CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Deadly voyage brings prison terms

A Miami federal judge slapped two Cuban immigrants with maximum 10-year prison terms after their smuggling journey led to the death of a young boy on the boat.

By Jay Weaver. jweaver@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Tue, Mar. 21, 2006.

Two Cuban immigrants who captained a smuggling mission that ended with the drowning of a young boy received the maximum prison sentence on Monday -- 10 years.

U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore hammered the two men after concluding a six-year term proposed under federal sentencing guidelines was not enough punishment for the child's death in the Oct. 13 illegal crossing of the Florida Straits.

A lawyer for both Alexander Gil Rodriguez, 25, and Luis Manuel Taboada-Cabrera, 28, whose relatives sobbed outside the courtroom, said they will appeal the judge's sentences for their alien-smuggling convictions. Attorney Steven Amster said the two Miami men, who were not charged or convicted of causing the death of 6-year-old Julian Villasuso, still faced up to the maximum prison term because his drowning was a factor in the judge's sentencing under advisory guidelines.

''They understand their actions led to this death,'' Amster said, acknowledging the two men sped off in their go-fast boat when the U.S. Coast Guard tried to stop them. "But their actions were not so egregious to go above what the sentencing guidelines say.''

The two men had reached plea deals in November, expecting to receive lighter sentences. They pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to smuggle 29 Cubans in a 33-foot speedboat that overturned and claimed the life of the boy, who got trapped beneath the capsized vessel.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Dana Washington said he didn't have enough evidence to charge them with the death of Julian Villasuso.

The boy's death was factored into the sentencing guidelines, doubling the initially proposed prison term from three to six years. But Moore, who as a federal judge has the authority to go higher than those advisory guidelines, didn't believe that penalty was sufficient.

''The question is whether the guidelines adequately take into account the death they caused,'' Moore said at a hearing in January.

Moore has greater leeway to go above the federal sentencing guidelines. Those guidelines had been mandatory until last year, when the U.S. Supreme Court made them advisory to maintain their constitutionality.

Still, Moore's stiffer sentences for the two Miami men would undergo intense scrutiny on appeal.

The reason: In 2001, Jorge ''Bombino'' Aleman was arrested on charges that he organized five smuggling runs between late 1999 and 2001 that ferried more than 100 Cubans to Florida.

A January 2001 voyage resulted in the death of Cira Rodriguez, a Cuban who is believed to have died on a small Bahamian cay after smugglers dumped her and the other passengers on the island without food and water.

LIFE IN PRISON

The following year, U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King sentenced the defendant to life in prison plus five years, overriding the federal sentencing guidelines that called for fewer than 13 years.

Then in 2004, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta threw out what was the longest prison term in an alien-smuggling case, ordering that Aleman be sentenced within the federal guidelines.

That ruling came down, however, when the guidelines were still mandatory.

At Monday's sentencing hearing, Taboada-Cabrera apologized to the judge, community and others. ''I wish to say I'm really repentant about what happened,'' he told the judge.

Rodriguez did not say anything in court.

Their attorney said the tragic smuggling trip was not for profit but was rather to bring over their families. Amster said Rodriguez had three family members, including his wife, aboard the speedboat, and that Taboada-Cabrera was supposed to bring his wife and a daughter on the voyage.

Amster also said the U.S. Coast Guard may have played a role in the capsizing of their speedboat that led to the boy's death.

Coast Guard officials strongly disagreed.

SPEEDBOAT

The alien-smuggling attempt occurred during the early morning of Oct. 13, when Coast Guard officials tracked down a Florida-registered speedboat, carrying the 29 Cubans, about 52 miles south of Key West.

A chase ensued, as the Coast Guard crew deployed an ''entangling device'' -- or net -- in front of the speedboat, according to court papers. Finally, the vessel came to a stop. Then, numerous people stood up on board and someone threw an object into the ocean.

BOAT CAPSIZES

''Water immediately began to flow into the stern of the vessel, due to the shift in weight and the excess amount of individuals on board,'' according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement affidavit, causing the boat to capsize and the passengers to fall overboard.

Authorities discovered the boy beneath the boat after rescuers pulled to safety the other passengers, including the boy's parents and the smugglers.

Julian's parents and a third passenger with health problems were allowed into the United States.

The rest were repatriated to Cuba.

28 Cuban migrants' repatriation likely

A cruise ship that picked up 28 Cuban migrants over the weekend will transfer them to a Coast Guard cutter. Another 19 Cubans made it to Sand Key.

By Oscar Corral, ocorral@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Tue, Mar. 21, 2006

A Carnival cruise ship was poised Monday to turn over to the Coast Guard 28 Cuban migrants it picked up on the high seas, after having stopped in Galveston, Texas, over the weekend, Coast Guard officials said.

Meanwhile, another 19 Cuban migrants made it to dry land Monday at Sand Key, according to Border Patrol spokesman Robert Montemayor. He said 14 were at the Border Patrol office in Pembroke Pines, and five were taken to a Miami hospital to be treated for dehydration and sun exposure.

As for the 28 on the cruise ship, they most likely will be repatriated to Cuba unless they can convince U.S. officials that they face political persecution and qualify for asylum.

Cuban exile activist Ramón Saúl Sánchez said the cruise staff was told by the U.S. government that instead of turning over the Cubans to immigration authorities at the Galveston port, they must transfer them to a Coast Guard cutter at sea because they do not qualify as "dry foot.''

