|
Posted on Tue, May. 07, 2002 in
The Miami Herald
Cuba put in biowarfare spotlight
Bush administration accuses nation of maintaining program
By Tim Johnson. tjohnson@krwashington.com.
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration accused Cuba on Monday of maintaining
an offensive biological warfare program and said the island's threat to U.S.
security has not been stressed enough.
The accusations marked the first time that public officials in Washington
have flatly asserted that Cuba is developing deadly biological agents and might
be transferring the know-how to other states wishing to harm the United States.
''The United States believes that Cuba has at least a limited offensive
biological warfare research and development effort,'' Undersecretary of State
John Bolton said in a speech to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think
tank in Washington.
Bolton, one of the administration's senior experts on arms proliferation and
terrorism, said Washington has evidence that Cuba is providing dual-use
technology -- that could be used either for peaceful purposes or for lethal
weapons-production -- to hostile nations.
''We call on Cuba to cease all biological weapons-applicable cooperation
with rogue states,'' Bolton said.
He did not identify the nations that may be receiving the Cuban
biotechnology, although he mentioned that Cuban leader Fidel Castro visited
Iran, Syria and Libya last year.
''I wish I could go into a lot more detail,'' Bolton said in response to a
question.
He said he was revealing Cuba's capacity for the first time because U.S.
officials have strong confidence in the evidence they have collected.
''For reasons and concerns with sources of that information, and our ability
to continue to learn about Cuba's activities and the other activities of rogue
states, I'm not at liberty to go beyond what I've said,'' Bolton said.
Bolton's accusations were hailed by Cuban-American groups, who urge the
White House to embrace a position stating that Castro's regime represents a
danger to the United States.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, many U.S. citizens no longer view
Cuba as a threat.
'AMPLE EVIDENCE'
''For decades there has been ample evidence pointing toward the Castro
regime's determination to develop and produce biological weapons,'' said Jorge
Mas Santos, chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation.
''Too often in the past, however, this fact was swept under the rug by those
eager to downplay Castro's longtime hatred of the United States,'' he went on.
The State Department lists Cuba as one of seven nations that sponsor
international terrorism, largely because of the presence of foreigners wanted on
terrorism charges in their home countries, including Puerto Rican radicals,
other wanted Americans, and members of the Basque separatist organization ETA.
VOICED SKEPTICISM
Under the Clinton administration, officials voiced skepticism at reports
that Cuba might be involved in developing or stockpiling offensive biological
warfare agents.
Last year, a high-level former Cuban scientist, José de la Fuente,
who was once director of Cuba's Center for Genetic Engineering and
Biotechnology, contended in a U.S. scientific journal that Cuba had sold
dual-use technology to Iran. President Bush in his state of the union speech in
January called Iran part of an ''axis of evil'' that included Iraq and North
Korea.
''We know that Cuba is collaborating with other state sponsors of terror,''
Bolton said, adding that Castro "continues to view terror as a legitimate
tactic to further revolutionary objectives.''
Florida pair tried to block Carter's Cuba trip
By Carol Rosenberg.
Two South Florida members of Congress appealed personally to President Bush
to block Jimmy Carter's upcoming trip to Cuba, claiming U.S. policy does not
authorize travel by "former presidents seeking to appease anti-American
dictators.''
In a March 22 letter obtained by The Herald, Reps. Lincoln Díaz-Balart
and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen also described Carter as "directly responsible for
having brought to power the terrorist regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini in
Iran.''
The letter to the White House by the two Miami Republicans bypassed Treasury
Secretary Paul O'Neill, whose Cabinet department enforces the U.S. embargo of
Cuba. ''We are forced to write you with this request concerning Mr. Carter
because of Mr. O'Neill's publicly professed opposition to your policy on Cuba,''
they wrote.
O'Neill a week earlier told a Senate subcommittee that, if he had
discretion, he would use resources to track down terrorists rather than chase
down Americans who violate the U.S. embargo of Cuba. In response, Ros-Lehtinen
and Díaz-Balart asked the president to fire O'Neill.
