CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Some South Florida Hispanics unhappy
with Cuba policy
By Peter Wallsten. The Miami
Herald, Mar. 02, 2004.
Months of growing tensions over the Bush
administration's approach to Cuba are taking
a toll on the president's standing among
Cuban Americans -- one of the Republican
Party's most crucial voting groups in Florida
-- just as his reelection campaign is getting
under way, according to a new poll.
The survey shows that more than one-third
of South Florida Hispanic voters -- a group
consisting primarily of GOP-leaning Cuban
Americans -- disapproves of the job the
president has done ''promoting democracy
and regime change'' in Fidel Castro's Cuba.
Those results, compiled for Univisión
Channel 23 by Washington pollster Rob Schroth,
are the latest indication that Bush could
be hurt politically by complaints from some
exile leaders that he has failed to deliver
on campaign promises to crack down on Castro.
And they suggest that efforts by Bush in
recent months to improve that record --
indicting the Cuban air force pilots who
shot down Brothers to the Rescue planes,
limiting travel, and establishing a special
commission to pave the way toward democracy
in Cuba -- might not have been enough to
soothe the hard feelings.
Democratic strategists believe that if
they can peel away even a portion of the
Cuban-American electorate, their nominee
can win Florida -- and the White House --
just as President Clinton did in 1996, when
he won an estimated 40 percent of the Cuban
vote.
Bush won about 80 percent of the state's
400,000 Cuban-American voters in 2000 but
won Florida by just 537 votes.
The poll results come as the Democratic
National Committee is devising a strategy
to court Cuban-American voters using a massive
advertising campaign designed to paint Bush
as insincere on the issues important to
them.
''Cuban Americans are coming to the slow
realization that the Republican administration
they backed so heavily has not brought an
end to the Castro regime,'' said Schroth,
who also conducts polls for The Herald and
some Democratic candidates. "Sooner
or later, voters begin to look elsewhere
when they don't get satisfaction from any
one political party.''
The poll, conducted Feb. 27-29, surveyed
the views of 400 self-described registered
Hispanic voters in Miami-Dade and Broward
counties, with a margin of error of 4.9
percentage points. Seventy-one percent of
the poll respondents were Cuban American.
NOT ALL BAD
The results are not all bad for Bush, suggesting
that he is still a strong vote-getter despite
the concerns about his handling of Cuba.
Bush leads Democratic presidential front-runner
John Kerry among all Hispanics in Miami-Dade
and Broward counties by a 64-25 margin.
His margin is even stronger among Cuban
Americans, more than three-quarters of whom
back Bush compared to just 15 percent for
Kerry.
'That's pretty friggin' impressive,'' said
Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster who
has surveyed Florida for Gov. Jeb Bush's
campaigns. "There may be some disapproval
among Cubans about the way the president
is handling the issue, but there is absolutely
no indication that it would prevent them
from voting for him.''
The other major Democrat still in the race,
North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, does not
perform as well as Kerry among Hispanic
voters, the survey shows.
Among Democratic Hispanics -- the bulk
of whom are not Cuban -- Kerry leads Edwards
by a more than 4-1 margin with the state's
presidential primary just one week away.
Kerry's ''upside is bright and his downside
is equally perilous,'' Schroth said. "It
will be a matter of how well the campaign
is waged.''
The fight for Hispanic voters is likely
to be tricky for both Kerry and Bush.
Kerry, a Massachusetts senator, has a mixed
record on Cuba issues. He has both supported
and criticized certain aspects of the U.S.
trade embargo with Cuba.
He once blamed the embargo on ''Florida
politics,'' a position he stood by during
an interview last fall when he said he was
simply speaking the "truth.''
Republican strategists, who are already
attacking Kerry as an indecisive decision-maker,
are likely to make the same case to Hispanic
voters in Florida.
