Local residents stand in the water on a street flooded by the sea in the Centro Habana municipality in the Cuban capital in September 2017 in the wake of Hurricane Irma, one of the most intense storms in recent decades in this Caribbean island nation. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Aug 25 2021 (IPS)

Cuba, already beset by hurricanes, floods, droughts that deplete its main water sources, among other natural disasters, has seen its socioeconomic difficulties, similar to those faced by other Caribbean island nations, aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite the complexity of its domestic situation, Cuba has offered its best health resources to small island nations in the region and more than a dozen of them have received Cuban medical brigades to help them face the emergency created by the pandemic.

With differences and similarities, the Caribbean region shares the fate of other Small Island Developing States (SIDS), which are particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change but are responsible for only 0.2 percent of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that cause global warming."For Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean island nations the greatest challenges in relation to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda involve the indispensable creation of measures for adaptation to climate change." -- Marcelo Resende

The SIDS will hold a Solutions Forum on Aug. 30-31, promoted by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and sponsored by Fiji, to exchange experiences on how to move forward in the midst of the climate and health crisis towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in just a few more years.

The virtual conference is based on the premise that the 38 SIDS that are members of the United Nations and the other 20 associated territories, beyond their differences in size and development, share common challenges as island nations and can also share successful sustainable management initiatives that can be replicated in the other members scattered throughout the developing regions of the South.

“SIDS are characterised by unique development needs and extreme vulnerability. Frequent exposure to hazards and natural disasters intensified by climate change” negatively impacts Cuba, as well as the rest of the countries, FAO representative in Cuba Marcelo Resende told IPS.

He said this Caribbean country “has a lot of expertise and know-how in the integration of environmental sustainability, disaster risk management and climate change adaptation, so this exchange and transfer of knowledge will be positive.”

The SIDS Forum aims precisely to promote and exchange innovation and digitalisation solutions for sustainable agriculture, food, nutrition, environment and health.

Cuba, the largest island in the Caribbean, faces increased frequency and intensity of extreme hydrometeorological events – not only tropical cyclones, but also drought, major floods, rising temperatures and sea level rise, which scientists currently project to reach 29.3 centimetres by 2050 and 95 centimetres by 2100.

A man rides his bicycle along a flooded street in the town of Batabanó, in southern Mayabeque province in western Cuba, an area of low-lying, often swampy coastal areas prone to frequent flooding during hurricanes and heavy rains. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Of the country’s 262 coastal settlements, an estimated 121 are at risk from the climate crisis. Of these, 54 are located on the south coast and 67 on the north coast, almost totally impacted in September 2017 by Hurricane Irma, which reached winds of 295 kilometres/hour and became one of the most intense storms in recent decades.

Irma devastated several Caribbean islands and in Cuba alone caused losses officially estimated at 13.18 billion dollars.

A prevention system that involves everyone from the government to urban and rural communities makes Cuba one of the best prepared Caribbean nations when it comes to prevention and mitigation of risks in case of disasters, despite the generally substantial economic damages.

In addition to legal measures to prevent human activities that accelerate the natural erosion of areas bordering the sea and the relocation of vulnerable settlements, this year the project “Increasing the climate resilience of rural households and communities through the rehabilitation of productive landscapes in selected localities of the Republic of Cuba” (Ires) began to be implemented.

The “Coastal resilience to climate change in Cuba through ecosystem based adaptation – MI COSTA” project was also created. Both initiatives are supported by the Green Climate Fund, an instrument of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

In addition to boosting the resilience of rural communities and protecting coastal communities, both projects are aimed at generating information that will facilitate the scaling up of the use of ecosystem-based adaptation practices at the national level, and the model can be used in other island nations with similar conditions.

“The impacts that are already being felt today associated with climate variability and the country’s vulnerability imply a large economic burden, which is becoming even more critical given the limitations and difficulties in accessing international financing,” said Resende.

The FAO representative noted that according to the executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Alicia Bárcena, Caribbean SIDS will not achieve the sustainable development committed to in the 2030 Agenda if they fail to find effective ways to adapt to climate change.

“This means that for Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean island nations the greatest challenges in relation to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda involve the indispensable creation of measures for adaptation to climate change,” Resende stressed.

A row of solar panels on La Finca Vista Hermosa farm in Guanabacoa, one of Havana’s 15 municipalities, represents one of the small energy innovations that are part of the responses by some farms in Cuba aimed at making their production more sustainable. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Food security, also a priority

Improving sustainability, resilience and nutrition-based approaches to food systems, strengthening enabling environments for food security, as well as empowering people and communities for these strategies are also important challenges.

In this regard, Resende said that “Cuba is impacted by the steady degradation of its natural resources for food production (soil, water and biodiversity), and faces difficulties in the current context for the production, transformation and conservation of food,” which has repercussions on the instability of the physical availability of products in the markets.

For this island nation, which imports most of the food it consumes, these impacts are a challenge, “so the authorities are promoting an agenda of transformations and improvements in terms of supply and inclusive, sovereign and sustainable food systems, in compliance with the 2030 Agenda and as a priority that the country will face in the immediate future and beyond,” he said.

In July 2020 the Cuban government approved a National Plan for Food Sovereignty and Nutritional Education, which identifies as fundamental pillars the reduction of dependence on food and input imports, various intersectoral actions to bolster local food systems, and the mobilisation of educational, cultural and communication systems to strengthen food and nutritional education.

According to the objectives of the Global Action Programme on Food Security and Nutrition in Small Island Developing States, food systems should support local and family production, while providing a sufficient quantity of varied and nutritious quality food for their population, at a reasonable cost.

This transformation can help curb SIDS dependence on imports, as well as promote healthy eating and reduce obesity.

A patient receives the third dose of the Abdala anti-COVID vaccine at a hospital in Havana. Cuba has developed three vaccines against the coronavirus that could be used in other Caribbean island countries once all the steps for their international use have been completed. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

The resurgence of COVID

The resurgence of the COVID-19 epidemic since late 2020 exacerbated the tension in Cuba’s weakened economy, which had to devote more resources to its hospital system, overwhelmed by the higher number of infections. However, Cuba already has three vaccines of its own: Abdala, Soberana 02 and Soberana Plus.

Authorities on the island have reaffirmed that the national biotechnology industry is in a position to produce by the end of 2021 at least 100 million doses of the vaccines, with which it intends to immunise the entire Cuban population before the end of the year as well as offer them to neighbouring countries, such as other Caribbean SIDS.

As of August 20, 27.8 percent of the island’s 11.2 million inhabitants had received the required three doses of one of the three locally produced vaccines.

On Aug. 11, the director of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), Carissa F. Etienne, said that in the Caribbean, COVID cases have been on the rise in the Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, Martinique, Puerto Rico and Dominica – all members of the SIDS with the exception of Puerto Rico.

“In the last month, infections increased 30-fold in Martinique and there was a significant increase in hospitalisations,” she said.

Etienne announced that PAHO would use its Revolving Fund to help countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region acquire sufficient vaccines to curb the spread of COVID-19, on top of the assistance offered by Covax, a global mechanism to support the development, manufacture and distribution of vaccines.

The pandemic has severely impacted tourism, which many Caribbean economies and SIDS in general depend on. According to official figures Cuba’s tourism revenues fell in 2020 to 1.15 billion dollars – a 56.4 percent drop from 2019.

In addition to domestic problems, the tightening of the U.S. embargo is seriously hampering the Cuban economy, which shrank two percent in the first half of this year, after a 10.9 percent decline in 2020. Recovery will depend on curbing the epidemic and the rallying of the tourism industry.

(With reporting by Luis Brizuela from Havana.)

Excerpt:

Yunia Cancio and her husband and son stand next to the biodigester installed on their El Renacer farm, in the municipality of Cabaiguán, Sancti Spíritus province, thanks to the Biomass Cuba project financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. CREDIT: Courtesy of Biomass Cuba

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, May 19 2021 (IPS)

Yunia Cancio cooked with firewood until a few years ago, when a biodigester was built on her family’s El Renacer farm in Cabaiguán, a municipality in the central Cuban province of Sancti Spíritus, under the Biomass Cuba project. That change meant a lot for her family’s quality of life, but it was not the only one.

“Life has improved a lot thanks to the biodigester, especially for me, because as the woman of the house I’m the one who cooks,” the 48-year-old farmer told IPS by phone from her family farm. “It’s a very clean fuel, more comfortable and safer, everything is more hygienic. Before I used to cook everything with firewood and my day-to-day workload was harder.”

She explained that using the biogas she normally cooks for 10 people a day and for 20 during the planting and harvest seasons, when the tobacco farm employs more workers.

Cancio and her family are among the residents of agricultural localities involved in Biomass Cuba, a project initiated in 2009 with funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), which is currently in its third stage and is to be completed in 2022.

According to Leidy Casimiro, a professor at the University of Sancti Spíritus and an expert with Biomass Cuba, in its different facets of renewable energy, training and agroecology, the initiative directly benefits more than 15,000 people, including 5,417 with biogas technologies.

The initiative is coordinated by the Indio Hatuey Experimental Station, a research centre attached to the University of Matanzas in western Cuba, and also involves related institutions in the eastern provinces of Guantánamo, Santiago de Cuba, Granma and Holguín, and the central provinces of Las Tunas and Sancti Spíritus.

The biodigester at the El Renacer farm began operating on Jul. 15, 2014. “It was built by my father-in-law and brother-in-law, with the help of my husband and children, who carried bricks and made the mixture. With a capacity of nine cubic metres, it was built under the supervision of Alexander López, an expert in biodigesters,” Cancio said.

She also explained that electricity savings have been significant on the 28-hectare farm where her family has long-term “usufruct rights” and where they raise pigs and a few head of cattle and grow tobacco, vegetables and fruit.

“Something really important was when we received a rice cooker that was powered by biogas, a wonderful thing that we hadn’t seen before; we enjoyed it very much,” she recalled when commenting on the changes brought by the biofuel.

The plant also created new routines. Since it is fed mainly by manure from the farm’s pigs, the biodigester is connected to the pigsties. From time to time, cow manure is added to make the biogas more potent, from the stables, which are farther away.

According to Giraldo Martín, national director of Biomass Cuba, “The results are very valuable because today we have farms that consume only 30-40 percent of the conventional energy they used before.”

Engineer Alexander López Savrán stands next to one of the standard fixed-dome biodigesters he has developed, installed on a farm in La Macuca, a village in the municipality of Cabaiguán, in the central province of Santi Spíritus, Cuba. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

In a telephone interview with IPS from the municipality of Perico, in the province of Matanzas, Martín explained that in all its stages, Biomass Cuba has provided technologies and created capacities so local residents could move towards the concept of agroenergy in rural areas.

He also mentioned the covered lagoon model, an industrial technology that treats large quantities of biological waste to provide high volumes of biogas on a daily basis, which may be used in the future to generate electricity for the national power grid.

“In social terms, Biomass has had a great impact in the communities where it has intervened, generating employment, producing food, and in Cabaiguán, receiving domestic fuel through the supply networks that conduct biogas from pig farming areas to homes, with social and environmental benefits,” Martín said.

“We have farms that use the solid and liquid waste from the biodigesters as an excellent fertiliser with abundant nutrients that also contributes to the recovery of degraded soils, which are widespread today in agricultural areas in Cuba,” he explained.

Cancio said these techniques are used on her family’s farm, where the effluent from the biodigester “is used to fertilise the farm’s organoponic crops, including varieties of vegetables, herbs and medicinal plants, and fruit trees.”

“We are diversifying and…we now have infrastructure to extract oils, add value to various products, obtain flour from our root vegetables (a staple of the Cuban diet), motivate us to improve consumption habits and create new recipes with things that we did not use before,” she said proudly.

However, the Biomass project has also had its setbacks.

Martín said that one of the barriers that Biomass has had to break down was the lack of understanding about the concept of treating animal waste and producing energy, something that has taken a great deal of explaining and “is still not completely worked out.”

Chavely Casimiro feeds a biodigester located at the Finca del Medio, a farm in the municipality of Taguasco, Sancti Spíritus province, central Cuba. CREDIT: Courtesy of Biomass Cuba

He also considered it a challenge to align the priorities in the bidding and purchasing system with the plans of companies and productive and service organisations, so that the equipment acquisition processes are efficient and allow the technologies and knowledge generated by the projects to be applied expeditiously.

The project director said the main impact of the initiative was the way it influenced public policies.

Biomass contributes to “understanding the importance of renewable energy sources in rural areas, the role of the contributions that farms can make with biodigesters, waste treatment systems on pig farms, the use of rice husks to produce electricity and steam to dry rice, as well as the use of residual wood from sawmills to generate energy,” Martín said.

Meanwhile, José Antonio Guardado, national coordinator of the Movement of Biogas Users (MUB), told IPS that there are between 4,500 and 5,000 biodigesters around the country. “A count is currently being carried out in order to have a more precise figure,” he said by e-mail from Santa Clara, capital of the province of Villa Clara.

The MUB, which brings together producers who use the technology of anaerobic digestion by the action of microorganisms, emerged in Cuba in 1983 and has 3,000 members throughout this Caribbean island nation.

Guardado said the most urgent task of this movement was the promotion of the closed cycle system.

“In our assessment, in less than five percent of the installed biodigesters, closed-loop criteria and concepts are used, which means that the surplus end products are used in the processes that are generated in the chain on the farm, such as fish farming, irrigation or fertilisation,” he said.

Guardado said the MUB and all other actors working on the issue at the local level should defend this technology until all existing biodigesters in the country are closed-loop, including the distribution of surpluses among neighbouring producers.

According to the Ministry of Energy and Mines, 95 percent of the national energy mix is made up of fossil fuels, while this year the generation of energy from renewable sources is expected to grow to 6.3 percent of the total energy produced in the country.

Cuba’s goal is for 24 percent of energy to come from renewable sources by 2030.

Terraces specially designed to prevent surface runoff during the rains have been key for growing vegetables on the sloping terrain of Finca Marta in the municipality of Caimito, Artemisa province, about 20 km from Havana, Cuba. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Jan 28 2021 (IPS)

Most beginnings are rocky and sometimes the obstacles seem insurmountable, before they are finally overcome. This was certainly the case for the Finca Marta, a farm in Cuba that had to begin by digging a well in search of water and with the hard-scrabble work of clearing an arid, stony and overgrown plot of land.

“It was an inhospitable environment, everything was totally abandoned,” agroecologist Fernando Funes told IPS. On Dec. 21, 2011, he and his family settled on an eight-hectare plot of land, some 20 km west of Havana, which they planned to farm against all odds.

“With Juan Machado, the local well digger who has become our shaman, we were digging for seven months, using only shovels, until at 14 metres deep we found water, more than we need. For us, this well is a metaphor for how far we are willing to go,” added Funes.

It was the solution to the main problem they faced in their decision to turn a relatively infertile, hilly plot of land without water into a productive farm, in a country whose water supply depends mainly on rainfall and where agriculture consumes about 60 percent of what is extracted from the watersheds.

The farm, which has 20 workers, now has a guaranteed round-the-clock water supply, from groundwater or rainwater that is harvested and stored in ponds and tanks. It is enough to cover the needs of both livestock and wild animals, as well as the crops. A solar pump now draws water from the well.

Farm management and production efficiency soon made it necessary to dedicate time and resources to the construction of greenhouses to produce seedlings, harvesting facilities, a rustic cowshed and a storage facility for beekeeping equipment and supplies, among other infrastructure.

Other efforts focused on the design of a sustainable energy system, incorporating various renewable energy alternatives such as solar panels for pumping water, a biodigester for capturing and distributing methane for cooking food, and solar water heaters.

“We have done all this ourselves by hand, with the resources, conditions and knowhow that we had,” Funes explained, after mentioning that further plans to take advantage of clean sources of energy include the installation of a windmill for pumping water and producing electricity.

It took seven months of digging without machines on the Finca Marta to find enough water in a 14-metre deep well for the farm’s organic crops and small livestock, some 20 km west of Havana. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

And terraces were created to prevent soil erosion when it rains, “on a farm where the only flat part is where the house is,” said Funes.

Each terrace has a stone wall at the bottom to prevent surface runoff during rainfall. The substrate is composed of a mixture of soil and organic matter from vermiculture and compost produced on the farm, with residue from the biodigester and other waste.

The result is the production of a variety of top-quality crops free of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, in harmony with the environment. “This gives us a comparative advantage in the market, because we offer a high diversity that gives us better chances of meeting demand,” Funes said.

Beekeeping soon became an important activity at Finca Marta, which started with one old hive. Today there are more than one hundred hives and about 40 tons of honey have been produced over the last eight years using modern techniques, mainly for export.

Forming part of a Credit and Service Cooperative, Finca Marta, located in the municipality of Caimito in the west-central province of Artemisa, markets vegetables directly to a group of private restaurants, hotels and state-owned companies, while providing certain products free of charge to a local centre that assists at-risk pregnant women.

Agricultural engineer Fernando Funes explains how the biodigester works that uses livestock manure to produce biogas for domestic consumption at Finca Marta, in the municipality of Caimito, in the Cuban province of Artemisa near Havana. This is one of the innovations for the sustainable development of the farm. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

“We are following a concept of production, processing, marketing and consumption. We do the whole chain ourselves,” said the agroecologist, who is determined to demonstrate in practice that it is possible to run an ecologically sustainable and socially just family farm that is also economically sustainable.

The project includes an ecological restaurant that opens once or twice a week to serve visitors interested in life in the Cuban countryside and in eating meals prepared with organic products. Agritourism boosts both knowledge and investment, because the income is reinvested in the production system.

“Coming in, we had a great deal of uncertainty, a lot of challenges ahead of us and it was very risky from every angle,” Funes acknowledged.

After four or five years of intense work, the farm was showing significant progress in terms of marketing and bringing in sufficient income to pay good wages and offer social benefits to the workers.

This is the largest pond dug on the Finca Marta farm for rainwater harvesting, part of the sustainable solutions used to turn a sloping, relatively infertile piece of land without water into a productive farm in the west-central Cuban province of Artemisa, which has now become a model for other farmers. CREDIT: Courtesy of Fernando Funes

“For me from the beginning it was an ethical and social commitment as a scientist for science to have an impact on the lives of people, who have to see an improvement in their income and living conditions in order to commit to a process of change,” said the agronomist.

But not only that. In his opinion, “the projection for the future is not only to continue enriching the farm, generating new jobs, and offering better wages and social benefits, but to begin to have an impact on transforming the area – that is, on local development.”

Funes, who has been dedicated to research and teaching for 20 years and has a master’s degree in Agroecology and Sustainable Rural Development and a PhD in Ecological Production and Conservation, plus 10 years of practical experience on his farm, has been part of a group of experts since October that will manage a government programme for the Development of Logistics and Supply Chains.

His farm also serves as a model for a network of 50 other farms that are adopting the concept of agroecological production, processing, marketing and consumption.

A woman plants vegetables on one of the terraces of Finca Marta, a farm using ecological farming techniques to tame inhospitable terrain with sustainable solutions, in the municipality of Caimito, in the west-central Cuban province of Artemisa. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

The purpose of the government group, as announced when it was created, is to put into practice the modern concept of managing the integration, coordination and synchronisation of interrelationships, including material, informational and financial flows to supply and transform resources and products, all along the chain from suppliers to consumers.

These projects are part of Cuba’s effort to strengthen organic agriculture in domestic food production and thus alleviate the country’s dependence on imports, which cover 70 percent of food needs.

Today, this Caribbean island nation of 11.2 million people produces fresh vegetables and condiments using clean technologies on more than 8,000 hectares, where an average of 1.2 million tons of vegetables are produced annually.

A group of women clean a street after the passage of Hurricane Irma, in the Havana neighborhood of Vedado in September 2017. Women play a leading role in mitigating the impacts of climate change, a phenomenon to which they are also the most vulnerable. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Oct 21 2018 (IPS)

When people ask marine biologist Angela Corvea why the symbol of her environmental project Acualina, which has transcended the borders of Cuba, is a little girl, she answers without hesitation: “Because life, care, attachment, the creative force of life lie are contained in the feminine world.”

Acualina is a little philosopher dressed in an ancient Greek tunic in the colours of the Cuban flag – red, white and blue. She teaches, gives advice, issues warnings and provides guidelines on how to reduce risks to the environment. Her educational message is broadcast on TV and spread through other means, ranging from stickers to books.

This environmental education initiative created by Corvea in the coastal neighbourhod of Náutico, in Playa, a municipality on the northwest side of Havana, just celebrated its 15th anniversary. It is an area plagued by pollution, mainly coming from the mouth of a river, and from an open coast that causes flooding of the sea or the river during extreme climatic events.

“This is my way of developing, on a voluntary basis, organisational capacities to protect the environment, and adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. We developed this experience in many ways,” the 69-year-old expert, who has received international awards for her work on behalf of the environment, told IPS.

Corvea pointed out that in the face of the impacts of global warming, women are not only protagonists, but are also the most vulnerable. “In general, women are overburdened with work and in the face of a disaster, everything is magnified, the care of children and older adults, food and water shortages,” she said.

“The sixth sense that they attribute to us is activated with more power than normal and we have no other choice but to act, in the end we end up more tired than men: they are occupied (busy working) while we are occupied (working) as well as preoccupied (worried about and caring for everyone) – we have a double workload,” concluded the biologist, whose awareness-raising messages are tailored to children but also reach adults.

According to official reports, Cuban women currently make up 46 percent of the state labour force and 17 percent of the non-state sector. At the same time, they make up 58 percent of university graduates, more than 62 percent of university students, and 47 percent of those who work in science.

In politics, nine of the 25 cabinet ministers and 14 of the 31 members of the State Council are women, as are 299 of the 612 deputies of the National Assembly of People’s Power, the local parliament. The Minister of Science, Technology and Environment has been Elba Rosa Pérez Montoya since 2012.

The first head of this ministry, created in 1994, was scientist Rosa Elena Simeón. She was succeeded by José Miguel Miyar Barrueco, Pérez Montoya’s predecessor.

The data point to a steady increase in professional qualifications and in the level of female participation in Cuban society. However, they continue to be more vulnerable to the impact of climate change, which has intensified the force and frequency of hurricanes and exacerbated periods of drought.

Angela Corvea sits in front of the image of Acualina, the educational project she created 15 years ago in Cuba to teach children – and their families – how to reduce environmental risks, including climate risks, in an island nation where the impacts of rising temperatures are very noticeable. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

The response of men and women to this type of disaster is usually different. “Women generally assume the greatest responsibility during evacuations, packing up necessary personal belongings and water and food, often on their own with the children and the elderly in their care,” journalist Iramis Alonso told IPS.

Alonso, who specialises in scientific and environmental issues, added that women “tend to take longer to get back to work after these events, depending on how quickly support services are restored, such as day care centres. That affects them from the point of view of income more than men.”

“All efforts and conflicts are complicated by disasters, because women in every sense are more vulnerable, both at home and at work, where a machista organisational culture still reigns,” sociologist and academic Reina Fleitas told IPS.

In her opinion, disaster management policy should include a gender perspective, because solutions to the problems they generate have to be related to the different impacts and capacities created by people for recovery.

The researcher regretted that “vulnerability studies do not always include a gender focus, there is resistance to recognising that there is a feminisation of poverty that does not mean an increase in the number of women living in poverty, but rather the intensity of how they live.”

“It is known that the vast majority of Cuban women have double workdays and when a natural disaster occurs their efforts triple,” environmental educator Juan Francisco Santos told IPS.

They are the ones who have to prepare the food for the family, “who have to come up with meals, in many cases working magic to figure out how to cook,” she said.

Several women walk in the rain towards their homes carrying food, as part of their preparations for the imminent arrival in Cuba of Hurricane Gustav, in 2008, in a Havana neighbourhood. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

In her view, there are several factors that increase women’s vulnerability to the effects of climate change. In the first place, she mentions the domestic role assumed by the majority of women and, as heads of households, they suffer greater tensions in the face of shortages during extreme events.

Santos said the aging of the population also plays a role, “because most of them are responsible for the care of both the very young and the elderly,” as well as “the lack of understanding of what it means to be a woman, on the part of men and of many women, and society as a whole.”

The educator attributed the “differentiated” responses of men and women to the danger of disasters.to “cultural constructions.”

The male provider, the woman (mother) protector, the man guarding the home, the woman in charge of domestic chores, the man “in the vanguard” and the woman “in the rear,” are the stereotyped roles that still remain widespread, he said.

“Faced with a natural disaster, we will continue to reproduce the world as we conceive it,” warned Santos.

According to the State Plan for Confronting Climate Change, approved by the Council of Ministers on Apr. 25, 2017, officially known as the Life Task, scientific studies confirm that Cuba’s climate is becoming warmer and more extreme.

The average annual temperature has increased by 0.9 degrees Celsius since the middle of the last century.

At the same time, great variability has been observed in storm activity and, since 2001, this Caribbean island nation has suffered the impact of 10 intense hurricanes, “unprecedented in history.”

Since 1960 rainfall patterns have changed and droughts have increased significantly, and the average sea level has risen by 6.77 centimetres to date. Coastal flooding caused by the rise of the sea level and strong waves represent the greatest danger to the natural heritage and buildings along the coast.

Future projections indicate that the average sea level rise could reach 27 centimetres by 2050 and 85 centimetres by 2100, causing the gradual loss of the country’s surface area in low-lying coastal areas, as well as the salinisation of underground aquifers.

A medium-density polyethylene (MDPE) pipe is set to be installed on a centrally located avenue in the municipality of Centro Habana, which will be part of the new water supply grid for residents of the Cuban capital. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Sep 15 2018 (IPS)

If you enjoy a good daily shower and water comes out every time you turn on the taps in your home, you should feel privileged. There are places in the world where this vital resource for life is becoming scarcer by the day and the forecasts for the future are grim.

A study by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which covers the period 2003-2013, shows that the world’s largest underground aquifers are being depleted at an alarming rate as a result of more water being withdrawn than can be replenished.

“The situation is quite critical,” NASA scientist Jay Famiglietti has said, when discussing the subject in specialised publications in the U.S. In the opinion of this expert the problems with groundwater are aggravated by global warming due to the phenomenon of climate change.

Far from diminishing, the impact of climate variations is also felt in greater changes in rainfall patterns, with serious consequences for Caribbean nations that are dependent on rainfall. In Cuba and other Caribbean island countries, in particular, periods of drought have become more intense.

“There is a gradual decrease in water availability due to reduced rainfall, deteriorating water quality and greater evaporation due to rising temperatures,” Antonio Rodríguez, vice-president of the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources (INRH), told IPS in an interview.

Hurricane Irma, which in September 2017 tore almost through the entire Cuban archipelago, contributed to the relief of a drought that kept the country’s people and fields thirsty for nearly four years. The current rainy season, which will last until November, began in May with Subtropical Storm Alberto with high levels of rainfall that will continue.

“We have been able to show that climate change is real. We lived through 38 months of intense drought and then we had rains well above average,” said Rodrìguez.

A team of workers from the Aguas de La Habana water company work on the replacement of the sewage system in the Vedado neighbourhood in the Cuban capital. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

The intense rains associated with Alberto, which hit Cuba in the last week of May, caused eight deaths due to drowning and serious economic damage in several provinces, but at the same time considerably increased the reserves in the 242 reservoirs controlled by the INRH, the government agency in charge of Cuba’s water resources.

Tarea Vida, the official plan to deal with climate change in force since last year, warns that the average sea level has risen 6.77 cm to date, and could rise 27 cm by 2050 and 85 by 2100, which would cause the gradual loss of land in low-lying coastal areas.

In addition, there could be “a salinisation of underground aquifers opened up to the sea due to saline wedge intrusion.” For now, “of the 101 aquifers controlled by the INRH, 100 are in a very favourable state,” Rodríguez said.

These sources also suffered the impact of the drought, but recovered with the rains after Hurricane Irma.

In this context, the inefficient use of water, due to the technical condition and inadequate functioning of the water system, causes the annual loss of some 1.6 billion cubic metres of water in Cuba.

In 2011, a strategic plan outlining priorities to address this situation began to be implemented in 12 cities from Havana to Santiago de Cuba in the east.

Two workers from the Aguas de La Habana company replace water pipes and install water meters in homes to measure drinking water consumption in the Vedado neighbourhood in Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

When the programme began, losses amounted to 58 percent, both in the water grid and inside homes and other establishments. So far, the loss has only been reduced to 48 percent.

Since 2013, however, work has been underway on a comprehensive supply and sanitation plan that covers more than a solution to losses in distribution.

From 2015 to 2017, sewerage coverage has improved by 0.6 per cent and an additional 1.6 million people have benefited from the water supply.

Currently, only 11 percent of the country’s population of 11.2 million receive piped water at home 24 hours a day, and 39 percent at certain times of the day. In the remaining 50 percent of households, water is available only sporadically, and sometimes they go more than a week without water.

“I live in downtown Santiago de Cuba and we have two large elevated tanks and a cistern. We get piped water from the grid more or less every seven days and it is enough for us, even for our daily shower,” a worker from the telephone company Etecsa told IPS from that city, asking to remain anonymous.

Part of the historical water deficit in Santiago and other cities in the eastern-most part of the country has been alleviated through the transfer of water from regions with a greater supply. But during times of drought the supply cycles slow down. “That’s why in my house we are careful with our water,” she said.

One study found that of the 58 percent of water lost, 20 percent is lost in homes.

Another priority is to increase wastewater treatment. “Although in the country sewage coverage is more than 96 percent, only 36 percent of the population receives the service through networks, the rest is through septic tanks and other types of treatment,” said INRH vice-president Rodrìguez.

Among these challenges, he also mentioned poor hydrometric coverage.

Alexander Concepción Molina, a worker at Aguas de La Habana, supervises the thermofusion process of a high-density polyethylene pipe, which is part of the installation of new water gridsin the Peñas Altas neighbourhood of Habana del Este, in the Cuban capital. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

“We were able to get 100 percent of the public sector and all major consumers to be controlled by water metres, although in the residential sector this coverage reaches just over 23 percent of the population. From 2015 to 2017, more than 227,000 water meters have been installed, but the plan is to reach total coverage,” Rodríguez said.

“Without a doubt, water meters reduce consumption and allow us to measure the efficiency of our system,” he added.

Like other services, residential water supply is subsidised by the state and has a very low cost. “There are four of us and we pay 5.20 pesos a month (less than 0.25 cents of a dollar),” said María Curbelo, a resident of the Havana neighbourhood of Vedado.

The national hydraulic programme extended until 2030 includes works for water supply, sanitation, storage, diversion and hydrometry, as well as the necessary equipment for investment and maintenance.

“We are also working on the construction of seawater desalination plants,” Rodriguez said.

These plans include not only works to supply the population, but also everything necessary for agriculture, hotel infrastructure and the housing programme.

Rodriguez explained that to carry out the programme there is both state and foreign funding, which has made possible a subsidised home supply.

“We have benefited by foreign loans from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Spain’s development aid agency and Chinese donations,” among others, he said.

These are soft loans with a five-year grace period, two or three percent interest and to be paid in 20 years, with the Cuban State as guarantor.

Cubans wait in line outside the Colombian embassy in Havana, to obtain a visa for Colombia in order to apply for a U.S. visa at the U.S. embassy in Bogotá, due to the reductions in staff in the U.S. embassy in the Cuban capital. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Apr 2 2018 (IPS)

Cuba’s tense relations with the United States under the administration of Donald Trump reflect a scenario of conflict that is not alien to the generation that will take over the country on Apr. 19, when President Raúl Castro is set to step down.

Since the 1960s, Cuba’s nationalist stance has drawn on the animosity with the U.S., and the likely successors of the country’s current leaders, most of whom were born around the time of the 1959 revolution or afterwards, were educated in a culture of “anti-imperialist resistance”.

According to the official figures on the outcome of the Mar. 11 general elections, the average age of the new members of parliament fell to 49 years, compared to 57 years for the outgoing lawmakers.

The single-chamber National Assembly of People’s Power elects from among its members the 31 members of the Council of State, which according to the constitution is the highest representative of the Cuban state, whose president is the head of state and government."Reconciliation and rapprochement occur on a human level. States can facilitate it, but they can neither impose it nor stop it…Even during the most tense moments of relations between Cuba and the United States, we Cubans have remained in touch with our families, friends and collaborators." -- Lillian Manzor

The most likely candidate to succeed Castro is the current first vice president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, 57, although there is no official confirmation.

The return to the tension that existed before the détente agreed by Raúl Castro, 86, and Barack Obama (2009-2017) on Dec. 17, 2014, which led to the restoration of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana, brings additional difficulties to the weakened Cuban economy and puts a brake on the changes required by its socialist model of development.

“Unfortunately, reform in Cuba becomes more difficult when the United States is more aggressive and negative,” said John McAuliff, executive director of the Fund for Reconciliation and Development, a U.S.-based non-governmental organisation that supports efforts for reconciliation with Cuba.

In his opinion, a new generation of leaders “opens a door, but it does not guarantee” how quickly change will come. “If the new leaders expand opportunities for the self-employed and small businesses, especially in tourism and other professional sectors, the economy will improve,” he told IPS from the U.S. by e-mail.

In the same vein, he said that “if the public dialogue incorporates all the sectors that are not explicitly counterrevolutionary inside and outside the country, politics will expand, evolve and be strengthened along with Cuba’s history and culture.”

Trump’s adverse policy towards Cuba since his arrival at the White House in January 2017 has kept bilateral ties at their lowest level, with a skeleton staff at the two embassies, which are unable to carry out their consular and business duties, while it has restricted travel by U.S. citizens to the Caribbean island nation, among other limitations.

Senator Patrick Leahy (centre), and four other U.S. Democrat lawmakers give a press conference in Havana on Feb. 21, at the end of their visit to Cuba, in violation of the U.S. travel advisory against Cuba issued by Republican President Donald Trump. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Washington justifies the reduction of personnel and the recommendation to U.S. citizens to refrain from traveling to Cuba by citing mysterious attacks – apparently linked to high-pitched sounds – that affected the health of U.S. and Canadian diplomats in Cuba between November 2016 and August 2017.

Havana has denied any involvement in the incidents.

In a Dec. 22 speech in the Cuban parliament, Castro accused the United States of fabricating “pretexts” to justify the return to “failed and universally rejected policies.”

U.S. lawmakers who visited Cuba between Feb. 19-21, led by the Democratic Senator for the state of Vermont, Patrick Leahy, said the measures ordered by Trump were a serious mistake, harmful to the governments and people of both nations.

In defiance of the travel advisory against Cuba, the legislators flew here with their wives, and in the case of Leahy, with his 13-year-old granddaughter. The group met with Castro and other local authorities.

“Cuba is changing. Soon you will elect a new president and likely experience a generation shift in leadership, and regrettably at this historic moment in Cuban history, the U.S. engagement is limited,” Jim Mcgovern, a Democrat member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Massachusetts, lamented in a press conference.

In turn, Senator Ron Wyden, of Oregon, reported that there is a legislative proposal against the embargo brought forward by him and other senators, which has strong bipartisan support. “After the November elections, we will have more support to end the embargo,” he said.

Meanwhile, migrants are among the biggest losers in the embassy conflict, although the Cuban embassy in Washington, with 17 fewer staff members, says it has maintained its usual services, including consular services for Cubans and Americans.

A classic 1957 convertible Chevrolet Bel-Air, used by private drivers for sightseeing tours, drives through the historic centre of Old Havana in search of customers, now that the boom of visits by U.S. citizens has ceased. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

But the reduction of personnel in the U.S. embassy in Havana forces Cuban immigrants to travel to Colombia to process their visas, which will prevent Washington in 2018 from meeting its commitment to issue 20,000 visas a year, as established in the migration agreements of 1994 and 1995.

The main recipient of Cuban emigration is the United States, where over two million people of Cuban origin reside, of whom almost 1.2 million were born in Cuba, according to official data from the U.S. A good part of that population has not cut its umbilical cord with Cuba.

Lillian Manzor, interim chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami, told IPS by e-mail that currently, most Cubans in the U.S. support rapprochement between the two countries, while U.S. foreign policy is going in the opposite direction.

“Reconciliation and rapprochement occur on a human level. States can facilitate it, but they can neither impose it nor stop it,” she said, recalling that “even during the most tense moments of relations between Cuba and the United States, we Cubans have remained in touch with our families, friends and collaborators.”

In that sense, Manzor, a Cuban resident in the United States, does not underestimate the strength that this majority sector of Cuban migrants can represent in order to stop the setback imposed by the Trump administration on the normalisation of bilateral ties between Washington and Havana, restored in July 2015.

“That’s the big challenge. How can this need to stay connected with our family and friends be turned into an electoral force. In the meantime, we must continue with what we have always done: cope with adverse policies and fight for our rights as American citizens,” she said.

The academic also said that among immigrants favourable to “closer political and human relations” there are many who hope that “the new president of Cuba will continue with the necessary migratory changes to facilitate travel for Cubans residing abroad.”

Whoever it will be, Castro’s successor has the stage set to move in that direction. On Jan. 1, four Cuban government measures came into force, aimed at relaxing the country’s migration policy and improving its relation with the Cuban exile community. The provisions followed the new Migration Law in force since 2013.

“The Cuban passport is still one of the most expensive in the world especially considering the payment that must be made every two years to maintain the validity of the passport,” said Manzor. The document, valid for six years, costs 400 dollars plus 200 dollars for the biannual extension.

Docks at the container terminal of the Mariel Special Development Zone, designed to attract investments to Cuba, in spite of the restrictions imposed this month by the United States on businesses dealing with this development and logistics zone. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Nov 25 2017 (IPS)

“Maybe many of us thought that this project was a dream six years ago, but not anymore. The geography has completely changed, because of everything that has been built and the investments that have been approved,” said Nathaly Suárez, director of Construction Management at the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM).

The container terminal already has operations with 14 major international shipping companies and progress has been made in infocommunications, an aqueduct, sewerage, power grids, public lighting, bridges and railway stations, among other works made available to investors.

The ZEDM was born with the support of Brazil, which financed the container terminal with more than 800 million dollars. So far the Zone has 29 km of roads, as well as a double track railway line and overpasses that speed up the transportation of goods.

Activities have not slowed down in this strategic economic centre located about 45 km west of Havana, a few days after it was included by Washington in a list of entities banned for any economic relationship with American companies and travelers.

Suárez, a 31-year-old civil engineer, does not understand why in the 21st century, instead of promoting relations between countries, U.S. President Donald Trump is trying to close the door to trade and investment in Cuba, “a country that is doing everything in favour of its development.”

The young woman belongs to the generations born under the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. “I’ve lived my whole life under these prohibitions, which prevent my country from buying even medicines from the U.S.,” she told IPS shortly before participating in an exchange with Latin American trade unionists on Nov. 13.

Nathaly Suárez, Director of Construction Management at the Mariel Special Development Zone, in western Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

The meeting was held at the Pelicano business centre, one of the facilities built by the Construction and Assembly Company of Mariel, where Suárez has under her charge over 100 professionals. With more than 4,500 workers, this firm is responsible for satisfying the demand for construction services in the area.

The ZEDM and its container terminal are among some 180 Cuban entities subject to the restrictions announced on Nov. 8 by Washington, imposed on the grounds that they are related to Cuba’s ministries of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Interior.

“It is early to say whether or not these regulations have an impact. Here we have not stopped working,” said Suarez.

“We have made progress (in the works of the ZEDM) and we will take the necessary measures to continue moving ahead. What are we going to do? We’re not going to say that publicly,” said engineer José Ignacio Galindo, director of Planning and Development of the ZEDM, referring to the strengthening of the US embargo.

Galindo said that the construction of the ZEDM is currently at a launch stage, focused on completing the basic infrastructure and ancillary facilities. “We are working in sector A, which covers some 42 kilometers, although we are also working on roads and other works outside that area. After this come the stages of consolidation and maturity,” he said.

“We know what we want to do. The conclusion of each phase depends on the possibilities and investments available,” he told IPS.

Meanwhile, progress is being made in attracting and accepting businesses, as well as in the investment process for them to begin producing.

During the Havana International Fair, held Oct. 30 to Nov. 3, Teresa Igarza, general director of the ZEDM office, reported that so far 31 businesses have been approved or are already operating in the Zone.

The railway line that transports containers from and to the Mariel Special Development Zone, in the western province of Artemisa, 45 km from the Cuban capital. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

The investments have come from 14 countries, including Cuba, from Latin America and North America, Europe and Asia. Of the businesses, five are based on 100 percent Cuban capital, 15 are totally foreign, eight are mixed ventures and two are international economic associations. Among the new companies approved is one from the United States, the first from that country to set up shop in the ZEDM.

Rimco Caribe LLC (Puerto Rico) expects to begin operating in the Zone in 2018 as a distributor in Cuba of the US corporation Caterpillar, a manufacturer of construction machinery and mining equipment, diesel engines and industrial gas turbines.

Economist Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva told IPS that the new restrictions announced by the U.S. are blocking US companies from presenting investment projects in the ZEDM, but those initiatives already approved by Cuba before Jun. 16 would be exempt from penalties.

The new ban complements the memorandum signed by Trump that establishes a policy change towards Cuba, with exceptions to allow travel on commercial airlines and cruise ships, as well as commercial activity authorised up to that moment.

Since the approval of a new law on foreign investment in 2014, more foreign capital has been flowing into Cuba, both within and outside of the ZEDM, although authorities in the sector admit that the results achieved so far are still insufficient for the country’s development needs.

The Mariel Special Development Zone Pelicano Business Centre in western Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Authorities and experts agree that attracting investment flows to the country is a gradual process in which “modest” progress has been made. This is not only due to the U.S. embargo, but also because of delays in the process of negotiation and approval of investments.

“Foreign business people are concerned about safe ways for sending their capital to Cuba and then sending the dividends earned by the business to their country of origin, as a result of the embargo,” Deborah Rivas, general director of Foreign Investment of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, told local media.

However, during an investment forum held in early November, Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment Rodrigo Malmierca said that this year 30 new projects had been approved for a total of more than two billion dollars in investment.

When Law 118 on Foreign Investment was approved, Malmierca pointed out that the country needed an inflow of some 2.5 billion dollars a year of foreign capital to ensure the growth of the economy.

The new legislation and other official documents propose increasing and diversifying foreign investment as a source of development.

A portfolio of new investment opportunities presented in early November includes up to 50 projects, in sectors such as the pharmaceutical industry, biotechnology, logistics, agribusiness, construction, transport and real estate.

A woman waves good-bye before boarding a flight at the José Martí International Airport in Havana, Cuba, in June 2017. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Oct 28 2017 (IPS)

Cuban migration to the United States is the great loser under Donald Trump’s hostile policy toward Cuba, and creates additional difficulties for citizens of this Caribbean island nation who were accustomed to benefits that their neighbors in the rest of Latin America never enjoyed.

In a decision that keeps uncertainty hanging over thousands of people who wanted to travel to the U.S. by legal means, Washington suspended visas for residents of the island after ordering the removal of 60 percent of the staff in the Cuban embassy on Sept. 29.

“I cried a lot after the closure of the consular procedures in Havana,” a private sector worker told IPS. A year and five months ago her husband requested that she be allowed to immigrate to the United States to join him, under the Family Reunification Programme, which Washington assured it will keep in place, but without providing details.

This woman who lives in the capital, who asked to remain anonymous, said that she is less worried after receiving the new documents by mail this week to move forward with the application.

“Look, until now all the documents I had received referred to my case with a number. Now these have my full name,” she said.

“I still don’t have an appointment date and I don’t know where I will have to go for the visa interview, but my husband and I feel confident that everything will stay on track,” she said with a sigh of relief. For this step in the visa process she will probably have to travel to Colombia, where the U.S. embassy announced that it will attend cases in November.

