CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Cuban national ordered deported

A Cuban national detained at Krome on suspicion of having persecuted dissidents has been ordered deported. But his lawyer hopes to get him released instead.

By Alfonso Chardy, achardy@herald.com. Posted on Mon, Jul. 19, 2004. Posted on Mon, Jul. 19, 2004

An immigration judge has issued an order to deport Jorge de Cárdenas Agostini, a Cuban detained in Miami last month on suspicion of having supervised a team of torturers targeting dissidents in Cuba in the 1990s.

Nina Pruneda, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miami, said: "Mr. de Cárdenas will be removed from the United States at some point, based on the final order of removal issued by an immigration judge.''

But Linda Osberg-Braun, de Cárdenas Agostini's lawyer, said she was working to have her client released instead. She declined to discuss the removal order, which was issued last week, according to people familiar with the court proceedings.

An immigration judge, acting on an Osberg-Braun motion, has closed proceedings.

Osberg-Braun has denied that her client persecuted dissidents in Cuba or supervised a torturer team.

Friends of de Cárdenas Agostini have said he left Cuba because he was once associated with a Cuban officer, Gen. Antonio de la Guardia, who was executed in 1989 after a drug trial. Some viewed de la Guardia as opposed to Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Cuban human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez Santacruz, president of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation in Havana, told El Nuevo Herald after the arrest that de Cárdenas Agostini played no role in persecuting dissidents: "Our organization has no records of accusations against this person.''

People familiar with the case said de Cardenas Agostini views acceptance of the removal order as a deal that would lead to his release. They said the defense presented evidence backing de Cárdenas' contention that he did not persecute anyone.

While an immigration judge's deportation order can be appealed, people familiar with the case said de Cárdenas Agostini is not planning an appeal. Osberg-Braun declined to discuss the case.

De Cárdenas Agostini's uncle, Jorge de Cárdenas Loredo, a longtime lobbyist and political strategist in Miami, was released from immigration detention in the late 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 in West Miami-Dade to face possible deportation, but was released in 1999 under supervision.

While Cubans ordered deported are generally released, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2001 says an undeportable foreign national could be held indefinitely if the immigration service demonstrates with ''clear and convincing evidence'' that the person is ''specially dangerous'' to the community.

Whether immigration will seek to classify de Cárdenas Agostini as a threat to the community or agree to supervised release remains to be seen.

De Cárdenas Agostini was detained June 8 at his Miami home. The case stemmed from his uncle's deportation proceedings, in which de Cárdenas Agostini testified about political conditions in Cuba in the hope of preventing his uncle's possible deportation.

Cuba and Mexico restore ties

Mexico and Cuba agreed to send ambassadors back to each other's capitals and said they were on the way to resolving their differences.

Posted on Mon, Jul. 19, 2004.

HAVANA - (AP) -- The Mexican and Cuban foreign ministers announced Sunday that they would reinstate ambassadors to each other's countries on July 26, normalizing official relations after a diplomatic spat several months ago.

The two countries still had issues to work out, but they were back on the road to reconciliation, the ministers told a press conference after meeting Sunday afternoon.

''We've made progress and agreed on the importance of working in favor of bilateral relations,'' said Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque.

''There can be differences among friends on certain issues, but these differences can be talked out,'' added Luis Ernesto Derbez, Mexico's foreign minister. "What we are doing now is working on all this to be able to move forward on the same road.''

Derbez said the two countries would continue "resolving issue by issue.''

Derbez arrived in Havana at midday Sunday. He was greeted at the airport by Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, Cuba's vice foreign minister, and then received by Perez Roque during an offering of flowers at a statue of Mexican national hero Benito Juarez.

The visit was part of an effort to thaw a diplomatic freeze created when both countries withdrew their respective ambassadors in May after Mexico accused Cuba of meddling in its internal affairs.

Cuba said it had proof that a Mexican official arrested in Havana was part of a larger political conspiracy to smear leftist politicians in Mexico. Mexico denied that, and said Cuba's Communist Party was holding unauthorized political meetings in Mexico.

Last week, a top Mexican official said that the nation was prepared to normalize its troubled relations with Cuba, but that the island would have some explaining to do first about recent disagreements.

Despite the recent tensions, both ministers said their conversation Sunday was open, direct and respectful and led to the decision to restore both ambassadors -- Mexico's Roberta Lajous to Cuba and Cuba's Jorge Bolaños to Mexico -- at the end of the month.

Perez Roque said the date for the reinstatement was symbolic, as July 26 marks the 51st anniversary of a failed rebel attack that gave a name to President Fidel Castro's cause -- the July 26 Movement -- and laid the groundwork for Castro's eventual victory six years later over the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

Historically, Mexico has been Cuba's strongest ally in the region. But relations have become strained under Mexican President Vicente Fox, whose administration has criticized Cuba's human rights record.

