Fábrica de tractores será primera de EEUU que llega a Cuba en más de 50 años
Departamento del Tesoro dio la aprobación
lunes, febrero 15, 2016 | Agencias
MIAMI, Estados Unidos.- Una empresa de tractores con sede en Alabama
será la primera fábrica estadounidense autorizada para instalarse y
operar en Cuba en más de 50 años, gracias a las medidas ejecutivas
adoptadas por el Gobierno del presidente Barack Obama para relajar el
embargo económico que pesa sobre la Isla.
La compañía Cleber recibió la aprobación del Departamento del Tesoro de
EE.UU. a comienzos de este mes, según indicó a EFE uno de sus dos
fundadores, el cubanoestadounidense Saúl Berenthal.
Berenthal, de 72 años y que emigró desde Cuba a EE.UU. con 16 años,
explicó que con esta iniciativa, además de hacer negocio, quiere
sentirse "orgulloso" de poder contribuir a que los "pueblos de ambos
países se acerquen y se conozcan mejor".
Su objetivo es comenzar a vender los tractores fabricados en Cuba tanto
en la isla como en otros países de América Latina a partir del primer
trimestre de 2017.
Para ello, necesita una inversión inicial de 5 millones de dólares, que
podría llegar a los 10 millones para 2020, cuando prevén ampliar la
actividad de la empresa también con la fabricación de maquinaria para la
construcción.
Berenthal explicó que la agricultura y la construcción son dos de los
principales pilares para el futuro económico de la isla, pues
representan el soporte necesario para alimentar el principal motor de la
economía de la isla: el turismo.
Cleber planea construir una planta de ensamblaje para sus tractores en
la Zona Especial de Desarrollo del Mariel (ZEDM), un gran puerto
mercante y centro empresarial en construcción que es uno de los
proyectos estrella del Gobierno cubano para captar inversiones
extranjeras y que permite vender tanto en la isla como en el exterior.
Explicó que están en conversaciones para "distribuir o levantar fábricas
similares" en Costa Rica, Venezuela, Colombia, Perú, Bolivia y Chile,
entre otros países.
Esos tractores, que llevarán la marca "Oggún", en homenaje a uno de los
"orishas guerreros" de la santería cubana, tendrán un coste entre 10 000
dólares y "lo más cercano a 8 000 dólares".
Berenthal indicó que el 70 % del sector agrícola en Cuba está en manos
privadas, y estos "cuentapropistas" y cooperativas tienen capacidad
económica para afrontar este precio, además de contar con el apoyo de la
"gran población cubana en EE.UU.", por lo que el coste de la maquinaría
se podrá abonar en cualquiera de los dos países.
El cubanoestadounidense y su socio, Horace Clemmons, también de 72 años,
fundaron la empresa en 2015, poco después del anuncio del proceso de
acercamiento bilateral entre EE.UU. y Cuba, con la vista puesta en
proveer a los agricultores cubanos de "un tractor de coste asequible y
que es simple de operar y mantener", según figura en la página web de
Cleber.
Berenthal confía en que su tractor no solo contribuya a eliminar la
necesidad de importar alimentos a la isla, sino alentar la exportación
de sus productos, pues la agricultura cubana está basada en métodos
"verdes" que tienen una "gran demanda" en muchos países, incluido EE.UU.
En su opinión, ser los primeros supone una "gran ventaja" empresarial y
además crea un "precedente", en el que han "podido definir cómo es que
una empresa de EE.UU. puede empezar a producir en Cuba".
El empresario indicó que ya se han puesto en contacto con ellos varias
empresas de EE.UU. interesadas en fabricar en Cuba. EFE
Source: Fábrica de tractores será primera de EEUU que llega a Cuba en
más de 50 años | Cubanet -
https://www.cubanet.org/noticias/fabrica-de-tractores-sera-primera-de-eeuu-que-llega-a-cuba-en-mas-de-50-anos/
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Washington aprueba la instalación en Mariel de una planta para ensamblar tractores
Washington aprueba la instalación en Mariel de una planta para ensamblar
tractores
AGENCIAS | Washington | 15 Feb 2016 - 6:11 pm.
El Gobierno de Barack Obama aprobó la apertura de la primera fábrica
estadounidense en Cuba en más de medio siglo, al autorizar a una empresa
de Alabama la construcción de una planta para ensamblar tractores
pequeños en la Isla, reporta la agencia AP.
La compañía podrá fabricar tractores y otro equipo pesado en la llamada
Zona Especial de Desarrollo del puerto de Mariel, informó la semana
pasada el Departamento del Tesoro a sus responsables, Horace Clemmons y
Saul Berenthal, este último nacido en Cuba.
Clemmons y Berenthal recibieron en noviembre pasado autorización de La
Habana para instalarse en Mariel.
Según la AP, la idea de los empresarios es fabricar mil tractores
pequeños al año para su venta a agricultores independientes en Cuba. Los
socios estadounidenses esperan tener en marcha la producción para el
primer trimestre de 2017.
"Todo el mundo quiere ir a Cuba a vender algo, pero nosotros no
intentamos hacer eso. Estudiamos el problema y cómo ayudar a Cuba a
resolver los problemas que ellos consideran que son los más importantes
de resolver", comentó Clemmons. "Creemos que ambos ganaremos a largo
plazo si hacemos cosas que son beneficiosas para ambos países".
La planta, con un valor de entre cinco y diez millones de dólares, sería
la primera inversión corporativa significativa de una empresa de Estados
Unidos en territorio cubano desde que Fidel Castro asumió el poder en
1959 y nacionalizó miles de millones de dólares de propiedad privada y
corporativa estadounidense.
Esa confiscación provocó un embargo estadounidense que prohibió
prácticamente todas las formas de comercio.
Obama ha introducido varias excepciones en el embargo a través de
acciones ejecutivas, cláusulas que, según señala ahora Washington,
permiten la manufactura estadounidense en Mariel. Una excepción permite
a las empresas estadounidenses exportar productos que beneficien a
agricultores particulares o de cooperativas en Cuba.
Berenthal y Clemmons dijeron que solo venderían al sector privado. No
está claro cómo lo harán en un país en el que el Gobierno controla la
compraventa de insumos y herramientas.
La planta de tractores, que se llamará Oggún —uno de los orishas de la
religión yoruba—, ensamblará piezas disponibles de forma comercial para
fabricar un tractor de 25 caballos, duradero y de fácil mantenimiento,
que se venderá por menos de 10.000 dólares, afirmaron Clemmons y Berenthal.
El Gobierno de Obama dice estar muy interesado en que la apertura con La
Habana sea irreversible para cualquier futuro presidente estadounidense.
El ministro cubano de Transportes y el secretario estadounidense de
Transportes tienen previsto firmar el martes un acuerdo que autorice los
primeros vuelos comerciales regulares entre ambos países, suspendidos
desde hace décadas.
Source: Washington aprueba la instalación en Mariel de una planta para
ensamblar tractores | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1455556301_20229.html
tractores
AGENCIAS | Washington | 15 Feb 2016 - 6:11 pm.
El Gobierno de Barack Obama aprobó la apertura de la primera fábrica
estadounidense en Cuba en más de medio siglo, al autorizar a una empresa
de Alabama la construcción de una planta para ensamblar tractores
pequeños en la Isla, reporta la agencia AP.
La compañía podrá fabricar tractores y otro equipo pesado en la llamada
Zona Especial de Desarrollo del puerto de Mariel, informó la semana
pasada el Departamento del Tesoro a sus responsables, Horace Clemmons y
Saul Berenthal, este último nacido en Cuba.
Clemmons y Berenthal recibieron en noviembre pasado autorización de La
Habana para instalarse en Mariel.
Según la AP, la idea de los empresarios es fabricar mil tractores
pequeños al año para su venta a agricultores independientes en Cuba. Los
socios estadounidenses esperan tener en marcha la producción para el
primer trimestre de 2017.
"Todo el mundo quiere ir a Cuba a vender algo, pero nosotros no
intentamos hacer eso. Estudiamos el problema y cómo ayudar a Cuba a
resolver los problemas que ellos consideran que son los más importantes
de resolver", comentó Clemmons. "Creemos que ambos ganaremos a largo
plazo si hacemos cosas que son beneficiosas para ambos países".
La planta, con un valor de entre cinco y diez millones de dólares, sería
la primera inversión corporativa significativa de una empresa de Estados
Unidos en territorio cubano desde que Fidel Castro asumió el poder en
1959 y nacionalizó miles de millones de dólares de propiedad privada y
corporativa estadounidense.
Esa confiscación provocó un embargo estadounidense que prohibió
prácticamente todas las formas de comercio.
Obama ha introducido varias excepciones en el embargo a través de
acciones ejecutivas, cláusulas que, según señala ahora Washington,
permiten la manufactura estadounidense en Mariel. Una excepción permite
a las empresas estadounidenses exportar productos que beneficien a
agricultores particulares o de cooperativas en Cuba.
Berenthal y Clemmons dijeron que solo venderían al sector privado. No
está claro cómo lo harán en un país en el que el Gobierno controla la
compraventa de insumos y herramientas.
La planta de tractores, que se llamará Oggún —uno de los orishas de la
religión yoruba—, ensamblará piezas disponibles de forma comercial para
fabricar un tractor de 25 caballos, duradero y de fácil mantenimiento,
que se venderá por menos de 10.000 dólares, afirmaron Clemmons y Berenthal.
El Gobierno de Obama dice estar muy interesado en que la apertura con La
Habana sea irreversible para cualquier futuro presidente estadounidense.
El ministro cubano de Transportes y el secretario estadounidense de
Transportes tienen previsto firmar el martes un acuerdo que autorice los
primeros vuelos comerciales regulares entre ambos países, suspendidos
desde hace décadas.
Source: Washington aprueba la instalación en Mariel de una planta para
ensamblar tractores | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1455556301_20229.html
Monday, February 15, 2016
Crisis in Agriculture - Land for Those Who Work It
Crisis in Agriculture: Land for Those Who Work It / Dimas Castellanos
Posted on February 14, 2016
By Dimas Castellano, 9 February 2016
Property and crisis
Once the Cuban Government arrived in power, imbued by an exacerbated
voluntarism, it ignored the laws that govern the economy and
subordinated them to ideology. From this moment on, the loss of the
autonomy that is required by economic processes was converted into a
factor of poverty.
In 1959, with the first agrarian reform law, the Government handed over
property titles to 100,000 farmers but concentrated in its own hands
some 40.2 percent of cultivable land. In 1963, with the second agrarian
reform law, the 1,000 farms that had more than five horses swelled the
fund of State lands, which grew to almost 70 percent.
In 1976, with the objective of decreasing the numbers of small owners,
the Government initiated a project of "cooperativization," through which
it created the Cooperatives of Agricultural Production (CPA), thereby
raising the share of land that was State property to 75 percent. The
result was inefficiency, scarcity of products and high prices, which
obliged the Government in 1993 to convert a part of unused State land
into the Basic Units of Production Cooperative (UBPC), while retaining
the property ownership for itself.
Fourteen years later, on July 26, 2007, in his speech in Camagüey,
General Raúl Castro recognized the deficiencies, errors and bureaucratic
or indolent attitudes reflected in the fields infected with the marabú
weed, and he announced the decision to "change everything that should be
changed.'
And in 2007, he promulgated Decree Law 259, through which he began the
handing over of idle land to private individuals. However, the measure
sidestepped the declaration of changing everything that should be
changed and was limited to transferring — through a form of leasing
known as 'usufruct', which is the right to use the land without actually
owning title to it — a part of the land that the State wasn't able to
make productive. The poor result obtained from this measure did not
achieve what was proposed.
Of the 420,000 acres held by the 1,989 existing UBPCs, almost 40 percent
remained idle; their expanse, although comprising 27 percent of the
agricultural area of the country, produced only 12 percent of the grain,
food and vegetables, and 17 percent of the milk, and only 27 percent had
satisfactory results. In 2010, 15 percent of the UBPCs closed with
losses, and another 6 percent didn't even submit a balance sheet.
In order to stop the deterioration, in August 2012, the Council of
Ministers issued a package of 17 measures and a new General Regulation
for the UBPCs that recognized what before had been denied: the capacity
to acquire rights and to contract obligations; that is, juridicial
personality [a legal term meaning an entity that has a distinct
identity, with rights and obligations].
In December 2012, without altering the structure of the property,
Decree-Law 300 was substituted for Decree-Law 259. It alleviated some
restrictions, but it kept others and implemented new ones. Article 11
said that lands in usufruct could integrate with a State farm with a
juridicial personality, to a UBPC or a CPA, for which "the usufruct
cedes the right of usufruct over the lands and the improvements to the
entity with which it integrates."
In May, 2013, at the meeting of the Council of Ministers, Marino Murillo
Jorge, Vice President of the Council of State, recognized that the
measures, which for decades had been put into practice for managing the
land, hadn't led to the necessary growth in production. Finally, in
2014, Decree-Law 300 was modified with Decree-Law 311.
The loss of autonomy — which is to the economy what oxygen is to living
bodies — together with voluntarism, the methods of command and control,
the centralized planning, the inability of the bosses and
administrators, and the diminished interest of the producers, shaped the
agricultural inefficiency that has characterized Cuban agriculture for
several decades.
The process described shows the impossibility of resolving the crisis in
agriculture with the monopoly of State property and leads to the
analysis of usufruct and the cooperatives in Cuba.
The cooperatives and usufruct
As far as cooperatives are concerned, the Declaration of the
International Cooperative Alliance (ACI), adopted in 1995, defines
cooperatives as autonomous associations of persons who unite voluntarily
to cope with their needs and their common economic, social and cultural
aspirations, through an enterprise of conjoined and democratically
controlled property.
In agreement with this definition, the ones created in Cuba — with the
exception of the Cooperatives of Credits and Services, where, although
without juridicial personality, the farmers conserved ownership of the
land and the means of production — are not classified as such.
The Sugar Cane Cooperatives, created in March 1960 in areas that
formerly belonged to private sugar mill owners, almost immediately were
converted into State enterprises. The emergence of the CPAs in 1976 with
the purpose of reducing, even more, the quantity of land in private
hands, was also a State decision. And the UBPCs, organized in 1993,
didn't result from a true socialism but from the crisis in State
agriculture.
