Published Friday, December 14, 2001 in
The Miami Herald
Freighter leaving for Cuba with U.S. corn
By Tim Johnson. tjohnson@krwashington.com
WASHINGTON -- For the first time in 38 years, a freighter laden with U.S.
goods will depart New Orleans today and sail for Havana, bearing not only
Midwestern corn but the hopes of some exporters that the U.S. trade embargo of
Cuba could soon crack open further.
Even as the 623-foot freighter took on 24,000 tons of corn in Ama, La.,
senators in Washington debated whether to allow easier terms for agricultural
sales to Cuba.
The M.V. Ikan Mazatlan will arrive in Havana late Saturday or early Sunday.
"It's the first shipment since 1963,'' said Pamela Falk, a law
professor at City University of New York who has worked extensively with U.S.
agribusiness. "It's dramatically symbolic. It's the first break in the
embargo.''
Other shipments will follow. A load of frozen poultry leaves Jacksonville
for Cuba on Saturday, and other grain shipments may depart from Mississippi next
week.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Michelle, which tore through Cuba in early
November, the government of Fidel Castro offered cash for some $30 million in
U.S. agricultural products, reversing an earlier posture to buy food and
medicine only if U.S. companies were permitted to offer direct credit.
The trade falls under a liberalized law on food sales to Cuba approved last
year, and U.S. officials insisted that the deals in no way augur a lifting of
the U.S. trade embargo. Grain brokers, however, invited two governors and a
handful of legislators to a celebratory send-off of the Mexican-owned freighter
in New Orleans this morning, viewing its journey as a symbolic opening of the
closed Cuban market.
"There is excitement in the agricultural sector because this hasn't
happened in a long time,'' said John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade
and Economic Council.
Advocates of the trade embargo say it is a tool that helps weaken the
one-party communist state that rules the island. Opponents say the embargo has
failed to dislodge Castro after four decades, and U.S. vendors are losing
business to competitors.
The clashing views underscored the crosscurrents in the debate on U.S.
policy toward Cuba.
Brokers of agricultural commodities hope the sales to Cuba will give
momentum to grain-producing Midwestern states, where legislators are eager to
find new markets, to ease the embargo of Cuba.
"It's highly important,'' said Mark K. Lambert, of the Illinois Corn
Growers Association in Bloomington, Ill. "What better place to showcase our
new attitude on trade than by shipping to one of our closest neighbors. It's a
market that you can darn near hit with a stone from Florida.'' In a symbolic nod
to the corn-producing Midwest, ADM, the Decatur, Ill., grain conglomerate,
filled the freighter with corn from nine states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa,
Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin.
"We are hopeful that this will bring the United States closer to our
goal, which is to provide U.S. products and goods to the whole world,'' said
Karla Miller, ADM's vice president for corporate affairs. Miller said she and
other ADM executives would be on hand at the Havana docks for the arrival of the
freighter.
Another major grain exporter, Cargill Inc. based in Minneapolis, also voiced
optimism that U.S. sales to Cuba would expand in the future. Cargill has
contracts to ship corn, wheat and soybean oil in January and February.
"This is good both for . . . U.S. farmers and the people of Cuba,''
said Van Yeutter, Cargill's international business development director.
Excitement over the first shipment was high in New Orleans, a port that once
profited from U.S. trade with Cuba prior to the 1959 revolution.
"It's going from a state, Louisiana, that lost approximately 5,000
port-related jobs from 1960 to 1963 as various stages of the embargo took
effect,'' Kavulich said.
Commodity brokers and anti-embargo advocates sought to spread the benefits
of the $30 million in humanitarian trade with a number of Gulf of Mexico ports,
grain and poultry vendors, and shipping lines as a way to build pressure to ease
the embargo.
"There are a lot of people behind this,'' said Falk, the law professor.
"Because several U.S. ports are involved, and several companies involved,
there's no way back to the farm. They've seen Par-ee.''
A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity,
recently said the food sales are permitted as long as cash-strapped Cuba pays
hard currency.
"The bottom line is there is no lifting of the embargo. There is no new
era. Our concerns in Cuba are the same,'' he said.
On Capitol Hill, senators debated language in an omnibus farm bill that
would allow Cuba to buy U.S. agricultural products on credit, instead of just
for cash.
