CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Spies will challenge their convictions
A week before lawyers
appeal the convictions of five Cuban spies,
allies take out a full-page New York Times
ad seeking support for the imprisoned men.
By Gail Epstein Nieves and
Elaine de Valle, gepstein@herald.com. Posted
on Fri, Mar. 05, 2004.
Were five Cuban spies unfairly convicted
in 2001 during a flawed trial in anti-Castro
Miami? Or did justice prevail after the
men benefited from a stalwart defense before
impartial judge and jury?
Federal appeals judges will hear both sides
of that argument Wednesday when lawyers
for the five men return to court to challenge
their convictions.
The five, admitted Cuban intelligence agents
working on orders from Havana, were convicted
of spying-related charges for infiltrating
U.S. military facilities and anti-Castro
groups.
Spymaster Gerardo Hernández also
was convicted of murder conspiracy in connection
with Cuba's 1996 shooting down of two Brothers
to the Rescue planes -- an event that took
the lives of four Brothers fliers.
The spies have been turned into national
heroes in Cuba. They're also the subject
of a vigorous Cuban government-sponsored
campaign to sway popular opinion in their
favor, both internationally and in the United
States, U.S. diplomatic sources said.
Allies of the five placed a full-page advertisement
in the New York Times on Wednesday urging
Americans to join the call for their release.
The ad was placed by the National Committee
to Free the Cuban Five, a San Francisco-based
organization.
Gloria La Riva, the group's coordinator,
did not return a reporter's phone call Thursday.
But she told El Nuevo Herald last month
that the organization has raised $50,000
from donors in various U.S. cities, Europe
and Latin America.
MIAMI GROUPS
She said $10,000 had come from a coalition
of anti-embargo, pro-normalization Miami
groups -- including the Antonio Maceo Brigade,
Alianza Martiana, the Association of Cuban
Workers and Afro-Cuban Cultural Rescue.
Maggie Khuly -- whose brother, Armando
Alejandre Jr., was one of the downed Brothers
fliers -- said she fears the campaign is
spreading misinformation.
''I'm concerned that people across the
country and the globe are getting this one-sided
view,'' she said.
But ultimately, she added, "I do believe
that the U.S. justice system is not going
to be swayed by the propaganda of the Cuban
government.''
Next week, lawyers will take their best
shot before a panel of the Atlanta-based
11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
But they'll have to talk fast.
Each side -- the prosecution and all five
defendants combined -- gets 15 minutes to
make its case. They also filed voluminous
briefs.
A lot of attention will be focused on Hernández's
appeal.
ADVANCE WARNINGS
Evidence showed that his Cuban handlers
sent him numerous advance warnings that
a ''confrontation'' with Brothers' planes
was planned and instructed him to keep fellow
spies who had infiltrated Brothers to the
Rescue off the group's planes on particular
days.
Paul McKenna, Hernández's lawyer,
argues that the government failed to prove
his client knew his bosses were prepared
to take such drastic action.
''Hernández knew -- as did the U.S.
government, U.S. citizens and the United
Nations -- of the strong possibility Cuba
would interdict and confront future Brothers
to the Rescue flights into Cuban airspace,''
McKenna's appeal brief says.
'What the evidence failed to show was that
Hernández knew of, or joined in,
a conspiracy under which Cuba's reaction
to Brothers' provocations would be to commit
a first-degree murder,'' said the brief.
Lawmakers say Cuba spied
Uruguay's Chamber of
Deputies condemns Cuba, saying one of its
member's phones and e-mails were monitored.
From Herald Wire Services.
Posted on Fri, Mar. 05, 2004.
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay - The Chamber of Deputies
of Uruguay has denounced what it called
the tapping of its telephones by the Cuban
intelligence services.
In a resolution passed by a 41-36 vote
late Wednesday, the lawmakers expressed
"the most severe condemnation of any
act committed within the national territory
or from another territory toward Uruguay
aimed at violating the jurisdiction of the
Legislative Branch and its members.''
The vote came after Nationalist Party deputy
Jaime Trobo, told the chamber that on Feb.
