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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
26 Cubans taken into custody on Key
Biscayne
By Alfonso Chardy, achardy@herald.com.
Posted on Thu, Sep. 23, 2004.
Twenty-six Cuban migrants were smuggled
overnight onto Key Biscayne, but by the
time Border Patrol agents showed up early
Thursday, the smugglers' boat was gone.
Walter Harris, a spokesman for the Border
Patrol station at Pembroke Pines, said the
group consisted of 19 men, 6 women and one
boy accompanied by his mother.
Harris said the migrants appeared to be
in good health.
The arrival was similar to dozens of other
smuggling trips in which migrants are dropped
off on South Florida beaches after traveling
from Cuba aboard speedboats.
Cubans who reach U.S. soil are generally
allowed to stay. Those intercepted at sea
are normally returned home.
U.S. House eases some Cuba limits
The U.S. House of Representatives
voted Wednesday to remove some travel and
trade restrictions on Cuba.
Posted on Thu, Sep. 23,
2004.
WASHINGTON - (AP) -- A day after moving
to nullify the Bush administration's new
rules restricting family travel to Cuba,
the House on Wednesday voted to remove barriers
to agriculture sales and student exchanges
in the island nation.
But, as in past years, actions by both
the House and Senate to ease decades of
economic and social sanctions imposed on
Cuba are expected to make little headway
against an administration determined not
to make life easier for the Fidel Castro
government.
The White House has threatened to veto
a $90 billion Transportation and Treasury
Department spending bill if it contains
any language to weaken sanctions. The bill,
for fiscal 2005 programs, passed 397-12.
Rep. Ernest Istook, R-Okla., chairman of
the subcommittee overseeing the spending
bill, suggested that the Cuba provisions
will ''evaporate'' when the House and Senate
come together to write a final version of
the bill. The White House is ''very unequivocal''
about the veto threat, he said, and "my
responsibility . . . is to produce a bill
that will pass into law.''
The House on Wednesday approved two of
the Cuba amendments without a roll call
vote.
The first, introduced by Rep. Maxine Waters,
D-Calif., would make it easier to sell agricultural
products, medicine and medical supplies
to Cuba. Sales of healthcare goods have
been legal since 1992, and cash-only sales
of food products since 2000, but restrictions
on commercial financing and credit guarantees
have discouraged exports.
The second, sponsored by Rep. Barbara Lee,
D-Calif., prohibits funds to enforce regulations
promulgated June 30 this year that erect
obstacles to American student programs in
Cuba. The rules are ''just plain undemocratic
and punitive and simply don't make sense
for Americans,'' she said.
A far broader proposal by Rep. Charles
Rangel, D-N.Y., to end the economic embargo
with Cuba, lost 225-188.
Files show how Celia overcame 1960s
blacklist
A new batch of federal
documents showed that salsa queen Celia
Cruz received permission to stay in the
United States because she publicly crusaded
against communism.
By Carol Rosenberg, crosenberg@herald.com.
Posted on Thu, Sep. 23, 2004.
The U.S. government took famed salsa singer
Celia Cruz off its blacklist of suspected
communists in 1965 because, while in exile,
she performed and raised money for anti-Fidel
Castro causes, according to newly released
records obtained by The Herald.
Cruz had kept her decade-plus struggle
with J. Edgar Hoover-era suspicions a secret,
which the Cuban-American icon took to her
grave at age 77 a year ago.
The documents show that she was finally
granted permission to stay in the United
States in 1965, ending a string of visa
rejections in U.S. consulates from Mexico
City to Montreal to Havana that started
in 1952.
''The record indicates that in July 1960
she fled as a defector from the Communist
regime of Cuba,'' according to an Oct. 28,
1965, immigration service memorandum recently
obtained by The Herald. "Since that
time she has actively cooperated with anti-Communist,
anti-Castro organizations through artistic
performances and by campaigning for funds
for those organizations.''
Cruz even got anti-communists to vouch
for her in the bid to win permanent residence
in the United States. The same memo said,
"She has presented statements from
a number of responsible persons attesting
to her active opposition to Communism for
at least the past five years.''
They are not named in documents.
The Herald discovered Cruz's secret U.S.
government blacklisting this summer after
receiving her FBI counterintelligence file
through the Freedom of Information Act.
The documents reflect a time when U.S. agents
and Congress were hunting communists in
U.S. society and were particularly interested
in the entertainment industry.
Now, 11 more declassified documents received
from the immigration division of the Department
of Homeland Security describe Cruz's effort
to stay permanently in the United States
after she fled Castro's revolution for Mexico
City in 1960 with the Sonora Matancera band.
ACTION AND REACTION
They reflect internal U.S. government debate
each time she sought to play a concert --
sometimes in Puerto Rico, at times in Hollywood,
Miami and New York -- over whether she should
be granted a waiver and allowed to perform.
