Published Sunday, May 14, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Ceremony set to honor Elian's mom
Dozens of mothers and their children will dress in black and hold hands as they throw roses into a makeshift raft they will set adrift this afternoon in honor of Elisabeth Brotons, mother to Elian Gonzalez, the rafter boy plucked from the sea last Thanksgiving.
Brotons and 10 others died on the ill-fated voyage that brought Elian, 6, to the United States from Cuba.
``It's for her and all the mothers that have died for freedom. Not only Cuban mothers, but every mother that has died for freedom,'' said Ana Rodriguez, 35, a mother of three girls who lives in Westchester.
A prayer service will begin at 2 p.m. by the sea wall behind Ermita de la Caridad Catholic Church, 3609 S. Miami Ave. Afterward, roses of every color will be thrown into a raft the Rodriguez family and her daughters' friends built to the specifications suggested by a rafter who made a trip
similar to Brotons'.
``We inflated three inner tubes and roped them together and then put a net over them. We did it exactly how he told us he came,'' Rodriguez said.
``We're hoping that it's an event people take seriously. It's a very sad moment.''
The idea sprouted when Rodriguez and women she knew via the Internet began talking about the Elian case and how they could do something for his mother on Mother's Day.
Cuba Embargo May Be Eased. Farmers press Congress to allow sale of food, medicine; exiles oppose plan
Ana Radelat. Special to The Herald
WASHINGTON -- A political alliance between U.S. farmers and traditional opponents of the economic embargo on Cuba may be on the verge of persuading Congress to end restrictions on the sale of food and medicine to the government of Fidel Castro.
Since it was imposed by President John F. Kennedy in 1962, the embargo has become one of the most enduring artifacts of the Cold War, surviving repeated efforts to end it or create loopholes.
But this time, farm-state lawmakers are confident that a shift in the political landscape could bring about what was once unimaginable.
The change is typified by Democratic Rep. Charles Stenholm of Texas, the ranking minority member of the Agriculture Committee and a well-known House conservative. After leading a delegation of his state's farmers to Cuba in April, he declared that restrictions on agricultural sales don't affect
Castro.
''We're hurting the Cuban people and American producers,'' he contended.
Provisions that would exempt food and medicine sales from trade embargoes are contained in farm spending bills that have been approved by committees in both the House and Senate. The exemptions would apply to Cuba and other nations on the State Department's terrorist list, including Iran, Libya,
Sudan and North Korea.
The legislation, which the House hopes to vote on this week, also prohibits the president from including a ban on the sale of food and medicine in future sanctions packages.
Opponents, led by the Cuban American National Foundation, warn that approval would bolster Castro's government and eventually lead to the end of the embargo.
Moreover, Emilio Vazquez, deputy director of the foundation's Washington office, insisted that Castro would use U.S. food imports as a ''weapon against his own people,'' by withholding food from those who don't support him.
INTERESTS COINCIDE
But the campaign to end restrictions, which has been vulnerable to such arguments in the past, is bolstered by a variety of factors, including the unusual convergence of interests between conservative farm organizations and farm-state lawmakers, on the one hand, and the traditional anti-embargo
lobby.
That lobby consists of liberal church and advocacy groups and liberal Democrats like Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn.
In addition, the Clinton administration has fostered a favorable political climate by maintaining anti-Castro policies but at the same time making some allowances for humanitarian trade and cultural exchanges as part of a policy designed to promote close contact with ordinary Cubans.
Moreover, the staunchest defenders of the long-standing U.S. embargo against Cuba have been battered by their fight over Elian Gonzalez, which has elicited little support among both the general public and Capitol Hill lawmakers.
The anti-sanctions campaign, which has been promoted by U.S. agribusinesses that hope for new, profitable markets in Cuba and other nations, scored a major victory last week when House Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, was unable to persuade fellow Republicans to strip the legislation from the House farm
bill.
SPLIT ALLEGIANCE
Even though many consider DeLay the most powerful member of the House, 15 Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee joined Democrats to defeat DeLay's motion by a vote of 35-24.
At the behest of Cuban-American lawmakers like Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., the powerful GOP leader was able to block similar legislation last year, but the recent vote in the Appropriations Committee does not bode well for supporters of the embargo.
DeLay was also abandoned by many of his GOP colleagues when he tried to win support for a bill that would give Elian citizenship and when he tried to create momentum for hearings on the Justice Department's armed raid that removed the Cuban castaway from the home of his Miami relatives.
Mary Kay Thatcher, a lobbyist for the American Farm Bureau Federation, said she was surprised at the level of support for the anti-sanctions measure. ''Before the vote, I would have never told you that we were that strong,'' Thatcher said. ''I was ecstatic, skipping down the hall.''
Senate support for the anti-sanctions drive is even stronger, especially since Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., a longtime embargo supporter, capitulated to the wishes of fellow farm-state Republicans -- such as John Ashcroft of Missouri and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska -- who led the anti-sanctions
campaign in that chamber.
SENATOR'S CONDITIONS
In order to allow the legislation to move in the Senate, Helms insisted on a few conditions, among them that food sales to Cuba and other terrorist list nations be reviewed on a case-by-case basis by the administration and that no government financing could be used in the sales.
Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., the House sponsor of the food and medicine proposal, adopted the same restrictions in the belief this would speed the legislation through the House.
''We wanted to have a bill . . . and a bill that could pass,'' he said.
Nethercutt said there is momentum behind his bill because ''there's a new reflection on the validity of sanctions as an effective foreign policy tool.''
In addition, the Republican said, in post-Cold War America, attitudes about Cuba are changing.
