It is the reverse of what might be expected: the oil-rich, OPEC-member country Venezuela will be counseled through its energy crisis by the small island nation of Cuba, which is renowned for its blackouts and imposed rationing of electricity amid energy shortages of its own. Caracas, which supplies the bulk of Cuba’s oil supplies, turned this week to Havana for consulting advice on how to confront shortages.

Cuban Vice President Ramiro Valdes leads the consulting team in Caracas, an appointment that has angered the Venezuelan opposition. Chavez has cited Cuba’s “valuable experience” as reason enough to seek help from Havana. His government is installing tens of thousands of energy saving light bulbs imported from Cuba, and Cubans have already begun a cloud-seeding effort that it hopes will ease the drought. (The drought, according to Chavez, is the cause of the energy shortage). But Chavez has also followed other Cuban examples, with planned and unplanned blackouts across the country and partially shutting down some businesses in order to save energy.

Lead opposition in Venezuela criticizes Valdes’ qualifications for the consulting job. “What he’s done in Cuba is impose rationing,” said one, “He’s not en expert in investment, maintenance and production.” That is what both of these countries need.

(AP Photo/Javier Galeano)

Earlier this week, Havana announced a two-month amnesty for gun owners across the country to register their unlicensed guns and thus (ideally, but probably not actually) eliminate the illegal gun culture in the country.

Today, perhaps on a related bent to curb illegality in all its forms and better account for the true situation in the country, the Cuban government announced that it will begin offering pensions to self-employed artists and performers, calculating benefits based on the taxable income they declare. The hope here is that such artists (musicians, writers, movie and television performers, sculptors and painters) will now more honestly report income and the state will be able to account better for the full economy. In previous years, state policy excluded these self-employed individuals from pensions, causing many to underreport incomes in order to pay less in taxes that were required of them—at least 7% of total income in addition to year-end returns with additional payments.

With the new policy in place, this group of individuals (how many is not clear) will be eligible to receive monthly government pensions of 60% of their reported income starting at age 65 for men and 60 for women.

(Photo from enforex.com)

Today, Cuba declared a two-month amnesty for unlicensed gun owners—an implicit acknowledgment of the presence of an illegal underground market in Cuba, since very few individuals beyond active military personnel and state security agents are legally allowed to even possess weapons. As the Associated Press reports:

“Even most police officers are required to leave their pistols at the station or in a regional barracks when on vacation or leave, and young men participating in mandatory military service are given unloaded firearms for most exercises.”

During this “exceptional and one-time only” two-month amnesty, gun owners who come forward and pass aptitude and psychological tests will be allowed to keep their weapons.

Unclear: will they have to pay a fee for registration? This would certainly deter some Cubans from coming forward. Indeed, the Prensa Latina announcement says that gun owners will have to pay established taxes related to gun ownership.

And Cuban officials have a history of mistrust to contend with: Cubans were encouraged to register any weapons they owned in the years after 1959. Then later, authorities used the list of those who had sought licenses to go door-to-door and encourage them to turn over their firearms.

Havana is not alone in its judgment that the Obama administration has not done enough in its first year to achieve rapprochement. Analysts have been voicing their dissatisfaction in connection with the end of year one: the Center for International Policy’s critique sums up the main complaints that have been circulating.

Over-arching thesis: “Obama is so far falling short of promoting the principles of reconciliation, self-determination, mutual respect, social equity, and peace that he espoused at the April 2009 Americas Summit.”

Scathing comparison: “Obama lifted restrictions on Cuban-American travel and remittances and has allowed a few more Cuban officials and cultural figures to come to the United States, but that is about it. The same attitudes that drove the Bush administration regarding Cuba seem to be present in Obama.”

And what should Washington do? “It needs to take Cuba off the list of terrorist states. There is absolutely no evidence that Cuba should be on it. It needs to lift travel controls across the board, and especially educational travel. And there is really no reason we cannot now again have diplomatic relations.”

… and beyond: Liz Harper at the Americas Quarterly proposes that Obama “unleash the Googles on Cuba,” referring to the recent Google-China dispute which continues to receive much publicity (Henry Hoyle has more on Google in Chine here).

