CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Cuba restores electricity to U.S Interests Section

By Frances Robles. frobles@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Tue, Jun. 13, 2006

Electricity at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana was restored Tuesday, the same day that Cuba's Communist Party daily published a scathing 2,000-word editorial denying that the week-long outage was intentional.

The Cuban government ''categorically denies'' claims by the U.S. State Department that it deliberately cut off power and water to the U.S. Interests Section, and such accusations are an attempt to provoke a total break in relations and end immigration accords and food sales, the Granma editorial said.

On Monday the U.S. State Department said its Havana mission was running on generators since June 5, when electricity was shut off. The State Department also said faucets ran dry for a month this year -- plus another three days last week.

''Our revolution has never assaulted or violated the diplomatic headquarters,'' the newspaper said. "It never did it and never will.''

The flap over water and lights comes amid increasing hostility between the two nations. The U.S. Interests Section infuriated Cuba in January when it put up an electronic ticker-tape board that carried messages critical of the government. Cuba fired back by posting a sea of flags to block its view.

Not long after, the USINT received a letter from the Cuban government saying that in response to the electronic billboard sign, it would cease USINT's diesel fuel deliveries.

Granma said the power outage was the result of a broken electrical line, and that water department technicians have diligently responded to problems. It even listed the amount of construction supplies delivered this year.

Washington scoffed at the Cuban explanation.

''You'll excuse me if I don't take that explanation at face value,'' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, noting that Cuba's power company is controlled by the government. "It's the only building or compound on the block that doesn't have power, and we did pay our power bill.''

The Cuban government claims its notoriously poor electrical service suffered a setback recently when the 13,000-volt underground circuit that supplies power to the U.S. Interests Section (USINT) broke down during recent heavy rains.

Proof that the USINT doesn't ''lack a single watt:'' the electronic billboard that broadcasts ''insulting and offensive'' messages is still on, the paper said. Granma also said the USINT demonstrated ''bad faith'' by not mentioning that the water department sent maintenance workers to do repairs seven times since January.

Granma also offered a list of how much electricity and gas and construction equipment the Interests Section had used this year.

'Cuba fights up front and clean: it doesn't' need to find pretexts to harass the office,'' the paper said. "It doesn't look for subterfuge, or cut electric cables to turn out little trashy signs.''

Interests Section spokesman Drew G. Blakeney said the office was being harassed in other ways: a lack of supplies; a shortage of Cuban construction workers; refusal to grant exit visas to the Cubans who work at the office and need to travel abroad.

''It's a propaganda piece from a dictatorial state's propaganda machine,'' Blakeney said of the Granma editorial. "What we got today was electricity. All the other things are still outstanding.''

Blakeney said since fuel deliveries ended, the Interests Section has had to send a flat bed truck to fill up 55 gallon drums to collect diesel at commercial pumps a renovation project at the refugee annex is at a crawl, he said.

Cutting power to a diplomatic mission is a rare occurrence, although not unprecedented. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said the Cubans did it at the start of the Lyndon Johnson administration, forcing Washington to send generators.

In 1964 Cuban leader Fidel Castro cut off the water and power to the Guantánamo Naval Base to retaliate for the arrest of 36 Cuban fishermen in Florida waters.

School Board votes to remove Cuba book from all Miami-Dade schools

By Matthew I. Pinzur, mpinzur@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Wed, Jun. 14, 2006

A controversial children's book about Cuba -- and similar books from the same series about other countries -- must be removed from all 33 Miami-Dade school libraries that stock it, following a closely divided School Board vote today that split Hispanic and non-Hispanic members in a frenzied political atmosphere.

Only the Cuba book was ever reviewed through the district's appeals process, but books about nations such as Vietnam, Greece, and China were also removed under the vote.

Even longtime district officials could not remember any prior banning of a book, and the issue has energized diverse groups of South Floridians, including Cuban exiles, librarians and civil-liberties groups.

''I don't want him reading this trash,'' said Laura Vianello, 60, whose grandson is a first-grader at Coral Way Elementary. "I want him educated, not indoctrinated.''

The district owns 49 copies of Vamos a Cuba or its English-language counterpart, A Visit to Cuba, which became the target of controversy earlier this year when the father of a Marjory Stoneman Douglas Elementary student complained about the book's sunny portrayal of life in Fidel Castro's Cuba.

''The Cuban people have been paying a dear price for 47 years for the reality to be known,'' said Juan Amador, the father who filed the original appeal and a former political prisoner in Cuba. "A 32-page book cannot silence that.''

The book had survived numerous appeals, including one to Superintendent Rudy Crew, but a 6-3 majority of board members decided its inaccuracies and omissions made it inappropriate for its kindergarten-to-second-grade audience.

''A book that misleads, confounds or confuses has no part in the education of our students, most especially elementary students, who are most impressionable and vulnerable,'' said board member Perla Tabares Hantman.

Opponents of the ban said it was tantamount to censorship of politically unsavory speech -- something specifically barred by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The appeal, filed by parent Juan Amador, was originally limited to Stoneman Douglas. But board member Ana Rivas Logan amended the bill, broadening it to the entire district.

The American Civil Liberties Union had promised to file a lawsuit opposing any ban, and the board's own attorney has warned of the decision's legal vulnerabilities.

''This litigation will be costly and it will in fact be a reality,'' said board attorney JulieAnn Rico.

The board's action will not impact the 33 copies in Miami-Dade public libraries, the 17 copies in Broward school libraries nor the two in Broward public libraries.

It was not immediately clear how many copies the district owns of other books in the series, which critics said is weak and gives too little detail about the countries it covers.

''Basically it paints life in those 24 countries with the same brush, with the same words,'' Barrera said.

Of the six board members who voted to remove the book, three are facing re-election this fall: Hantman, Agustín Barrera and Marta Pérez. A fourth, Frank Bolaños, said he will resign from the board to run for state Senate.

Board member Robert Ingram supported the ban only to invite the ACLU's lawsuit and only after a passionate speech condemning the appeal.

''We are rejecting the professional recommendation of our staff based on political imperatives that have been pressed upon members of this board,'' said board member Evelyn Greer, who joined Martin Karp and Solomon Stinson in opposing the removal.

The emotional and political storm surrounding the debate became impossible to ignore in a community so deeply steeped in Cuban culture. It bared the exile community's considerable political heft as well as persistent suspicion that other groups remain ignorant of -- or even hostile to -- the deep sensitivity toward Cuba's image and struggles.

At a news conference earlier this month, Bolaños exemplified that tension when he described the decision his colleagues faced with today's vote, saying, "They will have a choice to either define themselves on the side of truth and with the Cuban community or on the side of lies and against the Cuban community.''

Ingram said some board members ''might find a bomb under their automobiles'' if they voted to keep the book, and said he fears his children and grandchildren may be at risk as a result of his vote.

''There's a passion of hate,'' Ingram said. "I can't vote my conscience without feeling threatened -- that should never happen in this community any more.''

Crew had tried to negotiate a compromise, suggesting that parental consent be required for borrowing the book or that a sticker in the cover advise parents of the book's weaknesses. But he also suggested early in the controversy that he would not ban the book outright, and his attempts to intercede were seen in some circles as a subversion of the appeals process.

Miami Herald staff writer Kathleen McGrory contributed to this report.

State sued over Cuba-travel ban

The ACLU filed a lawsuit claiming a state law seeking to ban state university personnel from traveling to Cuba for academic exchanges is unconstitutional.

By Oscar Corral, ocorral@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Wed, Jun. 14, 2006.

The recently passed Florida law that essentially bans state academic travel to Cuba promised to escalate into a constitutional battle when Gov. Jeb Bush signed it into law last month.

On Tuesday, the legal war began.

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing several professors from state universities, filed a lawsuit against Florida officials in federal court, claiming the travel ban is unconstitutional. The group also demands a temporary injunction to prevent the law from taking effect while the case is in court.

''This act is terribly misdirected,'' Randall Marshall, legal director of the ACLU of Florida, said of the new law. "This is unconstitutional, and we hope to have this law struck down very shortly.''

