Cuba News / The Miami Herald - CubaNet News - Noticias de Cuba / Cuba News

CUBA NEWS

January 2, 2006

Castro, next Bolivian leader vow cooperation

Posted on Sun, Jan. 01, 2006.

HAVANA - (AP) -- Fidel Castro and visiting Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales say cooperation between their countries will bloom despite U.S. worries about more nations allying with communist Cuba and a growing leftward tilt in Latin American politics.

The two men late Friday announced a 30-month plan to erase illiteracy in Bolivia as Cuba moves to increase hemispheric cooperation without U.S. influence.

Morales' and Castro's announcement was the latest move by left-leaning Latin American leaders calling for increased cooperation among nations in the region. Cuba also agreed to offer free eye operations to up to 50,000 needy Bolivians with vision problems, as well as 5,000 full scholarships for Bolivians to study medicine on the island.

''Could it be that the government of the United States feels hurt that Cuba cooperates with a brother nation?'' Castro asked. "Does that offend the U.S. government . . . is it anti-democratic, is it a crime?''

Morales said he would not allow himself to be pressured by the United States. ''I never had good relations with the United States, but rather with the American people,'' the Bolivian president-elect said.

Morales, a coca farmer, says he won't resume the U.S.-backed coca eradication campaign in Bolivia. He has vowed to crack down on drug trafficking while promoting legal markets for coca leaf, which is used to make cocaine but has many legal uses in Bolivia.

Castro and his close ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, over the past year have launched plans for social cooperation among countries in the region while rejecting a U.S.-backed plan for hemispheric free trade. Washington has expressed concern about their growing alliance.

Morales won the presidency Dec. 18 with nearly 54 percent of the vote -- the most support for any president since democracy was restored to Bolivia two decades ago.

One mysterious voyage links five

The five men who took a voyage aboard the shrimping boat Santrina in March are now linked by intrigue, deception, federal charges and Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles.

By Oscar Corral and Alfonso Chardy, ocorral@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sat, Dec. 31, 2005.

The lines of the Santrina are hardly the sort to quicken pulses; it's a simple shrimp boat, really, nothing more.

Yet this shrimper is freighted with the stuff of intrigue: suspected conspiracy plots, betrayal, a secret weapons cache linked to one of the shrimper's owners -- and an array of ties to Luis Posada Carriles, the CIA-trained, anti-Castro militant who has been accused of acts of terror.

The Santrina, described by its owners as a vessel for teaching diving and appreciation of the sea, floats idly on the work-a-day waters of the Miami River.

In March, it bobbed off Mexico's Caribbean coast -- just miles from where Posada said he plotted his politically combustible entry to the United States.

That mysterious voyage -- Fidel Castro claims the Santrina's mission was nothing less than to sneak Posada into Florida -- remains unexplained. The men who participated in it deny they had steamed to Isla Mujeres to pick up Posada. But they give differing accounts of what they were doing there. They are:

VOYAGERS

o Santiago Alvarez, 64, Posada's benefactor and one of the Santrina's owners. He is behind bars, following his arrest Nov. 19 on weapons charges for illegal possession of machine guns, ammunition, a silencer and grenade launcher, which the government says were kept at a Broward apartment complex Alvarez owns.

o Osvaldo Mitat, 63, employed by Alvarez as a handyman who helped with the upkeep of Alvarez's properties. He, too, is in jail, facing weapons charges. Both men have pleaded not guilty.

o The Santrina's captain, Jose Hilario ''Pepin'' Pujol, 76, who says he sailed to Cuba on another boat a decade ago in attempts to infiltrate two anti-revolutionaries into the island in a plot to kill Castro. The ploy ended with the two men behind bars in Cuba, convicted of attempted bombings in what Cuban officials have labeled a terror campaign they say was partially masterminded by Posada.

o Gilberto Abascal, 40, who cooperated with the federal government to turn state's evidence against Alvarez and Mitat, culminating in the pair's November arrests in South Florida. Abascal told The Miami Herald he did "what I feel is right.''

o Ruben Lopez Castro, 67, owns the house where Posada is said to have stayed for about six weeks while he was in hiding in Miami and where Posada was detained May 17, friends said. Lopez Castro, reached by phone, declined to comment.

