Published Wednesday, November 15, 2000, in the
Miami Herald
Foreigners in Cuba join in protest against embargo
HAVANA -- (AP) -- Thousands of foreigners from an array of countries --
including hundreds of Americans -- joined Fidel Castro on Tuesday to demand an
end to the 40-year-old U.S. trade embargo against the communist island.
Flags from Brazil, the African National Congress, New Zealand and other
countries and organizations fluttered above the crowd gathered outside the U.S.
Interests Section, the American mission here.
``If solidarity brought down apartheid, it can bring down the blockade!''
Rosamary Janches of South Africa declared to the cheers of other Cuba
sympathizers.
Americans carried a sign that read: ``End to the U.S. Blockade on Cuba --
Now.''
With loudspeakers blaring Cuba's folk song ``Guantanamera'' and a popular
ode to revolutionary icon Ernesto ``Che'' Guevara, the event at times seemed
more like a giant block party than a protest.
Castro, Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque and other high-ranking
members of the Cuban leadership assembled in the first row facing the stage in
the plaza, built during mass protests demanding the repatriation of 6-year-old
Elián González.
Daniel Ortega, the former Nicaraguan Sandinista guerrilla leader and
president, attended.
There was not a single U.S. flag in sight, despite the involvement of about
500 Americans.
Although Cuba's leaders apparently placed much importance on the event, it
was the first such mass gathering not to be broadcast live on state television
and radio.
The crowd of about 8,000 was divided among more than 4,000 foreigners in
town for a solidarity conference, and 4,000 Cuban and other Latin American
students who attend classes on the island.
Citizens from 120 countries were in Havana for the World Encounter of
Friendship and Solidarity with Cuba, which opened Friday and ended Tuesday.
U.S. sanctions against Cuba have been a constant theme during the meeting.
La Liga, Overtown education benefit from exile 'angels'
By Doralisa Pilarte. Special to The Herald. Published
Wednesday, November 15, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Domingo and Brenda Moreira are passionate about keeping alive one of the
most beautiful traditions the exile community brought to Miami from Cuba: La
Liga Contra El Cáncer (the League Against Cancer), one of the few
charities nationwide to provide free cancer screening and treatment to needy
people.
But the Moreiras are equally passionate about keeping the limelight off
their generosity; they would rather talk about the immense good that La Liga, as
everyone calls it, has done for the community.
"Brenda and Domingo have made very important contributions to La
Liga,'' said oncologist Dr. Luis Villa, president of the organization. "Both
do it in the most selfless manner. But they make an effort to keep their role
unknown.''
Domingo Moreira, 54, president of Miami-based Ladex Corp., a seafood
marketing and distribution company with operations in Central America, is
perhaps best known for his board membership at the Cuban American National
Foundation. Less well known is his underwriting of private-school education for
underprivileged children.
OVERTOWN ANGEL
"There are 50 Overtown kids today getting a great education and it's
mostly thanks to Domingo,'' says Michael Carricarte Jr., who spearheaded the
formation of South Florida's first privately funded school voucher program,
administered by a group called Miami's Inner City Angels.
"Domingo has humility. But he's been an angel to Overtown.''
The group provides tuition vouchers for children from needy families, at
$1,000 per child per school year.
Carricarte adds of Moreira: "He really understands that the only way to
break the cycle of poverty and crime is to educate the little ones.''
"The only thing that can make everybody equal is education,'' Domingo
Moreira says of his motivation for sending African-American children to St.
Francis Xavier Catholic School in Overtown. "The ultimate affirmative
action is education.''
It's only with some prodding that the Moreiras will discuss some of their
other philanthropic endeavors, such as supporting the education of dozens of
children at local K-12 private schools and at the university level. They
estimate they have devoted a quarter of a million dollars to the effort over the
past 10 years.
"We've never told anyone who the kids are, and sometimes the kids
themselves don't know,'' said Brenda Moreira, 49. "The only thing we ask of
them is that they keep up good grades and that they graduate.''
The Moreiras' generosity extends to Champerico, a port town on Guatemala's
southern Pacific coast where Moreira has seafood operations with his Guatemalan
partner, Pesca, S.A. There, 300 children are attending school thanks to the
couple.
"We also have a library there and last month we sent them 14 or 15
computers,'' said Domingo Moreira, warming to the subject. "Every time I
have to upgrade my computers [at Ladex Corp.], we send the old ones down. This
is in a place where, apart from those, there is not one computer for 100 miles
around.''
Education has clearly been a family value for the Moreiras; they point
proudly to the fact that their three children all have master's degrees.
HEALING BODIES
If the Moreiras only reluctantly talk about their contributions to educating
young minds, they enthusiastically discuss the work of La Liga in healing
cancer-stricken bodies.
The original La Liga was established in Havana in 1925 and operated until
1959. Miami's La Liga was formed in 1975, and the Moreiras knew of it and of the
work of its legendary founder, Lourdes P. Aguila, during all of those years.
But the couple was deeply involved in the Cuban Exodus Relief Fund,
established in 1988 when the Cuban American National Foundation agreed to help
resettle Cuban exiles who had been stranded in third countries. When that
program ended, Brenda Moreira found she had a lot of time on her capable hands.
"I chose to volunteer with La Liga because it filled two needs: that of
working in the field of medicine, which is a world I like, and the need to do
charity work,'' she says, jokingly calling herself a "frustrated doctor.''
Meanwhile, Aguila, who had devoted much of her life to helping cancer
patients, fell ill with the disease. She died in June 1999, two days before La
Liga's annual telethon.
NAMED TO POST
As Aguila's health had declined, other volunteers had begun to take on the
administrative burden she had handled alone. The board then decided to name
Brenda Moreira executive vice president.
"What Brenda has brought to La Liga is administrative leadership: She
is highly organized, and she has done an exceptional job,'' said Dr. Villa.
"That is very important in an organization like ours, where we live
day-to-day making tough decisions on funding. We must have the organization and
the discipline to decide how to use those funds. Sometimes those are easy
decisions from the economic point of view, but they're very difficult from the
emotional point of view.''
The great love the Cuban community has for Aguila's memory, and the
fund-raising abilities of its board members and top administrators, helped La
Liga buy new headquarters, a one-story building into which it moved in June,
just in time to celebrate La Liga's 25th anniversary. Naturally, it was named
the Lourdes P. Aguila Oncology Center and Administrative Offices.
The tidy, cream-colored stucco building at 2180 SW 12th Ave. has
state-of-the art equipment. The plaque listing donors to La Liga's building fund
includes some of the most high-profile Cuban-American names in Miami including
the Jorge Mas Canosa family, the Moreiras and Salvador Diaz-Canseco.
Diaz-Canseco "initially came to La Liga as a patient, and then his
family donated $25,000 for the building fund,'' Brenda Moreira notes.
The Mas Canosa family donated $500,000, and there is a chemotherapy facility
in the building named after the late Jorge Mas Canosa.
On this day, close to a dozen people are waiting to be screened for cancer
or to be treated. From 1982, when La Liga began keeping statistics, through the
end of last year, the organization served more than 50,000 patients. In October,
National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, La Liga provided 900 free mammograms.
Although rooted in the Cuban community, La Liga is expanding the universe of
people it serves. In its latest such move, the organization and the Haitian
American Foundation announced they were teaming up to bring cancer screening and
therapy to needy Haitian Americans.
La Liga leans heavily on the telethon, which last June raised $3 million of
its $5 million budget. Despite its deep roots in the community, La Liga
struggles to pay the bills. It has two more fund-raisers scheduled before then
end of the year, a Dec. 3 golf tournament and the annual raffle.
"We're raffling a townhouse donated by Sergio Pino of Century Builders
and furnished by El Dorado Furniture, and we're also raffling a car donated by
the South Florida Ford dealers,'' Brenda Moreira says. (Tickets can be obtained
by calling La Liga, 305-856-4914, or visiting its website, www.liga
contraelcancer.org).
With $1 million annually from the state of Florida and $100,000 from the
Dade Public Health Trust, the group relies on an army of 300 medical doctors,
backed by 2,500 volunteers, who provide their services free of charge.
STRONG TIES
Although most of the volunteer doctors come from Mercy Hospital, Villa said,
La Liga has strong ties with other hospitals, including Cedars, Doctors, South
Miami, Pan-American and Coral Gables.
"The volunteering done by the doctors is one of the reasons why it
would be hard to duplicate La Liga in other cities; this is a tradition of more
than 50 years that dates back to Cuba,'' Domingo says.
Brenda adds: "Now we have the children of the old Cuban doctors calling
us, which means the tradition continues.''
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