''People are thinking more about American interests rather than what's bad for Castro,'' Nethercutt said.
WHAT CUBA WANTS
Cuba says it buys nearly $1 billion worth of imported food each year, mostly from Canada and Europe, and would like to trade with the United States instead to save shipping costs.
Thatcher of the American Farm Bureau said the farmers' campaign may have also been helped by the media's intense focus on the bitter custody fight over Elian Gonzalez, which brought attention to economic hardships suffered by Cuban people.
''A lot of people have now seen what Cuba looks like,'' she said.
Nevertheless, Diaz-Balart and other advocates of a hard line toward Cuba have vowed to continue to fight any move toward easing the embargo.
DeLay and Diaz-Balart hope to block the measure in the House Rules Committee, which controls the flow of bills that go to the House floor.
''We don't think the fight is over,'' Steve Vermillion, an aide to Diaz-Balart, said. ''This is a choice between providing help to terrorist governments or not. . . . This is about dismantling the embargo unilaterally, without any concessions from Castro.''
Business finds an easy niche in Little Havana
By Marika Lynch. mlynch@herald.com
It was a twist of fate, divine providence via the Yellow Pages. When she stops to think about it, Virginia Haskin can't remember how, or when, or why the phone book started listing her Little Havana shop as La Casa de las Banderas, Spanish for House of Flags.
But the name stuck. And it has been good for business, especially in these days of pride and protest. Especially when the shop is four blocks from the home of Elian Gonzalez's Miami relatives.
''Our rear ends are on the ground. We're waiting a day or two to lift ourselves up,'' Haskin said at the shop also known as the Flag Center.
The counter-top store not much wider than two parking spaces was packed for weeks, at the peak of street demonstrations, selling 500 flags a day. Postcard-sized ones for 45 cents that fit in a purse, shop-sewn ones measuring 6 by 10 feet for $102. They sold out and sold out again.
''They were practically buying our underwear,'' Haskin said.
Three generations of Haskins worked the counter, from 82-year-old Virginia to her 11-year-old granddaughter, Victoria, on the register. Five seamstresses in the back workshop cut red and blue stripes from spools of nylon and sewed nonstop. There was a lot of sign language.
Haskin's Spanish skills don't much surpass the phrase un poquito, which means ''a little.''
The business dates to 1948, when Virginia Haskin and her now deceased husband, Clare, opened their first shop. This was before Little Havana was Little Havana, when their corner of Southwest First Street was a shopping district ''off downtown.'' This was Miami B.C. -- before Castro.
STARTING BUSINESS
The Haskins started in the business of bunting, decorating convention halls from Miami to Michigan, sticking red push pins into a map of the United States to mark their projects.
Decorating streets was another specialty. When Jamaica won independence from England, the Haskins decorated lampposts from Kingston to Montego Bay.
Their banners were strung through 45 miles of Havana in 1959 -- when Castro was in power, but had not yet declared himself a communist, the family is quick to point out -- to welcome an international tourism convention.
The family business evolved into flags a year later, when Clare Haskin bought a Union Special sewing machine he named Betsy, moved into their current location at 2187 SW First St., and hung an American flag out front.
The shop now relies largely on selling custom flags to high schools, home builders and businesses such as the Seaquarium. But many of the flags stay in the neighborhood, on front lawns, buried six deep at local cemeteries, or flying among the palm trees at La Plaza de La Cubanidad on Flagler
Street and West 17th Avenue.
''La Casa de las Banderas, I've been buying flags there for 25 years,'' said Gerardo Rosales, a member of Cuban exile group Alpha 66. The flags are good quality at a good price, he said, and it's near group headquarters.
LOYAL CLIENTELE
The location also has helped cull a loyal clientele, said Cindy Zoeller, Haskin's daughter, who helps her run the store. ''Cuban customers make better flag customers than Americans,'' Zoeller said. ''They care a lot about their flag. They talk about it more. We take ours more for granted.''
The tension surrounding the fate of Elian, the 6-year-old boy in the midst of an international custody battle, has not escaped the shop. A few customers left in protest after the shopkeepers shared their opinions on Elian's plight. One caller last week hung up the phone after realizing Haskin
doesn't speak Spanish, she said. But the shop owner says she has a few things to be proud of throughout the saga.
TENSE POLITICS
When Miami politics grew tense, Haskin turned down a request to print a flag with a portrait of a crowned Miami Mayor Joe Carollo that read ''República de Miami.'' The store also stopped selling the Confederate flag, which is popular with German tourists who see it as a symbol of
rebellion, Zoeller said. ''We thought it would cause ill will,'' she said.
Now, in the lull in the legal battle, the seamstresses replenish the stock in the workshop, sewing Cuban flags and others from Colombia, Nicaragua and Puerto Rico for those who marched in solidarity with the exile community.
The only flag they don't sew is the American one.
Haskin orders those from a factory in Roseland, N.J. Sewing the Stars and Stripes, she said, is just too complicated.
Cuban group arrives in Keys
Ten Cuban migrants made their way to the Keys early Saturday.
Nine men and a woman landed in Long Key, off Islamorada, at about 9:30 a.m.
The migrants, whose ages ranged from 26 to 39, left Villa Clara in a 19-foot wooden boat three or four days ago, said Joseph Mellia, U.S. Border Patrol spokesman.
``They said they all purchased the boat cooperatively,'' Mellia said.
He added that he did not suspect smuggling because their stories did not conflict.
All the migrants were in good condition and were taken to the Pembroke Pines Border Patrol station and transferred to Krome Detention Center for a medical screening.
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