Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 17:48:48 -0700
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Cuban Weekly News Digest - "A compilation of news articles about Cuba, distributed since 1992 in order to encourage a balanced understanding of the Cuban situation and to promote investments in the Republic of Cuba"
NOTE: On May 2nd, 2009, Palmares SA, the organization responsible for golf in Cuba, will host the inaugural Montecristo Cup at the Varadero Golf Club (http://www.varaderogolfclub.com) in Varadero, Cuba. This competition is expected to be Cuba’s biggest international golf tournament and will be the pre-qualifying event for the Cuban Open in 2010. The main event will be held on Saturday May 2nd at the Varadero Golf Club. Limited to 72 competitors, the 18-hole tournament will begin with a shotgun start at 9:30am. Both amateur and professional golfers are welcome to test their skills on the Varadero beachfront golf course and the winner will receive the opulent Montecristo Cup and a guaranteed place in the 2010 Cuban Open.
The awards dinner will take place following the competition at Xanadu Mansion which was built in 1930 and was once the luxurious residence of the Dupont family and is located within the grounds of the Golf Club. On Sunday May 3rd, there will be a 9-hole Cuban Junior competition for the Esencia Cup. In an effort to encourage the game of golf among the younger Cuban generation, a group of local youths under the age of 17 will be coached and mentored by a PGA Golf Professional in the game of golf prior to the event. A select group of 12 juniors displaying the most remarkable skill will be invited to compete for the Esencia Cup. The tournament will consist of three four balls, followed by the trophy presentation by the British Ambassador to Cuba, Dianna Melrose.
The Varadero Golf course is a par-72 course running 6,856 yards , (6,269 meters) and features several salt water lakes that connect directly with the sea, a rare feature in golf course design. This is the first and (currently) only 18-hole Cuban golf course, designed by Canadian golf architect Les Furber (once an associate with Robert Trent Jones), which offers luxurious surroundings and an entertaining round of golf, both for beginners and experts. The course hosted two European Challenge Tour Grand Finals in 1999 and 2000. The main sponsor of The Montecristo Cup is Habanos SA, the world leading premium cigar company and purveyor of the famous Montecristo brand. Other supporters include Havana Club, Bucanero Beer and Sol Melia Hotels. In addition, the weekend event is being supported and co-managed by Esencia Hotels and Resorts, one of the supporters and developers of golf in Cuba.
Details at: http://www.themontecristocup.com
Wall Street Journal - WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama plans to lift longstanding U.S. restrictions on Cuba, a senior administration official said, allowing Cuban-Americans to visit families there as often as they like and to send them unlimited funds. The gesture, which could herald more openness with the Castro regime, will fulfill a campaign promise and follows more modest action in Congress this year to loosen travel rules. The president has authority to loosen the restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba on his own. The new rules will affect an estimated 1.5 million Americans who have family members in Cuba. Other Americans are allowed to travel to Cuba but only if they qualify through certain cultural, educational and other programs.
President Obama doesn't intend to call for lifting of the trade embargo against Cuba, which would require congressional action, nor is any specific diplomatic outreach contemplated, the official said. Advocates for greater openness with Cuba said the move is significant in itself, signaling the Obama administration's willingness to take a fresh look at Cuba policy early in the presidency. However, others argue that overtures to Cuba as long as the Castros are in charge are not likely to foster democracy on the island.
The timing of the announcement is unclear, but several Cuba experts have speculated that it could come ahead of this month's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago. It will come amid a series of international gestures by President Obama recently. He moved to improve relations with Russia and told an audience in France that he was there to listen. Previously, he made an outreach to the people of Iran, sending a video message calling for a "new day" of relations between Washington and Tehran. Last May in a campaign speech in Miami, Mr. Obama said, "It's time to let Cuban-Americans see their mothers and their fathers, their sisters and their brothers. It's time to let Cuban-American money make their families less dependent on the Castro regime."
The travel and remittance restrictions stem from the embargo, put in place in 1962 after Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba. President Jimmy Carter allowed the travel ban to lapse. But President Ronald Reagan reinstituted the travel ban with some exceptions. Under President Bill Clinton, Cuban-Americans could visit family once a year. President George W. Bush's policy was at one point even looser, but in 2004, he tightened the rules, allowing family trips once every three years, and narrowing the definition of who qualified as family. Sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers and grandparents qualified, but uncles, aunts and cousins did not.
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus traveled to Cuba in another sign of congressional interest in easing a longstanding trade embargo and travel restrictions. This year, Congress approved legislation that had the effect of rolling back the Bush rules. As they now stand, family members -- broadly defined -- may visit once a year. The rules on how much money family members can send to Cuba, which date to 1978, have also changed with various administrations, but under Mr. Bush, funds were limited to a maximum of $300 per quarter for each household in Cuba receiving them. Remittances from the U.S. to Cuba now amount to around $700 million a year.
The expected action comes as cries grow louder in Congress to open U.S. policy toward Cuba. A bill introduced this year would allow unlimited travel for any purpose by Americans. Sen. Richard Lugar, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote Mr. Obama calling for a change in U.S. posture toward Cuba and suggested that his administration open a dialogue about how to bring Cuba into the international community. Mr. Obama has also been under pressure from Latin leaders to make a gesture toward Cuba to start rebuilding regional relations.
Reaction to the expected policy shift was mixed. "The status quo has been unnatural and immoral," said Julia Sweig, a Cuba specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations. "This will at least allow families to begin to normalize, if not the two countries." Some Cuban-American circles have pressed to maintain U.S. restrictions because of their antipathy for Fidel Castro and his brother, Raul, who replaced him as leader after Fidel became ill. "How do you help people speak out about human rights violations if you're basically extending the dictatorship abroad?" said Mauricio Claver-Carone, director of U.S. Cuba Democracy PAC.
(acn) - Havana - Over 20,000 children suffering from different diseases have been seen in Cuba as part of the Cuban Medical Program for Children of Chernobyl, marking last Wednesday the 19th anniversary of its creation. The plan began in 1990, when children and their relatives began to arrive en masse from Russia, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Moldavia and Armenia to the former Pioneer Children’s Camp in Tarará, east of this city. Dr. Julio Medina, coordinator of the Program, explained that from 700 to 800 children arrive in Cuba annually to be treated by multidisciplinary teams of Cuban specialists. So far, patients with blood diseases have been treated, especially with different variants of leukemia; bone marrow and kidney transplants have been done, as well as cardiovascular surgery due to congenital malformations.
Ukrainian Dr. Nadiezhda Guerazimenko, coordinator of the Program in that country, highlighted the professionalism of Cuban doctors. She added that the best example of this statement lies in the high figure of patients who have returned to their respective countries cured of their ailments. The Program has a significant impact in the health and recovery of children and their families. In its almost two decades of existence, it has treated more than 16,000 Ukrainians, almost 3,000 Russians, and 671 Byelorussians. Some 40,000 people died immediately and millions were contaminated as a result of the nuclear disaster on April 26, 1986, which at first hit the Ukraine, and then extended to Russia, Belarus and different parts of Europe and Asia. The event caused several types of diseases, like leukemia, tumors, heart malformations, kidney problems, psoriasis, vitiligo and alopecia. Many of the children and youngsters seen today in Cuba weren’t even born when the disaster occurred. However, their parents were affected by the radiation.
HAVANA (Reuters) - A Canadian widow living in Cuba whose fortune was trapped in a Boston bank by the U.S. trade embargo died on Friday at the age of 108 without having ever gotten her money. Mary McCarthy died in her rundown Havana mansion after failing to get treatment for respiratory problems due to a shortage of cash, according to godson and heir Elio Garcia. "She had been suffering the embargo for 50 years," he told Reuters. McCarthy, born in St. John's, Newfoundland, in 1900, moved to Cuba in 1924 when she married her husband, a wealthy Havana-based Spanish businessman whom she had met at the Boston Opera.
She soon became a member of Cuba's high society, co-founding the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra and an orphanage for boys. Her husband died in 1951, but she stayed in Cuba, even after the 1959 revolution when Fidel Castro took power and all the neighbours in her wealthy neighbourhood fled to the United States. She was not able to touch the money her husband left her after the United States imposed a trade embargo against Cuba in 1962, and had lived in near poverty for years. In 2007, after a Canadian diplomat intervened, the U.S. government allowed her to withdraw $96 (65 pound) a month from the bank in Boston.
Garcia said McCarthy had to postpone treatment for respiratory problems when the United States did not transfer extra money allowed for medical purposes in time, and she died. "People should not have to pay for the political circumstances. This is a problem between two governments," he said of the embargo. She died early on Friday morning and in the afternoon, two dozen friends gathered in her home, where a candle burnt atop the old Steinway piano where she had given music lessons. They accompanied her humble coffin, wrapped in gray cloth, in a funeral procession to Columbus Cemetery, where she was buried next to her husband. "Mary McCarthy was perhaps the best welder of the friendship between the people of Cuba and Canada," Canadian consul Mark Burger told the gathering. She would have been 109 on April 27.
JAIMANITAS, Cuba - (Reuters) - From his second-story studio, Cuban artist Jose Fuster looks out over what he has wrought in the seaside village of Jaimanitas and, with a big smile, says, "I am completely crazy." Below, wildly colourful mosaics and large, fanciful sculptures cover his home and fill his yard in an explosion of art that has transformed the humble neighbourhood into a island of brightness among Havana's well-worn suburbs. His home and studio are the epicentre of a work in progress in which Fuster, 62, has adorned houses on two streets with Picasso-like paintings and playful ceramic figures of the palm trees, roosters and crocodiles that reappear in all his art.
In front of his house, he has created a sort of tiled park that is a large communal chess board; behind that, a massive 25-foot (eight-metre) tall tribute to five Cuban agents jailed for spying in the United States, lauded in Cuba as the "Five Heroes ." It is a fantasy land that is Cuban to its core in its bright colours, comical icons and political undertones. Bearded and bespectacled, fun-loving and hard-drinking, Fuster has been called the Picasso of the Caribbean for his quirky style and is one of Cuba's best-known artists overseas. He has exhibited all over Europe and in the United States, which has a 47-year-old trade embargo against Cuba, although art is exempted. He has a website, http://www.josefuster.com, where his paintings, watercolours and ceramics are on sale for prices ranging above $10,000.
The Jaimanitas project, now 14 years in the making and, according to Fuster far from finished, is an attraction for locals and arts-minded international visitors. The latter have to make an effort to find it because Jaimanitas, a ramshackle coastal community that straddles a river of the same name in Havana's western suburbs, is well off the tourist track. Fuster makes no apologies for being a loyal devotee of Cuba's communist-ruled system nor a beneficiary of the capitalist world's appetite for art. By standards in Cuba, where people receive various social benefits but earn an average of $20 a month, he makes a bundle of money and has freedom to travel abroad that most Cubans do not. But he views his sales as a source of hard currency for his cash-strapped country. He happily pays the required 50 percent taxes on art income and says he invests most of what's left in Jaimanitas, either in the art works or in helping his less-fortunate neighbours.
"I have the idea that I have to give back part of my money," he said. How much has he invested in Jaimanitas? "I don't know. Everything," he said, shrugging his shoulders. His neighbours use the funds for home repairs and other needs. Spend time with Fuster and two things will surely happen -- rum will be drunk and politics will be discussed. An early afternoon interview begins with a glass of rum and ends with another as he sits down to paint a few tiles he will sell for $20 to less well-heeled customers. "I'm always drinking. I am, unfortunately, an anonymous alcoholic," he jokes. After a sip of seven-year-old Havana Club, he savers it with eyes closed, then says, "Que rico" (How delicious).
But the rum is just for fun, not inspiration, which arises from some inexplicable, unexpected place, if at all. "I say what Hemingway said. I work every day. If inspiration exists, let it surprise me working," he said. As for politics, Fuster is a product of the revolution that put Fidel Castro in power in 1959. He was a 12-year-old from a humble family living in the coastal town of Santa Fe, near Jaimanitas, at the time, and two years later went to the Sierra Maestra, the mountain stronghold for Castro's guerrilla army, to teach peasants how to read. He believes he owes everything to that period, which led him to train from 1963 to 1965 at the state-run National School for Art Instructors in Havana.
"I found art in the Sierra Maestra," he said. "The Sierra Maestra was what gave me the inspiration to do art. There I found a world I've never abandoned -- the palm trees, the peasants, the rooster, the horse." Those things are found in all his art because they are symbols of an essential Cubanness that he also finds in the island's political system, which he says is neither communism nor socialism, but "Cubanismo." Cuba, he says, is not perfect, but has achieved an enviable level of social equality. "I am a Cuban citizen who lives in Cuba and agrees with the social system," he said. "I think in this country there is justice." Fuster says his work occasionally includes a "constructive criticism" of the system, but he has never been censored, despite the Cuban government's authoritarian reputation.
While he is not a native of Jaimanitas, it was there that he put his political beliefs directly into action. When he arrived, he saw a downtrodden community and as soon as he began to make money he started his art project in 1995. It did not always go smoothly, for some neighbours objected and local bureaucrats put up obstacles. But now there is general agreement that Fuster's art is good for the community. "He has helped so many people and the art is so lovely. We now have a lot of pride in Jaimanitas," said housewife Youvaleta Teri, watching her children play in the chess park. Fuster says he has turned down lucrative projects in great cities such as Paris to focus on Jaimanitas because the love and respect of his neighbours is more important than money. "This is a pretty place, a little fishing village. There's no pollution, it's good," he said, "From here, we can shine."
