An Exiled Cuban Journalist Finds Threats Now Cross Borders

Jose Jasan Nieves-Cardenas

BY JOEL SIMON

The independent website El Toque thrived in Cuba during the period of relative openness surrounding the 2016 visit to the island by US president Barack Obama, during which he met with Cuban leader Raúl Castro. But rising tensions with the Trump administration, the transfer of power to a new president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in 2019, the COVID pandemic, and a protest movement that brought thousands to the streets ushered in a wave of repression that forced its entire staff of twenty into exile.

Now it appears that Cuban repression has followed editor José Jasán Nieves Cárdenas to the United States. On June 21, Nieves, who lives in Miami with his family, received a WhatsApp message from an unknown number. “We’ve tried to reach you every which way, but you’ve rejected us,” the message read. “Now we will have to come to you personally, and we know exactly where to find you.” The message was accompanied by a photo and video showing the exterior of his home.

Nieves suspects Cuban state security, because he had previously received a slew of menacing messages on his WhatsApp from “Mabel” and “Franco,” which are the names used by the police officials who interrogated him on several occasions when he was still in Cuba. Nieves says that in early July he filed a complaint with the FBI, which handles counterintelligence in the US. (The FBI said that it “cannot confirm or deny any particular contact or the potential existence of an investigation.”) He is also going public, in revealing the threat for the first time to CJR.

Threatening an independent journalist in the United States would represent a serious escalation by Cuban intelligence, if confirmed. (The Cuban government did not respond to requests for comment made to its embassy in Washington, DC, and its UN mission in New York.) But unfortunately Nieves’s experience is not unique.

In 2023, the FBI charged three men in connection with a murder-for-hire plot linked to Iran. VOA journalist Masih Alinejad identified herself as the target. A 2023 report from Freedom House pointed to China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Rwanda as nations that have targeted activists, journalists, and others in the US, part of a global phenomenon. Russia, meanwhile, has charged US-based journalists with “spreading false information,” including my Newmark Journalism School colleagues Professor Masha Gessen and Press Freedom Fellow Mikhail Zygar.

When Nieves became the editor in chief of El Toque, in 2017, his goal was to create a professional news organization to occupy the space between state propaganda and the opposition media, which has openly challenged the legitimacy of the ruling Communist Party. But as repression mounted, including the clampdown on the artist-led San Isidro movement in 2020, Nieves changed course. “We had to resist,” Nieves explained. “The challenge was how to do so without violating the principles and standards of journalism. We are not activists, but we were accompanying the activists.”

As its staff was forced to flee the island—today El Toque’s reporters reside in ten countries, from Spain to Mexico—Nieves developed a clandestine network of reporters that it still uses to cover events on the island. But what has distinguished El Toque is its reporting on economic issues.

It has angered Cuban authorities in part due to its unique role in informing the Cuban public each day about the exchange rate for US dollars on the black market, vital information that the government seeks to hide from its citizens.

For decades now, the Cuban economy has revolved around access to dollars—and to a lesser extent euros—which are needed to buy food, pay for medical care, and travel abroad. Families who receive remittances from relatives in the US live a privileged existence compared, for example, with a Cuban doctor, who might earn the equivalent of a few dollars a month. The vast inequalities created by this system have been a huge political challenge for a regime whose legitimacy is derived from its ability to deliver the basic necessities for all its citizens on an equitable basis.

The Cuban government sets the official exchange rate—currently around 120 pesos to the dollar for individuals—and imposes strict requirements on access to hard currency. But this restrictive policy has only deepened dependence on the black market, where the rate of exchange is negotiated, often using messaging apps.

Working with a computer scientist and using AI to scour the apps, El Toque is able to determine the prevailing black market rates, which it publishes on the front page of its website. It’s currently calculated at 340 pesos to the dollar, nearly three times the official rate. El Toque’s figure is used by businesses from taxis to restaurants to set the rate of exchange. The hundreds of thousands of Cubans who have gone into exile in recent years, taking their life savings with them, also need access to dollars.

The Cuban government has reacted with fury. It has attempted to disrupt the AI algorithm by flooding message boards with false information about the exchange rate. Nieves says that the tool can detect and eliminate this noise. The Cuban government has also come after Nieves in a more personal way—it denounced him in the government-backed media as a CIA agent and profiteer who is seeking to manipulate the exchange rate for his personal benefit.

Nieves dismisses those attacks—he says that El Toque survives modestly on grants from governments and foundations and with limited advertising. But he can’t dismiss the latest threat.

“It confirms what we already knew,” Nieves explained. “The Cuban regime has spies within our community. I think their goal is to instill fear. The only recourse is to hope that they are not capable of doing something more. But I can’t just think about myself—I have to think about my family, my two small children and my wife. I think part of the strategy of these authoritarian governments is to make us seem paranoid, like we’re playing the victim.”

In fact, transnational repression is real, and it’s a tactic that authoritarian governments resort to when forcing journalists into exile fails to silence them. It’s also why defending the rights of journalists like Nieves is so essential in ensuring those living in repressed societies around the world remain informed.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Cubans Flee Island’s Economic Woes By Air, Land And Sea

A Cuban migrant, who wished not to be identified for fear of reprisals against his family back on the island nation, holds up a picture of a home-made boat that brought him and three others to the U.S., Tuesday, June 21, 2022, in North Miami Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

BY GISELA SALOMON

MIAMI (AP) — One Cuban man endured a trek through eight countries that lasted more than a month. Another man paid a small fortune for a furtive speedboat trip. A third decided to risk a perilous passage aboard a homemade raft rather than stay a moment longer on the island.

Cubans are fleeing their country in the largest numbers in more than four decades, choosing to stake their lives and futures on a dangerous journey to the United States by air, land and sea to escape economic and political woes.

Most fly to Nicaragua as tourists and slowly make their way to the U.S. border, often to Texas or Arizona. A smaller number gamble on an ocean voyage. Three men who survived the odyssey spoke to The Associated Press about it.

Tens of thousands of others share the same goal. From January to July, U.S. border authorities stopped Cuban migrants entering from Mexico nearly 155,000 times, more than six times as many as in the same period of 2021. From October to August, the Coast Guard intercepted more than 4,600 Cubans, an almost sixfold increase over the entire previous year.

The vast majority are released with notices to appear in immigration court or report to immigration authorities.

In all, it is the largest flight of Cuban exiles since the Mariel boatlift in 1980, when nearly 125,000 Cubans came to the U.S. over a six-month period.

The exodus is fueled by Cuba’s worst economic conditions in decades — a result of tightened U.S. sanctions and a hangover from COVID-19.

Massive street protests in mid-2021 triggered widespread arrests and fears of political oppression that prompted more to flee. An additional enticement emerged in November, when Nicaragua stopped requiring visas for Cubans to promote tourism.

Two of the three men spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity because they fear for the safety of relatives still on the island. These are their accounts of the trip:

CROSSING EIGHT COUNTRIES AND TWO RIVERS

Rolando José Cisneros Borroto, who worked as a street vendor in Camaguey, a city in central Cuba, said he was tired of going hungry and decided to leave his wife and three children in hope of finding a job in the U.S that would help sustain his family.

Borroto, 42, sold everything — his house, furniture and television — to pay for the journey, collecting $13,000. His family stayed in another house that belongs to the wife.

After taking six flights, he finally arrived in Nicaragua in June. From there he went overland to Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico.

He crossed two rivers on an inflatable rubber ring, walked through mountains and along highways, and got rides aboard buses, cars and motorcycles.

While hiding from Mexican police, he spent days drinking water from a river and eating only grass. He finally crossed into the U.S. south of Del Rio, Texas, and surrendered to the Border Patrol.

Borroto was released after three days of detention and now lives in Algona, Iowa, where a cousin offered him a room in his house and food. The trip lasted 36 days.

“I never thought it would take so much work to arrive,” said Borroto, who was detained at least three times in Cuba for selling garlic in the streets. “What one goes through along the way I do not advise anyone, but Cubans prefer to die on the way before staying in Cuba.”

A PROTEST, A PROSECUTION AND A SPEEDBOAT

Another Cuban man, 35, participated in protests in July 2021, when thousands of people across the island clamored for food and a change of government. He was tried on charges of public disorder and contempt and freed after 30 days in jail to await sentencing.

He fled in February, the month before he was to be sentenced to five years in prison. Air travel was out of the question because he would be stopped at the airport upon showing his passport. A raft was too dangerous.

