Chronicle on Cuba - April 2005

US-Cuba Relations

April 1: Twenty-five years ago, a Cuban guard was killed in the crossfire after a bus carrying six asylum seekers crashed into the Peruvian embassy in Havana, launching a series of events that culminated in the 1980 Mariel boatlift that saw 125,000 Cubans set sail for the United States, including hundreds of mental patients and inmates from Cuba's prisons. The guard, Pedro Ortiz Cabrera, was remembered by several hundred Cuban diplomatic police with a simple ceremony, in which the United States was blamed for the killing and subsequent mass exodus. "The whole world knows that the United States encourages the people to leave the country,'' said Victor Hugo Pares, director of a small municipal museum nearby where some of Ortiz Cabrera's belongings are displayed in a glass case. "What happened at the Embassy of Peru was a propagandistic maneuver that turned against them,'' he added, referring to US officials. The official Cuban media made no mention of the 25th anniversary of the start of the Mariel boatlift. (AP, EFE, 3/4/05)

April 6: The President of the US company Calhoun Foods, Gregory Calhoun, underlined the need to put an end to the US embargo on Cuba. At the opening in Havana of a food business exhibit organized by this Alabama company, Calhoun said: "we are working to end the trade obstacles with the island. Calhoun and Buffy Donlon, president of Ala Caribe Initiative Inc., also from Alabama, are heading a US delegation to the food exhibition in Havana. (Prensa Latina, ABC, 6/4/05)

April 6: A press release issued by the US Interest Section in Havana (USINT) said that Fidel Castro lied during a TV appearance on March 30, when he said that “the US Interests Section selects teachers, architects, engineers and other professionals to resettle permanently in the US as part of the US Government's obligation to issue 20,000 travel documents a year”. The USINT “wants to set the record straight”, the note says. “USINT processes self-selected Cubans for resettlement in the US, without regard to profession or job”. “Some Cubans, and their immediate family members, meet the definition of refugee because they have suffered persecution by the Cuban regime, and the US Government recognizes their refugee status. Others are petitioned by family members in the US”, the note adds. “The majority of Cubans paroled into the United States – 60% of the average annual total – registered for a special Cuban visa lottery. In this random selection process, professional background plays no role. The last time Mr. Castro permitted the United States to hold a lottery registration, in 1998, 541,000 Cubans registered to leave Cuba in just 30 days. The regime has refused to permit us to hold another lottery registration, despite our annual requests to do so and Cuba’s obligation under the Migration Accords to allow this”. (Notimex, Reuters, 7/4/05)

April 6: The US Senate voted to keep the government-backed broadcasts aimed at Cuba. The broadcasts by Miami-based Radio and TV Marti are funded though the US Information Agency and the budgets are often disputed in Washington. An amendment on a State Department spending bill this year would have cut the $21.1 million budget for Radio and TV Marti, including $8 million for airborne TV broadcasts. The Senate defeated the amendment by a 65-35 vote. US Senator Byron Dorgan (Democrat-North Dakota), called the broadcasts a "colossal waste of taxpayer money." "It is absurd to spend $21.1 million to send TV signals to Cuba that no one sees," Dorgan said. But US Senator Bill Nelson said the money will help the messages reach Cubans. (AP, 6/4/05)

April 7: In a reference to US president George Bush, Fidel Castro said that the “US emperor's visit to Rome” to pay his last respects for Pope John Paul II is an affront to the deceased prelate's memory, calling it a hypocritical attitude. "Now they have gone to cry before the cadaver of John Paul II, who so opposed the war, who so opposed the Imperialist order, who so often condemned consumerism and this brutal war in Iraq,'' Castro said during his televised address. ``How far will this hypocrisy go. In my judgment (Bush's presence) is an outrage to the memory of John Paul II,'' he said. Castro made the statement at a televised and radio appearance before Communist Party, union and grass roots leaders, Interior Ministry and Armed Forces members. He harshly criticized Bush's attitude, adding that the Pontiff was a very strong critic of war, including the war on Iraq and Afghanistan, whose promoter was the US President himself, and of nuclear weapons, the largest arsenal of which is kept precisely in the United States. The Cuban leader highlighted that unless Bush had knelt down before the body of the deceased Pontiff to ask for forgiveness for all the evils he is causing on the world, his attitude was completely hypocritical. (Radio Habana Cuba, Reuters, 8/4/05)

April 7: The Reverend Jesse Jackson plans to travel to Cuba to promote US trade with the Communist-run island, a friend said. Jackson visited Cuba in 1984 when he secured the release from jail of 22 Americans and 26 Cuban political prisoners, and again in 1991. This time he will be going to endorse free trade with Havana. "He thinks we should bring the walls down and do business with Cuba,'' said Alabama businessman Gregory Calhoun, owner of the distribution company Calhoun Foods, who spoke to Jackson from Havana. "He said he would come to Cuba and told me to work on the dates for him,'' Calhoun said before signing with Cuban authorities food sales worth $14.3 million. (Reuters, 7/4/05)

April 7: Maine Agriculture Commissioner Robert Spear is recovering in a Havana hospital from illness apparently brought on by an infection, a Cuban official said. "The commissioner is receiving an appropriate medical treatment and the possibility exists that he will leave soon for the US, but he personally asked us to remain a few days to continue being treated here," said the president of state-run import company Alimport, Pedro Alvarez. He told reporters that Spear fell ill while on a visit to Cuba to discuss sales of his state's agricultural products to the island. (EFE, 7/4/05)

April 8: The US government is cracking down on certain religious organizations that promote licensed travel to Cuba, restricting the number of visitors they can send to ensure that limits on US citizen travel to -- and spending in -- Cuba are enforced. The Office of Foreign Assets Control sent letters to dozens of organizations that have US-issued religious licenses for travel to Cuba, warning them not to abuse their privileges and announcing investigations into alleged wrongdoing. The regulators also imposed a limit on the number of people who can travel to Cuba under the auspices of these religious groups: 25 every three months. There were no limits previously. (The Miami Herald, 8/4/05)

April 9: Unlike 1980, when US officials had to scramble to deal with the Mariel crisis, the government now has a detailed sea, air and land plan to handle mass migrations from Cuba, Haiti or any other nation to the Southeast US coast. "If there is a mass migration threat to Florida, there's lots of plans in place," said Amos Rojas Jr., special agent in charge of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Miami office. "My sense is it's better to be prepared than to have the chaos we had in 1980." The plan, dubbed "Operation Vigilant Sentry," was developed by the Homeland Security Department along with Florida officials and the military. Its central goal is to intercept migrants at sea -- preferably close to their home shores -- and immediately return them in hopes of deterring more people from attempting a dangerous ocean crossing. (AP, 9/4/05)

April 11: Juan Emilio Aboy, a Cuban exile detained for almost three years on suspicion of being a Cuban spy operating in South Florida, has been on a hunger strike for the past month -- demanding release from the Krome detention center in West Miami-Dade County. Nina Pruneda, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman in Miami, confirmed that Aboy is on a hunger strike but did not provide details on his condition. In a phone interview with the press, Aboy said he heard officials were trying to obtain a federal court order to insert a feeding device into his body. Aboy, 44, is fighting a deportation order that cannot be executed because Cuba generally refuses to take back exiles. He has been linked by federal investigators to the so-called Wasp Network of more than a dozen Cuban government operatives rolled up in the late 1990s. (The Miami Herald, 11/4/05)

April 11: A militant, anti-Communist Cuban exile who was jailed in Panama and then pardoned in connection with a plot to kill Fidel Castro is in the United States and will apply for asylum, his lawyer said. Luis Posada Carriles is an archfoe of Cuba's Communist government, which views him as a terrorist and has linked him to a series of attacks on Cuba, but is seen as a hero by some hard-line exiles in Florida. Lawyer Eduardo Soto confirmed media reports in Miami that Posada Carriles was in the country, saying he entered illegally across the US-Mexican border. A spokeswoman for US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Nina Pruneda, said the agency did not comment on such databases. She said the agency was "working with law enforcement partners reviewing his case. We can confirm he's not in our custody." Soto did not say when his client arrived in the United States or where he was. He said Posada Carriles had good grounds for asylum because if he were deported he would be "squarely in the path of danger." "Mr. Posada Carriles has done nothing that would make him inadmissible (to the United States)," Soto said. (Reuters, 11/4/05)

