Chronicle on Cuba - October 2004

US-Cuba Relations

October 1: The US government allowed several hundred more Cubans to migrate to America over the past year than during the year previous, according to figures released by the US Interest Section in Havana. The American mission in Cuba said it had granted 23,000 immigrant visas for Cubans during the US fiscal year that just ended — 2,000 more than last year and 3,000 more than required by migration accords. Under migration agreements signed in the mid-1990s, the United States must provide at least 20,000 visas to Cubans annually, and Cuba must discourage its citizens from making risky attempts to immigrate illegally to the United States. The accords are aimed at encouraging safe, legal and orderly migration from Cuba to the United States. Nevertheless, hundreds still leave communist Cuba each year on smugglers' fast boats, or homemade rafts made with floating inner tubes, heading toward an uncertain fate in hopes of illegally reaching the United States. (AP, 1/10/04)

October 3: A Houston company's recent cancellation of an agreement with Cuba has sparked new complaints about Havana's insistence that Americans wishing to sell products to Cuba should first agree to push Washington to ease economic sanctions against the communist-ruled island. In recent months, US businesses have been privately grumbling that Alimport, Cuba's food-importing monopoly, has increased pressure for political cooperation. Americans who have exported food products to Cuba or wish to do so report that they “are receiving pressure (…) to be more public” and “more forceful” about their opposition to the United States policy,'' the New York-based US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council reported recently. Americans also “report that representatives of Alimport have decreased purchases from (…) [U.S.] companies whose ‘commitment’ to a change in United States policy (…) is suspect; or have stated that products would be sourced from those United States-based companies that ‘support our position’,'' the USCTEC report added. (The Miami Herald, 3/10/04)

October 3: The United States will not allow a new wave of rafters illegally fleeing from Cuba as a result of the current economic crisis facing Fidel Castro’s regime, now worsened by the discontent created by shortages of electric power, warned a high-ranking official of the US State Department. “We have previously warned the Cubans that the United States will deem any attempt to stimulate or manipulate a mass exodus to our shores as a threat to its national security”, said Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roger Noriega. “I think that they have understood the message”, he added. (El Nuevo Herald, 3/10/04)

October 3: The National Network on Cuba (NNOC), a coalition of 55 groups that oppose the US government's anti-Cuban policies, met in Washington for its second meeting of the year. About 70 persons from all over the US discussed the situation in Cuba today, ending US-imposed restrictions on travel and trade with the island, and finding additional ways to highlight the case of the "Cuban Five." Representatives from the Cuban Interests Section in Washington and the Havana-based Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples also participated in the sessions, as did Marvin Glass, co-chair of the Canadian Network on Cuba, and representatives of the Venezuelan UN Mission in New York. At a pre-meeting reception at the Cuban Interests Section, Cuban Minister of Health Jose Ramon Balaguer said that the Cuban people are unified, that they will fight to preserve their values, and that "to prevent a war is to win the war." (People’s Weekly World, 15/10/04)

October 4: A sked on a flight to Brazil about Latin American complaints that the United States views regional problems through the lens of Cuba, Secretary of State, Colin Powell, answered that, "We don't see everything through the lens of Fidel Castro." "Fidel Castro is a problem for the Cuban people. I don't view him as that much of a problem for the rest of the hemisphere. Certainly not the way he was when I was [President Reagan's] national-security adviser — 15 years ago — when he really was." (Knight Ridder, 5/10/04)

October 4: Cuba's top trade official has warned that American agricultural companies could suffer sharp financial losses because of the new US restrictions on trips to the island nation. Trade with the United States has already declined to a trickle since the Bush administration sought in June to further squeeze the government of Fidel Castro, said Pedro Alvarez, chairman and chief executive of Empresa Cubana de Alimentos, or Alimport, the national import agency. On paper, 2004 looks like a record year for US imports to Cuba. By the close of December, US suppliers and shippers will have earned some $450 million, a 20 percent increase over 2003 sales of $349 million. But Alvarez said he signed 95 percent of the year's US contracts before the White House limited Cuban-American travel and remittances to family members on the island. Now, in a challenge to the US government, Alimport is inviting American companies to show their products at Havana's annual trade fair next month. The company intends to sign its first contracts for 2005, worth some $150 million. (NBC News, 4/10/04)

October 5: The Russian company TNK has been accused in an American court of engaging in "criminal activity" by trading with Iraq and Cuba in the 1990s. The allegations were made by Norex Petroleum in a new legal submission to a wider "racketeering" case but were rejected by TNK's lawyers as "devoid of fact and logic". The Canadian-based oil company Norex has been fighting a case against TNK and its former majority shareholders - Access Industries, Renova and Alfa Finance Holdings - in the US legal system. Norex lost the first round in a New York district court and has sought to introduce new evidence for its appeal. (The Guardian, 5/10/04)

