They are teachers, engineers or farmers, all seeking freedom in the United States. But after an unexpected policy change and an end to special treatment that allowed the majority of Cuban migrants to remain legally in the country, more than 1,300 are now being held at detention centers across the country waiting for their fate to be decided by immigration judges.
A Coral Gables business consultant watched one day in June as Cuban authorities carried out chairs, tables, plates, sound systems and bottles of imported liquor from a popular private restaurant near the U.S. Embassy in Havana.
First, Cuban authorities hauled out tables and chairs from several private restaurants on the island. Then, they put a hold on issuing permits for a range of new ventures citizens had hoped to launch — from home rentals to agricultural endeavors.
Critics of President Trump’s Cuba policy are falling prey to President Obama’s “narrative.” Obama’s policy was in fact not new but a return to the old, discredited policy of embracing Latin American dictators at the behest of corporate businesses while ignoring U.S. interests.
The Center for a Free Cuba sent a letter of gratitude to President Donald Trump Wednesday for his decision to come to Miami and said it was pleased that he would soon begin the “dismantling of Barack Obama’s concessions to the Castro regime.”
Status as a "dissident " is not the product of any coherent calculation. It does not refer to a particular affiliation or a specific creed. It does not even necessarily stem from a primeval hatred of what they call "Revolution."
It is everyday abuse, accumulated disappointment, insufferable humiliation, and, largely, chance, that turn a simple citizen into a dissident.
State control of Cuba’s economy is both pervasive and inefficient, hampering any meaningful development of a job-creating private sector. As the largest source of employment, the bloated government sector soaks up much of the labor force. After decades without effective economic reform, the government has eased the rules on private employment in an effort to reshape the economy and improve efficiency.
On February 2nd 2009, Cuba ratified the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED). The Convention defines enforced disappearances as “the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law.”
A brutal high-security prison was the last place Stephen Purvis expected to end up when he moved to Havana. Stephen Gibbs tells his story.
Stephen Purvis loved Cuba and his job as development director with one of several small foreign firms that were setting up as the country sought international partners following the collapse of the Soviet Union, The Guardian reports:
Purvis’s job was to look for joint venture opportunities with the Cuban government...