If the cooperatives in Cuba are created by the will of the State; if the
Council of Ministers regulates them; if the entity that authorizes
their constitution is the entity that controls, evaluates their
functioning and defines when the "members" can contract with salaried
workers; if the activities and tasks that the "partners" can assume are
created in places decided by the State and "deal with segments of the
market that are not competitive with the State"; and, on top of this, if
the State retains ownership over the fundamental means of production,
then they are not true cooperatives, but State cooperatives in usufruct.
A convincing proof of this false cooperativism was the report published
in the newspaper, Granma, on Friday, January 25, 2013, which announced
the decision of the National Association of Small Farmers to replace or
remove from their positions 632 presidents of agricultural cooperatives.
For its part, usufruct consists of the use and enjoyment of a good
belonging to others. If there had been consistency with the principle of
changing everything that should be changed, the idle lands, infected
with marabú, would have been handed over to those who work the land.
Nothing justifies making private producers — who have demonstrated they
can be efficient — owners in usufruct, and giving ownership to the
State, which is responsible for the inefficiency. The question sends us
to one of the reasons declared by the 1959 Revolution: to return the
land to the farmers. Why now does the land not belong to those who work it?
Neither the State lands, nor the cooperatives created by the State, nor
the 17 measures of 2012, nor the successive decrees that handed over
land in usufruct have managed to pull Cuban agriculture out of the
crisis created by the State monopoly of property.
On the contrary, the crisis has worsened.
Such a result, like it or not, places on the agenda the need for a new
reform directed at eliminating the large State land holdings, converting
the present owners in usufruct to owners in title and transforming the
rest of State property into private property and large cooperative
enterprises.
Therefore, what is needed is to determine what are the most effective
forms of property in each moment and place for personal and social
development, which will make the institution of property a foundation of
personal and social order.
Not recognizing this need explains how the administrators of
cooperatives can be separated, not by the members, but by a para-State
institution like the National Association of Small Farmers, or that the
Second Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba threatens the owners in
usufruct with the emphatic declaration: "The land belongs to the State.
Without discussion." The obvious question is: And what is the State
going to do with land that it never managed to make productive?
The answer is requires the democratization of economic relations, so
that parallel to the State, Cubans participate like subjects with
institutionalized rights.
From Diario de Cuba
Translated by Regina Anavy
Source: Crisis in Agriculture: Land for Those Who Work It / Dimas
Castellanos | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/crisis-in-agriculture-land-for-those-who-work-it-dimas-castellanos/
Posted on February 14, 2016
By Dimas Castellano, 9 February 2016
Property and crisis
Once the Cuban Government arrived in power, imbued by an exacerbated
voluntarism, it ignored the laws that govern the economy and
subordinated them to ideology. From this moment on, the loss of the
autonomy that is required by economic processes was converted into a
factor of poverty.
In 1959, with the first agrarian reform law, the Government handed over
property titles to 100,000 farmers but concentrated in its own hands
some 40.2 percent of cultivable land. In 1963, with the second agrarian
reform law, the 1,000 farms that had more than five horses swelled the
fund of State lands, which grew to almost 70 percent.
In 1976, with the objective of decreasing the numbers of small owners,
the Government initiated a project of "cooperativization," through which
it created the Cooperatives of Agricultural Production (CPA), thereby
raising the share of land that was State property to 75 percent. The
result was inefficiency, scarcity of products and high prices, which
obliged the Government in 1993 to convert a part of unused State land
into the Basic Units of Production Cooperative (UBPC), while retaining
the property ownership for itself.
Fourteen years later, on July 26, 2007, in his speech in Camagüey,
General Raúl Castro recognized the deficiencies, errors and bureaucratic
or indolent attitudes reflected in the fields infected with the marabú
weed, and he announced the decision to "change everything that should be
changed.'
And in 2007, he promulgated Decree Law 259, through which he began the
handing over of idle land to private individuals. However, the measure
sidestepped the declaration of changing everything that should be
changed and was limited to transferring — through a form of leasing
known as 'usufruct', which is the right to use the land without actually
owning title to it — a part of the land that the State wasn't able to
make productive. The poor result obtained from this measure did not
achieve what was proposed.
Of the 420,000 acres held by the 1,989 existing UBPCs, almost 40 percent
remained idle; their expanse, although comprising 27 percent of the
agricultural area of the country, produced only 12 percent of the grain,
food and vegetables, and 17 percent of the milk, and only 27 percent had
satisfactory results. In 2010, 15 percent of the UBPCs closed with
losses, and another 6 percent didn't even submit a balance sheet.
In order to stop the deterioration, in August 2012, the Council of
Ministers issued a package of 17 measures and a new General Regulation
for the UBPCs that recognized what before had been denied: the capacity
to acquire rights and to contract obligations; that is, juridicial
personality [a legal term meaning an entity that has a distinct
identity, with rights and obligations].
In December 2012, without altering the structure of the property,
Decree-Law 300 was substituted for Decree-Law 259. It alleviated some
restrictions, but it kept others and implemented new ones. Article 11
said that lands in usufruct could integrate with a State farm with a
juridicial personality, to a UBPC or a CPA, for which "the usufruct
cedes the right of usufruct over the lands and the improvements to the
entity with which it integrates."
In May, 2013, at the meeting of the Council of Ministers, Marino Murillo
Jorge, Vice President of the Council of State, recognized that the
measures, which for decades had been put into practice for managing the
land, hadn't led to the necessary growth in production. Finally, in
2014, Decree-Law 300 was modified with Decree-Law 311.
The loss of autonomy — which is to the economy what oxygen is to living
bodies — together with voluntarism, the methods of command and control,
the centralized planning, the inability of the bosses and
administrators, and the diminished interest of the producers, shaped the
agricultural inefficiency that has characterized Cuban agriculture for
several decades.
The process described shows the impossibility of resolving the crisis in
agriculture with the monopoly of State property and leads to the
analysis of usufruct and the cooperatives in Cuba.
The cooperatives and usufruct
As far as cooperatives are concerned, the Declaration of the
International Cooperative Alliance (ACI), adopted in 1995, defines
cooperatives as autonomous associations of persons who unite voluntarily
to cope with their needs and their common economic, social and cultural
aspirations, through an enterprise of conjoined and democratically
controlled property.
In agreement with this definition, the ones created in Cuba — with the
exception of the Cooperatives of Credits and Services, where, although
without juridicial personality, the farmers conserved ownership of the
land and the means of production — are not classified as such.
The Sugar Cane Cooperatives, created in March 1960 in areas that
formerly belonged to private sugar mill owners, almost immediately were
converted into State enterprises. The emergence of the CPAs in 1976 with
the purpose of reducing, even more, the quantity of land in private
hands, was also a State decision. And the UBPCs, organized in 1993,
didn't result from a true socialism but from the crisis in State
agriculture.
If the cooperatives in Cuba are created by the will of the State; if the
Council of Ministers regulates them; if the entity that authorizes
their constitution is the entity that controls, evaluates their
functioning and defines when the "members" can contract with salaried
workers; if the activities and tasks that the "partners" can assume are
created in places decided by the State and "deal with segments of the
market that are not competitive with the State"; and, on top of this, if
the State retains ownership over the fundamental means of production,
then they are not true cooperatives, but State cooperatives in usufruct.
