CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Report: Cuban requested asylum

Officials deny it occurred

From Herald Staff and Wire Reports. Posted on Wed, Aug. 13, 2003

SANTO DOMINGO - The organizing committee of the XIV Pan American Games denied reports that a Cuban cyclist requested political asylum during Tuesday morning's competition.

''At this moment we have received no request for asylum from anyone,'' said Ramón Emilio Jiménez, the committee's executive vice president.

Security has been extremely tight around Cuba's Pan Am delegation, especially after an incident last week in which Dominican and Cuban intelligence agents detained a man they said was trying to convince baseball players to defect. Fear of defections also persuaded Cuba to leave five of its top baseball players home following the desertion of pitcher José Contreras in Mexico last October.

Eight Cubans defected during the last Pan Am Games in Winnipeg in 1999.

Venezuelans cheer and protest presence of doctors from Cuba

By Frances Robles. Frobles@herald.com. Posted on Wed, Aug. 13, 2003.

CARACAS - When poor Venezuelans like Jenny Preciado fall ill, they must leave their distant slums and arrive at public clinics by 6 a.m., lest they miss being one of 20 patients assigned a number for a chance to see a doctor that day.

''Sometimes it is so packed, you just don't get a number,'' Preciado said, standing outside her barrio's new makeshift clinic, manned by a Cuban doctor. "This town is never letting this new doctor go.''

While the poorest of Venezuela's poor beam over the arrival of up to 1,000 Cuban doctors who have been assigned to low-income neighborhoods and even make house calls, their influx has enraged others who see them as another example of leftist President Hugo Chávez's quest to ''Cubanize'' this nation.

Doctors, literacy trainers, sports coaches and agronomists have openly poured into Venezuela in past months. Allegations of Cuban advisors in the armed forces, police and Chávez's presidential offices bubble up occasionally but have never been proven. Internet gossips talk of Cuban ships and planes bringing arms to pro-Chávez militias but offer no evidence.

Venezuela's increasing reliance on Cuban experts illustrates the ever-warming relations between President Fidel Castro and Chávez, a self-proclaimed ''revolutionary'' who has said that Cubans ''swim in a sea of happiness.'' It has even become a source of concern in Washington.

A recent editorial in the El Nacional newspaper declared that "Venezuela is being colonized by Cuba. For everything, the government looks to Cuba, consults with Cuba and tries to read the signs coming from Cuba. We cannot do anything without approval from Havana.''

RICH VS. POOR

But the Cubans' presence here also underscores the deep-seated divisions between Venezuela's rich and poor. While Chávez's mostly middle- and upper-class opponents decry the Cubans' services as political brainwashing, few Venezuelans seem willing to take their places.

''The doctors here in Venezuela are involved in politics, not taking care of patients,'' Preciado said. "We want our children taken care of, and that's it.''

Preciado lives in Cipres, one of the many slums in the hills surrounding Caracas. Plagued by poverty and crime, the barrios are considered a no man's land where no Venezuelan doctor dares journey.

''Pregnant women in these neighborhoods have never been to the doctor for prenatal care, and give birth at home on the floor,'' said Rafael Vargas, a former Chávez chief of staff who now runs the Cuban doctor program. "There are 10-, 14-year-old kids who have never been to the dentist.''

In Cipres, Dr. Félix Ramón Viltres Gutiérrez works in a clinic in the back of a grocery store, where a 101 Dalmatians cartoon bed sheet separates the waiting from the potato chips.

His one-room office has a shelf with neat piles of medicines and a desk. In 2 ½ months, he has seen 1,000 patients, who suffered mostly from asthma, diarrhea, parasites and hypertension.

''We think what we're doing is right: helping people,'' said Viltres, who has also worked in Nicaragua and Haiti. As for the clamor: "That's a political problem.''

Cuba has sent thousands of doctors and teachers to work in poor countries all over the world in the past decade as a sign of ''internationalist solidarity'' with underdeveloped nations -- and sometimes as a way of earning income for the Havana government.

The Venezuelan government initially said that in exchange for the doctors' services, Cuba received preferential oil prices, but Vargas said there is no such swap. The doctors, he said, are paid about $250 a month by Venezuela.

Viltres came under fire this month when the fiercely anti-Chávez media reported that a child he had seen later died of meningitis. It turned out that while Viltres was the first to see the 7-year-old, several Venezuelan doctors had seen him as well.

The Venezuelan doctors association has filed a complaint in court seeking to bar the Cubans from practicing. They have been quick to cite alleged cases of malpractice, arguing that the Cubans are under-qualified and unlicensed.

''We're not xenophobes,'' said Douglas León, president of the Venezuelan Medical Federation. "We have information that these people, almost 100 percent of them, are not doctors. These are people masquerading as doctors, wearing white robes with stethoscopes around their necks.''

The Venezuelan Medical Federation asserts there are 9,000 unemployed or under-employed physicians in this country, so there was no need to hire the Cubans. The government says it placed four ads seeking doctors, and there were few takers. The Cubans, Chávez claims, have saved 300 lives.

'THANK YOU, FIDEL'

''The program has been doing an extraordinary job,'' he said in a recent speech. "Thank you, Fidel.''

The absence of Venezuelan doctors in crime-plagued barrios underscores the very factors that helped put Chávez in power. Although Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, at least 70 percent of its populace lives in poverty, and half endures extreme poverty.

Chávez, a former paratrooper, swept into office five years ago promising to change all that. He calls the rich ''the squalid ones,'' and says they do nothing to help the poor.

His critics note that the number of poor rose under his government, and surveys show he has a 30 percent approval rating.

When Chávez was briefly ousted in a military coup last year, it was the desperately poor who came down from the hills to demand his return. And as unemployment rises along with inflation, Chávez now needs their support as his critics push for a recall referendum.

''They are as much about indoctrinating as they are about providing services,'' Miguel Diaz, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said of the program.

"I compare it to missionaries. They teach and provide healthcare, but at the expense of suffering through their preaching.''

''I think Chávez is using the Cuban doctors for political purposes,'' Diaz said. "On the other hand, the fact that Venezuelans themselves have never provided support to the marginal communities that the Cubans are now serving speaks a lot to what divides Venezuela.''

The State Department has kept an eye on the issue since the literacy trainers began arriving earlier this summer.

''We support people who want to learn to read and write,'' a State Department official said. "But we're concerned over the increasingly close ties between the two countries. We expect the Cuban trainers will be limited to their literacy camp.''

Vargas scoffs at the outcry. The oligarchs, he said, are simply against Chávez's revolution on behalf of the poor.

Paraguay abuzz over Castro's arrival

By KEVIN G. HALL. Knight Ridder News Service. Posted on Wed, Aug. 13, 2003.

CIUDAD DEL ESTE, Paraguay - The expected arrival of Fidel Castro for Friday's presidential inauguration in Paraguay is causing a stir in the tiny South American nation that like Cuba was once ruled for more than three decades by a dictator.

Considered a hero in much of Latin America for standing up to the United States, Castro causes commotion nearly anywhere he visits.

In Paraguay, where the vice president was assassinated in March 1999 without police ever catching the intellectual author of the crime, Castro's visit has sparked security concerns.

AWASH IN RUMORS

Paraguay has been awash in rumors about assassination plots ahead of the Cuban strongman's visit, with some Cuban nationals briefly detained in Asunción on Monday but apparently later released.

Paraguay's military is expected on the streets for Friday's inauguration of Nicanor Duarte Frutos, and Paraguayans are being asked to avoid protests during the visit of heads of state.

Castro provoked chaos in Argentina during the inauguration of President Néstor Kirchner in late May, drawing large crowds outside his hotel and forcing the cancellation of a speech planned for the University of Buenos Aires law school. The small auditorium was overrun by stampeding students, and Castro moved his speech outside hours later on the steps of the university and spoke to the masses for three hours in the bitter cold without an overcoat.

FULL-PAGE EDITORIAL

The leading Asunción daily ABC Color on Tuesday published a full-page editorial saying that Castro should not be given the red-carpet treatment that he received in Argentina. The editorial, titled The Unwelcome Visit by a Political Dinosaur, reminded Paraguayans that, like the Cuban people, they too were ruled for decades by a dictator.

Gen. Alfredo Stroessner's brutal right-wing military government ruled for 35 years, falling in 1989.

The ABC Color editorial said "we can only ask if those who today are ready to receive with honors and adulation the Cuban dictator would have thought the same if it was Castro who governed our country with the same bloody methods.''

The editorial added: "In Cuba, there is not even recognition for the people of the only rights that the Constitution of 1844 recognized for Paraguayans: to have their complaints heard and to freely leave the country, which in practice has been converted into an immense prison.

Collectors of Cuban art get costly education in forgeries

By Jay Weaver. Jweaver@herald.com. Posted on Sun, Aug. 10, 2003.

On the eve of a major Latin American art sale in 1997, Christie's abruptly pulled six Cuban paintings valued at $500,000 because they were suspected to be fakes.

The New York auction scandal exposed a dirty little secret: Forgeries of pre-Castro paintings by Wifredo Lam and other Cuban masters were polluting the world's art market. And the troubling trend hit hardest in the one community with the closest links to Cuba -- Miami.

Among the rich-and-famous collectors who became victims -- two of Miami Beach's most celebrated exiles, Emilio and Gloria Estefan.

''You have to be very careful,'' said Axel Stein, director of the Miami office of Sotheby's, one of Christie's competitors in the lucrative art auction business. "We have seen collections of Cuban paintings . . . and they are worth zero dollars.''

The Cuban art market has become so tainted that some Miami connoisseurs have spent thousands of dollars to hire forensic analysts, just like those who help police crack crimes.

Such experts test canvases, primers and pigments to determine whether prized paintings of the Vanguardia era, from the late 1920s to the early 1950s, are forgeries.

POOR DOCUMENTATION

The root of the problem: During the modernist movement's boom in the last decade, Cuba's isolation under Fidel Castro's rule has made documenting a painting's authenticity a challenge.

Scholarly records, exhibit histories and reputable experts are scarce.

At the same time, Miami has turned into a bazaar for Cuban art and a battleground for lawsuits.

Gallery owners and art lovers -- including Ramón Cernuda, who has the largest Vanguardia collection outside the island -- have filed a half-dozen suits against one another over allegedly forged works of Amelia Peláez, Mario Carreño and other Cuban modernists.

Other forgery victims have dealt with their embarrassing purchases more quietly.

The Estefans, former ambassador Paul Cejas and businessman Francisco Mestre got burned when they unwittingly paid in the six-figure range for forgeries of Lam and Peláez paintings, according to people familiar with the sales.

MATTER RECTIFIED

But they were able to use their clout to recover their investments by getting their money back or authentic paintings of equal value, the sources said.

The Estefans and Cejas could not be reached, and Mestre did not want to comment.

Sotheby's Stein said that before anyone buys or sells a valuable painting, it's essential to establish its provenance, or custody history.

The artwork's commercial viability largely depends on tracing its ownership.

For example, Stein said, Sotheby's in New York sold El Guitarrista (The Guitar Player), painted in 1944 by Carreño, for a record $456,000 in May, primarily because it had only two previous owners.

But some of the alleged Cuban fakes sold in Miami have been difficult to trace.

Skeptical buyers have insisted on certificates of authenticity from gallery owners. That, however, has led to another kind of forgery.

PAPERWORK DISPUTED

Some recent sales have come with dubious certificates of authenticity purportedly signed by a respected Vanguardia curator who has worked for decades for Havana's National Museum of Fine Arts.

In Miami court documents, however, curator Ramón Vázquez Díaz swore the certificate featuring his name to verify a 1941 Carreño painting is a fake, lending support to the buyer's complaint that the artwork is a forgery.

Ecuadorean businessman David Goldbaum bought the painting for $150,000 from Coral Gables gallery owner José Martínez-Cañas of Elite Fine Art.

Goldbaum traveled to Cuba in June to meet with Vázquez and obtain his sworn statement.

''I affirm categorically that the certificate of authenticity written by hand on the back of a photograph of Mujer en balancín (Woman on Swing), an oil painting attributed to Mario Carreño, is not of my authorship,'' Vázquez wrote in his affidavit.

DATE CONTRADICTED

A preliminary report on the age of the painting's canvas, based on a radiocarbon test by a University of Arizona physicist, also shows that it dates from the post-1945 period.

But Martínez-Cañas insisted in affidavits that the Vázquez certificate and the Carreño artwork are authentic.

Christie's, however, refused to sell the Carreño painting at auction earlier this year after learning from the curator that he had never seen the work and had not issued the certificate.

Martínez-Cañas, who has a criminal history from a 1977 bank-fraud conviction in Puerto Rico, was hit last month with another lawsuit alleging art forgery.

Miami Beach businessman Timothy Heuer accused the dealer of selling him a fake oil painting by Peláez for $135,000 and giving him a phony Vázquez certificate of authenticity.

A scientific analysis by James Martin of Massachusetts, who specializes in testing paints and has done work for the FBI, concluded the purported 1951 Peláez piece, Naturaleza Muerta (Still Life), was not even an oil painting.

Martínez-Cañas said Heuer's suit is off the mark.

CURT STATEMENT

''The painting is good,'' he said, declining further comment.

In Florida, gallery owners are not licensed. A dissatisfied buyer can sue a dealer over a questionable painting up to four years after the purchase.

Auction houses such as Christie's and Sotheby's, by comparison, offer a five-year guarantee, but buyers must prove an artwork is counterfeit.

Luis Quevedo, a Coral Gables aviation executive, is trying to do just that after buying a purported 1946 Carreño painting, Los Músicos (The Musicians), for $45,795 from La Boheme Fine Art in Coral Gables.

The gallery owner, Ivan Hanuszkiewicz, wrote that it was an ''original'' on the invoice.

But Quevedo became suspicious after consulting with Cernuda. Then Quevedo hired the University of Arizona lab to conduct a carbon test on the work's fabric and New York scientific researcher Eugena Ordoñez to analyze the pigment.

''The results from the inorganic pigment analysis and the fabric analysis indicate that the earliest date that the painting could have been made would be the late 1950s,'' Ordoñez wrote.

WENT TO COURT

Quevedo demanded his money back. The gallery owner refused. Quevedo went to court.

La Boheme's attorney, Pedro Martínez-Fraga, a collector of Vanguardia art himself, described the suit as a ''dispute over a date'' and called it "frivolous.''

Gary Nader, a pioneer in the Latin American art market who owns a Coral Gables gallery, said buyers and sellers can never be too careful.

''If I'm not 100 percent sure, I don't want to sell them,'' Nader said. "There are so many things that give them up.''

He said, for instance, that he rejected about 60 Cuban paintings submitted for his January auction because he considered them forgeries just by looking at their styles, colors and the artists' signatures in photographs.

Nader said that over the past decade, he received so much fake Lam artwork for consignment that it became an "epidemic.''

He collaborated with the artist's widow, Lou Laurin Lam, to try to put a stop to it by documenting the provenance of her late husband's paintings for the official Catalogue Raisonné, considered the bible of the art world.

Despite such precautions, he said, Miami's marketplace for Cuban art forgeries persists with apparent impunity.

Said Nader: "What is lacking is the right system that punishes people who sell fake art.''

Herald translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report.

One man's crusade against fakery

By Jay Weaver. Jweaver@Herald.Com. Posted on Sun, Aug. 10, 2003

Ramón Cernuda is known as the largest private collector of 20th century Cuban paintings in the world.

The Miami exile is also known as a rebel who promotes the island's artists and crusades against forgeries.

''I know this is going to sound self-serving, but it's my duty and obligation to defend Cuban art,'' Cernuda said.

That attitude has led to trouble with conservative exiles, federal prosecutors and gallery owners.

When he was on the board of Miami's Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture, it held a controversial 1988 auction of paintings by artists who still lived in Cuba. The museum was blasted by bombs -- twice.

The following year, federal agents seized about 220 of Cernuda's paintings from his Brickell Avenue condo, allegedly because their acquisition violated the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. But a judge ruled the First Amendment protected Cuban art in the marketplace.

Cernuda, who became rich in the publishing business, owns nearly 450 Cuban paintings, most from the coveted Vanguardia period before the Castro revolution. He said he bought them from auction houses, galleries and private collectors outside Cuba.

GALLERY LAWSUITS

During the 1990s, Cernuda, his wife, Nercys, and others demonstrated in front of two Coral Gables galleries, accusing them of selling forgeries. Cernuda's group was sued -- twice.

His competitors and critics say Cernuda has tried to control the market. He now owns a gallery on Ponce de Leon Boulevard in the Gables, the capital of the Cuban art world.

''I think he has good intentions, but his real intention is to become the king of Cuban art,'' longtime gallery owner Gary Nader said.

One former gallery owner, Javier Lumbreras, called Cernuda "vengeful.''

In 1993, Lumbreras sold him a contemporary painting, Inundación (Flood), by Cuban artist Tomás Sánchez for $16,000. But when Sánchez later visited Cernuda's home, he declared, "That's not my painting.''

Cernuda sued Lumbreras' gallery. A judge ordered it to repay Cernuda, who is still waiting for the money.

''I don't feel vengeful toward him,'' Cernuda said. "I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to clean up the market of forgeries.''

Case in point: Christie's auction debacle of 1997.

CANVAS QUESTIONED

Cernuda was reviewing the Christie's catalog for its Latin American art auction in New York and suspected some of the Cuban paintings were fakes. In particular, he fingered a Mario Carreño painting, Dos Mujeres (Two Women), dated 1944.

The artwork, valued at $180,000 to $220,000, was owned by Lumbreras, although Cernuda said he did not know that.

Cernuda and other experts convinced Christie's to pull five of the paintings. The auction house then had a pigment analysis done on Dos Mujeres, which showed it may not have been painted in 1944.

Christie's yanked it.

Lumbreras sued Cernuda for defamation, offering a certificate of authenticity by Carreño's wife, Ida González.

Cernuda, who obtained a court order to analyze the painting again, said new scientific tests on the canvas, paint and artist's signature suggest that Carreño could not have painted Dos Mujeres in 1944.

Lumbreras sniffed at Cernuda's new evidence, countering he had tests done that support its originality.

''Obviously, I believe in the authenticity of this painting,'' he said.

A Miami judge is likely to have the last word.

Herald translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report.

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