SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011 update A New Indigenous-Left in Ecuador? By Jeffery R. Webber O AUGUST 9, ABOUT 400 DELEGATES from Ecuador’s many social movements joined most of the country’s left-wing parties for the First Gathering of Social Movements for Democracy and Life. The gathering, held in Quito, brought together various sectors of the indigenous, peasant, labor, feminist, LGBT, Afro-Ecuadoran, and environmental movements. The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), the Ecuadoran Confederation of United ClassStruggle Workers Organizations, and the National Teachers Union of Ecuador together constituted the core of the social forces involved, while the broad political left was represented by Pachakutik, the Democratic Popular Movement (MPD), Montecristi Lives, Participation, and a dissident fraction of the Socialist Party. In break-away sessions, speeches, and declarations, the participants expressed their disaffection with the government of President Rafael Correa— calling into question Correa’s deepening and extension of the extractivist development model into mining, the absence of agrarian reform in spite of government promises to the contrary, intensifying attacks on public-sector unions, the concentration of authority in the executive power, the absence of participatory democracy, and the criminalization of resistance under Correa’s watch.1 The continuity of capitalist extractivism under Correa and his predecessors dominated the discussion of natural resources and resistance. This session declared Correa “an enemy of the Ecuadoran people,” not least because of the “persecution and criminalization of social struggle” against extractive industries. The labor session similarly called Correa a “traitor to the project of change of the Ecuadoran people and an enemy of workers,” vowing “to reject and to fight” his government’s “anti-popular and anti-worker policies.” The break-away session on democracy focused on the criminalization of social protest and popular struggle under the Correa government and stressed how these repressive dynamics were necessarily linked to “the implementation of an economic model that strengthens and centralizes the state at the service N of emergent Ecuadoran bourgeois interests and those of transnational corporations.” The participants’ positions against the Correa government—as well as social movement mobilizations against it in recent years—can only be understood against a complex backdrop of relations between the state and social movements since Correa first scraped his way into the presidency in the second round of elections in 2006. This political contest took place at a time when the prestige of the indigenous movement—by far the most important popular force in Ecuador for several decades—had still to recover from the acute setback it suffered after participating in the illfated government of Lucio Gutiérrez (2003-2005). Gutiérrez, of the Patriotic Society Party, had run his 2002 electoral campaign on an anti-neoliberal platform, but once in office he immediately capitulated to the neoliberal policy prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund. CONAIE supported the party’s election and even provided ministers for the government’s first cabinet. Within seven months, however, the rapidly intensifying rupture between the indigenous movement and the now evidently neoliberal Gutiérrez had been formally played out with the resignation of these ministers. A mass explosion of resentment and agitation in April 2005 successfully forced the disgraced Gutiérrez from power. The protests were characterized politically by a largely urban middle-class sentiment that was anti-party, anti-neoliberal, and anti-corruption, but lacked a coherent political project.2 Rather than signifying a deep rearticulation of popular-sector power or organizational capacity—indeed, the indigenous movement was almost completely absent from the scene—the April 2005 revolt instead encapsulated a relatively spontaneous expression of disdain for the political elite and inchoate rage against the ongoing imposition of neoliberal economic restructuring. This was the vacuum into which Correa’s party, Alianza País (Country Alliance, AP), positioned itself during the 2006 presidential campaign. His main right-wing contender, the multimillionaire banana magnate Álvaro Noboa, received more votes than Correa in the first round, but was suf- Jeffery R. Webber teaches politics at Queen Mary, University of London. He is the author of From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia (Haymarket Books, 2011) and Red October: Left-Indigenous Struggles in Modern Bolivia (Brill Academic Publishers, 2011). 