A speedboat “was the only way to escape,” the man said in an interview at the office of his Miami attorney, Wilfredo Allen. He left the island without telling his 5-year-old daughter. Only his wife, his mother and a brother knew.

Unemployed, he asked his father, who lives in Texas, for about $15,000 to pay smugglers who gave him instructions over the phone.

Two days before the trip, he traveled 250 miles (400 kilometers) to Ciego de Avila, a city in the center of the island. From there, a bus picked him up along with 30 other people, and took them about 60 miles (100 kilometers) to one of the Cuba keys to board the speedboat. Among the migrants were a pregnant woman and a 7-year-old boy.

They passed through the Bahamas and, after 12 hours, arrived at an unknown place in the Florida Keys, at dawn. The boat stopped in a mangrove swamp. Then they came ashore, and several cars picked them up on a highway. A Cuban friend met him at a house where he was taken.

A DESPERATE VOYAGE ON A HOMEMADE RAFT

Cubans who can’t afford a speedboat or the $10,000 to $15,000 for travel and smuggling fees to fly to Nicaragua sometimes flee on rafts made from pipes or wood.

Among them was a 37-year-old man who occasionally worked in construction and fished. He couldn’t pay a smuggler, so he built a raft of 10-foot aluminum tubes. In May 2021 he traveled with three friends for 22 hours until they reached south Florida.

“The first thing one thinks of is leaving, that either we all die of hunger little by little, or we make an attempt,” said the man, who secretly constructed the raft over six months. “I knew I could die in the water, but I needed to take the risk.”

He built the raft alone and kept it hidden in bushes and mangroves. The same day of the journey, he purchased a small engine that allowed him to travel at about 6 mph (10 kph).

No one knew about the trip, except his three companions, his mother and his wife. For fear of being discovered, he told his companions the date of their travel just a few hours before they left.

They departed late at night, rowing out from a fishing port west of Havana, he said in a long interview at Allen’s office. With no GPS, they navigated by the stars.

A whole day passed, and when night started to fall again, they saw the entry buoys to an island. They approached the coast and walked.

“At least we’re alive,” he thought, but they soon realized that someone was calling authorities to report them. They immediately ran back to the boat and returned to the sea, fearing that they would be detained and deported.

They waited in the water for a while and later reached a beach in Key West, where a group of Cuban tourists offered to take them to Miami. The man called his wife to tell her that he had arrived safely and was on his way to his in-laws’ house.

He is now seeking asylum and hoping to bring his wife and three teenage daughters to join him in the U.S.

Associated Press journalists Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Andrea Rodríguez in Havana contributed this report.

What Was Cuba Seeking In Africa?

Fidel Castro. Image: Elliot Erwitt/Magnum Photos 

BY RAUL ANTONIO CAPOTE

One warm morning of October 1983, a group of young men gather in front of the Military Committee office in the municipality of Plaza de la Revolución, in the city of Havana. The reason for the presence of these young men, most of them still fresh-faced, is to leave for Angola as volunteers.

The aspiring internationalists combatants have been arriving to this place since the early hours of the morning. The waiting hours would pass by among jokes and stories and comments on the episodes of heroism and combats born from their juvenile imagination and their desire to match the deeds of their fathers and grandfathers.

As the opening hours approach, officials and employees start to arrive, amazed by the large crowd. One officer, who is also an official of this Committee, greets those waiting outside and asks them to form a line, to which the boys quickly comply by lining along the sidewalk.

The echoes of the heroic defense of Cangamba have been the spark, even though the details were still unknown, but the stories told about it surpass those of the legend of the 300 Spartans of the Battle of the Thermopylae.

CANGAMBA

From August 2 to August 10, 1983 all the positions defended by Cuban internationalist combatants and the People’s Armed Forces of Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) in the town of Cangamba were surrounded and attacked.

The 32nd Brigade of Light Artillery (BIL) of the FAPLA and a group of Cuban advisors were deployed in this locality of the province of Moxico..

The number of FAPLA forces were 818 soldiers, many of them with very little combat training. Cuban internationalist advisors were 82. Once the attacks started in Cangamba on August 2, 1983, the Cuban headquarters sent reinforcements, which increased the number of Cubans in Cangamba to 184 troops. In total, there were 18 pieces of artillery and small-caliber mortars and 36 GRD-1P installations with little ammunition.

On the South African side, even though there was no artillery deployed in the territory, there were experts on artillery, intelligence and scorers for aviation, which could be estimated to be the size of a contingent. There were also small units of the Buffalo Battalion, which already had experience in joint actions with the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), which had over 3,000 troops.

The Cuban troops suffered 18 casualties and 27 wounded. FAPLA, on their part, had 60 casualties and 177 wounded. Shelters suffered damages or destruction in 85% of them. A total of 401 tails of grenade mortars were counted scattered all over the territory and around 1,300 fragments of projectile and GRAD-1P rockets. It is estimated that no less than 1,500 artillery projectiles hit the positions defended by the Cubans.

A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY
While the aspiring internationalists wait, they talk about Kifangondo and the bravery shown by Cubans and Angolans, the dramatic withdrawal of the enemy troops who, days before, described this venture as a piece of cake with the phrase “breakfast in Caxito, lunch in Cacuaco and dinner in Luanda,” but they only bit the dust of defeat instead.

Kifangondo, Cangamba and Cuito Cuanavale would go down in history as “unforgettable instances of Cubans’ patriotic sensitivity,” the success of Cuito Cuanavale, which would be a turning point in the history of Africa because it marks the end of the oprobious Apartheid regime, is still a few years away. These three combats fought by Cuban internationalists, volunteer soldiers from the country of Martí and Fidel, fill with pride the new generations that hope to contribute to “repay the debt with Africa.”

Teachers, medical doctors, builders, engineers and hundreds of thousands of Cubans have worked as internationalists in Africa. On May 23, 1963, a plane of Cubana de Aviación Airlines with 29 doctors, four dentists, 14 nurses and seven health technicians departed for Algeria.

This was the beginning of Cuba’s internationalist missions in Africa in the history of the Cuban Revolution, a collaboration that has never ceased over the years and that have contributed to save thousands of lives, to teach how to write and read, to build, to plant, to defend with their own blood the independence of the continent. In turn, over 34,000 Africans have graduated from middle-level technician and higher education in the last few decades and other thousands of young African people are currently studying in Cuba. 1

INTERNATIONALIST MILITARY MISSIONS
A Cuban military contingent integrated by 865 troops and their equipment, arrived in the African nation between October 21 and October 29, 1963 to help the budding People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, following the arrival of health professionals.

Cuba sent 746 troops to meet the request of the Syrian government in the wake of the failure of the offensive launched by Egypt and Syria on October 6, 1973; an attempt to recover the territories occupied by Israel during the Six Day War in June 1967. The Cuban troops composed the Tank Battalion, which later integrated the 47 Cuba-Syria Tank Brigade.

In Angola, Carlota Operation spanned from August 1975 to May 1991, when the last group of combatants left Angola. It was the response of the Cuban government to the request for assistance made by the historical leader of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) Agostinho Neto in the wake of the aggression of the South African Apartheid Regime and its internal and external allies to prevent Angola from earning its independence, overthrow MPLA and occupy the country.

In total, 337,033 military troops and around 50,000 civil collaborators took part in the mission in Angola. A Cuban military contingent was deployed in the territory of Pointe-Noire, Republic of Congo, with the mission of supporting the Cuban troops defending Cabinda, Angola, if necessary.

“”The peoples of Cuba and Angola are brothers in all senses and for that reason we will always be by each other’s side (…) In the good times, in the bad times, and forever. We will carry with us the indestructible friendship of this great people and the remains of our fallen ones!”2.

Known under the code name of Operación Baraguá, it started in January 1978 with the internationalist military mission in Ethiopia, where the first military troops arrived to fight against the armed forces from Somalia, who first attacked on June 1977. The mission lasted until September 1989 and 41,730 military men took part in it.

In all these missions, 385,908 Cuban combatants took part, of which 2,398 lost their life in the fulfillment of their internationalist duties.

Cubans took nothing from Africa, which had been plundered over and over by the colonial powers. Cubans went to Africa at the request of their peoples to fulfill what we considered a sacred duty. The thousands of combatants who fought in Africa were not looking for personal gain or glory, they were moved by the desire to be useful, to fulfill their duty with the Revolution, to live up to the time they lived in.

