The Cuba Blog:
Using phrases and words from the U.S constitution and countering the much maligned criticism by Hillary Clinton of China´s alleged Internet Censorship the new twitter profile proves that unchanged hypocrisy abounds…the tweets speak for themselves…
Follow http://twitter.com/thouwilttweet to get the broad picture of U.S censorship of the Web and the time the Government spends denying this as per Mrs. Clinton’s speech on Jan 21st 2010
Guardian: Cuba has produced some of the world’s most explosive dancers – but its cultural isolation comes at a cost. On the eve of two major UK tours, Judith Mackrell visits Havana
Virtually blind and wearing Jackie Onassis sunglasses that might have been bought when Jackie O was still alive, Alicia Alonso has her ballerina face painted on every morning: a wide slash of scarlet lipstick, thick found-ation, flaring black eyebrows. She may be approaching her 90th birthday, but she is still the head of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, still the island’s revolutionary prima ballerina assoluta. Talking to me in her private office in Havana, she combines diva glamour with political rhetoric; spreading her arms wide at one point, she insists: “Art is the lungs of the people. It is the expression of our humanity.” It’s a gesture that would carry to the back of an opera house.
Ever since she gave up her inter-national career to found the Ballet Nacional in 1959, Alonso has been proselytising for her art form. Fidel Castro, determined to acquire a people’s ballet to match Russia’s Bolshoi and the Kirov, gave her the funding to expand what was a private company into a state ensemble. She has kept it alive for 50 years despite chronic money problems and a scarcity of essential supplies, and in the process acquired a near-sacred standing in Cuba. You almost believe her when she says, serenely: “I’ll still be running this company in a hundred years’ time.”
Certainly the impact Alonso has made on Cuban dance will gain her a kind of immortality. The ballet school she opened with her former husband Fernando is now world-famous, gathering its students from the island’s rural poor and urban delinquent; Carlos Acosta was enrolled by his father to keep him off the streets. The training it gives is also world-class, producing dancers who can pirouette and jump with explosive attack, but whose musicality embraces a shimmering languor.
The audiences they dance for are special, too. Low ticket prices and a lack of cultural competition have elevated ballet to a national entertainment. Local dancers acquire celebrity status, and the few foreign companies that visit are mobbed. When the Royal Ballet danced in Havana last July, fans slept on the street outside the Gran Teatro for a week, to be sure of getting tickets. Yet behind this apparent success story lies a harsher reality. Cuba has been stranded in a political, economic and cultural limbo for decades, imposing stifling constraints on its artists. Collectively, Cuban dancers may possess astounding potential, yet they face few choicesin their careers.
Stuck in a 50-year time-warp
This spring, Britain will be getting a concentrated taste of Cuba’s dynamic rhythm and heat, as both the Ballet Nacional and the state-run Danza Contemporanea de Cuba (DCC) begin UK tours. Also founded in 1959, Danza Contemporanea now numbers 47 dancers – almost double the size of the UK’s Rambert Dance Company. Its signature style is a bewitching hybrid, blending the blunt attack of American modern dance with the long, lean extensions and graceful arms of ballet, as well as the percussive syncopation and rippling spines of Caribbean dance.
Spanish choreographer Rafael Bonachela, who was recently invited to create a work for DCC, says he was awed by the dancers’ talent. “If I audition for my own company, I might see 800 dancers, but few are as good as these. They’re taught to really push themselves and they have this very old-fashioned, hardcore technique that you don’t often see.” Yet Bonachela’s voice has the guilty inflection typical of most visitors to Cuba, as he acknowledges that DCC’s unique qualities are, in part, a reflection of their long and enforced segregation from the rest of the dance world. The time–warp effects of the 50-year US embargo, and of Castro’s rule, may be fascinating to observe: a world free of Starbucks and the evils of global capitalism. But for Cubans, the reality has been grim. For all their justified pride in Cuba’s health service and education system, many Cubans long for Starbucks, or at least what it symbolises – access to basic goods and, above all, the freedom to travel. As Bonachela says: “Cuba is a waiting island.”
At the Ballet Nacional, dancers do have certain privileges, including the chance to tour abroad. But it’s evident from talking to them that this exposure to the wider world has sharpened their dissatisfaction, as they realise how far ballet has moved on, and how limited their own repertory is. It’s not just that Alonso’s taste dominates the company, a taste inevitably rooted in an older aesthetic; there is also little money to acquire new work from elsewhere.
For some dancers, the situation feels impossible. Carlos Acosta, who left Cuba for good in 1993, believed he had no choice: “Your career is so short – you have to do everything you can to find new challenges.” But others find it harder to leave, like dancer Javier Torres, who professes enormous loyalty to his home company: “It has taken me to a very high level.” Even so, an expression of longing crosses his face when he describes watching the Royal Ballet dance Chroma, the fiercely modern Wayne McGregor ballet they brought to Havana last year. “My body is hungry to dance that,” he says simply.
Cuba’s lead ballerina Viengsay Valdés shares his sense of conflict. “We have this special musicality and physicality in our blood,” she says, “but we need to be able to dance Forsythe, Kylián or MacMillan to widen our minds and souls.” Like others of her generation (she is 32), she would like to see Acosta return to the company to succeed Alonso. But while Acosta, nearly 37, is certainly planning to spend more time in Cuba, and will be dancing with the Ballet Nacional next month, he says he is unwilling to take on the company. “It’s Alicia and Fernando’s creation,” he says. “I would like to help in any way I could, but I want to start my own company.” What he envisages would certainly be an asset to Cuba – a company embracing an international range of choreographers and styles. But unless the political situation changes dramatically, Acosta rules out a permanent residency. “I would need to be touring and having co-productions with places like Sadler’s Wells. I couldn’t be based only in Cuba.”
At Danza Contemporanea, the sense of frustration takes a different slant. Here, the dancers are exposed to a greater variety of work, due to the enthusiasm and persistence of their director, Miguel Iglesias. Ten years ago, he discovered the existence of small pockets of foreign money, available to help him augment his repertory. Since then, he has acquired works by Bonachela, Mats Ek and Dutch choreo-grapher Jan Linkens; his future wish list includes the radical conceptual dance artist Jérôme Bel. Iglesias’s ambition and eclectic tastes have had a galvanising effect on his dancers, inspiring and informing a new generation of Cuban choreographers.
One of them, George Cespédes, says that dancing in foreign work has been a crucial part of his education. Still, at the age of 27, he feels thwarted by the fact that he is performing and creating inside a company that is 50 years old. The experimental work that interests him doesn’t sit naturally with the beautiful but institutionalised technique that dominates any DCC dancer’s training. “[That technique] feels like a dinosaur to me,” he says. “I can admire it, but it isn’t any use to my body any more.” Were he anywhere else in the developed world, Cespedés would form his own company. But in Cuba there is minimal funding for individual projects; given that most of the island’s small dance budget goes to the Ballet Nacional, there is precious little even for the state-supported DCC. Its tiny office barely has a functioning computer.
Exiles from paradise island
Scouting for foreign money now takes up most of Iglesias’s energy. “I’ve had to become a full-time whore,” he grins cheerfully. His dancers are on a subsistence wage so low it forces many to leave. Bonachela describes his shock on meeting one ex-DCC dancer performing cabaret in Australia. “He’s incredibly talented. But back in Cuba he had to live with his parents, miles outside Havana. Every morning he got up at five o’clock to hitch a ride into work. He was exhausted the whole time.”
And yet for all the dancers who give up and go, the island seems to create more. Renowned Cuban ballet teacher Loipa Araujo says: “I don’t know anywhere that has more dance students. We find them in the smallest places and we develop them. They are our hope for the future.” Bonachela agrees: “In some ways it’s a paradise island. Perhaps it’s the hardships, but the people have so much spirit and passion.” Even Cespedés admits there is some truth in this. “If you’re given everything, you don’t know what to choose. Here we are given very little, but we’re so hungry we eat it all up.” He extends his arms and suddenly I see Alicia Alonso, talking about her own lifelong crusade for ballet. In Cuba, they talk about art as if it were food and water, and they mean every word.
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HAVANA (AP) — Cuba said Wednesday it will begin offering pensions to self-employed artists and performers, calculating benefits based on the taxable income they declare.
