Nick Miroff World Press Review correspondent Havana, Cuba April 23, 2003

On the night of April 4, all of Cuba’s three government-owned television stations devoted their prime-time programming to Fidel Castro. Dressed in his trademark military fatigues, the 76-year-old commandante spoke for nearly five hours. This in itself was not unusual, but the president seemed in a surprisingly good mood given the events of the past week. A tense hostage standoff with a group of hijackers who commandeered a passenger ferry in an attempt to reach the United States had just been resolved, and all the hostages were safe.

It had been the third such hijacking in nearly two weeks, and Castro railed against U.S. policies that, he said, continue to encourage such “terrorist” endeavors. But he also joked about the amateur—if not comical—efforts of the hijackers, who allegedly professed their love for the Cuban leader during his negotiations with them. The commandante laughed and members of the studio audience laughed with him.

At dawn on April 11, the three lead hijackers were sent before a firing squad and executed, having been hastily tried and convicted barely three days earlier.

The deluge of international criticism over their quick executions has added to existing outrage at the Cuban government’s recent arrests of its domestic critics. In March, more than 100 alleged dissidents were arrested by state security forces in a crackdown that was unprecedented in its severity. Most of the detainees were tried and convicted in swift, closed-door proceedings—some of which lasted only a few hours—and given prison sentences averaging 20 years. Family members complained that defendants hardly had the chance to meet with their attorneys before standing trial.

Those arrested included many of the Cuban government’s most prominent dissident activists. Raúl Rivero, Cuba’s best-known independent journalist, was handed a 20-year sentence. Marta Beatriz Roque, a dissident economist who had previously been jailed for anti-Castro activities, also received a 20-year sentence. And Hector Palacios, one of the lead organizers of the Varela Project, a petition campaign seeking to reform Cuba’s command economy and one-party state, got a 25-year sentence. International repercussions from these measures have been swift and significant. The war of words between Washington and Havana has escalated to new heights. The mutual antagonism carried over to Geneva, where, on April 17, after a one-day postponement and hours of heated debate, Cuba received a rebuke for its human-rights record at the annual meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

The resolution, watered down from the outright condemnation sought by the United States, once more called on Cuba to accept a visit from a U.N. human-rights monitor. Even this version did not garner the support of some Latin American countries: Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Uruguay voted in favor of the resolution, but Argentina and Brazil abstained. Cuba quickly dismissed the milder resolution as “spurious and illegal,” and blasted the Latin American countries who voted against Havana as “vile lackeys,” “traitors,” and “puppets” of Washington.

Meanwhile, nascent dissident movements in Cuba have been decimated. The Varela Project—whose founder, Oswaldo Payá, won the European Union’s top human-rights award in December 2002—has been hit particularly hard. More than half of those arrested and convicted were members of the group, which sought a referendum in Cuba’s National Assembly on a plan to liberalize the state-run economy and one-party political system. Payá himself, and a few other prominent dissidents like Elizardo Sanchez, have yet to be arrested, possibly because the Cuban government is trying to avoid drawing additional criticism.

Undoubtedly, though, an era of relative tolerance for dissent in Cuba has come to an abrupt end and old enmities are being rekindled. Miami-based anti-Castro exile groups, whose credibility with mainstream audiences was sullied by the Elián Gonzalez affair, are now back in action, calling for harsher economic sanctions on Cuba and even “regime change” in Havana. Many of Cuba’s historical allies—sympathetic foreign governments, political organizations, prominent celebrities, and intellectuals—also say they are disgusted.

The timing of the crackdown, coinciding directly with the U.S.-led war in Iraq, has also led to much speculation. Commentators around the world have argued that Castro deliberately planned the crackdown at a time when he knew international attention would be elsewhere. But Cuba launched its internal offensive only weeks before the annual meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva—where it had a rare chance to escape censure—and days before the European Union opened its first office in Havana.

As a result of Cuba’s repressive measures, the E.U. has put on hold an aid package brokered under the June 2000 Cotonou Agreement on trade, which was worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Cuba, and which would have provided Cuba with a badly needed injection of foreign capital.

Nor can it be said that the Cuban government’s actions have gone unnoticed by the international media. Those in Washington who had called for a more open U.S. policy on Cuba have fallen silent or have reversed their position. Lawmakers in the United States who have long argued for ending sanctions against Cuba, like Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY), have publicly expressed their outrage, and planned visits to Cuba from U.S. farm state representatives and other U.S. delegations are being cancelled. Even Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese novelist José Saramago, a staunch Cuba supporter among European intellectuals, lamented in the April 14 edition of Madrid’s El Pais that “Cuba has won no heroic victory by executing these three men, but it has lost my confidence, damaged my hopes, robbed me of illusions. This is as far as I go.”

