Tourism… or? / Anddy Sierra Alvarez
Tourism… or? / Anddy Sierra Alvarez Anddy Sierra Alvarez, Translator: Unstated
Tourism in Cuba is an organism that because of its importance carries great economic weight in the country. What is going on with Cuban tourism? How is it there are no creators in the Cuban architecture, this being an educational powerhouse?
We don't see architectural projects relevant to the view, that serve as tourist attractions. They only come on all-expense paid packages, meaning the tourists don't spend much money in the country and such a gift is unfavorable to the Cuban economy.
There is a small growth in visits to Cuba, but no related growth in the economy.
The directors in charge of the tourism agency offer a figure of two million annual tourist visits as if it were an accomplishment. This figure compared to the Cuban population of "11 million inhabitants" is equivalent to 18%, not even a quarter of the population on the Caribbean island.
When the government allowed Cuban citizens to enjoy the tourist facilities, the economy of this sector grew in proportion. We Cubans are contributing more than half of what the tourists bring to the Cuban economy. Such a situation affects the country, but many who visit tourist recreation facilities have relatives abroad who send them money, making the Cuban a target in the island's economic growth.
If Cubans didn't have family abroad, would the government open the doors of the hotels, the cell phones…"
It's a question that makes my head spin, if tourism isn't given to the tourist they don't come and many of those who come don't return so Cuban tourism becomes a tourism with no return.
May 7 2012
Cuba: Letting Others Make the Changes
Cuba: Letting Others Make the Changes May 7, 2012 Veronica Vega
HAVANA TIMES — In a chance encounter a few days ago, I heard a few words that shook me to the core. The friend of a friend was talking about his girlfriend, the daughter of a member of the Ministry of the Interior (domestic security).
Describing her, he said — almost apologetically — "She doesn't believe in any of that defending the revolution crap. No one there is living in a fairytale. Many of those people are disillusioned.
Then he added, "But 'they' can have whatever they want. My girlfriend sometimes walks around with 200 CUCs (over $200 USD) in her purse. She goes to school just for the hell of it since she already has a lock on a job in tourism. What they require is that she be a member of DTI (the police's Department of Technical Investigations)."
What I expected to follow was some criticism, a protest… but he only said: "I told her to accept it." Then he completed that sentence with a shrug.
I couldn't help jumping into the conversation by asking, "But didn't you just say that she doesn't believe in any of that?
The young man simply made a gesture that meant something like: "Yeah, but hey, what are you going to do?"
What was most puzzling was that he immediately added, as if he had a glimmer of hope, "We'll all have to see what happens when everything changes here."
A response came to me, but I held it in – only out of courtesy.
While my friend was saying goodbye and we separated, my restrained words kept going around again and again in my mind:
More than ever, we're only helping to complicate things so that others can wiggle out.
More than ever we're benefiting from lies while hoping others act to defend the inconvenient truth, which exposes us, which makes us equal.
More than ever we believe the world is changing on its own while we worsen things with our inaction, while we hang ourselves with all our weight and try to hide our own little double-dealings (as if that were possible).
Yoko Ono once said, "We are all connected" in this world.
Those who have 200 CUCs in their purse and those who don't. Those who watch and those who are watched. Those who are silent, those who lie, those who express themselves – and those who wait…comfortably.
Cubans in Seoul
Cubans in Seoul 05-07-2012 17:01
Visit to serve as catalyst for improved ties
A rare economic delegation arrived in Seoul Monday. The mission consists of officials and businessmen from Cuba, one of the four countries with which Korea has no diplomatic relations.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the delegation will stay here until Friday to seek ways to increase bilateral trade and investment. So far, only Cuban state company officials have visited Seoul and this is the first time for a high-level official to visit the country.
The delegates will meet with Korean government officials and visit the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), Hyundai Motor, Hyundai Mobis and Hyundai Engineering & Construction.
So far, Cuba has been an unknown country to South Koreans except for some sports games. The Caribbean island country recognized South Korea in 1949 and provided the poverty-stricken South with $2.79 million during the 1950-53 Korean War. But their relations were severed in 1959 when Cuba was communized.
