Published Thursday, July 26, 2001 in
The Miami Herald
Cuba calls on 1.2 million to march in annual rebellion day celebration
HAVANA -- (AP) -- The communist government was calling out more than 1
million people to flood Havana's streets Thursday for a march marking the start
of the Cuban revolution nearly a half-century ago.
The Communist Party daily Granma declared Wednesday that about 1.2 million
residents of the capital and surrounding Havana province were expected to
participate in the "gigantic combatant march'' past the U.S. Interests
Section, the American mission here.
It was not announced if Fidel Castro would participate in the early morning
march, but it was considered likely. He led a similar July 26 march in Havana
last year, dressed in his typical olive green uniform and white sneakers.
For decades, the traditional July 26 celebration was always an afternoon
event, held in a different Cuban province each year and almost invariably
featuring a key Castro speech.
But that long-standing tradition has varied some in recent years.
Last year, for instance, three major national events were held in different
cities over several weeks to commemorate the anniversary of the July 26, 1953
attack by Castro and his followers on an army barracks that launched the Cuban
Revolution.
Last year, the first event was a similar 3.5-mile (6 km) march on July 26,
2000 of more than 1 million people led by Castro himself along Havana's coastal
Malecon highway.
Castro did not speak that day, but in other National Rebellion Day events
held in subsequent days he delivered important addresses in the central city of
Santa Clara and the western city of Pinar del Rio.
July 26, known here as National Rebellion Day, is among the most important
dates on communist Cuba's calendar. July 25-27 are national holidays and banks,
government offices and virtually all businesses are closed.
During the storming of the army barracks 48 years ago, 61 of the 160
attackers were killed and many of the rest, including Castro and his younger
brother Raul, were jailed.
The movement later regained strength and triumphed on New Year's Day 1959
after then-President Fulgencio Batista fled the country.
House endorses travel to Cuba
Vote would gut restrictions
By Tim Johnson, tjohnson@herald.com.
WASHINGTON -- Heeding calls to "try something different'' in U.S.
policy toward Cuba, the House approved a measure Wednesday that would block the
White House from enforcing restrictions on travel to Cuba.
For the second consecutive year, the House voted to gut the four-decade-old
travel restrictions by withholding money for their enforcement. But the
legislators turned back a proposal by a liberal New York Democrat, Charles
Rangel, to block President Bush from enforcing the economic embargo on Cuba.
Wednesday's 240-186 vote on the travel restrictions was nearly identical to
the total a year ago, a provision that was eventually derailed by the House
Republican leadership. The measure now goes to the Senate.
Proponents suggested that a wave of U.S. tourists could bring change to the
island and confront Cuban President Fidel Castro with a major political
challenge. Opponents said up to $5 billion in projected U.S. tourist dollars
would only fill the coffers of the Castro government, without aiding ordinary
Cubans.
'SOMETHING DIFFERENT'
"For 42 years, we tried to change the government of Cuba, and we have
failed,'' said Rep. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican. "It is time for us to
try something different that may actually work.''
Proponents included an odd mix of conservative Republicans, like bill
sponsor Jeff Flake of Arizona, who argued for unfettered free trade, to liberal
Democrats, who said U.S. citizens should be allowed to travel anywhere in the
world. "What we've done is erect our own Berlin Wall, preventing free
travel of American citizens,'' said Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., who called for
"an invasion'' of U.S. travelers to the island. "Let the college kids
on spring break be the vanguard of this invasion.''
Opponents bitterly decried any effort to weaken pressure on the Castro
government.
"Allowing travel to Cuba is a terrible mistake,'' said Rep. Tom DeLay,
R-Texas, the majority whip. "The tyrant is teetering on the brink of an
abyss. Why in the world would we reach out now and draw his evil, abusive regime
back to safety? Let it fall!''
PROSPECTS UNCLEAR
Prospects for the measure, which was an amendment on a $30 billion
appropriation bill for the Treasury Department, are unclear. While Democrats now
control the Senate, passage there is uncertain. And the Bush administration
signaled utter opposition to changing the travel restrictions -- though whether
the president would veto an entire appropriation bill to keep them in place
remains to be seen.
"The administration would strongly oppose any amendment that weakens
sanctions against the Castro regime,'' the White House told legislators in a
statement before the vote.
While average U.S. citizens are not prohibited from traveling to Cuba, they
are banned from spending U.S. dollars there -- making tourist trips there
virtually impossible. Some U.S. citizens -- including journalists, academics,
clerics and Cuban Americans with relatives on the island -- are exempted from
the ban.
Cuba welcomes House vote lifting ban on U.S. travel to island
HAVANA -- (AP) -- Cuba welcomed a vote by the U.S. House of Representatives
to lift restrictions on American travel to the communist country, saying
Thursday that it hoped the Senate would vote the same way.
The vote by the lower house of Congress on Wednesday is "proof of the
majority sentiment in American society,'' Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque
said Thursday morning during a march celebrating the start of the Cuban
revolution.
"Cuba defends the right of American citizens to travel freely to Cuba,
Perez Roque said. "It is not Cuba that prohibits'' Americans from visiting,
he added.
The foreign minister said he expected that "extremist groups'' would
fight to block a senate vote in favor of lifting the American travel ban to the
island, as well as any congressional attempts to ease or lift the U.S. embargo
against Cuba.
The House voted Wednesday night to lift restrictions on travel to Cuba by
U.S. citizens in what sponsors called a first step toward ending the communist
nation's economic isolation.
The 240-186 vote in favor of lifting the restrictions came Wednesday on an
amendment by Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., to the $32.7 billion fiscal 2002 spending
bill for the Treasury Department, post office, White House and other agencies.
The House approved the overall bill later Wednesday on a 334-94 vote, sending it
on to the Senate.
U.S. citizens can only travel to Cuba now by obtaining a special license
from the Treasury Department, which limits access generally to journalists,
academics, government officials and people on humanitarian missions.
Supporters of lifting the travel restrictions said the move would begin to
bring U.S. policy toward Cuba in line with that toward other communist
countries, such as Vietnam, China and North Korea. The restrictions and other
economic embargoes against Cuba, they said, haven't done much to make
significant changes in the country's political system.
Some lawmakers said lifting the travel restrictions should be made
contingent on Cuba releasing hundreds of political prisoners and returning
fugitive U.S. citizens to this country.
On the Net:
Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov
CANF director: Changes are good
In memo, he calls rift 'self-cleansing'
By Carol Rosenberg. crosenberg@herald.com
The long-serving director of the Cuban American National Foundation's
Washington, D.C., office says in a secret memo that the influential lobby is
engaged in a "self-cleansing process'' of members who have not come to
terms with the death of the founder, Jorge Mas Canosa.
Addressed to "friends,'' José Cárdenas sent the e-mail to
a select group of Capitol Hill staffers and other anti-Fidel Castro activists to
quiet concerns over the public resignation and renunciation of the group by
veteran Miami spokeswoman Ninoska Pérez Castellón.
It is significant both for its content and because it offers a rare, candid
view of infighting at the lobby where the credo has long been, La ropa sucia se
lava en la casa, no en la calle -- wash your dirty laundry at home, not in the
street.
"There may be some more righteously indignant resignations before this
is all over -- and I don't believe that's such a bad thing,'' Cárdenas
wrote Monday in response to Pérez Castellón's WQBA 1140 AM
denunciation of CANF leaders as liars and hypocrites. "As someone said,
we're not interested in preaching to the choir but getting more people into the
church. Amen, brother.''
Pérez Castellón, for her part, said she quit in protest of
funding and organizational changes at the 20-year lobby, which she said no
longer followed the founder's line. Both insiders and the popular
Spanish-language radio host now agree that she had fiercely fought the changes
from inside, but was publicly silent about her discontent.
"Frankly, I find it patently offensive to be lectured to about loyalty
and what Jorge Mas Canosa REALLY stood for,'' Cárdenas wrote. "And
in one aspect of the theater of the absurd by his former bodyguard! -- and if
I'm offended I can't imagine how Jorge Jr. must feel.''