A convincing proof of this false cooperativism was the report published
in the newspaper, Granma, on Friday, January 25, 2013, which announced
the decision of the National Association of Small Farmers to replace or
remove from their positions 632 presidents of agricultural cooperatives.
For its part, usufruct consists of the use and enjoyment of a good
belonging to others. If there had been consistency with the principle of
changing everything that should be changed, the idle lands, infected
with marabú, would have been handed over to those who work the land.
Nothing justifies making private producers — who have demonstrated they
can be efficient — owners in usufruct, and giving ownership to the
State, which is responsible for the inefficiency. The question sends us
to one of the reasons declared by the 1959 Revolution: to return the
land to the farmers. Why now does the land not belong to those who work it?
Neither the State lands, nor the cooperatives created by the State, nor
the 17 measures of 2012, nor the successive decrees that handed over
land in usufruct have managed to pull Cuban agriculture out of the
crisis created by the State monopoly of property.
On the contrary, the crisis has worsened.
Such a result, like it or not, places on the agenda the need for a new
reform directed at eliminating the large State land holdings, converting
the present owners in usufruct to owners in title and transforming the
rest of State property into private property and large cooperative
enterprises.
Therefore, what is needed is to determine what are the most effective
forms of property in each moment and place for personal and social
development, which will make the institution of property a foundation of
personal and social order.
Not recognizing this need explains how the administrators of
cooperatives can be separated, not by the members, but by a para-State
institution like the National Association of Small Farmers, or that the
Second Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba threatens the owners in
usufruct with the emphatic declaration: "The land belongs to the State.
Without discussion." The obvious question is: And what is the State
going to do with land that it never managed to make productive?
The answer is requires the democratization of economic relations, so
that parallel to the State, Cubans participate like subjects with
institutionalized rights.
From Diario de Cuba
Translated by Regina Anavy
Source: Crisis in Agriculture: Land for Those Who Work It / Dimas
Castellanos | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/crisis-in-agriculture-land-for-those-who-work-it-dimas-castellanos/
US OK's first factory in Cuba since revolution
APNewsBreak: US OK's first factory in Cuba since revolution
By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN
HAVANA (AP) — The Obama administration has approved the first U.S.
factory in Cuba in more than half a century, allowing a two-man company
from Alabama to build a plant assembling as many as 1,000 small tractors
a year for sale to private farmers in Cuba.
The Treasury Department last week notified partners Horace Clemmons and
Saul Berenthal that they can legally build tractors and other heavy
equipment in a special economic zone started by the Cuban government to
attract foreign investment.
Cuban officials already have publicly and enthusiastically endorsed the
project. The partners said they expect to be building tractors in Cuba
by the first quarter of 2017.
"Everybody wants to go to Cuba to sell something and that's not what
we're trying to do. We're looking at the problem and how do we help Cuba
solve the problems that they consider are the most important problems
for them to solve," Clemmons said. "It's our belief that in the long run
we both win if we do things that are beneficial to both countries."
The $5 million to $10 million plant would be the first significant U.S.
business investment on Cuban soil since Fidel Castro took power in 1959
and nationalized billions of dollars of U.S. corporate and private
property. That confiscation provoked a U.S. embargo on Cuba that
prohibited virtually all forms of commerce and fined non-U.S. companies
millions of dollars for doing business with the island.
Letting an American tractor company operate inside a Cuban government
facility would have been unimaginable before Presidents Barack Obama and
Raul Castro declared on Dec. 17, 2014, that they would restore
diplomatic relations and move to normalize trade, travel and other
aspects of the long-broken bilateral relationship.
Since then, Obama has been carving exceptions into the embargo through a
series of executive actions, and his administration now says they allow
U.S. manufacturing at the Mariel port and special economic zone about 30
miles west of Havana. One exception allows U.S. companies to export
products that benefit private and cooperative farmers in Cuba. Berenthal
and Clemmons say they will sell only to the private sector.
The Obama administration says it is eager to make the opening with Cuba
irreversible by any future administration. Since the start of the year,
U.S. and Cuba have made a series of announcements that appear designed
partly to create a sense of unstoppable momentum in their new relationship.
Cuba announced late last month that it would more than double the number
of public Wi-Fi access spots to more than 100 across the country this
year and bring broadband Internet to a small number of Cuban homes,
where it is currently illegal. Obama said in 2014 that Castro had
promised to increase Cubans' access to the Internet as part of detente.
On Saturday, Cuba announced that it had returned a U.S. Hellfire missile
that it said was mistakenly shipped to Havana from Paris in 2014. On
Tuesday, Cuba's Transport Minister and the U.S. Secretary of
Transportation will sign a deal authorizing the first regularly
scheduled commercial flights between the U.S. and Cuba since shortly
after the 1959 revolution.
The Oggun tractor plant, named after a god in Cuba's syncretic Santeria
religion, will assemble commercially available components into a durable
and easy-to-maintain 25-horsepower tractor selling for less than
$10,000, Clemmons and Berenthal said. The men believe they can sell
hundreds of the tractors a year to Cuban farmers with financing from
relatives outside the country and to non-government organizations
seeking to help improve Cuban agriculture, which suffers from low
productivity due mostly to excessive control of both basic supplies and
prices by an inefficient, centrally planned state bureaucracy.
"I have two countries that for 60 years have been in the worst of terms,
anything I can do to bring to the two countries and the two people
together is tremendously satisfying," said Berenthal, a Cuban-born
semi-retired software engineer who left the country at age 16.
He met Clemmons, who is from Paint Rock, Alabama, when they worked at
IBM in the 1970s. They left to form a successful cash-register software
company that grew to earn $30 million a year before they sold it in 1995
for a sum that Clemmons says was "enough that I don't have to work."
Between their own capital and commitments from private investors they
say they have enough cash in hand to build the Oggun factory as soon as
Cuba lets them proceed.
"Everything's locked in," Clemmons said.
Berenthal said they are optimistic that they will also be able to export
Oggun tractors to other Latin American countries, which have low or no
tariffs on Cuba products, making them competitive on price. The men
expect a 10-20 percent profit on each tractor.
For the project's first three years, Clemmons and Berenthal say they
will export components from the United States for assembly in Cuba. They
hope to eventually begin manufacturing many of the parts themselves on
the island. They said they expect to start with 30 Cuban employees and,
if things go as planned, grow within five years to as many as 300.
Clemmons and Berenthal will publish all the schematics of their tractors
online in order to allow Cubans and other clients to more easily repair
their equipment and come up with designs for other heavy equipment based
on the same frame and motor that Cleber can then produce at their Mariel
factory.
The men already have plans to produce excavators, backhoes,
trench-diggers and forklifts, equipment that's badly needed across Cuba,
where virtually all the infrastructure is crumbling after years of
neglect and mismanagement and a lack of cash that the government blames
on the embargo.
"I think it'll have a tremendous impact on their ability not only to
help their economy but to set an example across the Caribbean and Latin
America," Berenthal said.
