Chronicle on Cuba - December 2008

US-Cuba Relations

December 3: Néstor Nazario, from Puerto Rico’s National Hostosiano Pro-Independence Movement  (MINH), made the official delivery of humanitarian aid collected in that Caribbean nation for the victims of recent hurricanes in Cuba. In a ceremony held at Havana’s Friendship House, Nazario stressed that the cargo is made up of food and clothing, and described the archipelago as the nation that most exemplifies solidarity in the world. The president of the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), Jorge Martí Martínez, thanked Puerto Ricans for this gesture (ACN, 4/12/08).

December 4: A veteran spy catcher, who publicly named people he claims are Cuban government agents, was sued in Miami federal court, where he was accused of malicious defamation. Lt. Col. Chris Simmons is an Army Reserve counterintelligence officer and former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst with a career in catching Cuban spies. Now he's writing a book, starting a new business, and going on Spanish language TV shows to ``name names.'' On October 8, Simmons appeared on América TeVe Channel 41 show “A Mano Limpia” and identified anti-embargo activist Silvia Wilhelm as a Cuban government collaborator. Wilhelm, executive director of Puentes Cubanos and the Cuban American Commission for Family Rights, filed a defamation suit against Simmons seeking more than $75,000. Simmons had said former FIU professor Carlos Alvarez, convicted of spying for Cuba, identified Wilhelm in his confession to the FBI. She since ''retired'' from her duties after the FBI approached her, Simmons said. ''My suit speaks for itself,'' Wilhelm said. She referred questions to her attorney, Bruce Rogow, who could not be reached for comment. Simmons, who lives in Virginia, also could not be reached (The Miami Herald, 4/12/08).

December 4: President-elect Barack Obama should start soon to loosen five decades of trade curbs on Cuba and begin a comprehensive review of US policy toward the communist-run island, US business groups said. "We support the complete removal of all trade and travel restrictions on Cuba. We recognize that change may not come all at once, but it must start somewhere, and it must begin soon," the groups said in a letter to Obama. They recommended the United States start by holding talks with Cuba to discuss how to repair nearly 50 years of distrust and by allowing Americans to visit the island. Washington should also consider exempting agricultural machinery, heavy equipment and certain other goods from its embargo to help in the rebuilding of Cuba in the wake of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, the groups said. The groups included American Farm Bureau Federation, Business Roundtable, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Retail Federation and Grocery Manufacturers Association, whose collective membership comprises a broad cross-section of American industry and agriculture. "We are pleased that you support suspending restrictions on family remittances, visits and humanitarian care packages from Cuban Americans. These are excellent first steps, but we urge you to also commit to a more comprehensive examination of US policy," the groups said (Reuters, 4/12/08).

December 4: Fidel Castro said that President-elect Barack Obama is a man Cuba can talk with and indicated that communist officials would be willing to meet with him wherever he wants. But the former Cuban leader expressed disappointment with some of Obama's Cabinet choices, including Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state and Robert Gates as defence secretary. In his latest essay distributed to official media, the ailing 82-year-old former president wrote that with Obama "a conversation can be held wherever he wants," and that Cuban officials don't expect the new US administration to be marked by violence and war. But he added that Obama must remember that a carrot-and-stick approach won't work with Cuba (Swimming Up Stream; Reuters, 4/12/08).

December 5: Cuba's foreign minister urged US President-elect Barack Obama to keep his promise to ease restrictions on family travel and remittances to the island, saying it would be a positive step toward normalizing diplomatic relations. Felipe Perez Roque told reporters at the opening of Pakistan's new embassy in Havana that "we are willing, as we've always said, to one day normalize relations between the United States and Cuba." Obama has said he plans to loosen restrictions on Cuban Americans who want to travel or send money to Cuba. Those with relatives here are currently allowed to visit only once every three years. Perez Roque said Havana would view such changes positively — calling them "a positive first step" — but he repeated the communist government's demands that Washington close its military prison at Guantanamo Bay, rewrite immigration rules for Cuban migrants and completely lift nearly 50-year-old economic sanctions that outlaw nearly all trade with the island and prohibit US tourists from visiting. "Cuba's position is very clear," he said. "We firmly demand the lifting of the embargo, the ceasing of extraterritorial measures taken to persecute our trade with other countries." Ending the embargo entirely would require congressional approval, and Obama has said he does not intend to do that (AP, 5/12/08).

December 5: The goals of the US economic embargo on Cuba remain exactly the same as when the embargo was first imposed almost 50 years ago, US Commerce Department official Walter Bastian said. Interviewed at the December 1-3 Miami Conference on the Caribbean and Central America, Bastian said that even though the embargo's major goal - to encourage Cuba's peaceful transition from communism to democracy - has not yet occurred, the message remains that the Cuban regime's illegal expropriation of US property has serious consequences. "That message is as strong today as it was back" in October 1960 when the United States initiated the embargo, said Bastian, who is Commerce's deputy assistant secretary for the Western Hemisphere. Bastian's comments came after a forum on Cuba at the 32nd annual Miami conference in which the event's organizers, the Washington-based Caribbean-Central American Action, said Cuba is at a crossroads, where the country's leaders can choose to reintegrate Cuba into the region or continue old policies (Daily News, 5/12/08).

December 7: President Raul Castro said that Cuba has battled Washington's trade embargo for nearly 50 years and is prepared to do so for another 50 if need be. His comments appeared to be a small swipe at Washington at a time when President-elect Barack Obama has raised expectations that warmer US-Cuba relations could be on the way. He spoke as leaders from the 14 member nations of the Caribbean Community trade bloc, or CARICOM, gathered in the eastern city of Santiago to discuss ways to strengthen tourism in the region despite the global economic crisis. During an event at Santiago's Plaza of the Revolution, Castro said of the US economic sanctions that "we have learned to resist for half a century, and we are prepared to fight for another half century" (The Miami Herald, 8/12/08).

December 8: The 17 Cubans discovered wandering about Boca Grande on Thanksgiving Day have been released on their own recognizance by the US Border Patrol from a detention facility in Pembroke Pines, Florida. They are now are waiting to appear before a US immigration judge. Victor Colon, US Border Patrol assistant chief patrol agent, said the Cubans had been fingerprinted and it was determined that none of them has a criminal record in the US. While he didn't know how many, Colon said some of the Cubans had family members already settled in the United States (Charlotte Sun, 8/12/08).

December 8: Thirteen organizations including academic, business, humanitarian, and advocacy groups in the United States joined to send a letter to President-elect Obama asking him to lift policies toward Cuba that limit people-to-people exchanges, family travel, and remittances. A report posted at the Association of International Educators’s website (NAFSA), which is one the signatories of the letter, says the organizations  asked the president-elect to take actions that send a "clear and welcome signal of change and reverse actions that have proven counterproductive to our shared goal of assisting the Cuban people." The letter dated December 8 specifically urges Obama to lift executive-branch amendments to the Cuban Assets Control Regulations published in 2003 and 2004 that have decimated academic and cultural exchanges with Cuba and severely restricted travel to and from the island. Among the signatories are also the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, American Friends Service Committee, Church World Service, Fund for Reconciliation and Development, Latin America Working Group, Latin American Studies Association, National Foreign Trade Council, Operation USA, Social Science Research Council, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, USA*Engage, and Washington Office on Latin America (ACN, 10/12/08).

December 9: Cuba reiterated its denunciation of the release in the United States of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. During a session of the UN Security Council dedicated to the threats that terrorist actions pose to peace and security, the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations, Ileana Nuñez, recalled that it has been a year and a half since the release of Posada Carriles in the United States. “However, in spite of all the evidence that the US Government has of his vast terrorist record, Washington has not accused him,” Nuñez said. According to Prensa Latina news agency, the diplomat added that this is a clear and flagrant violation of UN Resolution 1373 and others pertaining to the UN Security Council and the General Assembly and several international legal instruments regarding the fight against terrorism (ACN, 9/12/08).

December 9: The American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) is calling on President-elect Obama to permit Americans to travel to Cuba. During the 2008 presidential election campaign, the President-elect indicated that he supports changes to US policy toward Cuba, including a suspension of restrictions on family remittances, visits, and humanitarian care packages from Cuban Americans. While these proposals are encouraging, ASTA believes that Americans would best be served by an elimination of current restrictions on travel to Cuba. In a letter dated December 4, 2008, ASTA and a host of organizations from across the business community formally requested that the incoming Obama administration make immediate changes to US policy toward Cuba, including a removal of the travel ban (ASTA Press Release, 10/12/08).

December 10: Cuban exile leaders and US academics urged President-elect Barack Obama to ease restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba as a first step toward ending Washington's 46-year-old economic embargo against the island and normalizing bilateral relations. The executive director of the Cuba Study Group, Tomas Bilbao, and the president of the Emergency Coalition to Defend Educational Travel, former US diplomat Wayne Smith, told the press that although they have different strategies, they are united in their desire to eliminate a "failed" policy of isolation against the communist-ruled island. The two leaders believe that it is time for Obama, who will take office on January 20, to extend a bridge to Cuba and breathe new life into a bilateral foreign policy that, in their judgment, is a vestige of the Cold War. "If the 28 countries of Eastern Europe taught us anything it's that there is a direct correlation between the level of opening of a society and the successful transition to democracy," Bilbao said. In his opinion, the United States should lift the travel and remittance prohibitions not only for Cuban Americans - as Obama has promised to do - but "for all Americans." The Cuba Study Group says the restrictions imposed by the Bush administration in 2004 "violate ethics, fundamental US freedoms and international human rights" with regard to freedom of movement and family reunification (EFE, 10/12/08).

December 10: The US Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez released a statement on Human Rights Day highlighting that it is important to remember “the Cuban people, who live under a totalitarian dictatorship”. “It is important to remember the plight of the Cuban people, who live under a totalitarian dictatorship that has denied them human rights for almost half a century”, the statement says. “The Castro regime prevents its citizens from having an elected and democratic government, freedom of speech and fundamental human rights. "The Cuban government jails hundreds of political prisoners who continue to suffer under dismal conditions and are denied access to human rights organizations such as the International Red Cross”, it adds. “On this very day, Cuban authorities have detained and beaten dozens of Cuban citizens who were attempting to peacefully celebrate human rights day in Cuba”. Secretary Gutierrez co-chairs the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a US Cabinet-level commission formed to explore ways the United States can help hasten and ease a democratic transition in Cuba (US News Service, 10/12/08).

December 11: Cuban authorities arrested more than 30 people in the days leading up to International Human Rights Day, a New York-based human rights watchdog said. Human Rights Watch cited press reports and Cuban human rights groups as saying many of those arrested were trying to travel to Havana for marches on December 10, the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "The Cuban government should immediately and unconditionally free the dissidents who have been arbitrarily detained in recent days," Human Rights Watch said in a statement. The statement said some of those arrested had since been released and it was not known how many remained in detention. Rights groups say Cuban authorities have in the past briefly held dissidents planning protests (Cuba: Free Dissidents; Reuters, 11/12/08).

December 11: Investigators say Isla Express scammed at least 502 customers of some $189,000 in late 2007, taking their money but never delivering the funds to family in Cuba. The heartless crime, police say, became clear when angry crowds on three separate days gathered outside Isla Express wire service during last year's holiday season: They wanted to know where tens of thousands of dollars destined for family members in Cuba had gone. One year later, authorities said, two of Isla's three operators were jailed on charges of illegal money transfers. One has vanished. The money disappeared, too. ''These people were waiting for food and medicine,'' Hialeah Police Chief Mark Overton said of the victims in Cuba. Norberto Alzar surrendered. Eiler Rubio was arrested. Prudencio Garcia Leon is a fugitive believed to be in Cuba. Each is charged with operating an unauthorized currency transmitting business. Grand-theft charges have not been brought because investigators cannot go to the Communist island to prove the money was not delivered. ''Although we may have hundreds of potential victims, we can only prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, these particular charges,'' explained Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle (The Miami Herald, 12/12/08).