“We know that Cubans are worried about this, but we still do not have instructions on how to proceed,” a source at the Colombian diplomatic mission, who asked not to be identified because she was not authorised to talk about the question, told IPS on Monday. Like most countries, Colombia requires visas for Cuban travelers.

The Washington delegation in Havana has reported on its website that Cubans who will be required to travel to Colombia include those who are applying for immigrant visas for fiancés, relatives of US citizens or people who have won one of the visas from the so-called “lottery”.

Those who wish to obtain visitor, tourist or business visas will have to go to the U.S. embassy in any other country. It is still unclear how they will guarantee the continued operation of the Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program (CFRP) and the processing of refugees.

The bilateral climate has soured since the Trump administration cited alleged “acoustic attacks” at the U.S. embassy in Havana that reportedly affected the health of more than a score of its diplomats and their family members. Cuba insists that it had nothing to do with the incidents, which are still under investigation.

The U.S. also warned its citizens to refrain from traveling to Cuba for security reasons and demanded the departure of 15 officials from the Cuban embassy in Washington directly linked to consular and commercial matters, whose absence will hinder the relationship between people and companies from the two countries.

Such measures can have a “very damaging” effect on the (1994 and 1995) migration agreements between the two countries, political analyst Carlos Alzugaray told IPS. In his opinion, the decision to process visas in a third country will raise the costs which are already high.

It is possible that an increase in irregular immigration will occur, Emily Mendrala, executive director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, an organisation that promotes a policy based on reciprocity and recognition of Cuba’s sovereignty, told IPS.

“Even if the United States can live up to its commitment under the 1994 and 1995 Migration Agreements to admit 20,000 immigrants (per year), under current consular practices the number of non-immigrant visas issued to Cubans visiting the United States will drop drastically,” she said.

The expert said that applicants for immigrant visas will undoubtedly have a sponsor in the United States willing to pay the airfare and lodging expenses in Colombia, and also said that the refusal rates for nonimmigrant visas are higher and the cost of the trip, even if it is from any third country, “will be prohibitive.”

Internet users consulted by IPS agreed that in this context, “poor Cubans suffer, both here and there.”

In turn, a university professor, who asked not to be identified, said he believed that behind everything that is happening is the aim to create internal tensions and raise “the temperature of the (social) boiling pot”.

On Jan. 12, 2017, a few days before leaving the White House, then President Barack Obama announced the end of the so-called wet foot/dry foot policy, in force since the 1994 and 1995 agreements, which gave Cuban immigrants preferential treatment to obtain residence and other benefits.

“By taking this step, we are treating Cuban migrants the same way we treat migrants from other countries,” said Obama, who also terminated the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, intended to welcome Cuban doctors who defected from their official missions in third countries.

The fear that the process of normalisation of bilateral relations, restored in July 2015, could put an end to special benefits for Cuban immigrants prompted thousands of Cubans to leave this country legally and to try to reach the United States from other Latin American nations.

Those countries closed their borders to the waves of travelers from Cuba, leading to a migration crisis involving several countries in the region. During 2016, a total of 6,000 frustrated migrants were returned to Cuba, according to official data, while a number difficult to pin down still remain hopeful and refuse to return.

The biannual review of the migration agreements was for almost two decades the only point of contact between the two countries. In that scenario, the Cuban government vehemently rejected the wet foot/dry foot policy and the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966.

Havana argued that these laws encouraged Cubans to defect, even at the risk of their lives. The immigration reform approved by President Raúl Castro in 2013 helped prevent clandestine departures.

The main recipient of Cuban migrants is the United States, where just over two million people of Cuban origin live, of whom almost 1.2 million were born in Cuba, according to official data from that country cited by Antonio Aja, director of the state University of Havana’s Center for Demographic Studies (Cedem), in an article on the subject.

Representatives of the gender subcommittee to Colombia’s peace talks alongside the U.N. Secretary General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura (centre-left) and U.N.-Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, during the Jul. 23 presentation of the preliminary results of the novel initiative, in Havana, Cuba. Credit: Karina Terán/U.N.-Women

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Jul 29 2016 (IPS)

The novel inclusion of a gender perspective in the peace talks that led to a historic ceasefire between the Colombian government and left-wing guerrillas is a landmark and an inspiration for efforts to solve other armed conflicts in the world, according to the director of U.N.-Women in Colombia, Belén Sanz.

In statements to IPS, Sanz described as “innovative and pioneering” the incorporation of a gender subcommittee in the negotiations between the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which began in November 2012 in the Cuban capital and ended in late June with a definitive ceasefire.

She said the large proportion of women who spoke with the negotiating teams, in regional and national forums, and during visits by victims and gender experts to Havana showed the growing openness on both sides to the inclusion of gender proposals in the final accord and the mechanisms for its implementation.

The results of the work by the subcommittee, made up of representatives of both sides, were presented in Havana during a special ceremony on Jul. 23, exactly one month after the ceasefire was signed, putting an end to over a half century of armed conflict.

Taking part in the ceremony were U.N.-Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka; the U.N. Secretary General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura; and Sanz, whose office has worked closely with the subcommittee.

Other participants were María Paulina Riveros, the Colombian government’s delegate to the subcommittee, and Victoria Sandino, the FARC’s representative, along with the rest of the members of the subcommittee, the delegates to the peace talks, and representatives of the countries that served as guarantors to the peace process.

The results of the subcommittee´s work, presented on that occasion, include the incorporation of a gender perspective and the human rights of women in each section of the agreement, starting with guarantees for land access and tenure for women in rural areas.

Other points agreed on were women’s participation in decision-making to help ensure the implementation of a lasting, stable peace; prevention and protection measures for a life free of violence; guarantees of access to truth and justice and measures against impunity; and recognition of the specific and different ways the conflict affected women, often in a disproportionate manner.

“These are some examples that can be illustrative and inspiring for other peace processes around the world,” Sanz said from Bogotá, after her return to the Colombian capital.

Victoria Sandino, a FARC commander, who headed the guerrillas’ representatives to the gender subcommittee in the peace talks with the Colombian government (second-left, wearing red headscarf), poses with members of civil society during the signing of the definitive ceasefire on Jun. 23 in Havana, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

In her view, “these strides forward represent milestones in the promotion of women’s rights and the transformation of gender inequality during the construction of and transition to peace, which could be exported to other places in the world and adapted to their particular conditions and contexts.”

The introduction of a gender focus also includes the search for ensuring conditions for people of different sexual orientations to have equal access to the benefits of living in a country free of armed conflict.

“For women and people with different sexual identities to be able to enjoy a country at peace is not only a basic human rights question: without their participation in the construction of peace and, as a result, without their enjoying the benefits of peace, peace and stability themselves are threatened,” said Sanz.

She cited a study commissioned in 2015 by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, 15 years after the approval of Security Council Resolution 1325, designed to promote the participation of women in peace processes.

The report showed that women’s participation increases by 20 percent the probability that a peace agreement will last at least 20 years, and by 35 percent the chance that it will last 15 years.

“So if women don’t participate in peace-building processes, not only as ‘beneficiaries’ but as drivers of change and political actors, it’s hard to talk about a stable, lasting peace,” said Sanz.

Erika Paola Jaimes, a survivor of Colombia’s armed conflict, holds a sign about peace during a trip to Havana to participate in the peace talks between the government and the FARC rebels, which led to a ceasefire signed Jun. 23 in the Cuban capital. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

The U.N. study also shows the risks faced by women in the post-peace deal stages.

According to the report, women in areas affected by the conflict have fewer economic opportunities and suffer the emotional and physical scars of the conflict, without support or recognition – besides often facing routine violence in their homes and communities and shouldering the burden of unpaid care for children and the elderly and household tasks.

In a broader sense, “the structures of inequality remain in place and measures are needed to dismantle them, as well as a commitment by society as a whole,” said Sanz, who described a transition process like the one that Colombia is facing as “a key opportunity” to transform women’s status in society.

She said the continued work of the gender subcommittee is “crucial”, as well as that of women’s organisations, with the support of international aid, in order to incorporate provisions in the agreements to enable these situations of inequality to gradually be transformed, with a view to the period following the signing and implementation of the accords.

The inclusion of gender provisions in peace agreements “opens a window of opportunity for the transformation of existing structures of inequality and can also be an opportunity for other peace processes, during the signing of the agreements and the stage of implementation,” said the head of U.N.-Women.

According to estimates, women account for over 40 percent of the members of the FARC, whose exact numbers are not publicly known.

Overall, women represent slightly over half of the general population of 48 million. However, Colombia is one of the countries in Latin America with the lowest levels of female representation in politics.

In 2015, women represented only 14 percent of town councilors, 17 percent of the members of the lower house of Congress, 10 percent of mayors and nine percent of governors. These figures are still far below the parity that would do justice to the proportion of women in society, states a U.N.-Women report.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx (left) and his Cuban counterpart Adel Izquierdo signed an agreement Feb. 16 in Havana to restore commercial flights between the two countries. In the last year, four U.S. cabinet secretaries have visited Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Feb 23 2016 (IPS)

U.S. President Barack Obama and his Cuban counterpart Raúl Castro will go down in history as two statesmen who managed to overcome more than half a century of hostility to bring back together two neighbouring countries with too many shared interests to remain at loggerheads.

When Obama visits Havana on Mar. 21-22, it will be the fourth time he sees Castro in person. But it will be the first time a U.S. president is a guest of the Cuban government since 1928.

In December 2013, they shook hands for the first time in South Africa during the funeral of former president Nelson Mandela. At the time, few imagined that there would be further, less incidental, meetings – let alone that diplomatic ties would be restored and Obama would make an official visit to Cuba.

But diplomats from the two countries had been working behind the scenes since June 2013, with Canada and Pope Francis brokering the efforts, before the two governments surprised the world on Dec. 17, 2014 with the announcement of the decision to reestablish the ties broken off on Jan. 3, 1961.

In 2015 they met on Apr. 11 in Panama, during the Summit of the Americas, and later on Sep. 29 in New York, at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. The latter was the first time the presidents of the two countries met in the United States since the 1959 revolution in Cuba.

In this Caribbean island nation, just 90 miles off the coast of the state of Florida, Obama will find people who admire him – and people who don’t.

Several generations of Cubans have grown up with the anti-imperialist rhetoric according to which the United States is the source of all evil. And although it has been toned down in the last few years, there is still a great deal of scepticism regarding Washington’s “good intentions” with respect to the thaw, or incomprehension as to why the former “enemy” is now a friend.

Independent journalist Miriam Leiva, of the internal opposition, said Obama’s visit is very important. “The Cuban people will receive his message directly. Besides, he’s coming with results; his measures have brought benefits such as an increase in remittances, which improve the lives of many people, not just of those who receive them directly,” she told IPS.

The United States is the main destination of Cuban immigrants, and as a result it is the biggest source of money sent back home to families in Cuba. According to official U.S. figures, nearly two million people of Cuban origin live in that country. Of that total, 1.1 million were born in Cuba and 851,000 were born in the U.S.

This explains why migration was the only issue that brought the two countries to the negotiating table – although not without tension – regularly for years. In these talks, Cuba complained that the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, which grants Cuban immigrants U.S. residency one year and a day after reaching the country, encouraged illegal immigration to the U.S.

The image of U.S. President Barack Obama on a TV screen in Havana, announcing the restoration of diplomatic ties with Cuba, on Dec. 17, 2014. Now Obama can be seen in person by the people of Havana, when he visits the country Mar. 21-22. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Issues of mutual interest and possible cooperation were discussed in the first contact made to outline the roadmap for the thaw – led by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson, and Josefina Vidal, director general of the Cuban foreign ministry’s U.S. Division.

The agenda for the normalisation of bilateral ties includes human rights, telecommunications, the fight against drug trafficking, environmental protection, prevention of natural disasters, and combating epidemics, among other areas of mutual interest and possible bilateral cooperation.

A year after the announcement of the restoration of ties, with the two countries’ respective embassies installed in the same buildings they were in before relations were broken off, President Castro publicly summed up what has been done so far and the issues that, in his view, must still be addressed for the complete normalisation of relations.

Among the results, he mentioned the expansion of the already existing cooperation in air security and aviation, and in efforts against drug and people trafficking and immigration fraud, as well as possibilities of cooperation in areas including environmental protection, maritime-port security and health.

Delegations from the two countries are currently working on more complex issues such as mutual compensation, people trafficking and human rights.

With respect to human rights, “we have profound differences and we are holding discussions on the basis of respect and reciprocity,” Castro said.

In a Feb. 20 reference to his upcoming trip to Cuba, Obama said that with Castro “I’ll speak candidly about our serious differences with the Cuban government, including on democracy and human rights.”

Josefina Vidal, director general of the Cuban foreign ministry’s U.S. Division, after reading out an official communiqué Feb. 18 on the historic Mar. 21-22 visit to the country by U.S. President Barack Obama. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Cuban authorities have habitually flatly rejected accusations about human rights.

However, on Feb. 18 Vidal said the Cuban government is open to dialogue with the Obama administration on any issue, including human rights, on the basis “of respect, equality, reciprocity and non-intervention in internal affairs.”

In a statement, the White House said that besides holding a bilateral meeting with Castro, Obama would “engage with members of civil society, entrepreneurs and Cubans from different walks of life.”

These are expected to include representatives of dissident movements and the emerging private sector.

In the last 12 months, the governors of several U.S. states have visited Cuba, along with dozens of members of Congress and of the business community.

Government officials who have visited include the secretaries of State John Kerry; of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack; of Commerce, Penny Pritzker; and of Transportation, Anthony Foxx.

And from Feb. 15 to 18, Pritzker hosted Cuba’s minister of foreign trade and investment, Rodrigo Malmierca. During the visit, the two officials stressed their interest in moving forward in the area of bilateral trade, although they recognised that changes are needed in order for this to prosper.

Pritzker said U.S. companies continue to face difficulties in Cuba, such as the requirement that foreign businesses hire Cubans through state organisations, or problems reaching people in the government to discuss business opportunities.

Malmierca, meanwhile, reiterated that the measures taken by Obama to make the embargo more flexible fall short, and said the president has the power to push harder to dismantle the sanctions in place against Cuba since 1960.

And he said the ban on the use of the dollar in financial transactions affects operations with companies from the United States and from elsewhere.

Businessman Gerard Dion, a former U.S. Marine and the author of “Cuba Unchained”, a political thriller that delves into the history of the relations between the U.S. and Cuba, is convinced that Obama knows what political, economic and legal changes must take place to convince Congress that it is time to lift the embargo.

“I’m sure he’ll discuss these things with Raúl Castro and will work hard to reach a mutually beneficial arrangement,” he told IPS by email.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Members of the Red de Artistas Únete artists network, which organised a “no to gender violence” flash mob on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women in Havana, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Dec 31 2015 (IPS)

Activists and researchers dedicated to the study of gender violence in Cuba insist on the need for a comprehensive law to protect the victims and prevent the problem, which was publicly ignored until only a few years ago in this socialist Caribbean island nation.

Legislation is necessary “because even when the ideal in our society is justice and equality, there are social expressions of violence against women that have been kept invisible, which contributes to the impunity enjoyed by the abusers,” psychologist Valia Solís told IPS.

Solis, with the non-governmental Christian Centre for Reflection and Dialogue – Cuba (CCRD), based in Cárdenas in the western province of Matanzas, added that the law should not be limited to providing for prison terms, because violence requires a preventive approach in order to keep the behavior and its consequences from getting worse.

Several articles of the Cuban constitution, the penal code and other legislation refer to gender equality. But there are no specific laws aimed at fighting sexist violence, or adequate instruments to protect the victims.

People who face gender-related mistreatment are “in a state of vulnerability, and a law could attenuate this,” said Aida Torralbas, a professor and researcher at the university of the eastern province of Holguín, who said the phenomenon is largely unnoticed and surrounded by impunity.

In her view, although a punitive response is not the best option, because it addresses the problem after the act, it is important because it recognises gender violence as something that must be punished and that hurts the integrity of another person. Torralbas concurs with other academics that education is an essential factor in combating the problem.

“That’s why a law of this kind must also take into account the possibility of educating society in non-patriarchal and non-sexist values that modify ways of thinking and acting,” she said. The expert also argued that it is important to strengthen training of judicial system and law enforcement personnel with respect to how to deal with these issues.

“It’s a fact that the police themselves do not know how to handle these questions,” Mercedes Abreu, a social worker with the Integral Neighbourhood Transformation Workshop (TTIB) of Pogolotti, in the Havana district of Marianao, told IPS.

The TTIBs were created in 1988 to carry out social work in poor neighbourhoods in the capital, and are under municipal government administration.

“Women themselves often do not know that they’re the victims of violence in the family, in the workplace, in the community. Ignorance leads us to turn a blind eye to this problem,” said Abreu, who also said the Cuban population “has very little legal awareness.”

From left to right: Yamila Delgado, Nidia Tamayo, Lidia Santos and Alina Sabor, victims of domestic violence who belong to the group “Women with a purpose”, in the offices of the Integral Neighbourhood Transformation Workshop (TTIB) in the Libertad neighbourhood in Havana, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

The TTIBs and civil society organisations have helped pull out of the closet a reality that is the product of Cuba’s patriarchal culture, which runs counter to the progress made towards equality such as equal wages for men and women, the massive incorporation of girls and women in education and the labour market, and free, universal access to abortion on demand.

For example, since 2007, the “Oscar Arnulfo Romero” Centre for Reflection and Solidarity (OAR) and other groups have been organising an annual National Day for Non-Violence Against Women, to coincide with the 16 days of global activism between Nov. 25 and Dec. 10.

Without underestimating the impact achieved by this activism, Abreu believes the question of violence must be addressed continually from different angles. “We can’t just focus on it during the week of activism against violence. Progress can’t be made this way,” said the social worker, who has worked for several years in a low-income neighbourhood.

In her view, the efforts must involve families, schools, the family doctor, social workers, the Federation of Cuban Women, decision-makers, the media, churches, activists, lawyers, judges and the police.

Elaine Saralegui, a theologian and pastor of the Metropolitan Church in Cuba, in the western province of Matanzas, told IPS that “violence has to do with the established order and with the relations between people or groups in unequal positions of power.”

She said laws were needed to protect and promote free expression of gender identity. “When we talk about gender, people generally think about men and women, and we tend to ignore other expressions of gender that don’t fit in the heteronormative mindset,” she said.

Lawyer Indira Fajardo speaking during the event “You are more: Reflections on gender violence in Cuba” in the Multifactorial Panel during the National Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women 2015, whose theme was “Prevention of and attention to gender violence as a health, social and rights problem” in Havana, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

She said the country needs “laws that can offer legal protection across the board, explicitly, where each one of the faces of the people hurt by heteronormativity, patriarchal sexism and gender violence are taken into consideration.”

“So we’re talking about heterosexual women, but also about people with different sexual orientations and gender identities,” she said.

In 2012, the first National Conference of the governing Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) included the rejection of gender and domestic violence in its objectives, in what was seen as an important official recognition of the issue.

The PCC is organising its seventh congress for April 2016, with an agenda that includes assessment of compliance with the agreements reached at the party’s sixth congress and First National Conference. The last congress, in 2011, approved a programme of reforms to update the country’s socialist model of development.

Next year, the governmental Women’s Studies Centre and the National Statistics and Information Office plan to carry out a national survey on gender equality, although it is not clear whether gender violence will be included in the questions.

According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean now have laws against gender violence, although only eight have earmarked specific funds in the national budget.

Meanwhile, 14 countries have created a separate criminal classification for femicide – gender-motivated murders – and two have established that it is homicide aggravated by gender hostility in their legislation.

Edited by Verónica Firme/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

A group of women wait their turn to buy rationed food that is sold at subsidised prices, at a government shop in Havana, Cuba on Nov. 21, 2015. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Dec 16 2015 (IPS)

While the normalisation of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba is moving ahead, and the U.S. and Cuban flags have been proudly waving in Havana and Washington, respectively, since last July, the year gone by since the thaw has left many unanswered questions.

“You shouldn’t ask me, because in my view, nothing has changed,” one slightly angry middle-aged man told IPS while waiting his turn in a barbershop. In a nearby farmers’ market, a woman asked, loudly so that everyone could hear, why a pound of tomatoes cost 25 pesos (nearly a dollar).

Many Cubans feel that they don’t have much to celebrate this Dec. 17, the first anniversary of the day Presidents Raúl Castro of Cuba and Barack Obama of the United States took the world by surprise with their decision to reestablish diplomatic relations, severed in January 1961.

People who got excited about the idea that their daily lives would begin to improve after more than half a century of hostile relations are ending the year with public sector salaries that do not even cover their basic food needs.

The Cuban press reported that Marino Murillo, minister of economy and planning and vice president of the Council of Ministers, admitted at a recent session of the provincial legislature of Havana that the overall economic indicators in the capital had improved, but that this has not yet been reflected in the day-to-day lives of local residents.

The thaw has, however, had a positive impact on tourism, by giving a boost to emerging private enterprises like room rentals and small restaurants, options chosen by many visitors interested in getting to know Cuban society up close.

According to official statistics, in the first half of 2015 this country of 11.2 million people was visited by 1,923,326 people, compared to 1,660,110 in the first half of 2014. Visitors from other parts of Latin America can be frequently heard saying that they wanted to come to Cuba before the “invasion” of tourists from the U.S.

People from the United States can only travel to Cuba with special permits, for religious, cultural, journalistic or educational purposes, or for “people-to-people” contacts. Experts project that 145,000 people from the U.S. will have visited the country this year – 50,000 more than in 2014.

Two primary school students walk by a group of foreign tourists in a plaza in Old Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

The ban on travel to Cuba for the purpose of tourism and the embargo that Washington has had in place against this socialist country since 1962 are among the pending issues to resolve in the process of normalisation of ties promoted over the last year by official visitors to Cuba who have included Secretary of State John Kerry, two other members of Obama’s cabinet, and three state governors.

“Beyond a number of grandiloquent headlines, everything remains to be done,” Cuban journalist and academic Salvador Salazar, who is earning a PhD in Mexico, told IPS. In his view, only the first few steps have been taken towards “what should be a civilised relationship marked by talking instead of shouting, and debating instead of attacking.”

