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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Biological warfare capability is denied
HAVANA - (AP) -- Cuba's Foreign Ministry on Monday
denied a new claim the island has a limited biological
warfare program and demanded that American authorities
back up claims with proof.
Assistant Secretary of State for the Western
Hemisphere Roger Noriega reportedly made the claim
Thursday at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee
hearing on Cuba.
American officials ''believe that Cuba has at
least a limited, developmental, offensive biological
weapons research and development effort,'' Noriega,
the top U.S. diplomat for Latin America, was quoted
as saying at the hearing.
Cuba's Foreign Ministry said Monday that Noriega
"acts like a fanatical member of the terrorist
groups of Miami, obsessed with the destruction
of the Cuban revolution.''
Carried in the Communist Party daily Granma and
other government media, the statement called on
the U.S. authorities to back up the claims with
proof.
''It's embarrassing that high-ranking figures
in the United States government have to lie before
Congress to try to justify their discredited anti-Cuban
policies,'' the statement added.
There was no immediate reaction Monday from State
Department officials in Washington.
The United States charged twice last year that
the Cuban government was running a program for
biological warfare.
On those occasions, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe
Pérez Roque also denied the U.S. accusations
and demanded proof.
Problems with visas create roadblock for Cuban
artists
South Florida cultural events are at risk
as new travel procedures are blamed for the delays.
By Fabiola Santiago. fsantiago@herald.com.
The Bush administration failed to process visas
for three Madrid-based Cuban musicians to travel
to Miami to perform at a debut concert last weekend
-- one more instance in which a South Florida
cultural event is put in jeopardy by stricter
post-9/11 regulations on travel to the United
States.
The visa woes will be an issue again as the Miami
Book Fair International gets under way Nov. 7-9,
and already, Cuban participants are facing problems
obtaining travel clearances.
The musicians -- singer/songwriters Pepe del
Valle and Luis Barbería, and Kike Ferrer,
the drummer -- are part of the edgy Habana Abierta
ensemble, a collective of musicians whose streetwise
lyrics, poetic and critical, reflect a generation
clamoring for change and freedoms.
Despite myriad technical difficulties, the Habana
Abierta concerts brought scores of fans to their
feet at the Coconut Grove Playhouse Friday and
Saturday nights as the five members of the band
and three back-up musicians who did obtain travel
documents played their energetic fusion music
with a replacement drummer.
But the absence of their colleagues meant the
band had to hustle at the last minute to coordinate
with local back-up musicians.
''Explain to me how three musicians are a threat
to national security,'' said Natalio Chediak,
the Grammy-winning music producer who brought
the band to Miami in collaboration with Miami
Dade College. "It's a shame to have robbed
the other members of the band the opportunity
to perform in Miami.''
POLITICS INVOLVED?
The fact that the band had performed in Cuba
last January -- a factor that doesn't play well
with some of Miami's conservative political leadership
-- left fans and organizers wondering whether
local Cuban politics had played a role in delaying
the visas.
A State Deparment official on the Cuba Desk
said delays in getting all the necessary post-9/11
inter-agency clearances, not politics, was keeping
the musicians from coming to Miami.
But whatever the case, organizers of cultural
events in South Florida are constantly facing
a new reality: events that require the participation
of people born in Cuba -- one of the countries
on the U.S. enemy list -- are risking cancellation
due to delays blamed on the new procedures.
Last year, Antonio José Ponte, an established
writer who had previously easily traveled to the
United States to read from his work and participate
in literary workshops, did not get his visa approved.
This year, Spain-based Cuban poet Lidia Señaris
already has experienced difficulties and given
up trying to secure a visa. Filmmaker Manuel Marcel,
who had planned to attend the Cuban Alternative
Film Festival two weeks ago, was denied his visa.
''We did everything on time, knowing all that
is happening with the visa process -- and nothing,''
said Alejandro Ríos, director of the film
festival and one of the book fair coordinators.
Some big name writers have declined to participate
in the Book Fair all together, Ríos said,
because they "don't want to endure the humiliation
they are being put through in this process.''