December 12: Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage said that the island's society is ready to receive tourists from the United States in the event that Washington liberalizes tourist travel there, banned up to now by its 46-year-old embargo against the communist-ruled nation. "Our tourism and our people are ready. It's barbaric to prohibit a citizen from visiting his family," the Cuban leader said in a statement quoted by the state news agency Prensa Latina. Lage pointed out that while US President-Elect Barack Obama has mentioned "enabling Cubans residing in the United States to travel, he has said nothing about the right of US citizens that is included in the Constitution." "Among the things that it (the Constitution) talks about, and it doesn't say much because it isn't very long, is the right to travel, but that is violated by the embargo of the United States against Cuba," he said. The Cuban vice president said that, "he (Obama) has talked about travel for Cuban citizens living in the United States and the sending of remittances." "That's the situation that existed before" the administration of the current president, George W. Bush, he said (EFE, 12/12/08).

December 12: Throughout his campaign, President-elect Barack Obama said that he'd loosen some restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba and rebuild the already slight ties to the communist nation cut by the Bush administration. With an Obama government soon to become reality, many in the U.S. capital are pushing for much more. The question of what US Cuban policy will look like under Obama has fed one of the moment's biggest foreign-policy debates, and a loose coalition of legislators, free-trade advocates and leftist groups believes that it has an ally in the president-elect. Legislators such as Representatives Jo Ann Emerson (Republican-Missouri), and Rosa DeLauro (Democrat-Connecticut), want to pass legislation that would allow all US citizens to travel to Cuba, which would undo prohibitions that the US government has imposed almost continuously since 1962. That embargo prohibits many types of trade, travel or other types of exchanges with Cuba. The Bush administration tightened those regulations even further in 2004 by allowing Cuban-Americans to visit the island only once every three years rather than once a year, as previous rules had allowed. Those who support lifting the travel ban argue that history is on their side. The nearly 50-year-old embargo has failed to promote democracy and freedom, they say, and has even helped Fidel Castro and his brother, Raul, stay in power. ''If you've been running the same play for 40 years and you're not getting results, why not change the play?'' Emerson asked. ``It's time to move forward. If we can lift the status of our relations with North Korea or a country like Libya, why can't we do it with Cuba?'' (The Miami Herald, 12/12/08).

December 13: Ricardo Alarcon, President of the Cuban National Assembly of People´s Power (Cuban Parliament) underscored the need to show the US Supreme Court that the world is closely following the case of the five Cubans incarcerated in the North American country. In his speech in the closing ceremony of the 9th Criminal Sciences International Seminar, Alarcon called for strengthening international solidarity in order to secure justice in the appealing process in favour of Gerardo Hernandez, René Gonzalez, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, and Fernando Gonzalez, incarcerated in the United State since September 12th, 1998. Alarcon recalled that defence attorneys will take their Cuban Five case to the US Supreme Court, and highlighted the importance of the introduction of Friends of the Court documents, a way within the US legal system to assure people and institutions from within or abroad their right to express their concern about the topic on trial (ACN, 13/12/08).

December 14: Barack Obama's election is rekindling the hopes of US agribusiness for an end to the trade embargo with Cuba. At the least, farmers hope he'll loosen restrictions on exports of American food. How far he'll go to increase trade is far from clear, however. Obama carried Florida, the linchpin in US policy toward Cuba because of the power of the Cuban-American community there and its long antipathy toward the Castro government. Obama's victory in Florida was aided by strong support from the state's growing non-Cuban Hispanic community. But Obama has made no commitment to overhaul US policy toward Cuba beyond easing curbs on Cuban-Americans' visits to the island and their ability to send humanitarian aid there. "Our overall goal is elimination of the embargo," said Chris Garza, who follows trade policy for the American Farm Bureau Federation. "I don't think that's going to happen overnight." For now, the bureau would be happy to see the reversal of restrictions imposed by President George W. Bush, who relied on the Cuban-American vote to win Florida in 2000 and 2004. The Farm Bureau joined several U.S. business organizations, including the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, in a recent letter to Obama asking him to remove all restrictions on travel to Cuba (The Advertiser.Com, 14/12/08).