Sarah Stephens, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas, concurred that after 55 years of hostile and dangerous relations, the governments of the two countries are learning how to respect each other.

“…[I]f 2015 was about both governments learning to treat each other with dignity and respect, 2016 has to be about building on that progress and using diplomacy to create lasting benefits for both countries in order to make the changes we are seeing irreversible and the further changes we want inevitable,” she told IPS by email.

In September, a binational commission created after the official restoration of diplomatic relations and the reopening of embassies defined the issues for starting talks aimed at clearing the path towards normalisation, including communications, drug trafficking, health, civil aviation and maritime security.

Human rights, human trafficking and demands for compensation by both sides were other questions on the agendas outlined by the delegations from the two countries. The list also includes immigration, an issue that has been discussed for years in periodic talks held to review progress on agreements signed in 1994 and 1995.

The talks about the agreements aimed at ensuring “safe, legal and orderly” immigration are not free of tension, given the Cuban government’s frustrated demand for the repeal of the U.S. Cuban Adjustment Act’s “wet foot, dry foot” policy and other regulations that according to authorities here encourage illegal migration.

Washington has reiterated that it will not modify its immigration policy towards Cuba. The anniversary of the start of the thaw finds some 5,000 Cuban immigrants stranded at border crossings in Costa Rica without any apparent solution, in their quest to reach the United States by means of a route that takes them through Central America and Mexico.

John Gronbeck-Tedesco, assistant professor of American Studies at Ramapo College in New Jersey, believes the Obama administration is doing its part to clear the way towards reconciliation, and says the talks held so far have calmed the “anti-normalisation rhetoric.”

But the academic says he does not yet see a climate favourable to the lifting of the embargo, which can only be done by the U.S. Congress, “especially” given the fact that 2016 is an election year.

According to the Cuban government, the embargo has hindered this country’s development and has caused 121.192 billion dollars in damages over the past five decades.

“I think that before Congress takes up the matter, however, the significant issue of debts still owed will need to be settled more clearly,” added the analyst, referring to the question of compensation that the two countries began to discuss in a Dec. 8 “informational” session in Havana.

“The U.S. has a price for Cuban American property and investments lost (nationalised) due to the revolution, and Cuba has a number in mind regarding the economic harm caused by the embargo. These debts are as politically symbolic as they are materially real for both interested parties,” added Gronbeck-Tedesco, without mentioning specific figures.

In an interview with the press published Monday Dec. 14, Obama reiterated his interest in visiting Cuba, although only if “I get to talk to everybody”.

He said that in his conversations with Castro he has made it clear that “we would continue to reach out to those who want to broaden the scope for, you know, free expression inside of Cuba.”

The two leaders have spoken by phone at least twice and met in person for the first time on Apr. 11, at the seventh Summit of the Americas in Panama. And on Sep. 29 in New York they held the first official meeting between the presidents of the two countries since the 1959 Cuban revolution.

*With reporting by Ivet González in Havana.

Edited by Verónica Firme/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Hundreds of Cubans gathered outside the Ecuadorean embassy in Havana in an infrequent public display of discontent, protesting Quito’s decision to require that Cubans visiting Ecuador obtain a visa. Many held up the airplane tickets they had already bought, asking to be given visas or to be reimbursed for the money they had spent. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Dec 10 2015 (IPS)

The crisis that has broken out at several border crossings in Latin America as a result of thousands of Cubans attempting to reach the United States has revived a problem that remains unresolved between the two countries in spite of agreements, negotiations and the diplomatic thaw that started a year ago.

In the meantime, measures taken by Havana to curb the exodus of health professionals have led to reversals in the flexibilisation of the country’s migration policies which was part of the reforms being adopted, and have given rise to reflection on the causes and the consequences for the country of the growing wish to move abroad.

Analysts say it’s time to discuss why so many young people want to leave Cuba, despite the risks of failing in their attempt. In October 2012, the government of Raúl Castro lifted the restrictions that for decades kept Cubans from going abroad, eliminating, for example, the requirement of an exit visa to leave the country.

But the main hurdle was still the visa demanded by the United States, the main recipient of immigration from Cuba, and nearly all other countries. “Two friends of mine are stuck in Costa Rica and another was about to buy a ticket to fly to Ecuador when that country began to demand an entry visa, starting on Dec. 1,” a young local musician who preferred not to give his name told IPS.

In response to the announcement that Ecuador would no longer be one of the few countries to which Cubans can freely travel, around 300 people protested outside the Ecuadorean embassy to demand a solution. Some cried while others asked for visas or to be reimbursed for the money they had spent on plane tickets.

Meanwhile, on Monday Dec. 7 the Cuban government put into effect Decree 306, approved on Oct. 11, 2012, which regulates travel abroad of health professionals – a measure that upset a sector that contributes some eight billion dollars a year to state coffers from services provided to third countries.

“Everyone is against the measure, and protesting,” Graciela Nantes, a retired doctor who still works at a hospital in Havana under short-term contracts, told IPS. “Some people were even crying because they have sons and daughters and other relatives outside the country. But what can you do? The measure is a step backwards with regard to a right that had been won.”

Aspiring immigrants to the United States wait in line in the Cuban capital outside the U.S. embassy, which was reopened this year after the two countries reestablished diplomatic ties. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

The authorities have stated that the idea is not to ban travel abroad, but to require that doctors with specialties considered essential or key to scientific research and final year residents apply for a special permit to leave the country, in order to guarantee the stability and functioning of the country’s health services.

According to official data from 2014, Cuba has more than 50,000 health workers on assignments in 66 countries. Over 60 percent of them are women and around half are doctors. The main recipients of Cuban health professionals in Latin America are Venezuela, Brazil and Ecuador, in that order.

The protest outside the Ecuadorean embassy took place while more than 5,000 Cuban migrants remained stranded, on Thursday Dec. 10, at the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, due to the latter country’s refusal to let them in. Another 1,000 are waiting to cross the border between Colombia and Panama.

From Ecuador, on their grueling journey to the United States, Cuban migrants go through Colombia and Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and other Central American countries before crossing Mexico and reaching the U.S. border.

Sources in the United States estimate that over 43,000 Cubans reached that country between October 2014 and September 2015, mainly entering across the Mexican border. According to human rights groups, Mexico is where migrants face the greatest threat of being robbed, raped, or even killed.

Costa Rican Foreign Minister Manuel González told IPS in San José that “These people are brought in by the mafias, the international people trafficking networks; without a doubt they are risking their lives. We have received reports of women who have been raped, who have crossed through jungles, and of children who are put in danger. The conditions are deplorable.”

For years Latin American migrants have used the route through Central America to try to make it to the United States. The trafficking rings charge Cubans up to 10,000 dollars for smuggling them into that country. But the flow was cut off when Costa Rica adopted measures against human trafficking in early November.

The crisis coincided with a new round of the periodic migration talks between Cuba and the United States, held to assess the implementation of the agreements reached in 1994 and 1995 aimed at ensuring “safe, legal and orderly” migration. Until the thaw agreed on Dec. 17, 2014, the negotiations were the only regular dialogue between Washington and Havana.

In the talks on Nov. 30, as on previous occasions, Cuba repeated its request for the repeal of the 1966 U.S. Cuban Adjustment Act’s “wet foot, dry foot” policy, which guarantees residency one year on to any Cuban who sets foot on U.S. soil

In the meantime, “balseros” or “rafters” intercepted at sea are returned to Cuba in compliance with the bilateral accords. And during these talks and in official statements, before and after the restoration of diplomatic ties in July, Washington ruled out any changes in its migration policy towards Cuba.

Havana argues that these policies foment illegal migration, and that the 2006 Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program encourages Cuban medical personnel to leave their posts in third countries and go to the United States.

That programme has drawn over 5,000 Cuban doctors to abandon their overseas assignments. This, together with the freedom to emigrate that health professionals have enjoyed, the retirement of doctors, and the number of medical workers who have switched to other economic activities “have made it even more difficult to maintain the domestic health services,” analyst Jesús Arboleya wrote in an article on the issue.

Experts like Antonio Aja, author of the book “Al cruzar las fronteras” (When Crossing Borders), say Cuba is a source of immigrants, and emigration will continue even under optimal domestic economic conditions.

According to his estimates, one out of three or four people living in Cuba have relatives abroad.

He said social networks are one of the factors that draw people to other countries, along with the search for better economic conditions, jobs and wages. “The thing is, when they get to the United States, they tend to declare themselves as immigrants motivated by political reasons, for their immigration status,” Aja told IPS.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

A resident of the East Havana municipality arranges the containers of drinking water that she has brought home, after days without piped water in her home in the Cuban capital. Fetching water for household use has been added to the day-to-day tasks of women in Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Dec 2 2015 (IPS)

Denia Arrascaeta suffers water shortages on a near daily basis in the neighbourhood in the Cuban capital where she lives. “Sometimes I don’t even have water to drink,” she told IPS.

At her grandmother’s house, the water supply is more regular, so when the shortage becomes acute, she fills several big bottles and carries them the eight blocks to her home.

The 39-year-old accountant lives in a neighbourhood on the west side of Havana, where the water supply is more erratic.

“Occasionally, my grandmother’s tap also goes dry, and we have to wait for the ‘pipa’,” she said, referring to the tanker trucks that provide water to the neighbourhoods that are not connected to the grid.“Household tasks take longer, and the women arrive late at work, which generates problems due to incomprehension. It’s a chain of things that are affected in their personal lives, with a heavy impact on their physical and mental health.” -- Reina Fleitas

Arrascaeta said the worst thing is the constant stress due to this problem, which in this Caribbean island nation has structural causes related to the crumbling water treatment and supply infrastructure, and was aggravated this year due to record drought.

In Old Havana, at the heart of the Cuban capital, the situation is no better, says Yaritsa Oliveros, who lives in Jesús María, one of the neighbourhoods in the old city. At the age of 25 she supports her mother and her four-year-old daughter working as a cleaning woman in a municipal government office.

“We go several days without water and suddenly it starts to flow in our building in the early hours of the morning,” she told IPS. “We collect all we can in different containers, because we don’t know when the taps will run again.”

Three years ago her neighbourhood was the focus of an academic study that covered 166 households, home to a combined total of 528 people, 56.1 percent women and girls and 43.9 percent men and boys. Of that sample, 57 percent of the families were headed by a woman, with varying educational levels.

Most of the people surveyed said that every two or three days they had to haul water to their homes. The worst difficulties in terms of access to water and sanitation were experienced in female-headed households.

“My mother complains of back pain, from having to carry so much water,” said Oliveros, who does not know if her home was covered by the survey.

Sociologist Reina Fleitas, a researcher and professor at the psychology department of the University of Havana, told IPS that the study, the only one of its kind carried out so far in Cuba, even reflected problems of domestic violence or violence among neighbours, caused by the tension arising from the water shortages.

A man fills containers with water from a tanker truck on a street in Old Havana, in the Cuban capital. Water supply problems in households caused by structural problems in the water grid and severe drought have complicated the lives of people in Havana, and especially those of women. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

The survey also confirmed that women shoulder the greatest burden with regard to the administration and use of water, because they organise and reorganise their daily lives around its availability.

“Household tasks take longer, and the women arrive late at work, which generates problems due to incomprehension. It’s a chain of things that are affected in their personal lives, with a heavy impact on their physical and mental health,” Fleitas said.

The latest statistics from Cuba’s National Water Resources Institute (INRH), published in the government-controlled media, indicate that while 73.5 percent of the Cuban population had access to piped water in 2014, a significant number of people were still not connected to the water grid and received water supplies through other channels, such as tanker trucks.

But over 50 percent of the water supply in the grid is lost due to leaky old pipes.

The INRH is in charge of state policies on the water supply, and is currently carrying out a programme aimed at gradually solving the country’s water problems.

“In my neighbourhood the lack of water has been aggravated by the reparations taking place, but at least it gives us some hope that things will get better one day,” said Oliveros. “Although they also say that because of the drought, the shortages will get worse.”

Arrascaeta said that one of her neighbours calls the INRH every time the situation becomes acute, and receives a wide range of excuses. “We don’t believe anyone anymore,” she said.

The sixth of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, approved at a global summit in September at U.N. headquarters in New York, is: “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”.

“Our data from 45 developing countries show that in seven out of 10 households, the burden of collecting water falls to women and girls, so access would also aid gender equity,” Geeta Rao Gupta, deputy executive director of the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, said in October.

A woman shows IPS an improvised water well opened in the Havana municipality of Santiago de las Vegas to alleviate the water shortage in the Cuban capital. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Professor Fleitas said a differentiated approach to the problem should take into account that it is poor women, minorities, and other vulnerable sectors that suffer discrimination who experience the worse impacts of water shortages, a problem that is becoming more acute at a global level.

With respect to water, Fleitas stressed how basic a need it is, especially in the lives of women.

“It defines the organisation of their time; they wash, clean, scrub, prepare food….they are responsible for inculcating in children a culture of hygiene. We lament that is women who must carry the burden of this responsibility, but we must not ignore this when it comes to political decision-making,” she said.

The professor also noted that besides being aggravated by climate change, water shortages are accentuated by the growing number of wars in the world, which destroy infrastructure and contaminate water sources.

“Investment in the arms race is given priority rather than spending on the development of countries that have huge disadvantages when it comes to providing a clean water supply,” she complained.

As an island nation, Cuba depends largely on rainfall for its water supply. But this year has been one of record drought. At the end of the May to October rainy season, the country’s 242 reservoirs held 4.5 billion cubic metres of water, only half of total capacity, which indicates that the shortages will continue.

From November 2014 to October 2015, 68 percent of the national territory was affected by drought. But worst-hit was the western end of the island, a key food production area.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

The United Arab Emirates foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, shakes hands with his opposite number in Cuba, Bruno Rodríguez, after raising the UAE flag at the opening of the Emirati embassy in Havana on Oct. 5, 2015. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Oct 6 2015 (IPS)

Cuba and the United Arab Emirates agreed to strengthen diplomatic ties and bilateral cooperation during an official visit to this Caribbean island nation by the UAE minister of foreign affairs, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

During his 24-hour stay, Al Nahyan met on Monday Oct. 5 with Cuban authorities, signed two agreements, and inaugurated his country’s embassy in Havana, which he said was a clear sign of the consolidation of the ties established by the two countries in March 2002.

“I am sure that the next few years will witness the prosperity of our ties,” he added during his official meeting with his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodríguez, with whom he signed an agreement on air services “between and beyond our territories” which will facilitate the expansion of opportunities for international air transport.

In the meeting, Rodríguez reaffirmed his government’s support for Arab peoples in their struggle to maintain their independence and territorial integrity.

According to official sources, the two foreign ministers concurred that the opening of the UAE embassy is an important step forward in bilateral ties and will permit closer follow-up of questions of mutual interest.

Al Nahyan also met with the first vice president of the councils of state and ministers, Miguel Díaz Canel. The two officials confirmed the good state of bilateral ties and the possibilities for cooperation on the economic, trade and financial fronts, Cuba’s prime-time TV newscast reported.

The foreign ministers of Cuba and the United Arab Emirates, Bruno Rodríguez (left) and Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, during the Oct. 5, 2015 agreement-signing ceremony in Cuba’s ministry of foreign affairs in Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Cuba’s minister of foreign trade and investment, Rodrigo Malmierca, signed a credit agreement with the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, to finance a solar energy farm that will generate 10 MW of electricity.

Al Nahyan first visited Havana on Oct. 1-2, 2009 in response to an official invitation from minister Rodríguez. On that occasion they signed two agreements, one on economic, trade and technical cooperation, and another between the two foreign ministries.

“We have great confidence in Cuba’s leaders and in our capacity to carry out these kinds of projects,” Al Nahyan told the local media on that occasion.

United Arab Emirates, a federation made up of seven emirates – Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm al-Quwain – established diplomatic relations with Cuba in March 2002, in an accord signed in Cairo.

The decision to open an embassy in the Cuban capital was reached in a June 2014 cabinet meeting presided over by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the UAE vice president and prime minister, and the ruler of Dubai.

In late February 2015, Al Maktoum received the letters of credentials for the new ambassador of Cuba in the UAE, Enrique Enríquez, during a ceremony in the Al Mushrif Palace in the Emirati capital.

The United Arab Emirates foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed al Nayhan, unveils a plaque commemorating the official opening in Havana of the new UAE embassy, together with his opposite number in Cuba, Bruno Rodríguez. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Later, UAE Assistant Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Ahmed al Jarman and Enríquez discussed the state of bilateral relations and agreed to take immediate concrete steps to expand and strengthen ties in different areas.

Enríquez also met with Cubans living in Abu Dhabi with a view to bolstering relations between them and their home country. They agreed on periodic future gatherings.

In May 2014, the UAE and Cuba signed an open skies agreement to allow the airlines of both countries to operate in each other’s territories, as well as opening the door to new plans for flights between the two countries, the UAE General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) reported.

The accord formed part of a strategy to boost trade with other countries, said Saif Mohammed al Suwaidi, director general of the GCAA, who headed a delegation of officials and representatives of national airlines during a two-day visit to Cuba.

The UAE signed similar agreements with other Latin American countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, as part of its effort at closer relations with this region, which is of growing interest to the Gulf country.

Talks have also been announced between the UAE and Russia to build a giant airport in Cuba, which would serve as an international airport hub for Latin America, the Abu Dhabi-based National newspaper reported in February.

The proposal is being discussed by the Russian government and the Abu Dhabi state investment fund Mubadala, mandated to diversify the emirate’s economy.

In 2013 and 2014, UAE was named the world’s largest official development aid donor in a report released by the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In 2013, the Gulf nation provided five billion dollars in ODA to other countries.

Last year, according to OECD data, the only Gulf country to have a Ministry of International Cooperation and Development spent 1.34 percent of their gross domestic product in development cooperation.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Ernesto “Che” Guevara delivers his famous speech on Aug. 8, 1961 at the Inter-American Economic and Social Council in the Uruguayan city of Punta del Este. This was the last continental forum Cuba attended before being excluded until the Seventh Summit of the Americas, to be held Apr. 10-11 in Panama City. Credit: Public domain

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Apr 8 2015 (IPS)

U.S. President Barack Obama was only four days old when Comandante Ernesto “Che” Guevara publicly castigated the United States’ policy of hostility toward Cuba at an inter-American summit, reiterated then Prime Minister Fidel Castro’s willingness to resolve differences through dialogue on an equal footing, and held secret conversations with a Washington envoy.

More than half a century later, the U.S. president accepted the challenge of pursuing rapprochement with the Caribbean island country, overcoming conflicts, mutual resentment and tensions, and initiating the still precarious process of normalising bilateral relations.

On Apr. 10 and 11 he will come face to face with Cuban President Raúl Castro at the Seventh Summit of the Americas in Panama City.

Guevara addressed the meeting of the Inter-American Economic and Social Council of the Organisation of American States (OAS) on Aug. 8, 1961, on behalf of the Cuban government of Fidel Castro, his leader and comrade-in-arms in the guerrilla revolt that deposed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista on Jan. 1, 1959.

The summit meeting, held in the Uruguayan resort city of Punta del Este, was the last time Cuba participated in an inter-American forum, as the island nation was suspended from the OAS in January 1962, a measure that was officially lifted in June 2009.

At the Punta del Este conference the United States formally established the Alliance for Progress, launched by U.S. President John Kennedy (1961-1963) months earlier to counteract the influence of the Cuban Revolution in the region, after his government’s frustrated attempt to invade the island in April 1961.

Behind the scenes of that conference the Argentine-born Guevara held a confidential meeting in Montevideo on Aug. 17 with Richard Goodwin, Kennedy’s special counsel for Latin American affairs, regarded by Cuban media as the first high level contact between authorities of both countries since bilateral relations had been broken off in January 1961.

Five days later the White House issued a statement describing the meeting as “a casual cocktail party conversation in which Goodwin restricted himself to listening.”

Since then there have been numerous unsuccessful attempts to secure closer ties, until after Fidel Castro’s retirement in 2006, his brother and successor Raúl together with Obama surprised the world on Dec. 17, 2014 with their announcement of the joint decision to restore diplomatic relations.

Hence a lot of attention in the run-up to the Seventh Summit of the Americas is being focused on the two heads of state. It will be Obama’s third attendance at a Summit of the Americas, while Cuba has been excluded until now. Cuba’s presence at this Summit is the result of a diplomatic strategy that led to unanimous support from countries of the region for its reinstatement, and that brought about the thaw with the United States.

Cuban political scientist and essayist Carlos Alzugaray regards the growing autonomy of the region as a factor in the process. “It could be said that the United States has lost the initiative and its room for manoeuvre” south of the Rio Bravo or Rio Grande, he told IPS.

After the first Summit of the Americas which took place in 1994 in the U.S. city of Miami, successive meetings revealed that Latin America was increasingly unwilling to accept U.S. dominance. This came to a head with the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a star concept at early summits but which fell out of favour in just over a decade.

It was at the Fourth Summit, in the Argentine city of Mar del Plata in 2005, that the host country and other South American nations rejected attempts by the United States and Canada to impose the FTAA. Leftwing or centre-left leaders had come to power in the south of the hemisphere, like Hugo Chávez of Venezuela (1999-2013), who called on the Mar del Plata meeting “to be the tomb of FTAA.”

As a regional counter-proposal, in December 2004 Chávez and Fidel Castro launched what is now known as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), made up of Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, Grenada and Saint Kitts and Nevis.

Three years later, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) was founded in order to encourage integration, social and human development, equity and inclusion in the region. Its members are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.

All the countries of the Americas except the United States and Canada came together in 2011 to form the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). This forum reinstated Cuba as a full member of the regional concert of nations, in the absence of Canada and the United States.

While Cuba basks in this new international context, Alzugaray itemised internal changes put in motion by the government of Raúl Castro since 2008 to modernise the socialist development model, as well as “overall changes arising from the growing presence in the region of China, above all, and also of Russia.”

