By Carol Rosenberg. crosenberg@herald.com. Published
Saturday, June 16, 2001 in the Miami Herald
Jammed inside WQBA's Calle Ocho studio on Friday, Janet Reno got everything
she sought from her first Cuban-American radio talk-show chat since floating her
possible candidacy for governor of Florida:
An open microphone and helpful Spanish translation; two tough but respectful
veteran radio interviewers; wall-to-wall news photographers and reporters; a
plate piled high with pastries and, after asking, a shot of Cuban coffee.
Most of the 90-minute broadcast was taken up with a wide-ranging,
question-and-answer session. At the very end, she took six quick calls that
showed feelings were still raw over the raid that removed Elián González
from Little Havana.
One caller welcomed her home -- then said Reno was wrong to return the boy.
She pledged never to vote for her.
Reno thanked the caller for the welcome.
But mostly, the news was the 62-year-old former Miami-Dade prosecutor's
appearance on the 10 a.m. show hosted by Agustín Acosta and Bernadette
Pardo. It was her first time on South Florida's at-times feisty Spanish-language
radio circuit since saying she is considering challenging Republican incumbent
Gov. Jeb Bush.
Reno brushed aside criticism of her decision to send in federal forces to
seize Elián, saying, "The little boy belongs with his father.''
She also maintained that her Parkinson's disease would not interfere with
her ability to govern -- after Pardo asked if she would be "irresponsible''
to run for governor with the unpredictable illness.
"If I can sit here with all these television cameras,'' Reno replied, "with
protesters out there and all my hands do is just shake, you all have to get used
to the shaking.''
PROTEST OUTSIDE
Reno, who drove and parked her red pickup truck herself, arrived late after
about a dozen protesters delayed her at the door.
The hosts were already broadcasting by the time she stepped into the studio
at 10:03:27, according to the neon clock on the wall. Sometimes, she offered a
few sentences in Spanish, the language of choice for the up to 30,000 listeners
of El Programa de Agustín y Bernadette.
"Pero, es muy importante . . .'' she said countless times, using her
signature segue, "It's very important . . .''
She declined to comment on a series of Acosta's questions about
controversies that bedeviled her eight-year tenure as attorney general, saying
they involved ongoing or protected investigations.
Then the coffee arrived, 42 minutes into the program. Ahora! she said, hands
trembling as she took a sip. Gracias.
During the most intense days of the Elián González affair,
after Reno sent federal forces to take the boy from his great-uncle's Little
Havana home, the former Miami-Dade prosecutor emerged as Enemy No. 2 among some
Cuban Americans, second to Castro.
At the time, Reno said she looked forward to the day when she would move
back to Miami and hash out the Elián affair with Cuban-American friends
over pastelitos.
So Friday, while about two dozen protesters stood outside the studio, some
with photos of Reno decorated with swastikas, she sat before the WQBA microphone
and a plate piled high with pastelitos.
They went untouched as the usually hourlong show stretched beyond 90
minutes. But there was lots of talk, Reno-style, about the little boy whose
plight polarized South Florida:
"I think about Elián all the time, and what a remarkable little
boy he was, what a good job his father and his mother did raising him,'' she
said of her decision to reunite the 6-year-old shipwreck survivor with his
father, Juan Miguel.
Her voice cracked with emotion at one point when she spoke of the pain some
Cuban exiles suffered during the years living in Cuba, under the Castro regime.
But she disagreed with a caller who said she was dooming the child to starve in
Cuba, or certain death if he criticized the government.
"If I thought I was sending him back to starvation, I wouldn't have
done so,'' she said. "I haven't see any evidence that he was starving.''
ISLAND LIFE
Reno characterized Cuban island life as more subtle than that, and said the
proof of its complexity could be found in the tens of thousands of Cuban
Americans in South Florida who travel back and forth between the island each
year, to visit relatives. Lázaro González, Elián's great
uncle, was among them, she reminded listeners.
Reno also said she was still deciding whether to run for governor but
offered no timetable for her decision. She repeatedly indicated the topics that
most interested her in that regard -- education, the elderly, healthcare and the
environment.
After the show, seven uniformed police and security guards led her to her
pickup truck and held back about 25 protesters who were shouting "murderer''
as she drove off alone.
She was asked whether she was glad she agreed to participate in the Cuban
radio forum.
"Sure,'' she replied. "I thought it was a wonderful show.''
For criticizing cops, a 2-year jail sentence
HAVANA -- A Cuban tribunal has sentenced a government opponent to 2 years
imprisonment following conviction for publishing false statements about the
police, a well-known human rights group here said Thursday.
Marcelo López of the non-governmental Cuban Commission for Human
Rights and National Reconciliation said that José Orlando González
Bridón was sentenced June 2.
González, member of the small Democratic Workers Federation of Cuba,
was arrested after he wrote an article accusing the Cuba's National
Revolutionary Police of not responding quickly enough to a woman's reports about
being beaten by her husband, the human rights commission says.
Talk of cyberterror is 'craziness,' Castro says
HAVANA -- An irritated Fidel Castro on Thursday dismissed concerns about
Cuban cyberterrorism against the United States as "craziness,'' saying his
country doesn't have the technology to launch such attacks even if it wanted to.
U.S. officials who believe that Cuba could and would attack the country's
computer networks are "orphans, and bereft of ideas,'' Castro said in a
televised speech. "It is craziness . . . It would be against our
principles.''
He was responding to comments made by Rear Adm. Thomas Wilson at a Senate
hearing in February about Cuba's capacity for "information warfare or
computer network attack.''
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald |