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On April 16th and 17th a group of Cuban Americans of different political persuasions from states including Florida, Illinois, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, and Kentucky visited Washington DC in order to promote engagement in relations between Cuba and the United States with members of Congress, the U.S. State Department, and the Cuban Interests Section in Washington. We counted on the support of the Latin America Working Group (LAWG) and the Washington Office of Latin America (WOLA) for such an undertaking. Para leer en español haz un click aquí.

From the unique perspective of Diego Benitez from Witness for Peace (WFP) who has been on the ground in Havana, Cuba since the beginning of the year. WFP is a politically independent, nationwide grassroots organization of people committed to nonviolence and led by faith and conscience. WFP’s mission is to support peace, justice and sustainable economies in the Americas by changing U.S. policies and corporate practices which contribute to poverty and oppression in Latin America and the Caribbean. WFP established an active delegations program in Cuba in 1999. Delegates worked to expose the human costs of the U.S. embargo. Over the next four years, thousands of activists traveled to Cuba with WFP before President Bush revoked WFP's license to travel to Cuba in 2005.

“Very few people have been found, so the question’s always there: how do we talk about them?  Is or was?  Presence or absence?” 

It’s hard to understand what exactly it means to be disappeared.  One day a daughter, father, or aunt is there, and the next they aren’t.  Families are left to search endlessly for their loved ones, meeting immense resistance from the government, and all the while never knowing if their loved one is across town or across the country, dead or alive.  

In case you hadn’t noticed, it seems that Cuba has been popping up in mainstream news headlines a lot in the past week. From Ozzie Guillen’s comments about Fidel Castro to this weekend’s Summit of the Americas, Cuba is a hot topic these days. The strange thing is—Cuba isn’t in the news for what its people or government have done—it’s in the news because U.S. citizens and politicians are putting in their two cents about the country (as is so often the case).

I can tell you what should be on the table for discussion at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia:  The safety of the region’s human rights defenders.

Alexander Quintero campaigned for justice for the victims of Colombia's 2001 Naya River massacre, committed by paramilitary forces.  “He brought us all together, indigenous, Afro-Colombian and mestizo communities,” said a colleague.  “It could have been any of us,” a sobbing defender said, as she told me about his May 2010 murder.

President of the Cuban Parliament, Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada, was interviewed last week by Dr. Salim Lamrani, lecturer at Paris Sorbonne Paris IV University and expert on U.S.-Cuba relations, for publication in The Huffington Post. The interviewer and the interviewee produced an absorbing conversation on the state of U.S.-Cuba relations, particularly how the countries can cooperate to move forward—a   step that Alarcón claims would benefit both sides of the Florida Straits. He should know. Prior to his position as President of the Parliament, Alarcón spent twelve years in the United States as Cuban ambassador to the United Nations. Throughout the conversation, the two men did not hesitate to discuss some of the touchier topics plaguing U.S.-Cuba relations: including migration, the current administration, normalized relations, and even Alan Gross. Read below for excerpts of the more compelling questions and responses:

As the National Days of Action for Peace in Colombia begin this week, I wanted to share the original poem "They Don't Believe Us" that Colombian human rights defender, Orlando Bolaños, read aloud to me when I visited him on a human rights verification mission in December. 

Dr. Reinerio Arce, President of the Evangelical Theological Seminary of Matanzas, Cuba,  participated in a briefing at Washington, DC’s National Council of Churches last week regarding the current  reality of religious life and the role of churches  in Cuba. Dr. Arce’s presentation focused on the current economic and social changes occurring on the island and how they have affected various faiths and churches. He also expressed deep support for small, but important measures taken by the Obama Administration in regards to religious travel--which he claims has greatly facilitated his seminary’s ability to carry out social projects. Dr. Arce began by stressing the importance of the relationships between U.S. and Cuban churches:

Dr. Reinerio Arce, President of the Evangelical Theological Seminary of Matanzas, Cuba,  participated in a briefing at Washington, DC’s National Council of Churches last week regarding the current  reality of religious life and the role of churches  in Cuba. Dr. Arce’s presentation focused on the current economic and social changes occurring on the island and how they have affected various faiths and churches. He also expressed deep support for small, but important measures taken by the Obama Administration in regards to religious travel--which he claims has greatly facilitated his seminary’s ability to carry out social projects. Dr. Arce began by stressing the importance of the relationships between U.S. and Cuban churches: