CUBANET ... CUBANEWS

June 4, 2001



Cuba News

Miami Herald

Miami Herald

Miami jury gets case against Cuban agents

By Catherine Wilson. Associated Press Writer. Posted at 11:47 a.m. EDT Monday, June 4, 2001

.MIAMI -- (AP) -- The six-month trial of five secret agents who admit working for Cuba as part of the self-proclaimed Wasp Network went to the jury today.

"It's been an interesting odyssey,'' U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard said after sending the 12-member jury out and excusing three alternates. She told attorneys to be available within 10 minutes for any questions and the verdict.

Three agents are charged with espionage conspiracy, and reputed ringleader Gerardo Hernandez is charged with murder conspiracy in a MiG attack that killed four Miami fliers on two Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996.

The trial, which relied heavily on 2,000 pages of the defendants' decrypted messages, also includes charges of fraud conspiracy, failing to register as foreign agents and possessing false documents.

The defense claims prosecutors are using Hernandez as a scapegoat for a military decision made after two years of provocative invasions of Cuban airspace by the Miami exile group and repeated U.S. and Cuban warnings.

The fraud count charges the agents defrauded the U.S. government by getting false passports, cozying up to the FBI as informants and trying to manipulate members of Congress.

Defense attorneys, who worked hard to successfully select a non-Cuban jury, accused prosecutors of conjuring up nonexistent evidence in their closing arguments to buttress a crumbling case.

If convicted, Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, who supervised agents assigned to penetrate the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, and Antonio Guerrero, who worked menial jobs at Boca Chica Naval Air Station in Key West for five years, face possible life sentences.

Fernando Gonzalez, who allegedly brought internal communications codes to the network, and Brothers to the Rescue infiltrator Rene Gonzalez, no relation, face up to 10-year prison terms on the unregistered agent counts.

They were charged along with nine others. Five pleaded guilty in exchange for cooperation and reduced sentences, and four are fugitives believed to be in Cuba.

New 'confidential cable' predicts action on Cuba, Colombia, Haiti

Andres Oppenheimer: The Oppenheimer Report . Published Sunday, June 3, 2001.

If I were a Latin American ambassador in Washington, D.C., this is the confidential cable I would send to my foreign minister today on how the latest developments in the U.S. capital will affect the Bush administration's policies in the hemisphere.

Dear Minister:

As you know, the opposition Democratic Party will take control of the U.S. Senate this week. Now that the new committee chairmanships have been announced, I can offer you a better picture on how the new balance of forces will affect U.S. policy on issues such as diplomatic nominations, free trade, drug certification, Cuba, Colombia, and Haiti.

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., a centrist Democrat, will replace ultraconservative Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and will thus become a key player. But Biden is a consensus builder who is not likely to turn things upside down: He has a very good relationship with Helms, and the two have worked very well together in the past.

DODD'S SUBCOMMITTEE

Where we may see a bigger change is in the Foreign Relations' Western Hemisphere subcommittee, which will now be headed by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. As you know, Dodd is a veteran Latin Americanist who has been best known lately as a passionate advocate of lifting the U.S. embargo on Cuba and of eliminating the annual U.S. certification of countries' cooperation in the war on drugs.

Our embassy's political section says Dodd may succeed in killing President Bush's nomination of Cuban-born former Ambassador to Venezuela Otto Reich as new chief of the State Department's Western Hemisphere Department. Reich has been attacked in the press for having allegedly conducted dubious covert propaganda operations during the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s.

But Bush administration sources say they have asked Reich not to respond to these allegations until the day of his confirmation hearings, where they expect him to refute the charges and be confirmed.

My own estimate is that Reich has now a 50 percent chance of being confirmed, slightly less than the 51 percent chance I gave him in my previous cable.

What's more important -- and bad news -- for us in the near term is that the top Latin American job at the State Department may be effectively vacant for several months. Current chief Peter Romero has announced he is leaving at the end of this week, and the battle over Reich's nomination could drag on until late this year. This means that we won't have anybody with clout to expedite things through the State Department bureaucracy.

FREE-TRADE AREA

On free trade, our embassy's economic section estimates that there will be a clear setback for the Bush-backed plan to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas by 2005, because the Democrats are very close to anti-free-trade labor and environmental groups.

I'm not sure that the plan is doomed, however. I just talked with Robert Pastor, a former Carter administration official who now teaches at Emory University, who says the new Senate "increases the likelihood'' of the FTAA being approved in Congress, because it will force Bush to negotiate a deal with the Democrats rather than force an all-or-nothing vote that he might have lost.

CUBAN EMBARGO

On Cuba, our embassy's political section is convinced that the departure of hard-liner Helms and the promotion of Dodd will give anti-embargo forces a new chance.

My own estimate is that there will be a standoff: The Democrats may succeed in killing Helms' recent Cuban Solidarity bill to give $100 million to democratic opposition forces in Cuba, and in forcing the Bush administration to implement rules to lift restrictions on food and medicine exports to Cuba.

On the other hand, the Bush administration will probably step up its pressure on Cuba. The Bush people will want to help presidential brother Jeb Bush win Florida's gubernatorial election next year. Also, they may want to look tough on Cuba if they decide to continue with the Clinton administration policy of issuing six-month waivers that suspend Helms-Burton law sanctions against foreign companies that invest in properties confiscated by the Cuban regime.

Well-placed Republicans tell me that Bush could increase U.S. support for Cuban dissidents, as well as new funds for TV and Radio Martí, without congressional approval. About 70 percent of the measures contemplated by the Helms bill could be carried out by the president on his own, they say.

