The LAWG Cuba Team wanted to let you know about a great series events that will take place here in Washington, DC sponsored by the International Committee to Free the Cuban Five.
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We’re 59 strong!
Due to your action/emails/phone calls we have 59 signatures from House representatives urging President Obama to support travel to Cuba by granting general licenses for ALL current categories of travel.
By eliminating the laborious license application process, especially for people-to-people groups, that is managed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the majority of the bureaucratic red tape that holds up licensable travel to Cuba would disappear and actually facilitate what the President wanted to see in 2011, liberalized travel regulations.
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April 27, 2013, will mark the one-year anniversary of the domestic terrorist attack on my offices in Coral Gables, Florida. Three incidiary devices were put inside my office in the pre-dawn hours of the morning. The effects were total destruction; everything was reduced to ashes. As I watched the terrorst act in Boston, I could not help but find similarities but also differences in comparing it to my office fire bombing. Let me be clear, I am in no way equating the two acts, as the one in Boston was of much more significance and caused more destruction to the people, the city, and our country. But here is what I learned. Both bombings, Boston and my office, were carried out because of hate. I was lucky that no one died at my office, although the potential was there...
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For Immediate Release: April 26th 2013
On Friday, April 26, 2013, the Latin America Working Group delivered a petition to Secretary of State John Kerry asking him to remove Cuba from the State Department’s list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. The petition, launched in February, has over 8,000 signatures and will continue to collect signatures through the summer. See petiton here.
The petition was addressed to Raymond McGrath, (Coordinator of Cuban Affairs, Department of State), Ricardo Zuniga, (National Security Council, Western Hemisphere Division), and President Barack Obama.
As the State Department may release its list of state sponsors of terrorism on April 30th, this petition is very timely. The continued presence of Cuba on the list symbolizes everything that’s wrong with our approach to Cuba. It’s based on a myth (that Cuban sponsors terrorist groups); it reinforces Cold War-era prejudices (that Cuba is an “enemy” who we must isolate and oppose); it helps lock our foreign policy in stone. It prevents the United States from taking sensible steps toward normalizing relations with Cuba.
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She has been named everything from the "princess of technological communication" and the "most famous living Cuban not named Castro" to simply "Cuba's dissident blogger" in an array of headlines in newspapers across the nation from the Miami Herald to the New York Times. Bluntly said, if you follow Cuba news and have not heard the name, "Yoani Sanchez," you must be living under a rock. Regardless of your opinion of Yoani Sanchez, whether you think she's the greatest thing since sliced bread and "the voice of Cubans on the island," or think she's trying to milk her fifteen minutes of fame, she has elevated the media's attention to the broken U.S. relationship with Cuba, which is a step in the right direction, period.
 Marco Rubio, Yoani Sanchez and Bob Menendez in Washington, D.C. Photo: Office of Sen. Marco Rubio
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Remember in 2011 when we convinced President Obama to issue an executive order that liberalized the United States' Cuba travel regulations? This action expanded general licenses for academic and religious travel and re-instated specific licenses for people-to-people travel. Well, we want to push the envelope even further this time and see President Obama grant general licenses for ALL purposeful categories of travel, doing away with the laborious license application process through the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). This would eliminate the majority of the bureaucratic red tape that prevents licensable travel to Cuba from actually happening. Representative Sam Farr (D-CA 20th) is leading this charge by circulating a "Dear Colleague" letter to members of the House of Representatives, asking them to join him in signing a letter to the President asking just that.
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One of the biggest complaints about the Cuban government from the exile community is that it “lacks transparency.” During a presentation given at American University by Dr. Jose R. Cabañas, the current Cuban Chief of the Cuban Interests Section (aka Ambassador) to the United States, it is clear that this new blueprint for economic reform in Cuba is quite the contrary, and actually very transparent. The “Proyecto de lineamientos de la política económica y social del partido y la revolución,” (Communist Party’s Policy Guidelines for Social and Economic Reform) simply referenced as the “lineamientos” (policy guidelines), is essentially a rubric of reforms that have been proposed and approved by the Cuban National Assembly. There are over 300 reforms that have been approved and are now in the implementation phases. Some of these significant changes include the expansion of the private business sector, legalizing the sale of homes and automobiles and a implementing a less bureaucratic migration policy...
 Cuban Ambassador Jose R. Cabañas Photo Credit: American University
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These remarks were originally presented at a congressional briefing on March 20th, 2013 titled “The New Miami-Cuba Reality: Is It a Game Changer?” This briefing by Cuban Americans from south Florida discussed the new Miami-Havana reality -- and why the U.S. and Cuban governments must seize the moment to start talking about solving their myriad bilateral disagreements.
In 2002, I participated in an exchange program organized by Silvia Wilhelm of Puentes Cubanos, which consisted of a small group of Cuban-Americans (all from Miami) and an equal number of Cuban counterparts in a weeklong intensive encounter at the University of Havana. There, we debated, discussed, expressed and exchanged ideas about what being Cuban meant to each one of us present. The focus on cultural identity and all the complex emotional issues it brought to the fore had far reaching consequences for everyone involved. In my case, this experience marked a before and after and one that has driven the thrust of much of my subsequent personal and professional endeavors.
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In 2006, the World Wildlife Fund declared that Cuba is the only country in the world that qualifies as developing sustainably. I imagine that this may come as a shock to some people, who, when they think of Cuba, imagine old cars from the 1950s on the roads, crowded city blocks in Havana, or retrograde political leaders and systems that surely couldn't be so modern as to incorporate eco-friendly policies around climate change. However, once you know a little bit more about the history of Cuba, it makes perfect sense that this small country would be the only one around the globe whose ecological footprint isn't far outreaching its development index.
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Francisco Gonzalez Aruca – Rest in Peace. The Latin America Working Group’s Cuba team extends sincere sympathy to family, friends, and colleagues of Francisco Aruca on his passing on March 6, 2013. Mr. Aruca died unexpectedly of a heart attack in his sleep in Denver, Colorado, where he lived. He was 72 years old. You may read the post sent out today by Progreso Weekly announcing Mr. Aruca’s passing, here...
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