Uncommon Sense

Bacardi donates $100K to Cuban hurricane relief

The Miami Herald reports:

Bacardi Limited said Monday it has donated $100,000 to assist hurricane victims in Cuba.

The world's largest privately held spirits company, whose U.S. headquarters are in Miami, made the donation to the Pan American Development Foundation and earmarked the funds for disaster relief in Cuba. The money will go to provide emergency shelter, food and hygiene kits.

The Pan American Development Foundation, an affiliate of the Organization of American States, creates public-private partnerships to assist people in Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly after a natural disaster.

PADF accepts donations through a toll free number (800) 941-0114 and a special Web site www.PanAmericanRelief.org. The organization is also collecting contributions for hurricane victims in Haiti. All contributions are tax-deductible.

There was more in a news release I received in my e-mail:

“The Bacardi family and company are deeply saddened by the devastation caused by the recent hurricanes in Cuba. We hope that this donation will help alleviate some of the pain that the Cuban people are experiencing and remind all Cubans that they continue to remain in the hearts and minds of all Cuban exiles,” said Facundo L. Bacardi, Chairman of Bacardi Limited.

Marc Wachtenheim, Director of the Cuban Development Initiative at PADF, encourages individuals and companies to help the survivors. “Bacardi Limited’s donation has made a big difference to PADF’s disaster relief assistance in Cuba . Donations large and small have come in to support survivors of these storms,” he said. “But, we cannot stop here as this disaster requires assistance from around the world.”

Bacardi Limited, with its roots in Cuba more than 145 years ago and being Cuba’s first multi-national company, encourages companies and individuals to help those in dire need on the island.

Independent journalism is growing in Cuba

There is no better way to learn about journalism than from another journalist. It's why many faculty at journalism schools are former editors and reporters, and why in newsrooms you will find interns learning on the job. Even though they may one day be in the running for our jobs, we welcome them in large part because we know that's how the profession will survive and thrive.

The same holds true for independent journalism in Cuba. As quasi-criminals in Castro's Cuba — as is anyone who dares speak truth to power the way Cuban independent journalists do — regular school really isn't an option.

To survive and thrive, Cuba's independent journalists have to help themselves, and they are.

Félix Reyes Gutiérrez of the Cubanacán Press reports that his agency, headed by the legendary Guillermo Fariñas, earlier this month hosted a week-long workshop to train new journalists. Several prospective students were unable to travel to Santa Clara because of ongoing hurricane recovery efforts, but there were five people, ranging in age from 18 to 51, who did attend the sessions.

They are, from Santa Clara: Juana Gómez Riego, Clotilde León Ramírez, Frank Reyes López and Daimy Sánchez Gómez. And from Placetas, Alejandro Gabriel Martínez Martínez.

I can't wait to start reading their bylines.

Spain grants asylum to Cuban ex-political prisoner

The Spanish government has granted political asylum to former Cuban political prisoner José Gabriel Ramón Castillo. Despite Madrid's conciliatory position towards the Castro dictatorship, the move is not too much of a surprise, as it was the Spanish government that earlier this year was able to secure the release of Ramón and three other political prisoners from the Castro gulag because of their poor health.

Ramón, who worked as an independent journalist before his arrest during the "black spring" of March-April 2003, was the only one of the four to request asylum in Spain. Ramón opposes Spain's moves to normalize relations with Cuba, which chilled after the "black spring," but he said he was grateful that the Spanish government had granted his request.

"The decision gives me tremendous peace of mind, because it means I can count on the protection of the Spanish government," said Ramón, who suffers from diabetes, hypertension, cirrhosis and stomach ulcers. "Until now I wasn't sure. Furthermore, I could not return to Cuba because if I did, they might revoke my parole (licencia extrapenal), detain me again and send me back to prison."

The Spanish government also granted asylum to Ramón's wife and stepdaughter.

