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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Exiles strike back at Moore's writings
By Gail Epstein Nieves,
gepstein@herald.com. Posted on Fri, Aug.
06, 2004.
Weeks after Michael Moore's Fahrenheit
9/11 became a controversial blockbuster
in the United States, the film and its maker
are generating a new wave of attention --
this time from Cubans on both sides of the
Florida Straits.
In Cuba, where leader Fidel Castro is in
a heightened war of words with President
Bush, bootlegged copies of Moore's Bush-bashing
documentary were shown to packed cinemas
for a week, and the film was aired on state-run
television July 29.
In Miami and elsewhere, Cuban Americans
who support Bush are vilifying Moore on
Spanish-language radio, the Internet and
in e-mails.
Their objection, beyond the new film: inflammatory
pieces Moore wrote about Cuban exiles in
1997 and 2000 in which he called them ''Batista
supporters'' and ''wimps'' who were wrong
not to immediately send home child-boater
Elián González.
The controversy has put Cuban-American
Democrats in a sensitive spot: Moore's writings
about Miami exiles are sure to offend some
of them, but the filmmaker's anti-Bush message
resonates strongly with Democrats eager
to reclaim the White House.
Miami Cuban-American Gus Garcia, a delegate
to the Democratic National Convention in
Boston, said he skipped the Florida delegation's
July 28 breakfast with Moore because a relative
called and read him an e-mail quoting Moore's
writings.
''Total Cuban bashing,'' Garcia said Thursday.
"I lost my father when I was 11 in
the struggle against Castro, so I did not
appreciate that, as a Cuban American or
as a human being.''
Cuban exiles are spreading Moore's writings
around the globe ''in what I call the Web
track, the information highway, going about
90 miles per hour,'' Garcia said.
Garcia's opinions form rare common ground
with Radio Mambí host Ninoska Pérez
Castellón, a staunch Bush supporter,
who criticized Moore during her show on
Tuesday.
''I mentioned the fact that what he's written
about Cubans is totally insulting,'' she
said Thursday. "Of course there's a
lot of talk, because people feel offended
-- and rightly so -- by the things he has
said.''
LOSS OF RIGHTS
As for the film being shown in Cuba, Garcia
said it could send a message that "this
country allows criticism of the power structure,
which the Cuban government doesn't. I think
Moore should point that out. It's fashionable
now to go to Cuba, but it's not quaint to
point out the loss of human rights in Cuba.''
People are calling Miami-Dade County Mayor
Alex Penelas' office to complain, too.
''They want us to stand up and tell Michael
Moore a thing or two,'' Penelas spokeswoman
Lynn Norman-Teck said.
Will Penelas, a Cuban-American Democrat
running for a U.S. Senate seat, take up
the cause? Norman-Teck said she would ask
him when he got out of a meeting. There
was no answer Thursday night from Penelas,
who did attend the delegation breakfast
in Boston at which Moore spoke.
Shawn Sachs, Moore's spokesman in New York,
said Moore declined to comment.
Fahrenheit 9/11 reached Cuban homes and
120 cinemas ''from an unauthorized, pirated
copy'' broadcast without prior knowledge
of Moore or the film's distributors, their
representatives said.
In a country with a long-held distrust
of U.S. governments, the film has sparked
widespread public interest and added to
a recent barrage of official -- and personalized
-- attacks on President Bush.
Relations between Washington and Havana
have soured since the White House tightened
the Cuba embargo on June 30. New rules limit
visits and cash gifts from Cubans in the
United States.
For Maria, a wife and mother struggling
to support seven loved ones in her cramped
Havana apartment, watching Fahrenheit 9/11
on Cuban television last week had the intended
effect:
''I'm surprised at what [George Bush] was
doing when Sept. 11th happened,'' said Maria,
who agreed to give only her first name.
"I couldn't imagine that he was in
the school visiting children and that terrible
thing was happening and he didn't do anything.
"In my opinion, he is not intelligent
enough to be president of the United States.
I wish that in November he would not be
the president again.''
Encouraging the masses to bash President
Bush is a shared goal for filmmaker Moore
and Castro. But they share opinions about
more than Bush.
DISLIKE OF EXILES
According to material written in 1997 and
2000 by Moore, both men abhor Miami's Cuban
exile community. In a chapter of his 1997
best-selling book Downsize This! that is
excerpted on the Internet, Moore wrote about
Miami's Cuban exiles as ''always present
and involved . . . in every incident of
national torment that has deflated our country
for the past three decades,'' including
as examples the Kennedy assassination, Watergate,
Iran-Contra and the drug-abuse epidemic.
In a letter of apology to Elián
on Moore's website, Moore calls Elián's
mother a child abuser for taking the boy
to sea. Elián's mother died on the
journey, setting up a tug of war for the
boy between his father in Havana and his
Miami relatives.
The film's distributors hastened to say
they had not provided the movie to Cuba
after a report this week suggested that
it could be disqualified from the Academy
Awards because it had aired on television
within nine months of its theatrical distribution
-- a violation of academy rules.
East Cuba drought worst in 40 years
Eastern Cuba's wells
are dry, its faucets empty and crops withered
in the worst draught the region has experienced
in 40 years.
By Vanessa Arrington, Associated
Press. Posted on Sun, Aug. 08, 2004
HOLGUIN, Cuba - For Rebeca Falla, it's
getting harder and harder to chill out.
Eastern Cuba's worst drought in 40 years
has turned cooking, washing clothes and
scrubbing floors into a nightmare.
Then there's showering. Falla, 59, is accustomed
to taking long, cold ones twice daily for
relief from the humid 90-degree weather,
but has to settle for a brief drizzle.
