Another visitor to Cuba experiences Castroscare

Jan. 27 - From an article in Moon Travel Guides (H/T) Capitol Hill Cubans:

A few weeks ago while escorting a National Geographic Expeditions’ 10-day “Cuba: Discover its Culture & People” trip, one of the participants fell ill with a serious dental problem.
I accompanied her to the Clínica Internacional—the foreigners-only International Clinic— Cienfuegos. Cuba’s best medical services are reserved for foreign tourists paying hard currency. This was no exception. An English-speaking doctor saw us immediately.
She identified an abcess and recommended we visit the dental ward at Cienfuegos Hospital. We were transferred in a low-tech ambulance.
The hospital’s broken windows and screens were an ill omen of worse to come: The black ring (caused by a million grubby hands) around the door handle to the dental ward, suggested it hadn’t been cleaned since the revolution.
We were admitted immediately to the ward and seated at one of a dozen stations. The first image took my breath away. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Dental instruments were sitting in a tray that hadn’t been cleaned—not even wiped!—in ages. Literally, my best guess is in months, if not years! A microscopic study might well have revealed every known bacteria under the sun. In Europe or North America, the hospital would be instantly closed as a health hazard. The travelers looked up at me with a mix of revulsion and near-panic.
Fortunately, the female dentist didn’t need to place any instrument in her mouth. Instead, she looked into her mouth and instantly confirmed the abcess, then wrote a prescription for antibiotics, which the international clinic had in stock.
The next day, while walking along Cienfuegos’ main shopping street (El Búlevar), the group paused to peruse the local pharmacy that serves local Cubans. I counted barely a handful of drugs (all locally produced) for sale on the sparsely stocked shelves.
What a study in contrasts!…
The barebones Cubans-only pharmacies. And the foreigners-only pharmacies fully stocked with imported drugs, reminding me of President Jimmy Carter’s admonition (presented live on Cuban TV during his visit to Cuba in January 2001) that Cuba can buy all the drugs its needs from Mexico, Brazil, etc. at prices well below those charged in the United States.
The Cuban government disingenuously tells Cubans that the U.S. embargo is to blame for the critical shortage of basic medicines. How, then, to explain the fully-stocked pharmacies serving tourists, which Cubans never get to see? Clearly, a political decision has been made to not stock the Cuban pharmacies.
Why? I can think of only one plausible reason: It’s great politics in Fidel Castro’s pathological demonization of Uncle Sam. Let’s hope things will soon change under his younger brother, Raúl.
Meanwhile, and more worrying, is the disparity between Cuba’s claims about the excellence of its health-care system and the shocking revelation that it doesn’t even apply standards of basic hygiene. Moon Travel Guides

More than 1,000 people have registered at CubanSearch looking for relatives and friends

 If you haven't visited or registered, click here for the English Version  Y aqui para la versión en español.

You can register a name of a missing relative, or you can look through the list of names to see if you have any information that you can provide about any of them.

Dozens of people have already found their missing relatives thanks to www.cubansearch.com

Chileans who received medical training in Cuba failed test to practice medicine in their country

Jan. 26 - In 2011, nearly 80% of Chilean doctors who obtained their degree overseas failed the mandatory national medical knowledge test, also known as Eunacom. The vast majority of them completed their training in Cuba.
Cuba’s program of medical internationalism began in 1959 after the Cuban Revolution, when Fidel Castro rose to power. Since then, it is argued that medical professionals are Cuba’s most important export.
Since the Revolution, Cuba has sent more than 185,000 health professionals on medical missions to at least 103 countries, according to the New York Times. Unfortunately, this great quantity of doctors does not mirror the quality of their training. In other words, doctors in Cuba are not expected to learn as much as doctors trained in other countries. However, they are sent to some of the poorest parts of the world, including areas of Latin America and Africa. This raises an important question: Is a poorly trained doctor better than no doctor at all?
Cuban doctors have routinely received lower scores in countries including the U.S. and Brazil as well as Chile. In Chile, the average point for the doctors trained overseas was 38.84, well below the minimum needed for success. The average points for Chilean natives, on the other hand group was 74.05.
Beltran Mena, who is head of the Eunacom tests, articulated that “This group of doctors are not authorized to practice medicine in Chile and besides the test will now have to revalidate their degree at Universidad de Chile.”
Of all Chilean medical schools represented in the tests, residents from the Universidad Católica hold first place, followed by those from the Universidad Mayor. On the other end of the spectrum, highest failure percentage rates belong to schools such as the Universidad del Mar and Católica de la Santísima Concepción. Read more
 

