Update on self-employment & non-agricultural cooperatives in Cuba

(...along with a cautionary tale about La Fontanella pastry shop)

@yoanisanchez: En #Cuba se han autorizado 498 #cooperativas de las cuales 329 ya están funcionando y "están en estudio" 300 más

Trans: In Cuba 498 (new non-agricultural) cooperatives have been approved, 329 of which are open. 300 more are "under review".

@yoanisanchez: A principios de #2015 las cifras oficiales aseguran que 483.000 cubanos ejercen el trabajo por cuenta propia en #Cuba

Trans: At the start of 2015 official figures assure us that 483,000 Cubans are licensed to work "on their own account" in Cuba. (Up 12,000 from August 2014).

Also of import are the following 3 stories about the entrepreneurial triumph and bureaucratic tragedy of Nuevo Vedado's La Fontanella pastry shop:

Here's a recent story in Spanish from @diariodecuba: "Auge y caída de La Fontanella" http://t.co/Wyt7mklb4y"

Here's an excellent reflection on the story (in English): "The Crime of Prosperity in #Cuba" from Havana Times - Entrepreneurial triumph & bureaucratic tragedy of Fontanella pastry shop http://t.co/MunrYxNZLf

Finally, my friend and colleague Regina Coyula reported on this "clipping of wings" back in March 2014 on her blog La Mala Letra (Bad Handwriting): https://lamalaletraen.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/snipped-regina-coyula/

What to make of Raúl's recent declarations? Or, how are "normal" relations different from "diplomatic" ones?

A friend and colleague just gave the following quick summary (in Spanish) of a recent declaration from Raúl Castro:

El mandatario cubano puso cuatro condiciones como premisas para el restablecimiento de las relaciones bilaterales:

1. La eliminación del embargo.
2. La devolución del territorio ilegalmente ocupado por la Base Naval de Guantánamo
3. El cese de las trasmisiones radiales y televisivas (Radio TV Martí) hacia el territorio cubano.
4. La compensación al pueblo cubano los daños humanos y económicos sufridos como resultado de la política estadounidense.

 * * *

I responded with three questions of my own:

1) Is Raul serious or just saber rattling to strengthen his negotiating position (ahead of future talks that will surely include some or all of the issues above),
2) Would he be willing to indemnify/settle outstanding property claims against the Cuban government (given that he is raising the "reparations" issue himself)? and
3) Is he simply looking for a new series of excuses to prevent real detente and maintain his tried and true enemy as an enemy?

 * * *

Two other colleagues chimed in to the effect that:

*The nitty-gritty of full diplomatic relations -- raising the flags over embassies, naming ambassadors, etc. -- is being negotiated.
*But beyond that, both governments are noting other issues (financial claims, the Guantanamo base, TV & Radio Martí, the embargo itself, etc.) that need to be resolved if they are to consider that relations have been "normalized".
*In other words: "normalized" relations are not equivalent to "diplomatic" relations and neither side is saying that the second is contingent on the first.

In sum, establishing diplomatic relations will be relatively quick and painless, while full "normailization" will take time (years, most likely) and involve painful and controversial decisions on both sides.

Readers: Your thoughts please...

The "Cuba Moment"... is really an American Moment

NYU's CLACS holds a usefully frustrating panel - January 28, 2014

I went to an excellent academic panel on "The Cuban Moment" tonight at NYU's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Like good academicians they (along with the token journalist, Damien Cave of the NYT) were very critical-minded and quite skeptical that any real or positive "change" would come from the Obama-Castro détente.

At the same time, I found myself increasingly frustrated because presumably all of the panelists also thought on December 16 that previous US policy was ineffective, wrongheaded, and even counterproductive - both for the Cuban people and for US interests.

I agree that there's a lot to be cautious and even skeptical about - both in terms of the US's real motives behind the new policy ($, security & stability, or democracy & human rights?) and regarding the extent the GOC will allow any changes to take place that might undermine its internal power and control (ie, in telecom or trade with the private sector).

One take away is that no one should expect positive changes in Cuba or a solution to the Cuban crisis to come from the United States. But is anyone promising that or even saying that it's the goal of the new policy?

Solutions to Cuban problems have to come from Cubans, and especially the interplay between a very powerful state apparatus, weak economy, fractured yet dynamic civil society, and everyday citizens.

