CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Four die in hard-hit Havana area

Charley's two-hour assault -- the worst the Havana Province had seen in nearly a century -- killed four people, knocked out power and ruined thousands of buildings.

From Herald Wire Services. Posted on Sun, Aug. 15, 2004.

HAVANA - The death toll from Hurricane Charley's two-hour sprint across Cuba rose to four on Saturday as authorities tried to determine the extent of the storm's damage on the island.

Lt. Col. Domingo Carretero, head of Cuban civil defense, updated the death toll in a Saturday report.

Carretero offered few specifics, but said three people were killed by collapsing roofs and a fourth person drowned. All four deaths occurred in hard-hit Havana Province, which borders the capital of Havana.

Another five people were injured in the storm, he said.

Charley also caused serious damage to high-voltage towers and other parts of the electrical power infrastructure when it punished western Cuba before dawn Friday, Carretero said.

Some regions remained without electricity Saturday, including a large part of the western province of Pinar del Rio.

Residents in Havana were still without power, which authorities were promising to restore to 80 percent of the city today.

National and international flights resumed at Havana's main airport, despite damage to the control tower.

Carretero said thousands of buildings across western Cuba crumbled under the hurricane's high winds and rains.

The storm damaged 502 schools and 22 health centers in Pinar del Rio and Havana provinces, officials said.

Officials said Charley was the most destructive storm to hit Havana Province since 1915.

Charley was a Category 2 storm with winds of up to 110 mph when it swept across the Caribbean's largest island in less than two hours shortly after midnight. Gusts of up to 125 mph were reported in some areas.

''We had to crawl under the bed,'' 39-year-old Marlen Perez said of the storm, which ripped chunks of corrugated roof off her modest Havana home.

'The wind was howling and I was screaming, 'Oh, my God! Oh, my God!' '' Perez said. "Pieces of the roof were falling everywhere. . . . I thought the walls were falling down.''

Rejected by Cuba, gymnast gets her chance competing for the U.S.

By Jemele Hill, Detroit Free Press. Posted on Sun, Aug. 15, 2004.

ATHENS - They told Annia Hatch her butt was too big, her body too muscular and her feet too flat.

Sadly for Hatch, it wouldn't be the first time her native country of Cuba decided she wasn't worth the investment.

When she was 6, Cuban coaches told her she never would be a gymnast because of those perceived physical flaws. Eventually, Hatch was accepted at an academy because one coach lobbied the rest to keep her because of her flexibility.

When she was 17, Cuba kept her from the Olympics altogether.

When she was 21, the country kept her out of the world championships.

Now at 26, she is competing again - for the United States.

"It was just a dream come true that I am here," Hatch said Sunday.

Given her history, it's a wonder Hatch is even in Athens. The Americans finished second to defending champion Romania at Sunday's qualifying and Hatch did not perform her best, but it's difficult not to admire her resolve.

Hatch is an anomaly at 25 because in gymnastics that translates to 85. She retired at 17 after the Cuban federation didn't send her to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics - even though she had won seven national titles and won the country's first-ever medal at the world championships by taking bronze in the vault in 1996.

"She's here," said husband, Alan Hatch, whom she married after moving to the United States following her retirement. "We're going to make it. I'm sure we're going to be fine."

If perseverance were a competition, Hatch already would have a gold. She tore her knee to shreds last year, which was supposed to signal the end of her career. But Hatch stormed back at the Olympic trials and made the team.

Hatch didn't compete for four years. She resigned herself to a lifetime of coaching and opened Stars Elite Gymnastics Academy in West Haven, Conn., with her husband. It seemed like an appropriate choice. Many gymnasts have pursued coaching after they stopped competing in their late teens.

But upon hearing that a former Cuban teammate was still competing after having a son, Hatch decided it was time to perform again.

"The Olympics are just icing on the cake," Alan Hatch said. "It really wasn't for the Olympics that she came back. It wasn't for any other competition. It was mainly for the fun of it. That's why she came back."

But returning as a competitor wasn't so simple. Cuba used a 10-year commitment she signed at age 14 to keep her from competing at the world championships in Hungary in 2002 - after Hatch had been training for more than a year.

International Gymnastics Federation rules were on Cuba's side. They say an athlete's former country must give permission to compete for a new nation in the first 12 months after the athlete gains citizenship. Hatch's commitment didn't expire until December 2002.

So Hatch didn't perform again until the 2003 American Cup in Fairfax, Va., when she roared back with a fourth-place finish in the all-around. If an entire country couldn't keep her down, the competition in gymnastics certainly wouldn't, either.

Despite the rocky relationship she has had with her homeland, she still loves Cuba. Her parents, two brothers and sister still live there.

"Definitely, I feel proud about who I am and where I come from," Hatch said. "This is what America is all about. Everybody comes from everywhere."

But her relationship with Cuba has left a wound.

"That is another time," Hatch said when asked if there was any lingering hurt. "I'm over with that, and I'm thinking about the future."