April 11: In a nationally broadcast speech Fidel Castro said the United States was harboring anti-Cuban terrorists. "That monster has been living there for 19 days," Castro said of Luis Posada Carriles, who was convicted and sentenced to eight years in jail in Panama for trying to murder Castro during a Latin American presidential summit in 2000. Carriles, 76, was pardoned and released from jail by Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso last year. Press reports said he recently moved to Miami, Florida, together with three acccomplices. Castro wondered what motives "that perverse empire" -- the United States -- may have to hide a terrorist in its territory after proclaiming to the world "its alleged commitment to fight terrorism." Changing a well-known phrase, he said that “the devil raises them and the same devil unites them” referring to links between some Cuban American organizations based in the US and the successive US administrations. "That is clear, they treat him like a son”, said Fidel Castro with irony. Castro said Cuba delivered a diplomatic note demanding that Carriles be arrested and deported to Cuba to face charges of international terrorism, or if that proved politically impossible, that he be tried in the United States. (AFP, Prensa Latina, Reuters, 11/4/05)

April 12: Luis Posada Carriles, a CIA-trained Cuban exile implicated in a series of terrorist incidents, applied for political asylum in the United States, prompting at least one congressman to assert that granting the request would undermine the nation's credibility in the war on terrorism. Posada is in hiding after recently slipping into the United States, said Eduardo Soto, the Miami area lawyer handling Posada's asylum application. "If he is in the United States, he should be arrested and deported under the norms of international law," said Representative William D. Delahunt (Democrat-Massachusetts), who wrote a letter to leaders on the House International Relations Committee calling for an investigation into how Posada entered the country. "Given the enmity between the Cuban and US governments, it is possible that US officials may have turned a blind eye to Posada's entrance into our country -- or even worse, facilitated it," Delahunt wrote. "If that were true -- and even if it were not and Posada is allowed to remain here -- it would obliterate America's credibility in the war on terrorism, because it would suggest that we share the views of those who support al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents that 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." (Washington Post, 13/4/05)

April 13: Venezuela said it would demand Washington hand over an anti-communist Cuban exile wanted for terrorism by Havana after his attorney said he had travelled to the United States to apply for asylum. Luis Posada Carriles, who holds Venezuelan citizenship and who once escaped from jail in Caracas, has been accused by Havana of several attacks, including the bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed dozens of people. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had called for Posada's extradition after he was arrested in 2000 in Panama. "We’re going to step up our demands for extradition," Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel told reporters. "I hope Mr Bush will take note of his own anti-terrorism policies and hand over Posada Carriles." (ABC Online, 13/4/05)

April 13: Spain's foreign minister has found a generally unsympathetic audience among both Republican and Democratic US legislators in the first part of his fence-mending mission to Washington. Miguel Angel Moratinos defended the need to intensify the two nations' bilateral dialogue in his first meeting with lawmakers on his visit to the US capital, however the legislators expressed their incomprehension over Madrid's policy toward Cuba and Venezuela. Moratinos met with members of the House International Relations Committee. There, both Republican and Democratic congressmen informed the Spanish minister that they did not understand the strategy being pursued by the government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero toward Havana and Caracas, diplomatic sources said. (EFE, 14/4/05)

April 14: Cuba, only hours after being formally criticized by the UN Commission on Human Rights for its lack of respect for individual liberties, presented a resolution of its own calling for an investigation into treatment of detainees at the US naval base on the southeastern coast of the island. Cuban ambassador Jorge Ivan Mora said the resolution asks that a representative of the UN commission be sent to the base at Guantanamo, sovereignty over which is exercised by Washington, to investigate treatment of the more than 500 people the United States has been holding there without trial, some for more than three years. Washington contends that the prisoners, some of whom reportedly have been subjected to deprivations and interrogation techniques tantamount to torture, are "enemy combatants" and suspected Islamic fundamentalist terrorists bereft of most legal rights. The Cuban-proposed measure notes that the European Parliament called last October for "an independent and impartial investigation" into allegations of abuse of detainees at the base. (EFE, 14/4/05)

April 14: Fidel Castro urged the United States to refrain from granting political asylum to Luis Posada Carriles, saying the Cuban militant should instead be sent to an international tribunal or Venezuela, where he is wanted for a 1976 Cuban airliner bombing. In his second speech on the Posada case this week, Castro said that the government has no intention of trying to bring Posada, who is also linked to assassination plots against the Cuban leader, to the island. ''We are not going to ask for him, the whole world knows we won't,'' he said. ''Send him to Venezuela (...) or an international tribunal in a neutral place where criminals are judged.'' Castro negated the possibility that Cuban intelligence agents would be after him. ''We don't want him to disappear from the face of the earth,'' Castro said. ''What we want is for him to appear -- him and all those who trained him.'' (Reuters, AP, 15/4/05)