Newt Gingrich talks tough regarding the Castro regime

Jan. 26 - Newt Gingrich was ahead in the rhetorical war among Republican presidential hopefuls on who could be toughest on Cuba's communist regime, suggesting yesterday that he would bomb the island if there were a popular uprising.
The former house speaker and his top rival, ex-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, were engaged in heated campaigning in Florida days before Wednesday's Republican primary. And both were desperately wooing the state's large Cuban-American community, nearly a million strong.
Mr Gingrich was asked to explain comments that if elected, he would "not tolerate four more years of a Cuban dictatorship".
If the US planes bombed Libya, should they do the same with Cuba?
"If there was a genuine, legitimate uprising, we would, of course, be on the side of the people," Mr Gingrich told Spanish-language network Univision.
"In that sense, I don't see why Cuba should be sacrosanct, and we should say, 'Oh, don't do anything to hurt' - you know, we're very prepared to back people in Libya. We may end up backing people in Syria. But now Cuba? Hands off Cuba. That's baloney.
"People of Cuba deserve freedom."
The audience at the Miami venue where Univision held the interview broke into applause.
Mr Romney said if he were president, he would punish foreign companies doing business in Cuba. Read more
 

Brazil Grants Visa to Yoani Sánchez on Eve of Rousseff’s Trip

Jan. 26 - Brazil issued a tourist visa to a dissident Cuban blogger a few days before President Dilma Rousseff is scheduled to travel to the communist island in a visit being dominated by human rights concerns.
Yoani Sanchez, an outspoken critic of Raul Castro’s government, requested permission to travel to Brazil so she could attend the screening next month of a documentary in which she appears, the foreign ministry said in a statement. The visa was issued by Brazil’s embassy in Havana.
The 36-year-old philologist, who has repeatedly been blocked from leaving Cuba, celebrated the decision. “Now comes the most difficult part: the permission to leave,” she said in a message posted on her Twitter account yesterday.
Rousseff has been under pressure to meet with Sanchez and other activists during her Jan. 31-Feb. 1 visit after a jailed dissident, Wilman Villar, died last week during a 50-day hunger strike. Sanchez appealed this week directly to Rousseff, invoking the president’s experience surviving prison and torture at the hands of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship.
“I saw a photo of young Dilma, sitting on a bench blindfolded as men accused her,” Sanchez wrote Jan. 24 on Twitter. “I feel that way right now.” Read more
 

The two Cuban soccer players who defected are in the US and have asked for political asylum
Jan. 25 - Two members of the Cuban women's national soccer team have defected to the United States and are asking for political asylum.
The players, Yisel Rodriguez and Yezenia Gallardo, disappeared Monday while the team was participating in Vancouver in the CONCACAF women's soccer Olympic qualifying tournament.
Rodriguez is now with relatives in Miami, while Gallardo has been reunited with family in Houston.
Speaking by telephone from Miami, with her brother, Raudel Rodriguez, acting as interpreter, Yisel detailed how she and Gallardo escaped the attention of the Cuban delegation.
Rodriguez said she told no one back home about her plans, but did discuss the possibility with Gallardo after arriving in Vancouver.
The problem was that except for games and practices, players were not allowed outside the hotel, and inside they were permitted to go only to the third floor for meals.
But following Cuba's match with Canada Saturday evening, the two players made their move.
"We waited for a distraction of the coaches," Rodriguez said. "Then I talked to my roommate (Gallardo), and we decided to go. We tried to take the elevator down to the first floor, but it would only go down to the fifth floor, so we took the stairs down to the street. We hailed a cab and asked him to take us to the border."
The two reached the U.S. border at about 2 a.m. Sunday. Once they arrived, Rodriguez and Gallardo approached a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official.
"He asked us what we were doing," Rodriguez said. "We told him we wanted to defect."
The players' passports were in the possession of the Cuban delegation, but Rodriguez said she was able to prove who she was by showing the official her Cuban identity card. She had kept the card hidden in her shoe to avoid detection by the Cuban delegation.