Cuba puts focus on corruption

Raúl Castro has been leading an attack on corruption and liberal attitudes among members of the Communist Party in Cuba.

By Marc Frank, Financial Times. Posted on Sun, Jul. 18, 2004.

HAVANA - Cuba's ruling Communist Party has launched a far-reaching assault on ''corruption and illegalities'' that could lead to the expulsion of moderate members.

The campaign -- yet to be reported by official government media -- reflects the party's ideological retrenchment and underlines the extent to which the government has renounced its timid market-oriented reforms of the early 1990s.

Over the past two or three months, members of the party's Political Bureau have been visiting local party branches to tell militants that they have one last chance to clean up their acts.

The new focus on corruption has been accompanied by measures to strip state businesses of their limited operational autonomy and to scrap executive perks such as expense accounts.

PROMINENT VOICE

A prominent voice in the anticorruption effort has been Raúl Castro, defense minister and apparently the person in line to succeed his brother, Fidel Castro, as Cuba's president, according to party cadres who attended high-level national and provincial party meetings two months ago.

The meetings were shown a video prepared as part of Raúl Castro's anticorruption drive.

''Raúl was adamant that the revolution is threatened not just by the United States but [by] corruption and liberal attitudes that give space for it to grow,'' said a midlevel party official who attended a secret gathering at central committee headquarters in May.

The official quoted Raúl Castro as saying, "Corruption will always be with us, but we must keep it at our ankles and never allow it to rise to our necks.''

'CAPITALIST' METHODS

According to a partial transcript of a separate meeting of top Communist Party officials in Matanzas province, José Ramón Machado Ventura, a Political Bureau member, warned that Cuba was not only copying 'capitalists' management technique, but [also] its methods and style.''

Machado, thought to be Raúl Castro's right-hand man, criticized ''those who have copied capitalist methods so well that they have become capitalists themselves.'' The Matanzas meeting was told that ''liberalism, lack of control and tolerance'' are affecting the entire country.

A report read at the same meeting cited 219 of a total 593 audits last year that showed that serious problems of ''corruption continue increasing in various sectors, including tourism.'' In his video, Raúl Castro reportedly makes clear that tolerance is out and discipline in.

The one-hour presentation shows the younger Castro talking to tourism officials about a corruption probe into the sector.

Viewers at selected screenings were not allowed to take notes or make recordings, but five people who have seen the video say that Castro was forthright in urging a crackdown on liberal attitudes.

''He says that tourism is a tree that was born twisted,'' one party member said. "He insists that liberalism has led to a lack of respect for the party and government within tourism and other economic sectors, in turn creating space for corruption to blossom.''

TOO FRIENDLY

In the film, Raúl Castro concedes that Ibrahim Ferradaz, the former tourism minister, and two of three deputy ministers were replaced because they were too friendly with junior officials and unable to control corruption.

''We are not militarizing tourism, but I would not hesitate to do so if I had to,'' he reportedly said.

He was referring to the appointment of a top executive from the Gaviota group -- the tourism company of Cuba's armed forces -- as tourism minister, and of another to head Cubanacán, the largest of five state-run tourism corporations.

According to Western diplomats, the campaign may also reflect the start of the inevitable post-Fidel Castro battle for control of the party.

They argue that Raúl Castro is using the campaign to knock out any competitors and avoid a power struggle when the day arrives that his brother can no longer lead.

''Raúl and the military have taken over tourism, the country's most important sector, and his men control basic industry and many other positions,'' one European ambassador said.

Cuban gymnast hopes to find glory with U.S.

Linda Robertson. lrobertson@herald.com. Posted on Sun, Jul. 18, 2004.

Annia Hatch came to the United States from Cuba for love, not an Olympic medal. But if her storybook comeback continues, she'll have both.

Hatch will find out today whether she's on the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team. After a final training camp competition at the Karolyi ranch in New Waverly, Texas, coach Marta Karolyi will select a team of six, plus three alternates.

Hatch is fighting for the final spot. Olympic trials champion Courtney Kupets and runner-up Courtney McCool already have won places on the roster, and world all-around silver medalist Carly Patterson is a shoo-in. Terin Humphrey and 2000 Olympian Tasha Schwikert are two versatile gymnasts Karolyi has an eye on. Chellsie Memmel and Holly Vise, both recovered from injuries, shared the uneven bars gold medal at last year's world championships.

That leaves Hatch, Mohini Bhardwaj, Liz Tricase and Allyshe Ishino on the outside looking in. But because Olympic scoring has changed, Karolyi wants four all-arounders and two specialists.