Cárdenas has worked for the lobby in Washington since 1986, notably
as the lone representative during a period of dramatic downsizing after Mas
Canosa's death in 1997.
"That e-mail was never meant to be in the public domain,'' he said
Wednesday, alarmed that The Herald had obtained a copy. "But I stand by
what I wrote.''
Pérez Castellón said Thursday that she had seen the memo. "It
shows the low level to which the foundation has sunk, and I don't want to be a
part of it,'' she said. "Obviously, there is no space for those who
criticize.''
Some of the son's changes to CANF culture have included hiring for the
Washington office Dennis Hays, a retired U.S. diplomat who once served on the
State Department Cuba Desk, and buying a $1.8 million townhouse there for office
space.
A posh opening party there promoted the offices as "An Embassy for a
Free Cuba.'' Pérez Castellón was notably absent from the February
affair; CANF employees said she missed her Miami-to-Washington flight.
Mas Santos has also hired other professional staff and pumped millions into
Miami's Freedom Tower, which critics have grumbled are expenditures at odds with
Mas Canosa's more frugal approach.
Cárdenas ridiculed the defectors and critics in the memo without
specifically naming Pérez Castellón or her husband, longtime
jailed island dissident Roberto Martín Pérez. Neither did he name
Mario Miranda, Mas Canosa's former bodyguard who recently registered himself in
Tallahassee as president of the Cuban American National Foundation Inc. CANF
lawyers apparently mistakenly let the Florida registration lapse.
"Basically, what you have here are a number of people who built up
special relations with Jorge the elder and never have adjusted well to his
death,'' he wrote.
"They expected right off that they would just replicate the same type
of closeness with Jorge Jr. For a variety of reasons -- Jorge Jr. has a day job
that taxes much of his time, he has his own style and has set out to make his
own mark and not mimic his father -- those relationships did not materialize in
the ways some wanted, and they felt left out, in their minds perhaps spurned,
rejected.''
Separately, CANF legal counsel George Fowler III, a member of the board of
directors, agreed in an interview Wednesday from his law offices in New Orleans
that the rift resulted from the transition from father to son.
"Frankly, she was unhappy for such a long time it wasn't a good thing
for her or for us,'' the Havana-born lawyer said of Pérez Castellón.
"Some people thought after Jorge Mas Canosa died that they would call
the shots, that after Jorge Mas Santos took over that he would be someone they
could manipulate. And he's not someone to be manipulated,'' explained Fowler,
who called himself one of the son's "closest advisers.''
Fowler also dismissed Pérez Castellón's characterization of
CANF's inner circle as undemocratic and the new leadership as dictatorial. "Ninoska
is brazen, strong-willed, outspoken. She spoke her mind on many occasions,'' he
said. "I loved Ninoska. I love her still. But I'm really unhappy. Instead
of just resigning quietly we have this tirade to undermine the foundation.
"The only one who gets the jollies out of this is Fidel Castro,'' he
concluded. "He uses it for his propaganda purposes to show that the
foundation is divided. It's very negative for us. It makes us look weak, makes
us look divided. That's what he wants.''
CANF ignites Cuban media
Papers abuzz with commentary on foundation's 'turbulence'
By Elaine De Valle And Carol Rosenberg. edevalle@herald.com
Cuban media have been relishing the news of Ninoska Pérez Castellón's
break with the Cuban American National Foundation, long a favorite foe of Fidel
Castro's government.
Tuesday, it was the turn of La Mesa Redonda, the evening news round table,
to tackle the topic, where one analyst exulted that the infighting "is a
'Bay of Pigs' for the Miami Mafia.''
"There are no generation gaps or ideological divisions. . . .The
foundation continues to be a terrorist organization,'' said another analyst in a
break from the recent extensive coverage of Miami's Cuban spy case.
Cuban newspapers similarly have embraced the intra-Cuban spat on the other
side of the Florida Straits with a mixture of enthusiasm and anti-exile
analyses.
"Dancing among the wolves,'' crowed a headline on an article about
internal strife at the organization that was carried in Granma, the daily
newspaper of Cuba's Communist Party.
