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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Cuban travel agency added to U.S. ban
list
The U.S. Treasury Department
barred nationals from dealing with a Cuban
travel agency, as a senator warned against
changing agricultural export rules.
By Pablo Bachelet, pbachelet@herald.com.
Posted on Thu, Dec. 09, 2004.
WASHINGTON - The Treasury Department on
Wednesday designated the travel agency Tour
& Marketing International Ltd. as a
Cuban-linked enterprise, barring persons
subject to U.S. jurisdiction from conducting
any transactions with it.
A Treasury statement said the agency provided
''a means by which U.S. persons can travel
to Cuba via third countries'' and evade
U.S. sanctions. The company has offices
in Cuba, Spain, England and the British
Virgin Islands.
Tour & Marketing is a tour operator
representing the Cuban government's Agencia
Receptora Ecotur, one of the largest local
agencies, Treasury said, and generates resources
for the Cuban government.
Most U.S. nationals are prohibited from
traveling to the island. The Bush administration
says most of the tourism dollars are collected
by the Cuban government to sustain a repressive
regime.
The move follows Treasury's addition in
October of SerCuba, an electronic money
transfer company, to its list of Specially
Designated Nationals, meaning U.S. citizens
and residents cannot do business with firms
on the list. In February, the Treasury designated
10 companies as owned by the Cuban government.
Meanwhile, an influential Democratic senator
threatened to block future Treasury Department
confirmations if the Bush administration
makes it harder for U.S. companies to sell
agricultural products to the island.
''I will not sit idly by if the Treasury
Department attempts to rewrite legislation
Congress intended to facilitate trade with
Cuba,'' said Max Baucus of Montana, ranking
Democrat on the Finance Committee. "I
am prepared to hold up the next significant
Treasury Department nominee until this gets
resolved.''
The administration is considering rules
that would oblige the Cuban government to
make cash payments for U.S. exports before
the products leave U.S. ports, rather than
the customary arrangement of paying when
the goods arrive in Cuba.
A dash of adventure, luster for old
Cuban dance music
By Jordan Levin. jlevin@herald.com.
Posted on Thu, Dec. 09, 2004.
In almost half a century as a musician,
violinist and composer Federico Britos has
played with artists who push the boundaries
of jazz and popular Latin music. He has
worked with revolutionary tango great Astor
Piazzolla, bossa nova master Joao Gilberto
and mambo inventor and bassist Israel ''Cachao''
Lopez.
So it's not surprising that for his own
group, Danzon by Six, Britos delves into
the Cuban danzon, the popular dance music
of Cuba in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. The danzon may seem old-fashioned
now, but it was ground-breaking in its day,
the first intrinsically Cuban dance music.
It remained popular for some 70 years, a
long run for a dance music style, giving
birth to the mambo before passing into obscurity.
But Britos' way with the danzon has hit
a spark with audiences. When Danzon by Six
performed at Coral Gables' Books & Books
in May, the crowd overflowed into the street.
That inspired Books & Books to make
its first venture into concert production;
the store will present Danzon by Six at
Little Havana's Manuel Artime Theater tonight.
The group is releasing its second album,
Elegante.
Britos loves the danzon's formality and
sweetness -- and its musical depth. ''The
danzon is a very rich genre musically, and
it's very elegant,'' Britos, 67, says from
his home in Miami, where he has lived for
11 years. Conservatory trained, the Uruguayan-born
Britos has worked with the Urfe family,
one of Cuba's most important musical families
and central to the development of the danzon,
and written a danzon for orchestra. He revels
in the genre's complexity and in the important
place it gives to the violin.
One of the most accomplished musicians
in Latin jazz, Britos is featured on Charlie
Haden's Grammy-winning Nocturne, and on
Bebo Valdés and Diego El Cigala's
Latin Grammy-winning Lagrimas negras. In
his hands the danzon takes on an even more
adventurous touch. ''We improvise, and this
allows me to be creative spontaneously,''
he says. "We respect those things they
did before, and we do other things that
belong to this century.''
For all its sedate reputation, the danzon
is one of the most important of popular
Cuban musics. It grew out of the contradanza
and the danza, formal European group dances
featuring couples in elaborate patterns.
As African musicians in Cuba began playing
contradanzas in the second half of the 19th
century, they added Cuban rhythms and a
sense of swing, says Ned Sublette, author
of Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums
to the Mambo. The result was the first native
Cuban dance music. ''[The danzon] grew quite
organically out of the conjuncture of European
dance forms being played by black musicians
in Cuba,'' Sublette says. "It was a
Cuban way of playing a heritage music from
Europe.''
With its couples dancing front to front,
its impulse in the hips, barely African-tinged
rhythm, and its then-radical use of percussion
and horns, the danzon was the wild dance
of its time. ''When they started playing
danzones it was the scandalous Negro thing,''
Sublette says. It remained popular until
the even more scandalously informal and
intimate son came along in the 1920s.
But danzon's influence doesn't end there.
In the late 1930s, Cachao used it as the
basis for compositions generally regarded
as the first mambos.
Britos believes danzon's musical energy
appeals to audiences besides nostalgic Cubans.
''It seems to me that this is a genre that's
interesting not just to older people, but
to younger audiences, and not just to Cubans,
but to Americans and Europeans,'' he says.
"We've played in Detroit and Ann Arbor
[Mich.], and the audience was 99 percent
North American, and it still got people
dancing.''
The Cuba travel ban appeals process
Posted on Tue, Dec. 07,
2004.
Under rules by the Treasury Department's
Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC),
tourists caught traveling illegally to Cuba
can be fined up to $55,000, although most
first-time violators are fined $7,500 --
less if they can prove, for instance, they
performed humanitarian work on the island.
When issued a penalty notice by OFAC, the
individual has 30 days to appeal. If the
case is not settled out of court, the case
goes before an administrative law judge,
who can uphold or dismiss the penalty.
There's one more administrative appeal
available, to a person known as a ''Treasury
Secretary designee,'' according to an OFAC
spokeswoman. If the fine still stands, the
individual can take the case to a U.S. federal
district court.
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