Coast Guard spokesman Luis Diaz confirmed that the migrants were going to be handed over to the Coast Guard in the next few days.

The 25 men and three women from Vertientes in the Camaguey province left from Playa La Mula, Sanchez said. They were heading south, seeking Honduras. The cruise ship stopped in Jamaica, Grand Cayman and Mexico before heading to Texas, but none of those countries wanted to accept the Cuban migrants, Sanchez said.

''The crew of the ship gathered money and clothes to help the migrants. They were very humane,'' Sanchez said.

Diaz said that all cruise ships and commercial shipping vessels must alert authorities 96 hours in advance when they plan to arrive at a U.S. port and provide a complete passenger list. When cruise ship officials say they are carrying Cuban migrants, the routine is to have them keep the migrants on board because they are still deemed ''feet wet,'' Diaz said.

Under the controversial wet foot/dry foot policy, most Cuban migrants picked up at sea are repatriated to Cuba, but those who make it to U.S. terrority can stay. Migrants of other nationalities are usually repatriated whether they are caught at sea or on land -- unless they can show they qualify for asylum.

Sanchez said the migrants were barred from talking to the media, legal representatives or their families while docked at Galveston.

Carnival Cruise lines, which is based in Miami, referred questions to the Coast Guard.

Diaz said that a cruise ship can sometimes be considered U.S. territory, but it must be a U.S.-flagged ship, meaning that it's registered in the United States. ''There are no U.S.-flagged cruise ships on the East Coast as far as I know,'' he said.

In the case of the migrants who made it ashore, Montemayor said the migrants told Border Patrol they left from Villa Clara in Cuba on Thursday on a wooden rowboat, although the Coast Guard did not find a rowboat at the scene. He did not know how many were men, women or if there were children.

Read Miami's Cuban Connection, The Miami Herald's new blog on Cuba and Cuban exile issues, in the blogs section of the Herald's website, or type: http://blogs.herald.com

Rooting for Cuba a tough choice for S. Fla. Exiles

Cheer for Cuba's team or against it? South Florida's exiles were torn because of Castro; in the end, Japan won

By Manny Navarro, mnavarro@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Tue, Mar. 21, 2006

Nelson Cardoso and his friend Carlos Rodriguez spent Monday night sitting in the back of La Ayestarán Restaurant off Southwest Eighth Street and 27th Avenue. The two were among a group of a dozen Cuban exiles glued to a big screen TV showing a baseball game in San Diego.

But this wasn't any ordinary baseball game. It was Cuba versus Japan in the finals of the World Baseball Classic. And like Cuban Americans throughout South Florida, they were divided over whether to cheer for their homeland or against Fidel Castro.

Cardoso, 68, left Cuba nearly half a century ago, driven out by Castro's revolution. And yet, he bowed his head when Japan took a 4-0 lead over Cuba in the top of the first inning, a lead it never relinquished, finally winning 10-6.

''Cuba is the only Latin country playing,'' Cardoso said. "Regardless of how we feel about Castro, I have to root for them.''

Cardoso was among 10 fans cheering for the Cuban team. Rodriguez, also in his 60s, was one of two cheering against them. He pumped his fist when Japan took the first-inning lead. Then, he banged it against the table when Eduardo Paret homered for Cuba to start the bottom half of the inning.

''A lot of these guys were singing the Cuban National Anthem before the game,'' Rodriguez said. "I wish the Cuban players the best, but the way Cubans like me and other from Miami see this whole thing is that this is Castro's team.''

Rodriguez may have been in the minority at the Miami restaurant, but plenty of South Florida Cubans shared his sentiment. From restaurants and bars in Hialeah and Little Havana to the baseball fields at Tamiami Park, the sentiment from most Cuban Americans and exiles was the same: Victory for Cuba meant victory for Castro.

''I'd say about 80 percent of the Cubans here [in South Florida] were rooting against them,'' said Jerry Del Castillo, whose hourlong local Spanish sports talk radio show, Descarga Deportiva, on Cadena Azul 1550, was flooded with phone calls about the World Baseball Classic for the past month.

"Whether we admit it or not, this whole tournament has been about politics, not just sports. The 80 percent who have wanted to see Cuba lose aren't the people who left Cuba to better themselves. They left because [Castro] took everything away from them.''

No matter what side of the argument exiles fell on, the topic was discussed passionately, whether in Spanish, English or a combination of the two.

Alan Strauss, a co-host on 790 The Ticket's Dos Amigos, a new sports talk show on Saturday nights, said discussion of the Cuban baseball team dominated his show for the better part of the past few weeks. Callers, he said, had mixed reactions on whether to root for the Cubans.

'While a lot of people in the exile community have taken the stance they have against Castro, some people have come to realize it is not the players' faults they're in the situation they're in,'' Strauss said.

"We talked to [ESPN reporter] Pedro Gomez last week on the show, who is a Miami-born guy of Cuban descent. He [wasn't] rooting for the Cubans outright, but in the end it's still his heritage, his countrymen. I think some people have begun to see it as that.''

Luis Cue, a 39-year-old service manager at Potamkin Chevrolet in Miami Lakes who left Cuba when he was 13, said the blood in his veins simply wouldn't allow him to root for Japan on Monday.

