Gerard Dion's Blog, page 8
February 27, 2017
Exile initiative aims to help hundreds of Cubans stranded in Mexico
Alma Aguilera helps organize donations to be transported to Mexico to help Cubans stranded in that nation following the end to an immigration policy known as “wet foot, dry foot.” Roberto Koltun rkoltun@miamiherald.com
By Abel Fernández
abfernandez@elnuevoherald.com
A group of exile organizations and volunteers are trying to help hundreds of Cubans who are stranded in Mexico following the end of the so-called “wet foot, dry foot” policy on Jan. 12.
Vigilia Mambisa, Democracy Movement, WWFE La Poderosa radio station and other organizations and volunteers have set up a tent on Miami’s Calle Ocho at Southwest 13th Avenue, next to a monument dedicated to the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
More than 4,000 pounds of food, personal hygiene products and other donations have been collected so far. But much more is needed to fill a tractor trailer headed to Mexico on Sunday.
“It’s the people of the community who are mainly helping,” said Ramón Saúl Sánchez of the Democracy Movement. “They are arriving with clothes, food, bedspreads, toiletries.”
Miguel Saavedra, of the Vigilia Mambisa, said that “people from different nationalities have come to make donations in solidarity with the Cubans.”
U.S.-bound Cubans stranded in Mexico say they are victims of extortion and more
The donations will be transported in a 53-foot truck traveling by road to a church in the border city of Laredo, Texas. The cargo will be received by Sergio Pérez, a Cuban-American businessman who lives in Las Vegas and who has organized similar operations elsewhere in the U.S. Last month, Pérez temporarily closed his restaurant in Las Vegas, the Florida Café, to gather donations for the stranded Cubans. Some 22 tons of food and other basic necessities have been collected so far.
The supplies are transported from Laredo, Texas to several churches that are assisting some 800 Cubans stranded in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, Pérez explained.
In late January, Cubans who were stranded in Mexico complained about the “indifference of Cubans in Miami.”
Pérez, who is flying to Miami on Saturday to finish the preparations for the trip to Mexico, said the Cuban Club in California is also collecting supplies for stranded Cubans.
The businessman said that he has noticed some “disunity” within the Cuban community in exile and urged everyone to help the stranded Cubans.
“We need unity in the Cuban-American community,” he said.
I am doing this to help these Cubans because that’s what my heart dictates, because I went through the same thing.
Juan Cabrera, volunteer
Juan Cabrera, the owner and driver of the truck carrying the supplies, said they need to collect about 40,000 pounds to fill the vehicle.
“I am doing this to help these Cubans because that’s what my heart dictates, because I went through the same thing,” said Cabrera, who himself was temporarily stranded in the Bahamas in the 1990s.
“We need the support of the community,” Cabrera said, adding that donations also are being collected in Tampa and Orlando.
If organizers do not manage to fill the truck in Miami, Cabrera said he will stop in Tampa and Orlando to load up more goods.
“This truck is going to leave full,” Cabrera said.
Follow Abel Fernández on Twitter: @abelfglez
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/natio...
Cuba blocks Chilean, Mexican former officials from entry
Cuba stoked tensions across Latin America on Tuesday by blocking a former Chilean minister and one of Mexico’s ex-presidents from traveling to the island to attend an award ceremony hosted by political dissidents.
Chile said it was recalling its ambassador to Cuba for consultation and asking the Cuban government why Mariana Aylwin, a former education minister and daughter of an ex-president, was blocked from entering Cuba on Monday night.
Aylwin was traveling to the island to receive a prize on behalf of her father. The event, planned for Wednesday, was organized by the Latin American Network of Youth for Democracy, a group opposed to the Communist government.
Cuba opposes anything that legitimizes dissidents, which it claims are funded by U.S. interests. The government is bracing for a tougher U.S. approach to the island under President Donald Trump.
“Exercising the right (to travel between nations) should not be interfered with, especially given that Chile has recognized the feats of various figures in Cuban history and politics,” Chile’s Foreign Relations Ministry said in a statement.
Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon tweeted on Tuesday that Cuban immigration prevented him from boarding a flight from Mexico City to Havana to attend the same meeting.
Aylwin was prevented from checking in to her flight in Chile’s capital, Santiago, apparently at the request of the Cuban authorities, she told journalists on Tuesday.
Calderon, from Mexico’s conservative National Action Party, ruled Mexico from 2006 to 2012 and improved relations with Cuba, which had been severely tested by his predecessor.
Mexico’s foreign ministry said on its Twitter account that it “regretted” Cuba’s decision to block Calderon’s entry.
The group, known as JuventudLAC, has also invited Luis Almagro, the head of the Organization of American States, which suspended Cuba in 1962 for being Communist. It agreed in 2009 to lift the ruling, but Cuba declined to rejoin the Washington-based group, which it deems an instrument of its former Cold War foe the United States.
“The behavior of the Cuban government is deeply gross, vulgar and rude,” Rosa Maria Paya, the group’s leader and daughter of dissident Oswaldo Paya, who died in 2012, told Chilean media.
“We have all received information that (invited guests) are receiving pressure from the Cuban government.”
Mariana Aylwin is seen as an ideological leader of the most conservative segment of Chile’s center-left ruling coalition. Her father was Chile’s first democratically elected president after the 1973 to 1990 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery in Santiago; Additional reporting by Sarah Marsh in Havana; Editing by James Dalgleish and Richard Chang)
U.S. senators say Cuba’s Castro keen to continue detente
U.S. senators say Cuba’s Castro keen to continue detente | Reuters
By Sarah Marsh | HAVANA
HAVANA Cuban President Raul Castro made it clear to a visiting U.S. congressional delegation that his country was intent on pursuing market reform and detente with the United States, U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy told a news conference on Wednesday.
Leahy, a Democrat who has been key in efforts to normalize relations, was leading a bipartisan group of five U.S. senators and a representative on a three-day visit to the Communist-run island to discuss ties and explore business opportunities.
Cuba watchers are looking closely for signs of how the fragile U.S. detente with Cuba will fare under Republican President Donald Trump, who has threatened to backtrack on it if he does not get “a better deal.”
Analysts say Cuba has played its cards well so far by not responding shrilly to such provocation and demonstrating its continued willingness to engage under the new president.
Castro “wants reform to continue, he wants the movement forwards to continue,” said Leahy at the news conference in the U.S. embassy, after meeting with the Cuban president on Tuesday. “The number of people he had from his administration talk to us made it very clear they want us to continue.”
The delegation met with Cuba’s foreign, trade and agriculture ministers as well as with Castro.
The group included Republican Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi who on Monday oversaw the signing of agreements between Cuba and two Mississippi ports.
“Increasingly this issue of normalizing relations with Cuba is bipartisan, this isn’t just Democrats, there are a lot of Republicans that believe we ought to do this as well,” said Representative James McGovern, a Democrat.
Support for the detente was also growing among the business and academic communities, said McGovern, who was traveling with a group of U.S. biotech experts keen to explore the sector in Cuba.
“The movement is more significant in the U.S.A. today than at any time in my career in the Senate,” said Leahy. “And I am the dean of the Senate, I have been there the longest,” added Leahy, who was first elected to the Senate in 1974.
The White House said earlier this month that the Trump administration was in the midst of “a full review of all U.S. policies towards Cuba.” The visit came as a diplomatic incident highlighted continuing concerns about restrictions on human rights on the island.
Cuban authorities prevented the head of the Organization of American States (OAS), a former Chilean minister and an ex-president of Mexico from traveling to Cuba to attend an award ceremony on Wednesday hosted by dissidents.
Cuba opposes anything that legitimizes dissidents, who it claims are mercenaries funded by foreign interests. It also views the OAS as an imperialist instrument of the United States.
OAS chief Luis Almagro reported that Cuban authorities said they were “astonished” at his involvement in “anti-Cuban activities” which were “an unacceptable provocation.”
A U.S. embassy official attended the ceremony, organized by the Latin American Network of Youth for Democracy, a group opposed to the Communist government. Almagro’s seat was left empty in symbolic protest.
“It may not be the smoothest of paths but it will continue,” Leahy said of the U.S.-Cuban detente. “I would not be here today on one more trip if I didn’t think that continuation of that progress is inevitable.”
January 29, 2017
Dear Donald Trump: A letter from Cuba
Cubans and visitors from other countries gather to observe the flag-raising ceremony for the newly reopened US embassy on August 14, 2015 in Havana, Cuba [Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]
by
Elaine Diaz Rodriguez
Elaine Diaz Rodriguez is the editor-in-chief at Periodismo de Barrio, a Havana-based independent news digital magazine.
There can be no true friendship between the governments of Cuba and the United States. They represent two opposing political systems and the first has long been denying the right of the second to exist and vice versa. The most we can expect is tolerance and respect.
And that is exactly what we achieved, in a way, after December 17, 2014 under Barack Obama’s administration. By “we”, I mean the 11 million Cubans living on the island and the two million immigrants living abroad.
But people do not have to play by the same rules as governments. There has always been true friendship between the people of Cuba and the people of the US.
In February 2015, I travelled for a conference to Traverse City, in Michigan. I had been living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for more than six months as I pursued the Nieman fellowship in journalism at Harvard University, and I was feeling homesick. There is only one cure for Cuban homesickness: a hug.
At a tiny airport in Traverse City, with temperatures close to zero degrees, my American host hugged me. And it felt like home.
The “people-to-people” programmes, fostered by several policies during Obama’s government, took a bet on the ability of both societies to share the best of our countries, without intermediaries. We, the people, often try to find those things that bring us together rather than those that divide us.
I was born in 1985. I don’t remember the collapse of the Soviet Union, but I still remember what we called the “Special Period”, which, by the way, was neither short nor special. Eighty-five percent of Cuba’s trade relations had been with the Soviet Union and the rest of the socialist camp. This meant that most of our clothes, food, technological supplies and pretty much everything else besides sugar came from the Soviet Union at highly-subsidised prices.
People still remember the years after this as the “there is no” era: there is no food, no shoes, no clothes, no public transportation. Scarcity was the norm. The reason given by Cuban politicians for this scarcity was the US embargo.
Today, the US embargo is still given as the reason for anything that goes wrong with the Cuban economy. And almost every Cuban agrees that the embargo must be lifted, not as a concession to the government, but as an opportunity for Cuban society to be more prosperous.
It is our right, as Cuban citizens, to be given a fair opportunity to develop our nation without other countries making us pay a price for any mistakes.
If we fail to do so, if we cannot develop a so-called “sustainable and prosperous” society, the US would not have to subvert the political system in Cuba because there would be no political system to subvert. So far, we have not had this chance.
It is your duty, Donald Trump, as the President of the United States of America, to represent all of your citizens and not only a couple of politicians who keep speaking on behalf of the Cuban people without having ever set foot on the island.
It is my president’s duty to represent all Cuban citizens, even those who have left the country for economic or political reasons.
Both leaders have spoken loudly: we want relationships, we want embassies, we want the negotiations to keep going, we want to reach an agreement in every area and we are open to dialogue.
We people want to be close, not far. We want to build bridges, not walls.
Source: Al Jazeera
Cuban entrepreneurs dream big but the government is in their way
BY NORA GÁMEZ TORRES
ngameztorres@elnuevoherald.com
Like entrepreneurs in any country, Cuban entrepreneurs want more access to resources and fewer bureaucratic obstacles to expand and reinvest in their businesses, according to a new study based on interviews conducted on the island.
“I would like those who govern to begin to think more about how to make life simpler for citizens and less how to preserve the [government] precepts that have been proven to offer only hardship,” says a private real estate agent, who was among the 80 Cubans interviewed for Voces del cambio en el sector no estatal cubano (Voices of Change in the Cuban Non-State Sector).
The study, spearheaded by Cuban-born economist Carmelo Mesa Lago, includes interviews from Havana and surrounding provinces that were done without government approval. It is focused on four segments that are part of the so-called “non-state sector” of the Cuban economy, still highly centralized and controlled by the state: the self-employed; farmers who use state-owned parcels; corredores (brokers) of home sales; buyers and sellers of private homes; as well as workers of non-farm production and service cooperatives.
Among those interviewed are coffee shop owners and hairdressers; sellers of religious products for Santería; a chauffeur for rental cars used for weddings; massage therapists; photographers; and homeowners who rent to tourists. Absent from the study, however, are the owners of private restaurants known as paladares, which Mesa Lago attributed to the difficulty of accessing these entrepreneurs who, in many cases, function on the edge of legal bounds and do not want to attract attention to their business.
Among the great surprises of the interviews, he said, “was discovering the very high level of reinvestment that the self-employed engage in. Most, including those renting apartments and houses, reinvest.”
Another interesting section of the study, published in bookform by the Ibero-American publishing house and which is expected to have an edition available in Cuba, summarizes the main problems and aspirations of those interviewed: “One of the main barriers that they mention, and there was an impressive unanimity in this, is the level of state interference,” Mesa Lago said.
The prospects for a booming private sector have not changed much since a similar study, conducted by professors Ted Henken and Archibald Ritter, found that high prices for supplies, the absence of a wholesale market, high taxes, and over-regulation hindered the development of Cuban entrepreneurship.
The overwhelming majority of respondents in the Voces study also expressed their frustration with obstacles to move their business or work forward — from high prices of raw materials and supplies, low wages and bureaucracy, to poor access to the internet.
The so-called cuentapropistas were at the center of policy changes toward Cuba by former President Barack Obama. He met with them in Havana during an unprecedented visit to the island last year and issued executive orders to promote the export of their products to the United States and for them to import products from the U.S. But the Cuban government put up roadblocks, Mesa Lago opined, because it sees the development of cuentapropistas with “reluctance,” which is why the private sector is becoming “stagnant.” The absence of further reforms during the Communist Party Congress in April filled the self-employed with disappointment.
“The way of thinking has to change, not just our own, but of the people who govern us,” said a cooperative partner interviewed in the study. “They have to give us more freedom to grow, to continue to cooperate.”
Another unexpected result of the study was the high degree of satisfaction expressed by those who have decided to start a private business in Cuba, which has allowed them to gain autonomy and live better than those who depend on state wages.
Mesa Lago warned that the study has limitations and is not intended to be scientific. The sample, the economist said, is small and not fully representative of a private sector comprised of the self-employed and other workers. By including both entrepreneurs and other workers in the non-state sector and even home buyers, the survey could not be homogeneous and not all respondents answered the same questions. So any quantification or statistical analysis should not be taken as conclusive but as a starting point to gather more information on the subject.
The Cuban government has drawn up surveys for the self-employed but their results have not been published, Mesa Lago said, so the book “fills gaps in information about issues we did not know about, such as the characteristics of race and gender” in these sectors. Of those interviewed, 76 percent were state workers before launching their own business, 80 percent of all respondents were white, and 74 percent were men.
Although the sample is predominantly white, the quantitative analysis in the study found no significant relationship between skin color and other variables. Other scholars such as Alejandro de la Fuente have pointed out that the Afro-Cuban population is at a disadvantage in the emerging private sector compared with whites — who receive more remittances and support from abroad.
However, the same characteristics of the Voces survey, the under-representation of blacks and mulattoes in the official Census and the absence of official data on race in relation to the labor market, make it difficult to draw definitive conclusions on the subject.
Still, Mesa Lago emphasized the informative value of the study in a context where gathering this information independently of the State is extremely difficult and people are reluctant to provide personal information.
“We tried to see if we could do a survey with 200 people and it was impossible,” he said. “Even among the cooperatives we could not do the 25 interviews we planned. Nobody wanted to talk because the cooperatives depend on the state.
“The state decides that they will become cooperatives and workers have no choice, he added. “if they do not agree they are fired, then they do not dare to speak.”
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article128972349.html
Dear Donald Trump: A letter from Cuba
Cubans and visitors from other countries gather to observe the flag-raising ceremony for the newly reopened US embassy on August 14, 2015 in Havana, Cuba [Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]
by Elaine Diaz Rodriguez
Elaine Diaz Rodriguez is the editor-in-chief at Periodismo de Barrio, a Havana-based independent news digital magazine.
There can be no true friendship between the governments of Cuba and the United States. They represent two opposing political systems and the first has long been denying the right of the second to exist and vice versa. The most we can expect is tolerance and respect.
And that is exactly what we achieved, in a way, after December 17, 2014 under Barack Obama’s administration. By “we”, I mean the 11 million Cubans living on the island and the two million immigrants living abroad.
But people do not have to play by the same rules as governments. There has always been true friendship between the people of Cuba and the people of the US.
In February 2015, I travelled for a conference to Traverse City, in Michigan. I had been living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for more than six months as I pursued the Nieman fellowship in journalism at Harvard University, and I was feeling homesick. There is only one cure for Cuban homesickness: a hug.
At a tiny airport in Traverse City, with temperatures close to zero degrees, my American host hugged me. And it felt like home.
The “people-to-people” programmes, fostered by several policies during Obama’s government, took a bet on the ability of both societies to share the best of our countries, without intermediaries. We, the people, often try to find those things that bring us together rather than those that divide us.
I was born in 1985. I don’t remember the collapse of the Soviet Union, but I still remember what we called the “Special Period”, which, by the way, was neither short nor special. Eighty-five percent of Cuba’s trade relations had been with the Soviet Union and the rest of the socialist camp. This meant that most of our clothes, food, technological supplies and pretty much everything else besides sugar came from the Soviet Union at highly-subsidised prices.
People still remember the years after this as the “there is no” era: there is no food, no shoes, no clothes, no public transportation. Scarcity was the norm. The reason given by Cuban politicians for this scarcity was the US embargo.
Today, the US embargo is still given as the reason for anything that goes wrong with the Cuban economy. And almost every Cuban agrees that the embargo must be lifted, not as a concession to the government, but as an opportunity for Cuban society to be more prosperous.
It is our right, as Cuban citizens, to be given a fair opportunity to develop our nation without other countries making us pay a price for any mistakes.
If we fail to do so, if we cannot develop a so-called “sustainable and prosperous” society, the US would not have to subvert the political system in Cuba because there would be no political system to subvert. So far, we have not had this chance.
It is your duty, Donald Trump, as the President of the United States of America, to represent all of your citizens and not only a couple of politicians who keep speaking on behalf of the Cuban people without having ever set foot on the island.
It is my president’s duty to represent all Cuban citizens, even those who have left the country for economic or political reasons.
Both leaders have spoken loudly: we want relationships, we want embassies, we want the negotiations to keep going, we want to reach an agreement in every area and we are open to dialogue.
We people want to be close, not far. We want to build bridges, not walls.
Source: Al Jazeera
January 20, 2017
Trump Transition The inauguration is why I love America
President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania arrive for church service at St. Johnâs Episcopal Church across from the White House in Washington, Friday, Jan. 20, 2017, on Donald Trump’s inauguration day. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The inauguration is why I love America. Of all the presidential events, from election night to the State of the Union, from press conferences to state dinners, the inauguration is my favorite for one simple reason. More than any other moment, the inauguration is a picture of our Constitution, proof that we are a nation based on representation, not royalty.
In a single instance the three branches of government— the executive, judicial and legislative— come together for a united purpose. A new president takes the oath of office administered by the chief justice of the Supreme Court while standing in front of the U.S. Capitol that houses Congress.
This doesn’t mean that everyone is happy about the winner of an election, though many are. But it does mean that this American experiment, the “sacred fire of liberty” as George Washington called it in his first inaugural, is still burning today.
John F. Kennedy, who won by a mere 112,000 votes in a bitter election, poignantly explained America’s ceremonial unity at his 1961 inauguration. “We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom.”
Even during America’s darkest days in the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln used the inauguration to look optimistically at the halo of history as a sign of hope for a united future by saying, “The mystic chords of memory. . . will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched. . . by the better angels of our nature.”
Last week I had the unexpected opportunity to give an interview to SKY News Arabia about America’s inauguration. I said what I’ve written here, that the inauguration is a picture of our three branches of government and shows a peaceful transfer of power. When the reporter told me that my words would be translated into Arabic and broadcast in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, I teared up in the hope that maybe someone would better understand America and our form of government because of our inauguration ceremony.
George W. Bush’s words from his 2005 inauguration seemed profoundly relevant as I thought about those who don’t have the freedom to worship, speak or peacefully oppose their government. “We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world,” Bush said.
Because not everyone lives in a country that celebrates freedom and witnesses a change of executive presidential power every four or eight years, Ronald Reagan proclaimed at his 1981 inauguration that “In the eyes of many in the world, this every-four-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.”
This peaceful transfer of power is miraculous and taps our better angels through a ceremonial picture of unity broadcast to the world. That is why I love the inauguration. And the inauguration is why I love the United States of America.
Jane Hampton Cook is an award-winning author and a former White House webmaster. The author of nine books her latest is “The Burning of the White House: James & Dolley Madison and the War of 1812.” For more, visit her website, janecook.com.
Obama announces end to ‘wet foot, dry foot’ policy for Cuban refugees
President Barack Obama announced Thursday that he was ending a longstanding immigration policy that allowed any Cuban who made it to U.S. soil to stay and become a legal resident.
In a statement, Obama said the so-called “wet foot, dry foot” policy was “designed for a different era” of U.S.-Cuba relations.
Under the new policy, which takes effect immediately, Cubans who attempt to enter the U.S. illegally without qualifying for humanitarian relief will be sent back to the island.
“By taking this step,” Obama said, “we are treating Cuban migrants the same way we treat migrants from other countries.”
Obama added that the Havana government had agreed to accept Cubans ordered to leave the U.S., a concession that was a focus of months of negotiations. A senior administration official told the Associated Press the Cubans gave no assurances about treatment of those sent back to the country, but said political asylum remains an option for those concerned about persecution if they return.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said the move “goes a long way to putting our relationship with Cuba on equal terms with our relationships with other neighbors.”
Obama is using an administrative rule change to end the policy. President-elect Donald Trump could undo that rule after he is sworn in next week. He has criticized Obama’s moves to improve relations with Cuba. But ending a policy that has allowed hundreds of thousands of people to come to the United States without a visa also aligns with Trump’s commitment to tough immigration policies.
The “wet foot, dry foot” policy was put in place in 1995 by then-President Bill Clinton as a revision of a more liberal immigration policy. Until then, Cubans caught at sea trying to make their way to the United States were allowed into the country and were able to become legal residents after a year. The U.S. was reluctant to send people back to the communist island then run by Fidel Castro, and the Cuban government also generally refused to accept repatriated citizens.
The Cuban government has in the past complained bitterly about the special immigration privileges, saying they encourage Cubans to risk dangerous escape trips and drain the country of professionals. But it has also served as a release valve for the single-party state, allowing the most dissatisfied Cubans to seek better lives outside and become sources of financial support for relatives on the island.
Relations between the United States and Cuba were stuck in a Cold War freeze for decades, but Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro established full diplomatic ties and opened embassies in their capitals in 2015. Obama visited Havana last March.
U.S. and Cuban officials were meeting Thursday in Washington to coordinate efforts to fight human trafficking. A decades-old U.S. economic embargo, though, remains in place as does the Cuban Adjustment Act which lets Cubans become permanent residents a year after legally arriving in the U.S.
The official said that in recent years, most people fleeing the island have done so for economic reasons or to take advantage of the benefits they know they can receive if they make it to the U.S.
The official also cited an uptick in Cuban migration, particularly across the U.S.-Mexico border — an increase the official said reflected an expectation among Cubans that the Obama administration would soon move to end their special immigration status.
Since October 2012, more than 118,000 Cubans have presented themselves at ports of entry along the border, according to statistics published by the Homeland Security Department. During the 2016 budget year, which ended in September, a five-year high of more than 41,500 people came through the southern border. An additional 7,000 people arrived between October and November.
The influx has created burdens on other countries in the region that must contend with Cubans who have yet to reach the U.S. border, the official said.
The Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, which was started by President George W. Bush in 2006, is also being rescinded. The measure allowed Cuban doctors, nurses and other medical professionals to seek parole in the U.S. while on assignments abroad.
People already in the pipeline under both “wet foot, dry foot” and the medical parole program will be able to continue the process toward getting legal status.
The preferential treatment for Cubans reflected the political power of Cuban-Americans, especially in Florida, a critical state in presidential elections. That has been shifting in recent years. Older Cubans, particularly those who fled Castro’s regime, tend to reject Obama’s diplomatic overtures to Cuba. Younger Cuban-American voters have proven less likely than their parents and grandparents to define their politics by U.S.-Cuba relations. Exit polls show President Barack Obama managed roughly a split in the Florida Cuban vote in 2012, and Trump in November won the same group by a much narrower margin than many previous Republican nominees.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Obama will end ‘wet foot, dry foot’ policy for fleeing Cubans
© Getty
The Obama administration will end the controversial “wet foot, dry foot” policy that allows Cuban citizens who reach American shores to stay in the country.
President Obama said in a statement that the 20-year-old policy was “designed for a different era.”
“Effective immediately, Cuban nationals who attempt to enter the United States illegally and do not qualify for humanitarian relief will be subject to removal, consistent with U.S. law and enforcement priorities,” Obama said.
“By taking this step, we are treating Cuban migrants the same way we treat migrants from other countries. The Cuban government has agreed to accept the return of Cuban nationals who have been ordered removed, just as it has been accepting the return of migrants interdicted at sea.
The changes are part of the Obama administration’s moves to warm diplomatic relations, which have been tense since America’s 1958 embargo on the country.
“Since I took office, we have put the Cuban-American community at the center of our policies. With this change we will continue to welcome Cubans as we welcome immigrants from other nations, consistent with our laws,” Obama said.
The policy effectively allowed Cubans fleeing their country to qualify for permanent residency if they make it to American shores, or with “dry” feet, even if they do not have a visa or legal authorization to visit the country.
If fleeing Cubans are caught before they land, with “wet” feet, they are sent back.
The policy began in 1995 under President Bill Clinton as a compromise between the two nations. The American government previously allowed Cubans to resettle in America and become eligible for permanent residence even if they were caught at sea, under the premise that they were fleeing danger in their home country.
But critics have pointed to the policy as favoring Cuban immigrants over those from other potentially dangerous countries, as well as incentivizing undocumented migration from the country.
Since the Obama administration’s warming with Cuba, Pew Research found a surge of Cuban immigration into the U.S.
Various news reports from Florida found that Cubans were migrating because they were concerned about the “Wet foot, dry foot” policy nearing its end as part of the administration’s more relaxed relationship with Cuba.
Obama also announced that he was immediately ending the Cuban Medical Professional Parole program, which essentially encouraged Cubans in the medical field working abroad to defect to the U.S. by allowing U.S. officials to grant visas to doctors, nurses and other medical professionals.
“The United States and Cuba are working together to combat diseases that endanger the health and lives of our people. By providing preferential treatment to Cuban medical personnel, the medical parole program contradicts those efforts, and risks harming the Cuban people,” Obama said. “Cuban medical personnel will now be eligible to apply for asylum at U.S. embassies and consulates around the world, consistent with the procedures for all foreign nationals.”
Obama reiterated that “the future of Cuba should be in the hands of the Cuban people.”
“During my Administration, we worked to improve the lives of the Cuban people – inside of Cuba – by providing them with greater access to resources, information and connectivity to the wider world. Sustaining that approach is the best way to ensure that Cubans can enjoy prosperity, pursue reforms, and determine their own destiny,” he said.
January 3, 2017
The Rum War
Who makes the real Havana Club rum? And who owns the rights to sell the liquor under that famous brand name? Sharyn Alfonsi reports from Cuba
The following script is from “The Rum War,” which aired on Jan. 1, 2017. Sharyn Alfonsi is the correspondent. Rome Hartman, producer.
The relationship between Cuba and the United States was stuck in pretty much the same bad place for half a century. But things have been changing at a dizzying pace in the last couple of years.
President Obama started the thaw in the relationship by re-establishing diplomatic relations and easing restrictions on travel. Now President-elect Trump is threatening to undo all those moves. And Fidel Castro, who spent 50 years poking his thumb in the eye of every American president, has died.
El Floridita
CBS NEWS
Whatever happens, there’s already a war underway that has the U.S. and Cuba on the rocks. It’s a war over rum, specifically, over two different versions of Havana Club rum and it’s as bitter as the Cold War ever was.
It’s a Tuesday afternoon at El Floridita in Old Havana, and we and lots of other visitors to Cuba are filing in and filling up at the bar that calls itself the “Cradle of the Daiquiri.” Head bartender Alejandro Bolívar needs to double up on rum bottles just to keep up with demand.
Sharyn Alfonsi: How many bottles do you go through a day? Any idea?