Read more ESPN
 

Be careful about having your wedding at a Castro resort, you could spend your honeymoon in the toilet

Jan. 24 - A Montreal woman who became ill while attending her cousin's wedding in Cuba believes she and other members of her family picked up a virus during their vacation - not on an airplane.
Sabrina Sollecito said about 25 of the 29 people who traveled with her to the resort town of Holguin became ill with either diarrhea, vomiting or nausea. The group flew to Cuba on Jan. 9 on a CanJet flight from Montreal.
Not even the bride was spared, said Sollecito, who is a nurse. The bride became ill the day after her wedding and had to stay in her room.
"As the week went by, more people were ill," recalled Sollecito, who was sick for 24 hours. "It seemed to me to be a gastro because other people at the resort were also complaining about being sick."

A second Montreal woman said members of their wedding party also became ill while staying at the same resort, the Sol Rio de Luna y Mares.
The woman, who didn't want her name published, said she still feels a bit queasy one week after returning home on her CanJet flight.
"I am glad to be home," she said.
The woman said about 25 of the 30 members of her group became ill with vomiting, diarrhea and nausea. All of the sick Canadian tourists had been vacationing in Holguin, but at different resorts. Calgary Herald
 

Cuba's Cardinal Ortega should follow the example of this bishop and a priest

Jan. 24 - Cuban dissidents are thanking a Catholic priest and a bishop for protecting a handful of opposition activists from a government-organized mob, armed with sticks and rocks, that besieged the church where they attended Mass Sunday.
The Cuban government, meanwhile, fired back at U.S., European and other officials who condemned the death of political prisoner Wilman Villár, accusing them of “unscrupulously taking advantage of a lamentable . . . death of a common prisoner.”
Villár’s death last week after a long prison hunger strike triggered a string of dissident protests over the weekend and the short-term police detentions of about 80 opposition activists, according to government opponents.
More protests, pots-and-pans demonstrations and other public activities are planned for Tuesday, according to the National Front for Civic Resistance, an umbrella organization of dissident groups around the island.
The government-organized mob and scores of police laid siege Sunday to the Cristo Redentor church in the eastern city of Holguin as two members of the Ladies in White and Javier Martinez, a dissident also dressed in white, attended mass to pray for Villár.
“We were terrified because the mob was armed with sticks and rocks,” the 25-year-old Martinez told El Nuevo Herald Monday by phone from Holguin. “It was something horrible.”
After the Mass, the Rev. Arnaldo Aldama told the dissidents to remain in the church while he went out and told the mob that “the people in the church were just as Cuban as they were,” Martinez said.
Holguin Bishop Emilio Aranguren arrived amid the standoff and met privately with a local government official in charge of relations with the church, Martinez added. During the talks several members of the dissident Christian Liberation Movement slipped into the church.
After the Aranguren meeting, the mob dispersed and the estimated 100 police in uniform and plain clothes withdrew about 200 yards from the church, said Jose Ramon Pupo Nieves, 40, a dissident who said he watched the incident from the edges of the mob.
Neighbors applauded as the dissidents emerged from the church and rushed to their homes, fearing that police would detain them on the way, both Martinez and Pupo reported.
A person who answered the phone at Aranguren’s office said the bishop was out of town. Calls to Aldama’s cellular phone were answered with a message that it was shut off or out of the service area.
Pupo and Martinez praised the two priests for their decision to protect the dissidents, very likely a tough choice at a time when the Cuban Catholic Church is preparing for Pope Benedict XVI’s planned visit to the island March 26-28. The Miami Herald
 

Ivonne Malleza and two other dissidents were released, but threatened with "harsh jail sentences"

Jan. 23 - Amnesty International said Monday that three Cubans held without charge for 52 days following their arrest at a protest were released last week, hours after the human rights group named them as prisoners of conscience.
The release of the three also came a day after a hunger-striking dissident died, prompting condemnation from island dissidents, rights watchers, the United States and other nations. Amnesty had planned to designate Wilman Villar, 31, a prisoner of conscience but he died in custody before it could.
Ivonne Malleza Galano, Ignacio Martinez Montejo and Isabel Haydee Alvarez were set free Jan. 20 but threatened with "harsh sentences" if they do not stop their anti-government actions, the human rights monitor said in a statement Monday.
It said all three were detained at a Nov. 30 protest in Havana at which Malleza and Martinez held a banner that read "Stop hunger, misery and poverty in Cuba." Alvarez was arrested for objecting when security forces took the other two into custody.
"Amnesty International had adopted them as prisoners of conscience, as they were detained solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, and had called for their immediate and unconditional release," the statement said. Read more

