Despite a succession of sweeping changes in recent years – rapprochement with the US, Fidel Castro’s death – the rhythm of life on the island remains as languid as ever.
In Old Havana, locals still watch life go by from the balconies of their dilapidated colonial buildings, as classic American cars putter down cobblestone streets and seemingly endless games of dominoes play out on sidewalk tables.
Tourists love the island’s timelessness, which gives it the aura of a living postcard immune to change.
For Cubans, who have made standing in line an art form and bureaucracy a way of life, this vestige of communism is less charming. “We live in slow motion – because we’re an island, because it’s the Caribbean and because of the whole legacy of socialism,” said writer Wendy Guerra, a rising star of Cuban literature.
“Time isn’t money here. Very few people produce anything for themselves. The country stopped producing a long time ago. People act like they’re working, and the state acts like it pays them,” the 46-year-old novelist and poet said.
“There’s no schedule. No one ever has to be somewhere urgently. There’s no traffic, and public transportation problems have made us all officially unpunctual.”
In her novel Everyone Leaves, Guerra’s heroine ends up frozen on Havana’s famous seaside boulevard, the Malecon, “stuck in the immobility of Cuba.”
Cuban artist Alejandro Campins also addresses the island’s lethargy in his work. “Every Cuban’s subconscious is a waiting room,” he said.
Standing in line “is in our DNA,” said port agent Daniel Rios, 36, whose job involves a lot of queuing.
Speeding up
Many artists have found inspiration in Cuban time. “Coming to Cuba is like travelling back to the past. Time doesn’t move here,” said the artist Dagoberto Rodriguez.
He and a collaborator made waves in 2012 with a piece where a troupe danced backward up a Havana avenue, symbolizing Cubans’ peculiar relationship with time.
But things have been evolving since President Raul Castro came to power in 2008. Since he replaced his big brother Fidel, tourism has boomed, Wi-Fi hotspots have flourished and private restaurants and hotels have gone from banned to blossoming.
Besides the long-unthinkable rapprochement with Washington, Raul Castro has sought to modernize Cuba’s Soviet-style economy by allowing small private businesses, the sale of cars and homes, and international travel.
“Time has accelerated in Cuba as a result of the economic reforms,” said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a professor at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley.
Not so fast
Still, the country is not exactly jumping to light speed.
“Time may be moving quickly by Cuban standards, but not by the standards of the rest of the world,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue research institute.
“For most Cubans, life remains unchanged even to this day.”
Nearly six decades after the Cuban Revolution, a Castro is still in power, dissent is muzzled, the US embargo remains in place and the island’s economy is 80% controlled by the state. Foreign investment is limited, and requires navigating a labyrinthine bureaucracy.
“Foreign corporations have a hard time understanding why things take so much longer here. A contract that would take three or four months somewhere else takes a year or two,” said cell phone maker Nokia’s Cuba representative, Charles Ferrer.
Cuba is stuck in “a different dimension of time,” said Cuban economist Pavel Vidal, who teaches in Colombia.
Raul Castro’s economic reforms, he said, could have been “faster and broader.” The president has said he will implement his reforms “without hurry, but without pausing.”
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Showing posts with label fidel castro. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fidel castro. Show all posts
Friday, 21 April 2017
Friday, 2 December 2016
CUBA: Cuba Tourism In For Change
Canadians have increasingly been spending more to visit the island as resorts switched pricing to U.S. dollars in preparation for a flood of American tourists.
“The tour operators, hotels changed their pricing last year at the start of the winter season, just over a year ago,” said Allison Wallace, spokeswoman for Flight Centre Travel Group. “Prices have gone up by approximately 15 per cent to 20 per cent based on the currency difference,” she said.
Although President Barack Obama has taken steps to improve relations with the communist country – reopening the U.S. embassy in Cuba and easing some travel restrictions – it is unknown whether U.S. president-elect Donald Trump will overturn the Obama administration’s policies. So far, his rhetoric suggests a more hostile relationship.
“If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate deal,” Mr. Trump said in a tweet after the death of former Cuban president Fidel Castro.
Ms. Wallace said that if Mr. Trump reverses U.S. policy, “it will effectively be good news for Canadians as it will mean a lack of competition. Less demand equals better availability and pricing.”