The article reported the facts of last week's walkout by Pérez
Castellón, 51, as well as her husband, Roberto Martín Pérez,
66. It also described Martín Pérez, a former Cuban political
prisoner of nearly 28 years, as "one of the leaders of the clandestine,
armed wing of that faction, an apparatus that specializes in terrorist acts.''
Reached at the Doral home he shares with Pérez Castellón, Martín
Pérez described as "absurd'' the accusations coming from Havana.
"I've never been charged or tried for anything. They always say
whatever they want,'' he said. "Fidel Castro lives and works in lies.''
Granma offered the analysis that the break was not the result of a deep
ideological divide among members of the 20-year-old influential lobby. Rather,
it adopted analysis offered in Miami that attributed the couple's departure to "squabbling''
among members in the aftermath of the death of the founder, Jorge Mas Canosa, in
1997.
"The essence of the present problems within the well-known gang does
not come from ideological differences,'' it said, "but from the very nature
of that political group, which is made up of people who are lacking in
principles.''
The daily Juventud Rebelde, the newspaper of the Union of Communist Youth,
linked the break to CANF Chairman Jorge Mas Santos' support of the Latino music
industry effort to bring the Latin Grammys to Miami.
In Miami, meantime, businessman Francisco Aruca, a radio commentator with
access to Cuban officials, offered a commentary Tuesday morning that divided the
two camps at the foundation between the dogmatics and the pragmatics.
For his part, independent analyst Damian Fernandez, a political science
professor at Florida International University, called Pérez Castellón's
departure "evidence of the turbulence within the CANF,'' but dismissed
speculation that it was a sign of the foundation's imminent demise.
"The CANF is in flux; personal and ideological conflicts will surface
now that there is no one [Mas Canosa] to contain them,'' he said. "Her
departure is not the death knell of the organization, just the dawning of a new
era -- younger, more 'Americanized,' more pragmatic.''
Fernandez also suggested that by leaving in such a high-profile manner, Pérez
Castellón "also legitimizes the possibility of other organizations,
and in a indirect way might democratize Cuban American politics.''
Herald translator Renato Perez contributed to this report.
Cuban exile convicted of fatal car bomb released by INS
Posted at 6:32 a.m. EDT Thursday, July 26, 2001
BRADENTON -- (AP) -- A Cuban exile accused of detonating a car bomb that
killed the former Chilean ambassador to the United States and his aide in 1976
was released from an Immigration and Naturalization facility.
Virgilio Paz Romero was released from the detention center on the southwest
Florida coast Tuesday night, a month after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said
indefinite detentions were unconstitutional.
Paz Romero, 49, has been in the custody of the Immigration and
Naturalization Service since May 1998.
"I'm shocked. The system worked,'' Paz Romero said. "It's
lamentable that it took so long, but it worked. God bless Democracy.''
The FBI said Paz Romero and two other men planted a bomb Sept. 21, 1976,
that killed former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and American co-worker
Ronni Moffitt in Washington.
Letelier served as Chile's ambassador to Washington and foreign minister and
defense minister in the 1970s under President Salvador Allende, whose friendly
relations with Cuban President Fidel Castro earned him the enmity of Cuban
exiles.
Paz Romero lived as a fugitive following the bombing until his arrest in
1991. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder a foreign official and served 6
years of a 12-year sentence before being paroled in 1998.
The INS immediately took him into custody, saying he was a flight risk and
danger to the community. An immigration judge ordered him deported, but the U.S.
has no deportation agreement with Cuba, so he remained in limbo in a Bradenton
INS center until the U.S. District Court in Miami ordered him released Tuesday.
The decision comes after a June 28 ruling by the Supreme Court that said
though immigration law can permit a reasonable detention period of six months,
it cannot permit indefinite detention.
"His release is a huge victory for all people who have been illegally
detained in the U.S.,'' said Paz Romero's attorney, Carlos Garcia Perez.
Romero said that he plans to move closer to his family in South Florida. His
two children live in West Palm Beach, and he said he plans to have a family
reunion in Miami in November.
"I have already paid my debt to society. I am not a threat,'' Romero
said.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 
