Chronicle on Cuba - August 2007

US-Cuba Relations

August 1: North Dakota will ship 100 tons of seed potatoes to Cuba, marking the first time the communist country has bought US seed potatoes in decades. The deal calls for the seed potatoes to be sent to the island in time for farmers there to plant this year, North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson said. "It's a very small amount - only about $15,000 worth - but it is significant in testing the waters," Johnson said. (Buffalo News, 1/8/07)

August 1: The Cuban government newspaper Granma slammed US broadcasters Radio Marti and TV Marti for hostile programs that have cost millions of US dollars, but is of no interest to the islanders. Under the headline "the radio that no one listens to and the TV channel that no one watches," Granma said the two Miami-based Marti stations have wasted 520 million dollars since 1985. The United States spends more than 20 million dollars on the anti-Cuba broadcast each year, and that does not include one-off costs like the 2006 purchase of a rebroadcasting aircraft for 10 million dollars. Citing a report by the Associated Press, Granma said Cubans who had recently arrived in Miami told the US news agency that the TV channel was considered boring on the island and that they preferred the commercial channels from Miami via contraband satellite dishes. (Xinhua, 2/8/07)  

August 1: A hunger strike by Cuban migrants detained at the US Navy base in Guantanamo Bay entered its third day though one participant was hospitalized with pneumonia, according to an exile group monitoring the protest. The Miami-based group, Democracy Movement, said 22 Cuban men were on hunger strike at the Migrant Operation Center at the base in southeast Cuba. A US official said, however, that there were 17 strikers. The hospitalized man remains on strike, said Ramon Saul Sanchez, president of Democracy Movement. The protesters are among 44 Cubans who were captured at sea by the US Coast Guard but could not be returned to Cuba because authorities determined they had a credible fear of persecution. They have been detained at Guantanamo -- some for more than two years -- while the US seeks to settle them in a third country. Sanchez said they began the strike to protest their conditions and the length of their confinement. He and other exiles want them settled immediately in the United States, where some have relatives. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez said all the hunger strikers are monitored by military doctors and in stable condition. (AP, 1/8/07)  

August 1: The vast majority of Cubans sneaking off the island now enter the United States through Mexico after US relatives pay thousands of dollars (euros) to organized crime networks that scoop them off Cuba 's westernmost tip in souped-up speedboats. The Mexico route is more dangerous than a direct, 90-mile voyage (145-kilometer) from Cuba to Florida, but there is less chance the US Coast Guard will intervene. Nearly 90 percent of all undocumented Cubans who make it to America now come overland rather than reaching US shores by boat, according to US Customs and Border Protection. From the Mexican coast, Cubans then travel up to the US border, where unlike other undocumented migrants, they are welcomed in under US law. (AP, 1/8/07)  

August 2: A dozen Saint Leo University faculty members will leave for a 10-day research trip to Cuba. But as of July 2006, state lawmakers banned Florida 's public universities from spending money on travel to any nation labelled by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism, Cuba included. "I'm really jealous that they're going," said Noel Smith, curator of Latin American and Caribbean art at the University of South Florida 's Graphicstudio. She is organizing a fall sculpture exhibition with a Cuban curator via e-mail since she can't travel to Cuba. One of several co-plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging the ban that is set for trial in December, Smith applauds Saint Leo's trip: "They're very lucky that they're able to do this -- and very smart." Saint Leo spokeswoman Susan Shoulet said the professors are tapping privately funded faculty development money for the trip: "They were very careful that they had taken a look at all the regulations, to the letter of the law." The group, including university President Arthur F. Kirk Jr., will arrive in Havana on August 11 for nine days of meetings with a broad range of Cuban officials and professors. They will also meet with Catholic Church officials and Mariela Castro Espin, daughter of acting President Raul Castro and the director of Cuba 's National Center for Sexual Education. (Tampa Tribune, 2/8/07) 

August 2: Michael Moore has been served with a subpoena by the US government over his controversial trip to Cuba for his latest documentary Sicko. Moore brought men and women who had assisted in the clean-up of lower Manhattan following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to Cuba to receive free medical treatment for the ailments they have developed over the past five years. He claims they have not received adequate medical care in the US. Moore maintains he is exempt from the travel ban because he visited Cuba as a journalist. (Ireland On-Line, 2/8/07)

August 2: The US Department of Homeland Security's US Coast Guard, 7th District, issued a press release informing that “eighty-one Cuban migrants interdicted in five events were repatriated by the crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Chandeleur to Bahia de Cabanas, Cuba”. The information also said that, “13 Cuban migrants interdicted July 23 were repatriated on July 1 by the crew of Coast Guard Cutter Kodiak Island”.  (US Fed News, 2/8/07)

August 2: Representatives of the Cuban dissident movement took part in a videoconference with US members of Congress in Washington from Havana. The exchange took place in the United States Interests Section in the Cuban capital. Participants from Washington included senators Mel Martínez and Bob Menéndez, and representatives Ileana Ros Lehtinen, Lincoln Díaz Balart and Mario Díaz Balart, all of Cuban origin. Attending the videoconference were dissidents Marta Beatriz Roque, Vladimiro Roca, Elizardo Sánchez, Félix Bonne, Héctor Palacios and Roberto de Miranda, among others, as well as Gisela Delgado and Laura Pollán, of the ladies in White. (Martí Noticias, 3/8/07)

August 6: Exile activists in Miami and family members of Cubans detained at the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo Bay said that 22 Cubans held at the base were continuing their hunger strike for the 10th day to protest what one former detainee calls "cruel" treatment. Exile organizations are planning a protest in downtown Miami to show support for the Cuban migrants, who complain that they are being treated as common prisoners, with surprise searches, head counts and limited capacity to move around the facility and make phone calls. Several more migrants are expected to join the strike. "Those people are very cruel with the Cubans," said Mariela Despaigne Agramonte, 39, who said she spent three months at the Guantánamo base last year and now lives in Connecticut. ``The Cubans in Guantánamo call me every day, desperate." Exile activist Ramón Saúl Sánchez placed blame on The GEO Group, the private company that runs the Migrant Operations Center at Guantánamo under a US government contract. GEO Group officials could not be reached for comment, but the company's website notes that the Cubans at the center are not ``incarcerated or detained." But Dionelo Reyes Morales, the father of detainee Duniel Reyes Betancourt, says his son feels like a political prisoner. Reyes Betancourt, 23, fled Cuba on a raft in May and was picked up by the US Coast Guard, said Reyes Morales, 58. Reyes Morales said his son had a visa to come to the United States and had served time as a political prisoner in Cuba, accused of associating to commit delinquency. "He is being treated like a political prisoner," Reyes Morales said. ``He left Cuba because he didn't want to be treated that way any more. They search him whenever they want to. They don't let him communicate with his family sometimes." (The Miami Herald, 8/8/07)

August 7: Cuba's Granma newspaper refers to an August 5 New York Times article on the five Cubans incarcerated in the US -- stressing that this constitutes a crack in the wall of silence on the case of the anti-terrorist fighters. Granma points out that this is undoubtedly important for the case as it informs the American people about the truth of the Cuban Five, who have been arbitrarily detained in US prisons since September 12th, 1998. Entitled "Cracks in the Wall of Silence," the daily newspaper comments that despite having published an article on March 3rd, 2004 -- which was paid by the international solidarity movement -- this New York Times article is good news because the readers have an opportunity to learn about the case. (Radio Habana Cuba, 7/8/07)

August 7: The defense attorney of five Cubans imprisoned in United States will denounce political manipulations of the case at a hearing scheduled for the Atlanta Appeal Court. Interviewed by the National Committee to Release the Cuban Five, attorney Leonard Weinglass talked of three new important issues for the Cuban 5 appeal on August 20. Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labanino, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez were detained in September 1998 in United States for protecting Cuban and US citizens from terrorism. "We have an incredible number of topics to present before judges, but the most important ones are if Cause No. 3 against Gerardo Hernandez proceed or not, US attorney John Kastrenakes’ bad behavior in his final allegation of the case, and sentences by Hernandez, Guerrero and Labanino, condemned to double life imprisonments," noted Weinglass. "If we win these three issues," the defense attorney stressed, "it will be a fair way so the Cuban Five can return home with their relatives and compatriots in Cuba." (Prensa Latina, 7/8/07)

August 7: John Parke Wright IV said he believes Cuba and the United States would both have much to gain if the 40-year-old trade embargo were lifted to allow free commerce between the two countries. A rancher from Naples who has shipped about 1,200 head of cattle to the island country during the past five years, Wright said if the embargo were lifted the United States would see "at least a doubling of business, and more than that from Florida, I'm sure”. "Two-way trade would clearly be good for the farmers in Cuba ," Wright said. "It's not fair that they have to buy from us, but they can't sell anything back. I'd love to get the contract to import mangoes for Port Manatee, Cuban coffee for Miami,  Cuban cigars. Florida 's economy was built on agriculture and tourism. For almost the last 50 years, Cuba was closed down." (The Bradenton Herald, 7/8/07)

August 8: Cuba's Foreign Ministry said it had formally protested the US State Department's acknowledgment it will not meet this fiscal year's minimum quota of 20,000 visas for Cubans wanting to live in the US. It accused Washington of violating accords aimed at ensuring safe and orderly migration, while US officials blamed Cuban restrictions for the problem. Dagoberto Rodriguez, chief of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, said in a statement distributed via e-mail that his office sent a diplomatic note to State Department officials. ''It now corresponds to the United States government to end with the manipulation of the migratory issue in its relations with Cuba,'' Rodriguez said. The visa quota flap erupted in mid-July, when Havana warned that the US Interests Section, the American mission here, was not on track to grant at least 20,000 emigration visas before the end of the US government fiscal year ending September 30. US officials confirmed that they would not fill the quota and blamed the Cuban government, saying it had blocked necessary materials and American personnel from entering the country. ''We categorically reject that accusation,'' Rodriguez said. ''The United States authorities deliberately lie.'' [MINREX’s Statement] (The New York Times, 9/8/07)

August 8: Two Cuban migrants held at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay quit a hunger strike after being hospitalized with health problems, a Miami-based exile group said. Twenty other migrants were keeping up the strike that began July 29 to protest their conditions and Washington's refusal to let them settle in the United States, said Ramon Saul Sanchez, president of the Miami-based exile group Democracy Movement. (Sun Sentinel, 9/8/07)

August 9: The Emergency Coalition to Defend Educational Travel (ECDET) announced that it will appeal Judge Huvelle's July 30 decision to grant the government's motion to dismiss ECDET's litigation. Comprising almost 500 academics, ECDET held that restrictions imposed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control on courses in Cuba violated academic freedoms by dictating who could teach the courses, who could take them, the duration of the courses, and where they might be held. Judge Huvelle held that what she gratuitously referred to as "the so-called academic freedom doctrine" applies only to academic speech. ECDET chairman Wayne Smith is an adjunct professor who has taught at Johns Hopkins for twenty-plus years, is one of the country's leading experts on Cuba, and for years has taught short-term courses in Cuba. But since 2004 he, and other part-time faculty members, has been prohibited from doing so. (PRNewswire, 9/8/07)

August 10: Details of the state's case against a father seeking to take his daughter back to Cuba emerged for the first time in a Miami courtroom, where the fate of the 4-year-old in the middle of an international custody dispute will be decided. Blue-eyed, redheaded and precocious, the little girl came to Miami with her pre-teen half brother in 2005 after their mother won the right to emigrate. By that December, the children had been sheltered by the Department of Children & Families when the mother tried to commit suicide. The children have been living with foster parents, a wealthy Cuban-American family in Coral Gables, for more than a year. The foster parents are fighting to maintain custody of a little girl they say has become a part of their family. In a petition filed in Miami's juvenile court -- the details of which were disclosed in the court hearing -- DCF is arguing that the girl's birth father, a farmer in Cuba, failed to protect her by not devising a ''safety plan'' to protect the little girl in the United States if her mother became incapacitated or ill. The DCF petition also says the little girl would be harmed if forced to leave her older brother, now 12, who protected and cared for her when their mother was neglectful. A lawyer for the girl's foster parents, who have adopted her brother, is asking Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen to allow the sibling to participate in the court case. (The Miami Herald, 11/8/07)

August 10: After three months of getting to know each other in Internet chatrooms, Alex Menéndez, a Miami resident, was finally face to face with Yaditza López, 22, a Havana computer-programming student who was one of 52 Cuban migrants who landed on Key Biscayne in what US Border Patrol agents call a smuggling operation. López and the group were taken to the US Customs and Border Patrol Processing Station in Pembroke Pines. The Border Patrol learned that the group arrived with the aid of smugglers traveling in a series of speedboats. ''This was a normal smuggling-type effort that took 15 to 18 hours,'' said Border Patrol agent Walter Harris. ``The large number of them were from Pinar del Río.'' Harris said the investigation was ongoing and could not specify how much each migrant paid the smugglers, though in other cases the price tag ranges from $5,000 to $10,000 per person. (The Miami Herald, 11/8/07)

August 12: A prominent Cuban dissident who was released after 13 years behind bars said he hopes to go to the United States for surgery, then return to Cuba to resume his human rights activism. "My future is in the struggle" for improved rights on the island, Francisco Chaviano said in an interview at the western Havana home he shares with his wife. The 54-year-old mathematician said, however, he first wants to see about his health. Chaviano said a small tumor was recently discovered in one of his lungs, and that he developed heart problems while behind bars. Although he could have the tumor removed in Cuba, Chaviano said he would feel more comfortable undergoing major surgery in a country where the government doesn't consider him an enemy. Chaviano would need an American visa and an exit permit from the Cuban government to make the trip. He said he will not know until he meets with a judge whether the conditions of his parole would affect an attempt to leave the island. "For good or bad, I'll come back" to Cuba, he said, even though all three of the couple's children now live in Orlando, Florida. "Why would I leave Cuba for good now if I didn't leave before?" Chaviano said. (AP, 12/8/07)

August 13: Canadian Mary McCarthy lives in the same mansion she and her millionaire husband moved into 62 years ago in the once-posh Country Club area of Havana. Her real jewelry and the small fortune she inherited when she was widowed in 1951 have been frozen in a Boston bank since the United States placed Cuba under sanctions after Fidel Castro's leftist revolution in 1959. That's because she lived in Cuba and did not leave with most of her wealthy Cuban neighbours who fled to Miami when Castro nationalized businesses and steered the Caribbean nation toward Soviet communism. The Cuban government confiscated her properties and her husband's leather factory, assets valued at $4 million, and she was left only with "Villa Mary," a dilapidated mansion in need of repairs where she lives in virtual poverty. Since January this year the US government has let her withdraw a $96 a month allowance from her US bank after Canadian diplomats interceded on her behalf. McCarthy is asking US President George W. Bush to free her money so that she can live her remaining days with dignity. She would also like to have her family's "trinkets" released. "They said they couldn't give it to me because I live in Cuba. That's the only money that I have left. It is in Boston, but I live in Cuba, that's the great terrible, terrible thing," she said. (Reuters, 13/8/07)

August 13: Signalling she may have no choice but to return a 4-year-old girl to Cuba, a Miami judge ordered that the girl's birth father be permitted overnight visits, despite concerns of therapists and the girl's foster parents, who claim a weekend sleepover ''terrified'' her. Miguel Firpi, the girl's court-appointed psychologist, testified that the girl cried herself to sleep during an overnight visit with her father, who came to the United States from Cuba two months ago to fight for custody. ''The child told me she cried a lot. She told me she does not want to go back,'' Firpi told Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen. ``She's anxious and concerned.'' Though Cohen expressed dismay that the long custody battle is traumatizing the girl, she told lawyers for the state Department of Children & Families and the Guardian ad Litem Program that the birth father has ''fundamental rights'' to raise the daughter unless he is proved to be an unfit parent. (The Miami Herald, 14/8/07)

August 14: Senator Mel Martinez said that he is aware of the growing human smuggling problem in our area and that help is on the way to protect Southwest Florida's shores. Martinez is a Cuban-American and some say he is the face of the immigration debate in Washington. He admitted that many times the Coast Guard doesn't have the man power to keep up with smugglers. "It is important that their boats, their vessels be as fast as the smugglers," said Martinez, a Republican serving his first term in the US Senate. The 33 foot "go fast" boat that was just given to the Coast Guard Station on Fort Myers Beach will help with that issue. He does admit, however, that Cubans will continue to attempt to make it to America if one thing doesn't change. "The overall big answer to that problem would be if we can get the situation in Cuba to be one where people's human rights were respected," said Martinez. He even went one step further, blaming the Cuban government for the human smuggling problem. "The Cuban government is complicit in this human smuggling business. In my opinion I believe they are," said the senator. That is the first time we have heard a politician point a finger at the Cuban government and say the smuggling problem is its fault. (NBC2 News, 14/8/07)

August 14: Travelocity was fined nearly $183,000 for booking roughly 1,400 Cuba trips between 1998 and 2004, apparently the first time Washington has cracked down on a major online travel provider for violating the 1963 embargo on the communist nation. Travelocity blamed the 1,458 violations on technical issues that were corrected years ago. ''In no way did the company intend to sell trips to Cuba,'' the spokeswoman, Ashley Johnson, wrote in an e-mail. ``The trips to Cuba (…) were unintentionally booked online because of a technical issue several years ago and it's just now being settled.'' (The Miami Herald, 14/8/07)

August 15: Cuba's two leading newspapers published an article dated August 14 attributed to Fidel Castro on the history of US-Cuban relations, which he dedicates to "future generations" of Cubans. "Cuban history over the past 140 years has been the struggle to preserve national identity and independence," wrote Castro. The United States, meanwhile, which Castro refers to as "the empire," has a long history of scheming to take over the island. Castro also writes about what he says are "the horrendous methods that (the United States) uses today to maintain its domination over the world." The article, published in the government dailies “Granma” and “Juventud Rebelde”, was announced earlier as part of a series that will run to the end of the week. [El imperio y la isla independiente] (AFP, 15/8/07)

August 15: The President of the Cuban Parliament, Ricardo Alarcon, denounced the “immorality” of the US judicial system in regards to the case of the five Cubans imprisoned in the United States. During the presentation of the 162nd issue of the Tricontinental magazine at the venue of the Organization of Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin American in Havana, Alarcon noted that the case of Rene Gonzalez, Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino and Fernando Gonzalez - internationally known as the Cuban Five - is irrefutable evidence that Washington's war in Iraq is a farce that has been carried out in the name of anti-terrorism while they manipulate and violate their own laws in the case of the Cuban patriots. (CAN, 16/8/07)

August 16: For the second time this year, the attorney for a Cuban man seeking custody of his 4-year-old daughter, who is living in the home of a Coral Gables foster family, is seeking to oust the Miami judge who is presiding over the dispute. During a brief court hearing, attorney Ira Kurzban told Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen he will argue that she does not have authority to hear the case because it involves parents and a sibling who are foreign nationals. As foreign citizens, he said, they should be allowed to resolve the dispute in Cuban courts. ''We believe this court no longer has jurisdiction,'' Kurzban said. ``The child is a foreign national. Both parents are foreign nationals, and the parents wish to dispense of this matter in foreign courts.'' A few months ago, Kurzban asked Cohen to recuse herself from the case because he said she had held private conversations about the case with an attorney who represents the Cuban-American couple that is caring for the girl and wishes to adopt her. The couple already has adopted her 12-year-old half-brother. Cohen denied the recusal request. Kurzban has yet to make his second request formally. (The Miami Herald, 16/8/07)

August 16: The president of the Cuban parliament reiterated his country's desire to talk to the United States and "solve our differences". Ricardo Alarcon, who has been named by some analysts as a potential successor to sick Cuban president Fidel Castro, said the Latin American nation wanted to meet with its American neighbours on a level-playing field. Speaking on the Today programme, Mr Alarcon said Cuba had always been willing to talk to the US. "Raul was reiterating a position of principle," he said. "We have always been in favour of negotiations and discussions to solve our differences, on one condition: that those negotiations have to take place on the basis of mutual respect for our respective independence and sovereignty." (IntheNewsCo.UK, 16/8/07)

