Vol. 18, No. 3 March 2010 www.cubanews.com In the News One year later, Obama’s Cuba initiatives Facebook for everyone yield mixed results; nothing new likely Obama loosens regs on instant messag- BY ANA RADELAT But Havana has had a real problem with ing, Web technology to Cuba .......Page 4 t’s been nearly a year since President Obama Obama’s effort to bring Cuba’s citizens into the turned his attention toward Cuba with a ser- information age. And the president’s much- ies of modest initiatives, but they have failed hyped effort to ease restrictions on U.S. tele- Going backwards? I communications firms hoping to do business in to thaw relations with Havana. And new policy Analyst argues U.S. policy is taking steps Cuba has also failed to interest that industry. changes from the Obama administration aren’t in the wrong direction ..................Page 6 In September, the White House issued a new expected anytime soon. general license that allowed representatives of State Department spokeswoman Gini Staab U.S. telecom companies to visit Cuba to negoti- Sweet dreams told CubaNews in late February “there are no ate deals. But Obama’s initiative largely restricts 2010 sugar harvest unlikely to reach re- other initiatives in the works that I know of.” those entities to making deals with non-Cuban One year ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clin- gime’s goal of 1.4 million tons .....Page 7 companies. It also leaves in place a regulation ton promised a review of Cuba. But that propos- that bans U.S. firms from establishing facilities al has been put on indefinite hold, said a State in Cuba or exporting technology to the island Newsmakers Department official who asked not to be named. except for cellphones distributed to individuals. Vicki Huddleston, ex-chief of the U.S. In- Meanwhile, the small steps Obama took in 2009 Those restrictions — and Cuba’s clear signal terests Section in Cuba, pushes her new to change Cuba policy have had mixed results. that it doesn’t want the United States to inter- While Cuba has said Obama’s initiatives are fere with the flow of information on the island — book, “Learning to Salsa” .............Page 8 meaningless, it clearly benefits from a dramatic have dampened the U.S. telecom industry’s jump in the flow of hard currency resulting from enthusiasm for doing business with Cuba. Reporter’s notebook a boost in U.S. exile travel and remittances. See Obama, page 2 What it’s really like to be a foreign corre- spondent in Havana .......................Page 9 Gross family takes its campaign public; All aboard! Special 3-page report examines the sorry Congress urges jailed citizen’s release state of Cuba’s railway infrastructure and BY LARRY LUXNER what’s being done to fix it ..........Page 10 concerned that his health has recently deterio- he name Orlando Zapata Tamayo was rated. I am increasingly worried about the psy- Business briefs flashed all around the world after the out- chological trauma he might suffer due to his T spoken political dissident died following imprisonment. Lastly, but not less important, his A hotel in Shanghai, a bridge in Vietnam; an 83-day hunger strike in a Cuban jail. 86-year-old mother’s health has deteriorated sig- urban farm project expanded .....Page 14 Tragic though his death was, it’s another pri- nificantly since Alan’s arrest. We are afraid soner — U.S. citizen Alan Gross — whose fate is something might happen to her before Alan Hope for Mariel more likely to determine the immediate future comes home. Every day he is apart from us, it of relations between Washington and Havana. gets harder and harder.” Brazil’s Odebrecht seeks to convert Mar- For three months, the 60-year-old Maryland Ben Gross, who lives in Wynnewood, Pa., is iel into major container port........Page 17 man has been locked up in Havana’s Villa Alan Gross’s first cousin. Their fathers — both Marista maximum-security jail. After a long of whom worked in the window-cleaning busi- Bookshelf silence, family members and congressmen are ness in New York — were brothers. now starting to talk publicly about the man “He’s got two daughters, ages 24 and 20, and Matanzas, magical powers of state, mak- whom Cuban officials are calling a spy — even they don’t know if their father is coming back,” ing dance and Benny Moré ........Page 18 though they’ve yet to charge him with anything. said Gross, a business consultant for Philadel- “Our two daughters and I miss Alan terribly. phia-area hospitals. Alan is a social worker by CubaNews (ISSN 1073-7715) is published monthly We need him home immediately,” said his wife, background, and spent an entire career in devel- by Luxner News Inc. © 2010. All rights reserved. Judy Gross, in an