But the new survey results lend credibility
to a new campaign being devised by operatives
for the Democratic National Committee and
other local Cuban-American Democrats hoping
to exploit a lingering rift between the
Bush administration and the exile leadership.
Bush was criticized openly by several leading
Cuban-American Republicans -- and even by
his own brother, Gov. Jeb Bush -- last year
when the government repatriated 12 suspected
Cuban boat hijackers under a deal with Castro's
regime to give them prison time rather than
death sentences.
SENATE BATTLE
In the battle for the U.S. Senate seat
being vacated by Democrat Bob Graham, the
survey shows that Hispanics are likely to
back their own in the August primaries.
On the Democratic side, Miami-Dade Mayor
Alex Penelas, who is Cuban American, leads
rivals Betty Castor and Peter Deutsch by
more than 5-1 -- although nearly one-quarter
of the voters are undecided.
Among Republicans, former U.S. Housing
Secretary Mel Martinez, also Cuban American,
would win easily over all of his rivals
among Hispanics.
Founded in Cuba, school celebrates 150th
year
By Oscar Corral, ocorral@herald.com.
Posted on Wed, Mar. 03, 2004.
The mayor of Miami and a rising star of
Broadway were educated there, as was the
former CEO of Coca-Cola, not to mention
the world's longest ruling dictator.
Belen Jesuit Preparatory School in West
Dade, founded in Cuba in 1854 and billed
as the South Florida school with the oldest
history, celebrates its 150th anniversary
this week.
Like hundreds of thousands of Cuban Americans
who have made Florida their home, the all-male
private school will mark this milestone
in exile.
But also like many of the Cubans who thought
they were coming to Miami only temporarily
to wait out the fall of Fidel Castro --
himself a Belen alumnus -- the school has
seen immense success during its 43 years
in South Florida.
Flush with endowments from alumni like
Roberto Goizueta, the late CEO of Coca Cola,
and other benefactors, the school has grown
from a scruffy flat in a downtown church
to a 30-acre campus with its own theater,
gym, observatory, art gallery and chapel.
''It's the pride and joy of the Cuban-American
community in Miami,'' said former Belen
student Carlos Saladrigas, chairman of Premier
American Bank, who has pledged more than
$1 million to the school.
"It instills that philosophy that
tells you you have a moral responsibility
to take to the max the gift you've been
given by God for the betterment of the world
around you.''
This week, Belen marks its anniversary
with several events, including a celebration
Mass that took place Tuesday morning and
a torch relay scheduled for Saturday from
downtown Miami to its campus at 500 SW 127
Ave.
CORRIDORS OF POWER
One doesn't have to wander too far along
South Florida's corridors of power to bump
into the school's alumni: Miami Mayor Manny
Diaz, nicknamed ''Wolfie'' in high school
and photographed for the yearbook with a
mustache and long hair; Braulio Baez, chairman
of Florida's Public Service Commission,
which regulates the state's utilities; Joe
Garcia, executive director of the Cuban
American National Foundation.
But the school's graduates also pop up
in unlikely places. For example, Broadway
star Raul Esparza, who graduated in 1988,
had the lead role as the emcee on Broadway's
Cabaret a couple of years ago. And Anthony
Laurencio, class of 1992, is lead keyboardist
and backup guitarist for the Grammy-winning
Latin rock band, Bacilos.
Esparza today hardly recognizes the school's
campus, which has doubled in size since
he graduated, adding an indoor gym and a
performing arts center.
''Belen is definitely the place where I
began to believe that I could do anything
I wanted to do in this life,'' Esparza said.
"Of course, when I was there, we were
nailing light bulbs to a board and pretending
we had a stage.''
To many graduates, Belen is a source of
pride, an institution that changed them
for the better, bred competition and set
them on paths of leadership.
''It set a high standard and bar to reach,''
Mayor Diaz said in a recent interview. "It
instilled in me a set of values that I still
hold near and dear with respect to giving
back, working on behalf of the community.''