But the Panama Summit, convened formally to satisfy the region’s demand to end Cuba’s ostracism from the bloc of the 35 independent states in the Americas, and to take a significant step toward normalisation of relations between Havana and Washington, may need to shift its attention to the crisis between the United States and Venezuela.

Obama issued an executive order on Mar. 9 declaring that the situation in Venezuela, governed by socialist President Nicolás Maduro, is a “threat to the national security of the United States,” and he imposed several of the country’s senior officials. The measure met with the disapproval of the majority of Latin American countries.

“No country has the right to judge the conduct of another and even less to impose sanctions and penalties on their own,” said UNASUR Secretary General Ernesto Samper, a former president of Colombia. In his view, unilateralism will prevent Washington from maintaining good relations with Latin America.

“Under these circumstances, it will be very difficult for the United States to develop a strategy in the region that takes into account Latin American and Caribbean interests and allows for natural adaptation to change,” said Alzugaray.

In his opinion, Obama has made “a serious mistake” in the run-up to a meeting that was supposed to celebrate hemispheric reunion. “The region will overwhelmingly support Cuba and Venezuela,” Alzugaray predicted.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Valerie Dee

The Cuban (left) and U.S. delegations on the last day of the first round of talks for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations, Jan. 23, in Havana’s convention centre. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg and Ivet González
HAVANA, Jan 26 2015 (IPS)

The biggest discrepancies in the first meeting to normalise relations between Cuba and the United States, after more than half a century, were over the issue of human rights. But what stood out in the talks was a keen interest in forging ahead, in a process led by two women.

After a meeting with representatives of Cuba’s dissident groups, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson reiterated on Jan. 23 that the questions of democracy and human rights are crucial for her country in the bilateral talks, while stressing that there are “deep” differences with Havana on these points.

But the head of the Washington delegation said these discrepancies would not be an obstacle in the negotiations for restoring diplomatic ties – a goal that was announced simultaneously by Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro on Dec. 17.

In her statement to the media after her two-day official visit to Havana, Jacobson added that her country’s new policy towards Cuba is aimed at greater openness with more rights and freedoms.

Nor does independent journalist Miriam Leiva, founder of the opposition group Ladies in White, believe the U.S. focus on defending human rights and supporting dissidents will be a hurdle. “The Cuban government knew that, and they sat down to talk regardless,” she remarked to IPS.

In her view, the important thing is for the normalisation of ties to open up a direct channel of communication between the two governments. “This is a new phase marked by challenges, but also full of hope and opportunities for the people. Of course it’s not going to be easy, and the road ahead is long,” she added.

The Cuban authorities have consistently referred to opposition groups as “mercenaries” in the pay of the aggressive U.S. policy towards Cuba.

Nor are they happy when U.S. visitors to Cuba meet with opponents of the government. And they are intolerant of the relationship between dissidents and the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, which is to be turned into the new embassy as part of the process that got underway with the first round of talks in the convention centre in the Cuban capital.

Jacobson and her Cuban counterpart, Josefina Vidal, the Foreign Ministry’s chief diplomat for U.S. affairs, addressed the issue of human rights during the talks on Thursday Jan. 22.

The high-level U.S. diplomat described the process of reestablishing bilateral ties as “long” and “complex.”

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson, the head of the Washington delegation in the first round of bilateral talks, between the two countries’ flags. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

In a written statement distributed to reporters in a no-questions-allowed media briefing, Jacobson said: “As a central element of our policy, we pressed the Cuban government for improved human rights conditions, including freedom of expression.”

Vidal, meanwhile, said “in our exchange, each party laid out their positions, visions and conceptions on the issue of the exercise of human rights.”

She said the word “pressure” – “pressed” was translated into Spanish as “pressured” – did not come up in the discussion, and that “Cuba has shown throughout its history that it does not and will not respond to pressure.”

In the 1990s and early this century, the question of human rights triggered harsh verbal confrontations between Havana and Washington in the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and since 2006 in the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Havana complained that the U.S. used the issue as part of its “anti-Cuba” policy.

Vidal said she suggested to Jacobson that they hold a specific expert-level dialogue at a date to be agreed, to discuss their views of democracy and human rights.

Josefina Vidal, the Cuban Foreign Ministry’s chief diplomat for U.S. affairs, arriving at the convention centre in Havana, where the first round of talks for reestablishing diplomatic relations with Washington was held. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Jurist Roberto Veiga, who leads the civil society project Cuba Posible, told IPS that “the circumstances that have influenced the issue of human rights should be considered in any bilateral talks on the issue, to avoid mistaken judgments that could stand in the way of possible solutions.”

In his view, during the process that led to the 1959 triumph of the revolution, which was later declared “socialist,” there was a “struggle between a vision that put a priority on so-called individual rights to the unnecessary detriment of social rights and inequality,” and one that put the priority on social and collective rights.

As a result, in this Caribbean island nation what has prevailed up to now is “a conception [of human rights] that favours equality and social rights at the expense of certain freedoms, and of this country’s relations with important countries,” he said.

Veiga said Cubans must complete the effort to find a balance between individual rights and social equality. It is important to discuss this issue “for the development of Cuba’s political system and the consolidation of our civil society,” he argued.

The two delegations also addressed possibilities of cooperation in the areas of telecommunications, national security, international relations, people smuggling, care for the environment, responding to oil spills, the fight against drugs and terrorism, water resources, global health, and a joint response to the ebola epidemic in West Africa, among others.

In the first part of the meeting, the two sides analysed the practical steps to be taken for the opening up of embassies, which will basically follow the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations in effect since 1964.

Reporting the results of the first meeting, aimed above all at laying the foundations for the process, Vidal stressed that following the Convention “implies reciprocal respect for the political, economic and social system of both states and avoiding any form of meddling in internal affairs.”

The date for the next round of talks was not announced.

The meeting was preceded, on Wednesday Jan. 21, by a round of follow-up talks on the migration accords reached by the two countries in 1994 and 1995.

Most Cubans are sceptical and even incredulous about the surprising decision to “make friends” with the United States.

“I think both sides are demanding a lot of each other,” 37-year-old Ángel Calvo, a self-employed driver, told IPS. “Both countries have completely different politics, which it is best to respect in order to start reaching agreements.”

Manuel Sánchez, 33, who described himself as a worker in the informal economy, said both countries “will make more progress towards improving relations than in the past, but they’ll never have the excellent ties that many people are hoping for.”

What is clear is that the talks led by the two high-level officials in Havana have raised expectations.

As renowned Cuban writer Leonardo Padura wrote in a column for IPS earlier this month, after the historic Dec. 17 announcement, “with our eyes wide open, we can catch a glimpse of the future, trying to see shapes more clearly through the haze.”

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Several Cuban dissidents released at the start of the year, standing in front of other opponents of the Cuban government, including Bertha Soler (second to the right, in the second row), the leader of the organisation Ladies in White. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Jan 19 2015 (IPS)

Cuba has decided to move ahead in its talks with the European Union towards an agreement on cooperation parallel to the negotiations aimed at normalising relations with the United States after more than half a century of hostility.

As everyone’s attention is focused on the start of talks this week to restore diplomatic ties between Cuba and the United States, Brussels and Havana scheduled for Mar. 4-5 the third round of negotiations launched in late April 2014 in the Cuban capital.

“We first thought we had slipped down a bit on the list of priorities; now the message is that no, the Cuban state wants to keep a balance between the two processes, which is good news for us,” the EU ambassador in Havana, Herman Portocarero, told IPS.

Delegations from Cuba and the United States will meet Jan. 21-22 in Havana, in the first meeting since the two governments announced Dec. 17 that diplomatic relations would be reestablished, and since sweeping new measures to ease trade and travel between the two countries were presented by Washington on Jan. 15.

In a process that got underway in 2008, Cuba and the EU finally held their first round of talks Apr. 29-30 for a future bilateral accord on political dialogue and cooperation which, according to Portocarero, should define aspects like the role of civil society and the main issues involving long-term cooperation.

Cuba is the only Latin American country that lacks a cooperation agreement with the EU.

A second meeting was held in August in Brussels, and on Jan. 8-9 the Cuban and EU delegations were to sit down together for the third time. But in early December the meeting was postponed by the Cuban authorities, with no new date scheduled, apparently solely due to a busy agenda.

After a year during which Cuba strengthened its relations with the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean and with traditional allies like China and Russia, and which ended with the historic announcement of a thaw with Washington, Havana will now be in a different position in its negotiations with Brussels.

The main aim of Cuban diplomacy in this case is to push for more trade, but above all for an increase in capital inflows under the new law on foreign investment.

The European bloc is currently Cuba’s second trading partner after Venezuela, whose economic difficulties raise doubts about what will happen to its wide-ranging trade ties with this Caribbean island nation. In 2013, according to the latest available figures, Cuba’s imports from Europe totalled 2.12 billion dollars and exports amounted to 971 million dollars.

According to analysts, the government of Raúl Castro hopes that a stable relationship under a framework accord like the one sought with the 28-member European bloc will lead to increased trade, but also to the diversification of economic and trade ties given the possibility that the normalisation of relations with the United States will lead to the lifting of the half-century U.S. embargo.

Portocarero believes Cuba’s new relationship with its northern neighbour will accelerate all of the processes. “If the Cuban authorities want to maintain a balance so that not everything is monopolised through the United States, then they have to give us the attention we deserve,” he said.

Brussels is observing with concern that some of the measures announced by the United States favour its financial sector, while Europe’s remains subject to enormous fines because of the extra-territorial reach of the Helms Burton Act, which in 2006 codified Washington’s sanctions against Cuba, and can only be repealed by the U.S. Congress.

“It is an imbalance that we have to put on the table with our friends in the United States,” Portocarero said in an interview with IPS. “It is not acceptable for us to continue to be subject to sanctions and huge fines against Europe’s financial sector, while restrictions are removed in the case of the U.S.”

The EU, for its part, hopes for faster changes in Cuba. “My message has always been: move faster while you are in control, so as to better defend the good things that should be preserved,” the ambassador said. In his view, moves should also be made to make Cuba’s foreign investment law more attractive.

The EU delegation building in Havana. The Cuban government will restart talks towards a bilateral agreement on cooperation in March. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños

“Foreign investment is competitive and special zones [like Cuba’s Mariel special economic development zone] are everywhere. At this point, 30 percent of the foreign capital invested in Cuba comes from the European Union,” he said.

Cuba has indicated that to ensure the normal growth of its economy, it needs some 2.5 billion dollars a year in investment.

The Mariel special economic development zone, which covers 465 square km 45 km west of Havana, has a modern port terminal built with investment from Brazil, and areas for a broad range of productive activities open to foreign investment.

The questions of foreign trade and cooperation made up the working agenda in the first and second round of talks, although no final documents have yet been produced. Human rights, civil society and good governance are to be discussed in the third round in March, although they are also crosscutting issues that arise in other areas.

These are touchy subjects for the Cuban government, which does not accept being internationally judged regarding them, while they are concerns raised by both Brussels and Washington.

Castro has stated that he is willing to engage in respectful, reciprocal dialogue on the discrepancies, including “any issue” regarding Cuba, but also the United States.

Over 50 inmates considered political prisoners by the U.S. government were released in Cuba in the first few days of January. Spokespersons for the Obama administration clarified that human rights would continue to be a focus of discussion in the talks on migration and the normalisation of ties with Havana.

The Cuban delegation in the talks will be headed by the director general of the foreign ministry’s United States division, Josefina Vidal. On Wednesday Jan. 21 a meeting is to be held to assess the progress of the migration accords and the measures taken by both sides to tackle undocumented migration and smuggling of migrants, among other issues.

In the two-day meeting, the U.S. delegation will be led by U.S acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Edward Alex Lee. The 1994 and 1995 migration accords are reviewed every six months, in meetings that rotate between Cuba and the United States.

Steps towards opening embassies in the two countries will be discussed at the first meeting on reestablishing diplomatic ties between the two countries, on Jan. 22.

Bilateral issues will be addressed later that day, including cooperation in areas of mutual interest. The U.S. representatives in these two meetings will be led by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Damaris González and Omar Navarro describe their farm in eastern Cuba as an integral agroecological system. Credit: Courtesy Randy Rodríguez Pagés/SEMlac

By Patricia Grogg
SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Jan 7 2015 (IPS)

Meat and vegetables are never missing from the dinner table of Damaris González and Omar Navarro, since they get almost all of their food from their farm, La Revelación, on the outskirts of the city of Santiago de Cuba, 765 km east of the Cuban capital.

On the three hectares they have been working for the past seven years, the couple combine agroecological techniques with the rational use of natural resources, as they learned in the permaculture courses given in the city by the non-governmental ecumenical Bartolomé G. Lavastida Christian Centre for Service and Training (CCSC-Lavastida).

“I used to grow just one or two varieties, especially tubers (staples of the Cuban diet). If we didn’t sell them or if the harvest was lost, we didn’t have much to survive on,” Navarro told IPS.“We had to ‘deprogramme’ ourselves to start using these techniques, because when you have planted the same thing in the same way all your life, it’s hard to believe it’s possible to diversify crops and stop using chemicals.” -- Omar Navarro

The farmer is the coordinator of the local administrative committee of one of the food production microprojects organised by the religious organisation in rural areas in the eastern provinces of Camagüey, Las Tunas, Holguín, Granma, Guantánamo and Santiago de Cuba.

When the initiative got underway with a local church in 2009, González and Navarro, along with another 10 ecumenical activists, received nine months of training on permaculture, agroecology, gender, business administration, food preservation, nutrition and other areas.

“We had to ‘deprogramme’ ourselves to start using these techniques, because when you have planted the same thing in the same way all your life, it’s hard to believe it’s possible to diversify crops and stop using chemicals,” said Navarro, 52.

The microproject gave them economic support to improve the infrastructure on their farm and buy livestock, in exchange for a commitment to donate part of their production to vulnerable segments of society, such as terminally ill patients, people living with HIV/AIDS, or the elderly.

González, who is an engineer by profession but is now farming to boost her family’s income, believes their main achievement has been guaranteeing a balanced diet.

“We use vermiculture (worm farming) and composting of organic material to make natural fertiliser, without chemicals, so our food is healthier,” said González, who runs the family farm, where the couple live with their 11-year-old son.

They recently hired six workers who help them tend three fish farming tanks where they grow up to 5,000 red tilapia fry, rows of vegetables, different kinds of fruit, a seedbed, and 200 farm animals, including sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks and seven cows.

“The community benefits from us being more productive because we sell the surplus at low prices compared to what is sold in the farmers’ markets,” added González, 48, as she showed IPS the booklet where she records the farm’s harvests by hand.

Fidel Pérez, who practices permaculture, grows giant oranges from China in his yard in Santiago de Cuba. Credit: Courtesy Randy Rodríguez Pagés/SEMlac

With economic support and ongoing training, CCSC-Lavastida has been helping empower people in the countryside to produce food in an ecological manner, while encouraging the active participation of women, for the past 17 years.

Agronomist César Parra told IPS that the institution, founded in 1995, has set up 87 microprojects with support from international Christian organisations such as Bread for the World and Diakonia-Swedish Ecumenical Action. Seventy percent of the microprojects involve food production and agriculture.

In 2014, 32 were still active, directly or indirectly benefiting some 600 families throughout the entire eastern region, the poorest part of the country.

Some of these groups have more than one system of permaculture – agriculture in harmony with local ecosystems, introduced in this Caribbean island nation in the 1990s in response to the ongoing economic crisis triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc.

“It’s about creating sustainable human settlements, following the ethics of caring for the earth, people and animals in a harmonious relationship and imitating the cycles of nature,” said Parra, CCSC-Lavastida’s projects coordinator.

Based on the premise that everything can be reused, these systems of permanent agriculture make use of organic waste and manure as fertiliser, harvest rainwater, diversify crops, reduce energy use, increase greenery, create seedbeds and install biodigesters and dry toilets, among other techniques.

The Christian centre has trained 40 people to spread this philosophy and system in the eastern provinces of Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo and Granma, who create gardens in urban patios, backyards and rooftops.

Fidel Pérez is one of those who has planted fruit and vegetables on every inch of soil around his house, in a neighbourhood in Santiago de Cuba.

Pérez, who runs a local church, told IPS that he manages to supply his family of seven with tubers, fruit, vegetables and different kinds of meat, with what he produces.

He estimates that he saves 17,000 Cuban pesos (710 dollars) a year, in a country where the mean monthly salary is 471 pesos and people spend between 59 and 74 percent of their monthly income on food, according to studies by local economists.

Figures from the non-governmental Antonio Núñez Jiménez Foundation indicate that more than 1,000 people have been trained in Cuba as promoters of permaculture.

“These people are assuming new lifestyles, with a closer connection to nature and greater sensibility and knowledge, to forge a beneficial relationship with their habitat,” says a recent article written by several specialists in the Foundation’s magazine, “Se puede”.

Experts agree that the adoption of permaculture by rural and urban families can help provide solutions to Cuba’s food sovereignty problems.

This is especially important when the authorities are attempting to boost agricultural production, as a matter of “national security.” In 2013, agriculture accounted for 3.7 percent of GDP, according to official figures.

The National Statistics Office reported that of 6.34 million hectares of farmland in Cuba, only 2.64 million were under cultivation in 2013.

Food imports absorbed 2.09 billion dollars in the first half of 2014, says a report by the Ministry of Economy and Planning to the Cuban parliament, which stated that 60 percent of that total could have been produced in this country.

The sustainable production of food and seeds is top priority for the period 2013-2018 in the cooperation agreements between Cuba and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), whose goals also include adaptation to climate change and the sustainable management of natural resources.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

The U.S. and Cuban flags adorn a bicycle-taxi in Havana, a few hours after the announcement of the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, which were broken off in 1961. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Dec 18 2014 (IPS)

The announcement that the United States and Cuba would reestablish diplomatic relations took most Cubans by surprise. Over half of the population was born after the severing of ties in 1961 and the start of the embargo that has marked their lives.

“I wasn’t expecting it; it’s the news of the century and a step that will put in gear many changes,” a journalist who has followed the question for years told IPS.

Groups of university students took to the streets on Wednesday to celebrate the return of the three Cuban agents serving out lengthy sentences in U.S. prisons on charges of spying.

A U.S. contractor serving time in a Cuban prison, Alan Gross, was also released. His arrest and sentencing to 15 years in prison on charges of involvement in subversive plans in Cuba was seen by Washington as a major hurdle to the normalisation of relations with Havana.

Nor was the Cuban government willing to move in that direction unless the Cuban agents were freed.

Antonio Guerrero, whose sentence ended in 2017; Ramón Labañino, sentenced to 30 years; and Gerardo Hernández, who had been given two life sentences, arrived in Havana on Wednesday.

The other two members of the group known as “the Cuban five”, René González and Fernando González (no relation), had served out their sentences and have been back in Cuba since 2013 and February of this year, respectively.

In a televised speech – broadcast simultaneously with U.S. President Barack Obama’s address in Washington – President Raúl Castro said that his openness to dialogue with the U.S. gave continuity to his brother Fidel’s (president from 1959 to 2008) willingness to negotiate.

Observers see that statement as targeting segments of society and even within the government who could be opposed to the normalisation of relations. “The conflict with the United States, and especially the embargo, has served for decades to justify our shortcomings,” a researcher who wished to remain anonymous told IPS.

The reestablishment of diplomatic ties does not include the lifting of the trade and economic embargo against Cuba, a decision that is up to the U.S. Congress. But Castro urged Obama to “modify its application by use of his executive powers.”

More than seven million people in this country of 11.2 million were born under the embargo.

But the move towards normal relations with Cuba’s powerful neighbor only 90 miles away will pose enormous challenges to this country’s socialist development model, which Castro says he will not abandon.

Luis Emilio Aybar, a sociologist, says Cuba should follow a pragmatic policy of economic and political ties like the ones it has with many other countries, while maintaining its “alternative anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist policies” – but without forgetting that the U.S. will continue to be the main enemy of this form of government.

Vulnerability to different kinds of foreign influences “will now be multiplied manyfold, and will be added to the loss of hegemony that socialist values are suffering in our country. The U.S. government understands the situation clearly; that’s why it took this step,” said Aybar, who believes the solution to the dilemma “lies in understanding that you can be pragmatic and radical at the same time.”

Rita María García Morris, executive director of the independent Christian Centre for Reflection and Dialogue, said it was important for civil society institutions to keep their doors open to a conciliatory dialogue, even if it is difficult and painful. “It has never been easy to acknowledge differences,” she said.

The reforms undertaken by the government of Raúl Castro, such as an expansion of private enterprise and a new foreign investment law, enabled the government to optimise relations with the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean and with traditional allies like China and Russia, and to renew negotiations with the European Union.

Havana and Brussels are involved in talks towards a political and cooperation agreement that would further diversify the diplomatic ties of the Cuban government, which is keen on drawing larger flows of investment to ensure growth, particularly in the Mariel special economic development zone.

Against that backdrop, the United States appeared to be increasingly isolated in its stance towards Cuba, which was officially invited to take part in the next Summit of the Americas, in Panama in April, despite Washington’s resistance. Now that things have changed, Castro and Obama will be able to use that occasion to strengthen the direct dialogue that they began with a phone conversation on Tuesday Dec. 16.

Pope Francis’s mediation in the process that led to the new relations between the U.S. and Cuba did not come as a surprise, given the dialogue in recent years between Castro and the Catholic Church leadership in Cuba, which helped bring about the release of several dozen political prisoners.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Mercado Amistad, one of the shops that only accept hard currency, officially called “foreign currency recovery stores”, in central Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Dec 16 2014 (IPS)

One of the major challenges assumed by President Raúl Castro when he launched a series of reforms in Cuba is improving living standards in a country still suffering from a recession that began over 20 years ago and has undermined the aim of achieving economic and social equality.

Inequality has been growing since the start of the crisis triggered by the break-up of the Soviet Union and East European socialist bloc – Cuba’s main trade and aid partners – in the early 1990s. The “special period” – the euphemistic term used to refer to the lengthy recession – “has even morally affected the concept of inequality,” economist Esteban Morales told IPS.

