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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Travel regulations delayed for Americans
in Cuba
By Nancy San Martin and
Frank Davies, nsanmartin@herald.com. Posted
on Sat, Jun. 26, 2004.
The enforcement of new U.S. regulations
on travel to Cuba will be delayed by one
month for U.S. residents who legally traveled
to the island and can't get back before
the new rules take effect next week, the
Treasury Department announced Friday.
The reprieve means that U.S. residents
on the island visiting relatives or under
''fully hosted'' licenses will not be hit
with the $7,500 fine that kicks in June
30 if they get back by 12:01 a.m. Aug. 1.
The new regulations have created a frenzy
among Cuban Americans at the Miami and Havana
airports, with thousands of people scurrying
to get in or out of the island before the
deadline Wednesday.
''The purpose of this is to help people
who logistically can't get out of Cuba before
June 30,'' said Molly Millerwise, a Treasury
spokeswoman.
ON OR BEFORE JUNE 29
The delay applies only to those in Cuba
on or before June 29.
June 30 restrictions on family visits to
once every three years, instead of annually,
remain intact.
Limitations on baggage, gift parcels and
remittances remain effective as well.
HOPE FOR DEMOCRACY
The measures are part of a long list of
tightenings of U.S. sanctions on Cuba.
President Bush ordered these measures last
month in an attempt to hasten the fall of
the communist government and speed a transition
to democracy.
These measures were included in a 500-page
report released in Washington by the Commission
for Assistance to a Free Cuba, a cabinet-level
group created by Bush last year.
In an interview with WFOR-CBS4, Cuba's
chief diplomat in Washington, Dagoberto
Rodríguez, said the new rules were
''a cruel measure against the families''
and called Bush "the great family divider.''
But he also acknowledged that the regulations
will have ''a very serious impact'' on Cuba's
economy -- an objective U.S. officials have
said is a key ingredient to dismantling
the island's socialist system.
U.S. OBJECTIONS
U.S. lawmakers on Capitol Hill, meanwhile,
turned up the pressure on the controversial
new measures.
Rep. Jim Davis, a Tampa Democrat who supports
the economic embargo against Cuba, joined
forces with several long-time embargo opponents
this week on a bill to erase the toughened
restrictions.
''These new rules make it harder for Cuban
Americans to support their own flesh and
blood,'' Davis said Friday, adding that
he plans to propose his bill, filed this
week, as an amendment to one of the must-pass
spending bills later this year.
Davis criticized the restrictions that
will block Cuban Americans from sending
remittances to aunts, uncles or cousins,
and limit visitors' baggage to 44 pounds.
He said the limit of one visit every three
years is ''punitive'' and forces people
to make difficult decisions on when to visit
a dying relative.
THIS YEAR'S FOCUS
Several longtime embargo opponents, including
Democrats William Delahunt of Massachusetts,
Charles Rangel of New York and Maxine Waters
of California, said they would focus on
the new travel restrictions this year.
''The Bush administration made a grave
political miscalculation with these new
restrictions, and I think you will see them
backing away from them when more people
realize what is at stake,'' Delahunt said.
Exile still pulling for independent
libraries in Cuba
By Christine Armario, carmario@herald.com.
Posted on Sat, Jun. 26, 2004.
''There are no prohibited books in Cuba,''
was all Ramón Colás needed
to hear to open up a library that would
change the country.
The words came from President Fidel Castro
as he addressed a journalist at the International
Book Fair in 1998. What followed was the
start of an independent library movement
that would fuel the beginnings of a civil
society.
Colás, 42, now in Miami, continues
to support the movement he began in 1998
with the opening of his personal library
in the town of Las Tunas. Several of his
colleagues were arrested during last year's
dissident crackdown for continuing the library
efforts.
In their memory, he sends books and delivers
lectures to governments worldwide, operating
from a small office on Miracle Mile. Recently,
he was given the ''Celebrate Free Speech''
award by the People for the American Way
Foundation, a free speech organization.
''If I was in Cuba I would be in prison
with them,'' Colás said. "So
we double our strength from here so that
they can obtain their liberty.''