April 15: A US senator who wants more food sales to Cuba blocked action on a popular nominee for the No 2 job at the Agriculture Department to draw attention to the issue. Senator Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, acted a few days ahead of a potential Senate vote on a measure that would make it easier to sell US farm goods to Cuba. The Bush administration toughened the rules on February 22 over the protests of farm groups and their lawmaker allies. "We want to be assured we can trade with Cuba," said a Craig aide. He confirmed Craig put a hold on the nomination of White House agriculture advisor Chuck Conner to become deputy agriculture secretary. As a matter of courtesy, senators traditionally defer action on a nomination if a senator puts a hold on it. (The News, 17/4/05)

April 15: US Ambassador Kevin Moley, a representative to the UN Human Rights Commission at Geneva, said the resolution on Cuba passed with a larger majority than it has in the recent past. Last year's vote was 22-21 with 10 abstentions. This year's 21-17 vote was cast with 15 abstentions. "I think it reflects the president's energy and efforts he is putting behind his push for democracy around the world," Moley said. "We're very pleased. Weeks ago, I would have said that it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to prevail," he said. In a telephone interview with the press Moley said Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine were responsible for the margin. (UPI, 15/4/05)

April 15: A Cuban official demanded that the United States immediately arrest and try ''international terrorist'' Luis Posada Carriles, who has sought political asylum and is believed to be hiding in Miami. Dagoberto Rodríguez, Cuba's top diplomat in the United States, also said that Cuba would not abide by a US-sponsored resolution passed in Geneva extending a 2003 mandate charging a UN expert with examining Cuba's human rights situation. ''For us, the resolution passed on Cuba is just garbage. It is a piece of poor quality toilet paper. We are not going to abide by that,'' Rodríguez said, questioning the moral authority of the United States to sponsor such a resolution. (AP, 15/4/05)

April 15: A judge cleared the way for federal officials to have a feeding tube inserted in a Cuban exile who is on a weeklong hunger strike to protest his detention as a suspected spy. Juan Emilio Aboy was at Jackson Memorial Hospital's inmate ward, hospital spokeswoman Lorraine Nelson said. A day earlier, US District Judge Paul Huck agreed with another judge's order to "involuntarily administer nutrients" to Aboy through a stomach or intravenous tube, and to restrain him if he attempts to remove it. (The Seattle Post, 17/4/05)

April 17: Fidel Castro denounced obscure dealings by some US government officials and the “anti-Cuban terrorist mafia” based in the United States. Castro pointed his finger at the US government for its relations with terrorists such as Luis Posada Carriles, who is currently requesting political asylum in that country. Fidel Castro included John Bolton, Otto Reich and Roger Noriega on the list of US officials who have ties with terrorists. He said they have been characterized by their aggressive stance against the Cuban revolution from their government posts. Castro sustained that possible asylum granted to Luis Posada Carriles in the United States would undermine the country´s alleged struggle against terrorism around the world. (Prensa Latina, 17/4/05)

April 18: Fidel Castro demanded that the United States immediately arrest and deport an alleged terrorist who is a former US army officer and ex-CIA agent. Castro in a speech commented on the reported presence in Miami of Cuban-exile radical Luis Posada Carriles, who he said should be sent to Venezuela to be tried there by an international tribunal. "What would be best for the United States, for its prestige, for the war on terrorism, would be to display no vacillation on this, to look for Posada Carriles," he said. "We already waived our right to try him, though no one has more of a right to do so, but we don't want anyone to think that we want to put on a show. We are not interested in any of that," Castro said. He also repeated his proposal to have an international court try Posada Carriles in Venezuela, where there is no death penalty. Castro has dedicated five televised speeches to the topic of Posada, whose exact whereabouts are not known, over the last week (EFE, AP, 19/4/05)

April 19: A Cuban spy suspect who had been on a hunger strike for 38 days demanding freedom from immigration custody was abruptly deported to his homeland -- only the second such removal of a non-Mariel Cuban back to the island since 1982. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention and removal officers returned Juan Emilio Aboy to Havana aboard an American government plane that took off from Miami and flew directly to the Cuban capital, said Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE spokeswoman in Miami. Aboy was admitted and paroled into the country on March 2, 1995. He became a lawful permanent resident on May 7, 1996. Aboy was arrested in May 2002, but has never been charged criminally. Instead, he was put in deportation proceedings. He had been linked by investigators to the so-called Wasp Network of more than a dozen Cuban government operatives working in South Florida in the late 1990s. He has denied the allegations, and investigators have not produced specific evidence other than to indicate the information came from Wasp Network members who were government informants. (The Miami Herald, 20/4/05)

