CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Bush, exiles plotting to kill me, Castro says

Cuban leader Fidel Castro repeats a claim that President Bush wishes to kill him, but he makes the accusation more pointedly than before. U.S. officials and exiles dismiss Castro's assertion.

By Nancy San Martin, nsanmartin@herald.com. Posted on Sat, Jan. 31, 2004.

Cuban President Fidel Castro on Friday accused President Bush and Cuban Americans in Miami of plotting to assassinate him -- a charge that he has made before but never so explicitly.

''We know that Mr. Bush has committed himself to the mafia . . . to assassinate me,'' Castro was quoted as saying in a speech in Havana, using his favorite epithet for hard-line Cuban exiles. "I said it once before and today I'll say it clearer: I accuse him!''

His allegation was widely covered by foreign correspondents in Havana, although he has made similar allegations on at least four other occasions, including in two speeches in which he claimed that the plot was hatched during a Texas meeting between Bush and exiles before the 2000 presidential election.

Several Cuban Americans said they did meet with Bush in Austin that year but denied that there has ever been any discussion of assassinating Castro or of military action to remove him from power.

''Castro needs to have a constant war against shadows,'' said Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, who attended the Austin meeting. He said the gathering, which included several exile leaders, was short and focused on Bush's stance on U.S. policy toward Cuba, including the embargo.

''Castro's accusation has no basis or foundation of truth,'' Garcia said.

Top U.S. officials also dismissed the allegations by the 77-year-old Castro.

''The world would be better off without Fidel Castro, a lot better off, but that doesn't mean anybody's trying to kill him,'' said Roger Noriega, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, who was in Miami Friday. "It's a ridiculous assertion.''

''There's no need to kill Castro. He's half-dead already,'' said Luis Zuñiga, a member of the anti-Castro Cuban Liberty Council in Miami.

MARATHON SPEECH

Castro's remarks came at the end of a 5 ½-hour speech before some 1,000 Latin American activists opposed to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. In his speech, which began Thursday night and continued into the wee hours, Castro offered few details but insisted that a Bush-endorsed plan was in the works to forcibly remove him from power.

''I am not asking to survive a war. I've already done my part and I still have to do what I have to do. With weapons in hand, I don't care how I die, but I'm confident that if they invade us, I will go down fighting,'' he was quoted as saying by the news agency Agence France-Press.

Several U.S. experts on Cuba said that while the accusation was serious, it was in line with sharp and hostile language used by Castro against Bush since he became president.

NOT A NEW APPROACH

''I don't see it as raising the level of rhetoric,'' said William LeoGrande, a Cuba expert at the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington.

Castro, who has ruled Cuba since 1959, claims to have survived more than 600 assassination attempts, including many well documented cases in which the CIA financed or promoted attempts on his life in the 1960s.

Since U.S. troops invaded Iraq, Castro has also repeatedly warned that Cuba is next -- a claim that the Bush administration has just as repeatedly denied.

In his speech Thursday, Castro also criticized President Bush's decision in October to create a Cabinet-level -- ''Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba,'' headed by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Powell later suggested that the goal of the commission was not to force Castro out of power but to prepare a U.S. strategy for Cuba once Castro is no longer in power. Recommendations from the commission are expected in May.

RECENT CASES

Cuban President Fidel Castro claims to have survived more than 600 assassination attempts. Among the most recent high-profile cases:

o In late 2000, authorities arrested Luis Posada Carriles and three Miami-Dade County men -- Gaspar Jiménez, Guillermo Novo and Pedro C. Remón -- on accusations of plotting to kill Castro with a bomb while he attended a summit in Panama. The four remain in custody in Panama and have yet to stand trial for possession of explosives, threatening public safety and illicit association. Novo and Posada also are charged with carrying false passports.

o In 1999, five Cuban exiles were acquitted in Puerto Rico on assassination conspiracy charges. José Antonio Llama, Angel Alfonso, Francisco Cordova, Angel Hernández and José Rodríguez-Sosa had faced up to life in prison on accusations that they conspired to shoot Castro when he visited the Venezuelan island of Margarita in 1997. Authorities in Puerto Rico found two .50-caliber rifles hidden on a Miami-registered yacht when four of the five defendants were arrested. The defendants admitted they had planned to sneak into Margarita but only to stage peaceful protests and spirit away possible defectors from Castro's retinue.

