At 50, Cuba's revolution showing its age

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/12/31/cuba.anniversary/

At 50, Cuba's revolution showing its age
From Morgan Neill
CNN Havana Bureau Chief
12-31-8

Story Highlights
On anniversary of Fidel Castro's rise to power, Cuba tries to adapt
Castro's brother Raul faces challenges of poverty, political dissent
Raul's pragmatism supplants idealism of Fidel's regime

HAVANA, Cuba (CNN) -- Thursday marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution, when Fidel Castro and a group of guerrillas toppled a longstanding U.S.-backed dictator.

A Cuban youth passes a Havana storefront poster touting the 50th anniversary of Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution.

But January 1, 1959, was a long time ago. In Cuba today, when people refer to "the revolution," they often mean the country's aging, established government.

After so many years, people's hopes for the revolution's future are hardly revolutionary.

"I hope that it continues to move forward, because this country needs development. We're really behind," said a student who did not give his name.

"More opportunities in the economy and in transportation," another man said.

But there was a time when the goals were much loftier.

In the first days of 1959, when Castro and his bearded rebels rolled into Havana on tanks and other captured vehicles, they talked of sweeping changes -- an end to corruption, justice for the poor and independence from foreign domination.

A half-century later, their achievements are a mixed bag.

The government often points to free health care as a measure of its success.

"Cuba is a global medical power," said Joaquín García Salabarría, the vice minister of public health. "Nobody can doubt that."

Also touted by the government: education. Literacy rates are among the world's highest, and access to higher education is widespread.

But students question why they can't travel freely, and why their access to the Internet is so limited.

Most Cubans can barely make ends meet, and while the government blames a U.S. trade embargo imposed in 1962, critics say it's just bad management. They say the gains of the revolution have come at too heavy a cost.

Dissident groups say Cuba holds more than 200 political prisoners, an accusation the government denies.

Television, radio and newspapers are all controlled by the state.

Cuba marks the 50th anniversary of the revolution with a new president, Raul Castro, who officially took the reins in February because of the prolonged illness of his brother, Fidel Castro.

But this year, Raul Castro faced three devastating hurricanes, rising prices for food imports and plummeting prices for nickel, one of Cuba's most important exports.

In a speech this week, the president warned Cubans -- who on average earn the equivalent of less than $20 a month -- to prepare for belt-tightening.

"The accounts don't square up," Raul Castro told the National Assembly. "You have to act with realism and adjust the dreams to the true possibilities."

That pragmatic approach is a far cry from the idealism in the early days of the revolution led by his brother.

"I think that celebrations of the 50th anniversary are also marked by a real sense that sustaining this experiment and institutionalizing it is going to require major, major lifting in a very short term by the people running the country today," said Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations.

That, in turn, could mean making changes to deal with a new environment. But, ironically, change is about the last thing people here expect from the revolution.

All About Cuba • Fidel Castro • Raul Castro • Political Dissent

Cuban government backs calls to combat homophobia

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gbyA5ykfr5l1fOWDHLZmFSA8zCawD90NKKO00

Cuban government backs calls to combat homophobia
By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ
5-17-8

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba's gay community celebrated unprecedented openness — and high-ranking political alliances — with a government-backed campaign against homophobia on Saturday.

The meeting at a convention center in Havana's Vedado district may have been the largest gathering of openly gay activists ever on the communist-run island. President Raul Castro's daughter Mariela, who has promoted the rights of sexual minorities, presided.

"This is a very important moment for us, the men and women of Cuba, because for the first time we can gather in this way and speak profoundly and with scientific basis about these topics," said Castro, director of Cuba's Center for Sexual Education.

Mariela Castro joined government leaders and hundreds of activists at the one-day conference for the International Day Against Homophobia that featured shows, lectures, panel discussions and book presentations. A station also offered blood-tests for sexually transmitted diseases.

