Religion and politics, the so-called taboo subjects provide the central themes for Latin Pulse this week. The program provides a preview of Cuba’s favorite religious celebration, the feast day of San Lazaro. The program also goes in-depth on reaction to the surprising landslide win of opposition groups in Venezuela in that country’s Congressional elections.
Cuba is experiencing a wave of U.S. “unofficial” tourism. Even as the hidebound communist regimes claims it isn’t looking for U.S. investment, the contact with tourists and U.S. communications are changing Cuba from the bottom up.
There’s more that President Obama can do if he wants to cement his legacy of policy change on Cuba.
For the first time since 1960s, the United States has leverage over Cuba. Now President Obama is cleverly playing off the Republic congressional critics of his policy to encourage the Cuban regime to change if it really wants to embargo lifted.
Senadores demócratas y republicanos, miembros del Estado Mayor Conjunto, representantes de la Oficina de Derechos Humanos y varios delegados de los Departamentos de Comercio, del Tesoro y del Estado. Nada menos que 19 personalidades del gobierno y de la política de Estados Unidos llegaron este viernes a participar en la ceremonia oficial de apertura de la embajada de ese país en La Habana, que estuvo cerrada durante más de 54 años tras la ruptura de las relaciones diplomáticas entre Washington y La Habana.
El candidato único del oficialismo para las elecciones presidenciales en la Argentina, Daniel Scioli, realizó el pasado 22 de julio una breve pero significativa visita a Cuba, donde se reunió con Raúl Castro. ¿De qué hablaron?
Taking Cuba off the list has two main consequences, diplomatic and economic, said Christopher Sabatini, a Columbia University professor who specializes in Cuba studies. “This is something that for a long time sort of stuck in the craw of the Cubans, who really resented being lumped together with countries like Iran and Syria,” he said.
“The embargo has grown by accretion over the decades, one brick at a time,” said Christopher Sabatini, a scholar of U.S.-Cuba relations who teaches at Columbia University. “Dismantling it is going to happen similarly.”
The new, the exotic, the previously forbidden fruit may appear to be the most tantalizing, but objective criteria should form the realist metric on which to measure all business decisions. The incremental and marginal changes in trade with Cuba are just that—incremental and marginal.
Cuban journalist Lázaro de Jesús González Álvarez expresses his sadness and embarrassment over the behavior of Cuban official civil society groups and Cuban officials at the VII Summit of the Americas Civil Society Forum.
