CUBA NEWS
May 20, 2005
 

CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

All eyes are on dissidents' assembly

A gathering of Cuban dissidents in Havana may be disrupted, but the government is unlikely to suffer any political ramifications, experts said.

By Nancy San Martin, nsanmartin@herald.com. Posted on Fri, May. 20, 2005.

As Cuban dissidents attempt to converge today for a historic gathering in Havana to develop a plan for a future democratic society, international observers will be watching the Communist government.

The European Commission has expressed disappointment over Cuba's refusal to allow two Polish lawmakers to enter the country -- despite their diplomatic passports -- to participate in the two-day Assembly to Promote Civil Society, an ambitious effort to gather opponents of Fidel Castro's government and its unyielding political controls.

The entry ban comes as European Union governments plan to reevaluate their relations with Cuba next month and review diplomatic sanctions. The sanctions, imposed in response to Cuba's crackdown on dissidents in 2003, were temporarily lifted in January.

An EU commission spokesman on Thursday said Cuba's refusal to allow the Polish lawmakers to attend today's meeting was ''a pity'' and ''does certainly not go in the direction the European Union has set.'' But experts said verbal reprimands would probably be the only ramifications for Castro's government if it opts to disrupt the Havana reunion.

'The consensus of the EU will be, 'We are not going to make things worse,' '' said Joaquín Roy, director of the University of Miami's European Union Center. "That means that they don't want to go down in history as shouting . . . so that more people are punished and Fidel Castro wins.''

Antonio Jorge, an international relations professor at Florida International University, said the Cuban government decided long ago to take a hard line against dissidents and not tolerate outside interference in internal affairs.

''They've proven to be completely unmovable to change that policy,'' Jorge said. "The very fact that they denied entry to the Polish lawmakers means that Castro doesn't care about defying the European Union.''

In Havana, meanwhile, assembly organizers expressed confidence they would have a successful turnout even as division within the dissident movement took a bitter tone.

Prominent leader Oswaldo Paya, who sharply disagrees with assembly organizers on their refusal to negotiate reforms with those now in power, issued a statement calling the gathering ''a big fraud against the opposition,'' The Associated Press reported.

The statement also accused assembly organizers of working with Cuban state security and receiving support from Miami-based exiles, to the benefit of Castro's government.

Assembly organizers have acknowledged receiving about $25,000 in donations, primarily from Miami. But they have vehemently denied accusations by the Cuban government and others that the money is from the U.S. government.

Castro has accused dissidents of being in cahoots with the Bush administration and warned in a speech Monday night that ''mercenaries'' would receive "energetic and appropriate responses from the revolution.''

At least 365 people have registered to participate in the assembly, said Martha Beatriz Roque, one of three main organizers.

''Things are moving along,'' Roque said in a telephone interview from Havana. "We've had a lot of little problems, but nothing major so far. The government will likely send undercover agents in an attempt to stir provocations, but that's to be expected.''

Former rebel: Posada ordered torture

A former Venezuelan leftist guerrilla fighter has accused Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles of ordering his torture.

By Alfonso Chardy and Oscar Corral, achardy@herald.com. Posted on Fri, May. 20, 2005.

A former leftist guerrilla in Venezuela claims that Luis Posada Carriles ordered that he be tortured and also ordered the murder of another guerrilla when Posada was a senior intelligence officer for a Venezuelan police agency in the 1970s.

Posada, a militant Cuban exile in U.S. custody accused of illegally entering the country, said in an interview with The Herald last week that he had not ordered anyone's torture while he headed a special operations unit at the agency known as DISIP. Posada also denied ordering the other guerrilla's murder.

''When I got to DISIP I abolished torture,'' Posada said. "I fired anyone who tortured.''

On Thursday, U.S. officials formally charged that Posada was in the country illegally and ordered him held for deportation -- though his lawyer says he intends to ask for asylum. He is being held in an El Paso detention center.

The allegations from Jesus Marrero, the former Venezuelan guerrilla, are difficult to verify, but they could open a new front in the U.S. government's case against Posada in immigration court.

The case is already expected to include allegations that he masterminded the bombing of a Cuban jetliner in 1976 and a string of bombings at Cuban tourist spots in 1997.

Federal law prohibits asylum for any foreign national believed to have committed a ''serious nonpolitical crime'' or to have "engaged in or incited terrorist activity.''

It also prohibits asylum for foreign nationals found to have ''ordered, incited, assisted or otherwise participated'' in persecution. And a new law signed by President Bush on Dec. 17 empowers immigration authorities to deny admission and deport any foreigner accused of persecution abroad.

Marrero, now an economist, said in a telephone interview from Venezuela that when he was in custody in 1973 he was interrogated by Posada. After he refused to reveal names of other members of Venezuela's leftist guerrilla movement, Posada ordered his torture, Marrero said.

'Posada said to me 'You will talk,' '' Marrero recalled. "I know how you will talk.''

Marrero said he was then taken to an abandoned house on a hill overlooking Caracas and tortured by other DISIP police officers.

He said he was placed on an iron drum-like contraption and tortured with electric shocks to his testicles and his right ear, and wooden sticks were rammed into his ears. Marrero said Posada never applied any torture himself.

Posada's lawyer, Eduardo Soto, declined to comment because he said he was not familiar with the charges. ''If Luis says he has no involvement, then there is no involvement,'' Soto said.

Miami developer Santiago Alvarez, Posada's benefactor, said that if Marrero has proof he should present it. Otherwise, his word is worthless, Alvarez said.

''What he says carries the same weight as what Hugo Chávez says,'' Alvarez said, referring to the leftist Venezuelan president.

In his May 11 interview with The Herald, Posada denied knowing Marrero.

However, in his 1994 autobiography, The Roads of the Warrior, Posada mentioned Marrero as one of several members of the guerrilla group Bandera Roja who were detained or killed or who disappeared during his tenure.

In the book, Posada linked Bandera Roja and other guerrilla groups to kidnappings, assassinations and attacks on police units in Caracas and other large Venezuelan cities. Posada said in the book that the groups were funded and trained by Cuba.

Marrero told The Herald that his group was not financed by Cuba and that its leaders had some disagreements with Cuban policies. Marrero was at a rally in Caracas Thursday aimed at collecting signatures to lobby prosecutors to open a new extradition case against Posada based on his torture allegations.

Marrero also accused Posada of ordering the murder of another detained rebel whom he identified by his nickname of Pancho Alegria. Marrero later said that Alegria's real name was Angel Maria Castillo of the Guerrilla group PRV, (Revolutionary Party of Venezuela).

Posada acknowledged to The Herald that one of his subordinates at DISIP killed Alegria, but denied having anything to do with it. He said the officer found Alegria on the street and shot him to death -- without authorization. ''Pancho Alegria was a wanted guerrilla. He was a captain of a guerrilla group,'' Posada told The Herald. "A subordinate of mine found him and killed him. He did it on his own; he shouldn't have done it.''

Posada said his former DISIP subordinate is now serving a prison sentence in Miami in an unrelated drug case. Posada said he could remember only the man's first name, Cristobal.

At the time that Posada was recruited by top Venezuelan officials at DISIP in 1969, one of his main responsibilities in Caracas was to prevent communist Cuba from spreading leftist insurrection throughout Venezuela. He was given wide flexibility and autonomy by the government of then-President Rafael Caldera. Posada eventually became chief of special operations, rewarded for his success in suppressing leftist insurrection in one of the Cold War's hottest fronts in the hemisphere.

In his book, Posada said Venezuelan authorities used harsh measures to combat leftist guerrillas.

''The police,'' Posada wrote, 'detained, raided and interrogated using the harshest methods of persuasion. As the saying goes, 'The play was rough and the mask had come off.' ''

Marrero was first interviewed by the Cuban government news agency Prensa Latina, which Posada said in his book he ordered bugged and investigated for allegedly fomenting revolution in the 1970s. Marrero was 26 when arrested by DISIP at his home in Valencia, an industrial city west of Caracas, on July 23, 1973.

He told The Herald that he was taken to a holding cell in the basement of DISIP headquarters in Caracas and kept in detention for two months.

Exiles reluctant to publicly back militant Posada

The case of Luis Posada Carriles, an accused terrorist who is being held in Texas, is not drawing loud protests from Miami's Cuban exiles.

By Oscar Corral, Alfonso Chardy and Luisa Yanez, ocorral@herald.com. Posted on Thu, May. 19, 2005.

The last time federal agents seized a high-profile Cuban native in Miami-Dade County, there were demonstrations in the streets and angry speeches on Spanish-language radio, and anti-Castro exiles felt a lasting bitterness.

But Luis Posada Carriles, who was taken into custody by U.S. agents on Tuesday, is no Elián González.

Eager to avoid the blistering that Miami's Cuban community took in 2000 as a result of the Elián case, exile leaders are preaching restraint when it comes to Posada, 77, a militant accused in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner and other acts of terrorism.

A group that had sponsored street demonstrations in 2000 was asked to back off, for example, and Spanish-language radio stations on Wednesday appeared intent on building interest in Friday's scheduled assembly of civil societies in Cuba -- rather than fueling outrage over Posada's fate.

''If the news over the next 48 hours is reaction in Miami to Posada, then Fidel [Castro] wins again and disrupts the assembly,'' said Alfredo Mesa, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation.

Some said it's a lesson from the Elián protests, which fed a perception that the exile community was fighting the U.S. government.