''This situation is creating tension, ill-will,
and is hurting our cultural events,'' Ríos
added.
And none of the Cuban artists nominated for the
Latin Grammy, and thus routinely invited to the
ceremony, was able to get a visa for the Miami
event last month.
DEADLINE MET
The Herald inquired on Sept. 30 about the delay
in granting the Habana Abierta musicians permission
to travel to the United States. All Habana Abierta
musicians had filed their paperwork within the
required six to eight week window before travel.
Del Valle and Barbería were interviewed
at the U.S. embassy in Madrid on Aug. 12. Ferrer,
who had previously traveled to the United States
on a music scholarship in his teens and returned
home, was interviewed July 28.
At first, the State Department official looking
into the matter said that two of the musicians'
files had been ''put on hold.'' He said he did
not know the reasons, but would inquire.
By Thursday, the official still had no answers,
except to say that the cases were held up because
one of the agencies involved in the approval process
had not been able to provide the necessary clearance.
''The six to eight weeks is a minimum in a lot
of cases,'' the official said.
He denied that politics had played a role.
Said Chediak: "What we are creating here
is a police state, a mix of arrogant and unrestricted
power. They don't have to answer to anyone. They
don't have to say yes or nay.''
Ironically, Chediak and Ríos noted, Cuban
cultural groups with closer sympathies to the
Cuban government do get their paperwork expedited
quicker, apparently because the Cuban government
cooperates in the paperwork process, while critical
groups like Habana Abierta and independent writers
like Ponte may suffer because their paperwork
seems to take unexpectedly long.
''Los Van Van get their visas to perform here
and they come with the Cuban state security apparatchik
that watches their every move and these Cubans
stranded in Madrid can't get their visas processed
in two whole months,'' Chediak said.
Likewise, the Cuban National Ballet -- led by
Alicia Alonso, a longtime public supporter of
Fidel Castro and his government -- are currently
touring the United States, including some venues
in Florida.
Cabinet minister in 1950s Cuba
Deaths | Santiago Rey Perna
By Wilfredo Cancio Isla, El Nuevo
Herald.
Santiago Rey Perna, a prominent political figure
in pre-Castro Cuba, died Monday in Miami of a
heart attack. He was 95.
Rey Perna, who held the post of minister of governance
during the regime of Fulgencio Batista, became
very active on Cuba's political stage in the 1930s
and was one of the surviving members of the historic
National Assembly that established the Constitution
of 1940.
''We have lost an illustrious Cuban,'' said attorney
Rafael Peñalver, president of the San Carlos
Institute in Key West. "He was a man of exceptional
talent, a learned man, and someone who knew history
like few did.''
Born April 7, 1908, in the city of Cienfuegos,
Rey Perna was the son of a veteran of the War
of Independence that freed the island from Spain.
After graduating from high school, Rey Perna
traveled to the United States to study before
returning to graduate from the University of Havana
Law School. .
Rey Perna entered politics in 1932 and was elected
to the Chamber of Deputies on the Conservative
Party ticket. He became chairman of the Finance
Committee of the Constitutional Convention of
1940, the same year he was elected governor of
Las Villas.
Between 1944 and 1958, he served in the Senate
and headed the committees on Sugar Affairs and
Insurance. In 1954, he became chief of the Ministry
of Governance, serving until the fall of the Batista
regime.
When Fidel Castro took power in 1959, Rey Perna
sought asylum in the Chilean Embassy and remained
there for 73 days before traveling to Chile as
a political refugee.
Later he moved to Mexico and finally to Miami,
where he lived for the past 40 years in the same
Little Havana home with his wife, Berta Ziegenhirt.
The two were married in 1944 and had no children.
In 1959, he published in Mexico Looking at Cuba,
a book that foretold the evolution to totalitarianism
of the Castro regime.
In the 1960s, he was an aide to Dominican President
Joaquín Balaguer. In Miami in the 1980s,
he managed or had a role in the election campaigns
of several local politicians.
A funeral Mass will take place at St. John Bosco
on Wednesday at 10 a.m.
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