Cuba gets first prime minister in over 40 years

HAVANA, Cuba — Cuba's first prime minister in more than four decades — long-serving tourism minister Manuel Marrero — took office Saturday as the country resurrected a post last held by Fidel Castro.

The appointment of Marrero, 56, as head of government is part of a process of decentralization and generational change from the revolutionary old guard that is aimed at extending and protecting Communist Party rule.

"This proposal was duly approved by the political bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba," President Miguel Diaz-Canel said, presenting it to the country's National Assembly, which unanimously signed off.

Immediately after his presentation, Marrero received a handshake from former president Raul Castro, the leader of the Communist Party.

Marrero "is not coming to the job to transform, but rather to implement and manage. The president is the one who leads," said Cuba specialist Arturo Lopez-Levy of Holy Names University in California.


Marrero served as tourism minister from 2004, late in revolutionary hero Fidel Castro's administration, continuing in the post under Fidel's brother Raul and the current president, Diaz-Canel.

He began his career in government in 1999 as vice president of the powerful Gaviota Hotel Group belonging to the armed forces, becoming its president a year later — a post he held until 2004.

"Throughout his career... (Marrero) has been characterized by his modesty, honesty, work capacity, political sensitivity and loyalty to the party and the revolution," Diaz-Canel said.

The new premier "has led the tourism industry in a commendable fashion, which constitutes one of the main lines of development of the national economy," he added.

'Wide-ranging experience'

That is precisely why Marrero "who has all this wide-ranging experience in tourism and working with investors," is the pick, according to Lopez-Levy.

"It underscores the priority that this area holds in the country's development strategy," he said.

The position of prime minister was last held by Fidel Castro in 1976.

But the post was abolished when Castro transitioned to the presidency, taking over from Osvaldo Dorticos after the country's constitution was restructured.

Castro was a unique prime minister "given the weight of his persona," Lopez-Levy said.

"Ultimate power in the country was in Fidel's" hands during his time as prime minister from 1959-76, even though Dorticos was president and head of state, he said.

The appointment of a prime minister may signify a separation of powers but Lopez-Levy insisted that in Cuba it represents more of a "separation of functions" given the communist concept of political unity and the fact that the country is a one-party state.

Cuba's constitution required that the candidate come from the 605-member National Assembly, be at least 35, "be a Cuban citizen by birth and hold no other nationality."

The premier has the power to hire and fire state employees as well as overall control of provincial governors, another position restored under the new constitution.

Diaz-Canel also took aim at the United States on Saturday, at a time of high tensions between the superpower and the island nation.

He said that 2019 was "a year full of challenges, tension and aggression" by Washington.

The United States carried out a "brutal, insane" tightening of its long-running embargo, but "we are alive," Diaz-Canel said.

Agence France-Presse

Cuba diversifies ‘options for love’ via state-run motels

Cuba is reviving a network of state-run “love motels” in Havana where couples can rent rooms by the hour as the communist government seeks to “diversify options for love,” the official trade union weekly Trabajadores said on Monday.

Havana, the capital of the Caribbean island, boasted dozens of such “posadas” until the 1990s, when the remaining few were given to Cubans left homeless by hurricanes.

Privacy has became all the more elusive for lovers, given a housing shortage that forces many families to live in the same apartment and couples to live together long after their divorce.

Private establishments have filled in the gap for some, the trade union weekly wrote, but many cannot afford to pay around $5, or a sixth of the average monthly state wage, for three hours of bliss.

The less fortunate must resort to “parks, dark staircases, the beach and even the Malecon (seafront),” Trabajadores wrote. But now the state wants to make lovemaking easier again.

“We want to revive this service that is in high demand, has a big social impact and without a doubt is very profitable,” Alfonso Muñoz Chang of the Provincial Housing Company of Havana was cited as saying. “We will start with what we call Hotel Vento, a two-storey building with 16 rooms with bathrooms.”

“The city needs this,” Hotel Vento administrator Maria Sterling was cited as saying, noting that employees would be “very enthusiastic” as wages would likely rise with the extra work.

Next, authorities will restore some once-famous love motels like La Monumental to their former glory and convert another hotel, Muñoz Chang said.

“To think about how to diversify options for love is not farfetched,” Trabajadores wrote. “It is a reality that concerns everyone, and cannot become a luxury.”

source: interaksyon.com

In Havana, music stops as Cubans mourn 'father' Castro

Havana, Cuba - Cubans will likely forever remember where they were when Fidel Castro's death was announced. The music stopped across the dance-happy city and people rushed to awaken loved ones with the news.

Parties shut down and the bustling streets emptied after President Raul Castro, Fidel's 85 year-old younger brother, made the announcement on state television around midnight Friday.

"Everyone was stunned. It was a very sad moment," said Yaimara Gomez, who was working in a hotel at the time.

