Castro Watch News feed page for keyword Castro
CUBA POLITICS SECTION - Havana Journal
*=sticky
Rob Sequin | Havana Journal
Maybe it is premature to declare the end of a US policy that is almost fifty years old but the Havana Journal is closely watching developments that appear to lay a path towards lifting the travel and/or trade Embargo against Cuba. We are listing events, although may not appear to be immediately related to changes in US Cuba policy, we think collectively the events below are related to the big picture of changing US Cuba policy.
We will update this article as events develop.
May 23, 2008: Presidential candidate Obama says he…
more…
Mariano Castillo | CNN
Ramiro Valdes, 77, is one of only four remaining original rebels led by Fidel Castro in the 1950s in Cuba. By Cuban standards, he has had a remarkable career, serving the Castro brothers loyally for years in a variety of posts, some which made him notorious.
Now, Valdes has accepted a new task outside Cuba that is raising skepticism. He arrived this week in Venezuela as a consultant for that country’s energy crisis.
Venezuela is facing critical electricity shortages that have created rolling blackouts in some areas. The government of Hugo Chavez blames a long drought…
more…
AP
Cuban police harassed and briefly jailed some 35 political dissidents this week in the eastern city of Camaguey, a Cuban human rights group said Friday.
Twenty-three dissidents were “brutally beaten and detained” after marching Wednesday in a demonstration in Camaguey, 530 kilometers (330 miles) east of the capital Havana, the underground Committee for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) said in a statement.
The demonstrators were protesting “the cruel and inhuman treatment” of Orlando Zapata, a jailed political dissident on a hunger strike since December, according to CCDHRN president Elizardo Sanchez.
The protesters were briefly jailed, then released.
Another…
more…
Juan Tamayo | Miami Herald
Eight congressional Republicans on Friday alleged the Obama administration is trying to ``appease’‘ the Cuban government after the arrest in Havana of a Washington subcontractor, and called for the cancellation of bilateral migration talks now set for Feb. 19.
``We are greatly concerned about the manner in which the administration is handling the arrest of Alan Gross’‘ and its impact on the U.S. government’s pro-democracy programs in Cuba, they wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Gross, a Maryland subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), has been jailed in…
more…
An OFAC “release of civil penalties” was just posted today and there was only one violation and that was for violating an Iranian transaction sanctions program.
The last OFAC civil penalties with a Cuban sanctions violation was back in August against an Australian bank.
So, all is quiet lately from the Obama Administration’s OFAC.
Perhaps OFAC is doing what it should be doing and looking for terrorist money rather than reviewing and fining people for traveling to Cuba and buying Cuban cigars over the Internet.
more…
Canaleta Prison. Ciego de Ávila, Cuba. February 2, 2010
Respectable Mr. Nelson Mandela:
We who sign this letter are Cuban political prisoners of conscience, who want to send our sincere congratulations to the twentieth anniversary of your well deserved and historic release from prison.
On February 11, 1990, with your release, the world witnessed the beginning of a process of change from irrational social order to an inclusive and equal society made up of all South Africans, putting an end to the repugnant apartheid regime.
It was a difficult road, full of hard sacrifices that fortunately, thanks to…
more…
WILL WEISSERT | AP
Cuba has declared a two-month amnesty for citizens to register unlicensed guns, and says those passing aptitude and psychological tests will be allowed to keep their weapons.
The move is unusual in a state where almost no one except some active military personnel and plain-clothed state security agents are allowed to possess weapons.
Even most police officers are required to leave their pistols at the station or in a regional barracks when on vacation or leave, and young men participating in mandatory military service are given unloaded firearms for most exercises.
Starting Feb. 12, Cubans will…
more…
By KENNETH A. CHANDLER | New York Post
Much has been written about Haiti being a failed state in the wake of its devastating earthquake. But just to its west lies another human catastrophe in the making—Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
Havana is a city of sorrow—a once elegant and prosperous capital brought to despair by 51 years of deliberate neglect and isolation. A country that has been plundered by a succession of foreign powers, homegrown dictators and mobsters imported from America now languishes in a bizarre time warp where little has changed in more than half a century.
Its people go…
more…
Yoani Sanchez | Huffington Post
Every night in the cabaret of a luxury hotel a European businessman goes from table to table making an unusual request. He approaches the guests and asks that when their bill comes, they let him pay it with the colored vouchers that he has in his pocket. In exchange, they will give him the amount in convertible pesos, which he can then turn into dollars or Euros which he can take far away. This man is a victim of the financial Corralito* that prevents many foreign investors from taking their earnings out of the country.…
more…
The Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies invites you to a panel discussion on Cuba
“What to Expect”
7:00pm Monday February 8, 2010
Casa Bacardi, University of Miami
1531 Brescia Avenue, Coral Gables Florida
MODERATOR: Jaime Suchlicki, Director, Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS), and Emilio Bacardi Moreau Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Miami. Mr. Suchlicki is Editor of “Cuban Affairs” a quarterly electronic journal published by ICCAS and the author of Cuba: From Columbus to Castro; Mexico: From Montezuma to…
more…
View all Havana Journal politics articles in 2010
Didn't find the article you were looking for? You can SEARCH for it.
