Texas agricultural exports to Cuba continue growth
Texas agricultural exports to Cuba continue growthFebruary 6, 2012 By: Blair Fannin
COLLEGE STATION – Though tightly controlled, there are opportunities for Texas agricultural producers and businesses to capitalize on potential exports of food products to Cuba, according to a Texas AgriLife Extension Service economist.
Dr. Parr Rosson, AgriLife Extension economist and director of the Center for North American Studies at Texas A&M University in College Station, said the Cuban economy has held its own amid world economic turbulence.
Dr. Parr Rosson, Texas AgriLife Extension Service economist.
Thanks to the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000, U.S. businesses may export food, agricultural and forestry products and medicines to Cuba.
Texas supplies Cuba with several export items, including chicken leg quarters, corn and wheat. U.S. corn exports to Cuba saw more than a 200 percent increase in value in 2011 to $109 million during the January-November period as Cuba uses more corn products for poultry feeding operations and other uses.
"We've begun to see some higher quality beef cuts enter the Cuban market as well," Rosson said. Pork, cotton and dairy products produced in Texas are also exported there.
"Pears, apples, raisins and dry (pinto) beans were exported in 2011, along with corn chips and potato chips," Rosson said. "These are products that we are seeing more interest in due to the growing tourism market in Cuba."
International visitors are increasing, Rosson said, with 2.7 million traveling to the island in 2011, 7 percent above 2010 and a new record. Revenue from tourism exceeded $2 billion, providing more money for Cubans to use in purchasing imported foods. Canada is the top visitor, Rosson said, with 900,000 going to Cuba in 2011.
"They are more likely to go during the winter months," he said. "They can fly from Canada directly to the major beach resort of Varadero."
Those resorts serve many items, including chips, fresh fruit and table cuts of beef and pork.
"The downside is that Cuba is attempting to implement several economic reforms and design a new more market-oriented path for their economy," Rosson said. "It creates some instability and uncertainty."
Rosson said Cuba is "very proficient" in producing certain tropical crops such as sugar, tobacco, citrus and vegetables grown in greenhouses, but other crops such as rice, wheat and corn struggle due to high humidity, insects, disease and the high cost of production.
"And, of course, hurricanes are a threat with each season," he said.
Cuba also lacks consistent agricultural credit, so some crop and livestock production is constrained.
"They rely on joint ventures with Spain and China to finance many agribusiness opportunities," he said.
Agricultural commodities, such as dry beans for example, are shipped out of Corpus Christi. Corn and wheat grown in the Lone Star State ships out of the port of Houston, Rosson said.
The Cuban government's buying agency, Empressa Cubana Importada de Alimentos (Alimport), handles all U.S. exports to the island, Rosson said.
"Alimport is Cuba's exclusive agent for all purchases from the U.S. and negotiates purchases, handles documents and arranges logistics and transportation of goods," Rosson said.
Before a U.S. firm can take product samples or export its products to Cuba, Rosson said each product must be reviewed and licensed by the Office of Exporter Services, Bureau Industry and Security, U.S. Department of Commerce.
"The license is free and is valid for one year," Rosson said. More information on licensing requirements can be found at www.bis.doc.gov.
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Contacts
Dr. Parr Rosson, 979-845-3070, prosson@tamu.edu
http://agrilife.org/today/2012/02/06/texas-agricultural-exports-to-cuba-continue-growth/
Former spanish ambassador to Cuba to head relations with Latin America
Posted on Thursday, 01.05.12
CUBA
Former spanish ambassador to Cuba to head relations with Latin America
Jesus Gracia Aldaz was ambassador in Havana when Cuban government jailed 75 dissidentsBy Juan O. Tamayojtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com
A Spanish diplomat who served as ambassador in Havana from 2001 to 2004 was appointed Thursday to head the Foreign Ministry section that handles Spain's relations with Latin America.
Jesús Gracia Aldaz, named as Secretary of State for Iberoamerica, was Spain's ambassador to Cuba when Havana courts sentenced 75 dissidents to lengthy prison terms during a crackdown in 2003 known as "Cuba's Black Spring."
He was appointed to the Cuba post in 2001 by the conservative People's Party government of Prime Minister José Maria Aznar and left the island in 2004, when socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero succeeded Aznar. PP leader Mariano Rajoy took over as prime minister after his party won the November elections.
Joaquin Roy, who heads the European Union Center at the University of Miami, noted that while Gracia is experienced in Spanish-Cuban relations, he will have to follow the policy guidelines set by Rajoy and Foreign Minister José Manuel García Margallo.