Travel company Transat AT, which has been active in Cuba for about three decades, said it is too early to say how the direct flights between the United States and Cuba would affect costs. But the company did say it has also seen higher prices for some hotels because of the increased demand.
A good chunk of that demand came from Canadians. More than 1.3 million Canadians travelled to Cuba in 2015, a 10-per-cent jump over the previous year, according to the Cuban government.
Canadians now make up 40 per cent of Cuba’s visitors, dwarfing all other countries.
“If you combine all of Europe, it doesn’t equal Canada,” said Eloy Govea, director with the Cuba Tourist Board in Canada. “Every single year, we have seen an increase in the number of arrivals from Canada.”
Regardless of the top Canadian vacation spot, few Canadian businesses are involved in the country’s tourism infrastructure.
“Cubans would say ‘we are mystified’” about the lack of direct investment, said Mark Entwistle, a former ambassador to Cuba.
Mr. Entwistle, who now advises U.S. and Canadian firms hoping to do business in Cuba, recalls his conversations with Cuban tourism officials this way: “We love you, Canada. You have these assets. You can come through any door and Cuba will receive you. But where are your hotel companies, where are your hotel developers, where are your investors?”
Sunday, 20 March 2016
USA: Starwood Signs Deal To Renovate And Run Three Cuban Hotels
Starwood signed a deal on Saturday to renovate and run three Cuban hotels, returning U.S. chains to the island more than 50 years after American hotels were taken over by Fidel Castro's socialist revolution.
All Cuban hotels are state-owned so the deal puts a major U.S. corporation directly into business with the Communist government under a special license that pushes the U.S. administration's legal dismantling of the trade embargo on Cuba further than ever before. In a once-unimaginable arrangement, a hotel owned by the tourism arm of the Cuban military will become a Sheraton Four Points.
The deal comes on the eve of President Barack Obama's historic visit to Cuba, which opens a new era between the former Cold War foes that has American travelers and businesses eagerly eyeing opportunities on the island nation 90 miles (145 kilometers) south of Florida.
Starwood's chief of Latin America operations, Jorge Giannattasio, said the company will invest millions to renovate and rebrand the Quinta Avenida, Santa Isabel and Inglaterra hotels, train and hire new staff and reopen the hotels by the end of the year. The Quinta Avenida is owned by Gaviota, a military-run tourism conglomerate. The Santa Isabel and Inglaterra, which are run by other state agencies, will be operated as part of Starwood's Luxury Collection brand.
It's unclear, however, how long Starwood can be called an American company. On Friday, Starwood called off a $12.2 billion buyout agreement with Marriott in favor of an offer from a group of investors led by the Chinese insurance company Anbang.
All Cuban hotels are state-owned so the deal puts a major U.S. corporation directly into business with the Communist government under a special license that pushes the U.S. administration's legal dismantling of the trade embargo on Cuba further than ever before. In a once-unimaginable arrangement, a hotel owned by the tourism arm of the Cuban military will become a Sheraton Four Points.
The deal comes on the eve of President Barack Obama's historic visit to Cuba, which opens a new era between the former Cold War foes that has American travelers and businesses eagerly eyeing opportunities on the island nation 90 miles (145 kilometers) south of Florida.
Starwood's chief of Latin America operations, Jorge Giannattasio, said the company will invest millions to renovate and rebrand the Quinta Avenida, Santa Isabel and Inglaterra hotels, train and hire new staff and reopen the hotels by the end of the year. The Quinta Avenida is owned by Gaviota, a military-run tourism conglomerate. The Santa Isabel and Inglaterra, which are run by other state agencies, will be operated as part of Starwood's Luxury Collection brand.
It's unclear, however, how long Starwood can be called an American company. On Friday, Starwood called off a $12.2 billion buyout agreement with Marriott in favor of an offer from a group of investors led by the Chinese insurance company Anbang.
Friday, 4 March 2016
CUBA: Touring A Cuban Cigar Factory
A worker at La Corona sorts tobacco leaves on a system known as a burro.
You walk through the wide doorway with the tropical heat following you inside, and step onto a cracked marble floor, wondering just how many shoes have walked this weathered path before you.
