Lula and Fidel meet
Cuban
Radar Read Spanish Version
Lula
and Fidel meet
A
service by the Radio Progreso Alternativa Havana Bureau
President
of Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva arrived in Havana on Monday
evening, January 14, and at noon the following day was meeting with
Fidel Castro.
According
to Lula, the conversation lasted two and a half hours: “Fidel spoke
for two hours and I talked for half an hour,” he joked, and added
that Castro “is ready to assume his political role in Cuba and the
political role he has in history,” He also said that the Cuban
leader is “incredibly lucid and impeccably healthy.”
Lula’s
comments to the press at the airport before returning to Brazil
precede, by days, the election of representatives to the National
Assembly of Popular Power (parliament), where Fidel Castro is a
candidate in his native province of Santiago de Cuba. In order to
hold office in the Cuban government it is mandatory to be elected to
parliament.
During
his 24 hour visit, the Brazilian president met with acting Cuban
president Raúl Castro in order to check bilateral relations
and the hemispheric and world situation. Both leaders witnessed the
signing of 10 legal documents that cover several memoranda and
agreements.
Among
the documents stands out the protocol of understanding that includes
the approval by the Brazilian Financing and Guaranteeing Committee of
Exports (COFIG) of several credits for financing Brazilian exports to
Cuba of food articles, the expansion and modernization of the Ernesto
Che Guevara nickel plant, and equipments for fish hatcheries in Cuba.
It also expresses COFIG’s disposition to analyze new financing for
projects in the areas of hostelry, pharmaceutical industry,
biotechnology, road infrastructure, sugar industry and
transportation.
Two
important memoranda of cooperation were signed by PETROBRAS of Brazil
and CUPET of Cuba through which the Brazilian partner would be able
to participate in drilling and production of oil and gas in the Cuban
Exclusive Economic Zone in the Gulf of Mexico. The second agreement
is for the creation of a joint venture by both oil companies for the
production and marketing of lubricants in Cuba.
Brazil
is the island’s second trading partner in Latin America after
Venezuela.
Elections
in Cuba
On
Sunday, January 20, millions of Cubans will vote to elect 614
representatives to the National Assembly of Popular Power (Cuban
parliament) and 12,000 delegates to the provincial assemblies.
National
TV and printed media have shown the ballots for both elections and
explain how to vote for the whole proposal or for individual
candidates. Media also transmit messages from several organizations
urging the idea of the vote for all as an expression of national
unity.
In
declarations to the daily Juventud
Rebelde
on January 13, Speaker of the Parliament Ricardo Alarcón de
Quesada, who is also a candidate, favored the united vote — for the
entire group — “for it is not only a necessity to save the
Motherland and defend the revolution, sovereignty and independence,
but also to improve it, strengthen the Cuban system, make it richer
and more representative.”
Artists
perform in Cuban jails
Headed
by famous singer/songwriter Silvio Rodríguez, a group of Cuban
artists on Jan. 13 began a concert tour of the country’s main
jails. The tour kicked off at Guantánamo Penitentiary and will
continue until January 28.
Among
the artists accompanying Silvio are troubadours Vicente Feliú,
Amaury Pérez and Augusto Blanca, the female quartet Sexto
Sentido, novelist/essayist Reynaldo González, poet Alexis Díaz
Pimienta, and the City of Havana’s Historian Eusebio Leal.
Participating also in the tour is Ernesto Rancaño, a painter
who will leave his work inside the penitentiaries.
The
tour is the brainchild of Silvio Rodríguez, who in his
condition as representative to the National Assembly introduced the
idea in June 2007 in order to bring to inmates a cultural message.
The proposal was accepted and is now underway.
Silvio,
as he is popularly called by Cubans, has been a member of the Cuban
parliament for several sessions, but decided not to run in the
upcoming elections.
Congress
on sexuality
January
15th through the 18th the 4th Congress on Sexual Education, Leaning
and Therapy are meeting at Havana’s Palace of Conventions.
According
to Mariela Castro Espín, director of the National Center for
Sexual Education (CENESEX), the Congress not only promotes “the
right to a free sexual leaning and genre identity” — which is the
slogan of the Congress — but will also hold the first symposium on
transexuality on the island.
In
its website, CENESEX also informs that the meeting “hopes to give
continuity to the theoretical debate and the presentation of working
experiences in the field of promotion of sexual health, sexology and
education of sexuality, which began in Cuba over two decades ago.”
Good
start for the sugar harvest
Both
national TV and printed media announced that 33 sugar mills were
already at work on January 15. That is 16 more than during the same
period in 2007. Fifty-two will eventually participate in the present
sugar cane harvest.
According
to Granma
daily in its January 15 edition, on that date “the performance of
the potential standard is almost the same as in 2007, but since the
country has in production a greater number of sugar mills, the volume
of milled sugar cane and of produced sugar is higher…
“There
is a growing trend and the national average reported yesterday was
significantly higher that the one on January 14, 2007.”
For
different reasons that range from drought to rain and floods and
inefficiency, in the past few years the sugar industry has not
been able to reach an acceptable level of production for the country.
There is hope of a recovery in 2008.
A
letter
to Cuban writers and artists
Sergio
Corrieri, president of the Organizing Committee of the Cuban National
Writers’ and Artists’ Union (UNEAC) 7th
Congress, addressed a letter to his fellow members urging them to
continue the debate.
"I
bear in mind the closing speech at the National Assembly by Comrade
Raúl (Castro). Like all Cubans, I’m anxious to hear news
that can reveal what the future has in store for us,” said
Corrieri, who is a famous actor.
In
his letter, Corrieri says that although the changes may be or may be
not known before the Congress in April, “it won’t be an obstacle
for a good meeting.”
For
the president of the Organizing Committee, the Congress will be
defined by the debates that from February on will be held by UNEAC’s
national associations.
The
letter ends with a call of responsibility to all artists citing the
importance of the event which will be held “in a delicate, even
historical, moment of the Revolution.”