HELD IN TEXAS

Posada, meanwhile, is in custody in an immigration detention center in El Paso, his attorney said Wednesday. There, government officials will decide by 2 p.m. today whether to declare him an illegal immigrant.

Posada, who says he sneaked into the United States at the Texas border in March and rode into Miami aboard a Greyhound bus, intends to renew his bid for political asylum, said his attorney, Eduardo Soto. Posada withdrew his asylum application just before he was arrested.

Soto said he anticipates that Miami-area witnesses will be called to testify in any asylum case, either by himself or the government. He said U.S. officials will doubtless be gathering evidence on the 1976 jetliner bombing, which killed 73 people, as well as a 1997 series of bombings at tourist sites in Cuba, which killed an Italian national.

Even if the government tries to link Posada to the Cuba bombings, Soto said he could argue that the 1997 bombings were political acts -- and that the man who was killed was not meant to be harmed. The aim, Soto said, would be to prevent an immigration judge from finding that Posada had committed ''a serious nonpolitical crime,'' which would be a bar to asylum.

On the jetliner case -- for which Posada was twice acquitted in Venezuela -- Soto said: "I think there are things simply impossible to prove.''

Officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday declined to discuss Posada's whereabouts, but did not deny that he was being held in El Paso.

The main immigration detention center there is the El Paso Processing Center, which is very similar to the Krome detention center in West Miami-Dade County.

Soto said that he expects to file a motion quickly to have Posada returned to South Florida and released on bond.

IN LITTLE HAVANA

In Miami's Little Havana Wednesday, exile leaders said they anticipated few protests of Posada's arrest -- though many exiles view him as a patriot for the cause of Cuban freedom and hope he is granted asylum.

''We don't want to play into Castro's hands and have him start criticizing us,'' said Enrique Carrazana, 72, a Bay of Pigs veteran sitting at a barber shop.

Indeed, Castro has daily branded Posada a terrorist and ridiculed President Bush as a hypocrite for waging a war on terrorism while harboring Posada.

Ninoska Pérez Castellón, an influential radio personality and founding member of the hard-line Cuban Liberty Council, said the community was reassured by the Bush administration's statement Tuesday that Posada would not be deported to Cuba or Venezuela.

Some saw a partisan political factor in the exiles' restraint.

Chin Martinez, a community activist and the father of Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez, said exiles, who favor the Republican Party, should be defending Posada more vocally.

''If a Democratic president was in power, there would be demonstrations,'' said Martinez, 80, who is a registered Democrat. "This is about partisanship.''

In Washington, Miami's Cuban-American lawmakers offered statements Wednesday backing the ''rule of law'' for Posada.

''Leaders are reticent to embrace or condone anyone who has committed alleged terrorist acts,'' said Damián Fernández, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.

And Fernández predicted more moderation from a community undergoing a generational shift in its politics.

''We also learned from Elián,'' Fernández said. "That left a bitter taste. We are more in tune to national and public opinion. We are more reserved in making a judgment on a case that's much more dicey [than Elián's].''

Miguel Saavedra, head of Vigilia Mambisa, a group known for its vigorous and impromptu anti-Castro demonstrations, staged a brief pro-Posada event in front of Versailles restaurant in Little Havana Tuesday night.

But Saavedra said he fielded calls asking "that we stay calm and stop demonstrating.''

In response, he said, he agreed to wait 72 hours to see what happens to Posada.

''I'm confident the U.S. and the CIA, whom he worked for, will not turn their back on him,'' Saavedra said.

Santiago Alvarez, Posada's key benefactor in South Florida, told The Herald that Posada had asked groups such as Vigilia Mambisa to avoid large demonstrations.

''We have great respect for this country, and we do not want to look like we are being ungrateful,'' Alvarez said.

WHITE HOUSE RESPONSE

On Wednesday, the White House, too, sought to deflect any controversy.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that Posada had been taken into custody and that "there are laws and procedures that are in place, and they're being followed at this point.''

The hands-off approach stands in contrast to that used in the case of exile extremist Orlando Bosch, who was released into the United States by Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush.

In that case, Bosch's leading political champion was U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen -- whose campaign chairman was Jeb Bush, now Florida's governor. Jeb Bush visited with pro-Bosch hunger-strikers in Miami at the time.

But Gov. Bush on Wednesday questioned Posada's status, noting, "I'm not sure he's the symbol for the fight for freedom. There are people in political prison in Cuba simply because they've prayed to their God or they've expressed dissent.''

Herald staff writers Nancy San Martin, Lesley Clark and Susan Anasagasti contributed to this report.

Venezuela: Cuba wouldn't get Posada

Posted on Thu, May. 19, 2005.

