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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Bush's Cuba moves stir backlash
President Bush seeks
to shore up his Cuba credentials by getting
tough on Fidel Castro, but some Cuban Americans
with family members on the island are not
happy about it.
By Lesley Clark. lclark@herald.com.
Posted on Mon, May. 31, 2004 in The Miami
Herald.
U.S. Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart hailed
President Bush as the ''best friend'' of
Cuban exiles when the White House this month
touted its election-year strategy to crack
down on Fidel Castro.
Parts of the plan -- a boost in aid to
dissidents on the island and a renewed effort
to broadcast Cuban government-jammed Radio
and TV Marti -- met with broad acclaim from
Cuban Americans.
But Bush's nod to the hard-liners in the
exile community -- a further restriction
on travel to the island and a clamp-down
on those who can receive cash assistance
from U.S. relatives -- has touched off an
emotionally charged backlash among Cuban
Americans with family members still in Cuba
and among some exiles who believe that change
can come only from within the island.
And it has led some to warn that by playing
to his conservative base, the president
could hand Democratic rival John Kerry an
opening in a state that decided the presidency
in 2000 by just 537 votes.
''It's counter to the basic principle of
family reunification,'' said Miami banker
Carlos Saladrigas, chairman of the moderate
Cuba Study Group.
He noted that he has been a Republican
''all my life'' but is incensed by the travel
and cash restrictions and is wrestling with
how he will vote in November.
''We want to affect the Cuban government,
not hurt the Cuban people, and these are
absolutely and totally the wrong measures,''
he said.
Infuriated by the restrictions, several
Cuban-American exile groups have begun to
collect signatures to petition the administration
to lift them. Others plan a voter registration
campaign aimed at signing up new citizens
-- those most likely to be affected by the
changes.
''It was a potentially dangerous move for
a candidate who needs 80 percent of the
Cuban vote,'' said Sergio Bendixen, a Democratic
pollster who estimates that close to half
of all Cuban Americans and 25 percent of
Cuban-American voters send money home to
family members on the island. "He can't
afford to alienate anyone.''
VOTER SUPPORT
Republican strategists, though, scoff at
the suggestion that Bush risks any softening
of support from the reliably Republican
CubanAmerican voting bloc. They note that
the new policy is the result of lobbying
by a politically active hard-line exile
community that last summer warned the president
that he needed to match his anti-Castro
rhetoric with results or risk losing its
support.
And they suggest that those most affected
by the changes are recent arrivals, unlikely
to be registered to vote.
''I'm more concerned about a different
kind of backlash, the mainstream Cuban-American
community that may not come through if this
isn't carried out,'' said state Rep. David
Rivera, a Miami Republican who last summer
wrote to Bush, urging him to adopt a tougher
Cuba policy.
The warning came as the administration
last July sent back 12 Cubans suspected
of hijacking a boat to reach Florida. Angry
exile leaders saw it as a costly misstep
by a Republican president who had failed
to fulfill campaign promises to toughen
policies targeting Castro's government.
The new steps, they say, fulfill those
promises and more.
''President Bush is the best ally of freedom
for Cuba that we have,'' said Ninoska Pérez-Castellón,
a spokeswoman for the Cuban Liberty Council,
whose Radio Mambí show Vice President
Dick Cheney recently chose for a rare interview
in which he touted the new policy.
The new restrictions provide clear evidence
that despite some polls that show increasing
numbers of Cuban Americans steadily moving
away from hard-line positions, the administration
has the ear of the "exilio historico''
-- the first wave of Cuban exiles who retain
a tight grip on South Florida's Cuban-American
political infrastructure and influential
Spanish radio.
The policy includes recommendations made
by the Cuban American National Foundation.
But foundation President Francisco ''Pepe''
Hernandez said the group never advocated
tighter restrictions on travel and aid,
believing it could injure families and set
back efforts to foster democracy on the
island.
COMMITTEE VOTERS
Strategists suggest that Bush has more
to gain from playing to the hard-liners,
who are more likely to be committed voters.
''The people who vote are the hard-core,
hard-line exiles,'' said Rivera, a former
Hispanic outreach director for the Republican
Party of Florida.
''You might have these polls that show
the community has changed, but that's not
the heart of the community,'' said Pérez-Castellón,
whose group splintered off from the foundation
in 2001 amid differences in approach to
Cuba policy.
