CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Official says Castro fit to run in 2008

By Will Weissert, Associated Press, March 16, 2007.

HAVANA - Fidel Castro will be in "perfect shape" to run for re-election to parliament next spring, the first step toward securing yet another term as Cuba's president, National Assembly head Ricardo Alarcon said Thursday.

"I would nominate him," said Alarcon, the highest-ranking member of parliament. "I'm sure he will be in perfect shape to continue handling his responsibilities."

Mobbed by foreign reporters following a parliamentary session to discuss Cuba's upcoming elections, Alarcon said Castro "is doing fine and continuing to focus on recovery and rehabilitation."

A lengthy process of nominating candidates for municipal elections will begin this summer, leading to several rounds of voting. Then, by March 2008, Cuba should be ready to hold parliamentary elections that are expected to include Castro, Alarcon said.

The 80-year-old Castro was the world's longest-ruling head of state, occupying the island's presidency for 47 years before temporarily stepping aside in favor of his younger brother, Raul, following emergency intestinal surgery in July.

Alarcon said he has been in contact with Castro many times in recent weeks, but stopped short of saying he has seen him in person. He said that even though Castro ceded power to his 75-year-old brother, he never "abandoned his role."

"Fidel has been and is very involved, very connected, very active in all manner of important decisions that this country makes," Alarcon said. "What's happening is, he can't do it the same way he did before because he has to dedicate a good part of his time to recuperating physically."

Switching later to deliberate but fluent English, Alarcon told journalists: "To what extent he will go back to doing things the way he did, the way he is accustomed to, it's up to him."

He wouldn't say whether Raul Castro will remain acting president if his brother becomes well enough to return to work full-time.

Things in Cuba have remained calm and functioned normally under Raul Castro. Though Fidel has not appeared in public, he has sounded lucid and up on current events in a pair of recent telephone conversations with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

After earlier post-surgery photos had shown him looking sick and weak, images on state television in late January revealed a stronger and healthier seeming Castro.

Although Castro temporarily ceded his functions to his brother, he still holds the title of president of the Council of State, Cuba's supreme governing body.

Trade between Cuba, China shows signs of strengthening

Posted on Wed, Mar. 14, 2007.

HAVANA --(AP) -- Trade between Cuba and China ballooned to $1.8 billion last year, double that of 2005, Beijing's ambassador to the island said.

China's exports of buses, locomotives and farm equipment and supplies to Cuba in 2006 helped account for the sharp increase over the previous year, Zhao Rongxian said in a story posted Tuesday on the website of the Cuban government's business weekly, Opciones. He did not provide specific numbers for Chinese-Cuban trade in 2005.

An official Cuban report last year said trade between the two countries was about $775,000 during the 12-month period ending in October 2005.

It was unclear whether the $1.8 billion figure corresponded to the same 12 months in 2006.

''We are both socialist countries, we have a lot in common and magnificent relations of cooperation in all areas,'' the ambassador said.

Cuba sent nickel, sugar and medicine as well as biotechnological products to China. Chinese tourists also visited Cuba in record numbers and now average more than 10,000 a year, the ambassador said.

For decades, China did not trade with Cuba because of the island's economic dependence on Moscow, then a rival of Beijing.

But since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Venezuela -- with its generous oil exports at favorable prices -- has emerged as the island's top commercial partner, while trade from China has steadily increased.

Cuba's official trade figures are difficult to verify because the government includes social services not counted in U.N.-standard measures of economic output.

Government officials reported last month that trade with Venezuela topped $2.6 billion in 2006.

U.S. program for defecting Cuban doctors a success

Launched only six months ago, a special U.S. program for Cuban medical personnel who defect in third countries has sparked hundreds of applications.

By Pablo Bachelet, pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sun, Mar. 11, 2007

WASHINGTON --Hundreds of Cuban doctors and other medical personnel who defected in third countries -- and one magician -- have applied for fast-track U.S. entry under a special program launched six months ago, U.S. officials say.

