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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Seven groups of Cuban migrants stopped
at sea; most returned
Associated Press. Posted
on Mon, Nov. 08, 2004.
MIAMI - Seven separate groups of Cuban
migrants were stopped at sea over a five-day
period, and most of the individuals found
were repatriated, the U.S. Coast Guard said
Monday.
The seven groups were found during a five-day
period ending Nov. 3, according to the Coast
Guard. All but three of the 111 migrants
picked up were returned to Bahia de Cabanas,
Cuba, on Saturday, officials said.
Three go-fast boats smuggling migrants
were found in distress, two drifting alone
in the Florida Straits, and the third being
towed by another boat. Those boats were
carrying 68 migrants, the Coast Guard reported.
Another boat carrying 30 migrants was stopped
by federal officials.
Nine suspected smugglers from the speed
boats were taken into custody and are under
investigation, officials said.
Finally, 13 migrants were rescued from
homemade rafts after people reported them
to Coast Guard officials.
It was not clear why so many migrants were
found during that period, though Coast Guard
Petty Officer Ryan Doss said the number
varies throughout the year, with no particular
trend.
The three migrants who were not repatriated
over the weekend will be turned over to
immigration officials at Naval Station Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, for more processing, the Coast
Guard said.
U.S. dollar removed from circulation
in Cuba
Posted on Tue, Nov. 09,
2004.
HAVANA - (AP) -- After a decade as the
dominant currency to buy shampoo, canned
food, furniture and almost everything else,
the U.S. dollar was eliminated from circulation
Monday in Cuba.
Cubans as well as tourists visiting the
island must now use a local currency tied
to the dollar. Cuba's communist government
announced the change Oct. 25, prompting
thousands of Cubans to flood banks and exchange
houses to turn in their dollars for Cuban
convertible pesos.
A 10 percent surcharge to convert the U.S.
currency into pesos was to have taken effect
Monday, but because of the huge demand to
dispose of the U.S. bills, the Central Bank
extended the surcharge-free period to until
Sunday.
The surcharge will not apply to other foreign
currencies, such as the euro or the Canadian
dollar, and there will be no surcharge to
buy U.S. dollars.
Cubans and tourists in Old Havana lined
up outside exchange houses and banks Monday
to convert their dollars.
Cubans will now use the convertible peso
to purchase goods they have been buying
with dollars since the U.S. currency was
made legal tender in 1993.
That move was made to help attract hard
currency to Cuba after the island lost Soviet
aid and trade.
Previously sold at ''dollar-only stores,''
such items include groceries such as cereal,
yogurt and bottled water, as well as most
toiletries. Washing machines, furniture
and gasoline have also been sold in dollars.
The Cuban convertible peso, like that of
many other smaller nations, has no value
outside the country.
There also exists another currency on the
island -- the regular Cuban peso -- but
it has little value inside the country and
is used mainly to buy fruit and vegetables
as well as gain admission to concerts, museums
and movie theaters.
In announcing the currency switch, President
Fidel Castro said widespread use of the
money of his country's No. 1 enemy -- the
United States -- was being halted to guarantee
Cuba's economic independence.
Dallas paper to shut down Havana office
A Texas newspaper will
close its office in Havana by the end of
the year, further reducing independent news
from the communist-ruled island.
By Nancy San Martin, nsanmartin@herald.com.
Posted on Tue, Nov. 09, 2004.
The Dallas Morning News, one of just four
U.S. media companies with a coveted bureau
in Havana, will close its operation in Cuba
by the end of the year for economic reasons,
the paper's managing editor confirmed Monday.
The Havana pullout comes as the Texas daily
copes with financial losses from circulation
overstatements that resulted in millions
of dollars in overpaid advertisements that
must be compensated. Last month, the company
laid off dozens of employees and eliminated
a number of positions to cut costs.
The Havana bureau, opened in 2001, has
been an expensive venture that could no
longer be justified.
''It's been a significant cost,'' George
Rodrigue, the managing editor, told The
Herald in a telephone interview. "We
need to close the bureau but we don't plan
to close out our coverage in Cuba.''
FOCUS ON BORDER
Rodrigue said the decision came after examining
whether news from the communist-ruled island
was worth the expense. Executives decided
resources would be better spent on the Texas-Mexico
border, which is more relevant to readers
in the region. Plans are underway to open
a bureau on the border, either in northern
Mexico or southern Texas, Rodrigue said.
The Morning News is the flagship newspaper
of Belo Corp., based in Dallas. Although
considered a regional paper, the Morning
News has increased Latin America coverage
in recent years and has a strong presence
in Mexico. The Mexico City bureau will spearhead
news coverage coming out of Cuba, Rodrigue
said.
The paper is among four U.S. news organizations
allowed to have correspondents in Havana.
The others: Tribune Co., which includes
the Chicago Tribune and the Sun-Sentinel
in Fort Lauderdale; the Associated Press;
and CNN, which opened its bureau in 1997,
the first U.S. news organization with an
office there in 28 years.