August 17: The United States pays Cuba $4,085 (US) a month in rent for the controversial Guantanamo naval base, but Cuba has only once cashed a cheque in almost half a century and then only by mistake, Fidel Castro wrote in an essay published in Cuban official media. The ailing Cuban leader said he had refused to cash the cheques to protest the "illegal" US occupation of the land, which he said was now used for "dirty work." "The base is needed to humiliate and to do the dirty work that occurs there," he said of the detention camp where some 355 terrorism suspects are still being held with no legal rights despite international criticism. Castro said the US cheques are made out to the "Treasurer General of the Republic," a position that ceased to exist after Cuba's 1959 revolution. He said only one US cheque was ever cashed – in 1959 due to "confusion" in the heady early days of the leftist revolution. In a television interview years ago, he showed the cheques stuffed into a desk drawer in his office. [The Empire and the Independent Island] (Reuters, AFP, 17/8/07)

August 17: Cubans held at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay ended their hunger strike after learning that they would receive visas to go to either the US, Hungary or a third country, a Miami-based exile group said. The 17 hunger-strikers were entering their 20th day of fasting to protest their conditions and Washington's refusal to let them settle in the United States, said Ramon Saul Sanchez, head of the group Democracy Movement.  The hunger strikers are among 44 Cubans picked up by US Coast Guard officials at sea. But because US authorities deemed the migrants at risk of persecution if they returned to Cuba, they were held at the base while officials sought a third country to take them. Many were dissidents and some had been there for more than two years. Five of the Cubans already held US visas and were given the green light to go to the United States, Sanchez said. Another 29 were accepted by Hungary, and seven others were still awaiting word that a third country would accept them. One man decided to return to Cuba on his own for family reasons, Sanchez said. (Sun Sentinel, 17/8/07)

August 18: No dinners or family reunions were held for Fernando González's 44th birthday – his ninth behind the walls of a US penitentiary for spying on Miami's right-wing Cuban community. In Cuba, the images of González and four colleagues convicted and imprisoned in the United States for being unregistered foreign agents have become as commonplace as those of revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara. They are known simply as "The Five." Their faces are plastered on walls and billboards throughout the island, their illegal deeds routinely justified as necessary to protect their country from anti-communist terrorists. Prosecutors insisted the spy ring obtained no US secrets. Court papers chronicled the men's unsuccessful attempts to gather intelligence on the US military's Southern Command in Miami and the Naval Air Station in Key West. However, evidence showed ring members infiltrated the anti-Castro groups Brothers to the Rescue and Movimiento Democratico. The information they fed to the Cuban government was believed to have resulted in the 1996 downing of two planes in the Florida Straits, and the death of four Brothers to the Rescue pilots. The five were among 10 Cuban immigrants arrested in September 1998 and accused of belonging to a spy ring known as the Wasp Network. Five pleaded guilty. Four others were indicted but never apprehended. (Sun Sentinel, 19/8/07)

August 19: Hungary has granted political asylum to 29 Cubans who are currently being held at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo, Cuba, the MTI news agency reported, citing a high-level Hungarian official. Senior State Secretary Marta Fekszi Horvath told the press that a Hugarian delegation that included immigration officials met with the Cubans at the US base and discussed the possibility of asylum with them. The officials determined which of the 44 Cubans, many of them opponents of Fidel Castro's government, qualified for asylum. The group was intercepted on the high seas by the Coast Guard, which instead of returning them to Cuba took them to the US enclave on the southeastern tip of the communist-ruled island. Many of the Cuban migrants had gone on a hunger strike to protest the poor conditions at the base and Washington's refusal to allow them to go to the United States. (EFE, 19/8/07)  

August 19: Twenty-seven Cuban migrants landed on a Key West beach, authorities said.  Key West authorities said the 17 men, eight women and two boys were dropped off by a smuggler's speedboat on Smathers Beach. The migrants told police they came through rough weather after leaving Cuba at about 2 a.m. A few were dehydrated, but police said the group was generally in good health. The Cubans were taken into custody by immigration authorities. (The Miami Herald, 20/8/07)

August 20: A US federal appeals court in Atlanta is due to reconsider whether there are grounds for a retrial of five Cubans convicted of spying for Havana. They were arrested in 1998 and found guilty in a Miami court on charges including using false identities and conspiracy to commit espionage. Three were given life terms, the other two 15 and 19 years in jail. Cuba's government says the trial was political and accuses the US of double standards in the fight against terror. They are considered national heroes and figure prominently on billboards all over the country and are the subject of regular rallies and demonstrations. One of Cuba's most celebrated spies was born in a flat along Chicago's bustling Ashland Avenue in 1956. Back then, Rene Gonzalez, now in a Florida prison cell, was just like any other kid on the North Side, enjoying outings at the lake, Lincoln Park Zoo and the bygone Riverview amusement park. But after his parents returned home to Cuba in 1961 to join Fidel Castro's young communist nation, Gonzalez grew up to become a Cuban agent. He eventually worked in an intelligence ring called the Wasp Network, which US authorities accused of entering the US and spying on an American naval base in Key West and militant anti-Castro groups in Miami -- with deadly results. Prosecutors accused Rene Gonzalez of faking defection back to the US in 1990, reclaiming his US citizenship, and then working as a pilot for two exile groups, including one called Brothers to the Rescue. He is serving a 15-year sentence in a Marianna, Florida, prison. One of the five agents held a civilian job at the Boca Chica Naval Air Station in Key West, but the defendants contended they did not gather secret US defense information, only public data. Prosecutors dispute that claim. (BBC, Chicago Tribune, 20/8/07)

August 20: The politically charged case of five men convicted of spying for communist Cuba came before a federal appeals court for the third time, with defense attorneys alleging that prosecutors overemphasized Fidel Castro and committed other misconduct to win unjust convictions. Defense attorneys seeking a new trial claim the government wrongly used "Castro's evil" to push for convictions on what they say are overblown charges of conspiracy to commit espionage and murder. Federal prosecutor Caroline Heck Miller dismissed what she called a defense "parade of horrors" and argued the trial was won by hard evidence, not anti-Castro sentiment. "Red baiting. Communism. Your Honor, that was not the record of this case," Miller said. "It was a soberly tried case."  Dozens of people lined up outside the Atlanta courthouse more than two hours before the arguments began to watch the latest chapter of the decade-long saga unfold. The "Cuban Five" have been lionized as heroes in Cuba, while exile groups say they were justly punished. (The Charlotte Observer, 20/8/07)

August 20: A week before she is to preside over one of the most controversial child-custody trials held at Miami's juvenile court, the judge at the center of the dispute vehemently defended herself against allegations she might be susceptible to political pressure. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen, who has been on the bench since 1992 -- mostly in dependency court -- will decide whether a 4-year-old girl will return to Cuba to live with her birth father or be raised in the Coral Gables home of the foster parents who have cared for her the past 16 months. Reacting to an e-mail sent to the attorney for the girl's birth father, the judge insisted in a hearing that she would hear the case impartially, and would rebound and find a new legal challenge if the outcome of the case proved unpopular. Cohen is up for reelection in 2008. ''I am not worried about reelection; I am worried about doing the right thing for everybody involved,'' Cohen said. ``Anyone who thinks I would make a decision based on an election doesn't know me.'' (The Miami Herald, 21/8/07)

August 21: A recent report by the US International Trade Commission showed that a lift on the Cuban trade embargo would allow American farmers to supply up to 50 percent of Cuba's agricultural products and provide Americans with Cuban imports such as Cuban cigars. The report was requested by the Senate Finance Committee to draw support for a new proposal that would ease restrictions on trade and travel to Cuba. "When the Cuban embargo ends we will be aggressively serving our cigar customers through the great connections that we have made," said BestCigarPrices.com General Manager David Cagan. "Until the Cuban embargo ends and BestCigarPrices.com can legally sell Cuban cigars in the United States, we will continue to offer the best cigars the world has to offer." (Market Wire, 21/8/07)  

August 21: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama called the Bush administration's decision to tighten restrictions on relatives of Cubans who want to visit the island or send money home strategic blunders and promised to reverse the measures if elected. The Illinois senator leapt into the long-running and often bruising debate over US-Cuba policy with an op-ed piece titled “Our Main Goal: Freedom in Cuba”, published in The Miami Herald. "The primary means we have of encouraging positive change in Cuba today is to help the Cuban people become less dependent on the Castro regime in fundamental ways," Obama wrote."Unfortunately, the Bush administration has made grand gestures to that end while strategically blundering when it comes to actually advancing the cause of freedom and democracy in Cuba," he added. He said that was true of the travel and money restrictions imposed in 2004, adding that the move isolated those on the island from "the transformative message carried there by Cuban Americans." He promised to grant Cuban exiles unrestricted rights to visit their families and to send remittances home. While the US embargo has limited who can travel to the communist island and what can be sent there since the early 1960s, Bush's restrictions made visiting and shipping gifts to Cuba more difficult. “We must not lose sight of our fundamental goal: freedom in Cuba. At the same time, we should be pragmatic in our approach and clear-sighted about the effects of our policies”. “We all know the power of the freedom and opportunity that America at its best has both embodied and advanced. If deployed wisely, those ideals will have as transformative effect on Cubans today as they did on my father more than 50 years ago”. (The Miami Herald, 21/8/07)

August 21: Barack Obama's desire to ease US-Cuba travel restrictions stands in contrast to the stances of Democratic presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and most of the Republican contenders. Clinton, the New York senator and Democratic front-runner, issued a statement reiterating her support for the current policy toward Cuba, adding, "Until it is clear what type of policies might come with a new government, we cannot talk about changes in the US policies toward Cuba." Among other Democratic candidates, Senator Joe Biden also supports the status quo. Former Senator John Edwards staked out the middle ground, calling for an end to the family travel restrictions but saying he would not immediately change the remittance limits. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has also called for an end to the travel and money restrictions for Cuban-Americans, while Senator Chris Dodd has said he would lift all travel restrictions. US Representative Dennis Kucinich supports scrapping the embargo. Republicans criticized Obama's proposal. "We're in a very critical moment where many of us are hoping that we will see a transition as opposed to a transfer of power. Frankly I think his comments are ill-timed," said Florida Senator Mel Martinez, chairman of the Republican National Committee. "It shows that he either didn't think it through very well or simply hasn't had enough experience on these tough foreign policy problems." Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the leading GOP presidential candidates, both said easing sanctions would only help the Castro government. "We must not weaken our policy on Cuba until the Castro regime is dismantled, all political prisoners are freed and Cuba transitions to free and fair elections," Romney said. (AP, CNN, 21/8/07)

