CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Cuba economy hinges on Chávez vote

Cuba's Fidel Castro has forged a tight alliance with Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, who faces a recall vote. If Chávez falls, Castro has reason to worry.

By Richard Brand. rbrand@herald.com. Posted on Tue, Aug. 03, 2004.

CARACAS - Just as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez' political future is riding on an upcoming recall vote, so is the fate of his closest ally, Cuban President Fidel Castro.

The two presidents, united in their anti-American rhetoric and to differing degrees in their leftist policies, have developed a strategically critical relationship since Chávez was elected in 1998.

Petroleum-rich Venezuela provides economically strapped Cuba with tons of oil, and Havana owes Caracas an estimated $800 million. Cuba, in turn, has sent Venezuela thousands of doctors, teachers, sports trainers and a suspected horde of intelligence and political advisors.

It is an alliance so close that some analysts say each leader has become nearly dependent on the other for survival. And it is an alliance that some members of the opposition promise will end if the Aug. 15 recall vote succeeds.

''Our main goal is to stop being a Cuban colony,'' said opposition Congressman Julio Borges.

Acknowledging the popularity of some the social programs in which Cubans participate, such as the so-called ''missions'' that provide basic healthcare and literacy training in Venezuela's slums, Borges said ''true social programs'' would be protected while ''political and ideological'' ones would be cut if Chávez loses.

Still, the prospect of a reversal of Venezuela's friendly policies toward Cuba should give Castro reason to worry.

FINANCIAL TIES

During Chávez's tenure, Venezuela has become Cuba's top trading partner, a ranking based on the flow of an estimated $1 billion of subsidized petroleum to the island every year.

While Venezuela has agreements with several Caribbean basin nations to provide oil at cut-rate prices, only Cuba is permitted to resell that oil on the open market, said John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a New York-based group that monitors trade with the communist island.

Kavulich estimated that Havana owes Venezuela more than $800 million for those oil shipments -- a stunning debt that Cuba would find difficult to pay back if Chávez is ousted.

MAJOR LOSS LOOMS

An end to the oil shipments, combined with recent U.S. restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba, could put the Cuban economy and Castro's government against the ropes.

''Clearly it is in the Cuban government's commercial and economic interests to have Chávez remain the president of Venezuela,'' said Kavulich, who compares a possible Chávez loss to the end of Soviet subsidies to Havana in 1992.

The loss of Moscow's subsidies, estimated at $4 billion to $5 billion a year in the 1980s, created an economic crisis that forced Castro to adopt some free-market policies, open his doors to tourism and legalize the use of U.S. dollars in the early 1990s.

''Venezuela has clearly replaced the USSR in terms of the commercial and economic element,'' says Kavulich. "Without Venezuela, Cuba would not be able to maintain its current commercial, economic, and political systems. There would have to be some changes.''

The deep friendship between the two leaders was underscored by Chávez's recent decision to dispatch his brother Adán to Havana as Venezuela's ambassador.

While Chávez has said that Cuban-style communism would not work in Venezuela, he has nevertheless famously exclaimed that the two nations are "swimming together towards the same sea of happiness.''

Chávez also has pursued a series of other Cuba-style political initiatives, such as land redistribution and the creation of ''Bolivarian Circles,'' pro-government groups of civilians, some of them neighborhood-based, some of them said to be armed.

COLD-WAR ENEMIES

Venezuela was not always so tight with Havana. In fact, during the Cold War, Venezuela was a staunch U.S. ally that regularly cracked down on communists and was attacked by Cuban-backed guerrillas.

But pro-Chávez lawmaker Willian Lara says Cuba's close relationship with Venezuela would survive any change in government -- though he predicted Chávez will win the referendum.

''While there always existed an anticommunism in Venezuela, now many see that relations with Cuba have been good for the Venezuelan people,'' Lara said. "A new government, hypothetically, might try to marginalize Cuba, but that would be an effort against the popular will.''