U.S. bureaucrats branded her a communist
for her 1940s work at a pre-Castro Cuban
communist radio station, and membership
in the Popular Socialist Party.
Cruz's last manager, Omer Pardillo, said
in an interview that he did not know what
proof she provided.
But he dug through her personal papers
recently and found three certificates from
an anti-Castro guerrilla group.
Each one represented a receipt for $92,
and declared that she donated the money
to the Junta Revolucionaria Cubana to buy
three rifles in January 1964, a year before
she was finally cleared.
The group was formed after the ill-fated
Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, and the receipt
declared the donation of a rifle "for
the war against communist tyranny.''
Reached by telephone in San Juan, Puerto
Rico, the man who led the movement at the
time, Manuel Ray, said he did not recall
Cruz telling him of her communist blacklisting.
But ''at that time, the CIA was very discriminatory,''
he said. "I would've helped her in
any way possible. I had a high regard for
her.''
The latest batch of documents also reveals
an interesting twist: In the first year
of Castro's revolution, Cruz was among some
entertainers who sought to play in Miami
and New York to raise money for an island
rebuilding project in the aftermath of the
guerrilla fight that toppled former Cuban
strongman Fulgencio Batista.
FBI EVALUATION
''Subject is inadmissible to the United
States because of her affiliation with the
Cuban Communist youth organization and the
Communist Party of Cuba,'' said an FBI memo,
dated Sept. 3, 1959.
"She is a popular Cuban singer, and
was seeking to enter the U.S. for about
two days as a member of a group sponsored
by the Cuban Tourist Commission, to make
appearances at Miami and New York to raise
funds for the restoration of a Cuban city
devastated during the recent hostilities
there.''
Cruz's husband, Pedro Knight, said in an
interview this summer that he was unaware
of his late wife's U.S. visa troubles. The
couple wed in Connecticut in 1962, while
Cruz was splitting her time between New
York and Mexico, where she had sought U.S.
waivers to perform in the United States.
Giuliani aids Martinez cause
New York's former mayor
made a campaign stop in Miami on behalf
of Republican U.S. Senate nominee Mel Martinez.
By Luisa Yanez. lyanez@herald.com
Posted on Thu, Sep. 23, 2004.
Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani
rallied hundreds of Republicans in Miami
on Wednesday evening, capping a day of campaigning
in Florida for U.S. Senate nominee Mel Martinez.
Speaking largely to Cuban exiles packed
into a one-time car dealership on LeJeune
Road -- the new Bush-Cheney Miami headquarters
-- Giuliani was greeted with chants of "Rudy!
Rudy!''
The popular mayor urged the enthusiastic
crowd to elect the "first Cuban American
to the Senate.''
Martinez, of Orlando, is in a tight race
with former Education Commissioner Betty
Castor, who is scheduled to campaign in
Miami on Friday and in Broward County on
Sunday.
''First of all, thank you for your vote
on primary day; I would not have done it
without you,'' Martinez said before introducing
the former mayor.
Giuliani, praised for his leadership after
the 9/11 terrorist attacks, said he was
returning the favor by stumping for Martinez.
When Martinez was U.S. housing secretary,
he helped New York, Giuliani said.
''He was a real partner in getting the
things needed to rebuild Lower Manhattan,''
Giuliani said. "Now, make sure you
elect him, right?''
Martinez told his listeners that Giuliani
understands their concerns. ''He knows the
needs of the Cuban people,'' Martinez said,
relaying a conversation the two had on the
flight to Miami. 'He told me, 'Cuba has
to be free one day.' ''
The crowd cheered.
Throughout his stops in Orlando, West Palm
Beach and Miami, Giuliani made several quips
mocking Democratic presidential nominee
John Kerry, who was also making stops throughout
Florida with his running mate, John Edwards.
''Kerry can't make up his mind,'' Giuliani
said, adding, "To tell you the truth,
I don't know what he intends to do as president.''
Kerry, said Giuliani, flip-flopped on the
war in Iraq and the embargo on Cuba. Bush,
he said, will keep the embargo.
Giuliani asked the crowd for one favor:
"Don't make the election so close next
time, OK?''
New Film on Ernesto 'Che' Guevara Out
Anita Snow, Associated Press.
Posted on Thu, Sep. 23, 2004.
HAVANA - The luminous gaze of revolutionary
icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara is
almost a constant presence in communist
Cuba, his dark eyes staring out from beneath
a black beret on office walls and pro-government
billboards.
Nearly four decades after his death during
an abortive attempt to export revolution
to Bolivia, the Argentine-born physician
remains a beloved national hero, almost
a secular saint, to many on this Caribbean
island.
With a biopic about Guevara's early years,
"The Motorcycle Diaries," opening
in the United States on Friday, his relatives
hope the film will show Americans another
dimension of the man they may know only
as an iconic image.