In the end, Carter got his travel license and the Bush administration has so
far struck a note of cautious optimism that the former president will deliver a
strong human rights message when he goes to Havana on Sunday.
In part, the letter from the Miami members of Congress said:
"We write to request that you deny permission for Mr. Carter to visit
the Cuban dictator. While U.S. law authorizes the granting of licenses by the
Treasury Department to U.S. officials and members of Congress to visit Cuba on
official business for the U.S. government, it does not do so for former
presidents seeking to appease anti-American dictators.''
'TERRORIST STATE'
The pair argued that authorizing Carter's trip "would not only be
violative of U.S. law, it would doubtless also be portrayed as a gesture by your
administration of goodwill toward a terrorist state.''
The White House did not reply in writing, according to an administration
source. Instead, a staff member notified Díaz-Balart by telephone that
the license had been approved, after the fact.
As president from 1977 to 1981, Carter promoted a rapprochement with Cuba,
but the effort stalled. He also has long opposed the U.S. embargo policy.
Critics of his Iran policy blame Carter for failing to prevent the overthrow of
the pro-U.S. shah of Iran by Khomeini's anti-American revolution.
Díaz-Balart said through a spokeswoman Monday that he would have ''no
comment'' on the letter or the contacts. Ros-Lehtinen characterized the letter
as a long shot.
''I think it would've been very difficult for the Bush administration to
legally deny the visit,'' she said Monday. "But, we definitely did not want
President Carter to go to Cuba because it's a way of legitimizing his regime, a
way of lending credence to his dictatorship.''
Carter's trip is Sunday through May 17, just days before Bush is expected in
Miami for a May 20 fundraiser for the Republican Party of Florida and a big
Cuban community event to coincide with the Cuban Republic's 100th Independence
Day.
In the letter to the White House, the two lawmakers remind the president
that "no community has been nor continues to be more supportive of you and
your policies in furtherance of security, peace, freedom and prosperity, than
our community.''
They said they wrote "in that spirit of admiration and support for
you.''
Castro, 75, personally invited Carter, 77, and his wife Rosalynn in October
2000 while the two men attended the Toronto funeral of Pierre Trudeau. Both were
ceremonial pallbearers for the former Canadian prime minister. Castro sent a
formal invitation 15 months later.
CARTER APPLICATION
At the Treasury Department, spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said the Carter
application was treated the same as any other.
''I was not made aware of any particular pressure that was put on this
office in one way or another,'' she said, adding Carter's approval came under
the category of activities of a private foundation.
A Carter Center spokesman at Atlanta's Emory University said she was unaware
of the approach to the White House.
''We applied through the normal procedures for the license and received the
license under what I presume is a normal time frame,'' said Jennifer McCoy,
director of the center's America's Program.
The center never had contact with the White House about the trip, McCoy
said. Instead, she said, once Castro's invitation arrived, she personally spoke
with a diplomat at the State Department's Cuba Section on several occasions
about permit procedures.
The Bush administration has cast the visit as an opportunity to remind
Castro about the need to have free elections and respect for human rights.
''This would be a very good opportunity for former President Carter to
remind President Castro of the need to bring freedom and opportunity and
democracy to the people of Cuba, who have been oppressed,'' said White House
spokesman Ari Fleischer.
The Cuban American National Foundation has similarly adopted a more neutral
stance. Chairman Jorge Mas Santos went to Atlanta recently to brief Carter about
Cuban issues and ask him to make civil liberties a centerpiece of his trip. He
handed him a letter that said "there is great concern that your visit will
hurt, rather than help, the people of Cuba. Frankly, we share some of this
concern.''
Ros-Lehtinen, apparently also shifting gears, separately wrote Carter on
International Relations Committee letterhead April 16 with the names of three
political prisoners he should see -- Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet, Luis García
Pérez Antuñez and Rafael Ibarra Roque -- "among numerous
others who are languishing in Castro's jails.''
Jury selected in trial of Cuban-exile flotilla members
KEY WEST, Fla. - (AP) -- A jury has been selected in a federal trial of
three Miami-based Cuban exile activists accused of illegally sailing into the
communist nation's territorial waters in July.
The 12 jurors were picked after five hours of questioning, including whether
they ever participated in Cuban-American boating protests.
Ramon Raul Sanchez, leader of the Democracy Movement, and group members
Alberto Perez and Pablo Rodriguez were arrested July 14 by the U.S Coast Guard.
U.S. officials charge the three men broke federal law, which bars ships from
getting within 12 miles of Cuba's coastline without a Coast Guard permit.
Sanchez said Monday that the flotilla, which left from Key West, did not
breach Cuban waters.
But Democracy Movement spokesman Norman Del Valle said in July that the
three men intentionally entered Cuban seas during a memorial service for those
who died in a 1994 boating accident.
If convicted, Sanchez, Perez and Rodriguez face up to 10 years in prison and
a $10,000 fine.
Opening arguments are expected to begin Tuesday morning.
'Mami, I'm going to Harvard'
By Fabiola Santiago. fsantiago@herald.com
Miguel Arguelles knew he would be getting the e-mail that day.
When the 2:30 p.m. school bell rang, he rushed home to his computer.
And there it was: His acceptance into Harvard.
The scared, confused, homesick boy who sat in a Hialeah classroom seven
years ago not understanding a word his new teacher said, the boy embarrassed at
the thick accent that came from his lips when he uttered a simple word like
''chair,'' had made it into "the best school in America.''
'My dreams had come true,'' the 17-year-old says.
He stared at the e-mail for three minutes, reading over the lines about how
few students make it this far.
Then he cried.
Meet Miguel Angel Arguelles, the extraordinary valedictorian of Miami Lake's
Barbara Goleman Senior High School, Class of 2002: He has a weighted grade point
average of 5.6, he's the Sunshine State 2002 District Scholar, a top student in
calculus, physics and advanced placement English classes, the first student in
Goleman's seven-year history to be admitted to Harvard.
And yes, as the students here say, he's "a Cuban ref.''
Miguel came to Miami from Cuba with his mother and father and younger
brother in February 1995. He was 10 years old.
He didn't risk his life on the high seas -- his paternal grandfather
obtained visas for the family and they flew here -- but abandoning Cuba carried
all the emotional weight of leaving his home, his loved ones, ''and my
childhood'' behind.
His first year of exile was equally painful.
His parents, Havana professionals who studied in the Soviet Union's Kiev,
had to take factory jobs. His father Angel, a civil engineer, worked two jobs.
His mother, María Teresa, a science teacher with a master's degree in
biochemistry, worked cutting elastic at a sewing factory and studied English at
night.
For four months, the family lived in the gymnasium where Angel worked his
second job, sleeping on the floor on mattresses while they saved enough money to
rent an apartment. Then, the only apartment they could afford was so small that
the boys' ''room'' was the size of a closet. They propped up bunk beds.
LANGUAGE STRUGGLE
In school, Miguel, who was accustomed to getting top grades in Cuba, was
struggling with the language -- and even with math, his favorite subject.
Pronunciation was the most difficult thing to master.
''Beach is the hardest word in the world,'' he says.
An ace in mathematics in Cuba and now -- ''Math is my baby,'' he says -- his
teacher ''didn't like'' the way Miguel showed his work doing fractions. In Latin
countries, the method of division taught is different from that of the United
States. (The division bracket is upside down and the order of the numbers is
reversed.) Miguel could come up with the right answer, but his calculations were
not done "the American way.''
His father went to school to talk to the principal to get him out of that
class.
But the principal said, ''Miguel can make it.'' And his father left him
there.
He survived that year by using the same means he used to get to Harvard.