The clamor of workers going about their business reaches your ears and grows in volume with every step: A shout in rapid-fire Cuban Spanish, a call to an amigo, a friendly laugh, the hearty baritone of a golden-throated lector reading the daily news.
Busts of José Martí stand atop pedestals and photographs of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara cover the walls. This is a Cuban cigar factory, a living, breathing thing that comes to life each workday.
Then it hits you—the smell of unlit cigar tobacco, earthy and pungent and remarkably intoxicating. It pulls you closer to the factory’s heart, a siren song that can’t be ignored, and you walk into the massive galera, the main rolling room of the fabrica. There before you are scores of workers, each making cigars entirely by hand. It’s an unrushed, antique and artisinal process, one that has not changed in any major way for hundreds of years.
Havana is the birthplace of premium cigars, and the city is dotted with cigar factories of all shapes and sizes. Most tourists believe only the Partágas Factory is open to visitors, but three in Havana welcome tourists: the Romeo y Julieta Factory (which has been transformed into the temporary home of H. Upmann), La Corona and Partagás.
Production here is unlike almost every place else. Cuban cigarmakers, unlike their counterparts in most of the non-Cuban cigar world, make the entire cigar themselves. Most cigar factories in the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Nicaragua split the process between roller and buncher. (And many have males doing the bunching and females rolling.)
Cuban cigar factories also eschew Temsco, or Lieberman bunching devices, leather and steel pads that help the buncher craft the filler and binder together. Also in Cuba you typically see a cigarmaker, or torcedore, use two binder leaves rather than one large one.
While Cuba was the first to make cigars, Havana cigar factories have learned some new tricks from their counterparts in the Caribbean and Central America. Draw testing machines are now in every Cuban cigar factory, which makes for better cigars, and has greatly reduced the draw problems that plagued Cuban cigars in the late 1990s. Cigar production has also slowed considerably, and is far from the crazy days that came as a reaction to the cigar boom.
Here is a look at the factories you can tour, and what makes each one special. The government fixes the tour prices, and visiting any one costs 10 cuc (about $11.50). Note that Cuba is in the midst of refurbishing some of its factories. The iconic Partágas Factory was supposed to be closed in the spring, but as this issue went to press it was still open.
Check with your hotel about any changes before heading out for a tour. For those willing to spend a day out in Pinar del Río, there’s another factory you can see.
For the first time in years you can go inside Havana’s Romeo y Julieta Factory, which is the new (and temporary) home of the H. Upmann cigar brand.
This is a somewhat confusing situation. The original 1800s H. Upmann Factory was closed in the early 2000s when H. Upmann moved to what was touted as one of Cuba’s most modern cigar factories. That new home didn’t handle Havana’s punishing summer climate nor its ocean air very well. After a mere 10 years, Cuban officials ordered it closed for renovations, and decided to move H. Upmann into Romeo y Julieta.
So Romeo y Julieta is now operating as H. Upmann. In February 2011, H. Upmann factory manager José Miguel Barzaga Maceo and his workers had moved into Romeo, and began making cigars. By May, the transformation was almost complete. The Romeo factory had been decorated with umpteen banners and posters featuring the H. Upmann brand, while items were still being moved around and painters worked on small touchups.
As well as the entire production of Cuba’s H. Upmanns, the factory also rolls some Montecristos and Romeo y Julietas and several sizes of Cohiba. While the factory is also in charge of the diminutive Diplomaticos brand, none were
being rolled in May. The rest of Romeo y Julieta production (it’s a large brand, with many sizes) is spread out among other Cuban cigar factories.
The factory is very clean, and very efficient. There’s a beautiful old marble staircase to the left when you enter, and a huge black and gold banner reading H. Upmann Havana. The rolling gallery is one of Havana’s largest, with huge windows along either side providing light for the workers. There are 204 torcedores working here. The gallery buzzes like a hive, and is quite colorful, as some of the cigar molds are painted bright blue or crisp yellow, along with the more standard plain wood or black.
The factory was rolling several new cigars in the spring, including the H. Upmann Half Corona and the H. Upmann Royal Robusto (a size that will be exclusive to Casa del Habano stores throughout the world). Each of these new sizes were introduced at the Habanos Festival in February 2011.