"Everything depends on how active Rajoy and García-Margallo want to be on Cuba. I would be surprised if they start any 'harassment' (against the Cuban government) … that goes beyond the verbal," Roy wrote in an email to El Nuevo Herald.
After Cuba's crackdown in 2003, the Aznar government helped push member nations of the European Union to adopt sanctions on Havana, such as cutting back on government-to-government contacts and inviting dissidents to embassy functions.
Rodríguez Zapatero and his foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, reversed course by pushing the EU nations to abandon the 2003 sanctions and trying unsuccessfully to lift a EU "Common Position" that loosely links EU assistance to Cuba's human rights record.
The socialist government also eliminated the title of Secretary of State for Iberoamerica in 2010. Gracia Aldaz' appointment to the resurrected title points to Rajoy's stated goal of warming up relations with Latin America.
The 51-year old Gracia Aldaz is currently the No. 2 at the Spanish embassy in Argentina and has served in top positions in the government agencies that are in charge of assistance to Latin American and other nations.
A post Thursday in the Spain-based blog CubaEncuentro argued that Cuba issues have a low priority for the Rajoy government because of Spain's many domestic problems and the hefty Spanish investments in the Cuban tourism and oil industries. The Spanish Repsol company is spearheading the island's offshore oil exploration efforts.
But Rajoy also is unlikely to continue the Rodriguez Zapatero government's strong push to drop the EU's Common Position, and trouble may lie ahead, added the post, signed by Tony Gonzalez.
"Somewhere along there will be confrontation, and diplomatic notes with insults and apologies," the post noted.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/05/2575578/former-spanish-ambassador-to.html#storylink=misearch
Ros-Lehtinen says Smithsonian trips to Cuba a cash gift to Castro
Ros-Lehtinen says Smithsonian trips to Cuba a cash gift to CastroBy Pete Kasperowicz – 01/04/12 12:11 PM ET
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) said the Smithsonian Institution's plan to chaperone Americans on four visits to Cuba this year amounts to licensed tourism of Cuba that will help give the "Castro dictatorship" access to much-needed hard currency.
"It is deeply disappointing that the Smithsonian Institute, primarily funded by American taxpayers, is facilitating access to U.S. dollars, which enables the Castro regime to make a hefty profit," Ros-Lehtinen said Tuesday. "The trips not only illustrate a blatant disregard for human rights conditions on the island by an entity that receives U.S. government funding, but provide the deplorable Havana tyranny a sense of legitimacy."
Supporters of tough travel rules related to Cuba have argued for decades that easing travel to the island will only encourage Americans to spent money in Cuba that will mostly end up in the hands of the government, given the amount of control the government has over economic activity.
Ros-Lehtinen stopped short of saying she would move to block the Smithsonian trips but said the visits would do nothing to help Americans to see the brutality of the Cuban regime. "Instead, these tourists will experience a false depiction of Cuba through a biased and censored 'tour' of the island," she said.
"The Smithsonian's 10-day trips to Cuba will amount to little more than a tropical vacation," she said. "Americans participating in these trips will not see the brutal reality of the Castro dictatorship."
The Smithsonian is offering several trips to Cuba this year under a license issued by the Treasury Department. According to the Smithsonian, the trips start at $5,450 and will run from May 4-13, May 11-20, Nov. 9-18, and Nov. 30 to Dec. 9.
Allow us a word… / Jeovany J. Vega
Allow us a word… / Jeovany J. VegaJeovany J. Vega, Translator: Unstated
To Dr. Adelaida Fernández de Juan.
Esteemed colleague:
I recently read your article, "Medicine defended, which circulated on the web this past August. Before I read it I saw your name at the bottom, and as this is a sign of responsibility and courage — as those who dare not to hide in anonymity may be arrested — for me, in advance, I felt your sincerity and valor, and so I feel a reverence, far beyond what I can share. Like you, I am a doctor, graduated in 1994, and I find in your writing references to the abuse and misunderstandings, so I would like draw your attention to some details.
During the time I practiced medicine I was a witness to various situations in which a health worker mistreated, consciously or unconsciously, some patient or family member. This is undeniable. But as undeniable as this, is the fact that for each of these cases of mistreatment I can recall a dozen cases (without exaggerating), on the contrary, only in these, different from the others, were rarely reported.
When a patient feels mistreated, frequently they immediately complain to the different levels of the Health System, the Government and the Party, but this almost never happens when the mistreatment — much more frequently than people think — happens in reverse. Sometimes the patient isn't even aware of his attitude, as the grievance is assumed from the professionalism of the mistreated, in this case us.
However, there is a point where I disagree with you or with whomever suggests it. When you refer to the topic, "…the extremely low and disproportionate salaries, the undervaluing of the vocation, the truly abusive treatment of which we are victims and other grave matters…"; then giving the sense that, "…there are possibilities of lessening these evils."
This takes me to past times, when our sector was on the list of the so-called "budgeted," that is those depending completely on State financing. This was the excuse to explain why professional salaries in the health sector were so low and could not in any way be raised. But time passed, then came the era of medical missions abroad and now we live in a very different reality.
Today Cuba maintains collaborative medical missions in over 70 countries, which have been reported in recent years to bring up a sum of between five billion and eight billion dollars annually. A rapid calculation converts 8 billion dollars — in the Cuban peso in which we receive our wages — into 180 billion pesos annually.
With this alone we are the most productive economic sector of this country. But to these millions in income (which greatly exceeds even Tourism, which generates some two billion) we have to add that contributed by the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, the third highest exports after nickel and petrochemicals. It's clear: our section has become the engine of the Cuban economy, so there is no compelling reason that we should be paid this miserable salary, equivalent to less than 30 dollars for an entire month's work.
If I go on about the numbers, it's only because they are very eloquent. You know, as I do, that the added human sensibility that makes our work priceless, despite our great scarcities that perhaps those who judge with surprising lightness us don't know, don't fully understand the seriousness of the matter.
You, like me, have been on medical duty where there is a lack of vital medications, reagents, X-ray film and essential disposable materials; where we don't even have running water, where we can't even wash ourselves on a 24-hour shift, without even being able to wash our hands; resting in such tough conditions that people wouldn't even believe it if they saw it; eating poorly — for example broth and mashed potatoes, or corn flour and boiled potatoes for every meal — knowing beforehand that this shift did not bring us a penny to feed our children and knowing, as well, what is even more painful, that other State sectors like ours, which don't generate anywhere near the income we do, are much better paid.
For decades we have been a very poorly served sector. In my case, I remember that since 1994 I worked for seven years with only the two doctor's coats I was given as a recent graduate, and this compares with other sectors that have received uniforms and shoes every year — some even every six months — as well as extra monthly pay in convertible pesos, personal hygiene products and food. I couldn't explain this if it weren't accepted, with pain I say it, hard evidence: those responsible for dealing with this sector don't concern themselves with the well-being of our workers, nor with our families, everything is a matter of sheer laziness, a proverbial irresponsibility, or both.
You quote another journalist, Fernando Ravsberg, as part of what is already becoming a crusade, also on the attack — according to what I infer from what you wrote, because I haven't had access to that article — extending the shadow of bribery on the just and the unjust. I read it and remember, however, such elevated examples of moving dedication: professionals who are second to none in knowledge, and also in ethical principles, people of integrity, who carry their wisdom with a shining humility, living in the midst of shortages and that it shames me even to remember, and who even so, prefer to die rather than stoop so low.
I know there are the unscrupulous among us, I know its face, its name, its last name, they are not abstract examples but reality. But for my pride and yours, Doctor, and perhaps to the surprise of Mr. Ravsberg, they will never be the rule, they are a painful exception. That I know and I would hold both my hands to the fire for that, my disinterested and honest people. Who search the trees for firewood, who look above us and find enough reed to cut it; but when there is not enough courage, it is more comfortable and certain to take from us, those below.
For saying words very similar to yours, Doctor, I was stigmatized, and some idiot even accused me publicly of being "money-grubbing," when I am among those convinced that capitalism is very far from offering a solution to the problems of the world, but to belabor this point would take us far off topic.
I think it is stupid to run after the superfluous, following a consumer culture that compels me to buy a cellphone every month or a new car every year. But as absurd as this is, after working 26 years, to be without a penny three days after being paid; that the workers of our sector eat lunch at noon without knowing if they will eat dinner that night; that our "salaries" honorably earned don't even allow us to feed our families for more than a week a month; that a specialist with 20 years experience has only one pair of broken shoes; that the most that we can aspire as physicians is to a battered bicycle.
Before such a picture, even Kafka would pale, would certainly suffer a massive heart attack with all the complications described by cardiology. I don't ask for irrational opulence, but nor do I deserve the miserable existence they seem to want to condemn me to.
Excuse my manners, allow me to present myself: I am Jeovany Jimenez Vega, I live in Artemisa and I have been a specialist in Internal Medicine since 1999. Five years ago I was disqualified to practice Medicine anywhere in the national territory indefinitely, since October 2006, for having channeled to then Minister Dr. José R. Balaguer Cabrera the opinions of 2300 professionals in Public Health about that disrespectful "salary increase" in our sector in mid-2005.