Hatch might have finished 11th all around at the trials, but her vault score of 9.7 was among the best in the world this year. She regularly nails a Yurchenko double many other gymnasts don't even attempt. Her skill on that apparatus could be what gets her on the team.

At 26, she's the oldest of the contenders. In a sport dominated by teenagers, she ought to be way past her prime. But after a premature retirement from 1996 to 2001, she returned refreshed and is enjoying the sport more than ever.

THE EARLY YEARS

Annia Portuondo was a gymnastics phenom 10 years ago in Havana. She was a seven-time national champion by age 18. She was the first Latin American female gymnast to win a world medal.

But when Cuba decided not to send her to the Atlanta Games, saying there was not enough money, her coach defected and Hatch retired. She had grown bored with her regimented life as an elite athlete and couldn't imagine training another four years for the 2000 Games.

''It was like a job,'' she said.

She had met New Yorker Alan Hatch at a meet in Puerto Rico earlier that year. There was an instant attraction. They ended up falling in love over the phone. For a year and a half, their relationship blossomed through conversations and letters.

''I didn't have a phone, so Alan would call my neighbor and she would run over and get me,'' Hatch said. "Nothing is easy in Cuba.''

They decided to get married. Hatch got a visa and joined Alan in Connecticut, where he was coaching a gymnastics club. She worked alongside him but felt no itch to compete until three years ago.

''I was totally lazy,'' she said. "I'd just show the little kids how to do a cartwheel, things like that.''

EXAMPLE TO FOLLOW

But she happened upon the results from an international meet and noticed that her former teammate, Leyanet Gonzalez, had come back at age 22.

'Annia told me, 'Hey, if she can do it, I can do it,' '' Alan said. 'Previously she had always said, 'Never again, I'm done.' But in one night, boom, she changed her mind.

"She came back for the right reason -- to have fun. You can see it in her floor routine -- the smile, the interaction with the audience.''

Hatch became a U.S. citizen in 2001 and, after much wrangling with Cuba's Olympic committee, joined the U.S. team in 2002. She was to be part of the U.S. world championship triumph last summer, but during the meet dislocated her knee on a vault dismount.

Thus began her second comeback.

''I just stayed positive through the rehab, and now my knee is stronger than before,'' she said. "Nothing would be better than wearing the USA uniform at the Olympics. But I am having so much fun I may keep on training even if I don't make it.''

7 Cubans arrive in Keys

Posted on Sun, Jul. 18, 2004.

Seven migrants from Cuba came ashore in Sugarloaf Key on Saturday, the Monroe County Sheriff's Office reported.

The migrants, all men, were in good health. Four were found in an easily accessible area and were turned over to immigration officials, sheriff's spokeswoman Becky Herrin said.

Three others were found along a long dirt road and were brought out by helicopter because officials feared they were suffering from mild heat exhaustion. They were taken to Lower Keys Medical Center as a precaution, Herrin said.

Martinez gambling on Cuba stand

U.S. Senate candidate Mel Martinez navigates tricky political waters in bucking the Cuban exile community's beliefs about U.S.-imposed restrictions.

By Marc Caputo, mcaputo@herald.com. Posted on Sun, Jul. 18, 2004.

TALLAHASSEE - Mel Martinez invariably enthralls crowds when he recounts his childhood flight from Cuba's ''tyrannical Communism'' and ''religious persecution'' to a free United States, where he became President Bush's housing secretary and is now running for the U.S. Senate.

With its Horatio Alger overtones and White House ties, the story is the backbone of the Republican's campaign.

But it also means he condones an administration policy largely opposed by South Florida's Cuban exile community: turning back many of the Cubans who flee the very government Martinez escaped and continues to denounce.

''I don't think that's wrong unless that person has reasonable fear of persecution and can prove it,'' Martinez told The Herald. "Everyone from Cuba does not have a fear of persecution. Many people from Cuba are coming because of economic conditions.''

Expressing such sentiments about Cuba and immigration, while closely mirroring mainstream GOP thought, is a tricky act of political navigation for an Orlando-based candidate counting on Miami-Dade's Hispanics -- who comprise 69 percent of Republicans in the county -- to carry him in the crowded Aug. 31 winner-take-all primary.

Some Cuban lawmakers have joked, under their breath, that Martinez isn't a real Cuban because he doesn't live in South Florida.

HISPANIC SUPPORT

Martinez, who would become the nation's first Cuban-American senator, still has the backing of the majority of South Florida Hispanics, according to polls, though Senate race front-runner Bill McCollum has actively courted the Cuban-American vote, having sponsored a number of exile-backed measures when he was in Congress.