CARACAS - (AP) -- If the United States extradites Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, wanted in a 1976 airliner bombing, he would not be turned over to Cuba but would remain in Venezuela to face justice, Venezuela's vice president said Wednesday.

Venezuela has demanded that Posada, 77, be extradited to face trial in the bombing, which killed 73 people. The Cuban airliner exploded near Barbados after departing from Caracas. U.S. immigration authorities arrested him Tuesday in Miami, where he was living while awaiting a decision on his request for asylum.

U.S. officials have said they would not hand over those suspected of crimes to any country that would then turn them over to Fidel Castro's Cuba.

'There is no possibility that Venezuela would turn him over to another country if Posada Carriles' extradition to Venezuela is approved,'' Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said.

"I think it's an excuse, a subterfuge, that they are using precisely in order to not approve the extradition. Bringing up that he could be sent to Cuba . . . in this way they elude the commitment and the obligation they have to approve the extradition.''

Posada, a naturalized Venezuelan citizen, is wanted on murder and treason charges. He escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985 while awaiting a prosecutor's appeal of his second acquittal in the Cubana Airlines bombing.

If the United States denies the extradition request, Rangel said, that would violate a treaty from 1922. He said Venezuela could appeal to world bodies if necessary.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and close ally Castro say Posada is one of the worst terrorists in the Americas, and Castro led a march in Havana on Tuesday to demand his arrest.

To find tribute to Celia, follow the salsa sounds

By Lydia Martin. lmartin@herald.com. Posted on Thu, May. 19, 2005.

WASHINGTON - Celia Cruz is making a ruckus at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History -- and not everybody is doing a little rumba about it.

Whether you're checking out the walking cane Ben Franklin bequeathed to George Washington or you're wondering why you always thought Fonzie's leather jacket was black when it's actually brown or when you're on a different floor of the museum strolling through Julia Child's kitchen, you can hear that thunderous voice:

''Quimbara cumbara cumba quimbamba!'' -- the Spanish scat from one of Celia Cruz's biggest hits.

The Queen of Salsa's unmistakable contralto carries from the third-floor exhibition that opened Wednesday about her life and music. It's never gotten quite this loud up in here.

''Not even with the Beatles exhibition,'' says Melinda Machado, a spokeswoman for the museum. Some folks who work there, well, they wish the whole thing would be turned down a notch or two.

''Marvette [Perez, the curator of the show] told me she wanted to give it the feel of a performance. So, yeah, I guess it flows down the escalator and it makes some people nervous,'' said Greg Blair, the independent sound technician who hooked up the Cruz show. "I call it an attractive nuisance.''

Perhaps not everyone understands the pull of Celia Cruz. But it was certainly not lost on Lorenzo and Olinda Robay of Lima, Peru, on vacation and touring U.S. monuments. They stopped a random woman on the street Wednesday morning to ask for directions to the White House.

''And I was on my way to see the Celia exhibit,'' says Miriam Estrella, visiting from Ecuador. 'They looked Latin to me. So I told them, 'What you have to see is the Celia Cruz show at the Smithsonian.' And so they came with me. Because we're talking about Celia Cruz.''

The show features Cruz's over-the-top wigs, headpieces, gowns and shoes, rare photographs and film, old albums, Grammys, gold records, the beat-up Fendi bag she always took on her travels and all but one of the dashboard-sized saints she always packed along. The conspicuous exception: Our Lady of Charity, the patron saint of Cuba.

''We placed that one in her casket right before the burial,'' said Omer Pardillo, Cruz's manager, who attended a gala at the museum Tuesday night to celebrate the opening of the show. Also there was Pedro Knight, looking frail and faded since he lost his wife Celia.

''That woman has been everything to me,'' a moved Knight said at the opening. "We will never be separated.''

Also part of the exhibit is the Greenwich, Conn. marriage license from 1962 that lists Geronimo Pedro Knight's occupation as ''musician'' and Celia Cruz Alfonso's as ''housework'' (although by then she was already a star throughout the Latin world).

Perhaps nothing captures the spirit of the Cuban singer better than a display full of scuffed shoes: tall, rhinestoned, with those trademark heel-less platforms or swans for heels, the inserts so faded you can barely make out the word Nieto -- the name of the Mexican designer who made them all for her. They are shoes that were definitely danced in. And danced in.

By noon Wednesday, a steady stream of fans made its way through the exhibit that's big on the music and the kitsch, but light on the politics. Some who attended the opening party complained that Cruz was called an ''immigrant'' by the show, when she always called herself a political refugee. Others wondered why more wasn't made of the reasons Cruz left Cuba.

As for the loud music?

Anita Lombillo Fernandez of Venezuela, a medical secretary who has lived in Washington 30 years, doesn't see the problem.

"Who hasn't danced to at least one Celia Cruz song in their life? And if they haven't, why are they complaining, when here's their chance?''


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