Radio Havana Cuba-08 August 2001 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Radio Havana Cuba - News Update - 08 August 2001 . *ULTRA RIGHT CUBAN-AMERICANS IN A STRUGGLE FOR MONEY, POWER *HONDURAN FOREIGN MINISTER GRATEFUL FOR CUBAN MEDICAL ASSISTANCE *RESTORED FINE ARTS MUSEUM INSTANT SUCCESS IN HAVANA *CUBAN PRESIDENT SEES OFF YOUTH DELEGATION TO ALGERIA *WORLDWIDE SALE OF HAVANA CLUB LABEL GETS A GREEN LIGHT FROM WTO *CUBAN DOCTORS TAKE INITIATIVE IN TINY GHANIAN TOWN *FACED WITH MOUNTING SOCIAL PROTEST, ARGENTINA ASKS FOR MOORE MONEY Viewpoint: *US RECESSION MORE BAD NEWS FOR LATIN AMERICAN ECONOMIES . *ULTRA RIGHT CUBAN-AMERICANS IN A STRUGGLE FOR MONEY, POWER Havana, August 8 (RHC)--The deep divisions in the Miami-based, ultra right wing Cuban-American National Foundation are not the result of a struggle between moderates and hardliners, but rather a struggle for money and political power, assert analysts in Cuba. In a televised roundtable discussion Tuesday evening, Cuban journalists and commentators focused on the resignation of 20 members of the CANF's executive board, just two weeks after another split in the terrorist organization. While those who abandoned the organization this week accused CANF leader Jorge Mas Santos of being anti-democratic, in late July longtime spokeswoman for the organization, Ninoska Perez, accused Mas Santos of converting the CANF into his private fiefdom. Participants in the roundtable discussion noted how US media, particularly in Miami, are reporting the split as a falling-out between hardliners and moderates, between the old guard and younger, more pragmatic members. According to these press versions, the principal development behind the division is Mas Santos' support for allowing Cuban musicians to participate in Miami's Latin Grammy event, breaking a long tradition. But Cuban journalists Reynaldo Taladrid and Lazaro Barredo pointed out that those remaining in the CANF under Mas Santos' leadership continue financing the defense of infamous terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, arrested in Panama in connection with an assassination plot against President Fidel Castro. Panelists asserted that as a result of the CANF's defeat and humiliation in the case of Elian Gonzalez, as well as other political blunders that drastically altered American public opinion regarding the organization, the defections are convenient for Mas Santos, who can now claim that his organization has enhanced its image. But Cuban analysts say that those who remain with Mas Santos are as terrorist and mafia-like as those who defected. Taking note of the numerous financial corruption scandals in which the CANF has been implicated, Taladrid said the divisions are also a history of money. Barredo asserted that the family has split up, but that both branches of the family continue their mafia activities, and both branches continue with their objective of destroying the Cuban Revolution by any means necessary. *HONDURAN FOREIGN MINISTER GRATEFUL FOR CUBAN MEDICAL ASSISTANCE Havana, August 8 (RHC)--Upon arriving Wednesday in Havana, visiting Honduran Foreign Minister Roberto Flores Bermudez thanked the Cuban government and people for their medical assistance to his country following Hurricane Mitch. Announcing his intention to sign with his Cuban counterpart, Felipe Perez Roque, an investment protection accord and seek ways to strengthen bilateral relations, the Honduran Foreign Minister said that expressing his country's gratitude to Cuba is also at the top of his agenda. More than 170 Cuban health professionals are currently working in Honduras, while close to 400 Hondurans are studying free of charge at Havana's Latin American Medical School. In 1997, Cuba and Honduras agreed on the setting up of interests section offices in their respective capitals, though Tegucigalpa has yet to open its office in Havana. On July 10, Honduran business leaders called on President Carlos Flores to establish full diplomatic relations with Cuba. This is the first visit to Cuba of a Honduran Foreign Minister since diplomatic relations were severed with the island in 1962, at the behest of the US government. At that time, all other Latin American nations with the exception of Mexico also broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba. *RESTORED FINE ARTS MUSEUM INSTANT SUCCESS IN HAVANA Havana, August 8 (RHC)--The newly restored Fine Arts Museum in Havana, which opened to the public at the beginning of the month, has already attracted large numbers of Cubans to see its collection of more than 47,000 works of Cuban and foreign art spanning two centuries. The remodelling of the 1950s building housing the museum's Cuban collection cost $14.5 million. Its central atrium lends light and air to the three floors of exhibits, which comprise paintings and sculptures. The work took more than two years to complete. Of the four main exhibition halls in the first two floors, the museum chronologically follows Cuban art from the colonial period through 1951, exploring landscapes, portraits, impressionism, vanguard and abstract art. The third floor houses the country's contemporary art in one large hall. The more ornate 1927 Centro Austrian building houses ancient classical and European art, with more than 600 Spanish paintings, including those by El Greco, Joaquin Sorolla and Francisco de Zurbarn, and European works of van Dyck, Canaletto and Tintoretto. There is also a large collection of Latin American art and a North American collection that is on exhibit for the first time. The Fine Arts Museum also houses a library with more than 120,000 volumes. *CUBAN PRESIDENT SEES OFF YOUTH DELEGATION TO ALGERIA Havana, August 8 (RHC)--Cuban president Fidel Castro was in Havana's José Martí airport Tuesday to give a send-off to the remaining Cuban delegation to the XV World Youth and Students Festival in Algeria. After spending a brief time with the last 450 delegates of the full delegation of 750, whom he said he would be with in spirit, he congratulated the organizers at the island's Young Communist League for a preparatory job well done. The Cuban delegation comprises 223 students from a total of 56 other nations in the island's effort to ensure global representation in what Havana considers to be a very important event. The young Cubans who left Tuesday night included 14 primary school children. *WORLDWIDE SALE OF HAVANA CLUB LABEL GETS A GREEN LIGHT FROM WTO Havana, August 8 (RHC)--In a decision that has given a victory to the European Union and the French company Pernod-Ricard that represents Cuba's Havana Club rum, the World Trade Organization has ruled