August 19, 2005
"Cuba, an island of despair"
Even though it is heartbreaking to read, this piece from the Dallas Morning News is old news to readers of Babalu Blog:
Cuba: an island of despairCastro regime professes hope, but basic services are abysmal, many say
12:18 AM CDT on Friday, August 19, 2005
By TRACEY EATON / The Dallas Morning News
HAVANA, Cuba At the risk of being devoured by sharks, Juan Carlos is secretly preparing to escape Cuba by boat.
"I've had enough," said the 32-year-old cook, who earns less than $15 a month. "When I get home from work, there's no electricity, no water and no gas. I swat mosquitoes all night, then get up at 6 to go to work again. If you were in my shoes, I guarantee you'd leave, too, even if you had to climb into a bedpan and paddle to Florida."
The socialist government that Washington has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to topple is on the brink again. Not because of a lack of human rights or democracy, but because of something as simple as keeping the lights on and providing basic services, according to an August report by the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.
"Deteriorating economic, health and living conditions" in Cuba, the report warns, are "dangerously similar" to the circumstances that sparked the 1994 rafters crisis, when 30,790 Cubans fled to the United States.
There are no signs of an exodus, the report said, but unhappiness with Fidel Castro's socialist government is growing.
Tensions are mounting, Cuban dissidents agree.
"There is total discontent," said Alain Gomez Ramos, 27, an independent journalist who is part of the opposition.
During the first half of the year, the U.S. Coast Guard picked up more than 1,500 Cubans at sea, the highest number in 10 years.
A Cuban Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, conceded that some Cubans are frustrated and want to leave. But he contended support for the revolutionary government is not unraveling. Most people, he said, still back Mr. Castro, whose government has endured the most severe and longest-lasting U.S. economic sanctions ever imposed.
"If your father promises to take you to Disneyland, then tells you later you can't go, sure you'll complain about it," the official said. "But you still love your father."What's certain, many Cubans say, is that there's a widening gap between the gloomy mood on Havana's streets and the government's upbeat official line, which predicts that the economy this year will grow at an astonishing 9 percent, thanks in a large part to Venezuela, Cuba's newest and most important ally.
"I've stopped trying to understand this country," said a veteran former Cuban intelligence official, sitting down for a hearty meal of roast pork, black beans and fried plantains. "In April, the government said our energy problems were over. Then we had the worst blackouts ever. Still, Fidel gives the impression this is the best country in the world."
Billboards showing a smiling Mr. Castro and the words "Vamos Bien" ("We're Doing Well") appear throughout Havana, belying Cuba's brutal summer of 2005.
Hurricane Dennis plowed across the island in July, causing $1.4 million in damage and wrecking the country's already decaying power grid. Rolling power outages of six to 12 hours became common. And an estimated 2.5 million of the country's 11.3 million residents were left with no running water, according to the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.
The storm added to devastation from Cuba's worst drought ever, which has caused an estimated $1.2 billion in crop and livestock losses since 2003.
Despite such setbacks, Castro supporters forge ahead, voicing optimism that their economic and political alliance with Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil producer, will help them weather hard times ahead.
"Cuban officials are convinced that Venezuela will save them. It's the last card the Cuban government is playing," said Edgar Lopez Moreno, 28, a member of the dissident movement.
Among dozens of agreements reached this year: Venezuela sells Cuba 90,000 barrels of oil per day at cut-rate prices while Cuban doctors treat tens of thousands of Venezuelan patients for free or at a low cost.
Cuban officials say the oil-for-doctors swap and other treaties along with trade pacts with China and Vietnam will turn around the country's tough economic straits within one year.
But many Cubans can't wait, Mr. Lopez said.
"Young people aren't interested in political discourse," he said. "Ninety percent of them want to abandon the country."
Those staying behind, meantime, try to find humor in their difficult straits.
Jose Fuster, a famous Cuban artist dubbed the "Picasso of the Caribbean," managed to incorporate the country's energy woes into a piece of his artwork, a seven-foot tiled crocodile with an energy-saving light bulb mounted on its head.
"Look here," he said, pulling a switch, "no electricity."
Others tells jokes.
"Pepito, who's to blame for all these blackouts?" one joke begins.
"I have no idea," another man says. "But when I find him, I'm going to grab him by the beard, throw him on the ground and break his other kneecap."
Mr. Castro fell after a speech in October 2004, shattering his left knee. But he made a quick recovery and was making frequent appearances on Cuban television this spring, telling the people that better times were ahead.
The Cuban government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade its antiquated power plants, he said in a July 26 speech.
Already, blackouts have begun to diminish, the Foreign Ministry official said.
"This country continues recovering and advancing despite all the difficulties," he said. "And claims that Cuba isn't progressing are wishful thinking."
He contends that Bush administration officials, U.S.-financed dissidents and the media deliberately exaggerate the extent of Cuba's problems anything to give the U.S. a pretext to invade.
President Bush hasn't been subtle about his wish for regime change.
In late July, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice named a "Cuba transition coordinator," Caleb McCarry, a former staffer for the House Committee on International Relations.
"Liberty and freedom ... are not America's gifts, but gifts from the Creator," and that is why the U.S. promotes democracy around the world, she said in announcing the appointment.
Cuban officials criticize what they call Washington's interventionist approach and mockingly call Mr. McCarry the wanna-be "governor" of Cuba.
"Surely he will receive a juicy salary in his new job, but Caleb McCarry, I assure you, will retire without setting foot in Cuba," Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told reporters.
E-mail teaton@dallasnews.com
(H/T Daniel)
Posted by George Moneo at August 19, 2005 04:17 PM
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Comments
Unlike the regime's official's claim, most cubans are hating Castro.