Instead, Cuba has built up close relationships with North Korea. Following the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1960, Cuba's longtime leader Fidel Castro visited Pyongyang in 1986 to meet with then North Korean leader Kim Il-sung. Cuba signed a free trade agreement with the North in 1997.
Cubans' contacts with South Koreans have been rare despite former President Roh Tae-woo's “Northern Policy'' declared in 1991. In 2001, then National Assembly Speaker Lee Man-sup visited Cuba to attend a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and met with Castro. In the same year, a Cuban culture ministry official attended a World Tourism Organization (WTO) conference in Seoul.
History shows that relations with Cuba began with Korean immigrants in the early 1900s, when the Korean Peninsula was under Japan's colonial rule. Of more than 2,000 immigrants who were sent to Mexico, nearly 300 travelled to Cuba in 1921 to work on collective farms. At present, 300 Korean Cubans from 80 households reportedly live in the communist country.
The delegation's visit allegedly resulted from Cuba's growing interest in Korean businesses, especially automobile and electronics companies, which have been raising their profiles in the Cuban market.
Currently, Korean exports to Cuba remain at about $200-$300 million a year but the prospect for export growth is bright. In fact, there has been intermittent talk about secret contacts with Cuba but little progress was reported owing to the country's passivity.
Foreign ministry officials say it may be different this time, noting that the Seoul visit was realized at the request of Cubans. It's too early to foster premature expectations for an epoch-making deal but the visit could serve as a catalyst for the enhancement of mutual cooperation in diverse fields.
We feel it necessary for the government to make more active diplomatic efforts toward Cuba in consideration of looming threats from North Korea and expect that the two countries will set up official ties in the not-so-distant future.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2012/05/202_110478.html
Cuba oil drilling shifts west
Cuba oil drilling shifts west that could raise risk for South Florida May 03, 2012|By William E. Gibson, Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — A giant floating rig hunting for oil north of Cuba is about to move farther west to dig an exploratory well even closer to the Gulf Stream that rushes along the South Florida coast.
The exact location of the new site is a closely guarded secret, but sources familiar with drilling operations say it will be off the northwest coast of Cuba a little more than 100 miles from Key West. That's farther from Florida than the current drilling site north of Havana but closer to the Gulf Stream, which would carry a potential oil slick toward the Keys and South Florida's beachfront.
Oil drilling this close to Florida, just two years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, has raised alarms about a potential threat to Florida's delicate environment and $60-billion tourism industry.
Repsol, the Spanish energy company that is leasing the rig for $500,000 a day, has yet to strike oil after more than three months of trying. But it will keep on digging before turning the rig over to a Malaysian company, Petronas, in late May or June.
Federal scientists have developed computer models – using scenarios based on currents and wind patterns — to predict where a potential slick would go. The most likely path would run close to shore along the southeast tip of the Florida peninsula, perhaps as far north as Cape Canaveral, before heading into open seas toward the Carolinas.
"If you move the drilling site farther west, there seems to be a slightly higher risk to the Florida Keys and the area south of Miami," said Brad Benggio, a scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Oil could come ashore anywhere along the southeast Florida coast, he said, if it is blown by winds from the east or pushed by eddies, which are smaller cross-currents.
Coast Guard officials have prepared an elaborate response plan, which says "trajectory modeling suggests that the oil could reach U.S. waters within two to three days and have potential shoreline impacts within five to seven days."
Officials hope prevailing currents would push any slick rapidly past South Florida without it touching shore. But marine scientists and local officials in South Florida say a giant slick almost certainly would foul parts of the coastline.
Cuba without Chavez
Cuba without Chavez
How far could the island fall if Venezuelan leader can't beat cancer — or his election opponent? Nick MiroffMay 5, 2012 06:00
HAVANA, Cuba — Ask Cubans what the worst years of the so-called "Special Period" were like, right after the Soviet Union's demise dumped the island's economy in a ditch, and you're likely to hear a recitation of the era's most notorious menu options.
Sautéed rags. Burgers made from grapefruit rinds. Cat-meat stew.
