Cuba Politics News and Information
Cuba News and Information
By JUAN O. TAMAYO | Miami Herald
The top U.S. diplomat in Cuba, Michael Parmly, will leave his post this summer and will be replaced by a top official at the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, the Department confirmed Thursday.
Jonathan D. Farrar, now principal deputy assistant secretary at the bureau, has broad experience in Latin America, with previous postings at the U.S. embassies in Mexico, Belize, Paraguay and Uruguay.
State Department spokeswoman Heide Bronke confirmed Farrar will succeed Parmly this summer. There was no immediate word on Parmly’s next assignment after completing a normal three-year posting in Havana.
Parmly and Farrar were not available for comment.
Parmly was assigned to head the U.S. Interests Section in Havana in 2005, replacing James Cason, who had earned a reputation in his three years in Cuba as an aggressive critic of the Fidel Castro government.
Parmly took a different style, and even Castro initially noted the difference between him and Cason, describing Parmly’s correspondence as ``respectful.’’
But as time passed, Parmly appeared to wear out his welcome. In 2006, the electricity went off at the mission for several days in what U.S. officials called part of a deliberate Cuban harassment campaign that included poisoning a U.S. diplomat’s pet and shutting off water to the mission.
Parmly at the time said the harassment ‘’makes Ceausescu’s Romania look like real amateurs,’’ referring to the last and notoriously harsh communist ruler of Romania. Castro later called Parmly a ``little gangster.’’
Farrar was picked to replace Parmly because of his experience with human rights issues, said U.S. officials who asked to remain anonymous.
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Hopefully Mr. Farrar shows a little more respect for Cuba than his predecessors have shown.
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I was on a mission trip two years ago, and had the great pleasure of meeting Mr. Parmly and his wife at their residence. They are class acts. They were so happy to be in Havana and were so looking forward to getting to know the Cuban people. I have kept in contact with Mr. Parmly, and I feel confident that he did a great job serving all. I am proud to have met him.
Thanks for sharing that. At least he wasn’t an idiot like James Cason.
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hope this works. Obviously this post can be a key to whether relations between Cuba and the US improve. Obviously he cant do it without changes further up and a desire to improve relations.
Since he’s a human rights man, it would certainly help if Raol releases the remaining political (oops, forgot thats not the term they use in Cuba) prisoners - something that would neither be detrimental to his government nor his country. That would go a long way.
