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The Miami Herald

Castro requested Soviet missiles in 1981, book says

The late Chilean President Salvador Allende received help from the Soviet intelligence agency KGB, according to newly released records.

By Juan O. Tamayo. jtamayo@herald.com. Posted on Mon, Sep. 19, 2005

Nineteen years after the Cuban missile crisis nearly sparked a nuclear war, Fidel Castro asked the Soviet Union to redeploy atomic weapons to his island, says a new book based on reports by Moscow's KGB intelligence agency.

The book, based on documents revealed by KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin when he defected in 1992, makes other bombshell allegations as it tracks KGB operations around the Third World in the 1960s and '70s:

o The KGB documents record actual and proposed payments to Chile's Salvador Allende totaling $420,000 both before and after his election as president in 1970.

o Costa Rica's José ''Pepe'' Figueres received $300,000 from the KGB for his 1970 presidential campaign and $10,000 afterward.

o Carlos Fonseca, founder of Nicaragua's Sandinista National Liberation Front, was ''a trusted KGB agent'' code-named GIDROLOG.

o Nicaraguan Manuel Andara y Ubeda was a KGB agent who led a group of Sandinistas tasked by Moscow in the late 1960s to scope out the U.S. border with Mexico for possible targets for KGB sabotage teams.

o The KGB ''trained and financed'' the Sandinistas who seized the National Palace in Managua and dozens of hostages in 1978. A senior KGB official was briefed on the plan on the eve of the raid, led by Edén Pastora, also known as Commander Zero.

Pastora could not be reached for comment. The book does not refer to him as a KGB agent. All the agents identified by name in the book are now dead.

Mitrokhin and respected British historian Christopher Andrew first collaborated on a 1999 book about KGB operations against the United States and Europe. That book is now regarded by intelligence experts as the definitive work on the topic.

Their new book, The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World, covers KGB operations in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and Africa -- the Third World that Moscow believed it could come to dominate after Cuban President Castro embraced communism and became a beacon for leftists worldwide.

Its most startling revelation about Cuba is that Castro, concerned that President Ronald Reagan was planning to attack Cuba in 1981, urged a senior Soviet army general visiting Havana to counter the deployment of U.S. cruise missiles to Europe.

''Castro made the extraordinary proposal that, if the deployment went ahead, Moscow should seriously reconsider reestablishing the nuclear missile bases in Cuba dismantled after the missile crisis 19 years earlier,'' it says. The book does not elaborate or record the Soviet reaction.

'SEIZE THE INITIATIVE'

''Classic Castro,'' said Brian Latell, a retired CIA analyst on Cuba. "Always seize the initiative. Always go on the offensive to surprise the enemy -- never mind that the Soviets were never ever going to consider that.''

But not surprising, Latell added, because Fidel's brother Raúl has said publicly that in the early 1980s, Moscow told Havana that it would not protect Cuba in case of hostilities with the United States.

Mitrokhin's archives show that the KGB provided virtually no support to Castro before his guerrillas seized power in 1959. But just three months later, it gave Cuba the code name AVANPOST -- bridgehead -- and cemented better relations with Havana than the Soviet diplomats stationed there had.

Even then, the KGB never stopped snooping. Besides its official presence in Havana, it ran a secret branch to spy on Cuba that in 1974 alone sent 269 reports to Moscow, the book adds.

Other KGB reports describe Raúl Castro, on a 1960 arms-buying trip to Czechoslovakia, as " sleeping with his boots on and demanding the services of blonde prostitutes.''

'IMPORTANT' CONTACT

The book describes Allende as ''by far the most important of the KGB's confidential contacts in South America,'' because he was a democratically elected Marxist and Castro's ally. In KGB lexicon, a confidential contact is more like a friendly source, not an agent.

But Allende's KGB file says the agency maintained ''systematic contact'' with him since 1961, the book adds. One report says, "He stated his willingness to cooperate on a confidential basis . . . since he considered himself a friend of the Soviet Union.''