Cuban Hurricane Relief Fund

The Cuban Hurricane Relief Fund is another way you can contribute to hurricane relief efforts in Cuba:

Thousands of Cuban families need our help urgently. Hurricanes Gustav and Ike have torn into Cuba ravaging the island and taking the lives of many. Little was left undisrupted in the wake of the hurricanes. The back-to-back storms swept throughout the island devastating crops and severely damaging hundreds of thousands of homes and many churches. The catastrophic impact of these hurricanes is one never before seen on the island; it will require great resources and efforts to reestablish what has been lost.

This is a time to come to the assistance of the beleaguered Cuban people and to put love over politics, and charity over self-interest. For our brothers and sisters on the island, this is a critical time to recover and rebuild.

In response to this tragedy the Cuban-American community has organized the Cuba Hurricane Relief Fund, a campaign aimed at raising $1,000,000 to help the victims of these storms in Cuba. All money raised will benefit the work of Friends of Caritas Cubana, a non-profit organization that works with Catholic Relief Services, Caritas Cuba and other entities of the Catholic Church operating in Cuba, to bring provide assistance to the Cuban people.

Donate here.

Political prisoners start hunger strike in Santa Clara

Hunger strikes by Cuban political prisoners sadden me, for protest by suicide is no way to defeat the dictatorship. Life is much more valuable than that, and the struggle for Cuban liberty needs these brave men and women to be alive and fighting.

But I do not condemn the condemned, because for many prisoners, all they have to give, the only thing with which they have to protest, is their lives. And by putting themselves at risk to protest the regime, they demonstrate the extent of their desperation, and of their courage.

Benito Ortega Suárez and Arcelio López Rojas, both inmates in a prison in Santa Clara, are the latest political prisoners to resort to hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their confinement, according to a dispatch posted at Payo Libre.

Via telephone, López told independent journalist Idania Yanes Contreras that he started the hunger strike because he has been confined to a maximum security cell for more than year, preventing him from seeing his family and receiving adequate time in the sunlight.

Ortega is seeking a transfer to a prison in Matanzas, to be closer to his ailing mother, according to Yanes' report.

Ortega was returned to prison earlier this year, to complete the remaining 30 months of an 11-year prison term for allegedly assaulting a police officer. López, who formerly lived in the United States, was arrested last year and charged with illegal entry into Cuba. Whether his case had been adjudicated by the Cuban courts could not be determined.

For all their apparent futility, hunger strikes sometimes do help prisoners receive some concessions from their captors, if only to spare the dictatorship the embarrassment of having a prisoner die on them. Hopefully, that, too will be the case for Ortega and López.

Arroz con Frijoles, 9/28/08

A few recent headlines you might have missed about the reality of life in Cuba today:

• Human rights activist Jesús Cruz Santos was tried Sept. 26 on a charge of being a "pre-criminal social danger," after he was arrested four days earlier outside the Havana Libre Hotel in the capital. There was no information on what he was doing when he was arrested or the outcome of the trial.

• Political prisoner Luís Cueto Echevarría was beaten by guards for complaining about conditions at the Ariza prison in Cienfuegos.

• Political activist Iris Pérez Aguilera, the wife of the former political prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez", reiterated to a court in Placetas that she has no plans to pay a 500-peso fine levied after she was convicted last month of "resistance" and "contempt." The court gave her until Oct. 19 to change her mind; if she doesn't pay the fine, she could be sentenced to 8 months in jail.

• Police officers and other Castroite goons detained human rights activists Ricardo Rubén Barreto Fuentes and Francisco Sa Fuster, preventing them from attending a Mass celebrated each month to remember hostages being held by communist guerrillas in Colombia.

• Human rights activist Reynaldo Valle Cuello was threatened with death.

Unfortunately, this is just a sampling of what is happening in Cuba every day.

Rámdol Roca Mursulí, Cuban Political Prisoner of the Week, 9/28/08 (UPDATED)

UPDATED, April 9, 2011 — Rámdol Roca was released from prison and took exile in Spain.
|———|

For update, see below.

