Havana, Cuba
By Mary Murray, NBC News Havana Bureau Chief
HAVANA – It didn’t take long for Cubans to hear about the success of Barack Obama.
The girl’s dorm at Havana’s V.I. Lenin High School broke into cheers after 17-year-old Gabriela Sanchez received a cell phone text message from her mom watching the U.S. election results on satellite TV.
Housewife Rosa Llanos heard the news on short wave radio and thought about her daughter and grandchild living in South Florida. She wants Obama to stick to his promise to lift current U.S. restrictions that limit family visits to once every three years.
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| EPA |
| A woman combs her hair as she watches the news on Cuban TV about the newly-elected U.S. President Barack Obama, in Havana, Cuba on Wednesday. |
That same wish was echoed by child psychiatrist Ana Teresa Martinez who sees young patients suffering from "the trauma of families divided by the Straits of Florida."
All through the night, Fernanda Hernandez spoke with her sibling Patricia, calling from Miami with regular election updates. These sisters too want changes in U.S. policy with Cuba.
Car mechanic Boris Ruiz working the night shift heard the news on Cuban TV and immediately called his wife. "I woke her up but I needed to tell someone the good news," Ruiz said.
For the first time in his life, Ruiz sees "a chance to normalize relations with the United States and that will make my life better."
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By Mary Murray, NBC News Havana Bureau Chief
HAVANA – When it comes to the
U.S. presidential elections, the Cuban public doesn’t believe everything it’s told.
For more than a year, Cuban officials and the state-run media have been hammering away at the U.S. voting process, criticizing the influence that big money plays in electoral outcomes and dismissing both candidates along with their proposed policy toward the island.
No surprise there, given that Havana has spent the past 50 years battling a White House occupied by Democrats and Republicans alike.
Even retired and ailing Fidel Castro dedicated 11 different editorials since the presidential primaries began to belittling the U.S. elections, equating the process with the seriousness of a "Sunday afternoon card game" and accusing both Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain of planning to starve the island into submission.
And other Cuban officials have echoed that disdain for anything American.
Recently parliament president Ricardo Alarcón advised voters looking for "real change" to cast their ballot for Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney or independent Ralph Nader. Neither Obama nor McCain, predicted Alarcón, will transform much of anything.
But the Cuban public isn’t falling for the rhetoric.
Instead of just parroting the editorial line from state-run media, people are watching and weighing the U.S. election. They’re forming their own strong opinions instead of conforming to the prevailing official view.
Furthermore, many people believe that the outcome on Nov. 4 does matter. Some even argue that their own futures are at stake.
"I’m hoping that the American people will elect someone who will be open to changing relations with Cuba and allow free travel," said Alejandro Sene, 22, who dances with the National Ballet of Cuba and dreams of performing on the U.S. stage. "We need the breathing space."
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Music and dancing fill the streets of Santiago, Cuba from sundown to the first light of dawn. Contagious drum rhythms draw people out of their homes into endless conga lines -- some lasting as long as six hours. NBC News' Mary Murray reports on the colorful celebrations that mark the founding of Cuba's second largest city.
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By Mary Murray, NBC News Havana Bureau Chief
HAVANA – The U.S. election season is once again in full swing – here in Havana.
There’s so much political reporting here that you’d think Cubans plan on going to the U.S. polls.
A day rarely goes by without the state-controlled media running a story on the presidential candidates, analyzing their positions that go way beyond Cuba policy.
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| AP file |
| A Cuban man keeps up with the news in the Communist Workers weekly newspaper in Havana. |
Television pundits, radio commentaries and pages in the written press have probed a gamut of election issues – from each candidate’s proposed exit strategies in Iraq to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions to the impact of campaign financing on U.S. democracy.
Trading barbs
Even Fidel Castro, retired from public life but still packing a lot of punch, has gotten into the act. He’s written about a dozen editorials bashing both Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama.
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By Mary Murray, NBC News Havana Bureau Chief
HAVANA – A Cuban Scientific Research Institute just patented a promising new drug that it says helps terminal lung cancer patients live longer.
In some cases, the drug known as CimaVax EGF extended the lives of participants in the treatment trials by close to a year.
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| Roberto Leon / NBC News |
| Dr. Gisela Gonzalez, head of the Cuban cancer research team, holding vials of the new drug. |
CimaVax EGF, is classified as a therapeutic vaccine, because it is composed of modified proteins that help the body recognize and destroy cancer cells for those already suffering from lung cancer. It does not prevent lung cancer.
"It is the first lung cancer vaccine to be patented in the world," said Dr. Gisela Gonzalez, head of the team that researched and developed the drug through testing with hundreds of patients over 16 years.
She did point out that other countries are working on similar vaccines, but that they are still in the development stage.
Gonzalez cautioned that while it is "not a miracle drug," she does believe it is a "breakthrough in treating terminally ill patients."
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By Mary Murray, NBC News Havana Bureau Chief
VARADERO – Cuba may be
in the grips of political shifts but some things never change.
The Caribbean island continues to turn out world class musicians.
This past weekend no matter where you wandered in the beach resort of Varadero every corner offered up top performers singing their songs and thousands of Cuban fans packed the town for the summer’s hottest music festival.
More than 130 artists and groups wove a medley of generations and sounds that ranged from salsa and jazz fusion to the best in timba and hip hop. The music started blaring at noon and didn’t stop until the next day. All you had to do was follow your ears.
Artist Carlos Varela, known as the Bob Dylan of Cuba, improvised on a stage set up on an old landing strip, playing free-of-charge before 30,000 fans. He sang energetic lyrics filled with political messages and the frustration of life in contemporary Cuba.
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By Scott Foster, NBC News Pentagon Producer
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, CUBA – Last week, NBC News Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski and I joined 60 other journalists from around the world on a U.S. military sponsored trip to the isolated Guantanamo Bay Naval Base to report on the much anticipated start of the military war crimes trial of the self-confessed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man also known as KSM who had boasted to interrogators he planned the attacks of Sept.11 "from A to Z," hadn't been seen by anyone outside the U.S. government in over five years – not since that notorious photo when he appeared disheveled and confused after his capture in Pakistan in 2003.
This would be the public's first glimpse of Mohammed and four other alleged Sept.11 plotters, who were all being tried jointly. It would also mark the first time anyone directly involved in the Sept. 11 hijackings would face charges in an American courtroom.
The high-stakes drama was in place, but the legal backdrop to these proceedings was sure to be equally as significant.
This was an arraignment, so legally their cases wouldn't be advanced much, but it was clear the controversial military commission itself would also be on trial.
Legal experts have decried commission rules that prevent the accused and their attorneys from seeing sensitive evidence, some of which may have been obtained from coercive interrogation techniques, which human rights advocates have called torture.
This was the commission’s first major test, and the world was watching.
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By Mark Potter, NBC News Correspondent
HAVANA – In the past two months, Cuba has seen more economic and social changes than in recent decades. By the standards of other countries they are not all that dramatic, but in Cuba they are heralded as important openings in a country that has long appeared to be frozen in time. For Cuban citizens, who have been given something new to talk about, the question now is, what's next?
Much has been made recently about Raul Castro relaxing some of the restrictions that were instituted and held in place by his now-ailing brother, Fidel. It comes about a year after he asked the Cuban people to register their complaints about the economy and the standard of living on the communist island.
Cubans, it turns out, had plenty to grouse about: overcrowded buses, pathetically low salaries, poor service at health clinics, dilapidated housing, travel restrictions, shortages in food markets and pharmacies and a dual-currency system where Cubans who get dollars and euros from tourists or relatives abroad live much more comfortably than Cubans struggling to make ends meet with Cuban pesos.
In a series of announcements, the Cuban government recently raised pensions and certain salaries a bit and tried to address some of the other problems. As one official put it, it's an attempt to "make life a little easier."
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By Mary Murray, NBC News Havana Bureau Chief
HAVANA – What a difference a year can make!
Cuba’s International Worker’s Day parade last year had the air of a funeral. The Communist Party faithful had gathered all night expecting to see Fidel Castro when they marched through Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution. But they left disappointed – the man who had ruled Cuba for almost half a century had still not recovered from the intestinal surgery that almost killed him and was a no-show at the parade.
But today as thousands gathered for the annual May Day parade wearing red shirts and waving red flags, thoughts of Fidel were likely far from people’s minds.
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| Reuters |
| Cuba's President Raul Castro attends the May Day parade at Havana's Revolution Square. |
Since he permanently vacated the presidency five months ago and handed power over to his younger brother, Raul Castro has made his mark with his different governing style and realistic eye on the island’s serious problems.
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By Mary Murray, NBC News Havana Bureau Chief
Cubans can strike another complaint off their laundry list of grievances about life’s daily grind.
Sunday night, the Cuban government ended its decade-old ban against ordinary people staying at tourist hotels and renting cars. This is Raul Castro’s third edict in less than a month aimed at loosening government controls over consumer spending.
Previous rulings allowed any Cuban to buy a cell phone and pay for cell phone service and anyone with enough money in their pocket to walk into a government store and legally buy electronic items like computers, microwave ovens and DVD players.
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| Roberto Leon / NBC News |
| Bellhop opens door to the Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana. |
The old regime of Raul’s brother Fidel Castro strictly limited these luxury items to foreigners or the upper echelon of Cuban society holding privileged jobs. The only way regular consumers gained access had been through purchases on the black market.
Lucy Alvarez, a retired electrical engineer who learned to cut hair to supplement her pension, doesn’t expect to take advantage of her new economic freedoms anytime soon. "We live hand-to-mouth," she said.
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