The date has been set: on February 19, the second round of U.S.-Cuba immigration talks will take place in Havana.

Recall that the first session took place last July in New York, and the follow up discussions were postponed in December. According to the New York Times, Cuban officials aim to negotiate an agreement with the United States to slow illegal and dangerous human trafficking between the two nations. Bruno Rodriguez, Cuba’s foreign minister, announced the date and Havana’s intentions today (Washington has not confirmed the date publicly), saying that “part of the Cuban agenda presented to the government of the United States is a proposal for a new immigration agreement and solidifying cooperation in the fight against people trafficking.”

This is an opportunity to work together to protect migrants from the perilous journeys they sometimes undertake because of the disjuncture between U.S. and Cuban laws, and particularly problematic U.S. policy. Hopefully both sides can ignore some recent speed bumps in the relationship and pursue this mutual concern in February.

Perhaps even more than Cubans would like to see normalization of relations with the United States, they would like to see full normalization of relations with Cuban emigrants—the friends and family members who have moved abroad but maintain connections to the island, and oftentimes send money and goods back to those who remain. For years after Fidel came to power in Cuba, the Cuban emigre was portrayed by the state as a weak traitor who had betrayed the motherland. Indeed, for two decades, Fidel publicly referred to emigrants as gusanos (worms).

In years since, general relations between the Cuban state and its emigres have greatly improved. In fact, this morning the “2010 Conference against the U.S. Blockade of Cuba and in Defense of National Sovereignty” began in Havana—a conference of over 450 Cuban emigrants from 42 countries, including 200 individuals from the United States alone. Similar conferences in previous years have not only covered discussions of the embargo, however, but offer Cubans abroad the opportunity to voice concerns to and make direct requests of the Cuban regime.

And they have had tangible effects from the beginning. In 1978, after the first such meeting with emigrants, Fidel announced that he would stop using the derogatory terms gusanos and “counterrevolutionaries” to describe Cuban exiles, saying that these were “unjust generic references to people who had emigrated.” He proceeded to use the term “Cuban community abroad” (Cubanos en el exterior) for the first time in official speech, and adopted it from then on. More importantly, after that meeting it was decided that Cuban emigrants would be allowed to visit the island. In 1979, more than 102,000 Cubans living abroad visited their families in Cuba—many for the first time in 10-15 years or more.

Since then, each conference has had a similar scheme of mutual interest coverage: for the Cuban state, the conferences address the need for organized resistance to U.S. policies; for emigrants, the regime allows dialogue on emigrant-state issues. And as those channels for exchange expand (coupled with the Obama administration’s relaxation of travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans, certainly), emigrants continue to visit the homeland in increasing numbers: former Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque announced in 2008 that in the previous year, over 193,000 Cubans abroad visited the island; today, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told the Havana Conference that 296,000 Cubans living abroad were able to visit in 2009.

This year’s conference promises to issue a condemnation of the U.S. embargo and strategies for opposition action based on geographical areas. But what issue will the emigres demand action on this year, and will they have a positive response from the regime?

One idea: emigrants may push for elimination of the long-protested and much-despised “tarjeta blanca” (or “Permiso de Salida”), a permission that is difficult to acquire and which costs far above what average Cubans can ever hope to afford, despite the fact that Cubans must apply for and be granted the permiso in order to leave the country on visit or permanently. Opposition to the tarjeta blanca is broad, so much so that it has spawned a Facebook group of Cubans on the island and abroad—an impressive feat. See here.

(AP Photo: Franklin Reyes)

In the first days following the 7.0 earthquake in Haiti, American media failed the public by misreporting or omitting entirely Cuba’s involvement in the relief efforts. Only two mainstream media outlets reported on Cuba’s response. One was Fox News, which claimed (incorrectly) that among the neighboring Caribbean countries providing aid, Cuba was absent. The other was the Christian Science Monitor, which reported (correctly) that Cuba had almost immediately flown in 30 doctors to the stricken nation. All failed to mention that Cuban doctors were already in Haiti in large numbers (350+) and, having already established medical infrastructure before the quake, were some of the most effective responders to the crisis. The discussion got to the point of almost deliberate misdirection: the famous Babalu blog’s Val Prieto scoffed at the suggestion that any Cuban doctors were actually in Haiti at all.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking in a press conference before departing for Haiti last week, did not mention the role of Cuban doctors as the crisis unfolded. She thanked Havana for allowing U.S. planes to use Cuban airspace, and said that Washington would welcome any more help Cuba cared to give. That was all.

