January 20: Fidel Castro's enemies in exile have long predicted that the end of his reign in Cuba would bring dancing in the streets, a mass exodus and a rapid transition to a U.S.-style democracy and market economy. Almost six months after Castro stepped aside due to illness, the transition has occurred -- and with none of those changes. Cubans are calmly going about their business, and there has been no northbound rush of migrants, and no signs of impending policy shifts.

About the only thing different in Cuba is that its government, instead of being led by a single person, is handled by a group. Raul Castro heads a collective leadership guided by the same Communist Party his older brother extolled during a nearly half-century in power. "The only substitute for Fidel can be the Communist Party of Cuba," the 75-year-old Raul Castro told university students in September.

While no major policy changes are expected while Fidel is alive, analysts believe Raul Castro and Lage could eventually favor a slight economic opening. Raul Castro in the past expressed interest in China's model of a state-dominated market economy with one-party political control. Lage promoted modest reforms, including foreign investment and limited private enterprise, that saved Cuba's faltering economy in the 1990s after the Soviet bloc collapsed.

[source: CNN]

January 23: HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) -- Salomon Mitrani sat through his wedding ceremony. At 84, he finds it hard to stand. By Cuban law, he has been married to his wife, Pilar, for 55 years, and they have eight grandchildren. But, in a ceremony last week, he was finally getting married under a Chuppah canopy according to Jewish custom. It was no ordinary ceremony. Twenty other couples of all ages took their marriage vows in a ritual officiated by three visiting Argentine rabbis. The grooms smashed their wine glasses underfoot as a cantor sang age-old blessings in Hebrew. It was the largest wedding members of Cuba's depleted Jewish community can remember and a sign of a revival of Judaism in a country where there has been no resident rabbi since an exodus of Jews fleeing President Fidel Castro's communist government in the early 1960s.

When Castro took power in 1959, there was a flourishing and prosperous Jewish community of 15,000 in Cuba. Within a few years, as the new government nationalized businesses and steered Cuba toward communism, 90 percent of them left for southern Florida, Mexico, Venezuela and Israel. Cuba became an atheist state and the synagogues emptied. Congregations fell below the quorum for prayer ceremonies as Jews that stayed assimilated into the new status quo, stopped teaching their children Hebrew and lost their customs.

Things changed after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and Cuba struggled to survive a severe economic crisis. Cuba became a secular state and allowed religious worship even by card-carrying Communist Party members. Impoverished Cuban Jews began to receive aid from abroad, especially the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which has helped rebuild a community of 1,500 people.

[source: CNN]

January 29:The city of Miami is planning an official celebration at the Orange Bowl whenever Cuban president Fidel Castro dies. Discussions by a committee appointed earlier this month by the city commission to plan the event have even covered issues such as a theme to be printed on T-shirts, what musicians would perform, the cost and how long the celebration would last. Such a gathering has long been part of the city's plan for Castro's death, but firming up the specifics has been more urgent since Castro became ill last summer and turned over power to his brother, Raul.

City Commissioner Tomas Regalado, a Cuban American, came up with the idea. "Basically, the only thing we're trying to do is have a venue, a giant venue ready for people, if they wish, to speak to the media, to show their emotions. It's not that we're doing an official death party," Regalado said Monday.

[source: CNN]

January 31: Cuban television Tuesday broadcast scenes of what it said was ailing leader Fidel Castro meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

The only indication of a date on the video was a copy of Saturday's edition of the Argentine newspaper Clarin, which Chavez carried. The 80-year-old Castro, who has ruled Cuba since the 1959 communist revolution he led, ceded power to his brother Raul in late July before undergoing intestinal surgery. Castro has not been seen in public or on video since October, and the Cuban government has maintained secrecy about his condition, giving rise to widespread speculation about his fate. Chavez told the Cuban state television program "Roundtable" that Castro was in a good mood and looked well Monday during their meeting.

The scenes that aired Tuesday showed Castro, dressed in a track suit, talking with Chavez, a close ally. The Cuban leader was shot from the waist up and could be seen standing but not walking.

[source: CNN]

May 10: Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore is under investigation by the U.S. Treasury Department for taking ailing September 11 rescue workers to Cuba for a segment in his upcoming health-care documentary "Sicko," The Associated Press has learned. "Sicko" promises to take the health-care industry to task the way Moore confronted America's passion for guns in "Bowling for Columbine" and skewered Bush over his handling of September 11 in "Fahrenheit 9/11." The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control notified Moore in a letter dated May 2 that it was conducting a civil investigation for possible violations of the U.S. trade embargo restricting travel to Cuba. A copy of the letter was obtained Tuesday by the AP.