December 16: Cuban President Raul Castro told reporters that his administration is ready for a dialogue with US President-elect Barack Obama. After arriving in northeastern Brazil for a summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders, Castro said he'd discuss the blockade that prohibits nearly all US commerce with the island if Obama wants to.
"If Mr. Obama wants to discuss it, we'll discuss it," he said to journalists before the summit in Costa do Sauipe, Brazil. "If he doesn't want to discuss it, we won't discuss it."
"It has become more and more difficult to isolate Cuba from the outside world," he said, predicting that the summit would issue a resolution condemning the blockade. "We may be small, but we have demonstrated to the whole world that it is impossible to break us," Castro said, adding that more than 70% of Cuba's population has grown up under the US sanctions. The regional gathering excludes the United States and Canada and is the first large-scale meeting of Latin American leaders in recent times to take place without the presence of an outside power (AP, RIA Novosti, 16/12/08).

December 16: One of Manatee County’s two congressional representatives has joined the growing chorus calling on President-elect Obama to ease travel and remittance restrictions to Cuba. The restrictions by the Bush administration have prevented Cuban-Americans from seeing dying relatives on the island nation and sending humanitarian aid to family members after hurricanes, Representative Kathy Castor (Democrat-Tampa), said in a letter sent to Obama. “The restrictions have proven ineffective in altering the political situation and interfere with fundamental family relations and human rights,” Castor’s letter said. “By lifting the burdensome restrictions we can provide relief to families while maintaining the pressure for human rights and change the island needs.”
Now, a Bush executive order restricts travel to Cuba once every three years and limits monetary remittances to family members in Cuba to $300 annually. Before the order, Cuban-Americans could travel to Cuba once a year and send up to $3,000 annually.
Obama has said he favors easing the restrictions. Castor’s district includes Tampa, which has the nation’s second-largest Cuban population after Miami (Bradenton Herald, 17/12/08).

December 16: Russian warships have been plying the waters off Venezuela and Panama and are now heading for Cuba, but US officials are not so much wringing their hands as yawning. Asked about a Russian warship transiting the Panama Canal earlier this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- who saw the ship while crossing the canal -- told the press: "I guess they're on R & R. It's fine." R & R is rest and recreation. It was the first such passage by a Russian or Soviet warship since World War II. The Pentagon, while puzzled by the Russians' actions, also is taking a ho-hum attitude. The US military commander for the region, Adm. James Stavridis, head of the US Southern Command, said that from his vantage point there is no reason to be concerned about the Russian naval activity. "They pose no military threat to the US," he said in an email to the press. "We will continue to focus on our own naval missions in the region with international and interagency partners medical training, disaster relief, peacekeeping support, counter-narcotics, and logistic humanitarian support to US interagency activities" (AP, 17/12/08).

December 18: Though agricultural leaders’ expectations for the impending Obama Administration are mixed, one thing that excites many of them is the prospect of freer and more abundant trade with Cuba. Many states and trade groups have sent delegations there with the hope of selling increasing amounts of their products to the island nation of 11 million people, a potential 30 million bushel market for wheat alone. “It’s already the eighth largest customer for hard red winter wheat even though we only have 50 percent of their market,” said US Wheat Associates president Alan Tracy. “By comparison, the US has 90 percent of the market in the rest of the Caribbean.” Industry leaders don’t want to risk losing out on the market as trade relations continue to thaw. Tracy, who grew up in the family seed business and was once the Wisconsin Secretary of Agriculture, has been president of the check-off funded U.S. world wheat development agency since 1997. He made stops last week in Colorado and Oklahoma for meetings of the two states’ wheat grower organizations. “With a different president, there is a good chance of a different approach,” he told the growers. “Both houses of Congress have passed legislation to lift the travel ban against Cuba, but they were always taken out of the final bills by the leadership because they knew it would ultimately not be signed by the president” (Ag Journal, 18/12/08).