PUT TO THE TEST

The Posada case caused a firestorm in Miami this year, testing Washington's commitment to the war on terror, threatening diplomatic ties between the United States and one of its biggest oil providers, Venezuela, and jeopardizing President Bush's relationship to one of his most loyal Republican constituencies, the Cuban exile community.

The controversy began shortly after the Santrina visited Mexico and Posada appeared in Miami.

Five years earlier, Alvarez and other friends, including 42-year-old construction manager Ernesto Abreu, started Caribe Dive & Research Foundation, a nonprofit diving school they said was meant to increase students' appreciation of the sea.

In 2002, the group bought the Santrina, an old shrimping boat, in Louisiana and brought it down to Miami. During the boat's renovation, Pujol and Mitat met Abascal, whom Alvarez had hired as a welder to work on the Santrina. Pujol said Alvarez thought of the younger Abascal as a son.

Abascal, a Cuban immigrant, had arrived in the United States in the late 1990s. He developed a reputation as an accident-prone handyman who liked to talk about women, said Pujol and Abreu, who is listed as the president of Caribe.

''His conversations were always about things that had no importance, like women, or girlfriends,'' said Pujol of Abascal.

Alvarez asked Pujol to come teach boating classes to Caribe students. Pujol said that since Caribe opened, it has taught 20 to 30 people, but that Abascal never wanted to take the classes.

In mid-March, Alvarez and the others took the Santrina to the Bahamas and then headed west toward Isla Mujeres.

Posada acknowledged in a May interview he was in Cancún around the same time the Santrina was in Isla Mujeres, which is two miles north of Cancún.

DIFFERENT REASONS

But crew members and friends of Alvarez gave different reasons for the trip.

Pujol: "To make contacts in Mexico to see if people wanted to train [to steer boats and dive] with us.''

Abreu: "They had put a new propeller in and were testing it.''

Alvarez: "We made contact with two or three people. I can't say that [the trip] had absolutely nothing to do with Posada because I've been in touch with him for years, but I can say that I didn't bring him. Santrina didn't bring him.''

The one-day trip to Isla Mujeres underscored Abascal's lack of sea legs, Pujol said. Seasick, Abascal curled up in a cabin below deck on the 85-foot Santrina as it lurched on turbulent seas.

Pujol, the ship's captain, struggled to keep the current from twisting the ship into the rough water as the wind blasted the crew with salty spray. Still, the crew paused for a nostalgic glance of Pinar Del Rio's mountains -- jagged teeth on Cuba's horizon barely 100 miles from Isla Mujeres.

The Santrina ran aground in shallow waters outside Isla Mujeres' port, attracting the attention of Mexican authorities, Pujol said. Once they got the boat free and at port, Pujol said Abascal told the group he was going to visit a girlfriend and left.

''[Abascal] said he was going to give me a picture of his friend in Isla Mujeres, but I never saw it,'' Pujol said.

In May, Alvarez told The Miami Herald he used the Santrina to travel to small foreign ports as a way to avoid being detained or questioned at international airports.

All the men say they did not take Posada back with them. It's not clear if they met with him at the Mexican port. ''I don't remember if Posada was there,'' Pujol said. Abascal said he did not see Posada in Isla Mujeres.

Alvarez, Pujol, Posada and the U.S. government maintain a coyote smuggled Posada across the Texas border days after the Santrina's trip.

Posada is now in detention in an immigration facility in El Paso, where a judge recently ruled he could not be deported to Cuba or Venezuela because he may face torture there, though he may be deported to a third country yet to be determined.

Venezuela wants the United States to extradite Posada to face trial for his alleged role in the bombing of a Cuban jetliner in 1976 that killed 73 people when it departed Barbados on the way to Jamaica. The accused plotters, including Posada, were all living in Venezuela.

After Posada's capture, FBI agents began interviewing the passengers of the Santrina and other friends of Alvarez.