October 6: Government and business leaders from across the country will convene in Tampa to look at the evolving relationships between the United States and Cuba, and to discuss the implications of opening Cuban markets to US businesses. The National Summit on Cuba will be hosted at the University of Tampa's landmark Plant Hall. Previous summits have been held in Miami and Washington. (Tampa Tribune, 6/10/04)

October 6: Cuba is still ready to sign a cooperation agreement with the United States on drug smuggling, Cuban Vice Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno told the press. Moreno stressed that any agreement must be based on mutual respect for sovereignty and non-interference in each other's internal affairs. Washington has rejected six proposals from Havana on the issue since December 2001 although the American people will be the principal beneficiary of such an agreement, he said. (Xinhua, 6/10/04)

October 6: Seeking to gain inroads within the critical bloc of Cuban American voters, Senator John Kerry immediately pounced on remarks made by Secretary of State Colin Powell that suggested Fidel Castro is a problem for Cuba, not "the rest of the hemisphere.'' Kerry, whose campaign hopes to siphon even a sliver of the reliably Republican voting bloc from President Bush, rapidly assailed the remarks, calling it "shocking that the Bush administration is telling the world that Fidel Castro no longer poses a problem for this hemisphere”. ''Fidel Castro is a tyrant who brutally oppresses the Cuban people,'' Kerry said in a statement. "Castro's Cuba is the last bastion of communism in our region and a major obstacle to the triumph of democracy in this hemisphere.'' (The Miami Herald, 7/10/04)

October 6: A North Dakota trade delegation has agreed to sell 5,000 metric tons of peas to Cuba, and Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson hopes the country will strike another deal to buy five times that amount. The sale of yellow and green peas is worth $1 million to North Dakota, and about $500,000 to pea producers themselves, said Eric Bartsch, director of the North Dakota Dry Pea and Lentil Council. "Any time you have a sale ... it's always an impact to North Dakota. It's moving the product," Bartsch said during a telephone conference call from Havana. "We have a lot of product out there, so we're going to be continually needing sales like this to move our product." Johnson, Bartsch and Greg Johnson, owner of Premier Pulses International Inc. of Minot, are in Cuba this week to explore pea sales. The country, which has a centralized system for buying food, has bought $5.5 million worth of North Dakota dry peas and beans in the last five years. (AP, 7/10/04)

October 6: The United States Treasury Department has tightened its prohibitions against US citizens importing or consuming Cuban cigars. The department's Office of Foreign Assets Control has announced in a notice posted on the Internet that even Americans licensed to bring back up to $100 worth of Cuban goods will no longer be allowed to include tobacco products in what they carry. Previously, those licensed were exempted from what was otherwise a total import ban on Cuban tobacco products. The notice also clarifies that Americans are barred from not only purchasing Cuban goods in foreign countries, but also from consuming them in those countries. (VOA, 6/10/04)

October 6: The State Department's decision to deny visas to 65 Cuban scholars seeking to attend a conference in Las Vegas drew protests from Congress and academia. Representatives William Delahunt, (Democrat-Massachusetts), and Jeff Flake, (Republican-Arizona), asked Secretary of State Colin Powell to reconsider the decision to prevent the Cubans from taking part in the Latin American Studies Association annual meeting. Cuban scholars have participated for years; about 100 attended last year. Professors from Harvard University's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies said they are turning what was planned as a workshop on the Cuban economy into a protest about the government's action. (AP, 6/10/04)

October 7: A proposed bill aimed at terrorists could drastically change rules for undocumented migrants and place Cuban refugees at risk of being sent back to their homeland even if they make it onto US soil. The lengthy Recommendations Implementation Act was born from suggestions by the 9/11 Commission to keep terrorists out of the country. Immigrant advocates and several lawmakers are pushing for an amendment that would strike worrisome language affecting immigrants and essentially eliminate a 10-year-old policy -- known as wet-foot/dry-foot -- which allows most Cubans who make it to US soil to remain in the country. The same policy permits only those Cubans interdicted at sea to be returned to Cuba. ''We want to make sure it is the terrorists who we are keeping out and not the immigrants who need our protection,'' said Florida Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who co-sponsored the amendment. (The Miami Herald, 7/10/04)

October 7: The Tisch School of the Arts will offer New York University's first semester-long study abroad program in Havana in spring 2005, Tisch officials said. Twenty-four NYU students will be accepted to the Tisch program, which is operating in collaboration with the Ludwig Foundation, a nonprofit group that supports young Cuban artists, and two Cuban schools, the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematograficos and the University of Havana. Joanne Savio, a professor in Tisch's department of film and television who will lead the program, said she is excited to have the honor of overseeing NYU's newest study abroad site. "It's the excitement, intrigue and seduction of being able to go back and really live and study and work in an environment that, for the most part, has been off limits to Americans since 1959," Savio said. (The Washington Square Arch, 7/10/04)

October 7: Vice president Dick Cheney continued his post-debate campaign swing with a townhall meeting in Miami, The enthusiastic audience at the Radisson Mart Plaza Hotel and Convention Center saved its loudest applause for Cheney's promise that Bush would veto any legislation that attempts to water down his new Cuba policy, which restricts travel to the island to once every three years. In response to a question from the audience, Cheney noted that there is ''an effort in Congress'' to prevent the White House from carrying out the travel restrictions. Despite threats of a veto, the US House voted two weeks ago to prevent funding to carry out the new restrictions. ''The president has made it very clear any bill that interferes with his Cuba policies will be vetoed,'' Cheney said as some in the audience rose to their feet. (The Miami Herald, 7/10/04)

October 7: Under an exception to a US trade embargo, communist Cuba has become the third importer of American rice after Mexico and Japan, officials said. Cuba bought 110,000 tons of rice this year from the United States, said Pedro Alvarez, chairman of Cuba's food import company Alimport, which signed a letter of intent to strengthen trade relations with the US Rice Producers Association. Dwight Roberts, president of the association, said Cuba could eventually surpass Mexico and Japan as America's main rice importer. (AP, 7/10/04)

October 7: Seeking to contain a minor political storm over recent remarks on Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that Castro has "never stopped being a troublemaker" in Latin America and that the region will be better off when he's gone. Powell spoke with the press one day after Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry seized on earlier remarks in which the secretary of state suggested that Castro was a problem for Cubans but not for the rest of the Western Hemisphere. But he staunchly defended his record on dealing with Castro and suggested his remarks had been twisted. His point, he said, was that Castro's Cuba doesn't present the sort of regional threat it did when Castro had the military and political backing of the Soviet Union. "We're in a political environment," said Powell, who seemed dismayed at the brouhaha. "Castro is an anachronism. He is causing his own people to suffer greatly. He is a troublemaker in the rest of the region. He is a troublemaker in Venezuela. He's a troublemaker in Colombia. He's never stopped being a troublemaker. But he is not the kind of threat he was when we had the Soviet Union backing him up about 15 to 20 years ago." Powell said he chaired a presidential commission that studied ways to ease the transition to democracy in Cuba and repeatedly has pushed for international condemnation of Castro's human-rights record. (Knight Ridder, 8/10/04)

October 7: The United States is defending its decision to deny visas to 67 Cuban scholars who wanted to attend a conference this week in the western US state of Nevada. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that the academics are Cuban government officials whose aim is to "spout the party line." Mr. Boucher also noted that 68 Cuban dissidents remain jailed in the communist country after being arrested last year in a crackdown on opponents of Cuban leader Fidel Castro. (VOA, 7/10/04)

October 8: Free trade with Cuba could generate $50 billion and 900,000 jobs for the United States over a twenty year period, according to a forecast presented at the National Summit on Cuba by Dr. Tim Lynch, director of the Center for Economic Forecasting and Analysis at Florida State University. “It's in everyone's best interest to see free trade between the US and Cuba," said Lynch. This is good for America and good for Cuba." Lynch determined that Florida would stand to benefit more than any state for three reasons -- a historic linkage to Cuba, Florida's proximity to Cuba and large and growing Hispanic population. "Florida could see as many as 112,000 new jobs over a 20 year period that would not otherwise exist in a variety of industry sectors," said Lynch. "Where is a hungry nation like Cuba going to turn? It's cheaper to ship from Florida to Cuba, especially from Tampa and Miami, than anywhere else." (PRNewswire, 8/10/04)

October 8: Lifting trade and travel restrictions on Cuba is the only way to bring about real change in the island nation, panelists said during a national summit largely critical of long-standing US policies. But some speakers at the third National Summit on Cuba showed there is still support for using the trade embargo, now more than four decades old, and recently tightened travel restrictions to squeeze the island's economy and push leader Fidel Castro out of power. They were supported by a knot of protesters near the event's venue at the University of Tampa. Wayne Smith, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and former chief of the U.S. interests section in Havana, said the containment policy has made less and less sense as the years have passed, especially after the breakup of the Soviet Union, with which Castro had aligned himself. (St. Petersburg Times, 9/10/04)

