CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Havana's transfer of dissidents hints at release

Supporters of a group of dissidents imprisoned in Cuba last year hoped for releases after 13 of the inmates were suddenly moved to Havana from prisons around Cuba.

Posted on Sun, Nov. 28, 2004

HAVANA - (EFE) -- Cuban authorities have transferred 13 imprisoned dissidents, journalist-poet Raúl Rivero among them, from facilities around the island to Havana, a move the opposition hopes signals their imminent release.

All were part of the ''Group of 75,'' peaceful dissidents who were sentenced to up to 28 years in prison after summary trials in the spring of 2003.

The prisoners were told Friday that they would be transferred to Havana for medical checkups, a procedure usually undertaken prior to release, said Elizardo Sánchez of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

Among the transferees is Raúl Rivero, who was serving a 20-year sentence at Canaletas, 280 miles from Havana, when he was taken to the hospital at Combinado del Este prison complex in Havana, his wife, Blanca Reyes, told EFE.

''They called me from State Security and told me that Raúl is fine, he is being given a medical checkup in the hospital of the Combinado del Este'' prison, Reyes said. She added that she has been promised she will be able to visit him.

'I think it could be a step toward the prisoners' release, but if it's a fresh game by the government, it would be very painful,'' said Reyes, convinced Rivero's transfer is related to the Cuban government's decision to resume official contact with the Spanish government, which has pressed for for the release of the dissidents.

In an interview by Radio Martí, Laura Pollán, wife of imprisoned Cuban dissident Héctor Maseda, said that in addition to Rivero, others believed transferred were José Ubaldo Izquierdo, Héctor Raúl del Valle, Efrén Fernández Fernández, José Miguel Martínez, Jesús Mustafá Felipe, Omar Ruiz Hernández, Pablo Pacheco Avila, Blas Giraldo Reyes and Pedro Argüeyes Morán, Antonio Villarreal and Margarito Broche.

El Nuevo Herald also reported that José Luis Rodríguez Tanquero was part of the group.

Pollán said, "At this moment, all of us wives are in a state of uncertainty, of anxiety.''

Special correspondent Renato Pérez contributed to this report.

Cuba, Spain see thaw in frosty relationship

From Herald Wire Services, Posted on Sat, Nov. 27, 2004.

HAVANA - A meeting between Cuba's foreign minister and the Spanish ambassador to Havana appears to have broken the ice on European-Cuban relations, cooled by Havana last year in reply to European diplomats' contacts with Cuban dissidents.

''We met with the Spanish ambassador . . . and we have reestablished official contact,'' Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque told a news conference Thursday with Spanish Ambassador Carlos Alonso Zaldivar.

Cuba broke off diplomatic contacts with European Union member nations in Havana last year after the EU adopted some sanctions against Havana because of a crackdown on dissidents that sent 75 to prison.

But the socialist government of Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, elected in March, has been pushing the EU to reengage with Cuba to more effectively push Havana to release the jailed dissidents and move toward political reforms.

But diplomats from other European countries said the meeting was ''a complete surprise'' to them.

One warned that the talks ''will open a crisis in heart of the European Union,'' where nations have struggled to agree on how to respond to President Fidel Castro's crackdown on the Cuban pro-democracy opposition.

A month ago, a fresh political row erupted when Cuba refused to grant admission to three EU parliamentarians who had arrived in Havana to have meetings with Cuban dissidents.

Bush's squeeze on Castro pinching Cubans

By Nancy San Martin, nsanmartin@herald.com. Posted on Fri, Nov. 26, 2004.

In the five months since the Bush administration tightened sanctions on Cuba, life has become ''very complicated'' for Yuceika, a Cuban woman who once survived on the $100 sent monthly from Miami by the father of her 12-year-old son.

''Before, I would have to really restrict spending so that the $100 would last a complete month,'' said Yuceika, 35, a resident of the north-central city of Matanzas who can no longer receive the money. "Now, every day is a gamble.''

Yuceika is not alone. Numerous Cubans, and the Cuban government, have been harshly affected by the Bush administration measures, intended to hasten a transition to democracy by keeping U.S. dollars out of the Cuban government's coffers.

''We are challenging the regime in a way that it has not been challenged at least in the last 25 years,'' said Dan Fisk, deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. "They're feeling the pinch.''

U.S. officials say the tighter sanctions have already denied the Cuban government $100 million in income since they were implemented June 30, and they expect the total impact for their first year to hit $375 million.

The measures are widely considered unlikely to dramatically challenge the stability of Cuba's four-decade old communist government. But there is little question that Cuba and Cubans are feeling the pinch:

o The once-busy Havana airport terminal reserved for U.S. flights has been shut down. The 20 to 25 jetliners a week that used to fly from Miami, New York and Los Angeles to Cuba are down to a handful of much smaller planes, travel agents in Miami say.

o The number of U.S. travelers to Cuba, most of them Cuban Americans visiting relatives, is expected to drop from 180,000 in 2003 to no more than 30,000 in the first year of the new measures.

o Prices at Cuban government stores that sell imported products have soared by as much as 50 percent.

o Tourism dollars that trickled down to Cubans like taxi drivers and private restaurant and room-to-rent owners have dwindled, according to island residents.

o Saying it was reacting to the Bush measures, the Cuban government has imposed a 10 percent fee on most dollar exchanges -- in essence taking $1 out of every $10 that Cubans receive from people abroad.

The toughened U.S. rules restrict family reunification visits by Cuban Americans to Cuba to once every three years, instead of once a year, and limit gift parcels and the $1,200 a year cash remittances to immediate relatives -- parents, siblings and children, but not cousins or others.

Remittances from the United States alone total at least $400 million in a typical year, according to U.S. government estimates, while the family reunification travel and gift parcels total another $1.1 billion.

That estimate includes items such as the costs of airplane tickets, airport fees for excess baggage, and per diem expenditures authorized for visitors. Under the new rules, the per diem dropped from $164 to $50.

HALVING THE INFLOW

Fisk said the goal was to reduce money going into Cuba by 50 percent.

''That still keeps a flow going to the island, to the Cuban people, but it reduces the regime's ability to exploit those revenue sources,'' he said. "The idea is to go after the regime.''

But average Cubans are feeling the pinch.

One example: Yuceika is not married to the father of her son, making her ineligible to receive the $100 a month that she used to get. And while the son is entitled to the money, he is a minor and cannot withdraw the cash in Cuba.

''I guess we'll have to wait and see how we manage,'' Yuceika told The Herald in a telephone interview from her home in Matanzas.

And while buyers still jam the government's so-called ''dollar stores'' -- which provide the state with huge profit margins on the otherwise unavailable imported items -- it remains unclear how long that will continue.

''The stores are still filled with people buying stuff because there's nothing to buy anywhere else,'' said James Cason, chief of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana. "What we don't know is: Are people going to buy more or buy less as things get tougher and tougher? Will the measures lead to more money for the regime or less? . . . Only time will tell.''

Cason said another part of the new Bush policy on Cuba that seems to be working is the use of U.S. military airplanes, equipped as flying broadcasting stations, to force the signals of Radio and TV Martí past Cuban jamming. The planes have made seven such flights this year.

''On the information side, we are seeing people looking for TV Martí and they're finding it in some areas,'' Cason said during a recent visit to Miami. "People are eager to see it.''

And in Washington, enforcement of the Cuba sanctions also has increased, officials said.

Of the approximately 63,000 requests for licenses to travel to Cuba processed by the Treasury Department from Aug. 10 to Nov. 10, about 36,000 were denied and 26,000 approved. U.S. regulations permit travel by humanitarian and academic groups, journalists and others as well as Cuban Americans.

Most of the travel licenses denied were ''incomplete, have been filled out by someone seeking to travel too soon after their last visit, they have false information or are seeking a license to visit someone other than immediate families,'' said Treasury spokeswoman Molly Millerwise.

Previous figures were unavailable.

ENFORCEMENT

Hundreds of civil penalties also have been issued to violators of travel regulations, with fines totaling more than $1.5 million in the year that ended Sept. 30. And at least five cases have been referred to law enforcement for criminal investigations, Millerwise said.

For Yuceika's son, the tighter U.S. restrictions make no sense. He was 2 years old when his father fled on a raft in 1994. He came to know his father again during his visits twice a year, the last one in June.

Now, he may not see him again until June 2007.

''This whole thing has caused my son to shed a lot of tears,'' Yuceika said. 'Now, more than ever, he wants to be with his father. Every Saturday, when his father calls he asks, 'When are you getting me out of here?' ''

The boy turns 13 on Dec. 7. His father won't make it to the celebration.

"All he can do is wait for his father to call and wish him a happy birthday.''

D.C. museum's Cuba program gets wrong kind of notice

Washington's Corcoran Museum postponed a Cuban cultural program after anti-Castro activists and the Treasury Department -- but few others -- showed interest.

By Pablo Bachelet And Juan Tamayo. jtamayo@herald.com. Posted on Fri, Nov. 26, 2004.

WASHINGTON - The Corcoran Museum of Art has postponed a program on Cuban culture it was cosponsoring with Havana's diplomatic mission here after the $70-$90 tickets sparked little interest -- except from anti-Castro activists and the Treasury Department.

Corcoran spokeswoman Margaret Bergen said only 41 people had signed up for the program, which was to have started Tuesday, apparently because the date was too close to the busy Thanksgiving weekend.

''The timing is very bad and the response has been low,'' Bergen said, adding that complaints from anti-Castro activists played no role in the decision.

No new date has been set for the events, Bergen said.

The program was scheduled to include a movie on Cuban culture, a meeting with Dagoberto Rodríguez, head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, and a reception at the diplomatic mission's ballroom.

But the price of admission -- $70 for Corcoran members and $90 for the general public -- drew queries from the Treasury branch that enforces U.S. sanctions on Cuba, the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Virtually all U.S. transfers of money to Cuban government coffers require special licenses.

State Department officials also noted that the Cuban government has regularly barred the U.S. Interests Section in Havana from hosting similar cultural events, and recently denied visas to a blue grass music group that the diplomatic mission wanted to take to Cuba.

Washington and Havana do not have full diplomatic relations, so instead of embassies they maintain interests sections in each others' capitals. Both are housed in their one-time embassies.

Frank Calzón, executive director of the Washington-based Center for a Free Cuba, said he wrote a letter to the Corcoran on Monday, not trying to block the show but urging it also to listen to "the voices of Cuban political prisoners and their families who will be extremely saddened when they hear about your forthcoming function.''

Calzón's letter argued that artistic freedoms are severely restricted in Cuba and that the government jailed 75 dissidents last year.

Havana show's just Vegas getting back to its roots

By Enrique Fernandez, efernandez@herald.com. Posted on Fri, Nov. 26, 2004.

Vegas, the final frontier. Sweep away the political brouhaha surrounding Havana Night Club, the touring act playing the Stardust in Las Vegas that recently sought political asylum in the United States, and you have the interesting fact that Cuban show biz has, once again, intersected with American showbiz -- at this country's showbizziest juncture, Las Vegas.

Once again. ''The Vegas nightclub show derives from the Havana night club show,'' boldly states Ned Sublette, author of Cuba and its Music and a promoter and record producer of Cuban music in the United States. ''The Tropicana,'' he said by phone from New Orleans, referring to the massive outdoor nightclub in Havana that has been wowing international guests since 1939, "antedates Vegas.''

Havana Night Club partakes of a tradition that includes both Havana and Las Vegas: the presentation of Cuban song and dance to a general public. The Vegas show, which has toured other countries before landing in Nevada, is both genuinely Cuban and not.

Genuine because Cubans put it together and perform it, and because it's based on Cuban songs and dances, some even sacred. Not because it's been taken from its natural habitat, the tenements and dance halls of Cuban cities, its rough edges polished so it will, as we say in the American showbiz tradition, "cross over.''

South Florida has played a role in this crossover, since Cuban -- and by extension Latin -- music has its major crossover star in Gloria Estefan.

Gloria's shows have played Vegas, and they've included elements of traditional Cuban music, dances and design. ''Our sets looked like a solar [the Havana tenements where Afro-Cuban music brewed], there were dancers dressed like rumberas and we projected slides of Cuban scenes,'' Gloria's husband and producer, Emilio, explains.

The shows were enthusiastically received, says Estefan, who had his first taste of his country's sounds at the Casa de la Trova -- a venue devoted to preserving traditional sounds, in the spirit of New Orleans' Preservation Hall -- in the city of Santiago.

According to Estefan, whose wife has been crisscrossing back and forth between American pop and Cuban/Latin sounds throughout her career, "the whole world loves Cuban music. The syncopation, the phrasing, the musical language, they are all spectacular.''

The most notable antecedent of Havana Night Club's booking at a Las Vegas venue is a very different kind of musical crossover, Buena Vista Social Club. This curious pickup band, made up of strong journeymen like Elíades Ochoa, cult figures like Compay Segundo, major artists like Omara Portuondo and virtual unknowns like Ibrahim Ferrer, hit the American bigtime playing -- who would've thought? -- veritable antiques from the Cuban songbook.

Nothing glitzy about Buena Vista, old-timers all.

A more produced phenomenon -- and one closer in its nature to Havana Night Club -- was the musical revue Noche Tropical, which performed in Japan in 1992. It was produced by the makers of Tango Argentino and Black and Blue and commissioned by Mitsubishi.

Unlike Buena Vista, Noche Tropical's roster was made up of the strongest figures in Cuban music, like percussionist Tata Güines -- Omara Portuondo is the only artist featured in both productions.

And, like Havana Night Club, it was a journey through the history of the island's music.

Since then, the world has been going through one of its many romances with Cuban music, with specialized venues in major cities around the world, like the famous Azúcar club in Cancun, Mexico, (Cuba's premiere band, Los Van Van, had a hit song about the club).

''Cuban music has always been in the American mainstream, dormant or not,'' argues Nat Chediak, author of the Diccionario del jazz latino, which, given the hegemony of Cuban music in Latin jazz, is a veritable who's who of the island's musicians.

As for Vegas, he notes that the legendary bassist/composer Cachao (among many compositions, he wrote the original tune Buena Vista Social Club ), now a Miami resident, lived and worked in Las Vegas in the '70s. He's not surprised that a Cuban act like Havana Night Club is now a Vegas headliner. ''Vegas has always been where they pay musicians best,'' he says.

From the early days of New Orleans jazz, where the influence of Cuban music gave the American genre ''the Spanish tinge'' that Jellyroll Norton claimed was a necessary ingredient, through the '40s and '50s, when Sublette claims ''Cuban music was almost dominant in the U.S.,'' to the recent asylum-seekers in Vegas, Cuban song and dance just keep on coming.

''Cuba never runs out of great musicians,'' says Estefan, who has tapped a number of them for Gloria's tours when they've gone into exile. ''Cuban music still has a lot to give us,'' says Sublette, lamenting that Havana Night Club act has been the only Cuban talent to get a U.S. visa since the 9/11 security tightening. And Chediak claims that ''Cuban music has always been on the front burner,'' adding that "the irony is that the city where it should be playing is this one.''

ALBERTO BARROCAS, 82
Cuban exile led Miami to top of shoe industry

By Carol Marbin Miller, cmarbin@herald.com. Posted on Sat, Nov. 27, 2004.

Alberto Barrocas, a shoe executive who fled Cuba after being placed under house arrest by Fidel Castro, and became one of the largest footwear manufacturers in the United States, died Friday following a long bout with cancer. He was 82.

Barrocas managed a successful shoe business in Havana in 1959 when Castro began to nationalize the industry. He fled to Rhode Island, later moving to Miami, with little more than his wife and three young sons and the contacts he had made in the shoe business.

Barrocas' death is a reminder of the passage of an industry that, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, made Miami the international hub for the manufacture of low-cost shoes. The field was dominated by immigrant Cuban Jews -- called ''Jewbans'' in their Miami Beach and North Miami Beach neighborhoods.

As the industry thrived, so did the thousands of families it supported. But by 1999, when Mr. Barrocas sold his business, competition from the Far East had destroyed the large Miami shoemakers. Most of them were friends and neighbors in Havana and remained friends until their deaths.

THE PIONEERS

''They were really the pioneers of the shoe industry, and they were selling not just to the local market,'' said Abel Holtz, a retired banker whose father also produced leather shoes in Cuba. "They were selling to the whole world.''

By the 1980s, Barrocas' firm, Injection Footwear Corp., employed 1,200 men and women and produced 10 million pairs of shoes, sneakers, and and sandals each year in Hialeah. Mr. Barrocas turned his energy toward philanthropy, donating time and money to the Miami Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged and other charities.

He served as president of the Hospice of the Miami Jewish Home, and volunteered with the Jewish Federation, the Latin Chamber of Commerce, and the 210 National Foundation, a shoe industry charitable group. He also served on the Industry Advisory Panel of the International Trade Commission.

''He was the first one who gave us support and money,'' said retired banker Bernardo Benes, a family friend, who rallied local businessmen to help Cuban refugees during the 1965 Freedom Flights.

In 1981, when an earthquake devastated El Salvador, Benes traveled with the Latin Chamber to a small town on the outskirts of San Salvador. ''All the houses, all the businesses had been destroyed,'' Benes said. "I saw 2,500 kids who were shoeless.''

Barrocas stepped in. ''In two days he called me up and said he had 8,000 shoes,'' recalled Benes, 69. ''That was done by Alberto Barrocas anonymously.'' When Hurricane Andrew struck Miami-Dade in 1992, the Barrocas family organized a drive among the nation's largest footwear companies and delivered hundreds of thousands of new shoes to families in Homestead who had lost everything.

FAMILY OPERATION

With his wife of 57 years, Alegre, Barrocas took a personal interest in the lives of his employees, from the office to the factory floor.

''My father was the patriarch of the business,'' said Jacob Barrocas. "He cared about his employees. He viewed them as an extended family for 30 years.''

''It was more of a family,'' said Guillermo Miranda, 61, president of Gator Industries, who sold raw materials to Barrocas for many years. Though Gator was a direct competitor, the two remained good friends. ''Every time I walked into his office,'' Miranda said, "it was a learning experience.''

The Barrocas family lived in Miramar, a suburb of Havana, where Barrocas served as president of Pieles Moises Egozi, a leather shoe supplier.

Carlos Lidsky, a friend of the Barrocas' son Charlie, remembers spending much of his childhood at their home, practicing judo, talking about girls and playing baseball and dominoes. ''It used to be a joy to be in the Barrocas home; they were so loving,'' said Lidsky, 55. Charlie Barrocas died in 1994.

''They were always respectful of us and our thinking. Even though we were little kids, our opinions always counted,'' Lidsky said.

COLLIDES WITH CASTRO

In 1960, the owners of Pieles Moises Egozi fled Cuba after Castro seized power. Barrocas remained behind to manage the business, but provoked Castro's ire when he refused to relinquish the business to the state. He was placed under house arrest until October 1960, when he fled the island with Alegre and his three sons, Charlie, Jacob and Eddie.

Barrocas was a sales manager for Apex Tire and Rubber in Rhode Island from 1960 until 1965, when he helped found Injection Footwear with the Egozi family. In 1977, Barrocas gained sole ownership of the business, which he ran with his sons until 2000.

''He always had a smile on his face,'' said Lidsky. "He always shared the things that were important to him with those around him.''

Mr. Barrocas is survived by his wife, Alegre, 76; two sons, Jacob, 51, and Eddie, 47; and three grandchildren, Scott, 27, Andrea, 20 and Jordan, 19.

Service will be Sunday at Beth David Memorial Gardens and Chapel, 3201 N. 72nd Ave., Hollywood. The time has yet to be determined. Burial is to follow. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Miami Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged.

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