Colás is never without an eloquent
phrase on the importance of the independent
library in Cuba. On a recent evening, while
dining at La Casita restaurant on Calle
Ocho, he recalled the speech that sparked
the nationwide movement.
''Comandante, are there books prohibited
in Cuba?'' he remembers a journalist asking
Castro on TV during the International Book
Fair in 1998.
Colás says Castro replied, "There
are no books prohibited in Cuba. There is
just not enough money to buy them all.''
With that Colás placed a sign outside
the door of his house in Las Tunas that
read, ''Felix Varela Independent Library''
with Castro's quote below it. Word about
the project spread swiftly, and soon people
all over the island were establishing libraries
of their own.
''We surprised ourselves with the reach
that it began to have all over Cuba,'' said
Colás. ''It's converted into one
of the visible projects of the future civil
society'' in which cultural, educational,
religious and other institutions independent
of the state create an alternative public
space.
Colás says his library had 100 patrons,
though every book checked out passed through
dozens of hands. Foreign embassies, including
the U.S. Interests Section, and anonymous
people worldwide sent contributions. The
library grew to hold more than 2,000 books.
The selections included classics like The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer and works from
dissidents in exile, such as Reinaldo Arenas
and Guillermo Cabrera Infante. It also included
the works of Cuban writers who are now in
prison, such as the prized poet and journalist
Raul Rivero.
Among the ''bestsellers'' were the autobiography
of Alina Fernández, Castro's daughter
in exile; Juan Clark's Cuba: Myth and Reality;
and Vaclav Havel's The Power of the Powerless.
''They found a window to find information
totally independent of the state,'' said
Colás. "People started to realize
there is a world other than the one presented
by the government.''
In 1995, Colás, a clinical psychologist,
was fired, he said, on grounds that he was
''untrustworthy'' and "dangerous.''
With the success of his library, however,
he had the money to buy medicine, olive
oil and other prized goods those working
for the state could not afford.
''They were doing everything with the revolution,
but they had fewer possibilities than me,''
Colás said.
The fruits of his labor, however, had their
own bitter consequence. His wife, Berta
Mexidor, who helped run the library, and
his two young children were repeatedly threatened,
he said. Colás was detained for days
at a time. And on three occasions he was
thrown out of Havana.
Colás and his wife filed for political
asylum and arrived in Miami on Dec. 27,
2001. Today he lives in Southwest Miami-Dade
with his wife, who also received the ''Celebrate
Free Speech'' award for assisting with the
library, and their children. They now have
three. He works as a researcher at the Institute
of Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the
University of Miami.
''I think he continues to have a tremendous
impact,'' said Fred Balsera, a consultant
for People for the American Way Foundation.
". . . being on the outside has allowed
him to take his awareness to a whole other
level.''
Colás says his dream is to build
a library again in Las Tunas, the town of
20,000 without one now that he has left.
Colás' brother-in-law, Fernando Mexidor,
continues to operate a library from the
nearby town of Amancio, using books Colás
left behind.
Now, the small excesses of exile are worn
upon him -- the Cuban flag on his key chain,
for example, which he says he always keeps
near him. And like so many others, when
he flies over Cuba or sees his country in
a photograph, he is overcome with emotion.
''What I have now I want for them there,''
Colás said. "That's what I want
for Cuba. I envy this liberty for my county.
And I dream that it be realized one day.''
Nominations for Unsung Hero can be e-mailed
to kfoster@herald.com
Cuba is freeing sick dissidents 'to
avoid a mishap,' experts say
The Cuban government
has released six jailed dissidents for health
reasons, not because it has become more
tolerant of dissent, experts say.
By Nancy San Martin, nsanmartin@herald.com.
Posted on Fri, Jun. 25, 2004
The Cuban government's decision to free
six jailed dissidents in recent days is
designed to avoid the embarrassment of having
them die behind bars and is not an indication
that it is loosening its grip on dissent,
experts said Thursday.
''The common denominator here is that all
are in poor health,'' said Elizardo Sánchez,
head of the Havana-based Commission on Human
Rights and National Reconciliation. "It's
apparent that the government is trying to
avoid a mishap. They don't want anyone to
die in jail.''
Since April, the government has released
10 political prisoners, including the six
who were among 75 jailed in a crackdown
last year against human rights activists,
opposition party leaders, economists, independent
journalists, librarians and other government
opponents. The 75 received sentences of
up to 28 years. Four other dissidents, jailed
two years ago, were released on June 8.
Last year's arrests drew worldwide condemnations,
and calls for the dissidents' release have
grown urgent as more of them suffer deteriorating
health.
About 20 are suffering from life-threatening
illnesses, several of which have required
hospitalization and medical procedures,
Sánchez said in a telephone interview.
The six released over the last two weeks
also were gravely ill.
Although Cuba experts said the releases
are a welcome gesture, they added that there
is no indication the government is leaning
toward tolerance: More than 300 dissidents
remain incarcerated, including some 80 declared
''prisoners of conscience'' by Amnesty International.
Additionally, the government has continued
to detain activists and recently handed
down sentences of up to seven years against
more than a dozen dissidents who had languished
in jail since 2002 without trials.
''The release of some and the imprisonment
of others shows the power of the state to
do whatever it wants whenever it wants to,''
said Damián Fernández, director
of Florida International University's Cuban
Research Institute.
''These latest releases give the appearance
of a thaw, an opening that is more a mirage
than a reality,'' Fernández added.
Also of concern is the fact that the six
dissidents freed were sent home under an
''extrapenal license,'' meaning their convictions
remain in effect and that they could be
returned to prison at any time.
Still, Cubans with relatives behind bars
remain hopeful that more will be released.
''At least six of them are out,'' Lydia
Lima, 65, wife of economist Arnaldo Ramos,
62, said by telephone from Havana.
"Some day it will be our turn to be
reunited with our loved ones.''
Lima is among a group -- consisting of
wives, mothers and sisters of prisoners
and known as the Women in White -- that
has staged quiet demonstrations around Havana.
Cubans returning to Dade to retire
By Daniel de Vise, ddevise@herald.com.
Posted on Sun, Jun. 27, 2004.
Brothers Luis and John Aguilar were born
in Cuba and will die in Miami. The 90-mile
journey took them half a lifetime.
Like thousands of other men and women with
education and training who fled Cuba at
the dawn of the Castro regime, the Aguilars
went where the jobs were. Luis reached Miami
by way of New York and Washington, D.C.,
John via Puerto Rico, Louisiana, Canada
and Iowa.
Their working days behind them, the Aguilar
brothers followed their hearts back to Miami.
''Do you know what we call Miami? The cemetery
of the elephants,'' said John Aguilar, now
83. "Like in the Tarzan movies. We
Cubans come to die all the way to Miami.''
Steadily, Cuban-born Americans are finding
their way back to South Florida. In 1970,
half of all Cuban Americans older than 60
living in the United States called Florida
home. In 2000, nearly three-quarters were
living here, according to the U.S. Census.
Cubans are defying the rules of immigrant
America.
Throughout the past century, waves of immigrants
disembarked, clustered in one city, found
their footing and then dispersed across
the land.
Cubans, in contrast, ''started out dispersed,
and now they're concentrating,'' said Lisandro
Perez, director of the International Migration
Initiative at Florida International University.
EMPLOYED ELSEWHERE
The Cuban Refugee Resettlement Program,
active throughout the 1960s and '70s, ushered
300,000 exiles to places like Des Moines,
Iowa, and Trenton, N.J. There, far from
the overfed Miami job market, they found
employment as doctors, lawyers and professors.
''The way for these people to move upwards,
to restart their lives, was to relocate,''
said Antonio Jorge, another FIU Cuba scholar.
"The Miami market was much smaller
back then than it is now. You had medical
doctors cleaning floors and just doing any
work they could to make money.''
Efren Cordova, now 80, spent just three
weeks in Miami at the end of 1960. He was
on his way to a teaching job in Puerto Rico.
He saw it again in 1964, en route to another
teaching job at Cornell.
Two decades later, at the end of a career
in labor relations spent mostly in Switzerland,
Cordova returned to Miami.
''I enjoy the weather,'' said Cordova,
now living in Key Biscayne. "I enjoy
the fact that we have here around one million
Cubans who are like me, who have the same
philosophy, the same ideals. I have many
friends here. Most of my classmates from
the University of Havana came to live here.
When they retired, they, too, came to Miami.''
His neighbor at the Commodore West condominium
towers is Luis Aguilar, a man with a parallel
past.
BECAME TEACHERS
Luis and John Aguilar were born in the
early 1920s in Manzanillo. John studied
law at the University of Havana and became
a labor lawyer. Luis says he studied alongside
Castro at Belen, the famed Jesuit high school
in Havana, then became an anti-Fulgencio
Batista writer at a Havana newspaper.
When Castro toppled Batista, he closed
the paper and put Aguilar on a hit list.
The brothers left Cuba in September 1960.
John took a job with a Puerto Rican insurance
company, then taught at the Interamerican
University, then studied law at Louisiana
State University. After a teaching stint
in New Brunswick, Canada, he spent the balance
of his career at the Drake University law
school in Iowa. He retired to Miami in 1984.
''All Cubans, in the future, want to go
to Miami,'' he said. "Because we love
Miami. They may not find work here, they
may find work somewhere else, but they want
to come here.''
Luis lived briefly in Miami, running guns
to an anti-Castro group, Movimiento de Recuperacion
Revolucionario.
He wrote job letters to 125 colleges and
universities, finally landing work at Columbia
University, then at Georgetown, where he
spent 30 years as a beloved professor of
Latin American history. Bill Clinton was
a pupil, and mentions Aguilar in his new
memoir. Aguilar retired in 1992.
'My parents said, 'Where now?' '' recalled
Luis Aguilar Jr., a screenwriter, one of
three children. "Costa Rica came up.
Spain came up. And I said that Key Biscayne
would be the best place. We had a lot of
friends in Miami.''
Luis Aguilar served as opinion editor for
El Nuevo Herald, sister publication to The
Herald, in the early 1990s, and remains
an occasional columnist.
TREND CONTINUES
Census data show a three-decade trend of
elderly Cubans returning to their home-in-exile,
searching for familiar names and faces in
an unfamiliar land.
More than 10,000 Cuban-born Americans older
than 60 relocated to Florida between 1985
and 1990, when the trend peaked. Nearly
7,000 relocated between 1995 and 2000, the
most recent data available.
Another factor contributing to the trend
is aging Cubans migrating from their homeland
to Florida.
Both groups of Cubans are driving a gradual
rise in the concentration of the Cuban-American
population in South Florida. The share of
all Cuban-Americans living in Miami-Dade
County rose from 40 percent in 1970 to 53
percent in 2000, according to the Census.
The concentration is even greater among
the first-generation immigrants, those born
in Cuba: 59 percent lived in Miami-Dade
as of 2002, according to census estimates.
This runs against conventional wisdom,
which dictates that Miami, with its ever-increasing
ethnic diversity, is becoming less Cuban.
Jose Delatorre, dean of the FIU graduate
business school, returned to Miami in 2002
after three decades spent in Pennsylvania,
Boston, Paris, Washington and Los Angeles.
He now finds that he has more in common
with fellow Cubans who have spent time roaming
the globe: "They're more worldly, and
their views are not so much colored by the
exile experience.''
ELDERS DWINDLING
In Miami, as many of the first generation
of exiles die off in larger numbers, this
has brought a visible decline in the once-thriving
peñas, groups of elder Cuban intellectuals
who met regularly at such now-defunct Iberian
Calle Ocho eateries as Malaga and Centro
Vasco.
The peñas have been a central feature
of life for Cubans who retired to Miami.
''For me,'' said Aguilar, a longtime peña
member, "everything was Cuba. Even
after so many years.''
Neither Efren Cordova nor the Aguilar brothers
have heard much from their peñas
in recent months.
But they intend to remain in Miami, believing
it's as close as they'll get to their homeland.
Herald Database Editor Tim Henderson contributed
to this report.
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