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June 27,
2001.
Cuban-Americans hold Florida events June 28, Elian Anniversary Day
Wednesday June 27, 9:30 am Eastern Time. Press Release.
SOURCE: Cuba Policy Foundation
MIAMI and TALLAHASSEE, Fla., June 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Tomorrow, Thursday,
June 28, 2001, marks the one-year anniversary of Elian Gonzalez's return to
Cuba. On Thursday, June 28, Cuban-American leaders from across the United States
-- including Bay of Pigs veterans -- will be holding news conferences in Miami
and Tallahassee to speak out for an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba, and
for lifting the U.S. travel ban to Cuba as the first step. Also speaking will be
Ambassador Sally Grooms Cowal, president of the Cuba Policy Foundation, who
housed Elian Gonzalez in Washington, D.C. in the weeks leading up to his return
to Cuba.
The Miami news conference will be at 9:30 am on Thursday, June 28 at the
Wyndham Miami Airport Hotel, 3900 NW 21st Street, adjacent to Miami
International Airport.
The Tallahassee news conference will be at 3:00 pm on Thursday, June 28 at
the Capitol Rotunda.
The Cuban American leaders and Ambassador Cowal will be speaking at both
news conferences.
The news conferences are sponsored by the Cuba Policy Foundation, a centrist
organization led by senior diplomats in Republican Administrations that strongly
supports democratic reform in Cuba. The Cuba Policy Foundation favors lifting
the embargo because the embargo has failed to produce change for 40 years, and
is hurting America's economic and national interests.
The president of the Cuba Policy Foundation, Ambassador Sally Grooms Cowal,
spent 23 years in the U.S. Foreign Service working mostly for Republican,
pro-embargo presidents, beginning with President Nixon. Ambassador Cowal was
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs under first
President Bush, who later appointed her U.S. Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago.
Nuns Inheritance a Mystery in Cuba
By Vivian Sequera, Associated Press Writer
REMEDIOS, Cuba 27 (AP) - It's a tale of corsairs and nuns, saints and
conquistadors, of centuries of mystery about a fortune in gold or jewels.
"That money exists and we are the heirs,'' says Julia Humbelina Perez
with certainty.
"A farce,'' says Eusebio Leal, Havana's official historian.
But what do those bigshots in the capital know? Here in the town of
Remedios, 180 miles east of Havana, there are thousands of true believers.
Then again, this town of 20,000 people has a history of riches, smuggling
and piracy, and it also thrives on tall stories, like the one about Lucifer and
35 legions of demons once seizing power over Remedios.
The treasure in question is that of one Bartolome Manso de Contreras,
wealthy scion of a Spanish family that immigrated to Remedios in 1605. Manso de
Contreras is said to have bequeathed all his houses, farms, cattle, sugar mills
and slaves to his three daughters.
But all three daughters were cloistered nuns with no use for such things, so
the properties were sold off by the executors, Bartolome's brother and Juan de
Loyola, the sisters' grandfather, and the proceeds given to the nuns in gold or
silver or something else.
A copy of the will, dated Feb. 20, 1758, lists the properties bequeathed to
the nuns, according to Rafael Farto, a Remedios historian. He says he has seen
copies of the will in the homes of some of putative heirs in Havana. A version
is supposed to be in the national archives in Havana, but archivists say they
have no such document on file, or anything else from the Manso de Contreras
family, for that matter.
Nobody is sure how much money is involved, though the ever-inflating
guesstimate now stands at $4 billion, according to some relatives.
One legend holds that the sisters, fearful of pirates, hid their fortune in
the walls of the Convent of Santa Clara in Havana, which is now a hotel.
Some say the sisters shipped the valuables to London, where it was deposited
in a bank. Or maybe it went to the Vatican (news - web sites). Again, no one is
sure, although for decades, Cuban newspapers have been periodically reporting
claims on the missing wealth.
"It is pure fantasy,'' said Monsignor Angelo Gallardi, spokesman for
the Papal Nunciatura in Havana. "It's a story from a novel.''
Could the money be in Britain? "No idea,'' replied Janeth Duff, a
British Foreign Office spokeswoman.
The would-be heirs often base their claims on dusty records dating back to
the 17th Century in the church of Remedios, where baptisms, marriages and deaths
were marked down.
The legend has spread well beyond Cuba and taken root among Cuban emigres.
Those who can afford it - especially claimants in the United States - finance
investigations covering two continents and hundreds of years.
People come from "everywhere, not only from Cuba, to find out if they
are family... . I have almost become the secretary of the Mansos de Contreras,''
the Remedios church archivist, Maria Adelaida Leopo, said with a chuckle.
The church charges 5 pesos - about a cent - for a search of its records. The
price doubles if the documents date to the 19th Century.
Leopo, 62, jokes with visitors that if the fortune turns up, they can reward
her by replacing her old Remington typewriter with a computer.
"I don't know if the money exists or not, but there must be something
that moves so many people,'' she said, taking a break from helping a Miami woman
whose family name is Castro Manso. The woman arrived in Cuba in April to visit
relatives and investigate the possible inheritance.
Heirs of Loyola, the co-executor, also claim the fortune, saying his
granddaughter nuns gave the money to him.
That Manso de Contreras lived "is true. That Bartolome left a will is
true,'' said Farto, the historian. "But where the money is, what happened,
I don't know.''
He says the claim has passed down through generations. One day the children
of today's claimants "will learn of it, will see some paper and will again
return to the task of searching, beginning the cycle again.''
Cuban VP Says Castro's Health Fine
By Andrew Selsky, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK, 26 (AP) - Cuba's vice president said Tuesday that Fidel Castro
(news - web sites)'s fainting spell over the weekend was so brief that
U.S.-based exiles "didn't even have time to uncork their bottles'' to
celebrate his demise.
Vice President Carlos Lage, attending the U.N. AIDS (news - web sites)
conference in New York, told reporters he had spoken to Castro on the phone
early Tuesday, and that the Cuban leader was eager to learn of progress at the
conference.
"He is again working at his customary rhythm,'' Lage said of Castro. "His
health is excellent.''
Castro tottered and seemed to briefly pass out while delivering a speech
Saturday under a hot sun in Cuba. Onlookers reacted with anguish and some even
wept, Lage noted.
"But there was also discipline among the population,'' Lage said. "People
stayed at the rally, waiting for news (on Castro's health).''
The 74-year-old Cuban leader quickly recovered, then later Saturday
delivered the rest of then speech from an air conditioned TV studio.
"His fatigue was very brief,'' Lage said. "Some enemies in the
south of this country didn't even have time to uncork their bottles.''
But the episode was a reminder that Castro, who seized power in 1959 in a
revolution, is entering his winter years. Lage brushed off a suggestion that
Cuba might not be prepared for a post-Castro era.
"There will be no post-Castro era,'' said Lage, who is Cuba's main
economic planner. "And not because he won't die; Fidel's ideals and the
ideals of socialism are every day more entrenched in our country.''
Discussing relations with the Bush administration, Lage said he saw a
toughening of policy against Cuba's leftist regime and blasted the Bush team for
planning to spend tens of billions of dollars on a missile defense shield. Lage
said Washington could instead spend the money on a global AIDS fund, for which
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) is seeking $7 billion to
$10 billion.
While Cuba lacks the funds, it can contribute 4,000 doctors to poor
countries to battle AIDS, Lage said, repeating an offer he made in a speech
Monday before the U.N. conference. He said Cuba could even send some of the
doctors to poor regions of the United States, if Washington would permit it.
Lage said AIDS drugs are too expensive, and that such pharmaceuticals should
not be protected by patents, adding Cuba's objection to a growing concern among
developing countries that millions of people who cannot afford the drugs are
dying.
"We don't think people should profit from human life,'' he said,
referring to the drug companies.
