Something quite unusual happened in Cuba last week. Dissident lawyer Wilfredo Vallín, who last year filed an unprecedented lawsuit against the island’s communist government, was told by its highest court that the suit can proceed. Coincidentally, the news reached veteran Cuba reporter Juan Tamayo in Miami yesterday, April 27 – the …
Cuba
Cuba’s Communist Codgers Keep Control
Three years ago, just before Raúl Castro was declared his older, ailing brother Fidel’s successor as President of Cuba, the world thought a new generation of leadership would emerge with him. Raúl, then 76, had promised to make Cuba’s sclerotic communist system more open and efficient, and younger, reform-minded apparatchiks …
Party Time In Havana: Cuba’s Bay of Pigs Generation Hopes To Get It Right
Fifty years ago this weekend, the Cuban Revolution had its crystallizing moment: the defeat of the Bay of Pigs invasion. On April 17, 1961, a small army of 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles stormed Cuba’s southern coast, only to be routed in three days by the forces of the island’s leader, Fidel Castro. It was an embarrassing debacle …
Why Posada Carriles Should Still Be Tried For Terrorism
Now that an El Paso, Texas, jury has acquitted Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles of perjury, the buzz back in Miami is that at least he got the fair trial that people in communist Cuba are usually denied. Now, say Cuban exile leaders, it’s time to put the whole ugly Posada drama to rest. But Friday’s verdict only throws into sharper …
Carter in Cuba: The Long Road to Freeing a U.S. Prisoner – and Thawing U.S.-Cuba Relations
Question: If former U.S. President Jimmy Carter didn’t go to Cuba this week to win the freedom of jailed U.S. contractor Alan Gross, what was he there for? Answer: To win the freedom of jailed U.S. contractor Alan Gross – but down the road. And that road could be a long one.
Gross, 61, a Maryland lawyer, was arrested in Cuba in …