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Compiled by Ken Sehested

§ And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. ~Genesis 2:8-9

Right: "Psalm 67" art by John August Swanson

§ Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes. ~author unknown

§ The earth laughs in flowers. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

§ Gardening is the slowest of the performing arts. ~author unknown

§ It is forbidden to live in a town with no greenery. ~Jerusalem Talmud, Kiddushin 4:12

§ Leave room in your garden for the fairies to dance. ~author unknown

§ Anyone who thinks that gardening begins in the spring and ends in the fall is missing the best part of the whole year. For gardening begins in January with the dream. ~Josephine Nuese

§ Let us plant dates even though those who plant them will never eat them ~Rubem Alves

§ Gardening is the slowest of the performing arts. ~Mac Griswold

§ I have been fed from fields I did not til. I have crossed bridges I did not build. I have sat in the shade of trees I did not plant. I have received knowledge I did not research.” ~Henlee Barnette

§ [Merely] praying for peace is like praying for a weedless garden. ~John Stoner

§ When my thirst got great enough / to ask, a stream welled up inside; / some jade wave buoyed me forward / and I found myself upright / in the instant, with a garden / inside my own ribs aflourish. / There, the arbor leafs. / The vines push out plump grapes. / You are loved, someone / said, take that / and eat it. ~Mary Karr

§ Those who believe and humble themselves before their Lord, they will be companions of the garden. ~Qur’an, Sutra 11:23

§ But just because the garden grows weeds, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plant fresh flowers, instead paving the whole thing over with concrete. ~N.T. Wright

§ A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.  ~Gertrude Jekyll

§ A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.  ~Liberty Hyde Bailey

§ Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind! Blow upon my garden that its fragrance may be wafted abroad. Let my beloved come to his garden, and eat its choicest fruits. ~Song of Solomon 4:16

§ Do you think that you shall enter the Garden of Bliss without such trials as came to those who passed before you?  ~Scott Reed

§ Garden as though you will live forever.  ~William Kent

§ The wicked thrive before the sun, and their shoots spread over the garden. ~Job 8:16

§ The garden is growth and change and that means loss as well as constant new treasures to make up for a few disasters.  ~May Sarton

§ The weeds keep multiplying in our garden, which is our mind ruled by fear. Rip them out and call them by name.  ~Sylvia Browne

§ To dwell is to garden.  ~Martin Heidegger

§ Gardening requires lots of water—most of it in the form of perspiration.  ~Lou Erickson

§ Gardening is a matter of your enthusiasm holding up until your back gets used to it.  ~author unknown

§ I come to my garden, my sister, my bride; I gather my myrrh with my spice, I eat my honeycomb with my honey, I drink my wine with my milk. Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love. ~Song of Solomon 5:1

§ Plants cry their gratitude for the sun in green joy.  ~Astrid Alauda

§ You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming. i

§ For the Lord will comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places, and will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song. ~Isaiah 51:3

§ A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. ~Greek proverb

§ I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation. ~Phyllis Theroux

§ They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord, over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; their life shall become like a watered garden, and they shall never languish again. ~Jeremiah 31:12

§ Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest. ~Douglas William Jerrold

§ Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love! ~Sitting Bull

§ One of the worst mistakes you can make as a gardener is to think you're in charge. ~Janet Gillespie

§ If you offer food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, . . . you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail. ~Isaiah 58:10-11

§ When the soil disappears, the soul disappears. ~Terri Guillemets

§ Essential advice for the gardener: grow peas of mind, lettuce be thankful, squash selfishness, turnip to help thy neighbor, and always make thyme for loved ones. ~author unknown

§ Green fingers are the extension of a verdant heart. ~Russell Page

§ They shall again live beneath my shadow, they shall flourish as a garden; they shall blossom like the vine, their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon. ~Hosea 14:7

§ There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling. ~Mirabel Osler

§ [My father] talked and contrived endlessly to the effect that I should understand the land, not as a commodity, an inert fact to be taken for granted, but as an ultimate value, enduring and alive, useful and beautiful and mysterious and formidable and comforting, beneficent and terribly demanding, worthy of the best of a man's attention and care. ~Wendell Berry

§ I cultivate my garden, and my garden cultivates me.  ~Robert Brault

§ If you defile the land, it will vomit you out. ~Leviticus 18:28

§ The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there. ~George Bernard Shaw

[§ The kingdom of God] is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches. ~Luke 13:19

§ Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. ~Wendell Berry

§ In the garden I tend to drop my thoughts here and there. To the flowers I whisper the secrets I keep and the hopes I breathe. I know they are there to eavesdrop for the angels. ~Dodinsky

§ Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace. ~May Sarton

§ One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.  ~Wendell Berry

§ Weather means more when you have a garden. There's nothing like listening to a shower and thinking how it is soaking in around your green beans. ~Marcelene Cox

§ God made rainy days so gardeners could get the housework done. ~author unknown

§ God’s liberation from Egyptian slavery comes in the form of a promised new garden. “For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land,” says the book of Deuteronomy, “a land with flowing stream . . . a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees . . . a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing. . . . You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God. . . . “ (8:7-10). The biblical vision of salvation is rooted in fertile land, bountiful harvest, enduring security. The welfare of the soul and the soil—human and humus alike, adam and adama together—are everywhere intertwined. ~Ken Sehested

§ To love is the great amulet that makes this world a garden  ~Robert Louis Stevenson

§ Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelves kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. ~Revelation 22:1-3a

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

By Stan Hastey

            Cuba stands at a crossroads unlike any other in the 59 years since a rebel army headed by Fidel Castro and his younger brother, Raul, defeated the supposedly far superior armed forces under the command of Fulgencio Batista. Batista, the last in a series of corrupt and repressive Cuban presidents backed and kept in power by the United States for the previous half century, fled the island nation as three columns of rebel soldiers bore down on Havana during Christmas week 1958. Declaring victory on New Year’s Day 1959, the three commanding officers—Raul Castro, Ernesto (Che) Guevara, and Camilo Cienfuegos—welcomed Fidel to Havana one week later, where the charismatic leader formally declared victory before a massive crowd of supporters convinced that a new day had dawned on the economically and educationally deprived nation.

Right: Cubans voting in precinct elections, November 2018.

            Among the undeniably significant achievements of the Castro brothers’ revolution have been the virtual elimination of illiteracy by means of a system of public education funded and overseen by the government from kindergarten through university graduate studies and a public health system premised on prevention that boasts a lower infant mortality rate than that of the United States. These are measurable successes.

            Yet another and overriding factor, this one immeasurable, has kept the Castro regime in power for the past two generations, namely, a fiercely held sense of nationalism that has persevered against all efforts by the U.S. to secure its demise. These include dozens, if not hundreds, of attempts by the Central Intelligence Agency to assassinate Fidel Castro and one failed invasion of Cuba undertaken by CIA-backed Cuban Americans at the aptly named Bay of Pigs.

            Toward the end of a long battle with an undisclosed gastrointestinal disorder, Fidel Castro in 2008 conferred power as head of state onto his brother Raul, who then was ratified as president by Cuba’s unicameral legislative body, the National Assembly of People’s Power. Nearly five years younger than his more celebrated brother, Raul announced last November that he will step down on April 19, 2018.

            On the most recent of my more than 30 visits to Cuba over the past 25 years, I sensed a restlessness in friends of long standing who over time have offered the benefit of their perspectives on their nation to this eager observer. Some of these have been openly supportive of the “revolutionary project.” Others have been either privately or publicly critical of the “excesses” of the Revolution. Most have verbalized both satisfaction and criticism, a not uncommon assessment of the state of their country. Their current unease has to do with uncertainty over the political future of Cuba, and specifically over the identity of Raul’s successor.

Left: US President Barack Obama arriving on Air Force One at the Jose Marti International Airport in Havana, 17 March 2016. Photo by Jose Luis Casal.

            What is known is that Cuba’s next president will be a communist who will not be popularly elected by citizens at large. As in Raul Castro’s selection to succeed his brother, the National Assembly will select the younger Castro brother’s successor. That alone will be a more than sufficient reason for the Trump administration to maintain a hard line on U.S.-Cuba relations. Although this is a story unto itself, here in brief is what this harder line is about.

            In December 2014, former President Barack Obama and Cuba’s President Raul Castro announced jointly a series of major changes in bilateral policies, the most significant and visible of which was the normalization of diplomatic relations between the countries. This was a dramatic reversal of the longstanding enmity between the two, dating to 1961 and President John F. Kennedy’s executive order severing relations. For the first time in six decades, the United States flag was to fly at a newly reopened U.S. embassy in Havana, while the Cuban flag was to go up at Cuba’s embassy in Washington.

            Sometimes referred to as “the Cuban thaw,” the new agreement was formalized on July 20, 2015, with the implementation of the joint Castro-Obama declaration. Besides renewing diplomatic relations, most travel restrictions were lifted on U.S. citizens’ travel to Cuba, the prohibition of remittances from the U.S. to Cuban banks was suspended, and some commercial restrictions were likewise ended.

            But relations reverted to nearly-Cold War status on June 16, 2017, scarcely five months into the administration of Donald Trump, when the newly inaugurated president issued an executive order of his own reinstating most travel restrictions and suspending commercial liberalization. Most of our diplomats at the U.S. embassy in Havana were recalled, and Trump ordered the expulsion of most of the Cuban diplomatic corps in Washington. Yet Trump chose not to break off diplomatic relations outright, an omission that did not go down well with wealthy Cuban American supporters, especially in south Florida, who accused him of failing to fulfill a more dramatic course of action promised them during the 2016 election campaign.

            During my most recent trip to Cuba in January, close friends there told me bluntly they don’t know what to expect with Raul Castro’s imminent retirement. Empathizing with their plight, I told them that in a very real sense many of us U.S. citizens feel the same way about our future under a Trump administration. In a way we reflect their uncertainty, albeit with significant variations. What is indisputable is that whomever the Cuban parliament selects as Cuba’s new president following nearly six decades during which the name Castro has followed the word “President,” bilateral relations between the United States and Cuba are newly imperiled for the foreseeable future.

            Still, this new reality does not get those of us who seek a new day in U.S.-Cuba relations off the hook. Led by groups such as the Latin America Working Group in Washington, an Alliance of Baptists partner organization, we will continue to seek a more fulsome and healthy future. We’ll continue to press for the lifting of restrictions on our travel to Cuba. We’ll lobby our government to restore the U.S. embassy in Havana to a full complement of consular officers so that Cubans wishing to travel to the U.S. will have at least an even chance of doing so. We’ll continue to demand that the Trump administration allow the Cuban embassy on 16th Street in Washington to be fully staffed in order to provide the full range of services that countries with normal diplomatic relations are supposed to provide to citizens of both countries.

            Finally and hardest of all, we need to bring unrelenting pressure on members of Congress to repeal the infamous Helms-Burton Act of 1996 making our economic embargo a matter of public law – understandably labeled a “blockade” by Cuba. That law, we need to remember, was enacted in the white-heat reaction of Congress to the shooting down of two small planes over international waters just off the Cuban coast. The government of Fidel Castro had warned the U.S. repeatedly that it would take such action unless the planes, owned and operated by an incorrigible group of fiercely anti-Castro Cuban Americans in Miami called “Brothers to the Rescue,” ceased and desisted from flying over Havana and other Cuban towns and cities dropping anti-Castro leaflets upon them. In fact, shortly before they were shot down on that fateful day, one of the two apparently had wandered into Cuba’s air space.

            Both houses of Congress acted swiftly and decisively. In the Senate, the vote to formalize the embargo – until then enforced by a long succession of presidential executive orders – was 96-4. President Bill Clinton signed Helms-Burton, which now can be brought down only by congressional action and the signature of another U.S. president. This is a tall order, to be sure, especially in the Trump era, fraught as it is with foreign policy crises spanning the globe.

            Yet this is a winnable fight. Many Republican governors, especially those in states whose commerce is dominated by agriculture, long ago joined the battle to liberalize trade relations with Havana. Such interests include, for example, the US Rice Producers Association representing producers of rice in six states. For years Cuba has imported about two-thirds of the rice consumed on the island from Vietnam and China. The rice producers want in on that market. They envision shiploads of rice going from Mobile, Ala., to Havana (not coincidentally, Mobile and Havana are sister cities); from Miami to Matanzas, Cuba; from New Orleans to Santiago de Cuba. And rice is but one example, as wheat- and corn-producing states in our Midwest likewise seek access to the Cuban market.