Apocryphal or not, the stories of Cuban desperation are so much a part of popular lore that they now serve as shorthand for Cuba's lowest point, in the early 1990s, a time of acute hardship the island has been trying to recover from ever since.
Now, with Hugo Chavez and his Cuban oncologists locked in a mortal battle with an undisclosed form of cancer — and the Venezuelan president facing uncertain re-election in October — Cubans are wondering if hard times are coming back. If so, how hard will they be?
The Venezuelan leader supplies the island with about two-thirds of its oil on favorable credit terms, a mysterious arrangement whose details remain a state secret here. Chavez also pays the Castro government more than $6 billion a year for the 40,000 or so Cuban doctors, nurses, security advisers and other professionals sent on "missions" to Venezuela, typically to provide social services in the poor neighborhoods where support for Chavez is the strongest.
These missionaries are Cuba's biggest source of hard currency, bringing in far more revenue for the island than tourism, nickel exports or other industries.
That arrangement looks increasingly shaky with Chavez now in a Havana hospital, undergoing another round of radiation therapy but assuring the public he's in the "home stretch" of his treatment schedule. It's not much comfort, given that he has yet to disclose what type of cancer he's fighting.
Instead, the world has seen a worried-looking Chavez praying for Jesus to spare his life — a scary sight for many here.
If Chavez beats the cancer with the help of his Cuban doctors and his nurturing mentor, Cuba's former President Fidel Castro, the Venezuelan leader's bond with the island will likely be stronger than ever. A vigorous recovery would give a huge boost to his re-election bid, converting his larger-than-life heroic image into a death-defying one.
If Chavez's cancer is terminal but he lives long enough to win re-election, a hand-picked vice president could take over and keep Venezuela's trade agreements with Cuba in place, since that figure would likely need Havana's help to maintain support among Venezuela's poor.
But if Chavez can't win or can't survive, and his campaign rival Henrique Capriles wins the presidency, Cuba's generous subsidies could be a fat target for his red pen.
Experts say a split between the two countries wouldn't necessarily happen immediately, playing out more as a gradual untangling than an abrupt break. Pulling thousands of doctors and other Cuban social workers out of Venezuela's toughest neighborhoods too fast might be tricky, unleashing a wave of anger and unrest.
Still, few believe a post-Chavez trade balance would stay sweet for Cuba very long.
University of Havana economist Pavel Vidal said the island would likely face a recession lasting "one, two, even three years" if Venezuelan subsidies dry up, with an economic contraction projected at 9 percent of Cuba's gross domestic product (GDP).
The Soviet collapse in 1991, by contrast, produced a 35 percent economic contraction, he said, but warned that the island's economy is in some ways more fragile now.
"Cuba doesn't have the same kind of economic cushion it had back then," said Vidal, noting that the island has been facing acute cash shortages, with little ability to borrow money.
"There isn't as much of a margin to work with," he said, "which is why it's even more important to accelerate economic liberalization and reforms."
There are signs that Chavez's illness has created new urgency for Cuban President Raul Castro to move faster on his economic reform agenda. Last month a top Cuban Communist Party official said that while nearly 95 percent of the island's economic output is generated by state-owned businesses today, that figure will drop closer to 50 percent in the next four or five years, as millions of government workers shift to private sector and other "non-state" jobs.
Given that Cuba still restricts small business and self-employment licenses to micro-enterprises like snack bars, room rentals and barber shops, there is potentially a good deal of room to grow. But the government would have to allow Cubans to own medium-sized businesses and accelerate the conversion of money-losing state companies into worker-run cooperatives.
At this week's May Day rally in Havana, employees from several privately owned businesses marched alongside state workers, some carrying large banners which conveniently doubled as free advertising.
One restaurant owner and his 21 employees marched in their red company shirts, handing out business cards.
Another Havana entrepreneur, Lazaro Enciso, said he sees his capitalism as a patriotic calling. "I'm creating jobs, and that makes me feel useful to society," said Enciso, who runs three businesses — a snack bar, a clothing shop, and a stand selling religious items — for which he's hired about 20 workers.
"We're providing our country with exactly what it needs right now," he said.