Sometime during the summer, Abascal told Pujol the FBI had been questioning him and putting pressure on him, Pujol said.

The FBI also has questioned Pujol, he said.

A MISCALCULATION?

Pujol believes Alvarez made a mistake in granting a clandestine news conference for Posada in May, because it provoked the authorities.

''The correct thing would have been to take Posada directly to the CIA, not take him to the television,'' Pujol said.

Shortly after the news conference, which was held the day The Miami Herald published an exclusive interview with Posada, federal agents detained Posada at Lopez Castro's house, said Abreu and a witness who asked not to be named.

Posada's last Cuban meal as a free man consisted of congrí (a rice and beans dish) and ropa vieja (shredded steak in tomato sauce).

Migration to U.S. soared in '05

The number of migrants heading to the United States from Cuba and the Dominican Republic was unusually high in 2005. Experts say both the economy and political policies fueled the upsurge.

By Oscar Corral, ocorral@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Fri, Dec. 30, 2005.

The constant blackouts, the dismal economy, the messages of false hope from Fidel Castro. It was all too much for Estrella Fresnillo, a well-known Cuban journalist.

Fresnillo left Cuba behind this year to come to the United States, joining a growing wave of immigrants from across the Caribbean taking to the seas -- or sneaking through U.S. land borders -- in search of a new life.

This year, the Coast Guard interdicted almost twice as many Cubans at sea than last year -- more than any year since 1994, when a rafter crisis of 37,000 prompted the United States and Cuba to strike up a rare dialogue to implement a controversial new immigration policy.

The Coast Guard also intercepted almost four times as many Dominicans at sea but caught fewer Haitians trying to reach Florida this year than in 2004. Interdictions of Haitians last year set a record for the past 10 years.

Although Fresnillo did not enter by sea, she is part of another fast-growing group of Cuban migrants who entered the United States illegally by land. Fresnillo crossed from Canada to Buffalo, N.Y., in September.

As many as 7,610 Cubans entered the United States through its southern border in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The Coast Guard interdicted 2,866 Cubans at sea in 2005, up from 1,499 in 2004. Many more also made it to shore in South Florida than last year. Border Patrol spokesman Steve McDonald said 2,530 Cubans were detained in South Florida in 2005, up from 955 the year before.

''The situation in Cuba is worse than ever,'' Fresnillo said. "I've never seen so many blackouts, and the hurricanes coming through were horrible. I am part of a generation of people that is disillusioned.''

The U.S. State Department said several factors have contributed to the uptick in migrants. Aside from widespread blackouts, the Cuban government is taking a much bigger bite -- up to 18 percent -- of every dollar sent by relatives. And new U.S. rules imposed in 2004 restrict the amount of remittances U.S. relatives can legally send to their families to $100 a month.

''The crackdown on dissidents is also a major factor,'' said a State Department official who asked not to be named. "This year, the Cubans were promised more than in the past, especially with [Fidel Castro] saying they are coming out of their special period. But the average Cuban looks around and realizes it's just not getting any better.''

U.S.-Cuba immigration policy took center stage this year after several high-profile incidents involving clashes between the Coast Guard and Cuban migrants at sea. In one incident, a go-fast boat smuggling Cubans capsized following a chase by a Coast Guard vessel, and a 6-year-old boy drowned.

''From what we've seen and heard here, the latest trend in migrant smuggling from Cuba is the go-fast boat,'' said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Chris O'Neil. "For those that go the route of migrant smuggling, they leave themselves at the mercy of smugglers who don't have an interest in their safety. They are interested in the cash.''

After the 1994 crisis, the United States implemented the controversial ''wet-foot, dry-foot'' policy, which generally allows Cubans who make it to U.S. shores to stay in the country but mostly guarantees repatriation to Cuba for those interdicted at sea.

In a report earlier this year, the State Department accused Cuba's government of refusing to comply with the 1995 migration accords, which were designed to prevent another exodus. The report said Cuba's government doesn't try to stop migrants on vessels while they are still in Cuban territorial waters, and it refuses to issue exit permits to many citizens who receive U.S. travel documents allowed by the accords.

U.S. Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart said the 1995 accords should be "abrogated. It's fundamentally flawed and immoral. . . . I would eliminate the migration accords. But I haven't been able to convince President Bush of that.''

Cubans aren't the only ones taking to the seas in a growing tide. The number of Dominicans interdicted by the Coast Guard has grown more than fivefold from about 801 in 2002 to 4,388 in 2005.

Eduardo Sanchez, a representative of President Leonel Fernandez's Dominican Liberation Party, blamed, in part, a global economy for the exodus. He also said the higher number could mean the Coast Guard has stepped up its efforts to intercept Dominicans -- most of them heading for Puerto Rico.

''Although the economy is growing, the distribution of that wealth is much slower,'' Sanchez said. "The poorer people, who risk themselves to come to the U.S., always have an incentive.''

Despite the turmoil in Haiti, the number of Haitian migrants interdicted by the Coast Guard in 2005 -- 1,828 -- is less than last year's 3,078. Most of them are taken back to Haiti.

Activists in Miami's Haitian community warn that the lower number should not be interpreted to mean that conditions in Haiti are improving.

''Things have never been worse than they are now in Haiti -- the violence, the misery, the poverty. It has been called a failed state,'' said Steven Forester, policy advocate for Haitian Women of Miami. "It is simply wrong that anybody should be returned to Haiti at this point.''

Conditions also seem to be getting worse in Cuba, according to Cubans who left this year.

''Popular rebellion and discontent have increased in the last two years, and at the same time government repression is increasing,'' said dissident Manuel Vasquez Portal, who left Cuba with a visa in June. "Life for us in Cuba had become impossible.''

Old murder, new resolve for victim's daughter

For 29 years, the murder of a Cuban exile leader has gone unsolved. But his daughter, a Miami- Dade detective, won't stop trying to solve the most important case of her life.

BY Amy Driscoll, adriscoll@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sun, Jan. 01, 2006.

The eyes of the dead stare at detective Nelda Fonticiella as she searches for her father's face on the wall of photos at the Bay of Pigs museum in Little Havana.

She finds his picture down on the left, near the display case of tarnished bullets and worn Cuban flags. All around her are snapshots of other veterans: baby-faced youths, Elvis types in glamour shots, steely-eyed men who gave their lives in the failed 1961 attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.

She studies the photo for a minute -- the man with the mustache regards the camera gravely -- but it reveals nothing new.

For 29 years it has been this way. A father frozen in time. A daughter frustrated by unanswered questions. A detective who cannot solve the one murder mystery that matters most: the assassination of her father, Cuban exile leader Juan Jose Peruyero, on the streets of Little Havana in 1977.

''I don't think it's a matter of closure. There is no closure when you have this hole in your life. But it's a matter of justice,'' said Fonticiella, 46, a veteran Miami-Dade cop who serves as a spokeswoman for the department. "That's what I have come to understand in all these years of trying to make sense of it.''

Now, as the anniversary of Peruyero's murder approaches, some news at long last: His case is being reexamined by Miami police, with help from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. There's no statute of limitations in murder cases. The killer might still be caught.

''Do I have hope? Absolutely,'' Fonticiella said. "I have to try.''

She was 17, a teenager in typing class at Miami Senior High, when her dad walked from their Little Havana house toward his green El Camino and straight into an ambush. The Bay of Pigs veteran and ex-leader of the famed Brigade 2506 caught six bullets in the back on Jan. 7, 1977.

He died with $3 and a tiny Cuban flag made of paper in his pocket.

The headlines read: Cuban Exile Leader Slain Outside His Miami Home; Castro Agents Blamed. Twenty-five hundred people turned out for the funeral, including a former Cuban president and Castro's sister, Juanita. Peruyero's name was added to a list of prominent exile killings in the mid-1970s that would remain unsolved nearly three decades later.