Venezuela's opposition needs at least 3.7 million votes -- the number received by Chávez in the 2000 election -- to remove the president. Some recent opinion polls have the opposition winning, while others say Chávez will prevail.

That a vote in Venezuela could have profound consequences for Cuba, an island without elections, is an irony not lost on some opposition leaders.

''The recall will be a victory against authoritarianism in Venezuela and simultaneously a defeat against the dictatorship in Cuba,'' said Carlos Tablante, an opposition congressman from Venezuela's Socialist Movement.

Edwards meets with Cuban Americans in Miami

By Lesley Clark. lclark@herald.com. Posted on Mon, Aug. 02, 2004.

Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards stepped up the Kerry campaign's outreach to Cuban Americans today, meeting privately with a group of community leaders and vowing at a rally in Miami to ''keep the pressure'' on Fidel Castro.

Edwards, who made Miami his first solo post-convention stop, told a crowd gathered at the James L. Knight Center that nominee John Kerry's pledge to keep the country strong includes a promise to "keep the pressure on Castro and support those who fight for freedom.''

''We know what needs to be done,'' Edwards said to a cheering crowd this morning at the Knight Center.

Edwards later met with about 20 Cuban American leaders, telling them, according to one participant, that "the Cuban vote is in play.''

The meeting comes as the campaign believes it has an opportunity to pick up votes among the reliably Republican voting bloc of Cuban Americans, some of whom are angry with President Bush's recent crackdown on Castro, which includes limiting the number of trips family members can make to Cuba.

Edwards also did several television interviews before jetting to Orlando and closing the day with a speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Jacksonville.

Founded the first Cuban Episcopal church in Miami

By Nikki Waller, nwaller@herald.com. Posted on Tue, Aug. 03, 2004.

The Rev. Max Ignacio Salvador, founder of Miami's first Cuban Episcopal congregation who worked to broaden the involvement of Hispanics in area churches, died of a stroke Sunday at Hialeah Hospital. He was 74.

Born in Cuba, Salvador came to Miami in 1961, part of a wave of immigrants seeking civil and religious freedom. When he arrived, he was surprised to find that Miami's Episcopal churches offered no services in Spanish.

On Nov. 1, 1961, he met with a dozen other Episcopalians at the Church of the Holy Cross and they formed their own congregation, the Iglesia Episcopal de Todo los Santos. Membership grew quickly, and the congregation leased an abandoned warehouse on Southwest 17th Avenue. The new church became a support center for recent immigrants in need of food and clothing, English lessons and spiritual advice.

After a few years, the church moved to its current home at 1023 SW 27th Ave. in Little Havana, where Salvador served as rector until his retirement in 1995.

The Right Rev. Onell A. Soto, who met Salvador at a religious retreat in Cuba in 1956, described his friend as a jovial community leader who loved interpersonal communication of every kind -- from radio to newspapers to conversation.

Salvador was excited to see the successful completion of church projects and events, such as the yearly rummage sale, Soto said.

''He was happy to see the whole thing come together,'' Soto said. "He was proud of everyone who worked on projects.''

Salvador was a well-known personality in civic and community affairs, Soto said. He compiled Christian music and literature in Spanish and, with his wife of 26 years, Lourdes, compiled Anglican hymns in Spanish. He dedicated the finished compilation to his wife, who died in 1980.

He is survived by his second wife, Teresita Machado; sons Max, Miguel and Eduardo; and four grandchildren.

Funeral services are scheduled for 7 tonight at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, 464 NE 16th St.

Cuba's natural treasures facing man-made problems

Tightened U.S. rules on dealings with Cuba are reducing contacts between American and Cuban scientists who want to study and preserve the island's treasure of flora and fauna.

By Georgia Tasker, gtasker@herald.com. Posted on Sun, Aug. 01, 2004.

The hoary old-man palm, a nearly extinct cycad, the curious belly palm, the world's smallest hummingbird, a kapok relative that grows on the sides of limestone cliffs -- these unique plants and animals make Cuba, the largest island of the Greater Antilles, a biological treasure trove.

Half of the island's 6,700 species of plants are found nowhere else, even within the greater Caribbean region -- which claims only 12,000 plant species in all.

So dazzling are Cuba's flora and fauna that despite the four-decades-old U.S. embargo, a cadre of American scientists has been working quietly for years with their Cuban colleagues, racing to protect as much as possible before the natural splendor butts heads with resorts and condominiums.

This scientific cooperation has been growing for a decade, as Cuba began to allow more scientists into the country and the United States permitted more scientific exchanges.

But recent Bush administration restrictions on travel to Cuba are reducing the flow of information once more. Scientists no longer can go for a few days to collect plants or consult with colleagues -- they must stay for 10 weeks. They can't spend more than $50 a day, so renting a car may prove impossible. And a separate, specific license must be obtained if a research scientist wants to collaborate with a Cuban counterpart.

WHAT THE RULES ALLOW

Molly Millerwise, a Treasury Department spokeswoman, said the new rules will allow a trickle of exchange.

''An accredited university can apply to have 10 weeks in Cuba, and when licensed, it can engage in research,'' she said. "That includes having a scholar come up to the U.S. and teach. Cuban nationals under this license -- they can teach, and the university can pay them for it.''

But the landscape has clearly changed. The rules make it ''much more difficult for people to engage in legitimate scientific research,'' said John Croatsworth, director of Harvard University's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

Mike Maunder, director of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, said the garden has suspended its Cuba research because of the restrictions.

Brad Bennett, an ethnobotanist at Florida International University who made his first trip to Cuba this year, said FIU was not sure what the restrictions would mean to its researchers.

Scientists, including those from FIU and Fairchild, are awed by the plant life they have seen in Cuba.

''I was surprised at how much diversity there was,'' Bennett said. ''On the eastern end, it was just mind-boggling.'' Bennett calls the island ''a palm paradise,'' and Fairchild and FIU have focused on ways to save nearly extinct palms.

Ties between biologists in the United States and Cuba reach back at least to 1899, when sugar-cane grower Edwin Atkins asked Harvard for help with his crops. In 1902, Harvard set up an agricultural research center, which became the Harvard garden. It was taken over by the Cuban government after the 1959 revolution, which curtailed U.S.-Cuban botanical cooperation, and is now the Cienfuegos Botanical Garden.

FOCUS ON TOURISM

After the Soviet Union ended its financial subsidies to Cuba in 1989, there wasn't enough money for food, much less plant science. President Fidel Castro switched his focus from biotechnology to tourism, to bring money to the island quickly.

For the biotechnology people, scientific journals were stopped and computer use was restricted. By the late 1990s, some frustrated biotech scientists had left.

In the 1980s, international conservation groups began to focus on conservation in the Caribbean, where intense agriculture and growing populations had put a severe squeeze on natural areas. Two conferences in the mid-1990s, organized by the David Rockefeller Center at Harvard, further raised scientific consciousness about the importance of Cuba's environment.

As more U.S. scientists traveled to Cuba, they found 85 endemic palms, two dozen native begonias and distinctive pine forests. They also found a cadre of Cuban biologists who had been well trained in Russia and East Germany but had few resources.

''Almost everything is done on a shoestring because a shoestring is all they have,'' said Bob Dressler, a Central Florida orchid expert who attended a conference at the Soroa Orquideario in 1997, then drove across Cuba, looking for orchids. Cuban botanists who went along were ''delighted to have someone who could buy the gas for a field trip,'' he said.

Andrew Guthrie, a U.S. citizen who heads the Queen Elizabeth II Park on Grand Cayman Island, found a shortage of such basics as gardening hand tools in 1995. ''So we left them our trowels,'' Guthrie said.

When Missouri Botanical Garden's Shirley Graham worked there last year on the Flora of Cuba, she took along newspapers for pressing plants in the field.

INTERNET HELPS

The island's flora are so rich that scientists hope to do what they can to work within the narrow limits of the new restrictions.

The Internet is proving to be an important medium for information exchange.