Concerns over policy on Cuba linger

Gov. Bush campaigns for his brother in Miami-Dade as some local GOP officials remain concerned about U.S. policy toward Cuba.

By Lesley Clark.lclark@herald.com. Posted on Sun, Feb. 01, 2004

Gov. Jeb Bush fired up a roomful of supporters of his brother's reelection campaign Saturday in Miami, but there were signs of lingering tension over the Bush administration's Cuba policy.

Even as Bush was mobbed by the crowd for autographs and pictures, a few Cuban-American Republican legislators and local elected leaders chose to skip the morning rally and a closed-door reception with the governor, underscoring, they said privately, concern over the president's commitment to a crackdown on Fidel Castro.

The no-shows come six months after GOP legislators and local elected leaders wrote to the White House warning that the president risks losing crucial Cuban-American support unless more is done to ensure democracy in Cuba.

''The lack of turnout among Republican-elected officials at the campaign kickoff may highlight a problem among Cuban-American voters that must be addressed,'' said state Rep. David Rivera of Miami.

He was among the legislators who did not attend, saying he had scheduling conflicts.

''As Republican-elected officials, we want to deliver overwhelming support for the president's reelection, but we need help on the Cuba issue to achieve it,'' said Rivera, one of 13 state representatives to sign the letter to the White House.

Others who said they had prior commitments included Miami Beach Rep. Gus Barreiro, Rep. Manny Prieguez and Hialeah Councilman Esteban Bovo.

THREE ATTENDED

Only three of those who signed the letter met with the governor: Miami Republicans state House Majority Leader Marco Rubio, Rep. Gaston Cantens and Rep. Julio Robaina. Miami-Dade Commissioner Jose ''Pepe'' Diaz and U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart also attended the early morning reception at the Radisson Mart Plaza.

''Putting all our issues aside, we are all committed to getting this gentleman reelected,'' Robaina said.

Robaina said the low turnout could be attributed to the early hour of the event, but he acknowledged there is still a belief that the administration needs to do more.

''It's still there and it has not gone away,'' Robaina said. "But we're moving in the right direction.''

The governor -- who spent much of Friday in Miami courting Cuban votes for his brother -- downplayed the talk of a protracted rift.

'''There's strong support for the president in this community,'' Bush said after a round of applause for his brother at a Latin Builders Association luncheon.

"The Cuban-American support for the president is really strong. Very strong. Very intense.''

U.S. DEFENDS POLICY

The White House has been on the defensive on its Cuba policies since last July when it repatriated 12 Cubans suspected of hijacking a boat to reach Florida.

The decision drew fiery responses from leaders of the politically influential Cuban American National Foundation.

The legislators' letter suggested that, unless the administration becomes more aggressive in targeting Castro, Bush would risk losing the traditionally enthusiastic support among the state's Cuban-American voters.

RECOUNT FIGHT

In 2000, when Bush won Florida by 537 votes after a protracted recount fight, he won more than 80 percent of the 400,000 Cuban Americans who voted -- a statistic that is not lost on GOP strategists.

Gov. Bush went on the offense on behalf of his brother Friday night, telling a crowd of hard-line exiles attending a Cuban Liberty Council dinner that "as long as George W. Bush is president of the United States, the Cuban people will have a true ally in the fight for a free Cuba.''

He was preceded by Roger Noriega, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, who said that Bush's "personal commitment to a free Cuba is making a difference every day.''

''This administration will lead the way to democracy in Cuba,'' Noriega said.

Speaking to the volunteers on Saturday, Bush repeated the president's support for the Cuban trade embargo, despite interest from Republicans in some farm states to lift the block.

''The embargo is being attacked, little by little,'' Bush said, noting his brother has ''threatened for the last three years'' to veto any effort to lift the embargo.

The city speaks

BY FABIOLA SANTIAGO / fsantiago@herald.com

For Cuban director Fernando Perez, Havana is an obsession. He shares his insights into daily life there in 'Suite Habana,' playing at the Miami Film Festival.

By Fabiola Santiago. fsantiago@herald.com. Posted on Sun, Feb. 01, 2004

As the film Suite Habana opens, morning breaks over the Cuban capital in an opaque yet mystical glow, and the deafening horn of a freighter announces its passage through the harbor.

Francisquito, a 10-year-old boy with Down syndrome and a ready smile, gets ready for school. At a Havana park, a man and a woman trade places guarding a bronze statue of John Lennon. A drizzle cloaks Havana in gray.

No one speaks as habaneros rise, only the city does.

No one speaks throughout this daring documentary that, as politically ambivalent as it may seem, says volumes about today's Cuba -- and will be screened Wednesday at the Miami International Film Festival.

The work of Fernando Pérez, the island's most highly regarded contemporary filmmaker, Suite Habana features 10 ordinary people whose only stage instructions were to carry on their daily routines.

The result is an an ode to an elegiac city, poetic in its desperate state of decline, and to some of its most anonymous dwellers, poverty-stricken people whose days center around survival among cracked walls, potholed streets, ceilings close to collapse.

To the viewer, Havana and her people seem to exist in a perpetual state of waiting, and in their most intimate moments, losing and loving with touching dignity.

''Havana is for me an obsession,'' Pérez, 59, says in a telephone interview from his home. "I walk a lot all over the city, not for physical exercise but for the spiritual, and it nourishes me with observations. I see the retired old people selling peanuts. I see people reading newspapers, and I ask myself, what kind of life is behind all this? What are their hopes? What are their dreams?''

It's an artistic quest, perhaps mundane in any other country, but in Cuba, a politically hermetic island where almost all filmmaking is state-sponsored -- and approved or censored -- it takes on more complex hues.

Pérez says he approaches his subjects from an artistic point of view but can't avoid the politics.

''The Cuban reality has been political for 45 years,'' Pérez says. "All Cuban art is subject to that vision, and the reality that it generates is political. All filmmaking has political content, and Suite Habana also has it. But I didn't set out to issue a political discourse. My discourse comes from the point of view of life and art.''

TRAPPED IN HISTORY

Like his cryptic 1998 feature film about the search for happiness, La vida is silbar (Life is to Whistle) and his earlier Madagascar, about the abyss between a Cuban mother and her eccentric daughter, Suite Habana freezes in each frame the idiosyncrasies of a society trapped in its history:

A wall is inscribed ''El Rincón de la Paciencia'' -- The Corner of Patience.

A catatonic 97-year-old woman languishes in front of a black-and-white television set awash in the image of throngs at the Plaza of the Revolution waving Cuban flags. The only sound is the static coming from the fuzzy TV.

There's the obsessive 24-hour watch from a bench directly in front of Lennon's statue to keep the British star's glasses from being stolen even though they are welded onto his face -- this from a regime that once banned rock music and The Beatles.

A 37-year-old doctor moonlights as a clown pulling Cuban flags out of a hat to entertain children at a party, his chant about happy Cuban children ringing more like a satirical lament than a celebration.

And then there are the long silences.

The musical score, the sounds of the city and the people's work give the film voice: a knife chopping onions, the clanging of steel against steel along the railroad, the wind rustling through the sculpted graves at the historic Colón Cemetery.

A woman calls out to her son from her balcony, "Yosva-a-a-ny! Yosva-a-a-ny!''

It is one of the few light moments in the film.

''All Cuban mothers are sopranos,'' Cuban film expert Alejandro Ríos quips during a press screening.

A man takes a Continental Airlines flight to Miami to be with a Cuban American with whom he has fallen in love. Omara Portuondo sings to ocean-soaked views of Havana's famed seawall, El Malecón: "Cuando se quiere de veras como te quiero yo a ti es imposible mi cielo tan separados vivir . . . tan separados vivir.''

