Chronicle on Cuba - August 2008

US-Cuba Relations

August 4: Washington didn’t show any concern about the renewal of bilateral relations between Russia and Cuba. The State Department spokesman, Gonzalo Gallegos, said that is a matter of concern for those two countries. “We don’t see dealing with the Cuban government as particularly productive. However, we understand that other countries will have bilateral relations as they seem fit”, Gallegos said. He reminded the press that the US doesn’t have relations with Havana because “that is a country that continues to oppress its citizens, that continues to squeeze them for all the resources that it can to maintain the regime there”. “Our relations with Cuba are not – the relations that we don’t have for Cuba are well known”, he said (EFE, 4/8/08).

August 4: The Florida House of Representatives is defending a law it passed earlier this year requiring new restrictions on travel agencies and charter companies booking trips to Cuba. In July, a federal judge temporarily blocked the law until a September hearing. House Speaker Marco Rubio planned to announce in Miami that the House of Representatives will join the lawsuit in support of the state. State Representative David Rivera sponsored the measure. He opposes travel to Cuba and says the law is not about his personal views but about protecting customers. The companies say the measure would pre-empt federal law and could put the agencies out of business. It would force them to put up a $250,000 state bond. Other travel agencies pay $25,000 (AP, 4/8/08).

August 5: A concert featuring world-renowned Latin performers in support of the five Cubans who remain imprisoned in the United States, will take place on September  13th at the Hostos Community College Auditorium, in New York City. The concert, entitled “Five Stars and a Song” and organized by the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five in an attempt to reach a broader audience inside the United States, will take place as part of a series of activities to mark the tenth anniversary of the   arrest and imprisonment of Gerardo Hernandez, Rene Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino and Fernando Gonzalez, on September 12th, 1998 (ACN, 5/8/08).

August 5: The United States government seized more than $16,000 from a passenger who planned to fly to Cuba from Miami without authorization to take that amount, according to a federal court document. The seizure order was issued against Leonel González, who, when asked about the origin of the money, said that he received it from Magaly García, identified by the federal district attorney’s office as a travel agent. According to the registry of corporations in Florida, García is linked to the Havanatur and Travel Service agency, with head office in Miramar, Havana. The federal records show no indication of González or García appealing to recover the money (El Nuevo Herald, 5/8/08).

August 5: The University of Alabama baseball team will be taking the road less traveled later this year. After years of negotiations, the Crimson Tide will travel and play in Cuba in mid-December, having received approval from both governments. A formal announcement of the mid-December trip is expected from UA officials. The trip was arranged through the auspices of the University's Alabama-Cuba Initiative. Over the past several years, the initiative has been responsible for a number of cross-cultural contacts. University faculty and students have visited Cuba for cultural exchanges and joint academic endeavours ranging from comparative studies in book arts to an anthropological dig in search of pre-Columbian artifacts on the island (USA Today, 5/8/08).

August 7: A veteran spy catcher's appearance on Spanish-language TV in Miami has added fuel to the decades-long debate about the Castro government's interest in spying in South Florida. Lt. Col. Chris Simmons, an Army Reserve counterintelligence officer and former Defense Intelligence Agency counterintelligence analyst, named Marifeli Pérez-Stable, Gilberto Abascal, Alberto R. Coll and Gillian Gunn Clissold as agents for the Cuban government. But Simmons offered no conclusive evidence that any of the four -- who have denied the accusation -- gave classified information to Cuba, received intelligence training or undertook missions for Cuban intelligence. Simmons said his years of training enable him to make educated determinations on whether someone is an intelligence agent. ''Why deny what we know to be true?'' Simmons told the press. Of the four, Gunn, a former Georgetown University professor, is little known in the local exile community. The other three -- including Pérez-Stable -- have been accused in the past of collaborating with Cuban intelligence. Judy Orihuela, spokeswoman for the Miami office of the FBI, declined to comment. One of the agency's jobs is to catch spies working in the United States (The Miami Herald, 8/8/08).

August 8: If the American people knew the real mission of the Cuban Five, they would immediately demand their freedom, said Gloria la Riva, coordinator of the US National Committee for the release of the five Cubans held in US jails for nearly 10 years now.
During an encounter in San Francisco California, the activist with the National Committee unveiled a huge billboard, which demands the release of Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Rene Gonzalez and Fernando Gonzalez, internationally known as the Cuban Five. La Riva said the Five “are not criminals, they are heroes; they are very courageous and they have never regretted the decision they took over 10 years ago, when they infiltrated terrorist groups based in Miami in an effort to prevent them from carrying out terrorist actions and with it avoid a confrontation between the United States and Cuba” (ACN, 8/8/08).

