Four Cuban labor activists who were featured in a documentary that debuted last week in Miami were summoned by the Cuban National Police and threatened, stateside supporters said. "Under the Cuban Skies' is a 29-minute movie filmed in Cuba about the lack of labor rights and low salaries in Cuba, which aired a week ago at the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy onference in downtown Miami. Four days later in Havana, activists Maria Elena Mir Marrero, Justo J. Sanchez, Hanoi Oliva and Daniel Sabatier, who were featured in the film, were summoned and threatened, said Cuba Study Group executive director Tomas Bilbao. The Cuba Study Group hosted the premier. In the film, which was produced by retired InterAmerican Development Bank economist George Plinio Montalvan, the four discussed racial and political discrimination at the workplace, low salaries and the lack of right to organize. The movie was directed by Carlos Montaner - son of the Spain-based writer who is a regular commentator for the Miami Herald. "They reported to police on Tuesday and were interrogated, fingerprinted had DNA samples and photos taken and were degraded,' Bilbao said. "They were told that if they continue these activities, they would be subject to detention or more physical harm.' Documentary Trailer:http://tiny.cc/TrailerUCS .

"THE Revolution has abandoned its principles, if it ever had them, of building a more just society, and has condemned Cubans to a fierce fight for their lives at the most primitive level -- obtaining food." --Vicente Botín, Los funerales de Castro (Castro's Funeral). President Obama recently removed restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba by Cuban-Americans. U.S.- Cuba discussions have begun on other issues such as immigration. Congressional initiatives to relax further or to eliminate the U.S. embargo entirely have been announced for Fall 2009, including expanding the right to travel to Cuba by all U.S. citizens. The business sector has long advocated an end to the embargo, and there is considerable interest on the part of U.S. investors to begin operations on the island, as well as offshore. However, here's the rub: the current Cuban labor system is in violation of internationally recognized human and labor rights. The Cuban government believes that because of increasing domestic and international pressures, the U.S. will be forced to lift the embargo unilaterally, without concessions of any kind by Cuba. At the very least, then, investors from the U.S. and other countries will need to consider precedents such as the Unocal and Curaçao Drydock ruling under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) of 1789, whereby federal "district courts have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a Treaty of the United States." Courts hearing cases brought under ATCA have interpreted the statute to grant U.S. courts jurisdiction over tortuous acts that occur anywhere in the world, provided that those acts violate international law. The ATCA is also called the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 law that, "...allowed non-U.S. citizens to seek redress in American courts for torts considered violations of the law of nations: piracy, attacks on ambassadors and the right of safe passage." In October 2008, a court entered the first corporate ATCA judgment -- $80 million to three Cuban workers trafficked to work in the nation of Curaçao for a Dutch dry dock company. According to the law firm, Grossman Roth, P.A., the landmark case was "the first time a U.S. Court has held a company doing business with Cuba liable for forced labor and human rights abuses committed in concert with the Cuban state." Alberto Rodriguez-Licea, one of the plaintiffs who spoke on behalf of the three, said, "We hope that today's historic judgment means that no Cuban worker will ever have to suffer the same humiliation and inhumane treatment that we experienced. We are overwhelmed by the generosity of so many people who have worked very hard to help bring our oppressors to justice." In Cuba, not only is the labor market a disaster, the whole economy is currently in the throes of a severe crisis. The national GDP, overly reliant upon nickel, remittances, tourism and Venezuelan foreign aid, has been battered by the worldwide financial recession. In addition, two devastating hurricanes in 2008 wreaked widespread damage upon the island nation. However, in the midst of this crisis, if the Cuban government wishes to take advantage of opportunities offered through the lifting of the embargo, it will be forced to undertake profound reforms, at least encompassing its labor practices. At virtually the same time, changes in leadership in Cuba in 2008 and in the United States in 2009, foretell a "new beginning" in U.S-Cuba relations which could eventually lead to greater respect for human and labor rights as well as to sustainable economic development in Cuba. In addition, each year of late, Americans report diminishing domestic support for the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Two years ago this week, the "new leader" of Cuba, Raúl Castro, urged Cuban citizens to debate openly their nation's problems. Hopeful Cubans took him up on his offer. A growing number of journalists, labor leaders, as well as founders of independent libraries, pressed their demands for freedom and an end to the government's suffocating monopoly over virtually every aspect of life. The government ordered a token relaxation of its restrictions by granting Cubans the right to purchase electric items such as microwaves, cell phones, and computers, and for the first time the right to patronize modern hotels. Until now, all of the above were inaccessible to ordinary Cubans and reserved only for tourists. The relaxation of limitations on computer and cell phone use has resulted, predictably, in a rise in the number of dissident Cuban bloggers. The world renowned Yoani Sánchez, who blogs