December 18: Cuban President Raul Castro proposed a swap of prisoners with the United States as a goodwill "gesture" to pave the way for talks with incoming US President Barack Obama. His offer to release political dissidents in exchange for the release of five convicted Cuban spies in US prisons was the most specific proposal yet to ease ties with the United States since Obama, who takes office on January 20, was elected in November. "Let's do gesture for gesture," Castro answered angrily to reporters during a visit to Brasilia. "These prisoners you talk about -- they want us to let them go? They should tell us tomorrow. We'll send them with their families and everything. Give us back our five heroes. That is a gesture on both parts," he said, referring to the convicted Cuban spies (Reuters, 18/12/08).

December 18: Cuba's offer to release jailed political dissidents in Cuba in exchange for five Cubans convicted of spying in the United States was rejected by the State Department and Cuban rights groups. "The issue of political prisoners held against their will, merely for making peaceful protests, is independent of the case of the five spies tried and convicted under due process of the US judicial system," the department's deputy spokesman Robert Wood told the press. The five Cubans were convicted of espionage conspiracy against the United States and sentenced in a Miami, Florida federal court to long prison terms in June 2001 (AFP, 18/12/08).

December 18: Raul Castro’s offer to release jailed political dissidents in Cuba in exchange for five Cubans convicted of spying in the United States was rejected by Cuban dissident groups in Havana. "It's vulgar blackmail because these men should never have been prisoners and that's why they can't be used as bargaining chips," said Laura Pollan, a leader of a group of prisoners' wives. In Cuba, there are 219 political prisoners behind bars, including 67 adopted as prisoners of conscience by rights group Amnesty, according to the illegal Cuban Commission of Human Rights and Reconciliation. Castro did not state a number of dissidents which could be involved in a possible exchange for the five Cubans. He spoke after a meeting with leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, during a first official trip overseas since formally replacing his ailing brother Fidel in February (AFP, 18/12/08).

December 19: US physician and clown Hunter "Patch" Adams, known internationally as "the doctor of laughter," put on an act for homeless people in the Cuban town of Santa Cruz del Sur, devastated in November by Hurricane Paloma. "It was a really important experience to be part of this and make friends," Adams told reporters, after taking his art to this town in the eastern province of Camaguey, where he found "a spontaneous welcome of friendship." Adams, 65, has visited Cuba six times since 1998, and this time came with a cast made up of 15 Virginia medical professionals and students to present his shows of "humanitarian clowning." The group shared the stage with members of the Cuban children's theater company La Colmenita (Little Beehive), which Adams judged "the most beautiful meeting of two countries with such a complicated history" in which "the bridge is this group of children" with whom "we were working as a team." Another of the group's actors, Dr. John Glick, said that for a week they put on shows in which language was "never" a barrier and through music and dance they communicated with an audience of different generations (EFE, 20/12/08).

December 19: A former aide to President George W. Bush pleaded guilty to stealing money meant for democracy programs in Cuba. Felipe Sixto, a former special assistant for intergovernmental affairs at the White House, pleaded guilty to stealing more than $500,000 from the Center for a Free Cuba when he was its chief of staff. He faces up to three years in prison and a fine of $60,000 when he is sentenced March 18. Sixto admitted he overcharged the program, which supports democracy efforts in Cuba, for radios and flashlights he supplied. He resigned March 20 as an aide to Bush after admitting he engaged in improprieties. All the money was eventually recovered, according to the centre. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino declined to comment on the Sixto plea (Bloomberg, 19/12/08).

December 21: President-elect Barack Obama represents the future to most of the nation, but some Southeast Texas rice farmers see in the president-elect a chance to return to the past. Under the new administration, farmers expect to see some change in the United States' agriculture trade relations with Cuba, which has been under an embargo since the 1960s. Cuba was once a top buyer of Southeast Texas rice, and for several years, area growers have lobbied for a loosening of relations to allow local farmers to compete with the rest of the world. "We're sitting 80 or 90 miles from this country, and we're really limited on what we can ship to 'em," said Mike Doguet, president of Doguet Rice Co. “They buy everything from foreign sources from Vietnam and Thailand. All it does with the embargoes is help our competitors." Before the 1960s, Beaumont Rice Mills sold about 90 percent of its rice to Cuba under the brand Sunset. A series of trade restrictions began after Fidel Castro seized power in a 1959 revolution, and the United States imposed a full embargo against the communist island nation in 1962. "It would get more people growing rice and other commodities if we would just do away with that stuff," Doguet said of the embargo. "It doesn't work. All the leaders they're trying to hurt, I don't think they've missed a meal. But it does hurt the poor people and the American farmer" (Beaumont Enterprise, 21/12/08).