Rivera notes that Bush needs to excite
the hard-right Cuban-American base in an
election year that otherwise has little
to galvanize Florida's nearly half-million
Cuban voters. That's a contrast to 2000,
when outrage over the Clinton administration's
decision to return Elián González
to his father in Cuba helped Bush roll over
Al Gore among Cuban Americans and narrowly
secure the state.
SHOWING RESTRAINT?
Yet, critics of the restrictions note that
Bush did not eliminate travel and cash gifts
as proof that such a move would be politically
toxic. According to several people close
to the negotiations, the administration
was aggressively lobbied to eliminate the
restrictions, but held off.
''He's just moved the ball forward, but
right behind this huge package is something
that's neither rational nor pragmatic,''
said Joe Garcia, executive director of the
Cuban American National Foundation.
But Democrats suggest that Kerry will need
to bolster his Cuba credentials if he hopes
to siphon off Cuban-American voters. ''At
this time, the choice for those people who
are upset is to either be for Bush or sit
it out. No one has made a play for them
yet,'' said Bendixen, who is consulting
for a Democratic group that plans to push
for Hispanic votes in South Florida.
Kerry's campaign disputes the contention
that the Massachusetts senator hasn't become
engaged with the issue, noting that the
senator has said he supports the economic
embargo against the Cuban government, but
is interested in lifting the travel ban
to encourage democracy.
''George Bush has created an opening for
any opponent by failing to deliver on his
promises and now by failing to present a
coherent policy,'' said Kerry campaign spokesman
Mark Kornblau. "John Kerry has on numerous
occasions clearly articulated a clear anti-Castro
policy that also proactively explains how
he will bring about democracy by encouraging
face-to-face exchanges and encouraging civil
society.''
The Bush campaign has said it will seek
to exploit what it says is Kerry's record
of changing his stance on Cuba -- saying
he backed a 1996 law to stiffen sanctions
on the communist island even though he voted
against the measure on final passage.
''The information we are receiving is that
people are grateful for the president's
consistent stand against Castro,'' said
Bush spokesman Reed Dickens.
Cuban-American reggae man on a musical
mission
By Elaine De Valle, edevalle@herald.com.
Posted on Fri, May. 28, 2004.
Johnny Dread is on a roll again, slicing
the air in front of him with his hands,
unable to finish a sentence, thinking so
fast on topics so urgent that it's on-to-the-next,
quoting New Testament verses and Bob Marley
lyrics simultaneously, working this audience
of one as if his life depended on it.
And in a strange, spiritual sense, it does.
This is his life.
''It's my job to educate,'' he says.
This is what the past 17 years in music
has been all about. This is how, this is
why, Johnny Dread -- Cuban-American, Rastafari
reggae man, singer/songwriter with the waist-low
locks -- came to be. He is more preacher
than rock star.
''In my Catholic Columbus/FIU days, I never
thought I would be a prophetic messenger,''
Johnny says.
So it's OK that there were only about 60
people at The Culture Room in Fort Lauderdale
on a recent Thursday night. Johnny performed
as if it were for a cheering arena crowd
-- this, just three hours after his wife
gave birth to their third little girl in
the backyard whirlpool of their North Miami
home.
The music is more than a gig. It's his
mission. It's his journey.
GROWING UP
It began when Juan Carlos Guardiola was
born in Philadelphia 40 years ago last month.
The family soon moved to Weh-chés-teh,
where Juanito grew up in the pews at St.
Brendan Catholic Church and the basketball
courts of the Big Five Club and Christopher
Columbus High. Dad Felix Guardiola played
basketball in Cuba before he left in 1958
-- perhaps he, too, was a prophet -- and
delivered papers and milk and sold insurance
to put food on the table.
Mom Elena stayed home. She hasn't learned
to drive to this day.
The Republican couple worked hard to raise
eight respectful, educated children -- four
boys, four girls. Each day Elena parted
Johnny's hair -- ''le hice la raya,'' a
perfect line -- to send him to parochial
school. And she's never accepted his ''horrible''
dreads.