August 8: Three Cuban dry-dock workers who sued a Curacao shipyard business for conspiring with the Cuban government and forcing them into virtual slave labor won their federal lawsuit, after their former employers failed to show up in court. In a joint venture with the Cuban state shipyard, Curacao Drydock Company hired at least 100 Cuban workers to repair cruise ships and tankers at its dock in Willemstad, Curacao. Court records showed that instead of paying the men, the Curacao company applied their $6.90 hourly value to the Cuban government's debt with the company. Alberto Justo Rodríguez, Fernando Alonso Hernández and Luis Alberto Casanova Toledo escaped and in 2006 sued the company in US District Court in Miami under the Alien Tort Act, which allows foreigners to file civil suits in US federal courts when a serious international law has been violated. The men -- who now live in the Tampa area -- said the company made them work double shifts against their will in substandard conditions and kept their passports to prevent them from fleeing. On off hours, they were forced to watch hours-long videotaped speeches of then-President Fidel Castro. ''It really is a historic ruling,'' said Tomás Bilbao, executive director of the Cuba Study Group, an organization of Cuban-American business leaders who followed the suit. “It sends a message to any company that would conspire with the Cuban government to violate the human rights of Cuban workers and basically says, `Look, you are on notice: there is now a legal precedent. If you conspire to do this, there will be severe consequences' '' (The Miami Herald, 9/8/08).

August 8: Cuban exile and journalism watchdog groups are seeking the release of 22 Cuban political prisoners, including one who recently sewed his lips shut to protest his treatment. The wife of a fellow prisoner told other dissidents and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists that independent journalist Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta sewed his own lips together in mid-July. The CPJ said that the Cuban government considers the 42-year-old a counterrevolutionary in the services of the United States.  Herrera is serving a 20-year sentence and is among 22 independent journalists held since 2003. His hunger strike started July 12 and ended around July 30 when he was taken to a prison hospital (Sun Sentinel, 9/8/08).

August 10: Young baseball players from the United States and Cuba squared off in a game that was the first of its kind in eight years and far friendlier than relations between their two countries. On a rustic, palm-fringed baseball diamond at a convent east of communist Cuba's capital, Havana, the Santos of Cuba clubbed three home runs in the first two innings and went on to defeat the Twin State Peregrines, 16-5. But both sides said it did not matter who won, only that boys from different worlds shared a few hours playing a game they loved, and maybe in the process made things a little better. The Peregrines, who come from Vermont and New Hampshire, were the first US Little Leaguers known to visit Cuba since the Lost Coast Pirates from northern California in 2000. The Peregrines won a second game against a different team, the Mangos, 19-8. Peregrines' coach Ted Levin said getting permission from the United States for the nine-day trip was not easy. "It was two years in the making, four tries with the US government and it was a moving target with the Cuban government," he said. It was finally arranged after intervention from members of the US Congress, he said. The Peregrines' Joe Crevara, 13, said the team came to Cuba, "just to have fun. We're not here to win." Florida rancher John Parke Wright, long active in trying to improve US-Cuba relations and who helped organize the trip, said the baseball game put on vivid display the strong ties between Americans and Cubans. "This is about kids and baseball and lovely friends," he said. "Both governments should be ashamed" (Reuters, 10/8/08).

August 11: The US women's volleyball team lost to Cuba in three sets in the Beijing Olympics. Cuba, ranked third in the world, overpowered the US women 25-15, 26-24, 25-17 and are up 2-0 in preliminary round play (AP, 11/8/08).

August 12: A key advisor to John McCain lobbied on behalf of a French liquor giant that partners with the Cuban government to sell rum -- and which has been embroiled in a costly and controversial trademark dispute with Miami-based Bacardi. Lobbyist disclosure forms suggest John Green since 2001 also lobbied on behalf of several bills that seek to relax the economic embargo against Cuba -- a stance contrary to McCain's support of the embargo. Campaigning in Miami in May, the Republican presidential contender told a crowd that before he'd entertain lifting the embargo he would press the Cuban government to release political prisoners, legalize political parties and schedule elections. The embargo, McCain said, ``must stay in place until these basic elements of democratic society are met.'' The managing director of the lobbying firm that Green co-founded, however, said in an interview that the firm did not lobby for lifting the embargo. Stewart Hall said Ogilvy Government Relations' sole interest was protecting French liquor manufacturer Pernod Ricard's right to the trademark, Havana Club. The French company, partnering with Cubaexport, a Cuban government company, sells rum under the Havana Club name in Cuba and around the world -- but not in the United States, because of the trade embargo (The Miami Herald, 12/8/08).