Helping the U.S. win a gold medal might provide some salve. The Americans, the reigning world champions, didn't perform especially well in qualifying Sunday, finishing with 151.848 points, behind Romania's 152.436. China was third at 151.085. The finals are Tuesday.

Although Hatch was added to the U.S. team because of her proficiency in the vault, she posted mediocre scores of 9.387 and 9.450 on her two vaults.

"She could do better," said team coordinator Martha Karolyi. "That's honest. She has the ability to do it. I think the next day of the competition, I am expecting her to do it. She is probably the best in the world at what she does. But she had trouble with her landings."

It seems landings are Hatch's specialty.

Cuba, Japan Win in Olympic Baseball

Sun Aug 15,11:03 AM ET

ATHENS, Greece - Cuba, one of the favorites in the Olympic baseball tournament, defeated Australia 4-1 in the Olympic baseball tournament Sunday.

Adiel Palma pitched eight shutout innings to pick up the win, giving up just two hits. Michael Enriquez, batting second for Cuba, hit a solo homer in his first at-bat. Australia committed three errors and two of Cuba's four runs were unearned.

Japan dominated Italy 12-0, a game that was halted after seven inning because of the mercy rule. Starting pitcher Koji Uehara, a star with Yomiuri Giants in Japan's Central League, threw six scoreless innings for the win, giving up four hits and one walk, while striking out four.

The saints and El Líder

The relationship of Castro and his regime with 'the religion,' as Santería is often called in Cuba, is complex -- and mysterious.

By Elizabeth Hanly, elizhanly@aol.com. Posted on Sun, Aug. 15, 2004.

In any conversation among Cubans, sooner or later a trinity of questions will come up. When will Fidel Castro fall? What will happen afterward? Is he protected?

''Protected'' in this context doesn't refer to a palace guard. Cubans are asking whether despite years of soaking the island in Marxist-Leninist jargon, El Líder is in fact an initiate of one of the magical Afro-Cuban faiths. As they say, ''that Fidel is pretty lucky, no?'' He is by now modern history's longest-standing strongman.

To what extent he may be a ''believer'' is open to speculation. What is clear is that in a culture where these traditions have a special hold on the imagination -- Newsweek has estimated that 70 percent of all Cubans on the island practice some form of the old slave religions -- the association of Castro with Afro-Cuban faith contributes to his power.

Over the years, a number of events have been read as marking Castro as one ''anointed'' by the gods. Castro has used this to show his solidarity both with African nations and with his own country's black underclass. Still the relationship of Castro's regime with ''the religion,'' as Cubans call Santería, is complex: Castro has used this one to respond to emerging and even urgent conditions.

Although Santería in Cuba has always been shrouded in secrecy, many Cubans and even serious scholars believe there is a long tradition of highly placed politicos, including presidents, turning to ''the religion'' for that little added edge. Still, nobody had seen anything like El Comandante. His revolution managed to ''triumph'' on arguably the most sacred day in Santería's calendar -- Jan. 1, the day given over to prophecy and belonging to Elegua, keeper of the crossroads, he who is responsible for ''opening the way.'' Castro's cavalcade wound through Cuba draped in the flags of a movement whose colors of red and black happened to be Elegua's as well.

About a week later in 1959, as the 32-year-old Castro addressed his people at a huge rally in Havana, a dove alighted on his shoulder. Wayne S. Smith, former chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, describes ''a palpable shiver that went through the crowd.'' Here was the living synthesis of symbols from two religions: the Holy Ghost, represented in Catholicism as a dove, and Obatalá, the Santería prince of peace, whose color is white. (Of course, there are skeptics who believe the dove was trained, particularly because it happened again 30 years later.)

There were other signs of Castro's connection to Afro-Cuban traditions. The Abakuá, a secret-society/male-brotherhood, was among the most respected and feared of any Cuban institution. According to Dr. Ivor Miller, a scholar-in-residence at the Shomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Visiting Professor of African and Black Diaspora Studies at DePaul University, 'in 1959 the brotherhood made Fidel an honorary member because, as one of them put it, 'Fidel had come to defend the blacks who had always been discriminated against.' Castro's body was ritually cleansed with medicinal plants and a rooster. The ceremony was shown on Cuban national TV.''

After Castro's ascent to power and under his direction, museums featuring Santería's ritual objects were popping up all over the island. In 1965, the first company devoted to the sacred dance of the Afro-Cuban faiths was born. Rogelio Martínez-Furé, who founded the company, talked of the troupe's trip to West Africa. "We were greeted at the airport by hundreds dancing the same dances that we would dance for them. The old world was meeting the new. Everyone was in tears.''

''It appeared to be a time when black culture/Santería could finally come out of Cuba's closet,'' says Damián Fernández, who heads Florida International University's Cuban Research Center. "Castro was setting the stage for Cuba to appear as paradise for the black, the disenfranchised. But. . . once a culture is enshrined in a museum, it can no longer threaten another orthodoxy.''

Shrewd calculation? Look at those around Fidel, and the picture becomes muddy.