August 21: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is calling for ''unrestricted rights'' for Cuban Americans to visit and send money to family in Cuba, just days before his first pilgrimage to Little Havana as a presidential candidate. Obama is expected to repeat his message on August 25 at Miami-Dade County Auditorium. About 1,100 tickets have been sold so far to Obama's speech, with the proceeds going to the Miami-Dade Democratic Party. The $30 entry fee is a fraction of the $2,300 donation typical of presidential fundraisers. ''This speech has so much symbolism and value, coming in the heart of the Cuban-American community,'' said the local party's chairman, Joe Garcia. ``Senator Obama has come to the conclusion that the majority of Cuban Americans have come to, which is that more travel is good for freedom and good for democracy.'' (The Miami Herald, 21/8/07)

August 22: Cuba's foreign minister said he welcomed a call by US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to ease the US embargo on the communist-ruled island. "These declarations appear to express the sentiment of the majority of the United States," Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said when asked to comment on Obama's proposal. Measures by the Bush administration to tighten the decades-old blockade were barbaric and an effort to "try to force our people to surrender through hunger and illness," Roque told reporters at the III Foreign Ministers' meeting of the Forum for East Asia - Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC) in Brazil's capital. "The blockade has to be dismantled and the rights of Cuba respected," Roque said. (Reuters, 22/8/07)

August 22: The Cuban Foreign Ministry (MINREX) published a declaration denouncing the most recent US violation of the bilateral migratory accords. The note, dated August 21, cites a recent piece of news published by Reuters news agency in which it announced that "Hungary granted political asylum to 29 Cubans held at the US naval base in Guantánamo (...) The US forces held 44 Cubans caught at sea and 17 of them held a three-week hunger strike to protest the conditions of their detention and to demand admission to the United States (...) The United States had been trying to find other countries that would accept them (...) Hungary granted political asylum to 29 of them while the United States would pay for rent, winter clothes and language courses for a year for the 29 (...) Five others would receive US visas and some are waiting for a third country to admit them (...) Many of those detained were opposition figures and would be persecuted if they were sent back to Cuba," the press report said. [Declaración Oficial del MINREX] (ACN, 22/8/07)

August 22: A recent decision by federal immigration authorities will make it much easier for people born outside Cuba to obtain a US green card if at least one of their parents was born in Cuba. Under the decision, US Citizenship and Immigration Services will no longer require that those born outside Cuba file documents specifically saying they are Cuban citizens. Cuban consular papers saying they are children of at least one Cuban parent will be enough to prove Cuban citizenship. The July 31 decision is likely to benefit thousands of foreign nationals born abroad of Cuban parents -- particularly Venezuelans whose parents fled Cuba shortly after Fidel Castro seized power in 1959. The Cuban expatriate community in Venezuela, numbering between 25,000 and 50,000 people, is one of the largest after the one in Miami. The new green card decision is based on a Miami case in which the application of a Venezuelan born of Cuban parents was rejected by US Citizenship and Immigration Services in May 2006 on the grounds he could not conclusively prove he was a Cuban citizen. (The Miami Herald, 22/8/07)

August 22: The crew of the US Coast Guard Cutter Edisto repatriated 22 Cuban migrants to Bahia de Cabanas, Cuba. The repatriated migrants were interdicted when the crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Key Biscayne located and proceeded to intercept a go-fast vessel 38 miles south of Marquesas, Florida. (US Fed News, 22/8/07)

August 23: Two men, one a Coral Gables businessman, the other a farmer from central Cuba, squared off publicly for the first time to make their case why each should be the one to raise a 4-year-old girl. On one side: Joe Cubas, 46, a nationally known sports agent, investor and real estate developer who is the girl's foster father. On the other: Rafael Izquierdo, 32, a malanga and plantain farmer and sometime fisherman who is the girl's birth father. Outside Miami-Dade's juvenile courthouse, Izquierdo said he was eager to bring his daughter back to Cabaiguán, the small village he calls home. ''Children belong with their parents, and parents belong with their children,'' said Izquierdo, whose current wife brought their 6-year-old daughter to the United States for the custody proceedings. Cubas is equally determined that the girl should remain with him. ''There are two children who have been through thick and thin together, who have been through the most difficult times together,'' Cubas said. ``They are in a safe, nurturing, loving home. They spend all their time together, and now they are faced with the possibility of separation.'' Cubas refers to the girl and her 13-year-old half-brother -- whom he has adopted -- as ''my children.'' Cubas' involvement in the dispute became widely known for the first time when he spoke openly with reporters. Though he says he no longer represents sports figures, Cubas earned admirers -- and some critics -- when he helped some of Cuba's finest baseball players defect to the United States. (The Miami Herald, 24/8/07)

August 24: Private exporters reported the sale of 100,000 tonnes of US hard red winter wheat to Cuba for delivery this marketing year, said US Agriculture Department. The 2007/08 marketing year for wheat opened on June 1. (Reuters, 24/8/07)  

