Yahoo! February 18, 2002.
Cuba players tell tale of defection
By Adrian Sainz, Associated Press Writer. Fri Feb 15, 6:22
PM ET
MIAMI - Cuban soccer player Alberto Delgado was ready to follow his teammate
and friend out of the busy hotel lobby, into the streets of Los Angeles County
and the freedom of the United States.
But he forgot his wallet.
Delgado and his countryman, Rey Angel Martinez — forwards on the team
Cuba sent to the CONCACAF Gold Cup — still managed to defect Jan. 25, but
only after Delgado sprinted upstairs to his hotel room to get the wallet and the
list of important phone numbers it contained.
"Thank God we're here," Martinez said.
Martinez, 20, and Delgado, 22, spoke publicly for the first time Friday
about their dash out of the lobby of the Burbank Hilton and their successful
escape during the tournament, the championship of soccer's North and Central
American and Caribbean region.
"We realized that we had the possibility of reaching the dream of every
young Cuban, which is to be free," Martinez said in Spanish. "Though
we were playing in the free United States, we realized that clearly we were not
really free."
Flanked by Cuban-American National Foundation executive director Joe Garcia
and Tony Sanchez, an uncle of Martinez who helped them defect, the players said
they told no one of their plans.
"We traveled here with many security people," Delgado said. "We
couldn't call any family members, we couldn't write letters ... We had to be in
the hotel 24 hours a day."
Added Martinez: "It would have been an enormous risk to have someone
find out that we were going to stay, because if they caught us, (the Cuban
authorities) would make us disappear."
On the morning of the defection, Martinez left the team breakfast and told
Delgado that it was time.
While Delgado hurried upstairs, Martinez ran out of the lobby. Delgado soon
followed, and they both met up and managed to call for help.
"When we were out of the hotel, we called Rey's uncle from a public
phone and he got in contact with people from the foundation in Los Angeles,"
Delgado said.
Delgado said the pair spent the following days moving from one safe house to
another. Representatives from the Cuban soccer team reported the men missing,
and it was mentioned that the men had been kidnapped, an allegation that later
was proved false, Garcia said.
"Rey and Alberto's fear was not with the American authorities,"
said Sanchez, who has provided both with a place to stay in Miami. "The
danger was there were Cuban authorities still in Los Angeles, and that was the
worry because they were still in danger of being caught."
They eventually left Los Angeles, and, because their passports were in the
hands of the Cuban authorities, flying or taking a train to Miami became an
untenable option. Sanchez ended up driving the two to Miami, taking a "circuitous
route" that took a week, he said.
"We had traveled to other countries before as athletes, but we never
had the chance to go to the United States," Delgado said. "We came
here, saw how beautiful it was, and we decided to stay."
Delgado, who left behind his wife, mother and other relatives in Cuba, said
Cuban athletes have almost everything they need in Cuba — but only while
with the team.
"The athletes have diets in which we received enough food, but what
happens when you go home?" said Delgado, who is shorter and stockier than
the tall, wiry Martinez.
"We had to invent ways to get food, even a piece of meat for my family,"
Delgado said. "The conditions there aren't good enough, there's no money. I
had to sell a shirt or a pair of pants for food."
Martinez, who also left behind some family in Cuba, and Delgado want to play
for Major League Soccer but said they hadn't yet heard from MLS officials. They
may experience trouble receiving clearance to play in the United States, Garcia
said.
Regardless, the two are happy that their ordeal is over and said they want
to get their families to the United States as quickly as possible.
"We're prepared for anything," Martinez said. "If we can't
play soccer, we're ready to work or to study, knowing that living in this
country will give us a better future than in Cuba."
Cuban-American skater brings pride
By Adrian Sainz, Associated Press Writer. Sat Feb 16, 4:44
PM ET
MIAMI (AP) - Mention Olympic speed skater Jennifer Rodriguez to
Cuban-Americans here and the reaction is either effusive pride or: "What's
speed skating?"
Despite growing up in a city where ice is confined indoors, Rodriguez —
believed to be the first Cuban-American in the Winter Olympics — is
expected to do well in the 1,000-, 1,500- and 5,000-meter events coming up
Saturday and Sunday.
But far from the ice and snow of Salt Lake City, where Rodriguez so far has
finished seventh in the 3,000 despite breaking her own national record, many in
balmy Miami are following her races.
"Imagine that, a Cuban at the Winter Olympics," beamed Omar Lopez
Montenegro, director of human rights for the Little Havana headquarters of the
Cuban-American National Foundation.
"That's unimaginable, but it's another sign of where we've come as a
culture and how we exceed expectation," Montenegro said.