Human Right Watch: Cuba "represses virtually all forms of political dissent"

Jan. 23 - Cuba remains the sole Latin American nation which "represses virtually all forms of political dissent," Human Rights Watch said in a report Sunday, while citing concerns over developments in Venezuela and Mexico.
"Cubans who criticize the government are subject to criminal charges," the watchdog group said in its annual survey released in Cairo.
"They are exempt from due process guarantees," and courts "are 'subordinated' to the executive and legislative branches, denying meaningful judicial protection."
The report said the government's media monopoly ensures that "there is virtually no freedom of expression."
"Limited Internet access means only a tiny fraction of Cubans can read independently published articles and blogs," HRW said.
Despite the release of the remaining 12 members of the "group of 75" dissidents in 2011, the regime of President Raul Castro "continued to enforce political conformity using short-term detentions, beatings, public acts of repudiation, forced exile, and travel restrictions," the report said. Read more
 

Planes continue to return from Cuba full with sick Canadians

Jan. 22 - Canadian travellers are continuing to return from Cuba with more than their vacation memories.
For the fifth time in less than a week, a Canadian airline is reporting several ill passengers on a flight returning from the vacation destination of Holguin.
Although many travelers on each flight reported staying at the same resorts, at least four resorts have been identified amongst the travellers onboard the first four affected flights, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada. Health officials in Cuba have been contacted, said Sylwia Gomes, a spokeswoman for Public Health, and in Canada agency officials are monitoring the situation.

Fifteen passengers on an Air Transat flight that landed in Montreal late Saturday reported feeling sick, said Debbie Cabana, a spokeswoman for the airline. The airline contacted health officials before the plane landed, she said, but once passengers were on the ground it was determined that because of the mild nature of their symptoms, health officials were not required.
The airline is taking extra precautions to disinfect planes travelling to the island and crew are being advised to be extra vigilant about hygiene, she said.
Michelle Larabie said she got sick on a plane returning to Toronto from Holguin on Jan. 13, a week earlier than the other flights. She said she began feeling nauseous while in the air, and her sickness and diarrhea lasted nearly a week.
“As soon as we landed, I had to run to the washroom,” Ms. Larabie said. Read more The Globe and Mail

Cubana Airlines is planning a new non-stop flight Holguín-Toronto:

The widow of Wilman Villar slams the Castro brothers' version of his death

Jan. 22 - The widow of Cuban prisoner Wilman Villar, who dissidents say was a government opponent who died after a lengthy hunger strike to protest his sentence, slammed an official statement denying that her husband had been fasting and calling him an ordinary inmate.
Maritza Pelegrino, Villar’s widow and the mother of their two daughters, said on Saturday that the official version provided by Raul Castro’s government is “the political police’s story” aimed at “staining (her husband’s) image after his death.”
Cuba’s Communist government on Friday released a statement on the official Web site Cubadebate that described Villar as a “common inmate” and said there was “abundant proof and testimony that show that he was not a ‘dissident’ nor was he on hunger strike.”
Cuban authorities said Villar, who died Thursday at a hospital in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, was jailed on Nov. 25 after a domestic violence incident in which he was accused of injuring his wife in the face.
Villar’s mother-in-law called the authorities and when police arrived at the scene he violently resisted their attempts to arrest him, the statement said.
After Villar was booked and released, he “began aligning himself with counter-revolutionary elements in Santiago de Cuba who convinced him his apparent membership in mercenary groups would allow him to avoid justice,” Cubadebate said.
“I deny all of that ... it’s false,” Pelegrino said from Contramaestre, the town in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba where Villar was buried Friday. Read more
 

