CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Search continues for 31 Cubans

By Jennifer Babson. jbabson@herald.com. Posted on Tue, Aug. 23, 2005.

KEY WEST - The U.S. Coast Guard continued a massive search Monday for 31 Cuban migrants believed to have been thrown into the sea when an alleged smuggling boat they were in capsized about 30 miles off Cuba's northern coast.

Cuban officials notified the Coast Guard by telex Sunday night that three Cuban survivors of the boat accident were plucked by a freighter from the water Sunday. The dehydrated migrants said they spent five days clinging to life -- wearing flotation devices and sporting second-degree burns from a blazing sun.

The freighter returned them to the island late Sunday.

No other survivors or victims have been recovered, though the Coast Guard and Navy continued Monday to deploy three cutters, a C-130 plane, a Falcon jet and a helicopter over a vast swath of ocean between the Keys and Cuba.

Monday afternoon, the Coast Guard identified the freighter as the Melfi Habana, based in Antigua and Barbuda in the eastern Caribbean.

The rescued migrants relayed a chilling tale of survival at sea.

The three Cubans told authorities they were on a 28-foot vessel that capsized off Matanzas Province, about 30 minutes into a smuggling run that departed Cuba Aug. 16 with 34 people on board. The survivors -- two women and a man -- were apparently the only people on the speedboat wearing life jackets. After the boat flipped, frightened Cubans struggled to hold on to whatever they could as the saltwater began to swallow them up.

''There were two alleged smugglers, and apparently they were among 14 people who were able to cling to the hull of the boat after it capsized,'' said Lt. Cmdr. Chris O'Neil, a Miami-based spokesman for the Coast Guard. "Eleven of those people eventually floated away -- and they did not have life jackets.''

Those wearing life jackets are the only ones authorities know survived.

''It's a pretty harrowing tale, and I think it speaks to the ruthlessness of the smugglers,'' O'Neil said. "This case demonstrates two things: the incredible will to survive of three people and how dangerous an undertaking a smuggling voyage is.''

Early Monday morning, a Coast Guard helicopter found the Florida-registered speedboat capsized about 16 miles from where the merchant ship picked up the three survivors.

A single life jacket was later spotted bobbing about 20 miles from the sight of the accident.

The Coast Guard used a boat with a crane to raise the speedboat but found no bodies. By evening, the boat was being towed into the Keys.

Florida-based smugglers routinely make the 90-mile trip between the United States and Cuba toting migrants whose passage is often underwritten by Miami-area relatives at a cost of as much as $10,000 per person. But the boats are often overloaded and periodically capsize. A number of Cubans are believed to have died trying to make the voyage.

Coast Guard searches for missing Cuban migrants

By Jennifer Babson. jbabson@herald.com. Posted on Mon, Aug. 22, 2005

KEY WEST - The Coast Guard continued a massive search today for 31 Cuban migrants believed to have been thrust into the sea when an alleged smuggling boat they were in capsized about 30 miles off Matanzas province along Cuba's north coast.

Cuban officials notified the Coast Guard by telex Sunday night that three Cuban survivors of a smuggling boat accident were plucked from the water and rescued by a freighter that returned them to the island late Sunday.

The survivors said they were on a 28-foot vessel that sank with at least 34 people on board. Early Monday morning, a Coast Guard helicopter found a Florida-registered vessel capsized about 16 miles from where the merchant ship picked up the three Cubans.

The Coast Guard raised the speedboat -- located about 60 miles south of Key West -- at sea using another boat with a crane Monday afternoon, but found no bodies, a spokesman said.

No other survivors or victims have been recovered, though the Coast Guard and Navy continue to deploy three cutters, a C-130 plane and a helicopter over a vast swath of ocean between the Keys and Cuba.

Rescuers were still trying to piece together a chronology for the capsizing -- details that could shape search, rescue, and recovery efforts.

"We don't know when it happened. It could have been anywhere from 28 to 48 hours ago,''said Ryan Doss, a Coast Guard spokesman. "We hope to find someone out there.''

Florida-based smugglers routinely make the roughly 90-mile sprint between the U.S. and Cuba toting migrants whose passage is often underwritten by Miami-area relatives at a cost of as much as $10,000 per person. But the boats are often overloaded and periodically capsize. A number of Cubans are believed to have perished trying to make the voyage.

Doss said no relatives had stepped forward seeking information about missing Cuban migrants.

Chávez slams U.S. in show with Castro

In his fourth visit to Cuba in nine months, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez held his six-hour call-in show in Cuba alongside Fidel Castro and blasted ''U.S. imperialism'' as the greatest global threat.

By Vanessa Arrington, Associated Press. Posted on Mon, Aug. 22, 2005.

HAVANA - Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez criticized the United States for recent remarks about his role in Latin America, saying in a Sunday broadcast from Cuba that it is the policies of the U.S. government that are harming the world, not his own.

Chávez spoke alongside Cuban President Fidel Castro during his regular Sunday television and radio show, Aló Presidente, from the western tip of the island, flaunting the close ties between the two leftist leaders that U.S. leaders say are threatening democracy in the region.

''The grand destroyer of the world, and the greatest threat . . . is represented by U.S. imperialism,'' Chávez said.

Chávez was responding to remarks Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made on his way home from visits to Paraguay and Peru last week. Referring to social uprisings in Bolivia that have pushed out two presidents in less than two years, Rumsfeld told reporters that Venezuela and Cuba have been influencing the Andean nation "in unhelpful ways.''

Uneasy about the close relationship between Castro and Chávez, Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials have repeatedly said the two men are fomenting instability in Latin America. Both leaders have consistently denied the accusations.

VIEW OF DEMOCRACY

Chávez gave a new vote of confidence to Castro's communist government Sunday, calling it a ''revolutionary democracy'' in which the Cuban people rule.

People ''have asked me how I can support Fidel if he's a dictator,'' Chávez said. "But Cuba doesn't have a dictatorship -- it's a revolutionary democracy.''

Television footage showed Chávez and Castro together in the streets of Pinar del Río earlier in the day, standing on the back of a jeep wearing olive green military uniforms and saluting hundreds of shouting residents waving Cuban and Venezuelan flags.

During the nearly six-hour show, Castro and Chávez talked mainly about their joint social ventures, particularly in the health sector. Cuba has sent a fifth of its doctors to work in Venezuela in gratitude for Venezuelan oil under preferential terms.

ORTEGA IN AUDIENCE

The leaders praised each other throughout the show and took phone calls and messages from supporters in both countries. They also received praise from the audience, which included Castro's Cabinet members, the ex-Salvadoran guerrilla leader Shafick Handal and former Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

''It is a great privilege for all of us to see you here together,'' said Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque, dressed like the other officials in a bright red shirt. "We feel like we are living a special moment, and that, in Latin America, Cuba is not alone.''

The visit marked Chávez's fourth to Cuba in the last nine months. He arrived Saturday to attend the first graduation of the Latin American School of Medicine, a regional initiative launched in 1998 after two hurricanes devastated Caribbean and Central American nations. Chávez announced he would create a second such school in Venezuela.

U.S. sends 234 back home

By Alfonso Chardy, achardy@herald.com. Posted on Wed, Aug. 17, 2005.

Coast Guard officials said Tuesday that 234 migrants from Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Haiti have been repatriated since Saturday after they were stopped at sea on boats headed toward the United States.

CONTINUING FLOW

The repatriations reflect a continuing flow of illegal migrants attempting to reach U.S. shores.

The total number of Cubans stopped at sea this year is increasing -- 1,856 as of Tuesday, the largest number intercepted in a single year since 1994, when 37,191 Cubans were stopped during the rafter exodus.

According to a Coast Guard statement, its vessels returned 100 Haitians, 121 Dominicans and 13 Cubans since Saturday.

The Cubans were intercepted last week at an unspecified location.

SAILBOAT STOPPED

The Haitians were intercepted Sunday while traveling on a sailboat 19 miles west of Great Inagua in the Bahamas. About 947 Haitians have been stopped by the Coast Guard this year, compared to 3,078 last year.

The Dominicans were stopped Monday about two miles west of Rincón, Puerto Rico. About 2,404 Dominicans have been interdicted so far in 2005, compared to 4,568 in all of 2004.

Coast Guard officials say that so far the figures do not portend a mass migration from Cuba.

The number of Cubans stopped this year is only 357 more than the total for all of 2004, or 1,499.

Blackouts in Cuba generate crisis

Cuba's aged power plants are causing blackouts that sometimes last more than 12 hours.

By Frances Robles. frobles@herald.com. Posted on Mon, Aug. 15, 2005.

Cuba's government has a solution to the electricity shortages that some experts say might threaten the government's very existence: energy-saving light bulbs.

Facing repeated blackouts that last 12 hours or longer, the government has been scrambling to find fixes for an aged and rundown power system that serves 11 million residents.

Some $500 million is being invested to resolve the crisis, and Cuban leader Fidel Castro recently announced a ban on importing and selling incandescent light bulbs -- the household kind -- to be replaced by low-wattage bulbs.

But the nation's energy problems are so severe that experts say it would take billions of dollars -- and five years -- to repair them all.

During recent months, Cuba has been suffering its worst power outages in 10 years, reminiscent to those in the early 1990s that helped trigger the 1994 rafter crisis and sent thousands of refugees to South Florida's shores.

'The Achilles' heel to political and economic stability is going to be the power structure -- the electrical power structure,'' said Jorge R. Piñon, a former Amoco oil man who studies energy issues at the University of Miami. "Electricity is important, in some cases, as important as food.''

Cuba's energy crisis is the product of an aging and deteriorated power structure hit by several hurricanes in the past few years. There are seven power plants on the island, which together have a capacity of 3,200 megawatts. They are currently running at about 50 percent capacity, Piñon said, but need to be at 65 percent to meet demand.

Daunting energy challenges have hit the island since the early 1990s, when the collapse of communism cut off the flow of cheap Soviet oil. Cuban officials then started to run power plants with lower-quality oil that ate away at the already decaying plants, Piñon said.

The Antonio Guiteras plant in the central province of Matanzas, which provides about 12 percent of the nation's power, collapsed for eight months last year. Unable to use other plants to make up for the gap, the result was long power outages, rotting food and frayed nerves.

'DRIVING PEOPLE NUTS'

''It's driving people nuts,'' said Dan Erikson, a Cuba expert at the InterAmerican Dialogue in Washington. "The electrical grids just don't work. They haven't invested in their infrastructure. It's back to the bad old days that people thought faded into history.''

This month the Ministry of Basic Industries announced that 400,000 incandescent bulbs were being replaced by lower-wattage bulbs as part of ''Operation Save Energy.'' Roberto González Vale, a ministry specialist, said the goal was to replace 1.2 million bulbs in Havana alone, the EFE news agency reported.

Had the new bulbs, imported from China, been installed in June, the capital would have seen 20 percent fewer power outages, González said.

The bulbs joined other measures announced last year, such as trimming school and work days by half an hour.

And while Venezuela's Hugo Chávez is now supplying Cuba with up to 90,000 barrels of oil at cut-rate prices, the sudden availability of better quality Venezuelan oil has done little to stem the crisis.

In October, Castro fired Minister of Basic Industries Marcos Portal for not warning the government of the impending disaster. Portal was a Castro family protégé who had been in his post since 1983.

His replacement, Yadira García Vera, has appeared on Cuban TV several times this summer promising improvements. She warned that most of the generating plants would be undergoing repairs in the coming months, leaving the system 800 megawatts short, which would require scheduled blackouts.

Some improvements have been achieved, said Elizardo Sánchez, a human-rights activist in Havana who heads the nongovernment Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

''Compared to the first 20 days in July, when practically half the country was in the dark, the electricity situation has improved in the last two weeks for the whole island,'' Sánchez said in a telephone interview. "Still, an atmosphere of energy insecurity persists.''

Sánchez said the power outages were among the causes of the number of small protests that erupted in Cuba last month, which included people throwing rocks at government buildings.

And last month, Castro said $500 million would be spent on 40,000 new transformers, plus power lines and poles.

''It won't take much more time,'' Castro said at a July 26 speech celebrating the anniversary of his revolution. "You can trust what I say.''

