Published Wednesday, December 20, 2000, in the
Miami Herald
Cuban American to lead HUD
Paul Brinkley-Rogers. pbrinkley-rogers@herald.com
Orange County Chairman Mel Martínez, a child of the traumatic Cold
War-era Operation Pedro Pan, will be named the next secretary of housing and
urban development today, sources close to President-elect George W. Bush say.
Martínez is a 54-year-old Cuban American who holds the
highest-ranking government job in Orlando and played a key role in support of
Bush by working as co-chairman of his Florida campaign.
According to Republican sources, at least two other Cabinet choices are
expected to be named today as well -- Don Evans, Bush's national campaign
chairman, to be commerce secretary, and Californian Ann Veneman, former director
of that state's Food and Agriculture Department, as agriculture secretary.
Martínez flew to Washington to meet personally with the
president-elect and then flew back to Texas with his wife, Kitty, and Bush, on
Tuesday to take center stage when the appointment is announced in Austin. Martínez
has been quoted as saying he was "surprised'' that he was even under
consideration for the post.
Martínez, who backed Bush as far back as April 1999 as a member of
the GOP's Florida Association of Republican Mayors, is the first Cuban American
to be named to a Cabinet position. He is the fifth Hispanic to be named to serve
at that level in recent administrations.
He was elected as Orange County's chief executive two years ago after a
close and hard-fought race, rose to prominence as leader of a special commission
on growth management set up by Gov. Jeb Bush, and as a GOP activist was one of
the 25 electors who cast their votes for Bush this week. Jeb Bush said his
brother asked him for his opinion about Martínez a week after the
November election.
"He's a wonderful person, he's incredibly talented and a great
friend,'' the governor said. "We campaigned a lot with Mel. He's a
co-chairman of the campaign and George knew him.''
Martínez was one of several Cuban Americans who successfully pushed
for the pro-embargo plank in the party's platform over the objections of some
Republicans who want to make it possible to trade agricultural and medical
products with Cuba. The 2000 platform calls for active American support for
Cuban dissidents and the continuation of the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 which
is bitterly opposed by Fidel Castro's government.
But although he remains an implacable foe of the Castro regime, his
experience in Orlando has allowed him to reach out to other ethnic groups,
acquiring the sort of political skills that will come in handy in Washington.
"When I get 70 percent of the black vote as a Hispanic elected
official, that makes a very different statement about the climate here,'' he
said in a Herald interview earlier this year. "There's not the hostility
that exists in Miami.There's more of a partnership or a cordial sort of working
relationship with other groups.''
He added, "I have affection for Miami. . . but I have over the years
watched the problems and seen how negative that can be for the community.'' Martínez,
born in the central Cuba city of Sagua la Grande, came up the hard way.
He arrived alone in 1962 in the United States at the age of 15 as one of
14,048 children airlifted out of newly communist Cuba by their fearful parents.
He spent time in Camp Matecumbe in South Dade and another camp near Jacksonville
before finding a home in Orlando with two American foster families. He is
impassioned about that experience.
When he took the oath as Orange County's leader, he pointed to his foster
parents -- Walter and Eileen Young, and June Berkmeyer Brewer -- and said, "They
taught me that ordinary people, through selfless acts of kindness, have an
extraordinary impact on the lives of so many others. That is what being a
community is all about.''
He drew parallels between his own situation as a child and that of young Elián
González in March when he appeared before a Senate Judiciary Committee
hearing to make a case for allowing the boy to stay in the United States.
Martínez told the senators he was not reunited with his parents --
his father was a veterinarian -- until four years after he left Cuba, when they
were allowed to leave Sagua la Grande to join him in Orlando.
"This great and blessed land has given me the chance to fulfill the
promise of America,'' he said. "I hope and pray Elián González
also will be permitted to live a life of freedom and opportunity.''
In December 1999, Martínez picked up the tab for the two days the boy
and his Miami relatives spent at Walt Disney World near Orlando. "I can
identify with him,'' a clearly moved Martinez said at the time. "I came
here alone without my family. I was lonely, scared, confused, homesick.''
Martínez's star rose quickly after he settled in Orlando.
He graduated from Orlando Junior College in 1967, earned a bachelor's degree
from Florida State University in 1969 and a law degree from the same school in
1973. He began practicing law in 1973, but quickly became involved in
governmental affairs.
Martínez has been a member of the board of directors of United
American Bank, president of the Orlando Utilities Commission, and chairman of
the greater Orlando Aviation Authority and a member of the Orlando/Orange County
Expressway Authority.
His only experience with housing issues came when he was chairman of
Orlando's Housing Authority from 1984 to 1986. In his two years as county
chairman, Martínez strived to streamline government, improve
transportation services, and create clean neighborhoods. He earned high marks
for dealing with problems of crowded schools, helping the private sector open
new healthcare clinics and making possible the expansion of the city's parks
system.