The factory is quite popular with tourists disembarking cruise ships. There’s a good, but not great, cigar store around the corner due to be upgraded to a Casa del Habano. The renovation of H. Upmann is scheduled to last until around spring of 2012, but could be delayed.
Partagás Factory
The 166-year-old Partagás Factory, arguably Cuba’s best known cigar factory and certainly the one most frequented by tourists, was expected to be closed by now for extensive renovations. As this issue went to press, cigars were still being rolled there, but only special tours were being allowed. If you visit Havana and find it still open, try to wrangle a visit.
Partagás is a grand facility. Stand outside for a moment and take a full look, taking in the four stories with its signature balconies, shuttered windows and the oversized red and white Real Fabrica de Tabacos Partagás sign. (Standing outside admittedly requires a bit of patience. You are all but certain to be approached by locals selling cigars, even by the front door. Resist the urge—what they sell is almost assuredly counterfeit.)
Walking inside, past the metal gates, take another moment to look up from the open center to watch as workers move about the floors above. Also take in the grand skylight far overhead. The walls are stone and wood, and the entire place teems with history.
Built in 1845, Partagás certainly shows its age, with crumbling steps, creaky floors and all manner of things needing fixing. One doesn’t question the need for a ‘This Old House’ style makeover.
The rolling gallery has style, with large windows that open in the middle and a grand stage at the front of the room, where a lector sits, carefully reading the news aloud to the cigarmakers as they work. All wear bright red shirts sporting the Partagás logo as they roll cigars, sort tobacco, or weigh blends to be made into smokes. They make the Partagás brand, of course, along with Bolivar, La Gloria Cubana, Ramón Allones and Quai D’Orsay cigars, as the factory is the mother factory for those brands. A group of older workers, former cigar rollers, look over cigars for quality control, spot-checking the work of their younger comrades.
When this factory closes, its production will be moved to the El Rey del Mundo Factory, a gorgeous white building decorated with Ionic columns. That factory was closed in May, in the midst of its own renovation, preparing it for the workers from Partagás. The equally iconic Partagás Factory Casa del Habano store is scheduled to remain open throughout the renovation of the Partagás Factory. This is a wonderful cigar store that should not be missed.
La Corona Factory
A worker at La Corona sorts tobacco leaves on a system known as a burro.
Just around the corner from the busiest baseball stadium in Cuba is the La Corona Factory. This building served as a cigarette factory until 2000, when it was converted into a cigar factory.
The factory lacks the style of Romeo or the charm of Partagás, and has quite the Eastern Bloc feel. The entrance is small and simple, and inside the paint scheme is heavy on mustard yellow and dark brown. The very center of the building, which all can see from inside, is dominated by a five-story industrial elevator, with an open shaft and steel I-beams. It’s far from the most attractive cigar factory in the world.
Still, the factory makes some very good smokes. This is the mother factory for Cuaba, Hoyo de Monterrey, Punch, San Cristóbal de la Habana, Flor de Cano and Por Larrañaga. There are workers here who can make amazing cigars, such as the multifaceted Cuaba Salomon. On a recent visit, a slim man in a green tank top carefully crafted a Salomone while puffing on a panetela.
The crowded rolling gallery has an intriguing system of lights fashioned on curved poles at every roller station. There’s a tasting room at La Corona with cubicles, each one designed for a cigar taster. They work early in the morning (to ensure a fresh palate) and rate cigars to ensure quality.
While the factory definitely merits a visit, you should skip the lackluster cigar shop next door. It’s plagued by cigar hustlers hawking fake smokes, and is a better place to buy rum than fine cigars. It’s not meant for the sophisticated cigar aficionado.
The clamor of workers going about their business reaches your ears and grows in volume with every step: A shout in rapid-fire Cuban Spanish, a call to an amigo, a friendly laugh, the hearty baritone of a golden-throated lector reading the daily news.
Busts of José Martí stand atop pedestals and photographs of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara cover the walls. This is a Cuban cigar factory, a living, breathing thing that comes to life each workday.
Then it hits you—the smell of unlit cigar tobacco, earthy and pungent and remarkably intoxicating. It pulls you closer to the factory’s heart, a siren song that can’t be ignored, and you walk into the massive galera, the main rolling room of the fabrica. There before you are scores of workers, each making cigars entirely by hand. It’s an unrushed, antique and artisinal process, one that has not changed in any major way for hundreds of years.