as Generación Y, has led the clarion call for labor reform and liberty in Cuba: "I arrived at this medicine that would 'cure a horse' after verifying that the Internet was the only opening through which an alternative, critical and inconvenient opinion could 'jump the fence' of censorship in Cuba. The examples around me of those thrown out, isolated, and incarcerated warned me that differences of opinion continue to be penalized. But the inquisitors grow older and their methods do not develop at the same speed as technology. So, there was the Internet, still without laws to prevent the posting of opinions, like an unregulated zone, a crack that opened up in the wall." Cuban dissidents have been calling attention to the problem since the mid-1990s, but even now it seems to have gotten very little attention in the business community or in the U.S. Congress. On a trip to Cuba I took a few weeks ago, I witnessed the well-known Cuban dissidents "Las Damas de Blanco" (The Ladies in White) marching down Fifth Avenue in Havana after Sunday Mass. In what has traditionally been a silent protest of the unjust incarceration of their loved ones and the lack of fundamental freedoms in Cuba turned vocal. "Libertad! Libertad! Libertad!" shouted the ladies in unison as they stood abreast of one another with raised flowers and impassioned voices. Other potential witnesses in any labor dispute are the Cuban doctors who have defected from Cuba during their internationalist missions in Venezuela and in other countries. Awareness must be raised in the international community as to how the expectations of thoughtful, courageous and "independent" Cubans can help the U.S. and other countries arrive at a new, respectful relationship with Cuba - a relationship based on greater freedom for the Cuban people and on a realistic agenda for meaningful and sustainable development. Today, the interests of international business, the U.S. government, and the Cuban populace coalesce around a single ideal: labor reform in Cuba. The Obama administration and the United Nations have a fleeting opportunity to embrace and encourage greater awareness of human and labor rights in Cuba and pave the way for meaningful change on the island only ninety miles from our shores. They must seize that opportunity now. Luis Carlos Montalván is a member of the Council for Emerging National Security Affairs (CENSA) and consulted on the forthcoming documentary film, "Under Cuban Skies - Workers and their Rights." .

Fifty years ago, Fidel Castro swept into Cuba’s capital on January 8, promising to establish a socialist state that would promote collectivism over individualism. But the anniversary celebrations, which culminated in an evening rally in Havana on Thursday, have put less emphasis on social spending and more on rewarding individual labour, as Cuba under the leadership of Fidel Castro’s younger brother Raúl moves away from its decades-old commitment to communism. In a series of speeches and interviews dedicated to the anniversary, President Raúl Castro hammered away at the theme that workers did not appreciate many government benefits – with the exception of free health, education and subsidised culture – and should be given higher wages instead. “It is well known that the vast majority of people do not appreciate a gratuity or generally high subsidies of goods and services as part of the return for their labour, for which they look only at wages,” he told parliament on December 27. In the same speech, he said subsidised vacations at tourism resorts were being scrapped, along with 50 per cent of government travel abroad and other unnamed gratuities. Many Cubans applaud the new policy but worry that wages will not rise as quick- ly as gratuities disappear. Cuba has had a second world war-style food ration system since the revolution. Public transport and utilities are heavily subsidised, as are many workplace rewards, even though an economic crisis following the Soviet collapse, combined with remittances sent by relatives from abroad, have long since undermined income equality. “Why, after working 24 years, is my ration the same as people who have never worked?” asked Nancy Artigas, a Havana resident. “What’s more, their rights and benefits are the same as mine. That doesn’t seem fair – nor is it a way to get people to work.” Although 85 per cent of workers receive no hard currency from their jobs, an estimated 40 per cent of the population receives some money from abroad. Cuba reports annual per capita income, including gratuities and subsidies, as being $6,000 (€4,380, £3,960), although the average yearly wage is the peso equivalent of only $240 at the official exchange rate. After taking over from his ailing brother Fidel last February, Raúl Castro has freed up sales of computers, mobile phones and other consumer goods and lifted caps on wages and on what farmers may earn. Cuba is struggling with mounting deficits, low productivity and the need to import 70 per cent of its food. In an interview carried by the official media to mark the anniversary of the revolution, Mr Castro said wages should reflect the real value of one’s work, and that those who did not work should feel economic pressure to do so. “If we do not take measures to ensure people feel the necessity of working to satisfy their needs, we will not get out of the hole we are in, and we are going to get out of it,” he said. Cuba’s trade and budget deficits soared and its current account balance deteriorated in 2008, despite a 4.3 per cent increase in gross domestic product – casting a pall over the anniversary celebrations that wound up in Havana on Thursday. In recent years, the country has helped to pay for its trade deficit through revenue from tourism and from services exports – mainly for health and education to its oil-rich ally Venezuela, which now faces a big drop in oil revenues. Tourism and services revenues did increase last year, but not by enough to compensate..