CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Video riles Cuban exiles

Bahamas boycott urged after journalist is beaten at jail

By Oscar Corral, ocorral@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Thu, Feb. 09, 2006.

Video of a Miami television reporter attacked by a guard outside a notorious Bahamian immigration jail is snowballing into a political crisis for the island government, as Cuban exile groups called Wednesday for a tourism boycott.

Univisión reporter Mario Vallejo said he received seven stitches just above his eyebrow Tuesday night after a jail guard slammed his head against a car bumper, knocking him unconscious for about two minutes. Among the witnesses was a Telemundo 51 reporter and Cubans who traveled from Miami to visit relatives kept at the immigration detention center.

Vallejo was in the Bahamas to report on eight Cuban migrants found on the tiny, uninhabited Elbow Cay last week by the Coast Guard -- survivors in a group in which six others perished at sea and one man was taken to a Florida Keys hospital for treatment. The Coast Guard turned over the seven migrants to Bahamian authorities Sunday because Elbow Cay is Bahamian territory.

''I was just doing my job as a reporter,'' Vallejo said Wednesday. "At that moment, I was outside the limits of the jail and my cameraman was hidden in a taxi.''

The Bahamian consul in Miami, Alma A. Adams, said the government had launched an investigation into the incident, in which at least two other journalists were detained by jail guards.

''I'm informed that the reports that have appeared in the media are not correct, and there is being prepared an update to be relayed by the Bahamian government to present the facts of exactly what transpired,'' Adams told The Miami Herald, adding she met with representatives of concerned Cuban exile groups.

SECURITY

In a written statement, Adams added that the Bahamian Ministry of Labour and Immigration "has taken great pains to ensure the smooth operation of the detention center as a matter of national security. The officers responsible for maintaining order at the center are trained to act within the law while ensuring the necessary high level of security.''

Last year, The Miami Herald reported that Cuban, Haitian and Jamaican detainees claimed to be regularly beaten while handcuffed, subjected to extortion and denied clean water and medical treatment. The situation reached a flash point in late 2004, when a showdown between Cuban migrants and soldiers, who guard the camp, ended with the detainees being sprayed with rubber bullets and a barracks burned down.

Others outside the Carmichael Detention Centre on Tuesday included Alberto Tavares, a reporter for Channel 51, and family members of other Cuban migrants.

According to Vallejo and two witnesses -- Zenaida Torres and Luz Karime Galvez -- family members and reporters had just finished visiting the Cuban prisoners and had left the jail grounds, where cameras are forbidden.

Vallejo then saw authorities detain Telemundo cameraman Lázaro Abreu for taping.

Vallejo said he yelled to Abreu: "Don't worry, I'll call your station and let them know.''

He picked up a nearby pay phone and called his boss to relay news of Abreu's detention to Vallejo's competitors at Channel 51.

BLACKED OUT

''At that moment, an official named Smith hangs up the phone, and starts pulling me toward the jail,'' Vallejo said. "If he got me in there, I'd be done for, so I pulled back. Then he threw me to the ground, and grabbed my head and slammed it on the bumper of a car.''

Vallejo blacked out for about two minutes, witnesses said.

''They grabbed Mario Vallejo and threw him to the ground and kicked him,'' Torres said. "He fell on the ground, and he was unconscious. They didn't want to call the rescue. I had to scream and get tough. That man was holding [Vallejo] down with his big boot, stepping on him.''

Karime and Telemundo reporter Alberto Tavares began to film the bloodied Vallejo with a home video camera. Guards immediately rushed them, demanding the camera, said Tavares and Karime, who was carrying her 1-year-old son at the time.

''My boy fell to the floor and started crying, but the guard didn't care,'' Karime said.. . . I paid a passing car to take me away because they were going to detain me with my child.''

'EVERYONE SAW IT'

Tavares said he also witnessed the guard beating Vallejo. Vallejo's cameraman, Osvaldo Duarte, who filmed the episode from inside a taxi, was detained, but left his equipment in the taxi. Vallejo said he recovered his equipment later that night after being released.

''Everyone there saw it,'' Tavares said. "I saw him hit the ground, and he tried to get up, but the guard squashed him. What happened to Mario was very, very violent.''

An ambulance finally came for Vallejo and rushed him to the airport, where he caught the first available flight to Miami. He was treated at a Kendall hospital, he said.

Vallejo, Torres and Karime said that Cubans in the detention center told them that the previous night, a jail guard dragged one of the Cubans into the courtyard and beat him in front of the others to send a warning.

In 2003, Amnesty International issued a scathing report on treatment of migrants and refugees at the detention center.

On Wednesday, several Cuban exile groups, including Democracy Movement, Agenda Cuba and the Cuban Liberty Council, called for a temporary boycott of all tourism to the Bahamas.