email to CubaNews, noting oping countries trying to work with local people. Subscriptions: $429 for one year, $800 for two years. that her husband has lost 52 pounds in prison. The Cubans have detained him for no appar- For editorial inquires, please call (301) 452-1105 or send an e-mail to: [email protected]. “This is the hardest thing we have ever had to ereason. If he’s a spy, prove it.” endure as a family,” she told us. “We are very See Gross, page 3 2 CubaNews ❖ March 2010 Villa Marista prison outside Havana. success. Keeping a campaign promise, Obama — FROM PAGE 1 Cuban President Raul Castro has accused Obama first allowed Cuban-Americans to visit Gross of using “sophisticated” communica- family members on the island once a year — “It wasn’t what the private sector wanted to Bush had restricted those trips to once every see,” said Eric Farnsworth, vice-president of tions equipment to help opposition groups in their role as U.S. “mercenaries,” and Cuban three years — then lifted all restrictions on the Council of the Americas and a former the frequency of family visits. State Department official. Obama also removed all limitations on the The only bilateral telecom project in the duration of those visits and on remittances works seems to be Miami-based TeleCuba’s and broadened the definition of family so that plan to lay a 110-mile undersea fiberoptic it included second cousins. cable linking the Florida Keys with Havana. Those changes pleased the exile communi- TeleCuba won a license last October from ty and resulted in booming business for char- Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control ter companies that offer direct flights to Cuba that exempted it from the prohibition against from Miami, Los Angeles and New York. granting Cuba access to U.S. technology. “Traffic is way up,” said Robert Hodel, TeleCuba CEO Luís Coello wouldn’t dis- president of Costa Rica-based Tico Travel, cuss the status of his $18 million project, one of several dozen agencies authorized to which was to have been “fully operational” by book Cuba-bound charter flights. 2011, according to a company press release. Hodel said charter companies have added HOSTILE RESPONSE FROM CUBA flights to Cuba and secured larger aircraft to meet demand. While Obama implemented the telecom “The real problem now is space,” he said. initiative, it was actually drafted by a State De- Francisco Aruca, founder of Marazul Tours, partment official during the Bush administra- the largest agency providing service from the tion as a continuation of the 43rd president’s United States to Cuba, estimated that 200,000 May 2008 initiative to let Americans send cell- Cuban-Americans visited family on the island phones to relatives in Cuba. in 2009. That’s more than double the estimat- After Obama’s election to the White House ed 85,000 travelers to Cuba on U.S. charter in November 2008, the Bush administration flights in 2008. held off implementing its telecom plan, a for- Marazul agent Bob Guild said 2,000 non- mer U.S. official said. Cuban-American licensed travelers visited The purpose of that initiative was not to Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez told re- porters last month that Gross had committed Cuba in 2008, jumping to 3,000 in 2009, indi- make an overture to the Castro regime, but cating that the Obama administration was to allow Cuban citizens — and especially dis- “serious crimes” and is “under investigation.” The American’s arrest, along with the Feb. more willing to license that kind of travel. sidents — to skirt their own government’s re- “These are still small figures, but it’s a strictions on free access to information. The 23 death of imprisoned Cuban dissident Or- lando Zapata Tamayo after an 11-week hunger change,” said Guild. hoped-for result was destabilization of the Like family travel, U.S. remittances to Cuba Cuban government. strike, has put a new chill on U.S.-Cuba rela- tions that isn’t likely to thaw soon. also dropped after Bush tightened the embar- As could be expected, Cuba’s response was go, from $109.4 million in 2004 to a low of just hostile, evidenced by the Dec. 3 arrest of Alan EXILE TRAVEL TO CUBA UP DRAMATICALLY over $60 million in 2008 (see above chart). Gross, a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency “With either of the Castros still in power, Remittances have since rebounded, though for International Development. Nearly three no one knows by how much since the State months after his imprisonment, no charges substantial changes will be difficult to achieve politically,” Farnsworth told CubaNews. “And Department said it could not provide specific have been brought against Gross, who allege- remittance data for 2009.