"The Revolution is in good shape. Fighting, working, advancing. ¡Continue moving forward!
photo by Drake and Kallmeyer
Castro Resigns Presidency
February 18, 2008
The text of Castro's letter to the Cuban people, as published first by Granma International and re-printed on CNN.com:
Message from the Commander in Chief
Last Friday, February 15, I promised you that in
my next reflection I would deal with an issue of interest to many
compatriots. Thus, this now is rather a message. For many years I have occupied the honorable position of President. On February 15, 1976 the Socialist Constitution was approved with the free, direct and secret vote of over 95% of the people with the right to cast a vote. The first National Assembly was established on December 2nd that same year; this elected the State Council and its presidency. Before that, I had been a Prime Minister for almost 18 years. I always had the necessary prerogatives to carry forward the revolutionary work with the support of the overwhelming majority of the people. There were those overseas who, aware of my critical health condition, thought that my provisional resignation, on July 31, 2006, to the position of President of the State Council, which I left to First Vice-President Raul Castro Ruz, was final. But Raul, who is also minister of the Armed Forces on account of his own personal merits, and the other comrades of the Party and State leadership were unwilling to consider me out of public life despite my unstable health condition. It was an uncomfortable situation for me vis-à-vis an adversary which had done everything possible to get rid of me, and I felt reluctant to comply. Later, in my necessary retreat, I was able to recover the full command of my mind as well as the possibility for much reading and meditation. I had enough physical strength to write for many hours, which I shared with the corresponding rehabilitation and recovery programs. Basic common sense indicated that such activity was within my reach. On the other hand, when referring to my health I was extremely careful to avoid raising expectations since I felt that an adverse ending would bring traumatic news to our people in the midst of the battle. Thus, my first duty was to prepare our people both politically and psychologically for my absence after so many years of struggle. I kept saying that my recovery "was not without risks." My wishes have always been to discharge my duties to my last breath. That's all I can offer. To my dearest compatriots, who have recently honored me so much by electing me a member of the Parliament where so many agreements should be adopted of utmost importance to the destiny of our Revolution, I am saying that I will neither aspire to nor accept, I repeat, I will neither aspire to nor accept the positions of President of the State Council and Commander in Chief. In short letters addressed to Randy Alonso, Director of the Round Table National TV Program, --letters which at my request were made public-- I discreetly introduced elements of this message I am writing today, when not even the addressee of such letters was aware of my intention. I trusted Randy, whom I knew very well from his days as a student of Journalism. In those days I met almost on a weekly basis with the main representatives of the University students from the provinces at the library of the large house in Kohly where they lived. Today, the entire country is an immense University. Following are some paragraphs chosen from the letter addressed to Randy on December 17, 2007: "I strongly believe that the answers to the current problems facing Cuban society, which has, as an average, a twelfth grade of education, almost a million university graduates, and a real possibility for all its citizens to become educated without their being in any way discriminated against, require more variables for each concrete problem than those contained in a chess game. We cannot ignore one single detail; this is not an easy path to take, if the intelligence of a human being in a revolutionary society is to prevail over instinct. "My elemental duty is not to cling to positions, much less to stand in the way of younger persons, but rather to contribute my own experience and ideas whose modest value comes from the exceptional era that I had the privilege of living in. "Like Niemeyer, I believe that one has to be consistent right up to the end." Letter from January 8, 2008: "...I am a firm supporter of the united vote (a principle that preserves the unknown merits), which allowed us to avoid the tendency to copy what came to us from countries of the former socialist bloc, including the portrait of the one candidate, as singular as his solidarity towards Cuba. I deeply respect that first attempt at building socialism, thanks to which we were able to continue along the path we had chosen." And I reiterated in that letter that "...I never forget that 'all of the world's glory fits in a kernel of corn." Therefore, it would be a betrayal to my conscience to accept a responsibility requiring more mobility and dedication than I am physically able to offer. This I say devoid of all drama. Fortunately, our Revolution can still count on cadres from the old guard and others who were very young in the early stages of the process. Some were very young, almost children, when they joined the fight on the mountains and later they have given glory to the country with their heroic performance and their internationalist missions. They have the authority and the experience to guarantee the replacement. There is also the intermediate generation which learned together with us the basics of the complex and almost unattainable art of organizing and leading a revolution. The path will always be difficult and require from everyone's intelligent effort. I distrust the seemingly easy path of apologetics or its antithesis the self-flagellation. We should always be prepared for the worst variable. The principle of being as prudent in success as steady in adversity cannot be forgotten. The adversary to be defeated is extremely strong; however, we have been able to keep it at bay for half a century. This is not my farewell to you. My only wish is to fight as a soldier in the battle of ideas. I shall continue to write under the heading of 'Reflections by comrade Fidel.' It will be just another weapon you can count on. Perhaps my voice will be heard. I shall be careful. Thanks. |
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[source: CNN]
source: Drake and Kallmeyer
February 22 - Ten years after the
historic visit to Cuba by Pope John Paul II, the Catholic Church continues
to call for "unlimited" scope
and "due freedom" for its social action initiatives in this
socialist country, as one of its most important demands.
"The Church wishes to expand its action to other areas, without limitations,
to contribute unwaveringly to the well-being of the Cuban people," said
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, in his homily at a mass
celebrated in Havana’s Cathedral Square.
The Cuban Church "hopes to be increasingly present and active in the
midst of society, in ways appropriate to today's world, carrying out its
urgent mission of teaching, healing, helping the poor and promoting the
dignity of all people, whether marginalised, displaced or imprisoned," he
said.
The open air mass held on Thursday night, the first of three that the Vatican
prelate will celebrate during his visit to Cuba, was attended by the president
of the National Assembly (parliament), Ricardo Alarcón, Foreign
Minister Felipe Pérez Roque, and the City of Havana Historian, Eusebio
Leal, among other authorities.
One of the national television channels broadcast the mass live, which
the government had only ever done before on the occasion of the visit of
John Paul II (1920-2005). However, the programme was announced at very
short notice, and it is not known whether other such events on the Italian
cardinal’s itinerary will be similarly aired.
There were serious differences between the Cuban state and the Catholic
Church until the early 1990s, when the government permitted a certain amount
of religious freedom. Relations improved radically after John Paul toured
several of the country’s provinces in 1998.
source: IPS-Americas
February 25: Closely following in the footsteps of
his brother Fidel, Cuba’s new president, Raúl Castro, defied
expectations and took many by surprise by selecting José Ramón
Machado, a member of the Communist Party old guard, as first vice president.
Seen as one of the foremost representatives of the country’s hard-line
communists, Machado is not only a symbol of the continuing grip on power held
by the now elderly leaders of the 1959 revolution, but also has a reputation
for efficiency -- a quality that the new president is apparently seeking among
his closest associates.
source: IPS-Americas
source: Google Images
February 29: The United States’ hostile policy towards
Cuba will remain a hurdle to recognition and respect for certain rights
enshrined in the first two international treaties signed by the government
of Raúl Castro.
The two pacts signed Thursday were the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights. The latter may be the focus of the government’s
main reservations.
"The economic, trade and financial blockade imposed by the United States
of America and its policy of hostility and aggression towards Cuba constitute
the most serious obstacle to the Cuban people’s enjoyment of the rights
outlined in these covenants," Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez
Roque said in a statement after signing the conventions Thursday.
source: IPS-Americas
source: Drake and Kallmeyer
March 20: Farmers in Cuba can now
buy their own supplies -- a departure from a decades-old system clogged
with red tape in which the state assigned them inputs, and an important
first step towards bolstering food production, say experts.
Academic sources consulted by IPS see the measure as more far-reaching than a
lifting of the restrictions that keep Cubans from purchasing computers, microwave
ovens and other electrical appliances, a move that is apparently imminent but
has not yet been confirmed by the government.
"The free sale of farm supplies implies a structural change in the countryside," said
one expert, who noted that the new procedure has already been put in practice
in some towns and that stores are being opened for the purpose around the country.
Initially, the farmers will buy their tools, irrigation equipment, fertiliser,
fencing, work clothing like boots and other supplies in the government’s
hard currency or former dollar stores, where they can only pay in "convertible
pesos", known as CUCs or "chavitos".
Nevertheless, the measure is a first step away from "the concept of centralised
distribution of supplies, and links farmers more directly to the production levels
that they achieve," said the expert, who asked to remain anonymous.
source: IPS-Americas
source: Google Images
April 4: Cuban filmmaker Rebeca Chávez is close to
finishing her first full-length film. This is true despite the fact that
filmmaking has not escaped the overwhelming "machismo" of
Cuban society. Getting a foot in the door in the industry, an almost
exclusively male preserve, is still wishful thinking for most women directors.
In the five-decade history of the state Cuban Institute of Cinematographic
Arts and Industry (ICAIC), only one feature-length fiction film has been
entirely directed by a woman: "De cierta manera" (One Way or Another), by Sara
Gómez (1943-1974). Her work was considered defiantly critical and
controversial, and is hardly known outside academic circles or the world
of film critics.
Rebeca Chávez is now in the final stages of editing "Rojo
vivo" (Red Hot), her film inspired by the armed struggle against the
dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista (1952-1959) in the city of Santiago de
Cuba, 850 kilometres east of Havana.
source: IPS-Americas
April 7: More than 30 women have
become pioneers of female Freemasonry in socialist Cuba, founding two
lodges under the auspices of the Women’s Grand Lodge of Chile,
which will provide them with support and advice until they can function
independently.