If anything, Cuba’s draconian measures have bolstered an argument that many Castro critics have been making for years: that whenever the U.S. embargo seems on the verge of being weakened, the tricky commandante does something provocative to stir up the pro-embargo lobby. This historical pattern repeated itself most recently in 1996, when Cuba shot down two airplanes belonging to the anti-Castro Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue, killing four people. The planes were flying over international waters. Immediately after this incident, the Helms-Burton Act was approved by the U.S. Congress, further tightening the U.S. embargo—and Castro’s own grasp on power.

Other analysts say the crackdown is Castro’s pre-emptive response to the Bush administration’s aggressive new foreign policy. Though it didn’t merit a place on President Bush’s “axis of evil,” the Cuban administration clearly feels it may be on the U.S. hawks’ laundry list of nations due for “regime change.” According to these theorists, the crackdown was Cuba’s effort to stage a little “shock and awe” of its own, sending a clear message to Washington about the firmness of Havana’s resolve.

Almost certainly, Cuba is also reacting to direct provocations by the Bush administration, which has made little effort to conceal its attempts to organize and assist the dissident groups that oppose Cuba’s one-party system. In recent months, James Cason, the chief officer of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana—the United States’ de-facto embassy—has assumed an increasingly outspoken role in criticizing the Cuban government and promoting dissident organizations.

The single event that seems to have led directly to the recent crackdown was the press conference held by Cason in the home of Marta Beatriz Roque in February, where he told reporters that a political transition was already underway in Cuba. “The Cuban government is afraid: afraid of freedom of conscience, afraid of freedom of expression, afraid of human rights,” he declared.

There is little question that Cason’s actions have enraged the Cuban government. At an April 9 press conference, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque asserted that Cason “came to Cuba with the plan of creating a single party of dissidents in Cuba,” a plan he advanced, Pérez Roque says, by channeling funds to dissident groups and encouraging them to unite. By way of evidence, Cuba points to the millions of dollars in U.S. funds routed into non-governmental organizations like Freedom House and the Center for a Free Cuba, which fund anti-Castro programs inside Cuba. It alleges that dissident journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who received a 20-year prison sentence, was caught with US$13,000 in cash—a huge amount of money in a country where the average monthly salary is around US$15 a month.

Another factor is the status of five Cuban spies currently serving long prison sentences in U.S. federal prisons. The Cuban government has hailed the men as “heroes of the homeland,” and mounted a colossal propaganda campaign on behalf of their release. Some have argued that the arrest and imprisonment of Cuban dissidents is a tit-for-tat response to the spies’ case and an effort to gain some leverage for their upcoming appeal in Atlanta.

Spying has also been a feature of the recent trials. Already shocked at the government’s harsh measures, Cuba-watchers reeled at revelations that many of the “dissidents” were actually undercover Cuban government agents. Journalist David Manuel Orrio worked undercover for over 10 years, it emerged, during which time he wrote hundreds of articles—many with anti-Castro overtones—for a Miami-based news service. Ironically, Orrio even organized a conference on journalism ethics at Cason’s residence in Havana.

That Cuban State Security decided to unmask agents such as Orrio shows the crackdown was designed to send a message to other potential anti-Castro organizers. Cuban television programs have been interviewing the agents ever since the trials, lauding them as heroes and celebrating their cloak-and-dagger exploits. The testimony of Orrio and others was a key part of the evidence brought by prosecutors against the dissidents.

Likewise, the swift execution of the ferry hijackers was intended to send a clear message to any would-be imitators. In the two weeks before the ferry incident, two Cuban planes were hijacked and diverted to Florida, and a day before the executions, Cuban authorities claim they foiled another air piracy plot by Cubans seeking to reach U.S. territory. U.S. authorities periodically warn that Cuban hijackers who reach the U.S. will be tried under U.S. law, but soften their message by blaming hijackings on the island's dire economic and political situation. Conversely, Cuba has accused the U.S. of spurring such desperate acts by failing to comply with agreements that grant 20,000 immigration visas to Cubans each year through a lottery system. Cuba's foreign ministry says that U.S. authorities have issued only 505 visas so far this year.

