Electronic scroll a sign of discord

Electronic scroll a sign of discord

Tone of U.S.-Cuba ties turns nastier

By Ian Katz
Havana Bureau

June 16, 2006

HAVANA · The big news, if you were standing in front of the U.S.
Interests Section building on Wednesday night, was that Chicago White
Sox pitcher Jose Contreras won his 15th consecutive game.

An electronic sign, scrolling in 5-foot-high red letters across the
façade of the sixth floor, repeated a few news items from the overtly
political to the mundane:

An Afghan delegation declared conditions at the U.S. detention center in
Guantanamo Bay humane. Tropical Storm Alberto blew through Florida. The
European Union deplored the "deterioration" of human rights in Cuba.

Relations between the United States and Cuba, always bitter, have taken
on a nastier tone in recent months. The only thing the two sides agree
on is that the current spat stems from the electronic sign, which
debuted in January.

The Interests Section said Monday that Cuba had cut off its electricity
a week earlier, forcing it to use generator power. The outage was part
of what the Interests Section claims is a flurry of recent harassment,
including the sporadic stoppage of water service and Cuba's refusal to
let the diplomatic mission import vehicles or hire Cuban employees.

Electricity was restored on Tuesday, the same day Cuba's official
newspaper, Granma, published a front-page editorial denying that the
power outage was deliberate and accusing the Interests Section of lying.

Granma attributed the outage to problems with the local electricity grid
and the uneven water service to a drought and supply difficulties.
"Never will our Revolution assault or violate a diplomatic mission. It
never has and it never will," the newspaper said.

The return of electricity to the mission might have signaled a truce.
"I'm tending to write this one off to a certain irrationality on both
sides," said Wayne Smith, director of the Cuba program at the Center for
International Policy in Washington and former head of the Interests
Section. "Relations will not improve, but maybe they won't get any worse."

The electronic sign, which scrolls in Spanish, makes not-so-subtle
references to democracy in other lands. But pitching sensation
Contreras, who defected from Cuba in 2002 and now makes $9.5 million a
year, appears most frequently. "The regime doesn't put up Major League
Baseball news and Cubans crave it, so we put it up, especially when it's
about Cuban-American players," Interests Section spokesman Drew Blakeney
said.

The sign was installed, he said, "to disseminate free, uncensored
information and opinion not usually available to Cubans." It's not the
first time the Interests Section has used a display to make a point. In
2004, it put up a Christmas display that included a brightly lit 75,
referring to the number of Cuban government opponents who had been
jailed the previous year.

After the electronic sign went up, Cuban President Fidel Castro had 150
flags installed directly in front of the building. Even without the
flags, the sign isn't in an ideal place. It faces a street with more
vehicle traffic than pedestrians, and drivers don't have time to read
the scroll.

Staff Researcher Barbara Hijek contributed to this report.

Ian Katz can be reached at katzincuba@yahoo.com.

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