Cuba travel program comes under scrutiny

Jan. 20 - Congressional investigators will review the government-funded Smithsonian Institution’s travel offerings to Cuba.
A U.S. House committee will investigate travel programs to Cuba offered by the Smithsonian Institution under an Obama administration initiative designed to expose Cubans to ordinary Americans.
The probe comes at the request of U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, who earlier this month criticized the government-funded Smithsonian Institution’s travel offerings to Cuba.
Ros-Lehtinen, who heads the House Foreign Relations Committee, called the museum’s travel program "little more than a tropical vacation" where Americans wouldn’t see "the brutal reality of the Castro dictatorship."
The 10-day, $5,400 trip is offered by the Smithsonian’s for-profit arm, which sought and received approval from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. That’s the agency that issues permits for American enterprises that want permission to do business under the embargo that’s been in place since the 1960s.
"There isn’t one single day at the beach, not one single day," Linda St.Thomas, a spokeswoman for the Smithsonian Institution, said of the travel program. "It is not that kind of vacation. Otherwise they wouldn’t qualify for the people-to-people exchange trips. It is not a Caribbean vacation."
Cuban-American lawmakers have complained that President Barack Obama’s policy on travel to the island nation has been counterproductive because it pumps money from tourism and remittances into the communist country.
The administration’s travel policy was among the reasons U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Miami, objected last year to the confirmation of Roberta Jacobson to be the assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs.
Friday, Ros-Lehtinen praised the probe by the Committee on House Administration, which oversees the Smithsonian.
"It is irresponsible and reckless for this entity affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution to act as a travel agent for a brutal dictatorship which is a declared enemy of the United States," Ros-Lehtinen said. "The trips unequivocally send the wrong message to the people of Cuba, will further enrich their oppressors, and undermine efforts to bring about a transition to democracy in Cuba."
The committee has asked for all memos and e-mails sent between the Smithsonian and the Treasury Department, as well as the planning memos that discuss how the museum decided to pursue such a venture.
St. Thomas said that it "goes without saying" that the institution would comply with the committee’s request. She also said they have no intention of discontinuing the Smithsonian’s four planned trips to Cuba this year — the first of which, in May, is sold out. Read more
 

It must have been a fun flight: Several planes return from Castro's Cuba full of Canadians with diarrhea

Jan. 20 - Flights from Holguin, Cuba, arriving in Ottawa and Toronto have been flagged by Canadian public health officials after people on board complained of a stomach illness.
Air Transat Flight 677 with 260 passengers returning from the Cuban tourist destination to Ottawa was delayed and then briefly quarantined at the Ottawa airport early Friday morning after 14 passengers complained of illness.
An Ottawa Fire Services hazardous materials team was rushed to the airport at 2:20 a.m. ET to assess the situation.
Ottawa paramedics and Air Transat said the sick passengers came from different vacation resorts. Paramedics spokesman J.P. Trottier said the illness appeared to be viral.
"Only two were exhibiting signs of symptoms of what we would determine as flu-like symptoms, being nausea, vomiting and diarrhea," said Trottier.
The passengers were soon cleared and allowed to return home.
Later Friday afternoon, Air Transat Flight 509 — from Holguin to Toronto — landed at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. Eleven people who reported feeling ill were assessed by public health nurses.
None needed to be treated or transported to hospital.

Read more CBC News  

Passengers become ill after visiting Cuban resorts

At least 11 people were checked over by medical personnel after they became sick aboard a Toronto-bound Air Transat flight from Holguin, Cuba on Friday afternoon.
This is the fourth flight to return to Ontario from Cuba since Tuesday with sick passengers on board. Two planes landed at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, while the other two landed in Ottawa.

■Seven ill passengers were on board a Cuba-to-Ottawa flight Tuesday
■Twenty passengers were ill on a Toronto-bound flight Thursday night
■Twelve sick passengers were on board a plane that landed in Ottawa on Friday morning    CP News

Pretty soon, airlines will start demanding that all passengers returning from Castro's resorts in Cuba carry at least one personal cork, in addition to their passports and other travel documents.