U.S. Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, a McCollum supporter and force behind Bush's new hard-line restrictions on Cuba travel, said it was risky for Martinez to "question the fact or put in doubt the fact that all Cubans fleeing Cuba are seeking freedom from totalitarianism.''

That essential belief has been under assault ever since President Clinton instituted -- and Bush continued -- the wet foot/dry foot policy.

The rule grants asylum to Cubans who step on U.S. soil without first being interdicted.

Those caught at sea are returned unless they can prove they fear persecution.

Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, said the wet foot/dry foot policy is unfair because it draws an ''absurd'' distinction based on modes of refugee travel.

''We don't make distinctions because nobody made distinctions with us when we came here. The people who want to leave Cuba today are living under the same dictatorship that we did,'' Garcia said.

Garcia also questioned the way in which Cubans caught at sea have to prove they reasonably fear persecution.

''Not everybody travels with his persecution file on a raft when you're dehydrated and delirious and sunburned and thrown on board a Coast Guard cutter after four days, and have an attorney with you and can prove to an immigration-trained officer that you've been persecuted,'' Garcia said. "No, most people don't come here like that, so they get sent back and, we believe, many are persecuted.''

CRITICISM OF POLICY

When wet foot/dry foot was instituted, it was roundly panned in the exile community. Bush suggested he would either change or review it when he campaigned in 2000. Exiles complain he has done neither.

Martinez said that he, too, doesn't like the policy.

He said he would want to change it to at least allow rafters to prove their case in a forum other than the deck of a Coast Guard cutter. He said the new Homeland Security Department had supplied him with information showing that many rafters intercepted at sea expressed that they were economic -- not politically persecuted -- immigrants.

Despite his dislike of the wet foot/dry foot rule, Martinez invoked it five years ago in the name of another famous rafter: Elián González.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

When Elián arrived in the United States and touched off an international and interfamily struggle in late 1999, Martinez argued that Elián's ''dry feet'' made him eligible for U.S. residency. Martinez, chairman of Orange County's commission at the time, briefly hosted the boy in Orlando and took him on a well-publicized trip to Disney World.

The parallels between Martinez and Elián were unavoidable: Elián lost his mother on the voyage over; Martinez's parents had sent him to America alone in the 1960s as part of Operation Pedro Pan, organized by the Catholic Church.

''A lot of what was going on in Cuba, which is still going on today, is religious repression,'' he said, comparing the Florida Straits to the Berlin Wall.

The analogy is a common one, and was used by McCollum in a Cuba policy statement made with Díaz-Balart and his brother, Mario, also a McCollum supporter and congressman.

VIEWS ON CUBA

Immigration and Cuba have become major themes among the eight Republican candidates seeking the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Bob Graham.

Lawyer Larry Klayman wants to invade the island; former Air Force pilot Sonya March has called for an end to the Cuban embargo; and McCollum is calling for an immediate end to wet foot/dry foot, though he says some Cubans shouldn't necessarily be instantly guaranteed residency in the United States and might be encouraged to go elsewhere.

Having spent 18 years on the House immigration subcommittee, McCollum supported a 1996 law that took away some due-process rights for legal immigrants. In 2000, when he first ran for the Senate, he sponsored a measure to remove some of those restrictions.

McCollum also helped write a plank of the GOP's platform in 1996 declaring that children born of illegal immigrants should not automatically be citizens. Both he and Martinez oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants in the United States, and Martinez has proposed a measure to register and track what he calls "aliens.''

A HARD LINE

The tough talk on immigration -- coupled with the tale of his immigrant roots -- has only brought Martinez accolades in conservative bastions such as the Panhandle.

Martinez's support appears even stronger in Miami-Dade, which is what makes his talk of ''economic refugees'' so disappointing to many exiles.

''I respect Mel Martinez very much, and if he made that statement, then I would have to categorically disagree,'' said Ramón Saúl Sánchez, president of the Miami-based exile organization Democracy Movement. "It does not represent reality, what people have to face on that island and why they leave.''

Castro lures sex tourism, president says

President Bush lashed out at Fidel Castro, saying the Cuban leader has fostered prostitution in his country to attract tourists.

By Lesley Clark. lclark@herald.com. Posted on Sat, Jul. 17, 2004

TAMPA - President Bush on Friday accused Fidel Castro of taking advantage of U.S. goodwill in the past to foster child prostitution in Cuba, turning the island nation into what the president called a ''major destination'' for visitors seeking sex.

''The dictator welcomes sex tourism,'' said Bush, who used a speech devoted to the crime of human trafficking to lash into Castro, in an apparent defense of his controversial election-year crackdown on travel to Cuba.

Bush said Castro ''bragged about the industry,'' quoting him as saying: "Cuba has the cleanest and most educated prostitutes in the world.''

Bush said Castro made the comment "because sex tourism is a vital source of hard currency to keep his corrupt government afloat.''

Castro made the comment in a 1992 address to the Cuban National Assembly, when he spoke about the country's need for tourism and acknowledged the presence of prostitutes in Cuba, even though prostitution is illegal. His actual words, according to a transcript prepared by the U.S. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, were: "We can say that they are highly educated hookers and quite healthy, because we are the country with the lowest number of AIDS cases.''

Bush's remarks, coming as he addressed the U.S. Department of Justice's first-ever national training conference on combatting slavery, seemed designed to deflect criticism that his Cuba policy -- unpopular in some quarters -- will hurt Cuban families by restricting how often they can see each other.

Instead, Bush argued that easing Cuba travel restrictions in the 1990s led to a spike in child prostitution. Bush sought to link the travel restrictions to what he said is a global strategy to bring an end to slavery, a scourge he called an "affront to the defining promise of our country.''

He suggested the restrictions -- enacted after Cuban-American Republicans warned that he risked losing support if he didn't get tougher on Castro -- will not only help tamp down prostitution, but cut off a flow of cash to the island's leader.

''The regime in Havana, already one of the worst violators of human rights in the world, is adding to its crimes,'' he said.

Citing a report from the Protection Project at Johns Hopkins University, Bush said that Cuba has ''replaced Southeast Asia as a destination for pedophiles and sex tourists'' and that the easing of restrictions before he took office led to an ''influx of American and Canadian tourists'' and a "sharp increase in child prostitution.''

The report, however, says Cuba is ''one of many countries'' that has replaced Southeast Asia as a sex tourism magnet, "according to general news accounts.''

According to news reports out of Havana, Castro in June denounced the State Department for including Cuba in a list of states practicing human trafficking, adding, "it is still more infamous to claim that Cuba promotes child sex tourism.''

Bush's visit was billed as a nonpolitical White House event, but Bush tucked in a plug for his Cuba policy, which critics say seeks to appease hard-line Cuban American exiles, a key GOP voting bloc in the state that decided the 2000 election by just 537 votes.

Bush's policies, which limit family travel to once every three years and restrict educational travel, have come under fire from some moderate Cuban Americans, who support a trade embargo but want to be able to travel and support relatives in Cuba.

Democrats have sought to exploit the potential divide, with Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry denouncing Bush's move as a ''cynical, election-year'' ploy. Kerry has said would encourage ''principled travel'' to the island and his campaign suggested Friday that Bush's travel ban has only "increased the suffering of the Cuban people and Cuban Americans with family on the island.''

Bush appeared with his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, whom he lauded for signing a bill that makes human trafficking a felony in Florida. Neither mentioned that the legislation was sponsored last spring by two of the Legislature's most liberal Democrats, Sen. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston and Rep. Anne Gannon of Delray Beach.

''I'm really glad to see the administration supports the Democratic agenda of helping women,'' said Wasserman Schultz. "It's good to see they are coming over to our way of thinking. It's just unfortunate that his budget priorities don't match the rhetoric.''

Other Democrats accused Bush of lagging to enact an international protocol against human trafficking that a departing President Bill Clinton had signed.

Human traffickers smuggle between 14,500 and 17,500 people into the U.S. every year, forcing them to work, often without pay, in brothels, sweatshops and farm fields. Florida, along with California and New York, is among the three states with the highest incidence of reported human trafficking cases.

Cuba, Mexico try to get in step

Mexico's foreign minister will visit Cuba Sunday to try to warm chilled relations, but officials say it may be some time before Mexico and Cuba agree to exchange ambassadors.

By Susana Hayward, Knight Ridder News Service. Posted on Sat, Jul. 17, 2004.

MEXICO CITY - Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbéz will visit Cuba Sunday to try mending troubled diplomatic relations that caused the two long-friendly nations to withdraw their ambassadors earlier this year.

Derbéz will meet with Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Roque during the one-day visit, although Mexican officials cautioned that quick results were not guaranteed.

''It's a step in the right direction, but we still have a lot of ground to cover,'' Miguel Hakim, Mexican undersecretary of Latin American and Caribbean affairs, said Tuesday in announcing the trip.

Both countries, friendly throughout much of Cuban President Fidel Castro's 45 years in power, have traded accusations of meddling in each other's affairs.

Relations started going downhill after Mexican President Vicente Fox took office in 2000. Fox developed a close rapport with Washington and has been critical of Cuba's human rights record. During a 2002 visit to Cuba, Fox became the only Mexican president to meet with anti-Castro dissidents.

