All Blog Posts from World Watch

Ever since Raul Castro became Cuba’s President in February 2008, people—at home and abroad—have been waiting for changes that would improve living conditions on the island. But the changes have been slow coming and there are indications that when they do take place they might not be the ones hoped for.

For three days this week, the official Communist Party daily, Granma, has front-paged statements made in the 1970s and 80s by former President Fidel Castro. They are all variations on the same theme: too many people being employed to do too little, and low productivity as the bane of the economy. He also warned that at some point there would be more university graduates than openings in their fields and that students should view their degrees as an honor but not necessarily as a ticket to a professional career.

Castro’s statement printed last Tuesday focused on “inflated” payrolls. Inside the same newspaper was an article announcing that the Ministry of Agriculture would be cutting thousands of bureaucratic jobs. Twenty-six percent of their employees - 89,000 people - it said, were office workers resulting in an “excess of unproductive personnel.”

Cubans fear that similar layoffs will come in many other sectors of the economy and that Granma’s publication of Fidel Castro’s views—if dated—on the issue are rather like trying to put the “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” on what are bound to be unpopular if necessary measures taken by his younger brother Raul.

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Cuba says it's "satisfied" with today's meeting between Cuban and U.S. officials on normalizing direct mail between the two countries. That service was discontinued in August 1963, a year after Washington imposed an economic and trade embargo on the fledgling revolution led by Fidel Castro.

A statement issued by Havana says the meeting "made it possible to examine the issues that make it difficult to normalize postal exchange" between the two countries. The head of the Cuban delegation is quoted as saying it allowed both sides to "evaluate a body of specific proposals intended to overcome these obstacles," but no details were given.

Heading the delegations to the one-day-talks were Josefina Vidal, director of the North America Division of the Cuban Foreign Ministry and Bisa Williams, acting assistant undersecretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs in the State Department, the most senior Obama administration official to visit Cuba. Williams was accompanied by representatives of the U.S. Postal Service

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For Cubans and others who wonder just how former President Fidel Castro is doing, the answer seems to be much, much better.

Nearly seven minutes of new video released by government-run TV Sunday showed a more robust looking Castro speaking in a firm voice with a group of recently graduated Venezuelan law students, in what the news announcer said was a three-hour meeting.

The video also offers the first full length view of Castro standing unaided seen in a long time. As in previous pictures, Castro, who celebrated his 83rd birthday August 13, is dressed casually in dark pants and a track suit jacket. Underneath he seems to be wearing a white shirt. In most previous photos he appeared to be wearing pajamas under the track suit.

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Former Cuban President Fidel Castro turns 83 Thursday, his birthday defying all predictions of his death. Those predictions escalated in frequency and frenzy following his collapse and intestinal surgery at the end of July 2006.

At exactly midnight, Cuban television interrupted all programming to put on a three-minute photo and video montage of Castro's life, accompanied by patriotic music. Included was a photo from the chest up - said to have been taken this month by one of his sons, Alex Castro - in which he looks quite fit. The photo was also on display among dozens of others of Castro going back to a 1955 shot of him in Central Park, Manhattan. They are part of an exhibit inaugurated in Havana Wednesday evening to honor the bigger-than-life revolutionary.

Also Wednesday, the U.S.-based religious group Pastors for Peace - an anti-embargo organization - released several photos on their Web site of Castro taken, they said, just 13 days ago. Several members of the group, including Harlem Rev. Lucius Walker met with Castro on August 1 in Havana. In the thigh up photo, Castro, wearing a blue baseball cap and a white windbreaker with blue trim, is standing with his arms around his American visitors, wearing a grin and appearing more robust than in earlier photos.

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Cuban President Raul Castro says he remains ready to talk about everything and anything with the United States but that Cuba’s political system was not on the negotiating table. Castro’s remarks came during a speech to the closing session of the Cuban parliament Saturday afternoon carried on national television.

He specified that discussion meant talking about issues in the United States as well as in Cuba. After affirming that there have been no cases of torture in Cuba since rebel forces led by his older brother Fidel Castro drove Fulgencio Batista from power in 1959, he corrected himself to note that there had been torture in the US Guantanamo Naval base—still considered an integral part of Cuba by the Castro government—and that he was willing to discuss that with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He said the international demand for the closing of the prison in Guantanamo should be heeded but that Washington should not stop there. Guantanamo, Raul Castro stressed, should be returned "unconditionally" to Cuba.

Castro also said that those who are reportedly waiting for the "biological solution" to the Cuba issue - the death of its aging leadership—were mistaken to think it would provoke changes in the country’s socialist system. Instead, he claimed, the younger generations were as committed as the revolution’s historic leaders to maintaining their socio-political system. However, Castro noted at various points in his address that economic changes would have to be made to cope with the current crisis and those changes would include the elimination of the dual currency system imposed in the 1990s when the collapse of Cuba’s socialist allies brought the island’s economy to a virtual standstill.

