Pablo Pacheco is a journalist that was imprisoned in Cuba in 2003, and remains behind bars (his sentence is 20 years). Supposedly, he is able to dictate blog entries by phone to Claudia Cadelo, a friend, who posts them here.

The Huffington Post gave this blog attention today. It seems unbelievable that Pacheco would be able to maintain an online journal while in jail in a country where internet is scarcely available to those that have no run-ins with the police. I share it for that reason alone, not because I am privvy to any information beyond what is here. Further, I see no reason to doubt the Huffington Post and Yoani Sanchez, who relayed the blog.

American car-makers have not shipped spare parts to Cuba since 1960, but an estimated 60,000 of these cars from the 40s and 50s still roam the roads of the island. Some operate as taxis and many have been carefully maintained over half a decade by individual owners. Watch an MSNBC video on this here.

The report points out the irony of these cars in Cuba (beyond the obvious—that the companies that are bankrupt at home still thrive in a country that the United States has had mutually icy relations with for years): the state-run tourism industry actually uses the nostalgia invoked by these American cars to draw foreigners to the island. Check out this advertisement, from the Cuban tourism industry’s own official site, for example:

Meanwhile, Cuba’s state media, in reports on the U.S. financial crisis, have highlighted events like GM’s bankruptcy as symptomatic of everything gone wrong with the United States and the failure of unbridled U.S.-style capitalism.

The present form and content of educational systems shapes the leaders of the next generation. Predictably then, the fact that Cuba is educating so many international students, particularly those from this hemisphere, makes some uneasy. From Andrés Oppenheimer’s Miami Herald piece yesterday:

“While the United States remains the leading destination for students from Latin American and Caribbean countries, Cuba is already the No. 1 destination for students from five countries in the region, and the No. 2 destination for another 13 countries. Among them:

• Bolivia has 4,800 college students in Cuba, 1,030 in the United States, and 490 in Argentina.

• Paraguay has 865 college students in Cuba, 390 in Argentina and 330 in the United States.

• Uruguay has 780 college students in Cuba, 530 in the United States and 500 in Argentina.

• Nicaragua has nearly 850 college students in Cuba, 425 in the United States and 287 in Costa Rica.

Cuba is the second largest foreign study destination for university students from Venezuela (3,850), Honduras (940), Guatemala (670), El Salvador (708), Panama (500) and Costa Rica (250), among others.”

Congressman Howard Berman’s (D-CA) response to this information was apparently: “We need to rectify that.” Read more here.

While Cuba’s World Baseball Classic team was in the United States this week, two Cuban journalists deserted the team and their duties in order to avoid returning to the island. Yuri Boza snuck away the first day that the team arrived in Southern California. Raúl Arce, the well-known sports writer for Juventud Rebelde “disappeared” just hours before the team’s flight out of San Diego on Thursday. His last published article was on the team’s defeat by Japan Wednesday evening.

Fidel Castro, ever involved in commentary recently, called the deserters “repugnant.”

News of where Arce and Boza might be now are only rumors at this point, although Boza appeared on public television to send a message to his loved ones, expressing his regret that he could not have taken them with him.

The non-partisan Latin America Working Group will begin its two-day “Cuba Consultation 2009” tomorrow. The focus of the Group’s event is on loosening travel restrictions, which, as they point out, is a concern that unites all sectors from academics to farmers, Cuban Americans to religious organizations, and travel service providers to performing artists and curious citizens.

The first day of the consultation is an opportunity for interested individuals to convene and discuss the issues related to achieving legal travel for all groups to Cuba, and the second day (perhaps more intriguing) is an opportunity to meet independently with Congresspeople to discuss their policy decisions on the matter. El Nuevo Herald reports that the main participants will be interested citizens and exiles.

This is an excellent time for a push like this, when Congress is considering the very proposals that participants in the Cuba Consultation are backing.

The U.S.-Cuba relationship is openly characterized by distrust, contradictions and mutual recriminations, but the wounds are deep and the important issues are more complicated than simple judgments based on limited knowledge of current events. The Cuban-American community had reasons, and still has reasons, for supporting the embargo, despite its apparent failure. The Cuban regime had and has its own motivations for calling the United States imperialist and domineering, and for engaging in seemingly paranoid counter-tactics.

In light of this, a history lesson is in order. Perhaps the best quick and descriptive timeline to this end is in this December 2008 BBC story.

The most recent event on the timeline should be of particular interest in terms of current U.S. concerns, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claims are human rights-based:

18 December 2008: Raul Castro says he is ready to consider releasing some political prisoners as a “gesture” with the US. But he calls for the US to free the Cuban Five - five men who were convicted in Miami in 2001 of spying.

The Law of Historic Memory, a law enacted by the Spanish government in December, will grant citizenship to the children and grandchildren of Spaniards who fled the country during the Spanish Civil War or were exiled during the years that General Francisco Franco’s regime ruled Spain.

The Spanish government estimates that one million individuals worldwide will claim citizenship. This includes around 210,000 Cubans—nearly 2% of the island’s population. Indeed, since the law passed, the Spanish consulate in Havana has been crowded with eligible Cubans hoping to take advantage of it. Read the full story here.