Resurrecting La Lupe, a wild and soulful singer whose life fell apart
By Mireya Navarro The New York Times. June 27.
The life and death of La Lupe, a Cuban-born singer known as the "Queen
of Latin Song," is the subject of a new play at the Puerto Rican Traveling
Theater.
In a testimonial at church, La Lupe spoke in rapid staccato, her words
coming out in short bursts of energy as raspy as her singing voice. "They
call me La Lupe, La Yiyiyi, the queen of Latin song," she said.
She told church members that she had once been rich and famous, that she had
had mink coats, expensive cars and a big house. Then her life unraveled in a
string of misfortune. Her husband fell mentally ill, she said; she had to go on
welfare; she fell down while hanging a curtain and injured her back; her
apartment burned; she and her daughter ended up in a homeless shelter.
"Sometimes," La Lupe told the congregation, her words preserved on
tape, "I asked my Lord Jesus Christ why did I have to go through so much to
meet him."
Her indomitable character, and the free spirit of a performer whose
showmanship stunned and thrilled audiences, is the subject of a play, "La
Lupe: My Life, My Destiny," by Carmen Rivera, which begins performances on
June 27 at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater.
La Lupe, who died in 1992 poor and largely forgotten at 53 (Lincoln Hospital
in the Bronx listed the cause as cardiac arrest), is also the subject of a movie
project, with the film and television actress Lauren Velez in the lead role, and
a documentary by Ela Troyano.
The new interest in La Lupe can be partly explained by the commercial appeal
of Latin music today, but fascination with the singer has endured in many
quarters. Her soulful voice has been featured in ballet productions and in the
films of the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, and much of her music has
been reissued in CD's.
In her heyday in the 1960's and 1970's, La Lupe partnered with Tito Puente
and Mongo Santamaria and later became a soloist. She sold millions of records,
performed in Carnegie Hall and appeared on television on Merv Griffin's and Dick
Cavett's shows. She sang everything from Afro-Cuban music to rancheras and even
rock in English, but many of her most popular hits were torch songs "Qué
Te Pedí" (What Did I Ask From You), "Puro Teatro" (Pure
Theater), "La Tirana" (The Woman Tyrant) that spoke defiantly of
troubled love.
When La Lupe, born Guadalupe Victoria Yoli in a poor section of Santiago,
Cuba, moved to New York in 1962, she was already famous. She said she had earned
a teaching degree at her father's insistence but instead had become a singer,
initially in a trio with her first husband and later as a soloist in a small
club in Havana.
In Cuba and the United States, her style was her own. She not only belted
out songs but acted them out in a tranceike state, punctuating them with an
orgasmic "Ay! Aieeyyee!" as if possessed. Anything could happen during
her performances she threw clothing and jewelry to her audiences, kicked off her
shoes, took off fake eyelashes, beat her chest, slapped her thighs, pulled her
hair.
"Like Eartha Kitt and Janis Joplin with plaintive echoes of Edith Piaf,"
wrote Newsweek in 1969. "She makes Jane Birkin, climaxing in 'Je t'aime,'
sound like a puppy," said Look magazine in 1971. "Manic cavorting,"
The New York Times called her performance in 1973.
Luís Caballero, the director of "La Lupe: My Life, My Destiny,"
recalled being "in shock" when he saw her perform at a small club in
his hometown in Puerto Rico when he was a teenager. "She took off the wig,
she threw the shoes, she flung herself at the wall," he said. "She'd
run backstage and come back again. I don't know why. She seemed crazy. People
loved it."
La Lupe's impulsive behavior on stage led to rumors that she took drugs, a
charge her close friends vehemently deny. "La Lupe is the most slandered
person in the world," said Antonia Rey, a Cuban actress who is godmother to
La Lupe's son, René Camaño, now 36. She also had a daughter,
Rainbow García, 26. "Lupe just sang like that. Sometimes they had to
give her oxygen after a performance because she couldn't breathe. She was very
intense."