No one was closer to Fidel than his secretary and lover Celia Sánchez. There are indications that Celia was a Santería priestess. A respected plastic surgeon who worked with her, and chooses to remain anonymous, claims having seen Castro in robes with Celia at a ceremony. ''Perhaps Castro was there to please Celia,'' says Carlos Alberto Montaner, a political writer and exile leader who knew her. "Celia was always doing everything to protect him.''

SPIRITIST

It wasn't just Celia. Castro's personal physician, Comandante René Vallejo, was a well-known spiritist who reputedly was informed by the ''invisibles'' that the U.S. invasion of 1961 would occur at The Bay of Pigs.

By 1980, the regime was losing its grip at home, as evidenced by the storming of the Peruvian Embassy and the Mariel exodus that followed.

''After Mariel, Fidel's power was so eroded that without serious overtures to the black community, he would have been overthrown,'' says an anthropologist working at Cuba's Academy of Science. (Like many other sources from the island, this one prefers to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.)

Suddenly, state permisos to celebrate Afro-Cuban liturgy were readily available. José Carniedad, who headed the Politburo's Office on Religion and Atheism, made overtures to various religious leaders, asking them to include in their praise song descriptions of the various deities as ''great revolutionaries.'' King Sijuwade Olubuse ll, head of the Yoruba faith in Nigeria, was invited to the island and was received with a pomp and ceremony heretofore unknown in revolutionary Cuba.

By the decade's end, as the Soviet Union collapsed, Castro made a very public rapprochement with the Catholic Church. When the church tried to push El Co mandante further in the area of religious rights, so many articles sympathetic to Santería appeared in Cuba's state-run press that Jaime Cardinal Ortega accused the regime of trying to place ''an artificial wedge'' between Santería and the church.

Economic and political crises continued. Cubans were desperate enough to take to the sea in rafts made of old doors. Annual Santería divinations reflected this. By the 1990s, the regime offered its favors to many of the island's priests in exchange for their help in an official Yoruba Cultural Association that guaranteed happier predications for Cuba. The association's work didn't stop there. Some of these priests were sent into Latin America and Europe to bring back the curious and the converted to be initiated in Cuba. Approximately $8,000 per head would make its way into state coffers. And in the annual May Day Parade, Santería devotees appeared just after the missiles and tanks chanting, "Elegua will resolve everything.''

Elegua, a child with the head of an old man, known as the Ancient of Days, can be interpreted as the aging revolutionary renewed by a sacred child. Thus the significance of Elián González, the child ''rescued'' back to Castro's Cuba.

FIDEL A BELIEVER?

But does Fidel actually believe? Could he be an initiate?

The answer continues to be . . . maybe.

''He believes only in power,'' says Montaner. But Santería is about power, or more precisely what Yale Africanist Robert Farris Thompson calls that ''flash of spirit'' that can make things happen.

''Fidel is a master of the dialectical,'' adds Miami Santería priest Jorge Torres. 'That is an attitude that might well be sympathetic to 'the religion.' ''

Another Miami priest, Ernesto Pichardo, explains, "If Fidel were initiated, we would have more information about who within Santería's community performed the ceremony.''

Still, the stories go on.

Miller, the scholar, found an old woman in Havana who knew Félix ''El Negro'' -- the priest who reportedly performed the initiation in the early 1950s, long before Castro became El Comandante. Miller tried to corroborate the story -- but Félix ''El Negro'' was dead.

A primer on Santería

Enrique Fernández. Posted on Sun, Aug. 15, 2004.

Although its practitioners prefer other names, Santería (Spanish for saint worship) is the best-known of a handful of African-based religious traditions that took root in Cuba and, in some cases, fused with Western beliefs -- mostly Catholicism, thus the matching of a saint and an African deity, but also spiritism and card-reading.

Santeros believe in the power of the orishas -- divinities from the Yoruba people (from today's Nigeria) shipped to the island as slaves -- who control phenomena like the sea (Yemayá), flowing waters (Ochún), iron (Oggún), thunder (Changó), and crossroads (Elegua). Through a complex and ancient divination process, santería priests consult the orishas to determine what issues (work, health, love, honesty) someone is facing and what can be done -- often a ritual involving the sacrifice of an animal like a dove or rooster -- to get on the right path.

Ceremonies in which sacred drums are played often lead to an attendee being possessed (''mounted'') by an orisha. At that point whatever the person does, which could include minor mischief or hectoring someone on their immoral behavior, is attributed to the ''saint.'' Although it deals with primal forces -- e.g. the blood of a sacrificed animal -- santería is more involved with avoiding harm than with causing it in others.

Other Afro-Cuban and Afro-Caribbean religions, particularly those that claim to tap the energies of the dead, have more sinister reputations.

Santería, which started as a slave religion, soon spread to whites in Cuba and other parts of the Caribbean and to the U.S., where it caught hold among African Americans in search of their roots, whites with alternative religious leanings, and others; many if not most old salsa songs, for instance, contain allusions to Santería that initiates will understand.

Copyright 2004 Knight Ridder All Rights Reserved

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