When you love truly, as I love you, it is impossible, my dear, to live apart . . . to live so far apart.

And another striking image: the neon lights on a building that spell on and off Revolución.

''To me, what he is saying is clear. That reality has a name and it's Revolution,'' says recently exiled Cuban director Orlando Rojas, also considered one of Cuba's top filmmakers.

CUBAN SUPPORT

Surprisingly, Suite Habana has been officially applauded in Cuba.

The film won the Best Film of the Year award at December's Havana Film Festival and became Cuba's official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (it wasn't nominated by the Academy).

Independent press reports out of the island describe the theaters where it has shown as packed, some Cubans bursting into tears, applauding, and others silently walking out at the end.

While praising the artistic merits, some Cuban media have predictably cautioned against seeing political criticism in the film. Calling it ''arte en grande,'' high art, Granma, the official daily, added the spin that some people left the theater feeling "reaffirmed in their fighting beliefs.''

In Spain, critics also were impressed.

Mauricio Vincent of the respected daily El País called Suite Habana ''the best film made on the island since Strawberry and Chocolate'' (the film by the late Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, which dealt with issues of intolerance) and praised the ''tender and wrenching'' portrayals.

Both Suite Habana and Life is to Whistle were filmed in partnership with Spain's Wanda Visión. Such collaborations with Cuban directors like Pérez who operate under the confines of Cuba's Film Institute, ICAIC, have become almost routine since the collapse of the Soviet bloc plunged Cuba into its most severe economic crisis in the early '90s.

Suite Habana is nominated for two Goyas, Spain's equivalent to the Oscars, in the categories of Best Documentary Film and Best Foreign Film in the Spanish Language.

At the time of this writing, before the Goyas were announced Saturday, Pérez seemed pleased but not dazzled.

''Critics have been pretty unanimous, and I don't believe much in unanimity,'' he says.

He prefers the ''Shakespearean reading'' of his old professor of literature, who called to say this about the movie: ''It is an ambivalent movie, which is not the same as ambiguous because ambivalence is part of the Cuban reality,'' Pérez quotes her.

In Miami, long before the movie was announced as a Film Festival pick, badly made pirated copies have been making the rounds of Cuban intellectual circles.

Reaction has been mixed.

''Fernando is an honest, intelligent and brave artist and a good human being,'' Rojas praises. "He is always in a quest for the artistic.''

But, Rojas adds, the film is ''too empathetic'' with its subjects and doesn't deal with the harsher, uglier realities of the Cuban psyche.

''The poverty is doing catastrophic damage. Poverty damages the mind. People are surviving by stealing, by living in a perpetual state of corruption,'' Rojas says. "The film is not representative enough of Havana -- the gritty Havana that I know.''

TOO MUCH PITY?

The film evokes pity, Rojas adds, an emotion to which Cubans have grown too accustomed.

Pérez, the son of a mailman from the blue-collar Havana suburb of Guanabacoa, unabashedly admits to being and feeling a lot like his characters.

Francisquito has a lovely relationship with his father, an architect who quit his job after his wife died to take care of the boy. At night, father and son go to their roof to study the stars.

''I confess, there is something very personal in the story of Francisquito and the way his father takes him up to the roof to see the stars and the moon,'' Pérez says. "My father dreamed of being an astrologer and couldn't because life and society didn't give him the opportunity. But he was a smart, sensitive man and he read a lot and he loved movies. He took me to the movies two and three times a week, to Cine Ensueño. Yes, there is something of a homage to my father in this film.''

At the end of Suite Habana, after the sun sets over the harbor, the light once more enveloping the city but now with a brighter golden glow, the credits roll and next to each character's name, the director lists his or her dream.

Francisquito wants to ''subir a las alturas,'' to reach very high.

The doctor wants to be a serious actor.

Amanda, a 70-year-old peanut vendor, says she has no dreams.

And what about the director? What is his dream?

''To me,'' says Pérez, now in Madrid to attend the Goya awards and awaiting a U.S. visa to travel to Miami for the screening of his film, "making movies has always been a dream.''

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