Martínez has three children. His father has passed away but his
relatives include his mother and his brother.
Herald staff writer Lesley Clark contributed to this story.
Actor tapped angst of jailed Cuban author
Javier Bardem, best known for hunky roles in Spanish films like Jamon Jamon
and Boca a Boca, had no clue who Reinaldo Arenas was when he was asked to play
the Cuban author in the upcoming film, Before Night Falls.
So Javier read up on Arenas. And he was instantly moved. "The
intensity, the anger, the humor, the c-----s. He was an intellectual. But he was
so much more than that.''
But as much as Javier connected with Arenas' work, he wasn't sure he could
play the role of the persecuted author who spent time in Cuban jails for his
homosexuality and his insistence on writing his truths.
"I felt like an intruder. A little Spanish actor who knew nothing about
Reinaldo, or about Cuba for that matter. I didn't think anybody would take me
seriously.''
Before he said yes to director Julian Schnabel, Javier took a three-week
trip to Cuba to check out some of Arenas' old haunts and to meet some of his old
friends.
"I spoke to everybody, from the poorest poets nobody knows, to
celebrated intellectuals. But I told them very little about why I was asking. I
didn't want to compromise anybody.''
Javier learned plenty about Arenas. But what the 31-year-old learned about
Cuba itself is what surprised him most.
"In some ways, I had always refused to believe some of the things I had
heard about Cuba. In Europe, especially in Spain, we tend to romanticize Cuba.
We think only of the palm trees, the cigars, the mulatas, the music. But there
is actually very little that is romantic about Cuba.
"Sure, there are things you can point to as positive -- free health
care, free education. But when you come face to face with the truth, you
understand the contradictions. An education is free, but you can only read what
the government allows you to read.''
Javier had worried about taking a political stand, and he knew starring in
the poignant and pull-no-punches Before Night Falls, based on Arenas memoir,
meant he would have to.
"After learning about Reinaldo's life, I felt like somebody had to take
the responsibility to play this person, and through him, denounce something that
many countries, including mine, refuse to see. I didn't think I could play a
Cuban and get it right, but then again, I thought that if a Cuban plays Reinaldo
Arenas, maybe there are people who would say he was exaggerating . . . If a
Spaniard does it, perhaps the world sees it as somebody just pointing out the
truth.''
And with that, Javier threw himself into the role, even spending 10 hours in
a reproduction of the claustrophobic, pitch-black box where Arenas was enclosed
for a week as punishment for trying to smuggle his writings out of prison.
"I wanted to see what the sensation was. And what I found is that there
is no sensation. There is simply nothing. But that nothing is anguishing.''
Before Night Falls, which will be released Jan. 12 in the States, is already
finding critical acclaim. It shared the Grand Jury Prize, and Javier picked up
Best Actor, in the Venice International Film Festival. Also, he was named Best
Actor from the National Board of Review.
But last week, hours before the film premiered in Miami, Javier was nervous
about how it might fare. Over a cheeseburger, fries and a Coke at the National
Hotel on South Beach, he comes up with every possible scenario for why he might
get attacked in the capital of Cuban exile.
"Have you talked to any Cubans in Miami who have already seen it? Maybe
they won't think I got the Cuban part right. Or maybe they'll think the politics
aren't anti-Castro enough, or even that we focused too much on Reinaldo's
homosexuality.''
When Javier had a hard time grasping Arenas , he took to writing to the
author who took his life at 47 after suffering from AIDS.
"I got a manual typewriter like the one he used and after a day of
filming, I would sit at the typewriter and tell him about it. I was trying to
learn more about myself and about him, about what it means to be a writer, about
what it takes to have the courage to keep writing even after you are jailed for
expressing yourself.''
And what did he learn?
"That I'm a bad writer. And that it takes a very special person to turn
his greatest fear into the greatest kind of courage.''
Having immersed himself in Arenas' life, would Javier say the writer was at
peace when he died?
"It would be pretty if the actor playing his life could say, 'Yes,
after everything he went through, Reinaldo died happy.' But he didn't. He was a
man who wouldn't end his life until he wrote certain letters as his last
vengeance. He died angry. He never stopped searching for freedom and he never
found it. In the United States, he had another oppressor -- the dollar,
capitalism. But the positive is that he took all of his anger and created
beautiful art through it. ''
Javier may have started out clueless about Cuba. But now he gets the
contradictions better than most. Which is why he can't decide how Castro's
government might react to the film.