25, Cuban National Assembly member Lazaro
Barredo, while visiting Montevideo, had
said that Cuba's security services had investigated
the origin and destination of several telephone
calls and e-mails made by Trobo from the
Chamber of Deputies in Montevideo. Barredo
referred to about 15 calls from Trobo to
Cuba, Miami, Puerto Rico and Spain, which,
Barredo said, were made to coordinate acts
against the Cuban revolution, the Spanish
EFE news agency reported.
Trobo is a member of the Commission on
Human Rights of the Latin American Parliament,
which has been expected to take up the issue
of human-rights violations in Cuba.
Barredo was in Montevideo to attend a conference
of the leftist coalition Broad Front-Progressive
Encounter, which has been Uruguay's majority
party since November 1989.
The resolution approved said the eavesdropping
was ''committed by the intelligence services
of a foreign state, the Republic of Cuba,
regarding telephone conversations made from
the Legislative Palace,'' where the deputies
meet.
''Any action that seeks to impede the free
exercise of the activities of legislators
and the free utilization of the means at
their disposal'' constitutes a violation
of the lawmakers' jurisdiction, the document
said.
Seventy-seven of the 99 legislators were
in the chamber for the vote, the newspaper
El Pais reported. All the nay votes were
cast by the leftist Broad Front bloc; the
yeas by the National, Colorado and Independent
parties.
Havana and Montevideo broke diplomatic
relations on April 24, 2002, after Uruguay
sponsored a motion at the U.N. Commission
on Human Rights in Cuba criticizing Cuba's
human-rights abuses.
President Fidel Castro then called Uruguayan
President Jorge Batlle a ''bootlicker''
and a ''lackey'' of the U.S.
Anti-Castro exile sings from the heart
Unlike many of her peers,
singer/songwriter Marisela Verena is an
exile with an anti-Castro message
By Juan Carlos Perez Rodriguez.
juanchi@bellsouth.net. Posted on Sun, Mar.
07, 2004.
For more than 30 years, Marisela Verena
has steered her career along less-traveled
roads, always willing to endure bumpy journeys
in order to set her own direction.
She was, in the early 1970s, a fledgling
singer-songwriter intent on carving out
a space for herself as an artist with a
nueva trova/nueva canción style and
approach, at a time when many in that Latin
American folk/protest genre felt contempt
for Cuban exiles like herself who were unsympathetic
to Fidel Castro's regime.
For years she lived in her beloved Puerto
Rico, even though other places would have
been better for her career.
In the early 1990s, after having built
a solid career, she exiled herself from
the concert stage and the recording studio
for a long five years, writing for others,
such as Celia Cruz and Gilberto Santa Rosa.
Throughout her career, she has eschewed
flashy singing, cultivating an unadorned
style to accentuate the lyrics.
''I'm satisfied because I have been able
to do what I love. My career is a calling,
not a profession. As a profession, this
can be a bad deal,'' says the 54-year-old.
"But I have a full and complete sense
of personal satisfaction.''
''It's often hard to find record labels
for her work, because her songs aren't mainstream
commercial,'' says Miami-based entertainment
businessman Pepe Horta, who was the executive
producer of her 2003 album Somos los que
andamos (We Are the Ones Who Move).
''My support is based on the quality of
her work, not on her record sales. In that
sense, I'm as suicidal as she is,'' he says,
chuckling.
Of course, sometimes the commercial and
the artistic feed off each other: Somos
los que andamos, which includes four new
songs, including the hit Nosotros los cubanos,
(a send-up of Cuban hubris that nonetheless
ends on a patriotic note) has been cracking
the Top 60 in the Billboard Top Latin Albums
chart this year. She will include songs
from that album in her 90-minute performance
at 4:15 p.m. today in the Sun Day on the
Mile music (see Smart Box).
The daughter of an attorney active in the
Cuban Liberal Party (and who thus supported
neither Fulgencio Batista nor Fidel Castro),
Verena left Cuba in 1962 at age 11 as part
of the Pedro Pan movement.
As a young adult, she read tomes on the
revolution, pro and con, reaching the conclusion
at around age 20 that the Castro regime
was atrocious.