that the Cuban rum can continue to be sold on a worldwide basis by the French company, including in the United States. The United States government and Bacardí Rum had sought to prevent the sale of Cuban rum under the world-famous Havana Club trademark, which belongs to Cuba. With the support of anti-Cuba organizations such as the Cuban American National Foundation, Bacardí had attempted to obtain the trademark, although the original owner had allowed it to expire. Although the brand name was then registered in the US by Cuba and reregistered in some 80 countries, Barcardí usurped the Havana Club name. using it in sales in the United States, after a New York court ruled in February of last year that Bacardí had full rights to the label following a US Supreme Court decision against Pernod-Ricard. In the ensuing suit filed with the World Trade Organization the European Union intervened in favor of Pernod-Ricard. According to the Cuban daily, Granma, the action expresses Europe's opposition to the U.S. blockade of Cuba, which attempts to prevent other countries doing business with the island. *CUBAN DOCTORS TAKE INITIATIVE IN TINY GHANIAN TOWN Havana, August 8 (RHC)--In an article in the Cuban newspaper, Granma, doctors volunteering their time in the African country of Ghana report that they have found a new way to ensure the health and welfare of pregnant women and their unborn children. Doctors Antonio Yanes Alarcón and Carlos Pérez Soccarás go to the local market in the town of Lawra every Sunday, where most of the area's women are selling produce. In this way, the Cuban physicians gain access to most of the community's pregnant women. After a few words they are invariably able to quickly examine the women and then convince them to take a short break and be fully examined at the local hospital nearby. This way, say Yanes and Pérez, the risks associated with childbirth are reduced and healthier children are born. The idea occurred to them when they were at the market one day and noticed many pregnant women who had not come to their office to be examined. The two Cuban doctors also noticed that a substantial number of the mothers-to-be were undernourished. Yanes and Perez also take the opportunity to get to know the state of health of community's children. The two doctors are now a familiar site to the town residents who are no longer reticent about asking them for their opinions and medical assistance. *FACED WITH MOUNTING SOCIAL PROTEST, ARGENTINA ASKS FOR MOORE MONEY Buenos Aires, August 8 (RHC)--Faced with increasing social protest, the government of Argentina has requested another International Monetary Fund loan of between 6 and 9 billion dollars. After justifying an economic shock policy with the argument that Argentina is over-indebted and must live on its own resources, Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo stated that this new loan is necessary due to the lack of confidence of international investors in the country's capacity to put its economy back on track. Rumors have spread during recent months of an imminent moratorium on Argentina's foreign debt payments and/or a devaluation of the national currency. Argentina received a $40 billion mega-loan last December, of which $13.4 billion came from the IMF. Meanwhile, associations of the unemployed, other grassroots organizations, labor activists, students, teachers and public employees today staged the second day of a 48-hour protest mobilization against the country's economic shock package that will reduce salaries and cut public spending. As road blockages and work stoppages continued throughout the country, thousands were reportedly marching on the capital to culminate the mobilization in the Plaza de Mayo, the square located in front of the presidential palace. The first mobilization last week was for 24 hours, this week 48 hours, and next week activists plan to extend it to 72 hours. The protest campaign has been announced as the beginning of a resistance movement. Viewpoint: *US RECESSION MORE BAD NEWS FOR LATIN AMERICAN ECONOMIES When the U.S. economy sneezes, Latin Americans get pneumonia. With the United States' hidden recession, which experts discreetly call "an undynamic economy," and the inability of the European Union or Japan to take over as the driving force of the world economy, once again Latin America is being hit the hardest. According to a recent study made by the United Nation's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Argentina's Gross Domestic Product will take a dive for the fourth straight year. Brazil's economy grew by less than three percent and Mexico's by just two percent. This means that the three countries with the best macro-economic results at the end of the last century have started off the new millennium with bleak prospects. Oddly enough, one of the countries in economic and social crisis for many months now, Ecuador, comes out in the U.N. study as the nation with the best prognosis for the future, with growth in 2001 projected at five percent. According to the same study, Cuba's economy should also experience a five percent growth rate, though the two countries' internal situations are very different. The Ecuadoran government, presided over by Gustavo Noboa, experienced an important reversal on Tuesday, when a constitutional court ruled that a rise in the value added tax from 12% to 14% was illegal. This is considered to be a grassroots victory since it affects the working people who pay sales tax. Macro-economic indicators are not always a sign of the well-being of the majority of people, because one cannot measure the results of a single year without considering all the inequalities that have accumulated over decades. In the case of Cuba, economic growth is a reflection of how the quality of life is improving little by little. This is true despite the brutal impact of the economic crisis that began in the early l990's and which in less than a year destroyed more than 70% of the island's foreign market, and despite the devastating effects of Washington's economic blockade imposed against Cuba for more than 40 years. For the rest of the Latin American nations the panorama is more uncertain, and everything appears to indicate that after the lost decade of the 1980s and the precarious recuperation of the 1990s, the beginning of the 21st century is even more menacing to the region as the U.S. economy stumbles. In these times we would all do well to pay heed to the fable of the grasshopper and the ant and begin preparing ourselves for a long, hard winter. (c) 2001 Radio Habana Cuba, NY Transfer News. 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