To ease the recession in the 1990s, the government of Fidel Castro (1959-2008) opened the doors to foreign investment, fomented tourism, legalised the dollar, and created the “foreign currency recovery stores”, among other measures whose economic benefits also came accompanied by greater social inequality.: “What is annoying is that people with less education and fewer responsibilities earn more than a professional. When I started studying in the 1980s that’s not how things were. People’s salaries stretched much farther.” -- Cuban schoolteacher

However, María Caridad González appreciates the sense of equality that still exists in Cuban society, which she says has made social inclusion possible for her 10-year-old son, who knows that “to do well in life he just has to study and become a professional.”

Since the 1959 revolution, free universal healthcare coverage and education have been important tools for achieving social equality in Cuba.

González, who comes from a family of small farmers, moved to Havana in the mid-1990s. “It was hard at first. There were shortages of everything, but I stayed anyway and got married here. Now there are a lot of stores and farmers’ markets, and what is lacking is money to buy things,” said the 36-year-old, who works in the cleaning service at a company that is partly foreign owned.

Other people are worse off than González, who manages to add to her monthly income working as a domestic in the homes of families she knows, which brings her another 80 CUC – the Cuban peso convertible to dollars – or 1,920 pesos.

That is more than four times the average public sector salary of 470 pesos (19 dollars) a month. “Thanks to my income we survived the months when my husband, who is a cook in the tourism industry, was out of work,” said González.

She is in a much better position than her neighbor, a 55-year-old primary schoolteacher who earns 750 pesos a month and has no source of dollars or other foreign currency – a mainstay for many Cuban families, who receive remittances from relatives abroad or who work in tourism, where they earn tips.

The teacher, who is married and has two adult children aged 20 and 25, told IPS: “What is annoying is that people with less education and fewer responsibilities earn more than a professional. When I started studying in the 1980s that’s not how things were. People’s salaries stretched much farther.”

The inequality gap has widened as the differences in incomes have grown.

Those who only earn a public salary – the state is still by far the biggest employer, despite a reduction in the public payroll as part of the reforms – or who depend on a pension or are on social assistance find it impossible to meet their basic needs. According to statistics from the Centre for Studies of the Cuban Economy, food absorbs between 59 and 75 percent of the family budget in Cuba.

A farmers’ market on Vapor street in Old Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

However, Cuba’s free universal healthcare and education, social security system, and social assistance for the poor have been preserved in spite of the country’s economic troubles, and were key to Cuba’s ranking in 44th place on the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI) this year.

The HDI is a composite index that measures average achievement in three basic dimensions of human development: long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living.

The schoolteacher, who asked to remain anonymous, said “I understand and appreciate that, but it is no less true that the differences in income differentiate us when it comes to putting food on the table or buying clothes.”

Morales agrees with the government’s aim of “equal rights and opportunities” rather than egalitarianism. In his view, the distribution of income based on work is still unequal. “It would be ethical if people received in accordance with what they contributed, and those who needed assistance would receive it through social spending, to balance out the inequalities,” he argued.

The academic defends the idea of subsidising specific people rather than products, which is still being done through the ration card system that distributes a certain quantity of foodstuffs at prices subsidised by the state, to all citizens, regardless of their income.

The system covered the basic dietary needs of families until the 1980s. But that is no longer the case, and Cubans now have to complete their diet with products sold in the hard currency stores and the farmers’ markets, where one pound (450 grams) of pork can cost 40 pesos (1.60 dollars) – the same price fetched by a pound of onions at certain times of the year.

In its 2014-2020 pastoral plan, the Catholic Church complains that broad swathes of society are plagued by “material poverty, the result of wages that are too low to provide a family with decent living standards.”

That situation, it says, impacts semi-skilled workers as well as professionals.

After acknowledging that the expansion of opportunities for self-employment and for setting up cooperatives in non-agricultural sectors of the economy has opened up opportunities for some, the church warns that the current economic reforms “have failed to reactivate the economy in such a way that it benefits the entire population.”

Not all segments of society are in equal conditions to take advantage of the changes that have been ushered in. Researchers like Morales or Mayra Espina say women, people who are not white, and young people are at a disadvantage, whether due to a lack of formal training and education, or of assets and resources for starting up their own businesses.

According to the last official statistics on poverty published in Cuba, from 2004, 20 percent of the urban population was poor. In this Caribbean island nation, 76 percent of the population of 11.2 million lives in towns and cities. Experts worry that the proportion today is even higher, and they say decision-makers need to know the exact percentage in order to properly tailor social policies to the actual situation.

But Espina and other academics say the reforms approved in April 2011 do not put a high enough priority on social aspects, ignore the questions of poverty and inequality, and contain weak measures for guaranteeing equality.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

A member of the Vivero Alamar Cooperative carrying ornamental plants at a nursery in a suburb of Havana. Access to employment is a problem for women in rural areas. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Sep 30 2014 (IPS)

Leonor Pedroso’s sewing machine has dressed children in the Cuban town of Florida for 30 years. But it was only a few months ago that the seamstress was able to become formally self-employed.

“My husband, a small farmer, didn’t let me work outside the home,” Pedroso, 63, told IPS. “I could only sew things for neighbours or close friends, for free or really cheap. According to him, jobs weren’t for women.”

She is now one of the beneficiaries of a project funded by international development aid that helps women entrepreneurs with the aim of closing the gender gap, as part of the economic reforms underway in this socialist Caribbean island nation.

Pedroso, whose main activities were running the household and raising the couple’s four children, did not have a stable enough flow of income or the knowledge to capitalise on her skills until she took courses in business plan development and management and gender along with other female entrepreneurs.

“I stood up to my husband, to do what I like to do, and now I am setting up a business in my home, to sell what I make and to teach young girls to sew and embroider,” she said with satisfaction, while waiting for the delivery of new sewing machines for her business.“I moved to where I could find work because I couldn’t let my 12-year-old daughter go hungry. Then I learned how to sell my harvest and invest the money I earn.” -- Neysi Fernández

She is now a new member of the local Producción Animal 25 Aniversario Cooperative.

The project, carried out by ACSUR Las Segovias, a non-governmental organisation from Spain, and the local Asociación Nacional de Agricultores Pequeños (ANAP – National Association of Small Farmers), with financing from the European Union, provides training and inputs to 24 women, including farmers, craftmakers and rural leaders.

The project, whose formal title is “incorporation of rural female entrepreneurs into local socioeconomic development from a gender perspective”, has helped women who have traditionally been homemakers to generate an income. It is to be completed at the end of the year.

The women involved are in Artemisa, a province near Havana; Camagüey, a province in east-central Cuba, where Florida is located; and the eastern province of Granma.

“In the past, men were seen as the breadwinners and the owners of the land, but women have started to understand what they themselves contribute to the family economy,” Lorena Rodríguez, who works in the area of projects with ACSUR Las Segovia, told IPS.

She said “machismo” and sexism continue to stand in the way of the incorporation of rural women in the labour market.

One of the women involved in the project is Neysi Fernández who, seeking a way to make a living, moved from her hometown of Yateras in the eastern province of Guantánamo to Guanajay in the province of Artemisa, where a family member offered her a piece of land to work.

On the four hectares of land she is planting cassava, malanga (a tuber resembling a sweet potato), beans, maize and plantains.

“I moved to where I could find work because I couldn’t let my 12-year-old daughter go hungry,” the 42-year-old small farmer, who married a manual labourer four years ago, told IPS. “Then I learned how to sell my harvest and invest the money I earn.”

According to social researchers, the problem of access to remunerated work is one of the worst forms of inequality in rural areas in Cuba. Women represent 47 percent of the more than 2.8 million rural inhabitants in this country of 11.2 million people.

The work carried out by the wives and daughters of small farmers – raising livestock, tending family gardens, taking care of the home and raising children – is not recognised or remunerated, speakers said at the third review meeting of the National Action Plan held in 2013 to follow up on the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

Only 65,993 women belong to ANAP, and they represent just 17 percent of the association’s total membership, according to figures published this year by Cuba’s daily newspaper, Granma.

Women make up 142,300 of the 1.838 million people who work in agriculture, livestock, forestry and fishing in Cuba, according to 2013 data from the national statistics office, ONEI.

The economic reforms undertaken by President Raúl Castro since 2008, with the aim of reviving the country’s flagging economy, have included the distribution of idle land under decree laws 259 of 2008, and 300 of 2012.

The objective is to boost food production in a country where 40 percent of the farmland is now in private hands, according to ONEI’s 2013 statistical yearbook.

But it is still mainly men who have the land, credits and farm machinery, and they remain a majority when it comes to decision-making in rural areas.

Given the lack of affirmative action by the state to boost female participation in rural areas, several civil society organisations and international aid agencies have been working to foster local development with a gender perspective.

With backing from the international relief and development organisation Oxfam, more than 15 women’s collective business enterprises will be operating in 10 municipalities in eastern Cuba by the end of the year. They include a flower shop, beauty salon, laundry, cheese shop, and several tire repair businesses.

With funds from the European Union, the Basque Agency for Development Cooperation and the Japanese Embassy in Cuba, the small businesses have been furnished with equipment and vehicles for transportation. In addition, the participants have taken part in workshops on self-esteem, leadership and personal growth.

According to sociologist Yohanka Valdés, the value of these projects lies in the strengthening of women’s capacity through empowerment and recognition of their rights.

“If an opportunity emerges, men are in a better position to take advantage of it because they don’t have to take care of the family,” the researcher told IPS.

Economist Dayma Echevarría says the female half of the population is at a disadvantage when it comes to the diversification of non-state activities in Cuba.

She says gender stereotypes in Cuba keep women in their role as homemakers and primary caretakers.

In one of the chapters of the book on the Cuban economy, “Miradas a la economía cubana” (Editorial Caminos, 2013), Echevarría says the lack of support services for caretakers is one of the reasons for rural women’s vulnerability when it comes to employment.

The recent process of land distribution has not translated into opportunities for boosting gender equality because it failed to foster active female participation, according to the expert.

At the same time, there are few Cuban women with the resources to set up their own businesses within the current regulatory framework.

Echevarría said Cubans were still waiting for the implementation of regulations that would enable more equitable insertion of women under the new labour conditions while incorporating a gender focus.

Cuba is in 15th place in the Global Gender Gap Report 2013, but in the subindex on economic participation and opportunity it ranks 66th out of the 153 countries studied.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

The 5 de Septiembre sugar mill in the Cuban province of Cienfuegos. A subsidiary of the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht is taking part in upgrading the plant, which will include construction of a bioenergy plant run on sugarcane bagasse. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Sep 26 2014 (IPS)

Cuba’s sugar industry hopes to become the main source of clean energy in the country as part of a programme to develop renewable sources aimed at reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels and protecting the environment.

The project forms part of the plans for upgrading and modernising sugar mills that have been opened up to foreign investment by Azcuba, the government business group that replaced the Sugar Ministry in 2011. Traditionally, sugar mills have generated electricity for their own consumption, using bagasse, the fibrous matter that remains after sugarcane stalks are crushed to extract their juice.

In a conversation with Tierramérica, Azcuba spokesman Liobel Pérez defended the production of energy using bagasse as a cheap, environmentally friendly alternative. “The CO2 [carbon dioxide] produced in the generation of electricity is the same amount that the sugar cane absorbs when it grows, which means there is an environmental balance.”

For now, the production of ethanol as a by-product of sugarcane is not being considered in Cuba, although some experts argue that the biofuel could reduce consumption of gasoline by farm machinery and transportation and thus limit atmospheric emissions.

“That is one of the issues being discussed and analysed by the government commission created to study the development of renewable energies,” said Manuel Díaz, director of the Cuban Institute of Research on Sugar Cane Derivatives. The official did not, however, rule out the possibility in the future.

“Even if it is not the definitive long-term solution to the consumption of automotive fuel, ethanol is an important factor and contributes to reducing fossil fuel use, and if it does not run counter to the use of land for food, it could be, it seems to me, an alternative that each country should analyse depending on its specific characteristics,” Díaz said.

A worker at the Jesús Rabí sugar mill in the Cuban province of Matanzas. The plant’s biomass will help increase electricity production from clean sources of energy in Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

The sugar industry currently accounts for 3.5 percent of electricity generation in this Caribbean island nation. A target of the plan to boost energy efficiency is for around 20 sugar mills to generate a surplus of 755 MW by 2030, to go into the national power grid.

That would raise the proportion of electricity produced by sugarcane biomass to 14 percent by 2030. The overall aim is for 24 percent of energy to come from renewable sources, including wind power (six percent), solar (three percent), and hydropower (one percent).

Currently, renewable energy sources only represent 4.6 percent of electricity generation; the rest comes from fossil fuels.

The gradual installation in the sugar mills of modern bioelectric plants needed to achieve that goal requires an estimated investment of 1.29 billion dollars, which Azcuba hopes to obtain from government loans or foreign investment.

“If we don’t find a loan we will get foreign investment,” said Jorge Lodos, business director for Zerus SA, a subsidiary of Azcuba. The executive told Tierramérica that the first two companies to enter into partnership with Cuba in the sector included the bioelectric plants in their plans, to boost energy efficiency.

The first of the plants that run on sugarcane biomass will begin to produce energy in 2016, Lodos said. It is to be built near the Ciro Redondo sugar mill in the province of Ciego de Ávila, 423 km from Havana, by Biopower, a joint venture established in 2012 by Cuba’s state-run Zerus and the British firm Havana Energy Ltd.

During the December to May harvest season, the plant will use sugarcane bagasse from the nearby sugar mill. The rest of the year it will use stored sugarcane waste and marabú (Dichrostachys cinérea), a woody shrub that has invaded vast areas of farmland in Cuba. The projected investment ranges between 45 and 55 million dollars.

Meanwhile, the Compañía de Obras e Infraestructura (COI), a subsidiary of Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, reached an agreement with the Empresa Azucarera Cienfuegos, another Azcuba subsidiary, to jointly administer the 5 de Septiembre sugar mill in the province of Cienfuegos, 256 km from the capital, for 13 years.

In this case, the commitment is to bring the productive capacity of the sugar mill back up to 90,000 tons of sugar per harvest, or even higher.
Lodos said investment in the project would surpass 100 million dollars, and would also include the construction of a bioenergy plant.

These two sugar mills and the Jesús Rabí mill in the province of Matanzas, 98 km from Havana, will generate the first 140 MW of electricity in the medium term.

Havana Energy and COI opened the door to foreign capital in Cuba’s sugar industry, just as investment has already been welcomed in other sectors of this country’s centralised economy. “Foreign investment requires mutual trust,” Lodos said.

The socialist government of Raúl Castro estimates that the country needs between two and 2.5 billion dollars a year in foreign capital in order to grow and develop.

Of Cuba’s 56 sugar mills, six of which are now inactive, Azcuba has opened up 20 to foreign investment. The initial priorities are the eight built after the 1959 revolution.

Although ethanol production is not among the plans to be offered to foreign investors, many experts believe prospects for selling the fuel are good.

“It is not expected to be included in the programme,” Lodos said. “None of the minimum conditions required to introduce foreign investment are in place. It would not involve large amounts of capital or technology contribution, and it would not be for export or to replace imports. Today it isn’t on the business menu. But it might be tomorrow.”

Cuba produces alcohol in 11 distilleries, which are also to be upgraded, for pharmaceutical use and the industry that produces rum and other alcohol.

Cuba’s once-powerful sugar industry, which produced harvests of up to eight million tons, hit bottom in the 2009-2010 season when output plunged to 1.1 million tones – the lowest level in 105 years.

The industry currently represents around five percent of the country’s inflow of foreign exchange.

The hope is that the modernisation of factories, machinery, transport equipment and other resources will boost yields and bolster production, along with the increase in the planting of sugarcane. Last year 400,000 hectares were planted and production in the 2013-2014 harvest amounted to over 1.6 million tons.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

The container terminal administrative building in the port of the Mariel special economic development zone in Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Aug 22 2014 (IPS)

The Mariel special economic development zone, the biggest construction project undertaken in decades in Cuba, emerged thanks to financial support from Brazil, which was based on political goodwill, a strategy of integration, and business vision.

“Cuba would not have been able to undertake this project from a technical or economic point of view,” economist Esteban Morales told IPS. He added that the geographic setting makes the development zone strategic in terms of trade, industry and services in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Brazil financed the construction of the container terminal and the remodeling of the port of Mariel, which is equipped with state-of-the-art technology to handle cargo from Post-Panamax container ships that will begin to arrive when the expansion of the Panama Canal is completed in December 2015.

Post-Panamax refers to vessels that do not fit in the current Panama Canal, such as the supertankers and the largest modern container and passenger ships.

The port, 45 km west of Havana, is located along the route of the main maritime transport flows in the Western hemisphere, and experts say it will be the largest industrial port in the Caribbean in terms of both size and volume of activity.

Construction of the terminal, in the heart of the 465 sq km special economic development zone, has included highways connecting the Mariel port with the rest of the country, a railway network, and communication infrastructure, and the port will offer a variety of services.

In the special zone, currently under construction, there will be productive, trade, agricultural, port, logistical, training, recreational, tourist, real estate, and technological development and innovation activities, in installations that include merchandise distribution centres and industrial parks.

The special zone is divided into eight sectors, to be developed in stages. The first involves telecommunications and a modern technology park where pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms will operate – two sectors which will be given priority in Mariel, along with renewable energies, agriculture and food, among others.

The Cuban government is currently studying the approval of 23 projects from Europe, Asia and the Americas for Mariel, in the chemical, construction materials, logistics and equipment rental industries.

The terminal was inaugurated on Jan. 27, and during its first six months of operation it received 57 ships and some 15,000 containers – small numbers compared to the terminal’s warehouse capacity of 822,000 containers. Post-Panamax vessels can carry up to 12,600 containers, three times more than Panamax ships.

Another economist, Pedro Monreal, estimates that the cost per container will be cut in half.

The lower costs, he said, will improve the competitiveness of Brazil’s manufactured goods, to cite one example. Mariel, where a free trade zone will also operate, could become a platform for production and export by the companies, even for supplying Brazil’s domestic market.

Heavy machinery prepares the terrain for a railway that will form part of the new infrastructure linked to the special development zone in the port of Mariel – the biggest project undertaken in Cuba in decades: Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Although Decree Law 313, which created the special economic development zone, was passed in September 2013, the remodeling of Mariel began three years ago, led by a joint venture formed in February 2010 by the Compañía de Obras e Infraestructura, a subsidiary of the private Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht, and Quality Cuba SA.

The container terminal is run by Global Ports Management Limited of Singapore, one of the world’s biggest container terminal operators, which has been working with the Cuban firm Almacenes Universales S.A, which is the owner and user of the terminal, and responsible for oversight of its efficient use.

The relationship between Cuba and Brazil is a longstanding one. Former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) did not hide his sympathies for the Cuban revolution, and has visited this country a number of times, first as a trade unionist and political party leader, and then as a president and former president.

Two packages of agreements signed in 2008 and 2010 between Lula and Cuban President Raúl Castro marked their interest in strengthening bilateral ties, an effort continued by current Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.

When she attended the inauguration of the terminal, Rousseff said the project would take 802 million dollars in the first stage, plus 290 million for the second stage. The first of Brazil’s loans was initially to go towards construction of the road, but the local government decided to start with the port.

The credit was granted by Brazil’s National Bank of Economic and Social Development (BNDES). Havana provided 15 percent of the investment needed for the work.

“Cuba is a priority for our government, and Brazil is important to Havana,” the director general of the Brazilian Agency for the Promotion of Exports and Investments (APEX-Brazil), Hipólito Rocha, told IPS.

APEX-Brazil was created by Lula and Castro to promote joint business ventures with Cuba, the rest of the Caribbean and Central America.

Odebrecht is the most important company involved in Mariel, but diplomatic sources told IPS that a total of around 400 Brazilian companies are taking part in the project. “Between our countries there is affinity, political will, an interest in integration, but business matters are also important,” Rocha said.

He added that Cuba strictly lives up to its financial commitments with Brazil, and said bilateral relations “are solid, sustainable and bring benefits to our country as well.”

Analyst Arturo López-Levy said Brazil’s involvement in the Mariel project was decisive not only because of the investment. The political scientist, who lives in the United States, says the Brazilian government is sending a message to Washington and the European Union and other emerging powers that it backs the transformations underway in Cuba.

The presidents of China, Xi Jinping, and Russia, Vladimir Putin, also sent out signals when they visited Cuba in July, indicating their interest in expanding cooperation with Havana.

The two presidents stopped over in Cuba when they travelled to the sixth summit of the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), held Jul. 14-16 in Brazil.

The strengthening of ties promises greater access to the Chinese and Russian markets, attraction of investment in areas of common interest like the pharmaceutical and energy industries, and cooperation for the modernisation of strategic areas in defence, ports and telecommunications, López-Levy told IPS.

With respect to the possible interest of U.S. businesses in getting a foothold in the special economic development zone, and to an increase in pressure for the lifting of the five-decade U.S. embargo, the analyst said “the Cuban market awakens very limited interest in the United States.”

However, he said it was “clear” that U.S. investors are becoming more interested, especially Cuban-Americans.

“In order for this motivation to turn into political pressure against the embargo, the Cuban economy has to give out clear signs of recovery and of the government’s willingness, in key areas, to adopt a mixed economy with transparent guarantees for investors and export capacity,” he said.

Rocha has a somewhat different opinion.

“The embargo is going to collapse under its own weight,” he said. “Business will knock it down.”

It was seen as symbolic that the first ship that docked in the Mariel port after it began to operate brought food for Cuba from the United States – cash-only imports, which were authorised by the U.S. Congress in 2000.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Women buying food at a farmers market in the Playa neighbourhood of Havana. More than 98 percent of the unpaid domestic work and family care in Cuban homes falls to women. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Aug 20 2014 (IPS)

Hortensia Ramírez feels like she needs more hands to care for her 78-year-old mother, who suffers from arteriosclerosis, do the housework, and make homemade baked goods which she sells to support her family.

She starts her day at 6:00 AM, putting the sheets that her mother wet during the nighttime to soak, before preparing the dough for the pastries and making lunch for her two sons; one works in computers and the other is in secondary school.