''As much as I didn't want to see the Cubans win because of Fidel, I've changed my mind because Cuba is still my country,'' said Cue, who plays in the Cuban-American League, an adult men's baseball league in Tamiami Park. "As much as I hate Castro, Cuba is a Latin team and I have Latin blood.''

In Cuba Monday night, neighborhood bars were flooded with fans watching the game on state TV. In South Florida, the reaction was more muted. Only a handful of Cuban fans were on hand as the game was shown on a large-screen TV at Shula's Steak II in Miami Lakes.

At Versailles, the famous Cuban restaurant on Calle Ocho, a manager said not a single TV set was tuned to the game.

Strauss, the Dos Amigos radio host, said exiles have been monitoring the tournament "with a cautious eye from home. . . This certainly hasn't been like the World Cup, where you had people from some foreign countries getting together in pubs to watch games at the wee hours of the morning.''

Said Del Castillo: "First of all, if you know anything about Cubans, we're not going to go out to a sports bar on a Monday night to see a baseball game. And we're certainly not going to go out to root against Cuba. That's just bad.''

Del Castillo, like a lot of South Florida Cubans, had, in fact, rooted for Cuba to be excluded from the tournament. And it nearly happened.

The U.S. Treasury Department initially banned the Cubans, reasoning that the Castro government would benefit financially from the team's participation. Five weeks later, at the urging of Major League Baseball, the United States relented. The government then refused Cuba's request for extra visas for the team's entourage. Only hours before the first pitch did Cuba arrive in Puerto Rico, one of several game sites.

''The sad part is win or lose, the team has already done enough for Fidel,'' Del Castillo said before Monday's game was final. "By beating the Puerto Ricans and Dominicans and outlasting the Americans, Fidel can sit there and brag about how his team without any major-league players was better than all those millionaires. He can give the people suffering in Cuba another reason to believe his [B.S.]. "The saddest part of this whole thing has been the fact we're the only people in the world who can't root for their own country.''

Island newest portal to U.S. for Cubans

A tiny island between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico is becoming the latest way for Cubans to reach U.S. soil.

By Frances Robles. frobles@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sat, Mar. 18, 2006

SAN JUAN - Soaked and freezing, the Cuban migrants could see by the light of the moon as 18-foot waves crashed hard on their small boats.

''At first, the sea was like a plate. It looked like it was going to be a tour,'' said Hilda Barbara Iglesias, who paid smugglers to take her family to U.S. soil last week. 'Then it got dark and ugly. They told us it would take seven hours, so when it had been six hours, I thought, 'Just one more hour.' ''

The Cubans' voyage from the Dominican Republic -- where many have lived for years -- to tiny Mona Island actually took nearly 12 hours. The waters were rough, but it was the destination that counted: 14,000 acres of deserted natural reserve that is U.S. territory -- which would allow them to stay in the United States under the ''wet-foot, dry-foot'' policy.

Iglesias and her family were one of the growing hundreds of Cubans turning the Mona Passage, one of the world's most dangerous straits, into a new route to America. She was one of 53 Cubans who have landed on Mona since Saturday. The number of Cubans arriving at Mona -- roughly the size of Weston -- increased five-fold in the past three years, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

In the first three months of this year alone, at least 155 Cubans have made it to Mona's shores.

Facing more numerous Coast Guard patrols that interdict and deport Cubans headed to Florida, Cubans are increasingly finding different routes to the United States -- from fraudulent passports in Paraguay to 3,700-mile boat-and-land journeys from Cuba to Honduras to Guatemala to the Mexico-U.S. border.

The 90-mile-wide Mona Passage that separates the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico has long been favored by smugglers ferrying illegal Dominican migrants to Puerto Rico, where they can stay illegally or try to take a flight to the U.S. mainland.

But Cubans need only go halfway to Puerto Rico -- to Mona Island, managed by the Puerto Rico Department of Natural Resources, thanks to the ''wet-foot, dry-foot'' policy that guarantees they can stay if they make it to U.S. soil. And with less risk. If caught at sea, they are returned to the Dominican Republic.

''Mona is pure Cuban,'' said Abel Mejía, Iglesias' husband.

The majority of Cubans using the Mona route settled legally in the Dominican Republic some time ago after arriving on tourist and work visas. One broad Dominican visa program for Cubans was briefly suspended in 1992 due to widespread allegations of payoffs.

HIGH PRICE

Those who want to move on to the United States now board the small boats, dubbed yolas, that regularly try to smuggle Dominicans to Puerto Rico. The price tag, up to $4,000, is more than double what Dominicans pay.

''They charged us $2,500 each,'' said Ruber Sosa Lechuga, who arrived on Mona Thursday with his wife, uncle and 12-year-old son. "I gave the smugglers a car and some cash, but I was still short. I gave them the refrigerator, the stove, the microwave, a DVD and a TV. I even gave him a hair dryer. Finally I got to the point where I had nothing else to offer.''

LURES SMUGGLERS

U.S. officials say the Mona route is attractive to Cuban smugglers.

''Smugglers are constantly looking for alternate routes,'' said Iván Ortíz, spokesman for the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in San Juan. "They think the chances of getting caught going from Cuba to Florida are far larger than from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico. It is definitely becoming a favorite route for Dominican smugglers.''

U.S. officials warn that the Mona Passage, a rough body of water that is the meeting point for the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean, is not safe for small boats.

Mona ''is one of, if not the most, dangerous passages in the world,'' Ortíz said.

Last year, 34 people died making the trip. In 2004, 110 people, mostly Dominicans, were killed.

''A lot of times these yolas are basically homemade vessels which are delicate. Anything goes wrong, and that thing is going in the water.'' said U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Ricardo Castrodad.

Authorities said the smuggling operations are run by multimillion dollar criminal organizations in Santo Domingo, which hire the captains. Last year, the immigration agency convicted two Cubans and five Dominicans for immigrant smuggling. They were sentenced to a combined 75 years.

''I would never ever have left if I had known what it would be like,'' Iglesias said. "I would tell anyone considering it: Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it.''

Once they reach Mona Island, the Cubans turn themselves in to the handful of park rangers and biologists who stay there. Rangers have grown accustomed to bringing extra towels and shampoo for the refugees who land on their shores.

''They get here constantly talking about Fidel this and Fidel that,'' said Sgt. Carlos Cordero, the island's security supervisor. "They are surprised to see we are not like the Cuban or Dominican police, who go around stopping them, shooting at them and arresting them.''

Last week, Cordero encountered seven vessels.

'I remember when the guard said to us, 'Don't worry -- you are on free land,' '' Iglesias said. "What a relief those words were.''

The migrants usually spend a few days at a detention center in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, and are released to awaiting relatives or Cuban exile organizations in San Juan.

Both families interviewed this week in Puerto Rico moved on to Miami, courtesy of an exile organization in Puerto Rico that paid their airfare.

'BEST RESULT'

''The fear we went through was not easy,'' said Sosa, now staying at a Little Havana motel paid for by the Cuban-American National Foundation. "I suppose the bottom line is that the illusion for every Cuban is to leave -- for Haiti, Santo Domingo, China or wherever. For us, this was the best result: Santo Domingo to Puerto Rico to Miami.''

Judge signs off on visas in bridge repatriation case

A group of repatriated Cubans may soon return after a Miami federal judge signed off on a new agreement granting them visas. Cuban leader Fidel Castro will ultimately decide their future.

By Jay Weaver. jweaver@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sat, Mar. 18, 2006.

A Miami federal judge has agreed to a new deal between the U.S. government and the legal team for 14 repatriated Cubans so they can return to the United States in the wake of their disputed January landing on an old Florida Keys bridge.

U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno issued his decision late Thursday, but it remains up to Cuban leader Fidel Castro to decide whether to allow the migrants to leave the island.

The agreement -- citing ''the humanitarian value'' of resolving the dispute promptly -- requires the federal government to issue U.S. visas to the Cubans. But one migrant who made the journey, Lazaro Jesus Martinez Jimenez, won't be granted a visa because he has a criminal history.

In February, Moreno ordered the U.S. government to make arrangements for the repatriated Cubans to be brought back to the United States after the judge ruled they landed on U.S. soil when they reached an abandoned bridge in the Florida Keys.

The judge found the Cubans ''were removed to Cuba illegally'' in January after the U.S. Coast Guard wrongly concluded the old Seven Mile Bridge was not connected to the United States.

Moreno's decision marked the first time the government had been ordered to allow Cubans into the United States after they'd been repatriated to Cuba under the ''wet-foot, dry-foot'' immigration policy.

Moreno had given the government a March 30 deadline to consider the Cubans' eligibility to obtain the appropriate federal documents to enter the United States. But Castro remained the wild card.

Moreno's geographical finding was a critical point because under the government's decade-old policy, Cuban migrants who reach U.S. soil are allowed to stay and apply for residency, but those intercepted at sea are generally returned to Cuba.

The Keys bridge case exploded into a flash point for the exile community, which used it to confront the Bush administration's interpretation of the controversial policy.

The judge's finding only affected the Cubans who reached the old Seven Mile Bridge -- not the government's overall wet-foot, dry-foot policy, adopted by the Clinton administration after a 1994 rafter exodus.

Moreno's latest ruling means his earlier order is vacated. As part of the deal, the U.S. Attorney's Office agreed not to appeal that decision, which could have brought more legal scrutiny to the wet-foot, dry-foot policy.

But in the deal reached this week, both sides still agreed to disagree on the judge's original finding about the old Keys bridge.

Embargo law due for a tweak, says an author

Ten years later, the U.S. government's reluctance to apply the Helms-Burton Act continues, as does the debate over the anti-Castro law.

By Pablo Bachelet, pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sat, Mar. 18, 2006.

WASHINGTON - Ten years after the controversial Helms-Burton Act tightened the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, one of its staunchest supporters now says that some of its key passages may need to be changed.

Back in 1996, President Clinton signed the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act, which provided support for Cuban dissidents and threatened lawsuits against foreigners who invested in Cuban properties seized from U.S. subjects and businesses.

It also detailed what Cuba needed to do before the embargo could be lifted: for instance, when a transition government would have to hold elections -- within 18 months -- and who could head that government, not Fidel Castro or his brother Raúl.

Miami Republican Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, who drafted parts of the law, said he's generally pleased with Helms-Burton because it took key elements of Cuba policy out of the president's hands and thereby allowed the embargo "to survive the second four years of the Clinton administration.''