(acn)- Havana - In an effort to quickly increase food production and pressed by the devastation left by three hurricanes last year, the technique of semi-protected farming have been extended across Cuba and in particular in this eastern province. Seven of that type of organic gardens have been created in Las Tunas, while another nine are due to be completed by May. They consist of plots of land covering an area of about one hectare, which is roofed with a special net that protects crops from the direct effect of sun and heavy rains. Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and other types of vegetables can be grown in those gardens, and they produce more that unprotected areas.
The use of irrigation and organic fertilizers such as worm humus and the creation of new jobs are other advantages of those agricultural centers that have been built in eight municipalities of this eastern province. The increase of such farming technique is one of the strategies implemented in the area to quickly increase food production, especially after the passing of hurricane Ike through Las Tunas in September 2008, which caused considerable agricultural losses. Las Tunas, some 670 km to the east of Havana, has the lowest rainfall in the country, which affects agriculture and forces farmers to constantly look for new alternatives to cultivate throughout the year.
WASHINGTON - (AFP) – A key Republican Senator on international ties has urged President Barack Obama to reach out to communist Cuba by opening talks, and naming a special US envoy to the longtime US foe. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee's top Republican Richard Lugar, who in February said decades of US sanctions on Havana had failed, wrote to Obama in a March 30 letter that: "additional (US) measures are needed ... to recast a policy that has not only failed to promote human rights and democracy, but also undermines our broader security and political interests." Lugar stressed that engagement with Cuba now could be key to achieving better bilateral ties.
Cuba is the only communist, one-party regime in the Americas. Havana and Washington do not have full diplomatic ties. And the United States has had an economic embargo on its neighbor Cuba since 1962. "To the world, our current approach defies logic," Lugar said in his letter. "Even during the lowest depths of the Cold War, diplomatic channels with the former Soviet Union were never severed." And "because Latin America's posture toward Cuba favors dialogue, I am concerned that our current approach could serve as an impediment to gaining support for larger goals" in the region, Lugar wrote.
He urged Obama, who heads to an April 17 Summit of the Americas in Port-of-Spain, to officially end US opposition to Cuba rejoining the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS), in the hopes that could lead to discussion. The OAS requires members to have democratic governments, and the United States for decades has argued that Cuba lacks one and cannot take part. Cuba says western democracies are corrupt and maintains its elections are fair, even as it formally outlaws opposition parties. "In the run-up to the summit, I ask that you also consider the designation of a special envoy for Cuba, who would report directly to Secretary of State (Hillary) Clinton," Lugar added.
"The special envoy's responsibilities would begin with the initiation of direct talks with the Cuban government on migration and drug interdiction in order to serve vital US security interests in the Straits of Florida among other issues," Lugar wrote. Cuba has demanded that the United States end its economic embargo on Havana. Lugar stopped short of calling for an end to the embargo, but noted it is "a source of controversy between the United States and European Union, as well as in the United Nations." A group of US senators introduced legislation that aimed at letting most Americans travel to Cuba, a major step toward ending one of the quirkiest holdovers from the Cold War era: the effective ban on travel by most US nationals to communist Cuba next door.
Obama, while on the campaign trail, said he would not rule out talks with Cuba. So far his government has made small adjustments to existing sanctions, allowing Cuban-Americans to send more money to family and to visit more often. Experts predict that scrapping US travel restrictions could prompt a tidal wave of visitors from a country of 300 million just 144 kilometers (90 miles) away from Cuba, with an estimated one to five million Americans visiting each year. Cuba, with more than 11 million people, recently has welcomed a total of more than two million tourists a year, mostly Europeans and Canadians. In the short run, the shift in tourist traffic also could deal a devastating blow other Caribbean destinations -- such as Jamaica and the Dominican Republic -- where tourism has been a key industry dependent on US visitors not allowed to visit Cuba.
(Bloomberg) - Cuba would welcome U.S. companies’ help developing its oil industry should the 47-year trade embargo on the communist island come to an end, said Manuel Marrero Faz, senior oil adviser at the Ministry of Basic Industries. “We are open,” said Marrero Faz, noting that Chinese, Russian and Angolan companies are in talks to explore areas about 100 miles off the U.S. coast. “We’re very close to each other. We’re neighbors. Why not do business?” Should nearby U.S. companies offer services and supplies, Cuba would be able to lower its costs and pick up the pace of development, said Marrero Faz, who learned geology as a student in the former Soviet Union. The difficulty of getting equipment from partners halfway around the world is a key reason only one offshore well has been drilled so far, he said.
Marrero Faz’s comments represent one of the strongest signals yet that Cuban President Raul Castro is ready for a new relationship with the U.S. under President Barack Obama. In Washington, Cuba’s incipient oil industry is helping fuel a growing campaign to ease the trade embargo that President John F. Kennedy imposed in 1962 to try to topple Fidel Castro’s Soviet-allied regime. U.S. business interests -- watching from the sidelines as global competitors scoop up contracts -- as well as lawmakers and policy groups are becoming more vocal that the time for a change has come.
“It’s stupid that the U.S. prohibits its companies from coming here,” said Gustavo Echeverria, a researcher at Cuba’s Center for Petroleum Investigation, who spoke after giving a presentation at a Havana oil conference last month. “Everyone else is taking the fields on its doorstep.” Obama may soon lift all restrictions on family travel to Cuba and allow unlimited remittances to relatives, the Wall Street Journal reported today, citing an unidentified administration official. Vice President Joe Biden said March 28 that the U.S. has no plans to lift the trade embargo. Any move to do so would be controversial in Congress. Easing the sanctions, without demanding concessions to lessen “the oppression of the people by the regime, will serve to strengthen the dictatorship and demoralize the Cuban people,” a group of congressmen including Florida Republicans Lincoln Diaz- Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said in a March 24 letter to Obama.
Cuba says its offshore deposits hold 20 billion barrels of oil, enough to supply the U.S. for almost three years. The government hasn’t disclosed how it arrived at the figure, which is more than quadruple the almost 4.2 billion barrels estimated to lie beneath Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates Cuba’s North Basin region, one of three offshore areas believed to hold oil, has 4.6 billion barrels. Along Cuba’s north coast facing Florida, 19 miles from Havana, a Chinese flag whips in the Caribbean wind at the base of a drilling tower. The rig, brought to Cuba by a unit of China National Petroleum Corp., or CNPC, is being used by the island’s state-owned oil company, Cubapetroleo.
Russian companies including OAO Gazprom, Russia’s largest company, and OAO Rosneft, both based in Moscow, are in talks with the Cuban company, known as Cupet, and may sign contracts for as many as four exploration blocks by the end of the year, Marrero Faz said. CNPC, China’s biggest oil producer, may also reach an exploration deal by the end of 2009, he said.
The Havana conference was attended by New Delhi-based Oil & Natural Gas Corp., and Rio de Janeiro-based Petroleo Brasileiro SA and Caracas-based Petroleos de Venezuela SA, which already have exploration agreements. Madrid-based Repsol YPF SA, Hanoi-based Vietnam Oil & Gas Group and Kuala Lumpur-based Petroliam Nasional Bhd., which also have accords and attended the conference, have opened offices in Havana’s Miramar district. “We would definitely like to continue here,” said Sushil Chandra, Cuba project coordinator at the Indian company, known as ONGC. Toronto-based Sherritt International Corp., Cuba’s largest foreign-energy partner, has produced oil from Cuban wells since 1992. Its average output of 31,200 barrels a day in 2008 accounted for two-thirds of the country’s domestic production, according to the company’s Web site.
Just as U.S. producers are blocked from projects only five days by tanker from Louisiana refineries, oil service companies such as Houston-based Halliburton Co., are also unable to take advantage of their proximity to undercut competitors on price, said Jorge Pinon, energy fellow at the University of Miami. “We have a long-term relationship here, and clearly the Americans don’t,” said Peter Huff, president of Calgary-based Datalog Technology Inc., a company that helps detect oil for Cupet, Repsol and Sherritt in Cuba. “That’s a competitive advantage for us.” U.S. oil companies including Texaco Inc., acquired by Chevron Corp. in 2001, and what’s now Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp., last operated in Cuba in 1960, when their refineries were expropriated.
Exxon Mobil spokesman Len D’Eramo said the company’s global exploration program is confidential. Chevron spokesman Justin Higgs didn’t respond to requests for comment. Charlie Rowton, a ConocoPhillips spokesman, said the company doesn’t speculate about future activities. Pressure in the U.S. is growing for Obama and Congress to open up to Cuba. Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in a report last month that U.S. policy toward Cuba has failed. The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based research and policy organization, said in a report in February that the U.S. should license energy companies to work in Cuba as part of full restoration of trade and diplomatic relations. The National Foreign Trade Council, a Washington-based group of companies and trade associations, is also calling for U.S. firms to work on the island.
Still, investing in Cuba has risks. The offshore reserves are unproven by U.S. standards and drilling an exploratory well at 1,500 meters (4,921 feet) beneath the sea would cost about $100 million, Marrero Faz said. As oil hovers around $50 a barrel, it’s less attractive than when crude prices set a record above $140 a barrel in July 2008. “There isn’t a sense of urgency,” said Pinon, who signed the Brookings report. “But in the long term, of course U.S. oil companies want to come.”
The Washington Post - HAVANA - Like much of Cuba's work force, Alfredo Congas is going gray. The chain-smoking 61-year-old retired last March after 42 years as a hotel doorman and rum-company driver. Now he's back working 12-hour shifts as a security guard to supplement his minuscule pension. "I'm here without a cent in my pocket," said Congas, whose new job brings his total income _ pension plus paycheck _ to the equivalent of $23.45 a month, about $4 more than the average state wage. Sweeping poverty forces most of Cuba's 2.2 million retirees to get new jobs that enable them to keep a steady income and supplement their pensions. Many barely scrape by, wandering the streets selling peanuts and newspapers or guarding parked cars at hotels for tourists' change.
Now even that is harder to do. Faced with an aging population and a life expectancy of 77.3 years, nearly the same as the U.S., Cuba's government has raised the retirement threshold by five years, to 60 for women and 65 for men, delaying the second jobs many have counted on to make ends meet in their old age. About 90 percent of Cubans have government jobs, and now both sexes must work at least 30 years, not 25, to get a full pension. "Retirement in Cuba was already no picnic. Now it's more complicated," said Oscar Espinosa Chepe, a state-trained economist turned political dissident. The overhaul, to be fully phased in by 2015, means Cuba's retirement age will exceed Latin America's average of 59 for women and 62 for men, according to Carmelo Mesa-Lago, an expert on the Cuban economy at the University of Pittsburgh.
The island's population is aging faster than the rest of the region _ some 17 percent will be 60 or older by 2010, compared with 9 percent across Latin America today, according to U.N. data. A quarter of Cubans will top 60 by 2025, a point the rest of the region won't reach until 2050. As Cuba's work force shrinks, the ratio of workers to retirees has narrowed from seven-to-one in 1970 to three-to-one today. Had the country not raised its retirement age, the ratio would have been two-to-one by 2025, the government said. "More needs to be done, but what else can you do? You can't turn the screw even more," Mesa-Lago said.
State pensions, though small, were once enough to live on in this communist country, where housing and health care are free and the government subsidizes food, utilities and transportation. But the Soviet Union's collapse cost Cuba huge amounts of income in subsidies and trade, crippling the economy and sparking widespread shortages that still persist. A U.S.-dollar-fueled black market mushroomed; prices soared and Cuba's peso plunged from 1 to the dollar to 22 to the dollar today. The minimum monthly pension was worth about $92 in 1989. Adjusted for inflation, it is now the equivalent of $9.50. "I'm going to keep working, keep fighting," said Antonio Valdes, a 63-year-old graphic designer who earns $19.30 a month. "The elderly who don't know how to do that are screwed."
Many countries are making tough decisions to keep funding social security programs as populations skew older. The U.S. retirement age is slated to increase to 67 by 2027. A handful of former Iron Curtain countries have privatized their once-troubled pension systems, as well as raising retirement ages and slashing benefits to stretch resources. Several Latin American nations have followed a private-account model pioneered by Chile in 1981. But privatization isn't an option in Cuba's command economy, where there are no 401Ks or pooled pension funds invested to draw earnings, and most forms of free-market enterprise are illegal.
Instead, a 1994 tax law requires Cuban state firms to contribute 14 percent of each worker's salary to a national social security pot. It also obligates employees in profitable sectors such as tourism to contribute an additional 5 percent. Still, contributions cover less than 60 percent of current pension costs, with the rest financed by unspecified areas of the federal budget, Mesa-Lago said. While the government doesn't say how much it spends, in 2006 he estimated the sum approached 6.3 percent of gross domestic product. The funding crunch has grown more urgent since last year's hurricanes caused more than $10 billion in damage, leaving nearly 1 million homeless, crippling farming and forcing costly food imports. Cuba's budget deficit ballooned to $4.2 billion.