Cuban state television gave prime-time play Friday to the U.S. film "Brokeback Mountain," which tells the story of two cowboys who conceal their homosexual affair.

Prejudice against homosexuals remains deeply rooted in Cuban society, but the government has steadily moved away from the Puritanism of the 1960s and 1970s, when homosexuals hid their sexuality for fear of being ridiculed, fired from work or even imprisoned.

Now Cuba's parliament is studying proposals to legalize same-sex unions and give gay couples the benefits that people in traditional marriages enjoy.

Parliament head Ricardo Alarcon said the government needs to do more to promote gay rights, but said many Cubans still need to be convinced.

Things "are advancing, but must continue advancing, and I think we should do that in a coherent, appropriate and precise way because these are topics that have been taboo and continue to be for many," Alarcon told reporters.

Some at the conference spoke of streaming out into the streets for a spontaneous gay-pride parade, but others urged caution.

The gay rights movement should be careful not to "flood" Cuban society with a message that many are not ready to hear, physician and gay activist Alberto Roque cautioned.

And Mariela Castro said gay activists should opt for more subtle ways to chip away at deep-seated homophobic attitudes.

Defending equal rights for Cubans, of all sexual orientations, is a key principal of the Cuban revolution led by her uncle Fidel Castro, who overthrew dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, she said.

"The freedom of sexual choice and gender identity (are) exercises in equality and social justice," she said.

Four possible successors to Fidel Castro

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-biobox20feb20,1,5914646.story

Four possible successors to Fidel Castro
February 20, 2008

Raul Castro

The brother who has filled in since Fidel Castro was sidelined by illness is a pragmatist more concerned with putting food on tables than with spreading revolution abroad.

The outwardly dour 76-year-old lacks his brother's charisma and has lived in his shadow for decades. But as acting president, Raul Castro has encouraged Cubans to openly debate the shortcomings of communism.

The camera-shy army general has acknowledged that wages paid by Cuba's socialist state are too low. Yet he is not expected to follow China's example and free up a market economy, at least not while his brother is alive. And he has promised more socialism.

Since their guerrilla war and the triumph of their revolution on Jan. 1, 1959, Raul Castro has long been his brother's most trusted right-hand man.

Carlos Lage

The son of Havana laborers became a vice president of the Council of State in 1993, positioning him as the third-most powerful figure, behind the two Castros.

Lage, 56, studied medicine at the University of Havana, earning a degree in pediatrics. He has been involved in politics since his student days, becoming head of the Federation of University Students in 1975.

He was elected to the National Assembly in 1976 and a decade later was recruited by Fidel Castro for the Council of State and the Assistance and Support Team, the strategic planning force from which he gained national attention with his Special Period reforms.

Appointed secretary of the Council of Ministers in 1990, he has served a prime ministerial function, albeit under constant guidance -- some would say intrusion -- from Castro. Although he is thought to support free and direct parliamentary elections and to advocate more private enterprise to boost services and quality of life, his few public expressions on international relations have toed the revolutionary line.

Ricardo Alarcon

The president of the National Assembly serves as the voice of the Havana hierarchy at the annual U.N. General Assembly and on issues of international conflict.

Alarcon, 70, has made the public case for the U.S. extradition of radical anti-Castro exile Luis Posada Carriles for trial in Venezuela, on charges that he bombed a Cuban civilian airliner in 1976, as well as for the release of the Cuban Five, jailed in the U.S. since 2001 on espionage charges.

An undergraduate at the University of Havana when Fidel Castro was plotting his revolution, Alarcon served as a leader of the National Student Front, organizing high school and university students in boycotts, building takeovers and street protests. He joined the Foreign Ministry after earning his doctorate and in less than a year was heading the ministry's Latin American directorate.

In 1966, he was appointed ambassador to the U.N., a post he held until 1978.

Felipe Perez Roque

The youngest of Cuba's emerging leaders and among the least likely to stray from Castro's policies, the 42-year-old has been foreign minister since 1999, when he became the first Cabinet member who had been born after the revolution.

A student of electrical engineering at a Havana technical school, Perez Roque followed the well-trodden path to power through the Federation of University Students into the Communist Party ranks in his early 20s.

His activism caught Castro's eye, and he was submitted as a candidate for the National Assembly in 1986, earning a seat in the rubber-stamp parliament three years before being appointed Castro's personal secretary and gatekeeper.

Not known to have expressed support for loosening political or economic strictures, he has served as palace bulldog on contentious and internationally sensitive issues.

From Times Staff and Wire Reports

Castro resigns as president, state-run paper reports

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/02/19/castro/index.html

Castro resigns as president, state-run paper reports
Fidel Castro announces resignation as Cuban president, commander in chief
Castro ceded power to brother Raul Castro in July 2006 after intestinal surgery
Castro's reign started in 1959, outlasted nine U.S. presidents

HAVANA, Cuba (CNN) -- Fidel Castro announced his resignation as president of Cuba and commander-in-chief of Cuba's military on Tuesday, according to a letter published in the state-run newspaper, Granma.

Castro, 81, temporarily handed power to his younger brother Raul Castro in July 2006 after undergoing intestinal surgery. He hasn't been seen in public since his surgery, but he has appeared in numerous videos and photos in state media.

The announcement of Castro's resignation appeared just before 3 a.m. on the Web site of the state-run newspaper.

The news is likely to send shock waves across the island and through the tens of thousands of Cuban exiles who have sought refugee in the United States.

In December 2007, a Cuban television news anchor read a letter reportedly written by Fidel Castro promising he would not "cling to office" or be an impediment to rising young leaders.

Castro took power in Cuba in 1959 and has ruled the island nation ever since, governing the first communist nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Fidel Castro captured the world's attention and imagination at 32 when the bearded revolutionary led a band of guerillas that overthrew a corrupt dictatorship -- and then became an irritating thorn in Washington's paw by embracing communism and cozying up to the Soviet Union.

For the next 47 years, Castro reigned in Havana with an iron hand, outlasting nine American presidents and defying a punishing U.S. economic embargo designed to dislodge him.

Raul Castro is generally seen as more pragmatic and less inclined to deliver the kind of long-winded speeches for which his brother is famous.

Ordinary Cubans have wondered whether a permanent change in power in Cuba will lead to lower food prices, higher salaries and more freedom to travel.

Dissidents freed as Raúl Castro signals change

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cuba/story/0,,2155967,00.html

Dissidents freed as Raúl Castro signals change of tack in Cuba
· Dozens released as talk grows of Fidel's bad health
· Overtures to US as small reforms bid to improve life
Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent
Saturday August 25, 2007
Guardian

Raúl Castro has started to make cautious changes in Cuba which could signal plans for political and economic reform.

Since he took over from his brother Fidel, dozens of dissidents have been released, an olive branch has been extended to Washington and there is talk of easing communist controls on property and agricultural production.

Three political prisoners have been freed in the past fortnight, the latest being Armando Betancourt Reina, a journalist jailed for 15 months after reporting on the eviction of a family in Camagüey.

Analysts said Raúl, 76, who has been acting president since illness forced his brother to step down last year, was experimenting with stealth reforms to improve living conditions and morale without eroding government control.

The defence minister has a reputation for hard-nosed pragmatism, in contrast to the more ideological Fidel, who at 81 embodies the 1959 revolution but no longer manages policy.

The changes could easily be reversed, but they signal a desire to ease the poverty and sense of claustrophobia which afflicts many Cubans, said a senior western diplomat. "There is a real effort to look at what doesn't work and to change it. Raúl wants to make life more bearable. The hope is that by addressing some specific complaints the system can continue."

The Venezuela president, Hugo Chávez, has shipped in 90,000 subsidised barrels of oil daily, easing an energy crisis and giving the government resources it has not seen since the height of Soviet subvention.

