Chronicle on Cuba - February 2007

Security

February 13: In the Ranchuelo municipality of Villa Clara, more than a hundred people received a call to create an anti-riot brigade. A local neighbor informed that the meetings were presided over by Lt. Col. Alio Gil, head of the Municipal Army Recruitment Office, along with an Army Counter Intelligence (CIM) officer. In each of the meetings, the CIM representative outlined the expediency of gathering volunteers to create shock brigades, which would receive training on how to deal with peaceful political activists and other opponents of the government. (Cubanet, 13/2/07)

February 13: With the aim of creating stronger links of friendship and Latin American integration, cadets and teachers from Venezuelan military academies visiting the island are beginning a wide range of activities in Havana. The delegation of more than 250 includes pupils from the first year of Command and Joint Chief of Staff, the Higher Institutes of War, Military Defense and National Guard Internal Order. The Venezuelan delegation, which remains in Cuba until February 17, is headed up by Vice Admiral Luis Alberto Morales Márquez. According to Granma daily, the programmed activities include visits to historic sites and units of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and the Ministry of the Interior. The South American cadets and officers, who arrived on February 12, were received at José Martí International Airport by Division General Urbelino Betancourt Cruces, director of the General Máximo Gómez FAR Academy.
(World Data Service, Granma International, 12/2/07)

February 23: Russian Ambassador to Havana Andrei V. Demetriev expressed gratitude to the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) for the homage paid in Havana on the Day of Homeland Defenders, on its 89th anniversary. The ceremony at the Internationalist Soviet Soldier Memorial in western Havana constitutes an example of the ties of friendship between the peoples of Cuba and the peoples of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Demetriev said. (Prensa Latina, 23/2/07)

February 26: Operation Caguairán, which began in mid-2006 with the objective of training and improving troop mobilization and deployment as well as the systematic preparation of reservists and militia members, is successfully underway in the territory covered by the Western Army, according to General of the Army Raúl Castro Ruz, second secretary of the Party and minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. He affirmed that the task is being carried out with similar effectiveness throughout the rest of the country. This Army and all of the Armed Forces have fully earned, in a way that they rarely have done until now, the description of outstanding, Raúl said, at the conclusion of the Military Council. Among others, the meeting was also attended by members of the Political Bureau of Cuba’s Communist Party, Ricardo Alarcon, Carlos Lage and Esteban Lazo, as well as by Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque and chiefs from the Armed Forces. (Granma International, Prensa Latina, 26/2/07)