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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Florida farmer exports awaited cattle
to Cuba
A Naples farmer sends
the first shipment of Florida-bred cattle
to Cuba in more than 40 years.
From Herald Wire Reports.
Posted on Sat, Jan. 01, 2005.
The first shipment of Florida-bred cattle
to Cuba in more than 40 years was expected
to leave Friday night from Port Everglades.
Twenty-two beef cattle were on a cargo
chip for the three-day trip to Havana, said
J.P. Wright & Co., which has a contract
to ship the livestock under an exemption
to the long-standing U.S. trade embargo
on Cuba.
The six bulls and 16 heifers were raised
in Florida's prime cattle country of Levy,
St. Lucie, Suwannee and Highlands counties,
said John Parke Wright IV, owner of the
Naples-based company.
The shipment is the first part of a nearly
$1 million order totaling 300 head of Florida-bred
cattle. The rest is expected to ship within
the next few months.
Wright's ancestors shipped cattle to the
Caribbean nation starting in the 1850s,
because Florida-bred livestock was suited
to the similar tropical climate in Cuba.
But trade was halted by the U.S. embargo
imposed after communist leader Fidel Castro
came to power in 1959. A law passed in 2000
lets U.S. farmers and companies sell livestock
and agricultural and food products to Cuba
on a cash-only basis.
Wright has been pushing for full re-established
trade between the two rival nations. In
the meantime, he says U.S. farmers are supplying
food for average Cubans.
''America's ranchers and farmers have established
respected and common grounds of friendship
and open market business intentions with
the Cuban people, especially in agriculture,''
he said.
But many Cuban-Americans contend that the
farm sales only benefit the communist nation's
elite, including Castro. They believe the
trade restrictions must be tightened to
topple Castro's government.
Cuban acts a top draw in Vegas
For the first time in
at least 45 years, two high-profile Cuban
acts are playing the Las Vegas Strip as
the old year ends and the new one begins.
By Timothy Pratt, Special
to The Herald. Posted on Fri, Dec. 31, 2004.
LAS VEGAS - The New Year will bring something
not seen on the stages of Las Vegas for
at least 45 years -- two Cuban acts, each
with 50 musicians, dancers and others, presenting
shows only blocks apart.
A local newspaper trumpeted the news by
noting, "Suddenly, Las Vegas is the
Cuban Entertainment Capital of the World.''
Tropical Passions, a show with a cast of
mostly Miami expats, is based on Havana's
nightlife in the 1950s and features the
Grammy-nominated Tropicana All Stars. It's
at the Las Vegas Hilton through Sunday.
Havana Night Club: The Show recently made
headlines when all 50 cast members sought
asylum. It's at the Stardust until Jan.
11. Ticket sales for both are brisk.
''It's long overdue,'' said Otto Merida,
executive director of the Las Vegas Latin
Chamber of Commerce, who said he has never
seen a pair of Cuban acts of this size and
scope in his 30 years in Las Vegas.
The Cuban-born Merida, who oversees the
third-largest Hispanic chamber in the Southwest
with 1,200 members, said that Hispanic visitors
from other states call him asking about
Latin acts.
'I've always had to tell them, 'No, you
have to come [during] Cinco de Mayo' ''
-- one of the few days of the year when
big-name acts such as Julio Iglesias regularly
play Las Vegas.
As for Cuban acts, Tony Alamo, senior vice
president of Mandalay Resort Group, said
he recalls a group with ''lots of dancers
and good-looking women'' that played Las
Vegas in the '60s shortly after he arrived
in the United States from Cuba.
''But I have never seen two Cuban shows
at once here,'' Alamo said.
Gonzalo de Barona, vice president of casino
marketing for the Las Vegas Hilton, said
his hotel will be targeting Hispanic audiences.
According to the Las Vegas Convention and
Visitors Authority, 8 percent of the 35
million visitors to Las Vegas in 2003 were
Hispanic.
De Barona said presenting a show like Tropical
Passions, with its Grammy-nominated musicians
and other top-notch talent is "branding
your property as somebody that has cultural
knowledge -- and that sends a strong message.''
Having the two shows in town has created
a mano a mano of sorts, as members of each
question the other's version of Cuba on
stage.