Alejandro Bolívar: So it’s at– it’s between 60 and 80– 80 bottles per day.
Sharyn Alfonsi: That’s a lotta daiquiris.
Alejandro Bolívar: Yeah. Plenty of empty bottles.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Oh my gosh. Is this just from today?
Bartender Alejandro Bolívar pours rum drinks at El Floridita.
CBS NEWS
Alejandro Bolívar: Yeah. Today, yeah.
All those bottles were filled with Havana Club rum, produced by a 50-50 joint venture between the Cuban government and the French beverage giant Pernod Ricard, which sent Jérôme Cottin-Bizonne to Cuba to run the business. We met him in a place that’s rarely open to outsiders: a warehouse stacked to the ceiling with oak barrels full of rum.
Jérôme Cottin-Bizonne: We built a very great success with Havana Club. When we started the partnership in 1993 we sold five million bottles a year. Today, we sell 50 million bottles a year.
50 million bottles, 11 million of them sold here in Cuba. The tourists drinking Havana Club are obvious, but we went looking down the side streets, and found locals drinking it too…at domino games and dance halls and discos…and sipping it along Havana’s seafront promenade, the Malecón.
To distill and age all that rum, the Cuban government and Pernod Ricard rely on Asbel Morales, Havana Club’s master rum-maker. He loves talking about rum, but he says to really understand it, you have to drink it.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Es muy bueno.
Asbel Morales: Muy Bueno.
“The first sip will impact you the most,” he said, “and make you anxious for a second.”
Sharyn Alfonsi and Asbel Morales, Havana Club’s master rum-maker for the Cuban government and French beverage giant Pernod Ricard.
CBS NEWS
Sharyn Alfonsi: I am anxious to continue the second sip.
And the third, and the fourth, and the Cohiba cigar that he says pairs perfectly with this Havana Club. As we drank and smoked, Morales told me “Cubans are born with a “rum gene.”
And to be real Havana Club rum, he said, it must be made from Cuban sugarcane and aged in the hot and sticky Cuban climate.
Here’s where it gets confusing: this is another bottle of Havana Club rum. Exact same name – but you can see right here this one is made in Puerto Rico. And it’s made by Bacardi.
Sharyn Alfonsi: How in the world can you say Havana Club when you’re making it in Puerto Rico?
Rick Wilson: I– just the way that you say I’m calling it Arizona Iced Tea and I’m not making it in Arizona.
Bottles of Havana Club rum made by Bacardi.
CBS NEWS
Rick Wilson is an executive at Bacardi, originally a Cuban company, and now the largest privately held liquor business in the world.
Rick Wilson: The true Havana Club made with the recipe of the original founders is the Havana Club that Bacardi is making and selling here in the United States.
Bacardi bought that original recipe from the family of this woman, Amparo Arachabala.
Sharyn Alfonsi: And it was one of the wealthiest families in Cuba before the revolution?
60 MINUTES OVERTIME
Havana Club vs. Havana Club
Amparo Arachabala: Yes. Definitely. Definitely.
The Arechabala fortune was built on sugar, and shipping, and rum…Havana Club Rum. Like hundreds of other Cuban companies, theirs was confiscated shortly after Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959.
Amparo Arechabala: They took over the company on December 31st, 1959.
Sharyn Alfonsi: And do you remember that day?
Amparo Arechabala: I remember that day vividly. My husband came home. He went to work early and then he came home and he says, “They’ve thrown us out. It’s over.”
Sharyn Alfonsi: It’s over, he said.
Amparo Arechabala: He said, “It’s over.”
All of their assets gone, Amparo and her husband Ramon were ordered to leave Cuba with only the clothes on their backs.
Sharyn Alfonsi: And how much money did you have in your pockets?
Amparo Arechabala: Absolutely nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Sharyn Alfonsi: What was it like when you got on the plane?
Amparo Arechabala: Everybody in the entire plane was crying. And I remember I looked out the window as we were taking off and I say to my husband, “Take a good look because you’re not gonna see it again.”
In Cuba, the Arechabalas and Bacardi had been competitors, each making and selling popular brands of rum. But when the revolution came, Rick Wilson says Bacardi had an advantage.
Rick Wilson: Bacardi, unlike most other Cuban families and companies, had assets outside of Cuba.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Is that the reason they were able to survive?
Rick Wilson: Yes. Because we could continue to produce and sell our product. Unlike the Arechabalas. The Arechabalas, everything they had was in Cuba. Everything.
Everything except the recipe for Havana Club rum. The Arechabalas eventually sold it to their old rival Bacardi, which makes this version at its distillery in Puerto Rico.
They did it to compete with this version made by the Cuban government and their partner Pernod Ricard. That set off the longest bar fight ever.
It has been fought both in the courts, where the latest lawsuit is pending, and the marketplace, between two of the world’s largest liquor companies. Pernod Ricard produces Absolut vodka, Chivas Regal scotch, Beefeater gin. Bacardi makes Grey Goose Vodka, Dewar’s Scotch, And Bombay Sapphire Gin.
And now they both make Havana Club rum, and they both try to claim the moral high ground.
Sharyn Alfonsi: And it wasn’t that Pernod Ricard had just stepped up and they looked to be competitors to you.
Rick Wilson: No. We don’t mind competition from Pernod Ricard or anyone else. Pernod Ricard, though, did and is partnering with the Cuban government who has confiscated the assets of a family. No compensation paid.
Sharyn Alfonsi: It’s hard to believe that a company like Bacardi is just making a moral argument. That it’s just about…
Rick Wilson: We’re– we’re not. We’re makin’ a moral and a legal argument.
Sharyn Alfonsi: OK. And the legal argument is?
Rick Wilson: Um, theft. I mean it comes down — it’s stolen property. That’s what it comes down to.
Sharyn Alfonsi: The Bacardi family will say that this Havana Club is stolen property.
Jérôme Cottin-Bizonne: Well, you see the place. We are here in our distillery. It was built in 2007.
Sharyn Alfonsi: And none of these facilities were used—before the revolution?
Jérôme Cottin-Bizonne: None of these facilities were used before the revolution, no.
And Asbel Morales dismisses the argument that the Havana Club rum he produces for Pernod Ricard in Cuba is not the real thing because it’s not made from the original Arechabala family recipe.
“The recipe remains in this land,” he said. “It is here in this climate, the culture.”
Jérôme Cottin-Bizonne: It’s very simple. To make a Cuban rum, you need to make it in Cuba. You know, it doesn’t– take more than that. You cannot make Cuban rum in Puerto Rico.
And the Arechabalas cannot, he insists, claim to own the Havana Club brand decades after abandoning it.
Sharyn Alfonsi: How do you feel that they used that word about the family, saying they abandoned the brand?
Amparo Arechabala: They can say whatever they want. They can say that we abandoned. We didn’t abandon anything. They threw us out.
The Castro government did that. The French company Pernod Recard came along much later, and turned the Cuban Havana Club into a global brand and an icon of Cuban culture. We found the logo everywhere we went in Cuba: on every glass in every bar…on taxi drivers and parking attendants…on the chairs we did our interviews in…and at the tourist market, on artwork and tote bags and T-shirts, right alongside other symbols of Cuba.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Do you sell more Che T-shirts or more Havana Club T-shirts?
Man: Same.
Sharyn Alfonsi: About the same
Jérôme Cottin-Bizonne: When we sell a bottle of Havana Club in France, in England, or in Chile, we not only sell the liquid, we sell the soul of the country.
The one place in the world they can’t sell their Havana Club at the moment is the United States, because of the trade embargo on Cuban products that has been in place since 1962.
But there is a way for Americans to have the Cuban version; President Obama recently lifted limits on how much rum and cigars tourists can bring home from Cuba.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Will you be bringing rum home with you?
Woman: Yes. Lots of rum. We stocked up. Now we just need another case to bring it back in.
The makers of Cuban Havana Club aren’t satisfied with just sending suitcases full of rum home with tourists. They want to ship containers full when the trade embargo is lifted.
Jérôme Cottin-Bizonne: In Cuba– we know how to be patient. Look, all the rum sitting around us, all these barrels. It’s years and years of aging. Years and year of work, of—dedication. We know that one day, we’ll be able to sell our rum, Havana Club, the true Cuban rum made in Cuba, and that the U.S. consumer will have the chance– the opportunity to enjoy it.
Consumers in the U.S. drink 40 percent of the world’s rum, which explains why they’re stacking barrels sky-high in Cuba in preparation.
Sharyn Alfonsi: This is all ready to go?
Jérôme Cottin-Bizonne: This is all ready to go.
For now, though, the trade embargo continues, and so does the court fight over who has the right to use the Havana Club name. On the streets of Havana, there’s no disagreement on that point. We took a few bottles of Bacardi’s version there to sample reaction.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Do you drink rum?
Players: Si!
Sharyn Alfonsi: Have you ever seen this before?
These men we found playing dominos on an old Havana side street were more than happy to try it…
Man: Similar.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Similar.
“It’s good,” he said, “but the Cuban is better quality.”
Ernesto Iznaga: Color is different, the stamp is different. This is the real Havana Club. The symbol.
In a bar called Sloppy Joe’s, manager Ernesto Iznaga wanted no part of Bacardi’s Havana Club.
Sharyn Alfonsi: You don’t even wanna try it.
Ernesto Iznaga: No.
Sharyn Alfonsi: You can just have a sip. You don’t have to drink the whole bottle.
Ernesto Iznaga: No.
Sharyn Alfonsi: No?
Ernesto Iznaga: Sorry.
These are the front lines: two bottling lines in two countries. Each one producing Havana Club rum. Each claiming that its version is the only real and authentic one. Not so far apart in miles, but worlds apart in the rum war.
© 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