October 9: To hasten freedom in Cuba, the United States is pursuing a comprehensive approach that includes greater support for the Cuban political opposition and measures to limit the resources available to the regime of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, according to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Dan Fisk. In his remarks to the Cuban American Association in Miami, Florida, Fisk outlined the Bush administration's efforts to isolate and pressure the Castro regime through the implementation of the recommendations of the Commission on Assistance to a Free Cuba (CAFC). As part of this effort, Fisk explained, the United States has already provided $14 million of a proposed $29 million in additional assistance to support the development of civil society in Cuba. He pointed out that the United States is also working to promote greater international support for, and involvement with, Cuban civil society and transition planning. (Washington File, 14/10/04)

October 9: The State Department is accusing Cuba of training Colombian rebels and says it is troubled by a large presence of Cuban personnel in Venezuela, whose president, Hugo Chavez, is a close ally of Fidel Castro. The department's view was outlined in response to a press question about Secretary of State Colin Powell's comments in an agency interview that Castro is "causing his own people to suffer greatly" and has become a troublemaker in the neighboring South American countries. Elaborating on Powell's remarks, a State Department official said in an authorized comment that the United States continues to be concerned by Cuba's support for terrorist organizations in Colombia. It said the two largest leftist guerrilla organizations there, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army, continue to maintain a presence and receive training in Cuba. Both are on the State Department's list of international terrorist organizations. The official, who could not be identified under State Department ground rules, said in the written response that the United States worries that the large Cuban presence in Venezuela might harm Venezuela's democracy. (AP,9/10/04)

October 10: Senator John Kerry sought to court important South Florida voting constituencies in a campaign swing, assailing President Bush's crackdown on Cuba travel. Kerry met with The Miami Herald's editorial board for a wide-ranging interview in which he assailed Bush's policies in the Middle East and the Western Hemisphere. He accused the administration of ignoring Latin America and Haiti and said that as president, he would work with US allies that do business in Cuba to bring pressure on Fidel Castro. ''Our ability to remove Castro is going to depend on earning the respect of other nations, and making them to get tough,'' Kerry said. ``Every other country, the Germans, the French, others, have been buying property in Cuba, playing games. There's no concentrated focus on [Castro's] repressive anti-human rights behavior, and there should be. But because the US has isolated itself, in a way, we've lost the legitimate pressure that ought to be brought on him.'' Kerry argued that Bush's travel restrictions will punish families while isolating dissidents on the island. ''It's counterproductive to the kind of exchange of information we need,'' Kerry said. ``To shut it off is to empower Castro, and frankly I think that's a huge mistake.'' (The Miami Herald, 11/10/04)

October 11: Five veterans of Cuba's national series and a member of the country's national junior program are in Miami after the largest mass desertion of baseball players since Fidel Castro's revolution. The six players, all reportedly under the age of 24, arrived in the Keys after spending two days at sea. They are infielder Yunel Escobar Almenares, pitchers Yamel Guevara, Jose Angel Cordero Valdez, Rafael Galbizo Figueroa and outfielders Yoel Perez Mendieta and Yoan Limonta Zayas. (AP, 11/10/04)

October 12: Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcón has denounced the so-called “democratic system” in the United States. During an international workshop on democracy and the role of local and national governments, Cuba's top legislator noted that millions of eligible voters in the US don't even exercise the basic right to cast their ballot. Ricardo Alarcón told participants at the workshop that only half of those eligible to vote in the United States even bother to register and, of that total, only 50 percent go to the trouble of voting. He contrasted this with Cuba's electoral experience where, he says, more than 90 percent turn out to vote and also take part in nominating candidates. (Radio Habana Cuba, 12/10/04)

October 12: Vermont expects to send its first shipment of dairy cows to Cuba early next year. The shipment is part of a trade agreement Agriculture Secretary Steve Kerr worked out during a trip to the island nation in early September. The estimated seven million dollar deal calls for Vermont companies to sell dairy cows, nonfat powdered milk and apples to Cuba. Kerr's visit followed a trip by Vermont Lieutenant Governor Brian Dubie in April to find out what Vermont products the Cubans might want. Vermont plans to send 50 Holstein heifers and 50 pregnant Jersey heifers. (AP, 11/10/04)

October 13: The Dutch firm Intervet has stopped sending a quadruple vaccine to Cuba after warnings from the United States that it could be fined since the vaccine uses a US antigen. According to the online edition of the weekly Trabajadores, the US embargo has also prevented Cuba from obtaining isotope I-125 for the treatment of children with eye cancer. “After acquiring the Mexican company Refractarios Mexicanos, the American company Harbison Walker Refractories banned any sales to Cuba of those supplies”, adds Trabajadores. (EFE, 13/10/04)

October 13: The Supreme Court debated the fate of two Cubans who are scheduled for deportation, aren't welcome back in their native land, and exist in a state of indefinite detention in America that wouldn't be legal for other immigrants or citizens. Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler told the justices that that is just as it should be because the nation's need to protect its borders requires that some foreign nationals be treated as if they have no due-process rights. Advocates for the two Cubans said the government's behavior was unconstitutional, and they urged the justices to apply their ruling barring indefinite detentions to the refugees. The two were part of the 1980 Mariel boatlift, in which 125,000 Cubans were welcomed to the United States by President Jimmy Carter as a humanitarian gesture. (The Miami Herald, 14/10/04)

October 13: A protest was held at Harvard University over the recent denial of entry visas by the US State Department to a group of Cuban scholars. According to the Harvard Crimson newspaper -- published on the university campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts -- the protest was the idea of John Coatsworth, director of Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Coatsworth, along with several other professors at Harvard, set up 65 empty chairs where the Cuban scholars were to have addressed a forum at the university. (Radio Habana Cuba, 13/10/04)

October 13: Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcón insisted that current plans by US President George W. Bush entail the destruction of the Cuban nation. The Parliament president emphasized -in an Internet forum - the real purposes behind the hostile policy promoted by the US administration in their efforts to subvert the Cuban political system. Bush´s new genocidal measures in force since June are an example of this US aggressive policy on Cuba, said Alarcón, noting that Bush´s project -favoring a Cuban political and economic dependence on the US- has met strong rejection in the Island and abroad. (Prensa Latina, 13/10/04)

October 13: A United Nations report released in Mexico City recalls Havana's repeated efforts to sign cooperation agreements with Washington in order to jointly fight drug trafficking. The document refers to the application of recommendations adopted in the 13th Meeting of Heads of National Organizations to Fight Drug Trafficking in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Brazil last year. The countries participating in that meeting suggested establishing and applying official agreements beyond national borders and the region to facilitate operations against international crime. Cuba has signed cooperation agreements with 33 countries. (Radio Habana Cuba, 12/10/04)

October 13: A triumph of the Democrat candidate John Kerry in US presidential elections would not affect Cuba, Ricardo Alarcón said. The president of Cuba’s National Assembly added that Kerry’s policy towards the island is “more of the same”. "We have to see what Kerry thinks and what he will do.” “Right now, everything he has said is more of the same”, Alarcón added. (EFE, 13/10/04)

October 13: A US doctor has led a Cuban surgical team performing an operation on the island, defying restrictions imposed by the administration of US President George W. Bush. William Stetson, a specialist in sports medicine and a professor at the University of Southern California, led the team that performed arthroscopic surgery on Oscar Luciano Martinez's shoulder at a hospital in Ciego de Avila in central Cuba, the official newspaper Granma reported. Stetson also donated some of the surgical instruments needed for this type of operation, which had previously been done only at Havana's Frank Pais Hospital. (EFE, 13/10/04)

October 14: The Cuban trade organization has indicated in a letter to Senator Tom Daschle that it is interested in pursuing an arrangement that would lead to the purchase of agricultural commodities from South Dakota. The group, known as Alimport, is Cuba's largest single importer of food supplies. The letter was a follow-up to a visit from a South Dakota delegation that traveled to Cuba earlier this year to pursue expanded exports to Cuba. In the letter, the head of Alimport indicated that Cuba would like to enter into negotiations to purchase roughly $10 million in various agricultural commodities from South Dakota. The letter referenced the visit of a delegation of South Dakota farmers and ranchers to Cuba this past March. Daschle and his staff have also met with Cuban officials to urge Cuba to purchase South Dakota products. (Aberdeen American News, 14/10/04)

October 14: Cuban political analyst and former Culture Minister, Armando Hart, warned that with what he called a "delirious, mediocre and aggressive person" for President, the United States is currently gripped by a dangerous "crisis". Hart, one of Cuba's leading political thinkers, made his remark during a press conference to announce the upcoming International Colloquium "José Martí for a Culture of Nature" that begins in Havana with the participation of representatives from 32 countries. The Prensa Latina news agency reported Hart saying that George W. Bush was "an insane individual" who claims God "ordered him to bomb and murder people around the world" adding that every individual had the duty to control both personal and social violence and work toward a more humane world. (Radio Habana Cuba, 15/10/04)