            Along with an impressive range of religious bodies, colleges and universities, and a host of other interested parties, we belong to a strong and growing lobbying effort in Washington seeking fundamental changes in U.S.-Cuba relations. Although we’ve all joined the fray from different perspectives, our mutual objective is clear. We seek a radically new approach in U.S. relations with Cuba, a small nation we have exploited in every way imaginable for far too long.

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Stan Hastey, a constitutional scholar, frequent traveler to and observer of U.S.-Cuban relations, was the first fulltime director of the Alliance of Baptists where he served for 20 years until his retirement in 2009.

Also by Stan Hastey: “Reflections on Changes in US-Cuba Relations” (Parts 1 & 2)

Other prayer&politiks articles on, about, or from Cuba:

 • “Thirty-five interesting facts about Cuba and its US relations,” by Ken Sehested

 • Special issue of “Signs of the Times” (31 January 2018) on Cuba’s electoral process

• “Bring Down the Wall in the Caribbean: A resolution in support of renewed diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba,” a United Church of Christ Synod resolution

 • “Martin Luther King Jr. in Cuba: A Cuban pastor's story of King's influence,” Rev. by Francisco Rodés

 • “A Cuban pastor responds to President Obama's visit,” by Rev. Eduardo Gonzalez

 • “Background to the touch down: President Barack Obama's historic visit to Cuba,” by Ken Sehested

• “Holy Obedience: One Christian’s story of civil disobedience (calling for the closure of Guantánamo Bay prison)”

• “My Sling is That of David: US-Cuba Relations as an emerging agenda,” by Ken Sehested

 • “Asheville Congregations Sends Delegation to Cuba”

 • “While Washing My Daughter's Feet,” by Kiran Sigmon, following a visit to Cuba

 • “Humbling, Sacred Moments:A Report on One Congregation’s Visit to Cuba,” by Beth Maczka

Part One

       Growing up in Mexico as a missionary kid gave me a different perspective on my native land. Whether always welcomed or not, I could not help but filter my own early sense of patriotism through the lenses of classmates. Their take on the United States was that of the colossus to the North that had stolen a huge section of their country in an illegitimate war and given it a new name—Texas.

       When Fidel Castro and his revolutionary compatriots seized control of Cuba on January 1, 1959, I was 14. In Torreón, the city in northern Mexico where my family lived during my junior and senior high school years (except for 11th grade in 1960-1961 when I attended Polytechnic High School in Fort Worth) spontaneous street celebrations broke out. It would take me a good while longer to understand better why Mexicans took such glee in the triumph of the Castro brothers, Che Guevara and the other bearded firebrands on a Caribbean island most of them never dreamed of visiting.

       What the crowds in Torreón and countless other cities and towns throughout Latin America were cheering was that an apparently rag-tag bunch of indigenous dreamers had run off a military dictator put in power by the United States of America. (This brings to mind another bit of hubris that we U.S. citizens tend to have, that of referring to the USA as “America” as though we owned the entire continent. My school friends, by the way, liked to make the point that the formal name of their country is the “United States of Mexico.”)

       Decades later, as leader of the Alliance of Baptists, I would have the extraordinary privilege of visiting Cuba 30 times, often in the company of delegations from Alliance-affiliated churches exploring partnerships with congregations of the Fraternidad de Iglesias Bautistas de Cuba. Nothing I did during 20 years with the Alliance gave me greater satisfaction.

       Often when speaking in Alliance churches about our Cuba connections, questions would be raised about why Cubans would put up with a communist dictatorship that had resulted in frequently severe deprivations of even the most basic of commodities. Reflecting on such inquiries, it occurred to me one day that on Cuba’s historical time line, the only period during which modern Cuba has been ruled by Cubans is 1959 forward. (By “modern” I mean since Christopher Columbus’ first landing in 1492 as he sought a route to India. Truly indigenous native peoples had lived in what is now Cuba for centuries before Columbus’ two visits.)

       In other words, Cubans themselves have been in charge of their own destiny for a mere 56 years of the 522-year colonial and post-colonial history of the island. As US citizens it is simply impossible for us to understand the depth of nationalistic fervor in Cuba about this historical legacy.

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Part Two

       Long gone is the immediate euphoria many sensed last December when President Raúl Castro of Cuba and U.S. President Barack Obama announced jointly from Havana and Washington that diplomatic ties between the long-estranged nations were to be restored. Since then the two leaders have met in what was reported as a significant exchange of views during the Summit of the Americas in Panama in April. In addition to this face-to-face encounter between heads of state, diplomatic teams from both countries have met twice—first in Havana, then in Washington—in what have been described as frank and difficult discussions.

        No one should be surprised, let alone dismayed, that the negotiations have been tense. After all, 50-plus years of outright hostilities cannot be undone in the course of a few meetings. Both governments are under pressure from factions within their own countries to preserve the status quo.

        Specifically on the U.S. side, the pieces of the proposed new relationship requiring congressional approval face determined opposition within key committees on both sides of Capitol Hill. In the Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker of Tennessee must deal with fierce opposition from two Cuban Americans on his panel—fellow Republican and announced presidential candidate Marco Rubio of Florida and the ranking Democrat, Robert Menendez of New Jersey. The latter was Corker’s predecessor as committee chairman before Republicans gained control of the Senate last year. For his part, Corker is one of only a handful of Republican senators whose inclinations are to bridge differences and produce results.

        Should Corker be inclined to move legislation dealing with U.S.-Cuba relations, he can count on the unabashed support of fellow Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, who for years has advocated the normalization of diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba. Flake is not the only Republican senator who wants to see an end to antiquated policies that hurt both countries. Numerous others are from states where farmers are hurting for overseas markets to sell their produce. Virtually every national association of farmers long has lobbied hard for the restoration of economic ties. Some of the most intense pressure has been directed at senators from southern states that comprise the rice belt.

        For years, Republican governors of some of these states likewise have themselves lobbied Washington to remove trade barriers that hurt their economies. Among these is Alabama, whose port city of Mobile is the sister city to Havana, Cuba’s capital. Cuba imports 70 percent of the rice consumed by the island’s 11 million people, most of it from China and Vietnam. Common sense has it that Cuba would pay a lot less to have rice shipped from Mobile to Havana, thus benefiting both the island’s economy and that of rice farmers in Alabama.

        Another clear example of the same economic incentive for restored trade is Louisiana. Now that the shipping industry in and around New Orleans is flourishing following years of slow recovery from Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, ships moving goods from the Crescent City to Havana would amount to a boon to Louisiana’s economy, as well as that of several Midwestern states that ship corn, wheat and other agricultural produce down the Mississippi to the Port of New Orleans. Governors of both parties from these states long have pressured Washington to restore relations, knowing that trade with Cuba would provide relief to their beleaguered farm industries.

        Unfortunately, prospects for favorable action in the House of Representatives are more troublesome, particularly within the lower chamber’s Committee on Foreign Affairs. Panel Chairman Edward R. Royce of California repeatedly has scolded President Obama since the announcement last December that the administration would seek to renew diplomatic relations with Havana. Besides Royce, the House panel includes Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban American whose opposition to the Castro regime is legendary. A former chairwoman of the committee, Royce refers to her as “Chairman Emeritus.”

        Further, Ros-Lehtinen sits on the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, whose ranking minority member is Rep. Albio Sires of New Jersey, another Cuban American long opposed to changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba. The subcommittee chairman, Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, also is fiercely opposed to normalizing relations with Havana.

        In addition, the House Committee on Appropriations will have to approve funds in President Obama’s budget to reopen a U.S. embassy in Cuba as well as any other changes in policy requiring tax dollars. Although Chairman Hal Rogers of Kentucky takes a measured approach toward renewed relations with Cuba, he must deal with and somehow accommodate another Cuban American member, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Miami, a determined foe of any liberalization in U.S.-Cuba policy. Further, Diaz-Balart is a key player on the Appropriations subcommittee that would first approve funds needed for liberalizing relations. That panel’s chairwoman, Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, is yet another outspoken Republican opposing changes in Cuba policy.

        Despite all these challenges, the conventional wisdom in Washington is that the new policies now in process of implementation will take hold and carry the day in the end. One reason for such hope is the key role being played by Pope Francis, who personally met with and helped persuade Raúl Castro and Barack Obama to seek to normalize diplomatic and economic ties. By now it is clear that when this pope speaks even heads of state listen.

