Published Tuesday, June 6, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Radio host addresses Cuban matters in English
Bettina Rodríguez-Aguilera sauntered into the offices of Cadena Azul at 8:31 on a recent Friday morning, which would hardly be worth noting if not for the fact that Rodríguez-Aguilera's daily radio show starts at 8:30.
But then a cavalier attitude toward punctuality isn't the only thing that makes her program unique. There's also the total disregard for standard formatics, for example -- not once during her half-hour show did Rodríguez-Aguilera mention the station's call letters or dial position. (For
the record, it's WRHC-AM [1560].) And after repeatedly asking listeners to phone in, she had to be reminded there were callers waiting on the line.
National Public Radio it isn't -- which is fine with Rodríguez-Aguilera because it's what the show is that really matters to her. After all, when you're host of one of the nation's few English-language radio program devoted entirely to Cuba, mundane things like station identification
aren't foremost in your mind.
``The main issue of the show is the education and information that is going out,'' Rodríguez-Aguilera says. ``It's important to educate fellow Americans on the reality of what's happening down there. And that's basically what we're trying to do.''
The weekday morning program, Cuba Today, is produced by Nueva Generación Cuba (New Generation Cuba), a 6-month-old nonprofit group of architects, professors and other professionals dedicated to educating mainstream America about Cuba and the plight of Cuban exiles. The organization,
headed by Rodríguez-Aguilera, buys its broadcast time from Jorge Rodríguez, the owner of WRHC and sister station WWFE-AM (670).
The program -- which competes with Francisco Aruca's English-language Cuba program, Babel's Guide on WAXY-AM (790) -- is on at 8 a.m. Monday through Friday, debuted just two weeks after Elián González was taken by force from the home of his Little Havana relatives, exposing the
huge chasm separating many Cuban Americans from their Anglo and African-American neighbors -- and highlighting the need for understanding among South Florida's three largest ethnic groups.
``The strife that we've seen in the community, all these tensions, I would go as far as to say that 75 percent of them are because of a lack of education and information of the reality of what's really going on [in Cuba],'' Rodríguez-Aguilera says. And while she says that ignorance
resides primarily in the Anglo and African-American communities, she says the blame for that lies largely with her fellow Cubans' inability -- or unwillingness -- to correct misperceptions earlier.
``If somebody could be at fault, we are,'' she says. ``Maybe it's because we didn't have the [command of] English yet. Or we didn't understand the system. But this is the time.''
Rodríguez, the station owner and a former director of the influential Cuban American National Foundation, agrees.
``We've committed some errors,'' he says. While CANF was ``something fantastic'' for lobbying politicians in Washington, Rodríguez says ``we didn't work well except for the lobby. We didn't work on the conscience of the American people.''
FULFILLING MISSION
Born in Cuba but raised in the United States, Rodríguez-Aguilera seems perfectly suited to correcting that oversight.
The daughter of a wealthy businessman, Rodríguez-Aguilera left her homeland for the last time when she was just 2 1/2. Her father remained behind to sell some property, but wound up in a Cuban jail, sentenced to 20 years for refusing to join a neighborhood watch group.
He served 14 years before being released.
``I didn't see my father between the ages of 3 and 17,'' Rodríguez-Aguilera, 42, says bitterly.
She went on to become an international speaker and consultant respected enough to serve on a three-month U.S. government mission to Albania, where she lectured on democracy and leadership skills. She has delivered similar messages to groups in Bosnia, Lithuania, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Costa Rica
and Panama, while closer to home, she has hosted a number of informational radio and TV spots for local government entities.
``My children were born here. I was raised here. And yes, I feel Cuban because of my family and my father,'' Rodríguez-Aguilera says. ``But I also feel very American. I mean, this is it. I don't know anything else.''
WRHC isn't the ideal home for Cuba Today -- nor was it New Generation's first choice. For one thing, the station's audience is so small it doesn't even register on the quarterly Arbitron surveys of radio listenership. And secondly, the station broadcasts in Spanish -- meaning few
English-language listeners are likely to discover the show.
But South Florida's established English-language broadcasters were asking as much as seven times what WRHC wanted for 30 minutes of air time while offering program slots around midnight or on Saturdays, neither of which were acceptable. Besides, Radio Azul is in the process of changing its
morning programming to English, which should help boost Cuba Today's audience.
The ultimate goal, Rodríguez-Aguilera says, is to eventually take the show national. Already she has heard from people in Illinois, Texas and California.
``Maybe they can start understanding the pain of these Cubans that are protesting after 41 years,'' she says. ``That's a first step. We have to not only say that we're going to build bridges . . . but actually start crossing them, one way or the other. And really understanding . . . and being
able to listen to the differences of each other.
``Embracing the things that we do have alike is very important.''
Contemporary Cuba
By Suzanne Muchnic. Los Angeles Times Service
``We're going to be in the eye of the storm,'' said Gregorio Luke, director of the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, Calif.
Maybe so, maybe not. But the museum's current exhibition, Contemporary Art From Cuba: Irony and Survival on the Utopian Island, has certainly arrived at a moment when all things Cuban seem newsworthy.
