Cubans rush to buy DVD players, electric bikes

Cubans crowded shops on Tuesday to buy DVD players and electric bikes that went on sale for the first time as new President Raul Castro moved to lift many restrictions in the one-party socialist state.
A customer looks at electrical scooters on display at a store in Havana April 1, 2008. (REUTERS/Enrique De La Osa)

Stores were authorized to sell dozens of electric goods that were previously banned, including microwave ovens, flat-screen televisions and even computers.

"This should have been done long ago. They should never have been banned," said Felipe, a 53-year-old engineer, who lined up impatiently to buy his first DVD player.

The Philips and Panasonic DVD players were priced between $118 and $162, much more expensive than in other countries but lower than the going rate on Cuba's thriving black-market.

Raul Castro succeeded his ailing brother Fidel Castro as president on Feb. 24, promising to lift "excessive prohibitions" on daily life in Cuba.

His government has since moved quickly to allow Cubans to buy cellular phones and stay at hotels previously reserved for foreigners.

The changes made so far by Cuba's first new leader in half a century are aimed at reducing pent up frustrations in the country of 11 million where the ruling Communist Party has a firm grip on power.

Cubans welcomed greater access to consumer goods that are available virtually anywhere else in the world.

"After so many years of restrictions, this is great. Now Cubans have new options and I can resolve my transport problem," said Raydel Leyva, 42, the first at a Havana shopping center to buy a battery-driven moped made in China and priced at $900.

"These measures are meant to improve life and make us feel better living in our country," he said.

With wages averaging $17 a month in Cuba, many of the new goods on sale were out of reach for most pockets, but even some of those who could not afford to buy anything were happy they are now available.

"The prices are astronomical. But at least I have the choice, and I can save up to buy things I want. People will work harder to buy them," said Gelis, a self-employed tennis coach.

COMPUTERS COMING

Computers, which until now could only be bought in Cuba by government or foreign companies, were also supposed to go on sale but none had changed hands by Tuesday afternoon.

At a shop in western Havana, Microsoft keyboards and mouses were on show, but Dell laptops and desktop computers were still in their boxes awaiting for prices to be decided.

A saleswoman said computers with 80 gigabytes of hard drive memory, 512 megabytes of RAM and a Celeron P4 chip made by Intel would sell for about $865.

"I have been saving up for three years, since I was 15, and I think I am close to buying one," said Paula, a university student waiting for the new stock to come in.

Cubans have to pay for the consumer goods in hard currency CUCs, or convertible pesos, worth 24 times more than the Cuban pesos that state wages are paid in.

About 60 percent of Cubans have access to CUCs, through cash remittances from relatives in the United States, bonuses, tips from tourists and black market dealings.

Havana shops had on sale 21-inch flat-screen television sets and home theater sets worth more than $1,300. It would take a Cuban with average six years to earn enough to buy one.

"This is all good and fine, but my purchasing power is too low to buy anything," said Yaima, a teacher who earns 592 pesos a month, about $26.60. "I'll have to wait until they strengthen the peso."

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Cuba ends restriction on cellular phones

Cuba said on Friday it will allow all Cubans to buy and use mobile telephones for the first time in the latest step by new President Raul Castro to improve access to consumer goods.

A man uses a mobile phone in Havana March 28, 2008. Cuba said on Friday it will allow all Cubans to buy and use mobile telephones for the first time in the latest step by new President Raul Castro to improve access to consumer goods. (REUTERS/Enrique De La Osa)

Cuba has the lowest rate of cellular telephone use in Latin America and the service has been restricted until now to foreigners or government officials and employees.

Cuban telecommunications monopoly ETECSA, a joint venture with Telecom Italia, said it would begin selling the service to the general public within days in hard currency.

"ETECSA is able to offer mobile phone service to the public," it said in a statement published in the Communist Party newspaper Granma.

Many Cubans have for long wanted access to cellular phones and hoped it would be among the first steps taken by Raul Castro, who succeed his ailing brother Fidel Castro as Cuba's first new leader in almost half a century on Feb. 24.

"This shows there is a change in mentality at the top and recognition that Cuba has to move into the 21st century," a young computer technician said, asking not to be named.

Raul Castro has begun lifting some of the many restrictions on the daily life of Cubans as he tries to meet popular demands for better living standards in the socialist state.

Taking office last month, he promised to start lifting "excessive regulations and prohibitions" within weeks.

Some Cubans already have mobile phones registered in the name of foreigners or their work places. They will now be able to put the contracts in their own names, ETECSA said.

Cubans will be able to buy computers and DVD players next month for the first time, if they have the hard currency to pay for them. Just two years ago, banned DVD players were being confiscated by airport customs officials on arrival in Cuba.

Raul Castro, 76, has also launched a restructuring of agriculture to reduce bureaucratic bottlenecks and boost food production.