The issue at hand is a state bill Bush signed into law in May -- sponsored by state Rep. David Rivera of Miami -- that prohibits state universities from using any money or resources to promote, plan, administer or fund travel to Cuba. That means that any support services, such as help from secretaries, computers or fax machines at state universities can't be devoted to Cuba travel. The law's critics say it essentially makes it impossible for professors and researchers to travel to Cuba, even using donations from private organizations.

The law also prohibits private universities from using state money to fund travel to Cuba.

The bill has put some prominent Cuban-American academics at odds with Cuban-American state lawmakers who want to maintain a hard line against the government of Fidel Castro.

''This is nothing but an attempt by Rep. David Rivera to get some political mileage with his constituents,'' said Florida International University Professor Lisandro Perez, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. "We consider this a blow to academic freedom.''

RIVERA'S PREDICTION

Rivera said in an interview Tuesday that he believes the lawsuit will fail to overturn the law.

''The Florida Constitution clearly delegates spending authority to the Legislature,'' Rivera said. "My bill doesn't prevent anyone from traveling to a terrorist nation. Only the federal government can do that. My bill only says that taxpayer resources cannot be utilized to promote travel to terrorist nations.''

The new law prohibits spending state money on any aspect of organizing a trip to any of the five nations on the U.S. State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.

Other plaintiffs named in the suit include the faculty senate of FIU; Jose Alvarez, professor emeritus at the University of Florida; Carmen Diana Deere, director and professor at the University of Florida's Center for Latin American Studies; Houman Sadri, associate professor at the University of Central Florida; and Noel Smith, curator of Latin American and Caribbean Art at the University of South Florida.

A major Washington law firm, Alston & Bird, will help the plaintiffs litigate the case at no charge.

''The purpose of doing research is not to advocate or promote other countries but to collect information and bring it back to the United States for publishing,'' said Leonard Bliss, vice chairman of the FIU faculty senate.

The academics worry that the travel ban will discourage top students who have an interest in studying Cuba or other countries on the list from remaining at Florida schools.

LOSS OF STUDENTS

''We are worried about the potential loss of many students,'' Alvarez said.

Ironically, Florida State University announced Tuesday that one of its students who received a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship this year, Joana Carlson, wants to study the Chinese and Cuban revolutions during the Cold War. Carlson, a doctoral student in history, will travel to China to conduct research. Under Rivera's law, she would not be allowed to go to Cuba using any university help.

Marshall said the notion that academic travel to Cuba helps bolster the island's communist government is "nonsense.''

Rivera, who has sponsored a number of Cuba-crackdown bills, seized upon the January arrests of two FIU staffers for allegedly being unregistered agents of the Cuban government to catapult his bill through the Legislature. He has said that he doesn't believe any legitimate academic research can be done in a totalitarian state.

The governor said he was not surprised that the ACLU filed suit against the bill.

''The courts will sort it out,'' Bush said. "I think it's good policy; if the courts decide otherwise, we'll yield.''

Miami Herald staff writer Gary Fineout contributed to this report.

U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana has no electricity

By Frances Robles and Pablo Bachelet, pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Mon, Jun. 12, 2006

WASHINGTON - The Cuban government has cut off electricity to the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana as part of a sharp increase in harassments that include holding up visas for American diplomats waiting to take up posts there and restricting gasoline supplies, the State Department said Monday.

The electricity to the U.S. Interests Section in Havana -- not quite an embassy because Cuba and the United States do not have formal diplomatic relations -- was cut off at 3 a.m. on June 5, said Ashley Morris, a State Department spokeswoman

Although electricity in Cuba is notoriously unreliable, Morris said no other buildings around the Interests Section on Havana's seaside Malecón boulevard have been affected, so U.S. officials believe the cutoff is deliberate.

Asked if the Cuban government had given any reason for the cutoff, Morris said, "you'll have to ask the Cubans. We'd like to know as well.''

The latest Cuban harassments were first reported in today's El Nuevo Herald.

U.S. officials also confirmed that diplomatic personnel in Havana have started destroying some documents that are not essential, but called that a standard procedure when power to a diplomatic facility is cut.