So while the Nixon administration and CIA were working diligently to prevent his election in 1970, and to oust him afterward, the KGB also was working hard to put him and keep him in power, the book says.

Mitrokhin and Andrew also wrote that while president, Allende offered a KGB officer to send his trusted aides around the region to investigate and report on issues to the KGB. Allende died in the 1973 coup that toppled him.

Only about 130 of the book's 677 pages are devoted to Latin America -- from more innocent KGB contacts with other Latin American leaders to previously known Soviet weapons shipments to Salvadoran guerrillas.

On Costa Rica's Pepe Figueres, the book says that after his election he met regularly with the KGB chief in San José, rather than the Soviet ambassador, and agreed to a deal involving a small newspaper he ran.

A 1974 KGB report to Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev said this: "In view of the fact that Figueres has agreed to publish materials advantageous to the KGB, he has been given 10,000 U.S. dollars under the guise of stock purchases in his newspaper.''

DID THEY KNOW?

Although the book does not say explicitly whether Allende and Figueres knew that their money was coming from the KGB, Andrew argued in an e-mail to The Herald that they surely knew.

''Allende knew well before he became president, and Figueres by 1970 at the latest, that they were dealing with a KGB officer rather than someone they assumed to be a Soviet diplomat or journalist,'' Andrew wrote in the e-mail.

"Allende's KGB case officer, Svyatoslav Kuznetsov, reported to Moscow that Allende reacted positively to his suggestions for reorganizing Chilean intelligence and establishing liaison with the KGB. Figueres took elaborate precautions to preserve the secrecy of his regular meetings with the KGB resident.''

Saharan refugees discuss perils

Several former Western Saharan refugees say they were separated from their families against their will by a leftist group in Algeria and sent to Cuba for forced communist indoctrination.

By Oscar Corral, ocorral@herald.com. Posted on Mon, Sep. 19, 2005.

Saadani Ma Oulainie's first memory from childhood is seeing her father tortured publicly in front of her by the Polisario Front in North Africa when she was five.

After that, her memories of youth are a blur of forced separation, a flight to Cuba, sugar cane cutting, and an unending campaign by Cuban teachers to convince her that Allah was a farce and that Fidel Castro was the only person that mattered to her now.

As Ma Oulainie recalled her itinerant adolescence Saturday in Miami Beach as part of an effort by the Moroccan government to discredit the Polisario Front, she broke down crying, stopping just short of saying exactly how Castro-allied soldiers tortured her late father, who they had accused of being a Moroccan spy.

''We were stripped of our traditions, of our religion, they made us eat lots of pork,'' Oulainie said of her 15 years in Cuba, during which she never communicated with her parents. "When I went back to Sahara, my father had died. Hundreds of Saharan children have been orphaned while they were forced to study in Cuba.''

Oulainie, one of thousands of children shipped to Cuba by the leftist Polisario for communist indoctrination, is in Miami this week along with several other Western Saharans, or Sahawaris, who have passed through the Polisario's refugee camps and prisons in the last 32 years. They hope their firsthand accusations of human-rights abuses and corruption will help bring attention to the plight of Western Saharans.

But like everything else in the post-9/11 world, the story of the the Sahawari plight is complex. Both the Polisario and Morocco, who are at odds over control of Western Sahara, have been accused of human-rights abuses against Sahawaris by Amnesty International, a respected human-rights organization.

From 1884 to 1975, Spain controlled Western Sahara, a dry, sandy patch of dessert south of Morocco populated by tight-knit nomadic tribes. In 1975, after the death of Spanish leader Francisco Franco, Morocco annexed it, triggering an uprising by a group of left-leaning Arab students who called themselves the Polisario Front and were backed by Cuba, Lybia and Algeria. Polisario is a partial Spanish-language acronym for Frente Popular de Liberación de Saguía el Hamra y Río de Oro or People's Liberation Front of Saguía el-Hamra and Rio de Oro.

More than 100,000 Sahawaris fled to southwestern Algeria, where they settled in refugee camps controlled by the Polisario in the Tindouf region.

The guerrilla war went on until 1991, when Morocco, which claims sovereignty over Western Sahara and the Polisario, which wants an independent state there, agreed to a cease-fire.

The two sides are still wrangling over a referendum to allow a democratic solution. A United Nations peacekeeping force has been overseeing the cease-fire since 1991.

''Freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly and association remain very restricted in the [Morocco-controlled] Western Sahara,'' said a U.S. State Department report from 2002. And, likewise, "The Polisario reportedly restricts freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association, and movement in its camps near Tindouf in southwestern Algeria.''

Oulainie, one of many who was caught in the middle, believes the human-rights abuses should be dealt with separately from the political solution.

Many of the people who fled to the Polisario camps were once sympathetic to their cause. One of them is Bachir Edkhil, 51, who once ran the Polisario program to send children to Cuba. He now has turned against them.

''The Polisarios destroyed the elemental values of family,'' Edkhil said.

Hossein Taleb knows this first hand. His daughter, Ghali Bentaleb, 27, spent 13 years in Cuba, from 1988 to 2001. When Taleb went to Cuba to try to get her back in 1999, he was turned around at the airport and immediately deported. Bentaleb eventually made it back to her family. But Taleb's son was shipped to Cuba's Isle of Youth in 2001, and has had no communication with his father since, Taleb said.

''I don't want other kids to go through what I went through,'' said Bentaleb, who was sitting near her father in a Miami Beach restaurant Saturday. "They tried to tell us that there was no religion, only Castro. In Cuba, they kept us confined to the buildings. We were their prisoners.''

Robert Holley, executive director of the Moroccan American Center for policy, which is sponsored by the Moroccan government, estimates that there are 3,000 Western Saharan children still in Cuba, and 350 to 400 more are shipped there every year. The Moroccan government, through Holley's organization, sponsored the Sahawaris' trip to Miami and Washington, where they met last week with several U.S. leaders.

Today, the Sahawaris are scheduled to hold a news conference in Miami with U.S. representatives Lincoln Díaz-Balart, Mario Díaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, to denounce Polisario-controlled refugee camps in Algeria and the practice of sending children to Cuba. To their credit, the Polisario freed more than 400 Moroccan prisoners in August.

But some U.S. leaders feel more needs to be done.

''There is still a close relationship between the Castro regime and the Polisario Front,'' said U.S. Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart. "The fact that there is an armed group such as the Polisario Front seeking power as an independent nation state in the Western Sahara, supported by terrorist regimes such as the Cuban regime is a concern.''

Posada could testify at spies' retrial

An attorney representing the Venezuelan government said Luis Posada Carriles could be called to testify in a Cuban spy ring case -- if the exile militant is neither deported nor extradited.

By Robert L. Steinback. ., rsteinback@herald.com. Posted on Mon, Sep. 19, 2005.

José Pertierra, a Washington lawyer representing the Venezuelan government, said in Miami on Sunday that if Luis Posada Carriles is neither deported nor extradited to Venezuela the Cuban exile militant could end up testifying in the retrial of five Cuban spies whose convictions were recently reversed on appeal.

''The five were sent [from Cuba] to penetrate extremist organizations in the United States that were financing the campaign of terror -- bombings [in Cuba] that Posada Carriles was organizing with money from Miami and the support of organizations in Miami,'' Pertierra said after addressing about 60 people, mostly sympathizers of the so-called Cuban Five.

It isn't clear, however, just how closely the two cases are connected.

Pertierra said the five convicted spies -- Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, René González and Antonio Guerrero -- were sent to Miami because of the 1997 bombings. But FBI documents indicated the Cuban agents had been under surveillance in Miami since at least 1994.

In an interview with the New York Times in 1998, Posada acknowledged organizing the 1997 Cuba bombings.