August 13: Gilberto Abascal, an FBI informant and alleged Cuban government agent, told The Miami Herald that he is not working for Cuban intelligence and that he is loyal to the United States. ''That's all a lie,'' Abascal said about the accusation in a telephone interview. Abascal's statements were his first since Lt. Col. Chris Simmons named him and three others as Cuban agents during a TV appearance July 31 and in an interview with The Herald. Of the four, only Abascal had not responded to Herald calls for comment before the story was published. Abascal, however, has denied similar allegations by others in the past. The other three named by Simmons also denied the allegations (The Miami Herald, 14/8/08).

August 14: The United States ranked among Cuba’s top five trading partners in 2007 for the first time since imposing a trade embargo in 1962. Data for 2007 on the Web site of Cuba’s National Statistics Office placed the United States fifth at $582 million, up from $484 million in 2006. The United States began selling food to Cuba in 2002 under an amendment to the embargo (Reuters, 15/8/08).

August 14: A federal appeals court has ordered Cuban militant Luis Posada Carriles to stand trial in El Paso on immigration fraud charges. A three-judge panel of the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that Posada, an anti-Castro militant, should stand trial on charges that he lied to federal authorities in his bid to become a US citizen. The criminal case against Posada was dismissed last year when US District Judge Kathleen Cardone ruled that the government engaged in trickery and deceit by using a naturalization interview to build a case against Posada (Sun Sentinel, 15/8/08).

August 15: The Cuban government called the reinstatement of a criminal indictment against Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles a ''maneuver'' to delay and prevent his extradition. In the first official Havana reaction to the ruling by a New Orleans federal appeals court, the Cuban foreign ministry issued a statement saying the opinion could shield Posada from trial abroad as a terrorist. Posada, 80, sneaked into the United States in March 2005 and told authorities he crossed at Brownsville, Texas, with a migrant smuggler. A federal grand jury, however, indicted Posada on January 11, 2007, on charges that he lied in his naturalization proceedings about how he entered the country. Federal officials said they had a witness who saw Posada transported from Mexico to Miami on a shrimping vessel. A federal judge in El Paso in May 2007 threw out the indictment on the grounds federal authorities committed ''fraud, deceit and trickery'' to implicate Posada in a lie. The appeals court said US District Judge Kathleen Cardone erred in her analysis (The Miami Herald, 16/8/08).

August 18: Congressional candidate Mike Erickson is calling a six-day visit to Cuba in 2004 a "humanitarian trip" to deliver medical supplies for the disabled to a Cuban charity. But those familiar with the trip said it was basically a vacation, which likely would have been illegal without the supplies. He said he visited a medical center and met with doctors. The Oregonian, of Portland, said it had determined the medical center does not exist. Erickson, a Lake Oswego businessman and Republican candidate for Oregon's 5th Congressional District, said he donated 20 boxes of medical supplies worth $9,000 that he bought in the United States. But two others on the trip said Erickson exaggerated his donation and that the group bought the supplies at a discount store in Cancun, Mexico, to make their trip a legal humanitarian mission. American access to Cuba has been sharply cut by the Bush administration, although Cuba has helped Americans enter via third countries such as Mexico (AP, 18/8/08).

August 19: With commodity prices on the rise and the global economy softening, a goal to open more markets for agricultural products is essential for the future of the Lone Star State's farmers and ranchers, said Todd Staples, Texas' agriculture commissioner. In a keynote speech before approximately 200 farmers and ranchers attending this year's Big Country Wheat Conference at the Taylor County Expo Center in Abilene, Staples said he became personally aware of the potential for new export markets following a trade mission trip to Cuba in May. It exceeded all expectations and was a major success, he said. "There is a huge potential for exporting Texas products to Cuba, and the mission has set the table for a long-term business relationship with our neighbors in the Caribbean," he said. "The Cuban buyers were very accommodating and made it clear they are ready to do business with Texans." Staples became the first statewide elected official from Texas to visit Cuba on state business in more than 45 years. The delegation included 24 Texas farmers, ranchers, commodity suppliers and port representatives. The group met with Cuban government officials who procure agricultural products, and visited three Cuban farms and food markets to identify food needs not met by domestic production (San Angelo Standard Times, 20/8/08).