AID TO COLOMBIA

On Colombia, the Democratic-controlled Senate will probably impose tougher human rights conditions on future U.S. military aid to the Colombian army.

On Haiti, we will probably see a greater Senate activism, especially because of Dodd's growing interest in the Haiti crisis.

Postscript: Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., will be the new chairman of the Banking Committee. He is a strong supporter of tougher rules to combat money laundering and international corruption. Perhaps we should close that bank account in Miami for our reelection campaign deposits and move it to a South Pacific island.

Writer's tale of Cuban exiles plays out in theater of absurd

By Fabiola Santiago, fsantiago@herald.com . Published Saturday, June 2, 2001

"Miami is the most vilified city in the world.''

So begins the latest creation of best-selling Cuban novelist Zoé Valdés, who comes to town next week to launch Milagro en Miami (Miracle in Miami, Planeta), as much an ode to the Magic City as it is a detective mystery and Gothic fantasy.

"Once you experience Miami, you find a million reasons to love it,'' Valdés says in a telephone interview from her home in Paris. "But from here, the view people have is simplistic.''

Yes, Valdés is stepping up to bat for the capital of Cuban exiles, which she insists, is the target of an ongoing defamation campaign by the highest spheres of the Cuban government and too often is portrayed by the media one-dimensionally.

"The image that Miami is excessive and extremist is false,'' says the author, who has visited eight times in recent years, while rising to star status in Europe with her blockbuster novels about life in Cuba.

After La nada cotidiana (Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada) turned her into a best-selling novelist in France, Spain and Germany and Te di la vida entera (I Gave You All I Had) became a finalist in the prestigious Planeta competition in 1996, Valdés has continued to produce one bestseller after another: Café Nostalgia, Querido primer novio (Dear First Love). The French government has awarded her the Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the highest honor France confers on distinguished writers and artists.

In its fourth printing in Spain, the new novel, her first based in Miami, is vintage Valdés. It has a quirky cast of characters humorously nicknamed and wildly imaginative twists and turns. The major villain is, of course, The Dictator Himself, nicknamed XXL in her Havana-based novels and introduced in Milagro as the modernized evil force "www.ProfoundlyBeastlyMan.com.''

Milagro stars a French detective, Tierno Mesurado, who comes to Miami to investigate the case of Iris Arco, an exiled former Cuban model in a fairy tale marriage to an American developer. Iris is hunted and tormented by an evil force. The character is inspired by the real-life story of former Cuban model Ivelín Robins and her marriage to Miami Beach developer Craig Robins.

"I'm delighted. I'm one of her No. 1 fans,'' Ivelín says of Valdés. "She writes about things the way she feels them, and it's all sad and funny at the same time. The stories of my life and of my family are largely true, but of course, there are all those fantastical twists Zoé makes up -- and I love.''

Truth: Ivelín's family was smuggled by coyotes across the Río Grande on the eve of her wedding to Robins. Her mother, father and little sister had to cross the river nude, carrying their clothes above their heads so that they would not be recognized as illegals by their wet attire. The family arrived in a border town on Halloween night, which added a new level of fright to their saga as they encountered costumed ghosts and witches on the streets. They were put on a plane to Miami, and hours later, "stinky as they were from crossing the river,'' Ivelín remembers, they were at Bal Harbour Shops buying clothes to attend he wedding.

Fiction: For the crossing, Valdés dresses up Ivelín's grandmother as a Pedro Infante mariachi, and on her way to the United States, a Mexican woman who thinks she really is the Mexican idol, falls madly in love with the merrymaking, wild abuela.

In real life, Ivelín's grandmother was smuggled separately in the backseat of a car as a snoozing Mexican-American grandma.

"My abuelita is the complete opposite [from Valdés' characterization],'' Ivelín says with a laugh. "She's a saint!''

It was through people like the Robins, whom Valdés befriended during her visits to Miami, that the celebrated author got to know the city well. Her best friend, Pepe Horta, owns the popular Café Nostalgia on Miami Beach, a gathering place for Cubans as well as non-Cubans. Horta makes a return appearance in Milagro as el Lince (The Lynx), as he was first introduced in the classic Yocandra (Valdés' nickname for her autobiographical character) as, you guessed it, Yocandra's best and most loyal friend.

"I got to know Miami through friends,'' Valdés says. "It's not what they told me about Miami that taught me about the city. It's that they are Miami.''

In Valdés' hands, the city takes on a soulful character much like the writer's beloved Havana does in her previous novels.

Of the Cubans who live here, she writes: "Cubans love to feel special, and they are, somewhat like royal palms that wait to be transplanted to the humidity of their own soil.''

And of the city: "Miami is a city of overflowing exaltations, excessive in passions, and so temperamental that she has become beautiful, gorgeous.''

Havana transformed at human cost

Opinion. Published Friday, June 1, 2001

The May 27 article A new day in Havana was reminiscent of stories about Germany in the early 1940s. They praised the country's economic recovery and the Nazis' organization and cleanliness, while failing to mention the regime's abuses.

To discuss Cuba in the narrow context of an improving tourist sector without mentioning the repression of human rights or the nature of the Castro regime is a travesty of journalism.

Jaime Suchlicki. Coral Gables

To praise what good tourism has done transforming Havana into a dot.com city of happy people misleads Americans into flocking there, helping Castro wash dirty dollars obtained slave-trading Cubans.

Luxury cars are driven by privileged collaborators who take advantage of now "more discreet'' prostitution in Cuba.

As for Internet cafes, every move with the mouse is registered by watchdogs. Try to download a Herald Cuba story and see what happens

Andrew Anderson. Santiago, Chile

Copyright 2001 Miami Herald

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