Unlike various occasions over the years, this time it was not a hoax: the man most Cubans grew up with as their country's leader had died.

"With great pain I appear before you to inform our people and our friends in the Americas and the world that today, November 25 at 10:29 pm, the Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, passed away," the president said.

He gave no details of the cause or circumstances of the death. It was assumed Castro died at his Havana home where he lived after stepping aside from power in 2006 following intestinal surgery.

Car washer Marco Antonio Diez, 20, was out at a party when the music suddenly stopped.

"I went home and woke up everyone, saying: 'Fidel has died,'" he told AFP. "My mother was astonished."

'Like losing a father'
As the news spread, crowds danced and celebrated in the streets of Miami, home to the largest Cuban exile community and their descendants.

But in Havana, locals mourned.

"Losing Fidel is like losing a father -- the guide, the beacon of this revolution," said Michel Rodriguez, a 42-year-old baker.

He was still in his shop late at night when he heard the news on the radio.

"What can I say? Fidel Castro was larger than life. I always wanted to die before him," said Aurora Mendez, 82.

She recalled a life in poverty before Castro's revolution in 1959.

"Fidel was always first in everything, fighting for the downtrodden and the poor," she said.

Choking back tears, Irma Hierrezuelo, 65, said she had gone on medication "for my nerves" after learning the news.

"He was my second father," she said. "I owe my nursing studies -- I owe everything -- to him."

The government decreed nine days of mourning and ordered flags to be flown at half-mast.

Castro's ashes will be buried in the historic southeastern city of Santiago de Cuba on December 4 after a four-day procession through the country, it added.

Santiago was the scene of Castro's ill-fated first revolution attempt in 1953.

As the news spread around the world, local media seemed taken by surprise: even the state newspaper Granma took about five hours to put the story on its website.

'Never forgotten'
Castro was loathed by many for stifling dissent, but loved by others for providing free universal healthcare and education.

He came to power in 1959 as a black-bearded, cigar-chomping 32-year-old in a revolution against former dictator Fulgencio Batista.

"I was born under this revolution and I am truly sad," Micaela Consuegra, a street-sweeper of 55.

"He was a unique man, with his faults and his virtues. It is a great loss. He is a man who will never be forgotten, by his friends or his enemies."

Blanca Cabrera, a 56-year-old housewife, came out into her garden to smoke a cigarette after hearing the news.

"It is hard to believe that Fidel has gone," she told AFP, her face showing her distress.

She recalled Castro's last public speech, to the Communist Party congress earlier this year, when he seemed to see the end was near.

"Everyone's turn comes," Castro said at the congress in April.

"He prepared the people for this moment," Cabrera said.

"But he will still be with us for years to come. That soothes the pain."

source: interaksyon.com

Madonna celebrates 58th birthday in Havana

HAVANA | Madonna celebrated her 58th birthday Tuesday in Havana, dancing to Cuban beats during a night on the town and drawing crowds as she toured the city.

The Material Girl’s visit got a write-up in the Cuban Communist party’s official newspaper, Granma, which reported that she “toured different city squares to start the first day of her visit, which will last until Wednesday.”

It said the U.S. pop superstar was in Cuba with her eldest daughter, Lourdes, a 19-year-old model whose father is Cuban dancer and fitness trainer Carlos Leon.

American photographer Steven Klein and stylists B. Akerlund and Andy Lecompte are traveling with them, it said.

Madonna posted a picture of herself to her Twitter account with the caption “Cuba Libre.” It shows her wearing a revealing black dress with yellow flowers and smiling as she tips a black hat.

Videos posted online by fans show her dressed in the same outfit strolling through the streets of Old Havana and dancing to Cuban beats at a restaurant in the historic city center as onlookers cheer.

The news site Cubadebate said Madonna was planning a “big party” Tuesday with the “rhythms and flavors” of Cuba.

Madonna is the latest in a string of U.S. celebrities to visit Cuba since its historic rapprochement with long-time enemy the United States was announced in December 2014.

Leonardo DiCaprio, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Katy Perry, Kanye West, Usher, Paris Hilton, and Kim, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian have all toured the Caribbean island recently.

U.S. citizens are still officially banned from traveling to Cuba as tourists under the embargo Washington has maintained on Havana since the 1960s.

But President Barack Obama’s administration has loosened travel restrictions, enabling more Americans to make the trip under permitted categories such as “cultural exchanges.”

source: interaksyon.com

Pope leads global praise for 'historic' thawing of US-Cuba ties

PARIS, France -- Pope Francis led a chorus of global plaudits for Wednesday's breakthrough in US-Cuban relations, hailed as "historic" in Europe and South America and prompting celebrations on the streets of Havana.

In a personal coup for the pope, it emerged that the Vatican had played a central role in bringing together the global capitalist superpower and the tiny communist island.

