Yahoo! May 28 2001.
Cubans Protest US Military Presence
HAVANA, 26 (AP) - President Fidel Castro (news - web sites) joined thousands
of Cubans on Saturday morning in a protest of U.S. military exercises on the
Puerto Rican island of Vieques.
"We are willing to die at their side,'' Cuban student leader Ernesto
Fernandez said of Puerto Ricans who are demanding that the U.S. Navy (news - web
sites) abandon its use of the island.
The Navy has used its range on Vieques, home to 9,400 people, for six
decades and says it is vital for national security. Critics say U.S. maneuvers
on the island pose a health threat, which the Navy denies.
Participants in the government-organized rally cheered speakers and waved
tiny Cuban flags outside the U.S. Interests Section - the American mission in
Cuba.
"The struggle over Vieques has become decisive in the liberty of Puerto
Rico,'' Fernando Martin, a leader of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, told
protesters.
For more than a year, the Cuban government has organized a weekly Saturday
rally, usually to protest U.S. policies toward Havana. This was the first time
the rally was dedicated to lending support to a cause in another country.
Opposition to Navy exercises on Vieques grew after a civilian guard was
killed on the range in 1999 by two off-target bombs. The Navy has since stopped
using live ammunition. Islanders will vote in November on whether the Navy must
leave in 2003 or can stay, resuming the use of live ammunition.
Venezuelans Protest 'Cubanization'
By Christopher Toothaker, Associated Press Writer. Yahoo!
May 28, 2001
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Demonstrators protested what they call the "Cubanization''
of Venezuela on Saturday outside the Cuban Embassy, only to be chased away by
hundreds of supporters of President Hugo Chavez.
Waving banners reading "Fidel Is An Assassin'' and "Democracy, Not
Dictatorship,'' dozens of protesters belonging to a group called Civil
Resistance warned that Chavez is leading Venezuela down a path to communism.
Since taking office in February 1999, Chavez has forged strong ties with
rogue states such as Cuba, Iraq, and Libya as part of his strategy to create a "multi-polar''
world against U.S. domination. Last year, Chavez rolled out the red carpet for
Castro during a five-day visit.
Members of Civil Resistance claim that Cubans who have been arriving in
Venezuela recently under an oil-for-services trade pact are secretly spreading
Castro's communist ideology.
"I still have family in Cuba - they have been completely brainwashed,''
said Ida Aguilar, a Cuban immigrant who fled the communist island 36 years ago.
"I'm afraid the same thing is happening here in Venezuela.''
The protest came a day after the Cuban ambassador to Venezuela, German
Sanchez Otero, denounced what he called a campaign to spread anti-Cuban "xenophobia''
in Venezuela.
Sanchez charged that Miami-based anti-Castro groups are funding a campaign
to spread the idea that Chavez is trying impose a political order modeled on
Castro's communist regime.
In a Friday interview with Caracas daily El Universal, Sanchez denied that
Chavez is trying to import his country's revolutionary ideas.
Responding to a call by Chavez' ruling party, hundreds of the former
paratroopers gathered outside the embassy to support Cuba's growing presence in
the South American nation.
Wearing T-shirts bearing the image of Cuban revolutionary hero Che Guevara,
several pro-Cuba demonstrators burned a United States flag. Accompanied by a
group of drummers, others chanted "Long Live the Revolution!'' and "End
the Embargo Now!''
Intimidated by the growing crowd of Chavez supporters and fearing violence,
members of Civil Resistance quickly left the scene.
An energy pact signed last year allows Cuba to pay for some of its
Venezuelan oil imports with goods and services. The communist island has sent
178 doctors and 323 sports trainers to Venezuela under the pact, and Chavez has
sent more than 500 Venezuelans to Cuba for free medical treatment.
Cuban Photographer Korda Dies at 72
HAVANA, 25 (AP) - Alberto Korda, the photographer whose images helped make
Ernesto "Che'' Guevara a guerrilla symbol, died in Paris on Friday of a
heart attack, according to relatives here. He was 72.
Korda, whose real last names were Diaz Gutierrez, worked with the newspaper
Revolucion immediately after Fidel Castro (news - web sites)'s guerrillas
toppled Fulgencio Batista in 1959. He was later a personal photographer for
Castro.
He took a photo of Guevara in Havana in 1960 that became famous. It showed
the rebel leader gazing intently into the distance beneath curly hair and a
tilted beret. After Guevara's death in Bolivia in 1967, the photograph was used
on posters and T-shirts around the world.
Korda took the photograph at a memorial service for more than 100 crew
members of a Belgian arms cargo ship who were killed in an attack that Cuba
blamed on U.S.-backed counterrevolutionary forces.
It was little noticed until several years later, when he gave a copy to an
Italian publisher who turned it into a poster.
Korda said he had never made any money from the Guevara photograph, though
it and others of the early revolutionary period in Cuba made him famous.
He was in Paris attending an exhibition of his works when he died.
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