The government says 3 million people attended town-hall meetings to discuss the potential retirement age increase last year, with 99.1 percent supporting it. Workers who attended say many complained, but didn't dare oppose the measure in a public show of hands. "I'm not prepared for this," said Grace, 52, a high school chemistry teacher who supports her 23-year-old son and 86-year-old mother on a monthly wage worth about $25. She asked to be identified by her middle name only, to avoid problems at work. Now, she'll have to defer retirement and plans to tutor for extra income for two more years.
Much of what the government saves by delaying retirement, it will dole out in bigger pensions. Payments are rising to 60 percent of an employee's peak five years of earnings, from 50 percent. Workers also earn an additional 2 percent for each year on the job after 25 years. But for some Cubans, the decision to keep older citizens working rather than cracking down on younger, job-ditching countrymen is shaking their faith in the communist revolution. While Cuba guarantees "full employment" and reports an official jobless rate of 1.6 percent, low salaries mean that many young people no longer seek formal jobs, even though neighborhood-watch committees are supposed to discourage unemployment. Instead, they live with their parents and work on the black market, failing to pay into the pension system at all. A 34-year-old nurse, who declined to be named for fear her comments would hurt her husband's army career, said the retirement reform leaves her even "more disillusioned." "I'm young," she said, her eyes welling with tears. "But I'm less optimistic than before."
acn – Havana - Researchers from the Chemistry Department of the National Center for Scientific Research (CENIC) have created a new bio-product called Suplecal, capable of supplementing insufficient calcium in the bones. The natural product has the therapeutic action of serving as a supplement to the human diet and contains 500 milligrams of calcium carbonate without the presence of other chemical substances, according to statements made by Yarelys Martín, MSc. to Juventud Técnica magazine. It’s made from fragments of the Porites-porites coral species remaining from the first production stage of Coralina biomaterials, destined for bone implants.
The medicine, approved for sale in 2008, is useful in the treatment of patients at risk of calcium deficiencies or in patients with insufficient calcium, and it is also very helpful to treat and prevent osteoporosis. The specialists recommend taking one or two capsules a day with meals. “We expect to produce and distribute some 2,000 bottles in different Havana drugstores this year, and our desire is to extend this result to the entire country”, pointed out the researcher.
(Prensa Latina) - Agriculture in Pinar del Rio, western Cuba, devastated by two hurricane last September, shows recovery as it triples vegetable production and expands into crops it never had before the storms. Six months after the devastation caused by hurricanes Gustav and Ike, Pinar del Rio province has surplus tomato and potato production thanks to the fine weather during the cold season. Granma Daily says the province now has an additional 20,000 hectares of plantations although harvesting problems affect storage. An official report issued after the storms assesses the losses of different crops at over 55,700 hectares, as well as some 1,200 urban gardens. Pinar del Rio has already overcome that deficit and its authorities will further develop policy to stimulate producers and secure summer supplies. Recovery was also crucial to supply other Cuban provinces that sent workers to rescue and restore the affected agricultural infrastructure.
SAN CRISTOBAL, Cuba - (acn) - The use of natural medicine, particularly acupuncture, in this province has broadened the treatment prospects for uterine fibroids, which affect one every three women in Cuba. As an initiative of Pinar del Rio's gynecologist Ana Rodriguez Núñez, the therapeutic alternative is implemented on a regular basis at the Comandante Pinares General Hospital, after being successfully used for the first time in the island in Santiago de Cuba. In 2008, some 200 women affected with this benign tumor were treated in that eastern province. Reports by the gynecologists' team confirm an improvement in the patient's condition between the first and third sessions, as confirmed by periodic abdominal and transvaginal ultrasound tests. This method is 6.2 times less expensive than surgery, reduces the discomfort and in most cases eliminates the most frequent symptoms such as pain, menstrual disorders or the combination of both.
Other procedures are under study to remove uterine fibroids without affecting the uterus, like radiation and hormone therapy; however, if those treatments can not fix the problem, the patient must undergo surgery, applied in 24 percent of cases. The Comandante Pinares Hospital was opened 26 years ago by Fidel Castro. It has become a teaching hospital, so in addition to providing medical care to patients from the municipalities of the east of Pinar del Rio, it offers clinical education and training for future and current doctors, nurses, and other health professionals.