While the arrest and conviction of the dissidents has angered organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the decision to summarily execute the three hijackers has alienated even some of Cuba’s left-leaning allies. Criticism has come from such diverse sources as the French Socialist Party, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, and the prominent Uruguyan writer Eduardo Galeano. “In the hard road it has traversed in so many years,” Galeano wrote in the April 18 edition of Mexico City’s La Jornada, “the revolution has lost the wind of spontaneity and freshness that has driven her from the start. I say it with pain. Cuba hurts.”

Meanwhile, the flood of international condemnation has left many Cubans fearful for the future. The New York Times has reported that President Bush is preparing to issue a statement on Cuba’s crackdown, including a stern warning that the United States will not tolerate another mass exodus of Cuban rafters to the United States, as happened in 1980 and 1994. The Times has also reported that the Bush administration is considering a retaliatory move that would revoke Cuban-Americans’ ability to send money to their families on the island, and end direct flights to Cuba from the United States.

Such measures risk worsening the acute poverty on the island while doing little to affect the political situation, says Gerardo Sanchez, of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and Reconciliation, the independent Havana organization that monitored the dissidents’ trials. “The economic impact would be tremendous,” he said, adding that he himself receives cash sent from relatives in the United States. “That’s what many people here depend on to survive.”

By Michael Radu <a href=frontpagemag.com>FrontPageMagazine.com | April 21, 2003

Recently, following a pattern understood by all but American liberals, Fidel Castro again did something he always does in response to U.S. efforts to improve relations with Cuba. He answered renewed congressional efforts to weaken the embargo by cracking down on the opposition. In the past, when then-President Jimmy Carter tried to improve ties, we wound up with the Mariel exodus and the emptying of Cuba's jails through migration to the U.S.; when Bill Clinton tried to improve relations, it ended up with American citizens being blown out of the skies  by Castro's fighter planes and yet another mass send-off to Florida. This time, when a combination of greedy Republicans from farm states and leftist Democrats tried to weaken the embargo in the name of free trade, Castro answered by jailing 79 dissidents for sentences totaling over 2,000 years.

Even the communist, Portuguese José Saramago, Nobel laureate in Literature and supporter of any leftist cause this side of the Milky Way, declared in an interview with Spain's El Pais that "This is my limit." ("Saramago critica ejecuciones en Cuba," AP, April 14). This reminds one of the late 1960s, when Castro's Stalin-like purges of intellectuals forced Jean-Paul Sartre, another lifelong fellow traveler, to reach his limit with Fidel. And Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch, whose goal seems to be indirectly helping the Marxist-Leninist terrorists/drug traffickers of Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) by blasting every effort of that country's democratic government to fight FARC, also seems to have seen the light. He criticized the UN Human Rights Commission's proposed resolution condemning Castro's persecution of dissidents and demanding that they be released as "weak . . . a slap on the wrist."

Those conversions, along with the fact that the UN resolution was submitted by Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Uruguay and Peru, are the good news from a UN organization now improbably chaired by Libya. Costa Rica aside, the Latin sponsors have paid heavy prices in fighting and defeating Marxist-Leninist insurgencies over the past few decades. They know what communism is, does, and may lead to.

There is another, less symbolic but darker side to the issue. Argentine president Eduardo Duhalde, a lame duck but nonetheless representative of his people's feelings, declared that Argentina will abstain from voting on the Resolution, calling the timing of the vote "inopportune" given the "unilateral war [in Iraq] that has violated human rights." Brazil will also abstain and in Mexico some 50 leftist intellectuals and the majority in the Mexican Congress have asked President Vicente Fox to abstain as well. They could not bring themselves to support Havana, but, again using Iraq as a pretext, claimed that abstention is the best way to deal with Castro. As Mexico's human rights ombudsman stated, regretfully, "only poor countries are condemned" and thus, in his logic, condemning Cuba is unfair - in effect asking for some kind of proportional condemnation, regardless of  realities.

Ultimately it comes down to fundamental differences among the Latin countries. The politics of most of the larger of them vis-à-vis the United States are adolescent, based on the desire to demonstrate independence from Washington. Nowhere is this more evident than in Mexico. To support the U.S. position on any matter, from the treatment of rocks on Mars to dissidents in Cuba, is politically dangerous, opening a leader to accusations from the intellectual elites of being a "gringo puppet." These elites have a disproportionate, and usually nocive impact on politics. In Brazil those sentiments are enhanced by most Brazilians' emotional belief that their country, by virtue of its size and relative economic power, is entitled to a leading role that Washington unfairly challenges.