THE GLORY OF WHAT WE HAVE LIVED
It may be hard to understand now, after all these years and in the light of the current times, that young men in the prime of their youth and vitality were willing to give their all, including their lives, for people living thousands of kilometers away from them, to abandon the safety of their houses to face homesickness, diseases, fatigue and death.

What made possible such acts of selflessness? Those young men, who have now become gray-haired were not present in the Sierra Maestra, in Playa Girón nor were they born during the days of the Missile Crises nor the Literacy Campaign. Those young men standing in line in front of the Military Committee office in Plaza de la Revolución and all over the country in 1983 and in the following years, are not fanatics or lambs following a doctrine, they are boys and girls born under the Revolution, moved by the deepest conviction that this is a duty; proud of those fighting and giving their lives in African lands and they just want to do as much. They do not want to be left behind.

This journalist is there too and he witnesses their tears, and he cries too, when they are rejected because they do not make it through the admission process. Logically, not all them can make the cut and there is not consolation for those left out, not even the promise of other missions, nor the call to fulfill their daily duty with the country. We all want to go meet history.

SOURCE: GRANMA

Trump Cracks Down On Cuba, Nicaragua And Venezuela

This combination of images shows, from left, Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega and Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro. The Trump administration on Wednesday, April 17, 2019, intensified its crackdown on Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, rolling back Obama administration policy and announcing new restrictions and sanctions against the three countries whose leaders national security adviser John Bolton dubbed the "three stooges of socialism." (AP Photos)

B GISELA SALOMON, DEB RIECHMANN AND MATTHEW LEE

CORAL GABLES, FLA. (AP) — The Trump administration on Wednesday intensified its crackdown on Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, rolling back Obama administration policy and announcing new restrictions and sanctions against the three countries whose leaders national security adviser John Bolton dubbed the “three stooges of socialism.”

“The troika of tyranny — Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua — is beginning to crumble,” Bolton said in a hard-hitting speech near Miami on the 58th anniversary of the United States’ failed Bay of Pigs invasion of the island, an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government.

The measures seem likely to hit hardest in Cuba, which is at a moment of severe economic weakness as it struggles to find cash to import basic food and other supplies following a drop in aid from Venezuela and a string of bad years in other key economic sectors.

Bolton announced a new cap on the amount of money that families in the United States can send their relatives in Cuba. The Obama administration had lifted limits on remittances, but the new limit will be $1,000 per person per quarter. Remittances to Cuba from the United States amounted to $3 billion in 2016, according to the State Department.

Washington also moved to restrict “non-family travel” after a broad loosening of so-called purposeful visits under Obama led to soaring numbers of American trips for cultural and educational exchanges. Details on the restrictions were not immediately clear, but tourism is a key lifeline of hard currency for Cuba. Bolton called such visits “veiled tourism.”

Bolton spoke hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a new policy allowing lawsuits against foreign firms operating on properties Cuba seized from Americans after the 1959 revolution. The United States has enforced a trade embargo against Cuba since the early 1960s.

Cuban officials met the announcements with defiance.

“Nobody will snatch away from us, neither through seduction nor force, ‘the Fatherland that our parents won for us by standing up,’” President Miguel Díaz-Canel said via Twitter. “We Cubans will not surrender.”

Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez called it an attack on international law, Cuban sovereignty and countries that would do business with the island: “Aggressive escalation by (hashtag)US against Cuba will fail. Like at Giron, we will be victorious,” he tweeted, referring to a Bay of Pigs beach where invaders landed.

“We will always be willing to have a dialogue based on absolute respect, but if the U.S. government has chosen a confrontational path we will not hesitate to defend the gains of the revolution at any cost,” Rodríguez later said on state television.

On Venezuela, Bolton said Washington was sanctioning the country’s Central Bank, which the Trump administration says has been instrumental in propping up the embattled government of President Nicolás Maduro. The sanctions do not bar humanitarian aid or private remittances and aim to ensure reliability of debit and credit card transactions, which have become essential amid skyrocketing inflation and a shortage of cash notes.

Maduro called the move the latest example of “imperialist aggression.” In a nationally broadcast TV appearance, he said any nation’s central bank is “sacred” and deserves respect.

“I see imperialism as crazy, desperate,” Maduro said.

Bolton also announced sanctions against financial services provider Bancorp, which he claimed is a “slush fund” for Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

“The United States looks forward to watching each corner of this sordid triangle of terror fall: in Havana, in Caracas, and in Managua,” Bolton said in South Florida, which is home to many thousands of exiles and immigrants from the three countries.

He said Obama administration policies had given the Cuban government “political cover to expand its malign influence” across the region, including in Venezuela. Cuba has trained Venezuelan security forces to repress civilians and support Maduro, Bolton said, calling Maduro “quite simply a Cuban puppet.”

Bolton’s pledge to “never, ever abandon” the people of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua in their fight for freedom also might ring hollow in light of the historical events he sought to highlight at the event hosted by the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association.

Many Cuban Americans to this day resent the late President John F. Kennedy for not deploying American troops at a critical moment in the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Meanwhile, with the high stakes of the Cold War a fading memory, some critics of U.S. policy toward Venezuela worry the Trump administration’s stance that all options are on the table, including a military one, to oust Maduro is an empty threat that will only serve to ignite the streets and geopolitical tensions with Russia, compounding the misery of Venezuelan citizens.

“Honoring one of U.S.′ greatest military fiascos from 60 years back suggests U.S. policy to Latin America owes more now to a perverse Cold War nostalgia than practical benefits for people of the region,” said Ivan Briscoe, the Latin American director for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank.

Collin Laverty, president of Cuba Educational Travel, said in a statement that the measures on remittances and travel threaten the economic survival of Cuban families and the viability of thousands of independent small businesses allowed to operate since 2010 under reforms implemented by former President Raúl Castro.

“The only winners here are a handful of members of Congress and those stuck in the past that support them,” Laverty said. “The losers are millions of Cubans on and off the island and the overwhelming majority of Americans that support engagement with Cuba.”

Many of the 400 or so who paid $100 to attend Bolton’s speech at the Biltmore in South Florida were of Cuban descent. Rafael UsaTorres, a member of the 2506 Brigade that worked for the CIA at the time of the invasion, said he has faith the measures will bring down Díaz-Canel’s government, though he wished it had been done sooner.

“Today is a big day,” the 78-year-old said. “But I feel very sad — too many years waiting.”

Others said Washington isn’t going far enough. Manuel Menendez-Pou, 79, said the Cuban government had confiscated some $63 million in property from his family, once one of the wealthiest on the island, mainly in the sugar industry.

“The problem is not the money,” Menendez-Pou, also a former member of the brigade, said minutes before the speech. “They stole our life.”

In Havana, homemaker Odalis Salazar worried about the future of remittances she receives from two children living abroad, including one in the United States.

“It hurts everyone and Trump is absolutely criminal, because he knows that ... (the remittances) help us a lot,” Salazar said. “We Cubans have families there and we get by largely with that help that they send us.”

Pompeo’s decision on allowing lawsuits lets Americans, including Cubans who became naturalized citizens, sue companies that operate out of hotels, tobacco factories, distilleries and other properties nationalized after Fidel Castro took power.

Pompeo said he would not renew a bar on litigation that has been in place for two decades, meaning lawsuits can be filed starting May 2, when the current suspension expires.

The Justice Department has certified roughly 6,000 claims as having merit, said Kimberly Breier, the top U.S. diplomat for the Americas. Those claims have an estimated value of $8 billion: $2 billion in property and $6 billion in interest, she said.

An additional 200,000 uncertified claims could run into the tens of billions of dollars, she said.

Breier said there would be no exceptions to the policy, but foreign companies “will have nothing to worry about if they are not operating on properties taken from Americans.”

Nonetheless, companies in the European Union and Canadian companies stand to lose tens of billions in compensation and interest, and the decision prompted stern responses and vows to protect businesses from lawsuits.

In a statement, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland called the decision to remove the longstanding waivers “regrettable” and said it “can only lead to an unnecessary spiral of legal actions.”

In Spain, which has large investments in hotels and other tourism-related ventures on the island, a senior government official said Madrid would ask the EU to mount a challenge at the World Trade Organization.

“The extraterritorial application of the U.S. embargo is illegal and violates international law,” said Alberto Navarro, EU ambassador to Cuba.