The bug to become a professional singer-songwriter
bit Verena when she was a university student
in Miami, and, feeling the city offered
little chance for her career, she moved
to Puerto Rico in the early 1970s.
There she honed her craft in bohemian clubs
with her own compositions and songs from
nueva canción stars like Joan Manuel
Serrat and Violeta Parra. Mainstream pop
turned her off, and she felt an affinity
with poetic, socially meaningful songs.
Making ends meet as a nueva trova/nueva
canción artist was hard enough in
the early '70s, even for those who fit the
genre's ideological requisite of unconditional
support of the Cuban Revolution. The genre
wasn't a favorite of the mainstream recording
industry.
But Verena faced an even steeper hill.
''Certain elements vetoed me automatically
for being a Cuban exile,'' she recalls.
'They stamped a sign on my forehead that
said 'despicable gusana' [exile worm] without
giving me a chance.''
EXCLUDED
In Puerto Rico, Venezuela and other places,
this discrimination kept her out of university
festivals, excluded her from clubs and even
put her at risk, such as when the Old San
Juan La Tea got bomb threats for booking
Verena in the early 1970s.
Undeterred, Verena built a career in Puerto
Rico, expanding her reach from nightclubs
to radio and television, and eventually
moving to Spain in 1975, where the CBS label
signed her.
Six years later she returned to Puerto
Rico. ''Spain held more promise professionally,
but Puerto Rico was more important because
of the many friends I reconnected with.''
There, during the '80s and '90s, she released
several successful albums. She began recording
about Cuba in 1989, penning songs such as
Son de las cuatro décadas (Song of
the Four Decades) and Memorandum para un
tirano (Memo to a Tyrant).
For the past two years Verena has been
spending most of her time in Miami, the
place for Latin music now, she says. However,
she feels a lack of support from the record
industry. ''Their concept of the commercial
is one degree below moronic. It's degrading
to the fans, who are tremendously underestimated,''
she says. "I've never been what's known
out there as commercial.''
But she has been what's known out there
as good. ''She has always been a first-class
songwriter and a singer with a very distinct
voice,'' says Juan Estévez, president
of Miami-based Pimienta Records, the label
that issued Somos los que andamos along
with Universal Latino. "Her style is
like trova mixed with Cuban son. Trova has
never been very commercial, but that's her
style and she does it very well.''
NO SHOWOFF
Still, Verena abstains from showing off
her pipes. ''I can sing well and hold a
note. But I've always been more concerned
with what I'm saying. It doesn't matter
that much to me if the voice breaks or tears,''
she says.
"Every time I have ever performed
before an audience, that is success for
me. The market side of things is a whole
different story.''
Cuban singer denied visa
Last December, Varela
traveled to Venezuela with Cuban superstar
Silvio Rodriguez, a Castro supporter, to
perform in support of Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez, making his fans wonder
if he had sold out.
By Juan Carlos Perez Rodriguez.
Special to The Herald. Posted on Sat, Mar.
06, 2004
Controversial Cuban singer/songwriter Carlos
Varela has been denied a U.S. visa to enter
the country to perform Wednesday at the
Gusman Center for the Performing Arts.
The trip would have been Varela's second
visit to Miami in the past six years.
Varela's is the latest in a series of visa
denials for Cuban artists who periodically
perform in the United States. In the most
recent cases, the State Department told
The Herald it had reversed its earlier people-to-people
policy, in which artists' visas were granted,
because it did not want money going into
Fidel Castro's coffers.
''I'm deeply saddened and outraged,'' said
Beth Boone, artistic and executive director
of the Miami Light Project, a nonprofit
cultural institution that was assisting
concert promoter Cubart. She added that
Cubart was expecting to fill the 1,700-seat
Gusman.
Cubart was notified of the government's
decision at mid-day Friday by the attorney
trying to secure visas for Varela and his
band. The government didn't give a reason
for its visa decision, Boone said.
It wasn't possible to immediately obtain
a comment from Varela, but Boone said he
was "extremely upset and frustrated.''
Varela earned fans inside and outside of
Cuba in the 1980s and '90s with lyrics that
were thinly veiled criticisms of the Castro
regime. His most recent work has been less
militant and more personal.