It was the very same adolescent politics that led the left-of-center governments of Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela to recently refuse to do the obvious, common-sense thing: to declare as terrorists the three irregular forces-FARC, the smaller, also communist National Liberation Army (ELN), and the anti-communists of the United Self-Defense of Colombia (AUC)-that are trying to destroy or avoid the democratic government of neighboring Colombia. They refused to do so despite the fact that FARC at least, and certainly soon enough the AUC, which is hunting them, operates across the borders in Panama, Ecuador, Brazil, and especially Venezuela, whose government is openly supportive of the insurgents.

In the case of Mexico, which has a seat in the UN Security Council (likely to the chagrin of President Fox), not supporting the U.S. approach to the Iraq issue was not a foreign policy or national interest issue, but one of national identity. Supporting the United States is a "sell out to the gringos." Teenagers of the world, unite!

In Chile, the most rational and pragmatic country in Latin America and certainly the most successful in economic, free-market terms, the story is the same, and equally depressing. President Lagos, a Socialist leading a coalition with the Christian Democrats, had never behaved as a socialist in either economic or political terms until Iraq, when he had Chile withhold support for the United States in the Security Council. Why? Because of anti-Americanism. It does not cost much, it is popular-especially in a country where hating capitalism and the United States is still popular among elites and the small (3 percent in the last elections) but organizationally effective Communist Party. Likewise with enthusiastically supporting whatever Havana does. Furthermore, Santiago, like Ciudad de Mexico, Brasilia, and Buenos Aires, still has difficulty understanding that Washington is less tolerant of adolescent games now than prior to 9/11. When President Bush stated that "those who are not with us are against us" in the war on terror, most Latins did not take it seriously. They may well have to now.

Ultimately, abstaining on or voting against a largely meaningless UN criticism of Cuba is itself irrelevant. However, a combined accumulation of Latin American positions suggests that when it comes to choosing between the obvious violations of freedom by one of their own (Havana) and supporting anything proposed by the United States, most Latin American governments will choose opposing Washington.

Understanding this, now let's consider both Castro's recent summary execution of thee ferryboat hijackers and the broader issue of how these Latin American attitudes toward U.S. global positions will affect their U.S. relations.

On the first issue, there is only one thing to say: a hijacker is a hijacker, period. As for capital punishment, it remains what it always was - a matter of political culture. Latins are fast to condemn US executions, especially when they involve their own citizens, but have little or nothing to say when Castro sentences people to death.

As to the price Latin America will pay, some sort of price for their recent behavior? Mexico is clearly doing its best to diminish, if not destroy, whatever support there was in Congress for the legalization of millions of its nationals living illegally in the United States. Chile was a legitimate applicant for NAFTA membership and possessed all the right social, economic, and political credentials, but it has how raised questions about its belonging there. Instead of facing Congressional opposition only from U.S. Democrats opposed to free trade, it will also now face opposition from Republicans, whether they are for or against free markets. Washington must make clear that being "anti-gringo" just on principle cannot continue in the age of international terrorism. Behavior should cost in terms of how many benefits one can expect to continue from Washington. Opposing the United States on matters of American security should have a cost in that regard, and Washington should impose it. Mexico, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina should be convinced that the cost is real and immediate.

Michael Radu is Senior Fellow and Co - Chair, Center on Terrorism and Counterterrorism, at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

nola.com Sunday April 20, 2003 By Joan Treadway Staff writer

Randy Poindexter has been trying for a year to give the city of New Orleans what she considers a significant gift, one that might be rescinded if it's not accepted soon: a "sister city" relationship with Cuba's Port of Mariel.

Poindexter believes a relationship would foster trade and cultural ties. But her gift, not surprisingly, is a Trojan horse in the eyes of some Cuban-Americans in the New Orleans area. They insist it would violate at least the spirit of the long-standing trade embargo against the communist nation and help Cuba's aging dictator, Fidel Castro, cling to power.

A portraitist, sculptor and the proprietor of a Garden District bed and breakfast, Poindexter, 54, got a preliminary agreement to the partnership a year ago from officials in Mariel. But on a trip to Cuba this month, she learned that San Antonio, Texas, and several other American cities are interested in connecting with Mariel, and that if New Orleans officials don't act quickly, it might be too late.

Poindexter said she was encouraged by a letter she received about a week ago from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. "I am impressed by your arguments to forge favorable trade relations with the City of Mariel," Nagin wrote. "With an eye to your recommendations, we will seriously consider Mariel for the Sister Cities program."

This seemed to be a shift from a February letter to Poindexter from Gina Nadas, director of international trade development in the Mayor's Office of Economic Development: "We will postpone any consideration of Cuban cities for Sister City agreements until such time as the embargo (against Cuba) were to be lifted."