A major public complaint that his government will have to deal with is that wages paid in Cuban pesos are too low, while consumer goods have to be paid for in convertible pesos, or CUCs, worth 24 times more than pesos.

Cubans will pay for their mobile telephones with prepaid cards bought in CUCs that will allow them to receive and make international calls.

ETECSA, in which Telecom Italia has a 27 percent stake, said the hard currency income would be invested in the expansion of land lines, where Cuba has the sixth lowest density in Latin American.

About 60 percent of Cubans have access to hard currency from cash remittances sent by relatives living abroad, mainly in the United States, or through factory and farm bonuses and tips from foreign tourists.

In the streets of Havana, the freeing of cellular phones services came as welcome news to all.

"It was an obvious measure. There will have to be more like it to get rid of the thousand and one obstacles that make life bitter in Cuba," said university student Jofre Valdes, 23.

"This was an anachronism. They have to end all unnecessary restrictions," said state employee Humberto Vega.

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Secrecy, planning key to smooth Castro succession

Fidel Castro's withdrawal from power in Cuba could have sparked a crisis for its communist leaders, but detailed planning and water-tight secrecy ensured a stable succession.

People stand on a staircase next to images of retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro and late revolutionary hero Ernesto "Che" Guevara at a tobacco farm in Cuba's western province of Pinar del Rio February 26, 2008. (REUTERS/Enrique De La Osa)

When Raul Castro was installed as Cuba's first new leader in half a century on Sunday, taking over from his ailing brother, hardly a ripple was felt in the country of 11 million people, and nobody was cheering in the streets of the anti-Castro exile stronghold of Miami.

"Instead of things getting out of control, what we saw was Fidel Castro supervising his succession," said Paolo Spadoni, assistant professor of political science at Rollins College in Florida.

When Castro, in power since ousting a U.S.-backed dictator in his 1959 revolution, was rushed to hospital 19 months ago with intestinal bleeding, he came close to death.

The revolutionary had frustrated the efforts of 10 U.S. presidents to oust him and was viewed as the glue that held the one-party system together for five decades,

Many of his enemies hoped his departure from the stage might send it crashing down as quickly as Soviet bloc communism crumbled in Europe.

But Castro survived the health crisis and delegated power to his brother, Raul Castro, starting a gradual transition that got Cubans used to the notion that Fidel Castro, 81, would not always be around and gave his Communist Party time to prepare.

Castro almost certainly drew up a succession plan years ago and he began talking publicly about his own mortality and the next generation of leaders after he fainted while delivering an outdoor speech in 2001.

Cuba watchers believe he knew more than six months before he underwent surgery around July 26, 2006, that he might have to enter an operation room.

When his condition became critical after having what Spain's El Pais newspaper said was a botched colostomy, Castro's inner circle activated a plan already prepared for a gradual transfer of power to his brother.

"The key to their strategy has been secrecy and discipline. There has not been a single leak. We still don't know what his illness is or even where he is, and they'll keep it that way," said a long-time Havana resident, who asked not to be named.

Castro made clear he was thinking about his succession plan in a speech on Nov. 17, 2005, at Havana University.

He warned that Cuba's socialist system could implode if problems, such as widespread pilfering of state goods for sale on the black market, were not corrected in time for a new generation of leaders to carry the torch.

PREPARED THE PEOPLE

After apparently putting the worst of his health crisis behind him, Castro last year began writing articles to stay in the public mind and prepare Cubans for his retirement.

He did it so successfully that his formal announcement on Feb. 19 that he would not return to power came as no surprise. Many Cubans felt he had done enough and deserved a rest.

In his retirement message, Castro said he had prepared the ground for his departure.

"My first duty was to prepare our people both politically and psychologically for my absence after so many years of struggle," he wrote. "I kept saying that my recovery 'was not without risks.'"

Castro's critics denounce what they see as a succession from one dictator to another.

But they misjudged the resilience of Cuba's Communist Party and the armed forces, and the economic recovery Cuba has seen since help arrived in the form of affordable oil from Cuba's main benefactor, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

John Kirk, a historian at Dalhousie University in Canada, said some critics also underestimated the government's level of popular support.

"The symbolism of Fidel Castro's rule will remain, and the "lion in winter" will still be consulted actively on major policies," he said.

For many Cubans, an event once expected to be momentous -- Fidel Castro's retirement -- was an anticlimax.

"It's as if nothing had happened at all," said Maritza Socarras, a kinder-garden teacher, saddened by the fading of a man who put her small country on the world map. "If he had died, it would have been more of a historic event."

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Castro to be Cuba's ideologue, elder statesman

Fidel Castro will play the role of Cuban communism's ideologue and elder statesman after giving up the reins of power for the first time since the 1959 revolution.