Havana is the birthplace of premium cigars, and the city is dotted with cigar factories of all shapes and sizes. Most tourists believe only the Partágas Factory is open to visitors, but three in Havana welcome tourists: the Romeo y Julieta Factory (which has been transformed into the temporary home of H. Upmann), La Corona and Partagás.
Production here is unlike almost every place else. Cuban cigarmakers, unlike their counterparts in most of the non-Cuban cigar world, make the entire cigar themselves. Most cigar factories in the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Nicaragua split the process between roller and buncher. (And many have males doing the bunching and females rolling.)
Cuban cigar factories also eschew Temsco, or Lieberman bunching devices, leather and steel pads that help the buncher craft the filler and binder together. Also in Cuba you typically see a cigarmaker, or torcedore, use two binder leaves rather than one large one.
While Cuba was the first to make cigars, Havana cigar factories have learned some new tricks from their counterparts in the Caribbean and Central America. Draw testing machines are now in every Cuban cigar factory, which makes for better cigars, and has greatly reduced the draw problems that plagued Cuban cigars in the late 1990s. Cigar production has also slowed considerably, and is far from the crazy days that came as a reaction to the cigar boom.
Here is a look at the factories you can tour, and what makes each one special. The government fixes the tour prices, and visiting any one costs 10 cuc (about $11.50). Note that Cuba is in the midst of refurbishing some of its factories. The iconic Partágas Factory was supposed to be closed in the spring, but as this issue went to press it was still open.
Check with your hotel about any changes before heading out for a tour. For those willing to spend a day out in Pinar del Río, there’s another factory you can see.
For the first time in years you can go inside Havana’s Romeo y Julieta Factory, which is the new (and temporary) home of the H. Upmann cigar brand.
This is a somewhat confusing situation. The original 1800s H. Upmann Factory was closed in the early 2000s when H. Upmann moved to what was touted as one of Cuba’s most modern cigar factories. That new home didn’t handle Havana’s punishing summer climate nor its ocean air very well. After a mere 10 years, Cuban officials ordered it closed for renovations, and decided to move H. Upmann into Romeo y Julieta.
So Romeo y Julieta is now operating as H. Upmann. In February 2011, H. Upmann factory manager José Miguel Barzaga Maceo and his workers had moved into Romeo, and began making cigars. By May, the transformation was almost complete. The Romeo factory had been decorated with umpteen banners and posters featuring the H. Upmann brand, while items were still being moved around and painters worked on small touchups.
As well as the entire production of Cuba’s H. Upmanns, the factory also rolls some Montecristos and Romeo y Julietas and several sizes of Cohiba. While the factory is also in charge of the diminutive Diplomaticos brand, none were
being rolled in May. The rest of Romeo y Julieta production (it’s a large brand, with many sizes) is spread out among other Cuban cigar factories.
The factory is very clean, and very efficient. There’s a beautiful old marble staircase to the left when you enter, and a huge black and gold banner reading H. Upmann Havana. The rolling gallery is one of Havana’s largest, with huge windows along either side providing light for the workers. There are 204 torcedores working here. The gallery buzzes like a hive, and is quite colorful, as some of the cigar molds are painted bright blue or crisp yellow, along with the more standard plain wood or black.
The factory was rolling several new cigars in the spring, including the H. Upmann Half Corona and the H. Upmann Royal Robusto (a size that will be exclusive to Casa del Habano stores throughout the world). Each of these new sizes were introduced at the Habanos Festival in February 2011.
The factory is quite popular with tourists disembarking cruise ships. There’s a good, but not great, cigar store around the corner due to be upgraded to a Casa del Habano. The renovation of H. Upmann is scheduled to last until around spring of 2012, but could be delayed.
Partagás Factory
The 166-year-old Partagás Factory, arguably Cuba’s best known cigar factory and certainly the one most frequented by tourists, was expected to be closed by now for extensive renovations. As this issue went to press, cigars were still being rolled there, but only special tours were being allowed. If you visit Havana and find it still open, try to wrangle a visit.