Mr. Camaño, a music studio assistant in New York City who along with
his sister has been trying to recover publishing rights and royalties for his
mother's music, said that what people took for eccentricity was simply
uniqueness.
"She was a very powerful, independent woman but also a very loving and
caring mother who just was ahead of her time," he said.
In a 1971 interview with Look magazine, La Lupe said: "I think people
like me because I do what they like to but can't get free enough to do."
Ms. Rivera said La Lupe's career faded not only because of her personal
tragedies a back injury required her to temporarily use a wheelchair and later
to walk with a cane but because in business she trusted the wrong people and
signed the wrong contracts. Mr. Camaño said she fell out of favor in the
music industry.
By the mid-80's, when she entered a classroom at Lehman College in the Bronx
as a student, she was not recognized: disheveled, overweight, oddly dressed. In
her church testimonial, La Lupe said she had enrolled in college mainly so she
could use grant money for rent and food. Rosalba Rolón, director of
Pregones Theater in the Bronx, said the singer was an "A" student in
her Caribbean literature class, though she fidgeted constantly. "She had
beautiful diction," said Ms. Rolón. "One day another student
told her: 'You have such a beautiful voice. Do you sing?' She said, 'I like to
sing.' "
In the late 1980's, La Lupe, who lived in public housing and later in an
apartment on East 140th Street in the Bronx, left the Santería religion
to join an evangelical church. She later became an ordained Pentecostal minister
and preacher in the South Bronx.
"She looked at peace, happy," said Ms. Rolón, who became a
close friend and who said she once made La Lupe laugh by confessing that as a
child in Puerto Rico she was not allowed to watch the singer on television
because her mother had given an X rating to La Lupe's performances.
In her last years, La Lupe earned a modest living from recordings of
Christian music.
Ms. Rivera, whose previous plays have featured the stories of women,
including "Julia de Burgos: Child of the Water," about the Puerto
Rican poet, and "La Gringa," about a Latina's search for identity,
said her challenge in telling La Lupe's story was "to sift through the
gossip." She talked to dozens of people who knew the artist and who had
worked with her, she said. Some described La Lupe as a saint, others as
difficult, demanding and argumentative.
After eight months of research, Ms. Rivera said, she used only information
she could confirm with various sources and focused her play on a prophesy made
during La Lupe's initiation in Santería: she would become very famous,
then fall. "I don't know how much attention she paid to it, but that blew
me away," Ms. Rivera said. "That's what the play is about: her trying
to avoid her destiny."
The actress chosen to fill the shoes of this sensual, energy-charged, almost
mythical chanteuse is Sully Díaz, who is better known as the star of
Spanish-language soaps and as a standup comedian, and who has never sung
professionally. But the casting has created a stir among some fans because La
Lupe, a light- skinned Afro-Cuban, is being played by an actress with more
Caucasian features. In promotional photos, makeup was used to widen Ms. Díaz's
nose.
"This was an opportunity for our own people to showcase dark Latina
talent," said Sandra Guzmán, a former editor in chief of Latina
magazine and Soloella.com, a Web site for Latinas. "I'll still support the
play because the story of this woman needs to be told, but the theater screwed
up."
But both Ms. Rivera and Mr. Caballero said Ms. Díaz's acting talent
and voice, which resembles La Lupe's, made her the outright winner among the 60
or so actresses who auditioned for the role. Ms. Díaz was born in the
Bronx of Puerto Rican parents, grew up in Puerto Rico and now lives in Miami. "I'm
not black, but I'm not white," she said in an interview, noting that as a
Puerto Rican she was a mix of races.
The role of La Lupe demands 14 songs and 13 monologues, and Ms. Díaz
said she had been busy listening to recordings, reading interviews and speaking
to people who had seen La Lupe perform. One is the play's stage manager, Adolfo
Vázquez, 55, who was a regular at "La Red," the Havana club
where La Lupe first gained fame.