The Argentinian pontiff sent "warm congratulations" to the former arch-foes for overcoming "the difficulties which have marked their recent history."

The Vatican said the pope had appealed to US President Barack Obama and his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro to end the standoff, offering negotiators his offices in October, paving the way for "solutions acceptable to both parties."

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper noted that his country -- which never broke off ties with Cuba -- had also played its part by hosting the first secret talks in 2013, and welcomed the "overdue development."

The European Union, which is itself moving to normalise ties with Cuba, hailed the announcement as a "historical turning point."

"Today another Wall has started to fall," said EU foreign affairs head Federica Mogherini, adding that the 28-member bloc hoped ultimately to be able to "expand relations with all parts of Cuban society."

In South America, the detente elicited a euphoric response from leaders of the five-nation Mercosur bloc meeting in Argentina, who broke into applause at the news.

Best birthday present

"We're living a historic day," said Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, leader of Cuba's closest ally and one of its biggest benefactors, at the Argentina summit.

Maduro, whose forerunner Hugo Chavez was a close confidant of Fidel Castro, immediately claimed the thaw as "a moral victory" and "a victory for Fidel."

Praising Pope Francis, who turned 78 on Wednesday, Maduro noted: "It was with his help, and it's the best birthday present."

In Bogota, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos saluted "the audacity and courage" of the US and Cuban leaders in helping further "the dream of a continent where there will be absolute peace between nations and within them."

And Chile's Foreign Minister Heraldo Munoz spoke for those in Latin America who were frustrated by the diplomatic divide, declaring: "This is the beginning of the end of the Cold War in the Americas."

In Europe, Spain's Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said the move was "of great significance" and seized the opportunity to urge Cuba to improve its rights record.

"This future can only be built on the basis of respect for democracy and human rights," he told reporters in Madrid.

German Foreign Affairs Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called the breakthrough "very good news in these times rich with conflict."

Celebrations and anger

In Havana's historic center, overjoyed Cubans took to the streets to celebrate the news, voicing hopes that the breakthrough would lead to an economic revival.

"I have goosebumps all over," said 52-year-old cafeteria worker Ernesto Perez. "It's very important news that will change all our lives."

But among Cubans in Miami's Little Havana, the reaction was one of anger and dismay.

Dozens of people gathered outside Cafe Versailles, a Little Havana landmark, to protest the rapprochement.

"It is a betrayal. The talks are only going to benefit Cuba," said Carlos Munoz Fontanil in Calle Ocho, the heart of an exile community that has long pined for the fall of the Castro regime in Havana.

Some Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Washington took a similar view and warned Congress would block efforts to lift the trade embargo.

"The White House has conceded everything and gained little," said Republican Senator Marco Rubio, blasting the deal as "inexplicable."

source: interaksyon.com

Cuba's second cholera outbreak in 4 months downs 51 people

 Three people died and 417 were infected in eastern Cuba last year, the first time cholera had been reported on the Caribbean island since 1882.

The latest outbreak was detected January 6 after a surge in cases of acute diarrhea in the Cuban capital, a city of 2.2 million people, the ministry said in a statement published in the official newspaper Granma.

It said 51 cholera cases had been confirmed.

The Pedro Kouri Institute of Tropical Medicine traced the disease back to the same strain of cholera that caused last year's outbreak in the city of Manzanillo, 800 kilometers (480 miles) east of Havana in Granma province.

That outbreak was declared eradicated August 28, nearly two months after it was first detected. The Havana outbreak "is in a phase of extinction," the ministry said.

It said the cholera was "generated by a food vendor, an asymptomatic carrier of the disease, contracted earlier in other regions of the country," the Health Ministry said.

It first appeared in a working class district called Cerro situated in the center of Havana, between the Plaza of the Revolution and the city's main baseball stadium.

Rumors of a cholera outbreak spread in recent days after doctors and nurses began going door to door in certain neighborhoods to distribute medicines to residents.

"They came to all the houses and said, 'Are you allergic to penicillin?' And they gave us three Doxycycline pills to take, but wouldn't tell us anything. I asked them if it was cholera, and they laughed but didn't tell us anything," a woman told AFP.

The Health Ministry called on the public to pay increased attention to hygiene, urging frequent hand-washing, the drinking of chlorinated water, and careful cleaning and cooking of food.

Preventive measures also were being taken at Havana clinics and schools, various sources told AFP.

The outbreak comes at the height of the tourist season in Cuba, which runs from December to April, when planeloads of travelers descend on the island from Canada, Europe and Latin America. Nearly three million tourists visited Cuba last year.

Cuba was a Spanish colony when the last major cholera epidemic swept the island from 1867 to 1882, leaving nearly 6,000 dead, according to the Medical Sciences Information Center in the western province of Matanzas.

