King Fidel on Cuban T.V. Again

Cuban state t.v. has released a video of King Fidel and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez taken this past Monday. Fidel reads a headline from Argentina's Clarin dated January 29, 2007. A printout of a story showing Clarin's logo and the date of the story are shown in the video.

there are samples from the video here and here.



the video does not show Fidel walking, as the last one did. rather, he is shown standing, taking only a few steps, or sitting. this tells me that Fidel is still having great difficulty walking, as shown last time around.

he has difficulty speaking as well, as he did in the last video. at times, his responses to Chavez seem disjointed, but that may be because he slurs some of his words.

when reading from Clarin about global warming, Fidel is quick to launch into an attack on capitalist society, which he says is threatening the human species. that much is vintage Fidel.

the video certainly shows that Fidel can stand, sit, talk, and rail against his standard better noir. however, Fidel is still frail and obviously nowhere near being able to resume day-to-day control of Cuban affairs.

Bill Introduced to Lift Travel Ban to Cuba

Charles Rangel, the chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, introduced a measure January 24, 2007, to end the US ban on travel to Cuba.

Rangel, a New York Democrat, said he and others will offer measures to relax limits on sending money to Cuba and payment restrictions on the sale of farm goods. With Democrats in control of Congress and Bush almost certainly to be replaced by a Democrat in 2009, even the end of the 48-year-old-embargo may be in sight.

source

Cuba Uses Abortion to Keep Infant Mortality Low

cuba boasts of its very low infant mortality rate: at 5.3 deaths per 1,000 births, lower than the U.S. (at 6.0 per 1,000 births) and much lower than the rest of Latin America.

but a few things look suspicious.

first, Cuba published its 2006 figures TWO DAYS after 2006 was over. the U.S. takes two years to do the same thing (last available figures for the U.S. are for 2004).

most alarming of all is the emphasis that Cuba puts on that figure. it is its showcase statistic, the one brandied about when any criticism of the system comes up. "Yeah, we may arrest journalists and beat opposition members up, but our infant mortality rate is lower than the U.S."

and how exactly is that managed?

Some doctors say they were told to use any means possible to keep the infant mortality rate low. Jesús Monzón, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Pinar del Río until he left in 1995, says pregnant mothers were required to appear monthly for sonograms and other tests to make certain the fetus was healthy.

''If there was any malformation in the fetus, they would interrupt the pregnancy,'' said Monzón, now a lab technician at Mercy Hospital in Miami. A heart murmur or other serious problems required an abortion. This was ''automatic,'' he said. If the mother objected, a team from the hospital would persuade her an abortion was necessary.

Other sources also say abortion is a tool used to keep infant mortality low, including Andy Gomez at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, and Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a retired University of Pittsburgh economics professor who has spent decades studying Cuba.

Recent Cuba abortion data is not available, but a study by the Pan American Health Organization from 1998 states Cuba had 70 abortions per 100 deliveries in 1992 and 59.4 in 1996, far higher than the 34 to 38 abortions per 100 live births reported during that time in the United States.

Néstor Viamonte, a primary-care doctor in Ciego de Aguila until 2003, says all Cuban doctors are told to focus on babies. Infants under 1 and those with serious chronic diseases were the only ones who could get in to see a doctor without waiting days for an appointment.

Mothers were required to bring in their babies monthly for examinations. Babies who died in the first month were reported to have died before birth to keep the numbers low, Viamonte said.

Source

Tourism Drop in Cuba

tourism (now Cuba's main hard-currency earner) dropped by 3.6% last year.

visitors fell to 2.2 million last year from 2.3 million in 2005. it was the first drop since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States hurt the travel industry worldwide in 2002. it was not related to King Fidel's illness or any sense of uncertainty over Cuba's future. of course, should Fidel die, things may change.

rather, more mundane concerns played a part: a revalue of Cuban currency by 8% in 2005 made a vacation in Cuba less of a deal. also, the quality of Cuban tourism has never been great, with cited lack of adequate service for tourists, theft of luggage at airports and hotels, and failure to attend to tourist complaints.

King Fidel's Condition "Very Serious"

according to US doctors commenting on reports in Spain's El Pais, King Fidel's situation is rather serious:


"What you're into is multiple operations with complications and infection in someone his age, you know, the wear and tear is going to start wearing him down, and he's going to get weaker," said Dr. Charles Gerson, a clinical professor of medicine in the gastroenterology division of New York's Mt. Sinai School of Medicine.

U.S. medical experts were also puzzled by El Pais' report that Castro had undergone a third operation to implant a Korean-made prosthesis, possibly an artificial stretch of bowel, after a second failed operation to clean and drain an infected area and perform a colostomy.

"I would say that that would likely be a very risky situation because of the nature of the large intestine, which is a sewage line," said Dr. Stephen Hanauer, chief of gastroenterology at the University of Chicago.

He said the use of a prosthesis in such cases was "experimental" at best and unheard of in the United States.

"I think the prognosis is very grave at this point," said Dr. Roshini Rajapaksa, a gastroenterologist at NYU Medical center and assistant professor at the NYU School of Medicine.

"For an elderly person to undergo major abdominal surgery three times, especially when they're unsuccessful, is a very serious situation."

Source

King Fidel Reported to Have Undergone 3 Surgeries

according El Pais, a Spanish newspaper, King Fidel has been operated on at least three times:

Castro, 80, suffered a serious infection that worsened to peritonitis, the newspaper's Tuesday edition said, citing two medical sources at the Madrid hospital where a surgeon who visited Castro in December works. The report was posted on the newspaper's Web site on Monday.