But at hearings in El Paso last month, Posada denied the report saying he misunderstood the questions.

Matthew Archambeault, one of Posada's attorneys, said that even if his client were subpoenaed for the retrial, the likelihood that he would reveal anything substantive was remote.

''Calling him is one thing, but having him actually testify and do anything other than take the Fifth Amendment is another thing,'' Archambeault said. Posada "is unwilling to testify against the U.S. government in his own trial so it's unlikely he'd do so for them.''

The 77-year-old exile, detained in Miami-Dade County on May 17, is awaiting a judge's ruling on his request for protection in the United States.

A hearing in the case is scheduled for Sept. 26 in El Paso, Texas, where he is being held.

Still more Cubans intercepted at sea

Herald Staff Report. Posted on Mon, Sep. 19, 2005.

The U.S. Coast Guard returned to Cuba 34 migrants picked up last week, bringing the number of Cubans stopped at sea this year to more than 2,000 -- the largest number in any year since the rafter exodus in 1994.

The migrants were rescued during four separate events last week, according to a Coast Guard statement issued Friday in Miami.

Homeland Security officials have attributed the increased migrant activity in the Florida Straits to extremely calm seas in recent days. But Coast Guard and Border Patrol officials say the higher numbers do not point to a larger exodus.

Nevertheless, the total number of Cubans picked up at sea so far in 2005 reached 2,029 Thursday -- the largest number in one year since 37,191 were stopped at sea in 1994. The number of Cubans intercepted so far this year is 530 more than 2004, when 1,499 were picked up.

Meanwhile, the number of Cuban migrants reaching South Florida shores this fiscal year is also up. According to recent Border Patrol statistics, about 1,800 Cubans have reached South Florida shores so far in fiscal year 2005 -- 845 more than during all of fiscal year 2004. Fiscal years run from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30.

In the latest suspected migrant smuggling, one person died and another was injured Saturday when a boat caught fire 40 miles southeast of Key West. The Coast Guard said a Customs and Border Protection aircraft crew spotted the speedboat on fire with two people and extra fuel barrels aboard. The Coast Guard cutter Metompkin was dispatched to the scene. The two people aboard jumped into the water. Only one person was rescued.

Under current U.S. policy, Cubans intercepted at sea are generally returned to their homeland.

Those who reach U.S. soil generally get to stay.

A fight for citizenship

By Amy Driscoll , adriscoll@herald.com. Posted on Sun, Sep. 18, 2005.

TOLEDO, Ohio - The envelope from the Department of Homeland Security arrived on a Toledo doorstep in July, a simple one-page note that held 45 years of unfinished revolution and unfulfilled romance.

Olga Morgan Goodwin read the words from her adopted government -- ''We will be addressing your concerns'' -- and dismissed them with a shrug.

'They are telling me, 'Olga, wait another 20 years,' '' she scoffed. "They are hoping I will go away.''

For more than two decades, Goodwin has cherished a hope: that the U.S. government would one day restore American citizenship to her late husband, William Alexander Morgan, the famous comandante yanqui of the Cuban Revolution who was executed by one of Fidel Castro's firing squads in 1961.

In March, after years of frustrated efforts, the former Cuban political prisoner took her case to the top. She wrote straight to President Bush -- and was rewarded July 19 by a response from Homeland Security officials.

Goodwin, who counts the Miami-based paramilitary group Alpha 66 among her supporters, now hopes to press her advantage in Washington. If the government review of Morgan's case stalls, she plans a protest learned in Castro's notorious prisons: a hunger strike, this one in front of the White House.

''I'm ready. I can go a long time without eating,'' said Goodwin, 69. "This time, it's for William.''

The crusade to restore Morgan's citizenship promises to resurrect long-forgotten memories of one of the most intriguing characters of the Cuban Revolution.

An American who spoke little Spanish, Morgan stood out as a swashbuckling figure even in those extraordinary times, carrying a gold-plated .38-caliber automatic and boasting of a price on his head.