August 25: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama criticized President Bush's Cuba policy to rousing applause at the same Little Havana auditorium where Republican Ronald Reagan once campaigned. "Just 90 miles from here there is a country where justice and freedom are out of reach. That's why my policy toward Cuba will be guided by one word: Liberty," Obama said, adding that freedom in Cuba begins with the release of political prisoners. He said there are no better ambassadors for change on the communist island than the Cuban Americans who send money to relatives. "It can help make their families less dependent on Fidel Castro. That's the way to bring about real change in Cuba," Obama said. "It's time we had a president who realized that." Obama said he wouldn't lift the trade embargo, and said the offer to normalize relations in a post-Castro Cuba would be made after the country opened up to democratic change. "Until there's justice in Cuba, there's no justice anywhere," Obama said. "We will talk to our enemies as well as our friends and both to our enemies and to our friends, we will tell them the truth and tell them what we stand for." (AP, 26/8/07)

August 26: As Detroit Public School students affected by school closings try and figure out the best routes to new destinations, two former DPS attendees are getting ready for a much longer trip on their first day of class. Chinere Knight and Ese Agari, both Cass Technical High School graduates, were recently accepted to the free scholarship program at the world renowned Latin American School of Medicine (LASM) in Havana, Cuba.  Knight and Agari will join about 16 other students from around the country who will receive a medical degree without submitting to the enormous debt most med school graduates incur in the United States. (The Michihan Citizen, 26/8/07)

August 27: The United States suggested that the latest round of rumours of ailing Fidel Castro's death might have been started by the government. "I would say that the Cuban government has always been very good at stirring the nest whenever they felt the need to," said Gonzo Gallegos, a State Department spokesman. "I can't say whether or not this is them or something else that is happening," he said when commenting on talk among Cuban exiles and echoed by foreign news outlets, especially in Florida, that the ailing Castro, 81, had died. When asked by reporters whether he was suggesting that Havana was circulating rumours that Castro was dead, Gonzo replied, "All I was saying was that the Cuban government takes the opportunity when it sees fit to take care of itself." Gallegos said he did not believe Castro was dead. "I don't have any reason to believe he is dead." (AFP, 27/8/07)

August 27: A child welfare judge threw out a key piece of the state's case against a Cuban father seeking to regain custody of his 4-year-old daughter: the claim that his desire to raise her constitutes child abuse because she has ''bonded'' with a foster family. Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen, a 16-year veteran of the bench, tossed out the allegation against Rafael Izquierdo, the father of the auburn-haired youngster at the center of a contentious custody dispute spanning the Florida Straits. “‘We often have situations like that. A parent says, `I understand there may be some bonding, but I want my child. I love my child. I will fight for my child.' That's basically what you're [saying]: If a father does that, or a mother, it constitutes prospective abuse,'' the judge said. ``I've never seen anything like this in all my years of doing dependency.'' The judge's decision leaves two claims remaining in the state's dependency petition against Izquierdo, and the judge left little doubt she is not impressed by one of those -- that Izquierdo abandoned his daughter by allowing her to move to the United States and not sending her birthday cards or money after she arrived. ''With everything you have, even if you pull a rabbit out of a hat, I just don't see how'' the state can prove Izquierdo intended to abandon his daughter, the judge told Department of Children and Families attorney Rebecca Kapusta. (The Miami Herald, 27/8/07)

August 28: A new essay signed by Fidel Castro criticized US presidents and aspirants for that office for "submission" to exile-influenced politics that call for democratic change on the island. Candidates for the US presidential election in 2008 "are totally absorbed by the Florida adventure," read the column entitled "Submission to Imperial Politics." It was published in the Communist Party newspaper Granma and other official media. Mentioning a possible Democratic ticket of Hillary Clinton for president and Barack Obama as vice president, Castro wrote that "both feel the sacred duty to demand 'a democratic government in Cuba .' They aren't making policy, they are playing cards on a Sunday afternoon." [Submission to Imperial Politics] (AP, 28/8/07) 

August 29: ABC News's Rick Klein reported on the network's "Political Radar" Web site that when an Iowa resident asked former senator John Edwards whether the United States should follow the Cuban healthcare model, the 2004 vice presidential contender deflected the question by saying he didn't know enough to answer the question. "I'm going to be honest with you - I don't know a lot about Cuba's healthcare system," Edwards (Democrat-North Carolina), said at an event in Oskaloosa, Iowa. "Is it a government-run system?" (News Busters, 29/8/07)

August 30: A group of three Cuban-American US congressmen urged Hungary and other former communist states to play a greater role in advocating for democratic changes in Cuba. The lawmakers said the transition of these countries from totalitarian regimes to democracy gave them credibility in the issue and a better grasp of Cuban reality. "A country that has gone through the experience (Hungary) has gone through can play a major role in assistance and providing support for democracy in Cuba," said US Representative Albio Sires, a Democrat from New Jersey. Sires and the rest of the delegation said Hungary and the European Union could assist the changes in Cuba by finding ways to help Cuban dissidents and insisting that free elections be held on the island after Fidel Castro's death. The congressmen also were critical of Spain 's position toward Cuba , especially of investments in Cuba made by Spanish companies, and said the Eastern European countries needed to be more determined in efforts to lead the European Union's position on Cuba. The three congressmen met with Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, Foreign Minister Kinga Goncz and opposition leaders during their stay, part of a trip which also includes stops in Poland and the Czech Republic. (AP, 30/8/07)