A woman walks past a grafitti reading "Long live Fidel" in Havana February 19, 2008. (REUTERS/Enrique De La Osa)

Castro, 81 years old and in poor health, announced on Tuesday that he would not seek a new term as president or leader of Cuba's armed forces when the National Assembly meets on Sunday.

The bearded revolutionary will have no government duties but he stays on as first secretary of the Communist Party and will continue writing articles on domestic and world affairs, indicating that no dramatic change is in sight for one of the world's last communist nations.

"We will continue waiting for the 'Reflections of companero (comrade) Fidel', which will be a powerful arsenal of ideas and guidance," the ruling Communist Party's Granma newspaper said on Wednesday.

His retirement after nearly half a century at the helm set the stage for an orderly transfer of power to his brother Raul, who has been running Cuba as acting president since mid-2006, when Fidel Castro underwent intestinal surgery.

For decades, Fidel Castro's enemies have hoped his death or resignation would send thousands of Cubans onto the streets to demand democratic reforms in the communist state. But when he quit, the reaction from Cubans was subdued.

Some were saddened by Castro's retirement and others hoped it would herald economic changes, but no one was predicting major changes to Cuba's one-party rule.

There were more police that usual in dilapidated and densely-populated central Havana, the scene of anti-Castro riots that sparked an exodus of 35,000 Cubans who took to the sea in rafts to reach the United States in the summer of 1994.

But Havana's residents are going about their lives as usual this week. Many sat at home on Tuesday night watching their favorite baseball team Industriales lose. Few appeared to be talking about Castro's departure from power.

A member of a visiting European delegation said he was surprised the issue was not even mentioned at meetings with a vice-minister and the mayor of Havana.

HEALTH CRISIS

Castro, who seized power in an armed revolution in 1959, has not appeared in public since his health crisis forced him to delegate power to his brother on July 31, 2006.

Cuba's National Assembly, a rubber-stamp legislature, is expected to formally nominate Raul Castro, 76, as president when it meets on Sunday.

Castro's retirement raised expectations for change on the island -- and calls for democracy by his arch-enemy, the United States -- but Cuba experts said limited economic reforms were more likely than a swift political transformation.

For some Cubans who have lost hope of seeing reform, that's a change of leader to keep everything the same.

"I wish it were so, but I don't believe it. Truth is, I don't believe in anything anymore," said Pedro, a 74-year-old retiree who was lining up outside a bank at dawn on Wednesday to collect a meager monthly pension of 164 pesos ($7).

"This is not enough to live on. A pound of pork costs 40 pesos," said Pedro, who supplements his pension working as a night watchman. "A man my age should not have to work."

"It's Raul now. Let's see is he takes power and makes some of the changes he spoke about, because if this does not improve, I don't know what will happen," said Yadira, a Havana housewife.

U.S. President George W. Bush, who has tightened the decades-old economic embargo against Castro's government, said his retirement should begin a democratic transition.

Bush's call for democracy in Cuba was posted on an electronic billboard on the facade of the U.S. Interest Section in Havana on Tuesday night.

But there were no Cubans reading Bush's message in the heavily-policed area around the U.S. diplomatic mission.

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Cuba's Fidel Castro retires after 49 years in power

Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro stepped down on Tuesday 49 years after taking power in an armed revolution, closing the book on a Cold War career that turned him into a leftist icon and a tyrant to his foes.

Cuba's leader Fidel Castro gestures during an interview on state television in Havana in this June 5, 2007 file photo. (REUTERS/Government TV/Handout)

Castro, 81, who has not appeared in public since undergoing stomach surgery almost 19 months ago, said he would not seek a new term as president or leader of Cuba's armed forces when the National Assembly meets on Sunday.

His retirement raised expectations for change on the communist island, but Cuba experts said limited economic reforms were more likely than swift political change.

"To my dear compatriots, who gave me the immense honor in recent days of electing me a member of parliament ... I communicate to you that I will not aspire to or accept -- I repeat not aspire to or accept -- the positions of president of the Council of State and commander-in-chief," Castro said in a statement published in the Communist Party's Granma newspaper.

U.S. President George W. Bush, who has tightened the decades-old economic embargo against Castro's government, said his retirement ought to begin a democratic transition.

"Eventually this transition ought to lead to free and fair elections. And I mean free and I mean fair," Bush said in Rwanda during a tour of Africa.

Cuba's National Assembly, a rubber-stamp legislature, is expected to nominate Castro's brother and designated successor Raul Castro as president. The 76-year-old defense minister has been running the country since emergency intestinal surgery forced his older brother to delegate power on July 31, 2006.

Raul Castro has promoted more open debate about the failings of Cuba's command economy, but he is unlikely to make bold political changes to the one-party state. Fidel Castro will remain influential as first secretary of the ruling Communist Party.

"This is a crucial moment. Cuba wants change, the people want change," said Oswaldo Paya, Cuba's best-known dissident.

CUBANS NOT SURPRISED

Cubans on the quiet streets of Havana were not surprised by Castro's retirement, first announced on Granma's Web site in the middle of the night.

"Everyone knew for a while that he would not come back. The people got used to his absence," said Roberto, a self-employed Cuban who did not want to be fully named.

"I don't know what to say. I just want to leave. This system cannot continue," said Alexis, a garbage collector.

In Miami, the heartland of exiled opposition to the Castro brothers, reaction was subdued.

"It's very good that Fidel resigns. But if Fidel dies, it's better," said Juan Acosta, a Cuban who left the Caribbean island in 1980, as he stopped to buy a newspaper on Calle Ocho, the main street in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood.

European governments said Castro's retirement could open the door to democratic change.

"Fidel Castro's resignation is the end of an era that started with freedom and ended with oppression," said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt.

The charismatic Castro led the bearded and cigar-chomping guerrillas who swept down from the mountains of eastern Cuba to overthrow U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

He then turned Cuba into a communist state on the doorstep of the United States and became the world's longest-serving head of state, barring monarchs.

Castro survived a CIA-backed invasion of Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, as well as assassination attempts, the continuing U.S. trade embargo, and an economic crisis in the 1990s after the collapse of Soviet bloc communism.

He played a key role in taking the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962 when he let Moscow put ballistic missiles in Cuba, leading to a 13-day stand-off between U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Famous for his long speeches delivered in green military fatigues, Castro is admired in the Third World for standing up to the United States but considered by his opponents a dictator who suppressed freedom.

Supporters point to Cuba's advances in health and education for all its citizens. Critics, led by the United States and the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who live abroad, say he turned the island into a police state and wrecked its economy.

Castro was close to death in 2006 and has looked gaunt and frail in the few videotapes of him broadcast since his surgery, but Cuba's leadership has showed no sign of collapse.

"Fortunately, our Revolution can still count on cadres from the old guard and others who were very young in the early stages of the process," Castro said in Tuesday's statement, adding that he would continue to write his newspaper columns.

"This is not my farewell to you. My only wish is to fight as a soldier in the battle of ideas ... It will be just another weapon you can count on. Perhaps my voice will be heard."

Frank Mora, a political scientist at the National War College in Washington, said Castro's successors will likely be forced to head down paths that he would disapprove of.

"He will not go into some sunset nor will he become that crazy uncle in the attic, but they are pushing him up those stairs," Mora said.

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Castro, McCain spar over Cuban torture in Vietnam

HAVANA (Reuters) - Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro took on front-running U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Monday, accusing him of lying about Cubans torturing American prisoners of war in Vietnam.

At a campaign stop in Miami last month, the Arizona senator told anti-Castro exiles that American POWs held with him in Hanoi were tortured by "a couple of Cubans."

"His accusation against the Cuban revolutionaries ... are completely unethical," Castro wrote in an article published by the ruling Communist Party newspaper Granma.

"The commandments of the religion you practice prohibit lying," he said of McCain, who was raised an Episcopalian and calls himself a Christian.

McCain, a Navy pilot when he was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967, says he was tortured by his Vietnamese captors over more than five years in captivity. Cuba and North Vietnam were Cold War allies of the Soviet Union at the time.

McCain has vowed to keep up decades-old U.S. pressure for political change in Cuba's one-party state. That has included a travel ban and trade and financial sanctions enforced a few years after Castro's 1959 revolution on the Caribbean island, which lies just 135 km from the U.S. coast.

Castro's criticism brought a sharp retort from McCain as he campaigned in Annapolis, Maryland.

"For me to respond to Fidel Castro, who has oppressed and repressed his people and who is one of the most brutal dictators on Earth, for me to dignify any comments he might make is certainly beneath me," he said at a press conference.

"It's a matter of record and you can ask several of the POWs who had direct contact with some, some thug that came to Hanoi with an underling assistant."

In Miami on Jan. 25, McCain had said: "There's a person I want you to help me find when Cuba is free, and that's that Cuban that came to the prison camps of North Vietnam and tortured and killed my friends. We'll get him and bring him to justice, too."

Castro, in Monday's article "The republican candidate," said he ordered the translation of McCain's 1999 book "Faith of My Fathers" into Spanish and rejected its account of a Cuban nicknamed "Fidel" who could "torture a prisoner until death."

Castro, 81, has not appeared in public since emergency stomach surgery forced him to hand over power to his brother Raul more than 18 months ago. But he has kept himself in the minds of Cubans with a prolific flow of articles.

Castro visited North Vietnam in 1973 to show his support for the communist-led country in the midst of its war with the United States. Cuba provided doctors and military engineers who took part in the widening of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Castro said the Vietnam War ended in a disastrous withdrawal by the United States.

"All they achieved was a candidate for the Republican Party 41 years later," he wrote.

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