On May 3, Cuba filed its first-ever trade dispute with the Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO), over Australia’s new anti-tobacco law.
That law — the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act — requires unattractive plain packaging and graphic health advisories on any tobacco products sold in Australia, while banning the “use of logos, brand imagery, and promotional text.” It also imposes strict limitations on the use of brand names.
Featured in Politics & International Affairs
Cuba’s foreign policy, doctor diplomacy and the economy
By Domingo Amuchastegui
When experts discuss what keeps the Cuban economy afloat, they usually focus entirely on tourism, overseas remittances and the export of nickel, tobacco and rum not to mention the big chunk from Venezuelan subsidies.
Florida International University studies future role in Cuba
By Domingo Amuchastegui
On July 30, Miami’s Florida International University sponsored an event to examine FIU’s potential future role in Cuba. More than 150 people attended the conference, moderated by Luís Salas, director of FIU’s Center for the Administration of Justice.
Washington alters visa policy without consulting Havana
By Ana Radelat
The State Department’s decision to give Cuban citizens multiple-entry visas was taken unilaterally and offered to Cuban government representatives as a fait accompli, a State Department official told CubaNews.
Arms shipments endanger P2P on Hill
By Vito Echevarria
The discovery of obsolete Cuban fighter jets, anti-aircraft systems and other military hardware hidden under bags of sugar in a rusty North Korean ship transiting the Panama Canal has angered Cuban-American lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
PCC replaces top officilas in Artemisa, Matanzas
By Domingo Amuchastegui
The Cuban Communist Party (PCC) has replaced top leaders in two provinces Artemisa and Matanzas following rather contradictory patterns.
In Artemisa, the provincial first secretary, Ulises Guilarte de Nacimiento, was abruptly booted out without any explanation. In his place, authorities selected José Antonio Fariñas, who until this latest promotion was head of the Industry and Construction Department at the PCC’s Central Committee.
State Department tones down criticism but keeps Cuba on terrorist list for now
By Ana Radelat
While its condemnation of Cuba was muted this year, the State Department has decided to keep the island on its annual list of terrorist-hosting nations.
Placed on that blacklist for the first time in 1982, Cuba remained there for decades because it harbored a dozen members of the Basque separatist group ETA and members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Analysis: Cuba is much stronger today than after USSR’s collapse in the 1990s
By Domingo Amuchastegui
Cuba watchers are pushing a new “domino theory” lately. They suggest that an eventual defeat of chavismo in Venezuela would spark an immediate collapse of the Cuban economy and with it the much awaited political collapse of Cuba’s government.
Gross family, DAI negotiate to settle $60 million lawsuit
By Tracy Eaton
Lawyers for jailed development worker Alan Gross and DAI, a Maryland contractor, are in negotiations aimed at settling the Gross family's $60 million lawsuit against the company. Cuban authorities arrested Gross in December 2009 and accused him of crimes against the state after he set up satellite Internet connections at synagogues in Havana and two other cities.
José Cabañas, Cuba’s man in Washington opens up a bit
By Ana Radelat
Cuba’s top diplomat in the United States, José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez, may be a man of his time. The youthful-looking Cabañas, who’s not much older than the Cuban Revolution, was dispatched to Washington at a time when U.S.-Cuba relations are clearly stuck in a deep freeze.
He has a reputation for being shrewd and intelligent, with special aptitudes for pressing Cuba’s agenda and making important connections to the Cuban exile community. Those skills may serve him well if the political winds shift and Cuba’s relations with the United States warm before President Obama leaves office in January 2017.
GITMO: A THORN IN CASTRO’S SIDE
By Armando H. Portela
Guarding the entrance to Guantánamo Bay since 1901, the U.S Naval Base known affectionately as “Gitmo” is the only American military enclave in a communist country. It covers 118 sq kms (45 sq miles) one-third of that inland water and is protected by a heavily patrolled perimeter fence that stretches 27 kms (17.4 miles).
The base is a byproduct of the 1898 Spanish-American War. A treaty signed more than a century ago by Washington and the newly born Republic of Cuba granted the United States the right to keep the site exclusively for coaling and naval operations.
French consultant offers Cuba advice
By Vito Echevarria
President Raúl Castro’s ongoing anti-corruption campaign is boosting business for one Guadeloupe based consultant who’s been advising French and Caribbean-area companies since 2007 on the “dos and don’ts” of conducting business in Cuba.
Cuba could be lucrative destination for Russian investment, says RIAC scholar
By Vito Echevarria
Russia needs to step up trade ties with its longtime ally Cuba, says an academic affiliated with the Moscow-based Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC).
In an Aug. 20 report, Dr. Eduard Belyi acknowledged not only Russia’s long-standing relationship with the Castro regime, but recent economic activities aimed at reviving trade with the island nation that crashed when the former Soviet Union cut off lucrative trade preferences in the early 1990s.