Morris said the Interests Section continues to ''operate under normal procedures'' by using its own generators. However, officials said access to gasoline has been restricted and the mission has been unable to import any equipment, including vehicles and computers.

Water is still supplied to the main Interests Section building but is sporadically available in the mission's annex, where visa applications are processed.

Harassment of U.S. diplomats in Havana is nothing new.

A 2002 cable from the U.S. Interests Section, obtained by The Miami Herald, detailed a campaign of nuisance attacks that even left human feces at the homes of diplomats posted in Cuba.

The three-page cable said alarms were set off in the middle of the night outside diplomats' homes, keeping them and their families from getting any rest. Phones would ring all night and "cell phones ring every half hour for no apparent reason.''

U.S. diplomats who regularly met with Cuban dissidents were specially targetted, the cable said. Their car tires were slashed, windows smashed, insides ''pilfered'' and radios set to pro-Castro stations.

Their homes sometimes were broken into, leaving doors and windows open and 'leaving not-so-subtle 'messages' . . . including unwelcome calling cards like urine and feces.'' The State Department at the time called the campaign ''a psychological operation'' to which spouses and children were not immune.

''In one example that demonstrates how regime officials actually listen to the daily activities of the staff, presumably through electronic bugs, shortly after one family discussed the susceptibility of their daughter to mosquito bites, they returned home to find all of their windows open and the house full of mosquitoes,'' the report said.

Former U.S. Interests Section chief Wayne Smith, now a critic of U.S. policies on Cuba, says that kind of campaign is triggered by provocation - like the electronic billboard that the U.S. mission hung on the side of its building earlier this year to show anti-Castro messages.

"If they are doing it for a short period of time, that's one thing. If they cut off the water and electricity indefinitely, it goes on for several days, that's when you get into very serious stuff. That's when the United States will begin to think of withdrawing.''

Smith said cutting off the lights was ''foolish'' and ''counterproductive'' because it would play into the hands of conservative Bush administration officials who he believes would like nothing more than to abandon the Havana post.

During Smith's tenure in Havana, a group of former political prisoners stormed the Interests Section demanding to know when they would be allowed to travel to the United States. With the Mariel boatlift in full swing and tensions high in Havana, a bus load of pro-government thugs showed up to beat the former prisoners.

Confession in FIU Cuba case challenged

Lawyers for an FIU professor accused of being an unregistered Cuban agent seek to suppress the confession.

By Oscar Corral, ocorral@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Fri, Jun. 09, 2006

June 22, 2005: Carlos Alvarez, mild-mannered psychology professor, Catholic volunteer, suspected covert agent for communist Cuba stops at Publix to swig java after Mass at St. Thomas the Apostle.

FBI agents confront him. Melodrama dominates the brief exchange. The FBI agents tell him, that "this would be the most important day of his life.''

It may well have been.

The Florida International University professor followed the FBI to a parking lot, ditched his car, and rode with agents to a hotel room.

According to defense motions filed this week based on snippets of declassified transcripts of the FBI's meetings, Alvarez spoke openly about his life, information coaxed by agents who assured him that "everything is going to turn out fine.''

It didn't.

In January, Alvarez and his wife, Elsa Alvarez, an FIU psychology counselor, were charged with being unregistered agents of the Cuban government. The husband and wife are accused of sharing information with Cuba, though the information did not involve military or classified state secrets. Rather, it pertained to prominent Miami exiles, such as FIU President Modesto ''Mitch'' Maidique -- information an enemy might use for political blackmail.

If convicted, they could face prison sentences of seven to 10 years. They remain in jail awaiting trial.

EFFECTS

The case sent waves of McCarthyist paranoia across Miami's academic circles, spawned a law that makes it almost impossible for professors at state-run universities to travel to Cuba, and shook FIU's foundations with allegations about Maidique being a target.

In their motion, lawyers for Carlos Alvarez quote from the government's partial transcripts of the June 22 interrogation and one the next day. The lawyers are arguing that the indictment against Alvarez should be dismissed because ''he was promised that he would not be prosecuted so long as he provided government investigators with truthful information in response to their questions.'' They want his confession thrown out.

The attorneys also want the court to limit the case to five years, rather than the 30-year span covered in the indictment.

