Los Angeles Times
Mexican Envoy Seeks to Forge U.S.-Cuba Ties
By Mark Fineman, Times Staff Writer. Sunday, March 18, 2001
HAVANA--In the two months since Ricardo Pascoe arrived here as Mexico's
ambassador to Cuba, he has met with President Fidel Castro nearly a dozen times,
briefed visiting U.S. intelligence officials and negotiated multimillion-dollar
trade deals with the Communist nation.
And received just one death threat.
After all, he will not only be the point man in trying to restore
historically close Mexican-Cuban relations but will also serve as an ideological
translator for the United States and Cuba in an attempt to bridge four decades
of Cold War animosity.
The blue-eyed 50-year-old is a man fond of complexities and acquainted
with conflict. He's a former Trotskyite and political prisoner and an architect
of Mexico's modern political left, but he owes his job to Mexico's new
center-right president, Vicente Fox. His appointment in December triggered a
furious 10-hour debate within the opposition party he co-founded, the leftist
Democratic Revolution Party.
Although he earned a practical doctorate from the London School of
Economics, he has also received a more ethereal philosophy degree from New York
University. And his many years in the United States and Cuba have made him
fluent not only in the languages of both but also in their political cultures--a
combination tailor-made for the challenge ahead.
"My feeling is that we can play a real role in creating some sort
of dialogue between Washington and Havana," Pascoe said in an interview
here last week. "It's a crucial and difficult moment. But there are also
great opportunities."
Pascoe's optimism comes at a time when even he concedes that the
prospect of Washington ending its policy of isolating Cuba--including a
39-year-old economic embargo of the island--appears grim, at best.
During his confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
labeled Castro "an aging starlet who will not change in his lifetime."
Powell added that the growing number of U.S. lawmakers who want to lift the
embargo to benefit American business "should do nothing that encourages him
or gives him the wherewithal to stay longer."
Conversely, the Cuban Communist Party daily Granma last week rated
President Bush's performance during his first 50 days in office as "failed."
It trumpeted economic decline, escalating violence in U.S. homes and schools
and, citing last month's bombing of Iraq, a foreign policy seeking to make
Washington "again a Cold War capital."
Castro, meeting Friday with a group of reporters, editors and
executives of the Tribune Co., which includes the Los Angeles Times, described
his approach to the new administration: "Watch. Wait. And see."
And Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, at the same meeting, said of
relations with the U.S. under the Bush administration: "I'm not optimistic."
Perez Roque spoke of "the same prefabricated faces" in Bush's
key foreign policy positions and an unwillingness to take on Miami's small but
vocal anti-Castro lobby. "They have surrendered before the battle even
began," he said. "There is a risk that cannot be understated that
relations can get worse, especially if the U.S. government isn't able to
withstand the pressures that are being exerted by the extreme right groups in
Miami."
Political Factors in Florida Cited
Analysts suggest that Bush is beholden to Cuban Americans in southern
Florida because they voted for him en masse in the state that decided his
presidency. That's also the state where his brother is governor--and up for
reelection next year.
"All the expressions that I hear coming from Washington indicate
that there is a kind of hard line on this issue," Pascoe acknowledged,
specifically citing Bush's choice of Cuban American Otto J. Reich as his key
advisor on Western Hemisphere affairs.
Nonetheless, the new Mexican ambassador said he hopes to engender a new
dialogue with original strategic options. And he points to some intriguing
details: personal histories, relationships and, as he puts it, the sheer "genetics"
of the three countries' leaders.
"I've been hearing a lot about this empathy between Presidents
Bush and Fox," Pascoe said, pointing to the chemistry between the U.S. and
Mexican leaders during Bush's first foreign trip after taking office. "Some
are saying it's because they're both landed gentlemen. Well, the curious thing
about all of this is that Fidel is also a landed gentleman."
Pascoe, who acknowledged that he has known Castro for "a very long
time," recalled the "extraordinary empathy" between Castro and
Fox when the Cuban leader attended the Mexican presidential inauguration in
December.
"Fidel was asking Fox: 'What are the good Spanish wines? Do they
travel well? Where can I get them?' " Pascoe recalled.
"In other circumstances, the three of them--Fidel, Fox and
Bush--because of their backgrounds, could sit down together and be buddies. But
in these circumstances, the one person who can do this with Fidel is Fox."