December 23: The US rice industry is hoping President-elect Barack Obama's campaign mantra of change will apply to the country's relations with Cuba, which analysts say could become a key customer if the US would allow it. Although the US eased trade sanctions against Cuba at the end of the Clinton administration, there are still enough restrictions to limit sales to the island neighbour. "The best case in our view would be to remove the restrictions regarding trade and economic relations and travel and all that, and just kind of open it up," said Reece Langley vice president of government affairs for the USA Rice Federation, which represents rice producers, millers and merchants. "Whether that's going to happen, I think that's a long shot, at least initially." Cuba is a big rice consumer and natural customer of US rice given its proximity, analysts said. "From what we can tell, they're using about 1 million tons per year, and we think can supply them 350,000 to maybe 500,000 metric tons of that, if things were completely opened up," Langley said. "Maybe not even completely opened up" (Alibaba. Com, 23/12/08).

December 23: The President of the Cuban National Assembly Ricardo Alarcón denounced that the US administration is promoting illegality and social indiscipline in Cuba, by way of its Helms-Burton Law. Our nation is the only one in which the most powerful country in the world insists on fomenting dissolution, vice, and social disobedience, warned Alarcón during a meeting of the District Attorney's Office and the Popular Supreme Court, held in Havana's Astral Movie Theatre. He reiterated his denunciation of the US administration's prevarications on the five Cubans incarcerated in that country (ACN, 24/12/08).

December 25: The Cuban Five’s defence attorneys will request the US Supreme Court to revise the sentences of their defendants and issue a venue, other than Miami, to hold a new trial. The appeal for justice will be presented at the US Supreme Court before January 30, said one of the prisoners’ defence attorneys Richard Klugh. In an interview with the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, attorney Richard Klugh pointed out that the appeal will request that all of the sentences be revised, after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals of Atlanta refused to grant a change of venue, or recognize the misconduct of the prosecution and the improper and discriminatory jury selection in the Cubans’ trial in 2001 held in Miami (ACN, 25/12/08).

December 27: A joint University of Alabama and Cuban archaeological dig in eastern Cuba is revealing how the natives there lived when Christopher Columbus found them and, more importantly, how Indians reacted to the Spanish. “We have very few cases in the Caribbean where we can point to a certain place and say, ‘This is exactly what happened when Europeans hit the scene,’ ” said UA professor Jim Knight. “Of course, we have the Spanish documents, but archaeology can tell a different story sometimes. Some of these documents tend to whitewash what happened, but artifacts won’t lie.” It took Knight nearly seven years to get permission and forms signed for UA to lead an expedition in Cuba. For the past two summers, UA graduate students worked alongside professional archaeologists with the Central-Eastern Department of Archaeology of the science ministry of Cuba to dig through El Chorro de Maita, a large Indian settlement on a hillside off the island’s eastern shore. The effort was sponsored by the National Geographic Society (Tuscaloosa News, 28/12/08).

December 31: During a press briefing at Crawford Middle School, Texas, Deputy Press Secretary Gordon Johndroe was asked if the Bush Administration had a message for the people of Cuba, given the 50th anniversary of the revolution that put Fidel Castro in charge. “President Bush's message to the people of Cuba is that we stand with you. We want to see them live in freedom. And the United States will continue to stand with the people of Cuba”, Johndroe said. “The Castro brothers have not treated their people particularly well. Many political dissidents are in jail. The economy is suffering and not free. And the United States will continue to try to seek the freedom of the people of Cuba, and support them”, he added (The White House Press Release, 31/12/08).