Published Wednesday, May 2, 2001 in the
Miami Herald
Castro predicts Latin American poverty under regional free trade plan
Posted at 7:58 a.m. EDT Wednesday, May 2, 2001
HAVANA -- (AP) -- Fidel Castro led hundreds of thousands of Cuban workers in
a noisy May Day march outside the U.S. mission Tuesday to protest a
hemisphere-wide trade agreement he predicted will bring more Disneylands and
McDonald's restaurants to the Americas but impoverish the region's people.
"No to annexation! Yes to plebiscite!'' the marchers chanted as the
74-year-old Cuban president trekked almost two miles (kilometers) from Havana's
Plaza of the Revolution to the U.S. government's mission.
Castro last month insisted that the region's presidents allow their citizens
to vote on whether they want to be included in the world's largest free-trade
zone by 2005 - an idea approved last month at the Summit of the Americas in
Quebec. Castro, the region's only head of state not invited to the gathering,
called the zone a U.S. "annexation'' of Latin America.
While the United States will grow wealthier under the plan, the hemisphere's
poor countries will grow even poorer, and workers in particular will suffer,
Castro told the masses of flag-waving Cubans who gathered under an overcast
morning sky before the march began.
Cuban baseball legend's clan scores
By Elaine De Valle . edevalle@herald.com. Published
Wednesday, May 2, 2001
The late Bobby Maduro has family in many places: Florida, Panama, the West
Indies, Curaçao, California, El Salvador, Illinois -- even Holland.
For a few days, however, nearly 100 relatives of "the father of Cuban
baseball'' gathered in Miami for a family
reunion that ended with dinner at Havana Harry's in Coral Gables on Tuesday
night.
The family -- which includes those with the surnames Sasso, del Valle and
Fidanque, among others -- first got together in Curaçao in 1999 after
finding one another on the Internet.
"My brother, Bobby Jr., and four others got together through the
Internet and started connecting and learning about each other,'' said Jorge
Maduro, one of seven of Bobby Sr.'s children, obviously moved by the assemblage.
"There's nothing like getting to know who you are and where you're
from,'' he said.
Robert "Bobby'' Maduro was a baseball legend in Cuba. He was a first
baseman with the Vedado Tennis Club amateur team and later owned the Cuban Sugar
Kings, a AAA team in the International League that was a farm club of the
Baltimore Orioles.
STADIUM IN HAVANA
He also built and owned the Estadio del Cerro in Havana, where baseball
games are still played and the Orioles beat the Cuban National team -- 3-2 -- in
1999.
Maduro, who has a stadium named after him in Miami, died here in 1986. He
was 70.
"We were very proud they named the stadium after him,'' said his
daughter, Rosario "Rosie'' Maduro Chica. "But we understand it's very
rundown, and what are you going to do? It's a shame because it's a historic
site, but we don't have a strong opinion one way or another about the stadium.''
What she does feel strongly about is family ties.
Monday night, Rene van Wijngaarden of Holland -- where next year's reunion
will be -- presented the family tree for the del Valle clan, which was his
grandmother's family.
CENTURIES OF ROOTS
He and relatives have traced their family's lineage back to 14th Century
Portugal, and he got more branches when Ricardo Henriquez showed up with two
computer printouts: his father's antecedents on one and descendants on the
other.
A thrilled Van Wijngaarden: "This is the way it works!''
Relatives remembered the first meeting in Curaçao, where Nadya Moron
(her great-grandfather was a Maduro) lives.
"We e-mailed each other for six months, and I had no idea who were the
faces behind those words,'' Moron said.
Her husband had died just months earlier, "so a whole new family opened
up for me,'' she said.
A whole new family also opened up for Diane del Valle Propster this week.
The high school teacher from Los Angeles had no extended family in her life.
"Some people grow up with relatives,'' del Valle said. "I had none
to speak of. I did not have grandparents.
"So this is an extraordinary experience.''
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 