October 15: In Havana, t he 2nd Forum on Cuban Civil Society concluded its debates and reflection on "The People Versus the Blockade". Intellectuals, religious believers, historians and attorneys discussed the effects of Washington's embargo in the fields of education, culture and sports, as well as harm caused to the island's economy, trade and finances. Cuba will demand UN Secretary General to distribute a document released by Cuban civil society organizations on the aggressive policy of the United States against the island, Minister of Foreign Relations, Felipe Perez Roque, announced at the closing ceremony. Perez Roque said he would instruct Cuba´s permanent mission to the UN that the declaration approved at this meeting circulates as an official document of the UN General Assembly. (AIN, Radio Habana Cuba, 15/10/04)

October 16: Representatives of the US Rice Producers Association were in Havana, Cuba, at the invitation of Pedro Alvarez, president and CEO of Alimport (Empresa Cubana de Alimentos), the Cuban food import agency. The visit was highlighted by the joint signing of a letter of intent by Alvarez and Dwight Roberts, president and CEO of the US Rice Producers Association, which called for the expansion of trade relations between the two groups including the proposition to elevate the level of Cuba’s purchases of rice from the United States. “Cuba has imported 100,000 tons of rice from the United States this year, and despite commercial restrictions placed on doing business, Cuba is the third largest importer of rice from North America after both Mexico and Japan,” Alvarez said. (The Lafayette Daily Advertiser, 16/10/04)

October 18: The Democrats don't expect their presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, to win the Cuban American vote in the November 2 election. But because the group is so large, just making inroads would translate into a handy boost in a battleground state that was decided by only a few hundred votes four years ago. President Bush will overwhelmingly win the support of the Cuban American community," said Al Cardenas, a lawyer and former state chairman of the Republican Party. "Democrats have no choice but to come and fight for every vote. If this were anywhere else but Florida, they would have written off our community a long time ago." (Reuters, 18/10/04)

October 18: Representative Bob Menendez (Democrat-New Jersey), the highest-ranking Hispanic in Congress, told a Miami audience that President Bush has ignored the needs of Latin America and enacted policies on Cuba that hurt families more than they hurt Fidel Castro. Menendez said the Bush administration punishes Cuban-American families, tightening restrictions on visits to relatives on the island even as US-Cuba commercial exchanges have increased. He said Kerry supports the US embargo on Cuba but would push for a more ''humane'' policy and would provide massive US humanitarian aid to Cuba through the International Red Cross, not the Castro government. ''We must act to create new additional external pressures to the Castro regime,'' Menendez added. "Under this administration, that's impossible. That's one of the key opportunities we have with Senator Kerry, who is committed to maintaining the embargo, but also committed to family travel.'' (The Miami Herald, 19/10/04)

October 18: For 12 years, the US government has financed a station aimed at bringing news and information to the Cuban people. There is only one problem. Almost no one on the island has ever seen it. Cuban officials have jammed its signal since the broadcasts began in 1990, saying it is an act of aggression and a violation of Cuba's sovereignty. After years of failure, the Bush administration launched a new effort in late August to break through the jam by beaming the TV signal from a US military plane flying off the southern coast of Florida. The results are uncertain. Critics say TV Marti is a $10 million-a-year boondoggle that should be shut down. The C-130 broadcast is the latest attempt by the US to penetrate Cuban jamming after failing to reach large numbers of Cubans through satellite transmission and a transmitter fixed on a helium-filled balloon tethered 10,000 feet above the Florida Keys. "You can't repeal the laws of physics," said Philip Peters, a former State Department official and Cuba expert at the Lexington Institute. "It's always going to be easier for Cuba to jam the broadcasts than for the US to get them through." (Chicago Tribune, 18/10/04)

October 19: Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said Cuba would win a "resounding victory" when the resolution condemning the US embargo of the island comes up for a vote in the UN General Assembly. Perez made the remarks while introducing a multimedia presentation entitled "No More Embargo" and a digital photography exhibit, "In Spite of the Embargo," both prepared by the Foreign Ministry. (EFE,19/10/04)

October 19: Rosa Aurora Freijanes, married to Cuban political prisoner, Fernando González, has denounced the constant obstacles put in the way of family members to visit relatives in prison in the United States. Fernando Gonzalez is one of five Cubans who were arrested in the US and sentenced to severe jail terms by a Miami court. Rosa Aurora Freijanes, told Trabajadores newspaper that throughout the six years Fernando has been in prison, she has been allowed to visit him only three times even though he is serving a sentence of 19 years. (Radio Habana Cuba, 19/10/04)

October 19: Washington is blocking educational exchanges between the United States and Cuba by denying entry visas to teachers from the island. According to Lidia Turner, Honorary Chairwoman of Havana's Teacher's Association, the US blockade has forced Cuba to organize alternative educational seminars. In an interview with the daily Granma newspaper, Lidia Turner said that as a researcher and leader of the teacher's association, she has personally suffered from restricted academic exchanges between Cuban and US professors. (Radio Habana Cuba, 19/10/04)