HAVANA, Cuba - (acn) - Representatives from the agricultural sector of Cuba and Lower Saxony, the second largest state of the German Federal Republic, began making contacts to expand cooperation in this capital. Some twenty entrepreneurs headed by Hans-Heinrich Ehlen, Agriculture Minister of this State, held business talks with Cuban counterparts, to boost exchanges in technology transfers, food production and commercialization, raw materials, and veterinary medicines. The German businessmen arrived in Havana, where they were received by Cuban Deputy Agriculture Minister Joaquín Lezcano. They will meet to go further into the bilateral trade and legal framework for business and foreign investment on the archipelago. The representative of the Department of International Relations of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce from Oldenburg, Germany, Felix Jahn, expressed his wish to strengthening economic bonds with Cuba He went into great detail about the fact that Lower Saxony, in the center of Europe, stands out in the agricultural sector, particularly in the production of chickens, potatoes, eggs, asparagus, sugar beet, and apples.
Although it exports agricultural raw materials and their derivatives, the Agriculture Minister stated that commercial activity shouldn’t be limited only to imports and exports, but that it should also include cooperation. Hans-Heinrich Ehlen expressed his interest in sharing knowledge and transferring technology for the good of the states with which Lower Saxony cooperates, and advocated for this visit to promote a similar exchange. The German entrepreneurs will stay in Cuba until today. They will visit agricultural entities and cooperatives in the provinces of Havana and Pinar del Río, where they will the tour tobacco plantations.
Ottawa Citizen - Canadians who travel regularly to Cuba often bring along notebooks, lipsticks and bottles of shampoo to distribute as gifts. Small stuff to us -- but immensely appreciated in a country where shortages have long been the status quo. When Ian Rome and his buddies head toward their favourite vacation spot west of Varadero, however, their suitcases bulge with fanbelts, spark plugs and old copies of Hot Rod magazine. As members of the Rusty Nuts car Club of Holland Landing, just north of Toronto, they know what is especially welcome to those Cubans who nurse 1950s-era American cars through countless odometer spins.
The Canadians have limited skills in Spanish and, at home keep their carefully-restored classic cars tucked in garages for most of the year. The Cubans may or may not speak English and must rely on their patched-up old cars for daily transport. But when it comes to appreciating, say, a '57 Chevrolet Bel Air, they speak the same language. The Cuban owners have even formed their own Rusty Nuts chapter, with help from their Canadian friends. "I think it's the Chevrolets that they like the best -- they are the most plentiful, and they hold the same '50s mystique as they do here," says Rome, himself the owner of a 1956 Chevrolet two-door-post Pro Street as well as an El Camino and a Lotus Esprit Turbo.
Chevies from the '50s were in glorious supply at Santa Cruz del Norte this winter at the first full-scale car show put on by the Rusty Nuts -- Cuban and Canadian. There were other American makes as well, including a delightful, yellow-and-white 1950 Ford Country Squire wagon. Also in the 25-car display was a sampling of vehicles from many other nations -- an antique British Anglia, a trim Fiat Polski -- that have found their way to Cuba. The Canadians handed out gift bags and awarded trophies recycled from car shows back home. Ties between the two groups have been building in the six years since a couple from the club first ventured south for Cuba's winter warmth and discovered its automotive riches -- and the remarkable improvision with which the Caribbean country copes with the longstanding U.S. trade embargo.
"There are some strong bonds," Rome explains. "Some club members are down there two and three times a year. We have been to Cuban members' houses, we have met their families. They are so happy when we visit, and it's not just the stuff we bring. "We have all become friends." Rome is aware many Cubans would happily trade in their old machines for new vehicles if they could. But he knows also the affection and admiration most hold for their old amigos, and the true love that a curvy '56 Buick hardtop can inspire in car buffs everywhere. "To some, a car of any shape is just a car, but to a true car guy, it is much more."
(Prensa Latina) - Cuba successfully uses the mother cell therapy with patients having poor blood circulation, said Public Health Ministry officials. Regenerative medicine benefits patients with arterial or venous insufficiency in several provinces, Dr. Mayda Quinones, president of the Cuban Angiology Society, told Prensa Latina. She says adult mother cells taken from the patient's blood favor hundreds of diabetics with vascular illnesses. They are implanted or injected in parts of organs harmed by diabetes. In some cases, treatment involves using Hebertprot-P growth factor (generates new tissue), which Cuba produces via biotechnology, she added.
Quinones said that reducing amputation linked to that pathology is a key achievement of the advanced technique currently in use in Havana, Santa Clara, Cienfuegos and Pinar del Rio. Cuban scientific protocols match international standards, assured the specialist who reminds the disease's high mortality rates in Cuba and its sequels. Among the risk factors she mentioned smoking, having a sedentary life, obesity, standing for long periods of time and excessive oral contraceptive intake. Cuba began studying regenerative medicine for the circulatory system few years ago and among its current priorities lies its extension nation wide. Vueltabajo, as the province is known too, pioneered in using the ther