April 19: Cuban´s resistance will be invincible if the United States ever decided to launch a military aggression against the island, stressed Fidel Castro when recalling memories of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Addressing a ceremony on the victory 44th anniversary, Castro warned that the US administration of President George W. Bush is portraying Cuba as a terrorist country to psychologically prepare the ground for a military attack. (Prensa Latina, 19/4/05)

April 19: The United States should allow UN human rights monitors, including the special rapporteur on torture, to visit detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Human Rights Watch said. Cuba put forward a resolution at the UN Commission on Human Rights demanding such access for the rights monitor. Cuba should permit the UN rapporteurs to visit detainees in its own prisons as well. “The international community should get commitments from both the United States and Cuba to grant UN investigators access to detainees on all parts of the island,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “The European Union put its weight behind this effort.”   (HRW Press Release, 19/4/05) 

April 20: The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) concluded discussion of agenda items, although the European Union dodged the Cuban proposal concerning prisoners of the US in Guantánamo. Several participants in the Commission have already said their farewells, although one burning issue remains - the answer to the Cuban initiative concerning the situation of the persons being held by the United States in the military base it illegally occupies in Guantánamo. The proposal has already been through three sessions of consultations, during which the Cuban mission considered opinions proffered, and modified the document accordingly. (Prensa Latina, 20/4/05)

April 20: Recent US Treasury Department rulings threaten a growing US market for rice and other commodities, a representative of the US Rice Producers Association and USA Rice Federation told members of Congress. “Cuba has grown to be among our top five largest single-country export markets for US rice,” says Dennis DeLaughter, a rice producer from Edna, Texas, who testified at a hearing held by the House Agriculture Committee. “Since December 2001, $1 billion of agricultural goods have already been delivered and paid for by Cuba, he said. “These purchases included shipments of nearly 320,000 tons of US rice worth a reported $81 million. In 2004, the Cubans bought $64 million worth of US rice — more than their purchases of any other commodity.” (Sothwest Farm Press, 20/4/05)

April 20: The abrupt deportation of an alleged Cuban spy in Miami -- the first such removal to the communist-ruled island -- came after Havana expressed an unusual willingness to take back the spy suspect, US officials told the press. Washington authorities had sought Juan Emilio Aboy's return to his native Cuba since late last year, but it wasn't until April 18 that Havana unexpectedly issued a diplomatic note saying his return would be accepted. Cuba has generally refused to take back exiles. US officials said no special negotiations or deals were tied to Aboy's return. (The Miami Herald, 20/4/05)

April 20: A pocket-size leaflet with a reprint of Bush's January 20 inaugural address in which he vowed to free the world of tyranny, and a second pamphlet containing the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, arrived anonymously in the dead of night on “patios” and doors of Havana. They are part of an escalating US government program to spur political change in Cuba. The clandestine, door-to-door leafleting is the latest in the Bush administration's stepped up effort to reach citizens who have little access to public information outside Cuba's government-controlled media. In Zamora, a neighborhood of concrete homes and wood shacks packed tightly together, the pamphlets were met with dread, suspicion and curiosity. Although rumors about anything out of the ordinary usually spread like wildfire in Cuba, Zamora residents have largely kept quiet about the mysterious pamphlets. Daniel Erikson, director of Caribbean programs at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington policy group, said the leaflets are designed more to irritate Castro than to cause change on the island. Erikson said Cubans have become extremely "risk adverse" because they live in a police state. Cuban authorities have made clear that anyone associated with the US government-financed program is a traitor who could be jailed. "Cubans do not see it to be in their own interest to be accepting or reading these flyers," Erikson said. "It's not that people are not interested in democracy. But the US is not the best messenger." (Chicago Tribune, 20/4/05)

April 20: A US House of Representatives Subcommittee passed a resolution in support of the meeting of the Assembly to Promote Civil Society in Cuba, which will be held on May 20 in Havana . The bipartisan resolution, introduced by Republican legislator of Cuban origin, Mario Díaz-Balart, serves as an expression of solidarity with the more than 360 organizations that make up the Assembly. (El Nuevo Herald, 2174/05)