DISMAYED
Cuba experts expressed disappointment over
the Morning News' decision.
''It's bad news when independent journalists
leave a country that needs that kind of
reporting and watch dog services,'' said
Damián Fernández, director
of the Cuban Research Institute at FIU.
"But there seems to be an exhaustion
with Cuba. It's the same old, same old.
It makes us wonder how important Cuba is
outside of Miami and the South Florida area.''
MIAMI BOOK FAIR INTERNATIONAL
The intellectual sports buff
By Fabiola Santiago. fsantiago@herald.com.
Posted on Tue, Nov. 09, 2004.
Roberto González Echevarría
dons the serious, studied look of an Ivy
League professor and the navy blue suit
to match his cerebral list of accomplishments,
which include his distinguished title --
Sterling Professor, Endowed Chair of Comparative
Literature at Yale University.
But stand him before an audience -- and
he'll be in front of one this weekend at
the Miami Book Fair International's Spanish-language
program -- and the 60-year-old Cuban-American
morphs into a charming gossiper and storyteller,
whether the topic is literature or his other
passion, Cuban baseball.
One of the most prominent Hispanists in
the world, whose work ranges from 17th century
Spanish literature to modern Latin American
authors, Echevarría calls his stunning
resume ''my ridiculum vita.'' He's also
a pilot, a member of the Yale Flying Club,
so if he's in Tampa visiting family, he
flies into Opa-locka Airport when he travels
to Miami.
The author of The Pride of Havana (Oxford),
a groundbreaking work on the history of
Cuban baseball, Echevarría was a
commentator at one of the famous Orioles/Cuba
game in 1999. His politically savvy commentary
angered the Cuban cultural establishment
on the island, which until then had gracefully
hosted him in Havana literary circles as
one of the world's premier experts on master
Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier.
Back then, his trips to Cuba angered conservative
exiles in Miami who saw him as a ''dialoguero,''
a proponent of dialogue with Fidel Castro.
But that's history. He made the final,
public break last year when the Cuban government
jailed 75 dissidents, most of them poets
and journalists, and Echevarría wrote
in The Herald a column denouncing the crackdown
and the 23 Cuban intellectuals who signed
a letter supporting it.
He hasn't been invited back to Cuba even
though Carpentier's centennial is being
celebrated this year. The absence of the
author of Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim
at Home is well-noticed.
Now, he's frequently invited to Miami.
He speaks on Carpentier with Columbia University
professor Anke Birkenmaier Sunday. On Saturday,
he introduces the Spanish language edition
of his baseball book, El orgullo de La Habana
(Editorial Colibrí).
Uva de Aragón, the assistant director
of Florida International University's Cuban
Research Institute, calls him a ''criollo
universal.'' That means he's something of
a super Cuban gifted at translating the
culture, giving it universal appeal. ''He
might seem German if it were not for his
delicious way with Cuban humor,'' de Aragón
says.
Echevarría was born in the central
Cuban town of Sagüa La Grande into
a family of college graduates. His mother
earned her doctorate in philosophy and letters
the year she gave birth to Echevarría.
''She wrote her dissertation on Cuban literature,
so in a way, I was fated to do what I am
doing,'' Echevarría says.
He doesn't remember being a particularly
good student.
''I was not as attentive as I should have
been,'' he says. 'I was a bit of a Neanderthal,
and I liked to chase after girls' skirts.
I climbed trees and that sort of thing.
A normal child.''
The family moved to Havana when Echevarría
was 13. After Castro's triumph in 1959,
the family moved to Tampa, where his father's
family had emigrated earlier. His grandfather
had been a successful sugar mill administrator
and sent his younger brothers to the States
to study. The family owned the González
Clinic in Ybor City.
Echevarría studied at Jefferson
High School, but graduated from night school
because he was washing dishes during the
day and ''doing all kinds of jobs'' to help
his family survive.
''Tampa was Latin in a different kind of
way,'' he says. "A lot of the Tampans
didn't speak Spanish.''
He enrolled in the University of South
Florida and played ''a lot of baseball.''
He also learned French and Italian. ''I
was very much a jock, but also a completely
obsessed student,'' he says. "Once
I found what I liked -- which was language
and literature -- I couldn't get enough
of it. My most crucial, intellectual development
took place in South Florida.''
He continued studying at Indiana University,
which gave him ''the best kind of fellowship.''
Two years later, he went to Yale. At 26,
he earned his doctorate and got his first
job at Yale. He taught at Cornell University
from 1971-77. ''I got tenure when I was
30 years old, something very unusual,''
he says. Six years later, Yale lured him
back.
But his rise was not without struggle:
''The Cubans in academia were pariahs,''
he says. "We were thought to be right-wingers.
We did not fit the mold of the latinos who
needed help. Particularly in Latin American
studies, what prevailed was an ideology
favorable to the Cuban Revolution.''
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