CASTRO DISPLEASED

Castro has called Fox a ''lackey'' of the Bush administration. He embarrassed Fox in 2002 by releasing audiotapes of Fox telling Castro that he wasn't welcome at a U.N.-sponsored summit in Monterrey in 2002, for fear that Castro would clash with President Bush. ''You eat and leave,'' Fox told Castro.

Relations reached a low point when Castro, during his annual May Day speech, said Mexico's standing in Latin America had "turned to ashes.''

The next day, Mexico accused Cuba of interfering in its internal affairs and recalled its ambassador, Roberta Lajous. The Mexican government also demanded that Cuba's ambassador to Mexico, Jorge Bolaños, leave the country.

Derbéz and Roque began mending fences May 27 on the sidelines of a Summit of the Americas meeting in the Mexican city of Guadalajara. They agreed to meet in Cuba soon and have spoken three times on the phone, Hakim said.

Hakim added that Mexico was ready to send Lajous back to Cuba "once we're satisfied by certain explanations.''

Cuban officials also expressed eagerness to improve ties.

''Cuba hopes for total reestablishment of relations, which both nations deserve after more than 100 years of friendship,'' said Cuban Embassy spokesman Frank Díaz. "It will be a good visit to air things out. And it's especially important because of U.S. policy against Cuba.''

PROBLEMS REMAIN

But there are still issues to resolve, including a Mexican demand for videotapes that Cuba supposedly made of its interrogations of Mexico City businessman Carlos Ahumada. Cuban officials arrested Ahumada March 31 on Mexican charges of fraud and money laundering.

Ahumada fled to Havana on Feb. 27 after giving Mexican TV stations videos of him giving wads of cash to members of Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador's Democratic Revolutionary Party. The tapes caused an uproar because López Obrador could succeed Fox.

Cuba didn't return Ahumada to Mexico until April 28, and Mexican officials want to know what Ahumada told Cuban officials during 40 hours of interrogations.

U.S. allows firm's deal with Cuba

A California biotech firm's deal with the Cuban government will allow it to develop three cancer drugs. The firm will pay Cuba $2 million a year in food and medicine for three years.

By Paul Elias, Associated Press. Posted on Fri, Jul. 16, 2004.

In a rare exception to long-standing American foreign policy, U.S. officials have approved a small California biotech company's deal with the Cuban government to develop three experimental cancer drugs created in Havana.

The agreement announced Thursday by CancerVax Corp. is the first such commercial deal approved by the U.S. government between a U.S. biotechnology company and Cuba, which has spent $1 billion on building a biotech program that is among the most advanced in the Third World. One of the drugs included in the deal is considered a promising one that attacks a cancer cell in a novel way.

Government approval comes while the Bush administration is getting even tougher with its 41-year-old economic embargo on the communist nation.

CancerVax, a money-losing company that currently has no drugs approved for sale, will develop the drugs in its Carlsbad, Calif., laboratories and share profits with the Cuban government if any of the drugs is approved for sale in the United States.

The deal also calls for CancerVax to pay Cuba $2 million a year for the next three years.

FOOD AND MEDICINE

But underscoring the complex political backdrop against which the deal took place, CancerVax agreed to a U.S. demand to pay Cuba in food and medicine instead of cash.

The State Department recommended approval of the deal, which was ultimately granted by the Treasury Department. Both departments said the U.S. government is open to considering similar drug deals but would continue to restrict the flow of U.S. currency to Cuba.

''This is a unique case in that there is the potential to successfully treat a deadly disease using technology not otherwise available,'' said State Department spokeswoman Darla Jordan. "As a matter of policy, the United States will continue to consider license requests where there is the potential to benefit public health.''

Analysts said the U.S. approval of the CancerVax deal is not a sign that the Bush administration is easing its policy on the embargo.

''The goal was to provide a benefit to the citizenry of the United States while limiting the monetary and public relations benefit to the government of Cuba,'' said John Kavulich II, who keeps U.S. businesses informed on Cuba as president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council in New York.

A TIGHTROPE

Kavulich said the Bush administration had walked a political tightrope since CancerVax applied last November for government permission to complete the deal.

''In this case, the Bush administration is loath to provide any mechanism that might enhance the positive visibility of the government of Cuba,'' Kavulich said. "At the same time, the Bush administration doesn't want to be seen as potentially denying a treatment to a sick child in the United States.''

EARLIER DEAL

Five years ago, the Clinton administration waded through a similar political thicket when it allowed the pharmaceutical giant now known as GlaxoSmithKline to enter a deal with Havana to develop and market a Cuban-made meningitis B vaccine, which is undergoing human testing.