The new law appears to be an attempt to encourage workers to report their full incomes — part of increasing efforts to better account for all Cuban employees and the money they make.
Previously, independent artists were required to pay at least 7 percent tax on all income, then file a yearly tax return with additional payments, but they were not eligible for retirement benefits.
The new measure, detailed in state-run newspapers, allows self-employed musicians, writers, movie and television performers, sculptors and painters, among others, to receive a monthly government pension worth 60 percent of their reported income.
To qualify, artists must have worked for 30 years and reported taxes for at least the last five. Like all Cubans, their benefits kick in at 65 for men and 60 for women.
It was not clear how many people will be affected.
The communist government controls well over 90 percent of the economy and pays employees an average of about $20 per month. Thousands of workers in certain sectors, however, can apply to become self-employed.
The island has about 2.2 million retirees, and an increase in benefits in 2008 raised the minimum pension to the equivalent of $9.50 per month.
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HAVANA (AFP) – Yoan used to earn 25 dollars a month working as a computer technician for a state company — and an extra 500 dollars selling Internet access on Cuba’s vast and varied black market.
The 31-year-old managed 10 accounts for government employees who had authorized email access and would rent out their passwords to trusted clients under certain rules: they could only connect at night or in the early hours, and had to avoid political references.
“I did it because I couldn’t live off my salary,” Yoan said.
But the technician had taken a large risk amid a crackdown by the government of President Raul Castro as part of an offensive on illegal businesses.
“There was an audit a little while ago, they trawled through the telephone numbers and one customer gave the game away,” Yoan said.
“They sacked me and I paid a 1,500-peso (60-dollar) fine.”
Yoan, who also received a ban from working for four years, was a tiny link in the chain connecting Cubans to the illegal network: an email service costs 10-15 dollars per month, it costs 50 dollars per month to navigate the Internet, and one dollar to send or receive an email.
“I need to be in contact with my friends and the world, but I can’t afford ‘underground’ Internet so I only have email. I connect at night because that’s what my illegal provider tells me to do,” said Aida, a 38-year-old former waitress.
The Caribbean island connects to the Internet by satellite because the decades-long US embargo prevents access to underwater cables which pass near its coastlines.
The government blames the embargo for its limits on the service — it gives priority to state and foreign companies, academics, doctors and research centers.
Dissidents and critics of the Communist government say Cuba, like China, limits Internet access to restrict freedom of information and control criticism of the single-party regime.
They say that is why authorities block dissident sites or blogs, such as the award-winning blog of Yoani Sanchez, for being subversive.
Cubans can connect to email at controlled state access points for 1.5 dollars per hour, or access the Internet in hotels with cards costing seven dollars per hour.
But with the average monthly salary at 20 dollars, that is also out of reach of most citizens.
“I can’t pay that, that’s why I have illegal email to communicate with my father in Miami,” said Marilis, a 23-year-old law student.
“I’ve never written anything political,” she added indignantly.
Raul Castro allowed computer sales two years ago, but Internet access remains limited.
Barely 1.4 million of the 11.2 million inhabitants have Internet access, and only 630,000 have computers, according to official figures.
Shared access is blamed for slow and patchy connections.
Deputy Computing Minister Ramon Linares said recently that the island’s connection speeds had increased, and an underwater cable was due to start operating from Venezuela in 2011.
That still won’t be enough for Aida.
“Even if they solve the technical problems, we won’t have free access,” she complained.
“It’s clear that those who lead the country decide what we can consult.”
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Chron.com: For the first time in nearly half a century, a shipping line will provide weekly transport from Houston’s docks to Cuba. Local officials view this as the beginning of increased exports to a Latin American nation that still faces a partial trade embargo with the U.S.
“What we’re witnessing is the important first step,” said Jeff Moseley, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership.
Shipping company CMA CGM of Marseille, France, recently began hauling food, medical products and other items allowed by the U.S. government to two Cuban ports from Houston. Every week, the vessels will stop in Kingston, Jamaica, before moving on to Havana and Santiago de Cuba from Houston’s Bayport terminal.