Miami back then was a place of turbulence, terror and intrigue, a hotbed for anti-Castro plots, the center of the world for Cuban exiles. Dozens of bombings and at least nine killings of high-profile exiles reportedly were linked to the political situation, with many of the murders instantly blamed on Castro agents.

For many, that's an era best left in the past, but Fonticiella can't. She became a cop in part because her father's murder had never been solved. Her family still keeps bits of his interrupted life in a plastic box: his green bottle of Brut cologne, his bathrobe, scrapbooks from the Bay of Pigs invasion, the watch and gold ring from Brigade 2506 he wore the day he died.

''If it were me, he would never have rested until he found justice,'' she said. "So I can't rest.''

Fonticiella thinks today's technology may be key. For years, she's been reading stories about DNA tests and fingerprint databases breaking open old cases. In her dad's case, she knows the original investigators found fingerprints, bullets, even a jacket that was in a car police believe the killers used. Could there be a hair or some other trace evidence to be analyzed?

REINVESTIGATION

PROBE EXAMINES OLD FINGERPRINT

The reinvestigation began this fall. Miami police's cold case detective, Andy Arostegui, already has sent the clearest fingerprint -- taken from the rearview mirror of the car -- to the FBI crime lab. That was about two months ago and he's still waiting for word. He also has requested the remaining evidence, long since boxed up, from police storage.

Is the case solvable? Arostegui, who cleared 22 cold cases in the last two years, is noncommittal.

''You never know,'' he said, with a shrug. "You just never know. The print could come back tomorrow with a hit.''

That's all Fonticiella wants. A shot.

''Wouldn't it be great if technology could solve this? If a fingerprint they run through the database brings up something?'' she said. "I mean, it does happen sometimes.''

Digging into a decades-old, politically sensitive case opens a door into the past, though, that some in Miami would prefer stay firmly shut. Many of those in the thick of Cuban political life back then won't talk about the Peruyero case on the record 29 years later. Elected officials, former Miami radio employees, ex-cops -- they say they don't have to look over their shoulders anymore. They don't want to start now.

''Miami in those years was much different than it is now,'' said Guarione Diaz, president of the Cuban American National Council, a non-profit human services organization founded in 1974. "There were bombings to federal offices and also to homes of Cuban exiles, assassinations and attempted assassinations. It was the last remnant of a philosophy that the ends justify the means, all of it to topple Castro.''

Solving cases like Peruyero's, with the political complications and lingering fear, is no easy task, noted Raul Diaz, a former county detective who helped work many of the exile murders and bombings.

''There are still enough witnesses available where they can probably close one or two of those cases,'' he said. "Peruyero? I don't know. Peruyero is a hard case.''

Fonticiella, who said she has heard her father was on a hit list along with other prominent exiles, knows "there are people who don't want me looking into this, who don't want it brought up again.''

''Some of them are even friends of my father's,'' she said, sitting in the Juan J. Peruyero Museum and Manuel F. Artime Library. "But I need to do this. I need to know.''

ANOTHER GENERATION

GRANDSON SHOWS NEW INTEREST

She shows Peruyero's picture to her son, Danny, who graduated from the police academy last year and joined the Miami-Dade police, her department. A lot has changed in two generations, though. Only recently has he become more interested in learning about his grandfather's efforts to overthrow Castro.

''After my father was killed, I remember seeing men carrying ammunition out the back door of the house. We had it stored in the basement, things like bazookas and mortar [rounds] and bullets,'' Fonticiella recalled. "I just thought it was normal. I thought everyone had that. That's how things were back then.''

In the cold-case office of the Miami Police Department, a crowded room tucked in the back of the homicide unit, two cardboard boxes with ''Peruyero'' written on their sides offer a slice of that world.

Inside, the reports begin with the day of the shooting and continue with daily dispatches in the weeks and months that followed. The documents, handwritten or typed with carbons, detail hundreds of leads tracked by detectives, many long gone from the department.

Edward Carberry, now working in the county inspector general's office, was the lead detective on the case initially.

''Most homicide cops have cases they still think about,'' he said. "For me, this was one of them. The kind that just haunts you.''