Newsweek and Time wrote about his exploits in 1959, the year the U.S. government stripped him of citizenship for his role in the Cuban rebel forces. Yet the Ohio-born man remains a hero to many Miami exiles for his unwavering anti-communist stance and the ultimate price he paid.

To his widow, remarried now and living in this industrial city where her late husband was raised, Morgan is a ghost at her shoulder, a spirit with no place to call home. Restoring his citizenship would finally let him rest, she believes.

Her struggle goes beyond the question of one man's legacy. For displaced Cubans like Goodwin, fighting a war that never ends, citizenship -- where you belong -- is central. If exile means no country of your own, then resolution for Morgan might be, in some small measure, resolution for many.

''He gave his life for democracy,'' Goodwin said. "And then he died without a country, neither Cuban nor American.''

Cuban historians have called Morgan a ''rock star'' revolutionary, with classically American looks -- tall, blond, blue-eyed -- and a wisecracking personality. A troublemaker as a teenager, he stunned his family when he left Ohio and adopted Cuba's fight as his own in late 1957.

'LIBERTY AND JUSTICE'

He seemed made for revolutionary times. A natural leader, he reached the rank of comandante, or major, after leading guerrillas in mountain battles against Cuban President Fulgencio Batista's soldiers. But he never hid his anti-communist feelings, telling The New York Times that he was fighting for ''liberty and justice'' in Cuba. As the new government veered left, Morgan became increasingly disenchanted.

''He was a classic 1950s rebel without a cause -- until he landed in Cuba,'' said Antonio de la Cova, a Latino Studies professor at Indiana University. "In Cuba, he was able to find the purpose he had been looking for. But he was a product of the Cold War, and as such, he was red, white and blue to his core. He would never have accepted communist rule.''

Morgan's open disdain for communism probably doomed him. Even after Castro took power, Morgan handed out anti-communist leaflets to peasants, fueling rumors that he was a CIA operative. He once ordered all communists off the farm he helped run after the revolution.

The story of his execution on March 11, 1961, recounted in books and a letter from a priest who witnessed it, is as dramatic as anything Hollywood could dream up. Imprisoned for six months before his one-day trial, he went to his death embracing one of his executioners and saying in stilted Spanish, "Tell the boys I forgive them.''

When he was ordered onto his knees at el paredon, the execution wall, he famously refused: "I kneel for no man.''

And when the firing squad shot him in the knees, and his legs buckled, a voice rang out: ''See? We made you kneel.'' A round of bullets finished him off.

''Some say he was a mercenary and a traitor, but he gave his life for a country that wasn't even his,'' said Lourdes Del Pino. Her father, Jesus Carrera, Morgan's good friend, was killed by the firing squad the same day as Morgan.

''To put your life on the line for any country -- that's admirable,'' she said. "But to do it for someone else's country, that's hard to argue with.''

Her mother, Teresa Del Pino, visited Carrera and Morgan before their execution. Morgan was worried that he had no burial plot. Del Pino, 20 at the time, promised to have his body placed in her family's crypt along with her husband's, which she later did.

After Del Pino left, she heard gunfire. ''I could hear the shots perfectly,'' she said during an interview in her South Miami-Dade County home. "I knew exactly what it was.''

Morgan and her husband died as bravely as they lived, she said, tears in her eyes. "They were fighting for freedom of a country, democracy, free speech. Not for one man to get all the power.''

PHOTOS FROM THE PAST

In her Toledo town home, a modest two-story residence where Jesus and George W. Bush share wall space, Goodwin sorts through binders of yellowed articles and old photos. Among the most famous shots: Morgan with Castro and rebel commanders Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo and Ché Guevara.

''They were never our friends,'' Goodwin says with a firm shake of her head. "We were working for the freedom of our country, not for communism, not for what happened.''

During her 12 years in prison, Goodwin was one of the plantados, or planted ones, who refused to bend to the will of their captors. In the revolution, she joined the nearly all-male guerrillas in the Escambray mountains. As a Mariel refugee in 1980, she settled in Toledo to be near her husband's family.

She has hoped for years that the United States would reclaim Morgan. In 1981, she told The Miami News that her husband's dream of a free world for her and their daughters had come true: "I now appeal to Congress and the American people to make it a just world for us by posthumously restoring William's citizenship.''

This spring, more than 20 years later, she took her plea directly to the president.

''Dear President Bush of the United States of America,'' her letter begins. "I am writing this letter to you because I am from Cuba. I was there in the revolution. I met in my country a wonderful man from the United States. His name was William Alexander Morgan. We became husband and wife.''

Newspapers at the time said Morgan at first fought to retain his citizenship but then renounced it; skeptics say his ''decision'' was announced by Castro's government. Goodwin insists he was deeply hurt by the U.S. action and always wanted to remain an American.

The president, she wrote, should honor her husband as a man who fought for democracy. "Please Mr. President, may God have you make the right decision. I beg of you.''

LOVE IN THE MOUNTAINS

In a photo snapped a few days after their 1958 wedding, William and Olga stand in matching khakis, gazing at each other, the mountains of Central Cuba behind them, each grasping a gun.

A young activist in Santa Clara, where her family lived, Goodwin met Morgan at a clandestine gathering of revolutionaries in the mountains.

'I look at him and I think, 'Oh, my God,' '' she recounted. "I knew he was fighting for my country, and that touched my heart. And then I saw him. My heart was going boom boom boom boom.''

He was 30 and divorced, with two children in Toledo, and had joined the rebels after a friend reportedly died at the hands of Batista's police. Olga was 22 and a teacher, the second oldest of six children from a family poor enough to go hungry sometimes.

Their courtship, conducted amid the revolution, led quickly to marriage in a ''rebel mountain hideout,'' a newspaper story said.

The newlyweds moved among top revolutionaries, putting aside the distrust Goodwin now says they felt for Castro in order to serve the cause: freedom of the people. But tensions were evident. In one confrontation, Goodwin recalled, Morgan threatened Guevara with physical harm if he tried to take command of Morgan's troops, part of the Second Front, or Segundo Frente.

''There was a rivalry there,'' Cuban historian de la Cova said, describing the relationship between the Second Front and Castro's 26th of July Movement. "Castro always distrusted them.''

By the time Batista fled on Jan. 1, 1959, Morgan was well known, with his biggest splash yet to come. When the new regime was seven months old, Morgan reportedly played a key role in foiling the first big anti-Castro plot, acting as a double agent to prevent an invasion by forces of Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo, Castro's enemy.

Did Morgan tell Castro because he knew the plot had already been discovered? Or was he truly working for Castro? In either case, Morgan became a national hero on Cuban television, sharing the stage with Castro himself.

And yet, times were increasingly tough for members of the anti-communist Second Front of the Escambray. Morgan, excluded from the new government, worked on a frog farm, raising frogs for restaurant use. He and Olga had two daughters by then.

The United States had announced it would revoke his citizenship weeks after the smashed anti-Castro plot. And the FBI was watching him, noting his friends' names and his trips to the United States, according to National Archives records.

In a Look magazine interview published after his death, Morgan joked about his future: "If anything happens to me, you'll know the commies have really taken over.''

Goodwin said they lived with constant worry. "William said he didn't want to leave. He wanted to stay. He wasn't afraid, but we knew that they might arrest us.''

He and Goodwin, though, were trying to prepare. They had hidden weapons in the hills after the revolution -- to protect themselves, Goodwin now says, although other accounts said they were part of counterrevolutionary forces.

On Oct. 17, 1960, Morgan and his wife were arrested. The charge: delivering arms to the guerrillas "at the direction of foreign interests.''

Hiram González, imprisoned with Morgan, said that he didn't know whether Morgan worked for the United States, but that everyone had heard whispers of a planned attack.