“This would definitely be easier for our people to get their product to Cuba out of the port and into a potential other market,” said Ron Hufford, executive vice president of the Texas Forestry Association, which hopes to sell railroad ties, utility poles, furniture and other items. Two years ago, a top Cuban official toured Texas mills to see the state’s wood products, Hufford said.
CMA CGM received a U.S. government license through October 2011 to move cargo to Cuba from the U.S. Texas officials have been urging a carrier to seek such approval for years.
For Texas, this means another market for some goods, and for Cuba, the new shipping route means faster delivery of products. Instead of waiting weeks or months for goods from other continents, Texas goods can arrive in Cuba much sooner.
“Shipping from Texas, they can pretty much do just-in-time delivery of produce,” said Cynthia Thomas, president of Dallas consulting company TriDimension Strategies. She’s visited Cuba 40 times with clients and trade missions.
She said Texas companies can market their goods as fresher than their competitors’ products, which may have sat on a boat longer.
Prior to this new route, Texas producers seeking regular service had to haul their Cuban-bound products to Florida ports. That added costs and delays. Or companies had to charter an entire vessel for the occasional shipment to Cuba.
“That would make them less competitive,” said Ricky Kunz, the port’s vice president of origination.
“That would make them less competitive,” said Ricky Kunz, the port’s vice president of origination.
In 2000, the U.S. began allowing Americans to sell agricultural and medical products to Cuba. Since then, food makers, exporters and port officials have traveled there to try to convince Cubans to buy from them.
“When a marketplace opens up, everybody wants to get into the action,” said Port Chairman Jim Edmonds, who represented the port on a trade mission in 2005. “Cuba is attractive to us from the standpoint of its proximity.”
Port officials have visited Cuba a few times already and plan to attend a Texas-Cuba Trade Alliance meeting that will be held at the partnership in March.
The island, 900 miles from Houston, was once a buyer of Texas rice and other agricultural products until the Kennedy administration imposed a trade embargo.
In 2008, $143 million worth of food and agricultural products moved to Cuba through Texas ports, nearly 50 percent higher than in 2007, said Parr Rosson, extension economist of the Texas Agrilife Extension Service. But exports from the U.S. to Cuba slowed because of hurricanes that pummeled the island in 2008; the decline in prices of nickel, one of Cuba’s exports; and a decline in tourism because of the global economic slowdown.
In 2008, 274,000 tons of goods were shipped from Houston to Cuba. That’s a “minuscule” amount of the port’s business, Kunz said, since 225 million tons typically move through the port annually. But the port hopes to expand that business.
With the Obama administration already easing some of the restrictions on trade and travel with Cuba, Moseley said: “We’re very optimistic that the embargo could be lifted during the first term of the administration, if not sooner. The effect is going to be tremendous.”
If the embargo is lifted, he predicted Houston companies would sell goods for Cuba’s energy business and the rebuilding of its roads and homes.
However, Cuban exiles still oppose easing trade restrictions because of their opposition to Fidel Castro’s communist regime and its human rights record.
“We’ve always seen that as the only way to protest,” said Houston business consultant Andres Puello, who left Cuba 40 years ago. “There’s going to be no benefit for the Cuban people. I don’t think because they make these concessions there will be an improvement in Cuba.”
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WASHINGTON (WPR) U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold says it’s time to de-fund Radio and TV Marti. The news and cultural broadcast service targeting Cuba began after Fidel Castro rose to power in the late 1950’s. Feingold says the propaganda broadcasts are having little effect on Cuban citizens.
Feingold has tried before to eliminate funds for Radio and TV Marti. This time the effort is part of a larger bill aimed at trimming federal spending. Feingold says a recent government report found that less than 2-percent of Cubans tune into the programs that are broadcast from Florida. He says cancelling the project would save tax payers about $300 million, and he also cites a 2006 GAO report which shows operational problems like cronyism, patronage and biased coverage.
Ricardo Gonzalez, director of Madison’s sister city project in Camaguey, Cuba, says Feingold is on the right track in trying to chop funding for the broadcasts. He says in his annual visits to Camaguey he’s heard one major complaint from Cubans about American’s policy towards their country. He says Cuban people don’t want any more interference from the United States and want to end the policy of isolationism. He says TV and Radio Marti is a form of aggression against Cuba.