''It leaves you in a very bad mood,'' she
said.
The water shortage has affected thousands
in Holguin city, 435 miles east of Havana
in the area hardest hit.
Surrounding towns in Holguin province and
the eastern provinces of Camaguey and Las
Tunas have also suffered.
Yucca, banana and sugar cane crops have
withered away, sending up prices in local
markets. Nearly 13,000 bony cows have been
slaughtered this year.
Authorities went on alert in Holguin, Cuba's
fourth-largest city, in July 2003, when
rain failed to fill reservoirs.
Two months later, one of the city's three
reservoirs dried up, then another in May
when rainfall was 40 percent below normal.
''Never before have two reservoirs dried
up,'' said Leandro Bermudez, Holguin's deputy
director of Cuba's National Institute of
Hydraulic Resources. "It's been very
tense here.''
Although things have improved lately with
more frequent rain showers, it will be weeks
before reservoirs and wells are replenished.
The reservoir that dried up in May has recovered
only enough to guarantee 30 days of water
for hospitals and clinics in Holguin, a
city of 300,000. Faucets run empty, and
most wells dried up long ago.
Cuba's government reacted by digging more
than 100 new wells in and around Holguin
and setting up stores selling drinking water
by the liter for less than a U.S. cent.
Castro is called 'no longer invincible'
Cuba experts told the
Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy
that a weakened Castro could mean an unstable
Cuba.
By Nayiva Blanco, nblanco@herald.com.
Posted on Fri, Aug. 06, 2004.
Cuban President Fidel Castro has lost his
''prophetic, charismatic and inspirational
abilities,'' leaving the island's political
stability uncertain, the CIA's former top
Cuba expert said Thursday.
Castro is ''no longer invincible,'' said
Brian Latell, now with the Washington-based
Center for Strategic and International Studies.
He was addressing the annual meeting of
the Miami-based Association for the Study
of the Cuban Economy (ASCE).
Latell said Havana's leader, who will turn
78 on Aug. 13, has ''lost his prophetic,
charismatic and inspirational abilities,''
and as a result has become more constrained
by aides, who now even write some of his
speeches.
That implies that Cuba's political stability
is uncertain, and that its people could
even face chaos or a ''conspicuously military
regime'' if Castro's leadership continues
to deteriorate, Latell said.
Latell was among four panelists who addressed
the opening session of ASCE's three-day
conference in Miami. ASCE is largely made
up of academics and business people interested
in Cuba issues.
Also addressing the opening session, Phil
Peters, a Cuba expert with the Washington-based
Lexington Institute, said the economic openings
Cuba adopted in the early 1990s -- after
its massive Soviet subsidies ended -- were
positive in the beginning but 'now we see
things slipping into reverse.''
The island now has a ''culture of illegality,''
because of the mixture of private and state-controlled
economic activities, and could achieve more
positive results with ''minor changes,''
he said.
But as long as Castro is in power, Peters
stressed, "they're going to keep things
as they are.''
Adolfo Franco, assistant administrator
of the U.S. Agency for International Development,
said that despite the Cuban government's
crackdown on dissidents last year, ''there
is an unstopable movement for change'' on
the island.
Perspectives on Cuban exiles and Michael
Moore
Posted on Mon, Aug. 09,
2004.
Michael Moore should be put on a raft and
sent to live in Cuba where he can enjoy
the benefits of free healthcare, obtain
a free education and spend his life worshipping
his good friend Fidel Castro. Maybe then
he'll learn what it's like to live in a
communist regime, without the freedoms and
human rights that he takes for granted in
the United States.
Since most Cubans on the island are starving,
living there might help Moore lose some
of that fat around his waist as he struggles
to buy his next meal with the measly salary
the government will pay him. Until then,
Moore has no right to say anything about
the Cuban people or exiles.
I applaud The Herald for publicizing his
comments. This should be a good lesson for
us younger Cuban Americans who believe that
the Democratic Party is going to sympathize
with us or help our community.
E. BLANCO, Coral Gables
I am a Cuban American and grateful that
Moore thinks so little of me -- for I think
less of him. Castro and Moore both spin
the truth, despise Cuban Americans and love
to badmouth the United States.
In 1960, after Castro confiscated our family
business, my father was put in prison, where
he was physically and mentally tortured
for 20 years, solely because he disagreed
with the Cuban dictator. My father was not
a ''wimp;'' neither was my best friend's
father, who was put before a firing squad
and gave his life for his beliefs. Nor were
the many young Cuban men who died during
the Bay of Pigs, trying to defend their
country.
I am extremely grateful to the United States
and, most important, I know that I am living
in the greatest country in the world.
MARIA EUGENIA ORDOÑEZ,
Miami
Isn't it interesting how Moore's writings
weren't newsworthy in 1997 or during the
2000 presidential campaign? Those writings
are old news. Moore is not running for office.
Many Democrats have pointed out that portions
of the recent film are highly suspect --
like the assertion that the United States
entered Afghanistan because of an oil pipeline
rather than the Taliban. But there are valid
points in the movie.
Moore and his movie should not be a deciding
issue in this election. It should be: Are
we, as individuals and a nation, better
off now than four years ago?
If you are happy with the way things are,
I guess you could make an argument for President
Bush's reelection. If not, then Kerry is
your best choice.
MARY A. MILAN, Miami
It is unfortunate that Moore holds such
mistaken notions about the Cuban-exile community.
It is also unfortunate that he is not alone
in those opinions. But linking his wrong-headed
view to the suggestion that Cuban Americans
therefore all should vote for President
Bush is even more mistaken.
It would be the ultimate tragedy for this
community.
OSCAR A. SANCHEZ, Miami
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