"This office has no record that a specific license was issued authorizing you to engage in travel-related transactions involving Cuba," Dale Thompson, OFAC chief of general investigations and field operations, wrote in the letter to Moore. In February, Moore took about 10 ailing workers from the Ground Zero rescue effort in Manhattan for treatment in Cuba, said a person working with the filmmaker on the release of "Sicko." The person requested anonymity because Moore's attorneys had not yet determined how to respond. The letter noted that Moore applied October 12, 2006, for permission to go to Cuba "but no determination had been made by OFAC." Moore sought permission to travel there under a provision for full-time journalists, the letter said.

Source: CNN

Source: CNN

May 16: Cuba's population declined in 2006 for the first time in 25 years due to fewer births, the Communist Party newspaper Granma said on Wednesday. The Cuban population dropped last year by about 4,300 to 11,239,536 inhabitants, according to official statistics. The number of births dropped to 111,084 in 2006 from 120,716 a year earlier, an 8 percent decline, the country's top demographic expert, Juan Carlos Alfonso, told Granma. Cuba's populace is aging fast and there is a marked rise in the number of people aged 60 and over compared to other age groups, Alfonso said. Today, 16.2 percent of the Cuban population is 60 or over, according to the National Statistics Office. Rising life expectancy -- now at 77 years -- has given Cuba the demographics of the industrialized First World even though it is a Third World nation, officials say.

Source: CNN

May 17: Cuba says it will spend about $185 million to upgrade more than 200 resorts, golf courses, marinas and other facilities in a bid to reverse a dip in tourism to the island. The government has said the number of visitors to island dropped by about 100,000 last year to 2.2 million, hitting the communist nation's leading source of income. Washington's 45-year-old trade embargo prohibits American tourists from going to Cuba and chokes off most trade between the countries.Some $162 million will be used to upgrade non-hotel facilities, such as golf courses, yacht clubs and theme parks. Other funds will be used to build 50 boutique inns around the country in addition to 10 already under construction and to improve the country's outdated highways. Tourism, which generates roughly $2 billion a year on the island, became a major source of income in the 1990s following the Soviet Union's collapse and the loss of critical aid and trade.

Source: AP

Source: CNN

May 22: Even in Cuba, you can get a Coke.

Despite the U.S. Trading With the Enemy Act, which governs Washington's 45-year-old embargo, sales on Fidel Castro's island are lining the pockets of corporate America.
Nikes, Colgate and Marlboros, Gillette Series shaving cream and Jordache jeans -- all are easy to find. Cubans who wear contact lenses can buy Bausch & Lomb. Parents can surprise the kids with a Mickey Mouse fire truck. Dozens of American brands are on sale here -- and not on the black-market. They're in the lobbies of gleaming government-run hotels and in crowded supermarkets and pharmacies that answer to the communist government.

Made in China, brick-red Nike Air Max 90 sneakers sell for 129.40 convertible Cuban pesos -- about US$140 -- at a store off Havana's Central Park. High-priced fakes also abound. Several stores, including one inside the Havana Libre Hotel -- the Havana Hilton before Castro's 1959 revolution -- offer authentic-looking Max Air 80s, but Nike makes no such product. At the Comodoro Hotel, a boutique wants US$40 for assorted small gym bags with pastel or silver swooshes. Their tags read "Made in Indonesia" in Spanish and "Nike de Mexico," providing a hint of their route to Cuba.

The U.S. Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 made such third-country transactions illegal, while also authorizing the export of U.S. medicines. Eight years later, the U.S. Congress allowed direct sales to Cuba of food and farm goods, everything from rice, ice cream and livestock to wood products, down feathers and cigarettes.

Source: CNN

May 22: Cuba is modernizing its ethanol-producing facilities despite Fidel Castro's repeated assertions that making more of the biofuel could starve the world's poor. The island plans to upgrade 11 of its 17 refineries, which produce up to 47 million gallons annually of ethanol from sugar cane, said Conrado Moreno, a member of Cuba's Academy of Sciences.

The refineries currently produce alcohol for use in rum and other spirits, as well as medications and cooking on the island. But the improvements will give Havana the capacity to one day produce fuel for cars, Moreno told reporters at a conference on renewable energy.
Ethanol produced in Cuba is not for cars now, but "in four or five years, we'll see," he said.
Castro has railed against a U.S.-backed plan to produce ethanol from corn for cars in a series of editorials published in state-run newspapers, claiming it will cause prices of farm products of all kinds to spike and make food too expensive for poor families around the globe. Brazil is the world's leading producer of ethanol from sugar cane. In March, it signed an agreement with the United States to promote ethanol production in Latin America and create international quality standards to allow it to be traded as a commodity like oil.