Gonzalez says he’s hopeful that defunding the broadcasts, combined with the easing of travel restrictions for Cuban America’s enacted by the Obama Administration may lead to normal relations between Cuba and the U.S. for the first time in decades.
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HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) – Canadian mining and energy company Sherritt International will build a third gas-fired power plant in Cuba in conjunction with its state partners, local media reported this week.
Cienfuegos Communist Party weekly, 5th of September, said the new Energas plant, with a 150-megawatt capacity, would be built in the province, some 250 miles (402 km) southeast of Havana, fueled by gas from the Cienfuegos oil refinery, a joint venture with Venezuela’s state oil firm PDVSA.
“The effort is part of Cuba’s strategy to reduce imports and use environmentally friendly energy sources,” 5th of September said.
“The plants opening in the medium term will also mean gas generated power represents between 10 percent and 15 percent of all power generation in the country,” the weekly said.
Energas S.A., in which Sherritt has a 33 percent stake, currently operates two plants in western Matanzas and Havana provinces with a capacity of 376 megawatts, fired by natural gas from oil wells along the northwest coast.
Energas’s state partners are CubaPetroleo (Cupet) and Union Electrica, each with a 33 percent stake.
Sherritt is one of the largest foreign investor in Cuba, with additional interests in the nickel, oil and gas.
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Trinidadexpress.com:
WITH CLOSURE of US President Barack Obama’s first year, the promise of any fundamental change in US-Cuba relations is rapidly fading and a short-lived political honeymoon now seems heading for the rocks.
The latest indicator emerged last week with a stinging broadside from Havana against Washington’s decision to include Cuba among 14 countries linked with alleged state-sponsored terrorism.
In the absence of any clear commitment by Obama to lift the very punitive US trade and economic embargo enforced against Cuba 47 years ago, optimism, nevertheless, has been on the ascendancy with new arrangements on remittances and travel, as well as agreements on telecommunication and postal services between the two countries.
When Obama came under some sharp criticisms for being awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, the legendary Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, came out batting on his behalf, even as reservations were being openly expressed about his expedient ’just war’ doctrine in relation to Afghanistan, as declared in his acceptance speech in Oslo.
But Havana felt it was nothing but unprovoked official hostility for Washington to blacklist Cuba among 14 countries in new security arrangements in its ’war against terrorism’, following the foiled Al Qaeda linked bombing attempt on Christmas Day by a 23-year-old Nigerian national, Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, on a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight.
It so happens that Cuba is the sole exception of the 14 countries that are known to be Muslim nations and with no regular flights into the US. Other than that is the four heavily monitored daily charters that connect Havana with Miami and two other American cities.
The Cuban Foreign Ministry was last week alerting its allies in the global community, including the governments of Caricom, of its deep concerns about the implications of being so wrongfully blacklisted by the US, and while its citizens continue to suffer from the consequences of the almost half a century old economic blockade.
’We categorically reject this new hostile action by the US government’, the Cuban Foreign Ministry said in a statement. It claimed that the ’list was politically motivated and its only goal is to justify the US policy of economic embargo against Cuba’.
Nigeria, a country of some 151 million largely Muslim people, has, for its part, dismissed as being totally unjustified to have to bear the ’blacklisting’ burden because of the crime with which a single Nigerian, Abdulmutallab, has been charged. It has officially demanded exclusion from the listed 14 countries.
Before Obama, other Washington administrations had routinely sought to brand Cuba as a terrorist-sponsored state without offering any specific evidence of the US being a victim of such a deplorable political doctrine and practice.
On the contrary, it is Cuba, as is known to the 15-member countries of our Caribbean Community (Caricom), as well as in Latin America and other regions of the world, that have had to repeatedly expose its sufferings, at home and abroad, at the hands of terrorists, many trained and financed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Indeed, a few of the CIA’s terrorist collaborators who have been exposed in the assassination of the former foreign minister of Chile, Orlando Letelier on September 21, 1976, on ’embassy row’ in Washington, have been linked with anti-Castro Cuban emigres involved in a series of terrorist acts in Cuba and the Caribbean.