He was on dayshift, 7 to 3, when he was called to the murder scene.

''It was total bedlam. Lots of hysteria, screaming, crying,'' he remembered. The shooting took place a few feet from the Peruyero house, 1761 NW Third St., near the Orange Bowl. For months after, no one would park there.

Witnesses saw a car slow down as it pulled alongside the 47-year-old man. They said Peruyero turned toward the car, then spun away, as gunfire erupted.

''It was a busy spot. There were a lot of people out and a lot of witnesses who saw a man's arm come out the window and start shooting,'' Carberry said.

Before Peruyero died, he was able to tell police that he knew his assailants and describe the car they drove. Two days later, police found it, a gold 1968 Cadillac Eldorado, at 2100 NW Seventh St. It had been purchased for cash seven days before the shooting.

In the ensuing weeks, records show, police questioned dozens of people, explored several different theories -- everything from Castro agents to drug dealers to a connection with the 1976 bombing of radio commentator Emilio Milian, a close friend of Peruyero's -- and compared fingerprints found at the scene to those taken from more than 50 potential witnesses. They administered lie detector tests to about half a dozen people.

Police also took note of Peruyero's politics. Ardently anti-Castro, he had spoken out against terrorist activities and a year earlier had lost control of the Bay of Pigs veterans' association.

Milian, who lost his legs in the attack on him, told police at the time that Peruyero had called him the night before the shooting to tell him he'd discovered new information about the bombing. The two men were set to meet the day of Peruyero's murder, Milian told police.

LINGERING QUESTIONS

ONE STILL CONSIDERED 'PERSON OF INTEREST'

Early on, though, detectives publicly focused on two men, Jesus Lazo and Valentín Hernández. The men already were wanted for questioning in the 1975 shooting of Luciano Nieves, an exile leader who preached peaceful coexistence with Cuba, at the former Variety Children's Hospital. Both were believed to be members of the Pragmatista organization, an anti-Castro Cuban terrorist group.

Lazo was never found but Hernández was caught and convicted in 1979 for the Nieves murder. Two months after his life sentence was imposed, Miami police gave him a lie-detector test in the Peruyero case. Documents show the examiner found deception on four questions, including: Did you shoot and kill Juan Peruyero?

Arostegui said he considers Hernández "a person of interest.''

''There are a lot of avenues to pursue,'' he said. "That's one of them.''

Hernández, released on parole in 2004 and living in Naples, said he was not involved in the Peruyero shooting. He wasn't even in the country at the time, he said. He was in Colombia, trying to get a visa to live in Chile, he said. He also said he was given information from police, via his lawyer, that another man who was killed in a gangland-style shooting in March 1979 was the real killer.

''His face is my face -- exactly like mine, even the mustache, everything,'' he said.

His attorney, Nathaniel Barone Jr., said he remembered ''something to that effect'' but he couldn't recall specifics. He said he believes Hernández was in Colombia at the time of the Peruyero murder.

Hernández, now 63, said he failed the lie-detector test in 1979 because it wasn't correctly administered and also because he was upset by his conviction in the Nieves case.

He offered his own theory on Peruyero's death: The Bay of Pigs veteran was serving as a bodyguard for a man involved in drugs, he said. A dispute arose and Peruyero was caught in it. Hernández said the murder had nothing to do with him.

"I am a 1,000-percent anti-Castro person, not what is portrayed of me. I fight against Castro in Cuba. I am not a murderer. I never killed anyone in my entire life.''

Carberry, the former detective, said police were never certain who committed the murder.

''To this day I'm not sure,'' he said. "We tried to keep an open mind. Back in those days, the first cry was always that Castro agents were suspected. While I'm sure that was happening -- there were Castro agents around -- it was only one factor. We had to weigh all of these things.''

Hernández said he is untroubled by questions about the past. He lives, he said, " . . . in peace with my conscience and my children and all I care about is love and forgiveness. . . . God forgives me for my sins, I have to forgive everybody.''

He offered this for Peruyero's family: "I feel sorry for what happened to him because he was my friend.''

