• Cuba: Splendor of the living mangrove
• Cuba's artists make music and dance on rooftops during lockdown
• How organic agriculture took a hold in Cuba

• Cuba: Havana hit by rare tornado
• Lack of customers dooms many Cuban businesses
• Cuban academic says corruption is island's big threat

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Positive Trends
Short Summaries of Top Stories

Cuba: Splendor of the living mangrove
13 July 2020 - In Cuba, ecosystem-based adaptation is a cost-effective way to preserve and restore natural habitats and protect coastal communities. To restore Cuba's mangroves, the 'Reduction of vulnerability to coastal flooding through ecosystem-based adaptation in the south of Artemisa and Mayabeque provinces' project focusses specifically on an 84km long stretch of coastline between Punta Sucia and Punta Mora. Funded by the Adaptation Fund and implemented by UNDP, the project is working together with the Cuba's Ministry of Science, Technology, and Environment and Ministry of Agriculture, to restore these mangroves through an intensive water rehabilitation project. (more)

Cuba's artists make music and dance on rooftops during lockdown
5 May 2020 - Cuba's artists are rising to the occasion during the coronavirus lockdown, taking to rooftops and balconies to create music or dance. (more)

How organic agriculture took a hold in Cuba
11 October 2018 - Cuba was forced to abandon its sugar monoculture and has survived thanks to organic agriculture. With the fall of the Soviet Union ... Cuban citizens started to grow crops on their balconies whilst farmers, left with no petrol or pesticides, were forced to resort to traditional methods to feed themselves. This started a true revolution: that of organic agriculture in Cuba. (more)

You've got mail: Cuba, U.S. make permanent restored postal services
1 June 2018 - Cuba and the United States are making the re-establishment of postal services permanent after a trial run, the state-run Cuban News Agency reported on Friday (1 June), as cooperation in some areas inches forward ... The former Cold War foes first restored direct mail service as a pilot program in December 2015 as part of the policy of detente pursued by former U.S. President Barack Obama with then Cuban President Raul Castro. (more)

Cuba's Capitol reopens after years of restoration
1 March 2018 - After eight years of restoration work, Cuba on Thursday re-opened to the public the doors of its Capitol, an imposing neoclassical gem previously shunned as a symbol of U.S. imperialism now to become the seat of its national assembly. Its restoration was started in 2010 as part of the Office of City Historian's revamp of Havana, one of the architectural treasures of Latin America. Its design is tailored to Cuba's tropical weather, such as multiple patios to maximize air circulation. (more)

Scrappy Cuban clothing line exemplifies ingenuity with U.S. online store opening
26 October 2017 - Hip Cuban clothing brand Clandestina is not waiting to see how tighter U.S. restrictions on travel to the Caribbean island affect visits of Americans shoppers. Instead, the line is taking its apparel to the United States through e-commerce. Its site, clandestina.co/, went live on Thursday (26 October) ... no small feat in a country with minimal internet access. (more)

Major U.S. hotel groups sponsor tourism investment meeting in Havana
17 May 2017 - The annual Latin American Hotel and Tourism Investment Conferences meeting opened in Havana this week and the list of sponsors read like the who's who of the U.S. hotel industry. The head of the organization, Arturo Garcia, told Reuters it was no accident that the likes of Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, Choice, and Wyndham were supportive. (more)

Cuba ballet festival reflects diplomatic pas de deux with U.S.
31 October 2016 - A woman in a floaty dress wrestles a minotaur who reflects her inner demons in 'Errand into the Maze', one of the Martha Graham Dance Company works that made its Cuban premiere this weekend to thunderous applause at the Havana ballet festival. The troupe was performing in the Communist-run island for the first time since 1941 and is one of seven American companies participating in the 10-day event, underscoring greater U.S.-Cuban cultural exchange in the wake of the countries' detente. Dancers and companies representing sixteen countries in total will participate in the 25th Havana ballet festival, including for the first time South Korea's Universal Ballet Company and the lead dancer from the National Ballet of Mongolia. (more)

Historic commercial flight from US lands in Cuba
31 August 2016 - The first commercial flight between the United States and Cuba in more than a half century landed in the central city of Santa Clara on Wednesday morning, re-establishing regular air service severed at the height of the Cold War. Cheers broke out in the cabin of JetBlue flight 387 as the plane touched down. The arrival of the flight out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida opens a new era of U.S.-Cuba travel with about 300 flights a week connecting the U.S. with an island cut off from most Americans by the 55-year-old trade embargo on Cuba and formal ban on U.S. citizens engaging in tourism on the island. (more)

Cuba scrambles to keep pace with U.S.-fueled tourism boom
4 May 2016 - The number of U.S. visitors to Cuba has nearly doubled this year, its tourism minister said on Wednesday, as the island races to build hotels and expand Havana airport to keep up with booming demand. Tourism has taken off since Cuba and the United States announced they would work to bury the Cold War hatchet in December 2014. Overall satisfaction with Cuba as a destination was high, reflected by the fact that nearly half of last year's tourists were return visitors, he said. (more)

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Flops
Short Summaries of Top Stories