"The dangers to the environment and the human species are topics on which I have been mediating for years," Castro wrote. "What I never imagined was the immense risk."

Source AP

Source: AP

May 24: Fidel Castro has gained weight and is getting better, but grumbled about having to cut his hair and trim his beard for official photos in a personal report on his condition published Thursday in state media. The 80-year-old leader wrote frankly about just how sick has been, undergoing several emergency surgeries, the first of which did not go well.

"It wasn't just one operation, but various. Initially it wasn't successful and that had a bearing on my prolonged recuperation," wrote Castro, who has not been seen in public for nearly 10 months.
He gave no indication of how long it will take to get back to full health or whether he will resume the presidential duties he handed to his 75-year-old brother Raul last July 31. In fact, he seemed in no hurry, comfortable with the role of elder statesmen and behind-the-scenes columnist who pens dense essays on global issues. "For now, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, reflecting and writing about questions that I judge of certain importance and transcendence," Castro wrote in the statement carried on the front pages of Cuba's official newspapers and read on state radio and television. "I have a lot more material to go."

"I tell everyone simply that I am getting better and maintain a stable weight of about 80 kilograms (176 pounds)," Castro wrote. He said the greatest risks now are his age and the effects of not taking proper care of his health over the years. He also complained about the "films and photos that require me to constantly cut my hair, beard and mustache and get spruced up every day," evidently referring to the preparation required for some of the official images released since his illness. Castro has worn a track suit in the photographs and videos released occasionally by state media. The convalescing leader looked gaunt in the earlier images, but appeared more robust in recent ones.

"For many months, I depended on IVs and catheters through which I received an important part of my nourishment," he wrote. "Today I receive orally all I require for recuperation."

Source: AP

source: CNN

May 28: The man who was Meyer Lansky's driver and bodyguard during the Mafia's heyday in pre-revolutionary Cuba died earlier this year, a curious footnote in a communist-run country whose past as a gambling mecca for vacationing Americans is all but forgotten. There was no story in the Communist Party daily Granma about the February 12 death of Armando Jaime Casielles, at age 75, from lung cancer. No mention on Cuban state television either, despite the decades he spent promoting Afro-Cuban dance and music in his post-mafia years.

A stout, reserved man who sported eyeglasses, a goatee and a pinky ring, Casielles was among the last people alive with firsthand knowledge of Mafia operations in the colorful, decadent Havana that thrived before a young rebel named Fidel Castro seized power. Stoic and discreet, Casielles was there with Lansky during numerous meetings with Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, who protected gambling businesses on the island, and accompanied him when the mobster traveled around the Caribbean to talk with underworld figures such as Santos Trafficante Sr. Casielles helped Lansky hide in the Cuban capital in late 1957 after the Sicilian Mafia families of New York tried to grab control of the mobster's Havana operation, and violence erupted in Manhattan. And he was behind the wheel of Lansky's silver-gray 1957 Chevrolet Impala convertible on New Year's Eve 1958. As word spread that Batista had fled the island and Castro's bearded rebels were close to victory, he helped the gangster scoop up millions of dollars in profits from his Havana casinos. The next day, Cuban mobs euphoric over the revolutionary triumph ransacked the gambling dens, exposing their deep resentment of Mafia control of the island. Bonfires of smashed slot machines and roulette tables raged in Havana's streets. Soon thereafter, the revolutionary government outlawed gambling, prostitution and nonprescription drugs, and the mobsters gave up without a fight.

Casielles underwent a "spiritual, ethical and moral crisis" about the harm organized crime had caused Cuba, Cirules said."This was the reality of many Cubans at that time," agreed longtime friend Gregorio Hernandez, a musician and dancer. "Jaime became a super revolutionary, an admirer of Fidel Castro and his work." Casielles later became interested in Cuba's African-influenced music, helping the dance troupe launch projects such as Havana's popular Sabados de la Rumba, which brings families together to enjoy traditional music each weekend. He also married twice, and had three children: a son and daughter now in Venezuela, and a daughter in Havana.

source: CNN

source: CNN

June 1: For the first time in four months, Cuban leader Fidel Castro was shown standing and talking in video footage that aired on state-run Cuban TV. Castro, 80, was seen early Sunday laughing, smiling and standing without assistance in an apparent meeting with Vietnamese Communist Party chief Nong Duc Manh.