        Another reason for hope is the skill of Cuba specialists in Washington who long have lobbied for significant changes in U.S. policy with our Caribbean neighbor. One of the best of these is Mavis Anderson of the Latin America Working Group, a partner organization with the Alliance of Baptists. For the past two decades, the Alliance has depended on and supported the LAWG in its tireless efforts lobbying Congress and a succession of administrations of both parties to normalize relations with Havana.

Rev. Dr. Stan Hastey, a veteran Cuba traveler and US-Cuba policy analyst, is the interim preaching minister at First Baptist Church, Washington, DC. He served for 20 years as director of the Alliance of Baptists.

by Ken Sehested

        You will be excused for not knowing that Cuba is in the midst of a historic electoral process which, when completed, will feature a Cuban president not named Castro. (It’s quite possible you didn’t even know Cuba had elections.)

        The process began on 26 November 2017 when citizens went to polling stations in every district across the country to select leaders to serve on ward [precinct] and municipal governing bodies as “delegates.” On 11 March, candidates for provincial and national legislatures will be chosen. The National Assembly will then chose a new president to succeed Raúl Castro, who retires on 19 April.

        For the first time since the country’s 1959 revolution, Cuba will not have a president named Castro.

Right: Precinct voting in Cuba. Older children (under age 16) serve as poll monitors.

¶ What follows is a bit more background on Cuba’s electoral process.

            • Cuba’s recent election is the first of three stages in choosing their provincial and national assemblies. A field of 27,000 candidates were on the ballot in 12,515 wards, with 11,415 members of Municipal legislators elected. Of those, 35.4% were women and 14.3% were “youth” (up to age 29). —for more see Telesur

        • All citizens older than 16, who not suffering from mental illness or are in prison, are eligible to vote. Neither voters nor candidates are required to be members of the Communist Party. Campaigning is illegal. Voters learn of the candidates in their districts by reading short biographical sketches (with photos) posted on store windows and, of course, in conversation with neighbors.

        • The Miami Herald, one of the few publications in the US covering the election, ran the headline, “Cuba had the lowest election turnout in four decades. Is the government losing its grip?”

        • In fact, 85.9% of eligible voters in Cuba cast ballots—7.6 million of the country’s 8.8 million eligible voters. In US presidential elections, average turnout over the last 50 years is less than 55%. In mid-term elections that number goes down to 34.4. In most major cities, fewer than 15% of eligible voters participate. —for more see Drew DeSilver, “US trails most developed countries in voter turnout,” Pew Research Center; PBS News Hour; Kriston Capps, CityLab)

        • The ban on election campaigning is justified as a sanction against “million–dollar election campaigns where resorting to insults, slander and manipulation are the norm.” (“Elections in Cuba,” Wikipedia) That “million-dollar” statement is badly out of date. Cost of the 2016 US election was $6,444,253,265. —“Cost of election,” Center for Responsive Politics

        • Provincial and national assembly members will be selected from those “nominated by the municipal assemblies from lists compiled by national, provincial and municipal candidacy commissions. The final list of candidates for the National Assembly, one for each district, is drawn up by the National Candidacy Commission; however, voters can veto a candidate because if a candidate fails to gain 50% of the vote, a new candidate must be chosen.” —for more see “Elections in Cuba,” Wikipedia

        • Cuba’s “Council of State” is a 31-member body elected by the National Assembly. It exercises legislative power between the biannual meetings of the National Assembly and can also call for special sessions of the Assembly. —Wikipedia, “Council of State (Cuba)”

¶ Here’s what I’ve learned about the electoral process from a group of pastors in Cuba:

        • At the precinct (also called “ward”) candidates are nominated and elected by popular vote. Elected representatives at the precinct and municipal levels are called “delegates.” At they provincial and national levels, they are called “deputies.”

        • The Council of State appoints the electoral commission for National Assembly elections, which must be composed of at least 50% of local district (ward) delegates. The electoral commission for the National Assembly selects the provincial commission members, which then selects the municipal commission. Only at the precinct level do voters nominate or vote for candidates.

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