"We want them to do things in their own way, according to their customs," Mónica
Morós told IPS. She is the grand chancellor of the Chilean lodge, which
sent a delegation of over 40 women Masons to Havana to initiate the Cuban women
and set up the Venus and Victoria lodges.
Cuban Masonry follows the Ancient Landmarks, the set of principles, customs and
traditions that enshrine the obligations of this society, including Masonic secrecy,
and selected membership of adult men who respect morality.
But the sponsorship of the Chilean lodge frees the Cuban women from the rules
of the male Grand Lodge of Cuba, which could not accept women among its members
without risking the loss of its regular status and recognition by the other grand
lodges with which it maintains fraternal relations.
source: IPS-Americas
April 7: Topics that are taboo in Cuba, absent from
media coverage and missing in the political discourse were nevertheless
present in debates at a congress of intellectuals who advocated a greater
role for criticism in society, and more room for dialogue and participation.
"This is one more sign that the country is changing. Analyses are much more
realistic, and there’s a shift in attitude among officials when they face
criticism," a participant at the Seventh Congress of the Cuban Writers and
Artists Union (UNEAC) told IPS.
"Not only was the congress critical of systems that used to be virtually
untouchable, such as Cuba’s public education system, but that criticism
has come from people in high positions, and has been well received by the people
moderating the debates," added the intellectual, who preferred to remain
anonymous.
source: IPS-Americas
source: Google Images
April 11: The United States has
begun a new program to reunite Cuban families, which has renewed the
hopes of potential migrants from the island who have family members in
the United States. The U.S. government hopes to fulfill the goal of issuing
20,000 immigration visas a year, as agreed in a longstanding bilateral
treaty.
"The U.S. Interests Section (USINT) in Havana is pleased to announce the
first official travel documents have been delivered to an eligible Cuban family
under the Cuban Family Reunification Programme (CFRP)," which ensures legal,
safe and orderly immigration from Cuba, Consul General Sean Murphy told journalists
on Thursday.
What is new about this programme is that families will now be able to obtain
a "parole" document to enter U.S. territory, instead of staying in
Cuba to apply for permanent legal residence in the United States, thus dramatically
shortening the waiting period.
The parole document is a temporary authorisation to travel, which would be replaced
in the United States by a resident permit. According to Murphy, under the previous
rules people might have to wait for a visa for up to 10 years, whereas now the
waiting period will be no more than 10 weeks.
source: IPS-Americas
source: cartoonstock.com
April 29: Cuban President Raúl Castro’s
announcement that virtually all death sentences would be commuted to
terms of 30 years to life was welcomed Tuesday by social sectors calling
for the abolition of capital punishment.
The Cuban government does not generally provide statistics on the prison
population or the number of people facing the death sentence. But Elizardo
Sánchez,
president of the dissident Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation,
said that according to his group’s estimates, around 30 people on death
row will benefit from the decision.
"It is a gesture that merits our support and I am sure that as we move towards
a climate of mutual respect in international relations, capital punishment will
be completely eliminated," Reverend Raúl Suárez told IPS.
source: IPS-Americas
May 10: If the worst outcomes predicted
for climate change in Cuba become reality, a large portion of the Ciénaga
de Zapata, the largest and best preserved wetland in the islands of
the Caribbean Sea, could disappear by the second half of this century.
The Ciénaga de Zapata provides habitat for birds that are only
found in Cuba, like the Zapata wren (Ferminia cerverai), sparrow (Torreornis
inexpectata) and rail (Cyanolimnas cerverai). It is estimated that
the marsh holds 65 percent of Cuba's birdlife, in addition to 1,000
plant species.
The area, dominated by low plains, marshes and semi-wetlands, with savannah vegetation,
holds forests, rivers and lakes, as well as 70 kilometres of caves in which semicircular
freshwater lagoons have formed, known in Spanish as "cenotes".
source: IPS-Americas
source: National Geographic
May 13: The application of agroecological techniques
and the salvaging of traditional farming methods have revolutionized food
production in rural areas along the southern edge of the Cuban capital.
Cuba is currently facing the urgent challenge of boosting agricultural productivity
because of the rise in global food prices.
A number of farms in the outlying Havana district of Batabanó that
are taking part in the Program for Local Agrarian Innovation (PIAL) have
seen improvements in their harvests and livestock.
The key seems to lie in efforts to capitalize on natural conditions in
the area and in the openness to innovative ideas, particularly with regard
to crop diversification.