"It will be very interesting for Americans,"
said Camilo Guevara, the 42-year-old son
of the late revolutionary and a project
director at Havana's Che Guevara Studies
Center.
The film is based on the personal writings
of Guevara and fellow Argentine Alberto
Granado about their travels across Latin
America on a Norton motorbike in 1952.
"The film appears to be very faithful
to the documents, respectful to the subjects
and esthetically beautiful," the younger
Guevara said this week. "I liked it
very much."
Producer Robert Redford traveled to Cuba
in January to privately screen the film
for Guevara's widow, Aleida March, and other
close relatives.
The film's Brazilian director Walter Salles
and Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal, who
plays Guevara, traveled here in June when
the movie opened to enthusiastic audiences.
Nicknamed "Che" for the Argentine
expression he used to address people, Guevara
is remembered by older Cubans as a leader
who rejected privilege and celebrated hard
work.
"We will be like Che," uniformed
boys and girls recite each school day when
pledging to be "pioneers for communism."
Images of Guevara hang in schools, medical
clinics and food ration centers. His visage
is on postage stamps and the 3-peso coin
beneath the words "Patria o Muerte"
- "Homeland or Death."
Guevara himself evidently sensed his ideals
would live on after he died.
"Shoot, coward, you are only going
to kill a man," Guevara told his Bolivian
executioner, according to revolutionary
legend.
Dead at 39, Guevara became an icon to leftists
worldwide, especially Latin Americans who
made him a symbol of their struggles against
U.S. interference and poverty and corruption
in their own nations.
"Why did they think that by killing
him, he would cease to exist as a fighter?"
former comrade-in-arms and President Fidel
Castro asked in October 1997, when Guevara's
remains were enshrined in a mausoleum built
beneath an 18-foot bronze statue in his
likeness in the central city of Santa Clara.
"Today he is in every place, wherever
there is a just cause to defend."
If still alive today, Guevara would be
76, two years younger than Castro, whose
beard has grown gray during his 45 years
in power. Castro discourages public display
of his image, thus few photographs - and
no statues - of him are seen in Cuba except
for official portraits in government offices.
The men met in 1955 in Mexico, where Guevara
drifted after his motorcycle sojourn.
Turned increasingly radical by the poverty
and injustice witnessed on his travels,
Guevara joined Castro's invasion of Cuba
a year later. They were among the few who
survived the disastrous landing of the rebels'
yacht, Granma.
From Cuba's Sierra Maestra, the rebels
launched their guerrilla war on Fulgencio
Batista's dictatorship. In 1958, Guevara
led the rebels' capture of Santa Clara,
a victory that drove Batista into exile
and secured Castro's triumph on Jan. 1,
1959.
Several months later, the best known image
of Guevara was captured by Cuban photographer
Alberto Diaz Gutierrez, better known as
Alberto Korda.
In it, Guevara gazed into the distance
during a memorial service for more than
100 crew members of a Belgian arms cargo
ship killed in an attack Cuba blamed on
U.S.-backed counterrevolutionaries.
The portrait of the man who went on to
promote armed revolution across the Americas
and Africa was emblazoned on posters and
T-shirts. Even former Argentine soccer great
Diego Maradona, who returned to Cuba this
week to resume treatment for his cocaine
addiction, sports a "Che" tattoo
on his arm.
Guevara's family and Korda, before his
death in 2001, were enraged four years ago
when the image was used to advertise Smirnoff
vodka. Guevara, who didn't drink, would
have hated the commercialization of his
memory, they said. Korda later won copyright
protection for the image from a British
court.
Guevara assumed Cuban citizenship shortly
after Castro's revolution and went on to
become the nation's top economic planner,
steering the country toward central planning
and sending aid to South American revolutionary
movements.
But Guevara's efforts to export revolution
failed in the Congo and in Bolivia, where
he was captured and shot to death by soldiers
in October 1967.
The whereabouts of the remains of Guevara
and six comrades were unknown for three
decades until identified by an international
forensic team in Bolivia and brought to
Cuba.
Seven years after the interment, Argentine
lawmakers last month asked for Guevara's
remains to be taken to the country of his
birth. His relatives refused.
"The decision that they stay where
they are is the will of his family, as well
as the loved ones of many of his fellow
fighters," Camilo Guevara said at the
time.
The 1997 ceremonies for Guevara's interment
in Cuba on the 30th anniversary of his death
resembled a state funeral.
Hundreds of thousands of people lined the
180-mile route from Havana to Santa Clara
as his small flag-draped casket traveled
to its final resting place.
Cannons thundered, air raid sirens shrieked
and schoolchildren sang a popular song recalling
Guevara's farewell message to Cubans: "Hasta
siempre" - "Until forever."
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