At the time of my punishment I was a Party member – since 1995 – and was studying the final year of specialization in Internal Medicine; I was expelled from the party immediately and suspended from my Residence, and several months later was disqualified, along with a colleague and friend who accompanied me on that initiative.
The details of they flat out lied to try to legitimize our punishment can be found in the first post of my blog "Citizen Zero" (http://citizenzerocuba.wordpress.com), open since last December to denounce this injustice and fight to regain the exercise of the profession that was taken from me.
Doctor: Despite everything, I have no doubt, we can count on the respect and caring of the majority of our patients and this is a great encouragement to continue. Along with this, I am comforted that there are professionals like yourself, who are not resigned to look on with indolence and shame, but who break their silence and share the truth. We consecrate our lives to the medical profession, as we must, but this should never be understood as renouncing the right to proudly defend our rights.
We live proud of our sublime profession, far beyond that "…contempt for the vocation, the abusive treatment…" to which we are subjected by those whose job it is to ensure our well-being as workers.
We will never forget that our oath imposes on us the duty to comfort man in his sickness and at his death, and to always comfort him in his pain, even if in his delirium he comes to bite the hand that cures him. In this endeavor, Doctor, we hold our heads high and our hearts open, and nothing else matters. Be assured, better times will come.
September 12 2011
Cuba to consider term limits
Cuba to consider term limitsThursday, December 29, 2011 » 08:16pm
Cuba's Communist Party is expected to consider a strategic overhaul at its first National Conference in 50 years next month, including a radical presidential proposal to impose term limits on top leaders.
President Raul Castro has said the gathering, set for January 28, will tackle big social issues like discrimination and official corruption, and will look at how to handle Cubans' access to the internet and social media.
It will also take on a proposal by Castro, 80, to impose a 10-year term limit on government officials, including the president and party leaders.
Such changes would amount to a mini-revolution in the country where his brother – the revolutionary icon Fidel Castro – ruled for almost five decades before handing over power to Raul in 2006.
'In January, the party's National Conference is to be held, so there is no time to rest,' the president told the National Assembly on Friday.
He was more direct on August 1, saying: 'If we do not change our mentality, we are not going to be able to ride out the changes that are necessary to guarantee' the current system remains in place.
As defence chief, Raul Castro turned Cuba's armed forces into major players in the country's tourism sector.
Few expected he would open Cuba up politically, but many thought he would champion economic reforms.
He has implemented some reforms, such as allowing Cubans to have mobile phones and stay in hotels once reserved for foreign tourists.
He has also pared state payrolls while encouraging more Cuban workers to be self-employed.
But some analysts argue the president has dragged his feet on other reforms, even as Cuba's economy has sputtered.
Others believe that his range of motion may be limited by the still-influential Fidel.
The Americas' only one-party Communist regime has been on the ropes economically and politically since the end of the Cold War.
The country of 11.2 million has been in economic crisis mode for more than 20 years.
With the loss of vital Eastern Bloc partners in the early 1990s, Cuba's economy largely collapsed, sending thousands of Cubans fleeing on fragile rafts across the Florida Straits to the United States.
The two countries still do not have full diplomatic ties.
Havana later found a new ally in Hugo Chavez, the leader of oil-rich Venezuela.
Over the past decade Venezuelan aid has allowed Cuba's leaders to indefinitely postpone the kind of market reforms undertaken by formerly communist countries elsewhere in the world.
January's high-stakes party conference could well be the last one for the Castro brothers, given their age – both are in their 80s – and Cuba's dire economic straits.
Most Cubans make the equivalent of about 20 dollars a month.
As long ago as December 2010, Raul Castro warned the National Assembly: 'Either we put this right, or it is time to stop getting close to the edge… We are sinking, and we will sink… the efforts of whole generations.'
http://bigpondnews.com/articles/World/2011/12/29/Cuba_to_consider_term_limits_701783.html
Chronicle of Asclepius in Cuba (Part 2) / Jeovany J. Vega
Chronicle of Asclepius in Cuba (Part 2) / Jeovany J. VegaJeovany J. Vega
Translator's note: Asclepius is the ancient Greek god of Healing and Medicine
If you are moderately well-informed you know that we 11 million Cubans living in Cuba are subject to a ban on free travel abroad. In this case it's not about a personal decision, but requires that you be invariably authorized by an arm of the Ministry of the Interior with discretionary power to say yes or not to your "permission to leave"; a privilege that becomes the stuff of blackmail, with perks awarded to those who remain "quiet" and refusals as punishment for the irreverent, to set an example to others. This general prohibition is contained in the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) Resolution 54, specifically designed for those who work in Public Health, and which presents a bleak picture.