9 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS update ficiently hated by the popular sectors that a second-round rally for the AP circumvented his rise to the presidency. The marketing team of AP, trying to tap into the widespread anti-party sentiment, refused to call the AP a “political party,” instead referring to it as a “political movement.” Correa in turn was pitched as a heterodox outsider, an anti-neoliberal economist who—as a consequence of missionary work as a youngster—spoke Kichwa and was familiar with the needs and aspirations of the country’s indigenous, peasant, and urban popular sectors. The 2007–08 Constituent Assembly process solidified the president’s early popularity, as the country polarized around a hard-right camp represented by Noboa and a progressive poll led by Correa. Within the Constituent Assembly, as a result of this wider societal divarication, a “mega-bloc” of the left emerged around Correa, a bloc that included Pachakutik, the MPD, and the Democratic Left (ID), although always under the hegemonic guidance of Correa and the AP.3 The wildly popular process of a Constituent Assembly offered up an extended honeymoon for Correa and large cross-sections of society. A new, progressive Constitution received the approval of 64% of voters in a referendum in September 2008, and Correa was re-elected—this time in the first round—with 52% of the popular vote in April 2009. Things began to sour soon after, however, when Correa’s failure to break with the quotidian banalities of the neoliberal economics he had inherited was difficult to reconcile with the president’s romantic and ostentatious slogans of “21st-Century Socialism” and “Citizen’s Revolution.” Indeed, the president would strain to align his practical commitment to aggressively reorienting the Ecuadoran economy toward the extraction of minerals by multinational corporations with his 10 preferred rhetorical schemas for the next several years. “The new constitution opened the door for a series of profound changes,” argues Alberto Acosta, a former minister of energy and mines in Correa’s first administration and the president of the Constituent Assembly. “Its statutes guarantee the construction of a plurinational state. This means the incorporation for the first time of marginalized groups, like indigenous peoples and nationalities and Afro-Ecuadorans. The constitution mandates respect for their unique ways of life and community organizing, and a new way of structuring the state in general.” Likewise, the new constitution includes probably the most progressive environmental commitments of any constitution in the world. The text ensures, for example, an allegiance to “living well,” or sumak kawsay, in Kichwa, “which is an entirely distinct way of understanding development,” Acosta explains. Moreover, “nature is a subject with rights in the Constitution,” Acosta adds. “Ecuador’s Constitution is the only one in the world with this characteristic.” In keeping with the spirit of the Constitution, the 2009 electoral campaign featured Correa’s promise to radicalize the Citizen’s Revolution.4 It quickly became apparent, however, that there would be a gaping chasm between the contents of the Constitution and the lived reality of the country under Correa’s rule. Shortly after the 2009 elections, Correa shifted decisively to the right, presenting “infantile leftism, environmentalism, and indigenism” as the preeminent threats to economic modernization and progress, particularly regarding the president’s plans to shift the extractive focus of the economy from oil to mining.5 Correa allowed the disintegration of the mega-bloc of parliamentary left forces that had held together loosely during the Constituent Assembly, as the MPD and Pachakutik abandoned the coalition in the face of the AP’s rightward drift. Key business federations that had been hostile to the first Correa administration notably altered their discourse and practical orientation toward the government in the post-2009 conjuncture, presumably as a reward for the government’s newly invigorated commitment to neoliberal continuity.6 Correa, now openly “allied with traditional, right-wing businessmen,” the Uruguayan sociologist Raúl Zibechi points out, “reserves his most poisonous darts for the left.”7 According to Marlon Santi, former president of CONAIE, “Correa entered the presidency in 2006 with the support of all the social movements— indigenous, environmentalists, human rights movements. But all of the social and political programs being introduced by this government have nothing to do with the program of his party, Alianza País, or a Citizens’ Revolution. The programs the government is introducing are based on other foundations, foundations that do not respect the collective ideas and demands of the grassroots that supported him.” Indigenous peoples in particular are excluded from the decision-making circles of the Correa government, Santi says, adding: “There’s an important popular saying around our independence: the last day of oppression, and