But it had to claw its way back to success
after leaving Cuba.
In 1854, the Real Colegio de Belen opened
its doors to 40 students for the first time
in Havana after Queen Isabel II of Spain
issued its royal charter. Officially signed
over to Jesuit priests in 1898, Belen steadily
grew.
By the time 80 communist soldiers occupied
the school's campus for Castro in January
1961, it had 60 acres with 1,200 students.
On Sept. 17 of that year, 26 Jesuit priests
-- expelled by Castro -- boarded the Covadonga
ship and headed for Miami.
The Jesuits immediately opened a small
campus for fewer than 200 students on the
fourth floor of the Centro Hispano Católico
at the Gesu Church, in downtown.
The following year, they moved to a warehouse
on the corner of Southwest Eighth Street
and Seventh Avenue.
''They were pretty decrepit, limited facilities,
small classrooms with no windows,'' Diaz
recalled. "We used to do phys-ed and
practice sports in what we used to call
the dust bowl, which was basically a big
pile of dirt out back.''
The school has evolved from those days.
With tuition having doubled in the last
10 years, from about $400 a month to more
than $800, the school has become harder
for many to afford.
To make Belen more widely available, administrators
say one out of every four students receives
some of the $600,000 a year doled out in
financial aid.
''We are so convinced that what we have
here is a good thing, that we want to be
able to offer it to anybody and everybody,''
said the Rev. Guillermo ''Willie'' García-Tuñón,
a Belen alumnus and Jesuit priest who now
teaches at the school.
MOLDED BY MIAMI
Belen has also been molded by Miami's unique
demographics. What used to be a school of
Cuban Americans now comprises about 1,000
students from 27 different countries, most
of them Latin American, European and Cuban
American, García-Tuñón
said.
Strict rules remain the norm. It was not
unusual during the 1980s and 1990s for a
paddle-wielding disciplinarian to spank
students for having their shirts untucked,
having hair too long or short, missing a
belt or wearing the wrong type of shoes.
Those rules are no longer enforced with
a wood paddle.
Likewise, academic toughness is still Belen's
trademark. Every year, from 6th to 12th
grade, the classes tend to shrink as students
either flunk out or leave because they can't
keep up with the academics. García-Tuñón
said 100 percent of graduating classes go
on to college.
''It's a place where men throw shoulders
and elbows against each other to try to
make it to the top to distinguish themselves,''
CANF director Garcia said.
Of course, not all Belen alumni have brought
prestige to themselves. Former Miami Commissioner
Humberto Hernandez, who was removed from
office and served several years in prison
for mortgage and voter fraud, was in the
class of 1980. Hernandez's yearbook quote:
"I'll talk my way out of it.''
Ironically, the judge who sentenced Hernandez
for voter fraud, calling his actions ''unconscionable,''
is Belen alumnus Roberto Pineiro.
Hernandez says he resents any association
between his past mistakes and his Belen
education.
''I think it would be ludicrous to say
that they taught me or any other students
to skirt around the law,'' Hernandez said
in a recent interview.
The school is also a place where ruthless
humor and lifelong friendships among the
students are standard.
''The only friends that I really truly
have came from that point in my life,''
said Baez of the Public Service Commission.
"The relationships are based on ridicule,
and it creates, one would hope, a thick
skin.
''I always joke around it's like the shovel
test,'' Baez explained. "God forbid,
if you ever kill someone, who is going to
show up with the shovel? These are people
you trust with your life.''
U.S. farmers sowing seeds to become
Cuba's breadbasket
By Jane Bussey, Miami Herald.
Posted on Mon, Mar. 01, 2004
INDIANTOWN, Fla. - Iris Wall's High Horse
Ranch lies more than 100 miles - and further
in perspective - from Miami and its staunch
supporters of the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
But it is in places like this cattle ranch
- deep in rural America - that agribusiness
has started to chip away at the decades-old
restrictions against trade and other business
dealings with Cuba.
Since a 2000 trade bill, the U.S. Trade
Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement
Act, allowed the flow of some trade with
Cuba - on the condition that President Fidel
Castro's government pay cash - farm exports
have soared from a few million dollars in
2001 to an expected $230 million or more
in 2003.
Hundreds of companies and individuals,
ranging from steamship lines to purveyors
of wine and growers of soybeans, have set
up trade and other deals with Cuba, and
the United States is now Cuba's single largest
source of imported food and agricultural
products. For every $4 Cuba spends on food,
$1 is going to U.S. growers or producers.
But ever since the resumption of U.S. food
exports in December 2001 - after a hiatus
of some four decades - the trade has been
controversial.
"While there may have been a possible
argument to lifting the embargo 10 or 15
years ago, today - when every day it seems
more imminent that Castro will go on to
a different life - the best leverage the
U.S. government will have on a future transitional
government in Cuba is the embargo, so why
lift it?" said Jorge Arrizurieta, a
prominent Cuban-American who is executive
director of the Florida FTAA.
But for scores of American exporters, brokers,
politicians and farmers who already have
logged hundreds of trips to Havana and other
parts of the island, the export numbers
are proof of the success of their goal to
open markets and increase sales.
FLORIDA-CUBA CATTLE TRADE
On a recent brisk morning at High Horse
Ranch, just outside Indiantown, Fla., and
some 30 miles northwest of Jupiter, Fla.,
exporter John Parke Wright rode a horse
alongside the 74-year-old Iris Wall to view
the cattle and savor the thought of restoring
Florida-Cuba cattle trade to its once-thriving
status.
"I personally waited 40 years for
this opportunity," said Wright, a scion
of the Lykes family, which has a long history
in Florida in the cattle, citrus and steamship
line businesses.
As chairman and chief executive of J.P.
Wright & Co., the 54-year-old executive
is spearheading an alliance of Florida ranchers
working to develop the export market to
Cuba. Florida-bred cattle, they say, are
ideal for the depleted Cuban herds; they
are accustomed to the heat, humidity and
mosquitoes.
Cuba is set to purchase 250 head in the
first quarter of this year and has pledged
to move forward when issues surrounding
the mad cow disease scare in the United
States have been resolved.
"This is not about selling a few cows,"
says Wright. "This is about establishing
a foundation of resupply of healthy Florida-bred
beef and dairy cattle to the island nation
of Cuba."
But among those who see the embargo as
the only means of pressuring the Castro
regime or encouraging a transitional government,
there is still bitter resistance to lifting
or even easing the myriad restrictions on
trade, investment, travel, remittances and
other transactions with Cuba that have been
in effect since the early 1960s.
And despite the growing farm trade, verbal
exchanges between Washington and Havana
have been especially testy of late.
The Bush administration recently lobbed
a series of verbal attacks at Castro's government,
in power for 45 years, accusing the Cuban
leader and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
of mischief in the hemisphere and canceling
a scheduled meeting to discuss immigration
with the Cuban government.
DESTABILIZING LATIN AMERICA
Roger Noriega, assistant secretary of state
for Western Hemisphere affairs, took a shot
at Castro last month, charging that "his
actions to destabilize Latin America are
increasingly provocative to the inter-American
community."
In response, Granma, the Cuban Communist
Party newspaper, published a 3,000-word
editorial, calling Noriega's words "shameful
lies," and lambasting the "swarm
of liars" in the highest level of power
in the United States.
But neither Havana nor Washington has canceled
travel visas for farmers, although the U.S.
State Department denied travel permits to
organizers of the 2002 U.S. Food and Agribusiness
Exhibition in Havana and pulled the plug
on the event in 2003.
Still, in November, 71 American companies
from 18 states and Puerto Rico attended
the International Fair of Havana to push
their products alongside scores of other
nations.