Opponents, such as Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, said the U.S. government
should not soften trade terms with a nation that the Bush administration has
labeled a sponsor of terrorism.
"The Cuban government does not pay its bills,'' added Sen. Jesse Helms,
a North Carolina Republican.
"Why would any senator be eager for their home state businesses . . .
to assume the risk of doing business with the Castro regime?''
A farm state Democrat, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, exhorted his
colleagues: "Don't use food as a weapon. That's what this issue is about.''
He added: "Those who govern in Cuba have never missed a meal because we
don't sell food to Cuba.''
A vote on the matter remained pending.
2nd Cuban agent given life term for espionage
gepstein@herald.com
Cuban spy Ramón Labañino, the second-in-command of a South
Florida spy network who once pledged, "From this trench, we will give
imperialism the blow it deserves,'' was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for
espionage conspiracy.
Labañino, 38, became the second Cuban spy to receive a life sentence
in as many days.
Trial observers had followed the decision closely because Labañino --
unlike Gerardo Hernández, the first spy to be sentenced Wednesday -- was
not implicated in the 1996 shoot-down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes.
Four men perished in the attacks.
SUPERVISED SPIES
But evidence showed that Labañino supervised other spies in their
efforts to infiltrate U.S. military installations -- an offense that U.S.
District Judge Joan Lenard found worthy of the maximum punishment as recommended
under federal sentencing guidelines.
The proceedings continue today with the sentencing of spy René González.
Labañino, in a politically charged 47-minute speech, said he and his
fellow spies were defending Cuba's interests by monitoring for a possible U.S.
invasion and by countering exile-sponsored "terrorism'' against the island.
But Lenard, who presided over the six-month spy trial which ended in June,
was unmoved.
"That does not give the right to this defendant to come to this country
and enter into a conspiracy to provide national security secrets to a hostile
power,'' she said.
William Norris, Labañino's defense lawyer, said the life sentence was
disappointing even though he and his client expected it.
An appeal is planned.
"Everybody loves their own spies and hates the other guys','' Norris
said.
PRAISING SENTENCE
Caroline Heck Miller, lead prosecutor in the case, said the sentence was
just.
"An important statement was made: Don't come on our military bases to
do us harm,'' she said after the proceedings. "The United States will find,
prosecute and seek maximum punishment for any who do.''
Cuban officials criticized the proceedings Thursday as they continued to
react to Hernández's sentence.
President Fidel Castro called Hernández a "hero'' and denounced
U.S. claims that he and the four other Cubans had threatened U.S. security.
"These boys are five heroes, and they've treated them with incredible
brutality,'' Castro told reporters Thursday in Porlamar, Venezuela, after a
summit of Caribbean leaders.
Castro also condemned the "credibility'' of everyone involved in the
trial.
Of the defendants, he added: "Their honor and dignity have been
stripped away with the help of . . . North American attorneys.''
Before the spies were arrested in September 1998, Labañino went by
the name Luis Medina and shared a downtown Hollywood apartment with fellow spy
Fernándo González.
Their landlord remembered Labañino as a friendly tenant who claimed
to be a Mexican dishware salesman.
In reality he was a Havana-born intelligence agent and father of three who
helped run a South Florida-based spy ring that the Cubans named the Wasp
Network.
Prosecutors said Labañino had reported to Havana on flights from
MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa since 1992.
He was transferred to Miami to lead the infiltration of U.S. Southern
Command, the military's nerve center for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Labañino directed other spies in their efforts to get hired at
SouthCom, evidence showed.
He also supervised Antonio Guerrero, who got a job at Key West's Boca Chica
Naval Air Station and filed voluminous reports to Havana outlining the number
and types of military airplanes using the base.
'POLITICAL PRISONERS'
Labañino did not directly address that evidence in his speech.
Instead, he denounced federal prosecutors and the FBI.
"I will wear the inmates' uniform with the same pride as a soldier
wears his most valued badges,'' he said, standing tall in front of a podium, his
feet shackled.
"This has been a political trial, and as such, we are political
prisoners,'' he said.
After the sentence was pronounced, Norris patted Labañino on the
back.
Labañino then turned to face the mothers of the four other spies --
who were flown in from Cuba for the sentencings -- and gave them a nod and a
wink before exiting the courtroom.
Labañino's mother is dead. His wife applied for a visa, but it was
not granted.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 
