CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Anti-Castro pilots' kin meet

The daughters and other relatives of covert operatives who disappeared in the fight against Fidel Castro meet in the Keys to chart their parallel, difficult histories.

By Cara Buckley, cbuckley@herald.com. Posted on Sun, May. 16, 2004.

NO NAME KEY - Eighteen years after her ace pilot father vanished over Cuba, shot down during the doomed Bay of Pigs invasion, Janet Weininger received a message from Fidel Castro: Her father's frozen body was in a Havana morgue, and the Cuban president was willing to give it back.

For Weininger, the return of Pete Ray's body marked the end of a desperate decadelong search in which she wrote 200 letters to Castro and scoured Little Havana's streets for Cuban pilots. It also set in motion her lifelong quest to help children of covert operatives lost during the Cold War piece together the puzzle of their missing parents' lives.

''It's a long, lonely search to go against the government, the family who you love, the Cuban government,'' said Weininger, 48.

This weekend, at a fishing camp on No Name Key, Weininger gathered with four other women whose fathers or relatives had been pilots in, and victims of, Cuba's bloody revolution more than 40 years ago and the United States' efforts to quash it.

These daughters of the disappeared traveled from Maine, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Bermuda, drawn together by their parallel histories and unanswered questions haunting most of their lives: Were their fathers mercenaries, as the CIA claimed? Or were they covert operatives hired by the U.S. government to secretly take Castro down?

''When it happened, the U.S. government and the CIA's attorney said my father and the three other [Americans] who died with him were soldiers of fortune hired by Cuban exile groups,'' Weininger said. "But until 1968, the government deposited $500 in my mother's account every month. They told her if she asked questions, they'd cut her off.''

Four of the five women were not yet 10 years old when their fathers flew off on covert missions to fight Castro and never returned. But unlike Weininger, three of the women never found out what their fathers were involved in when they disappeared.

Sherry Sullivan, now 48, was 7 years old when her father, Geoffrey Sullivan, disappeared while piloting an anti-Castro mission to Central America. The CIA denied any knowledge of the man, but as an adult, Sullivan grew suspicious: Her father was a former Air Force pilot and, her mother said, always flew with poison pills in case he got caught.

Sullivan became a private investigator, took her search to TV's Unsolved Mysteries and fought and lost a six-year court battle to extract information from the CIA.

''Right now I have 100,000 pages, but I still don't know where my father is,'' Sullivan said. "I've been trying to get legitimacy for my father for 40 years.''

Karen Hughes, 50, and her sister, Christy Cox, 47, were living in Havana's plush Miramar neighborhood when Castro swept to victory in 1959. Their father, Paul Hughes, an ex-U.S. military flier, had funneled guns to Castro, only to become an antirevolutionary after learning Castro had embraced communism. The family fled. In 1960, Hughes disappeared with a copilot during an apparent bomb attempt against Cuba from Fort Pierce.

MAGAZINE ACCOUNT

Their family heard nothing until a neighbor appeared at the doorstep two weeks later, holding an article from Life magazine. ''We were told in a national magazine that our father was a lone nut,'' said Hughes. "We have to live with the legacy of the American government saying that he shouldn't have been doing what he did.''

The group of women began forming when Weininger contacted Sullivan after reading a 1987 article detailing her search. They met Hughes and Cox after the sisters contacted pilots involved in gun running to Nicaragua during the Iran contra affair.

Each of their stories was chronicled by Gordon Winslow, a Miami historian who runs a website devoted to tales of the fight against Castro. Last year another daughter, Ilona Perry, 29, contacted him.

MOTHER MURDERED

Perry discovered recently her estranged mother was murdered during a 1986 burglary in Miami Beach. She resolved to contact her mother's family, knowing vaguely of their involvement in the revolution and subsequent defections.

Through Winslow, Perry met Weininger and began charting her family's history: Her uncle Pedro Luis Díaz Lanz ran Castro's air force before becoming the revolution's first high profile defector. Her uncle Guillermo had been tortured to death in a Cuban prison. Some 15 other family members still live in Miami.

''I had no idea the breadth of this,'' said Perry, who is beginning to get acquainted with her uncles, aunts and cousins. "They're wonderful. I haven't had a family my whole life.''

A FIRST GATHERING

This weekend marked the first time all five women had met. They chose to gather in the Keys because the island chain housed many anti-Castro training sites in the 1960s. Joined by Winslow and another Cold War researcher, Bill Bretz, the women spoke of Cold War intrigue, of being stonewalled by the CIA, pouring over Bay of Pigs minutiae as if recounting the details would tunnel through the pain, and finding comfort in the shared understanding of each other's loss.

