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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Cuban dissident disputes book's claim
Pro-Castro authors say he's informant
By Nancy San Martin. Nsanmartin@herald.com.
Posted on Tue, Aug. 19, 2003.
Cuban human-rights activist Elizardo Sánchez
on Monday vehemently denied an allegation by two
pro-Fidel Castro authors that he has been a government
informant for the past six years.
''I deny it absolutely,'' Sánchez, head
of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National
Reconciliation and probably the island's best-known
dissident, told reporters in Havana.
The allegation was viewed by both Sánchez
supporters and some of his critics in South Florida's
exile community as a mudslinging attempt by the
Cuban government to further undermine an already
crippled dissident movement.
The report emerged at the launch of a state-sponsored
book titled El Camaján, or The Freeloader,
which also features several pages of photographs
of Sánchez with men identified as government
security officials, according to wire-service
reports from the Cuban capital.
The book was authored by two journalists affiliated
with the state-run media who regularly host a
television program used as a platform to criticize
U.S. policy toward Cuba and verbally attack opponents.
Although the Cuban government has unveiled several
of its spies within the dissident community during
past trials of opponents, this was the first time
in memory that the government had publicly identified
a dissident as an informant who denies being a
snitch.
PLANTING SEED
''The government always tries to discredit the
opposition,'' Vladimiro Roca, a high-profile dissident,
told The Herald in a telephone interview from
Havana. "They are looking for a way to destroy
the opposition. They are trying to plant a seed
of doubt.''
Even those who disagree with Sánchez,
a former Marxist who advocates dialogue with the
government toward a peaceful change in Cuba, gave
little credence to the book.
''I've always believed that he is a legitimate
dissident, even though I have not always agreed
with him,'' said Angel de Fana, who spent 20 years
in Cuban prisons and now lives in Miami. "I
doubt the veracity of the regime more than the
authenticity of Elizardo Sánchez.''
The authors of the book, Lazaro Barredo and Arleen
Rodríguez, characterized Sánchez's
relationship with agents as collaborative in the
book, published by the Communist Party. All materials
published in Cuba are subject to strict security
reviews.
''Elizardo, of his own free will, approached
State Security organizations in 1997,'' Barredo,
a parliament member and author of several books
slamming Castro opponents, said at a news conference
in Havana.
Barredo said Sánchez provided government
agents with information about other dissidents
and about the international reporters who regularly
interview him, The Associated Press reported.
Sánchez acknowledged that he had been in
contact with state security agents in recent years,
usually when he was detained, but he denied any
collaboration.
''I must tell you that I have confronted this
regime for 35 years and my own history denies
this frame-up,'' Sánchez told reporters
who rushed to his house after a morning news conference
about the book.
Herald efforts to reach Sánchez by telephone
were unsuccessful.
WAS IN PRISON 4 YEARS
The 59-year old Sánchez, who describes
himself as a socialist Democrat, is a former professor
of Marxism. He broke with the government more
than three decades ago and has since been a vocal
critic of human-rights abuses. He spent four years
in Cuban prisons in the early 1980s. In 1987,
he founded the human-rights commission group,
which has served as an important source of information
about the situation on the island for international
rights groups, including Amnesty International
and Human Rights Watch.
The government outed three of its informants
during the trials of 75 dissidents arrested in
mid-March in an island-wide crackdown. The three
boasted that they had managed to infiltrate the
dissident groups while remaining loyal to Castro.
Sánchez was among a handful of government
opponents who escaped arrest in the crackdown.
Herald writer Alejandro Landes contributed to
this report.
Antonio Navarro, 80, led resistance in Cuba
By Elaine De Valle. Edevalle@herald.com
Antonio ''Tony'' Navarro -- a former Fidel Castro
ally who later became a resistance leader on the
island and director of Radio and TV Martí
in the early 1990s, died of heart failure on Saturday
at the hospice at Mercy Hospital in Miami.
He was 80.
Navarro, who was born in Güines, Cuba, was
a graduate of Belén Jesuit Preparatory
School in Havana -- four years before Castro became
a student there.
He then came to the United States and obtained
a degree in chemical engineering from Georgia
Tech University in Atlanta in 1943. He worked
for Shell Chemical Co. in California until 1950.
That's when he returned to Cuba to work for Galban
Trading Co., one of the country's biggest sugar
exporters.
