This Weekend’s Cuban Communist Party Congress

Press Release: What Can be Expected from this Weekend’s Cuban Communist Party Congress?

Early last month in Havana, COHA Research Fellow J. Preston Whitt interviewed Josefina Vidal, head of the MINREX (Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs) North America division. In this interview, Vidal outlined the Cuban opinion regarding the Washington-Havana stand-off, and highlighted some of the proposed changes to be discussed at the April 16 Communist Party Congress, the first session of this body since 1997.

Cuba’s Pragmatic Compromise
Vidal began with what she called the Cuban “tough list” of requirements to officially normalize U.S.-Cuban relations. The seven-topic list started off, of course, with the demand of lifting the U.S. embargo. Next, Cuba requires the return of the Cuban Five, a group of Cuban spies currently serving long prison sentences in the United States. Cuba maintains that the Five were wrongfully convicted, arguing that they were investigating anti-Cuban terrorist organizations and were not acting against the United States government or the interests of the U.S. citizens.

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This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Fellow J. Preston Whitt

Press Release: Peru’s Presidential Election and the Approaching Run-Off

Results now being assessed from the first round of Peru’s presidential election are expected to deliver a strikingly different outcome than what was widely predicted merely months ago. Former lieutenant colonel and quirky leftist candidate Ollanta Humala led the race with 31.37 percent of the popular vote. Keiko Fujimori, daughter of now jailed Peruvian autocrat Alberto Fujimori, trailed Humala with 23.22 percent of ballots cast. The other three top candidates—former president Alejandro Toledo, former IMF economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (PPK), and former Lima mayor Luis Castañeda—were all favored by the country’s center-right elites when it came to their political leanings. Many in the media have suggested that the three trailing candidates were too ideologically indistinct, fragmenting the aristocratic vote. This left Humala and Fujimori to compete for the remaining segments of Peruvian society, to whom they offered differing varieties of populist appeal. For many, this is an unfortunate outcome that could supplant reasoned political debate in the run-off on June 5 with emotionally-based responses to the two remaining candidates.

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This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Adrian Carroll

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