Chronicle on Cuba - September 2005

Domestic Affairs

September 1: Blind human rights activist, Juan Carlos González Leiva, denounced that he was the victim of an angry demonstration in front of his house by mobs organized by Cuban authorities. Forces of State Security and the Cuban Police used the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution to lead a mob of over 200 people that shouted obscenities and governmental slogans. They banged the doors and windows of Leiva’s home and threatened him. Leiva denounced that since August 6 he has suffered more than 15 demonstrations, and other acts of repression like detainments, fines, and citations. He also said that his telephone is interrupted continually, for entire days and nights. (Netfor Cuba, 11/9/05)

September 5: According to Lisandra Lafitta, wife of physician and political prisoner, Dr. Luis Milán Fernández, her husband has been arbitrarily confined since February 18, 2005, to a psychiatric ward of the Boniato Prison Hospital in Santiago de Cuba. Dr. Milán Fernández is a man free of mental ailments. Sentenced to a 13-year prison term, he is forced to share a cell with patients suffering a variety of mental disorders, two or three of them sleep in Dr. Milan’s prison cell. Some of these patients, due to their aggressiveness have annoyed and provoked him. Upon the complaints presented by Dr. Milan and his wife for this imprisonment in a psychiatric ward with mental patients, the authorities at the Boniato Prison said that, “it’s the ward with the best conditions, spacious, and where he is able to remain alone for a period of time.” (NetforCuba, 5/9/05)

September 6: Cuban authorities denied permission to hold several religious events related to the feast of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre but authorized 60 processions across the island to honor the patron saint of Cuba. The Cuban Catholic Bishops Conference (COCC) said the celebration of the feast of the Virgin on September 8 would include a procession through the streets around the Church of Our Lady of Charity, in Havana, where Cardinal Jaime Ortega will celebrate Mass. On that same day, processions are planned in the Havana neighborhoods of Calabazar, Batabanó, Tumba 4, Wajay, Jaruco and Bejucal, among others. Processions are also planned on September 7-8 in the Dioceses of Cienfuegos, Santa Clara, Ciego de Avila, Camagüey, Bayamo-Manzanillo and Holguín, while church officials are still awaiting permission to stage a procession in Matanzas. The COCC said authorities denied seven permits to stage religious processions, two of them in the Diocese of Bayamo-Manzanillo, on the grounds that they were "not convenient." Five permits were denied to the Archdiocese of Camagüey based on the fact that "there was no tradition" of processions in some cases and that "a procession has already been authorized in the same municipality" in others. (EFE, 6/9/05)

September 6: Cuban government opponent Oswaldo Payá again called on public opinion to condemn the treatment afforded political prisoners in Cuba, as one of the dissidents jailed in the crackdown of the spring 2003 has gone on hunger strike after being transferred to a cellblock with hardened criminals. Payá, leader of the outlawed Liberation Christian Movement, or MCL, said in a communique released in Havana that Jose Daniel Ferrer García, now being held at a prison in the eastern province of Camagüey, earlier spent 84 days in a punishment cell for protesting his placement among ordinary convicts in another penitentiary. (EFE, 6/9/05)

September 7: Cuba is still a country rated "high" in human development, the UN Development Program reported. The Human Development Index (HDI) the organization publishes every year is an indicator that takes into account three dimensions of human welfare: income, education and health. Cuba was ranked 52 on the HID, the same as last year, after fellow Latin American nations Argentina, ranked 34, Chile, 37, Uruguay 46 and Costa Rica, 47. It ranked above Mexico, ranked 53, and Panama, 56, in the "high" category, with the other countries of the region placing among nations in the "medium" category. With a per capita gross domestic product (GDP) estimated at $5,400, Cuba devotes 6.5 percent of its GDP to health and 9 percent to education. The island's economic and technological shortcomings are revealed in the section on technology, as only 64 out of 1,000 Cubans have a basic telephone line, three have cell phones and nine have Internet access, according to 2003 figures. Women occupy 16.2 percent of Cabinet-level jobs and 36 percent of seats on the National People's Power Assembly. [UNDP Human Development Report 2005] (EFE, 7/9/05)

September 7: The leader of the Catholic Church in Cuba, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, rejected as "truly outrageous'' a Communist government official's charge that Cuban bishops served the interests of the United States. Ortega, archbishop of Havana and president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Cuba, said statements made by Cuba's envoy to the Vatican, Raul Roa, were "insulting.'' “Ambassador Roa uses disrespectful and sometimes offensive language never before employed in public by a Cuban ambassador to the Holy See,'' the cardinal said in a statement. In an interview with an Italian news agency, Roa said the Catholic Church hierarchy served Spanish colonial rule and, after the Spanish-American war of 1898, continued in the service of a foreign power, the United States. Ortega was most annoyed by Roa's remark that Cuban priests are closer to the people and the socialist work of the government, while some bishops are "closer to the people in Miami, the Cuban emigres." "His opinions about the Cuban bishops and their distance from the priests are unacceptable and false," the cardinal said. (The New York Times, 7/9/05)

September 7: Fidel Castro returned to Havana after taking part in the Petrocaribe Summit that took place in Montego Bay, Jamaica. The head of state and his delegation were received at the José Martí international airport by Castro’s brother, Raúl, and other officials. (AFP, 7/9/05)

September 8: A group of Cuban dissidents led by activist Oswaldo Payá launched a project to survey fellow government opponents to determine what they have in common and where there are points of contention. A document with dozens of questions on communist Cuba's future was being distributed to more than 100 activists in Havana and other cities across the island, said Ernesto Martini, a dissident who works closely with Payá. The survey, called "Common Ground," addresses topics including freedom of expression, equal rights for Cubans and foreigners, and even the abortion debate. Those participating will indicate whether they agree with each statement, disagree, or wish to propose modifications. "The people of Cuba should know what groups within the diverse civic movements think and want for our country," a statement announcing the survey said. (AP, 8/9/05)

September 8: Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega said that relations between the Catholic Church and the State are continuing “the status quo, but without there being any problem", despite his rejection of statements by the Cuban ambassador to the Holy See. The also archbishop of Havana celebrated a mass in the church of the Sanctuary of the Virgin de Regla, in Havana, on the occasion of the festivities of the Patron Saint of Cuba, Our Lady of Charity, which was celebrated on the island with religious services and public processions. (EFE, 9/9/05)

September 11: The well known Cuban composer and conductor, Manuel Duchesne Cuzán, one of the mainstays of the symphonic movement on the island, died of cancer in Havana at the age of 72. He was one of the founders of the National Symphonic Orchestra in 1960, which he directed for more than two decades. (Granma, 11/9/05)

September 12: A group headed by well-known opposition leader Martha Beatriz Roque accused Cuban authorities of confiscating medicine and cash intended for a jailed dissident's family. The Assembly for the Promotion of Civil Society said in a statement sent to international media that state security agents seized the medicine and local currency worth about $296 (euro240) earlier in the day when they detained and questioned Carlos Jimenez. Jimenez, an assembly member, had been on his way to deliver the items to the family of imprisoned dissident Rene Gomez Manzano. "Every day, the Cuban government becomes more fascist," the assembly said, accusing island authorities of "not allowing humanitarian aid to be given to prisoners." There was no immediate response from the Cuban government. (AP, 12/9/05)

September 13: Cuba announced it would create an organization of doctors ready for dispatch to natural disasters around the globe as it continued to wait for a response to its offer to send physicians to the United States to aid the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. The doctors "continue training intensely at the Latin American Medical School, waiting for a response that has yet to arrive, and may never come," said a government statement on the front page of Granma, the Communist Party daily. The group's objective will be to "immediately cooperate (…) with any country that suffers a catastrophe [like Katrina], especially those confronting (…) hurricanes, flooding and other natural phenomenon," the Granma statement said. The new organization was to be formally created at a graduation ceremony of Cuban medical students. (CNN, 13/9/05)