“Two years ago I quit my job as a nurse because my mother couldn’t be alone, and although I have a brother who helps with the expenses, I provide the day-to-day care,” the 57-year-old, who separated from her second partner shortly before her mother started to need round-the-clock care, told IPS.

“Since then my life has been reduced to taking care of her, but it’s more and more complicated to put food on the table and to get her medication – and don’t even mention disposable diapers on my limited income…Well, let’s just say I end my day exhausted.”

Like the majority of middle-aged Cuban women, Ramírez feels the burden of domestic responsibilities and family care, exacerbated by economic hardship after more than 20 years of crisis in this socialist country.

The burden of caretaking traditionally falls to women, which sustains gender inequalities and makes women vulnerable to the reforms undertaken by the government of Raúl Castro since 2008, aimed at boosting productivity and the efficiency of the economy, but without parallel wage hikes.

The reduction of the number of boarding schools where students combine learning with agricultural work in rural areas, the closure of workplace cafeterias, and cutbacks in the budget for social assistance have left families on their own in areas where they used to receive support from the state, and which affect, above all, the female half of the population of 11.2 million.

“The state is passing part of the burden of caregiving and healthcare and education to families, but economic development should take into account the contributions made by families,” economist Teresa Lara told IPS.

If no one cooks, takes care of the collective hygiene, helps children with homework or cares for older adults and the ill, then the workforce won’t grow, the expert said.

But these tasks, which almost always fall to women, remain invisible and unpaid.

Cuban women dedicate 71 percent of their working hours to unpaid domestic work, according to the only Time Use Survey published until now, carried out in 2002 by the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI).

The study, whose results remain valid today according to experts, found that for every 100 hours of work by men, women worked 120, many of them multitasking – cooking, cleaning, washing and caring for children.

Based on those tendencies, Lara estimates that unremunerated domestic work and caregiving would be equivalent to 20 percent of GDP – a larger proportion than manufacturing.

And that percentage could be even higher today given the complexity of daily life in Cuba, the economist said.

Without laundries, dry cleaning services, industries that produce precooked foods or other services that ease domestic tasks at affordable prices, Cuban families have to redouble their efforts to meet household needs.

To that is added the rundown conditions of homes for the elderly and public daycare centres and the reduction of the state budget for social assistance, from 656 million dollars in 2008 to 262 million in 2013, according to the national statistics office (ONEI).

Women often end up stuck in lower level jobs, or dropping out of the job market altogether, because of the burden of caretaking for children, the ill or the elderly, on top of the other household duties.

Many women find it hard to cope financially with the burden of caregiving, in a country where the average monthly salary is 20 dollars a month while the minimum amount that a family needs is three times that, even with subsidised prices for some food items and services.

ONEI statistics show that the female unemployment rate rose from two percent in 2008 to 3.5 percent in 2013, parallel to the drastic pruning of the government payroll, which could soon bring the number of people left without a job up to one million.

Although the number of areas where private enterprise or self-employment is permitted was expanded, they do not guarantee social security coverage. Nor do they tap into the expertise accumulated by women, who make up over 65 percent of the professional and technical workforce in this Caribbean island nation.

Sociologist Magela Romero says that burdening women with the social role of caretaker buttresses the unequal power relations between the genders, with economic, emotional, psychological and sexual consequences for women.

A qualitative study of 80 women from Havana carried out by the university professor in 2010, which IPS saw, concluded that a number of those interviewed were caught up in an endless cycle of caregiving: after they completed their studies they spent the rest of their lives raising children and taking care of parents, parents-in-law, grandparents, grandchildren, spouses and other family members.

This situation is especially complex in a country with an aging demographic, where 18 percent of the population is over 60 and 40 percent of households include someone over that age.

Adriana Díaz, an accountant, was only able to work in her profession for less than a decade.

“First my kids were born, and I raised them. Then I got divorced and I went back to work for four years, which were the best years of my life. But when my mother fell seriously ill, I quit again,” the 54-year-old told IPS.

Nearly nine years taking care of her mother round the clock left Díaz with a bad back and cardiovascular problems. Besides the fact that she is entirely dependent on her children, who moved abroad.

Social researcher María del Carmen Zabala says the gender gaps in employment that are a by-product of the fact that the responsibility for caregiving falls almost exclusively on women require policies that specifically address women, in line with the changes currently underway in the country.

Citing the rise in the proportion of female-headed households to 45 percent, according to the 2012 Census on Population and Housing, Zabala said specific policies targeting these families are needed, because they are especially vulnerable.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

A young Cuban man wearing a New York cap and an Adidas T-shirt using a cell-phone in Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Apr 6 2014 (IPS)

The generations born in Cuba in the last two or three decades, permeated by the influences of societies that differ radically from the one their government is trying to build, are in the eye of the ideological storm that feeds the conflict between Havana and Washington.

On Thursday Apr. 3 the White House acknowledged that from 2009 to 2012, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was behind the ZunZuneo social network – the “Cuban Twitter” that targeted young people and reached a peak of 40,000 subscribers.

Its apparent aim was to destabilise and topple the government of Raúl Castro. But the programme came to an end when it ran out of funds.“For the White House spokesman to say that it’s not a covert operation is simply a bald lie.” – Peter Kornbluh

“Young people today dislike equally pressure [from the Cuban government] to go to the May 1 march and calls, through text messages, to hold protests,” 29-year-old journalist Antonio Rodríguez, who decided to immigrate to the Unites States for economic reasons and to join his father, told IPS. “It’s the same idea: telling them to do what others want them to do.”

However, “young people are the main target [for this kind of activity] because they are always the ones who push forward social changes. Older people have preconceived notions, while young people are rebellious by nature and try to change things.

“But we are very busy dealing with economic difficulties, caught up in the day to day. The spirit of protest, of holding strikes, has been lost,” he added.

Miguel Castro, a 32-year-old self-employed worker, said that people who are today 25 years old are the children of the crisis that broke out in Cuba in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, which the Cuban economy depended on.

“Their political commitment to the historic generation [that experienced the 1959 revolution] has been injured; they haven’t seen the government update its discourse and adapt it to the reality and needs of the young,” he argued.

A study by the Centre for Psychological and Sociological Research found that “socio-political aspirations” continue to be important among university students, unlike among segments with lower levels of education or less skilled jobs, where political participation dropped to the bottom of their list of concerns.

Young people “are the perfect target group for this project which also benefited from the fact that it could be done remotely,” Latin America researcher Peter Kornbluh, of the Washington-based National Security Archive, which requests and publishes declassified U.S. government documents, told IPS.

“All of the good research on Cuban society points out that the younger generation is completely detached from the revolution. They’ve grown up almost entirely in this period – from the collapse of the Soviet Union onwards – they’ve never really seen the benefits of the Cuban revolution. They have an interest in communications and the modern world,” he added.

ZunZuneo – the term in Cuba for the noise made by “zunzunes” or hummingbirds – was based on text messages and took advantage of a Cuban problem: the restricted access to telecommunications and the Internet for the average Cuban, which the government blames on economic problems.

In May 2012, the authorities in Venezuela announced that the underwater fibre optic cable to Cuba was operational. But the Cuban government kept mum about it until January 2013, and an overall improvement in connectivity has not been noted.

The use of social networks has grown in Cuba since the government opened 145 Internet cafes, which offer connection to the worldwide web, international email service or the national web, depending on what the client pays for. And since March, cell-phone users can check their email using the domain @nauta.cu.

In this Caribbean island nation of 11.2 million people, as of mid-March there were two million people with cell-phones – more than the 1.27 million fixed lines, a density of just 28.9 per 100 inhabitants.

ZunZuneo was financed with 1.6 million dollars in funds that were publicly allocated to an unspecified USAID project in Pakistan.

The users never knew that a U.S. agency linked to the State Department was behind the network, or that the programme was gathering information to be used for political purposes in the future.

“This is a modern version of a CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] covert propaganda operation. In many ways, this is a classic covert operation with shell companies, cut-outs, multinational actors with companies in London and Spain and Managua, and hidden bank accounts,” said Kornbluh.

“For the White House spokesman [Jay Carney] to say that it’s not a covert operation is simply a bald lie. It looks like AID is the new CIA, particularly AID’s Office of Transitional Initiatives, which is a murky, mysterious entity clearly working covertly on regime change projects targeting Cuba,” he added.

The revelations about ZunZuneo were the result of an investigation published Thursday by the AP news agency, which created a considerable stir in the Cuban government and state-controlled media.

According to the AP report, the programme’s aim was to reach a critical mass of perhaps 200,000 subscribers, at which point political content would be introduced in the messages sent by ZunZuneo, in order to prompt Cubans to organise “smart mobs” – mass protests arranged via text message that could trigger a “Cuban spring”, a reference to the revolutions that broke out in 2011 in the Middle East.

In a statement to foreign correspondents to Cuba Thursday, Josefina Vidal, the head of the Foreign Ministry’s North American affairs division, said the ZunZuneo programme “shows once again that the United States government has not renounced its plans of subversion against Cuba.”

According to Kornbluh, USAID “gets 20 million dollars dumped into its coffers for its Cuba Democracy project every year, and it has to figure out creative ways to spend it.

“This was creative, but, in the end, it completely and utterly failed, just like the Alan Gross project failed,” he said, referring to the USAID contractor serving a 15-year sentence in Cuba for plotting against the state.

“This operation in hindsight looks silly except that its revelation right now threatens to undercut any momentum in Washington and Havana coming to a meeting of minds on better relations in the future,” Kornbluh stated.

With reporting by Ivet González in Havana and Jim Lobe in Washington.

Construction of a railway running to the special development zone in the port of Mariel. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Apr 1 2014 (IPS)

A new law opening Cuba up to foreign investment and a shift in the country’s relations with the European Union are aimed at seeking outside support to overcome the chronic crisis plaguing the country since the early 1990s.

The new legislation could also facilitate the return – at least financial – of Cubans living abroad.

The new foreign investment law, which received unanimous approval in the legislature Saturday Mar. 29, invites foreign investors to operate in all sectors of Cuba’s planned economy, with the exception of four strategic areas: health, education, the media and the military.

The objective, according to the minister of foreign trade and investment, Rodrigo Malmierca, is to draw some 2.5 billion dollars a year in foreign direct investment.

The vice president of the Council of Ministers, Marino Murillo, said more FDI was needed in order for the economy to grow at an annual rate of around seven percent.

A 46-year-old schoolteacher who wished to remain anonymous told IPS that she hoped the economy would improve now. But she also said her late father, who worked in a sugar mill, used to tell her that before the 1959 revolution, wealthy foreigners would come to Cuba, set up companies, and take all the profits back to their own countries.

“But I understand that the law passed now is for the good of the country,” she added.

Like her, other people consulted by IPS said they hoped the opening to foreign investment would bring better living conditions for Cuba’s population of 11.2 million.

“Foreign investment is a necessary step for leaving the crisis behind as well as for the development of any nation,” said ecologist Isbel Díaz.

The new law, which will go into force 90 days after it is published in the Official Gazette, replaces a 1995 decree.

FDI in Cuba grew steadily from 1995 to 2002, to a peak of 403 joint ventures – a number that shrank to 218 in 2009.

Former economy minister José Luis Rodríguez wrote in an article that the sharp drop in investment was due to the expiration of contracts, breach of terms, and negative economic results from some of the ventures.

Other sources point to additional reasons like excessive red tape, non-payments and cases of corruption.

Spain heads the list of 15 countries doing business in Cuba, followed by Italy, Canada, Venezuela, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, China, Mexico, Angola, Germany, Panama, Brazil, Chile and Russia, in that order.

Brazil’s participation will grow in the near future, mainly in the special development zone in Mariel, which is being built with financial support from South America’s giant.

That megaproject under construction 45 km west of Havana is to become a pillar of Cuban development due to the geographic location of the port, remodelled to equip the terminal to receive deeper-draft ships.

The project will also attract investment in biotechnology, the pharmaceutical industry, renewable energy, agribusiness, tourism and real estate.

At the same time, the start of negotiations of a new political accord with the European Union, which would normalise relations between Cuba and the European bloc’s 27 member countries, will put the bloc in a good position to do business with this Caribbean island nation as it opens up to foreign investment, analysts told IPS.

The talks are set to begin in April, and analysts say the likelihood of an agreement could be fuelled by the new law on investment.

European representatives have indicated that the aim of the negotiations is to reach an agreement that supports “reform and modernisation” in Cuba, while promoting human rights.

“Europe already has strategic and economic interests on the island, cultivated for decades, and linked with the presence of its companies and networks of influence in Cuba,” Arturo López-Levy, a Cuban political scientist living in the United States, told IPS via email.

But López-Levy, a lecturer at the University of Denver, Colorado, said Europe had a limited window of time to jockey for position in Cuba “before the onslaught of business from the United States.”

In his view, the reform of the Cuban economy, which began to be implemented in 2008, has begun to “whet the appetites” of members of the U.S. business community and of Cubans living in the United States, despite Washington’s 52-year-old trade embargo against Cuba.

The embargo keeps companies in the United States from competing for space in the Cuban market, and puts the EU in a “privileged position,” said López-Levy.

He said the opening to foreign investment makes it more likely that “the United States will replace the current policy of self-isolation with one more in line with its democratic values and economic and strategic interests.”

In 2013, Cuba’s GDP grew only 2.7 percent, below the target of 3.6 percent, while it grew just 3.1 percent in 2012. For 2014, the forecast is for 2.2 percent growth.

Foreign investment in Cuba would be focused on the diversification and expansion of export markets, access to state-of-the-art technologies, and import substitution, with a priority on food.

To encourage the influx of foreign capital, the new law offers investors significant facilities and tax exemptions.

It also guarantees that property will not be expropriated “except for reasons of social interest or public utility previously declared by the Council of Ministers and with due compensation,” said the president of the parliamentary commission on constitutional and legal affairs, José Luis Toledo.

The new law will allow companies funded entirely by foreign capital in cases where the complexity or importance of the endeavour requires it, especially in the development of industrial infrastructure. The 1995 law also permitted this, although in practice the state maintained control of a 51 percent share in all joint ventures.

One of the touchiest aspects is employment, because foreign-owned companies would be required to hire local labour through a state agency, which would receive the wages in convertible hard currency and pay workers in the weakened peso.

“It is worrisome; investors would find cheap labour in Cuba,” said Díaz, the environmentalist.

Analysts say that from the definition of foreign investor, it can be inferred that Cubans living abroad could invest here.

“Many Cubans who live in the United States and have enough money are interested in investing in the fatherland,” Cuban nurse José Enrique Romero, who has lived in the United States for 35 years, commented to IPS. “But independently of the limitations of the embargo, they are worried about changes that will affect them.”

* With additional reporting by Ivet González.

Heads of state at the Second Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), at the Palacio de la Revolución, Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Jan 30 2014 (IPS)

Heads of state and government at the Second Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) made a joint commitment to reduce poverty, hunger and inequality, and declared their region a “zone of peace”.

The goals, which even the presidents regard as “ambitious”, came at the end of two days of deliberations in the Cuban capital, and include action for food security, access to education and better job opportunities, as instruments to reduce inequalities in the most unequal region of the world.“We have to integrate for the sake of our own development, but this is not just about more wealth and consumption, it is the struggle for human happiness." -- Uruguayan President José Mujica

By proclaiming a continent-wide zone of peace – with the exception of Canada and the United States – the region committed itself to act “as a space of unity within diversity”, and confirmed the two-year-old CELAC as the regional political forum for dialogue and collective action at the highest level, regardless of ideology.

The summit, held in Havana Jan. 28-29, was attended by the heads of all Latin American and Caribbean countries except Panama, Belize and El Salvador (in the last two cases because of illness). The meeting of 30 presidents also put an end to Cuban isolation.

“This is a historic summit,” because it has decided to address an issue that has long been demanded by the Latin American peoples: the fight against inequalities, hunger and poverty, said Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.

Another woman, Chilean president-elect Michelle Bachelet who is due to take office Mar. 11, said “poverty and hunger are not the only forms of inequality,” and emphasised that governments must address “all inequalities,” including gender divisions, urban-rural disparities, and the injustice faced by indigenous people and Afro-descendants.

The 83 paragraphs of the Declaration of Havana ratified the commitment to promoting social inclusion and sustainable development with quantifiable policies, measures and goals, in order to spread “the enjoyment and exercise of economic, social and cultural rights” to all the population, especially the most vulnerable.

Among the major goals, it says, are strengthening food and nutritional security, literacy, universal free public education, land tenure and agricultural development, including family and peasant agriculture.

It also calls for decent, long-term jobs, universal public health, the right to adequate housing, and industrial and productive development as “essential factors for eradicating hunger, poverty and social exclusion.”

The Economic and Social Panorama of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States 2013, a study presented at the summit by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), shows inequality statistics for this region of over 600 million people.

The study says that the poorest one-fifth of the population on average accounted for five percent of total income, and even less in countries like Bolivia, Honduras and the Dominican Republic. Meanwhile, the wealthiest fifth received up to 55 percent in countries like Brazil.

In 2012 the poverty rate was 28.2 percent, and 11.3 percent of the population lived in extreme poverty. This means that 164 million people live in poverty and, of them, 66 million are extremely poor. These “shameful figures,” as some presidents called them, were the centre of discussions at the meeting.

Progress in recent years has been “slow, fragmented and unstable,” Cuban president and summit host Raúl Castro said in his opening speech.

According to figures from 2011 and 2012, the rate of inequality reduction has been above one percent a year only in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela, and above 0.5 percent a year in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Panama.

Poverty has its greatest impact on children and teenagers, since its incidence is higher in households with a large number of dependent children. A total of 70.5 million children under 18 are affected, of whom 28.3 million live in extreme poverty, according to ECLAC.

Child poverty is greatest in Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru, where an average of 72 percent of children are extremely poor, based on data from 2000-2011.

The countries with the lowest child poverty rates (19.5 percent) mentioned by ECLAC were Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Uruguay.

Alicia Bárcena, ECLAC’s executive secretary, said Latin America is a “region of contrasts” and recommended that its governments should promote public policies that contribute to poverty reduction. Employment, she said, is the “master key” to remediating inequality.

At the summit, Castro handed over the rotating presidency of CELAC to Costa Rica. In his view, Latin America and the Caribbean have all the necessary conditions to change the unbalanced social panorama outlined by ECLAC, since they possess natural riches ranging from extensive mineral reserves to one-third of the world’s fresh water.

The sub-continent also has 12 percent of the world’s arable land, the highest potential for expanding food production and 21 percent of all natural forests.

The populations of the región, said Castro, want fairer distribution of wealth and income, universal, free and high-quality education, full employment, better wages, the elimination of illiteracy, real food security, health care for all, and the right to decent housing, drinking water and sanitation.

Uruguayan President José Mujica’s contribution reflected his characteristic humanism. “We have to integrate for the sake of our own development, but this is not just about more wealth and consumption, it is the struggle for human happiness,” he said.

“We cannot attempt development that goes against human happiness. That would not be development,” said Mujica. “Defending life means being able to put aside waste and pollution,” and he asked his colleagues, “Why do we waste so much?”

Cuban analyst Carlos Alzugaray told IPS that, beyond the goals reflected in the Declaration of Havana, CELAC has emerged from its second summit “facing the challenge of consolidation” as a forum for political integration “that will foment regional cooperation and build a regional profile with a single voice.”

It also has the challenge, said the political scientist, of persuading other blocs in other world regions to “accept and recognise it as a legitimate and authoritative voice to negotiate in the name of the entire region.” This can only be achieved by “sustained, firm but cautious work,” he said.

With additional reporting from Ivet González.

Saturday night at El Madrigal, a private bar in the upscale Havana neighbourhood of Vedado, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Dec 30 2013 (IPS)

The landscape is changing in Cuba’s cities and towns, with political slogans giving way to lighted signs  advertising the best of local and international cuisine and air-conditioned lodgings – signs of an emerging private sector that was inconceivable until recently.

As a result of the new migration rules that went into force in 2013, Cubans made 250,000 trips abroad between Jan. 14 and Nov. 30, according to official figures.

Since the migration policy reform scrapped the requirement for an exit visa and a letter of invitation from abroad, well-known dissidents have been able to travel overseas and return without any trouble, after decades of restrictions.

In 2011, Cubans had recovered the right to buy and sell their homes and cars, which only the state could do up to then. And on Dec. 19, the government announced that costly, difficult-to-obtain letters of approval from the Transport Ministry would no longer be required to buy a car.

Steep prices on the state market are still a hurdle, however. Many people who saved up to buy a car see no real possibility of doing so, because the new prices will be three times higher than what they could afford.

Mercedes, a retired 67-year-old office worker who draws a pension of 11 dollars a month and also cares for a disabled daughter, does not feel like the changes have improved things for her.

“I can’t survive on my income. My neighbours encourage me to rent out a room, but I would first have to fix up my apartment, and I don’t have the money to do so,” Mercedes told IPS, asking that her last name not be used.

“The problem isn’t the slow pace of the reforms, but how they are perceived and how they reach the people,” says Bélkis González, a professional who works in communications. Despite the government’s stated aim that no one will be left high and dry and that there will be no “shock therapy,” gaps and inequalities remain.

During the discussions that preceded the reforms approved in 2011 by Cuba’s governing Communist Party, experts warned that the core document should include much more explicit and far-reaching social measures than the ones outlined there.

“The text has a totally justified economic focus because otherwise social changes are not possible,” sociologist Mayra Espina admitted at the time to IPS. But she added that it was “somewhat simplistic” to believe that a preferential focus on economic measures would generate positive influences on social questions.

According to studies cited by Espina and other experts, the proportion of the urban population who are income-poor and have unmet basic needs climbed from 6.3 percent in 1988 to 20 percent in 2000.

That increase in social vulnerability was due to the impact of the economic recession that has had Cuba in its grip since the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the East European socialist bloc, on which this country was fully dependent.

According to the 2012 census, 76.8 percent of the Cuban population is urban. The total number of inhabitants reached 11,167,325 – 10,418 fewer than in 2002. And two million people are over the age of 60.