The dissidents who have been freed have slipped back to their homes with little or no official comment. Mr Betancourt, who worked for Miami-based website Nueva Prensa Cuba, was freed on Monday, said the Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York.

Francisco Chaviano, a human rights activist, and Lázaro González Adán, a labour union activist, were also released this month. The Havana-based Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation said more than a fifth of the island's 316 political prisoners had been freed in the past year.

Restrictions on free speech and opposition politics have not been lifted and the tiny group of dissidents has not become more outspoken. "Still in force is a police state whose nature is reflected in almost every aspect of national life," the human rights commission said in June.

However, some analysts say the acting president and his ministers are warily exploring new policies with a view to emulating Vietnam, where communists preside over market-driven prosperity, and avoiding the Soviet Union's unsuccessful perestroika.

Cuba's education and health systems, the pillars of the regime's legitimacy, remain intact, but severe shortages of food, transport and housing cause deep resentment which has reportedly shaken Raúl and other officials. In addition to pursuing better relations with the US, which were rebuffed by the Bush administration, Raúl has called for a national dialogue on corruption and inefficiency.

Controls on agricultural production have been loosened to give farmers more incentive to produce, and there is speculation that it will become legal to buy a car without government permission.

Officials have publicly fretted that young Cubans will be seduced by consumerism unless conditions improve.

Hundreds of buses are being imported from China to ease the queues and overcrowding which dog public transport, and a big overhaul of resorts is under way to try to win back tourists from Caribbean rivals.

Fidel, who has not been seen in public since surgery for an intestinal illness in July last year, is suspected of acting as a brake on some of the proposed changes.

There is speculation that his health has deteriorated. There were no photographs to mark his birthday on August 13, and his opinion columns have become fewer.

On a visit to Brazil this week, the foreign minister, Felipe Pérez Roque, sought to dispel the rumours about Fidel's health. "Fidel is fine and is very disciplined about his recovery," he said.

Raul Castro speaks of Cuba

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-cuba27jul27,1,4246359.story?coll=la-headlines-world

Raul Castro speaks of Cuba needing 'structural changes'
By Ray Sánchez, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
July 27, 2007

CAMAGUEY, CUBA — An estimated 100,000 cheering loyalists crammed a plaza here as acting President Raul Castro presided for the first time over ceremonies marking the start of the Cuban Revolution.

In a one-hour speech, Castro acknowledged that the economy has failed to meet the needs of working people and signaled the need for unspecified "structural changes."

"No one country can afford to spend more than what they have," he said during a ceremony peppered with praise for his convalescing older brother, Fidel. "To have more, we have to begin by producing more, with a sense of rationality and efficiency."

Raul Castro's first major policy address since taking power came a year after Fidel Castro's last public appearances, when the longtime Cuban president gave speeches in the eastern cities of Bayamo and Holguin. Five days later, in a statement read on television, Fidel Castro announced that he had to undergo emergency surgery and ceded the presidency, the leadership of the Communist Party and military responsibilities to his younger brother.

"These have truly been very difficult months, although with a diametrically different impact to that expected by our enemies, who were wishing for chaos to take hold and for Cuban socialism to collapse," he said, referring to U.S. predictions.

Raul Castro also reiterated his willingness to open discussions with the U.S., saying that if the next U.S. administration after the 2008 election "desists from their arrogance and decides to converse in a civilized manner, it would be a welcome change."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack responded: "The only real dialogue that's needed is with the Cuban people."

Philip Peters, a Cuba expert at the Lexington Institute think tank in Virginia, said Raul Castro appeared to set the stage for serious structural changes in a centralized economy molded largely by his brother.

"He's creating the expectation that they are looking at some larger policy changes," Peters said. "It's a way to tell the public they recognize a lot of people have trouble making ends meet."

Cuba watchers and some dissidents question whether Raul Castro will be able to implement even modest economic reforms as long as his brother is alive. Fidel Castro's behind-the-scenes presence would probably deter him, they said.