Partagás is a grand facility. Stand outside for a moment and take a full look, taking in the four stories with its signature balconies, shuttered windows and the oversized red and white Real Fabrica de Tabacos Partagás sign. (Standing outside admittedly requires a bit of patience. You are all but certain to be approached by locals selling cigars, even by the front door. Resist the urge—what they sell is almost assuredly counterfeit.)
Walking inside, past the metal gates, take another moment to look up from the open center to watch as workers move about the floors above. Also take in the grand skylight far overhead. The walls are stone and wood, and the entire place teems with history.
Built in 1845, Partagás certainly shows its age, with crumbling steps, creaky floors and all manner of things needing fixing. One doesn’t question the need for a ‘This Old House’ style makeover.
The rolling gallery has style, with large windows that open in the middle and a grand stage at the front of the room, where a lector sits, carefully reading the news aloud to the cigarmakers as they work. All wear bright red shirts sporting the Partagás logo as they roll cigars, sort tobacco, or weigh blends to be made into smokes. They make the Partagás brand, of course, along with Bolivar, La Gloria Cubana, Ramón Allones and Quai D’Orsay cigars, as the factory is the mother factory for those brands. A group of older workers, former cigar rollers, look over cigars for quality control, spot-checking the work of their younger comrades.
When this factory closes, its production will be moved to the El Rey del Mundo Factory, a gorgeous white building decorated with Ionic columns. That factory was closed in May, in the midst of its own renovation, preparing it for the workers from Partagás. The equally iconic Partagás Factory Casa del Habano store is scheduled to remain open throughout the renovation of the Partagás Factory. This is a wonderful cigar store that should not be missed.
La Corona Factory
A worker at La Corona sorts tobacco leaves on a system known as a burro.
Just around the corner from the busiest baseball stadium in Cuba is the La Corona Factory. This building served as a cigarette factory until 2000, when it was converted into a cigar factory.
The factory lacks the style of Romeo or the charm of Partagás, and has quite the Eastern Bloc feel. The entrance is small and simple, and inside the paint scheme is heavy on mustard yellow and dark brown. The very center of the building, which all can see from inside, is dominated by a five-story industrial elevator, with an open shaft and steel I-beams. It’s far from the most attractive cigar factory in the world.
Still, the factory makes some very good smokes. This is the mother factory for Cuaba, Hoyo de Monterrey, Punch, San Cristóbal de la Habana, Flor de Cano and Por Larrañaga. There are workers here who can make amazing cigars, such as the multifaceted Cuaba Salomon. On a recent visit, a slim man in a green tank top carefully crafted a Salomone while puffing on a panetela.
The crowded rolling gallery has an intriguing system of lights fashioned on curved poles at every roller station. There’s a tasting room at La Corona with cubicles, each one designed for a cigar taster. They work early in the morning (to ensure a fresh palate) and rate cigars to ensure quality.
While the factory definitely merits a visit, you should skip the lackluster cigar shop next door. It’s plagued by cigar hustlers hawking fake smokes, and is a better place to buy rum than fine cigars. It’s not meant for the sophisticated cigar aficionado.
Monday, 21 September 2015
CUBA: Pope Meets Fidel Castro In Cuba
The Vatican described the 40-minute meeting at Castro's residence as informal and familial, with an exchange of books and discussion about big issues facing humanity, including Francis' recent encyclical on the environment and the global economic system.
Video of the encounter broadcast on Cuban state media showed the 89-year-old former president chatting animatedly with Francis and shaking the pope's hand, the pope standing in his white vestments and Castro sitting in a white button-down shirt and Adidas sweat top.
The meeting brought together the leader who shaped Cuba for the last half of the 20th century and Latin America's first pope, who many Cubans credit with opening a path to the future by mediating the warming diplomatic relations between their country and the United States. After his Cuba visit, the pope flies to Washington for his first ever trip to the U.S.
Since their historic deal, Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro have reopened embassies in each other's countries, held a personal meeting, had at least two phone calls and launched a process aimed at normalizing ties in fields ranging from trade to tourism to telecommunications.
Francis called on both Fidel and Raul Castro after celebrating Mass in Havana's main plaza on his first full day in Cuba. Believers and non-believers alike streamed into the square before dawn, and they erupted in cheers when the pope spun through the crowd in his open-sided popemobile. Francis wound his way slowly through the masses and stopping to kiss children held up to him.
