CUBA NEWS
March 15, 2004

CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Cuban dancers say defections painful but necessary

Lisa Cornwell, Associated Press. Posted on Mon, Mar. 15, 2004.

CINCINNATI - Two dancers who joined the Cincinnati ballet after defecting from Cuba's national troupe say they had to leave because they were prohibited from pursuing international careers.

Cervilio Amador and Adiarys Almeida, both 20, have been granted asylum from the communist country, said their attorney, Willy Allen. Three other dancers also fled during the National Ballet of Cuba's fall tour of 19 U.S. cities.

Amador slipped away in a taxi in Daytona Beach, Fla., a day before he was to perform in "Don Quixote." Almeida did the same thing in New York City a few days later.

Almeida said that she knew leaving her country, loved ones and fellow dancers would be difficult, but she wasn't prepared for the overwhelming sense of loss.

"It has been so much more difficult than I could ever have imagined to leave everything behind," said Almeida, who became so emotional that several minutes passed before she could continue a telephone interview. "If I had looked back, I knew I might not have been able to leave, so I just kept going."

The dancers, who speak little English and are living in Miami for now, were interviewed by The Associated Press with the assistance of an interpreter from the Cincinnati Ballet.

Both said they do not regret their decisions to defect.

"I had a dream to dance with a bigger company in the United States and to understand and learn other styles of dance," Amador said. "I knew I couldn't do that in Cuba. I hadn't yet decided to defect when I came here, but I was hoping for an opportunity to get away. When it came, I took it."

Almeida said she loves her homeland but felt limited as an artist.

"The idea to defect was always in the back of my mind, and when I heard there was an American tour, I knew that would be my opportunity," she said. "I always had a dream to dance with other ballet companies and have an international career."

Amador said the differences between American and Cuban politics did not affect his decision to leave.

"I love Cuba," he said. "I had seen when we toured the United States and other countries what working in an atmosphere of freedom can mean to an artist."

Both dancers said they would have preferred to stay in contact with the Cuban company if they had been allowed to experiment with other companies. Amador said he didn't know what the consequences would have been if they had tried but failed to get away.

Amador and Almeida accepted contracts to perform as soloists for the Cincinnati ballet's 2004-2005 season and will begin rehearsals in July.

Immigration authorities granted asylum because they demonstrated they would be persecuted if they returned to Cuba, Allen said. Most Cubans who reach U.S. soil are allowed to stay and seek permanent residency.

Messages to the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., were not returned, but Alicia Alonso, director of National Ballet of Cuba, has said the defections were painful because the company had trained the dancers for years.

Cincinnati Ballet officials say the two new additions will be an asset to the 32-dancer company.

"I think the sacrifices they have made for their art and the courage it took to defect will add a maturity to their dancing that few young dancers are able to achieve," said Victoria Morgan, the ballet's artistic director.

The young Cubans look forward to learning more about the American culture when they get to Cincinnati.

"It's hard to even learn the English language in Miami, because Miami is Cuba," said Almeida, laughing.

Both say their happiest experience in the United States happened during their audition in February in Cincinnati when it snowed.

"It was wonderful," Amador said. "We had never seen that before." The dancers are adjusting to their new lifestyles with help from friends they have made in Miami.

"We have had a lot of good things coming in a very short time," said Amador. "But our dream in the end is to be able to return to Cuba and to share our triumphs with our families."

ON THE NET:
National Ballet of Cuba
Cincinnati Ballet

Calusas may have fled to Cuba

Posted on Mon, Mar. 15, 2004

New evidence suggests that South Florida's Calusa Indians may not have been wiped out by Indian wars, the Spaniards and disease and survived by migrating to Cuba.

PINELAND - (AP) -- Researchers have discovered the first birth records of the Calusa Indians outside Florida, providing evidence that the once-mighty South Florida tribe might not have been wiped out as previously thought.

Anthropologist John Worth said new information from his search of records shows several dozen members of the tribe, which lived in Southwest Florida from 100 A.D. to the early 1700s, escaped to Cuba after invading Indian tribes, Spanish soldiers and foreign diseases overran their region.

Though most of the band of Calusa who escaped to Cuba died from typhus or small pox within three months of arriving, records show at least one Calusa woman survived and gave birth, said Worth, the director of the Randell Research Center, which is located at the site of one of the Calusa's largest Florida settlements.

The woman, who arrived in Cuba in 1711 as an infant, was baptized in the Catholic church and gave birth to two daughters in 1729 and 1731, Worth said.

No records have been found to show what happened to the girls, though Worth said he's now trying to trace their paths to determine whether Calusa descendants may still be alive.

''The chances are probably fairly slim, but hope springs eternal,'' he said.

Calusa Indians, nicknamed ''The Fierce Ones,'' were the most powerful people in South Florida when the Spanish arrived in the 16th century.

