CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Calm seas, warm weather a magnet for Cuban rafters

By Jennifer Babson. jbabson@herald.com. Posted on Wed, Sep. 07, 2005.

KEY WEST - More than 50 Cuban migrants landed in the Florida Keys in recent days -- many of them rafters on homemade boats who likely took advantage of relatively calm seas to cross the Florida Straits, federal immigration officials say.

On Tuesday alone, three separate groups of Cuban migrants made it to Florida:

o Four were discovered at Key Colony Beach in Marathon, traveling aboard a 33-foot Cuban fishing vessel that departed Havana at 8:30 p.m. Monday.

o Five were discovered a few miles north of Marathon in the Middle Keys on Tuesday. They told authorities they had left Matanzas Province Monday at 1 a.m. in a 14-foot homemade boat.

o Eleven landed in the Keys on Tuesday, but it was not known where they arrived.

U.S. Border Patrol officials were also kept busy throughout the Labor Day weekend, according to U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Robert Montemayor.

He said 21 Cubans landed at Loggerhead Key in the Dry Tortugas west of Key West. That group left Pinar del Rio province on the island's west coast in a 30-foot wooden boat, though authorities believe the group -- which showed few signs of exposure -- was smuggled in. No smugglers were nabbed, however.

On Monday morning, 11 migrants were discovered near Big Pine Key north of Key West. They claimed to have left the Havana area two days beforehand, climbing aboard a 20-foot aluminum boat with a diesel engine. They landed at tony Little Palm Island, a high-end Lower Keys resort.

Several other groups of Cubans also landed Friday and Saturday of last week in Monroe County, but Montemayor had no information about the landings.

The rash of Cuban migrants apprehended didn't surprise border patrol officials, said Montemayor, who said calmer seas this time of year typically draw more migrants willing to make the perilous voyage.

''I would say they saw an opportunity because of the weather and that's why we are seeing these smaller endeavors,'' Montemayor said of the latest attempts by rafters.

Those apprehended during the past week were allowed to remain because they had made it to dry land.

Under the so-called wet-foot/dry-foot U.S. immigration policy, Cubans that make it to land are allowed to stay while those intercepted at sea are generally returned.

The latest sojourn of Cuban migrants comes less than a month after at least 31 people reportedly perished after the smuggling boat they were aboard capsized at sea. A passing freighter rescued three people.

Through late August, the Coast Guard had stopped at least 1,856 Cubans at sea, more than the total for any year in more than a decade.

Cuban government boasts of increased TV viewership

Posted on Thu, Sep. 01, 2005.

HAVANA - (AP) -- Cuba's state television programming can now be seen by 18.2 million viewers outside the island, a top government broadcasting official told lawmakers in comments published Wednesday.

The Communist Party newspaper Granma said Ernesto López, president of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television, told a parliamentary commission Tuesday the number was more than double that of last year, when Cubavisión Internacional had about eight million viewers abroad.

López reported that Cubavisión Internacional, Cuba's pro-government news and other programming tailored for an international audience, can now be seen in 20 Latin American nations, as well as in Europe.

The institute president said that Radio Habana Cuba, the government's shortwave radio operation, ''has fulfilled a relevant informative and ideological-political function'' through transmissions abroad in nine languages.

Cuba's Communist Party has searched in recent years for new ways to get its message out to the world, broadening its use of pro-government Web pages on the Internet while beefing up its international broadcasting services.

Posada might stay in U.S., avoid deportation to Venezuela, judge says

Luis Posada Carriles scored a small victory in federal immigration court when the judge agreed that he might qualify for U.S. protection.

By Alfonso Chardy, achardy@herald.com. Posted on Thu, Sep. 01, 2005.

EL PASO, Texas - Anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles may not, after all, be deported to Venezuela, where he fears he would be tortured, if his plea for protection in the Unites States fails.

The judge overseeing his asylum and deportation trial in El Paso said Wednesday that on the face of it, Posada had presented enough evidence to persuade him that he could qualify for a form of U.S. protection. But Judge William Abbott said he would defer a ruling.

''He has made a prima facie case,'' Abbott said.