''We're calling on the Bahamas to stop the abuse of prisoners,'' said Democracy Movement President Ramón Saúl Sánchez, who led a 30-person protest in front of the Bahamian consul's downtown office in Miami Wednesday.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen slammed the Bahamian government: "I have met in several occasions with Bahamian authorities and they have always been unrelenting and unwavering in their unwillingness to remedy these abuses in any way. . . . Different year, same problems.''

Hotel caught in embargo trap

A U.S.-owned hotel faces sanctions from the Mexican government for kicking out Cuban officials to follow U.S. embargo laws.

By Julie Watson, Associated Press. Posted on Thu, Feb. 09, 2006.

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's vow to prosecute an American-owned hotel for following the U.S. embargo of Cuba puts American businesses in a dilemma: Whose laws do they obey -- those of their homeland or those of their host? No matter what they do, they could face prosecution.

Mexico issued a complaint Tuesday against Hotel María Isabel Sheraton in Mexico City that -- at the request of the U.S. government -- expelled a group of Cuban officials meeting with U.S. energy executives.

The expulsion outraged Mexicans, who take pride in rejecting the U.S. embargo of Cuba, and alarmed American businesses.

''This is kind of one of the rare moments that really brings out the ugliness of the Helms-Burton law that puts American business in a tight position,'' said Al Zapanta, president of the 2,000-member U.S.-Mexico Chamber of Commerce, referring to the 1996 U.S. law that strengthened sanctions imposed against Fidel Castro's government in 1961.

''You have to go into the international marketplace and you have to operate within the laws of the host country,'' he said Wednesday.

TRADE LAWS

Brookly McLaughlin, a spokesman for the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, said the department asked Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., which owns the hotel in Mexico City, to expel the Cuban delegation in compliance with the Trading with the Enemy Act, established in 1917.

The meeting was moved to a Mexican-owned hotel Saturday.

U.S. officials say the act bans American businesses and their subsidiaries from doing business with Cubans outside the United States.

Mexican officials, however, said the hotel violated investment and trade-protection laws when its manager told the Cubans to leave.

The United States approved the Helms-Burton Act in 1996, threatening sanctions against foreign investment involving Cuban properties confiscated from Americans.

In response, Mexico, Canada and other countries produced ''antidote laws'' meant to outlaw compliance with the U.S. measures, which they said trampled upon their sovereignty.

While other American companies in Mexico quietly avoid dealings with Cuba, few if any have been prosecuted under the "antidote law.''

Larry Rubin, chief executive officer of the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico, said the hotel should have consulted Mexican authorities before booting the Cubans.

''Corporations have to find a balance,'' said Rubin, whose 2,000 members represent 93 percent of U.S. investment in Mexico. "If it goes against Mexican law, then we cannot apply it, because first we have to abide by Mexican law. . . . I mean you don't see American corporations down here breaking contracts and solving the matter in the U.S. court system. It just doesn't operate that way.''

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE

In a statement, the hotel -- part of the chain of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc. -- said it "deeply regrets this incident and any inconvenience it may have caused.''

It said Starwood's policy "is not to discriminate against any person because of their nationality or any other reason, and to always respect the laws of countries where its hotels are located.''

Mexican authorities are threatening to slap the hotel with a nearly half million-dollar fine and possibly shut it down.

But Zapanta said the U.S. legislation is hurting U.S. companies.

''This is a good example of how the U.S. Congress is somewhat myopic,'' he said, but added that the controversy "will force the issue to be dealt with.''

At least one Mexican businessmen already was caught in a similar squeeze.

The U.S. government told Javier Garza Calderón, president of the Mexican company Grupo Domos, to drop his investment in Cuba's telephone company or his family would lose its U.S. visas. Garza Calderón's children were in U.S. schools at the time.

Mexican officials, however, warned Garza Calderón that if he complied, he would face fines of up to $300,000.

The U.S. government later barred Grupo Domos' officers from entering the United States.

Walesa achieves solidarity with exiles in Miami

By Oscar Corral, ocorral@Miami.Herald.com. Posted on Thu, Feb. 09, 2006.

Former Polish president and Nobel Peace Laureate Lech Walesa, one of the key personalities that helped bring down communism in Eastern Europe, expressed a humor-laden dose of solidarity with Miami's Cuban exile community Monday.

Miami Dade College hosted Walesa at a breakfast at the Marriott Biscayne Bay, and College President Eduardo Padrón presented him with the college's top honor, the Presidential Medal.

Walesa told the powerhouse crowd of about 200 -- which included Emilio Estefan, Florida House Speaker-elect Marco Rubio, and other prominent Cuban Americans -- that Cubans in Miami and Cuba must be prepared for what comes after Fidel Castro, whatever that may be.