The exhibition of 43 works by 19 artists has been traveling the country for two years, and it was booked at the Long Beach museum long before the fate of 6-year-old Cuban refugee Elián González became the subject of an impassioned international debate.
But this show, says Luke, is about culture, not communism.
``This couldn't be farther from an official exhibition,'' Luke said, looking over plans for the installation at the museum. ``Presenting the show has nothing to do with politics; it's about our mission. I think it's very important to talk about the culture of Cuba. You can't be a Latin American
art museum today that ignores some of the best art produced in the Americas. Cuban art deserves to be seen.''
Contemporary Art From Cuba -- which opened May 20 and will run through Sept. 10 -- was organized by Marilyn Zeitlin, a 1959 graduate of Miami Beach High School and currently director of the Arizona State University Art Museum in Tempe, where the show opened in the fall of 1998.
After Long Beach, the exhibition will appear at the University of California, Santa Barbara's University Art Museum (Oct. 20-Dec. 16) and at the Spencer Art Museum at the University of Kansas in Lawrence (January-March 2001). There are no plans to bring the show to Miami but it will appear at
the University of South Florida in Tampa from May 11-July 14, 2001.
``We would have loved to see it go to Miami. And it was offered,'' says Zeitlin, who also considered taking the show to Key West but was unable to find a suitable venue. Negotiations to stage the exhibition in Miami faltered on a number of issues, but chief among them was politics.
``Of course that was the issue,'' Zeitlin says. ``And I think for good reason people are fearful of bringing work by Cuban artists that deal with the `special period' and current reality in Cuba.
``The people living in Miami have a different memory of Cuba. This work is about a very different Cuba.''
LANDMARK EXHIBIT
The traveling exhibit is a landmark, billed as ``the first major exhibition in the United States dedicated entirely to the work of the new generation of Cuban artists.''
Zeitlin first visited Cuba in 1978, then returned in 1996.
``I spent two weeks there and was knocked out by the work,'' she said. ``I was so impressed by the artists' creativity and imagination, and the humor and the bite of their work. And they were so highly skilled.
``There's this combination of intelligence and skill and something great to make the work about.''
Although the artists have had to struggle to survive, their experience has provided a rich supply of subject matter, she said. So Zeitlin decided there should be a major exhibition of the work she had seen -- and that she should be the one to organize it.Staging the exhibition involved
negotiating numerous obstacles because of the strained relations between the United States and Cuba. But despite ``the purported enmity,'' the United States has a strong presence in Cuba, which often turns up in Cuban contemporary art as ``an implied love-hate for everything American,'' she said.
One work she selected, Dreaming of Things American by Osvaldo Yero, merges the two countries' flags in a fractured image strewn with bits of American Pop art. A larger, much more poignant piece by Yero, Sea of Tears, will cover a 15-foot-wide gallery wall with 750 blue-glazed, cast porcelain
hands of Cuban artists.
Since rediscovering Cuba in 1996, Zeitlin has traveled there about 15 times. For the exhibition, she selected a varied assortment of works that deal with the theme of survival.
For Cuba, a wood sculpture by Fernando Rodríguez stationed at the entrance of the show in Long Beach, depicts a man pulling a train of miniature trailers loaded with ordinary household items and toiletries that are unavailable in Cuba. At the end of the exhibition, another large wood
sculpture, The Prophet by Carlos Estévez, depicts a giant male nude puppet.
With strings running from nails all over its body to rafters of the museum, the figure is hopelessly ensnared and controlled by unseen forces.
Between these two imposing pieces, visitors will find paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations that take a critical view of life in Cuba and portray clashes of ideals and cultures. About the only thing missing is dispassionate abstraction.
DREAM JOB
A native of Mexico, Luke started his U.S. career in diplomatic circles. He worked in Washington, D.C., during the late 1980s and early '90s as first secretary of the Mexican Embassy, then moved to Los Angeles, where he was Mexico's counselor for cultural affairs.
A tireless advocate of the arts and a frequent lecturer at the museum, Luke eventually took charge in January 1999.
``When Robert Gumbiner [the museum's founder and primary backer] asked me to be director, I didn't think twice,'' he said. ``I loved the energy of the place. This is a dream, not just for Mexico, but for all of Latin America.''
Having attended ``too many cocktail parties and accomplished too little'' as a diplomat, he is working harder than ever in Long Beach but says ``the challenges are good challenges.''
`CULTURAL ACTIVIST'
Calling himself ``a cultural activist'' who believes that ``culture can build bridges and bring us together,'' Luke said his goal is to create a different type of museum in Long Beach.
``We see ourselves in the service industry, so to speak. We take an integrated approach to culture,'' he said.
The Cuban show is definitely a special attraction, but it fits easily into ongoing programs. The artists, whose ages range from about 27 to 41, have had many opportunities to exhibit their work abroad since Zeitlin organized her exhibition. Some of them have become quite well-known in
contemporary art circles, but they have yet to achieve much of a presence in mainstream museums.
``There are a lot of opportunities in museums for the famous and the dead,'' Luke said. ``Most of our artists are alive. Many of them are well-known at home but not here.''
And that adds to the museum's challenge.
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald |