicine and supplies for the beleaguered population of Cuba, which has been battered by two hurricanes in the past five weeks and may be in the path of a third by this weekend. Based in Pittsburgh, the relief project is licensed by the U.S. government to assist Cubans through humanitarian missions and donations. (Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 16/9/04)

September 18: The world premiere of Oliver Stone's follow-up documentary on Fidel Castro met timid applause from a half-full house at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. Stone's documentary, titled "Looking for Fidel," presents a more balanced portrait of the Communist leader and life on the Caribbean island than Stone's 2002 film "Comandante." "It's a very spontaneous movie," Stone said at a news conference after the screening. "It's not a left-wing documentary, and I hope Americans will see it that way." "It was made for educational reasons, not for money, but I've had enormous difficulties to market it," he added. (Las Vegas Sun, 19/9/04)

September 18: IFCO’s Pastors for Peace, an organization based in New York, announced the creation of a relief fund for countries affected by recent hurricanes Charley, Frances and Ivan in the Caribbean. The second week of September, Hurricane Ivan hit hard across the Caribbean, destroying 90% of the housing on the island of Grenada and rendering 3/4 of the people of Grenada homeless; flooding Grand Cayman; killing more than 60 people and causing untold damage in Jamaica and other island nations, explains IFCO’s Pastors for Peace in a press release. In Cuba, no lives were lost, it says, but major damage has been suffered in Pinar del Rio and the Isle of Youth, and torrential and sustained rains have damaged crops in Havana Province and homes in the oldest neighborhoods of Centro Habana and Old Havana. The note says that when Pastors for Peace brought their 15th Friendshipment to Havana in late August, Cuba was recovering from the summer"s first big storm. (Prensa Latina, 18/9/04)

September 21: In a rebuke against President Bush, the House voted to reverse a new administration policy that limits travel by Cuban-Americans to visit their families in Cuba. With Florida members sharply divided, the US House voted 225 to 174 remove new travel restrictions. Proponents from Florida and other states said the new rules separate families and cut off a lifeline of support during an especially traumatic time in the aftermath of hurricane damage. The 225-174 vote is not expected to survive the legislative process; the Senate version of the bill is still in committee and even if both chambers keep the amendment on the final transportation appropriations bill, Republican leaders said they believe Bush would veto it. But the vote was viewed as a slap at Bush as he battles to keep his historic domination of the Cuban-American vote in Florida. (Boston News, Sun Sentinel, 22/9/04)

September 22: A Cuban-American man convicted of smuggling Cubans into the United States has been sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison for a mission that claimed the life of a 48-year-old woman after a life prison term was erased on appeal. Under a plea bargain, Jorge "Bombino" Aleman admitted organizing five smuggling trips that ferried more than 100 Cubans to Florida from October 1999 to June 2001. (AP, 22/9/04)

September 22: Award winning US filmmaker Oliver Stone has reaffirmed his admiration for the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro. Speaking with reporters in Spain at the San Sebastian Film Festival, the internationally-renowned movie director said that during recent visits to the island he has witnessed the Cuban people's reaction to their president on the streets and affirmed that their support and admiration are not feigned. "If it were, they'd all deserve Oscars for their performance." (Prensa Latina, 22/9/04)

September 23: Cuba sought fresh support from the American people and the United Nations to end the four-decade US embargo on the island, and dismissed the Bush administration's campaign to topple Fidel Castro as a failure. Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said if Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry defeats President Bush in November and lifts some restrictive measures against Cuba, "that would be positive." But only a complete end to the social and economic embargo will satisfy the Cuban government, he told The Associated Press in an interview. Perez Roque made a sharp distinction between Washington's hard line toward the Cuban leader and the support for easing the sanctions among the American public and in the US Congress. (AP, 23/9/04)

September 23: Former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, accused the democrat candidate, John Kerry, of avoiding a visit to Miami. According to Giuliani, Kerry didn’t want to give explanations to the Cuban exiles about his position towards the island. ''Sincerely, I think he doesn’t come to Miami because he has been very inconsistent regarding Cuba.” “He has been consistently inconsistent,” Giuliani told the press. Besides,  “Kerry knows that this community will ask him explanations for his positions during last visit”, Giuliani said in the last scale of a tour with candidate to the Senate, Mel Martínez. (El Nuevo Herald, 23/9/04)

September 24: A man from Ecuador was sentenced by a US jury to 100 years in prison for recording his sex acts with at least 120 children in Cuba and Ecuador and distributing the videotapes and CDs to customers in the United States. The Cuban government, co-operating with US investigators, tracked down nine victims using still images lifted from tapes and disks; Ecuador identified three victims. Cuba prosecuted three women and a man who helped recruit girls and boys for the illicit productions. (The National Post, 25/9/04)