But the law also contains unnecessary provisions, he added. ''Legislating is never a pretty process,'' he told The Miami Herald.

CONDITIONS

Díaz-Balart says he favors paring the conditions for lifting the embargo to three: Cuba must free all political prisoners and allow exiles to return, opposition political parties must be legalized, and the government must declare it will hold democratic elections "in six months, one year, two years, three years.''

And what about the rest of Helms-Burton, including the clause that bars Fidel or Raúl Castro from heading a transition government? Díaz-Balart makes it clear that if Raúl met the three conditions, he would deal with Raúl.

''That's what I call static,'' Díaz-Balart said. "I don't care what the name is. The [real] name is legitimacy.''

If required, Helms-Burton could be changed ''in 72 hours'' to make it easier to lift the embargo, he added.

The Castro brothers have given no sign that they would consider Díaz-Balart's proposals for change. But his remarks nevertheless have raised some eyebrows among Cuba observers.

Tomas Bilbao, executive director of the Cuba Study Group, made up of moderate exiles who back a peaceful transition in Cuba, said Díaz-Balart's statements were "a smart change in focus.''

''The congressman recognizes that the all-or-nothing approach [in Helms-Burton] is an impediment to bringing about a change,'' said Bilbao, director of operations for Florida Republican Sen. Mel Martínez's 2003 campaign.

Clinton signed the controversial Helms-Burton bill in 1996 amid the indignation that followed the shootdown by Cuban MiGs just weeks before of two small planes flown by the Miami-based Brothers to the Rescue. Four men were killed.

Critics of the law say it limits the role the U.S. government can play in Cuba after Castro.

''Giving people reason to believe that the United States sees itself as the ultimate arbiter of what happens in Cuba, which government is good or bad, which government is acceptable or not, which one is democratic or not . . . undermines the objective of the U.S. playing a positive role in promoting a peaceful democratic transition in Cuba,'' said Richard Nuccio, a Clinton White House advisor on Cuba.

LAW'S IMPACT

The Cuban government, which has attacked the provisions as a galling example of U.S. interventionism, estimates that Helms-Burton has cost the island $82 billion in potential investments. But it also oddly claimed that the government weathered the law's impacts. The law was passed when Cuba was opening itself up to foreign investments for the first time since the 1950s.

''They tried to score a home run on us, and we split their bat,'' the newspaper Juventud Rebelde said on its front page on March 12, when Helms-Burton turned 10 years old.

Many in the Cuban-American community still back the legislation, largely drafted by Roger Noriega and Dan Fisk, then respectively aides to Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Rep. Dan Brown of Indiana, both Republicans.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Miami Republican, said the law put an economic stranglehold on Castro, brought new attention to rights abuses in the island and "provided help for human rights activists and pro-democracy forces in Cuba.''

Helms-Burton also generated international protests because it extended the reach of U.S. courts. Its Title III, which lets U.S. residents use U.S. courts to sue foreigners who invest in confiscated U.S. properties in Cuba, has been consistently waived by both the Clinton and Bush administration.

Title IV, which strips executives and owners of foreign companies that invest in Cuba of their U.S. visas, has been selectively used, much to the irritation of Cuban-American lobbyists. The State Department has taken away visas, or threatened to do so, of Canadian, Mexican and Jamaican investors, but not of the more powerful Europeans.

Cuban roots: One man's genealogical journey grows into a project to save other family histories

By Ana Veciana-Suarez, aveciana-suarez@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sat, Mar. 18, 2006.

It began, as many things do, with a personal search.

In 1976, Jorge Piñon, then an oil executive, wanted to know more about his Cuban-American family's history, so he began doing research and asking questions of his parents. Now, 30 years later, Piñon has amassed a genealogical chart that dates to the 1600s and has put together an informative how-to book that can help others do the same.

He is also helping to launch the Cuban Family History and Genealogy Project at the Institute of Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) at the University of Miami, where he is now a research associate. The project will include seminars and workshops to help Cuban Americans sift through civil and church archives in Cuba and Spain.

'During our teenage years we hear our parents' tales, but we don't really listen,'' he says. "We're not interested in the old man's stories. But there comes a time in our lives when we begin asking ourselves questions: Who am I? Where do I come from?''

For Piñon, the project is as much about a personal mission as about historical preservation. The obituary page was his inspiration.

''I kept reading these notices every day,'' says Piñon, pointing to the death notices in the Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald "and I realized that we were losing an important part of who we are as a community. What are their stories? What can they tell us about how they lived and what they went through?''

Though we live in a digital era where recording a moment in history is as easy as flipping a cellphone, Piñon, nonetheless, worries about the legacy we are leaving our children. Few of us keep diaries as our ancestors did, and fewer still actually write letters, an important fountain of information for future historians.

''I'm hard pressed to think of a time when I wrote any of my children a letter,'' says Piñon, father of four adult children. "We live in a world of fast communication and technology. We call and we send e-mails. So how do we capture our experiences to leave behind as a legacy?''

The genealogy project, he adds, will do this through an outreach program to teach people how to document, in oral and narrative form, a family's history, stories, rituals and customs. Workshops are scheduled later this year at Miami-Dade's public libraries and at the Little Havana Activity and Nutrition Centers.

THREE TARGETS

It is aimed at three generations: the abuelitos who have most of the history stored in memory, the children who are interested in the information but don't know how to go about gathering it, and the grandchildren who may take for granted the time they have left with older relatives.