That deal was a template for the granting of the current U.S. license, which occurred July 9. The company also enlisted bipartisan support from some members of Congress.

''Saving lives shouldn't be a political issue, it should be a human issue,'' deal supporter Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said in a statement released by his office.

CancerVax Chief Executive David Hale said that he and Cuban officials sealed the deal in Havana late Tuesday night, bringing to fruition a three-year courtship begun at a cancer conference in San Francisco. There, two Cuban scientists presented positive data on one of the three drugs.

All three drugs are known as cancer vaccines, intended to induce the body's own immune system to fight the disease. Hale said the most developed of the three experimental drugs is called SAI-EGF, which the company hopes to first use to combat some forms of lung cancer. Hale said the company hopes to begin human testing in the United States by early next year.

OTHER POSSIBILITIES

Hale said he hopes that CancerVax's deal will lead to similar arrangements between other U.S. companies and Cuba.

''The Cubans have spent a lot of time and money developing technologies that could be useful as products here,'' Hale said.

Region's leaders turn to Cuba trade talks

Posted on Fri, Jul. 16, 2004.

HAVANA - (AP) -- Foreign ministers from around the Caribbean gathered here Thursday for talks aimed at increasing trade and other ties among their countries -- and with Cuba.

Opening the daylong meeting, Foreign Affairs Minister Billie Miller of Barbados promised that Cuba would not be isolated from the talks, even though it does not belong to the 15-member Caribbean trade bloc known as CARICOM. ''Many of the nations in CARICOM have very strong ties and roots with Cuba,'' Miller said.

The group was talking with Cuban officials about implementing a free-trade pact signed with the regional bloc in 2000. Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque said his country was keen to put the agreement into action.

The delegation also discussed programs offered by Cuba. More than 1,000 students from other Caribbean countries study in Cuba under scholarships from Fidel Castro's government.

Dancing with Fidel in a changing Cuba

Journalist explores the country's culture through its vibrant musical history and future.

By Enrique Fernandez, efernandez@herald.com. Posted on Sun, Jul. 18, 2004.

Last Dance in Havana:The Final Days of Fidel and the Start of the New Cuban Revolution. Eugene Robinson. Free Press. 288 pages. $25.

Eugene Robinson's book on contemporary Cuba starts on a high note. It's late at night at the Tropical, Havana's premium music venue, and the author is watching the supernatural spectacle that is Afro-Cuban popular dance:

"They were whipping, they were twirling. They were circling, diving beneath locked arms, embracing. They were bumping, grinding, releasing, spinning, caressing, all but making love. They were doing all those things in a dense crowd, somehow coordinating their moves so that whenever a man swung his partner toward a given point on the floor, the man or woman in the neighboring couple who was occupying that space somehow moved out of the way just in time, gracefully shifting into another space that a millisecond earlier had likewise been magically vacated.''

Robinson, an assistant managing editor at The Washington Post and author of Coal to Cream: A Black Man's Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race, is dancing as fast as he can. But he cannot quite meet the expectations of such an explosive first step in exploring Cuban culture. The rest of Last Dance in Havana has its moments as it meanders through the careers of several music professionals and links them to recent Cuban history, Afro-Cuban culture and the island's aging dance master, Fidel Castro. But Last Dance in Havana leaves the reader less than breathless, for no reporting can match the wizardry of Cuban popular dance.

Writing as intricate and dazzling as a night at the Tropical does exist. Alejo Carpentier comes to mind. In his novella Concerto Barroco, on another late night, in 18th century Venice, Europe's greatest composers, led by a talented Afro-Cuban, invent the Cuban jam session two centuries before Israel ''Cachao'' Lopez.

Still, Last Dance in Havana offers a fresh look at the mass of contradictions of the Cuban Revolution. To call Fidel Cuba's greatest dancer is an overarching trope applied to someone who is reported to have little affinity with Afro-Cuban popular culture. Yet Robinson makes a strong case for his assessment, down to the latest wave of repression, carefully camouflaged by the United States' war on Iraq.

Black Cuban culture is this book's theme, for in a predominantly Afro-American country -- due to the white diaspora that calls itself el exilio -- this culture is undoubtedly the future. But Cuban musicians have a bumpy ride ahead. The island is an endless fount of musical talent. Even as exiles were claiming that the son -- Cuba's master genre -- left Cuba, a new generation of popular artists, some of them classically trained, were creating the turbocharged salsa of timba. And enough old soneros stayed behind for Ry Cooder to package them into the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon. (Robinson sets the record straight on this subject, reporting that the genius who put the group together was Cuban producer Juan de Marcos.)