Cuba’s little capitalists are ready to rumba
Cuba's little capitalists are ready to rumba By Jeff Franks HAVANA | Fri May 4, 2012 6:10am EDT
(Reuters) – When Ojacy Curbello and her husband opened a restaurant at their home in Havana in late December, not a single customer showed up.
It was a disheartening debut for Bollywood, the first Indian restaurant in the Cuban capital. Curbello worried that their dream of cashing in on recent reforms in this Communist-run country would collapse.
The next day customers began trickling in. As word spread, the trickle became a flood. Many nights the couple had to turn people away or serve them at the family dining table and call in extra help. Today they are planning to increase the 22-seat capacity by expanding their 1950s home and putting tables and a bar in what is now their bedroom.
"It has been amazing how quickly it has taken off," said Curbello, still looking slightly stunned. She sat with her husband, Cedric Fernandez, a Londoner of Sri Lankan descent, in the main dining area, hung with prints of Indian figures.
Bollywood's story is an example of how life is slowly changing in Cuba since President Raul Castro launched a string of limited economic reforms in 2010.
After his ailing older brother, Fidel, stepped down as president four years ago, Raul Castro began to encourage self-employment. He initiated changes in sectors previously restricted to the state or which had operated illegally in Cuba's vast black market.
He has given Cubans the right, with some restrictions, to buy and sell homes and cars for the first time since the early days of the 1959 revolution, led by Fidel.
Would-be farmers can lease land from the government. New small entrepreneurs are being allowed to enter into contracts with state companies and local governments.
As a result, more Cubans are setting up their own businesses as the cash-strapped government moves to cut spending and boost tax revenue.
The self-employed, known on the Caribbean island as "cuenta propistas," literally "on their own account," are selling food, services and assorted goods out of their homes or off sidewalk tables. Private restaurants are opening, and the cries of street vendors, common before the revolution, again echo through neighborhoods.
Havana says more than 371,000 Cubans are self-employed, up from 157,000 before President Castro announced his private-enterprise measures in September 2010. Economy Minister Adel Yzquierdo Rodriguez has said as many as 240,000 more nonstate jobs will be added in 2012.
More such change may be in the works. In April, a senior Communist Party official, Estaban Lazo Hernandez, said in a speech that Cuba will move nearly 50 percent of the country's economic activity to the "nonstate" sector in the coming five years, up from 5 percent now.
This is not capitalism for capitalism's sake, however – and political reform is not part of the program.
The goal is to keep the Communist Party in power by nurturing a larger private sector and a smaller, more efficient state bureaucracy. Cuba says it is developing its own model, but think China 30 years ago, on a far more modest scale.
Whether it will work is one of the great unknowns about Cuba's future.
Interviews with a wide range of cuenta propistas found a mixed record of success and failure, with most doing well enough to keep going but only moderately improving their lives.
A few said they are succeeding hugely. Others have already quit or are thinking about it. Roughly 25 percent of the new businesses have failed, local economists say.
Cuba needs the budding private sector to thrive because in the future the government will no longer offer what essentially has been guaranteed employment.
The state employs about 85 percent of its 5.2 million workers. The plan is to cut a million jobs by 2015, with the hope that many of those laid off will go to work for themselves.
CONSERVING POWER
Some observers believe Castro is opening a Pandora's box with his reforms. Allowing a little capitalism could lead to a desire for more and perhaps pose a threat to the future of communism he envisions. Others think that if Cubans become less dependent on the government, they will be less accepting of its social and political control.
For that reason, said Marifeli Perez-Stable, a Cuban-American professor of sociology at Florida International University in Miami, Castro is proceeding cautiously.
"Raul is going slowly because he knows what he faces," she said. "They are being conservative because they want to conserve power."
Cubans seem generally pleased that economic change is afoot. Some like the idea they can strike out on their own, with an opportunity to earn more than the paltry state wages. The average Cuban salary rose slightly in 2011 to the equivalent of $19 a month.
While most Cubans say change is needed, they also worry about losing their social safety net if there is too big a dose of capitalism. They get low-cost or free housing, a heavily subsidized monthly food ration, and free health care and education.
