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The
Miami Herald. Posted on Thu, Jun. 27, 2002.
Castro threatens to reduce U.S. ties
Immigration pact in peril
From Herald Staff and Wire Reports
HAVANA - Fidel Castro warned Wednesday that limited Cuba-U.S. relations
could be cut further and the American mission on the island could be closed if
U.S. diplomats continue "violations of our sovereignty.''
Migration agreements between the two countries were also being put at risk
by American diplomats ''who go around the country as they like, organizing
networks and conspiracies,'' the Cuban president said.
Hours after Castro's speech, Cuba's National Assembly voted to consecrate
its 41-year-old socialist system in the constitution as ''irrevocable'' and
declare that ''capitalism will never return again'' to this Caribbean island.
After a special meeting that included 168 speeches over three daylong
sessions carrying long into the evenings, the voice vote among the 559 assembly
members present was unanimous.
The vote and Castro's new warning come as Washington steps up programs it
says are aimed at bringing democracy to the communist nation, such as
distributing radios so Cubans can tune in to U.S. government programming and
increasing funding for dissident support groups in the United States.
''We are not willing to permit violations of our sovereignty, nor the
humiliating disregard of norms ruling the conduct of diplomats,'' Castro said in
his speech.
Washington reacted with restraint at Castro's apparent threat, though
officials warned it would be a mistake for the Cuban government to dissolve the
migration accords.
''Only Castro would consider a democracy, a system that exists everywhere
else, to be subversive,'' said a State Department official who works in Cuban
affairs.
"He has an opposition on the island. The Cuban people are saying loudly
and clearly that they want basic human freedoms and rights. He cannot disguise
the fact that his 43 years of control over the island and denial of basic human
rights are under considerable pressure.''
The State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also
said that dissolving the migration accords would amount to putting the lives of
the Cuban people at risk.
''It would be a mistake to not continue a migration accord that exists,
because those migration accords have worked reasonably well to get people to
migrate in a safe and orderly manner,'' the official said. "We'll certainly
be watching.''
Castro's speech was aimed in large part at the growing advocacy role on the
island by the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.
Under the leadership of mission chief Vicki Huddleston, the Interests
Section since last year has distributed hundreds of small shortwave radios so
Cubans can listen to the American government's Radio Martí station. There
was no immediate comment from Huddleston's office Wednesday.
''The contraband of merchandise in diplomatic pouches also is not
admissible,'' Castro said, in an apparent reference to transporting the radios
into Cuba. "It will be the responsibility of the government of the United
States if the insistence of such practices results in the annulling of the
migration agreement, or even the withdrawal of the Interests Section in
Havana.''
The migration accords Castro referred to were signed in 1994 and 1995 and
permit the repatriation of Cubans intercepted at sea. Prior to the migration
accords, all Cubans fleeing the island were allowed to seek asylum in the United
States. Now only those who reach U.S. soil automatically qualify for legal
residency.
Castro's words mark the first time he has used the migration accords and the
possibility of closing the U.S. Interests Section as tools against the United
States. The last two mass migrations out of Cuba sanctioned by Castro -- in 1980
and 1994 -- brought hundreds of thousands of Cubans to Florida shores.
''For the first time in his life Castro is on the defensive,'' said Joe
Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation. "He
is trying to create chaos internally to send the message that he is in charge
and he is trying to put President Bush on the defensive. He is creating a bubble
because he has nowhere else to go.''
Some Cuba watchers also said the National Assembly's adoption of the
resolution Wednesday evening ensured -- at least in the short term -- that there
is no possibility of a political opening within Cuba.
That's because the amendment keeps Cuba's economic, social and political
foundations intact. That's precisely what the Varela Project -- in which
dissidents in Cuba seek a referendum on whether voters favor guarantees for
liberties such as freedom of expression and the right to own a business -- aims
to change.
''This shuts the door on the Varela Project completely,'' said political
science professor Dario Moreno, director of Florida International University's
Metropolitan Center, a think tank. "Castro has used this opportunity again
to clamp down . . . It is clear that Castro and the current regime isn't
interested in any political opening.''
Herald staff writer Nancy San Martin in Miami and Associated Press
writer Anita Snow in Havana contributed to this report.