September 13: Cuban homosexual males organized the first film festival on sexual diversity, an event also intended to contribute to the fight against AIDS. The festival is an opportunity to discuss topics regarding male homosexuals and it has a preventive approach since it allows to speak "aloud" on HIV/SIDA, said Yoel Vega, a coordinator of the project "Men who Have Sex with Men" (HSH). Outside a movie theatre in Havana, young people distributed leaflets, condoms and posters to the audience. (AP, 13/9/05)

September 13: Cuban authorities and parents are shifting their attention from universal primary education to the quality of education received by Cuban schoolchildren. Cuba already has achieved the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) set in 2000 that all children receive primary education. “The question now is no longer quantity, but rather quality. Many families have begun to pay for private tutors to ensure that their children are learning what they need to learn, and that didn't happen 10 years ago," said Aurelio Castellanos, a 43-year-old teacher. A month of private classes in Spanish or mathematics can cost around 40 Cuban pesos or two dollars, a high price in a country where the average monthly salary is roughly 300 pesos. During the worst years of the economic crisis in the 1990s, the shortage of teachers was solved by the introduction of intensive, short-term training courses to prepare recent secondary school graduates to teach in primary schools. This made it possible to ensure a maximum class size of 20 students at the primary level. However, it also means that of the 38,881 teachers in the Cuban school system today, 12,553 are young and relatively inexperienced graduates of these intensive training courses. Fidel Castro acknowledged July 24 that despite all the advances made in the school system, the country is "still a long way from achieving all of the educational results" that could be hoped for. (IPS, 13/9/05)

September 14: Of every 100 Cubans 14 years of age and older, 65 live in couple, 43 of them married and 22 in free union, according to a demographic study. The study was presented by expert Elena Benítez, of the Centre for Demographic Studies at the University of Havana, during the VI Ibero-American Conference on Family, which took place in Havana's International Conference Centre. In her presentation, Benítez indicated that the tendency of increasing consensual unions is influenced by factors that go from the economic and social independence reached by women and the rejection of formalisms, up to material needs like the scarcity of housings and social and economic problems in Cuba. (AFP, 14/9/05)

September 15: Actors from 16 countries are attending XII International Theater Festival in Havana. Participating countries include Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Greece, Switzerland, South Korea and Cuba. Twenty-two facilities and 17 alternative places host the 195 scheduled functions throughout the city. (Prensa Latina, 15/9/05)

September 15: The independent journalist and political prisoner Victor Rolando Arroyo Carmona has been held incommunicado for four months in the prison Combinado de Guantánamo. "I have not been able to see my husband for the past four months; I am very concerned because Arroyo is suffering from high blood pressure that is out of control and at the present time has blisters all over his body”. “According to relatives of other prisoners my husband's physical deterioration is alarming," said Elsa Gonzales. His isolation extends to denying him access to all mail, no telephone calls and most importantly, not allowing his wife to pass the medications he needs. (Puente Informativo, 15/9/05)

September 17: Cuba won its eighth straight Baseball World Cup with a 3-0 shutout of South Korea. It was the 24th title for Cuba since the competition began in 1938. South Korea was the last team to beat Cuba in the World Cup, in 1982. (Toronto Star, 17/9/05)

September 19: The Henry Reeve International Contingent of Disaster and Epidemic Physicians, a team of 1,586 physicians, was officially inducted by Fidel Castro at the graduation ceremony for 1,903 new doctors from Cuban medical schools. If wealthy nations ever decide to collaborate in the combat against the pandemics of poor countries, they’ll need professionals like those in the Henry Reeve brigade,” declared Fidel Castro, citing Cuba’s first world infant mortality and life expectancy stats as evidence of the island’s medical success. [Speech by Fidel Castro] (Prensa Latina, 20/9/05)

September 19: Fidel Castro said that Cuba is on the way to reduce infant mortality to less than four per thousand births and to increase the life expectancy of her people. Addressing the graduation ceremony for 1,903 physicians from Cuban medical schools, Castro stressed that, "we are going to be the first Latin American country to reach this figure, even better than that of Canada." In addition, he said, this will take place in half the time it took Switzerland and Japan to raise their life expectancies from 70 to 80 years, because today we are at 77.5 years. [Speech by Fidel Castro] (Prensa Latina, 20/9/05)

September 19: Cuban authorities prepared to evacuate thousands of people in advance of the arrival of Tropical Storm Rita, which was expected to become a hurricane before reaching the island. Cuban authorities have put evacuation plans into action to remove residents and tourists from areas near sea level along the island's northern coast, as well as from zones prone to flooding. In the areas at risk from the storm, workers are clearing drains, sewers and terraces, removing debris and securing doors, windows, roofs and fresh water supplies. Also, warehouses and businesses are stocking up on food and basic materials. (EFE, 19/9/05)

September 20: Protestant Christians in Cuba are concerned about new regulations on house churches that may restrict religious freedom. This month, new regulations concerning house churches in Cuba drawn in April 2005 will take effect. The new laws, called Directive 43 and Resolution 46, mandate that all house churches register with local officials to obtain permission to operate. House churches that do not receive authority to hold services do not have legal permission to operate. Cuban Protestant Christians are expressing concern because it is unlikely that all house churches will receive authorization to hold service before October. There are approximately 10,000 to 15,000 house churches in Cuba, according to Cuban Protestant pastors. The house churches are usually affiliated with “well-established denominations,” acting as a satellite church for the main congregations. (The Christian Post, 20/9/05)

September 20: Former political prisoner Miguel Sigler Amaya, his wife Josefa Lopez Peña, and their two children, were all arrested as they were boarding the plane that was to take them into exile. As they were boarding a plane at Havana’s International Airport, Sigler Amaya and his family were taken to a police office close to the airport. Sigler Amaya had been arrested on March 18, 2003, and condemned to 26 months in prison, but was released due to severe health conditions. His wife, Josefa Lopez Peña participated in demonstrations carried out by the “Ladies In White” (Damas de Blanco), a group of women comprised political prisoners’ relatives who peacefully and publicly pray and demand the freedom of their loved ones. Josefa also practiced independent journalism and her articles were widely published in media web pages such as Payolibre and, most recently, in Bitácora Cubana. (Bitacora Cubana News Release, 20/9/05)  

September 20: In the September issue of “Geology”, scientists from Spain, Cuba, and Mexico reported that they have discovered a highly disturbed bed of fossils that dates from the end of the Cretaceous era. “It was difficult. The site is located opposite a military base. So it's almost impossible to get a work permit,'' Laia Alegret, a team geologist at the University of Zaragoza in Spain, said in an interview. The discovery was outside Santa Clara, a city in central Cuba whose nearby air base drew scrutiny in 1962 when American spy planes spotted Soviet jets and antiaircraft missiles. It turned out that the base held Soviet bombers and a half-dozen atom bombs. A rocky outcrop on the hill showed an exposed bed of sedimentary rock made up of broken bits of minerals and fossils. Examination with microscopes showed numerous signs of cosmic violence, including quartz deformed by high temperatures and pressures, as well as tiny spheres of glass, both clearly debris from a spectacular fireball. (The New York Times, 20/9/05)

September 21: Agriculture Minister Alfredo Jordán Morales, who rose from humble beginnings to hold a ministerial post and sit on the ruling politburo of Cuba´s Communist Party, died from cancer, state media reported. He was 55. Jordán continued to work in his position until his death, Cuban television and the domestic National Information Agency said. Jordán had headed Cuba's Agriculture Ministry since 1993, at the height of the severe crisis known as the Special Period that followed the loss of the island's former trading partners in Eastern Europe. (The New York Times, 22/8/05)

September 22: An imprisoned Cuban activist rounded up in a crackdown on dissidents two years ago has been hospitalized after 14 days of a hunger strike, his wife said. Víctor Rolando Arroyo, 55, stopped eating on September 8 to protest mistreatment at the prison in eastern Cuba where he is serving a 26-year-sentence, Elsa González said in a telephone interview with the press. González was waiting to visit her husband, whom she said she has not seen for four months. The hunger strike was confirmed to her by Cuban authorities, she said. Another political prisoner, Felix Navarro, joined the hunger strike in support of Arroyo and has not eaten for nine days, Navarro's daughter said. ''We are very worried,'' said Sayli Navarro. ''These men are not young, and they have made clear that they will maintain this until the end.'' Another political prisoner, José Daniel Ferrer García, has gone also on hunger strike for 15 days to protest bad conditions in jail. Ferrer, a member of the Christian Liberation Movement in Cuba, received a 25-years sentence in March 2003. (The New York Times, El Nuevo Herald, 22/9/05)