Cuba, which nationalized all businesses in the years after the revolution, allowed a brief blush of private enterprise in the mid-1990s following the collapse of Havana's patron, the Soviet Union. When that grim time — known in Cuba as the "special period" – began to ease, the government put the brakes on the low-level capitalism that had bloomed and used onerous regulations to run many cuenta propistas out of business.
This time, government leaders have said the reforms are not temporary.
"We are not applying patches or improvising, but looking for permanent solutions to old problems," 81-year-old Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura said in a speech in central Ciego de Avila last July.
"It's deeper, the scope is much bigger, and the objective is larger," says Philip Peters, a Cuba expert at the Lexington Institute in Virginia. "In the 1990s the goal was to make a few adjustments to the model to get their heads back above water. … This time they are making changes to the model."
Cuba's new entrepreneurs face challenges common everywhere, as well as some peculiar to a country where private enterprise has been largely prohibited for a half century. Many lack startup capital and experience, and their customers have limited purchasing power.
A vice minister in Cuba's Labor Ministry recently said the self-employed are heavily concentrated in the making and selling of food, transporting cargo and passengers, and working as contract laborers.
Two-thirds were not working when they started their businesses, he said. A state television report said 16 percent are pensioners.
Former agriculture worker Oscar Oquendo is 78 years old. A tall man with wispy gray hair and a withered face, he walks along a crumbling central Havana street selling pastries he makes at home.
Like many of his generation, he says he is loyal to the Castros and communism, but needs money to supplement his monthly pension, equivalent to $10.
4 CENTS APIECE
Oquendo, 78, sells his pastries for one Cuban peso, or 4 cents, apiece. Without a word, he pulls a pastry from his bag, holds it up to a potential customer's startled face, looks him in the eye and waits for a response.
It works – he says he is earning $33 a month.
"I'm very happy with that. I'm helping myself and my country," Oquendo said as he prepared to confront another passerby.
Success has been more elusive for Rafael Barrios, who sells plumbing items from a stand on 10 de Octubre Avenue, where dust swirls past century-old buildings.
At 42, he wonders if he should have left his job at a state warehouse. The insecurity and the long hours needed to earn a little more money are wearing on him.
"At least there I didn't have to work very hard and I got paid every month," he grumbles from behind a table he set up in between abandoned buildings.
But with the government cutting jobs, there is no turning back for him. He is scouting new locations.
Leather goods salesman Arle Toro Perez, 58, faced the same dilemma as Barrios, glumly sitting on a folding chair in a gravel-strewn driveway with few customers to buy the few belts, key chains and wallets he hung from a stand.
He was making about three times more than the $13 a month he earned at the state job he had quit, but still just scraping by. Taxes were high and business slower than he hoped. Some days he sold nothing at all.
He later moved to a new location across from the Havana Libre hotel, which opened in 1958 as the Havana Hilton, and things picked up. There were more tourists and more sales. Today he has a much bigger inventory and a smile on his face.
"Some days I'm making twice as much as I did at the old location. I can take better care of my family," he said.
Some of the new entrepreneurs are stretching the limits set out by the government and doing well.
Alex, who spoke on condition that his last name not be used, was an architect before he discovered the profitability of "pirateria." Today he sells counterfeit DVDs from a dingy, makeshift storefront in central Havana.
He moves between shoppers examining his movie selection, heavy on the latest Hollywood features. One customer looks over a copy of "Killer Elite," starring Robert De Niro and Clive Owen, then hands it back.
Alex has had the business for years, but before the reforms the store was illegal, though not the copyright violations. In Cuba, copyright laws are ignored and state television and movie theaters routinely show pirated movies.
Now, his feel for capitalism unleashed, Alex is diversifying, expanding and, by Cuban standards, making a bundle of money – about $80 a day.
"I have two other stands like this one, and with the money I've accumulated I'm getting into the food business," he said. "I've got a big house with four bedrooms and I've got two cars."
TOURISM TROVE
Much of the entrepreneurship is aimed at the lucrative tourist trade. In the colonial city of Trinidad, 175 miles southeast of Havana, Osmary and Alberto jumped into the business out of necessity.