Last December, Varela traveled to Venezuela
with Cuban superstar Silvio Rodriguez, a
Castro supporter, to perform in support
of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez,
making his fans wonder if he had sold out.
Though he wouldn't comment to The Herald
on the Venezuela trip or on any direct political
issues, Varela told The Herald in an e-mail
earlier this week: "I'm not an instrument
of anyone or any government.
''There are writers who prefer being close
to power,'' Varela insisted, "but that
is not my case.''
Prior to Friday's visa rejection, Varela
had expressed a desire to perform for his
Cuban fans in Miami. "It could be a
very emotion-filled concert. I'll sing to
the dry and wet hearts of the exile community.''
Herald staff contributed to this report.
Her Cuban heritage leaps off the pages
By Sue Corbett, scorbett@herald.com.
Posted on Sat, Mar. 06, 2004.
Mayra Dole's mother told her that, right
after she was born, she made ''drumming
gestures'' with her hands. So it probably
surprised no one that Dole turned out to
be one of those kids who beats every surface
to hear the sound it makes, or that she
later played the Senegalese djembe drum
in a band.
But given the fact that she never finished
high school or had any formal education,
it was less expected when Dole embarked
on a career as a writer, melding her love
of words with her instinct for rhythm into
her first published book -- Drum, Chavi,
Drum!, (Children's Book Press, $16.95, ages
5 to 8) a bilingual story set in Miami during
the Calle Ocho festival.
The star of the story is Chavi, a Cuban-American
girl who, like Dole, sees every surface
for its percussive potential. She pounds
out rhythms on the hood of a car, on a bedside
table, on the lids of paint cans. Chavi
even sends her mother to work by kissing
her nose and tapping her cheeks with a gentle
tippy-tap-chicky-chack.
Playing the drums is the way Chavi releases
her sadness about the death of her father,
and her guilt over how hard her mother must
work to care for them. What she wants more
than anything is to make her mother proud
by playing the tumbadoras in a Calle Ocho
parade. Imagine Chavi's indignation when
her music teacher chooses Carlitos to play,
simply because he is a boy.
Writing is the way Dole connects with her
heritage. Born in Marianao, Cuba, and reared
in Hialeah, Dole has woven the texture of
Cuban Miami into Chavi's story. The neighbor
ladies give manicures in their homes. The
men play dominoes in the park. The illustrations
by Tonel depict Miami's famous street party
in all its vibrant glory.
Dole recalls the Calle Ocho festival as
a favorite event of her childhood, having
arrived in Miami as a toddler in 1959. Her
father, a Batista supporter, fled Cuba in
disguise to avoid arrest.
''When Fidel's people came looking for
my dad, my mother dressed him as a priest
and hid him under a pew inside a church,''
until he could escape, Dole said. "My
brother and I stayed with my grandparents
and aunt until three months later when we
were flown to Hialeah. The five of us [my
aunt included] lived in a one-room efficiency.''
Dole took some high school and college
courses, but says she is largely ''self-educated.''
She's especially gratified to be writing
bilingual books, never having had access
to much literature written in Spanish while
she was growing up.
''When I was working on my first book I
was insecure about my Spanish translation
and so I gave it to an academic who helped
me translate it into formal Spanish.'' But
Dole felt the result robbed the story of
its Cuban heart, it's ''juiciness,'' she
calls it, so she changed it back, with her
publisher's permission.
Part of the problem was that insecurity
with written Spanish. "If I had been
exposed to Spanish/English [bilingual] books
in school, writing fluently in Spanish would
be as easy as writing in English.''
Her next book, Birthday in the Barrio,
is also written in both English and Spanish.
Due out this fall, the story is set on Miami
Beach, and follows Chavi and her best friend,
Rosario, as they plan a quince for Rosario's
sister.
She hopes her bilingual stories will help
kids stay in touch with their own culture,
and introduce the fun and vitality of Cuban
culture to those who aren't familiar with
it.
"I want to show children that learning
different cultures is a blast.''