September 23: About 70,000 Cubans have committed suicide by various means, all quite deadly - hanging, wrist-cutting, jumping out windows, a shot in the head. Over the last half century, a rough but realistic estimate is that some 100,000 Cubans have taken their own lives. In the early 1980s the Cuban Health Ministry announced that the suicide rate in Cuba had risen over the figure of 20 per 100,000 per year. In little over a decade, the index of deaths by suicide had doubled - in 1969 it was eight per 100,000 - and Cuba had thus gained one of the highest rates in the Western Hemisphere. More Cubans had been killing themselves than had the people of most other nations, and the phenomenon approached the suicide rates of Nordic countries such as Denmark, Finland and Sweden, or of some of Cuba's then European allies, such as Hungary, Russia and the Baltic republics. A 1990s study carried out in Miami questioned the statistics released by the World Health Organization, according to which the Cuban government had succeeded in containing this trend - at a rate of about 2,000 suicides per year. According to the study, the real rate was a good deal higher than that, but similarly high figures were also characteristic of Miami, with many more suicides than among other Hispanic communities in the United States. (El País, 23/9/05)

September 28: The inescapable eyes and ears of the Cuban Communist regime, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), charged with knowing what everyone in the neighborhood is up to, celebrated their 45th anniversary with exhortations to remain vigilant against "imperialism." Raul Castro, brother and designated heir of Fidel Castro, presided over the ceremony to mark the passage of 45 years since the creation the CDRs. Castro, 79, was not present for the festivities at Havana's Karl Marx Theater, but he did send a message to the block committees, known collectively as the CDR. Raul Castro did not speak at the celebration at the capital. The Havana ceremony concluded with an address from Cuban Communist Party leader Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, who said that when confronted with "imperialist actions," the island will respond in the same way as it did in 1960, when the CDR were established as part of a system of "collective revolutionary vigilance." (EFE, 28/9/05)

September 28: Josefa López Peña, wife of former political prisoner Miguel Sigler Amaya, was beaten on the street five days after she and her husband were taken off a plane bound for the United States. López Peña, a founder of the Ladies in White movement, said she was going to the Havana home of another member, Aida Valdés, when a young man got off his bicycle and started to beat her on the back of her head with an object he had in his hand. "Who are you? Why are you hitting?" she said she asked her assailant. "This is a warning that we've wanted to give you for a long time," the man replied. López Peña received medical attention at a nearby hospital. She reported the incident the following day to police. "I fear for our lives in Cuba," she said. "We hold State Security responsible for anything that might happen to us in the future." (Cubanet, 28/9/05)

September 30: Cuban specialists discussed the challenges that an aging population entail for the island. The workshop "The Aging of the Population and its Impact on the Cuban Reality", that took place at the Association of Cuban Economists (ANEC), revealed how the aging of the population is already having an impact on all the spheres of economic and social development on the island. During the meeting, Juan Carlos Alfonso, director of the National Statistics Office (ONE) indicated that the main reasons of this situation are the low levels of population growth and fertility. In Cuba, 14.5 per cent of the population is over 60 years old. (Juventud Rebelde, 1/10/05)

September 30: According to Elsa González, the wife of political prisoner Victor Rolando Arroyo who has been on a hunger strike for over 20 days, the degenerative process of Arroyo's system has accelerated, and a renal shut down is expected at any moment. Arroyo’s wife said that, he was sleeping when she came closer to his bed, “and woke up as soon as I spoke to him; he did not let anyone touch him but with a quick movement the doctor was able to take his pulse, he had tachycardia”. “His eyes were very hollow and he had no saliva in his mouth"- affirmed Elsa González, who is torn for she knows that they are leaving her husband to die. (Puente Informativo, 30/9/05)