October 21: Washington has declined to wish Fidel Castro a speedy recovery, with some officials joking that they preferred to hear of a "different kind of fall". The US state department appeared to be in no mood to show sympathy for a Communist revolutionary who has defied Washington's power for more than four decades and who has reportedly survived hundreds of assassination attempts. Asked if the state department wished him a speedy recovery, spokesman Richard Boucher simply replied: "No". "The situation of Mr Castro is little concern to us but, unfortunately, of enormous importance to the people of Cuba, who have suffered very long under his rule," he said. One unnamed state department official quoted by a news agency in Washington quipped: "We've been looking forward to Castro's fall for years but this isn't what we had in mind." (BBC, 22/10/04)

October 23: Parliament speaker Ricardo Alarcon blasted Washington's four-decade trade embargo against Cuba as "genocide" as thousands gathered to draw attention to the upcoming UN vote to condemn the sanctions. Alarcon noted that 70 per cent of Cuba's 11.2 million citizens were born after the United States imposed trade sanctions on the Caribbean country in the early 1960s in an effort to undermine Fidel Castro's communist government. "It's a policy of genocide (…) aimed at causing suffering and hunger," Alarcon said of the sanctions. The rally was the first major political gathering in Cuba since Castro, 78, tripped and fell after a graduation ceremony speech in the central city of Santa Clara. (AP, 25/10/04)

October 23: Cuba considered ridiculous the statements of the US Department of State spokesman, Richard Boucher, about the health of Fidel Castro after his accidental fall in a public act. Granma newspaper rejected statements by Richard Boucher, the State Department’s spokesman, and what it called his lack of sensibility and scruples for a human life, and denounced that “ignorant and chatty politicians are common in Washington´s policy”. (Prensa Latina, 23/10/04)

October 23: Some 10,000 people in the Cerro district of Havana demanded the lifting of the US economic embargo on Cuba imposed for more than 40 years. The demonstration demanded the lifting of the US embargo on Cuba and denounced that it violates the principles of International Law and the human rights of the Cuban people. (Prensa Latina, 23/10/04)

October 25: Cuba said it was prepared to use "every possible measure" to repel any form of aggression against the Communist state as it renewed its criticism of the United States over its decision to establish a radio and television station to broadcast material to the island. Ambassador to Barbados, Rodeny López, told the International Frequency Registration Board (IFRB) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) that Washington was using a military plane to broadcast the material to Cuban citizens. He said Radio and TV Marti underscored Washington's policy of tightening the four-decade old trade embargo against Cuba. (BBC, 25/10/04)

October 25: The US Department of the Treasury identified the electronic money transfer business, SERCUBA, as a national of Cuba. "As we have seen, the Castro regime uses a variety of schemes and businesses located not only in Cuba, but also in countries around the world to feed its military and security infrastructure – instead of the Cuban people.  Today, we are financially isolating SERCUBA to make it more difficult for the Cuban regime to obtain the hard currency it uses to oppress its own people and to prop up its government," said Juan Carlos Zárate, Treasury's Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crime. SERCUBA provides a means by which US persons can forward remittances to Cuban nationals via a third country or through SERCUBA's own website.  SERCUBA has a call center in Havana and sixteen offices located in Cuba, along with two offices abroad – one in Italy and one in Spain.  The entity is organized under Cuban laws and is supported by Cimex, a Specially Designated National of Cuba. (Press Release. US Department of the Treasury, 25/10/04)

October 25: A 30-second Bush ad, in Spanish, depicts Kerry as sympathetic toward the Cuban dictator and targets Florida's Cuban-Americans - a community that had been strongly Republican but has splintered over economic hardships it claims the Bush administration has put on family and friends in Cuba. The spot whacks Kerry for voting against the 1996 Helms-Burton Act to beef up sanctions on Cuba, and charges he and the "liberals in Congress (…) don't understand what a dictator is." But Kerry spokesman Phil Singer said Kerry opposed one provision that would have led to frivolous lawsuits. The Bush administration has opposed the same provision. "So now they are taking issue with a provision that they want removed from the law," Singer said. (Washington Bureau, 25/10/04)

October 26: The State Department said Cuba's move to ban the circulation of dollars underscores the weakness of Fidel Castro's communist government. At a news briefing in Washington, State Department Deputy spokesman Adam Ereli described the dollars-for-pesos exchange requirement "draconian," and said it shows that Mr. Castro is "cynically trying to preserve a bankrupt regime" at his peoples' expense. "We see it is a confiscatory measure that demonstrates that President Bush's policy is working," he noted. "It's squeezing the regime, and causing them to take extreme measures that underscore its own inherent weaknesses." (VOA, 26/10/04)

October 27: Stricter travel policies and restrictions on the number of visits to Cuba approved by Washington, have cut the number of visits by US residents to the communist island by half, according to official estimates. The flow of visitors from the United States to the island had dropped by almost 50 percent, as of September, while the number of visits to the island by Cubans who live in the United States had fallen this year by 38 percent, Cuban Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero said. Marrero estimated that at the end of this year, the visits of Cuban-Americans and other US residents to the island will have dropped to only 30 percent of their former levels, down from 115,000 and around 40,000, respectively, in 2003. (EFE, 27/10/04)

October 28: Friends and adversaries of the United States voted overwhelmingly in the UN General Assembly against the four-decade-old American economic, financial and commercial embargo against Cuba. The vote, conducted for the 13th consecutive year, was a lopsided 179 to 4 with one abstention on the resolution opposing the embargo. The United States, Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands voted "no" and Micronesia abstained. "The U.S. government has unleashed a world wide genocidal economic war against Cuba," said Havana's foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque, the only speaker warmly applauded. But the US delegate said Cuba has shown no interest implementing economic reforms that would lead to democratic change or a free market. "The Cuban government is not a victim as it contends. Rather it is a tyrant, aggressively punishing anyone who dares to have a differing opinion," said Oliver Garza, a State Department adviser. (Reuters, 28/10/04)

October 28: Agriculture officials in the state say Cuba will buy $1-million bushels of Oklahoma wheat in November and December. Oklahoma Agriculture Secretary Terry Peach says based on current prices the sale is worth more than $4-million. Peach recently led a trade mission to Cuba that included six farm organizations. The state Wheat Commission, US Wheat Associates, state Farm Bureau, state Farmers Union, Plains Grain and WB Johnston Grain joined Peach on the trip. (KOTV, 28/10/04)

October 28: US Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, urged Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez, to stop supporting the regime of Fidel Castro. “President Chávez should stop anti-democratic forces in the region”, said George W. Bush’s rival in a harsh statement released in Madison, Wisconsin. “In supporting Castro’ repressive regime, (Chávez) has jeopardized regional security and progress toward democracy”, said the candidate. (AFP, 28/10/04)

October 29: A judge dismissed charges against organizers of a sailboat race from Key West to Cuba who were accused of violating federal laws against trading with enemy nations. Peter Goldsmith and Michele Geslin had been charged with two counts of providing unlicensed travel services to Cuba. If convicted of both counts, they could have faced 15-year prison sentences. "The defendants certainly feel vindicated," said attorney Mario Cano, who represents Goldsmith. Carlos B. Castillo, spokesman for the US Attorney's office, said his office was reviewing the decision. (AP, 29/10/04)

October 31: President Bush campaigned from one end of battleground Florida to the other, criticizing Cuba's Fidel Castro in a pitch to the state's Cuban-Americans and urging Republican supporters in Miami to help give him a second term. "We will not rest - we will not rest, we will keep the pressure on until the Cuban people enjoy the same freedoms in Havana they receive here in America," Bush said to cries of "Viva Bush!" Then, in a direct reference to Castro, Bush said, "I strongly believe the people of Cuba should be free from the tyrant." (AP, 31/10/04)

October 31: Cuba's dolphin-export business is in the spotlight again after US authorities fined a Nevada physician $70,000 for buying six dolphins from the socialist nation. Graham Simpson, 53, has said he didn't think the purchase was illegal because he wasn't living in the United States at the time. US authorities say any American who does business with Cuba risks up to 10 years in prison and fines of $250,000 and up. Not all animal-protection activists agree with or even care about the US ban on trade with Cuba. But they say that if it helps them free even a single dolphin, they're glad to see it enforced. (Dallas Morning News, 31/10/04)

October 31: Just days before an American presidential election, Cuban communist officials were designing deals to buy $US150 million more in corn, wheat, cattle and other American farm products at a trade fair. Agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland of Illinois, Tyson Foods of Arkansas, Splash Tropical Drinks of Florida, Marsh Supermarkets of Indiana and White Rose Foods of New Jersey were among 125 American companies participating in the weeklong International Fair of Havana. "This is happening at a crucial moment, during elections in the United States," Pedro Alvarez, chairman of the Cuban food import company Alimport said Saturday after inspecting stands at the exposition centre where the Americans will display food samples. "Many companies and their people will come after the elections," so they don't miss the chance to vote, Alvarez said. Alvarez declined to talk about the US presidential candidates or express a preference. (News 24, 31/10/04)