''Our family thought we were the only ones this happened to,'' said Hughes. "It was hard to believe there could be other stories like ours.''

Today, the group plans to travel north for a ''Miami spy tour,'' hitting Little Havana and the Bay of Pigs museum, visiting the exile group, Alpha 66, and, finally, the memorial black marble wall dedicated to the "Unknown Cuban Freedom Fighter.''

Castro leads a protest denouncing embargo

Many thousands of Cubans protested new U.S. sanctions meant to weaken Fidel Castro's influence at home.

By Vanessa Arrington, Associated Press. Posted on Sat, May. 15, 2004.

HAVANA - Hundreds of thousands of red-clad Cubans marched with Fidel Castro past the U.S. diplomatic mission Friday, chanting support for the Cuban leader while depicting President Bush as Hitler for moving to tighten the 44-year embargo of the communist state.

Castro launched the demonstration with denunciations and ridicule of Bush, saying he was fraudulently elected and trying to impose "world tyranny.''

He then led the crowd, dressed in red shirts and shouting ''Long live free Cuba! Fascist Bush!'' past the mission on the oceanfront Malecon Boulevard.

A broad stream of students, workers, parents toting children on their shoulders and elderly couples filed past the mission singing, chanting, and playing drums.

The government-organized demonstration lasted just over six hours; as it ended, officials said 1.2 million people had taken part. The number could not be confirmed, but the turnout was well into the hundreds of thousands.

While past state-organized demonstrations have compared other world leaders to Adolf Hitler, Friday's march brought the level of hostility toward Bush to a new level. Scores of printed posters -- apparently distributed by the march's organizers -- bore swastikas and portrayed Bush in a Nazi uniform with a mustache similar to Hitler's.

There were hand-lettered signs as well: A middle-aged man carried a handwritten sign saying, "Bush, you are crazy, find yourself a psychologist.''

The 77-year-old Castro, dressed in his usual green military uniform and field cap, appeared to walk with some difficulty, favoring a leg, as he led the march for about 800 yards, sometimes waving a small Cuban flag made of paper before getting into a waiting car and leaving.

Castro said the march was ''an act of indignant protest and a denunciation of the brutal, merciless and cruel measures'' aimed at squeezing the island's economy and pushing out the Cuban leader.

The latest embargo measures, announced last week by Bush, included restrictions on money transfers and family visits, increased efforts to transmit anti-Castro television to Cuba and appointment of a coordinator to plan a transition from socialism to capitalism.

U.S. moves to deport Cuban

A Cuban migrant faces removal from this country after federal agents say he once spied on activists and a U.S. diplomatic office in Havana.

By Jay Weaver. jweaver@herald.com. Posted on Sat, May. 15, 2004

A Cuban accused of spying for Fidel Castro's government will be deported from Miami because he failed to register as a foreign agent and overstayed his visa after coming to the United States in 2000, immigration officials said Friday.

Lázaro Amaya La Puente, 40, who is in custody at Krome detention center in West Miami-Dade County, acted as an ''operative of the Cuban state security service,'' according to federal agents.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in Miami said he gathered intelligence on human rights activists in Cuba and spied on a U.S. diplomatic office in Havana.

''Espionage still happens in the United States and it still undermines the nation's security,'' Jesus Torres, special agent in charge of ICE's Miami office, said in a statement. The statement, however, did not explain what spying, if any, Amaya La Puente may have done in this country.

Earlier this month, the Board of Immigration Appeals ordered that Amaya La Puente, whose wife and two children live in Cuba, be removed because of the two Immigration and Nationality Act violations. ICE agents took him into custody in March 2003 at a Southwest Eighth Street motel where he worked as a night-shift clerk.

However, it remains unclear whether Amaya La Puente can be deported because the United States does not have normal diplomatic relations with Cuba, which would have to agree to accept him.

He was never criminally charged in the United States, though he acknowledged his intelligence past when he applied for asylum, according to a cousin in Hialeah, who could not be located Friday for further comment.

Amaya La Puente is among an increasing number of Cubans and other foreign nationals who are being arrested by federal agents because of criminal histories or immigration violations.

On Friday, for instance, immigration agents arrested 14 foreign nationals with prior criminal convictions living in Broward County -- including a Cuban. The group is awaiting the outcome of deportation hearings.

''We're successfully removing more and more [illegal immigrants] from the country,'' said Nina Pruneda, an ICE spokeswoman.

She declined to comment about Amaya La Puente's case, including whether he spied for Castro in this country.