And both the White House and the Castro
regime have allowed the exception to the
embargo that permits American companies
to export food, agricultural and medical
products to Cuba as long as the Caribbean
island pays cash.
"You have to separate a congressionally
required act and what the administration's
policy is," said a State Department
official. "The policy remains the same,
to work toward a transition to a democratic
government respecting the rights of citizens
in Cuba."
For the small group of executives who met
with Wright at Wall's ranch recently, their
repeated trips to Cuba and continued sales
are encouraging.
They are eager to create business relationships,
bring together buyers and sellers, manage
the risks, and work out the payment terms
- all cash transactions carried out through
European banks.
"I have made seven trips to Cuba and
each time we've been fortunate to come back
with an order," said Chris Aberle,
director of sales at FCStone, a commodities
trading company headquartered in Des Moines,
Iowa.
SELLING CUBA GRAIN
In the past 18 months, FCStone, a grain
cooperative with 750 members, has done $55
million in sales to Cuba, selling some 350,000
metric tons of corn, soybeans and wheat.
"My responsibility at work is to open
new markets," said Aberle, who is based
in New Smyrna Beach, Fla. "While I
was giving a speech in Cuba in December,
we were opening an office in Beijing."
At first Cuba balked at the 2000 trade
sanctions act, saying a law that required
payment in cash was insulting. But a month
after Hurricane Michelle, which ravaged
Cuban agriculture in November 2001, Cuba
took delivery of the first shipments of
American grains since 1963.
Opponents, as well as some who advocate
trade with Cuba, argue that what is going
on is not so much trade as politics.
"From the Cuban perspective, which
is essentially Fidel Castro's perspective,
this is not necessarily trade. He could
buy these things anywhere. This is part
of a concerted effort to put pressure on
the U.S. government and get a transition
that is to the liking of the Castro government
and of its followers," said Paul Alcazar,
a director of the Cuban Liberty Council,
a Miami exile organization that supports
the embargo. "It's very token and has
defined political goals."
POLITICAL ASPECT OF TRADE
"You need to put it in the context
of politics," said John S. Kavulich,
president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic
Council in New York, which tracks two-way
business with Cuba. "There was and
remains a substantial political component
to each purchasing decision made by the
government of Cuba as it relates to the
United States."
Since Cuba's demand for medical products
would be too small to whet the appetite
of big pharmaceutical companies to press
Congress for more economic opening, Kavulich
says, the Castro government has focused
on food and agriculture constituencies,
which wield considerable clout on Capitol
Hill.
"The Cuban government has read successfully
that there is more political advantage to
be gained from purchasing food and agricultural
products than from healthcare products,"
Kavulich said.
Since December 2001, Alimport, the Cuban
company in charge of food imports, has purchased
$590 million in food imports from 113 American
companies, and Cuba has become increasingly
sophisticated in purchasing commodities.
The political overtone of the deals grates
on some Cuban exiles.
Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban-American
National Foundation, complains that Havana
targets purchases to congressional districts
where lawmakers could be persuaded to press
for federal financing for the food purchases.
The foundation is not pushing to roll back
the exceptions to the trade embargo, but
Garcia called the growing trade and growing
Bush administration rhetoric "an absolute
contradiction."
"More trade has gone on with this
administration than any administration since
John F. Kennedy," he said. "It's
going to get larger and not smaller. The
Cubans have run out of credit everywhere
else."
In December, on the second anniversary
of the first food sales, Cuba signed three
contracts for grain purchases based on prices
in the Chicago commodities futures market,
a step toward bringing the country into
the global marketplace.
The contracts were $25 million for Cargill,
the giant Minneapolis processor, marketer
and distributor of agricultural products;
$13.5 million for Archer-Daniels-Midland
in Decatur, Ill.; and $7 million for FCStone.