''Their journals are old and difficult,'' said Brian Boom of the New York Botanical Garden.

"So one of the ways we are trying to bridge that [gap] is to get high-resolution digital images of specimens and put them on the Web.''

Six Cubans missing since July 6 departure

Six Cuban balseros are missing after they left for Honduras in a raft 15 days ago. The six were briefly mistaken for six other Cubans who arrived in Honduras.

By Kristen Bolt, kbolt@herald.com. Posted on Sat, Jul. 31, 2004.

For several days, Marta Olay has put off calling her mother-in-law and shattering her hopes.

Olay's husband and five balseros who left Cuba on July 6 are still missing.

There was a moment of elation last week, when Radio Mambi announced six Cubans had landed in Honduras on a homemade raft. From their description, her mother-in-law, still in Cuba, joyfully called Olay with the news, certain her son was one of them. She still thinks so.

But Olay, who is in Miami, knows better. The six, she has learned, are another group of Cubans, hoping to get to the United States but unable to reach their relatives in Miami.

''I am going crazy,'' said Olay, who came to Miami just two weeks after her wedding in May.

Members of her family are calling all over Central America, searching for news of her husband.

She is not yet ready to tell her new mother-in-law.

''Why should I destroy her again when I still do not know?'' she said.

''I am going to wait a little while,'' she said, before letting her voice drop, "but it has been too long -- almost a month.''

Her husband, Jorge Luis Eguiguren Rodriguez, and 11 other men left Havana in the late-night darkness on July 6.

They planned to go to Honduras, using a channel where the currents and winds were in their favor.

Some days later, four of the men drowned.

Six wanted to keep going, but the two remaining survivors fought to return to Cuba. They argued.

Finally, they cut off a piece of the raft and split into two parties.

When the two men got back to Cuba, they recounted what happened.

BAD NEWS

From the six, there was no word.

Then, about a week ago, Radio Mambi had news.

''My husband's mother called me from Cuba and told me that a group of Cuban refugees had landed in Honduras -- one of them even had the same name as a man on my husband's raft,'' Olay said.

Her family approached Honduran Unity, a Miami organization, seeking help in contacting the men in Honduras, as did families of some of the other men.

The volunteers jumped at the chance to lend a hand.

They found the men in the care of the Red Cross of Honduras.

But in a bitter twist of irony, these six stranded Cuban rafters had nothing to do with Olay and the others who had initiated the search. This group had left from Santa Cruz del Sur, Camaguey, on the southern border of Cuba.

''Just try to imagine it,'' Olay said.

"One minute, my husband is missing, and could be dead. Then, he is alive in Honduras. Then he is missing, and could be dead. I am devastated.''

'ANYBODY BUT CUBA'

The balseros in Honduras were also desperately searching for their relatives in Miami, clutching scraps of paper bearing scrawled names and phone numbers on which they pinned their cherished ambitions for a new life.

These men are lucky -- Honduran Immigration authorities gave each of them a work authorization permit.

The fate of the others remains unknown, although the Red Cross said that all Honduran ports are on alert for their possible arrival.

''Have you heard of your ABC's?'' asked Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation.

"Anybody But Cuba: they are just trying to get out of Cuba with any opportunity.''

''Some will stay in Honduras, but a lot will hopscotch north to the U.S.,'' Garcia said.

"They have been fortunate to get work visas.''

Garcia noted that "these Central American countries have always received dozens of refugees throughout the years, but in the last few years, there has been a small increase.''

''The distance is short, and there is a lot of Cuban trade there,'' Garcia continued. "Honduran ports are among the closest to Cuba, and with good weather, it is not such a bad passage.''

HOPEFUL

As for Marta Olay, who went to her wedding with her plane tickets and visa already in hand, she clings to the hope that she will one day be reunited with her husband.

''I miss you,'' he said to her on the phone, just days before he launched his own clandestine journey.

"I can't take it here anymore.''

''I was so afraid for him, but what could I say?'' Olay said.