Piñon hopes that his own experience -- the disinterested teenager who grew up to be a middle-age genealogy buff -- will encourage others to collect not only the names and birth and death dates of their ancestors but track down the family lore as well.

''Genealogy, the facts you get from documents, is really only the skeleton,'' he explains. "The stories of why and how are the heart and the muscle and the tendons. That's why it's so important to talk to relatives, to find the letters and photos of the abuelitos and ask them questions about it.''

Piñon arrived here from Cuba in 1960, as a 12-year-old who was regaled with stories of the island. After graduating from college, he began working for the oil industry and moving his young family around for different postings. By the time he returned to Miami about three years ago, he figured it was moving into his 14th house. ''We were like gypsies,'' he quips.

But during those wanderings, something happened that would change his perception of who he was and how his parents had weathered exile from Cuba. Stationed in New Orleans, he remembered that his mother had told him that his great-grandmother had been born in that city to parents of English and Scottish descent. Suddenly, what he had once dismissed as ''tall tales'' became pertinent information.

So he called his parents in Miami and got some sketchy details. Then he sent off a form letter to families in the New Orleans area who bore the same family name, Waugh. Two months later, he heard back from a man: "I think we're cousins.''

That initial contact led to a visit and a search through the attic, where letters from Piñon's grandmother in Cuba to her cousins were stored. The letters proved not only invaluable but also fascinating, and they recounted quotidian details of life in Cuba during the 1920s, including a devastating Caribbean hurricane in 1923 and his mother's asthma.

''I knew I had found a treasure,'' Piñon recalls. "That's when the genealogy bug bit me.''

The bug actually became a part-time job as he tracked his great-grandmother Isabella Waugh's temporary move to Cuba with her parents and siblings during the Civil War and then her eventual meeting and marriage to Ezequiel Torres, a Spaniard, in 1877. Slowly he built up an impressive collection of documents that fleshed out the ''tall tales'' that his mother had once told. For example, Isabella's father, Robert Waugh Scott, was killed during a scrimmage between the Spanish army and the Cuban rebels during the Ten Year War in January 1877, while working for a wealthy sugar baron in Cuba. Piñon found the death notice in The New Orleans Times-Picayane.

'GENEALOGY 101'

Piñon eventually used his own experience to write Research Guide to Cuban Family History and Genealogy. Though directed at Cuban-Americans, the first part of the book, written in English, can also serve as a primer for other ethnic groups interested in tracing their family's history since it lists various websites and research tomes. It recounts how researching surnames' etymology can narrow down ancestors' geographic origins, explains the meaning of a family coat of arms and, perhaps more important, provides basic tips on how to get started. Piñon describes the first few pages as "Genealogy 101.''

The final two-thirds of the book, in Spanish, lists Cuba's national archives and libraries, a guide to provincial and municipal governments on the island and government archives, church libraries and provincial offices in Spain.

This, Piñon admits, is just a starting point, and he warns that it takes a certain amount of perseverance to truly dig into the past. ''The key to getting documents in Cuba is to establish contact with the parish priest because that's where the records are,'' he explains. "The civil registry didn't start until the 1900s. The problem you find, of course, is that there are fewer priests and they're short-handed.''

For immediate gratification, he recommends neophyte genealogists begin with their immediate family by interviewing relatives, recording key life events and experiences and -- as he did -- searching for document boxes gathering dust in someone's attic or closet.

''As Cuban Americans, we're very good at preserving Cuban history in general -- our music, our food and our politics,'' Piñon says. "But do we know who abuelito is? Do we know how abuelito and abuelita met? I tell people to start with their parents, with their own lives. Work as much as you can with today.''

Lensman's lyrical trip in Cuban countryside

By Elisa Turner, elisaturn@aol.com. Posted on Thu, Mar. 16, 2006.

Orchestrating shades that range from velvet black to silvery pewter to egret-feather white, Florida photographer Clyde Butcher bucks the bias for color photography by shooting grand views in black and white.

His current show at Art + Gallery, Florida and the Cuban Expeditions, takes us back to the days of superb black-and-white landscape photography by Ansel Adams in the 1930s and 1940s. Adams is revered for his majestic scenes of wilderness in the American West.

Both photographers are known for their environmental concerns. Butcher has applied Adams' illustrious example to his own well-known scenes of Florida's endangered natural landscape, especially the Everglades.

He shows us scenes of glinting wetlands, lacy stretches of cypress strands, and cottony mountains of cumulus clouds. Sometimes he treads too close to his famous predecessor.

In the show at Art +, it's not hard to see Butcher's Moonrise, Big Cypress National Preserve as a rip-off of Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico of 1941. The artist may argue that this work is really a homage to Adams. The heart of this show are photographs that give us many views of rural Cuba, in images that aren't as well known as his scenes of Florida. These show us forests, rivers, fields and mountains of Cuba's countryside. It's a view of Cuba that takes us miles beyond clichéd shots of vintage American cars crowding streets in Old Havana.

These are images of a Cuban landscape that Butcher shot in 2002 and 2003. At that time, he was asked to photograph Cuba by the country's U.N. ambassador, Luis Gomez-Echeverri, and Naples businessman John Parke Wright IV. The request coincided with the United Nations declaring 2002 as The International Year of Mountains.

Butcher attended an environmental conference on mountainous habitats, held in the Sierra Maestra mountains of eastern Cuba. It was a meeting to draw conservationists from the Americas and the Caribbean.

Just as Adams helped people understand the raw beauty of the American West, so Butcher gives us a lyrical view of Cuba's natural treasures. He captures the silvery, silken stream of plunging waterfalls in Salto el Rocio. In Caballete de Casa (A House Easel) he shows a panorama of mountains rising from fields, dusted with clouds and seen through a scattering of royal palms' slender trunks.

The filigree of a tree fern becomes a self-conscious, fan-shaped focal point in Ancient Tree Fern, a work that shows how the over-zealous Butcher can occasionally slip from the grand to grandiose.

Cuban team doctor manages to stay in game

Cuba's team doctor once dreamed of playing baseball, but his father -- Fidel Castro -- had other ideas for his future. Today, he serves his country and the game he loves.

By Kevin Baxter, kbaxter@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Mon, Mar. 13, 2006.

SAN JUAN - The boy wanted to be a baseball player. And he showed some promise at it, too, starting at third base for his college squad while prepping for a shot at Cuba's powerful national team.

''He was a decent player at the university level,'' said Fernando Arango, coordinator of Latin American scouting for the Milwaukee Brewers. "He wasn't bad.''

But the boy's father wanted him to be a doctor. And when your dad is Fidel Castro, it's probably a good idea to do what his says. Especially when the two choices he gives you are entering medical school or entering the Cuban army to go fight in Angola.

''Baseball,'' Arango said with a chuckle, "wasn't an option.''

So Antonio Castro SotodelValle became an orthopedic surgeon -- then would end up making Cuba's national team anyway, as the team doctor.

''I'm very satisfied with what I've done,'' Castro said Sunday, standing in the tunnel leading from the dugout to the team clubhouse minutes before Cuba's second-round game in the World Baseball Classic. "No matter what your profession, to be the doctor or to just work with the national team of your country, for a sport that means so much, that's something to be proud of.''

Castro, 37, is one of five sons born to the Cuban president and Dalia SotodelValle, a former schoolteacher and his wife of more than 30 years. But because Fidel Castro has insisted his family stay out of view, Antonio -- or Tony to the players -- is the only one of the five with a visible public job.

A staff physician at an orthopedic hospital in Havana, Castro was added to the national team's medical staff six years ago and has worked multisport events such as the 2003 Pan American Games and the 2004 Athens Olympics as well as with the baseball team.

And though the Cubans don't advertise his presence, they don't keep him hidden either -- not that they could, anyway.

Dressed Sunday in the same khaki pants and red polo shirt as the other team doctors, Castro stands out nonetheless, his self-deprecating sense of humor and ready smile offering a stark contrast to dour seriousness enveloping the rest of the 65-person Cuban delegation.

In San Juan, Castro has signed autographs -- making him perhaps the only team doctor ever asked for an autograph -- and bantered with fans before games. Sunday he was often the first man off the Cuban bench to congratulate players as they came off the field, wrapping an arm around pitcher Yadel Marti when he was pulled from the game in the fifth inning, then high-fiving team captain Eduardo Paret after he scored a sixth-inning run.

The cheerleading, he explained, was not just the team, but for his country as well. Which is the same way he approaches his job.

''I am a child of Cuba, a product of our system. A product formed by the revolution and by the country,'' he said. "And this team is from the country, from the revolution.

"For the Cuban people there's nothing separated, there's nothing personal.''

Aging band dreams of revolt

Militants vow to help a Cuban insurrection, but a new poll shows that most Cuban Americans don't support them.

By Oscar Corral, ocorral@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sat, Mar. 11, 2006.

Bombs and assassination attempts, guns and raids defined the struggle for a free Cuba for decades to small groups of Cuban exiles who thought politics and embargoes would get them nowhere.

Today, their numbers ravaged by death, old age and even apathy, the old militants are trying to kickstart La Causa one last time. Recently, a few Cuban exiles, mostly in their 60s and 70s, held a news conference to vow support for an insurrection in Cuba and to aid it through any means necessary. At least one of the men has since pulled out, calling the talk about violence "stupidity.''

Thirteen years ago, an exile-led insurgency on the island would have been welcome by almost three of every four Cuban exiles in South Florida. But today, fighting words ring hollow to the vast majority of Cuban Americans.

A new poll, skewed toward older Cuban exiles, no less, finds that only one-third of South Florida's Cubans support a U.S. military strike on the island.

The militant cause has seen several of its leaders jailed or die. Andres Nazario Sargen, leader of Alpha 66, died in 2004. Luis Posada Carriles was detained by the federal government in Miami, and his biggest supporter, Santiago Alvarez, is facing federal weapons charges.

Yet the handful of mostly retirement-age men who met recently at the Municipios de Cuba building in Little Havana to call for an insurgency on the island say they aren't giving up.

''As a Cuban, I support any attempt to overthrow the tyrannical government Castro has put there,'' said Jose Dionisio Suárez, who served seven years in prison for his role in the assassination of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in the 1970s.

The FBI's Miami office is unaware of any plans by these men to support a Cuban-led insurrection, said FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela.