''You should be prepared for when it happens, with well-structured ideas of what to do, because there could be anarchy,'' he said through a translator. "Anarchy is worse than anything else.''

Walesa, founder of the Solidarity Movement, led a non-violent revolt against Poland's communist system in the 1980s. He said that was fueled in part by the rise to power of Pope John Paul II, a Polish priest named to the Catholic Church's top post in the late 1970s, giving hope to Poland's largely Catholic populace.

Walesa seemed to take a shot at the American government's ineffective attempts to bring freedom and democracy to Cuba, even hinting that Cuba is still communist by design.

''I start thinking that many Americans want to keep Cuba as a museum of Marxism in this hemisphere and that's why it has lasted so long, because it's a thorn in the side of the Americans, but it's still there,'' he said.

To prepare the audience for his unorthodox views, Walesa announced a disclaimer: ''If someone doesn't like what I say, well, understand that I am a revolutionary.'' The theme of his speech was the need for ''moral politics'' in a global economy.

The cherubic, red-faced Walesa, whose silver hair and mustache are just a shade lighter than they were in the 1980s, is in Miami with his wife and daughter, and plans to be here until next week. Several events are planned during his visit.

Passion over Cuba, Castro endures

Miami may be hip, but for Cuban exiles, there's still the Cold War to fight and mixed messages from the Bush administration to decipher.

By Oscar Corral, ocorral@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Thu, Feb. 09, 2006.

Two suspected agents for communist Cuba are taken down in Miami.

A local anti-Castro developer gets nabbed on weapons charges.

A Cuban exile militant sneaks into the United States and shakes the American security system.

Welcome to 21st century Miami, trapped in the anachronistic geopolitics of the Cold War. Osama who? Saddam what? Iraq where?

Here, the daily pathos of Cuba remains center stage to many -- just as it was almost a half century ago.

Passion over Cuba may be aging in Miami -- certainly many of the younger Cubans who arrive here prefer to leave politics behind -- but it is no less urgent to thousands of older exiles. The hot topic on Spanish language radio last week was whether Bush had betrayed the Cuban exile community because he failed to mention Cuba in his State of the Union address.

While younger U.S.-born Cuban Americans -- and more recent Cuban immigrants -- are less virulent and more moderate, the viewpoint of older, more conservative exiles still rules, political analyst and Democratic pollster Sergio Bendixen said. ''Until Cuban exiles get their country back and figure out a way to get rid of Castro, nothing else will matter to them,'' Bendixen noted.

''It absolutely is a throwback,'' said Miami historian and Miami Dade College professor Paul George, who leads guided tours through Miami and Little Havana. "Cuban exiles are still worried about the Castro issue, and they hinge everything around that issue, the existence of Castro. But the rest of the country has long forgotten that this Cold War period ever happened.''

Well, not everyone. The Bush administration still gives Castro his due with harsh Cold War-era rhetoric and toughened travel policies. Hard-line Cuban-American voters who have twice delivered their votes for Bush expect nothing less.

''Miami is as anachronistic and dinosaur-like as Fidel Castro, because we are a response to him,'' said Miami filmmaker Joe Cardona, who has chronicled generations of Cuban exiles in his films. "And until that issue is resolved, Miami Cubans will continue living in his world.''

Cuba took center stage in major South Florida cases from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Coast Guard, FBI, U.S. Attorney's Office and Florida International University -- just to name a few of the institutions enmeshed in exile dynamics the past year.

LOT OF ACTIVITY

''There's a lot of activity,'' said Florida International University professor Dario Moreno, who analyzes Cuban exile politics. "The truth is that the Cuban community is still very hard line and remains trapped in the Cold War environment because Cuba is still trapped there, too. Cuba is the issue that grabs the public's attention, the media's attention, and the government's attention.''

With Castro still alive, and an American president who has vowed to do all he can to bring democracy to Cuba, the tension sometimes seems to boil over. Among the flash points:

o Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles sneaked into the country and asked for asylum. Considered by Castro to be a terrorist, but by many exiles to be a freedom fighter, Posada remains detained in an immigration facility in El Paso, Texas, awaiting word on if he will be released.

o In November, the FBI arrested Posada's biggest financial supporter, Santiago Alvarez, and Alvarez's employee, Osvaldo Mitat, on weapons charges -- a move that irritated many exile leaders, who claimed that the Bush administration was playing into Castro's hands.

o A month later, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced the administration would again convene a Cabinet-level commission to revise U.S. policy on Cuba by May.

o The cry against the controversial ''wet-foot, dry-foot'' Cuban immigration policy reached a fever pitch after the Coast Guard repatriated 15 migrants found on a piling on the old Seven Mile Bridge in January. A Cuban exile activist, angry at the Bush administration, launched a high-profile hunger strike and Cuban-American congressional representatives demanded that the Bush administration review the policy.

o The same day the 15 migrants were repatriated, the U.S. Attorney's Office and the FBI announced the arrests of a professor at Florida International University, Carlos M. Alvarez, and his wife, Elsa Alvarez, who also worked at FIU. They are accused of being unregistered covert agents for Cuba. Their arrest was commended by Cuban exile activists, who claim Miami is full of Cuban spies.

o On Jan. 20, the Treasury Department allowed the Cuban national baseball team to play in the World Baseball Classic, a move strongly criticized by Cuban-American congressional representatives.

o Three days later, the Treasury Department announced one of its biggest crackdowns ever on illegal travel to Cuba, a move applauded by Cuban-American leaders.

o And last week, the Treasury Department disrupted a meeting between Cuban government officials and U.S. oil industry representatives in Mexico City when Treasury called the Sheraton Hotel there and informed executives that they could be sanctioned for violating the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Sheraton evicted the Cubans, angering government officials in Mexico and Cuba. ''More than ever you see the political hopscotching . . . and insincerity [by] some of these local politicians in regards to Cuba,'' Cardona said. "It's getting a little tougher for them to be consistent.''

POLITICS

Some Bush detractors smell political opportunity in Washington's inconsistencies.

''Most people realize that this administration has done almost nothing to perpetuate the views that many of the people held when they voted for them on Cuba politics,'' said Joe Garcia, a consultant for the New Democrat Network. "I believe Cuba is about to become a focus again. This is all stuff to gear up for the electoral cycle. The spy case was an attempt to put up some points on the Republican side.''

Manuel Vasquez Portal, a former Cuban dissident journalist and poet now living in Miami, has a different view than older exiles. ''I feel that time is being wasted to litigate personal differences, while the principal goal of democracy in Cuba has been lost at certain times,'' he said.

Democratic pollster Bendixen said exiles by now have realized that the federal government's attempts to squeeze the Castro government and help bring democracy to Cuba have been fruitless, but that doesn't mean they're ready to jump ship and register as Democrats.

''I still remember listening to Cuban radio here in the first years of exile, and I can't tell a big difference between what La Cubanisima was saying back then, and what Radio Mambi is saying today,'' Bendixen said.

Landing on sandbar a break for migrants

Fifteen Cubans made it to shore in the Keys after a Coast Guard chase.

By Luisa Yanez And Oscar Corral. lyanez@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Wed, Feb. 08, 2006.

In the latest Cuban migration drama, a ''go-fast'' boat trying to outrun U.S. authorities Tuesday slammed into a sandbar in the Florida Keys before migrants jumped onto dry land.

The boat carried 14 Cuban migrants -- 10 men, three women and one 17-year-old girl -- according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman Jennifer Connors. The boat stopped north of Marathon at Duck Key near mile marker 64.

The group made it to dry land, practically guaranteeing they will qualify for U.S. residency. They were taken into custody by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.

Two men, who took cover in the mangroves in an attempt to evade authorities, were taken into custody separately. Agency spokesman Zachary Mann said the two men, a Cuban national and a Georgia native, are suspected smugglers.

Mann did not release their names.

The drama began around 6:30 a.m. Tuesday off the Florida Keys after a Customs and Border Patrol jet spotted a boat traveling toward the Keys loaded with people, Mann said. About three hours later, another aircraft and two boats -- one from the Coast Guard, one from Customs and Border Patrol -- initiated a chase.

''The boat rammed and beached itself on a sandbar, and local authorities were called in to help,'' said Coast Guard Petty Officer James Judge.

The Monroe County Sheriff's Office said it was alerted and asked for help.

''We got a call from the Coast Guard that they were trying to intercept a boat and to go to Grassy Key,'' said Becky Herron, spokeswoman for the Monroe sheriff.

The Cubans were taken for processing to Pembroke Pines, Mann said.

One of the suspected smugglers was taken into custody in the early afternoon after trying to hide, Mann said. Another man was flushed out of the dense mangroves by Monroe County bloodhounds and taken into custody at about 5 p.m., Mann said.

Under the U.S. wet-foot, dry-foot policy, Cubans who make it to land are generally allowed to remain in the United States.

U.S.-owned hotel could face fines

The United States may have to deal with repercussions from its campaign against Cuba that led to Cubans being asked to leave a U.S.-owned hotel.

By Pablo Bachelet, pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Wed, Feb. 08, 2006.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's feisty campaign to curtail U.S. contacts with Cuba sparked an angry row with Mexico, which announced Tuesday that it could fine or even close a U.S.-owned hotel in Mexico that threw out a Cuban delegation after a call from the Treasury Department.

Three Mexican agencies -- the Mexico City government, the federal consumer protection office and the national commission against discrimination -- will look into the incident, said Rubén Aguilar, spokesman for President Vicente Fox.