Still, I must ask the panelists (and you my readers): What is right/positive about the new policy, what is flawed, negative, or naive, and what would YOU do differently if you were Obama (or even Raul)?

From External Embargo to Internal Blockade: El Yuma is Back on the Blog & Back at Books & Books!

Needless to say, a lot of water has passed under the #Cuba bridge since I last updated my blog in August, 2014.

If you've been following me on Twitter or Facebook, you'll know that I had (and still have) a very good excuse for giving the blog a rest over the past 5 months: Dimitrios Jackson Henken is his name and he arrived into our lives on October 9, 2014, giving me the best birthday present I could have ever wished for! (I turned 43 just two days before he was born).

Happiness is a warm son! Bang bang, shoot shoot.

After becoming an expert at changing diapers and singing "De Colores" to my young son during October, November, and December (...y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mi, y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores le gustan a Dimitri...), I spent a good portion of the second half of December and all of January deploying my dormant Cuba expertise.

You can see some of my comments in The New York Times and the NYT's Op-Talk Blog, The Wall Street Journal, AP, CNBC, CNN, the NPR shows All Things Considered and On Point (where I shared the mic with USA Today's Alan Gómez, Cuban blogger and journalism professor Elaine Díaz, and director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies at the University of Miami Jaime Suchlicki), and Diario de Cuba (where I discuss the Cuban Internet en español with José Remón, Larry Press, Iván Darias, and Ubaldo Huerta).

You can also check out Time Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, France 24, Australia's ABC radio show The World Today, China Central TV's World Insight show (with professors Rafael Hernández of Temas in Havana and Sun Hongbo from the Institute of Latin America, Beijing), USA Today, Al Jazeera-America, Arise America, McClatchy (on paladares!), The Miami Herald & El Nuevo Herald, Martí Noticias, and on María Elvira's Miami TV show (part 1 and part 2).

Arch Ritter and I have also been busy publishing a handfull of overlapping op-eds related to our new book, Entrepreneurial Cuba: The Changing Policy Landscape (50% off offer here). First, we published, "Abajo con el bloqueo en contra de los emprendedores cubanos," in 14ymedio on December 13.

Later, following the historic December 17 Obama-Castro joint announcement to reestablish diplomatic relations after almost 54 years, we expanded on that by publishing updated reflections in New York City's El Diario, The Huffington Post's ongoing 90 Miles feature (the entire January series is highly recommended), and in a forthcoming article in the February issue of the foreign affairs journal Current History (a version of which is included below).

After a restful and sunny January spent on Miami Beach with my growing family, last Friday evening, January 23, I was proud to present our book at the Coral Gables cultural institution, Books and Books, with the generous cosponsorship of Florida International University's Cuban Research Institute and its director Jorge Duany, who kindly introduced me (the Livestream podcast of the event is imbedded below and starts at minute 5:15).



A big thanx to the 75-100 full house of people who attended (even those who came early to see me when they were really interested in hearing Marius Jovaisa present his new book of arial photography, Unseen Cuba). Special thanks are due to the honored guests Dimitri Jackson, his mom Tasha, and Abuelita María; Sandra Ramos & family; Eduardo Suñol & Nancy Regal; as well as to Amparo Pujol, Jorge Sanguinetty, Nicholas Sánchez, Juan Juan Almeida, Ernesto Hernández Busto, and former Czech Ambassador Martin Palous, good friends and colleagues, one and all!

For frozen East Coast, tri-state residents who could not escape to Miami for the event, Arch and I will present our book together on Thursday evening, April 2, 2015, at the Americas Society.  Details to follow.

* * *

Are Raúl’s Reforms Change Cubans Can Believe In?

Cuba’s Emerging Entrepreneurs and the Island's Shifting Digital Media Landscape

By Ted A. Henken and Archibald R.M. Ritter

In scores of interviews conducted over the past 15 years with Cuban entrepreneurs for our new book, “Entrepreneurial Cuba,” Arch Ritter and I often heard the following two very pregnant Cuban sayings:

“El ojo del amo engorda el caballo” (The eye of the owner fattens the horse) and “El que tenga tienda que la atienda, o si no que la venda” (Whoever has a store should tend to it, and if not then sell it”).

El Yuma with Dimas Castellanos & Miriam Leiva at Books and Books!

FYI: After a bit of strange while-you're-waiting jazz muzak, our long-awaited event starts at minute 9:50. A brief Books and Books welcome is followed by Yours Truly, who kicks off by welcoming a number of special Cuban guests in the room such as Amb. Martin Palous, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Rosa María Payá, Joaquín Pujol, and my wife Tasha and mother-in-law Maria Anagnostopoulos (Fernández-Castro)) -and lamenting the fact that Miriam Celaya - one of the book's co-editors - could not be with us.

I then read the book's preface starting at minute 23:30.

Next, Dimas Castellanos shares his thoughts (in Spanish) on co-editing and co-writing the book from Cuba (37:10).

Then, one of the books many other authors, Miriam Leiva, discusses her part in the project (in English) at minute 47:15.

The event ends with a brief but energetic Q&A at minute 55.

Enjoy!

Note: Books and Books sold most o the copies I provided, but they still have 4 books in stock and they are exclusively available there for half off the $89 list price at just $45!

Here's the official event description published by Books and Books:

Saturday, August 2, 2014 7:00 p.m.
Join us to celebrate the publication by ABC-CLIO of CUBA IN FOCUS, a new Cuba Reader of Independent Voices Desde Adentro, edited by ASCE President Ted A. Henken, together with Cuban co-editors Miriam Celaya and Dimas Castellanos.

Henken and Castellanos will be present together with other book contributors Miriam Leiva and Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo.

The volume also includes original essays by the late economist Óscar Espinosa Chepe, blogger Yoani Sánchez, independent journalist Reinaldo Escobar, and independent lawyer Wilfredo Vallín.

Form Cyberspace to Public Space? The Emergent Blogosphere and Cuban Civil Society

The new Contemporary Cuba Reader: The Revolution under Raúl Castro is out!  Get your copy here.

Here's a link to the article that Sjamme van de Voort and I contributed:

"From Cyberspace to Public Space? 

The Emergent Blogosphere and Cuban Civil Society"

"Cuba's Perplexing Changes": 24th Annual ASCE Conference, July 31-Aug 1, 2014, Miami, Florida

In just over two weeks, scores of Cuba specialists will converge on Miami for the 24th Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy.

"Cuba's Perplexing Changes"

Click here for the program.

Our keynote speaker is Miriam Leiva, whose address is entitled:

"A Cuba in Transition 

and its Relationship with the United States."

Here's just a sample of some of the others we have on this year's program:

Miriam Celaya, Dimas Castellanos, Ambassador Martin Palous, Vegard Bye, Archibald Ritter, Phil Peters, Antonio Zamora, Jorge Pérez-López, Sergio Díaz-Briquets, Hildebrando Chaviano Montes, Emily Morris, Domingo Amuchástegui, Emilio Morales, Michel Mirabal, Lenier González, Roberto Veiga, Armando Chaguaceda, Rafael Rojas, Arturo López-Levy, Jorge Duany, Joseph Scarpaci, Mario González-Corzo, Alexis Jardines, Darsi Ferrer, Maria C. Werlau, Yaremis Flores, Osmar Laffita Rojas, William M. Messina, Julio Cerviño, José Antonio Fraiz, José Luis Perelló, Maria Dolores Espino, Dariela Aquique Luna, Jorge Ignacio Guillén Martínez, Orlando Freyre Santana, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Eliécer Ávila, Barbara Kotschwar, José Gabilondo, Maria Elena Cobas Cobiella, Jesús Mercader Uguina, Yvon Grenier, Sara Romanó, Vicente Morín Aguado, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Eduardo López Bastida, and Rosendo Romero Suárez.

Eric Schmidt on trip to Havana: Cuba needs greater political & economic opening (esp. Internet) & "US 'blockade' makes absolutely no sense"

After @14ymedio broke the story over the weekend that Google guru and co-founder Eric Schmidt made a two-day visit to Havana (in the company of three other top Google and Google Ideas executives, including Ideas chief Jared Cohen), Reuters, AFP, and Time magazine all followed up with reports of their own.

Yoani Sánchez also blogged about the visit with much wit and wisdom at Generación Y.

Below is what Schmidt wrote about the trip on his Google+ feed yesterday (Sunday) morning (all bold and underlining is mine):

"Trapped in its history, beautiful Havana recalls the faded grandeur of Argentina and a Dick Tracy movie of automobiles. With the goal of promoting a free and open Internet, Jared Cohen and I and two others traveled to Havana on a business visa (more on that later.) Landing at Havana airport, the first airplane you see is a jet from Angola Airlines. The Cuban people, modern and very well educated define the experience with a warmth that only Latin cultures express: tremendous music, food and entertainment (most of which we were not able to sample, more about that visa in a minute.) Under Fidel Castro’s younger brother, Raoul [Raúl], difficult economic conditions have brought many small liberalizing steps in the last few years. There are now 187 [201] professions where private employment is allowed (otherwise private jobs are not permitted), and cars and apartments are beginning to be tradeable with restrictions.

The two most successful parts of the Revolution, as they call it, is the universal health care free for all citizens with very good doctors, and the clear majority of women in the executive and managerial ranks in the country. Almost all the leaders we met with were female, and one joked with us that the Revolution promised equality, the macho men didn’t like it but “they got used to it”, with a broad smile. The least successful part of the Revolution has been economic development (not surprisingly) and it appeared to us a drop off in tourism and recent farm issues have made things somewhat worse in Cuba. The broad topic of conversation in the country is the constant speculation of what the government will do next and what the course and path of liberalization will be. We were told that there is a fight between more liberal and conservative leaders under Castro, and someone said that the military was becoming more involved in economic development. A number of people said the eventual model of Cuba would be more like China or Vietnam than of Venezuela or Mexico.

The embargo now codified in the 1996 Helms Burton act defines everything for the US and Cuba (Cubans call this a “blockade” and a billboard described it as genocide). The US govermnent classifies Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism” in the same class as North Korea, Syria, Iran and North Sudan. Travel to the country is controlled by an US office called OFAC and under our license we were not permitted to do anything except business meetings where our hotel room had to be less than $100 per night and total expenses per diem of $188.00. Not surprisingly there are many $99 hotel rooms in Havana. These policies defy reason: there are dozens of countries we call our allies and we are free to travel to that present much worse threats and concerns to the US than Cuba does in this decade. Cubans believe this is largely a Florida domestic political issue, and that the Cuban-American youth all support normalization of relations along with the US business community.

If Cuba is trapped in the 1950’s, the Internet of Cuba is trapped in the 1990s. About 20-25% of Cubans have phone lines but mostly subsidized land lines, and the cell phone infrastructure is very thin. Approximately 3-4% of Cubans have access to the Internet in internet cafes and in certain universities. The Internet is heavily censored and the infrastructure, which we toured, is made out of Chinese components.

The “blockade” makes absolutely no sense to US interests: if you wish the country to modernize the best way to do this is to empower the citizens with smart phones (there are almost none today) and encourage freedom of expression and put information tools into the hands of Cubans directly. The result of the “blockade” is that Asian infrastructure will become much harder to displace. The technical community uses unlicensed versions of Windows (the US does not allow licenses to be purchased) and GNU Debian Linux on Asian hardware and using Firefox. A small technical community exists around free Android and expect it to eventually spread. As US firms cannot operate in Cuba, their Internet is more shaped by Cuban narrow interests than by global and open platforms. 

We heard that Cuban youth are assembling informal mesh networks of wifi-routers, and thousands connect to these networks for file sharing and private messaging. USB sticks form a type of “sneakernet”, where people hand hard to get information to each other and keep everyone up to date without any real access to the Internet.

The information restrictions make even less sense when you find out that Cuba imports a great deal of food from the US as compassionate trade. The food imports to Cuba are important but so is importation of tools to Cuba for the development of a knowledge economy.

When you walk around Old Havana, you see beautifully restored facades that evoke the central role of Havana and the 1940s and 1950s. The bright colored American cars from the 1950’s, converted to diesel and repaired by Cuban mechanics, give a sense of what Cuba must have been like before the revolution.

Walking around its possible to imagine a new Cuba, perhaps a leader of Latin America education, culture, and business. Cuba will have to open its political and business economy, and the US will have to overcome our history and open the embargo. Both countries have to do something that is hard to do politically, but it will be worth it."