In 2012, the government of Raúl Castro created a subsidy for low-income segments of the population who need to repair or build homes. The measure was seen as the start of a process to subsidise people rather than products.

Meanwhile, the government has postponed the elimination of the ration book of subsidised basic food items, a system that cost the state 2.43 billion dollars this year.

The poor are also less able to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the reforms because they have less education and training, do not have the capital or other resources to set up their own businesses, and do not receive remittances from family members abroad – a lifeline that has made it possible for many families to weather the storm. (There is no official estimate of the remittances.)

“It would be decisive to implement policies not only of assistance for the vulnerable,” under the planned reforms, but also “affirmative action” policies to reduce inequality, Espina said.

One of the most comprehensive transformations began in agriculture, in 2008. But it has not yet brought results, and food prices remain high, because the productive apparatus is still hampered by the lack of measures to facilitate its development and independence in decision-making, say experts like economist Armando Nova.

Now 70 percent of the land is in the hands of non-state producers, who account for over 75 percent of total food production.

Among them are cooperatives and private farmers, who hold 24 percent of the country’s farmland and produce over 57 percent of all food of vegetable and animal origin. “In other words, their efficiency has been demonstrated,” Nova said in an interview that circulated over the Internet.

More than 440,000 people are now self-employed ‘cuentapropistas’ in nearly 200 different economic activities in which private enterprise is permitted.

But the lack of a wholesale market for purchasing the inputs they need, the scant buying power of the great majority of potential consumers, and the heavy taxes conspire against their success.

The government apparently wants to develop non-agricultural cooperatives. A total of 270 are already operating or have permits, and 228 are awaiting authorisation.

Vice President Marino Murillo explained to parliament that the priority put on cooperatives was due to the distribution of the resources they generate and the social impact of their production.

The authorities would like 40 percent of jobs to be generated outside of the government and state enterprises by 2016, compared to just 20 percent of the workforce prior to the advent of the reforms.

Another pending issue is the convergence of Cuba’s two currencies, the peso and the Cuban convertible peso (CUC), which is pegged to the dollar.

“In no case will people’s purchasing power be affected. The financial capacity of the CUC will be respected,” said Murillo in a message that helped ease the fears of the estimated 60 percent of the population that receives dollars or other hard currency in remittances.

But the changes have not been felt in homes like Mercedes’, although like the rest of the population she and her daughter still receive free healthcare, which they could not do without.

“I know that [former president] Fidel [Castro] and Raúl [Castro] think about people like us, but they’re already over 80,” said Mercedes. “What will happen with those who follow them [in the government]? If they eliminate the ration book, what will we eat?”

Members of La Muñeca Negra, a group that makes papier-mâché figures inspired by Afro-Cuban deities. Credit: Ernesto Pérez Zambrano/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Nov 25 2013 (IPS)

From a very young age, Irma Castañeda has braided her curly hair and cared for it with natural recipes inherited from her mother, ignoring the widespread conception that black women’s hair is “ugly” or “bad”.

Gently, with skilful hands, she aims to chip away at something much more complex: the silence surrounding the issue of race, a subject that was taboo for decades in official rhetoric, according to which racism was eradicated by the Cuban revolution in 1959.

In the Balcón Arimao barrio in the largely black municipality of La Lisa, on the west side of Havana, Castañeda and nine other women have launched an effort to improve self-esteem, teaching hairdressing techniques and traditional cosmetics recipes for black skin, because they are not available in stores.

“Whether it is straightened or worn in an Afro or dreadlocks, hair can look beautiful on a black woman, who has the right to have resources for taking care of her image,” Castañeda told IPS.

“We want to break the stereotype that we black women are less beautiful, without trying to look like white models,” added Castañeda, an educator by profession and promoter of the project Rizos (Spanish for “Curls”).

For these hairdressers, facial masks and tweezers are tools for raising awareness around problems faced by people of African descent, who officially account for 36 percent of Cuba’s population of nearly 11.2 million, although researchers such as Esteban Morales estimate the non-white population at around 60 percent.

Rizos is one of a number of initiatives of the Afrodescendent Neighbourhood Network (Red Barrial Afrodescendiente, RBA), which is reviving anti-racist activism in Havana.

About a year ago, activists from various urban communities founded the RBA to take research and debate about the race question into the neighbourhoods. Every month, in a community centre in La Lisa, lectures are given to train 35 local leaders.

All of these people, who work in different jobs and have different educational levels, assume the responsibility of taking what they learn to their families, neighbourhoods, and workplaces.

Marlene Bayeux, a 63-year-old former veterinarian, says she knows what it feels like to be underestimated. “To be respected as a professional, I had to overcome a racist boss, but if I had been equipped with the arguments that I learned in the network’s workshops, I would have saved myself a lot of grief,” she told IPS.

Bayeux feels that she contributes to the cause as part of La Muñeca Negra (The Black Doll) – a group of artisans who create papier-mâché figures inspired by female Afro-Cuban deities.

Another group sews black rag dolls, but they are dressed as flight attendants, doctors, nurses, and soldiers, instead of the typical religious or slave woman rag dolls.

While small, these efforts are important because of the direction they are moving in, historian Daisy Rubiera told IPS. She is part of the Cuban chapter of the regional network of African Descendants from Latin America and the Caribbean (ARAC), created in September of last year.

Rubiera described the work being carried out by academia and intellectuals as insufficient; for years, they have been talking, carrying out research and even making money on the issue, but they have not managed to really reach the wider public, she said.

“The historic causes of racial discrimination do not appear in the official texts, so they go unnoticed by the majority,” said Rubiera, who is an advisor to the RBA.

Maritza López, who is the RBA’s coordinator and has extensive experience in social work in poor neighbourhoods, said discussions need to happen with the people most affected, who are in the streets and not in bookstores, theatres or academic seminars.

“Academic activism opened up the road, but the intellectuals need to come down to our neighbourhoods to transmit their knowledge and wisdom in terms that people can understand,” López told IPS.

In Cuba, racial discrimination is manifest above all in subtle personal, social, and cultural prejudice and attitudes. It is low-key because public displays of racism are not socially acceptable.

“Sometimes black people do not perceive that they are being discriminated against because socially, the problem is accepted as natural,” said retired high school teacher Hildelisa Leal.

Segregation and discrimination are also reflected by the fact that blacks or people of mixed-race are a majority among the poor and a minority in decision-making posts and emerging economic sectors such as tourism and self-employment, according to researcher María del Carmen Zabala.

According to her studies, less than 20 percent of Cubans who leave the country in search of a better future are non-whites. For that reason, most of the remittances sent home by immigrants – an essential source of income for much of the population – go to white families.

According to the 2002 census, while unemployment stood at 2.9 percent among whites, it rose to 6.3 percent among the black and mixed-race workforce. And with respect to higher education, 4.4 percent more whites than non-whites held a degree.

These figures have not been updated with information from the 2012 census.

President Raul Castro has referred to increasing the presence of blacks in political office.

In the legislative National Assembly elected this year, 37 percent of seats are held by non-whites.

In January 2012, the ruling Communist Party declared its intention of “confronting prejudice and discriminatory conduct based on skin colour that runs counter to the Constitution and law and hurts national unity.”

However, activists are demanding more resounding actions in this nation, which has the second-highest proportion of blacks in Latin America after Brazil.

Tato Quiñones, a leading member of the citizens’ project Cofradía de la Negritud (roughly, Brotherhood of Blackness), is proposing a specific legal structure for prosecuting acts of racial discrimination.

In an award-winning essay, researcher Zuleica Romay suggested a general law against discrimination.

Learning about the cultural and historic roots of racism has helped Damayanti Matos, a member of the RBA, feel more empowered.

“I became aware of my rights – it used to seem normal for people to address me as ‘negra’ (black woman),” she told IPS. “Now I know that behind that innocent gesture, there is a history of discrimination.”

The convertible peso or CUC, above, and the Cuban peso below. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Oct 25 2013 (IPS)

An end to the country’s dual-currency system is one of the reforms most anxiously-awaited by Cubans, who nevertheless reacted with scepticism and doubt to the announcement of a timeline for eliminating the system, blamed for exacerbating social inequalities in the country.

“They are not giving any details of how it will be done, or when. It’s as is they just wanted to tell us that something is being done about this problem,” an accountant who wished to remain anonymous told IPS.

Since 1994, Cuba has had two official currencies – up to 2004, the Cuban peso and the U.S. dollar; since then, the peso and the hard currency convertible peso, or CUC, which replaced the dollar. The CUC, which is pegged to the dollar, is worth 24 pesos.

Omara, a 73-year-old pensioner who preferred not to give her surname, said that she gets by on her 240 peso (10 dollars) pension and remittances from her three children who live abroad.

“What I need is for the money, whatever kind of money it is, to be worth more, because if the exchange rate stays the same, then nothing changes for me. I will always have to change dollars for the national currency,” she told IPS, adding that prices in the stores “keep going up.”“[T]he dual currency system is not responsible for the low purchasing power of wages or for inequality…these are both structural, not monetary, problems.” – Economist Pável Vidal

Silvia Medina, who has no relatives abroad sending remittances and no income other than a pension that is worth about 10 dollars, says with a mixture of doubt and hope that “if currency unification means that the pesos from my pension check will have more buying power, then it’s welcome, and I hope they do it soon.”

Healthcare and education are free in Cuba. Medina also has a guaranteed basket of basic food products at prices heavily subsidised by the state. While insufficient, these goods are a big help to low-income families.

However, unlike Omara, Medina cannot get the rest of her basic needs met at the stores that only accept the hard currency CUCs.

On Oct. 22, the Cuban government announced that a series of measures would start to be taken to unify the country’s currencies and exchange rates, and acknowledged that the end of the dual-currency system would not be the end-all solution to the country’s economic problems.

Nevertheless, it is “essential to ensuring the restoration of the Cuban peso’s value and of its functions as money, that is, as a unit of accounting, payment, and savings….This will bring order to the economic environment and, consequently, provide an accurate measurement of its performance,” it added.

Cuban economist Pável Vidal, a professor at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, in Cali, Colombia, said the most significant aspect of the announcement was that it indicated that the process would “finally” begin.

The government said the changes would start with the business system before being expanded to the rest of the population, whose savings accounts will not be affected, Vidal told IPS.

That will involve a gradual devaluation of the Cuban peso for businesses – which currently use an exchange rate of one peso for one CUC – to the current exchange rate that applies to the population at large: 24 pesos per CUC, Vidal said.

Nevertheless, “many details remain to be worked out that would indicate the scope of the measure and to what extent the nominal devaluation of the exchange rate would be a real devaluation,” he added.

The correction of the exchange rate and the elimination of the dual-currency system would make companies’ financial statements more transparent, and would clarify national accounts and the state budget, Vidal said.

“Moreover, it would show that the dual currency system is not responsible for the low purchasing power of wages or for inequality, and that these are both structural, not monetary, problems,” Vidal said in an email from Colombia.

Beatriz González, who used to work as an accountant at a factory, says the dual currency system made her job very complicated. “It was crazy. I had to keep one set of books in pesos and another in hard currency. Every operation had to be done twice. Currency unification will be beneficial for businesses,” she told IPS.

But González wonders whether wages will go up and the exchange rate of CUCs for pesos will go down at the currency exchange houses.

The official response is that wages can only go up if labour productivity rises first.

Possession of hard currency by Cubans was decriminalised in August 1993. At that time, it became possible to open a bank account in U.S. dollars, and chains of state-run stores were set up for retail sales in dollars. Four months later, the convertible peso or CUC was created.

Between 1989 and 1993, GDP fell by 35 percent; more than 80 percent of foreign trade was lost; fuel consumption was cut by more than half; and external sources of financing dried up almost completely, due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which the Cuban economy depended on heavily.

During this period, inequalities and pockets of poverty grew in this Caribbean island nation.

Amid the severe economic recession, Cuban authorities decided not to check the flow of income from tourism, remittances, foreign investment, exports, and others from abroad.

Dollarisation benefited both the development of the tourism industry and foreign investment.

Still today, the state pays wages and pensions in Cuban pesos, which can be used to pay for basic public services, tickets for cultural and sporting events, some manufactured products, food at farmers’ markets, and subsidised products that families receive through their ration books.

Since 2004, the CUC is the only hard currency in circulation, and it is used to pay for services such as cell phones and the Internet, and to buy better-quality products at the chain of hard currency stores, including home appliances, furniture and other domestic goods.

Currency unification is one of the reforms with which the Raúl Castro government intends to modernise the national economy to advance toward a “prosperous and sustainable” model of socialism.

With reporting by Ivet González.

A waste picker unloads empty soda cans at the San José de las Lajas recycling cooperative in Mayabeque province. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Oct 23 2013 (IPS)

As self-employment and cooperatives expand in socialist Cuba, they are making incursions into new areas, such as waste picking and recycling – for many a means of subsistence, but for others, a gold mine.

“Pitusa” said the trash thrown out by the people of Havana is an inexhaustible source of useful materials. “I don’t waste anything – I collect, select, clean and keep for myself when I need it,” said this middle-aged Cuban who uses discarded components to fix windows or make “multi-functional” furniture.

“I’m 43 years old and I’ve been working in recycling for 19 years,” he told Tierramérica*, after asking to be identified merely as Pitusa, because he does not have a permit to be a self-employed worker or “cuentapropista”.

“I do so many different things that I wouldn’t know how to register and pay taxes,” he said, to justify his lack of a permit.

He said the garbage yielded everything from broken furniture to bottles, glass, plastic tubes, steel pipes, fishing reels, or old sofas, doors and windows. “Nothing is completely useless, although to make a new piece of furniture from a piece of junk isn’t easy. For me it’s an artistic thing to give a use to something that was abandoned and no one wants anymore,” he said, with a touch of pride.

Pitusa is a “buzo”, as waste pickers who salvage reusable or recyclable materials are known in Cuba.

“At this time there are 5,800 recoverers with cuentapropista permits, but we know that there are many more who aren’t registered,” said Marilyn Ramos, assistant director general of the Unión de Empresas de Recuperación de Materias Primas (UERMP) – the state association of companies that salvage raw materials, which recycles scavenged trash.

Odilia Ferro has dedicated herself to collecting and selling recyclable waste – “legally” she stresses – for the past 20 years in San José de las Lajas, the municipal seat in Mayabeque, a province that borders Havana.

“Sometimes I go out on the streets and look for stuff myself. But because people know that I work in this, they come to my house to sell things to me,” she told Tierramérica.

She buys aluminium, bronze, steel, plastic and empty rum or beer bottles. Until July she sold them to the state-run salvage company of Mayabeque, which has since then become a cooperative of nine members, four of whom are women.

“The good thing is that now they always have money to buy what you bring them, and in cash,” Ferro said.

In Cuba’s centralised economy, for many years cooperatives were only allowed in agriculture. But in mid-2013, the government of Raúl Castro made it possible to establish cooperatives in other areas, as part of wider reforms to boost “prosperous, sustainable socialism.”

Of the first 124 cooperatives established outside of agriculture, two are involved in salvaging waste materials.

The government’s aim is for each of the country’s 168 municipalities to have a waste recovery cooperative.

Ramos said the UERMP association is not equipped to go door to door collecting recyclable waste materials. That task is left to the growing private sector, while the state reserves for itself the large sources of recoverable waste products, she explained in an interview with Tierramérica.

Ignoring the stigma traditionally faced by waste pickers, Eida Pérez, a 39-year-old accountant, has found the recovery of waste materials to be surprisingly lucrative. In just two months, the cooperative she heads earned a profit of 14,750 dollars. (The average salary in Cuba is 19 dollars a month.)

“Three years ago, we couldn’t imagine this could happen” she said. Pérez said her cooperative is moving towards labour autonomy, overcoming fears and obstacles from a recent past when people only did what was indicated “from above.”

“We have increased the products we recover…Now we see ourselves as more efficient, and at an advantage compared to the state companies, because I don’t face restrictions. We operate in cash, we can pay more if the product merits it, lease our trucks and hire the services of cuentapropistas,” she said.

“We earn a 50 percent profit on all of the products we buy,” Pérez added. Her fellow cooperative members, who elected her as president, hope to reach the end of the year with a strong profit margin. But in the last two months they have already managed to pay off the initial interest-free loan of 5,400 dollars.

At the start, most of the new cooperatives were created on the initiative of the state, which later handed operations over to employees.

“It’s a bad way to start, because one basic principle of these forms of business management is individual enterprise,” an economist who preferred to remain anonymous told Tierramérica.

But in Ramos’s view, “the benefit is double. We increased the recovery of recyclable waste materials and kept them from going into the dump – in other words, there’s also an environmental impact.

There are 986 garbage dumps in Cuba, which received just over 5.3 million tonnes of trash in 2012, according to the government statistics office.

In the past year, around 420,000 tonnes of waste were recovered, including steel, cast iron, lead, bronze, aluminium, paper, cardboard, plastic, textiles, electronic scrap and glass bottles.

These products were exported or sold to national industries, like the metallurgical industry, wire and cable production factories or paper and cardboard companies.

If local industry had had to import these materials, it would have cost the country 120 million dollars, Ramos said. “We want to increasingly industrialise this work and increase the value added of recycled products.”

The UERMP recycling association wants to foment the creation of provincial cooperatives that would carry out “at least basic” processing of waste products, Ramos said. Today there are only two garbage separating plants.

The ideal thing, she admitted, would be to get households to classify their own garbage. But that achievement, which would require heavy investment, is still a far-off dream for Cuba.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

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Agronomist Sergio Rodríguez shows low-growing plantains that are more resistant to hurricane-force winds. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Sep 26 2013 (IPS)

A rise in temperature modifies the physiological features of some plants – a consequence of climate change that is less perceptible than stronger and more frequent hurricanes, but just as harmful to food production.

In tropical species in the Cucurbitaceae family, “like squash or cucumber,” pollination is interrupted if it is hotter than normal during flowering season, Cuban agronomist Sergio Rodríguez explained to Tierramérica.

When the female squash flower is ready to be pollinated, the pollen from the male flower, carried by bees, is transferred to the stigma in the centre of the female flower. But if it’s too hot, the sticky sweet substance on the stigma dries up, the pollen can’t stick, and the fruit will not develop.

“When pollination doesn’t work properly and yields drop, we often don’t understand the reasons,” said Rodríguez, director of the Cuban National Research Institute of Tropical Root Vegetables (INIVIT). “That’s because higher temperatures or drought are more subtle effect of climate change.”

In the last few years, summers have gotten longer and winters shorter and milder in this Caribbean island nation, scientists report. Temperatures are rising, which requires adaptation strategies for agriculture.

Studies indicate that average temperatures could increase by 1.6 to 2.5 degrees by the end of the century in Cuba. And one of the most serious effects would be a drop in agricultural yields.

Rafael González, a campesino or small farmer in the municipality of Manicaragua in the central Cuban province of Villa Clara, told Tierrámerica that “growing a little of everything” is the best way to weather higher temperatures, changing rainfall patterns and more intense tropical storms.

“If there’s drought, we have ‘viandas’ (tubers and starchy fruits) that adapt better to those conditions, and we have other kinds of fruit that are more resistant to storms. Nothing is better than variety,” said González, who belongs to the Ignacio Pérez Rivas Credit and Services Cooperative, which has 130 members, including 30 women.

Cassava – a staple crop throughout the Caribbean – is affected by an unusually cold winter, González said. “We have to keep seeking more adaptable varieties.”

The institution that Rodríguez heads, which is also located in Villa Clara, has the task of carrying out the search for crops more adaptable to intense heat, severe drought, hurricanes and new pests and diseases.

INIVIT has a germplasm bank with seeds, cuttings, roots and bulbs from 650 varieties of sweet potato, 512 kinds of cassava, 327 kinds of banana and plantain, 120 kinds of yam, and 152 kinds of malanga, or taro root.

These resources are “a strength that will help the country confront adversity,” Rodríguez said.

Cassava and the plantain known as the “plátano burro” are resistant to drought, while taro root, sweet potato, squash and yams continue to produce food even after a hurricane hits, because they lie close to the ground and are better able to withstand heavy winds, he pointed out.

“But we have to keep looking for new clones that are more adaptable to a broader spectrum of conditions, and varieties that produce in optimal as well as unfavourable climate conditions. In this last case, the yields might be lower, but the adaptability eases the impact,” he said.

To do this, different varieties of crops must be studied in different climate conditions, to gauge their capacity to adapt to specific conditions, soil types, rainfall patterns and minimum and maximum temperatures, he explained.

Seeds are key. “If you have a quality seed, the impact of climate change is less significant. We always tell the farmers that a good seed doesn’t wear out. It’s an investment that is later recovered,” Rodríguez said.

Over 70 percent of tubers, roots, plantains and bananas planted in Cuba are obtained or recommended by INIVIT. “The other 30 percent comes from campesino tradition. There are local varieties that adapt very well to certain soils and climates,” he said.

In 2012, everything seemed to be going well for the bean crop of Rubén Torres, whose land is near Santa Clara, the capital of Villa Clara. But because of the higher than normal temperatures, the harvest was smaller than expected.

On the other hand, “rice needs high temperatures when it’s flowering time,” Torres told Tierramérica.

Now he is growing rice, one of the staples of the Cuban diet, and says his productivity – eight tonnes per hectare – is good.

Rodrigo Morales lives in the province of Mayabeque, next to Havana province. He and other campesinos who farm nearby have noted that the longer and hotter summers affect their garlic, onion and bean crops, as well as fruit like the guayaba.

Under pressure from these climate phenomena, Cuban agriculture must increase productivity to cut down on food imports, which cost two billion dollars this year, the vice president of the Council of Minister, Marino Murillo, reported earlier this month.

He described as “disturbing” the fact that agriculture accounts for just three percent of GDP, with a workforce of 960,000 workers – including 300,000 who are not directly involved in production – in a country of 11.2 million.

Without taking into account sugar cane, agricultural production fell 7.8 percent in the first three months of this year with respect to the first quarter of 2012, according to the latest figures from the national statistics office.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

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