''It's a cliché,'' said Nicole Durr,
the producer of Havana Night Club, referring
to Tropical Passions, which is based on
pre-Castro Havana.
''This is the best of Cuba,'' Recaredo
Gutierrez, producer of Tropical Passions
responded, as dancers glided across the
stage to iconic Cuban singer Beny More's
Santa Isabel de las Lajas. ''This is what
we were and are no longer -- but one day
could be,'' he said.
Said Tropical Passions singer Ivette Viña:
"I think it's important to educate
people about what was happening in Cuba
in the '50s. You want to make sure when
people leave the theater, they have a positive
image of Cuba.''
(Viña, by the way, called Havana
Night Club a cliché, with focus on
drawing an arc from the time slaves were
brought from Africa to Cuba to Havana's
reggaeton of today.)
But cast members from both acts said the
future looks bright for similar shows on
the sea of neon known as "The Strip.''
Durr said she believes from seeing the
responses of audiences "that the time
has come for Las Vegas to have Latin, and
Cuban acts.''
For the casts of both shows, being on stage
in Las Vegas has been a dream come true.
Yadira Padron, a 20-year-old former Tropicana
dancer who came to the United States from
Havana six months ago, said she was overcome
with emotion on seeing Las Vegas for the
first time.
''I still haven't slept,'' she said.
Author explores Cuba's workhorses
Some 60,000 vintage cars
roll around Cuba and author Richard Schweid
finds that fascinating, as well the Cuban
ingenuity that keeps them on the road.
Barry Spyker, bspyker@herald.com.
Posted on Thu, Dec. 30, 2004.
Studebakers, Nash Ramblers, Kaisers and
De Sotos -- cars declared extinct in the
United States long ago -- are alive and
well on the streets of Cuba. And these are
not pampered collectibles, but daily workhorses.
Author Richard Schweid in a new book offers
a profile of the pre-1959 cars of Cuba,
where every day is a classic car show --
by our standards -- on the streets of Havana.
The book, Che's Chevrolet, Fidel's Oldsmobile:
On the road in Cuba, was released a couple
of months ago.
Schweid, who was born in Nashville and
now lives in Barcelona, where he is editor
of a magazine, says he was fascinated by
''the role this most capitalist of products
plays in one of the last and most interesting
of the old-style communist regimes.''
There are about 60,000 vintage American
cars running around the island, mostly in
Havana and Santiago de Cuba. That's the
figure most experts use, he says, and it's
probably accurate based on how many cars
he saw on the streets and how many were
in Cuba at the time of the revolution.
What in the world keeps them running when
there have been no new parts coming into
Cuba since 1960 and no junkyards to scavenge?
''Cuban genius,'' Schweid said during an
interview with the publisher, The University
of North Carolina Press. That, and an ''ability
to make do, to be innovative and tremendously
resourceful, and a great respect for the
cars.''
''Necessity has demanded much [from] the
people and the cars, and both have been
up to the task,'' he said.
Schweid says the book's title was chosen
from post-revolutionaries' choices of autos:
''When it came to dividing up the spoils
left behind by those who fled in airplanes
across the Florida Straits, Che chose a
Chevrolet and Fidel an Oldsmobile,'' Schweid
said. ''Both of them knew a good car when
they saw it.''
Castro has long since graduated to Mercedes
travel, with a driver.
The author weaves through a history of
cars, trucks and buses in Cuba since the
turn of the century, dating to the island's
first car, a Locomobile, in 1902. He includes
52 black and white photos and eight contemporary
color photos by Cuban photographer Adalberto
Roque.
Today, there is only a tiny new-car market
in Havana for diplomatic and government
agencies. European and Japanese companies
accommodate that minuscule market.
Might collectors be champing at the bit
for Cuba's classics some day? Schweid said
there probably would not be much of a market
for them if the trade embargo were lifted.
''The majority of these cars have been drastically
altered from their original selves to run
on diesel. They have been rewired and repainted,
and the materials at hand have not always
been the best,'' he said.
''These cars will not be of value to anyone
but their owners, and they have to keep
working until they die.''
For more information on the book, visit
www.uncpressunc.edu.
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