Nadas said last week that the two letters do not contradict each other. "The mayor and I are on the same page," she said. Her office uses sister city agreements primarily for trade, and since full trade with Cuba is not allowed now, she is more interested in other markets. She said that when Nagin stated "we will seriously consider Mariel," he meant only after the embargo is lifted.

Of the 19 sister city agreements that Nadas has learned about since arriving at City Hall last fall, she said several represent good opportunities for trade, including those with Caracas, Venezuela; Merida, Mexico; and Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Supporters and critics

Poindexter said she and some of the 50 local residents who support her plan soon will seek a meeting with Nagin, both to clarify his position and to lobby for the proposal.

One backer, Romualdo Gonzalez, has written to Nagin, stating that the relationship would not violate the embargo and that Mariel is "the premier cargo port on the island."

Gonzalez, a local Cuban-American lawyer, said last week that he thinks the best chance for a change in Cuba's government will come "from a policy of engagement." This approach has worked in the former Soviet Union, China and Vietnam, he said.

Another supporter of the proposal is Cesar Martino, president of The Vega Group, which plans special events. Martino, who also is Cuban-American, said Mariel is undergoing an expansion that will include development of a free-trade zone.

But opposition forces are lining up as well.

George Fowler, an attorney for the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation, which is anti-Castro and pro-embargo, said he too plans to talk to Nagin. He opposes the plan because Cuba is still listed by the State Department as a "terrorist" country. Developing a relationship with one of its cities would be "like becoming a sister city to Tikrit, when Saddam was still in power," he said.

The timing couldn't be worse, Fowler said, because Cuba has just cracked down on political dissidents, imprisoning about 70 of them, some for more than 20 years. Three people trying to escape Cuba in a hijacked ferry recently were executed, he said, noting that Mariel became a symbol of Cuba's yearning for freedom when 125,000 embarked from the port during the 1980 boatlift to the United States.

While Poindexter stresses that the sister city relationship is "apolitical" and a "people-to-people" effort, Fowler countered that "there can't be a people-to-people relationship when one person is on top (in Cuba)." Even the artists involved in any exchange wouldn't be free to express themselves, he said.

Felipe Cortizas, owner of the Liborio Cuban Restaurant in downtown New Orleans, opposes the plan for reasons both political and personal: His grandmother almost didn't make it to New Orleans when she was trying to leave Cuba in 1960. For trying to escape, she was briefly jailed and threatened with death by a firing squad, he said.

Mobile, Ala., blazed trail

Controversial or not, about 20 American cities have formed sister city relationships with an equal number of Cuban cities, said Lisa Valanti, president of the U.S.-Cuba Sister Cities Association in Pittsburgh. They abide by the rules of the embargo, and none has been penalized, she said.

Poindexter's point that New Orleans could lose Mariel is well-taken, Valanti said. Some Cuban cities are considering partnering with more than one American city, but others have rejected the idea of multiple partners.

Through her own involvement, Valanti said she has become a godmother to the child of a Cuban woman who works for her as a translator when she visits the island.

Mobile, Ala., was the first American city to connect with a Cuban city -- Havana. The decade-old partnership has meant not only friendships, but also business, said Gene Lambert, Mobile's international protocol officer. One outgrowth of the sister city relationship he cited was a pledge Cuba made in February to purchase $10 million worth of agricultural products from Alabama, which is allowed under an easing of the embargo three years ago.

But Oakland, Calif.'s, 3-year-old sister city partnership with the city of Santiago de Cuba has led to discord. Differing political factions have tried to exploit the relationship to their own advantage, said Simon Bryce, Oakland's chief of protocol. He is trying to pull together the community, so that the relationship can be more productive, he said, but right now, it's "polarized."

. . . . . . . Joan Treadway can be reached at jtreadway@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3305.

The Atlantic Monthly | May 2003 by Susan Orlan ..... One thing will never change: Carbonaro must always be on the right. Five years from now, ten years, even twenty, if all goes well, Carbonaro will still be on the right and Primavera on the left, the two of them yoked together, pulling a spindly plough across the loamy fields in the hills outside Cienfuegos. Oxen are like that: absolutely rigid in their habits, intractable once they have learned their ways. Even when a working pair is out of harness and is being led to water or to a fresh spot to graze, the two animals must be aligned just as they are accustomed or they will bolt, or at the very least dig in and refuse to go any farther until order is restored, each ox in its place. Carbonaro and Primavera were not always a pair. Twenty years ago Primavera was matched up and trained with an ox named Cimarrón. They worked side by side for two decades. But Cimarrón was a glutton, and he broke into the feed one day and ate himself sick, dying happy with incurable colic. It was an enormous loss. An ox costs thousands of pesos and must be babied along until the age of two and then requires at least a year of training before he can be put to work. It is especially difficult to lose half of a working pair: you have to find a new partner who fits the temperament and strength of your animal, and above all, you have to find an ox who can work on the now vacant side. Primavera would work only on the left. He could be matched only with a partner who was used to working on the right. It was a lucky thing to find Carbonaro, a right-sider and a pretty good match in terms of size, although to this day he is a little afraid of Primavera and hangs back just a bit. Anyway, it was a lucky thing to find an ox at all. For a while oxen had seemed part of the Cuban landscape—huge, heavy-bodied creatures, with necks rising in a lump of muscle, their gigantic heads tapering into teacup-sized muzzles; homely animals with improbably slim legs and a light tread, their whip-thin tails flicking in a kind of staccato rhythm, the rest of their being unmoving, imperturbable, still. But then cheap Soviet oil came to Cuba, and chemical fertilizers, and, most important, tractors. In fact, during the 1960s and 1970s so many tractors were being sent to Cuba that there were more than the farmers could use. Sometimes when the Agriculture Ministry called the cooperatives to announce the arrival of more tractors, no one even bothered to go to the port to pick them up. During that time hardly anyone wanted oxen. With a heavy tractor a farmer could rip through a field at five or six times the speed he could with a team. It was, or it seemed, so much more modern, and so much simpler, than dealing with the complicated politics of a flesh-and-blood team. Hardly anyone was raising or training oxen. With such a windfall of tractors, no one imagined that oxen would ever again be anything other than a quaint anachronism. Even during the time of abounding tractors Humberto Quesada preferred using Primavera and Cimarrón—and then, of course, Carbonaro—but Humberto is an independent sort of man. His grandfather was brought to Cuba as a slave and was put to work on a sugar plantation of 70,000 rich acres owned by a Massachusetts family. Humberto's father was a slave there too, and Humberto as a child worked beside him in the fields, so that he could learn how to do what he assumed he'd grow up to do. Although the Quesadas were slaves, they were mavericks. Humberto's sister Ramona, a tiny woman with tight curls and a dry laugh, married the son of white farmers down the road—a scandal at the time, but one that yielded a happy fifty-year marriage that became the warm center of the joined families. And of course Humberto went his own way. After the Castro revolution he became a truck driver, but he kept a hand in farming. It was different, because he was farming his own land, a piece of the old plantation. "The land is the foundation of everything," he told me not long ago. "If you have land, you always have something." He was encouraged to join a cooperative, but like many Cuban farmers, he chose to work alone. "There's always a lazy person in a group, so I don't like being part of groups," he explained. Moreover, he resisted each time the government tried to cut back a little bit of his land. Recently the government wanted to build a health clinic on a piece of his property, but once the official in charge of the appropriation realized that the magnificent sweet potatoes he regularly enjoyed were from Humberto's farm, he changed his mind and said Humberto should have more land, not less. Once or twice Humberto rented a tractor, but he didn't like it. "It presses too hard," he explained. "The land ends up flattened, like a Cuban sandwich." Even when everyone else was using tractors, using chemicals, growing only sugar, Humberto ploughed with oxen; fertilized naturally, the way his father had taught him; cultivated tomatoes and corn and lettuce and beans—and sweet potatoes. Humberto never actually owned the oxen. He borrowed them from his neighbor, whose father had fought beside Humberto's father in the War of Independence. When the Soviet money ran out, the battalions of tractors, now out of gas, rattled to a standstill, and oxen—quaint, anachronistic oxen—were once again worth their weight in gold. It was a lucky farmer who had never given them up, who still had a working team, who could still plough and plant even in the worst moments after the Soviet collapse. Luckier still was a farmer who had stuck with such crops as corn and tomatoes rather than being seduced by the money that had seemed as if it would flow forever from sugar. In such a moment a man like Humberto no longer seemed a throwback. Now in his eighties, slightly lame, wizened, Humberto is everything the new Cuban farmer needs to be: small-scale, efficient, diversified, organic—and, most important, invulnerable to the ups and downs of Cuba's gasoline economy, which once depended entirely on Soviet good will and has since come to rest precariously on Venezuelan. Most of the imported oil in Cuba these days comes from Venezuela, and because of the good relationship between Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's President, the price had, until recently, been especially favorable. But Chávez was nearly overthrown in April of last year, and when he regained his footing, he suspended the shipments. Across Cuba gasoline prices rose by as much as 20 percent. It was a very good time to have an ox. One recent morning Humberto stopped by to say hello to his sister, who lives with her extended family on another piece of the old plantation property. It was a brilliant, breezy day. Outside Ramona's little cottage a couple of chickens were worrying the dirt, and a litter of piglets were chasing around in a pile of hay. The cottage is tidy, old, and unadorned; there is something timeless about it, as if nothing here, or nearby, had changed in twenty or thirty or fifty years. And, of course, nothing much has changed in the countryside: the elemental facts, the worries over sun and water and whether the seeds have germinated and the eggs have hatched, don't ever change. In Cuba right now there is a sense of the moment, a sense that the country is on the brink of newness and change, a sense that the future is unfurling right now—but the countryside has a constancy, a permanence. And these days Humberto feels like a rich man. He said that everyone he knows is going crazy looking for oxen, and that you have to barter for them or apply to the government, and that anyone who still knows how to train a team—a skill that was of course considered obsolete when the tractors prevailed—is being offered a premium for his talents. He grinned as he said this, pantomiming the frantic gestures of a desperate man looking high and low for a trained ploughing team. Someday, no doubt, the tractors will start up again, and the hills beyond Cienfuegos and the fields outside Havana and the meadows in Camagüey and Trinidad and Santiago de Cuba will be ploughed faster than the fastest team could dream of. Then, once again, oxen won't be golden anymore. They will be relics, curiosities. But this is their moment, just as it is Humberto's moment, when being slow and shrewd and tough is paying off. After we'd talked awhile, Humberto got up and headed down the drive and over to his neighbor's, and a few minutes later he reappeared, leading the two oxen, who were walking side by side. He stopped in the yard near the cottage and brought the animals to a halt and stood beside them, one hand laid lightly on Primavera's neck. The oxen shuffled their feet a little and looked sidelong at the cottage, the chickens, a curtain ruffling in the breeze in Ramona's entryway. Humberto's straw hat was tipped back, and it cast a lacy shadow across his face; he leaned a little against the animal's warm gray shoulder and he smiled.