They built large shell-mound settlements, most of which were torn down in the 20th century to be used as road fill or removed to make room for development.

But lost manuscripts from the 1890s that recently turned up at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., provide a new picture of the tribe's life on Pine Island.

The manuscripts are from archaeologist and ethnographer Frank Hamilton Cushing, who explored the region in the late 1800s.

Including maps and sketches, the papers describe a much larger complex than researchers believed existed.

''He has new things on his maps and in his observations that no one knew about,'' said Phyllis Kolianos, vice president of the Florida Anthropological Society, who found the papers.

Researchers said Cushing's notes show where other mounds existed, and where workers will now concentrate excavations.

Kerry's stances on Cuba open to attack

By Peter Wallsten, pwallsten@herald.com. Posted on Sun, Mar. 14, 2004

John Kerry had just pumped up a huge crowd in downtown West Palm Beach, promising to make the state a battleground for his quest to oust President Bush, when a local television journalist posed the question that any candidate with Florida ambitions should expect:

What will you do about Cuba?

As the presumptive Democratic nominee, Kerry was ready with the bravado appropriate for a challenger who knows that every answer carries magnified importance in the state that put President Bush into office by just 537 votes.

''I'm pretty tough on Castro, because I think he's running one of the last vestiges of a Stalinist secret police government in the world,'' Kerry told WPLG-ABC 10 reporter Michael Putney in an interview to be aired at 11:30 this morning.

Then, reaching back eight years to one of the more significant efforts to toughen sanctions on the communist island, Kerry volunteered: "And I voted for the Helms-Burton legislation to be tough on companies that deal with him.''

It seemed the correct answer in a year in which Democratic strategists think they can make a play for at least a portion of the important Cuban-American vote -- as they did in 1996 when more than three in 10 backed President Clinton's reelection after he signed the sanctions measure written by Sen. Jesse Helms and Rep. Dan Burton.

There is only one problem: Kerry voted against it.

Asked Friday to explain the discrepancy, Kerry aides said the senator cast one of the 22 nays that day in 1996 because he disagreed with some of the final technical aspects. But, said spokesman David Wade, Kerry supported the legislation in its purer form -- and voted for it months earlier.

The confusion illustrates a persistent problem for Kerry as Republicans exploit his 19-year voting history to paint the Massachusetts senator as a waffler on major foreign-affairs questions such as the Iraq war, Israel's security barrier and intelligence funding.

Cuba policy is particularly treacherous for Kerry because Florida's nearly half-million Cuban-American voters could be pivotal in awarding the state's 27 electoral votes. And Republicans are preparing to unleash a wave of publicity designed to portray Kerry's new toughness as an election-year conversion from a career of liberal positions on Cuba.

Speaking to reporters Saturday after a meeting of senior Florida Republicans about increasing Hispanic turnout this year, Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings predicted that Kerry's voting record on Cuba would ''haunt'' him in the coming months.

OTHER VULNERABILITIES

Kerry will also rue past votes supporting loosened restrictions on travel and cash ''remittances'' that Cubans are allowed to send back to the island, Republicans said. They point to a 2000 Boston Globe interview in which Kerry called a reevaluation of the trade embargo ''way overdue'' and said that the only reason the United States treated Cuba differently from China and Russia was the "politics of Florida.''

Republicans say they can increase Hispanic voter turnout in Florida from the 2000 levels, when outrage over the Clinton administration's decision to return Elián Gonzalez to his father in Cuba helped Bush crush then-Vice President Al Gore among Cuban Americans.

''Kerry is much softer on Castro than Al Gore was,'' Ken Mehlman, Bush's campaign manager, said in an interview.

Saturday's meeting came as GOP strategists worry about Bush's vulnerability on Cuba after months of criticism from some exile leaders who say Bush has failed to deliver on campaign promises to crack down on Castro.

One recent poll showed that three in four Cuban Americans planned to vote for Bush again -- but that a substantial number are concerned about his handling of Cuba policy.

Democratic strategists hope that such skepticism of Bush gives Kerry a foothold. But they acknowledge that a Democrat with Kerry's record is not likely to score points on Cuba policy among single-issue voters.

Some Cuban Americans, however, may be more flexible if they are equally skeptical of Bush and Kerry on the promise to foster reforms in Cuba. Strategists think they could be convinced by Democratic arguments on domestic matters such as jobs, healthcare and education.

''If they don't believe Bush on Cuba, then they certainly aren't going to believe someone who is new on the scene like Kerry,'' said Democratic pollster Sergio Bendixen, who is advising the centrist New Democrat Network on a new ad campaign targeting Hispanic voters. "Cuban Americans don't believe anybody on Cuba policy, not Democrats or Republicans.''

Nevertheless, as Kerry fought for his party's nomination and began eyeing a Florida strategy, his language on Cuba morphed.

The first shift was evident in August, when Kerry told NBC's Tim Russert that he was not in favor of lifting sanctions. ''Not now,'' he said. "No.''

Days later, in an interview with The Herald, Kerry offered a more textured explanation of his position, embracing ''humanitarian'' travel and other exchanges with the island to curb "the isolation that in my judgment helps Castro.''

HE STRUGGLES

But there are also constant reminders that Kerry struggles with the complexities of Cuba. Asked in the Herald interview last year about sending Elián back to Cuba, Kerry was blunt: "I didn't agree with that.''

But when he was asked to elaborate, Kerry acknowledged that he agreed the boy should have been with his father.

So what didn't he agree with?

''I didn't like the way they did it. I thought the process was butchered,'' he said.

And when he was asked last week during a town hall meeting in Broward County about immigration policies that allow Cuban migrants to remain if they reach land but do not give the same rights to Haitians and others who travel to Florida, he appeared to grasp for an answer.

First, he said all migrants have a right to make their case for asylum. Then, as if anticipating his weaknesses, Kerry turned the conversation back to the embargo, pledging that he would not support lifting sanctions.

''I haven't resolved what to do,'' he said, seeming to reflect on the full scope of Cuba concerns. "I'm going to talk to a lot of people in Florida.''

Herald staff writer Lesley Clark and researcher Gay Nemeti contributed to this report.

Miami shares nation's pain

A church overflows with mourners coming to pay their respects to victims of Spain's train bombings.

By Rebecca Dellagloria. rdellagloria@herald.com. Posted on Sun, Mar. 14, 2004.

In an outpouring of support for those victimized by the terrorism attack in Spain, hundreds of mourners packed St. Michael the Archangel in Little Havana on Saturday.

Among them: Alba Valdes Rodriguez, whose brother was one of 200 killed in Thursday's bombings of four commuter trains. Michael Michelle Rodriguez, 28, is the only known Cuban killed in the attack.

''I was here for vacation and all of a sudden I heard the news,'' Rodriguez told a well-wisher offering condolences between tears. She was planning to leave Saturday evening for Madrid, where she must identify her brother's body and collect his belongings.

Five people were arrested by Spanish authorities Saturday -- including three Moroccans and two Indians -- and charged in connection with the bombings. The arrests, announced on the eve of national elections for Prime Minister and Parliament, is seen as a strong indication the bombings were the work of Islamic terrorists. Previously, the Basque separatist group ETA had been named as a prime suspect.

During the Mass, led by Bishop Agustín Román and Father Federico Capdepon, a group of women dressed all in black sat somberly holding signs that read "With Spain.''

''For us, it's like Sept. 11 all over again,'' said Sylvia Iriondo, president of Mothers and Women Against Repression, a human-rights organization. "We were so profoundly affected when we saw the images on the television; all the suffering . . . It was horrible.''

During the service, Javier Vallure, Consul General of the Spanish Consulate in Miami, spoke of the many foreign victims who suffered along with the Spanish.

He thanked everyone who had shown their sympathy.

''I'm very touched,'' Vallure said after the ceremony. "They feel very close to the people in Spain. They share our pain and our sorrow.''

Jose Antonio Sanchez, who now lives in Miami, attended the Mass carrying a flag bearing the name of his hometown, Asturias.

''It's very hard from a distance,'' said Sanchez, who has many friends and relatives in Spain. It pains him to watch the news, he said. "Even though I'm here, I'm with them.''

Hip-hop festival opens Friday

Posted on Sun, Mar. 14, 2004

The Cuban Hip-Hop Film Festival opens Friday, and take place at the Arts at St. Johns on Miami Beach and the Miami International University of Art & Design in Miami.

The three-day festival runs through March 21, and will feature films, panel discussions with directors and critics, poetry, opening jam, master of ceremony battles, open mike and open circles.

Films to be screened include Cuban Hip-Hop All-Stars and Cubamor by Joshua Bee Alafia, Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop by Danny Hoch, INVENTOS by Eli-Jacobs Fantauzzi, and the trailer for La Fabri-k by Lisandro Perez Jr. Marinieves Alba, director of the International Hip-Hop Exchange, will chair panel discussions.

Admission is $10 on opening night Friday with film, performances and poetry, and $5 each for Saturday and Sunday, which includes films and panel discussions. A $15 pass covers all events.

The festival takes place at 8 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Saturday at the Arts at St. Johns., 4760 Pine Tree Dr., Miami Beach; and 2-6 p.m. Sunday, March 21, at the Miami International University of Art & Design, 1501 Biscayne Boulevard, Suite 100.

Call 305-815-2484 for information.


 

 


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