Posted by: Stefania at August 19, 2005 05:37 PM
I love the post Daniel made in the other thread. "Chistes o muerte. Seremos como pepito."
Posted by: conductor at August 19, 2005 10:36 PM
"Surely he will receive a juicy salary in his new job, but Caleb McCarry, I assure you, will retire without setting foot in Cuba," Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told reporters."
If it was up to me, after Iran and Syria, you'd be next, pal.
Posted by: mbennett at August 20, 2005 04:00 AM
What an article fron the Herald. Once again proves that the US' current actions in Cuba are meaningless.
Posted on Sat, Aug. 20, 2005
M O R E N E W S F R O M
• Cuba
• Fat Albert
• US News
• World News
• Central America
U.S. & CUBA
Deflated blimps limit broadcasts to Cuba
The blimps that carry the TV Martí signal to Havana ruptured last month. The result: less programming than usual.
BY FRANCES ROBLES
frobles@herald.com
The ''Fat Albert'' blimps that broadcast TV Martí to Cuba and scanned the Florida Straits for drug smugglers are skinny now, ruptured by the unforgiving winds of hurricane season.
The $3 million blimps that hovered over the lower Florida Keys were torn apart July 9 in 46 mph winds during Hurricane Dennis, U.S. government officials confirmed.
That means TV Martí's 31 ½ hours of weekly programming have been slashed to fewer than 10 hours broadcast by satellite and the U.S. military's flying radio stations known as Commando Solo C-130s.
SIGNALS JAMMED
Few people watch the U.S.-government station's programs because Cuba jams the signal. And critics say that the fact it took the U.S. media more than five weeks to notice the blimps were missing proves the station has no impact.
''If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound?'' said Joe García, a member of the board of directors of the Cuban-American National Foundation. ``Well if a TV Martí balloon blew up but nobody watched it, does it really matter?''
The two blimps stationed at Cudjoe Key -- dubbed ''Fat Albert'' after the Bill Cosby character -- are more formally known as tethered aerostat systems. Twice the size of Goodyear blimps, they are enormous fabric balloons filled with helium.
Anchored by cables, they carry radars used to spot drug-smuggling airplanes and boats and the equipment that broadcast programs to Cuba, where the government controls virtually all the news media.
OUT OF TIME
When there is time, the Air Force, which operates the blimps, deflates the aerostats before a big storm. But it takes at least three days and low winds to accomplish that, and Dennis didn't offer either.
The storm passed through the Keys in the early hours of July 9, dumping six inches of rain and killing one person. The Air Force removed the equipment and docked the twin Alberts to their mooring towers to let them ride it out, said Air Force spokesman Maj. Vic Hines.
''My sense is that they were torn up,'' Hines said.
The last time a storm destroyed one of the blimps was in 1998, when Hurricane Georges ripped through the Keys. Another blimp broke free in 1981 and was shot down by a fighter jet.
Air Force officials said the drug surveillance knocked out by Dennis was picked up by other radars, and a replacement aerostat is almost online. But there is no timetable for the one for TV Martí, an $11.2 million-a-year program that offers a broad range of news and other programming with an anti-Castro twist.
STILL BROADCASTING
A spokesman for the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, the U.S. government entity that runs TV and Radio Martí, said the television station is still broadcasting about eight hours a week: four hours by satellite, which requires a special dish for reception not widely available in Cuba, and another four broadcast Saturday evenings by the C130 airplane.
Radio Martí has not been affected because its signal is broadcast from other locations.
The loss of the blimp ''is regrettable, because it's one of the ways the TV signal gets to Cuba,'' said Office of Cuba Broadcasting spokesman Joe O'Connell. ``But on the other hand, it's the one the Cubans jam.''
Herald calls to the station's Miami office were not returned.
The communist government has long jammed the TV and radio signals fairly successfully, particularly in Havana, which holds 2.2 million of Cuba's 11 million people.
''You can't really see the shows during the week,'' Angel Pablo Polanco, an independent journalist in Havana, said in a telephone interview. ``The signal we're getting is the one that comes on Saturdays with the C-130. We're getting that signal better than ever.''
Polanco said Cubans enjoy the Saturday shows because they offer a sharply different view of the news. ''People love it,'' Polanco said.
WASTE OF MONEY?
Since Radio Martí went on the air 20 years ago, the U.S. government has spent about $100 million on the program, which has been blasted by people such as the Foundation's García as a patronage mill and a waste of taxpayers' money.
The Senate is considering a proposal to set aside $37.6 million in funding for the broadcasts to Cuba, including $10 million for the purchase of a C-130 dedicated exclusively to Cuba broadcasts.
The current C-130 is operated by the U.S. military. The planes' signals are difficult to jam because of its constantly shifting locations.
Posted by: pototo at August 20, 2005 07:10 AM
I just emailed the reporter thanking he/she? for exposing the reality of the conditions that Cubans have lived under for the past 46 years. A little at a time.... We need to keep the pressure on the reporters in the MSM to continue bringing light to what Cuba is really like, and uncover the myth of Cuba being an Island of tourism and pleasure!!
Posted by: carmen at August 20, 2005 11:52 AM
So now the Cuban American National Foundation is opposed to Radio and TV Martí! The electrical force of poor Más Canosa spinning in his grave would be enough to power both stations.
Posted by: M.A.T. at August 20, 2005 02:43 PM
So now the Cuban American National Foundation is opposed to Radio and TV Martí! The electrical force generated by poor Más Canosa spinning in his grave would be enough to power both stations.
Posted by: M.A.T. at August 20, 2005 02:44 PM