April 20: The UN Human Rights Commissioner rejected Cuba's attempt to force an investigation into the treatment of detainees at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay. The vote on Cuba's resolution was 22-8, with 23 other nations abstaining. The other nations supporting Cuba were China, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Sudan, Malaysia, Guatemala and Mexico. The resolution, which noted the “serious concern” expressed by UN experts about the conditions for detainees at Guantanamo, would have asked the United States “to authorize an impartial and independent fact-finding mission” to the centre. (AP, 21/4/05)

April 21: Fidel Castro charged that Washington might be planning the deportation of international criminal Luis Posada Carriles to El Salvador. He said that sending the terrorist to the Central American nation would be like sending him home, since, according to the Cuban leader, Posada Carriles planned many of his terrorist actions there, including the bomb explosions in several Havana hotels in 1997. Fidel Castro made the statement at a televised and radio presentation before victims and survivors of US terrorism against the Caribbean island, Communist Party, union and grass-roots leaders and Armed Forces and Interior Ministry members. (Radio Habana Cuba, 21/4/05)

April 24: The leader of a Baptist group in Cuba will be preaching at a Birmingham church as part of a program that promotes cultural exchange between US and Cuban Baptists. Manuel Delgado, executive secretary of the Fraternity of Baptist Churches in Cuba, will speak at Baptist Church of the Covenant. Delgado's group has ties to the Alliance of Baptists, a coalition of moderate Baptists of which Church of the Covenant is a member. The Alliance promotes exchanges between churches in Cuba and the United States. (Birmingham News, 24/4/05)

April 25: A move to limit travel from Florida to Cuba died in the Florida Senate when committee members said they don't want to stop anyone from visiting a sick or dying relative. The plan championed by Representative David Rivera, Republican-Miami, was designed to stop Floridians from traveling to and helping the economy of terrorist nations, mainly communist Cuba. It would have stripped Cuban expatriates of any state and federal benefits if they returned home within three years of arriving in Florida and called for stiff fees on charter flights to the island nation. "You'd be able to travel to a terrorist country, just not do it on the taxpayer's dime," said Rivera, one of South Florida's most vocal supporters of President George W. Bush's tough restrictions on travel and gift parcels to Cuba announced last May. But members of the Senate Commerce and Consumer Services Committee openly wondered why they should stop someone from visiting family. (Sun Sentinel, 25/4/05)

April 25: The Cuban Ambassador to the United Nations demanded that the United States arrest and extradite a Cuban-born militant who supposedly arrived in Miami. Ambassador Orlando Requeijo considered Luis Posada Carriles “one of the most monstrous terrorists on this continent.” At a UN Security Council meeting on terrorism, Requeijo said that the alleged militiaman was trained and used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to plan attacks against Cuba for 40 years. (AP, 25/4/05)

April 26: More than thirty companies, state agencies, and organizations from 19 states announced the official formation of the US-Cuba Trade Association (USCTA). Charter members of the newly formed association include ADM, Caterpillar, Cargill, National Foreign Trade Council, USAEngage, USA Rice Federation, North Dakota Farm Bureau, Port of Galveston, Louisiana Department of Economic Development, AgBioTech, Buffalo Int'l., Arthur Savage & Sons, Port Manatee Commercial Center, Virginia Department of Agriculture, US Wheat Associates, and other companies. The mission of the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association is to protect current trade with Cuba, expand and increase the potential for future business, and promote the full normalization of commercial relations between the US and Cuba. (PRNewswire, 26/4/05)

April 26: In a show of the growing clout of Cuban-American lawmakers in Washington, a bipartisan group of legislators is forming a caucus to strengthen measures designed to weaken Fidel Castro's regime and to promote Cuba's civil society and pro-democracy movement. The Cuban Democracy Caucus had yet to finalize its agenda and membership, but a draft of a 10-point agenda shows the caucus may push for aggressive new tactics to undermine Castro. Among the moves being pushed, the agenda supports current US law behind the embargo and fight legislation that would allow US tourists to visit and spend money in Cuba; insists that US interests be allowed to lobby the Havana government as much as Washington allows lobbying by the Cuban government; demands accountability for crimes committed by the Cuban government against US citizens, such as the shoot-down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996, which resulted in four US civilian deaths. (The Miami Herald, 27/4/05)