More than 100 already have arrived in the United States under the program, and hundreds more are hiding in places like Bolivia and Venezuela, awaiting U.S. background checks to ensure they are medical professionals and not rights abusers or Cuban government agents.

After a slow start, the program, designed for Cuban medical personnel who defect while working abroad, has received so many applicants that Cuban American activists are scrambling to assist the new arrivals. There are reports that Cuban authorities are visiting family members of doctors stationed abroad to warn of reprisals if their relatives flee.

''It's a hugely successful program,'' said Emilio Gonzalez, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Department of Homeland Security. "The word is getting out and obviously we get an increased number every week.''

Cuba has an estimated 40,000 doctors, dentists, nurses and other medical personnel working in 69 countries, including about 15,000 in Venezuela.

They usually work for modest salaries with the poor, earning income for the Havana government while extending its influence abroad. Havana is not known to have publicly complained about the U.S. program.

MAJORITY ACCEPTED

Miami Republican Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart last month said that 366 medical professionals who defected abroad had applied under the U.S. program, 160 have been approved and 55 had arrived. Twenty five were rejected.

Among those rejected were a magician and a chess player, U.S. immigration officials said.

Gonzalez said the latest number are much higher but declined to provide a number. Ana Carbonell, Diaz-Balart's chief of staff, says more than 100 already have entered the United States.

South Florida's Cuban American community has been pitching in to help the defectors with guidance and some financial assistance while they await the U.S. entry permits.

One group of Cuban doctors in the United States, created two years ago to help their brethren on the island, has been expanding its program to help doctors who defect third countries and want to enter the United States.

MORE CURIOSITY

Initially the group, Solidaridad sin Fronteras (Solidarity without Borders), received only a trickle of skeptical inquiries on its e-mail and phone hot line listed on its website, BarrioAfuera.com. Now, it receives more than 15 inquiries every day and more than half end up applying for the program, says Tony Costa, a director with the Cuban American National Foundation.

CANF has been working with the group.

Doctors who defect often wait in safe houses in places like Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Argentina. They receive a small stipend for expenses and relatives in Miami usually pay for their air fare to the United States.

Since Cuba is on the State Department list of countries that sponsor terrorism, the medical professionals must undergo extra security screening -- a process that can take months, especially if the applicant has a name that coincides with a known Cuban Communist Party member.

U.S. officials are also vetting applicants who worked at Havana's Mazorra psychiatric facility, where some dissidents are alleged to have been harshly mistreated, says Julio Alfonso, a founder of Solidaridad Sin Fronteras.

Calle Ocho kindles fond memories of fondas de chinos

By Enrique Fernandez, efernandez@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Thu, Mar. 15, 2007.

Some weeks ago, I came upon an article about General Tso's Chicken in The New York Times Sunday magazine. It told me about the general, the dish and how restaurants had adapted it to American tastes by making it sweet.

I was born and raised in a city with a proper Chinatown and proper Chinese restaurants. There were also Chinese-run restaurants outside Havana's el barrio chino, but they served classic Cuban, not Chinese, dishes. These mom-and-pops were known as fondas de chinos, although the only chino thing about them were the owner-cooks and waiters. Best palomilla steak ever at these joints.

The Cuban-Chinese population joined the exile, and many wound up in New York, where, in that city's Chinatown, they formed a tight subculture. They applied their restaurant experience to their new city, where there was a clientele for Cuban as well as Chinese food, which, at Havana's fondas de chinos, they had cooked only for themselves.

In New York, these Cuban-Chinese restaurants became known as chinas y criollas (a ubiquitous sign that almost seemed to advertise female charms, though the implied noun was actually comidas). To be fair, neither the Chinese nor Creole sides of the menu delivered great food, but it was fun to order arroz con picadillo and wontons or steak in oyster sauce with tostones. Most of all, like the original fondas de chinos, the chinas y criollas were cheap.

Mutatis mutandi. Asia de Cuba, once a joint patronized by the great, underpaid sidemen of the salsa industry, is now the name of a pricey fusion restaurant, and Flor de Mayo on upper Broadway is run by South American, not Cuban, Chinese.

If I knew my Confucius, I could come up with something wise to say about such changes, but I live in Miami now, and that's my change.

Thus I wound up recently at Chong's on Calle Ocho, a Chinese restaurant with a location that promised a chinas y criollas experience. Sure enough, all the patrons and waitresses were criollo, though they told me the kitchen was Chinese.

The $5.99 lunch buffet seemed the perfect degustation and -- what do you know? -- it included General Tso's Chicken, renamed General Chong's. It was sweet -- dessert sweet -- with a slight bite of chile. The barbecued pork ribs were heavily glazed, though not as sweet as the good general's creolized chicken. And the fried rice -- a dish that has crossed into the mainstream of many Latin cuisines -- was indifferent.

Interestingly, it was the criollo dishes that got my taste buds jamming. Short ribs oozed sabor criollo. A fish soup was rich and tasty and totally Latin. The fried chicken was basically chicharron de pollo, the skin crispy as cracklings.

Chong's doesn't advertise itself as chinas y criollas -- a term that, as far as I know, is only used in New York -- but its buffet lunch is just that.

Chinese food was a favorite in my college years, probably for the same reason pizza was: It was really cheap. Ethnic cuisine for shallow pockets and undemanding palates. As with Cuban food, we revel in vulgarity. We suspend our gastronomic pretenses and go for the $5.99 chinas y criollas buffet. What the heck? It's only lunch.

Place: Chong's Chinese Seafood Restaurant.
Address: 2772 SW Eighth St., Miami.
Contact: 305-643-6057.
Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. daily; until 11 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 10:30 p.m. Sunday.

Miami medical team gives thousands free care

Thirty-three Miami medical personnel are giving free medical care to the poorest of the poor in a Lima shantytown.

By Tyler Bridges. tbridges@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Thu, Mar. 15, 2007

LIMA --Enriqueta Hernández smiled as Orlando Silva, a visiting University of Miami doctor, checked her blood pressure, pricked her with a needle and examined her splotchy legs.

Hernández had reason to smile. She and her family normally can't afford a doctor.

But that's why Silva and 32 other volunteers from Miami spent several days this week in Lima: to give free care -- and $1 million worth of medicine -- to the poorest of poor.

It may have been the most rewarding week of the year for the visitors.

But it had special meaning to Orlando García, a doctor from Palmetto General Hospital in Hialeah, thanks to Hernández and others like her.

Hernández was one of the 100 Cubans treated Sunday from families that fled Cuba during the 1980 Mariel crisis and ended up resettling here, in a dusty shantytown known as Villa El Salvador.

García, too, left Cuba during Mariel, but headed toward a life with more opportunities.

He said he wouldn't have become a doctor in Miami if Mariel refugees -- including those in Peru -- hadn't sought asylum in the Peruvian Embassy in Havana and forced Fidel Castro to let them leave.

''Thanks to you, I'm a doctor,'' García told Hernández. She smiled.

Hernández, a 51-year-old mother of five, was among 3,000 people -- mostly Peruvians -- whom the medical mission treated this week. They suffered from parasites, scabies and other illnesses that the Miami doctors rarely see.

''I've only seen parasites once or twice in America,'' said Dr. Luis Raez, a native Peruvian who also works at the University of Miami. "Today, I saw 35 patients, and three had parasites.''

ON THE MISSION

Each person on the trip had to pay $1,000 to cover his or her airfare and other costs. Some came under the auspices of Catholic Missions Emmaus, a group founded by Silva.

A cancer specialist born in Cuba, Silva has organized 14 missions to Guatemala. This was the second one within the past year to Peru.

''You get the benefit of seeing these people and hugging them,'' he said. "So you as a human being not only touch them, but they touch you. You grow and become a better person.''

Some Peruvian-Americans on the mission, such as Raez, belong to a Lima-based group, Solidaridad en Marcha, that gave local help.

Angel Origgi, the group's executive director, said that in the shantytown where the Miamians worked, called San Juan de Miraflores, about one-third of the 300,000 residents don't have running water.

Another Peruvian native on the trip was Dr. Giovanna Baldárrago, who in Miami treats infectious diseases. On the trip, she served as the gynecologist.

''In Miami, I do whatever is in my area,'' Baldárrago said. "Here, I do everything. This kind of work is very rewarding. It's the reason you go into medicine. In the United States, you have too many rules and problems with insurance.''

DONORS OF SUPPLIES

A good amount of the medicine dispensed came from Heart to Heart International, a Kansas-based group that has also worked with other Miami-based missions, such as Cristo Salva, New Hope Ministries International and Nicaraguan Medical Missions.

Wheelchairs, walkers, crutches and diapers donated by the group this week came from St. Brendan Catholic Church of Westchester, which had intended to send the goods to Cuba but could not. The Bush administration has not renewed the Archdiocese of Miami's license to do so.

''If the goods can't be used in Cuba, then let them be used elsewhere where there is need,'' said Father Fernando Heria, St. Brendan's pastor.

Oil bill could put rigs near Florida

Florida lawmakers are against a proposed bill that could allow energy firms to drill close to Florida's coast and duck the Cuba embargo.

By Lesley Clark. lclark@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Wed, Mar. 14, 2007.

WASHINGTON --Florida's two senators expressed alarm Tuesday over a proposal they said would put oil rigs just 45 miles from the Florida coast -- and skirt the embargo against Cuba by allowing U.S. firms to explore for oil and gas in Cuban waters.

Plans to introduce Senate legislation today come as gasoline prices are rising and just months after Florida lawmakers labored to keep oil exploration as far as 325 miles from the Florida coast.

The proposed bill, dubbed the Security and Fuel Efficiency Energy Act 2007, or SAFE, by its sponsors, Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, also calls for an increase in fuel economy for all new vehicles, beginning in 2012, and incentives to promote alternative fuels.

But the provision to permit drilling drew strong opposition from Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and Republican Sen. Mel Martinez, who have teamed up to derail past drilling legislation.

Martinez called the bill ''bad policy,'' noting that it would violate the embargo with Cuba by allowing for oil exploration in Cuban waters.

It would also permit full-time employees and consultants of oil and gas producers to travel to Cuba for "work related to exploration and extraction.''

''This proposal goes back on everything the Congress dealt with last year -- everything we did to create a long-term buffer for Florida,'' Martinez said.

A summary of the legislation prepared for Dorgan and Craig contends that the measure would increase access to oil and gas reserves in the Outer Continental Shelf in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico "while strengthening environmental protections.''

It notes that oil and gas companies would have access to oil exploration in the Gulf "up to 45 miles from the U.S. coastline in U.S. and Cuban waters.''

UM students have a tricky job: representing Cuba

UM students will participate in a U.N.-like event representing the Cuban government.

By Noah Bierman, nbierman@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Wed, Mar. 14, 2007

Alexander Correa has spent months studying the international policies of Fidel and Raúl Castro's Cuba to defend them with all the passion he can muster.

It's an admittedly awkward position for a Cuban-American kid, the son of exiles who fled the dictatorship, and who is president of the University of Miami's chapter of Jóvenes por una Cuba Libre, Youth for a Free Cuba.

So what gives? The University of Miami's top-tier model United Nations delegation has been handed the tricky task of representing Cuba this year. They'll be judged on how well they advocate for that government's interest on a simulated world stage. Maybe that wouldn't be such a big deal if the team came from, say, Albuquerque, Dubuque or Tuscaloosa.

But this is Miami. It's like asking students in Taiwan to represent The People's Republic of China.

''I spoke with my grandfather about it. His reaction was: How can you be representing the government that threw me out of my country?'' Correa said.

None of the 22 team members was born in Cuba, but there are a few Cuban Americans and Venezuelans, whose politics are increasingly defined through an anti-Castro lens, in the group. The conference organizers who assigned UM students to represent Cuba must have a devious sense of humor.