Cuban President Raul Castro was short on details as he implied difficult economic times were still here for Cubans. The world economic crisis, and particularly a reduction in income from exports, means Cuba cannot meet its projected growth index, Castro told an early Sunday morning rally in the eastern Cuban city of Holguin.

From Havana, CBS News producer Portia Siegelbaum reports that in his short, 34-minute speech at the traditional July 26 rally marking Cuba's Day of National Rebellion (the 1953 armed uprising against the Batista dictatorship that six years later brought his older brother Fidel to power), Raul Castro reiterated the urgent need to increase agricultural production to replace food imports. (At present, Cuba buys 80% of the food it consumes from international suppliers.)

Castro, who stepped in to run the country when Fidel Castro was sidelined by illness in 2006, reiterated his call for more people to return to the land. On July 26, 2007, he had announced a plan to provide free leases to land parcels to those interested in growing fruits and vegetables. That program, he told rally participants, is moving along "satisfactorily."

An expert in U.S.-Cuba relations noted that among the surprising elements of Castro's speech was that, not only did he focus almost exclusively on domestic issues but that — despite the economic hardships facing the island — the U.S. embargo was barely mentioned.

"Instead of blaming the embargo for our problems, he talked about what we have to do to overcome its impact," noted researcher Carlos Alzucaray.

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It's not the usual ballet audience, although luminaries such as Cuba’s legendary ballerina Alicia Alonso was among the honored guests, but with tickets going for only 20 Cuban pesos, about 91 cents U.S., the fans attending the Royal Ballet performance in Havana’s Garcia Lorca theater were a diverse social mix.

And for those who didn’t manage to snag one of these bargain tickets - an outdoor screen had been set up just down the street from the theater, in front of a replica of the U.S. Capitol building, the steps leading up to this tourist attraction would fill with ballet fans once the show started.

The five performances, a first for England’s Royal Ballet in Havana are not a money-making deal. Productions like this are expensive to mount.

"Ballpark figure, you’re talking a million pounds," said Kevin O'Hare. "You know if you include everything, I mean some things are happening in kind but really you’re talking a million pounds."

O’Hare said 13 sponsors for these performances came through because of the prestige of Cuba’s National Ballet and Cuban dancer Carlos Acosta, dancing for the past 11 years with the Royal Ballet.

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Former President Fidel Castro, in a blog posted online Saturday afternoon, neither admits nor denies that that Walter Kendall Myers and his wife Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers have been spies for the Cuban Government. The Washington, D.C. couple—both in their early 70s—were arrested by the FBI Friday and accused of feeding secrets to Havana for the past 30 years. Walter Myers is a retired State Department analyst.

Castro declares the "confrontation with the United States is ideological and has nothing to do with the security of that country." He also questions the timing of their arrest, suggesting it is intended to undermine the beginnings of a new policy toward Cuba launched by President Obama. And Castro predicts that the couple will not get a fair trial as prosecutors use the case to obtain political goals and the press crucifies them in advance as "traitors."

Castro, 82, who retired as Head of State one year ago, says he met with thousands of Americans in the period that the FBI indictment says he held a four-hour meeting with the Myers (in 1995) and can hardly remember a meeting with just 2 people. Around that time, he notes, he even held a very long meeting with hundreds of American students participating in the Semester at Sea program.

He takes particular note of the fact that the FBI accusation says the "couple received numerous medals but at the same time admits that they never sought money or personal benefits."

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Despite decades of harshly criticizing the Organization of American States as a puppet of Washington, Cuban TV welcomed today's scrapping by OAS Foreign Ministers of the 1962 resolution excluding the island from active membership.

For 47 years, the Cuban flag has been displayed along with those of the other member countries but its seat has remained empty, barred as an "undemocratic" state. However, with the exception of the United States, all the rest of the countries in the Western Hemisphere now maintain normal diplomatic and trade relations with the Castro Government. And as the OAS debated what to do about Cuba, the President of Paraguay began an official visit to the island.

The state-sponsored Mesa Redonda, an early evening political talk show, broadcast the adoption by consensus, described by the Honduran Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas as "the beginning of a new history" for the regional organization.

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The ground under U.S. policy toward Cuba took a significant shift today.

Mauricio Funes was inaugurated as President of El Salvador and, as announced previously, he immediately restored diplomatic relations with Havana. That left Washington as the odd man out, the only country in the Americas without normal relations with its Caribbean neighbor and long-time thorn in its side.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in San Salvador for Funes' assumption of power, was nevertheless very upbeat in remarks to the press. She described the Obama administration's May 22 offer to resume bilateral migration talks with Cuba as "part of our effort to forge a new way forward on Cuba that advances the interests of the United States, the Cuban people and our entire hemisphere," adding that the Administration was "very pleased" with the Cuba's acceptance of the offer.

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