April 26: The University of Miami's Cuban Heritage Collection has received the Fulgencio Batista Zaldivar Collection, consisting of thousands of documents - correspondence, memorabilia, photographs, and books - owned by the former Cuban President. This invaluable part of Cuban history was donated by Batista Zaldivar's widow Martha Batista and his children. The Cuban Heritage Collection, in the University's Otto G. Richter Library, is the largest repository of Cuban historical, literary and cultural materials outside the island. The Fulgencio Batista Zaldivar Collection contains documents dating from 1958 to 1973. (Business Wire, 26/4/05)

April 27: The US Congress urged the European Union to press Cuba on its human rights record and condemned the communist-led island for its crackdown on dissidents. The House of Representatives voted 398-27 for a resolution that "condemns in the strongest possible terms" Cuba's arrest of 75 dissidents in March 2003 and its "continuing repressive crackdown against the brave internal opposition and the independent press." It also "calls for the European Union, as well as other countries and international organizations, to continue to pressure the Cuban regime to improve its human rights record." (AFP, 27/4/05)

April 27: North Dakota firms expect to sell 25,000 metric tons of dry peas to Cuba in the next 18 months, an agreement that officials say will bolster the state's trade relationship with the communist nation. The first shipment of 5,000 tons of peas should be sent to Cuba in the next three months, said Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson, who returned this week from a three-day trade mission to the country. Cuban officials also are interested in buying several other North Dakota commodities, including sunflowers, soybeans and potatoes, along with cattle, Johnson said. (AP, 27/4/05)

April 27: Business leaders and current and former elected officials from throughout the South will gather at the Mobile Convention Center to attend the 2005 National Summit on Cuba in Mobile, Alabama. Special presentations will be made on US Cuba policy's economic impact on the American South. Speakers include Alabama Secretary of Agriculture Ron Sparks; Louisiana Secretary of Economic Development Mike Olivier who just traveled to Cuba with Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco; US Representatives Jo Bonner (Republican-Alabama) and Jeff Flake (Republican-Arizona) among other local and US elected officials, corporate representatives and others. (PR Newswire, 27/4/05)

April 27: Activists from across the country gathered in Washington to protest US sanctions against Cuba. In a ballroom of the Hyatt Regency hotel, more than 700 activists gathered to hear members of Congress talk about legislation that would repeal travel restrictions to the island. One of those members said that those who support sanctions against Cuba are organizing because they are worried about losing ground in the fight. In reference to the creation of the Congressional Cuba Democracy Caucus, an organization that focuses attention on human rights violations in Cuba and on the dissident movement in Cuba, Representative Jeff Flake said as he left the Hyatt ballroom, "they look at a group like this and they say, Hey, this issue is slipping away from us." (Sun Sentinel, 28/4/05)

April 27: The United States has lost out on $300 million in agricultural sales to Cuba since February when the Bush administration imposed stricter financial regulations on firms doing business with the country, a Cuban government official told a new pro-Cuba trade group. Pedro Alvarez Borrego, chairman of the Cuban food import agency Alimport, told the US-Cuba Trade Association in a telephone conference that the "uncertainty of supply and financial losses" had forced Alimport "to detour" to other foreign markets for $300 million in purchases, according to a copy of his speech. Alimport has imported $179.4 million in U.S. food products this year, which USCTA said is on par with imports of recent years. Traders, however, say the Cuba business is not growing this year. Alvarez said Cuba will honor the contracts it has signed and hopes to continue to expand US purchases. (Congress Daily, 28/4/05)

April 29: The leaders of Cuba and Venezuela relished their roles as Washington's bad boys in Latin American and vowed to build a socialist alternative to US policies in the hemisphere. Fidel Castro and the younger and equally loquacious Hugo Chavez mocked Bush administration charges that their burgeoning partnership threatens to undermine democracy in Latin America. "I'm realizing that your friendship is hurting my image," Castro joked to Chavez during a meeting with hundreds of free trade opponents from across the Americas. Among the attendees were Bolivian coca farmer Evo Morales, whose peasant movement helped oust a US ally from the presidency in 2003, and former Salvadoran guerrilla Shafik Handal, leader of the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front. "If we are speaking of an axis, that axis is spreading in all directions and turning into masses of people that are rising up," said Chavez. We must congratulate (US Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice for the death of the FTAA. The FTAA is dead, the ALBA is coming," declared Castro, calling her "Condolence" Rice. The only country that has joined ALBA is Cuba, which has turned to Venezuela for oil to pull up a cash-starved economy crippled by the demise of the Soviet Union. (Reuters, 29/4/05)