In late 2010, shortly after Raul Castro announced the opening for the self-employed, the restaurant where Alberto worked closed. They painted their home bright orange and turned it into a guest house, renting rooms to tourists.
One of the first guests praised it on the travel website TripAdvisor.com, and it has been mostly full ever since. The couple began with two rooms, expanded to four and now want to add another and perhaps a pool. A chef now cooks for guests.
"We are more comfortable," Alberto says, declining to divulge numbers. He praised the reforms for giving Cubans a chance to do better. "The people have many ideas."
As a group, the splashiest new businesses are home-grown restaurants, or "paladares" as they are known in Cuba, which have exploded in number in the past year. ("Paladar" means "palate" in English and was the name given to a chain of restaurants opened by a small-time vendor in a popular Brazilian soap opera.)
Expatriates and visitors used to complain that there were too few good places to eat in Havana. Now they have trouble keeping track of all the new ones.
An Internet list showed 93 paladares in Havana districts where foreign residents and tourists are centered. Some date back to the 1990s, but the latest have popped up so quickly they are not yet cited.
The eastern province of Santiago de Cuba had four such eateries before the reforms; now there are 104. In the same period, the total number of self-employed in the province jumped from 8,000 to 25,800.
Many of the new paladares are upscale, with names like Le Chansonnier, El Partenon and Cafe Laurent. They are usually in nicely renovated homes, with fancy decor and hefty prices. Filet mignon with pepper sauce, grilled lobster, roast duck, and fish with white wine replace the usual Cuban fare of rice, beans and pork.
Some owners complain that business has not lived up to expectations and taxes are high. The self-employed must pay 10 percent sales tax every month, a monthly license fee that varies according to profession, and a yearly income tax that also varies but is 50 percent for paladares.
The government says it keeps taxes high because it needs money and doesn't want its reforms to lead to wide class differences, with some people accumulating great wealth.
RAMPANT REAL ESTATE SALES
But the housing market, which the government has opened, could be a major source of capital for Cubans, with the potential to boost living standards and infuse money into the economy. Cuba has billions of dollars worth of real estate that could be turned into liquid assets, and prices are already rising.
"Home ownership is very high in Cuba, about 85-90 percent," says Antonio Zamora, a Cuban-American lawyer who visits Cuba regularly and has studied its investment laws.
Cubans who stayed after the revolution were allowed to keep their homes. Over the years, through laws designed to do away with the for-profit real estate market, renters were also able to earn title to the places where they live. Selling homes was not permitted, and instead a home-exchange system was introduced.
"The net value of Cubans and the country as a whole is going to go through the roof," Zamora said.
Interest in buying and selling homes is running high. A recent check showed 11,025 listings on revolico.com, an Internet marketplace for Cubans, with prices ranging from a few thousand dollars for cramped apartments to several hundred thousand for spacious homes built before the revolution.
On Paseo del Prado, a main Havana avenue, unlicensed sales agents say the market for less expensive properties in better neighborhoods has been so brisk that stock is running low. The Cuban government says the country needs another 600,000 homes. Foreigners are still largely barred from buying Cuban property.
Retired government worker Jose Leon said he turned down an offer equal to $100,000 from a European buyer with a Cuban wife for his 1950s three-bedroom apartment in Havana's once-exclusive Miramar neighborhood. He did not want to pay the 10 percent fee the agents charge and thinks prices will go up.
Many believe that as long as keeping communism afloat is Castro's goal, he will not go far enough to make much of a difference to their lives. Others think he will, but slowly. Castro has said his reforms will take five years to implement because the leadership wants to avoid making mistakes.
Skeptics point out that the government still tells people how many homes they can own and how many chairs they can have in their restaurants. It has set out 181 jobs in which self-employment is allowed – but everyone must be licensed for their jobs.
Alex, the seller of pirated DVDs, nonetheless argues that the changes have put Cuba on an irreversible path. "Three years ago we didn't even think about having cell phones, now we have cell phones," he says. "For years we couldn't sell houses, now we can sell houses. For years, we couldn't buy a car, now we can buy a car.
"And now we can have a business. They are small, they are micro-businesses. But it's yours, and it depends on your ability, your effort, your tenacity."
(Additional reporting by Nelson Acosta, Rosa Tania Valdes in Havana and David Adams in Miami; Editing by Kieran Murray, David Adams and Prudence Crowther)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/04/us-cuba-economy-reforms-idUSBRE8430K320120504
May Day in Cuba: The Doctors Out in Front
May Day in Cuba: The Doctors Out in Front May 2, 2012 Fernando Ravsberg*
HAVANA TIMES, May 2 — This year's May Day demonstration in Havana's Revolution Square was led by a broad representation of health care workers, whose work abroad has turned into the principal source of income for the country.
Tens of thousands of Cuban doctors, nurses and medical technicians annually bring in more foreign exchange than tourism and family remittances – the two sources that in the 1990s were the oxygen that allowed the country to withstand the brutal economic crisis.
The majority of the physicians work in Venezuela in "social missions" promoted by Hugo Chavez, but officials of Cuba's Ministry of Public Health report that there's cooperation in dozens of places in the Americas, Africa, Asia and even Europe.
Moreover, this trend seems to be progressively extending to other sectors, with Cuban professionals engaged in several countries as water engineers, architects, chemists, computer scientists and sports trainers. There are thousands of them now working in several African nations.
The sale of medical services
The Cuban government manages these statistics with great discretion, but all sources conclude that there are about 40,000 of their health care workers serving overseas – most of them in Venezuela, but also in 69 other countries.
According to studies by centers specializing in the analysis of the Cuban economy, health care personnel bring in $5 billion USD annually, a significant figure when compared with the $2.4 billion received from tourism or the $1.2 billion from remittances.
The doctors spend periods of two years working in one country or another, during which time they receive part of their salary there while another part goes to their family in Cuba (who are paid in regular pesos and convertible pesos, and are given a discount card to make purchase in stores). Likewise, on their return to Cuba, these workers are allowed to import a large amount of goods with them.
However, the salaries received by these doctors represent a small part of what the Cuban contracting company charges customers who demand their services. This means the bulk of the money goes into the state treasury, making it one of the government's highest profit-generating activities.
"People of Science"
Public health has been one of the greatest accomplishments of the Cuban Revolution, which is not mere propaganda: Health indexes of Cubans are enviable when compared to the rest of the region. Photo: Raquel Perez
In January 1960, in one of his first speeches as prime minister, Fidel Castro announced that "the future of our country must necessarily be a future of people of science" and the following year he launched the nation straight into a massive literacy campaign.
Half a century later, Cuba has more than 1 million professional graduates in diverse branches – of which 70,000 are doctors, or about 10 times more than the country had when the victorious barbudos (bearded guerillas) entered Havana.
Despite the country being left with only 3,000 doctors after the revolution, the provision of medical assistance to other countries began immediately, as far afield as Algeria. Such aid was provided for decades for free.
It was at the insistence of President Hugo Chavez that this system of "internationalism" be transformed into a relation of South-South exchange in which Cuba provides tens of thousands of doctors, teachers and coaches while Venezuela pays with oil.
With the arrival of Raul Castro to the presidency, that system was extended to relations with other nations, such as South Africa, Algeria and Angola. Some 3,000 Cuban professionals are working in Angola, whose services annually contribute more than $100 million to the island's economy.
The new strategy
The government's new policies seem to pursue the use of those human resources that are available to Cuba: that wealth of college graduates that the national economy is unable to assimilate and see themselves forced to do other jobs.
Although currently the work of most doctors serving in other countries is charged for, Havana has retained free missions – such as in Haiti, where hundreds of Cuban aid workers have played a prominent role since the earthquake and in the fight against cholera.
Cuba is also involved in other altruistic projects, such as "Operation Milagro" (which has restored eyesight to millions of people), medical research in the ALBA bloc nations, and a school of medicine that graduates thousands of doctors from across the Americas and the Third World every year.
The fact that the May Day march was led by health care personnel is a tribute to one of the sectors that has worked best internally over the last five decades and today is also the mainstay of the Cuban economy. —–
(*) An authorized translation by Havana Times (from the Spanish original) published by Cartas Desde Cuba.
Havana Cuba 16 February 2012. Report of the Cuban League Against AIDS about Human Rights Violations in Cuba Against the LGBT Community / Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada
Havana Cuba 16 February 2012. Report of the Cuban League Against AIDS about Human Rights Violations in Cuba Against the LGBT Community / Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada Translator: Unstated, Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada
Five decades have passed since that fateful triumph featuring people dressed in garments of olive green, who descended from the mountain proclaiming a society of equality for all men without distinction of race, creed, political or sexual orientation.
Not many years had passed when they begin to devise on the island the first exclusions from workplaces, educational and government institutions, of those Cubans whose sexual conduct was characterized by the nascent government as shameful and as a practice that tarnished the morals of the Cuban socialist nation.
Our forebears spent years in confinement, forced labor camps, facing acts of repudiation, and in many of the cases were stoned and forced into exile. Separating them from family and friends. Cuban history includes the anecdotes and suffering of Reinaldo Arenas, Virgilio P, Lezama and those who even their names remain in oblivion, or whose bodies lie in the waters of the Straits of Florida or along the Cuban coasts.
Fifty years later, history repeats itself and violations of the respect for human rights continues in Cuba and have again targeted the Cuban LGBT community. The same ruler act as if they have changed the practice of such violations, but when they come for analysis the situation facing this community in Cuba is the same.
The lack of spaces, of freedom of expression, freedom of association, free movement and the right to establish a relationship or marry in equality of rights, the right to decide the opportune moment to make your family aware of your sexual orientation, all these are some of the constant violations facing the LGBT Community in Cuba.
Meanwhile, State institutions like the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) directed by Mariela Castro Espin, daughter of the current president of the nation, proclaim to the world uncertain openings that guarantee the full respect of the human rights of the LGBT community, the reality of the Island is otherwise, which they don't hesitate to silence out of fear of losing the great sums of money given for phantom projects that respond only to the interest of the Cuban State and not to those of the LGBT community in Cuba.
On the island there are daily reports of the arrests of LGBT people accompanied by heavy fines, deportations, in the case of homosexuals, from the capital Havana, extortion or blackmail by the police or law enforcement officers to purchase their own benefit at the suffering of those who fall into their hands. Beatings, arrests, instant and arbitrary searches in public places occur.
During year 2010 there is evidence of layoffs due to sexual orientation, layoffs of members of this community not following the current government's political thought or simply for maintaining a friendship with someone who was an activist for the LGBT rights.
The violence resulted in the deaths from assaults of six homosexual in unknown conditions. We denounced the death of a young transvestite in a police cell from negligence and inattention. The dismissal from her work of a transsexual woman, Wendy Iriepa Diez for wanting to unite in marriage to a human rights activist. The arrest of homosexuals in public places, the ongoing siege for alleged homosexual tourism among others.
We continue to denounce the abuse of prison sentences between two and four years imprisonment or forced labor to those homosexuals who wander at night through the streets of Cuba, those who ingest alcohol and even those who are maintained by their families and do not choose to work with the Cuban state.
Cuba is a country where, according to the authorities, Cuban citizens are not prepared to face changes such as marriage between people of the same gender, or adoption or cohabitation. Meanwhile we Cubans ask the leader of these explanations where are your criteria, if when we walk in the street people smile at us and on occasion congratulate us for our sexual orientation, if not for our great humanism.
The truly guilty with regards to the constant violations of the rights of the Cuban LGBT Community face are the State and it institutions, armies of homophobics and discriminators. There is, in our nation, no power or persons more exclusionary than our leaders.
The growth of male prostitution, in the community of men having sex with other men, shows at this time in the large number of infections by HIV/AIDS in the history of the illness in Cuba, 8 or every 10 people with HIV are men.
Despite the totalitarianism, despite the iron hand of the power of the State, the Cuban LGBT Community today is rising from the ashes like a phoenix showing its beautiful plumage which, on this occasion, has the colors of our unequaled flag demanding and recovering all the spaces usurped by the power and the lies.
February 20 2012
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