El Mundo.es FELIPE SAHAGÚN

Como todas las revoluciones, la cubana tiene amigos y enemigos, fervientes defensores e implacables adversarios. Aunque el fin de la Guerra Fría ha matizado y difuminado todas las posiciones, la ideología sigue siendo determinante de la visión que se tiene de la revolución cubana.

A pesar de ello, casi todos aceptan como cruciales para Cuba cinco fechas desde la Revolución: la crisis de los misiles (1962); el discurso del 13 de marzo de 1968 por el que Castro destruye los últimos vestigios de la propiedad privada; el éxodo de más de 100.000 cubanos a Florida en la primavera de 1980; la ejecución del general Ochoa en julio de 1989, y la legalización del dólar en julio de 1993.

La crisis de los misiles

1962.- En julio del 62, un año después de establecer relaciones con la URSS, el régimen revolucionario cubano aceptó la instalación de misiles soviéticos en Cuba durante una visita a Moscú de Raúl Castro, ministro de Defensa.

A finales de agosto del mismo año, Ernesto Che Guevara viajó a Rusia para cerrar el acuerdo. El 4 de septiembre, el presidente John F. Kennedy aseguró tener pruebas del envío de 3.500 técnicos militares de la URSS a Cuba y advirtió que, si instalaban misiles tierra-tierra de ataque, Estados Unidos intervendría para impedirlo.

El 14 de octubre aviones-espía estadounidenses fotografiaron obras de construcción de 40 rampas de lanzamiento de misiles de alcance comprendidas entre los 500 y los 3.300 kilómetros en suelo cubano. Dos días más tarde, Kennedy tenía las fotos sobre su mesa, en el Despacho Oval de la Casa Blanca. El 22 de octubre, Kennedy publicó las fotos y anunció un bloqueo -cuarentena- de Cuba.

En un discurso radiotelevisado, Kennedy amenazó con una respuesta nuclear masiva contra la URSS si se lanzaba algún misil nuclear desde Cuba contra Estados Unidos, y con acciones militares directas -invasión, bombardeos o ambas cosas- en Cuba si los misiles soviéticos no eran retirados inmediatamente de la isla.

El 26 de octubre, Kennedy recibió una carta del dirigente soviético, Nikita Jruschov, en la que aceptaba retirar los misiles bajo la supervisión de la ONU si Estados Unidos se comprometía a no invadir Cuba. El peligro había pasado.

En Essence of Decision, el mejor análisis publicado hasta hoy sobre la crisis, Graham Allison demuestra que fue el momento de la Guerra Fría en el que la URSS y Estados Unidos han estado más cerca del precipicio nuclear.