He was working for his American wife's family
textile business in Cuba when he joined Castro's
revolutionary forces to overthrow Fulgencio Batista's
dictatorship. A photograph of Navarro at a meeting
with Castro was published in Life magazine in
1959.
But when Castro began to control the press, overrule
courts, confiscate private property and summarily
execute members of the opposition, Navarro joined
the underground anti-Castro movement. His code
name: Tocayo, which means namesake in Spanish
and later became the title of a 1981 autobiography
he authored from exile in Miami.
The book opens in a well-appointed home overlooking
a golf course -- a house with an illegal radio
communications operation hidden in the basement's
elevator shaft. Navarro used this setup to send
and receive Morse code transmissions between resistance
fighters in the mountains and exiles in Miami.
The communications helped guide air-dropped shipments
of food and weapons to resistance fighters who
were to support the Bay of Pigs invasion.
After the ill-fated mission compromised his position
-- which Cuban intelligence had already suspected,
having arrested him with false identification
papers -- Navarro sought asylum at the Brazilian
Embassy in Havana in 1961.
He ended up in Lima, Peru, where he spent 12
years as general manager of W.R. Grace and Co.'s
extensive sugar, chemicals and diversified industries.
Then he moved to New York as assistant to the
company CEO, eventually holding several executive
positions.
He served on the advisory board for the Office
of Cuba Broadcasting -- which oversees transmissions
on Radio and TV Martí -- from 1985 to 1990
and, after retiring in 1989, became director of
the broadcasting office from 1990 to 1992.
Perhaps because of the three weeks he spent in
a Cuban jail -- fearing his own execution was
imminent -- after he was caught with the fake
papers in 1960, Navarro truly valued every day
of life, his son said.
''Although he was raised and formed by the Jesuits,
and had great respect for their educational skills,
he was not the most religious person,'' Antonio
Navarro Jr. said. "He did truly believe in
the sanctity of life and its importance.
'As a reminder, he wore a medal that stated,
'Be mindful of this day, for it is life.' ''
Navarro also is survived by his wife, Avis Hedges,
son Alex and daughter Avis Aronson, as well as
nine grandchildren.
Services will be private. In lieu of flowers,
the family asks that donations be sent to Belen
Jesuit School, 500 SW 127th Ave., Miami, FL 33184.
Where to see Cuban artists
Posted on Sun, Aug. 17, 2003.
Here's where to sample the work of Cuban artists
and performers:
o Carlos Averhoff performs Thursday and Aug.
28 with the Sammy Figueroa Latin Jazz Explosion
upstairs at the Van Dyke Café, 846 Lincoln
Rd., Miami Beach. Shows start 9 and 10:30 p.m.
and midnight, $5 cover. Call 305-534-3600.
o Lili Rentería's Teatro Abanico, 22 Giralda
Ave. in Coral Gables, presents dramatic readings
in English Saturday and Aug. 24 of Arnold Mercado
and Rolando Moreno's The End of Magic, with Ralph
de la Portilla, Juan Sánchez, Vivian Ruiz
and Karen García. Readings in Spanish of
Mercado's comedy El padre de la patria (Father
of the Land) take place Aug. 30 and 31 with Carlos
Cruz, Vivian Ruiz and Elizabeth Ayoub. Saturday
readings are at 8:30 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m. Thursdays
are dedicated to the reading of monologues, also
at 8:30 p.m. Admission is $5. Call 305-448-1100.
o Félix Lizárraga reads from his
work along with other South Florida authors at
Miami Voices and Stories, a panel discussion about
what makes life in South Florida a rich source
of literary inspiration, from 6:30 to 7:15 p.m.
Thursday at the Miami Art Museum, 101 W. Flagler
St. Admission is $5, free to MAM members. Call
305-375-3000.
o Ismael Gómez Peralta's new work will
show along with the works of Cuban painter Flora
Fong in the exhibit Una Isla, Dos Versiones (One
Island, Two Versions), from Oct. 9 to Nov. 7 at
Miami-Dade College's Kendall Campus Art Gallery,
11011 SW 104th St., Miami. Call 305-237-2322.
o Just one year out of Cuba, troubadour Cristina
Rebull, a charismatic performer, has rallied a
loyal following at Hoy Como Ayer, 2212 SW Eighth
St., a charming nightclub operated by Cuban newcomers
to the night scene. She performs at 9 p.m. Fridays
at the club's El Cuarto de Tula; cover is $7.
Call 305-541-2631.
-- FABIOLA SANTIAGO
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