There is a long history of Mexico playing a hidden yet historic role in
subtly influencing U.S.-Cuban relations and even defusing crises between the two
foes.
Most recently, during the 1994 rafter crisis that sent thousands of
Cubans to the U.S.--and an untold number to their deaths--Mexican President
Carlos Salinas de Gortari used Mexico's "special relationship" with
Havana to intervene and stem the flow, according to Salinas' autobiography. He
later used his influence to arrange face-to-face U.S.-Cuban meetings that led to
a bilateral immigration treaty and a continuing dialogue on the issue.
Yet it was Salinas whom many now blame for that relationship falling
into disrepair under the six-year administration of his successor, Ernesto
Zedillo. First, an economic time bomb exploded a month into Zedillo's term,
forcing him to seek a $50-billion bailout package, in which the U.S. pledged $20
billion. Some analysts, including Pascoe, strongly suspect that getting Zedillo
to distance Mexico from Cuba was "a string attached" to the U.S.
bailout.
Then, a fleeing Salinas exiled himself in Havana, infuriating Zedillo
and his top aides. The net effect: For the last several years, Zedillo's
administration had declined to sign a protocol sanctioning and protecting trade
between Mexico and Cuba, and the $400 million in trade between the two countries
in 1995 fell to $122 million last year.
But next month, Pascoe said, the two countries will sign that trade
protocol in Havana. Already, tens of millions of dollars in deals have been
struck between Mexico's private sector and Cuba's hybrid of state-run,
quasi-capitalist companies.
Those deals may well have been behind the death threat he received last
month: a fax that Cuban authorities later traced to the anti-Castro group Alpha
66 in Miami, which called it an expression of displeasure rather than a threat.
"We need to build a new way of looking at this issue of U.S.-Cuban
relations," Pascoe said. "And Fox is convinced, as am I, that one very
important way to do that is to build up trade."
U.S. Policy Affects Mexican Trade Deals
To do so, Pascoe knows he must tread lightly. The 1996 Helms-Burton
Act, which punishes non-U.S. companies and their directors for doing business
with Cuba, has already helped torpedo an ambitious, $200-million Mexican
investment in the island's partly privatized telephone company. Recent pending
Mexican deals for the export of 5,000 tons of beans and for a flour mill and
even Coca-Cola bottling here, he said, either use loopholes in the act or are
sponsored by Mexican companies with no ties to the U.S.
But the Fox administration, he stressed, isn't in it for the money. It
is in Mexico's best interest, he said, to help improve relations between two
countries that have "literally trapped Mexico in the middle" of a Cold
War dispute.
And Pascoe, a voracious reader whose love of the complex is so great
that he cites as his favorite book James Joyce's "Ulysses,"
acknowledged that to break through 40 years of mistrust he must shatter some
deep-seated U.S. notions about Cuba, communism and Castro.
Among his ammunition for the Americans: Cuba now has a hybrid economy
in which about 60% of its 11 million people have access to dollars.
And Castro, Pascoe insisted, already is putting in place a transition
of power to prepare Cuba for what the Communist leader has called "the
post-Castro era."
"He won't step down," Pascoe said. "But there are many
ways of stepping aside. He is not going to disappear until he dies, because he's
really interested in whatever this is [that is Cuba today] continuing after he's
gone. But he's building his transition. He's creating a situation where there
will be a passing of power--a prime minister, perhaps."
Of Castro's brother Raul, head of the Cuban military, second secretary
of the Communist Party and Castro's personally designated successor, Pascoe
added: "The brother can ensure stability in that transition. But, from a
political point of view, they're going to be moving in another direction.
"I think Fidel is going to surprise us," he added with a
knowing smile, "and that surprise might even come very soon."
Emilio Milian; Denounced Extremist Cubans
Sunday, March 18, 2001.
Emilio M. Milian, 69, a Miami-based broadcaster who opposed Communism
and denounced the extremism of some anti-Castro forces in the United States. His
outspoken views made him the target of a terrorist car bombing in 1976 that cost
him both his legs and nearly his life. Born in the small Cuban village of Sagua
la Grande, Milian started working in radio at the age of 15 and later quit
medical school at the University of Havana to become a full-time newsman. Milian
left Cuba in 1965 along with his wife and three children, eventually settling in
Miami. In Florida, Milian ran a print shop before starting a popular radio
program on WQBA. No one was ever charged with the 1976 bombing and, despite
continued harassment and death threats, Milian continued to be a force in
broadcasting until failing health forced his retirement late last year. On
Thursday at his home in Miami after a long battle with kidney and heart
ailments.