Cuba: Havana hit by rare tornado
28 January 2019 - A rare tornado ripped through several working class districts of eastern Havana late Sunday night (27 January), leaving at least three dead and scores injured as it reduced some buildings to rubble, tore off roofs and flipped vehicles in its path. It was the first twister to hit the Cuban capital in decades ... (more)

Lack of customers dooms many Cuban businesses
27 December 2013 - The Associated Press recently checked in with nine small business owners whose fortunes it first reported on in 2011 as they set up shop amid the excitement of President Raul Castro's surprising embrace of some free enterprise. Of the six ventures that relied on revenue from cash-strapped islanders, four are now out of business, their owners in more dire financial straits than when they started. While the sample size is small, the numbers point to a basic problem that economists who follow Cuba have noted from the start: There simply isn't enough money to support a thriving private sector on an island where salaries average $20 a month. Even in developed countries where entrepreneurs have access to capital, loans and a wide pool of paying customers, startups are risky ventures. According to the US Small Business Administration, about half of all new establishments in America close within five years, and two-thirds are gone within a decade. (more)

Cuban academic says corruption is island's big threat
16 April 2010 - Corruption at the highest levels of government -- not the meddling of a small band of dissidents -- is the greatest threat to Cuba's communist system, a leading academic said in a highly unusual opinion posted Thursday on a state Web site. The article by Esteban Morales crossed a number of red lines in tightly controlled Cuba. Mr Morales said some top Cuban officials are preparing to divide the spoils if Cuba's political system disintegrates, like the shadowy oligarchs that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Morales never singled out Fidel or Raul Castro for blame, but he said cronyism is rampant in the system that has developed 51 years after their revolution won power and said some officials are waiting for a chance to grab the country's resources. Morales is a prominent intellectual who only Monday appeared on a state television programme defending the government on another topic. (more)

Cuba looks to women to boost sagging cigar sales
22 February 2010 - With anti-smoking laws and the global recession causing sales to fall, Cuba wants to develop a largely untapped market for its famous cigars -- women. Habanos SA executives said on Monday sales fell 8 per cent to $360 million in 2009, so they have created the Julieta, a smaller, milder version of the Romeo y Julieta cigar, aimed specifically at female smokers. The Julieta is an attempt to overcome perceptions among women that Cuban cigars are made up of 'only strong tobacco for men', said marketing director Ana Lopez. Habanos is a joint venture between Cuba and British tobacco giant Imperial Tobacco Group Plc. (more)

US rights group finds abuses rife in Raul's Cuba
21 November 2009 - Human Rights Watch says conditions in Cuba have not improved under Raul Castro and in some ways are worse than they had been when his brother Fidel was President. In a report released Wednesday, the group accuses Raul Castro's government of systematic repression and creating 'a pervasive climate of fear among dissidents and, when it comes to expression of political views, in Cuban society as a whole.' Cuba contends it protects human rights much better than most countries because its communist system provides free health care, education through college, housing, and basic food. It says it holds no political prisoners. The government says dissident groups are mercenaries of Washington. Human Rights Watch rejects that argument, but criticizes the United States for its decades-old embargo. (more)

Cuba: US embargo 'still standing' despite new law
23 March 2009 - Cuba's state-controlled media on Monday downplayed eased US rules on family ties with Cuba, calling the measure a defeat for the communist government's foes that still left Washington's 47-year-old trade embargo intact. The article in the Communist Party newspaper Granma was the first official mention of the Cuba clauses in a package signed into law by President Barack Obama on 11 March, nearly two weeks prior. US law still bars most trade with and travel to Cuba. 'These steps don't restore the rights of Cuban residents of the United States to travel freely to Cuba or approve the rights of citizens of that country to visit a neighbouring island,' the paper said. (more)

Cuba: President Raul Castro dashes expectations for new reforms
27 July 2008 - Cuban President Raul Castro dashed expectations he would announce new economic reforms on Saturday in a speech that instead warned Cubans not to get used to hearing good news. The speech marking the 55th anniversary of the start of the Cuban revolution broke little new ground as Castro stressed austerity for Cuba and appeared to dampen rising expectations. Cubans had said they hoped Castro would say more about how far and how fast he wants to take Cuba down the road of reform. (more)

International banks shun Cuba under US scrutiny
20 July 2007 - Heightened scrutiny of banking transactions by the United States since the 11 September attacks has led European and Canadian banks to curtail dealings with Cuba, bankers and businesses say. The result --perhaps intended -- is that Western businessmen in Havana are having nightmares moving funds in dollars to and from Cuba because banks are increasingly refusing their business. (more)

Cuba summons troops, citizen soldiers
1 December 2006 - Communist Cuba's military is rolling out its olive green Soviet-era hardware this weekend, summoning 300,000 troops and citizen soldiers for a show of strength in times made uncertain by Fidel Castro's illness. The parade's most obvious purpose is to warn the United States against taking advantage of Castro's illness to attack the island. (more)

Cuba readies troops
5 August 2006 - Former revolutionaries promised to keep fighting for Cuba as the island beefed up security, saying it fears a US attack during Fidel Castro's health crisis. The government, under control of Castro's brother, Defense Minister Raul Castro, has mobilized citizen defence militias. (more)