____
Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein
Source: APNewsBreak: US OK's first factory in Cuba since revolution -
Yahoo News -
http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-us-oks-first-factory-143528471.html;_ylt=AwrC1jGt48FWBBUAl4TQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTByOHZyb21tBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--
By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN
HAVANA (AP) — The Obama administration has approved the first U.S.
factory in Cuba in more than half a century, allowing a two-man company
from Alabama to build a plant assembling as many as 1,000 small tractors
a year for sale to private farmers in Cuba.
The Treasury Department last week notified partners Horace Clemmons and
Saul Berenthal that they can legally build tractors and other heavy
equipment in a special economic zone started by the Cuban government to
attract foreign investment.
Cuban officials already have publicly and enthusiastically endorsed the
project. The partners said they expect to be building tractors in Cuba
by the first quarter of 2017.
"Everybody wants to go to Cuba to sell something and that's not what
we're trying to do. We're looking at the problem and how do we help Cuba
solve the problems that they consider are the most important problems
for them to solve," Clemmons said. "It's our belief that in the long run
we both win if we do things that are beneficial to both countries."
The $5 million to $10 million plant would be the first significant U.S.
business investment on Cuban soil since Fidel Castro took power in 1959
and nationalized billions of dollars of U.S. corporate and private
property. That confiscation provoked a U.S. embargo on Cuba that
prohibited virtually all forms of commerce and fined non-U.S. companies
millions of dollars for doing business with the island.
Letting an American tractor company operate inside a Cuban government
facility would have been unimaginable before Presidents Barack Obama and
Raul Castro declared on Dec. 17, 2014, that they would restore
diplomatic relations and move to normalize trade, travel and other
aspects of the long-broken bilateral relationship.
Since then, Obama has been carving exceptions into the embargo through a
series of executive actions, and his administration now says they allow
U.S. manufacturing at the Mariel port and special economic zone about 30
miles west of Havana. One exception allows U.S. companies to export
products that benefit private and cooperative farmers in Cuba. Berenthal
and Clemmons say they will sell only to the private sector.
The Obama administration says it is eager to make the opening with Cuba
irreversible by any future administration. Since the start of the year,
U.S. and Cuba have made a series of announcements that appear designed
partly to create a sense of unstoppable momentum in their new relationship.
Cuba announced late last month that it would more than double the number
of public Wi-Fi access spots to more than 100 across the country this
year and bring broadband Internet to a small number of Cuban homes,
where it is currently illegal. Obama said in 2014 that Castro had
promised to increase Cubans' access to the Internet as part of detente.
On Saturday, Cuba announced that it had returned a U.S. Hellfire missile
that it said was mistakenly shipped to Havana from Paris in 2014. On
Tuesday, Cuba's Transport Minister and the U.S. Secretary of
Transportation will sign a deal authorizing the first regularly
scheduled commercial flights between the U.S. and Cuba since shortly
after the 1959 revolution.
The Oggun tractor plant, named after a god in Cuba's syncretic Santeria
religion, will assemble commercially available components into a durable
and easy-to-maintain 25-horsepower tractor selling for less than
$10,000, Clemmons and Berenthal said. The men believe they can sell
hundreds of the tractors a year to Cuban farmers with financing from
relatives outside the country and to non-government organizations
seeking to help improve Cuban agriculture, which suffers from low
productivity due mostly to excessive control of both basic supplies and
prices by an inefficient, centrally planned state bureaucracy.
"I have two countries that for 60 years have been in the worst of terms,
anything I can do to bring to the two countries and the two people
together is tremendously satisfying," said Berenthal, a Cuban-born
semi-retired software engineer who left the country at age 16.
He met Clemmons, who is from Paint Rock, Alabama, when they worked at
IBM in the 1970s. They left to form a successful cash-register software
company that grew to earn $30 million a year before they sold it in 1995
for a sum that Clemmons says was "enough that I don't have to work."
Between their own capital and commitments from private investors they
say they have enough cash in hand to build the Oggun factory as soon as
Cuba lets them proceed.
"Everything's locked in," Clemmons said.
Berenthal said they are optimistic that they will also be able to export
Oggun tractors to other Latin American countries, which have low or no
tariffs on Cuba products, making them competitive on price. The men
expect a 10-20 percent profit on each tractor.
For the project's first three years, Clemmons and Berenthal say they
will export components from the United States for assembly in Cuba. They
hope to eventually begin manufacturing many of the parts themselves on
the island. They said they expect to start with 30 Cuban employees and,
if things go as planned, grow within five years to as many as 300.
Clemmons and Berenthal will publish all the schematics of their tractors
online in order to allow Cubans and other clients to more easily repair
their equipment and come up with designs for other heavy equipment based
on the same frame and motor that Cleber can then produce at their Mariel
factory.
The men already have plans to produce excavators, backhoes,
trench-diggers and forklifts, equipment that's badly needed across Cuba,
where virtually all the infrastructure is crumbling after years of
neglect and mismanagement and a lack of cash that the government blames
on the embargo.
"I think it'll have a tremendous impact on their ability not only to
help their economy but to set an example across the Caribbean and Latin
America," Berenthal said.
____
Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein
Source: APNewsBreak: US OK's first factory in Cuba since revolution -
Yahoo News -
http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-us-oks-first-factory-143528471.html;_ylt=AwrC1jGt48FWBBUAl4TQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTByOHZyb21tBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--
Productores pecuarios viajan a Cuba
Productores pecuarios viajan a Cuba
Empresarios mexicanos del sector pecuario, encabezados prr el
coordinador de ganadería de la Sagarpa, estarán hasta el 20 de febrero
en Cuba para avanzar en un acuerdo firmado con autoridades de la isla.
Valente Villamil
14.02.2016 Última actualización 14.02.2016
Empresarios mexicanos del sector pecuario inician el 16 de febrero una
gira a Cuba con la que buscan ampliar las oportunidades de negocio en la
Isla.
La gira, que se extenderá hasta el 20 de febrero, estará encabezada por
el coordinador de ganadería de la Secretaría de Agricultura, Ganadería,
Desarrollo Rural, Pesca y Alimentación (Sagarpa), Francisco Gurría
Treviño, indicó la dependencia este domingo en un comunicado.
"La misión comercial busca avanzar en la parte pecuaria contenida dentro
del Acuerdo Marco firmado por las autoridades de la Sagarpa y el
Ministerio de Agricultura de la República de Cuba (el pasado 23 de
noviembre)", señala el documento.
En lo referente al sector pecuario, dicho acuerdo señala que las áreas
de oportunidad en la relación son el intercambio de recursos genéticos,
la certificación de productos orgánicos y el envio de México a Cuba de
semen vacuno y caprino, así como de animales vivos, como ovinos.
La misión comercial está conformada tanto por productores de diversos
tipos de carnes, como de alimentos balanceados y lácteos.
En 2014, de acuerdo con el Observatory of Economic Complexity, Cuba
importó 462 millones de dólares de productos de origen animal entre los
que destacan 43 por ciento fueron carnes de aves y 42 por ciento de
leche concentrada.
Source: Productores pecuarios viajan a Cuba | El Financiero -
http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/economia/productores-pecuarios-viajan-a-cuba.html
Empresarios mexicanos del sector pecuario, encabezados prr el
coordinador de ganadería de la Sagarpa, estarán hasta el 20 de febrero
en Cuba para avanzar en un acuerdo firmado con autoridades de la isla.