September 24: Cuba said US President George W. Bush had "handcuffed" the United Nations, and that the war in Iraq had cost the world body its credibility and respect. Following the US-led invasion of Iraq, the United Nations had ceased to exist as a "useful and diverse forum," and was now living through the worst period in its 60-year history, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told the UN General Assembly. He also argued that the unilateral actions of the United States precluded any valid reform of the United Nations -- an issue that has been a hot topic of debate at the General Assembly. [Statement by Felipe Pérez Roque at the UN General Assembly] (AFP, 24/9/04)

September 24: The Cuban government has little hope for a change in US policy towards the island after the upcoming presidential elections in the United States. But in other sectors of Cuban society, there are some who believe that even a second term under George W. Bush would be different. "I support John Kerry, the Democratic candidate for president in the November elections, because I believe that anyone would be better than Bush," Cuban dissident Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, a former rebel commander who is now asking to be allowed to continue his activism legally in Cuba, said in an interview with IPS. Nevertheless, a change in Washington's stance could come under either Bush or Kerry, he added. "There is a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives that is in favour of a new U.S policy towards Cuba, a policy that isn't controlled by an elite minority of the Cuban exile community," he explained. (IPS, 24/9/04)

September 26: Bacardi has been indicted by a Texas grand jury on charges of making an illegal $20,000 (£13,600) payment to a Republican political group whose founder lobbied against rival Cuban rum brand Havana Club. The charge against the rum giant is the latest twist in the decade-long "rum war" between the exiled anti-Castro rum dynasty and communist Cuba. At stake is control of the US trademark for Bacardi's arch rival, Cuban-distilled Havana Club, currently owned by Cubaexport - a joint venture of Cuba and French drinks giant Pernod Ricard. The drink is the fastest-growing rum brand in the world but, because of a legal dispute going back to Fidel Castro's revolution in 1959, both sides claim to own it in the US. Bacardi lost the last round of the trademark dispute, but is appealing. (Reuters, 26/9/04)

September 27: A group of organizations representing publishers and authors sued the federal government, saying it is blocking the works of authors in countries such as Cuba, Iran and Sudan from reaching the United States. In the lawsuit in US District Court in Manhattan, the groups asked a federal judge to remove government restrictions that allegedly block the free exchange of information and ideas. Otherwise, it said, "Americans who want information from Cuba, Iran and Sudan are limited to reading what has already been written in those countries.'' The lawsuit noted that authors in those countries already work under government restrictions and blamed the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control for, in effect, extending "the force of foreign censorship to the United States.'' (AP, 27/9/04)

September 28: In a rare intervention in the American legislative process, the Cuban government is lobbying against legislation pending before Congress, saying lawmakers must act to repeal controversial trademark legislation and expressing its opposition to the so-called Bacardi bill, according to a document provided to the press. In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee members, Dagoberto Rodriguez Barrera, chief of the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, D.C., said Cuba opposes the bill. Rodríguez Barrera said his country’s courts have protected the thousands of US trademarks currently registered in Cuba, adding that Cuba has waited with considerable patience on effective US action to cure Section 211’s violations” of the Inter-American Convention and the TRIPS agreement. Many US companies fear that Fidel Castro would initiate legal retaliation against their trademarks. National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) President Bill Reinsch said he believes Cuba is waiting to see what Congress does” but would retaliate if Section 211 were not appealed outright. (The Hill, 28/9/04)

September 29: Cuban scholars charged that the US government denied visas to more than 60 Cubans seeking to attend a conference on Latin America in the United States. Milagro Martinez, a political scientist who was to attend the Latin American Studies Association congress in Las Vegas next month, said the American mission in Havana announced this week that she and more than 60 other Cuban academics were denied US visas. The reason for the denial was not immediately clear. Officials at the US Interests Section in Havana declined to comment and referred calls to the US State Department in Washington, which did not immediately issue a statement on the matter. (AP, 29/9/04)

September 30: Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque presented the document that will be offered before the United Nations General Assembly in October. In communist Cuba, milk rations for children stop at age 7, blackouts stop the fans in sweltering homes, and it's anyone's guess whether there'll be cooking gas this month. Such banes of daily life are the product of the US trade embargo and could be removed within a year of sanctions being lifted, Cuba's foreign minister said as he launched the island's annual international campaign against the embargo. Cuba has lost an average of $1.8 billion a year in trade since the first sanctions were imposed in 1960, a year after the Cuban revolution thrust Fidel Castro into power, Felipe Perez Roque said in a news conference. [Report by Cuba on Resolution 58/7 of the UN General Assembly] (Radio Habana Cuba, Sun Sentinel, 30/9/04)