Cuban: U.S. is wrong about 2 exiles

A human rights advocate in Havana criticized U.S. immigration over the detention of two Cuban nationals in Miami for alleged human rights violations in the island.

By Alfonso Chardy, achardy@herald.com. Posted on Sat, Jul. 31, 2004.

A prominent human rights advocate in Cuba says the U.S. immigration service has made a mistake in detaining two Cuban exiles in Miami over alleged past persecution of dissidents in Cuba.

Elizardo Sánchez Santacrúz, president of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said one of the Cubans -- accused of raiding Sanchez's home more than 10 years ago -- did not participate in the raid, and that his office has no record linking the second Cuban to persecution of dissidents.

''It's very likely that injustices have been committed,'' Sánchez told The Herald in a telephone interview.

Jorge de Cárdenas Agostini was detained June 8 and Luis Enrique Daniel Rodríguez July 2. Both men live in Miami-Dade County. Both also once worked for Cuban state security. Their lawyers say their clients are defectors, not persecutors.

Both men are in detention awaiting deportation or supervised release.

Cubans ordered removed generally are not deported because the Cuban government normally refuses to take them back. Most are released under supervision.

Barbara González, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined comment on Sanchez's contention.

''It is government policy to not discuss cases that are still in litigation,'' she said.

Sánchez is one of the island's recognized human rights advocates. He spent 8 ½ years in prison and has opposed the Fidel Castro regime for 37 years.

However, critics say Sánchez lacks credibility because he is suspected of having collaborated with Cuban state security, providing information about fellow dissidents -- an allegation he strongly denies.

In September, Sánchez acknowledged receiving a medal from the Cuban secret police but insisted the ceremony -- caught on tape and made public -- was a setup to smear his reputation.

Friends of the detained de Cárdenas Agostini say he left Cuba because he was associated with Gen. Antonio de la Guardia, executed after a drug-trafficking trial, when he worked at the Ministry of the Interior.

CASTRO FOES

Cuba experts have said de la Guardia and Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa, also executed after a drug trial, were perceived as Castro foes.

De Cárdenas Agostini is the nephew of Jorge de Cárdenas Loredo, a longtime lobbyist and political strategist in Miami who was charged with embezzlement, witness tampering and bribery in the 1990s.

De Cárdenas Loredo pleaded guilty in 1997 to one count of obstructing justice and was sentenced to one year in federal prison. After his release, he was sent to Krome detention center to face possible deportation, but was released in 1999.

During deportation proceedings for de Cárdenas Loredo, de Cárdenas Agostini testified about political conditions in Cuba in a bid to prevent his uncle's deportation.

It was during that proceeding, federal officials say, that de Cárdenas Agostini himself indicated he had supervised a team of torturers who targeted dissidents -- an allegation denied by his lawyer.

Sánchez told The Herald that he knew de Cárdenas Agostini and never received information he persecuted dissidents.

''His work had nothing to do with internal repression, according to information in our files,'' Sánchez said. "He was an aide and driver to Tony de la Guardia.''

One of the main allegations against Daniel Rodríguez, according to his lawyer, Leonardo Viota Sesin, came during a court hearing earlier this year when a Homeland Security prosecutor suggested Rodriguez had raided the homes of two Cuban dissidents in Havana, one of whom was Sánchez.

The other dissident, Yndamiro Restano, who now lives in Miami Beach, was arrested during the raid.

The allegation, said Viota Sesin, was based on a passage in a 1991 report published by Human Rights Watch that mentioned a ''Lt. Daniel'' as having been involved in the raids.

The Herald obtained a photograph of Daniel Rodríguez from Viota Sesin and asked Sánchez and Restano if they could identify him.

'DIFFERENT PEOPLE'

''Definitely, the person in the photograph and the officer who intruded into my house are two completely different people,'' Sánchez said during a phone conversation Thursday after receiving the photo via e-mail.

Restano agreed.

''I have never seen this man before,'' Restano said Wednesday at his home.