''I'm sure it's very interesting in South Florida to say: Can you separate yourself from your opinions of the Cuban government?'' said Michael Eaton, executive director of the National Model United Nations.

It's common for teams to represent countries that are unpopular at home. About half the schools will travel to the New York conference from abroad. German students from the Ludwig Maximilians-University of Munich will represent the United States, though many of their countrymen vehemently oppose U.S. policies on Iraq, global warming and other international issues.

Still, even Iran or North Korea might have been easier to defend in Miami than Cuba.

''Strictly, this is a representation,'' Correa, 20, says more than once, emphasizing that he is not changing sides in real life.

Correa said he was conflicted about the assignment, though he would not have abandoned the team.

Correa believes that when Cuba is free some day, he will have an advantage if he understands conditions on the island better. Sure, it's just a simulation. But when the team poses with the Cuban flag at the conference, Correa will be proud.

''It's the same Cuban flag that existed before the 1959 revolution,'' he said.

POWERHOUSE TEAM

UM's National Model U.N. team is a powerhouse, more successful than the school football team in recent years. They've been named among a dozen top-tier teams -- out of more than 200 universities and more than 3,000 international students -- three years in a row representing Cypress (2004), Amnesty International and Tonga (2005), and Somalia (2006).

Students practicing on a recent Friday afternoon were diligent in preparing to win a fourth trophy when the conference begins in New York, Tuesday. Correa made sure everyone signed up for a team guayabera in the right size. Students passed out copies of detailed Cuban-government position papers they had written. Just for fun, Correa gave them some impromptu salsa lessons as practice wound down.

More importantly, the students spent two hours simulating a United Nations committee meeting, with each student representing a different country.

''The king of Saudi Arabia remains adamant in emphasizing the right to develop,'' one student said after she was recognized.

The action wasn't always easy to follow, but the students definitely captured the bureaucracy. Delegates made parliamentary motions to limit or expand speaking time and then debated them. They offered competing motions on which topics to debate in which order and then debated those motions. They offered further motions on how long they should hold informal caucuses and then debated them.

''Delegates, decorum. Delegates, please return to your seats,'' Federico Cuadra shouted when time expired on one of the caucuses. Cuadra, a 2006 UM graduate who helped found the United Nations club on campus, now serves as a part-time coach for the team. He and fellow leader Patricia Mazzei wanted to make sure the students were following all the parliamentary rules so they won't lapse into informal speech during the conference and lose points.

The caucuses were frequent and frantic. Students gathered around laptop computers crafting possible resolutions. The clusters would move as the students looked for new international allies and dropped old ones. Volume rose as delegates made sure the interests of France or China or South Africa were heard.

''I would like to bring everyone's attention to a working paper on land management that we'd like to get passed today,'' Anjuli Pandit, representing India, shouted.

NO CLASS CREDITS

Students do this for love, and perhaps, to build their résumés. They get no money or class credit. But it is a social network of some of UM's most engaged students from around the world -- China, India, Tanzania, Mexico, Panama, Russia and more.

When they practice, some represent their home countries.

Cuadra, 22, said he would never have earned his job at the American Nicaraguan Foundation if not for the model U.N. experience -- which teaches diplomacy, research and negotiating skills.

''They're amazing,'' said Ambler Moss, a former U.S. ambassador to Panama who teaches many of them in his U.N. classes on campus. "They should do well because everyone in Miami knows more about Cuba than they want to know.''

The Cuban assignment was not entirely random. Each college team chooses 10 countries or nongovernmental organizations, such as Amnesty International, it would like to represent.

Then the national organization makes assignments from that list.

UM and Miami are great places to study Cuba.

The students have contacts among high-level defectors and meetings with visiting scholars, authors and faculty in the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies.

''We're going to be heavily scrutinized'' at the conference, said Stefano Rotati, a junior from Miami. "They're going to think we have biases.''

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