Flying the Fast Lane to Havana
By Barry Zwick, Times Staff Writer. Sunday, March 18, 2001
HAVANA--There is a right way, a wrong way and a very wrong way for an
American living in Southern California to go to Cuba. I've tried all three.
On my third try, the right one, it took me two phone calls, one check
and 41/2 hours to get from Los Angeles to Havana.
For you, depending on where your family lives, what you do for a living
and how good your imagination is, it might take as many as four calls and maybe
a letter. Or you might have to take a package tour. But, 40 years after Congress
barred commerce with our communist neighbor, you can go to Cuba legally and more
easily than ever.
Technically, it's not illegal for Americans to come to Cuba, only to "trade
with the enemy"-purchase goods and services here. And they do come, by the
tens of thousands, most by way of a third country.
Two years ago a direct route was opened from Miami, then from New York,
in the form of charter flights. Last April a Los Angeles charter was added.
Tickets are sold to approved travelers by outfits licensed by the Treasury
Department. For the flights from LAX, that's a new firm, Cuba Travel Services,
based in Long Beach.
Cuba Travel Services has an exclusive license and offers weekly flights
on an Airbus 320 from Grupo TACA, an airline based in El Salvador. The agency
screens potential passengers to ensure they qualify. Generally, those who make
the cut include people with relatives in Cuba, journalists, people doing
research in a professional field and athletes in international matches. I passed
as a journalist but never had to prove I was one.
At check-in for a Saturday afternoon flight last month, I chatted with
pediatricians who teach at UC San Francisco and were off to have a close look at
pediatric care in Havana. My seatmate was a Cuban American on his third visit
back to see family.
Lisa Perez of Cuba Travel Services was there to see us off and to tell
us how to stay out of trouble with the Cuban government-and our own.
'There are 130 seats on the plane, and we're three-quarters full,"
Perez told me. "Nearly everybody is either visiting relatives or doing
research. Officially, there are no tourists on this plane."
It was a happy flight. Drinks were free and unlimited-Chilean wine,
Salvadoran beer, Puerto Rican rum. For dinner we had a choice of pasta or spicy
Creole chicken, one of the best airline dishes I've had in years. The movie was
"Charlie's Angels," shown on drop-down screens in front of each seat.
We landed in Havana on time and walked under a starlit sky to the
baggage claim area at Jose Marti International Airport. A young woman from
Havanatur, the government tourist agency, whisked me out to an air-conditioned
van. In 25 minutes I was checking into the Hotel Habana Libre Tryp, the former
Havana Hilton.
Made over by the Spanish Tryp chain into a palace with a gleaming gold
and white interior, the Habana Libre is the biggest and liveliest hotel in town
and among the five most luxurious. My enormous room, illuminated by nine
spotlights and three lamps, with a wall of glass facing the Florida Strait, cost
me $108.50 a night.
By midnight I was on my way to the lobby bar to drink my first
mojito-rum with lemon juice, sugar, bitters and soda poured over a mint leaf. On
the way, I watched security guards herd young Cuban women wearing hot pants,
halter tops and stiletto heels into an express elevator to the rooftop disco.
Cubans who are not hotel employees are forbidden to enter guest rooms, and
security people were everywhere in the hotel. Still, it was Saturday night, the
lobby was humming, and fun was in the air. Nearly 13,000 Americans disembarked
at Jose Marti in January, according to Maritza Rodriguez, a marketing researcher
for Havana's luxury hotels. This projects to 156,000 this year, up from 140,00
in 2000 and 130,000 in 1999. The vast majority of them were scofflaws.
Technically, an American who visits Cuba without our government's
permission is in violation of the Trading With the Enemy Act. Although no
American tourist has been prosecuted in years, the Americans I met who had come
to Cuba by way of Canada or Mexico feared being found out.
Sunday morning, the Plaza de Armas in Havana's Spanish colonial old city
was swarming with Americans. They were friendly and eager to talk. But not about
how they got here.
I met just one couple willing to come clean. Danny Epner and Mindy
Wexler of New York had flown from Montreal on Cubana Air, the Cuban government
airline, for $275 round trip. "We're planning to spend four weeks in Cuba,"
Wexler said. "We're holding the budget down by staying in casas
particulares."
She was referring to the privately owned bed-and-breakfast inns
legalized to bring in dollars.
That evening, I asked the desk clerk at the Habana Libre how many
Americans were staying there. "Not more than 10 or 20," he said. "I
think they usually stay at casas particulares."
I heard a reproachful voice: "Because you don't meet the real
Cuban people at five-star hotels."
She was standing behind me. About 80 pounds, maybe 20 years old. A
honey-haired waif with huge green eyes and a pouty mouth. She was wearing
tattered little shoes and carrying a ratty little backpack. She said she had
walked three miles in the dark to meet her sister here, and now she couldn't
find her. She said she was a barber-did I know I needed a haircut?-and could
show me the real Havana the next day.
To the extent that I had any plan for my week in Havana, it was to sit
in sidewalk cafes, drink daiquiris and watch classic old American cars go by.
Instead, I would leave the world of air-conditioning, Mercedes Benz taxis and
hygiene as we know it. I would enter the world of Yadia Carrasco.
The next morning we met outside the hotel. Yadia hailed an illegal
private taxi, a noisy Russian Lada, on a back street, negotiated a $2 fare for a
15-minute trip and took me to the Mercado de Artesanias on the waterfront four
miles west of downtown. It was the brightest collection of folk art I had ever
seen. Yadia led me to painted idols of huge-breasted, cigar-smoking black
Santeria figurines called orishas selling for $6, to hand-woven baby blankets in
turquoise and peach and to tropical paintings in blazing colors. The orisha
carvings were not schlock tourist souvenirs. They represented Orchun, the
goddess of female pleasure. Yadia said she prayed to her every morning.
We took a bicotaxi, a bicycle with two passenger seats under a canopy,
past tree-shaded rows of pastel limestone houses with wrought-iron balconies to
Aries, a paladar near the University of Havana downtown. A paladar is a
privately owned restaurant, another 1990s innovation to bring in dollars. Aries
had seating for 12, the legal maximum, at four tables in a pretty room with pink
curtains, primitive paintings on the walls and a tank of fish.
The waiter told us not to ask for bread because he didn't have any.
Yadia, bent on showing me the real Cuba, took me to see the kitchen. It
was thick with flies. There was no running water and no soap; dishes were
cleaned by a swish through a tub of gray water with white specks of lard
floating on top.
This definitely called for wine. I took a bottle out of my courier bag
and opened it with the corkscrew from my Swiss Army knife. I poured some for
Yadia and me and for a Cuban tour guide at the next table. He was escorting
three Scots who looked Yadia up and down and said, not very quietly, that she
was the first Cuban girl they'd seen who didn't know how to dress.
Yadia and I ate grilled red snapper, along with tomato-and-cucumber
salad, black beans, French fries and white rice. Yadia told me about her brief
career in nursing school. She said I should just forget about sanitario and
parasitos and have a good time, and I did. We laughed about the amoebas swimming
on our plates.
Yadia ate every drop quickly, and I began to wonder how long it had
been since her last meal. The bill came to $29.
We took a long walk along the Malecon, Havana's beautifully restored
seafront promenade, shopped for posters at the mercado beside the cathedral,
stopped at a peso-only stand where Yadia bought me a striped scoop of ice cream
for the equivalent of 4 cents, then walked to the neighborhood where she lived.
In Cayo Hueso, a typical Havana quarter of decaying old tenements, many
residents were spending their day off working on home repair.
Yadia's mother and sister were patching the ceiling of their three-room
apartment, and they were covered with plaster dust. The family got its water
from the central courtyard, where there was also a privy. Upstairs, in the
windowless bedroom where the four of them slept, I met Yadia's mother's
boyfriend. He was splicing a wire to bring new life to a flickering bulb that
was the room's only source of light.
Two days later, I stopped by to see Yadia's mother, who earns the peso
equivalent of $7.50 a month. I had brought gifts of soap, shampoo and
toothpaste, all rationed in Cuba. I was wondering, I said, if she had time to
take me to the street of Santeria, the closed-off block where the orishas are
enshrined. Yadia had told me about it, but as a skinny old white guy carrying an
expensive camera, I was not about to wander this sprawling slum alone.