''We knew something was going on. We knew people were training,'' he said from his home in Miami. "But we didn't know what exactly it was going to be. William never believed he would be killed. He thought the government wanted to scare him, not to kill him.''

OBSTACLES AHEAD

To restore Morgan's citizenship would take an act of Congress or a special -- and unlikely -- action by the State Department.

In the 44 years since the Ohio man's death, U.S. courts have interpreted citizenship laws in a new light. Intent is now key. In most cases, a person must intend to give up citizenship in order for the government to act, immigration experts said.

State Department officials say they rarely reopen such cases posthumously because of the difficulty of determining intent. The Cuban Interests Section in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

But Goodwin insists that Morgan never intended to renounce his country. His case, she says, should be an exception.

Alpha 66 is ready to back her efforts. ''We are 100 percent for Olga,'' said Vice Secretary Osiel González, who fought with Morgan. "She is one of us.''

The letter from Homeland Security's Office of the Executive Secretariat is neutral: "The issues you raise are very important to us, and we are working to provide a written response.''

For Goodwin, though, there is no doubt. She recites part of Morgan's final, smuggled letter to her:

"Since the first time I saw you in the mountains until the last time I saw you in prison, you have been my love, my happiness, my companion in life and in my thoughts during my moment of death. . . . Olga, I have never been a traitor or done any damage to Cuba. . . . Those who are putting us on trial and condemning us have their job to do and are acting according to the conditions set out by today's politics. So if they are guilty of so many injustices, leave it to history to straighten out such faults. Revenge is not the answer.''

Cubans' landings, captures on rise

The number of Cubans being intercepted at sea is the highest since the 1994 rafter exodus.

By Alfonso Chardy, achardy@herald.com. Posted on Thu, Sep. 15, 2005.

Within one 24-hour period this week, 109 Cuban migrants landed on several of the tiny islands that form the Dry Tortugas of the Florida Keys -- bringing the number of Cubans landing in South Florida so far this month to more than 150.

Meanwhile, the number of Cuban migrants interdicted at sea while en route to South Florida hit more than 2,000 on Wednesday -- the largest number in a calendar year since 37,191 were rescued during the 1994 rafter exodus. Overall Cuban landings are up as well.

Since Oct. 1, 2004, more than 1,800 Cubans have reached South Florida's shores. That compares to 955 who made the trip between Oct. 1, 2003, and Sept. 30, 2004, according to recent Border Patrol figures.

Homeland Security officials acknowledge the rise in landings and interceptions, but said they don't believe the increase portends a mass exodus.

The increase could be attributed to ''extremely calm seas out there,'' suggested Steve McDonald, a Border Patrol spokesman.

The increased number of interdictions could be attributed to more efficient methods used by Homeland Security, added Luis Diaz, a Coast Guard spokesman.

The 109 Cuban migrants arrived in five different landings on Tuesday and Wednesday. McDonald said 91 of them were likely smuggled and the remaining 18 made the trip by themselves.

More than 50 Cuban migrants landed in the Florida Keys earlier this month, many of them on homemade boats.

Cubans intercepted at sea are generally returned to their homeland. Those who make it to U.S. shores generally are allowed to stay.

Split with Cuba still brings pain

By Enrique Fernandez, efernandez@herald.com. Posted on Sat, Sep. 17, 2005.

Rolando Sarabia was speaking in Cuban. ''No es fácil, esto,'' he said using a phrase common on the island and among recent exiles -- it ain't easy, this thing. He was referring to the life of a dancer, which at merely 23 has already cost him one ankle and two knee operations.

And his country.

Sarabia, an acclaimed principal dancer from the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, defected in July and will make his U.S. debut on Saturday and Sunday as part of the International Ballet Festival of Miami at the Jackie Gleason Theater in Miami Beach.

''I never wanted to leave,'' he said, his lithe and solid body gathering steam and tensing in a T-shirt and jeans at The Art of Classical Ballet, a Pompano Beach dance academy run by his former teacher, Magaly Suárez. "I just wanted to go dance for a season with the Boston Ballet and then come back and dance with my company.''