Czech's farewell taps Miami
By Carol Rosenberg. Crosenberg@herald.com. Posted on Wed,
Jun. 26, 2002
In a swan song to his decade-plus presidency, Czech President Vaclav Havel
plans to make a September swing through Miami to meet with former Cuban
political prisoners and host a $1,000-a-head fundraiser for his human rights
foundation.
His first known trip to South Florida, it's sure to cause a stir.
The playwright-turned-politician is admired by the Cuban exile community for
guiding his nation though the 1989 ''Velvet Revolution'' from communist to
civilian rule and for his tough talk through the years toward Fidel Castro.
''At this point, we're still working on it. Basically, it's going to be a
state visit,'' press secretary Petr Janousek said Tuesday from the Czech Embassy
in Washington.
Under Czech term limits, Havel, 65, steps down as president in February.
PERSONAL REQUEST
Besides stops in Washington and New York, Havel requested a trip to Miami
Sept. 23-25 and to meet with Cubans who fled communist rule, said Fort
Lauderdale attorney Alan Becker, honorary consul for the Czech Republic.
''There is a shared experience,'' Becker said. "Don't forget, a lot of
the present [Czech] leadership were dissidents in a communist repressive
system.''
The most public, plebeian event on his tentative schedule here so far is
what Becker characterized as ''a major address'' Sept. 24 at Florida
International University as a guest of FIU President Modesto ''Mitch'' Maidique.
Human rights and Cuban communism will be the theme.
The Miami visit starts with a Sept. 23 fundraiser, being planned for the
Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables. Attendance donations start at $1,000 a person to
benefit Havel's private human rights foundation, which he plans to make a focus
after his presidency ends.
Other events being planned:
• A breakfast at Miami Beach's Wolfsonian with members of the arts
community, . His Kafkaesque comedy plays satirized the communist bureaucracy
starting with The Garden Party in 1963.
• Private talks with former Cuban dissidents and ex-political
prisoners. He, too, was a political prisoner.
• A private visit on Fisher Island and sail on Biscayne Bay.
In Washington, the embassy spokesman emphasized that the schedule is still
tentative but said meetings with members of Congress are expected. Becker said a
small White House dinner is also planned for Sept. 18, hosted by President Bush
and his father, who was president when Havel was first elected.
RELUCTANT TO SPEAK
South Floridians vying for opportunities to meet Havel have been reluctant
to speak too soon about the trip, which could be derailed by Havel's health.
A heavy smoker, he suffers from respiratory problems and had part of one
lung removed for cancer.
Cuban Cooperstown
By Kevin Baxter. Kbaxter@herald.com.
Orestes Chavez's introduction to Cuban baseball memorabilia was a torn
Minnie Minoso trading card issued by Post cereal. It cost him $5.
''To this day, I think he ripped me off,'' Chavez says of the Hialeah dealer
who sold the card. "I would not have bought it if I had known better.''
Seventeen years later, Chavez is the one asking for the shirts off people's
backs. He sometimes takes their pants and caps, too. Because what began with a
single baseball card has grown into perhaps the most significant collection of
Cuban baseball artifacts in the world, one that includes bats, balls, trophies,
photos, pennants, ceramics and more than 100 jerseys and 30 full uniforms dating
back more than 100 years.
''Nobody has anything close,'' says Juan Iglesias a fellow collector and
sports agent who represents former Marlins pitchers Livan Hernández
(Giants) and Antonio Alfonseca (Cubs), among others. 'I've never seen anything
like it. What makes the collection so strong is the amount of stuff he has. If
you take each piece out individually, it's probably not as strong. But when you
see it together, you say 'damn!' '' Two auction houses have tried to buy the
collection, and Iglesias once headed a group that offered more than a million
dollars for everything. Even the National Baseball Hall of Fame has come
knocking.
But Chavez turned them all down. His vision is to establish a permanent
exhibition of Cuban baseball memorabilia, one that would tout Cuba's role in
developing baseball throughout Latin America, supporting the U.S. Negro Leagues
and training future big-league stars in the winters before the Castro revolution
drove professionals out.
''The Cuban Cooperstown. This is what we have,'' he says. "My whole
idea was bringing together the history of Cuban baseball. What I want to see is
this stuff in a museum together somewhere were everybody can enjoy it.''
AT THE TOWER?
The planned Cuban-American museum inside Freedom Tower would be an ideal
place, says Chavez, who like many Cubans had his immigration documents processed
there when he emigrated to the United States in 1967.
''I'll never forget it,'' says Chavez, who has an affinity for reaching out
and touching people he talks to, as if to make sure they're paying attention. "I
got a little cigar box with a little toy. My toy was a cow. A little statue of a
cow. And I got a toothbrush and toothpaste.
"It would be ideal to have all the Cuban memories stored somewhere we
can all relate to it.''
The Mas family, which is restoring the tower, has shown interest in the
collection but can't commit to an exhibition just yet, says a spokesman, because
the museum has been inundated with similar requests from collectors of political
memorabilia, original government documents and other items.
''The Freedom Tower is going to be about the Cuban-American experience. It's
about . . . the memories of the past. [This] would be something that could fit
in,'' says Joe Garcia, spokesman for the Cuban American National Foundation. "It's
not that we're not thinking about it. We're just not committed to taking things.
We just don't have enough space for all this stuff.''
So the bulk of Chavez's collection remains in storage, out of sight in two
bank vaults in downtown Miami. The rest spills from closets and storage rooms or
rests in boxes and on tabletops in the nondescript tract home Chavez shares with
his parents in southwest Miami-Dade.
MAJOR BUCKS
Chavez, 39, politely declines to estimate how much he has spent gathering
his collection, but when a visitor suggests a quarter of a million dollars,
Chavez shrugs and adds: "Let's just say this. It's enough to buy a nice
home in Westchester. Cash.''
He has full uniforms, dating to 1935, from six professional teams, 13
amateur teams, four schools and three sugar mills. There's a game-used jersey
and shoes from major league umpire Angel Hernández, who is Cuban
American, and the American flag that was flying over Yankee Stadium when
Cuban-born outfielder Sandy Amorós made his game-saving catch for the
Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 7 of the 1955 World Series. There's even a receipt from
the laundry that cleaned the uniforms of a Havana-based team in the 1950s.
Many of the items were donated by players or their families; others were
purchased for as much as several thousand dollars -- Chavez won't be more
precise -- or obtained in trade. But, Chavez says, he has gathered more than
just merchandise. By painstakingly tracking down hundreds of former Cuban League
players to autograph the balls, photos and uniforms, he's also gathered
priceless stories about a time and place he knew nothing about growing up in
Miami.
And the first story came from his dad, a former professional umpire in Cuba.
When Chavez showed him that Minoso card back in 1985, he sat the boy down and
told him all about the seven-time major league all-star from Havana.
''And that's when it all took off,'' Chavez says. "Not only have I
learned about baseball, but you learn about politics, you learn about the social
and economic situation in Cuba before the revolution. So you become educated in
a lot of ways other than just baseball.''
Chavez's collection isn't the only museum-quality gathering of Cuban
baseball memorabilia in Miami. Cesar López, an aviation department
employee and baseball statistics buff from southwest Miami-Dade, has thousands
of Cuban baseball cards dating to 1909, while Ralph Maya, an accountant in
Miami, has a broad collection of paper items including cards, magazines and
programs as well as gloves, game-used bats, autographed baseballs and other
items.
López started collecting Topps baseball cards about 25 years ago and
later worked as a dealer, selling standard and rare bubble gum cards of U.S.
players. But that all changed when he ran into a Puerto Rican collector who had
a photo of Babe Ruth in a New York Giants uniform, taken during a 1920
barnstorming tour of Cuba.
''I was just fascinated with it,'' says López, who was born in the
west Cuban city of Camaguey and came to the United States at age 7. "I knew
a lot about Negro League baseball, and I knew a lot about major league baseball,
obviously. But I knew next to nothing about Cuban League baseball. When I found
out about the major league stars that had been down there, that really got me
interested.''
And the more research he did, the more interested he became. His website,
www.cubanball.com, is perhaps the most complete English-language resource on
Cuban baseball, featuring a brief history of prerevolutionary baseball on the
island, a list of the 180 Cubans who have played in the major leagues and the
names of all the players -- and coaches and umpires -- of Cuban heritage on
big-league rosters.
López says he built his collection with the help of online auction
sites such as eBay, spending anywhere from ''a few dollars to several thousand''
for cards, some of which were smuggled out of Cuba and resold here.
''They know about eBay in Cuba,'' he says with a grin.
''It's too much to try to get everything, so you'll find most collectors
will focus on one thing,'' he continues. "I myself like the cards. Orestes
mainly goes for the uniforms.''