"Well, I thought at first that once I made it, I would never be able to
go back there. But now that I know how Cuba works, they might also decide to
honor me. Who knows if they'll use it as opportunity to show the world they have
come a long way from the 1970s when homosexuals were jailed and tortured. And
yes, that has changed. But a lot more has to change.''
Spy trial unmasks Cuba secrets
By Gail Epstein Nieves. gepstein@herald.com
Jurors in the Cuban spy trial got their first look Tuesday at the heart of
the government's case: some 1,400 pages of secret reports outlining everything
from the line-item budget that Havana allegedly allotted its operatives, to
communications that could reflect prior planning by Cuba of the 1996 Brothers to
the Rescue shoot-down.
The recently declassified documents -- rarely made public in such volume and
scope -- represent a treasure trove of Cuba's apparent military intelligence
goals and methodology.
They paint a picture of a highly secretive and organized network tasked with
multiple "active measures,'' or intelligence-gathering jobs; key among them
are infiltrating Miami's Southern Command and other federal agencies, and
discrediting Miami's Cuban exile community, especially the Cuban American
National Foundation.
The communications were contained on nearly 1,000 encrypted computer disks
confiscated during FBI searches of the defendants' South Florida apartments. FBI
agents broke the codes, ferreting out thousands of pages of reports that they
translated from Spanish to English.
Jurors saw only four short excerpts after three heavy notebooks of printouts
were introduced into evidence by prosecutors Tuesday. Further testimony is
expected. However, The Herald obtained and examined all three volumes.
Replete with references to "the Revolution,'' and using terms like "comrade''
for colleague and "our main enemy'' for the United States, the
communications mirror the prevailing terminology and philosophies of Fidel
Castro's Communist Cuba.
The reports also give a name to the spy ring: La Red Avispa, the Wasp
Network.
The five men on trial in federal court -- accused members of the Wasp
Network -- are all charged with spying for Cuba. They were arrested Sept. 12,
1998, in the culmination of a major counterespionage investigation.
Lead defendant Gerardo Hernandez faces the most serious charge: conspiracy
to murder, for the Feb. 24, 1996, Cuban MiG rocketing of two Brothers to the
Rescue planes over the Florida Straits that killed four men.
Though all of the accused spies acknowledge working on orders from Havana,
they deny ever obtaining classified information or intending to harm U.S.
interests.
Rather, they say they worked from a defensive posture, trying to identify
the exiles presumably responsible for a series of bombings at tourist sites in
Cuba and to find out if the United States had plans to invade the island nation.
Jurors will not hear the defense side of the case for at least another
month.
Among the prosecution evidence released Tuesday:
A Feb. 13, 1996, communication that appears to warn co-defendant and pilot
Rene Gonzalez not to fly with Brothers to the Rescue 11 days before the
shootdown -- and gives him code words to speak if he does go up.
It states: "If they ask you to fly at the last minute without being
scheduled, find an excuse and do not do it. If you cannot avoid it, transmit
over the airplane's radio the slogan for the July 13 martyrs and Viva Cuba. If
you are not able to call, say over the radio, 'Long live Brothers to the Rescue
and Democracia.' That is all.''
The message was addressed to "Brother Iselin,'' one of several "cover''
names the government alleges belonged to Gonzalez. It was signed by "Miguel
and Giro.''
Giro was a cover name for defendant Hernandez, prosecutors contend.
A "task objective'' to target the Cuban American National Foundation
for discord.
It states: "After the death of Jorge Mas Canosa, Department M-IX
[Active Measure] has been developing the FINADO active measures operation aimed
at increasing the existing contradictions among the directors of this
organization and at discrediting it.''
Finado means deceased.
The author and date of the message were not available.
Voluminous reports on fighter plane activity, building renovations and
other activities at Key West's Boca Chica Naval Air Station, the U.S. military
base "closest to our Cuban territory,'' said a Nov. 14, 1996, report.
It was signed "Lorient,'' the alleged cover name for co-defendant
Antonio Guerrero, who got a maintenance job at the base.
A host of secret communication procedures, including predetermined
signature codes for cables and phone messages. For instance, the message "I
need money'' was to be signed "N. Dinar.'' "I'm being watched'' was to
be signed "K. Jover.''
In directions for a clandestine meeting in New York, intelligence bosses
scripted conversations for the "verbal sign and countersign,'' or
passwords.
One man was to say, "Do you know the route that goes by Central Park
and the mayor's office?'' The contact was to respond: "It would be better
to take a Yellow Cab to the park, and don't see the mayor, it would be better to
go to the movies.''
Detailed "escape'' instructions telling the operatives to avoid
airports in Miami, New York and Los Angeles while they flee with their
counterfeit identification documents. "Leave by an overland route to a
neighboring city where, having verified that you have broken all enemy controls
on your person, you shall proceed to change your identity.''
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