Seven times he appeared before the head of Ballet Nacional, the legendary Alicia Alonso, to ask for a leave. ''I was very respectful and polite,'' Sanabria said. And seven times she denied him. ''End of story. Nothing else to talk about, so I went off to . . .'' And he finished the sentence with a Cuban vulgarity.

In Mexico, where he was allowed to teach some ballet classes this summer, Sarabia went to the border. ''I asked for political asylum,'' he said. 'It felt terrible to have to do that. All the while, the guards there were asking me for my autograph and saying, 'a lot of your baseball players have come through here.' ''

Sarabia had no idea whether he would be allowed back into Cuba to see family and friends. 'I have friends who are artists and friends from the street who know nothing about dance, and all they can say is, 'man, you can really jump high.' ''

Worse, he had recently decided it was time to make space in his life for a relationship and had a girlfriend in Cuba. ''No, don't print that,'' he said. Then he changed his mind. ''What the hell, print the whole thing. I don't give a . . .'' Thinking about being forced out of his country to pursue a career -- ''they threw me out,'' he said -- was getting him riled.

Sarabia had reached the point in his career where he needed to expand -- after all, Alonso herself had launched her own stardom in the United States. He wanted the same freedom. Recently, The New York Times' Erika Kinetz wrote that 'Critics have called him 'the Cuban Nijinsky.' '' And also quoting The Times, Pedro Pablo Peña, who heads the International Ballet Festival of Miami, said Sarabia had been compared to Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Sarabia says the political tensions of defections like his held no interest for him because dance had been all-consuming: "Ballet is a very small world and you never leave it.''

His father, Rolando Sr., was a principal dancer with the Ballet Nacional -- ''he's older now so he dances character roles,'' the younger Sarabia says. At age 5, Sarabia Jr. was already a gymnast, but at home he would put on music and dance like his father. Soon he switched to ballet.

''Rolando was very studious, very dedicated,'' said Suárez, who has been hosting Sarabia in her home and studio in Broward County. ''He's a great virtuoso, of course,'' Peña said, "a master of technique, but what he has is a nobility that is rare in someone that age.''

Sarabia said he owes it all to top-level instruction. ''Alicia Alonso is the head of the company, but the ones who made Cuban ballet dancers great were the teachers.'' And he named Suárez, who taught at Cuba's Escuela Nacional de Ballet for 19 years, and others. "Thanks to them we have dancers who are now principals with the world's best companies, like Carlos Acosta with the Royal Ballet, José Manuel Carreño with American Ballet Theater, Joan Boada with the San Francisco Ballet, and Yosvani Ramos with the English National Ballet.''

Peña, who says he invited Sarabia to participate in his festival because ''there are many Cubans in Miami who follow ballet,'' says the Cuban ballet style is an amalgam of French, Russian and American influences. Sarabia agrees: 'Fernando Alonso [Alicia's ex and co-founder of the company] told us, 'I take a little bit from everywhere.' ''

But Sarabia took the definition further: "What distinguishes the Cuban style is that the woman is very feminine and the man very masculine.''

And then he added, in a tone resonant of a street boast, "we [male dancers] are very well trained in the way we handle the girl.''

Sarabia says he is now certain he will finally be able to dance with the Boston Ballet, where his brother already is a dancer along with other Cubans. ''The director of the company likes the Cuban style,'' Sarabia explained.

But even with his dreams coming true, and his career about to truly take off, an edge of exile melancholy had already crept in. He had family in Miami and after training all week in Suárez's Pompano Beach studio, he would come down for the weekend and they'd spend their time together, "remembering the old days.''

Seeing that attitude in a mere 23-year-old, Suarez had to exclaim: "¡Ay, Rolandito!''

''There is nothing left for us,'' Sarabia insisted, sounding like a much older man, "but to live off our memories.''

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