The resulting impact on Cuba is predictable. Whatever the post-Chavez outcome in Venezuela, Raul Castro will have to expect worse conditions than those that are currently maintaining him in power and will have to obtain some access to the US market, accepting the condescending gesture from Obama.
Read MoreOn December 7, the Granma newspaper reported on what may be called large-scale telephone fraud. Two foreign companies were able to provide mobile and landline telephone services to numbers of Cubans, charging them black market prices well below those set by the national telephone company, ETECSA, which typically monopolizes those services on the island.
Read MoreMiami is undoubtedly a highly emotional issue for Cubans: Some because they love it, others because they hate it and to quite a few who simply fear it.
Read MoreI first met Hugo Chavez in 1994. He had just gotten out of prison and came to visit Cuba and Fidel Castro, who received him with the honors given a head of state. As I listened to Chavez speak at the University of Havana, I was trying to understand what the Cuban leader was up to.
Read MoreAs I learned about Haitian President Michel Martelly’s recent visit to Cuba, I was forced to reflect on my childhood memories in La Guira, Banes, a United Fruit Company Soweto-type, sugar cane plantation community in Holguin.
Read MoreAccording to one of the criticisms elicited by my article “Cuba’s One-Party State is the Main Obstacle” published in Havana Times, multiparty systems are a bad idea because they are invariably corrupt and inevitably involve the unprincipled politicking that characterized pre-revolutionary Cuba and other electoral systems in capitalist countries.
Read MoreThe five Cubans were convicted of charges that were not proven; rather, the jurors responded to constant pressure and intimidation by terrorist groups based in South Florida. For this same reason the five were sentenced to unreasonably long sentences.
Read MoreOn Monday I was in the waiting room at my hospital when the noontime news came on. The broadcast began with information about the headline of the moment here in Cuba: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez undergoing cancer treatment in our country.
Read MoreMy colleague Angel Thomas told me that during the early years of the Cuban Revolution, political debates were constant and many leaders — including Fidel Castro — used to go to the University of Havana to talk with students. Unfortunately I wasn’t around during that time.
Read MoreAlmost two decades later, Jan Nijman didn’t hesitate in dubbing it the “Mistress of the Americas” and presenting his arguments about this new global city, which has never been relevant on a national level, and which owes its importance to its ability to coordinate hemispheric flows of everything that moves (goods, services, capital, people and cocaine).
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