"We used to have big problems with animal feed," 39-year-old Jorge
Bársena told IPS. "But today we don't need to buy hay, and we supply
our own meat and eggs," said the farmer, who owns the La Otmara farm
and is president of the 9 de Abril small farmers cooperative.
source: IPS-Americas
source: Google Images
May 15: Cuba’s offer to provide cataract operations
for people who have been on waiting lists for years at Portugal’s
public hospitals triggered a reaction by the government and doctors,
who may finally begin to provide a solution to this problem that affects
thousands of elderly people.
Five Portuguese municipalities signed agreements with the Cuban government in
order to avoid bureaucratic delays in the National Health Service (SNS), which
was simply turning a deaf ear to the suffering of low-income elderly people who
were on the brink of going blind.
The repercussions at the level of the socialist government of Prime Minister
José Sócrates and the Medical Association, and among conservative
politicians and heads of public hospitals and private clinics, followed almost
immediately on wide local press coverage of the agreements this month.
Portugal could not bear the international embarrassment of having a so-called
Third World country, often referred to disparagingly as "banana republics" by
Europeans, provide the solution to a problem in a country in the industrialized
North by making inroads into the backlog of patients waiting for eye operations.
The protocols with Cuba were signed between September 2007 and April this year
by the mayors of the southern Portuguese municipalities of Alandroal, Aljezur,
Castro Marim and Vila Real de Santo Antonio, and by that of Santarem, in the
centre of the country.
source: IPS-Americas
May 17: After years of deliberation, the University
of Havana has finally decided to switch over to free software on its network
of computers, virtually all of which are running the Windows operating
system, produced by United States software giant Microsoft.
The plan, approved by the University Council, envisages intensive training of
professors and computer personnel this year, followed in 2009 by the broad installation
of the GNU/Linux operating system, which uses the Linux kernel created by Linus
Torvalds of Finland in 1991.
"It’s a plan for the long term," Yudivián Almeida, a professor
in the mathematics and computer science department of the University of Havana,
told IPS. "It’s an attempt to minimise conflict and avoid abrupt
changes, such as removing Windows and installing Linux."
In fact, the changeover strategy is made up of several stages, from installing
specific programmes like the browser Mozilla Firefox to replace the widely used
Internet Explorer, which began Jan. 5, to training operators to use OpenOffice
instead of Microsoft Office, until patented software is finally dropped.
source: IPS-Americas
source: Google Images
May 22: The Cuban government demanded that the United
States provide explanations for what it described as "obscure ties" between
U.S. diplomatic personnel in Havana, "terrorist" groups in
Miami and members of dissident organisations, in a case that has further
heated up relations between the two countries.
"We demand that they face up to this," said Cuban Foreign Minister
Felipe Pérez Roque in a news briefing Thursday, after three different
TV programmes were aired between Monday and Wednesday exhibiting the results
of an investigation that allegedly showed that U.S. diplomats ferried money to
dissident groups in Cuba.
Although he described the incidents as "extremely serious," Pérez
Roque did not indicate whether the government planned to close down the Interests
Sections opened in Havana and Washington in 1977 to provide consular services
and maintain a minimal channel of communication, in the absence of diplomatic
ties since 1961.
source: IPS-Americas
source: Donate Obama
May 23: In a major policy
address on U.S.-Latin American relations, the leading Democratic presidential
candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, pledged Friday to immediately roll back
key sanctions imposed by President George W. Bush against Cuba over
the last several years and called for a "new alliance of the Americas" in
which Washington's southern neighbours would no longer be treated "as
a junior partner".
Speaking in Miami to the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF),
previously the most hard-line and influential of the anti-Castro Cuban-American
Groups, Obama promised that, if elected, he "will immediately allow unlimited family
travel and remittances to the island" by Cuban Americans to "make
their families (in Cuba) less dependent on the Castro regime."
He said he would maintain the U.S. trade embargo against the island as "leverage" to
secure reforms there, but, in contrast to Bush and his presumptive Republican
foe in the November elections, Sen. John McCain, he would pursue "direct
diplomacy" with Havana "without preconditions".
"Now let me be clear," he declared. "John McCain's been going
around the country talking about how much I want to meet with Raul Castro, as
if I'm looking for a social gathering. That's never what I've said, and John
McCain knows it. After eight years of the disastrous policies of George Bush,
it is time to pursue direct diplomacy, with friend and foe alike, without preconditions."
Obama's address, which followed speeches by both McCain and Bush on Cuba this week, was accompanied by the release by his campaign of a policy document entitled "A New Partnership for the Americas" which stressed that his approach to Latin America and the Caribbean would be based on a "programme of aggressive, principled and sustained diplomacy in the Americas with a focus on advancing freedom as Franklin Roosevelt described it: political freedom, freedom from want and freedom from fear."
read full text of Obama's plan
source: IPS-Americas
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