Yadia's mother turned out to be a wonderful guide. She led me through a
maze of alleys teeming with people-men pushing wheelbarrows filled with stone
blocks, little boys on battered bicycles, bigger boys playing stickball, girls
parading around in bright bolts of Spandex sewn at home into tight little tops
and skirts.
Every inch of the Callejon de Habel (the proper name of the street of
Santeria) was painted with artist Salvador Gonzalez's cheerful images of gods
and goddesses dancing and lusting, and with poems speaking of matters more
earthy than divine.
I asked Elias Aseff, keeper of the orishas, if they demanded
sacrifices, and he said, "Yes, small birds, red wine."
And were there days when they fasted?
"Oh, no," he said. "They like to rumba."
For seven days and seven nights in Havana, I enjoyed sweet rum drinks,
enchanting music, open-air circuses and the joys of daily walks on streets where
everyone smiled. Day after day, Cubans approached me to practice their English,
to thank me for coming to their country, to ask me to send my friends.
On Friday I was at the Plaza de Armas watching a troupe of street
performers entertain an audience of schoolchildren. Some of the performers
paraded on stilts, some played horns or drums, and all led the children in song.
I had been on my way to the Museum of Rum, but the cheerful innocence of the
scene touched my heart, and I could not pull myself away. Maybe I was visibly
moved, because a clown jumped off his unicycle to shake my hand. "I am
Roberto Salas," he said, "the manager of this troupe. Are you having a
good time?"
The next day, Saturday, was my last in Cuba. Yadia stopped by to say
goodbye. I handed her a thank-you note. I had traveled a lot, I wrote. In the
past, when I landed in a foreign country where no one knew me, I was nobody. And
when I left, I was still nobody. But now, thanks to the overwhelming hospitality
of Yadia and her mother, and of so many other Cubans I had met, I felt more
important in their world than I did in my own.
* * *
Guidebook: Going to Cuba
Getting there: A nonstop charter flight leaves LAX for Havana (and
returns) every Saturday. The price is $670 round trip.
Arranging a trip: Travelers must qualify for legal travel to Cuba under
U.S. regulations (see story). For information: Office of Foreign Assets Control,
Department of the Treasury, telephone (202) 622-2480, fax (202) 622-1657,
Internet http://www.treas.gov/ofac.
Calling Cuba from the U.S. is difficult to impossible. Visas, flights,
insurance and land arrangements are handled by Cuba Travel Services, tel. (310)
772-2822; http://www.latocuba.com. At least 200 nonprofit organizations offer
group tours of Cuba. Among them: National Geographic Expeditions, Nov. 8-18
(photography); a general tour in November may be added. $3,950 double occupancy.
Tel. (888) 966-8687, http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngexpeditions.
Global Exchange, 13-day "Cuban Rhythms" tour, $1,350 double
occupancy, May 5 and June 2 and 30. Other Cuba tours also available. Tel. (800)
497-1994, http://www.globalexchange.org/tours/auto.
* Where to stay: Hotel Habana Libre Tryp, Calle L between 23 and 25
streets; local tel. 733-4011, fax 733-3141, http://www.tryp.es/e-hlibre.htm.
This is the old Havana Hilton, Fidel Castro's headquarters before the 1959
revolution. Rates: $108 single, $145 double. I looked into 11 casas
particulares-Cuban B&Bs-and loved the rooms in these three (all with
air-conditioning and private bath): Jose A. Perez, 508 Calle K, between 25th and
27th streets, Vedado district; tel. 732-3269. Rate: $35. Irma Avila de Lazo, 159
Calle G, Vedado district; tel. 732-7721. Rate: $35.
La Casa de Ana, 107 Calle F, Vedado district; tel. 32-2360 or 31-2344.
Rates: $35 to $40.
* Where to eat: El Aljibe, Avenida 7, between 24th and 26th streets,
Miramar district, tel. 24-1583. Signature dish of grilled garlic chicken with
rice, beans, french fries, fried plantains and a salad, $12.
Habana Cafe, Calle Paseo at Malecon, Vedado district, tel. 33-3636.
Cuba's answer to the Hard Rock Cafe, without the amps. Fish or chicken dinner is
about $15 after 8 p.m., when the entertainment, which might be big band, rock or
rumba, begins.
* For more information: Because the U.S. has no diplomatic relations
with Cuba, there's no Cuban information agency in the U.S. The Cuban
government's Web site is http://www.cubaweb.cu.
Barry Zwick is a news editor at The Times.
Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times | 