But returning to our mental exercise, here we have our thoughtful doctor who is forbidden to travel abroad, who can't support his family on his evanescent salary, who can't go to work in another better paid sector because the Resolution prohibits it, with a purely decorative Union that bows to the orders of the Administration and the Party, through which he can't channel any solution to these basic problems, nor will it acknowledge his starvation wages, nor the terrible conditions of hygiene and good, coupled with the lack of resources and medications which, save in happy exceptions, he passes his medical shifts in our polyclinics and hospitals; shifts for which our doctor, incidentally, does not receive even a penny.
Then our thoughtful physician has only one way out, and resignedly chooses the only door left open; he applies to be part of some medical mission that our supportive government sustains in some dozens of countries. He just has to fill out the rigorous documents, and spend a few months or years, and then our doctor leaves his office or hospital to care for the poor of the world.
I believe in human solidarity like I believe in the light of the sun, but in life you have the discern the luster of gold from the shine of the mirrors. When a doctor, dentist or other Cuban health professional leaves to work on a foreign mission, regardless of any moral valuation, he does it under indisputable circumstances. This worker, until now deprived of a decent wage, will from this moment forward receive 300 or 400 dollars a month, while his family in Cuba – which under no circumstances Is allowed to accompany him — will receive his full wages in Cuban pesos along with 50 convertible pesos every month.
Although under certain circumstances it can come to more depending on the destination country, it will never exceed 15% to 20% of what the host country is paying Cuba for his services. This is an estimate, as this information is practically inaccessible, but it's true that around 80% of what our doctor generates in his contracted wages — not taking into account extras for additional tests, radiology studies, etc., which are generously covered — goes directly to the coffers of the Cuban state to be administered by human functionaries.
Meanwhile, the Cuban health workers abroad receive a wage that in many cases is less than the legal minimum wage for a native of the country they are working in. When the worker returns to Cuba on completing his mission, he is once again subject like any good Cuban to the travel ban. Any professional that abandons his mission is invariably treated like a traitor, and is never permitted to enter Cuba again and will not be able to see his children grow up; he will not even be authorized to come in the case of an illness or death of a loved one.
Now let's look at a revealing fact: over the last decade contracting for medical services has brought the Cuban government tens of billions of dollars, and has become the country's largest source of export earnings. The selfless medical missions which our government exports to the world's poor, in the last decade, have generated between five and eight billion dollar annually; tourism is a distant second at two billion. This number accounts for the export of services only; our professionals in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries are third in line, surpassed only by the nickel industry and the petroleum products.
Note, first, the enormous economic dividend this implies, and secondly the obvious, and no less important, political benefit, that makes our leaders smell like Messiahs and garners votes for them in international forums. Add to that, thirdly, the escape valve it provides for the mood of the worker, who knows if he waits patiently for a mission abroad he can multiply his salary by 20 to 40 times during the two or three years, on condition he remain silent.
For the protestors, the outlaws, they will never join this mass of internationalists who now amount to about half of our practicing physicians who, clearly, resent the quality of medical care offered to the Cuban population.
Every human society is a complex system of relationships that require adjustments in their mechanisms and which should reward personal effort, because this will encourage respect for the value of honest labor. In this system, each one should have a well-defined place. While it is the role of the doctor to safeguard health and human life, that of the senior leaders of this country should be to guarantee the strategic design of a balanced and functional society and this, without a doubt, they have not managed to accomplish after 50 years of projects and conferences.
Not only did they fail in their design, but they did so resoundingly. The apologists talk about "free" education and health, but without attempting to complain of the sun for its spots, I suggest that this is relative, because the money they don't charge me at school or at the hospital, bleeds from my fingers in the hard-currency stores with their absurd policy of extremely abusive prices, where things are marked up 500% or 1000% over their wholesale price. Also, to guarantee an education and people's health is not a gesture of goodwill, but an obligation of the State. We mustn't forget that over his whole life a worker salary is cut by 33% to guarantee his Social Security. This gloomy subject is rarely spoken of in my country.
I have clean hands and I like to play it straight, so someone who's playing a game can save the lectures on patriotism. I believe the necessary Revolution of 1959 was right and authentic, but I can't applaud what it has condemned us to, because if there is no respect for the rights of man, there is nothing left to defend.
I am with the Revolution, but will never resign myself to its errors, nor with the acts of demagogues and opportunists. I am a doctor, a Cuban, I live in the real and difficult Cuba, not in the TV newscasts and I do not wish to emigrate. I graduated in 1994, and since 1998 have had a specialty in General Medicine. I was a third-year Resident in Internal Medicine until April 2006 when, in my last year, I was suspended from the study of this specialty and then disqualified from the practice of medicine in Cuba, for an indefinite time in October 2006, along with a colleague, Dr. Rodolfo Martinez Vigoa.
The ancestral intolerance to which we were already accustomed made the powers-that-be react as if we had thrown a Molotov cocktail. Terrified by that tiny consensus, they did what they do best: put down by force and show of dissent. They never responded, they were unscrupulous and brutal. The details of this injustice are fully known by all the relevant central agencies including the Attorney General's Office, without anyone doing anything to fix it.
I am one more among tens of thousands of Cuban doctors who live every day under this outrageous reality. I live under a government that deprived me of the right to exercise my profession for political considerations, that systematically censored my opinions, that took away my right to travel freely, that doesn't respect my right to receive information first hand and that denies me 21st century Internet access, all of which give an idea of how retrograde they are when topic is man's right to think freely.
The government that commits this flagrant violation of the rights of millions of Cubans now occupies no less than the Vice Presidency of the Human Rights Council of the UN. If you had the patience to read this far, you already have a rough vision of what our professionals in Public Health experience. If you belong to the group of apologists or those with clenched fist, know that this is the Cuba that you applaud or condemn so fervently as your conscience dictates.
August 19 2011
Chronicle of Asclepius in Cuba (Part 1) / Jeovany J. Vega
Chronicle of Asclepius in Cuba (Part 1) / Jeovany J. VegaJeovany J. Vega, Translator: Unstated
Asclepius is the ancient Greek god of Healing and Medicine
The Cuban Revolution has always raised great passions. Millions within and outside the island are split between those who applaud and offering moving excuses, or those who clench their fists and launch incendiary accusations. But without a doubt, among the picturesque barbarities that flourish under the tropical sky there is one that is particularly atrocious: the condition of semi-slavery affecting public health professionals. To shed some light on the matter, I suggest you follow me through this attempt at a chronicle.
Imagine for a moment you decided to study medicine in Havana and graduated in 1994, during the worst economic crisis in our history. Some of your friends from high school, who take life a little more lightly, decided to raise and sell pigs, open their own businesses, or start working in tourism. Once you graduate, after six years of personal sacrifice, you naturally aspire to live honestly on your salary, but it starts at 231 Cuban pesos a month, that is you receive less than two dollars for a whole month's work for almost two years.
From time to time you run into a friend from high school, who has bought an elegant car, as compared to your raggedy bicycle. But you want to get ahead so you devote four more years of your youth to study. After a total of ten years study (combining medical school and your specialty), you end up as a specialist in internal medicine, with which, given that specialty, your salary will be around 531 Cuban pesos a month, Meaning you will work a full month for a salary equivalent to $21 U.S. Meanwhile, a barman at a hotel earns $200 U.S., on one shift! The customs official at the airport earns $500 U.S. extorting the tourists, and this is 25 times the monthly salary of a doctor, again, on one shift!
This abysmal difference in living standards is the root of our dramas. Painfully, in Cuba, the well-being of your family doesn't depend on your dedication to work or on your desire to excel, nor on the respect shown your profession, which also illustrates the chaos that has ruled our lives for the last 20 years. It is in this jungle where our doctors "fight," not living in the encouraging world of International Cubavision TV, where the Revolution continues strong and victorious, with GDP growing 10% a decade, while the little guy suffers an economy in ruins, a complete divorce from reality, as if we are talking about two different countries.
Faced with such a hostile reality, our doctors have to invent miracles in their free time to feed their families, badly; make "magic" in the black market, work as a photographer, clown, carpenter, shoemaker or cosmonaut, always illegal, because up to a few months ago the Ministry of Labor prohibited, by Resolution, access to self-employment.
Suppose that you, a specialist in internal medicine, decide to go for a second specialty. After another four years of great sacrifice you graduate, for example, as a surgeon and now your monthly salary is augmented with 50 Cuban pesos (just over $2.00 U.S.), which is enough to buy four bars of soap. Thus, while a surgeon's monthly salary is 623 Cuban pesos ($27.00 U.S.), a guard in the Specialized Protection Services, after a one month course, earns about 1,500 Cuban pesos monthly in cash, plus extra food and toiletries, while a cop on the beat receives up to 1,600 Cuban pesos, plus other benefits. For some obscure reason our government believes that doctors don't merit such deference.