''He moved out of the house because of
his hair,'' said Elena Guardiola, 71, who
lives with Johnny's 74-year-old father in
the same three-bedroom house near Westwood
Lake where they raised him from age 6 --
and where one entire wall in the Florida
room is dedicated to basketball trophies:
Johnny's, his brothers', his nephews'.
''We made all our boys cut their hair,''
Elena says. It wasn't easy to accept Johnny's
transformation. ''Imagine! Fue un shock.
It's not our music and, well, when he quit
school it broke our hearts. But we have
no complaints about him,'' she is quick
to add. "He is un amor de persona.
He has such a big heart, so idealistic.
He's totally unselfish.
Still, mami sometimes longs for what could
have been had Johnny continued his studies
at Florida International University, where
he majored in hospitality management on
a full basketball scholarship.
''I'd be living in Cocoplum with a 94-foot
yacht,'' Johnny says. "But that's not
my style. I was put here to do something.
Ever since I was a little guy, people were
always attracted to me.
"I decided to use music.''
That decision came on the heels of a gift:
It was during his FIU days -- when he also
spent many a night at the Rat Skeller, studying
beer bottle labels -- that his girlfriend
of the time bought him a set of drums that
changed his life. They were metallic blue.
He painted them red, green and yellow.
So even if he keeps having to moonlight
in the daytime as a landscaper or sell parking
lot Christmas trees in December between
paying gigs, that's OK, too. It's all part
of his journey. "My own personal mission,
yeah, to teach.''
That mission takes him to the Montreal
Reggae Festival in June and, possibly, a
concert next month in Nigeria in a conscious
attempt to take Johnny's message global.
Locally, the journey took him recently
to Q Lounge in Aventura and La Covacha on
a recent Saturday, where more than 100 black-clad
salsa lovers boogied to his roots rhythm.
''What people don't know is that Hispanics
looooooove reggae,'' Johnny says.
In fact, many of Johnny's efforts these
days are concentrated in that arena. He
has just returned from his second South
American tour, two concerts in Lima, Peru.
He has done Venezuela and Costa Rica, where
3,000 people waited hours on a soccer field
for him.
A posting to his website from Caracas calls
him el máximo and asks when he'll
return to Venezuela.
''This is my job now,'' Johnny says again,
referring to his music and the ties it has
to Rastafarianism, of which he is a devout
follower. "To spread the word to the
Latin American people. It's where I'm falling
into place.''
Not that Johnny wouldn't love a fat, juicy
record deal and sold-out shows along the
east coast. It would mean his message was
getting a wider audience. But it would also
mean he could keep paying the mortgage and
the hefty tuition for Herizen, 7, to go
to the Waldorf International School in Palmetto
Bay. Johnny is a devoted dad who drives
his oldest daughter 25 ½ miles to
school every morning -- no matter how late
the gig ran the night before -- in a beat-up
Mitsubishi in dire need of repairs.
DIVINE INSPIRATION
As could be expected, Bob Marley was part
of the inspiration.
But another part, he says, is his love
of Christ, something he traces back to his
elementary classes at the Jesú school
in downtown Miami.
''I loved Christ so much, I had to find
the real story,'' Johnny says. "I knew
it was heavier than the Dallas Cowboys or
the New York Knicks or George Washington.
I needed to find out the truth. Why are
we hear on Earth? Why did we go to Catholic
school? Why do we give money when we go
to church? It's a puzzle and they didn't
tell us all the pieces.''
Sometimes, he gets a bit wide-eyed and
his sentences start to run-on as he quotes
obscure biblical passages and tells you
how he and his family are descendants of
the lion of Judah and he talks about the
Rastafari belief that Christ has risen again
already in the form of an African king named
Haile Selassie I.
Like his conversation, his music is marked
by frequent references to the Lamb and pilgrims,
Ethiopia, the Trinity and Judah.
''A judgement time a come, Magnificent
People, Mek we get back to the origin of
Creation,'' he sings in the title track
to Chapter Two -- or capitulo dos -- of
the Book of Revelations.
Gustavo Godoy, a high school buddy who
now helps produce his videos, says Johnny
could not be more sincere about his music,
which he, too, called a mission.
''He believes in his music and his message,''
Godoy, 40, said. "He truly believes
he was put here to get across his views.
"I think he's already succeeded. I
don't think he knows that, but he's succeeded
in what he's wanted to do.''
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