''I put everything I had into learning. I set out to pursue my dream. My
parents had sacrificed their lives for me, so that I could live in this country
in freedom and have a future. They were working in jobs as if they had never
gone to school,'' Miguel says. "I was just doing what I was supposed to do.
I made it with As and Bs.''
He figured out the math part with practice (even though now, he confesses,
he still counts in Spanish "deep inside''). He gained fluency in English
watching television after school -- and "reading lots and lots of books.''
''The interaction in school is very limited,'' he says. "When you have
your own TV, you have your own teacher talking to you.''
As Miguel prospered in school, his parents prospered in their jobs.
STUDIES PAY OFF
His mother's late-night studies paid off. She became a teacher again. She
now teaches English-For-Students-of-Other Languages (ESOL) at Miami Lakes Middle
School and is working on her master's in education at Nova Southeastern
University. His father landed a well-paid supervisory job in a construction
company.
From the tiny apartment, the Arguelles graduated to a two-bedroom one, and
last year, they bought a house in a new development in Royal Oaks in Miami
Lakes. Miguel has a room of his own and a laptop.
Last year, his junior year, was the most intense. He was taking six
college-level classes. He studied from 3 p.m. to 2 or 3 a.m. He took his books
to the park.
''No naps, no sleep, little food, an occasional shower,'' he says.
'I had to pry him from the computer and the books and say, 'No, ya, you are
going to bed,' '' his mother says.
She remembers the day he shared his dream.
'We had just set foot in this country, and he said to me, 'Mami, I'm going
to Harvard.' I remember it as if it had happened today. He fought, fought and
fought for what we wanted.''
His dream will cost plenty. The University of Miami offered a full
scholarship. It was tempting to accept because Harvard is expensive -- $36,000 a
year. He'll get about half that amount in scholarships and aid, his mother said,
but the rest has to come from Miguel and his family.
''Somehow we'll have to manage it,'' María Teresa says.
In his college essays, when he is asked to explain who he is, Miguel quotes
James Joyce, Napoleon Bonaparte and compares his own journey from a beloved but
wretched homeland to the hopeful, new life in the United States to that of
mythological characters.Of Cuba, he says: "Its memory is tattooed deep in
my heart.''
He calls the United States his ''garden,'' his "Eden.''
From hall monitors to teachers and counselors, everyone finds Miguel
remarkable.
He has picked up the street lingo of his generation with the same ease that
he has absorbed the intricacies of philosophical works like Toni Morrison's Son
of Solomon or James Joyce's A Portrait of The Artist As a Young Man.
HAS INSIGHT
''He's got such an insight into the English language that it blows me away.
He understands the nuances of language,'' says Linda Galati, his college
advisor.
''Out of all the students I've encountered in my entire teaching career,
Miguel ranks as one of my top two students,'' says his English teacher, Nell
Miller, who has taught in Miami-Dade schools for 22 years.
Miguel wants to be a neurosurgeon -- ''I love the human body and the human
mind,'' he says -- but there's more to his life than school work. Salsa dancing
is his passion and he recently sang and performed in a bilingual school
production of Fame.
''He gets straight A's and then you see him at a party, and he's the life of
the party,'' says friend Jorge García, 17.
''He goes out with us. He goes to the park, plays basketball, tennis. He has
fun,'' says friend Albert Araluce, 17.
His 16-year-old brother Alejandro, also a college-bound A-student, admires
him.
''He's got a life,'' Alejandro says. "He's not like a nerd who studies
all the time and only does that.''
There's little sibling rivalry, the boys say. ''Only the usual kid stuff,''
says Alejandro, who wants to go to the University of Florida.
''He's doing what makes him happy, following his own dreams and that is my
definition of success,'' Miguel says of his brother.
TIGHT GROUP
And indeed, the Arguelles boys are part of a tight-knit, high-performing
group of Goleman High students who have one thing in common: They came from Cuba
in the mid-'90s.