According to the documents, the FBI peppered its interrogation with veiled threats and warnings. Alvarez wept as the FBI pressed him for more. ''Here, here, here,'' an agent consoled Alvarez, "everything is going to turn out fine. . . . There are no problems here. . . . Nobody will know that you spoke with us.''

Alvarez's life changed forever that Wednesday morning, at the start of last summer's record-breaking hurricane season. As he munched on a danish and sipped coffee, court records note, FBI agents Alberto Alonso and Rosa Schureck approached him.

''It wasn't a coincidence that we came to see you at Publix for the first time,'' Alonso later told Alvarez. "We can tell you if, if you like books about Cuba, if you like this type of music, if you like to eat out, if you like soup.''

The FBI for four years had the Alvarez couple under surveillance, which included a bug for eavesdropping in the bedroom.

The decision to confront Alvarez at the Publix -- it did not specify which one -- ''was designed to heighten the coercive and intimidating effect of the stop by,'' a way to show him he had been under surveillance, said the court records filed by lawyer Steven Chaykin.

NO COMMENT

Chaykin, who maintains his clients are innocent, would only say that he believes the motions are "highly meritorious.''

FBI spokesman Michael Leverock said Thursday he could not comment on an ongoing case. The U.S. attorney's office is expected to respond in court to Chaykin's motion.

After reviewing the transcripts, some legal observers believe the FBI was employing techniques to try to flip Alvarez to cooperate and turn in his alleged Cuban intelligence handlers. They pressured, cajoled, invoked his family, to see if he would divulge more information about himself, his work and his alleged Cuban government superiors.

The agents started their questioning, the motion states, by telling Alvarez that he could ''help'' them and in exchange, he would be helping himself.

''We know we have the capacity to help you . . . but you also have to cooperate and assist us,'' Schureck said, according to the transcript.

''Nobody will know about this interview,'' Alonso quickly added.

AN 'OPPORTUNITY'

The agents told Alvarez that they had not granted this ''opportunity'' to other convicted Cuban spies, such as those who were part of the so-called ''WASP'' network and Ana Belen Montes, who worked at the Pentagon.

The agents explained that Cuba only defends the WASP prisoners, also known as the Cuban Five, and not the others because the others had cooperated with investigators.

''We want you to live your life exactly how you're living it now, to continue working at FIU. In four years you're going to retire,'' Alonso said. "You're daughter is going to school. Your children are here. One is an attorney. . . . Everybody is working peacefully. Nobody knows what you do, but I know there are other things that you, you are not telling me now.''

The partial transcript cited in court documents does not include any self-incriminating statements that Alvarez may have made. But it shows that he was talking.

''I'm basically honest,'' Alvarez told the agents. "You caught me, I mean, a little by surprise. Sometimes I say, 'Well, the legal thing, what does this mean?'''

Alonso reassured him, ''there's nothing legal here,'' he said.

''I mean, you guys don't have anything,'' Alvarez said. "I mean, basically, you're telling me there's nothing against me.''

In a not-so-veiled warning to Alvarez to be truthful, the agents talked about his family.

''I told you today was the most important day of your life because your future is determined today, but not only yours, the future of your wife, Elsa, your children, Javier, Jorge and Mario,'' Alonso said.

Alvarez corrected him. ''Marcos,'' he said.

''Marcos, and especially . . .'' Alonso said, going on to talk about Alvarez's youngest daughter. "She's starting to live, to see life. She hasn't gone to high school yet. She has so much to learn, to enjoy. And what's best for you as a family?''

The agents didn't hide the fact that they wanted Alvarez to turn on the Cuban government.

''Since you helped the, the Cuban government, we want you to help the United States now,'' Schureck said.

Alvarez said he wanted something else.

''I want peace . . . in my life,'' Alvarez said. "That's what I want in my life.''

Not long after agents consoled Alvarez as he sobbed during that first interrogation, Alonso said "you've confessed it completely.''

Alvarez, in few words, seemed to plead with agents to take his openness into consideration.

''I've told you everything that I was,'' Alvarez said, "I hope they recognize that.''

Herald staff writer Jay Weaver contributed to this report.

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