NEGATIVE VIEW OF INCREASED CUBA TRADE
Alcazar, who is a partner in Projecom,
a consulting and development company for
technology companies mostly in Brazil and
Mexico, takes a dim view of the increasing
trade. Many Cuban-Americans, who have waited
more than four decades to return to the
island and who blame Castro for a reign
of repression, say that the embargo should
not be lifted on his terms.
Besides, they contend, the food is used
to feed tourists and often does not reach
the broad population.
Castro disagreed during the 2002 U.S. Food
and Agribusiness Exhibition in Havana: "Of
course we can't prohibit a tourist from
buying bread, but a part of the goods we
have been buying will be consumed by our
poultry. Chickens when they are well fed
can be very productive. Dozens of millions
of tons of food have been distributed for
free to six million people in Cuba."
Worries about how the agricultural exports
are used, as well as opposition to Castro,
have kept some traders, especially those
in Miami, from touching the Cuba deals.
John Abisch, president of Econocaribe Consolidators,
said his company was not interested because
of opposition from many in Miami's trade
community. "A lot of them were strongly
politically opposed to do anything with
Castro," Abisch said, adding he will
wait to look for a partner after a change
in the Cuban government.
But other companies began staking out a
strategic position from the moment that
such business was legal. Crowley Liner Services,
headquartered in Oakland, Calif., was first
in line to obtain a U.S. license because
the Caribbean business is so important for
the steamship liner.
"When it became clear that the trade
sanctions were being lifted, we rushed to
Washington and we went to the Treasury Department,"
said Michael Hopkins, vice president of
Latin American operations at Crowley in
South Florida.
Hopkins said the issue was sensitive, but
Crowley wanted to be first. "We walked
into Cuba cold and started talking to people,"
he said.
The trade has proven to be a good market,
exporters say, since sales are growing and
companies do not have to worry about arranging
export financing. All financial transactions
are handled through European banks with
the U.S. exporters receiving cash.
MORALITY OF TRADING WITH CUBA
Because of the proximity, Cuba can also
save money by purchasing smaller orders
than it would have placed with China, Vietnam
or Russia, and it avoids warehousing costs.
"American farmers believe it is the
job of the government to open new markets
for them," said Philip Peters, a Cuba
analyst who is vice president of the Lexington
Institute, a free-market think tank in Arlington,
Va.
"It is hard to say that it is immoral
to trade with Cuba and not immoral to trade
with China or Vietnam," he said.
Some analysts say now that the door has
been opened to limited trade with Cuba,
there is no going back.
"They wouldn't have the votes to go
back on it now," said Antonio R. Zamora,
a Bay of Pigs veteran and a founder of the
Cuban-American National Foundation. Zamora,
who now favors lifting the embargo, is no
longer a foundation member.
Zamora, a Miami attorney, said there is
still a major chasm in the Cuban-American
community between those who will accept
regime modification - which means accommodation
with the existing political, economic and
social structures of Cuba to make the country
more open and a more efficient free-market
economy - and those demanding regime change.
The easing of the trade embargo also highlights
an aspect of Florida-Cuban relations often
forgotten. Not only are there millions of
Cubans with ties to the United States because
they have family here, but some Floridians
are also renewing old ties with Cuba.
FEEDING PEOPLE WITHOUT POLITICS
Wright's ancestor, Capt. James McKay of
Tampa, shipped cattle to Cuba in 1858. The
family also had ranches on the island before
the revolution. "In a family sense,
cattle and shipping go back 150 years,"
Wright said. For him, supplying food to
Cubans should be about feeding people and
not politics.
"Thank goodness the cattle business
has nothing to do with politics," Wright
said. "We have a legal license. There
have been no political discussions."
High Horse Ranch's Wall traveled to Cuba
in December when a number of exporters attended
a ceremony celebrating the second-year anniversary
of food sales. The cattlewoman said that
her Florida herd of 750 cattle was not for
export because it lacks the strict documentation
that exports require.
But she said her desire to spur Florida
trade with Cuba stems from one sentiment:
"I just love the Cuban people."
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