The Catholic News Agency ( CNA ), in an online news story article posted by Alejandro Bermudez on Saturday, March 31, 2012, stated that, in response to a specific request made personally to Cuban President Raul Castro by Pope Benedict XVI, during his Apostolic Visitation of Leon, Mexico and the island in March of 2012, following the pattern of small advances in Church-Cuban relations, it was decreed by the Communist Party and Castro and his advisers that in 2012, Good Friday would be made a holiday, with a possibility that the move could perhaps be made permanent ( following the move of the late Pope John Paul II, who got Fidel Castro to declare Christmas Day a holiday-which is still the case-due to a personal request during his landmark trip in 1998 ).

David Ormsby-Gore, British Ambassador to the US, stated that British intelligence analysis, as made available to the CIA, indicated that the Cuban people were predominantly behind Castro, and that there was no likelihood of mass defections or insurrections.

He also stated that Cuban defectors had carried out the attacks that day, and he presented a UPI wire photo of Zúñiga's B-26 in Cuban markings at Miami airport.

In a speech to Cuban immigrants in Steck Hall, New York, on January 24, 1879, he stated that the war against Spain needed to be fought, recalled the heroism and suffering of the Ten Years ' War, which, he declared, had qualified Cuba as a real nation with a right to independence.

But he was aware that there were social divisions in Cuba, especially racial divisions, that needed to be addressed as well, as he stated in a letter to Maceo on July 20, 1882: " the Cuban problem needs, rather than a political solution, a social solution cannot be achieved except through mutual love and forgiveness between the two races [...].

In the speech Castro also stated the need for Cuban nationalism, social equality and solidarity among the Cuban people.

The President of the Cuban National Assembly Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada stated that evidence that " belonged to the defendants themselves and included family photographs, personal correspondence and recipes "-was classified as " secret ", preventing the defendants and their attorneys from seeing it.

" Several days later, Posada was reported to have stated that " we are going to hit a Cuban airplane " and " Orlando has the details.

In light of a Cuban uprising, President James K. Polk refused solicitations from filibuster backer John L. O ' Sullivan and stated his belief that any acquisition of the island must be an " amicable purchase.

Omega 7 was a small Cuban paramilitary group based in Florida and New York made up of Cuban exiles whose stated goal was to overthrow Fidel Castro.

Max's favorite artists include the Wu Tang Clan, having stated on his radio show that Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx … album is one of his favorite albums.

The Cuban government claimed that the other freedoms were already guaranteed to the Cuban people and were only included in the project's stated goals to divert attention from the privatization aspect of the project.

The Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America ( Organización de Solidaridad con los Pueblos de Asia, África y América Latina ), abbreviated as OSPAAAL, is a Cuban political movement with the stated purpose of fighting globalisation, imperialism, neoliberalism and defending human rights.

Although not explicitly stated the use of historic regions ( the Eastern Block ) and events ( such as the Cuban Missile Crisis ) within the game suggest that it is set in the 1960s and 70s and that the game is progressing through an alternate timeline.

A later Los Angeles Times article stated that Agee posed as a CIA Inspector General in order to target a member of the CIA's Mexico City station on behalf of Cuban intelligence.

Titled the Cuban Democracy Act, the embargo was codified into law in 1992 with the stated purpose of maintaining sanctions on Cuba so long as the Cuban government continues to refuse to move toward " democratization and greater respect for human rights.

The Cuban government stated that the driver had lost control of the vehicle and collided with a tree, while Payá's children asserted that the car had been deliberately run off of the road.

In a 2000 editorial for the Miami Herald, he stated that " Lifting the embargo won't solve the problems of the Cuban people.

He also maintained his distance from Cuban political groups based in the U. S. In particular, he refused to support their stated goal of land reacquisition upon the return of exiles to Cuba:

When King Amadeus finally had the bill in his desk, which would extend the 1837 Abolition Act to the Antilles, he was put on notice of a coup financed by Cuban plantationers and industrialists if he signed.

They decided to transfer the Cuban U-2 reconnaissance missions to the Air Force ; if another U-2 was shot down, they thought a cover story involving Air Force flights would be easier to explain than CIA flights.

This emigration is illegal under both Cuban and U. S. law ; any Cuban found at sea, attempting to reach U. S. shores, will be deported by the U. S. Coast Guard or if discovered by Cuban police, ostracized and prohibited from most Cuban institutions.

Even after segregation laws started demanding " whites " and " colored " be kept separate, Laine continued to hire light-and medium light-skinned African-American musicians, claiming that they were " Cuban " or " Mexican " if any segregationist tried to start trouble.

Anticipating an invasion, Che Guevara stressed the importance of an armed civilian populace, stating " all the Cuban people must become a guerrilla army, each and every Cuban must learn to handle and if necessary use firearms in defense of the nation.

Our military posture throughout execution of the plan will allow a rapid change from exercise to intervention if Cuban response justifies.

An F-86 properly painted would convince air passengers that they saw a Cuban MIG, especially if the pilot of the transport were to announce such fact.

Therefore, most, if not all Cuban composers that established their residence outside Cuba have worked with electroacoustic technology.

The Cuban government under Castro has strongly denounced the treaty as a violation of article 52 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which declares a treaty void if procured by the threat or use of force.

Nash was reluctant to leave Dallas and returned to Cuban to see if he would match the deal ; Cuban did not, and Nash signed for the Suns for the.

In a private conference with President Grant, Fish agreed to support the Santo Domingo annexation if President Grant sent Congress a non-belligerency statement not to get involved with the Cuban rebellion against Spain.