Mexico ''will certainly not tolerate any discrimination against any person visiting Mexico,'' he said. Other officials said the Sheraton María Isabel hotel in the heart of the Mexican capital could be fined or even shuttered.

The weekend incident at the Sheraton seemed to raise to new heights the Bush administration's efforts to curtail even indirect U.S. dealings with Cuba.

''This is the commercial equivalent of a neutron bomb,'' said John Kavulich, a Cuba analyst with the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a New York-based group that tracks trade and economic opportunities between the two nations. ''It is designed to raise red flags for lawyers at large U.S. corporations'' and make any business dealings with Cuba "as unpleasant a matter as possible.''

The Treasury Department has confirmed it contacted Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide on Friday and cautioned it that a meeting at the María Isabel between Cuban government officials and U.S. energy executives could violate U.S. sanctions against the communist-ruled island.

16 ASKED TO LEAVE

That evening, the management of the María Isabel asked the 16-member Cuban delegation to leave. Their security deposits were not returned, said Kirby Jones, a U.S. consultant who arranged the U.S.-Cuba energy seminar.

U.S. laws forbid American companies from knowingly providing services or goods to Cuban nationals without prior consent from the Treasury Department. The laws have been applied to foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies that have significant deals with Cuba but never before to minor arrangements like hotel bookings.

''What's the difference between buying a hotel room and buying a cheeseburger?'' Jones asked.

His Washington-based consultancy, Alamar Associates, has organized nine other such seminars in the past, some of which took place in hotels owned by U.S. companies. In 1998, the Clinton administration denied Jones a permit to take U.S. executives gathered in Cancún on an overnight trip to Cuba.

Jones said a group of 12 Cuban musicians were staying at the María Isabel but were not asked to leave.

The Cuban delegation moved to a Mexican-owned hotel, and the seminar agenda was completed the following day, Jones said.

Executives from U.S. giants like ExxonMobil Corp., Caterpillar and Valero Energy Corp., one of the largest refiners in the United States, each paid close to $2,000 to learn more about Cuba's potentially lucrative reserves.

EMBARGO MENTIONED

An Associated Press report on the seminar quoted Cuban Vice Minister of Basic Industry Raúl Pérez de Prado as urging the U.S. executives to lobby against the embargo.

Starwood Hotels did not return calls from The Miami Herald seeking comment.

Spy culture takes toll on exiles' psyche

The recent arrests of two at Florida International University on charges of acting as Cuban agents is one more episode chipping at the Cuban-American psyche. More Miami Cubans are watching their backs.

By Lydia Martin. lmartin@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Wed, Feb. 08, 2006.

Growing up in Miami, young Cuban Americans rolled their eyes whenever the older generation warned there were spies everywhere.

Agents of Fidel Castro who blended into el exilio and reported back to the island? It seemed too dime-store-novel to be true.

But over the years, proof poured in. The latest: alleged Cuban agents at Florida International University. The old-timers have felt vindicated every time a spy is discovered -- just because they were paranoid didn't mean spies weren't out to get them. But just how damaging have those spies been?

Whatever intelligence they may have swiped, their greatest toll could be on the Cuban-American psyche. The 47 years of Castro's rule may have established a well-documented culture of fear and duplicity on the island -- but many say they look over their shoulders in Miami, too.

''Whether it's one spy or hundreds, they contribute to the culture of doubt,'' said Alfredo Mesa, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, which has been infiltrated several times. "From the early stages of the revolution, Castro has been separating families, creating divisions between friends. And it's happened in Miami, too. You don't always know who to trust.''

SENSE OF MISTRUST

Because they have proof of cloak-and-dagger actions from the island, for Miami Cubans there is often a sense that things are not as they seem on the surface. That means they can mistrust the news and dream up new angles to Cuba-related incidents just when all the angles seem exhausted.

A common whisper in Miami: Luis Posada Carriles, the exile suspected of anti-Castro bombings, is probably a Castro agent himself.

Then again, it was a Cuban artist, the late Antonio Prohias, who created the classic Spy vs. Spy cartoon after he fled the island in 1960. In Cuba, he had drawn cartoons critical of Castro, who in turn accused him of being a member of the CIA.

''I think the cartoon says a lot about what happened to our psyche after Castro took power and established a society based on double morality,'' said José Basulto, founder of Brothers to the Rescue, the exile organization infiltrated by a Cuban spy, which led to the death of four of his group's members, shot down in international waters by Cuban MiG fighter jets on Feb. 24, 1996.

Prohias, whose Spy vs. Spy was a cornerstone of MAD magazine, was a mentor for successful Cuban-American artist David Le Batard (Lebo), 33.

''Growing up here, my mom was always closing the blinds because she thought people were looking at the house,'' said Le Batard, who is the brother of Miami Herald sports columnist Dan Le Batard. "I think it started with the Cuba thing. Think about Spy vs. Spy, . . . the struggle between negative and positive and the fact that neither ever wins.''

In fact, there has long been a mutual paranoia between the island and exile. The flip side of believing spies lurk everywhere in Miami is the notion that the CIA is all over Cuba.

''I've been in line waiting for bread with family, and people around me who know I'm from the United States clearly don't trust me. They ask suspicious questions and accuse you of being with la CIA,'' said New York actress and playwright Carmen Peláez, grandniece of the late Cuban painter Amelia Peláez, who has visited Havana.

In Miami, many look at such incidents as the repatriation of Cuban rafters and subsequent protests of the wet-foot, dry-foot policy as examples of Castro pulling the strings of Miami's Cubans.

BAD PUBLICITY

Caímos en la trampa, we fell into the trap, has become a frequent groan from Cuban Americans who suspect they are being prodded. ''The level of penetration is worse than people realize,'' Basulto said. "[Castro operatives] work within Miami's community, creating disinformation, inciting violence at peaceful exile protests to make us look bad in the press.''

There is indeed proof Cuban agents have infiltrated exile protests over the years, U.S. officials said. ''The Cuban intelligence service is among the best in the world,'' said Brian Latell, a former CIA agent who in the early 1990s served as National Intelligence Officer for Latin America. Said Skip Brandon, former deputy assistant director of the FBI who specialized in counter-intelligence: "On the one hand, we probably tended to give Fidel too much credit that he was behind everything, and on the other, maybe not enough. Many foreign intelligence agencies don't really worry about their émigré communities in the United States. Castro always did, and still does. In the old days, people like [anti-Castro militant] Tony Cuesta were launching raids. It doesn't happen now, but Fidel may not have gotten out of that mind set.''

Some spies, like Ana Belén Montes, the Puerto Rican who was a former senior analyst for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, have posed serious threat to national security. Others have seemed low-rent nuisances.

But in early January, the FBI accused FIU professor Carlos M. Alvarez and his wife, Elsa, a counselor at the university, of operating as covert agents for Cuba -- Carlos since the late '70s, his wife since the early 1980s.

They were entrenched in Cuban Miami in a way other known agents had not been. They were active at St. Thomas Catholic Church, counted Cuban community leaders as part of their circle.

And many of those people are still reeling.

'I have two daughters in their 20s who were acquaintances of [the Alvarezes'] oldest son,'' said Andy Gomez, a Cuba expert and associate provost for the University of Miami. "That night when the story broke, it was interesting to see all the calls between the younger generation. They really felt betrayed.''

But the Alvarezes did worse than just hurt people's feelings, said Mesa, of CANF.

"They were involved in Catholic retreats where people of faith go for fraternity. Maybe you go there and talk about trouble in your marriage, or about your child's mental illness. There were prominent people at these retreats -- lawyers, judges, exile leaders. Now there is a sense that they know your weaknesses, and they can get you.''

BASIC TACTICS

Establishing distrust among friends and relatives is a basic tactic of the Cuban government, said Cuban author Eliseo Alberto, who moved to Mexico in 1990 and shortly after published a book titled Informe Contra Mi Mismo, Report Against Myself, which dissects the psychology of his generation.

"Almost everybody in Cuba, at some point, is approached to inform against a relative or a friend. You never know who to trust. And the Cuban government is trying to create that sickness in Miami, too.''

The doubting has taken a huge toll on the psychological well-being of people on the island, Alberto said.

"You get to the point where you're grateful it's a certain friend that you suspect is your informant, because he's not as bad a guy as so-and-so. I had a close friend who would come over all the time when I moved to Mexico. I was sure he was informing Cuba about the book I was writing. I would invent pages for him to report back on that were never going to be in the book, just to throw him off. But that's how the mind works after so many years in Cuba.''

The mind can work that way in Miami, too.

''They're probably recording this conversation right now,'' Basulto said while he talked on the phone.

Ana Margarita Martinez, who unwittingly married a spy, is also cagey now. She met Juan Pablo Roque at a church function and learned the truth when he disappeared from their Kendall home on a Friday and showed up on Cuban TV on a Monday, bragging just after the Brothers to the Rescue planes had been shot down that he had infiltrated the exile group -- and assuring he'd miss nothing about Miami.

''I'm a lot more watchful. But it's hard to know who to trust even when you think you know better,'' Martinez said. "I had this friend René González. After Juan Pablo disappeared, René would come over to console me. I trusted him. Until it was found out that he was a member of La Red Avispa [the Wasp Network, convicted of spying for Cuba]. I was shocked.''

Martinez is still affected.

