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The Miami
Herald, May 17, 2002.
27 Cubans reach Key Largo in possible smuggling venture
KEY LARGO, Fla. - (AP) -- Twenty-seven Cubans arrived here by fishing boat
Thursday in an apparent smuggling operation.
The group included 17 men, five women and five girls under the age of 16,
the U.S. Border Patrol reported.
The Cubans were picked up by the Coast Guard. Although one child was covered
in mosquito bites from the journey, all were reported to be in good condition.
Coast Guard spokesman Gene Smith said the group had abandoned the vessel and
were making their way toward the beach. "They were found in waist-high
water, standing by the mangroves.''
Border Patrol supervisor Carlos Roches said the Cubans arrived in a white
twin-engine, open-bow fishing boat. They reportedly departed from Santa Clara,
Cuba, on Tuesday.
The refugees told the Coast Guard they paid 20,000 Cuban pesos,
approximately $1,000, for the journey. Roches said an investigation into their
claim was under way.
''We believe it was a smuggling venture,'' he said, but could not provide
more specific detail.
Roches said some of the children were accompanied by at least one parent. He
could not confirm whether any of the refugees had relatives in Florida.
The Cubans were being processed late Thursday at Krome Detention Center, an
Immigration and Naturalization Service facility near Miami.
The federal government's ''wet-foot, dry-foot'' policy generally lets Cubans
who reach U.S. soil stay but repatriates those picked up at sea.
Carter boosts dissidents, but change not expected
By Nancy San Martin. Nsanmartin@Herald.Com
Opponents of Cuban President Fidel Castro's government described a private
meeting with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter Thursday as an encouraging
exchange of ideas and said he had promised to remain involved in their effort to
promote democratic reform in Cuba.
But as the most prominent American in more than four decades to have direct
access to the Cuban population and issue the boldest public criticism of
Castro's government prepares to return to Atlanta today, many expressed doubts
that change will be forthcoming immediately.
''Carter's presence here, at least for a little while, provided us with a
political opening, an opportunity to build a foundation of solidarity and reach
out to the population,'' Héctor Palacios, one of 23 dissidents who met
with Carter on Thursday, said in a phone interview.
''But what happens from now on really doesn't give us a lot of optimism,''
he added. "The government doesn't have a history of fulfilling the will of
the people.''
Still, most remained hopeful that Carter would somehow remain involved.
Carter promised dissidents he would submit a report on his five-day visit to
the Bush administration and Congress, said Elizardo Sánchez, president
the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.
The report will reportedly focus on the need for the longtime feuding
governments to find a way to work together and ''once and for all bring an end
to their private cold war,'' Sánchez said.
During two separate sessions that lasted more than three hours, Carter
emphasized the need for Cuba to establish closer relations with the United
States and other neighboring democratic nations, participants said.
He also cited the citizens' initiative known as the Varela Project as a good
example of how to bring about democratic reform. The project seeks a national
referendum on rights including free speech, free assembly and the ability to
open a private business.
The first to arrive for the meetings, held in the house of a U.N. official,
was Vladimiro Roca, 59, who was freed from prison May 5 after serving nearly
five years on charges of sedition.
Roca said Carter asked participants for their input about how to propel the
human rights movement in Cuba.
''We told him that the best help he could give us was to stay on top of what
is going on in Cuba, not to abandon us,'' said Roca, who was contacted by
telephone. "He said he would stay in touch and try to broaden the
relationship with Cuba. . . . He said he will try to return.''
A ''who's who'' of other current Cuban dissidents rolled up in vans, passing
a scattering of U.S. Secret Service agents and plainclothes Cuban security men,
as well as scores of reporters who waited outside during the private meetings.
Some who had traveled from faraway provinces complained about being left out
of the meetings, but those present said there was not enough room in the house
to accommodate everyone.
''To have a reunion with all of the opposition, you have to get a big
stadium because we are too many,'' said Palacios, of the Democratic Solidarity
Party. "It's not just two or three of us anymore.''
Government opponents include free-market advocates, unhappy socialists,
human rights and religious activists, independent journalists, former prisoners
of conscience and heads of political parties unrecognized by Cuba's one-party
government.
During his trip, Carter has given Cuban dissidents unprecedented domestic
publicity.
He used a nationally broadcast speech Tuesday night to promote the Varela
Project, suggesting that the world ''would look on with admiration'' if Cuban
leaders had the courage to hold a debate and vote on the initiative in their
Communist Party state.
Also on Thursday, the government-controlled newspaper Granma published the
full text of Carter's speech, which also was critical of U.S. policy toward Cuba
and called for a lifting of the 41-year-old economic embargo.
But despite the unprecedented breakthroughs, it appears unlikely dissidents
will make little, if any, headway with a government that considers them to be
''counter-revolutionaries'' propped up by the United States.
Justice Minister Roberto Díaz Sotolongo told reporters in Havana on
Thursday that the United States has invested $10 million to finance dissidents
in Cuba since 1996, "and this year, 2002, they have planned $5 million.''
Díaz, who did not explain how he came up with the figures, also said
that backers of the Varela petition "represent only 0.01 percent of the
population.''
Nonetheless, he offered the petition drive as "proof of how democratic
our system is.''
In Madrid, Cuba's Vice President Carlos Lage said in a radio interview that
the Varela Project "has no legal validity.''
Herald intern Larissa Ruiz Campo contributed to this report,
supplemented with Herald wire services.
'Love of country': Cuba's centennial
By Tere Figueras, tfigueras@herald.com.
South Florida's Cuban community will celebrate Cuba's centennial in the
heart of el exilio.
''This is for love of country, not politics,'' said Rafael Peñalver,
one of the organizers of a centennial celebration that will begin at the San
Carlos Institute in Key West and end at the shrine to Cuba's patron saint in
Miami -- one of several events in the coming days that will mark the 100th
anniversary of the Cuban Republic on May 20.
Florida International University will host a Cuban music concert featuring
pianist Sergio A. González and violinist Andrés Trujillo. The
University of Miami, which has already presented classes, concerts, art exhibits
and a film festival honoring the centennial, will dedicate the Casa Bacardi
cultural center with an invitation-only cocktail reception.
And the annual CubaNostalgia, which begins today in Coconut Grove, will
recognize the centennial with its blend of mojitos, merchandise and memorabilia.
''We're in exile, but can't forget that a dream for a free Cuba began more
than a century ago,'' said Peñalver. "When Fidel Castro is just an
asterisk in the story of Cuban history, there will always be a Cuban people.''
Saturday's daylong series of seminars, films and discussions at the San
Carlos Institute will culminate with the lighting of the Centennial Torch on the
balcony of the history building -- the same place patriot and poet Jose Martí
rallied exiled Cubans against Spain more than 100 years ago.
On Monday, the flame will arrive at the Torch of Friendship on Biscayne
Boulevard at 10 a.m. Carried on horseback, it will wind its way through the city
before arriving at La Ermita De Caridad -- Our Lady of Charity -- on Biscayne
Bay at 8 p.m.
The gathering at the church will include a concert featuring Cuban
performers and Afro-Cuban music, a speech by Bishop Agustín Román,
and a candlelighting ceremony that will span both sides of the Florida Straits.
Dissidents on the island will listen and talk to the crowd during an amplified
conference call.
''They'll be lighting candles in their homes, too,'' said Peñalver.
The weekend will be bittersweet, said Rosa Leonor Whitmarsh, a professor at
Miami-Dade Community College.
She is the great-grandaughter of Calixto Garcia Iñiguez, a Cuban
lawyer and general who led the insurrection against the Spanish forces in the
war for independence.
''The history of Cuba is also the history of families,'' said Whitmarsh,
whose family joined Martí as part of Key West's expatriate community. "It's
something you can't let die.''
During the day, the torch will pass the Freedom Tower on Biscayne Boulevard
-- the Ellis Island for many arriving Cubans in the early days of the Castro
regime -- through downtown Miami and the government center.
The procession will take the torch to the Woodlawn Cemetery on Southwest
Eight Street -- where three Cuban presidents are buried -- and to a dedication
ceremony of the Freedom Plaza in Coral Gables.
The plaza is a small grassy plot of land at the intersections of Galiano
Street, Santillane Avenue and East Ponce de Leon Boulevard. On Monday, it will
be the home of another symbol of Cuban independence: a monument to Martí.
''The arrival of the torch is going to link us to that dream that began in
Key West with Martí,'' said sculptor Marc Andries Smit, who created the
image of Martí that will be unveiled Monday.
The bronze bust will sit atop a nine-foot marble and granite pyramid that
contains soil from Cuba.
Sculpting the face of Cuba's poet hero called for some soul-searching, Smit
said.
''I tried to think of what he would say looking around him now,'' said Smit,
who came to the U.S. from Cuba as a child. "He has a gentle intensity. But
you also see this underlying sense of sadness.'' | 