* The Kennedy administration maintained that, if overpowered by Cuban forces, the CIA-backed rebels could " escape destruction by melting into the countryside " in the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

In February 2007, Cuban publicly criticized NBA Finals MVP Dwyane Wade and declared that he would get fined if he made any comments about what he thought really happened in the 2006 NBA Finals.

Additionally, Cuban plays himself in a television commercial for diet Mountain Dew, making elaborately fantastic offers to a man in a grocery store if he will give Cuban the store's last bottle.

Initially the Cuban revolutionaries received little if any support from the large communist states in Russia or the People's Republic of China.

Odom reportedly responded angrily when Cuban questioned his commitment, asking if he was " in or out.

The Varela Project relies on Article # 88 ( g ) of the Cuban Constitution Text of 1976, which allows citizens to propose laws if 10, 000 persons who are registered to vote support the proposal with their names, national identification numbers, addresses, and signatures.

Nonetheless, regardless of the skin tone of the Cuban players, at the very least blacks of the United States were still banned from white baseball albeit if Marsans and Almeida were in fact black but light skinned then their successful breaking of the color barrier has gone unheralded.

Many of these refugees were musicians, who were astonished to hear what sounded to them like Cuban music from the 1950s.

The Spanish spoken in the Gulf coastal areas of Veracruz and Tabasco and in the states of Yucatan and Quintana Roo, is also distinctive — at least at the level of vernacular speech — as the Spanish spoken there exhibits more Caribbean phonetic traits than that spoken in the rest of Mexico, Cuban Americans and Puerto Rican Americans who live with Mexican Americans with origins from those areas hear a Spanish dialect from Mexican Americans similar to theirs.

The White House itself has taken steps to remove a former Batista official, Col. Mariano Faget, from his preposterous position as interrogator of Cuban refugees for the Immigration Service.

The I. A. P. A. found itself driven from journalism into politics as it did its best to bring about the downfall of the Castro Government and the return of the Cuban press to the freedom it knew before Batista's dictatorship began in 1952.

Cuban S.S.R.: Whatever may have been the setbacks resulting from the unsuccessful attempt of the Cuban rebels to establish a beachhead on the Castro-held mainland last week, there was at least one positive benefit, and that was the clear-cut revelation to the whole world of the complete conversion of Cuba into a Russian-dominated military base.

Somehow, the pictures and stories of Soviet T-34 tanks on Cuban beaches and Russian Mig jet fighters strafing rebel troops has brought home to all of us the stark, blunt truth of what it means to have a Russian military base 90 miles away from home.

At times, three ships a day from the Soviet bloc are unloading in Cuban ports.

However, his term included an unpopular motor vehicle tax and citizens ' anger over the escape of Cuban refugees ( from the Mariel boatlift ) detained in Fort Chaffee in 1980.

Emilio Bacardí, Don Facundo's eldest son, was repeatedly imprisoned and was exiled from Cuba for having fought in the rebel army against Spain in the Cuban War of Independence.

The RECE ( Cuban Representation in Exile ) also receives funding from Bacardi family members.

Ernest Hemingway lived in Cuba from 1939 and stayed until shortly after the Cuban revolution.

The Cuban packages scandal revealed arms smuggling from the Communist Cuba to Chile ; Allende – surrounded by KGB advisors – had turned Chile into a center for Soviet operations in Latin America.

With the Spanish New Laws of 1552 Cuban Indians were freed from encomienda, and some seven Indian towns were set up.

The prosperity seen from the boom in sugar production is a major reason that Cuban ethnicity became further enriched by new influx of Spanish migrants.

As a result of the political upheavals caused by the Iberian Peninsular War and the removal of Ferdinand VII from the Spanish throne, a separatist rebellion emerged among the Cuban Creole aristocracy in 1809 and 1810.

During the time of the so-called " Rewarding Truce ", which encompassed the 17 years from the end of the Ten Years ' War in 1878, fundamental changes took place in Cuban society.

However, in October 2004, the Cuban government announced an end to this policy: from November US dollars would no longer be legal tender in Cuba, but would instead be exchanged for convertible pesos ( since April 2005 at the exchange rate of $ 1. 08 ) with a 10 % tax payable to the state on the exchange of US dollars cash — though not on other forms of exchange.

While the rail infrastructure dates from colonial and early republican times, passenger service along the principal Havana to Santiago corridor is increasingly reliable and popular with tourists who can purchase tickets in Cuban convertible pesos.

Apart from a brief period in the 1990s, however, the Castro government has forbidden the sale of Cuban vehicles to foreigners.

The Solomons ' Minister of Foreign Affairs Patterson Oti said that Solomon Islander doctors would " learn from their Cuban colleagues in specialized areas ".

" Cuba has also lent support to the prominent Palestine Liberation Organization ( PLO ) and the lesser-known Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine ( PFLP ) both received training from Cuba's General Intelligence Directorate, as well as financial and diplomatic support from the Cuban government.

On August 31, Senator Kenneth Keating ( R-New York ), who probably received his information from Cuban exiles in Florida, warned on the Senate floor that the Soviet Union may be constructing a missile base in Cuba.

Air Force General Curtis LeMay presented a pre-invasion bombing plan to Kennedy in September, while spy flights and minor military harassment from US forces at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base were the subject of continual Cuban diplomatic complaints to the US government.

Arnaz, Jr. played the drums and, supported by the SNL band, Desi sang both " Babalu " and another favorite from his dance band days, " Cuban Pete "; the arrangements were similar to the ones used on I Love Lucy.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the families of military personnel were evacuated from the base.