UNFULFILLED PROMISE

A year earlier, he had promised there would be no shortages. "By the first quarter of next year, you can all sleep peacefully.''

Piñon scoffs at the $500 million program, saying it's a small-time fix for a big-time job.

''That's like having a '56 Chevy that's falling apart, and you buy new tires,'' Piñon said. "He needs billions of dollars for the power plants and needs fuel oil, so he's getting new tires.''

Herald special correspondent Saudy Peña contributed to this report.

When time stands still, call on master 'relojero'

In Julian Pelea's hands, antique Rolexes and 17th century timepieces that haven't run in years come back to life.

By Enrique Fernandez, efernandez@herald.com. Posted on Sun, Aug. 21, 2005.

Fernanda Zapata walked into Julian Pelea's watch repair shop in Key Biscayne, flashed the vintage Rolex on her wrist and told him, "It hasn't slowed down. It's been perfect for 24 hours.''

And just as quickly she left, on her way to catch a plane to Colombia to visit her ailing father.

A couple of days later, the Miami resident was on the phone from her native country. The Rolex was still keeping time -- ''for the first time in 20 years,'' she said.

The watch was a family heirloom, handed down from her grandparents, and she was not quite sure how old it was. ''It's so old, the date is erased,'' she said, "but I've had it all my life.''

''It's a Rolex Oyster Perpetual 1130,'' Pelea explained. ''Probably from around 1956 or '57.'' For two decades Zapata had tried to get it fixed to no avail. Then she found Pelea. End of problem.

Welcome to the world of Cuban watch repair.

For years, travelers to Cuba have shared word of one of the island's crafts: bringing vintage watches back to life.

It all began in the old days, when Cuba, then a relatively prosperous country, had a clientele for fine watches.

''Rolex opened a repair shop in Havana in 1958,'' Pelea said. "And the oldest Rolex repairman is still in Cuba.''

CALLS SHOP

At that, Pelea dialed the shop in Havana and asked for ''Valdi,'' the name by which everyone knows the 66-year-old Waldo Fernández Longueira, who admitted he has been working for the firm ''for the past 47 years,'' though he was not sure if he was, indeed, Rolex's senior repairman.

Who is his clientele?

''People who come around here,'' Valdi said in the vague language of conversations between Havana and Miami.

''If Cuba had a different situation,'' Pelea explained, ''he would've left long ago and started his own business.'' Still, who owns Rolexes in today's economically deprived Cuba?

''Officialdom,'' Pelea said. "Some are gifts from relatives in the U.S. Also gifts to government functionaries who do Cuba's business abroad. And they're available, though in very limited quantities, in the diplotiendas [Cuba's well-stocked dollar-only stores].''

In any case, enough to keep the Rolex shop going.

Pelea, 54, claims to belong to an elite coterie of relojeros (watch repairmen) who came up in the 1980s and '90s, precisely when word began to spread about Cuba's specialty with vintage pieces, many graduates from watch repair schools founded in 1970.

''There were two schools, a primary one in downtown Havana, where students learned the basics and rose in the craft's strictly defined ranks,'' Pelea says. "And a master school in the suburb of Atabey.''

AN APPRENTICE

Pelea did not go to school but learned the trade the old-fashioned way, as an apprentice.

Still, he passed the exams and rose to the rank of master in 1987 -- and has the document, printed on Cuba's brittle low-grade paper, to prove it.

In 1998, Pelea moved to Miami and began the second phase of his career as a relojero.

He was hired in 1999 by a store in a strip mall at the entrance to Key Biscayne, where vintage watches were sold -- something Pelea still does selectively.

BUYS STORE

The next year he had saved enough from his wages to buy the store from the owner, and his reputation as a last-resort repairman began to grow.

''I fixed a Breitling that belonged to a WW II pilot and the factory shop could not repair,'' he said. And he has worked on much earlier pieces. "I fixed an 1875 pocket watch for Enrique Gratas [a Univisión News anchor]. And the oldest piece I fixed was a pocket watch made in Liverpool in the 1700s, with a rack level mechanism that is a real marvel.''