The foundation's executive director, Joe Garcia, says Rodriguez's success
illustrates a difference between communist Cuba and the United States.
"It shows the greatness of this country," Garcia said. "She
exemplifies the potential that human freedom can give you."
Born in Miami to a Cuban exile father and American mother, Rodriguez, 25,
began skating competitively at age 5 and has made 12 World Championships.
She finished 13th or higher in four events at the 1998 Winter Olympics in
Nagano, taking fourth place in the 3000 meters, and captured her first U.S.
all-around title in 2000.
But at a popular Little Havana cafeteria, Mayra Rodriguez gave a quizzical
look when told that a Cuban woman is competing at the Winter Olympics.
"You're kidding. What event?" said Rodriguez, who is not related
to the Olympian. "That's incredible. Are there any ice skating rinks in
Miami?"
At Little Havana's Maximo Gomez Park, men in shirt sleeves rattle dominos
and talk about the war on terrorism, Fidel Castro and the sad-sack Florida
Marlins — but not the Olympics.
"So they have a sport where they race on ice skates?" said Teodoro
Santana, who like most exiles in Miami left Cuba in the early 1960s. "I
don't like the Olympics. Just give me baseball and boxing. It's not cold in
Cuba."
"But now I know, and I will cheer for my compatriot," Santana
said.
Expat Cuban launches book collection
By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer. Sat Feb 16, 1:25 PM
ET
HAVANA (AP) - Trying to build cultural bridges, the daughter of a well-known
revolutionary who later turned against Fidel Castro is launching a new series
of books by authors from the island and abroad.
"Through books we become closer — we form, we sculpt, we reinvent
Cuba," Patricia Gutierrez-Menoyo said as she presented her publishing
house's new Cuban Cultural Collection to a crowded hall at Havana's
International Book Festival on Friday.
The nine books by diverse writers do not touch on political subjects, and
Gutierrez-Menoyo said she had no problem getting permission from the Cuban
government to sell them.
First presented late last year at an international book fair in Miami, the
Spanish-language collection includes "El viaje mas largo (The Longest
Journey)" a novel by Leonardo Padura, a writer who lives on the island; "Mi
vida saxual (My Sax-ual Life)," a biography by Cuban exile musician Paquito
D'Rivera; and "Mitos y Leyendas (Myths and Legends)," a colorful mix
of centuries-old Cuban beliefs and recipes by Natalia Bolivar, one of the
country's leading experts on Afro-Cuban religions.
Gutierrez-Menoyo, who owns the Plaza Mayor publishing house in San Juan,
Puerto Rico, said she funded the collection through proceeds from textbooks she
prints because she saw "a need to rescue our culture."
"I'm reinventing our culture, because we are losing it,"
Gutierrez-Menoyo said after the presentation.
"For the last 43 years we have not had enough ways for all of us to be
Cuban together, no matter where we have lived" she said, referring to the
start of the Cuban revolution that brought Castro to power. "We hope this
will help."
Gutierrez-Menoyo, now in her 30s, has lived firsthand the pain and nostalgia
of Cubans separated by geography and political belief.
Her father, Eloy Gutierrez-Menoyo, was a commander who fought alongside
Castro during the revolution in the late 1950s.
The elder Gutierrez-Menoyo later broke ranks and went to Miami, where he
became military leader for the newly formed anti-Castro group Alpha 66. In 1964,
he landed in Cuba with three men in hopes of launching an armed uprising. But he
was captured and went on to spend 22 years in Cuban prisons.
Today, he lives in Miami where his organization Cambio Cubano promotes
peaceful dialogue with Castro.
"It is the hour to establish a dialogue," said writer Amir Valle,
whose contribution to the collection is "Las puertas de la noche (The Doors
of the Night)," described as a dark novel that explores the diverse roots
of Cuban identity. Valle, who lives on the island, said the younger
Gutierrez-Menoyo had "a very Cuban heart, even though she was born in
Miami."
The new collection "is an embrace that stretches the width of the
island and extends all the way to Miami," Cuban writer Guillermo Jimenez
said at the event.
The writers also said the collection gave Cuban authors living in exile a
chance to publish works that are not blatantly political.
Cuban writer Pedro Perez-Sarduy, who now lives in London, said he had a hard
time publishing the novel based on his mother's remembrances, "Las criadas
de La Habana (The Maids of Havana)," because "it wasn't anti-Castro."
A little more than a year after it was accepted by Plaza Mayor, the book was in
print.
Carmen Duarte, who lives in Miami, said being able to present her novel "Hasta
la vuelta (Until the turn)," at book fairs in both Miami and Havana helped
establish "a road of communication, of understanding, between Cubans who
live on the island and those who live abroad." | 
