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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
In the U.S., volleyball player has
chance to chase dreams
Arasay Guerra left Cuba
on a small boat with her parents 15 months
ago. Now, she's a Dade high school volleyball
star who has led her team to a 25-1 start.
By Andre C. Fernandez, acfernandez@herald.com.
Posted on Wed, Oct. 13, 2004.
She was on her way to becoming one of Cuba's
next volleyball stars, but Arasay Guerra
wanted to have a chance to live out all
of her dreams.
So, 15 months ago, she fled Cuba on a boat
big enough for her, her parents and six
strangers. Now, Guerra, a junior at Palmer
Trinity, feels like she's on top of the
world.
Her volleyball team is 25-1, seven more
wins than they had all of last season, and
the first Miami-Dade team in years considered
a legitimate state title contender. Colleges
like Penn State, Florida State, Florida
International University and North Carolina
State have already come to recruit her.
And her classmates, well, they adore her.
''She has got to be one of the most dedicated
athletes I've ever coached,'' Falcons' coach
William Gonzalez said. "She can play
any position on the court effectively. She
hasn't let her quick success go to her head.
"When she makes a big play, she celebrates
with her teammates and gets ready for the
next one.''
The 17-year-old, a 5-11 outside hitter,
has made an impression on her classmates
in fewer than nine months as a Palmer student.
Hundreds of them filled Palmer's gym at
a Hispanic Heritage festival expecting to
hear her describe Cuban culture.
She had a surprise for them. After her
speech, she began singing a couple of her
favorite Celia Cruz songs. Before she was
done, everyone in the gym was clapping.
''That's just my personality,'' said Guerra,
who is still learning to speak English but
has already picked up slang phrases like
''whatever'' and "so you know.''
'I was like 'Sing along if you know the
words and if you don't just clap.' I'm not
shy at all in public.''
Before her singing days, before Palmer's
volleyball team started 24-0 and earned
the No. 4 spot in the state Class 2A, Guerra's
life was headed in a different direction.
She was being groomed for big things in
Cuba. She spent 18 months playing on the
Cuban Junior National team, and had the
potential to play on the Olympic team someday.
But her parents, Lubé and Armando,
who have been separated for two years, wanted
her to have the chance to pursue a career
after her sports days were over. They decided
to flee the country as a family in July
2003. Guerra left behind her grandmother
and cousins.
After nearly a day at sea, the Guerras
arrived in Mexico, where they spent the
next month living in a hotel, waiting for
their legal issues to get resolved. Once
they were allowed into the United States,
they took a bus to Miami where they were
greeted by her uncle.
''It all really happened so fast, it wasn't
a major shock to me,'' said Guerra, who
lives with her mother in South Miami, and
still keeps in touch with her father, who
lives in New York. "I just really miss
my abuelita. I write to her constantly.''
Guerra enrolled at Southwest last fall,
but was unable to play for the Eagles volleyball
team.
During the winter, she transferred to Palmer
Trinity where she met Gonzalez, also a Cuban
refugee who fled the country three years
ago. Gonzalez, a former trainer for the
Cuban national team, knew some of the coaches
that had taught Guerra in Cuba.
''Volleyball players in Cuba are used to
a very demanding style of coaching,'' Gonzalez
said. "We focus a lot on being in good
physical shape so you can have the endurance
to outlast your opponents during a long
match. That's something I've tried to bring
to the girls here at Palmer.
"With her experience, Arasay has been
a perfect fit on this team.''
Her outspoken and festive personality has
also made her a perfect fit with her team.
''Arasay has become a role model for us,''
setter Courtney Johnson said. "During
a match or at a team meeting, she'll speak
up and try to help all of us if she sees
something that can help make us better players
and a better team.''
Guerra joined Gonzalez's club team Spike
Volleyball after enrolling at Palmer Trinity
last winter. She has flourished under his
tutelage, developing one of the most devastating
spikes in the county.
''She hits the ball harder than most guys
do,'' said Clinton Reid, who coaches the
Killian girl's and boy's teams. "Some
of my girls looked a little hesitant to
get in the way of her spikes.''
Guerra showed Killian some of that power
two weeks ago when Palmer Trinity beat the
Cougars in the championship match of the
Westminster Christian Invitational, where
she later earned MVP honors. Killian got
a little revenge this past weekend, handing
the Falcons their first loss of the season
in the championship match of the Florida
Christian Invitational. Guerra was again
voted to the all-tournament team.
Because of her parents decision, it may
be the first of many accomplishments. Guerra
said she would like to become a police detective
like the those on her new favorite TV show,
Law and Order.
''In Cuba, even if you have a good education,
you don't have that much of a chance to
make something of yourself than someone
who doesn't,'' Guerra said. "Now, I
have a fantastic school, a great team and
all the opportunities I could have ever
dreamed of. Now it's time to chase my dreams.''
Martinez makes ad misstep
In the anything-goes
U.S. Senate race, the Martinez campaign
stumbles into a link between Cuban rafter
Elián González and terror
suspect Sami al Arian.
By Marc Caputo, mcaputo@herald.com.
Posted on Wed, Oct. 13, 2004.
When Republican Senate hopeful Mel Martinez
decided to run a commercial condemning rival
Betty Castor for not firing suspected terrorists
when she headed a university, his campaign
featured one man: former immigration agent
Bill West.
The ad, in which West said Castor was soft
on terrorism, appeared days after the Martinez
camp savaged her for campaigning with Janet
Reno. The campaign said the former U.S.
attorney general's ''armed thugs'' seized
Cuban rafter Elián González
and sent him back to the communist island,
"allowing Fidel Castro to have his
way.''
That rhetoric, however, tripped Martinez
up: The federal officer whose undercover
agents cased the Little Havana home of Elián's
relatives in preparation for the raid was
also Bill West.
The Martinez campaign caught its misstep
-- that it had insulted the federal agents
who worked for West -- the day The Herald
published a story about the ''armed thugs''
comment. The campaign called West to apologize
as it prepared to roll out the anti-Castor
ad.
''They asked if I had a problem with it.
I don't. . . . It's politics,'' said West,
who launched a 1995 investigation into Professor
Sami al Arian, who is accused of having
ties to terrorists while teaching at the
University of South Florida in 1995, when
Castor was president.
''The comment is a nonissue for me,'' added
West, who said the Martinez campaign told
him the ''armed thugs'' wording had been
a mistake by a staffer. "The whole
Elián González operation is
history. The operation went as well as possible.''
Martinez spokeswoman Jennifer Coxe said
Tuesday that there was no irony in condemning
the Elián raid and in holding West
up a trustworthy expert.
''This has no bearing whatsoever with what
went on at USF. People were angry at the
policy [to seize Elián.] Bill West
didn't formulate the policy,'' Coxe said.
"Betty Castor has yet to tell the truth
about what went on at her campus when she
was university president.''
Castor pounced on Martinez's campaign for
sending conflicting messages. On Monday,
Castor unleashed her own commercial, calling
Martinez "hypocritical.''
''It's certainly ironic,'' Castor said
Tuesday. "His campaign showed such
disrespect for the INS and then to use a
person he so violently disagreed with regarding
Elián González speaks volumes
about his campaign.''
Asked about the ''thugs'' comment on CNN's
Inside Politics after The Herald story ran,
Martinez said the press release that used
those words was "inappropriate.''
"I never said that. It was something
put out by someone in my office.''
That release said Castor's decision to
campaign with Reno was ''a snub to the Cuban-American
community'' outraged by the Elián
raid.
The raid wouldn't have happened so quickly
were it not for West, chief of the National
Security Section of the Immigration and
Naturalization Service in 2000.
''I had a group of agents we sent to the
area and around the house. We sent them
into the crowd and around,'' West said Tuesday.
"They were observing, milling around,
watching the crowd 24-7, taking pictures
and making reports. We structured the operation
based on what those reports said.''
HIT STRIDE
The Martinez campaign has lately hit its
stride with West's anti-terrorism commercial.
West points out in the ad that al Arian
and two other suspected terrorists operated
for years on the USF campus, and that Castor
did little, even though she had claimed
in her own campaign commercial: "I
took action to remove a suspected terrorist
from our campus.''
Says West in the ad: "Unfortunately,
that's wrong. . . . As university president,
Betty Castor's lack of strong leadership
allowed a dangerous situation to get worse.
. . . ''
The commercial, heavily aired in South
Florida, helped Martinez move slightly ahead
of Castor in opinion surveys of likely voters,
according to the Mason-Dixon polling firm.
The Castor campaign hit back Monday, and
accused Martinez of allowing George Bush
to campaign with al Arian at a Plant City
event in 2000, where both men and their
wives were photographed as Bush sought the
Muslim vote. Martinez, who was Bush's Florida
campaign chair, says the ad is a ''total
mistruth'' because he never met al Arian.
CASTOR'S MOVES
The ad also says Castor suspended al Arian.
Actually, she placed him on paid leave in
1996. Two years later, Castor reinstated
him because he and others had yet to be
charged. It took the U.S. government until
2003 to charge al Arian for his alleged
role in supporting Palestinian Islamic Jihad
through front groups at USF and the Islamic
Academy school that he helped found.
The Castor campaign also questioned West's
motives for appearing in the ads. It made
much of the fact that West consults for
a company -- run by the journalist who first
documented al Arian's alleged misdeeds in
1994 -- that was awarded a $600,000 grant
from the Smith Richardson Foundation, a
conservative organization.
West said he didn't know of the grant until
The Tampa Tribune brought it to his attention.
He said he didn't receive a penny of it,
and that as an independent voter he had
no partisan intentions when he appeared
in the ad.
''My issue is a single focus. My only involvement
is to set record straight on the Betty Castor
and Sami al Arian issue,'' West said. "Castor
said she did enough, and she clearly didn't.''
Herald staf writer Beth
Reinhard contributed to this report.
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