Castro has not appeared in public since emergency surgery forced him to hand over power 10 months ago to his brother Raul Castro. While Castro's recovery has been evident in an increasing number of editorials published in Cuban newspapers, he has not shown signs of resuming his power over the communist island. In the past 10 months, Castro has appeared in numerous videos and photos wearing track suits. In keeping with his previous appearances, during Sunday's televised appearance he donned a red and black track suit with white piping -- a sign that he was not meeting with Manh in any formal, official capacity.

"If he were to resume power he would be wearing an olive green uniform," CNN's Shasta Darlington in Havana reported. "Since he handed power July 31 last year to Raul, we have only seen him in track suits."

source: CNN

August 13: A 107-year-old Canadian widow living in Cuba is asking U.S. President George W. Bush to free her money so that she can live her remaining days with dignity.

"The only thing I want it for is medicines and my doctor. I don't even want to buy candy out of it," said Mary McCarthy. "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 during a recent visit to her home.

The small fortune she inherited when she was widowed in 1951 has been frozen in a Boston, Massachusetts, bank since the United States placed Cuba under sanctions after Fidel Castro's leftist revolution in 1959. 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. That's because she lived in Cuba and did not leave with most of her wealthy Cuban neighbors who fled to Miami when Castro nationalized businesses and steered the Caribbean nation toward Soviet communism. Since January this year the U.S. government has let her withdraw a $96 a month allowance from her U.S. bank after Canadian diplomats interceded on her behalf. McCarthy figures in the last edition of the Anglo-American directory of Cuba in 1960. Her address is still the same.

source: Reuters

August 15: In a first for an online travel company, Travelocity.com has been fined by federal regulators for booking trips between the U.S. and Cuba in violation of a 45-year-old embargo. Travelocity.com earlier this month paid $182,750 to settle a complaint brought by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which said the company violated the prohibition nearly 1,500 times between January 1998 and April 2004.

Dozens of travel service providers have been granted licenses by OFAC for approved trips to and from Cuba for everything from academic, religious and journalistic activities to humanitarian projects and visits to immediate family. Travelocity spokesman Joel Frey on Wednesday said the company had not applied for a license and did not intend to do so.

source: CNN

Aug 28: Add another name to the list of political observers who think a Clinton-Obama ticket would be unbeatable: Cuban leader Fidel Castro. In an editorial in Cuba's communist party newspaper, Granma, the ailing dictator called the pairing of the two White House hopefuls "invincible," according to an English translation on the paper's Web site. Castro, who has overseen communist rule of Cuba since 1959, did, however, make it clear that he is no fan of the two Democrats' support of democratic reform in Cuba. "Both of them feel the sacred duty of demanding 'a democratic government in Cuba,' " Castro wrote. "They are not making politics: they are playing a game of cards on a Sunday afternoon." The two Democratic candidates actually disagree over America's policy toward Cuba. Obama, a senator from Illinois, wants to grant Cuban-Americans "unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island." Such activities are strictly limited by current U.S. policy. Meanwhile, Clinton, New York's junior senator, said through a spokesman that "we cannot talk about changes to U.S. policy" unless and until Castro passes from the scene and a new government demonstrates its intentions.

source: CNN

September 19: Military tribunals that have tried serious cases of murder and kidnapping in the last few weeks in Cuba have opted for life sentences or 30-year prison terms instead of the death penalty, which has not been applied in this country in more than four years. The de facto moratorium has placed Cuba in a more flexible position with regard to the controversial issue, expected to be on the agenda of the United Nations General Assembly’s 62nd session. The London-based global rights watchdog Amnesty International reported that the European Union Council of Ministers decided in June to present a resolution seeking an international moratorium on the death penalty, a step towards the abolition of capital punishment worldwide.

Source: Patricia Grogg of IPS

September 21: Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro "… has a little problem, but he can live another 100 years with this little problem," Chavez was quoted as saying by Venezuela's Bolivarian News Agency. Castro, 81, has not appeared in public since announcing more than a year ago that he had undergone intestinal surgery and was provisionally ceding power to his younger brother, Raul. The Cuban leader had "three operations, and he's 81, imagine that. They changed almost all the blood with transfusions. Fidel is alive because he is Fidel," Chavez said.

Source: CNN

October 24: Insisting that the recent transition in Cuba represents "the dying gasps of a failed regime", U.S. President George W. Bush Wednesday vowed to maintain Washington's nearly 50-year-old trade embargo against Cuba until its government "has adopted in word and deed fundamental freedoms."