The words are wasted on Fonticiella. ''What I want,'' she said, "is for someone to answer for this crime. Justice. It's that simple.''

Pomp and praise for Morales in Cuba

Arriving in Havana on his first trip abroad as Bolivia's president-elect, Evo Morales was greeted by a red carpet, military band and a smiling Fidel Castro.

By Andrea Rodriguez, Associated Press. Posted on Sat, Dec. 31, 2005.

HAVANA - Bolivia's socialist president-elect got a greeting reserved for heads of state when he arrived in communist Cuba on Friday: a red carpet, a military band and a smiling Fidel Castro.

Stepping off the Cuban plane sent to pick him up in Bolivia, Evo Morales said his trip to the Caribbean island was "a gesture of friendship to the Cuban people.''

Castro embraced Morales, who has visited the island in the past as one of Latin America's leading protest organizers. The Cuban government has welcomed the election of the nationalist Indian activist as an important triumph over U.S. influence in the region.

''I think that it has moved the world,'' Castro told reporters of Morales' electoral victory. "It's something extraordinary, something historic.''

''The map is changing,'' said the Cuban leader.

The 79-year-old Castro has been one of the U.S. government's biggest headaches in the region during his 47 years in power. And Morales, a nationalist Indian activist, has repeatedly declared himself an admirer of Castro and has vowed to become a ''nightmare'' for Washington.

Nevertheless, since his election Morales has offered a more conciliatory message, telling business leaders he will create a climate favorable for investment and jobs and will not "expropriate or confiscate any assets.''

Morales, who will be inaugurated on Jan. 22, won the presidency with nearly 54 percent of the vote -- the most support for any president since democracy was restored to Bolivia two decades ago.

He joins a growing number of left-leaning elected leaders in Latin America, some of whom are not shy about criticizing the United States. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, Castro's close friend and ally, has repeatedly accused U.S. officials of plotting to assassinate him.

An Indian coca farmer and former protest leader, Morales campaigned on promises to halt a U.S.-backed coca eradication campaign in Bolivia.

He has vowed to promote legal markets for coca leaf, which is used to make cocaine but has many legal uses in Bolivia. He has also said he will crack down on drug trafficking.

Morales was to meet later in the day with Castro; no details were made available.

Shrimping boat captain recounts clandestine trip to Cuba in 1995

By Oscar Corral, ocorral@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sat, Dec. 31, 2005.

The captain of the Santrina is now in his 70s, but he has never given up the fight against Fidel Castro.

Jose Hilario ''Pepin'' Pujol, who insists he was trained by the CIA and conducted many raids, said he is an expert in infiltrating Cuba by sea. He gave the following account of a 1995 trip he steered to Cuba on another boat:

Pujol dropped off Santos Armando Martinez Rueda and a friend near Puerto Padre. The men dropped off supplies in Cuba, Pujol said, before he smuggled them back out.

''I delivered them and took them out, to infiltrate,'' Pujol said. "But later they went in with false passports from Costa Rica.''

Asked what the purpose of Martinez Rueda's mission was, Pujol first said he never asked the details of people's missions. Then he said Martinez Rueda and the other man wanted "to kill Fidel.''

In March 1995, Cuban security agents dismantled a bomb at a Varadero Beach resort and captured Martinez Rueda and Jorge Enrique Ramirez.

Cuban state-run media reported Martinez Rueda and Ramirez had previously infiltrated through the province of Las Tunas carrying 51 pounds of C-4 explosive. Puerto Padre is in Las Tunas. The men were convicted in 1996 and remain in Cuban prisons.

According to evidence offered at a 1998 trial covered in Havana by The Miami Herald, the Varadero bomb was among 15 bombings carried out or attempted in Cuba from 1992 to 1998.

Interior Ministry Col. Adalberto Rabeiro testified at the time that parts of the campaign, which culminated in the death of an Italian at a Havana hotel, were carried out through Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles, thought to be living in El Salvador. Posada has claimed responsibility and then denied involvement in those bombings.

PRINTER FRIENDLY