Nace un periódico en La Habana y arranca un congreso en Chicago

Lots going on in "CubaWorld" today.  Here's a quick round up of two juicy items (14ymedio and LASA) as I've got to pack and catch a plane to Chicago...

• Yesterday, the Diario de Cuba reported that a record 125 Cuban academics have received visas to travel to Chicago for the annual conference of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA, May 21-24, 2014).  They also report that UNEAC head and award-winning poet Nancy Morejón publicly criticized as "unacceptable" the long delays and 11th hour granting of visas as it has jeopardized the participation of many attendees.  I myself can attest to a mixture of gratitude and relief at this record number of visas and a bit of frustration as I was frantically firing off messages to my contacts in DC and the USIS trying to advocate for the visas.  
• Given Morejón's complaint that "It is inadmissible that this occur for what it means in terms of arrangements that were already made," I hope to hear an equally vocal complaint from her at LASA about the fact that Cuban intellectual and activist Manuel Cuesta Morúa has been prevented from leaving Cuba by Cuban authorities so he can attend the conference to present his paper entitled: "Cuba: La memoria de la democracia," based on the theme for LASA 2014, which is precisely: "Democracia y memoria."   
• The very good news that so many Cubans have been awarded visas is also marred by the report (as yet unconfirmed) that top Cuban economist and new co-chair of LASA's Cuba Section, Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva, was denied a visa. He was prevented from attending last year's LASA conference by forces within the island (a fact that I openly questioned at last year's gathering), and now it seems that he's catching hell from the other side.  He must be doing something right! 

• As has been widely reported, Cuba is home to a new, independent digital newspaper as of 8 a.m. this morning. As expected, 14ymedio went live this Wednesday morning and looks to be a true animal of "web 2.0" - an enterprise with loads of interactive links to social media and a smart arrangement where it can be easily converted into a PDF or TXT file for quick downloading and sharing in the Cuban off-line world.  It also thankfully avoids gratuitous insults and "anti-Castro" language, preferring to illustrate by example what it is for: a civil, objective, and critical journalistic tone necessary, in the words of Yoani Sánchez, "to accompany Cuba during its inevitable transition to democracy."  It also features at least two sections for debate (one called "Debates de Calidad" and another called "Fuegos Cruzados" - Crossfire).   
• For me, the two key questions that remain are to what extent will @14ymedio's content be accessible to Cubans IN CUBA, either on the site itself or via the island's various informal digital media distribution networks, and how Yoani & Co. can make the site financially self-sustaining, keeping it simultaneously critical and objective, while maintaining their journalistic independence.
• So, the takeaway for me is: Yoani & Co. are clearly throwing down the gauntlet with 14ymedio, but doing so in a civil, professional way - trying to further expand and enhance coverage of the Cuban reality (from Cuba, by Cubans) and building on the success of Generación Y and Cuba's many other pioneering digital journalism projects (Voces Cubanas, On Cuba, Havana Times, Primavera Digital, etc.).  They are "occupying" a space (cyberspace) without asking permission but also without the aim of provoking the government gratuitously - with the hope that the occupation of this new cyberspace can lead to more truly "public" space on the island.  
• We will soon see how and to what degree the government responds (i.e., there was already an AP report out this morning that the site was almost immediately hacked sending readers trying to connect to it from within the island to an "anti-Yoani all the time" site run by Iroel Sánchez.  This tactic may pay short-term dividends for whoever is behind it (hmmm??).  However, I expect that it will only serve to publicize 14ymedio's launch and make the long forbidden fruit of an independent media even more attractive to Cuban readers still suffering from the infamous "auto-bloqueo."

Speech of OLPL in Kennedy Auditorium, Johns Hopkins University, SAIS

Speech of OLPL in Kennedy Auditorium, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Washington DC, 16 Mayo 2014.

Dear friends:

As a Cuban from the Island —and all Cubans are, no matter how far and how much time has passed since we left or were expelled from the Island—, as a critical intellectual —that is, a writer and photographer who believes in the beauty of truth, even when nobody listened— and also as a Cuban from the exile, of course —because all Cubans are as well, no matter if we still live inside the Island, where we are "inxiles"—, it's a privilege and a great honor to be invited here to share my experiences and my vision with you today.