En declaraciones a Theodore Sorensen, su mejor biógrafo, el presidente John F. Kennedy reconoció poco antes de ser asesinado que, de haber estallado la guerra nuclear, «podían haber muerto 100 millones de estadounidenses, más de 100 millones de rusos y millones de europeos».

Ofensiva revolucionaria

1968.- El 13 de marzo de 1968, cinco meses después de la muerte del Che en Bolivia, Castro anunció una «ofensiva revolucionaria» contra «los últimos vestigios del capitalismo y de la moralidad burguesa» con el fin de construir en Cuba «el verdadero comunismo». En el mismo discurso confirmó la detención y encarcelamiento de sus principales críticos comunistas del interior, dirigidos por Aníbal Escalante.

En las 24 horas siguientes nacionalizó o clausuró 58.012 zapaterías, relojerías minúsculas, barberías, viejas imprentas, puestos de fritangas, pequeños comercios y hasta hornos de carbón. El Estado, como señala Jesús Díaz en el capítulo Los años grises de su libro Informe contra mí mismo, se arrogó el control absoluto de la producción y distribución de los bienes de consumo, gigantesca tarea para la que no estaba preparado.

«El empresario mediano y pequeño quedó fuera de los planes quinquenales, acusado de sanguijuela y explotador, y muchos se retiraron a España, Miami o Venezuela, en exilio tardío, con los bolsillos rotos», añade Jesús Díaz.

Mariel

1980.- Tras graves tensiones diplomáticas de Cuba con Venezuela y Perú sobre el derecho de los cubanos a buscar refugio en las embajadas extranjeras de La Habana, Fidel Castro ordenó retirar la vigilancia policial de los recintos diplomáticos a primeros de abril de 1980. En dos días, más de 10.000 cubanos se refugiaron en la sede peruana y varios centenares pudieron salir en avión hacia Costa Rica.

Castro prohibió a mediados de mes la salida de más aviones, pero autorizó la entrada en el puerto de Mariel, al oeste de La Habana, a partir del 21 de abril, de barcos de los exiliados cubanos en EEUU para que recogieran a los familiares y amigos que quisieran irse de Cuba.

Hasta finales de junio, llegaron a Estados Unidos 114.475 cubanos, muchos de ellos delincuentes comunes.

La ejecución de Ochoa

1989.- El general Arnaldo Ochoa, uno de los militares más prestigiosos del Ejército cubano, y seis supuestos cómplices fueron detenidos el 12 de junio de 1989 y acusados de conspirar con el cartel colombiano de Medellín para trasladar cocaína a EEUU. Un tribunal militar recomendó el juicio de Ochoa y los otros detenidos por traición a la patria. Al delito de narcotráfico añadieron el de la venta ilegal de diamantes, marfil y otros productos durante los años de servicio militar en Angola.

Ochoa, de 57 años, había dirigido las fuerzas cubanas en Etiopía, Nicaragua y Angola, y era uno de los cinco oficiales cubanos condecorados con la distinción de Héroe de la República.

Declarados culpables el 7 de julio, Ochoa, Antonio de la Guardia y otros dos acusados fueron ejecutados seis días más tarde. Con su muerte, Fidel Castro se deshizo de uno de sus principales rivales en las Fuerzas Armadas y cortó de raíz las acusaciones de Washington sobre su supuesta cooperación con los narcos colombianos.

La dolarización

1993.- Casi cuatro años después de la caída del Muro de Berlín, Fidel Castro anunció el 26 de julio de 1993 la legalización del dólar, prohibido en la isla desde hacía 30 años.

En un discurso pronunciado en Santiago de Cuba en el 40º aniversario del asalto a Moncada, preludio de la revolución del 59, Castro suavizó también la prohibición de viajar a Cuba a los exiliados y dio facilidades para las inversiones extranjeras.

Con esta medida, el régimen respondió a la grave crisis causada por la ruptura del bloque comunista y reconoció de hecho la existencia de un mercado negro donde el dólar se cotizaba a 60 pesos cuando, oficialmente, se vendía a 0,75 pesos.

Aunque el vicepresidente Carlos Lage insistió en que «los principios revolucionarios siguen intactos», floreció una segunda economía -la de las tiendas especiales, sólo para dólares- y, aunque con serias dificultades, surgieron las primeras empresas privadas desde los años 60.

Felipe Sahagún es profesor de Relaciones Internacionales en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid y miembro del Consejo Editorial de EL MUNDO.