In addition, Posada's lawyer abruptly withdrew his application for asylum, saying that if they had pressed ahead, he might have been forced to reveal ''sensitive'' information that would have been embarrassing to the United States.

Unless Judge Abbott changes his mind, the striking development in immigration court here could allow Posada to stay in the United States -- although he could be subject to indefinite detention.

Had he won asylum, Posada could have walked free and become eligible for a green card after a year. Withholding of deportation would have also given him freedom, without a green card.

A day earlier, Posada had testified in court that he needed asylum in the United States because Cuban President Fidel Castro was persecuting him. However, the U.S. government presented evidence that Posada has lived and traveled throughout the region without encountering any persecution for 15 years. In 1990, Posada was almost killed during a failed assassination attempt in Guatemala, which he has blamed on Castro agents.

IN DETENTION

The 77-year-old exile has been held at a federal immigration detention center in El Paso since he was detained in Southwest Miami-Dade County on May 17, about two months after he sneaked into the United States across the Mexican border near Brownsville, Texas. Although born in Cuba, Posada moved to Caracas and became a naturalized Venezuelan.

He has been accused of masterminding the bombing of a Cuban jetliner in 1976 that killed 73 people off Barbados, organizing the bombing of hotels and restaurants in Cuba in 1997 that killed one person, and conspiring to assassinate Castro in Panama in 2000.

The withdrawal of the asylum application came after Posada's lead lawyer here, Matthew Archambeault, and the Department of Homeland Security's lead prosecutor, Gina Garrett-Jackson, struck an apparent compromise.

Archambeault withdrew the asylum application and conceded in court that Posada does not qualify for withholding of deportation because U.S. immigration law prohibits terror and criminal suspects from receiving either form of protection. Garrett-Jackson came close to conceding in court that the government agrees that Posada could be tortured if deported to Venezuela, although she asked Judge Abbott for time to review the situation further.

''We have serious concerns about Mr. Posada's claim to torture in Venezuela,'' Garrett-Jackson said in court Wednesday. Her statement mirrored a statement to The Herald late Tuesday by Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke, who said of Posada: "We have serious and weighty concerns about the notion of a removal to Venezuela.''

Garrett-Jackson's posture in court Wednesday departed from her initial position Monday, the day the trial began, when she did not object to Abbott's decision to designate Venezuela as the country to which Posada would be deported were he to lose his petitions and all appeals. At the time, Garrett-Jackson said that Homeland Security agreed with Posada's contention that he would be tortured if deported to Cuba, but did not make the same stipulation about Venezuela.

She declined Wednesday to stipulate Venezuela, but did not rule it out -- saying Homeland Security needed time to consult with the departments of State and Justice.

''The government would like to reserve the right to take a position,'' Garrett-Jackson said in court. "Still need time to assess the situation.''

When Judge Abbott asked Garrett-Jackson on Wednesday if she disagreed that Posada has made a ''prima facie'' case against deportation to Venezuela, she replied: "No opinion.''

She also requested time to prepare a possible case to challenge Posada's petition to avoid deportation.

BASIS OF ARGUMENT

Posada's attorneys argue that he qualifies for the protection, known as ''deferral'' of deportation, under terms of the Convention Against Torture, widely called CAT by immigration lawyers.

While a foreign national accused of engaging in acts of terrorism or believed to have committed ''serious nonpolitical'' crimes abroad is barred from receiving asylum or withholding of deportation, he is still eligible for deferral under CAT.

Under deferral, the immigration judge orders the foreign national deported but then automatically defers the removal on the ground that he is ''more likely than not'' to be tortured if deported.

Deferral is considered a temporary protection measure, giving Homeland Security the discretion to keep the foreigner in detention until conditions in the country of removal have improved or a third country is found willing to accept the person and guarantee that he would not be tortured or turned over to the country where he could be tortured.

DEPORTATION RULE

Deferral under CAT also allows the government to deport the foreign national if it secures ''diplomatic assurances'' from the country where deportation is suspended that the person would not be tortured, Abbott said in court.

Homeland Security also has discretion under deferral to release the detainee under supervised conditions.

Archambeault said that if Posada wins deferral, his lawyers plan to ask Homeland Security to release him, or resort to federal courts to order his release.

''If Adolf Hitler applied for CAT, this court would have to grant deferral,'' Abbott said. ''Not that your client is like Hitler,'' Abbott added quickly, noting that no matter how terrible a deferral applicant's criminal or terrorist past is, it does not disqualify him from the benefit if he can show likely torture in the country to which he is expelled.

Judge Abbott set Sept. 26 as the date for the government to start its case.

Once commonplace, immigrant cigar makers fade into memory

Bonnie Pfister, Associated Press. Posted on Fri, Sep. 02, 2005.

UNION CITY, N.J. - Jose Suarez is part of a dying breed.

In the wake of the 1980 Mariel boat lift, Cuban immigrants crowded this city in the shadow of Manhattan. Bringing with them their language and traditions, many regularly enjoyed a good, affordable cigar.

Several little storefront tabaquerias cropped up, with an owner and maybe an assistant hand-rolling cigars in the back, then selling them from a counter in front.

But today, while Spanish is still commonly heard - although often studded with the cadences of New Jersey - the region's cigar makers are fading into memory.

Suarez's Boquilla Cigar Shop on Bergenline Avenue may the last such shop in Union City. Cuba Aliado Cigar's still has a retail presence but moved its production to Honduras more than a decade ago.

Now 72, Suarez said his trade has been assailed by high tobacco taxes and the unregulated street sales of premium cigars.

"I'm fighting, trying to maintain my business," Suarez said. "But if things continue as they have, I might have to close, too."

The older gents who used to favor the $2 cigars most popular at La Boquilla are dying off. The new generation of aficionados favor posh shops selling premium cigars at several times that price - usually hand-rolled in Honduras, the Dominican Republic, or other climes closer to tobacco fields and inexpensive labor.

In addition, Union City's Cuban population has declined substantially in the past quarter-century. Emilio del Valle, a top municipal staffer and founder of the Cuban Day Parade, said Cubans probably peaked between 60 to 70 percent in the 1980s. According to 2000 Census data, 14 percent of Union City's 80,589 documented residents claim Cuban ancestry. Hispanics as a whole comprise 75 percent.

The influx of new immigrants from nations with less of a cigar culture is evident: within one block of Suarez's shop are restaurants and bakeries proclaiming heritage from Guatemala, Peru, Mexico and Ecuador.

And in the United States, there's scarcity of would-be tabaquero apprentices wanting to learn the painstaking but poor-paying craft of cigar rolling.

"It's not surprising they're having difficulties," said Norman Sharp, of the decline of the storefront cigar makers. Sharp is president of the Cigar Association of America, which represents cigar makers, importers and suppliers. "It stopped being economical to hand-roll cigars in this country decades ago."

Machines began replacing human hands in the 1950s. In the United States, Sharp said, 94 percent of the cigars sold are machine-made in such factories as Swisher in Jacksonville, Fla., and John Middleton in King of Prussia, Pa.

At Jimenez Tobacco in downtown Newark, Nelda Pozo and an assistant roll a slightly pricier variety of cigars that are popular with police officers and lawyers frequenting the nearby courthouses.

While the business supports her as it did her family for a century earlier in eastern Cuba, Pozo said her now-grown children have pursued other careers. So, too, has Suarez's stepson.

Back in Union City, Suarez continues alone the trade he began learning at age 11 in Placetas, Cuba. One large tobacco leaf acts as a binder around bits of specially aged tobacco, while a second trimmed leaf provides the outer wrapper. The cigars are then stacked and pressed in decades-old wooden boxes. Suarez said he produces about 150 cigars in an eight-hour day.

Despite its trade name, Boquilla's top-selling Havana brand is a blend of tobaccos from the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Ecuador and Indonesia. The mythic Cuban leaf has not been legally imported into the United States since President Kennedy imposed an embargo in 1962.

While cigars allegedly smuggled from Cuba are sold illicitly on the streets of Union City, Suarez said many are fakes. And even authentic Cuban tobacco is not of the quality he recalls before Fidel Castro nationalized the industry.

"It's not bad, but it's not good, either," he said. But mystique sells. Despite his distaste for Castro, if Cuban tobacco were to become legally available, Suarez said he'd sell it - "because people are always asking for it."

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