Finally, on Friday, the U.S. government’s Voice of America (VOA)—the official radio and television broadcasting company of this country—turned around this poor streak (which by last week had admittedly improved, but there had yet to be a U.S. government admission of the omission). In an editorial entitled, “Cuba Aids Haiti Relief,” VOA finally gave much-deserved credit to the country and its doctors:

The massive international relief effort in Haiti has received a boost from Cuba, which has more than 400 health workers, many of them doctors, working throughout the devastated country. The government in Havana has also aided United States relief efforts by opening restricted Cuban airspace to American planes flying medical evacuation missions.

Surprise: the United States sees Cuba in Haiti.

Yesterday, NPR ran a story about the response of Cuban doctors in Haiti, called “Cuban Doctors Unsung Heroes of Haitian Earthquake” (it is excellent). Listen here.

(Photo from Prensa Latina)

For those who missed last week’s Foreign Policy Association event featuring Julia Sweig (in which she drew on her recently published book, “Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know”), check out the full footage from the event here.

(Story below from AFP)

US and Cuban experts are teaming up to try to save the Cuba home where Ernest Hemingway lived for more than two decades and penned his classic “The Old Man and the Sea,” official media said Wednesday. Cuba’s National Patrimony office chief Margarita Ruiz inked an agreement with the private US Finca Vigia Foundation to step up efforts to preserve and restore Finca Vigia villa.

The colonial home outside Havana is now crumbling in some places, the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma reported. It did not put a figure on the cost of saving the whitewashed home the US foundation says is “filled with original furniture, 9,000 books, artwork, and several thousand irreplaceable letters, photographs, documents, and manuscripts.”

“The preservation of the documents and repair of the villa must occur immediately, before all is lost forever,” the Boston-based US foundation says on its website.

The Nobel prize winner’s home here officially has been a Cuban museum since 1961.

This week Havana will hold the fifth Cuban Conference on Sexual Education, Orientation and Therapy, organized by the National Center of Sex Education (CENESEX) under Mariela Castro. Ms. Castro, notably, is the daughter of Raul and niece of Fidel Castro, and an outspoken rights advocate on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual Cubans.

In her remarks to reporters today, Mariela characteristically stepped outside the bounds of typical acceptable political and social discourse in Cuba—a rare privilege she enjoys and (thankfully) utilizes as a relatively untouchable member of the Castro family.

She announced that Cuba has now indeed begun performing sex change operations after the government lifted a long-time ban on the procedure in 2007. CENESEX has taken on the role of preparing transsexuals for the procedure and identifying those individuals it deems ready for it, and the surgeries began in 2008. Cuban doctors, working with Belgian counterparts, have as yet performed “less than half” of the 30 surgeries that have been approved by CENESEX, Mariela said, and over one hundred Cubans have now requested the surgery.

The operations have been protested in the past because of the stigma of the related issues, but also because universal health care covers the cost of these (probably expensive) surgeries. In a small country with severe economic problems, some wonder whether such surgeries are the best use of limited state funds. For this reason, Ms. Castro explained, only a small number are scheduled each year, based on budget constraints.

She went on to a second unmentionable: critique of the Communist Party.

Mariela accused the Communist Party of discrimination against gays, and said she will write a letter to its top leadership (note: Fidel Castro is still the official head of the Communist Party) urging them to draft a measure directing that homosexuals not be barred from joining the party. Gay individuals are not technically banned from party membership, but “implicitly they are rejected,” according to Ms. Castro. “Your ideological and party definition have nothing to do with your sexual orientation,” she said, “It’s absurd. It’s laughable.”

Her critique and determination are not unique in Cuba, but her ability to speak completely freely on contentious issues is, indeed, quite rare.

CENESEX’s abilities on the island are also unusual: check out their impressive web forum for LGBT Cubans and allies, la diversidad es natural, with blogs, member pages, and discussion threads here.

(Photo from CENESEX website)