Neither detainee has given an interview. Viota Sesin said Daniel Rodríguez was willing to talk, but the immigration service said it would not authorize interviews with suspected human rights violators.

Linda Osberg-Braun, the attorney for de Cárdenas, said her client would not talk to the media.

Mayor: I don't belong in jail

One of Venezuela's best-known politicians sits in jail, insisting that his only crime has been his opposition to the Chávez government.

By Richard Brand. rbrand@herald.com. Posted on Sun, Aug. 01, 2004.

CARACAS - On his 75th day in a windowless jail cell, Henrique Capriles Radonski, one of Venezuela's best-known politicians, insisted that he was in prison merely for opposing President Hugo Chávez.

The 32-year-old Capriles, mayor of the wealthy Caracas municipality of Baruta, stands accused of instigating a riot at the Cuban Embassy here during a coup attempt against Chávez in 2002.

''My conscience is at peace,'' he said. "The only crimes I committed were thinking differently than the government and being from a new generation.''

Capriles spoke with The Herald last weekend at the jail of Venezuela's political police, known as DISIP.

Capriles' imprisonment stems from the chaotic events of April 11-14 in 2002, when Chávez appeared to have been forced from office by a military coup. He was quickly returned to power by loyal troops.

RALLYING AROUND

The mayor's case has become a cause célbre among Chávez's opponents, who say it proves that the leftist-populist president abuses the legal system for political ends, and that he plans to impose a Cuba-style authoritarian regime. He faces a recall vote Aug. 15.

''There is a risk that Venezuela is becoming more repressive and authoritarian,'' said Michael Shifter, policy analyst at Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank. He cited the recent indictments of officers of Súmate, a civic group that helped organize the recall vote, for allegedly accepting U.S. funds for democracy-building programs.

The Caracas newspaper El Universal has identified dozens of so-called political prisoners -- ranging from students arrested at anti-Chávez rallies to opposition activists in rural areas -- and in recent days has run thumbnail profiles of prisoners on its front pages.

Chávez denies the allegation. ''We don't have political prisoners in Venezuela. We have prisoner politicians,'' he said in a recent speech.

Prosecutors say Capriles failed to control a crowd that gathered April 12, 2002, outside of the Cuban Embassy in Baruta amid rumors that members of Chávez's government had sought asylum inside during the coup. Chávez is a close ally of Cuban President Fidel Castro.

The crowd smashed cars, cut off the embassy's electricity and water, and threatened to invade it. Capriles and several aides were admitted into the embassy by Cuban diplomats during the melee.

CHARGES

In a 20-page complaint filed by prosecutor Danilo Anderson, he is charged with six crimes, including property damage, intimidation, violating international principles, and trespassing.

Capriles insists he was trying to defuse an explosive situation.

''We were calling and notifying authorities, asking for assistance,'' Capriles said. "I talked with the people outside. I said, 'This is an embassy, you cannot go inside. . . . I am in jail because I did that.'''

A videotape of that day's events taken by a news crew seems to support Capriles' claim that he tried to calm the crowd. But it also shows him asking the Cuban ambassador for proof that no Venezuelan citizens were hiding inside.

The tape is being used as evidence both by prosecutors and the defense.

Before his arrest on May 11, Capriles was seen as a rising star in Venezuela's turbulent politics.

He was the youngest speaker of Congress in Venezuelan history at age 27, and won the mayor's race in Baruta with over 60 percent of the vote.

Authorities say they have been building a case against Capriles since shortly after the 2002 disturbances, though they pressed charges only this year, as he launched his reelection campaign. Prosecutors say he is a flight risk, so he was not allowed to post bail.

It is unclear when Capriles will have his day in court. A preliminary hearing scheduled for last Tuesday was canceled.

His cell is equipped with a small television and decorated with a makeshift shrine to the Virgin Mary.

He has just finished reading a biography of Huber Matos, a former Cuban political prisoner.

''The people in high positions are persecuting me, but the people guarding me are with me,'' he said. "It makes me optimistic about things. This country has an incredible future, more of a future than a past.''

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