"Dáte, dáte," Mr. Vazquez coached in Spanish during
a recent rehearsal, urging Ms. Díaz to pound her chest while singing "Puro
Teatro."
"This is not an imitation of La Lupe," Ms. Diaz said later, "this
is an interpretation. This is a character everybody knows."
Miriam Colón, the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater's artistic director,
said that she had commissioned the play, which is billed as "a drama with
music," not so much because of La Lupe's art as because of her capacity for
survival. "There are people who are knocked down and never get up,"
Ms. Colón said. "La Lupe kept getting up and finding a way to
continue engaged in life."
Group Seeks Indictment Against Castro
By George Gedda, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON, 27 (AP) - The Cuban-American Nation Foundation is thinking big.
The nation's premier anti-Castro group wants the Bush administration to
convene a federal grand jury to determine whether murder indictments should be
handed down against President Fidel Castro in the shooting down of two
Miami-based planes north of Cuba in February 1996.
The attack by MiG jet fighters killed four Cuban-Americans, three of whom
were American citizens. Cuba insisted that the planes were shot down over Cuban
air space but independent investigators sided with the U.S. view that the attack
happened in international air space.
Official discussions have been held on the indictment issue, and the
Foundation appears to have the administration's ear.
"This is a simple matter of justice,'' says Dennis Hays, a Foundation
executive vice president. "We look to the administration to act
appropriately.''
Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites) discussed the issue this
week during a luncheon meeting in Miami with Cuban-American leaders, who urged
that Castro be indicted. Ashcroft asked a number of questions during the meeting
but participants said he remained noncommittal.
The Foundation's quest for an indictment appears to be a long shot.
Government officials and other experts say the sovereign immunity of heads of
state is a well-established principle.
If the United States indicts Castro, it would set a precedent that could be
used to indict American presidents. One government official known for his
strongly anti-Castro views said any attempt to indict Castro would be a serious
mistake.
Wayne Smith, a former career diplomat who supports a return to normal
relations with Cuba, said it would be very difficult to indict Castro. Without
defending the 1996 attack, he noted that the Cuban-American fliers had been
warned to keep their distance from the island.
And, Smith added, "There is no tape of Fidel Castro giving the order to
fire.''
It is hard to overestimate the Foundation's influence here these days.
Cuban-American votes for George W. Bush in Florida last fall contributed to
Al Gore (news - web sites)'s defeat in the presidential election. With
Cuban-American support, Bush chose Cuban-born Otto Reich to head the State
Department's Latin America bureau, he faces a tough Senate confirmation fight.
The recent trial in Miami of five Cuban agents has given the Foundation
encouragement that an indictment of Castro may be within reach. All were
convicted on spy charges.
One of the five, Gerardo Hernandez, faces up to life in prison for his role
in the deaths of the Cuban-American fliers.
Prosecutors said Hernandez knew about the alleged plot because he warned two
agents who infiltrated the group not to fly during a four-day period that
encompassed the fatal flights.
Former U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey, a Democrat, told The Miami Herald that
Hernandez' conviction "makes it less unthinkable'' that a South Florida
grand jury may someday return a Castro indictment.
Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., says justice in the deaths of the Cuban-American
fliers will not be done "unless the criminal conspiracy is traced up the
chain of command to its ultimate source. This chain almost certainly leads to
Fidel Castro.''
Cuba, of course, sees itself as the victim of aggression emanating from
South Florida. In a letter published last week in the Cuban media, the five
convicted Cubans said their mission in Miami was not to harm Americans but to
expose alleged terrorist plans by Cuban-Americans against the island.
Cuban-American anti-Castro groups "want to continue to update a
long-standing history of invasions, sabotages, biological aggressions and other
similar actions,'' the five said.
Without referring to the four dead Cuban-Americans, the letter said 3,478
people had died over the years as a result of these "aggressions.''
EDITOR'S NOTE - George Gedda has covered foreign affairs for The
Associated Press since 1968. | 