POLICE OFFICER
Chavez's affinity for uniforms seems only natural -- he wears one to work as
a sergeant in the Miami Police Department. A former Florida officer of the year
and one of Miami's most decorated patrolmen, Chavez has participated in a number
of high-profile drug busts and once saved a child's life by performing CPR.
As a beat cop in Liberty City, he organized a holiday picnic for
underprivileged children and their parents, then funded the event by collecting
pledges tied to his performance in a regional weight-lifting event. When Chavez,
a former world bench-press championship, hoisted 520 pounds, a fast-food
restaurant delivered 520 hamburgers to the picnic.
A series of injuries eventually forced him to quit competitive lifting, so
he devoted that time and energy to collecting, even taking a second job as a
security guard at a supermarket to fund his hobby.
''I'm a Type A personality. I always have to be doing something and I have
to be the best at it,'' Chavez says. "I want to get tired [of collecting]
but I can't. It seems like every day there's a new player that wants to come to
the United States and play. And I've gone so far into this that I have no choice
but to track them down and get one of his jerseys. It's never ending.
"Where it's baseball or watches, it doesn't matter. You always have
that love for it. And only another collector can understand these things.''
(Orestes Chavez can be reached by e-mail at ticochavez@aol.com)
Tirino will play Cuban master at the UM
James Roos. Posted on Thu, Jun. 27, 2002.
Call it a red-letter month for Latin piano music. Two weeks ago, Zenaida
Manfugas came to the University of Miami with a wide repertoire including a
piece by that unaccountably neglected Cuban master, Alejandro Garcia Caturla.
Now, at 8 p.m. Friday, UM's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies,
which brought Manfugas, will present Thomas Tirino, the American pianist who
appeared here last season playing music by Joaquin Nin, Isaac Albeniz, Enrique
Granados and Ernesto Lecuona.
This time, at UM's Gusman Hall, Tirino will play only Lecuona, whose music
the pianist has recorded on six CDs for the BIS label. Lecuona has been called
''the Cuban Gershwin,'' because he similarly straddled the pop and concert
worlds and created music that typifies his country.
''His music is very colorful but also aristocratic and cosmopolitan,'' says
Tirino. ``Even in his most Afro-Cuban dances, there's a certain elegance and
charm.''
Lecuona is best known as the creator of Malagueña, though he penned
about 700 other works, including 170 piano pieces. In exploring this music for
his Lecuona recording project, Tirino discovered much of it was scattered in
Spain, South America, Europe and Cuba. The composer had emigrated to the United
States, and subsequently Spain, soon after Castro took control.
Tirino found, for example, a piano roll by Lecuona kept for decades in
someone's Wisconsin closet, and learned that Futuristica, a piece recorded by
the composer in the '20s, had never been written down and had to be transcribed.
Lecuona was so prolific, he just heard it in his head, played it but had
neglected to preserve it for posterity on paper.
But then, Lecuona was a force of nature and there's no explaining such
talent. One of 14 children, he revealed his gift at 3 and at 5 began studying
piano. He published his first piece at 11, a march and two-step called Cuba y
America, promptly adopted by Cuban military bands. Then he coached with the
Spanish-Cuban master Nin, graduating from Havana National Conservatory at 15
with a gold medal.
Lecuona was also an accomplished enough pianist to have appeared as soloist
with the Havana Philharmonic playing Saint-Saens' Second Concerto and in recital
storming through Liszt rhapsodies. But by the mid-'20s he was touring the United
States and Europe with his own band, popularizing the conga and rumba. He was so
averse to practicing, he seldom touched the piano even when composing piano
music. Instead, he'd sit at a card table or play dominoes while jotting down
pieces as they poured out of him, sometimes scribbling immortal songs on
napkins.
Of course, Cuba has produced other musical geniuses who created more complex
art music: Caturla, Roldan and Orbon. But Lecuona has dominated the mass market
because his music flaunts seductive melodies with Spanish or Afro-Cuban rhythms
and is deeply rhapsodic and nostalgic, with a wonderfully sensuous, atmopsheric
quality.
Tirino will play provocative Lecuona pieces, including a set of four concert
waltzes, five Danzas Cubanas, and the Habanera from the second act of his El
Sombrero de Yarey. Tickets: $20. 305-284-2822. | 
