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The Miami
Herald, June 5, 2002.
U.S. diplomat in Cuba will leave post
By Nancy San Martin. nsanmartin@herald.com
Vicki Huddleston, the top American diplomat in Cuba, has been nominated by
President Bush as ambassador to Mali and will be replaced in Havana by James
Cason, a longtime Department of State official.
Cason serves in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs in Washington. His
appointment does not require senatorial confirmation and he is expected to be at
his new post at the end of Huddleston's tour duty in mid-September.
James Carragher, the State Department's coordinator for Cuban affairs, said
of Cason: "He brings the same dedication and determination to carry out the
president's policy.''
Huddleston's departure will end what has been a sometimes antagonistic
relationship with the Cuban government. Huddleston, a career member of the
Foreign Service, has been chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana since
September 1999.
''We've been extremely pleased with ambassador Huddleston and we're sorry to
see her go,'' said Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National
Foundation. "We're looking forward to meeting [Cason] and hope he's up to
the reinvigorated challenge the president has outlined for Cuba.''
Huddleston irritated the government on various occasions by meeting with
dissidents on the island and promoting their cause abroad. President Fidel
Castro of Cuba has even called her a spy and recently lashed out at her publicly
for passing out numerous short-wave radios across the island.
Huddleston has dismissed the charges, saying the radios are gifts that give
Cubans the ability to tune in to various sources of information, even if that
includes the U.S.-supported Radio Martí.
As the U.S. government representative in Cuba, Huddleston also has been
targeted by government loyalists opposed to U.S. policy toward Cuba. Before
becoming the principal officer at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana,
Huddleston had worked in Africa, Haiti and Latin America.
Cason also has experience in the Western Hemisphere, with diplomatic tours
in various Latin American nations, including Honduras and Bolivia. He also
served as deputy chief of U.S. Embassy in Jamaica and has been with the State
Department since the mid-1970s, Carragher said.
Neither Cason nor Huddleston could be reached for comment Tuesday evening.
Huddleston was among five selections announced by Bush to serve as
ambassadors to African countries and the Persian Gulf sultanate Oman.
Cuban mom reunites with son
By Luisa Yanez. lyanez@herald.com. Posted on Wed, Jun. 05,
2002
Aurelia Valdés, 70, said she paid a smuggler $8,000 to sneak her into
Miami from Cuba. She arrived Tuesday at dawn in Key Biscayne, too slow to leap
from the boat and run to a waiting car. She and another disoriented migrant were
left stranded at the dock.
''They left us behind,'' said Valdés, a retired cook, slowed by a bad
knee, wrapped in an elastic bandage.
Her pain was eased by the sight of her son, the reason she risked the
eight-hour trip.
''I had applied for a tourist visa five times and had been turned down. This
was the only way left for me to get here,'' she said, kissing her son, Lanel
Delgado, who came on a raft almost a decade ago.
Valdés said she saved for years to pay the smuggler from money her
only son sent her. Delgado had recently brought his teenage daughter to the U.S.
-- a girl Valdés called ''her pride and joy.'' She also left Cuba because
she had never seen her 1-year-old grandson born in Miami.
Valdés said she handed the cash to the boat pilot and then prepared
for the dangerous dart across the Florida Straits.
Also left Tuesday on the docks: Miguel Martín, 38, who said he didn't
want to leave Valdés by herself.
''I come to work,'' said Martín, an auto repairman. He left behind a
wife and four kids. "I want to help them from here and maybe bring them.''
Sporting sunglasses, a Nike baseball cap, and other U.S.-made clothes sent
to him by his twin brother in Miami, Martín said he paid for the trip by
selling his 1959 Rambler for $7,000. Martín said they were part of a
group 10 Cubans who left early Tuesday from Santa Fe, in western Cuba.
Under the Cuban Adjustment Act, Cuba migrants who make it to land are
eligible to apply for U.S. residency after a year and a day, said U.S.
Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman, Rodney Germaine.
Valdés and Martín said they were unsure what to do after their
boat pilot in Miami abandoned them near Sunday's by the Bay on Crandon
Boulevard. The pair walked to the nearest sign of life: the Crandon Park
Marina's Bait & Tackle shop.
''They told me that they had just gotten here from Cuba,'' said Ismael
Sotolongo. Someone called Miami-Dade police, who notified authorities.
The migrants -- longtime neighbors in Cuba -- called relatives from borrowed
cellphones, then sat on a park bench waiting for their arrival.
Soon Delgado drove up, amazed to see his mother had taken such a risk. ''I'm
happy she's here. But I can't believe she got here this way,'' he said.
Valdés interrupted her son, with a hug and kiss: "I wanted to
see you.''
Radio commentator Juan Amador Rodríguez dies
By Tere Figueras. tfigueras@herald.com
Juan Amador Rodríguez, veteran political commentator for WAQI Radio
Mambí whose career spanned five decades in Miami and Cuba, died in his
sleep Tuesday in his Westchester home.
Amador, 82, left his job as a morning host of Radio Mambí's morning
debate program En Caliente two years ago after suffering a stroke.
''The microphone was his love,'' said daughter Marianela Amador, who also
hosts a program on Radio Mambí. "That was his life.''
After fleeing his native Cuba shortly after Fidel Castro took power in 1959,
Amador -- a prominent radio executive and politician on the island -- became a
fixture in the politically influential and often tumultuous world of
Spanish-language talk shows.
He worked at numerous stations in Miami -- including WBQA, Cadena Azul and
Union Radio -- before settling at Radio Mambí, where he also hosted a
weekend program before illness forced him to leave the station.
''He was a true man of politics,'' said wife Eva Amador. "Politics and
Cuba, that was his delirium always.''
When a concert by the Cuban band Los Van Van sparked a furor among exiles in
1999, Amador proposed videotaping concertgoers to identify what he called
''Fidel Castro sympathizers'' and airing the tape publicly.
As the publisher of the free tabloid El Imparcial, Amador confessed he
wasn't bound by the title -- which means "The Impartial.''
''Our impartiality comes into play in everything except the subject of the
freedom of Cuba,'' Amador told The Herald in 1982.
He got his start as a radio reporter in his hometown of Candelaria in the
Pinar del Río province, was elected a representative from Pinar del Río
and became owner of Havana radio station COCO AM. In the last election before
Castro took power, Amador was elected governor of Pinar del Río, but fled
the island before he was sworn in, said his wife.
Once in Florida, he worked odd jobs -- toiling in a Hialeah garment factory,
picking tomatoes and washing dishes -- before joining WMIE Radio Continental in
1960.
Back on the air, he rallied the nascent exile community and helped obtain
services, food and clothes for new arrivals. When a Cuban-run school for the
blind needed a new bus, Amador held a 10-hour marathon and raised $10,000.
Despite his high-profile career, Amador never forgot his roots as the son of
a butcher who grew up with nine brothers and sisters.
''He loved this country, but he always said to never forget your heritage,
your homeland,'' said Univisión correspondent Jose Alfonso Almora, who
credits Amador with giving him his break when he moved to Miami. "I'll
never forget that guajiro.''
He is survived by four other children: Angel Amador, Marisela Aranegui, Juan
Amador Jr. and Natacha Amador, as well as 10 grandchildren.
A funeral service is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. today at Miami Memorial Park,
6200 SW 77th Ave., and arranged by Caballero Rivero Woodlawn Funeral Home. | 