In the United States or any other free country, Rámdol Roca Mursulí might be dismissed as nothing more than a vandal, for throwing stones through an office window and scribbling some graffiti on the walls. A fine, an order to pay restitution and maybe some time in jail.

In Cuba, however, when the office belongs to a government currency exchange, and the graffiti consists of anti-Castro slogans, that is an act of political defiance, and prosecuted not as a mere crime like vandalism, but as an affront to regime itself. In fact, when Roca was arrested in 2002 for doing just that, he was charged not only with "evasion," but with being a "pre-criminal social danger" — the charge of choice when the dictatorship seeks to punish someone because of their anti-regime views.

Roca was tried, convicted and sentenced to 9 years in prison.

This past week, he used a telephone call from Canaleta prison in Ciego de Ávila to tell independent journalist/human rights activist Juan Carlos González Leiva that he has spent more than 120 days in a punishment cell. He sleeps on the floor surrounded by insects and mice, and guards restrict his access to sunlight, correspondence and the telephone, despite prison regulations allowing such privileges.

UPDATED, Nov. 16, 2008.

Roca has been in the punishment cell for six months.

One of the surest indicators of the repressive nature of the Castro regime is the jailing of political prisoners. To illustrate that reality, Uncommon Sense each week profiles one prisoner. There also is a Political Prisoner archive on the right sidebar. To suggest a prisoner for a profile, send me an e-mail at [email protected]

For profiles of imprisoned Cuban journalists and related information, read the March 18 Project.

Daughter describes prisoner's protest

Joana Fernández Nuñez describes how her father's hunger strike persuaded prison officials to let him have access to some religious publications, via Miscelaneas de Cuba:

The morning of Tuesday September 23, the authorities of Canaleta Prison in Ciego de Avila handed over to Adolfo Fernández Sainz the periodicals with religious content which had been withheld from him since last Tuesday.

The prisoners of conscience Fernández Sainz, Pedro Arguelles Morán and Antonio Dias Sanchez brought to a successful end the hunger strike which they had undertaken since Friday, September 19.

Julia Nunez, wife of the independent journalist Adolfo Fernández Sainz, received confirmation via a telephone call from the prisoner this Tuesday afternoon.

We would like to thank all the organizations and/or persons who supported us in spreading the information about this situation, and who showed their support and solidarity to us. Hunger strikes are an extreme last resort used by honorable men when they are left no other recourse to appeal the vexations they are dealt. Their results on the health of the strikers are irreversible, as well as the suffering of their families.

The original cause of protests such as these arise from the unjust imprisonment these members of the Cuban civil society have been victims of since March 2003, from the ridiculous sentences, the hundreds of kilometers of separation from their families, and all other humiliations that they have been subject to day after day for the last five and a half years.

I call upon the government of Raul Castro to restore the freedom of the Cuban prisoners of conscience of the Black Spring who are still incarcerated, as well as all Cuban political prisoners.

How to help with hurricane relief in Cuba

Setting aside the inbred cruelty of the Castro government, which is acting as dictatorships act; and the intransigence of the Bush administration, which doesn't want to make it easier for Cuban Americans to help family members on the island trying to rebuild their lives after hurricanes Gustav and Ike, there are plenty of opportunities for those wanting to contribute to relief efforts.

For instance, there is the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. (be sure to designate your notation for "Cuba hurricanes.")

Other agencies collecting donations can be found here and here.

New press agency on the beat on Isle of Pines

A new press agency, founded by veteran independent journalist Lamassiel Gutiérrez, is covering the reality of life on the Isle of Youth Isle of Pines, which was hard hit by the recent Hurricane Gustav.

The agency, called the Isle of Pines Free Press Agency, is intended to be an alternative to state-run television on Isle of Pines, which Gutiérrez said presents a false, idyllic version of life on the island.

"The reality is that on this little island there is need and hunger. The people are desperate for help. There are people who sleep in the streets," Gutiérrez said.