His name can be added to a growing list of suspects with alleged Cuban intelligence connections who have been arrested or convicted in South Florida or other parts of the country in recent years.

In 2001, a federal jury in Miami convicted five Cubans on 23 spying-related charges stemming from an investigation of a South Florida Cuban spy ring known as La Red Avispa -- the Wasp Network.

Dollar stores to reopen in Cuba

Cuba's U.N. ambassador said that the country's recently shut dollar-only stores would reopen but that their customers should expect higher prices.

By Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press. Posted on Fri, May. 14, 2004

UNITED NATIONS - The dramatic closure of Cuba's dollar-only stores was temporary, to allow the government to assess the impact of ''brutal measures'' announced last week by President Bush, Cuba's U.N. envoy said Wednesday.

Ambassador Orlando Requeijo Gual said he didn't know whether the stores would be back in business within days or weeks.

The government had said earlier that the closures were in response to Bush's new measures to tighten the 44-year U.S. embargo on the communist state.

The measures' intent is to reduce hard currency on the island by limiting how often Cuban Americans may visit relatives.

They're currently limited to one visit a year and allowed to spend up to $164 a day. The new rules allow one visit every three years and a daily expenditure of $50.

In response, Cuba announced Monday that it was halting the hard-currency sale of all but food and personal-hygiene products. Prices on those goods, it said, will rise.

Nonfood dollar stores remained closed Thursday, and the government has called for a mass demonstration Friday to protest the new U.S. measures. The Communist Party's youth paper Juventud Rebelde has predicted that this would be "the biggest revolutionary demonstration in our history.''

The initial government declaration had said the closure of the hard-currency shops would be "until further notice.''

Cubans live rent free and get free healthcare, university education and other services. Some also receive meals at work.

But wages on the island average $20 a month, and in recent years monthly rations of nearly free food have dwindled to about eight eggs, a half-pound of chicken, a pound of ground meat, a half-liter of cooking oil and six pounds of rice per person.

Cubans who can get dollars that filter through the economy from tourism or family remittances from abroad turn to hard-currency shops for food and other goods difficult to obtain for pesos.

Bush let stand the $1,200-a-year U.S. limit on dollar transfers that Cuban-American families may send to the island, but he limited those who may receive the transfers to immediate family members -- excluding even uncles and cousins. Also excluded are Cuban officials and Communist Party members.

Requeijo joined the Cuban government denunciations of Bush's proposals, which were included in a nearly 500-page report by a presidential commission headed by Secretary of State Colin Powell.

''That document is full of stupid things,'' Requeijo said, "but it doesn't mean that we are not taking the document in a serious manner.''

Few may attend migration talks

Tougher restrictions on travel to Cuba may discourage attendance at a scheduled migration conference in Havana this month.

By Michael A.W. Ottey, mottey@herald.com. Posted on Fri, May. 14, 2004

Cuban Americans who planned to attend a Havana conference on migration issues may be forced to stay home because of new travel restrictions imposed by the Bush administration.

The conference on ''The Nation and Emigration,'' scheduled for May 21-23, was expected to draw scores of Cubans living abroad, most of them in the United States, who favor easing the U.S. embargo on the island.

The conference, the third of its type since the early 1990s, is sponsored by the Cuban government and participants attend at the invitation of the Cuban Foreign Ministry to discuss issues affecting Cubans who live abroad.

Under U.S. sanctions on Cuba, all U.S. residents are required to get special permission to travel to Cuba.

Cuban Americans have an easier time of it under special provisions for family reunification visits. But President Bush's decision last week to tighten the travel restrictions will make it difficult for Cuban Americans to attend the Havana conference.

Under the new restrictions, visits are no longer allowed to distant relatives such as a cousins -- one of the ways in which many Cuban Americans have been visiting the island legally.

A State Department spokesman said he suspects Cuban Americans who attended previous conferences reported that they were going there to visit family and did not apply for the special license required to attend conferences in Cuba.

''The regulatory basis has been in place for years,'' the spokesman said. "The people may have failed to comply.''

Cuban Americans who don't have close relatives on the island and other U.S. residents must seek special permits to visit the island, such as those issued for business and humanitarian trips.

But any conferences in Havana that U.S. residents wish to attend must be a legitimate international event, not just a Cuban ''production,'' the State Department spokesman said.

The Cuban government sponsors various conferences and labels them international, but that doesn't necessarily make them truly international, said the spokesman, who asked not to be identified.

The new measures restrict Cuban Americans' travel to Cuba to one trip every three years, instead of once a year. They also rule out visits to distant relatives, such as cousins, previously allowed.

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