"For a while I did worry that my phones were tapped. But I don't really have anything to hide. So I just live with it. But what's ironic is that my mother took me out of Cuba in 1966 so that I wouldn't be victimized by the regime. I guess we didn't get far enough.''

Film depicts plight of Cuban rafters

Laura Wides-Munoz, Associated Press. Posted on Wed, Feb. 08, 2006.

MIAMI - When director Carlos Gutierrez set out to make a short film about two Cuban rafters stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Florida, he hoped the movie might renew interest in the U.S. government's wet foot/dry foot immigration policy.

He never set out to make a movie ripped from the headlines.

Then last month the Bush administration sparked a firestorm when it declared an abandoned bridge in the Florida Keys didn't count as "dry land" and sent back 15 Cubans who had landed there. Suddenly the Miami-native found himself not only promoting his new Spanish-language film but smack dab in the middle of a major political debate.

Under the long-standing policy, Cubans who are picked up at sea are usually returned home, while those who reach U.S. soil are allowed to stay.

"It was a story that was there, under the radar, but the best I could hope for was that people would see it and say 'Oh, we should pay attention.' I never imagined this coincidence," Gutierrez said.

Gutierrez hopes to turn "Wet Foot/Dry Foot," featuring Spanish-language soap star Francisco Gattorno and fellow Cuban actor Jorge Alvarez, into a feature-length movie. A debut screening of the film, which Gutierrez wrote for his masters' thesis at New York University, was held Feb. 2nd at the University of Miami.

The film follows two starving migrants as they argue over whether to stay on the island or swim to a nearby boat a 100 yards off shore in hopes of finding food - risking being caught by the U.S. Coast Guard with "feet wet."

The film arrives just weeks after a Cuban-American activist ended an 11-day hunger strike protesting the removal of the 15 migrants, who landed on the abandoned bridge Jan. 4, just about 100 yards from a bridge that is considered U.S. territory. The Bush administration has since agreed to meet with several Florida U.S. congressional representatives to discuss the policy.

Immigration attorney William Sanchez, who is representing relatives of the migrants in a legal challenge to the federal policy, said he hopes the film will give Americans a better understanding of the issue.

"Were seeing in the fiction something that seems absurd, but it's not as absurd as the form in which it's actually being applied on a daily and weekly basis," Sanchez said.

Gattorno, who currently stars in Telemundo's "Land of Passions," and was also featured in the 2000 drama, "Before Night Falls," said making the film was both exhilarating and painful, forcing him to relive his own decision to leave Cuba in 1994. Although he left through legal channels, Gattorno recalled not being able to see his father for more than eight years.

"It was a time of little hope," he said. "It's something that is still raw."

Gutierrez, the son of two Cuban immigrants, said he hopes the film will provide a human side to the debate over immigration - not just the Cuban experience - but also that of Mexicans and Central Americans.

But he says he tried hard to avoid making the 18-minute film, shot in eight days in the Florida Keys, explicitly political.

"I didn't want it to be propaganda," he said. "I wanted it to be about the story. It's the basic human struggle of not only wanting to survive but wanting to seek freedom and seek freedom at any cost."

U.S. turns over Cuban castaways

Posted on Mon, Feb. 06, 2006.

Seven of eight Cubans stranded on a deserted Bahamian island more than two weeks ago during an ill-fated attempt to reach South Florida were turned over to the Nassau government Sunday by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Pleas by Cuban American leaders to bring the migrants ashore in South Florida could not overcome the fact they were found on Elbow Cay, about 60 miles south of Miami -- in Bahamian territory.

''Since it wasn't in our waters, the Bahamians are the ones who handle it now,'' said Gretchen Eddy, a Coast Guard spokeswoman.

One of the eight migrants was airlifted to a Florida Keys hospital. Six others died after their boat broke apart, survivors said. No bodies were recovered.

The seven, who had been aboard a Coast Guard cutter since their rescue Feb. 1, were transported to Nassau and turned over to Bahamian authorities around 10 a.m. Sunday, Eddy said.

'Viva Cuba' is a tale of humanity, not politics

After struggling to film Viva Cuba, Cuban director Juan Carlos Cremata is basking in the glow of international recognition, including an award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.

By Vanessa Arrington, Associated Press. Posted on Sun, Feb. 05, 2006.

HAVANA - Cuban film director Juan Carlos Cremata's new movie is about a young girl who runs away from home because her mother plans to leave Fidel Castro's Cuba and she doesn't want to go.

But Viva Cuba isn't a political film -- it's a human one.

''It's not that the girl wants to stay in Cuba because of the revolution,'' Cremata told the Associated Press in a recent interview. She wants to stay, he said, because Cuba "is where her friends are, where her school is, and above all, where her beloved grandmother is buried.''

Depoliticizing the subject of Cuban exiles is about as easy as taking the fruit out of an apple pie, but judging from the international reaction, Cremata has succeeded in moving beyond nationalism to reach a universal audience.

