An Example of Bureaucracy in Cuba

This Friday I visited an office of ETECSA [the telecommunications monopoly] to get a refund of a US $100 deposit I had given a few years ago. The process took half an hour and I had to sign 11 receipts!

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A Cuban Golf Federation?

US and Spanish golfers have pledged to support the creation of a Cuban national golf federation. The question is should the National Sports Institute dedicate part of its meager budget to finance the practice of an expensive sport that almost no one plays in Cuba?

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Old Windows in Havana

Her name was Felicia, and she was a prostitute back when it was good business to be one in Havana. She continued to be a hooker after 1959, when all gambling establishments were shut down and prostitution was declared illegal and actively persecuted.

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What the Pope Didn’t Get to See in Havana

The Pope saluted the gathered crowds, kissed a number of children who had been preselected for the occasion, blessed a similarly pre-approved woman on a wheelchair, embraced his Jesuit brothers and boarded his new Pope Mobile. No one drew his attention to a bulletin board where hundreds of petitions from Cuban citizens had been posted.

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How to Resolve Three Key Obstacles to Cuba’s Development

I will focus on three important regulations stemming from the hard-headed, bureaucratic reluctance to raise worker salaries, “until the country’s productivity is increased,” as well as the excessive centralization of foreign and domestic trade and the insistence on egalitarianism in subsidies afforded by the ration booklet.

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What Raul Castro Told the Sustainable Development Summit

In his first intervention at the United Nations, Cuban president Raul Castro had the following words to say on Saturday at the UN Sustainable Development Summit. Castro will address over a hundred heads of state and government at the plenary session of the UN General Assembly on Monday, Sept. 28.

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