August 21: Political rivals Cuba and the United States meet on August 22 in the Olympic baseball semi-finals with US second baseman Jayson Nix possibly returning after a severe eye injury in their volatile round-robin meeting. Controversy erupted after Cuba's 5-4 victory over the Americans when US manager Davey Johnson accused Cuban pitcher Pedro Luis Lazo of deliberately throwing at Nix with the intent to injure. Lazo denied throwing at Nix and Cuban manager Antonio Pacheco said the claim by Johnson showed a lack of respect for his team. Nix, likely to join Major League Baseball's Colorado Rockies next month if he is able, has made progress since the injury and was listed as probable for what promises to be an emotional rematch. "There is some past there, definitely bad blood with players and coaches," US infielder Brian Barden said. "It was a tough game last time and we're hoping for a really good game this time. "You can't really get into bad blood. You just have to play your game." The US-Cuba winner will face the winner of the Japan-South Korea semi-final in the gold medal game while the losers meet for bronze (AFP, 21/8/08).

August 21: The US women's volleyball team has advanced to the gold medal game, defeating Cuba in three sets to guarantee the Americans their best Olympic finish since 1984. The United States will play the winner of the Brazil-China semifinal for the Olympic title on Aungust 23. Cuba, three-time Olympic gold medal winners, will play the loser of that semifinal for the bronze (AP, 21/8/08).

August 25: Protesters wearing jail-style orange jumpsuits and black hoods over their heads marched down a pedestrian mall in downtown Denver, chanting "Stop the torture, stop the war." The protesters, estimated at several hundred, were at a rally at Civic Center Park near the state Capitol when they began pouring down the mall at midday, hours before the Democratic National Convention was to start. The march from Civic Center to the old federal court house, organized by Recreate 68, was against the US detention of people protesters called political prisoners, including American Indian activist Leonard Peltier and five Cuban men who are behind bars in the United States for espionage. Peltier is serving a life sentence for killing two FBI agents during a 1975 standoff on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The Cubans say they were monitoring terrorist groups in Miami they feared could attack Cuba (AP, 26/8/08).

August 26: A Manhattan public high-school teacher who twice took students on embargo-busting field trips to Cuba has resigned. Nathan Turner, a popular history instructor at the top-tier Beacon School, allegedly led dozens of students and teachers on at least two such spring-break excursions. Department of Education officials confirmed the resignation, along with that of fellow Beacon teacher Geoffrey Hunt, who also made jaunts to Castro country, according to sources. Officials declined to discuss whether Turner's departure was related to two ongoing investigations sparked by the April 2007 post exposé of the outings. The Treasury Department is exploring the trips' legality. Educational travel to Cuba is limited to college students, sources said. Each traveler could be fined up to $65,000 (The New York Post, 26/8/08).

August 28: The US National Soccer Team is traveling to Havana for a World Cup qualifier against Cuba -- the team’s first trip to the island since 1947. US coach Bob Bradley announced his roster for the match, and a second game against Trinidad & Tobago four days later in Chicago. The team is due to get together in Miami on August 31, and then travel to Havana on September 4. The game, scheduled for the Estadio Pedro Marrero in Havana, will take place on September 6. The US has twice met Cuba in World Cup qualifying, but that was back in 1949, before the rise of Fidel Castro and the end of diplomatic relations between the two countries. (Goal.Com, 28/8/08).

August 29: A federal judge has struck down a controversial state law that essentially banned professors at state universities in Florida from traveling to Cuba for research purposes, declaring it unconstitutional. US District Judge Patricia Seitz ruled that the 2006 law, pushed aggressively by State Representative David Rivera, ``is an impermissible sanction and serves as an obstacle to the objectives of the federal government.'' The law prohibited the use of state and non-state funds for travel to Cuba and other countries labeled by the US government as state sponsors of terrorism. The judge struck down one provision of the law -- the one banning non-state or private funds from being used for such travel. That means most academics at state universities would be allowed to resume travel to Cuba because most of those trips are covered by private funds, said Florida International University Professor Lisandro Perez, who founded the university's Cuba Research Institute. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging the law in 2006 on behalf of FIU's faculty senate. ''It was a mean-spirited bill,'' said FIU Faculty Senate Chairman Tom Breslin. ``It was made to turn back the clock. I'm glad it's gone for the sake of academic freedom'' (The Miami Herald, 30/8/08).