INTERNATIONAL ACCLAIM

The film has swept awards in countries as politically and culturally varied as Guatemala, Germany, Taiwan and France, including the Grand Prix Ecrans Juniors from a panel of child judges at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

But the film failed to grab a nomination for a foreign-language Academy Award in the most anti-Castro country of all -- the United States.

Cremata loves his country, but does not consider himself a communist. He took great care to avoid all political references in the film.

It is never made clear what country the girl, who appears to be about 12, is supposed to move to. Her mother, separated from her father, simply spends much of her time on the phone with ''a foreigner'' complaining about everyday problems on the island. When young Malu overhears her making plans to leave, she runs away with her best friend, Jorge, heading to the remote eastern tip of Cuba, where her father works at a lighthouse.

The movie chronicles the pair's adventures as they flee authorities across the island, from fancy beach resorts to provincial towns to the rural mountains. They sing, they fight, they get lost, they make up. They finally arrive at the lighthouse, but once there they realize they have nowhere else to run.

Cuban migration is in the director's face daily: He lives near the American mission in Havana and sees his countrymen lining up every morning hoping to get U.S. visas.

But the issue is a global one for Cremata, who has lived in cities across the world, including New York for a year on a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.

''The predicament of whether to leave or not to leave is not an exclusively Cuban problem,'' he said. "It exists all over the world.''

A RETURN TO CUBA

Cremata, 44, chose his own country, returning to Cuba after his 1996 stint in the United States.

''It was this year, living in the center of New York, with lots of money and everything, that I realized all I wanted was to return to Cuba and make Cuban films,'' he said.

The director's first full-length film was Nada, or Nothing, a 2001 comedy that also revolves around the issue of emigration. The movie is the first in a trilogy, but Cremata is still looking for funding for the next two installations: Nadie, (Nobody) and Nunca, (Never).

Boat people lived by forage

Cuban migrants found on a Bahamian key had to swim through a jagged reef and eat mollusks to survive on land for 13 days.

By Oscar Corral, ocorral@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sat, Feb. 04, 2006.

The eight Cuban migrants found alive on Elbow Key Thursday had been afloat for seven days in the Florida Straits, their food and water supply gone.

Then the sea turned on them, slamming their makeshift vessel against a jagged reef, and sending them all tumbling into the water, said Manuel Felipe Prieto, who lives in Miami and is the uncle of one of the victims, Yuley Parra, 22.

That's when six of the Cubans may have died, Prieto said.

''Everyone jumped into the sea,'' Prieto said. "They started swimming, but the sea was choppy. Yuley, the girl, was very skinny, and that's when she disappeared.''

Prieto's account comes from his conversation Thursday night with Raidel Martinez Chavez, the migrant taken to a hospital in Marathon to treat an infected thumb and lacerated arm. Prieto said Martinez lost part of his finger as he swam toward land through the razor-sharp reef, and that many of the other migrants were injured.

Mariners Hospital said Martinez was not taking phone calls.

The survivors told Coast Guard officials that six others had died while attempting to reach shore after their homemade vessel broke apart.

This group of Cubans was not the group of 15 that the Coast Guard had searched for last week. ''The two had no correlation,'' said Coast Guard spokeswoman Gretchen Eddy. "That other group is still missing.''

LIVED BY FORAGE

For 13 days, the survivors ate snails and other mollusks, seaweed and other edible things that washed up on shore, Prieto said.

The Coast Guard said the survivors claimed they had left Cuba Jan. 13, and desperately swam to the island after the shipwreck Jan. 20.

Seven of the survivors were awaiting their fate Friday afternoon aboard a Coast Guard vessel, said Petty Officer James Judge. Judge said no bodies had been recovered, and that the Coast Guard planned to turn the migrants over to Bahamian authorities because they had been found on Bahamian territory.

The Coast Guard rescued the survivors after receiving a report from the Bahamian fishing vessel Sea Explorer, the Coast Guard said. Judge said no bodies had been recovered.

William MacDonald, assistant director for the Bahamas immigration agency, told the Associated Press the migrants would have to prove they faced persecution in communist Cuba to be granted political refugee status in his country. Otherwise, they will be deported.

Martinez will likely be allowed to stay in the United States because he was taken for medical care to the Florida Keys.

CALL FOR REVIEW

Meanwhile, the Cuban American National Foundation sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asking him to conduct an immediate review of the controversial wet-foot, dry-foot policy, which mostly allows Cubans who reach U.S. shores to stay, but demands the repatriation of those picked up at sea unless they can show they qualify for asylum.

It has been two weeks since the White House promised Cuban exile leaders that federal officials will meet with them to discuss concerns they have with the policy.

So far, no date has been set for a meeting.

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