That watch originally belonged to Ricardo Alonso, the last San Juan, Puerto Rico, mayor appointed by the Spanish crown. Today it belongs to Marie Louise Crespo, named after her great-aunt, Alonso's half-French wife.

By the time the younger Marie Louise inherited it, the watch no longer worked. Until Pelea got his hands on it.

''It's incredible that no one knew how to fix it,'' Crespo said. "Pelea was the only one who put it to work, and it's working to this day.''

The cost of such repairs depends on the value of the timepiece, Pelea explained. ''If it's a family heirloom of little value, I charge them very little,'' he said. ''But if it's a vintage Patek Philippe estimated at $40,000 in working condition, I can charge between $800 and $12,000. The owners know the investment is well worth it.'' The antique Crespo pocket watch cost $700 to repair.

Although Pelea is acquiring a major reputation, he admitted he is one of a handful of master relojeros from Cuba, like Elías Sarras, whom ''Valdi'', mentioned on the phone from Havana, Orestes Alfonso and Pablo García, all of whom work in downtown Miami. The repairman he most admires, however, is a Spaniard who works out of North Miami, Demetrio Rico. Yet, like so many fine crafts, this one is endangered.

''There is a great clock repairman, an americano, who has been around for many years,'' Pelea said, ''but he is getting too old to ply his trade,'' Pelea said sadly.

On a visit to Pelea's shop, there were two French and one Belgian mantle clocks, both from the 19th century; the face of an English grandfather clock that was ''at least 200 years old''; a figure 8-shaped antique; an old American clock that also marks the days of the month.

"And I repaired a 10-foot-tall grandfather clock, built around 1780, that had 40-pound weights hanging from animal gut strings.''

On his workbench there were the usual eyeglass, tiny screwdrivers, pincers -- the tools of the trade. Plus small round containers that looked like makeup cases and held small pockets full of the various lubricants needed in watch repair, pastel-colored like so many shades of eye-shadow.

One bottle held, on a small top reserve, a clear Rolex lubricant in which the gears of an Oyster Perpetual were floating -- visible only through the eyeglass.

Pelea lifted a drop of lubricant with a tiny tool, laid it on the bench and gently blew on it. The drop, which had at first spread on the flat surface, condensed into a tiny bubble that grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared.

SIMPLE REPAIRS

Clients walked in and out, many for the simple task of replacing a battery, which seemed almost an affront to the skills of a master relojero.

Then a distinguished gentleman in a linen guayabera, an apparition from an earlier era, came in asking about his watch.

''It's not ready yet, sir.'' Pelea said.

"You have to be patient. That is a very old watch, and I have to find the replacement parts before I can get it running again.''

''So what?'' the client asked with a sardonic smile, "I'm old too and I'm still running.''

Deflated blimps limit broadcasts to Cuba

The blimps that carry the TV Martí signal to Havana ruptured last month. The result: less programming than usual.

By Frances Robles. frobles@herald.com. Posted on Sat, Aug. 20, 2005.

The ''Fat Albert'' blimps that broadcast TV Martí to Cuba and scanned the Florida Straits for drug smugglers are skinny now, ruptured by the unforgiving winds of hurricane season.

The $3 million blimps that hovered over the lower Florida Keys were torn apart July 9 in 46 mph winds during Hurricane Dennis, U.S. government officials confirmed.

That means TV Martí's 31 ½ hours of weekly programming have been slashed to fewer than 10 hours broadcast by satellite and the U.S. military's flying radio stations known as Commando Solo C-130s.

SIGNALS JAMMED

Few people watch the U.S.-government station's programs because Cuba jams the signal. And critics say that the fact it took the U.S. media more than five weeks to notice the blimps were missing proves the station has no impact.

''If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound?'' said Joe García, a member of the board of directors of the Cuban-American National Foundation. "Well if a TV Martí balloon blew up but nobody watched it, does it really matter?''

The two blimps stationed at Cudjoe Key -- dubbed ''Fat Albert'' after the Bill Cosby character -- are more formally known as tethered aerostat systems. Twice the size of Goodyear blimps, they are enormous fabric balloons filled with helium.

Anchored by cables, they carry radars used to spot drug-smuggling airplanes and boats and the equipment that broadcast programs to Cuba, where the government controls virtually all the news media.