___

Associated Press writers Michael Weissenstein in Miami, Andrea Rodríguez in Havana and Aritz Parra in Madrid contributed to this report.

Russia And Cuba Vow To Expand Their 'Strategic' Ties

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, exchange documents after their talks in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Friday, Nov. 2, 2018. Diaz-Canel is in Moscow for three days of talks aimed to expanding cooperation between the two nations. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

BY VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV

MOSCOW (AP) — The leaders of Russia and Cuba vowed Friday to expand what they called their “strategic” ties and urged the United States to lift its blockade of Cuba.

In a joint statement issued after their talks, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Cuban counterpart Miguel Diaz-Canel denounced U.S. “interference into domestic affairs of sovereign nations” and spoke in support of closer integration between Russia and Latin American nations.

Diaz-Canel, who replaced Raul Castro in April in a historic changing of the guard in Cuba, hailed the “brotherly” ties between Russia and Cuba and invited Putin to visit next year.


During the Cold War, the Soviet Union poured billions of dollars in supplies and subsidies into Cuba, its staunchest Latin American ally. But ties withered after the 1991 Soviet collapse as Russia, hit by an economic meltdown, withdrew its economic aid to Cuba.

Putin, who visited Cuba in 2000 and 2014, has sought to revive ties with the old Caribbean ally.

Following the Kremlin talks, Putin and Diaz-Canel vowed to expand political, economic and military ties between Russia and Cuba.

Cuba’s defense minister, Leopoldo Cintra Frias, is set to visit Moscow later this month to discuss specific plans for military-technical cooperation.

Sergei Storchak, Russia’s deputy finance minister, said Russia could offer Cuba a 38 million-euro ($43 million) loan to help fund its military modernization.

Soviet warships and military aircraft regularly used Cuban bases during the Cold War, and Cuba hosted a Soviet electronic spying outpost in Lourdes, near Havana.

Putin closed the Lourdes intelligence facility in 2001 as he sought to establish warmer ties with the United States during his first presidential term. But U.S.-Russian relations have steadily worsened, plunging to post-Cold War lows after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, and the Kremlin has sought to rebuild ties with Cuba.

In remarks apparently directed at the United States, Putin and Diaz-Canel criticized the use of unilateral sanctions as a destabilizing factor in global affairs.

The U.S. economic embargo, initially imposed in 1958 and subsequently expanded, has remained in place. Russia, in its turn, faced an array of crippling U.S. and EU sanctions over the annexation of Crimea and its support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Putin said he and Diaz-Canel discussed expanding economic ties, including Russia’s participation in the modernization of Cuban railways.

The Russian leader also mentioned Russian companies Rosneft and Zarubezhneft tapping for oil off Cuba and a contract for the Inter RAO energy company to build new generator units at a Cuban power plant.

First clues emerge about Cuba's future under new president

Cuba's new president Miguel Diaz-Canel, left, and former president Raul Castro, salutes, after Diaz-Canel was elected as the island nation's new president, at the National Assembly in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, April 19, 2018. Castro left the presidency after 12 years in office when the National Assembly approved Diaz-Canel's nomination as the candidate for the top government position. (Alexandre Meneghini/Pool via AP)

HAVANA (AP) — Miguel Diaz-Canel has been the presumptive next president of Cuba since 2013, when Raul Castro named the laconic former provincial official to the important post of first vice president and lauded him as "neither a novice nor an improviser," high praise in a system dedicated to continuity over all.

Castro said nothing about how a young civilian from outside his family could lead the socialist nation that he and his older brother Fidel created from scratch and ruled with total control for nearly 60 years.

Exiles in Miami said Diaz-Canel would be a figurehead for continued Castro dominance. Cubans on the island speculated about a weak president sharing power with the head of the communist party, or maybe a newly created post of prime minister. No one who knew was talking. And no one who was talking knew.

The first clues to the mystery of Cuba's future power structure were revealed Thursday when Raul Castro handed the presidency to Diaz-Canel, who took office shortly after 9 a.m. when the 604-member National Assembly said 603 of its members had approved the 57-year-old as the sole official candidate for the top government position.

With Castro watching from the audience, Diaz-Canel made clear that for the moment he would defer to the man who founded the Cuban communist system along with his brother. Diaz-Canel said he would retain Castro's Cabinet through at least July, when the National Assembly meets again.

"I confirm to this assembly that Raul Castro, as first secretary of the Communist Party, will lead the decisions about the future of the country," Diaz-Canel said. "Cuba needs him, providing ideas and proposals for the revolutionary cause, orienting and alerting us about any error or deficiency, teaching us, and always ready to confront imperialism."

Perhaps more importantly, Castro's 90-minute valedictory speech offered his first clear plan for a president whom Castro seemed to envision as the heir to near-total control of the country's political system, which in turn dominates virtually every aspect of life in Cuba. Castro said he foresees the white-haired electronics engineer serving two five-year terms as leader of the Cuban government, and taking the helm of the Communist Party, the country's ultimate authority, also for two five-year terms, when Castro leaves the powerful position in 2021.

"From that point on, I will be just another soldier defending this revolution," Castro said. The 86-year-old general broke frequently from his prepared remarks to joke and banter with officials on the dais in the National Assembly, saying he looked forward to having more time to travel the country.

State media struck a similar valedictory tone. The evening newscast played black-and-white footage of Castro as a young revolutionary, with the soundtrack of "The Last Mambi" a song that bids farewell to Castro as a public figure and was written by Raul Torres, a singer who composed a similar homage to Fidel Castro after the revolutionary leader's death in 2016.

The plan laid out by Raul Castro on Thursday would leave Diaz-Canel as the dominant figure in Cuban politics until 2031. "The same thing we're doing with him, he'll have to do with his successor," Castro said. "When his 10 years of service as president of the Council of State and Council of Ministers are over, he'll have three years as first secretary in order to facilitate the transition. This will help us avoid mistakes by his successor, until (Diaz-Canel) retires to take care of the grandchildren he will have then, if he doesn't have them already, or his great-grandchildren."

Diaz-Canel pledged that his priority would be preserving Cuba's communist system while gradually reforming the economy and making the government more responsive to the people. "There's no space here for a transition that ignores or destroys the legacy of so many years of struggle," Diaz-Canel said.

Diaz-Canel said he would work to implement a long-term plan laid out by the National Assembly and Communist Party that would continue allowing the limited growth of private enterprises like restaurants and taxis, while leaving the economy's most important sectors such as energy, mining, telecommunications, medical services and rum- and cigar-production in the hands of the state.

"The people have given this assembly the mandate to provide continuity to the Cuban Revolution during a crucial, historic moment that will be defined by all that we achieve in the advance of the modernization of our social and economic model," Diaz-Canel said.

Cubans said they expected their new president to deliver improvements to the island's economy, which remains stagnant and dominated by inefficient, unproductive state-run enterprises that are unable to provide salaries high enough to cover basic needs. The average monthly pay for state workers is roughly $30 a month.

"I hope that Diaz-Canel brings prosperity," said Richard Perez, a souvenir salesman in Old Havana. "I want to see changes, above all economic changes allowing people to have their own businesses, without the state in charge of so many things."

But in Miami, Cuban-Americans said they didn't expect much from Diaz-Canel. "It's a cosmetic change," said Wilfredo Allen, a 66-year-old lawyer who left Cuba two years after the Castros' 1959 revolution. "The reality is that Raul Castro is still controlling the Communist Party. We are very far from having a democratic Cuba."

After formally taking over from his older brother Fidel in 2008, Raul Castro launched a series of reforms that led to a rapid expansion of Cuba's private sector and burgeoning use of cellphones and the internet. Cuba today has a vibrant real estate market and one of the world's fastest-growing airports. Tourism numbers have more than doubled since Castro and President Barack Obama re-established diplomatic relations in 2015, making Cuba a destination for nearly 5 million visitors a year, despite a plunge in relations under the Trump administration.

Castro's moves to open the economy even further have largely been frozen or reversed as soon as they began to generate conspicuous displays of wealth by the new entrepreneurial class in a country officially dedicated to equality among its citizens. Foreign investment remains anemic and the island's infrastructure is falling deeper into disrepair. The election of President Donald Trump dashed dreams of detente with the U.S., and after two decades of getting Venezuelan subsidies totaling more than $6 billion a year, Cuba's patron has collapsed economically, with no replacement in the wings.

Castro's inability or unwillingness to fix Cuba's structural problems with deep and wide-ranging reforms has many wondering how a successor without Castro's founding-father credentials will manage the country over the next five or 10 years.

"I want the country to advance," said Susel Calzado, a 61-year-old economics professor. "We already have a plan laid out." At the U.S. State Department, spokeswoman Heather Nauert expressed disappointment at the handover, saying Cuban citizens "had no real power to affect the outcome" of what she called the "undemocratic transition" that brought Diaz-Canal to the presidency.

Vice President Mike Pence tweeted at Castro that the U.S. won't rest until Cuba "has free & fair elections, political prisoners are released & the people of Cuba are finally free!" Diaz-Canel first gained prominence in Villa Clara province as the top Communist Party official, a post equivalent to governor. People there describe him as a hard-working, modest-living technocrat dedicated to improving public services. He became higher education minister in 2009 before moving into the vice presidency.

In a video of a Communist Party meeting that inexplicably leaked to the public last year, Diaz-Canel expressed a series of orthodox positions that included somberly pledging to shutter some independent media and labeling some European embassies as outposts of foreign subversion.

But he has also defended academics and bloggers who became targets of hard-liners, leading some to describe him a potential advocate for greater openness in a system intolerant of virtually any criticism or dissent.

International observers and Cubans alike will be scrutinizing every move he makes in coming days and weeks.

Associated Press writer Ben Fox contributed to this report.

Last Cuban Doctor Defectors Arrive In US After Policy Change

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

FEBRUARY 9, 2017

Carlos Ariel Amigo, left, arrives in Miami as part of a group of Cuban doctors who were allowed to enter the United States through Miami International Airport. He and other Cuban doctors arriving in Miami this week under the Cuban Medical Professionals Parole said they’re relieved to be arriving, during an uncertain time for immigrants to the U.S. under President Donald Trump, but concerned about colleagues left behind. The outgoing administration of President Barack Obama cancelled the doctors’ policy on Jan. 12, the same day that it eliminated the more well-known “wet foot, dry foot” measure that gave any Cuban who makes it to U.S. soil a pathway to become a legal resident. (Carl Juste/Miami Herald via AP)





MIAMI (AP) — Yoandri Pavot applied just in time for a visa under a recently scrapped U.S. policy that had long welcomed doctors from Cuba who defected while on assignment in third countries. Pavot and other Cuban doctors arriving this week in Miami under the now canceled policy called the Cuban Medical Professionals Parole said they're relieved to be arriving despite uncertain times for immigrants under the Trump administration. But they're anxious about colleagues left behind.

"I still can't believe it. Pinch me. Pinch me. I can't believe I am here," Pavot, 35, said after arriving Monday at Miami International Airport holding a small American flag. "I wish they would give the ones left behind a chance because they are also fighting for freedom."

The program — begun in 2006 by then President George W. Bush — allowed Cuban doctors, nurses and other medical professionals to defect to the U.S. while on their government's mandatory assignments abroad. Pavot said he had applied after the Cuban government dispatched him to a crime-ridden area of Venezuela, where many co-workers were attacked.

The waning administration of President Barack Obama canceled the doctors' policy Jan. 12. It also eliminated the better-known "wet foot, dry foot" policy that gave any Cuban who makes it to U.S. soil a path to become a legal resident. The moves lined up with Obama's push for a more normalized relationship with communist Cuba.

But doctors who already applied for visas before Jan. 12 are being allowed in, and the final wave of those accepted are arriving on flights to Miami this week, said Julio Cesar Alfonso, director of a nonprofit that helps Cuban doctors resettle in the U.S.

On Monday, a few walked through glass doors past Customs to loud cheers and hugs from close and distant relatives carrying flowers and balloons. They cried and took photos. Alfonso said 20 professionals arrived Monday and more are expected on flights this week.

Some critics of the doctors' policy have said it amounted to a more than decade-long brain drain for Cuba. But proponents said the doctors were forced by the Cuban government to toil overseas under often-grueling conditions and deserved to be liberated.

The repeal of the "wet foot, dry foot" policy was welcomed by many in the Cuban exile community who accused certain recent arrivals of abusing privileges by claiming federal benefits and then traveling back to Cuba. But many of the same criticized the cancellation of the medical defectors program; they're urging the Trump administration to restore it.

Under the policy, qualifying medical professions could immediately apply for work permission and apply for residency after one year. President Donald Trump has not established what, if anything, will change regarding Cuba policy. Press secretary Sean Spicer said last week the administration is reviewing its position with Havana.

Cuba's doctors abroad program has earned praise from the World Health Organization for responding to the Ebola outbreak in Africa and to natural disasters such as Haiti's 2010 earthquake. Yet its critics are fierce.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican U.S. representative born in Cuba, said the Cuban doctors worked under "modern-day indentured servitude" and that the defector program was "undermining the Castro regime by providing an outlet for Cuban doctors to seek freedom from forced labor."

Some critics also say the Cuban government exploits medical professionals abroad by taking away most of the wages paid by foreign governments and using the funds as a source of hard currency for the island.

Alfonso said hundreds of doctors are currently stranded in Colombia, after deserting their missions in Venezuela, and many didn't manage to apply in time. "It's really sad that Obama left that legacy with the Cuban community, favoring the Havana regime and crushing the hopes of a group of professionals who want to be free," he said.

Yerenia Cedeno, a 28-year-old general practitioner, said she deserted her mission in Venezuela because of violence and meager pay that sometimes wasn't enough to buy food. Although she had applied for a visa before Jan. 12, she thought her chances of reaching the U.S. were slim once the program was canceled.

"I am immensely relieved because when we saw the program ended, we lost hope. Then we got the visa, and I was so happy," Cedeno said after arriving at the Miami airport. "We can say that we were saved."

Cuba's Fidel Castro, Who Defied US For 50 years, Dies At 90

ASSOCIATED PRESS

With a shaking voice, President Raul Castro said on state television that his older brother died at 10:29 p.m. Friday. He ended the announcement by shouting the revolutionary slogan: "Toward victory, always!"

Castro's reign over the island-nation 90 miles (145 kilometers) from Florida was marked by the U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. The bearded revolutionary, who survived a crippling U.S. trade embargo as well as dozens, possibly hundreds, of assassination plots, died 10 years after ill health forced him to hand power over to Raul.

Castro overcame imprisonment at the hands of dictator Fulgencio Batista, exile in Mexico and a disastrous start to his rebellion before triumphantly riding into Havana in January 1959 to become, at age 32, the youngest leader in Latin America. For decades, he served as an inspiration and source of support to revolutionaries from Latin America to Africa.

His commitment to socialism was unwavering, though his power finally began to fade in mid-2006 when a gastrointestinal ailment forced him to hand over the presidency to Raul in 2008, provisionally at first and then permanently. His defiant image lingered long after he gave up his trademark Cohiba cigars for health reasons and his tall frame grew stooped.

"Socialism or death" remained Castro's rallying cry even as Western-style democracy swept the globe and other communist regimes in China and Vietnam embraced capitalism, leaving this island of 11 million people an economically crippled Marxist curiosity.

He survived long enough to see Raul Castro negotiate an opening with U.S. President Barack Obama on Dec. 17, 2014, when Washington and Havana announced they would move to restore diplomatic ties for the first time since they were severed in 1961. He cautiously blessed the historic deal with his lifelong enemy in a letter published after a month-long silence. Obama made a historic visit to Havana in March 2016.

Carlos Rodriguez, 15, was sitting in Havana's Miramar neighborhood when he heard that Fidel Castro had died. "Fidel? Fidel?" he said, slapping his head in shock. "That's not what I was expecting. One always thought that he would last forever. It doesn't seem true."

"It's a tragedy," said 22-year-old nurse Dayan Montalvo. "We all grew up with him. I feel really hurt by the news that we just heard." Fidel Castro Ruz was born Aug. 13, 1926, in eastern Cuba's sugar country, where his Spanish immigrant father worked first recruiting labor for U.S. sugar companies and later built up a prosperous plantation of his own.

Castro attended Jesuit schools, then the University of Havana, where he received law and social science degrees. His life as a rebel began in 1953 with a reckless attack on the Moncada military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago. Most of his comrades were killed and Fidel and his brother Raul went to prison.

Fidel turned his trial defense into a manifesto that he smuggled out of jail, famously declaring, "History will absolve me." Freed under a pardon, Castro fled to Mexico and organized a rebel band that returned in 1956, sailing across the Gulf of Mexico to Cuba on a yacht named Granma. After losing most of his group in a bungled landing, he rallied support in Cuba's eastern Sierra Maestra mountains.

Three years later, tens of thousands spilled into the streets of Havana to celebrate Batista's downfall and catch a glimpse of Castro as his rebel caravan arrived in the capital on Jan. 8, 1959. The U.S. was among the first to formally recognize his government, cautiously trusting Castro's early assurances he merely wanted to restore democracy, not install socialism.

Within months, Castro was imposing radical economic reforms. Members of the old government went before summary courts, and at least 582 were shot by firing squads over two years. Independent newspapers were closed and in the early years, homosexuals were herded into camps for "re-education."

In 1964, Castro acknowledged holding 15,000 political prisoners. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled, including Castro's daughter Alina Fernandez Revuelta and his younger sister Juana. Still, the revolution thrilled millions in Cuba and across Latin America who saw it as an example of how the seemingly arrogant Yankees could be defied. And many on the island were happy to see the seizure of property of the landed class, the expulsion of American gangsters and the closure of their casinos.

Castro's speeches, lasting up to six hours, became the soundtrack of Cuban life and his 269-minute speech to the U.N. General Assembly in 1960 set the world body's record for length that still stood more than five decades later.

As Castro moved into the Soviet bloc, Washington began working to oust him, cutting U.S. purchases of sugar, the island's economic mainstay. Castro, in turn, confiscated $1 billion in U.S. assets. The American government imposed a trade embargo, banning virtually all U.S. exports to the island except for food and medicine, and it severed diplomatic ties on Jan. 3, 1961.

On April 16 of that year, Castro declared his revolution to be socialist, and the next day, about 1,400 Cuban exiles stormed the beach at the Bay of Pigs on Cuba's south coast. But the CIA-backed invasion failed.

The debacle forced the U.S. to give up on the idea of invading Cuba, but that didn't stop Washington and Castro's exiled enemies from trying to do him in. By Cuban count, he was the target of more than 630 assassination plots by militant Cuban exiles or the U.S. government.

The biggest crisis of the Cold War between Washington and Moscow exploded on Oct. 22, 1962, when President John F. Kennedy announced there were Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba and imposed a naval blockade of the island. Humankind held its breath, and after a tense week of diplomacy, Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev removed them. Never had the world felt so close to nuclear war.

Castro cobbled revolutionary groups together into the new Cuban Communist Party, with him as first secretary. Labor unions lost the right to strike. The Catholic Church and other religious institutions were harassed. Neighborhood "revolutionary defense committees" kept an eye on everyone.

Castro exported revolution to Latin American countries in the 1960s, and dispatched Cuban troops to Africa to fight Western-backed regimes in the 1970s. Over the decades, he sent Cuban doctors abroad to tend to the poor, and gave sanctuary to fugitive Black Panther leaders from the U.S.

But the collapse of the Soviet bloc ended billions in preferential trade and subsidies for Cuba, sending its economy into a tailspin. Castro briefly experimented with an opening to foreign capitalists and limited private enterprise.

As the end of the Cold War eased global tensions, many Latin American and European countries re-established relations with Cuba. In January 1998, Pope John Paul II visited a nation that had been officially atheist until the early 1990s.

Aided by a tourism boom, the economy slowly recovered and Castro steadily reasserted government control, stifling much of the limited free enterprise tolerated during harder times. As flamboyant as he was in public, Castro tried to lead a discreet private life. He and his first wife, Mirta Diaz Balart, had one son before divorcing in 1956. Then, for more than four decades, Castro had a relationship with Dalia Soto del Valle. They had five sons together and were said to have married quietly in 1980.

By the time Castro resigned 49 years after his triumphant arrival in Havana, he was the world's longest ruling head of government, aside from monarchs. In retirement, Castro voiced unwavering support as Raul slowly but deliberately enacted sweeping changes to the Marxist system he had built.

His longevity allowed the younger brother to consolidate control, perhaps lengthening the revolution well past both men's lives. In February 2013, Raul announced that he would retire as president in 2018 and named newly minted Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel as his successor.

"I'll be 90 years old soon," Castro said at an April 2016 Communist Party congress where he made his most extensive public appearance in years. "Soon I'll be like all the others. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain as proof that on this planet, if one works with fervor and dignity, they can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need and that need to be fought for without ever giving up."

Cuba's government announced that Castro's ashes would be interred on Dec. 4 in the eastern city of Santiago that was a birthplace of his revolution. That will follow more than a week of honors, including a nearly nationwide caravan retracing, in reverse, his tour from Santiago to Havana with the triumph of the revolution in 1959.

Associated Press writer Michael Weissenstein reported this story in Havana and Peter Orsi reported from Mexico City. AP writer Anita Snow in Mexico City and AP news researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mweissenstein

Peter Orsi on Twitter: at www.twitter.com/Peter_Orsi

Fidel Castro Gives Rare Speech Saying He Will Soon Die

Fidel Castro sits as he clasps hands with his brother, Cuban President Raul Castro, right, and second secretary of the Central Committee, Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, moments before the playing of the Communist party hymn during the closing ceremonies of the 7th Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, April 19, 2016. Fidel Castro formally stepped down in 2008 after suffering gastrointestinal ailments and public appearances have been increasingly unusual in recent years. (Ismael Francisco/Cubadebate via AP)



HAVANA (AP) — Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro delivered a valedictory speech on Tuesday to the Communist Party he put in power a half-century ago, telling party members he would soon die and exhorting them to help his ideas survive.

"I'll be 90 years old soon," Castro said in his most extensive public appearance in years. "Soon I'll be like all the others. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain as proof on this planet that if they are worked at with fervor and dignity, they can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need, and we need to fight without truce to obtain them."

Castro spoke as the government announced that his brother Raul will retain the Cuban Communist Party's highest post alongside his hardline second-in-command. That announcement and Fidel Castro's speech together delivered a resounding message that the island's revolutionary generation will remain in control even as its members age and die, relations with the United States are normalized, and popular dissatisfaction grows over the country's economic performance.

Government news sites said Raul Castro, 84, would remain the party's first secretary and Jose Ramon Machado Ventura would hold the post of second secretary for at least part of a second five-year term. Castro currently is both president and first secretary. The decision means he could hold a Communist Party position at least as powerful as the presidency even after stepping down from the government post in 2018.

Machado Ventura, 85, is known as an enforcer of Communist orthodoxy and voice against some of the country's biggest recent economic reforms who fought alongside Castro and his brother, revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, to overthrow dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

Fidel Castro made his rare appearance at the Communist Party congress to rousing shouts of "Fidel!" according to state media that showed a delayed, edited broadcast of the day's events. Government-run television showed rare images of the 89-year-old leader seated at the dais in Havana's Convention Palace, dressed in a plaid shirt and sweat top and speaking to the crowd in a strong if occasionally trembling voice, pausing occasionally to consult a written version of his speech.

Raul Castro's decision to remain in power alongside a deputy even he has criticized for rigidity capped a four-day meeting of the Communist Party notable for its secrecy and apparent lack of discussion about substantive new reforms to Cuba's stagnant centrally planned economy. Even high-ranking government officials had speculated in the weeks leading up the Seventh Party Congress that Machado Ventura could be replaced by a younger face associated with free-market reforms started by Castro himself.

The party congress also chose the powerful 15-member Political Bureau, mostly devoid of fresh faces associated with the party's younger generations. Five members were new but none are high-profile advocates for reform.

Esteban Morales, an intellectual and party member who had complained about the secrecy of the congress, said he was gratified by Raul Castro's decision to submit the guidelines approved by the 1,000 delegates to an ex-post-facto public discussion and approval. He said he expected the first and second secretaries to remain in their positions only until Castro leaves the presidency in 2018, after what Morales called a necessary transition period.

A physician by training, Machado Ventura organized a network of rebel field hospitals and clinics in the Sierra Maestra mountains in the 1950s, participating in combat as both a medic and a fighter under Castro in the revolution against Batista. After the revolution he became health minister and later assumed more political roles within the Communist Party. He also sat on the powerful Politburo starting in 1975.

Machado Ventura was vice president from Raul Castro's ascent in 2008 until 2013, when the post was taken by Miguel Diaz-Canel, widely seen as the country's likely next president. Machado Ventura was named second secretary in 2011 in a move seen as a way to placate and empower party hardliners.

Machado Ventura was often employed by Raul Castro and his brother Fidel to impose order in areas seen as lacking discipline, most recently touring the country to crack down on private sellers of fruits, vegetables and other agricultural goods. While Raul Castro opened Cuba's faltering agricultural economy to private enterprise, the government blames a new class of private farmers and produce merchants for a rise in prices.

Machado Ventura has been the public face of crackdown on what the government labels profiteering. "He's demanding! He's very demanding!" Castro said of his deputy in 2008. "To be sincere, sometimes I've said it personally, he doesn't use the best techniques in being demanding."

Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein

Fidel Castro To Obama: We Don't Need Your 'Presents'

BY MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN, ASSOCIATED PRESS

MONDAY, MARCH 28, 2016

Cuba's leader Fidel Castro meets Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, left, in Havana, Cuba. In a text published on Monday, March 28, 2016, Castro said that "We do not need for the empire to give us anything," in reference to the recent visit by U.S. President Barack Obama to Cuba.


HAVANA, CUBA (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — Fidel Castro responded Monday to President Barack Obama's historic trip to Cuba with a long, bristling letter recounting the history of U.S. aggression against Cuba, writing that "we don't need the empire to give us any presents."

The 1,500-word letter in state media titled "Brother Obama" was Castro's first response to the president's three-day visit last week, in which the American president said he had come to bury the two countries' history of Cold War hostility. Obama did not meet with the 89-year-old Fidel Castro on the trip but met several times with his 84-year-old brother Raul Castro, the current Cuban president.

Obama's visit was intended to build irreversible momentum behind his opening with Cuba and to convince the Cuban people and the Cuban government that a half-century of U.S. attempts to overthrow the Communist government had ended, allowing Cuban to reform its economy and political system without the threat of U.S. interference.

Fidel Castro writes of Obama: "My modest suggestion is that he reflects and doesn't try to develop theories about Cuban politics." Castro, who led Cuba for decades before handing power to his brother in 2008, was legendary for his hours-long, all-encompassing speeches. His letter reflects that style, presenting a sharp contrast with Obama's tightly focused speech in Havana. Castro's letter opens with descriptions of environmental abuse under the Spaniards and reviews the historical roles of Cuban independence heroes Jose Marti, Antonio Maceo and Maximo Gomez.

Castro then goes over crucial sections of Obama's speech line by line, engaging in an ex-post-facto dialogue with the American president with pointed critiques of perceived slights and insults, including Obama's failure to give credit to indigenous Cubans and Castro's prohibition of racial segregation after coming to power in 1959.

Quoting Obama's declaration that "it is time, now, for us to leave the past behind," the man who shaped Cuba during the second half of the 20th century writes that "I imagine that any one of us ran the risk of having a heart attack on hearing these words from the President of the United States."

Castro then returns to a review of a half-century of U.S. aggression against Cuba. Those events include the decades-long U.S. trade embargo against the island; the 1961 Bay of Pigs attack and the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner backed by exiles who took refuge in the U.S.

He ends with a dig at the Obama administration's drive to increase business ties with Cuba. The Obama administration says re-establishing economic ties with the U.S. will be a boon for Cuba, whose centrally planned economy has struggled to escape from over-dependence on imports and a chronic shortage of hard currency.

The focus on U.S-Cuba business ties appears to have particularly rankled Castro, who nationalized U.S. companies after coming to power in 1959 and establishing the communist system into which his brother is now introducing gradual market-based reforms.

"No one should pretend that the people of this noble and selfless country will renounce its glory and its rights," Fidel Castro wrote. "We are capable of producing the food and material wealth that we need with work and intelligence of our people."


Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein

American Muslims Decry Cruz Community Surveillance Comment

ASSOCIATED PRESS  

MARCH 23, 2016

Nas Juma, 22, left, and Omar Ghanim, 23, enjoy Lebanese pizza at Forn Al Hara restaurant in Orange County's Little Arabia in Anaheim, Calif., Tuesday, March 22, 2016. They discussed remarks made by GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz about Muslim Americans in the wake of terrorist attacks in Belgium. Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Tuesday that surveillance in Muslim neighborhoods in the U.S. must be intensified following the deadly bombings at Brussels, while rival Donald Trump suggested torturing a suspect in last year's Paris attacks would have prevented the carnage.


DEARBORN, MICH.. (AP) — Some American Muslims feel they are once again on the defensive following presidential candidate Ted Cruz's suggestion that Muslim-dominated neighborhoods should be subject to increased surveillance in the wake of the deadly attacks in Brussels.

"We're targeted even if it's not our fault," said Omar Ghanim, 23, eating Lebanese pizza Tuesday at a suburban strip mall in Orange County's Little Arabia neighborhood, just miles from Disneyland in California.

Ghanim said Islamic State doesn't represent his faith. "They don't follow the Islamic rules or anything Islam," he said. "We're a peaceful people. We're not violent." Cruz said Tuesday that law enforcement should be empowered to "patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized." Echoing earlier statements from rival Donald Trump, Cruz also said the U.S. should stop the flow of refugees from countries where the Islamic State militant group has a significant presence. IS claimed responsibility for the attacks at the Brussels airport and a subway station that killed dozens Tuesday and wounded many more.

Muslims across the country and groups including the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Anti-Defamation League condemned Cruz's statements. Many said the remarks were part of a disturbing trend: For months, the Islamic extremist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, and the intensifying rhetoric of the presidential campaign, have ratcheted up animosity against American Muslims.

"We have the same ideology as mainstream Americans," said Osman Ahmed, who lives in a Somali neighborhood in Minneapolis. Surveillance of a Muslim community neighborhood "will send a message that Muslim-Americans are not a part of American society ... and that's the message that terrorism groups are willing to hear."

Trump, who has proposed a temporary ban on foreign Muslims entering the U.S., praised Cruz's plan as a "good idea" that he supports "100 percent" in an interview with CNN. The Republican front-runner also intensified his past calls for the U.S. to engage in harsher interrogation techniques, arguing that Belgium could have prevented the bombings had it tortured a suspect in last year's Paris attacks who was arrested last week.

Speaking Tuesday in New York, Cruz praised the city police department's former program of conducting surveillance in Muslim neighborhoods. He called for its reinstatement and said it could be a model for police departments nationwide.

"New Yorkers want a safe and secure America," Cruz said. "New Yorkers saw firsthand the tragic consequences of radical Islamic terrorism." After the 9/11 attacks, the New York Police Department used its intelligence division to cultivate informants in Muslim communities. In a series of articles, The Associated Press revealed that authorities had infiltrated dozens of mosques and Muslim student groups and investigated hundreds of them.

The program was disbanded amid complaints of religious and racial profiling. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, said the call for surveillance sends "an alarming message to American Muslims who increasingly fear for their future in this nation."

The Anti-Defamation League, a U.S. group that battles anti-Semitism worldwide, said Cruz's plan harkens back to the relocation of Japanese-Americans to internment camps during World War II. Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, said she fears for armed groups "who are emboldened by the commentary from people like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump."

"What's scaring me more is the kind of potential fueling of these vigilantes and people who might want to take up arms and go patrol Muslim neighborhoods," she said. The Detroit suburb of Dearborn is widely known as the hometown of Henry Ford, who hired Arabs and Muslims in the early days of the Ford Motor Co. and helped create what is now one of the nation's largest and most concentrated communities of residents who trace their roots to the Middle East.

Kebba Kah, a 46-year-old Ford employee who was entering a mosque in Dearborn for evening prayers Tuesday, said the bombings in Brussels were "a very terrible thing," and insisted that such attacks are roundly rejected by all Muslims save for "a few radical groups."


Associated Press writers Gillian Flaccus in Anaheim, California; Vivian Salama, Jill Colvin, Steve Peoples, Ken Thomas, Lisa Lerer and Alan Fram in Washington; Jonathan Lemire and Deepti Hajela in New York; and Steve Karnowski and Amy Forliti in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

Follow Jeff Karoub on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jeffkaroub . His work can be found at http://bit.ly/1N7ImDc .

5 Decades Later, US-Cuba Diplomatic Ties Restored

Members of the media cover workers from Eastern Shores Flagpoles raising a flagpole at the Cuban Interest Section in Washington in preparation for re-opening of embassies in Havana and Washington. Cuba's blue, red and white-starred flag is set to fly Monday, July 20 outside the country's diplomatic mission in the United States for the first time since the countries severed ties in 1961. (AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States and Cuba restored full diplomatic relations Monday after more than five decades of frosty relations rooted in the Cold War.

The new era began with little fanfare when an agreement between the two nations to resume normal ties on July 20 came into force just after midnight Sunday and the diplomatic missions of each country were upgraded from interests sections to embassies. When clocks struck 12:00 in Washington and Havana, they tolled a knell for policy approaches spawned and hardened over the five decades since President John F. Kennedy first tangled with youthful revolutionary Fidel Castro over Soviet expansion in the Americas.

Without ceremony in the pre-dawn hours, maintenance hung the Cuban flag in the lobby of the State Department alongside those of other nations with which the U.S. has diplomatic relations. The historic shift will be publicly memorialized later Monday when Cuban officials formally inaugurate their embassy in Washington and Cuba's blue, red and white-starred flag will fly for the first time since the countries severed ties in 1961. Secretary of State John Kerry will then meet his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez, and address reporters at a joint news conference.

The U.S. Interests Section in Havana plans to announce its upgrade to embassy status in a written statement on Monday, but the Stars and Stripes will not fly at the mission until Kerry visits in August for a ceremonial flag-raising.

Shortly after midnight, the Cuban Interests Section in Washington switched its Twitter account to say "embassy," one of a series of similar changes being made to the two country's social media accounts.

In Havana, the U.S. Interests Section uploaded a new profile picture to its Facebook account that says US EMBASSY CUBA. And, Conrad Tribble, the deputy chief of mission for the United States in Havana, tweeted: "Just made first phone call to State Dept. Ops Center from United States Embassy Havana ever. It didn't exist in Jan 1961."

And yet, though normalization has taken center stage in the U.S.-Cuba relationship, there remains a deep ideological gulf between the nations and many issues still to resolve. Among them: thorny disputes such as over mutual claims for economic reparations, Havana's insistence on the end of the 53-year-old trade embargo and U.S. calls for Cuba to improve on human rights and democracy. Some U.S. lawmakers, including several prominent Republican presidential candidates, have vowed not to repeal the embargo and pledged to roll back Obama's moves on Cuba.

Still, Monday's events cap a remarkable change of course in U.S. policy toward the communist island under President Barack Obama, who has sought rapprochement with Cuba since he first took office and has progressively loosened restrictions on travel and remittances to the island.

Obama's efforts at engagement were frustrated for years by Cuba's imprisonment of U.S. Agency for International Development contractor Alan Gross on espionage charges. But months of secret negotiations led in December to Gross's release, along with a number of political prisoners in Cuba and the remaining members of a Cuban spy ring jailed in the United States. On Dec. 17, Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced they would resume full diplomatic relations.

Declaring the longstanding policy a failure that had not achieved any of its intended results, Obama declared that the U.S. could not keep doing the same thing and expect a change. Thus, he said work would begin apace on normalization.

That process dragged on until the U.S. removed Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in late May and then bogged down over issues of U.S. diplomats' access to ordinary Cubans. On July 1, however, the issues were resolved and the U.S. and Cuba exchanged diplomatic notes agreeing that the date for the restoration of full relations would be July 20.

"It's a historic moment," said longtime Cuban diplomat and analyst Carlos Alzugaray. "The significance of opening the embassies is that trust and respect that you can see, both sides treating the other with trust and respect," he said. "That doesn't mean there aren't going to be conflicts — there are bound to be conflicts — but the way that you treat the conflict has completely changed."

Cuba's ceremony at the stately 16th Street mansion in Washington that has been operating as an interests section under the auspices of the Swiss embassy will be attended by some 500 guests, including a 30-member delegation of diplomatic, cultural and other leaders from the Caribbean nation, headed by Foreign Minister Rodriguez.

The U.S. will be represented at the event by Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson, who led U.S. negotiators in six months of talks leading to the July 1 announcement, and Jeffrey DeLaurentis, the chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana who will now become charge d'affaires.

Although the Interests Section in Havana won't see the pomp and circumstance of a flag-raising on Monday, workers there have already drilled holes on the exterior to hang signage flown in from the U.S., and arranged to print new business cards and letterhead that say "Embassy" instead of "Interests Section." What for years was a lonely flagpole outside the glassy six-story edifice on Havana's seafront Malecon boulevard recently got a rehab, complete with a paved walkway.

Every day for the last week, employees have been hanging hand-lettered signs on the fence counting down, in Spanish, to Monday: "In 6 days we will become an embassy!" and so on. Both interests sections have technically operated as part of Switzerland's embassies in Washington and Havana. The Swiss also were caretakers for the former American Embassy and ambassador's residence from 1961 to 1977, when the U.S. had no diplomatic presence in the country.

Orsi reported from Havana.

Castro: This Pope's So Impressive, I Might Return To Church

Pope Francis meets Cuban President Raul Castro during a private audience at the Vatican, Sunday, May 10, 2015. Cuban President Raul Castro has been welcomed at the Vatican by Pope Francis, who played a key role in the breakthrough between Washington and Havana aimed at restoring U.S.-Cuban diplomatic ties.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Cuban President Raul Castro paid a call on Pope Francis at the Vatican Sunday to thank him for working for Cuban-US detente and later said he is so impressed by the pontiff he is considering a return to the Catholic church's fold.

"Bienvenido!" Francis said in his native Spanish, welcoming Castro to his studio near the Vatican public audience hall. The Cuban president, bowing his head, gripped Francis' hand with both of his, and the two men began private talks. The meeting lasted nearly an hour, as the Argentine-born Francis and Castro spoke in their native Spanish.

Francis will visit Cuba in September en route to the United States. After leaving the Vatican, Castro, the brother of Fidel, the revolutionary leader who brought the Communists to power in Cuba, gushed with praise for Francis.

The pontiff "is a Jesuit, and I, in some way, am too," Castro said at a news conference. "I always studied at Jesuit schools." "When the pope goes to Cuba in September, I promise to go to all his Masses, and with satisfaction," Castro said at a news conference at the office of Italian Premier Matteo Renzi, whom he met with after the Vatican talks.

"I read all the speeches of the pope, his commentaries, and if the pope continues this way, I will go back to praying and go back to the church, and I'm not joking," he said. It was a startling assertion for the leader of a Communist country, whose crackdown on dissidents in the past had drawn sharp Vatican criticism.

"I am from the Cuban Communist Party, that doesn't allow (religious) believers, but now we are allowing it, it's an important step," Castro said. Speaking about Francis, Castro said he has been "very impressed by his wisdom, his modesty, and all his virtues that we know he has."

Castro had already publicly thanked Francis for helping to bring Havana and Washington closer together after decades of U.S. government policy of strict isolation of the Communist-ruled Caribbean island. On Sunday, he stepped up his praise on Francis' push for the two nations to put enmity aside and work for reconciliation for the benefit of Americans and Cubans.

As he took his leave from the Vatican, Castro told journalists, "I thanked the pope for what he did." Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the president also "laid out to the pope the sentiments of the Cuban people in the wait and preparation for his upcoming visit to the island in September."

After his meeting with Renzi, Castro expressed hope that his country would quickly see more fruits of the thaw between Cuba and the United States. "Maybe the (U.S.) Senate will take us off the list of terrorist nations" soon, Castro told reporters.

Francis gave Castro a medal depicting St. Martin of Tours, known for caring for the destitute. "With his mantle he covers the poor," Francis told Castro, saying more efforts on behalf of the poor are needed.

Fidel Castro met with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in 1996. That encounter helped pave the way for John Paul's 1998 pilgrimage to Cuba, the first visit by a pontiff to the island. John Paul was also eager for Cuba to grant more visas for foreign priests to bolster the dwindling corps of clergy on the island.

The Vatican's general policy of opposing economic sanctions as a foreign policy tool carries appeal for Cuban leaders and people, after decades under a U.S. economic embargo. With the Vatican keen on protecting the interests of its Catholic followers under Cuban Communist rule, Pope Benedict XVI also visited the island.

Castro told reporters that "we are trying to carry forward improvements of our political, social and cultural system. But it's very difficult to do it without causing shocks, without leaving some in the street."

He came to Rome on his way back from celebrations in Moscow of the 70th anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany in World War II.

Follow Frances D'Emilio on twitter at www.twitter.com/fdemilio