After getting over your shock, you say, "But come on man! If a salary isn't even enough to buy toilet paper, become a barman, a customs inspector, even the security guard at the hospital will make out better!" I would respond: My friend, the leaders of my country literally turned the sacred practice of medicine into the famous tunic of Nessus — the poisoned shirt that killed Heracles; our doctors cannot work outside the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) because a Labor Ministry resolution categorically forbids it. No entity outside MINSAP is permitted to offer a doctor work. Can you comprehend it? But you meditate on this and your face lights up: "Emigrate! To some country that needs doctors, at least temporarily, while things improve."
Then I ask you to make yourself comfortable and listen carefully to the good part, because here it comes…
Everything you're read up to this point will seem like a game of little girls playing in the convent garden, compared to how you will live if you decide to travel outside Cuba as a doctor and Cuban citizen. In July 1999 the Minister of Public Health issued Resolution 54, still in force, whose details I don't know and nor do our workers, as they are hidden from us with the zeal of a State Secret. This Resolution of Ignominy, as we call it, is the most humiliating insult inflicted upon those who embrace the medical profession in Cuba since the coming of Columbus. It states that if you want to permanently leave the country, or even do so temporarily, you must ask the Minister of Public Health for "liberation" from the sector.
That is, if the happy idea occurs to you to visit your family or friends abroad during your vacation, you must wait an obligatory five years of your life at a minimum (!!), during which you will be held against your will by the Ministry of Public Health, with no options. It doesn't matter if you just graduated or if you've been working for 30 years, both have to wait five years! I know, personally, cases held for 7 years before their "liberation." Even retired doctors and dentists are held for three years before being allowed to travel; even a nurse faces this aberration!
Let's clarify that from the moment that you begin the paperwork to travel, you will automatically be placed on a list of the "unreliable," and will be relieved of all your administrative posts and teaching positions, if you have any, and you will be transferred from your job to one further away and that is a demotion. As the years pass marriages break up, children are traumatized, parents die without seeing their children again.
I can't adequately describe the human suffering that is caused by the monster to those who see their rights undermined, but none of this concerns the Union or Parliament: they can always blame the Cuban Adjustment Act for your death if instead of resigning yourself you improvise a raft and end up devoured by the sharks. As you can see, under such circumstances to speak of semi-slavery is much more than a euphemism.
*Footnote: As of two decades ago, two currencies circulate in Cuba: the Cuban peso (CUP), also called "national money" — in which workers receive their wages — and the convertible peso (CUC), also called "convertible currency" — which is used in the chain of hard-currency stores that accept only this money.
EXCHANGE RATES:
1994: 1 CUC = 1 USD = 140 CUP
Since the late 1990s to 2001: 1 CUC = 1 USD = 21 CUP
September 2001 to today: 1 CUC = 25 CUP
(To be continued …)
August 17 2011
Communist Cuba set to end travel restrictions
Communist Cuba set to end travel restrictionsAFPThursday, Dec 22, 2011
HAVANA – President Raul Castro is Friday expected to announce an end to onerous, unpopular travel restrictions that have been in place for almost 50 years and which keep most Cubans from traveling abroad.
The Roman Catholic Church and regime-friendly musicians like Silvio Rodriguez and Pablo Milanes have joined a chorus of Cubans calling for an end to the rules, including one that penalizes "permanent emigrants."
And observers say Castro is widely expected to make the announcement in an address to the National Assembly.
"Cuba normalizing its relations with Cubans who have left the country is going to have to include eliminating all restrictions," analyst Jesus Arboleya said in a recent interview in the Catholic magazine Espacio Laical.
To travel abroad legally, Cubans have to obtain an expensive exit permit as well as a passport – this in a country where the average monthly salary is about 20 dollars.
The exit permit, which is granted for 30 days, can be renewed 10 times, and can also be denied. Travelers who let their exit permits expire are declared "deserters."
As so-called "permanent emigrants," the assets of these illegal travelers are promptly seized, and they are not welcome to return to home.
Among the changes anticipated in official media: the maximum allowable stay abroad will increase from 11 months to two years, but on a renewable status.
That will spell a de facto end to the "permanent emigrant" status, and should mean that no one's assets will be confiscated any longer, and no one will be less than welcome to return to their homeland.
Cuba will be asking for its emigres to travel home on Cuban passports even if they are nationals of other countries, officials say.
In recent reforms, Raul Castro, 80, has authorized the sale of personal possessions by emigres as a sort of halfway step toward ending confiscation of personal goods.
The president has said reforming travel restrictions aims, among other things, to preserve "human capital created by the Revolution."
It is not just about stemming a "brain drain" – it is also tremendous business for the only communist regime in the Americas, which is politically and economically isolated, and desperate for cash.
The incomes from medical service staff working abroad and paid to the Cuban government now tops $6 billion a year, making Cuban overseas medical staff – not sugar exports or tourism – Cuba's top hard-currency earning industry.
Professionals, especially Cuban-trained doctors, whom the government sends overseas on foreign-currency earning and cooperation contracts, will still have to seek permission for every single trip they make.
If doctors make a little over $20 a month in Cuba, they might make a few hundred a month working in Venezuela, Uganda or Haiti; if they leave for the United States, they might make more than $10,000 a month.
Cuban doctors fled Cuba en masse at the beginning of the revolution led by now retired Cuban icon Fidel Castro, 85. Only 3,000 were left in the country, and the health care system collapsed. Now there are more than 76,000 in a country of 11.2 million.
In 2006, the United States said that any Cuban doctor in a third country could get a US entry visa for themselves and their family. In a reprisal Cuba slapped its toughest travel restrictions on its own doctors.
Back in August, the president said migration reform was in the works, promising better ties for the two million Cubans – about one in six Cuban nationals – who live abroad. Although they live in more than 40 countries, 80 percent live in the nearby United States.
Since 2006 Raul Castro's government has ended several unpopular restrictions. Among other things Cubans are now allowed to rent rooms in hotels geared to international tourism, sign cell phone contracts, and buy appliances – a government energy saving measure.
In September, the government authorized Cubans to buy and sell cars, and this month private homes.
Cubans are extremely keen for the government to eliminate its onerous restrictions on travel abroad.
If Havana makes that move, it could be a stunning wake-up call to the United States, which as part of held-over Cold War policy, still grants any Cuban who reaches US soil legal US residency on request. The United States does not have this policy for nationals of any other country.
http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/World/Story/A1Story20111222-317692.html
Cuba, North Korea, and Vaclav Havel
Cuba, North Korea, and Vaclav HavelRay WalserDecember 21, 2011 at 11:30 am
On learning of the death of Kim Jong-il, Cuban authorities immediately declared three days of official mourning. Their action underscored longstanding ties of intimacy between two of the world's most oppressive, most anti-American regimes.
The death of North Korea's tyrant also evoked a feeling that the Cuba of Fidel Castro, age 85, and reigning leader Raul Castro, age 80, will soon be overtaken by the passage of time, ushering in fresh and similar regime uncertainties.
Independent-minded Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez sees deep parallels: "genealogy has been more determinate than ballot boxes, and the heritage of blood has left us—in 53 years—only two presidents, both with the same last name. The dauphin over there is named Kim Jong-un; perhaps soon they will communicate to us that over here ours will be Alejandro Castro Espin [Raul Castro's only son and possible heir]."
Unlike North Korea, which remains remote and distant from the U.S. and the West, Cuba continues to enjoy the benefits of travel and tourism despite its inhospitable political climate. According to Cuban authorities, the island will receive more than 2.5 million visitors in 2011, many from the U.S., who have taken advantage of Obama-era travel concessions.
Yet, the stagnant and repressive political system grinds on, and the regime shows no signs of loosening its grip. It lashes out viciously at small groups of activists who dare protest the absence of democracy, such as a December 2 roundup of 46 dissidents, and complains loudly about intrepid protesters who pulled off a fireworks display off the coast of Havana to protest human rights violations.
Sadly, friends of Cuban liberty mourn the passing of former Czech anti-Communist dissident and ex-President Vaclav Havel, the antithesis of a Kim Jong-il or a Castro.
In a full lifetime, Havel never shied away from support for dissidents, democracy, and freedom in Communist Cuba. On travel to Cuba, he was firm: "I don't think we can go to Cuba and lie sunning on the beach, having a good time and enjoying a drink, without noticing what is going on around us."
Today's neo-realists in the White House and State Department prefer relative silence when it comes to Cuba's 50-plus years of dictatorship. They seek good relations with a regime that admires the regimentation of North Korea rather than the freedom of the United States. Yet, as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright observed in eulogizing Havel's life and actions, "the urgency in his [Havel's] voice came less from lofty expectations of human character than from the distress he felt at those who accepted injustice simply because it was easier to look away than to resist."
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/12/21/cuba-north-korea-and-vaclav-havel/
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