Published Wednesday, July 11, 2001 .
The Miami Herald
Aid group that wants to import Cuba rat poison leaves for U.S.
HAVANA -- (AP) -- An American humanitarian group left Cuba early Wednesday,
bound for Mexico and eventually the U.S. border after announcing it would try to
import Cuban-made rat poison as a challenge to the U.S. trade embargo.
The Rev. Lucius Walker and other members of the Pastors for Peace delegation
left Havana by plane in the pre-dawn hours, bound for Mexico, the Rev. Raul
Sanchez of Cuba's Martin Luther King Center said Wednesday.
Sanchez said the group was to travel to the Mexican port city of Tampico to
pick up the vehicles they used last week in a caravan that carried about 80 tons
of humanitarian aid from the United States across the Mexican border last week.
The aid was then transported to Tampico, where it was loaded on a boat and
taken across the Gulf of Mexico to Havana.
Valued at several million dollars, the aid reportedly included medical
equipment for cardiology, radiology and anesthesia, mobile bicycle repair
stations, medicines, school materials, computers and food.
After retrieving their vehicles, the group later Wednesday was to drive
north across the U.S.-Mexican border, presumably carrying with them the rat
poison and other Cuban products Walker mentioned last week.
Suarez said he did not know where on the border or at what time the caravan
was scheduled to cross.
Walker could not be reached Wednesday because he was traveling.
But he told reporters last week that "we are doing a reverse challenge
for the first time in history -- taking aid from Cuba by way of our caravan to
the people of the United States.''
The four-decade trade restrictions against Cuba bar most sales of American
products to the island, as well as Cuban imports to the United States.
Walker, founder of the nonprofit Pastors for Peace, at the time said his
delegation would likely return home with Cuban solar panels and, most
importantly, a rat pesticide called Biorat.
"There is a rat problem in the United States in addition to the one in
the White House!'' he said.
The poison, made by biotech firm Labiofam, would be shipped to parts of the
United States where "diseases caused by the burgeoning rat problem create a
serious health problem,'' Walker said.
Cuba has commercialized Biorat in Latin America, Africa and Asia since 1994.
But it has recently come under fire from U.S. health specialists and two
European multinationals for allegedly being unsafe, charges rejected by the
Cuban company.
A cheerful Castro greets Elián, family
HAVANA -- (AP) -- President Fidel Castro greeted 7-year-old Elián
González with a kiss Tuesday in a rare public appearance of the boy made
famous by Cuba.
Looking animated and cheerful, Castro briefly talked with Elián and
his family after a colorful and politically tinged children's performance. He
even picked up Elián's 2-year-old half-brother, Hianny.
Elián smiled as he walked into the Havana amphitheater with his
father, Juan Miguel González, his stepmother, Nersy, and his brother.
Sitting in the front row, they watched a series of children in colorful
costumes sing, dance and perform skits on a stage built outside the U.S.
Interests Section -- the American mission here -- during González's
battle for his son's return from the United States.
"Socialist children,'' thousands of boys and girls in school uniforms
sang at the closing ceremony at a meeting of the Pioneers, the island's
communist group for schoolchildren. "Steadfast! Steadfast!''
Castro, who embraced González's fight for his son last year and made
it a national cause that captured the world's attention, sat in the same row. He
wore his traditional olive green uniform.
After chatting with the González family, Castro spent a few more
minutes greeting other children with kisses and pats on the head. Neither
Castro's nor Elián's attendance was announced in advance.
The Cuban leader on Tuesday morning looked fit and better rested after his
fainting spell at a speech in the blazing sun two weeks before. The incident set
off rumors about Castro's health and talk of his future successor.
The Cuban leader on Monday night delivered a 2 1/2 hour speech to the
children, followed by a six-hour dinner with visiting German Minister of Economy
Werner Müller that wrapped up about 3 a.m. Tuesday.
61 Cuban refugees land on Dade shores
By Alfonso Chardy. achardy@herald.com
Sixty-one Cuban migrants landed on Miami-Dade shores between late Monday and
early Tuesday in what may have been two connected smuggling operations.
The landings of 21 Cubans in Key Biscayne at 10 p.m. Monday and 40 Cubans
near Haulover Park Marina at 3 a.m. Tuesday were the largest group since the
arrival of 42 Cubans in the Florida Keys on May 23.
The Cubans told Border Patrol agents that they boarded their boats in the
area of Sagua la Grande. The region, on the northern coast of Cuba east of
Havana, has become a major migrant smuggling center since the late 1990s.
Joe Mellia, a Border Patrol spokesman in South Florida, said he could not
say whether the landings Monday night and Tuesday morning were connected. But
information that the smuggled Cubans gave Border Patrol agents strongly
indicates a link.
Mellia said both groups boarded their boats along the coastal area near
Isabela de Sagua and Sagua la Grande in Cuba's northern Villa Clara province. He
said migrants in both groups said they paid smugglers 10,000 Cuban pesos per
person (about $2,200 at unofficial exchange rates).
The smugglers dropped off the people and left, Mellia said.
The group of 21 Cubans -- 13 adult men, five adult women, one boy and two
girls -- was dropped off Monday night in Key Biscayne near the Rickenbacker
Causeway, following a two-day trip from the Sagua la Grande area.
Mellia said people in the group told agents that the boat they used had left
at 9 p.m. Saturday.
According to Mellia, the second group -- 12 adult men, 22 adult women, four
boys and two girls -- arrived at around 3 a.m. Tuesday and were dropped off near
Haulover.
Mellia said the Haulover group told agents they had left Isabela de Sagua
about 9 p.m. Monday in a 30-foot fastboat.
Isabela de Sagua is on the northern coast just north of Sagua la Grande. The
area is considered to be a prime launching site for migrant smuggling because
it's one of the closest places in Cuba to Biscayne Bay -- almost in a straight
line south of the Miami-Dade coast some 225 miles away.
No one was injured in either landing, Mellia said. Both groups were
scheduled to be processed at the INS' Krome Service Processing Center in west
Miami-Dade prior to release.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 