the first day of the same.” B 2009, THE GOVernment was in open conflict with the indigenous movement. Mobilizations fought proposed water legislation that would have effectively privatized lakes and rivers in the interests of hydro-electrical development and the water needs of multinational mining corporations, at the expense of peasant and indigenous communities. Teachers unions and university professors, meanwhile, were locked in a conY THE END OF SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011 update JOSE JACOME / EPA Indigenous protesters in Quito take to the streets on April 8, 2010, in opposition to a controversial water law proposed by President Rafael Correa. One protester carries a sign reading, “With water there is life, without it, only death.” frontation with the government over a new law ostensibly about regulating higher education, but actually designed to weaken union power. Throughout 2010, a series of conflicts continued to convulse the country. Indigenous movements agitated against mining projects, while publicsector workers engaged in defensive battles to defend their most basic of labor rights. Indeed, according to sociologist Mario Unda, the essence of 2010 can be captured in the phrase, “a project of capitalist modernization confronting social movements.”8 A high point in the indigenous struggle that year took place on June 5. Ecuador was hosting a presidential summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) in the majority-Kichwa, Andean city of Otavalo. Despite the fact that the gathering was ostensibly called to discuss themes of indigenous and Afro–Latin American peoples within the ALBA countries, the principal indigenous organization of Ecuador, CONAIE, was not on the guest list. The indigenous movement consequently organized a march of 3,000 people through the city and symbolically installed a parallel Plurinational Parliament in the streets and plazas.9 Police repressed the march, and serious charges of terrorism and sabotage were laid against key indigenous leaders. At the time of writing, some 200 activists are facing charges of terrorism and sabotage with the possibility of lengthy prison terms.10 Marlon Santi of CONAIE is one of them. “When the presidents of the countries involved in the ALBA were meeting here in Ecuador, in Otavolo, they talked about indigenous rights,” Santi explains. “But the main representatives of the indigenous movement in the country, that is to say CONAIE, were never invited to the meeting. And we wanted to have a voice in ALBA. We wanted to say to the governments of ALBA that without the indigenous peoples of Latin America, ALBA can’t exist. We will not be excluded any longer. And for saying this in protests outside the ALBA meeting we have been given this new name of terrorists and saboteurs. We’re supposedly against the nation. But we believe the truth will rise to the surface about these claims.” Acosta, now a leading left critic of Correa, says the charges are “tremendously shameful for the country.” “They have no basis in justice or a democratic judicial system,” he says. “Even during the period of neoliberal governments, when social movements and the indigenous movement were massively involved in protests, there were never accusations of terrorism. This is an issue that is putting the Citizens’ Revolution itself at risk.” The extreme right in Ecuador has objected to Correa’s increases in public spending, anti-poverty cash11 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS update transfer programs, the introduction of modest banking regulations, targeted tariffs on specific import items, and geopolitical ties with Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, and Venezuela, at the expense of closer diplomatic relations with the United States. Most dramatically, Correa expelled U.S. Ambassador Heather Hodges over WikiLeaks documents in April, in which Hodges accused Ecuador’s former police chief of corruption and recommended revoking his U.S. visa. The Correa administration has also secured multibillion-dollar loans from China in recent months as part of an apparent attempt to adapt older geopolitical relations to an increasingly multipolar world. At the same time, the United States remains Ecuador’s leading trade partner and an important source of remittances. Coupled with the president’s propensity to employ radical sophistry at every turn, and his studied cultivation of a progressive political identity abroad, the Ecuadoran government is often misperceived as having broken much more thoroughly with the neoliberal model than is actually the case. Indeed, the rhetoric of revolutionary change figures so prominently in Correa’s discourse precisely because he relies on this mythology to mask some bitter truths. Early this century, Ecuador enjoyed fairly strong economic growth, as a product of a regional boom for most of South