Statement by Yoani Sánchez on the death of Wilman Villar

Jan. 20 - Translation by our friend Alberto de la Cruz:

Greetings and good evening.
My name is Yoani Sanchez. I am a blogger, a citizen journalist, and I want to make a denouncement.
I want to denounce that in my country, people have to use their bodies, their intestines, their stomachs as a battlefield, as as a way to mount a civic protest. It is very lamentable that an entire population -- 11-million Cubans on this island -- has had all their rights as citizens taken away or limited. The civic, electoral, and judicial avenues for citizens to seek change, to demand a transformation, to demand the end of the status quo in our country has been blocked. What do we have left? Well, the people then must use hunger strikes as a way to express their nonconformity. It is very sad what has happened today, the death of Wilman Villar. It is also very sad that Orlando Zapata Tamayo had to die. Until when will Cubans have to put their own bodies up as a form of protest?
That is the denouncement I wanted to make. Perhaps it is just like a bottle thrown into the sea, something that falls into an abyss, but on this 19th of January, I want to leave constancy of this. Please, we do not want to continue utilizing our skin, our bones, as a way to show our outrage. We have to have the right to do it without repression.
Thank you.

Political prisoner Wilman Villar dies after 50 days in a hunger strike

Jan. 19 - Wilman Villar, a Cuban political prisoner who had been in a hunger strike for the last 50 days, died on Thursday night at Juan Bruno Zayas Hospital in Santiago de Cuba.

"We hold the Castro regime responsible for his death. They are the only ones responsible, "said Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, spokesman for the Cuban Patriotic Union (UNPACU). "The family is mourning his death. Tyranny has just committed another crime," said Ferrer.

Villar, who was only 31 years old , became a new martyr in the ranks of the opposition who risk their lives in defense of individual liberties and human rights. Villar was on life support for several days. His condition worsened in recent days due to an outbreak of sepsis caused by a heavy infection in the bloodstream. Doctors warned the family that only a miracle could save his life.

The complication irreversibly affected the functioning of the liver and kidneys, according to the last medical specialists who treated him in the intensive care ward of the hospital.
On Thursday, his wife Maritza Pellegrino said that agents of Cuba's State Security didn't allow her to see the body of her husband.

Villar was serving a four year sentence for opposing the Castro regime.

On January 14, he was rushed to a hospital in critical condition and unconscious. In November he had been confined to Aguadores, one of the most brutal prisons in Castro's Gulag, after being arrested during a police offensive in Contramaestre, near Santiago de Cuba.
In a trial behind closed doors and without any procedural guarantees, Villar was charged with assault, disrespect and resistance.

Villar denied the allegations and, putting aside the risk that could mean an act of rebellion, he went on a hunger strike on November 25. He later  contracted pneumonia, which was aggravated by the hardships he suffered.
Villar never wanted to wear the common prisoner's uniform. In retaliation, his jailers sent him to a one-person cell, without clothes or acces to water.

Another crime of the brutal dictatorship of the Castro brothers!

And in the meantime, the Pope is getting ready for his trip to Cuba, the Miami Archdioceses is preparing tourist packages to profit from the visit, and the rest of the world couldn't care less about this new crime of the fascist regime in Cuba. El Nuevo Herald (Spanish)

María Corina Machado calls Chávez a "thief" to his face

Jan. 13 - Hugo Chávez spoke for more than 8 hours during his annual speech to the Venezuelan National Assembly on Friday, during which he announced the closing of the Venezuelan consulate office in Miami.

The US government expelled the Venezuelan consul in charge of that office after accusing her of conspiring with Iranian and Cuban agents to attack the US computer networks.

María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan legislator and a potential presidential candidate, told Chávez that during his marathon state of the country speech, he didn't say a word about the things that the Venezuelan people really wants to hear, the shortages of basic goods like milk, untamed crime and failed nationalizations that she referred to as "robberies."

"We've been listening to you for eight hours describe a country very different to the one we mothers know," she said, telling Chavez: "Mr. President, your time is finished."

María Corina Machado also told Chávez that the Venezuelan people don't want communism.

Watch the video (Spanish)

Video of a mob controlled by the Cuban regime, attacking the home of Maritza Castro in Havana

Jan. 12 - On Tuesday, January 10, the home of Cuban dissident Maritza Castro was attacked by a paramilitary mob under the control of Cuba's State Security.

The mob threw rocks and used wood stick to break the windows of the activist's home.

The ANC thanks Castro for his "unwavering support", while Jesse denounces "economic apartheid"

Jan. 9 - This weekend, African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma paid tribute to the men and women who sacrificed their lives for the liberation of South Africa, and to Castro's Cuba for "its unwavering support," during a ceremony to commemorate the 100 anniversary of the organization.

Also in attendance was US civil rights activist, Rev. Jesse Jackson who said it was time the country snapped out of "educational and economic apartheid."

"We single out Cuba for her unwavering support to the movement. "Freedom would not have been achieved (without the support)," Zuma said.

What a pair of hypocrites! What about freedom for the Cuban poeple?

Neither one of them has ever said one word about the abuses of the racist regime in Cuba, a country where 11 million human beings, the majority of them black or of a mixed race, has been enslaved for 53 years by the same Castro brothers who they thank for the "liberation" of their homeland.

When have you heard any of these so called " Black activists" denounce the brutal abuses of the Castro regime against the Cuban people?

Meanwhile, Jesse Jackson told the crowd: "Now you have been freed from humiliation of skin color apartheid- but there is educational apartheid, there is economic apartheid and land ownership."

Have you ever heard Jesse Jackson mention one word about the tourist apartheid in Cuba?

Have you ever heard him denounce the fact that only two Cubans, whose last name is Castro, are not subjected to the economic apartheid in the island?

Have you ever heard him denounce the fact that Cubans are second class citizens in their own country?

No way, Jesse would not jeopardize the opportunity to be wined and dined by the racist slave masters that have kept Cubans enslaved for 53 long years.

These are not "activists" on my book, they are HYPOCRITES!  The Africa Report

Listen to Fidel Castro

For those who think that the Cuban people chose the system imposed by the Castro brothers, here are some of the things that Fidel Castro said and promised when he gained power Click Here

Visit our updated Videos page with many new and old videos

Satellite photos of Cuba's prisons, missile installations, military bases and more

A look at Havana before the Castro brothers destroyed it Cuba B.C

Visit our updated page: The Useful Idiots

Our new page: Fidel Castro, the World's oldest terrorist

We have new photos of Havana taken in October of last year

Oct. 9 - A friend sent me around two dozen photos of Havana that he took at the beginning of this month.

Some of them are very sad, because they show how Havana has been completely destroyed by this gang of human termites.

Some others are hard to believe, including this one of goats having "lunch" off the dumpsters on a Havana street.

Click here  to see them

Article in El Nuevo Herald about Cuban Search

July 16 - Today's El Nuevo Herald has an article and a video about my new website, Cuban Search, that helps Cubans inside and outside the island, find relatives with whom they have lost contact.

Cuban Search serves as the missing-link with their relatives and friends between those millions of Cubans who are now spread all over the world and who may be trying to find them. El Nuevo Herald (Spanish)

Capitol Hill Cubans: Finding lost Friends

June 25 - Nearly every Cuban exile has a harrowing story about how they fled Castro's Cuba.
Each journey is full of tremendous risk, pain and sacrifice -- and that's just to leave the island.
Then, there are the challenges of starting a new life in a foreign land.
To help ease this transition, a new website has been launched to help Cubans find their friends and relatives abroad.
It's called Cuban Search.
According to its founder, George Utset (of the blog, The Real Cuba), the response has been overwhelming -- parents looking for their children who had left Cuba and they couldn't find, children looking for their parents, brothers, cousins, friends and schoolmates.
You can either search for a particular name, or register and enter the person that you are looking for.
You can search alphabetically, by city, or even by school.
Cuban Search has also teamed up with Cuba Archive Project to provide a database of Cubans who have disappeared at sea trying to escape Castro's Cuba.
It is estimated that as many as 70,000 Cubans have perished at sea in search for freedom.
Thus far, 900 have been identified. Capitol Hill Cubans

Socio-Economic Conditions in Pre-Castro Cuba

Dec. 17 - Cuba Facts is an ongoing series of succinct fact sheets on various topics, including, but not limited to, political structure, health, economy, education, nutrition, labor, business, foreign investment, and demographics, published and updated on a regular basis by the Cuba Transition Project staff at the University of Miami.

Click here to learn the truth about Cuba's Health, Education, Personal Consumption and much more in pre-Castro Cuba.

More photos showing how the Castro brothers have destroyed one of the world's most beautiful cities

Click here