The school draws its students from Hialeah Gardens, Miami Lakes and Palm
Springs North, a working and professional-class suburbia with pockets of upscale
living and pockets of struggling immigrants. In a school that is 90 percent
Hispanic, the typical name-calling of youth, sometimes harmless horseplay,
sometimes plain prejudice, is characterized not by race but by country of
origin.
The Central and Latin American kids are called tira flechas, arrow throwers,
or indios, Indian, for their indigenous features. The recent Cuban arrivals are
called balseros, rafters, or ''Cuban refs.'' (A ''ref,'' short for refugee, is
determined by how pronounced the accent and the year of arrival from Cuba.)
When a visitor asks a group of kids about the valedictorian, a student says:
"Oh, yeah, Miguel, the Cuban ref.''
Miguel simply shrugs.
As he walks the Goleman hallways in these, his last days as a senior, he
hears other names.
''Hey Harvey,'' a boy high-fives Miguel. 'Goin' ta Ha-w-vard.''
''That's my nickname now, Harvey, Harvard, and all sorts of variations there
of,'' Miguel says, blushing a little.
There's a tinge of pride in his voice, but not a shred of arrogance.
That, teachers and friends say, sets Miguel apart from the traditional crowd
of cocky overachievers.
''Miguel remembers his roots,'' says his geography teacher Richard Stamper. "He
remembers sitting in that class in sixth grade and not understanding anything. I
tell him that when he's at Harvard surrounded by all those people who are just
as smart, if not smarter than he is, that is the one thing that will keep him
grounded.''
Says Miguel: "How could I forget?''
Miguel Arguelles' college essay excerpt
An excerpt from one of Miguel Arguelles' college essays:
I was born at 21.60 degrees latitude and 78.88 degrees longitude, where the
cold Gulf of Mexico espouses the ardent Caribbean Sea, where the sun shines
brightest and drowns in tears, where Santa Claus has not the visa to enter and
dreams cannot escape their prison of nonexistence, where hopes are shattered and
religion is an endangered species, where freedom is in shackles.
I was born and raised in a land that for over forty years now has been
flooded with red, where food is rationed, where to the populace, a
color-television is a luxury and an apple a delicacy . . . It is a land whose
paradisiacal beauty is worthy of John Constable's brush strokes, but is
nonetheless undermined by its swelling penury.
It was in Cuba where I said my first words, took my first steps, learned to
write and multiply, and kissed a girl for the first time. It was there where I
met my first true friend and saw my first true friend drown. It was there where
I broke my chin three times: the first riding a bicycle; the second climbing a
tree; the third playing baseball. It was there where a dog bit me, where I got
chicken pox, where I read my first book, in Spanish, of course. My first school,
my first house, and my wooden bed still stand, refusing to succumb to
dilapidation, in that land where I said goodbye to my childhood and began my
voyage toward young adulthood.
It is there where I left my family -- my grandmother Chucha's kisses, my
grandfather Pape's stories, my aunt Lisette's hugs and tireless efforts to get
my dad to take away my punishment when I misbehaved. It is in the Cuban soil
where my roots can be found, planted deeply, where none can extricate them. It
is there where I walked a great and key distance of my existential quest for an
identity. But it was also there where I had to recite Communist pledges on a
daily basis, and where I was taught only what Castro's dictatorship believed
appropriate; where relatively every child's idiosyncrasies are molded to its
distorted vision. It is likewise there where a professional earns much less than
a prostitute, where the economy seems ever more susceptible to the effects of
gravity; where freedom of expression is silenced; where you can be not all that
you can be, but rather all that you are allowed to be; where preoccupations only
rise exponentially and disseminate, and much human potential is thrown to waste.
. . ..
This country has given me new wings, of which I've made the best use -- the
possibility to fly as high as I wish, to soar the heavens if I propose myself to
do so; and for this, I will forever be thankful and love it greatly. However,
despite it all, I would be a hypocrite to deny that my heart and my soul will
always belong to that little island that witnessed my birth. | 