America’s commodity exporters. For Ecuador, what mattered most was the high price of oil, its biggest export. GDP grew at roughly 3% in 2002 and 2003, spiked to almost 9% in 2004, and tapered to 6%, 5%, and 2% in 2005, 2006, and 2007, respectively. In 2008 GDP climbed again to 7%, before plunging to almost 0% in 2009 with the onset of the global crisis. (The contraction in GDP in 2006 and 2007 is partially related to the declining rate of production of private oil companies in 12 TABLE 1 Public Social Spending as a Percentage of GDP COUNTRY 1990-91 1997-98 2000-01 2007-08 ECUADOR 7.4 5.1 4.9 6.4 ARGENTINA 11.3 10.6 11.0 11.8 CHILE 12.0 13.2 15.1 13.2 COLOMBIA 5.9 12.8 11.1 12.6 MEXICO 6.5 8.8 9.7 12.1 URUGUAY 16.8 20.5 21.6 21.8 CUBA 27.6 21.6 23.7 37.4 Source: United Nat ions Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Social Panorama of Latin America 2010 (Santiago, Chile: ECLAC, 2011), 240. the country over these years.) Preliminary figures show an almost 4% rate of growth in 2010, with an outlook of roughly 3% for 2011.11 Social-democratic analysts sympathetic to the Correa government often stress how this respectable growth rate has allowed for expansionary public spending under Correa. Increases in health and education spending, as well as the priming of pre-existing, targeted cash-transfer programs toward the poorest sectors of society, are often flagged in such commentary, as are reductions in the poverty rate under Correa’s command.12 Looked at comparatively, however, the figures for Ecuador do not seem to be the stuff even of post-neoliberalism, never mind 21st-century socialism. For example, social spending as a proportion of total public spending in Ecuador is situated in the bottom echelons of regional Latin American trends. On average, social spending in the region rose from 12.2% of GDP in 1990–91 to 18% in 2007–08, whereas Ecuador’s fell from 7.4% to 6.4% over the same period. A casual perusal of Table 1 (above) indicates that Ecuador has a much poorer record in this regard than, say, Argentina or Chile, at best center-left governments during most of the 2000s. (The situation changed in Chile in 2010, when the far-right president Sebastián Piñera was elected.) Ecuador compares poorly even to Colombia under Álvaro Uribe or Mexico under Felipe Calderón, whereas Correa’s claims to be moving toward socialism of any type are simply laughable when social spending figures in Ecuador are juxtaposed with the record of the region’s leaders in this area, Cuba and Uruguay. Similarly, the record on poverty reduction is underwhelming for a selfproclaimed socialist government. As Table 2 indicates (see page 13), while urban poverty fell from 49% to 40.2% in Ecuador between 2002 and 2009, it is less impressive when one considers superior outcomes in Kirchner’s Argentina, Lula’s Brazil, García’s Peru, or Calderón’s Mexico. (We look here at urban poverty rates because no comparable figures on total national poverty rates are available for Ecuador for the relevant years in this data set, apart from 2008 and 2009, when national poverty rates were 42.7% and 42.2%, and rural poverty rates 50.2% and 46.3%, respectively.) As the global economic slump dips more deeply, repeatedly defy- SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011 update ing sunny recovery forefor CONAIE, advised me that TABLE 2 casts, international financial CONAIE has identified three Percentage of Population Below strategic priorities—first, to institutions and economic pundits have been forced to rebuild and reinforce the rank the Poverty Line in Urban Areas revise downward their outand file capacities of CONAIE looks for world growth for itself; second, to reorganize COUNTRY 2002 2008* 2009 2011 and 2012. As far as and strengthen ties between ECUADOR 49 39 40.2 Ecuador is concerned, this all of CONAIE’s wider array could mean a drop in oil revof allies within the indigenous ARGENTINA 45.4 21 11.3 enues as international prices movement; and, third, to build BRAZIL 34.4 22.8 22.1 fall, and a further decline in new organizational structures remittances sent home from of resistance at the national PERU** 42 23.5 21.1 Ecuadorans living abroad, level between all sectors of the MEXICO 38.9 32.2 29.2 particularly in Spain and popular movement. the United States, where the “From CONAIE we can Source: ECLAC, Social Panorama of Latin America 2010, 224–25. economies are suffocating offer support to the broader *The Argentine figure for this column comes from 2006. under the grip of austerity movement, drawing from our measures. experiences,” Sharupi said. **Figures from the Institute of Statistics and Informatics Political scientist David “We want to move beyond (INEI) of Peru. McNally, one of the most thinking merely of this governincisive analysts of the crisis ment, because governments are on a world scale, explains what he HE CONFLICTS OVER MINING ARE transitory. They are merely pieces in the means by the term global slump, and likely to intensify further in game that capitalism uses for its own the reasons that we should not expect coming months and years. ends. Our job is longer term, a process it to go away quickly. “Rather than Closed-door negotiations with multi- of political and ideological formation of describing a single crisis,” he writes, national corporations seeking to secure the popular sectors—of the indigenous “the term is meant to capture a whole large-scale mining projects were due sector, of all popular sectors.” period of interconnected crises—the to be completed in July, but have not Delfín Tenesaca, of the Kichwa bursting of a real estate bubble; a wave yet come to fruition. While the details Confederation of Ecuador (Ecuarunari), of bank collapses; a series of sovereign remain secret, it is estimated that $3.5 echoed Sharupi’s sentiments, particudebt crises; relapse into recession— billion in foreign direct investment will larly the understanding that change that goes on for years without a sus- flood the mining sector from 2012 for- will not come from the benevolence tained economic recovery. That, I ward.14 If past patterns are repeated, of leaders on high, but rather through submit, is what confronts us for many, Canadian imperial mining capital is the self-organization and self-activity of many years to come.”13 likely to play a defining role.15 popular classes struggling from below. For Luis Macas, former president In light of these realities, the con“We are going to fight back, and of CONAIE, the Correa government’s tradictions of Correa’s development fight back with a clear position, not one motivation for targeting the indigenous model are likely to sharpen, con- tied exclusively to 2013, when the next movement is clear enough. flicts to assume a more acute form, elections will occur,” says Tenesaca. “It’s not that the government wants and state repression and ideological “The government will be running for simply to get rid of the Indians, or defamation of popular movements re-election, and there will appear a new that it is racism for racism’s sake,” he to become more extreme. This will leadership layer, the new saviors of the says. “The objective is to liquidate the be combined, no doubt, with paral- world, saviors of the country, saviors of indigenous movement in this country, lel tactics aimed at co-opting social the poor, and all the rest. Confronted to dismantle and destroy this move- movements, such as extending clien- with this scenario, our objective will be ment.” He adds that the rationale telist and targeted petty handouts in to save ourselves, beginning now with grows out of the fact that “the indige- the lead-up to the 2013 elections. a fight against extractivism, neoliberalnous movement is the principal social The indigenous movement is pre- ism, clientelism, and a legal system that and political actor in the country that paring for such eventualities. Severino is attacking our leaderships in an effort has struggled against the economic Sharupi, an activist in the Shuar indig- to shut us up. We will defend ourselves model, against neoliberalism.” enous nation and youth coordinator in the face of this.” 13 T SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011 notes A New Indigenous-Left in Ecuador? You mentioned that the government has approved several things in the name of human rights. What things specifically? For example, the current regime has created a Ministry of Human Rights and Justice. But for me, until now, this has served only to sell the image internationally that the government is concerned with human rights, and locally for political clientelism. It also serves to co-opt resources, but not to resolve the problems that the Honduran people are confronting over the constant human rights violations. The Honduran congress has approved a law on the concessioning of natural resources, it has approved a law on model cities,* which is nothing less than the sell-off of the country in pieces. We have already lost victims in the struggle for natural resources. A week ago, an environmental defender in the Atlantic part of the country was assassinated. This shows us that the struggle to defend our natural resources is serious, intense, and we have to put the word out internationally and nationally to denounce and put an end to the continual man-hunt against the defenders of natural resources, the environment, and human rights. Before, right-wing governments didn’t speak of human rights. They denied their importance. But now, such governments don’t deny them, they accept them, and they say they are going to respect them but they don’t. It is a total manipulation, and it is part of how sophisticated they have become to continue committing violations and assaults on human rights. Tomorrow Lobo is going to speak