Valente Villamil
14.02.2016 Última actualización 14.02.2016
Empresarios mexicanos del sector pecuario inician el 16 de febrero una
gira a Cuba con la que buscan ampliar las oportunidades de negocio en la
Isla.
La gira, que se extenderá hasta el 20 de febrero, estará encabezada por
el coordinador de ganadería de la Secretaría de Agricultura, Ganadería,
Desarrollo Rural, Pesca y Alimentación (Sagarpa), Francisco Gurría
Treviño, indicó la dependencia este domingo en un comunicado.
"La misión comercial busca avanzar en la parte pecuaria contenida dentro
del Acuerdo Marco firmado por las autoridades de la Sagarpa y el
Ministerio de Agricultura de la República de Cuba (el pasado 23 de
noviembre)", señala el documento.
En lo referente al sector pecuario, dicho acuerdo señala que las áreas
de oportunidad en la relación son el intercambio de recursos genéticos,
la certificación de productos orgánicos y el envio de México a Cuba de
semen vacuno y caprino, así como de animales vivos, como ovinos.
La misión comercial está conformada tanto por productores de diversos
tipos de carnes, como de alimentos balanceados y lácteos.
En 2014, de acuerdo con el Observatory of Economic Complexity, Cuba
importó 462 millones de dólares de productos de origen animal entre los
que destacan 43 por ciento fueron carnes de aves y 42 por ciento de
leche concentrada.
Source: Productores pecuarios viajan a Cuba | El Financiero -
http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/economia/productores-pecuarios-viajan-a-cuba.html
Libreta de racionamiento, libreta de la discordia
Libreta de racionamiento, libreta de la discordia
Cuando sufre alguna extraña transformación, los cubanos ponen el grito
en el cielo
domingo, febrero 14, 2016 | León Padrón Azcuy
LA HABANA, Cuba.- Se conoce que las autoridades cubanas han considerado
la desaparición de la cartilla de racionamiento (Ley 1015) que perdura
desde 1962, pero la inmensa mayoría de los ciudadanos hasta hoy, siguen
dependiendo de ella para su alimentación y cuando sufre alguna extraña
transformación –aunque parezca trivial– ponen el grito en el cielo.
Hace solo unos días un grupo de consumidores, en el mercado estatal
situado en 27 y A en el Vedado, desencadenaron su irritación cuando el
bodeguero de turno les indicaba que a partir de este mes, los frijoles
negros fueron sustituidos por el conocido chícharo, un grano que desde
hacía varios años fue desterrado de la cartilla de racionamiento y
liberado al precio de 3.50 CUP.
"Ya nos quitaron los frijoles colorados de la libreta desde el pasado
año y ahora nos quitan los granos negros. Mi sueldo no me alcanza para
pagar por una libra de frijoles, 18 y 15 pesos en el agro mercado",
declaró una señora de unos 50 años vestida de enfermera que se
encontraba en la inmensa cola de este mercado para comprar los víveres
que una vez al mes recibe a través del vetusto documento.
Otra de las personas que descargaban su furor era la inspirada Tanita,
una santera reconocida en la barriada del Vedado, quien expresó: "Los
chícharos, a diferencia de los frijoles negros que resuelves con ají,
sal y aceite, hay que echarle carne, huesos, patas de puerco, jamón o
chorizo, y los que estamos aquí", dijo refriéndose a los presentes, "no
ganamos dineros para eso. ¿Hasta donde iremos a parar?", preguntaba.
"El regreso de este grano a las hojas de anotaciones de la libreta,
ahora importado desde Canadá, es una decisión de la Empresa Provincial
del Comercio Minorista. Los clientes me colman a preguntas como si yo
fuera el responsable de esto. A mí nadie me da explicaciones y nos
limitamos a repartir lo que nos traen", declaró el administrador del
mencionado establecimiento estatal, quien se enteró de este reemplazo,
gracias a una escueta nota aparecida en el periódico Tribuna, unos días
antes de que llegaran aquel lugar los víveres del presente mes de febrero.
El descontento en el mercado de 27 y A no fue un hecho aislado. Se pudo
conocer también que en otras bodegas del municipio plaza hubo mucho
revuelo por este "inusitado" cambio. "Todos los clientes que hasta ahora
han venido a buscar sus víveres se han quedado con la boca abierta al
enterarse que recibirían 10 onzas de chícharo en sustitución de las 10
onzas de frijoles negros. Esto no había sucedido jamás y yo los mando a
quejarse al Poder Popular", dijo Etian, uno de los bodegueros del
establecimiento ubicado en la calle 23 esquina E, quien añadió
jocosamente, refiriéndose a un chiste que circula por toda Cuba: "no es
lo mismo pollo por pescado, que chícharos por frijoles".
De aquella libreta que se instituyó para garantizar a cada uno de los 11
millones de cubanos una escueta canasta básica de alimentos (limitada a
arroz, frijoles, pan, café, huevos, carne, azúcar, aceite y otros pocos
productos) a precios que el Estado declara subsidiados, ya va quedando
muy poco.
Ya a mediados del año 2013, bajo el llamativo título de "Cincuentenaria
estrategia contra el bloqueo", el articulista del periódico Granma,
Manuel E. Yepe, mientras elogiaba el papel de la libreta de
abastecimiento, según él un instrumento de defensa contra el propósito
de Washington para derrocar por hambre al gobierno revolucionario
cubano. También suponía "que dado los sólidos avances que ha venido
experimentando la economía cubana no obstante el embargo, era
aconsejable proyectar ya, el objetivo de eliminarla".
En aquella ocasión algunos especialistas en temas económicos
consideraban que los cubanos con un ingreso que no rebasan los 20
dólares se sentían amarrados de pies y mano.
Por lo pronto, la pregunta que no pudieron contestar ni el
administrador, ni los bodegueros y tampoco los consumidores presentes en
el mercado de 27 y A, era si: ¿volverán los frijoles negros a la
libreta? Al fin y al cabo mejor suerte tuvo el chícharo, porque la
carne, la leche, el pescado, y otros tantos productos, jamás regresaron.
leonpadron16@gmail.com
@leonlibredecuba
Source: Libreta de racionamiento, libreta de la discordia | Cubanet -
https://www.cubanet.org/mas-noticias/libreta-de-racionamiento-libreta-de-la-discordia/
Cuando sufre alguna extraña transformación, los cubanos ponen el grito
en el cielo
domingo, febrero 14, 2016 | León Padrón Azcuy
LA HABANA, Cuba.- Se conoce que las autoridades cubanas han considerado
la desaparición de la cartilla de racionamiento (Ley 1015) que perdura
desde 1962, pero la inmensa mayoría de los ciudadanos hasta hoy, siguen
dependiendo de ella para su alimentación y cuando sufre alguna extraña
transformación –aunque parezca trivial– ponen el grito en el cielo.
Hace solo unos días un grupo de consumidores, en el mercado estatal
situado en 27 y A en el Vedado, desencadenaron su irritación cuando el
bodeguero de turno les indicaba que a partir de este mes, los frijoles
negros fueron sustituidos por el conocido chícharo, un grano que desde
hacía varios años fue desterrado de la cartilla de racionamiento y
liberado al precio de 3.50 CUP.
"Ya nos quitaron los frijoles colorados de la libreta desde el pasado
año y ahora nos quitan los granos negros. Mi sueldo no me alcanza para
pagar por una libra de frijoles, 18 y 15 pesos en el agro mercado",
declaró una señora de unos 50 años vestida de enfermera que se
encontraba en la inmensa cola de este mercado para comprar los víveres
que una vez al mes recibe a través del vetusto documento.
Otra de las personas que descargaban su furor era la inspirada Tanita,
una santera reconocida en la barriada del Vedado, quien expresó: "Los
chícharos, a diferencia de los frijoles negros que resuelves con ají,
sal y aceite, hay que echarle carne, huesos, patas de puerco, jamón o
chorizo, y los que estamos aquí", dijo refriéndose a los presentes, "no
ganamos dineros para eso. ¿Hasta donde iremos a parar?", preguntaba.
"El regreso de este grano a las hojas de anotaciones de la libreta,
ahora importado desde Canadá, es una decisión de la Empresa Provincial
del Comercio Minorista. Los clientes me colman a preguntas como si yo
fuera el responsable de esto. A mí nadie me da explicaciones y nos
limitamos a repartir lo que nos traen", declaró el administrador del
mencionado establecimiento estatal, quien se enteró de este reemplazo,
gracias a una escueta nota aparecida en el periódico Tribuna, unos días
antes de que llegaran aquel lugar los víveres del presente mes de febrero.
El descontento en el mercado de 27 y A no fue un hecho aislado. Se pudo
conocer también que en otras bodegas del municipio plaza hubo mucho
revuelo por este "inusitado" cambio. "Todos los clientes que hasta ahora
han venido a buscar sus víveres se han quedado con la boca abierta al
enterarse que recibirían 10 onzas de chícharo en sustitución de las 10
onzas de frijoles negros. Esto no había sucedido jamás y yo los mando a
quejarse al Poder Popular", dijo Etian, uno de los bodegueros del
establecimiento ubicado en la calle 23 esquina E, quien añadió
jocosamente, refiriéndose a un chiste que circula por toda Cuba: "no es
lo mismo pollo por pescado, que chícharos por frijoles".
De aquella libreta que se instituyó para garantizar a cada uno de los 11
millones de cubanos una escueta canasta básica de alimentos (limitada a
arroz, frijoles, pan, café, huevos, carne, azúcar, aceite y otros pocos
productos) a precios que el Estado declara subsidiados, ya va quedando
muy poco.
Ya a mediados del año 2013, bajo el llamativo título de "Cincuentenaria
estrategia contra el bloqueo", el articulista del periódico Granma,
Manuel E. Yepe, mientras elogiaba el papel de la libreta de
abastecimiento, según él un instrumento de defensa contra el propósito
de Washington para derrocar por hambre al gobierno revolucionario
cubano. También suponía "que dado los sólidos avances que ha venido
experimentando la economía cubana no obstante el embargo, era
aconsejable proyectar ya, el objetivo de eliminarla".
En aquella ocasión algunos especialistas en temas económicos
consideraban que los cubanos con un ingreso que no rebasan los 20
dólares se sentían amarrados de pies y mano.
Por lo pronto, la pregunta que no pudieron contestar ni el
administrador, ni los bodegueros y tampoco los consumidores presentes en
el mercado de 27 y A, era si: ¿volverán los frijoles negros a la
libreta? Al fin y al cabo mejor suerte tuvo el chícharo, porque la
carne, la leche, el pescado, y otros tantos productos, jamás regresaron.
leonpadron16@gmail.com
@leonlibredecuba
Source: Libreta de racionamiento, libreta de la discordia | Cubanet -
https://www.cubanet.org/mas-noticias/libreta-de-racionamiento-libreta-de-la-discordia/
Stale Bread with Ham and Rum - Tourism in the Time of Cuba
Stale Bread with Ham and Rum: Tourism in the Time of Cuba
February 14, 2016 / 1:00 pm
BY ALICE DRIVER
"Maaaaaammmey!" The song of the mamey seller was the soundtrack to my
first moments in Cuba. The burnt orange flesh of the mamey, which has a
consistency that is a cross between that of an avocado and a sweet
potato, is best eaten whole while walking down the streets of Havana.
My first morning in Cuba, I had stale bread and ham with locals on the
corner near my family's house. The young woman who served me breakfast
had hot pink nails, and she apologized for the stale bread by offering
me a shot of rum. A waitress at the restaurant sat at a table nearby
smoking a cigarette and drinking rum.
While walking along the Malecón one night, I met Noel, 27, a
welterweight boxing champ. He was sitting there with his entire family.
I walked by and admired his hair, and then thought about telling him I
liked his hair, and then returned to do so. He introduced me to his
entire family, offered me rum, and then asked me to wait while he ran to
his house to get his boxing photos. He showed me a photo of him in the
snow in Russia, of him in Germany, of him at his training gym. His
little cousin Alberto bought me peanuts. The moon was full and as heavy
and close to the Earth as I had ever seen it.
This grandma, one eye brown and the other blue, sat on a bench in Old
Havana with her hibiscus crown. When she reached over to pick up a huge
cigar, I snapped a photo. Then she stretched out her hand. I searched
around in my bag and then dropped $1 Cuban convertible peso (CUC) into
her hand, the equivalent of $1.45 US. I had not seen any beggars in
Havana, and nobody had asked me for money (although women had asked me
for makeup and kids had asked me for gum). She looked at me sharply and
said, "I want Euros." And then to make her point, she fished a $2 euro
coin out of her pocket.
The first snacks I found in the street were these chiviricos, fried
dough covered in sugar. In general, it was difficult to find street food
or snacks and most corner stores had either empty shelves or shelves
stacked with tomato sauce and bottled water. Often the woman at the cash
register asked me if I had any lipstick, mascara, or eyeliner that I
could give her. Once a cashier asked me for my shoes.
Walking down a crowded street in Havana, I looked through an open window
and was greeted by this almost-blonde getting her hair dyed at home. I
love the way we were able to interact in both domestic and public space
and the fact that she wanted me to take a picture but didn't pose or
change her expression at all.
In a country where there is always a lack of something (water, bread,
butter) people enjoy excess where they can. This excess also includes an
intense fondness for sugar which they sometimes pour into their coffee
cups until it reaches the halfway mark. "Even a few years ago, it was
hard to get nail polish here," said this woman as she showed me her nail
art.
I sat in the back of vintage taxis with bouquets of flowers covered in
glitter, with cigars, with beer, with friends made and lost in the space
of a few minutes, with my heart in my hand, with a cigar in my hand,
with glitter on my face as I rested my cheek on flowers.
Noel, the boxer, invited me to his boxing gym, the Gimnasio de Boxeo
Rafael Trejo, where I watched him jump rope and spar with fellow boxers
like the one seen in this photo. "I can travel to Russia and to Germany
for boxing matches, but I don't have a Lamborghini or nice shoes or a
big watch," he said when talking about the pros and cons of being an
athlete in Cuba. Large billboards all around Havana read "Sports for
everyone, the revolution conquers." Every child in Cuba can study a
sport at school, and I met many young boxers, fencers, and black belts
in karate.
I ran into this duo, who I called Superman and the smoker, after they
hopped of a motorcycle with a sidecar, a mode of transportation quite
common in Cuba. "Can you send us the photo?" they asked. "Do you have
Facebook?" I wanted to know. "What is Facebook?" they asked.
Cienfuegos, Cuba. Raul Castro's government has made the "social and
public" use of internet a priority, and has installed Wi-Fi hotspots in
parks and on high traffic corners in several Cuban cities. Young
entrepreneurs sit with their computers in the park and sell internet by
the minute to those who pass by. At night, the park in Cienfuegos is lit
up by the tiny points of glowing light created by mobile phones.
Cubans celebrate New Year's with a pig roast, and they see them from
life to death. (They often raise them in the back patio of the house.) I
watched this pig walk down the street and then heard it scream as they
let its blood. Pigs have a lot of fight in them, and it was hard to
watch, but I felt better about eating a pig whose life I knew and whose
death I had witnessed than I did about eating commercially produced meat
in the USA.
"I would travel to the end of the earth with you," he shouted from the
corner. I stopped and asked, "Why did you get lips tattooed on your
neck?" And he pointed to his neck and said, "Kiss me!" Cuban flirting is
a heady mix of romance novel and comedic antics, and I didn't know what
do do except laugh and ask him for a photo. His name was Jean Claudet,
and he was standing on the corner with two friends, José Luis and Ronan.
They asked if I could print them a copy of the photo. When I asked if I
could send it to them via Facebook, Jean Claudet responded, "Facebook,
there's no time for that. There's many things to do in the street."
"Cuba is for traveling, not for living," he said. "We get a ration of
five eggs per month, one piece of bread per day, and one chicken leg
every 45 days."
Source: Stale Bread with Ham and Rum: Tourism in the Time of Cuba |
MUNCHIES -
https://munchies.vice.com/en/articles/stale-bread-with-ham-and-rum-tourism-in-the-time-of-cuba
February 14, 2016 / 1:00 pm
BY ALICE DRIVER
"Maaaaaammmey!" The song of the mamey seller was the soundtrack to my
first moments in Cuba. The burnt orange flesh of the mamey, which has a
consistency that is a cross between that of an avocado and a sweet
potato, is best eaten whole while walking down the streets of Havana.
My first morning in Cuba, I had stale bread and ham with locals on the
corner near my family's house. The young woman who served me breakfast
had hot pink nails, and she apologized for the stale bread by offering
me a shot of rum. A waitress at the restaurant sat at a table nearby
smoking a cigarette and drinking rum.
While walking along the Malecón one night, I met Noel, 27, a
welterweight boxing champ. He was sitting there with his entire family.
I walked by and admired his hair, and then thought about telling him I
liked his hair, and then returned to do so. He introduced me to his
entire family, offered me rum, and then asked me to wait while he ran to
his house to get his boxing photos. He showed me a photo of him in the
snow in Russia, of him in Germany, of him at his training gym. His
little cousin Alberto bought me peanuts. The moon was full and as heavy
and close to the Earth as I had ever seen it.
This grandma, one eye brown and the other blue, sat on a bench in Old
Havana with her hibiscus crown. When she reached over to pick up a huge
cigar, I snapped a photo. Then she stretched out her hand. I searched
around in my bag and then dropped $1 Cuban convertible peso (CUC) into
her hand, the equivalent of $1.45 US. I had not seen any beggars in
Havana, and nobody had asked me for money (although women had asked me
for makeup and kids had asked me for gum). She looked at me sharply and
said, "I want Euros." And then to make her point, she fished a $2 euro
coin out of her pocket.
The first snacks I found in the street were these chiviricos, fried
dough covered in sugar. In general, it was difficult to find street food
or snacks and most corner stores had either empty shelves or shelves
stacked with tomato sauce and bottled water. Often the woman at the cash
register asked me if I had any lipstick, mascara, or eyeliner that I
could give her. Once a cashier asked me for my shoes.
Walking down a crowded street in Havana, I looked through an open window
and was greeted by this almost-blonde getting her hair dyed at home. I
love the way we were able to interact in both domestic and public space
and the fact that she wanted me to take a picture but didn't pose or
change her expression at all.
In a country where there is always a lack of something (water, bread,
butter) people enjoy excess where they can. This excess also includes an
intense fondness for sugar which they sometimes pour into their coffee
cups until it reaches the halfway mark. "Even a few years ago, it was
hard to get nail polish here," said this woman as she showed me her nail
art.
I sat in the back of vintage taxis with bouquets of flowers covered in
glitter, with cigars, with beer, with friends made and lost in the space
of a few minutes, with my heart in my hand, with a cigar in my hand,
with glitter on my face as I rested my cheek on flowers.
Noel, the boxer, invited me to his boxing gym, the Gimnasio de Boxeo
Rafael Trejo, where I watched him jump rope and spar with fellow boxers
like the one seen in this photo. "I can travel to Russia and to Germany
for boxing matches, but I don't have a Lamborghini or nice shoes or a
big watch," he said when talking about the pros and cons of being an
athlete in Cuba. Large billboards all around Havana read "Sports for
everyone, the revolution conquers." Every child in Cuba can study a
sport at school, and I met many young boxers, fencers, and black belts
in karate.
I ran into this duo, who I called Superman and the smoker, after they
hopped of a motorcycle with a sidecar, a mode of transportation quite
common in Cuba. "Can you send us the photo?" they asked. "Do you have
Facebook?" I wanted to know. "What is Facebook?" they asked.
Cienfuegos, Cuba. Raul Castro's government has made the "social and
public" use of internet a priority, and has installed Wi-Fi hotspots in
parks and on high traffic corners in several Cuban cities. Young
entrepreneurs sit with their computers in the park and sell internet by
the minute to those who pass by. At night, the park in Cienfuegos is lit
up by the tiny points of glowing light created by mobile phones.
Cubans celebrate New Year's with a pig roast, and they see them from
life to death. (They often raise them in the back patio of the house.) I
watched this pig walk down the street and then heard it scream as they
let its blood. Pigs have a lot of fight in them, and it was hard to
watch, but I felt better about eating a pig whose life I knew and whose
death I had witnessed than I did about eating commercially produced meat
in the USA.
"I would travel to the end of the earth with you," he shouted from the
corner. I stopped and asked, "Why did you get lips tattooed on your
neck?" And he pointed to his neck and said, "Kiss me!" Cuban flirting is
a heady mix of romance novel and comedic antics, and I didn't know what
do do except laugh and ask him for a photo. His name was Jean Claudet,
and he was standing on the corner with two friends, José Luis and Ronan.
They asked if I could print them a copy of the photo. When I asked if I
could send it to them via Facebook, Jean Claudet responded, "Facebook,
there's no time for that. There's many things to do in the street."
"Cuba is for traveling, not for living," he said. "We get a ration of
five eggs per month, one piece of bread per day, and one chicken leg
every 45 days."
Source: Stale Bread with Ham and Rum: Tourism in the Time of Cuba |
MUNCHIES -
https://munchies.vice.com/en/articles/stale-bread-with-ham-and-rum-tourism-in-the-time-of-cuba
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