A new poll shows that one-third of South Florida's Cubans still hold out hope for a U.S. military invasion of the communist island. When asked what action they would like to see the U.S. government pursue ''to bring about a free and democratic Cuba,'' 33 percent chose ''military strike to eliminate the dictator;'' 30 percent chose ''tightening the embargo;'' and 7 percent said ''increasing support to dissidents,'' among other choices.

Rob Daves, vice president and president-elect of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, said he would be cautious about drawing conclusions from the results.

''The questions and response categories do have some words with social baggage attached to them,'' he said, referring specifically to words such as ''dictator,'' ''free'' and ''democratic,'' which have strong negative and positive social connotations attached to them.

One of the researchers, Jessica Lavariega Monforti, a political science professor at the University of Texas-Pan American said the wording used in her poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points, is consistent with how the community refers to issues.

The poll, funded mostly by the University of California system, interviewed 600 Cubans and Cuban-Americans from Miami-Dade County in mid-February. Almost nine in 10 are registered voters, and 47 percent of the voters polled said they were 60 or older.

Nevertheless, the survey shows that support for a military strike has dropped drastically since 1993, when a poll conducted by Florida International University found that 73 percent of South Florida Cubans favored military action by exiles and 60 percent supported a U.S. military strike.

Many exile leaders today denounce militancy against Castro, saying other means must be employed.

''We are totally committed to nonviolence, and we think it's the only way to go,'' said Carlos Saladrigas, chairman of the Cuba Study Group, adding that he supports Cubans on the island who resist human rights abuses through civil disobedience.

Likewise, Alfredo Mesa, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, denounced the insurgency strategy, saying such announcements can reflect badly on the whole exile community.

''It's very easy to announce these things when you are living outside of Cuba, but it's the wrong message at the wrong time. And it's very unfortunate,'' Mesa said. "I don't question their love for Cuba, but I call to question their judgment.''

Tony Calatayud, a conservative Spanish-language radio show host who signed the statement backing insurrection, said the committee was formed to continue the ''belligerence'' against Fidel Castro's regime.

''We ask our brothers on the island to rise up and rebel in their country and liquidate the tyranny,'' Calatayud said.

Another co-signer, Tony Esquivel, said an insurrection is already afoot on the island.

A few days after the meeting, however, Esquivel said his group, Revolutionary Recovery Movement, withdrew from the effort because members disagreed with the means to promote change. ''We can't get involved in that stupidity,'' Esquivel said. "You don't say those things from American territory.''

Of all the groups that signed, perhaps none of them troubles the Cuban government more than Commandos F-4, which has been denounced often by the Cuban government for acts of terror. The group's leader, Rodolfo Frometa, said the commandos have already infiltrated Cuba.

He said members of his group have conducted various acts of sabotage over the past several years, including posting anti-Castro pamphlets on the island, blowing up buses, and an attempted assassination of Juan Pablo Roque, a Cuban under indictment in the United States for allegedly infiltrating the organization Brothers to the Rescue.

The Cuban Interests Section in Washington did not respond to requests for an interview.

Frometa, who served time in a U.S. prison in the 1990s for trying to buy surface-to-air missiles, hired a cameraman recently to videotape Commandos F-4 simulating the capture of Fidel and Raul Castro. In the video, which Frometa said was shot in South Florida, about a dozen commandos dressed in fatigues and wielding semi-automatic weapons can be seen storming a shack, where men dressed to look like the Castro brothers are captured.

In the last scene of the 15-minute video, Frometa yells at the Fidel Castro look-alike, calling him ''dog'' and asking him why he killed Frometa's son and brother. As Frometa played the video for a Herald reporter, he smiled in triumph as Castro's character kneels in defeat before him.

''Castro says I'm the biggest terrorist in the United States,'' Frometa said. "But if one day I have to go to prison or be killed for a free Cuba, it's well worth it.''

Martinez calls Cuba policy 'immoral,' urges changes

Sen. Mel Martinez proposed bringing Cuban migrants to land before determining asylum claims.

By Oscar Corral, ocorral@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sat, Mar. 11, 2006.

As the Bush administration reviews the controversial wet-foot, dry-foot policy, U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez said Friday the best solution would be to bring all Cuban migrants to land and then determine if they can migrate to the United States or go back to the island.

''You bring them to land . . . everybody's dry-foot, and then you deal with them in a fair and open way,'' Martinez said at a news conference at the Biltmore Hotel. "I think that the human rights violations that are seen in Cuba make it immoral for us to be repatriating Cubans the way we are doing now.''

It's crucial for the government to undertake reforms to U.S.-Cuba migration policy to make it more humanitarian and to serve the interests of the United States, he said. The United States should avoid another embarrassing Cuba migration episode, he said, such as the one that took place in January when 15 Cuban migrants found on an old bridge in the Florida Keys were sent back to Cuba because the Coast Guard decided that the unattached bridge did not constitute dry land.

''There has to be a solution to the problem,'' he said.

The Cubans should be brought on shore so that they can have access to some legal representation, Martinez said, because "it's just not working on the high seas.''

Martinez had just attended a closed-door meeting with other Miami politicians and leaders on immigration reform.

Martinez was invited to, but was not able to attend, a meeting earlier this week in Washington between Bush administration officials and Cuban-American representatives to discuss ways to reform the controversial wet-foot, dry-foot policy.

Miami Herald staff writer Alfonso Chardy contributed to this report.

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