50 years later, terrorist attack remembered
Decades after members
were sprayed by bullets, lawmakers are discussing
how to reorganize Congress in the event
of a catastrophic attack.
By Jim Abrams, Associated
Press. Posted on Sun, Mar. 07, 2004.
WASHINGTON - There's a penny-size bullet
hole in the desk used by Republicans when
they speak on the floor of the House, a
memento of the worst terrorist attack ever
on Congress.
On March 1, 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists
opened fire from the visitors' gallery above
the chamber. They sprayed some 30 shots
around the hall and wounded five lawmakers,
one seriously.
Amazingly, no one was killed even though
some 240 members were on the floor at the
time of the shooting, 50 years ago last
Monday. Bullets penetrating the Republican
desk barely missed Majority Leader Charles
Halleck of Indiana, who was hit by flying
splinters.
It was a stunning act of violence in a
body that, despite its openness to the public,
had been relatively free of violence in
its first century and a half.
There had been isolated incidents of lawmakers
assaulting each other. President Andrew
Jackson narrowly escaped an assassin outside
the Capitol Rotunda in 1835. In 1915, a
Harvard professor protesting U.S. policy
toward Germany destroyed two Senate rooms
with a bomb. A Vietnam War protester set
off a bomb in a Senate restroom in 1971.
The first metal detectors at the Capitol
did not appear until 1976. It was not until
1998, when a man with a history of mental
illness shot and killed two Capitol Police
officers, that the need to deal with security
threats took on a real sense of urgency.
Then came Sept. 11, 2001, when many believe
that the real destination of the fourth
hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania
was the Capitol. Since then, the police
force has grown substantially, streets around
the Capitol are barricaded and visitors
are closely monitored.
For the first time, lawmakers are considering
legislation on how to reorganize Congress
in the event of a catastrophic attack that
would kill or incapacitate hundreds of lawmakers.
The 1954 attack was ''extraordinarily unexpected,''
said Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., who at
the time was 16 years old and a House page.
Kanjorski recalled that he thought someone
was shooting off firecrackers until one
of the shots hit a marble column and he
was sprayed with a sandy material. Kanjorski
hit the floor. When the shooting ended,
he and other pages, included the late Bill
Emerson, a future Republican congressman
from Missouri, were among the first to respond.
Kanjorski helped carry three wounded lawmakers
off the floor and rode in the ambulance
with Rep. Alvin Bentley, R-Mich., who was
hit in the chest.
TOURNIQUET TIE
One lawmaker used his tie as a tourniquet
to stop the bleeding of a colleague shot
in the leg. Navy veteran James Van Zandt,
a Pennsylvania Republican, ran upstairs
and helped capture one of the four assailants.
The attackers were led by Lolita Lebron,
a 34-year-old nationalist angered by Puerto
Rico's new commonwealth status with the
United States. Shouting ''Vive Puerto Rico
Libre,'' she unfurled a Puerto Rican flag
and joined her comrades in firing off shots
with automatic pistols.
In a profile of Lebron, The Washington
Post Magazine said she is now a deeply religious
person but remains unrepentant about the
1954 attack. One of two surviving members
of her group, she still enjoys prominence
among Puerto Rican nationalists.
President Carter freed the Puerto Ricans
in 1979 after they had served 25 years in
prison. Although the Carter White House
denied any connection, their release coincided
with Fidel Castro's release of several Americans
being held in Cuba.
BULLETPROOF GLASS
Kanjorski said that after the attack, the
House considered erecting bulletproof glass
around the visitors' gallery overlooking
the chamber. A believer in openness, he
said he is glad that did not happen.
He said he believes Lebron and her group
set back the cause of Puerto Rican independence
by their act of violence. He contrasted
Lebron to Rosa Parks, asking what the black
civil rights leader would have accomplished
if she had thrown a grenade instead of refusing
to give up her seat to a white man on a
Montgomery, Ala., bus in 1955.
Kanjorski also recalls witnessing the aftermath
of the shootings of the two police officers
in 1998. ''It appeared to me like 50 years
ago,'' he said. ''The same chaotic situation,
the same shock.'' The only difference, he
said, was the design of the ambulances.
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