Marketing is also a problem. Cuba loves its artists, but Cubans are poor and for artists to eke out a living they need foreign gigs and foreign record contracts. But in the end, the biggest obstacle to selling Cuban music abroad is precisely what Robinson admired at the Tropical: the penchant for the baroque. This is the dominant style of the island's culture, evident in the prose of its writers as well as in the complicated twists and turns of dance and music so densely composed, arranged and orchestrated that it defies the simple-hooks formula of the marketplace. ''We tend to make our music too complicated these days,'' de Marcos tells Robinson. "A lot of bands go up to the States and they play. ... all this rocking music, man, and the people just sit there.''

Cubans will tell you that salsa is dumbed-down music. Exactly. And that is why it succeeded for so long. But salsa and timba belong to the past, Robinson writes. The future, he predicts, is hip-hop, mixed with Cuban genres, no doubt, infused with powerful Afro-Cuban religion and tough lyrics that tell unpleasant truths, created by youths who, as Robinson points out, know only the Revolution's disappointments and none of its triumphs.

Robinson's book focuses on music in Cuba; he ignores the fact that off the island, old-time musical culture is alive and kicking. Cubans mine their inherited traditions to make pop (Gloria Estefan); Latin jazz (Paquito D'Rivera); hip-hop (Pitbull); and fusions so new they have yet to be named (Habana Abierta). But in his vision of the future, Robinson is right. Cuba -- and one could argue, the community abroad as well -- will vibrate to the beat of the hip-hop generations, today and tomorrow.

Enrique Fernandez is The Herald's Features editor.

I rebelled for good reason, Venezuelan ex-officer says

A former Venezuelan military officer held at Krome detention center testifies for the first time, explaining why he rebelled against Venezuela's president.

By Alfonso Chardy, achardy@herald.com. Posted on Sat, Jul. 17, 2004

Former Venezuelan National Guard Lt. José Antonio Colina told an immigration court this week he broke with President Hugo Chávez because Chávez brought Cuban military advisors to train Venezuelan troops, allowed Colombian guerrillas to operate in Venezuela and fostered corruption in the military.

Colina, 30, is one of two National Guard lieutenants who fled to the United States in December after being charged in Venezuela with bombing the Spanish embassy and the Colombian consulate in Caracas Feb. 25, 2003.

It was the first time either lieutenant has spoken publicly since they showed up at Miami International Airport seeking asylum. Lt. Germán Rodolfo Varela, 31, is expected to testify when Colina finishes his own account. Colina is expected to resume his testimony next week at immigration court in Krome, a detention center in West Miami-Dade where the lieutenants are being held by immigration.

''I felt there was a loss of values in the armed forces after Chávez rose to power,'' Colina said. "There was widespread corruption . . . a loss of national sovereignty by allowing foreign armed groups to operate on national territory . . . instilling of the Cuban model by people sent by the Cuban regime.''

Chávez, a friend of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, has acknowledged bringing to Venezuela thousands of Cuban doctors and sports trainers to serve in poor areas and villages but has not publicly disclosed the presence of the Cuban military.

Venezuelan authorities have requested the extradition of the two asylum seekers, alleging they bombed the diplomatic missions. The issue did not come up in Colina's first day of testimony Wednesday. While neither Colina nor Varela had responded to the allegations, their lawyers and relatives say the claims are false.

Bernardo Alvarez, the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States, declined to respond to Colina's statements citing his country's extradition request.

But Alvarez said that, in general, Cuban personnel in Venezuela is active only in health, sports and education and that stories of Colombian guerrillas in Venezuela are ''rumors.'' He also noted that Chávez has reduced military spending to curb corruption.

However, foreign diplomats have told The Herald that Cuban advisors have been spotted at several ministries as well as in civilian and military intelligence agencies.

Colina said the Venezuelan military helped the guerrillas by staying in their barracks and reducing the size of border units.

The international saga of Colina and Varela began in November when a Caracas judge, Yedanira Nieves, issued an arrest warrant Nov. 14 for them on charges of participating in the bombings.

Prosecutors in Caracas have said the case is largely based on statements by Silvio Mérida, who operated the sound system at Altamira during opposition rallies, and allegedly overheard people at the plaza plot with Varela and Colina to bomb the diplomatic missions.

Alonso Medina, a Venezuelan attorney who represented Varela and Colina before they fled, told the court Mérida was tortured before he implicated the former lieutenants in the plot. Venezuelan prosecutors have denied that.

American officials have not taken a position on extradition. But the immigration service's trial attorneys have told Immigration Judge Neale Foster that Colina and Varela do not deserve haven in the United States because there are serious reasons'' to believe they committed a serious nonpolitical crime'' prior to arriving here.

The judge later will decide whether the former officers can stay, a decision that can be appealed.

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