Cuban doctors have gained experience treating the disease in Haiti, which suffered a cholera epidemic that has killed more than 7,900 Haitians since 2010.

Additionally, Cuban scientists have been working in recent years to develop a vaccine against cholera, which causes serious diarrhea and vomiting, leading to dehydration.

It is easily treatable by rehydration and antibiotics, but the ailment can be fatal if not addressed quickly enough.

The outbreak in Haiti, which had never had a recorded case of cholera, has since spread to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and the United States.

Suspicions as to the source of the Haitian outbreak have centered on a base for UN peacekeepers from Nepal in the country's Artibonite river valley.

source: interaksyon.com

Cuban doctors battle to control cholera outbreak

Manzanillo, Cuba (CNN) -- At first the Cuban doctors thought they were dealing with an outbreak of food poisoning.

The patients that arrived for treatment in mid-June at hospitals in Manzanillo had all gone to the same birthday party held at a house in the hilly countryside on the perimeter of the eastern Cuban city.

The sick had eaten shrimp at the party and doctors thought that meal might be the cause for the patients' heavy vomiting and diarrhea.

Then more people began walking into hospitals with similar symptoms.

But they had not attended the party.

"They started coming in a few at a time," said Julio Cesar Fonseca Rivero, the director of the Celia Sanchez Manduley Hospital, the largest in the region. "The first day five came, and then eight. That's not normal, that five people would come with the same symptoms. The most critical days were when there were 30 to 32 patients who arrived in a single day."

A sudden spike in cases of diarrhea is not unusual for Manzanillo's hospitals that treat the surrounding rural communities. There residents often live without indoor plumbing and in the summer months endure the scorching heat and heavy rains.

Illness kills three in eastern Cuba

This summer had already been particularly hot with heavy rains that caused outhouses to flood into several drinking wells.

Still, doctors suspected they were dealing with something they hadn't seen before.

"We became alarmed with the number of cases arriving. We usually see one or two cases of diarrhea each day," said Dr. Oyantis Matos Zamora, who oversees a clinic on the edge of the city that attends to rural residents.

The symptoms some patients exhibited -- the rapid onset of watery diarrhea and dehydration — had also not been seen in generations.

"The way that the outbreak developed and the appearance of other similar cases in the region, we realized this was a problem of a different magnitude," said Dr. Manuel Santin Peña, Cuba's national director of epidemiology.

The "problem" was cholera.

Cuba's last cholera outbreak occurred over a century ago. Although eradicated in many countries, the disease, according to the World Health Organization, still infects between 3 million and 5 million people each year, killing between 100,000 and 120,000.

In Manzanillo the outbreak has taken on a name of its own. There it's simply referred to by residents as "el evento."

So far "el evento" has taken three lives and infected at least 110 people, said Santin. He said doctors were waiting on test results for tens of other possible cases but said so far fewer than 30% percent of suspected cases had been shown to be cholera.

He denied reports that the Cuban government has underreported the death toll or that the outbreak is spreading to other provinces.

He said a handful of suspected cases had been identified elsewhere in the country. But he said those cases had come from the same region where the original outbreak took place and are believed to have been infected there.

"We can categorically say that there is no other outbreak in any other province," Santin told CNN, outside the entrance to the Celia Sanchez Manduley Hospital, where three more people had arrived suffering from severe diarrhea.

Cuban health officials allowed a CNN crew to be the first media to film in the hospital and speak with doctors there about the ongoing effort to control the cholera outbreak.

To combat the outbreak, the local government has closed 12 contaminated wells around Manzanillo, Santin said. Clean water is being trucked in for residents until a different source of water can be found.

At the entrances to hospitals and government buildings in the city stand buckets for people to wash their hands and soles of their shoes with chlorine bleach.

Kiosks throughout Manzanillo that sell milkshakes, iced drinks or other foods that come into contact with water have been shuttered.

A temporary ban has also been issued for fishing and bathing in waters off the coast that may be contaminated.

While in the rest of the country little has been said in the official press about the cholera, in Granma province, the site of the outbreak, residents are now shown a nightly program on how to prevent infection.

Santin told CNN those efforts appear to be working and that doctors are seeing a decline in the rate of infection. The perception that the outbreak was increasing, he said, came from the seven to 10 days it takes for Cuba's labs to return results of tests on the infected.

"The number of cases is dropping," he said. "That doesn't make us confident so much as make us work to intensify all our preventive measures so that in the next few weeks we can stop the outbreak."

Maria Rosa Rodriguez has seen up close what cholera can do.

The Manzanillo schoolteacher was hospitalized for a week with cholera and only recently was allowed return home to finish her recovery. She winced as she recounted the agony that the infection caused her.

"You're very nervous because we had never seen this before here," Rodriguez said. "You're feeling bad with diarrhea, vomiting and you lose weight very quickly. You think the worst."

source: CNN