in New York, talking about his administration in terms of their respect for human rights, and I wonder if anyone will ask him about the killing of Emmo [Sadloo], for example, an icon for the National Front of Popular Resistance. What would he say about the killing of the journalist in San Pedro Sula, the communicator [Medardo] Flores? The day they buried Emmo, they killed him. How would he respond to the youth who were captured by Operation Xatruch in Bajo Aguán, for the homes that were burned today and yesterday, in Rigores in Bajo Aguán? What would he say? And I’m just talking about the most recent cases, from August. What would he say about the killing of the young student from Santa Bárbara? I don’t understand how he can stand up to talk about human rights. What would he say of the 10 Hondurans who have disappeared just recently? The most recent was on August 30. What answer would he give? *Model cities are “charter” or autonomous cities that fall outside the jurisdiction of national law, so that unused land is ceded to international businesses or governments for development. Critics liken them to large export-processing zones. 1. Pablo Ospina Peralta, “La unidad de las izquierdas,” La Linea del Fuego, September 8, 2011. 2. See Franklin Ramírez Gallegos, “Fragmentación, reflujo y desconcierto: Movimientos socials y cambio político en el Ecuador (2000–2010),” OSAL no. 28 (November 2010): 28–32. 3. Ibid., 38–39. 4. Mario Unda, “Ecuador 2010: El año 4 de la Revolución Ciudadana,” OSAL no. 29 (May, 2011): 138. 5. Ramírez Gallegos, “Fragmentación, reflujo y desconcierto,” 41. 6. Unda, p. 138. 7. Raúl Zibechi, “Ecuador: The Construction of a New Model of Domination,” Upside Down World, August 5, 2011. 8. Unda, “Ecuador 2010,” 138. 9. Raúl Zibechi, “Bolivia and Ecuador: The State Against the Indigenous People,” Americas Program, July 19, 2010. 10. Ospina Peralta, “La unidad de las izquierdas.” 11. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean 2010–2011 (Santiago, Chile: United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, March 2011), 67. 12. See, for example, Mark Weisbrot and Luis Sandoval, Update on the Ecuadorian Economy (Center for Economic and Policy Research, June 2009). 13. David McNally, Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance (PM Press, 2011), 8–9. 14. Economist Intelligence Unit, “Ecuador: Country Report” (September 2011), 13. 15. Todd Gordon, Imperialist Canada (Arbeiter Ring Publishers, 2010), 216–219. Introduction 1. Charlie Devereux and Corina Pons, “OAS Court Rules for Venezuela Presidential Aspirant Lopez,” Bloomberg, September 16, 2011. 2. Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, “Fact Sheet: Myths and Realities on the Disqualifications From Holding Public Office,” August 11, 2008. 3. Christopher Toothaker, “Hugo Chávez Rejects Report Citing Human Rights Violations in Venezuela,” Associated Press, February 26, 2010. 4. James Peck, Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-opted Human Rights (Henry Holt and Company, 2010), 86. 5. EFE, “Las frases de un dictador,” December 11, 2006. Heroines With Friends in High Places 1. Michael E. Parmly, “Zapatero Writes to Damas de Blanco,” U.S. Interests Section cable 07HAVANA636, July 3, 2007, released by WikiLeaks. 2. Buddy Williams, “ ‘Ladies in White’ Website Launched,” U.S. Interests Section, 06HAVANA23611, December 18, 2006, released by WikiLeaks. 3. Granma Internacional, “We Will Defend the Truth With Our Ethics and Our Principles” (editorial), April 8, 2010, available at granma.cu. 4. Jonathan Farrar, “Request for HRDF Funds for Cuban Organizations,” U.S. Interests Section cable, 08HAVANA613, July 31, 2008, released by WikiLeaks. 5. Michael E. Parmly, “Subject: How to Shatter a Castro-Phile’s Arguments,” U.S. Interests Section cable, 07HAVANA617, June 27, 2007, released by Wikileaks. 6. Michael Parmly, “Mother of All Marches by Cuba’s ‘Ladies In White’ ” U.S. Interests Section cable, 06HAVANA10271, May 15, 2006, released by WikiLeaks. 7. Jonathan Farrar, “Damas Tell First Lady About Hurricane Devastation,” U.S. Interests Section cable, 08HAVANA814, October 16, 2008, released by WikiLeaks. 8. Michael E. Parmly, “Emotional March 18 for Damas De Blanco,” U.S. Interests Section cable, 07HAVANA271, March 29, 2007; Michael E. Parmly, “Cuban Activists Reaching Out to Nam Participants,” U.S. Interests Section cable, 06HAVANA17126, Aug. 30, 2006. 9. Michael E. Parmly “Cuban Thugs Confront ‘Ladies in White’ ,” U.S. Interests Section cable, 07HAVANA285, March 21, 2007; Michael E. Parmly, “Dissidents Push Envelope While Regime Adjusts,” U.S. embassy cable, 07HAVANA965, October 3, 2007. 10. Felipe Pérez Roque, “Statement Issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba,” April 23, 2008, available at cubaminrex.cu. 11. Ibid. 12. James L. Williams, “Informal Poll Of Refugee Applicants Shows Woeful,” U.S. 35