Two of these CIA-collaborators were also involved 15 days after the assassination of Letelier with the October 6, 1976 Cubana airline bombing tragedy off Barbados in which all 73 people aboard perished, most of them Cubans, and including 11 Guyanese and five North Koreans.
One of the earliest of Cuban emigres recruited by the CIA in Washington’s obsession with crushing the Castro-led government in Havana, and who was involved in the Cubana tragedy, Luis Posada Carriles, is still enjoying protection in the US.
But the US continues to ignore all requests from Cuba and Venezuela (from where he had escaped, as a Venezuelan citizen, first to Panama) for extradition.
Located somewhere in the bosom of America also is one of Posada’s better known terrorist emigre collaborators, Orlando Bosch, who had earlier illegally entered the US as a safe haven and succeeded in getting a presidential pardon from the elder George Bush when he occupied the White House.
In the spirit of ’international solidarity’ to which all Caricom governments lay claim with Cuba, perhaps they should consider sharing their own concerns over the consequences for that Caribbean nation to be now blacklisted along with 13 others following the Christmas Day bombing scare on that Northwest airline flight.
As Agence France Press (AFP) reported out of Havana on Wednesday, US-Cuba tensions are on the rise after the foiled Al Qaeda airline bomb plot, ending Havana’s ’fleeting honeymoon’ with Obama.
www.particularcuba.com – Travel agency to Cuba
HAVANA, Cuba (ACN) – The Cuban Institute of Meteorology reported significant low temperatures in at least 17 locations all over the country, including some provincial capitals, and forecasted a predominance of winter conditions for the weekend.
A minimum of 4.5 Celsius degrees in the Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs) meteorological station was the lowest recorded so far this winter season, Granma newspaper reported this Friday quoting M.Sc. Miguel Angel Hernandez from the Weather Forecast Center of the Institute of Meteorology.
There were also very significant lows in Santo Domingo, Villa Clara (4.6) and in the city of Ciego de Avila (5.2), which is the record for the month of January in the provincial seat, said the researcher.
Other notable values, according to Hernandez, were the 5.4 in the town of Falla in central Ciego de Avila province (a record for January); 5.5 in Aguada de Pasajeros; 6.0 in Jagüey Grande; 6.1 in Júcaro; and 7.0 in Indio Hatuey.
He also described as quite remarkable the 6.9 in El Jibaro and The Yabú; 7.0 in Sagua La Grande; 7.3 in Colon; 7.4 in the city of Sancti Spiritus; 7.5 in Jovellanos; 7.6 in Cienfuegos, 8.3 in Esmeralda; 8.4 in Union de Reyes; and 8.5 in Batabano; while the meteorological station of Casablanca registered 15.9 Celsius degrees.
Starting this Saturday, the winter conditions should be intensified in much of the country due to the influence of a new very cold air mass of continental origin, said the meteorologist.
On February 18th, 1996, temperature dropped to 0.6 Celsius degrees in the town of Bainoa in La Habana province, which is the absolute record of minimum temperature in Cuba.
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The Canadian Press:
Nine men were ordered off a Sunwing aircraft destined for Cuba earlier this week after asking a flight attendant unusual questions about the security equipment on the plane.
The men, onboard a flight from Toronto to Holguin, Cuba, on Tuesday were taken off the plane before the aircraft ever left Pearson Airport in Toronto.
A spokeswoman for Sunwing Aircraft says the men were asking “most unusual” questions as the plane taxied to the runway.
Martha Chapman says after the flight attendant consulted with the senior captain, the airline’s head of security advised the crew to return to the gate and have the passengers deplaned.
The plane taxied back, where the men were met by Peel Regional Police and the Canadian Border Security Agency.
Their bags were taken off the plane and the aircraft took off an hour and forty minutes late.
The airline will not reveal what questions were asked, other than to say they were “very specific”, “most unusual”, and pertaining to the security equipment onboard.
Chapman says “In today’s atmosphere of heightened security, I think that most airlines would be considered doing the wise thing if they were to deplane passengers that were asking these specific questions.”
The airline processed a complete refund to the men.
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