OUT OF TIME

When there is time, the Air Force, which operates the blimps, deflates the aerostats before a big storm. But it takes at least three days and low winds to accomplish that, and Dennis didn't offer either.

The storm passed through the Keys in the early hours of July 9, dumping six inches of rain and killing one person. The Air Force removed the equipment and docked the twin Alberts to their mooring towers to let them ride it out, said Air Force spokesman Maj. Vic Hines.

''My sense is that they were torn up,'' Hines said.

The last time a storm destroyed one of the blimps was in 1998, when Hurricane Georges ripped through the Keys. Another blimp broke free in 1981 and was shot down by a fighter jet.

Air Force officials said the drug surveillance knocked out by Dennis was picked up by other radars, and a replacement aerostat is almost online. But there is no timetable for the one for TV Martí, an $11.2 million-a-year program that offers a broad range of news and other programming with an anti-Castro twist.

STILL BROADCASTING

A spokesman for the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, the U.S. government entity that runs TV and Radio Martí, said the television station is still broadcasting about eight hours a week: four hours by satellite, which requires a special dish for reception not widely available in Cuba, and another four broadcast Saturday evenings by the C130 airplane.

Radio Martí has not been affected because its signal is broadcast from other locations.

The loss of the blimp ''is regrettable, because it's one of the ways the TV signal gets to Cuba,'' said Office of Cuba Broadcasting spokesman Joe O'Connell. "But on the other hand, it's the one the Cubans jam.''

Herald calls to the station's Miami office were not returned.

The communist government has long jammed the TV and radio signals fairly successfully, particularly in Havana, which holds 2.2 million of Cuba's 11 million people.

''You can't really see the shows during the week,'' Angel Pablo Polanco, an independent journalist in Havana, said in a telephone interview. "The signal we're getting is the one that comes on Saturdays with the C-130. We're getting that signal better than ever.''

Polanco said Cubans enjoy the Saturday shows because they offer a sharply different view of the news. ''People love it,'' Polanco said.

WASTE OF MONEY?

Since Radio Martí went on the air 20 years ago, the U.S. government has spent about $100 million on the program, which has been blasted by people such as the Foundation's García as a patronage mill and a waste of taxpayers' money.

The Senate is considering a proposal to set aside $37.6 million in funding for the broadcasts to Cuba, including $10 million for the purchase of a C-130 dedicated exclusively to Cuba broadcasts.

The current C-130 is operated by the U.S. military. The planes' signals are difficult to jam because of its constantly shifting locations.

Rumsfeld seeks views on Cuba, Venezuela

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked U.S. allies in Latin America for observations on Cuba and Venezuela's influence.

By Liz Sidoti, Associated Press. Posted on Fri, Aug. 19, 2005.

LIMA - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on a brief swing through Latin America, is seeking observations from countries friendly to the United States about the influence of Cuba and Venezuela in the region.

The Pentagon chief met Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo and the country's new defense minister on Thursday, just days after Toledo swore in a fresh Cabinet.

Under the Peruvian constitution, Toledo had been forced to ask all 16 of his ministers to step down when Prime Minister Carlos Ferrero, the Cabinet chief, resigned to protest the president's appointment of an unpopular ally as foreign minister.

Rumsfeld, who visited Paraguay before coming to Peru, is urging Latin American countries to work together to stem "anti-social, destabilizing behavior.''

The defense secretary's three-day trip, his third to Latin America in just 10 months, is part of an effort to strengthen U.S. ties with Latin American countries.

Concerned about increasing involvement of Cuba and Venezuela in the region, the United States wants to ensure that Cuban President Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez do not steer other Latin American countries away from democracy.

After meetings with top officials in Paraguay, defense officials said the country's leaders are very alert to the problems Cuba and Venezuela can cause.

Chávez has insisted his country poses no threat to the region and has accused the United States of trying to isolate Venezuela.

U.S. officials say the main target is Bolivia, which shares borders with both Peru and Paraguay, but other countries could be vulnerable as well. They say unstable countries, coupled with chronic problems in Latin America of corruption, drug trafficking and gang violence, present a security threat to North and South America.

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