At one point, Francis was approached by a man who grabbed onto the popemobile and appeared to be speaking emotionally to the pontiff, who touched him on his hand and head before he was pulled away by security agents. Video showed what appeared to be the same man throwing leaflets in the air, and backers of a Cuban dissident group said on Twitter he was a member of the opposition.
The head of the opposition group Ladies in White said 22 of 24 members of her group who wanted to attend Mass were prevented from going by Cuban security agents. And two other well-known Cuban dissidents said agents detained them after the Vatican invited them to the pope's vespers service at the Cathedral of Havana.
Marta Beatriz Roque and Miriam Leiva received invitations from the office of the papal ambassador in Havana but said they were arrested as they tried to travel to the cathedral.
"They told me that I didn't have a credential and that I couldn't go to the pope's event that was taking place there in the Plaza of the Cathedral," Roque said.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said some dissidents were invited to events to receive a greeting from the pope, although not in a formal meeting. He said the dissidents never showed up but he could not confirm that it was because they were arrested.
While most Cubans are nominally Catholic, less than 10 percent practice their faith and Cuba is the least Catholic country in Latin America. The Vatican said 200,000 people attended Sunday's Mass, more than at similar celebrations in the same plaza by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 and St. John Paul II in 1998.
"This is very important for us," said Mauren Gomez, who traveled some 155 miles from Villa Clara to Havana by bus, spending her time reciting the Rosary.
In his homily delivered under the gaze of a metal portrait of revolutionary fighter Che Guevara, Francis urged Cubans to care for one another out of a sense of service, not ideology. He encouraged them to refrain from judging each other by "looking to one side or the other to see what our neighbor is doing or not doing."
"Whoever wishes to be great must serve others, not be served by others," he said. "Service is never ideological, for we do not serve ideas, we serve people."
Many Cubans complain about the rigidity of the Cuban system in which nearly every aspect of life is controlled by the government, from cultural institutions to block-level neighborhood watch committees. While the system has softened in recent years, Cubans can be excluded or lose benefits if they are perceived as being disloyal to the revolution.
Cubans are also increasingly concerned about growing inequality, in which those with access to foreign capital live lives of relative luxury while others can barely feed themselves, generating jealousy and division.
"Being a Christian entails promoting the dignity of our brothers and sisters, fighting for it, living for it," Francis told the crowd.
Maria Regla González, a teacher, said she appreciated Francis' message of reconciliation.
"This is a crucial moment, and the pope's support for us is very important," she said. "He made a call for unity, and that's what we want."
Shortly after the Mass, Francis brought Fidel Castro three books including a volume of sermons by Fidel's former teacher, the Rev. Amando Llorente. Llorente taught at Colegio de Belen, a Jesuit high school where Fidel was a student. Llorente, a Spaniard, was forced out of the country after Castro's revolution and died in Miami in 2010.
Francis also brought two compact discs with Llorente's voice. Austen Ivereigh, author of "The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope," said he thinks the pontiff was using the Llorente books and recording to send a subtle message to Fidel, whose rule was marked by conflict with the Catholic Church and other groups.
"I can't help but think that it's Pope Francis inviting Fidel Castro to come to terms with his past," Ivereigh said. "There is clearly a lot of pain in this relationship," with Llorente.
Francis met afterward for an hour with Fidel's brother Raul, a declared atheist who has, perhaps jokingly, said he likes the pope so much he is thinking of returning to his Catholic roots. Francis thanked the 84-year-old leader for his pardon of thousands of petty criminals before his arrival. Castro presented the pontiff with a huge sculpture of the crucified Christ made of oars by the artist Kcho and a painting of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, Cuba's patron saint.
The pontiff spoke off the cuff about the virtues of poverty at an evening vespers service in the San Cristobal Cathedral before a meeting with Cuban young people.
In an important aside, Francis ended Sunday's Mass with an appeal for Colombia's government and rebels, who have been holding peace talks in Havana for over two years, to put an end to South America's longest-running armed conflict.
"Please, we do not have the right to allow ourselves yet another failure on this path of peace and reconciliation," he said.
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