Castro's prognosis is "very serious" and he is being fed intravenously, the paper said.

A first operation to extract part of his large intestine and connect the colon to the rectum was a failure and the link broke, releasing feces into the abdomen that caused another peritonitis, the newspaper reported.

A second operation to clean and drain the infected area and perform a colostomy also failed, the paper said. A third operation implanted a prosthesis, it said.

When Spanish surgeon Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido visited Castro in late December, Cuban doctors were considering another operation, the paper said.

source

No room at the Hilton for the Cuban Government

trying to obey the US's prohibition that US companies not do business with Cuba, an Oslo (Norway) hotel owned by the Hilton Hotel Corporation refused to let a Cuban delegation book rooms:

The Cuban delegation, set to attend a travel fair in Oslo this month, planned to stay at the Scandic Edderkoppen Hotel in the city center, as they had on five previous visits.

However, the 140-hotel Scandic company was bought by Hilton in March, and the Cubans were informed in December that they would have to find another hotel due to the American boycott.

Source

oy vey... of course, now Hilton is coming under criticism, and a boycott of its hotels is underway in Norway.

this illustrates how poorly thought-out US policy is in this respect. it puts US companies in an untenable possition: they either break the law of their host country or US law. either way, they get in trouble

imagine, for example, what would happen if a Saudi Arabian hotel chain did not allow its hotels in the US to book Israeli government delegations because Saudi Arabia has a boycott against Israel.

of course, this is another victory for the Cuban government in the international press. they were notified in December that they needed to make other arrangements. i am sure they decided not to in order to create just this sort of black eye for the US.

Cuba has been waging (and winning) a very effective guerrilla media war against the US for decades now.

Babalaos Issue 2007 Predictions for Cuba

babalaos (or high priests) of the Santeria religion in Cuba issued their customary predictions for the coming year. usually the predictions are so vague that you can't really say if they came true or not, but Cubans wait for this crap like American investors wait for stock newsletters to figure out the "great next stock" ... ah well...

anyway, in politicized Cuba, there are two main groups of Babalaos -- the "official" Babalaos and the "other guys."

the official Babalaos, taking a page from your average government report, predict "legal problems and their repercussions, which could bring as a consequence an increase in corruption and crime." because, you know, there's not enough corruption and crime in Cuba already. nevertheless, the hint of upheaval has been interpreted as being, for sure, not a good thing.

the "other guys" made quite more dire predictions:

-- 2007 would be marked by wars and ''military interventions'' although the island will see an economic improvement based on the discovery of oil and mineral deposits.

-- "The panorama that presents itself to us is a little funereal,'' said babalao Lázaro Cuesta, who read the year's prediction. "When one doesn't leave his place at its proper time, one runs the risk that unpredictable things happen.''


babalao Lazaro Cuesta

wow ... war ... military interventions .... a little funeral ... unpredictable things ... definitely not good. but these guys predicted military interventions back in 2005 and ... well.. not much happened ... so ... i don't think Prince Regent Raul is quaking in his boots.

back in 2003, they predicted "at the family level, an increase in domestic violence with danger to life and the possible death of women upon being discovered by their mates in adulterous relationships." indeed...

anyway ... we'll keep this in mind and check around next year to see how accurate these predictions were. being ever the contrarian, King Fidel is bound to stay alive for another year, confounding Babalaos and blog-writers alike.

The Cuba Project: Castro, Kennedy, and the FBI's Tamale Squad

just read this book by Peter Pavia, and I definitely recommend it.

the book is a bit of a contradiction. it is not in-depth, yet it manages to capture the early days of the Cuban revolution and US-Castro relations flawlessly. it is told in an irreverent, Generation-X style, and yet it is full of respect for the men who put their lives on the line for what they believed in. it somehow manages to capture the ad-hoc nature of Castro's victory in Cuba, yet it doesn't belittle the man's undeniable abilities.



i would not take this book as Cuban History 101, but it is an excellent taste of the flavor of that time, particularly from the Cuban-exile, FBI, CIA points of view.

anyway... this one is worth a read.

i did notice one factual error, and that is towards the end of the book. Pavia states that Ernesto "Che" Guevara's body lies lost somewhere in the Bolivian jungle, where he was killed by the Bolivian Army trained and assessed by US Special Forces.

in fact, Che was exhumed in July, 1997, and his remains were brought to Cuba that same year, where a memorial will house them in Santa Clara, site of the pivotal victory in the Cuban Revolution where troops led by Che essentially cut the country in half, leading to Batista's flight less than 12 hours later.

It Was 48 Years Ago Today...

shortly after (or shortly before) midnight, December 31, 1958, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista bid his top cronies adieu and got on a plane out of Cuba with his head, his cash, and his family.

Fidel Castro was on the other end of the island, near Santiago de Cuba, when he heard the news of Batista's flight, sometime in the early morning of January 1, 1959.

from that moment on, for better or worse, Fidel became identified with the Revolution, and the Revolution came to be identified with Fidel. and for 47 years, the two were one and the same.

no more. as Fidel lies recovering from some unnamed illness and his brother Raul exercises more and more of his "provisional" power, the reality is that this year will start with someone other than Fidel in charge.

but Fidel's presence is such that even from his deathbed he continues to hold power. Raul can't move on, truly, until Fidel dies. a new chapter can't start, truly, until Fidel dies.

and Fidel, apparently, is refusing to die.

to the last, King Fidel holds Cuba from moving forward into the future