U.S. food exporters look forward to competition in Cuba
By Vito Echevarria
Alimport, Cuba’s state-run food purchasing agency, has always been on a tight budget. As such, it’s traditionally made most of its deals with U.S. food exporters in the form of bulk farm commodities ranging from dry beans to frozen chicken.
Donations, NGOs keep independent Cuban lawyer going
By Doreen Hemlock
Laritza Diversent wasn’t sure until the plane took off from Havana that she’d actually make it to South Florida for her first visit ever to the United States.
An independent lawyer, journalist and human rights defender, she drew international attention this year by presenting critical reports to the United Nations on respect for human rights and on the status of women in her communist-led homeland.
Is Father José Conrado exaggerating?
By Domingo Amuchastegui
José Conrado Rodríguez, a prominent Catholic priest in Santiago de Cuba and frequent critic of the Castro regime, told Miami’s El Nuevo Herald in June that foreign humanitarian aid sent last year to assist residents of his city following Hurricane Sandy was being diverted to government, military and tourist facilities.
Discovery of Cuban arms on North Korean ship raises furor
By Vito Echevarria
Panama’s interdiction last month of a North Korean cargo ship carrying 240 tons of aging armaments from Cuba including two MiG-21 fighter jets, two anti-aircraft systems, nine missiles and 15 additional MiG-21 engines all hidden under sacks of Cuban sugar have led observers to wonder who the weapons were really intended for.
Gross case on the agenda during Vidal-Jacobson meeting
By Ana Radelat
Recent talks between a State Department official and a high-level Cuban diplomat have breathed new life into talks over jailed American subcontractor Alan Gross.
Josefina Vidal, director of the North American bureau at the Cuban Foreign Ministry, spent a week in late May in Washington, where she met with Roberta Jacobson, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, and other U.S. officials.
Venezuela unlikely to weaken Cuba ties after Maduro’s narrow election victory
By Vito Echevarria
For now, it looks like the Cuban economy will be spared a post-Soviet shock. With the Apr. 14 election of interim Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to finish out the six-year term of his mentor, the late Hugo Chávez, Cuba will not face a drastic cutoff of cheap oil from Venezuela currently the umbilical cord keeping the island’s economy afloat.
Over the years, Hugo Chávez who died Mar. 5 after a protracted battle against cancer shored up Cuba by providing the island with 92,000 barrels of oil a day worth $3.2 billion annually under generous terms.
Cuban economist Torres Pérez: Slash education spending
By Vito Echevarria
Cuban academic Ricardo Torres Pérez bemoaned the state of Cuba’s socialist system and pushed for more reforms during a Feb. 28 speech at New York’s CUNY Graduate Center.
Torres Pérez, an economics professor at the University of Havana, calls for a number of unprecedented cost-cutting measures to spur along the reforms President Raúl Castro has already implemented.
One area he’d like to cut is government spending on education.
Provinces: Sugar-mill towns, oil and Varadero — Matanzas has it all
By Armando H. Portela
Barely 90 kilometers east of Havana, Matanzas has excellent agricultural lands, abundant fresh water, an ample and deep bay, good transportation routes, numerous oil deposits and Cuba’s best-known tourist resort, Varadero.
One of the island’s most important ecological reserves, the Ciénaga de Zapata, covers over half of the land area of Matanzas. This huge marsh, by far the largest of its kind in the Caribbean, has freshwater swamps, saline marshes, hammocks and bogs, rare birds and the endangered Cuban crocodiles.
Chile’s Max Marambio: The executive whose luck ran out
By Administrator
Last July, the International Court of Arbitration in Paris ruled in favor of Chilean businessman Max Marambio, formerly a close friend of Fidel Castro.
Marambio, 63, is suing the Castro regime for $143 million to compensate for the confiscation of Alimentos Río Zaza, a joint-venture food production and marketing entity. He’s also seeking $10 million in “moral damages.”
From the Politics & International Affairs Archives
OFAC Fine-Tunes Cuba Travel Regulations
In response to complaints by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) about “frivolous” people-to-people programs that do nothing to promote political change in Cuba, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has made some minor revisions in its regulations governing travel to Cuba.
Chávez versus Capriles: Venezuela and the Cuba question
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez — who’s been in power for the last 13 years — is campaigning for re-election for the third time. His rival in the Oct. 7 election is Henrique Capriles Radonski — whose Mesa Unida por la Democracia (MUD) is a last-minute alliance of the opposition parties.
Cuba’s leadership 10 years from now: Some predictions
How and when will Cuba’s leadership — dominated at its highest level for years by the now-fading generation of históricos — finally give way to new blood?
While no one knows for sure, it’s safe to make several general assumptions.