"America will have no part in giving oxygen to a criminal regime victimising its own people," he told an audience of prominent Cuban-Americans and family members of Cuban political prisoners assembled at the State Department.

source: Jim Lobe of IPS

October 30: The United Nations General Assembly Tuesday snubbed the United States for its hostility towards Cuba, amid fresh calls for an end to the 45-year economic and financial embargo imposed on the socialist island.

On Tuesday, as many as 184 countries voted in favour of a General Assembly resolution demanding the U.S. lift 45-year-old restrictions on international trade with Cuba.

The vote broke last year's record, when 183 countries endorsed the resolution against the U.S. embargo. The 192-member General Assembly has adopted 16 similar resolutions since 1992.

Like last year, in addition to the United States itself, the negative votes were cast by just three countries: Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau. The only abstention was the small island nation of Micronesia.

Before and after the vote, speaker after speaker deplored the U.S. policy and said the sanctions against Cuba violate international law and the U.N. Charter.

source: Haider Rizvi of IPS

November 29: With equal doses of caution and hope, Cuban researchers are moving forward with studies to test the cancer-fighting properties of the toxin produced by the blue scorpion (Rhopalurus junceus), a species endemic to this Caribbean island.

Labiofam, a biological pharmaceutical laboratory, is heading the research, in collaboration with the Pedro Kouri Tropical Medicine Institute and the Havana Oncology Hospital. Patients arrive at its doors each day, from within Cuba and abroad, seeking the unusual product that comes from scorpion venom.

Hesitant to make firm predictions, microbiologist Alexis Díaz, chief of the research team at Labiofam, stressed that a long road lies ahead. "We have a history of treating patients, both Cuban and foreign, in which data has been collected, verifying the product's pharmacological effect. But these are not studies that provide scientific proof of its properties in patients with tumours," he explained.

The pre-clinical research began in 2000 to determine the venom's anti-tumour action. The toxin is also said to have analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties. "All of that must be subject to clinical tests that are tightly regulated and controlled," he said.

source: Patricia Grogg of IPS

December 17: A Cuban television news anchor read a letter on air Monday that was reportedly written by Fidel Castro promising he would not "cling to office" or be an impediment to rising young leaders.

"My basic duty is not to cling to office, much less to obstruct the rise of younger people, but to pass on experiences and ideas whose modest value arises from the exceptional era in which I lived," Castro's letter said, according to a CubaVision anchor.

source: CNN

December 22: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez presided Friday at a regional petroleum summit in Cuba, pressing his efforts to counter U.S. influence in Latin America and the Caribbean by suggesting more of his neighbors could pay for cheap oil with goods or services in lieu of cash. In his opening speech to the Petrocaribe summit in Cienfuegos, a southern coastal city about 155 miles from Havana, Chavez said his plan to provide low-cost oil to the region should go beyond financing mechanisms. He offered other countries the option of following the model of Cuba, which repays by sending doctors who offer free services to the poor in Venezuela. Providing fuel in return for locally produced goods or services has been an option for some time under Venezuela's current Petrocaribe pact, which supplies oil to the region through long-term, low interest financing. But it is unclear how many countries other than Cuba have taken up the offer. Chavez also called for creating an international fund to promote solar, wind, geothermal and other alternative energy sources.

"Despite the Yankees, our gas is at the service of Venezuela first, and next to our brothers in the Caribbean," Chavez said in a reference to the United States. Later, Chavez oversaw the reopening of an oil refinery renovated with his country's help. The Camilo Cienfuegos refinery was renovated in 18 months after standing idle more than a decade following the Soviet Union's collapse.

"We truly believe in solidarity, cooperation and the joint capacity to develop our countries for our people," Cuba's provisional president Raul Castro said, joining Chavez at the event at the end of the summit.

Venezuela has the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East. It is South America's largest oil exporter and the fourth-largest supplier of crude to the United States. Chavez said Petrocaribe members' collective debt for Venezuelan crude is currently near $1.2 billion and is expected to grow to $4.5 billion by 2010. He is promoting Petrocaribe as part of a larger effort to create a regional confederation from Argentina to Cuba that will help the region counter U.S. influence.The Venezuelan leader blasted Washington's proposals for free trade pacts and called on regional leaders to band together against the failed "dictatorship of world capitalism."

"Free trade doesn't exist," he said, insisting Petrocaribe was based on fairness and promoting social equality -- not profit margins.

Petrocaribe allows nations to repay Venezuela over up to 25 years with 1 percent interest as long as the price of crude is above $40 a barrel.

source: CNN