Apr 09, 2009, 11:51 PM
Mr. Castro removed the two noteworthy officials — Felipe Pérez Roque, the foreign minister, and Carlos Lage, the vice president and de facto economics czar — in advance of a party congress in the fall, the first in many years at which a Cuban leader will have to gather support for his plans. In doing so, he appears to want to consolidate control over the economy, which is in shambles, and Cuba’s dialogue with the United States, which is expected to increase under President Obama.
Cuban officials said that Mr. Pérez Roque and Mr. Lage had become too visible and that they had conveyed to foreign politicians false expectations about how the country would change and who would be in control of its direction. The officials declined to be more specific.
The men were also involved socially with a Cuban named Conrado Hernández, who was surreptitiously recording their conversations during regular parties at his ranch in Matanzas. Some of those recorded conversations, which Cuban officials recently discovered, included acerbic criticism and off-color jokes about various government leaders, including Fidel and Raúl Castro.
Mr. Hernández, who served as the liaison on the island between the Cuban government and business interests in the Basque region of Spain, has been detained for over a month, Cuban officials said, because he was supposedly passing the recordings to Spanish intelligence officials, a claim that the Spanish Embassy in Cuba adamantly denies.
The Cuban officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with reporters.
...
Mr. Hernández’s troubles began at his farm in Matanzas, about 60 miles east of Havana, where he, Mr. Pérez Roque and Mr. Lage met regularly for drinks and dominoes.
During at least one of those tape-recorded gatherings in early February, which was attended by Mr. Lage, Mr. Pérez Roque and Fernando Remírez de Estenoz, the head of the Cuban Communist Party’s Foreign Relations Department, the conversation drifted off course and the men began making vulgar jokes about Fidel Castro’s age and health and about the political capabilities of Raúl Castro and José Ramón Machado Ventura, the vice president, according to two Cuban officials.
Though it is not clear why Cuban officials detained Mr. Hernández originally, they raided his office where they found the recordings and an unauthorized diplomatic passport that Cuban officials say was given to him by Mr. Roque. He was arrested Feb. 14 at the airport in Havana.
On March 2, Raúl Castro announced his shakeup. After Mr. Pérez Roque received a standing ovation in the lobby after he left his office for the last time, Raúl Castro called a meeting on March 6 to explain his actions to his top 20 officials. In broad details, he described the evidence against the men and played certain sections of the recordings for those gathered.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/world/...uba&st=cse
Cuban officials said that Mr. Pérez Roque and Mr. Lage had become too visible and that they had conveyed to foreign politicians false expectations about how the country would change and who would be in control of its direction. The officials declined to be more specific.
The men were also involved socially with a Cuban named Conrado Hernández, who was surreptitiously recording their conversations during regular parties at his ranch in Matanzas. Some of those recorded conversations, which Cuban officials recently discovered, included acerbic criticism and off-color jokes about various government leaders, including Fidel and Raúl Castro.
Mr. Hernández, who served as the liaison on the island between the Cuban government and business interests in the Basque region of Spain, has been detained for over a month, Cuban officials said, because he was supposedly passing the recordings to Spanish intelligence officials, a claim that the Spanish Embassy in Cuba adamantly denies.
The Cuban officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with reporters.
...
Mr. Hernández’s troubles began at his farm in Matanzas, about 60 miles east of Havana, where he, Mr. Pérez Roque and Mr. Lage met regularly for drinks and dominoes.
During at least one of those tape-recorded gatherings in early February, which was attended by Mr. Lage, Mr. Pérez Roque and Fernando Remírez de Estenoz, the head of the Cuban Communist Party’s Foreign Relations Department, the conversation drifted off course and the men began making vulgar jokes about Fidel Castro’s age and health and about the political capabilities of Raúl Castro and José Ramón Machado Ventura, the vice president, according to two Cuban officials.
Though it is not clear why Cuban officials detained Mr. Hernández originally, they raided his office where they found the recordings and an unauthorized diplomatic passport that Cuban officials say was given to him by Mr. Roque. He was arrested Feb. 14 at the airport in Havana.
On March 2, Raúl Castro announced his shakeup. After Mr. Pérez Roque received a standing ovation in the lobby after he left his office for the last time, Raúl Castro called a meeting on March 6 to explain his actions to his top 20 officials. In broad details, he described the evidence against the men and played certain sections of the recordings for those gathered.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/world/...uba&st=cse