CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Castro highlights summit's guest list

Spain expects Cuban leader Fidel Castro to attend a meeting of leaders of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking nations from Europe and Latin America.

By Ciaran Giles, Associated Press. Posted on Mon, Oct. 10, 2005.

SALAMANCA, Spain - The Spanish government is bracing itself for a rare appearance by Cuban leader Fidel Castro at a summit due to take place here later this week.

Castro, 79, who rarely travels any great distances, has been invited to the 15th Iberoamerican Summit due to take place in the western city of Salamanca on Friday and Saturday, along with leaders and heads of state of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking nations from Europe and Latin America.

''As far as we know, everybody is coming,'' said Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernández de la Vega.

It was not clear whether Guatemala and El Salvador would send high-level delegates in the wake of the effects of Hurricane Stan.

The hotel reservation requirement for the Cuban delegation is nearly twice the normal number of rooms when the Cuban leader travels with it, and so far the booking is for the full amount, the spokesman said, indicating it was likely Castro would attend.

The prospect of a meeting between Castro and close ally Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez at the summit has caused Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's government some concern.

''Zapatero fears the effect of Castro and Chávez at the Salamanca summit,'' said newspaper El País.

''We've held 14 summits so far and want this, the 15th, to tackle serious issues,'' the spokesman said.

El País said that Castro and Chávez could use the summit to seek support for their stance on the Luis Posada Carriles case. Posada, a vehement anti-Castro Cuban militant, is wanted by Cuban and Venezuelan courts. Posada, a naturalized Venezuelan and one-time CIA operative, is accused of masterminding from Caracas a bombing in which a Cubana Airlines plane traveling from Barbados to Havana exploded in the air on Oct. 6, 1976. He has denied involvement.

A Venezuelan military court tried and acquitted Posada of the bombing, but the decision was later overturned and a civilian court case convened.

Posada then escaped from a Venezuelan jail in 1985 before the civilian trial was completed, reportedly paying a $28,600 bribe to secure escape.

Tackling Cuba's human rights position is another diplomatically difficult area for Zapatero's government if the Cuban leader arrives. ''Human rights will definitely be discussed and will be included in the final declaration,'' said Fernández de la Vega.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was scheduled to visit the summit as a special guest. Around 100 business leaders were expected to attend meetings on the fringe of the summit to discuss how to improve trading conditions and prosperity in the areas represented.

Cuban dissident held at MIA, misses event

Raúl Rivero was delayed by authorities for hours after arriving at Miami International Airport from Europe Sunday afternoon.

By Monica Hatcher, mhatcher@herald.com. Posted on Mon, Oct. 10, 2005.

Raúl Rivero, a prominent Cuban dissident, journalist and poet recently freed from jail on the communist island, was held for hours by immigration officials Sunday at Miami International Airport, causing him to miss a flight to the Midwest where he was scheduled to address an international media conference.

Rivero was pulled from the regular passport control line at MIA and taken to another area for processing under requirements of a national security regulation for citizens of countries believed to be state sponsors of terrorism. The requirement cited by a U.S. government spokesman calls for fingerprinting, photographing and registration of arriving citizens of those countries.

Cuba is one of several countries included on a list of so-called state sponsors of terrorism cited on a State Department website.

Rivero, 59, told reporters after his release that he was held for four hours and was not told why he was delayed.

''They didn't give me any explanation,'' he said. "They told me to enter a room for a moment and the moment lasted for four hours.''

Rivero was one of 75 journalists and political dissidents jailed in 2003 under a crackdown by the Fidel Castro regime. He was sentenced to 20 years but was released for health reasons, according to the Cuban government. Since then, Rivero has been a much sought-after commentator on Cuban affairs.

Last Wednesday, he was in Switzerland, where he spoke publicly on several occasions and met with hundreds of Cuban exiles.

Traveling from Madrid Sunday, Rivero arrived in Miami at 2:45 p.m. and was supposed to catch a connecting 6:15 p.m. flight to Indianapolis where he was scheduled to make a highly anticipated keynote speech at the Inter-American Press Association on journalists still jailed in Cuba.

Zachary Mann, a spokesman in Miami for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said heavy passenger traffic in the passport line added to the longer-than-unsual processing time for Rivero.

He was released at 7 p.m., Mann said.

Sunday night's event was not canceled, though Rivero was rescheduled to speak to the group tonight in Indianapolis.

Rivero will be back in Miami on Thursday for a poetry reading hosted by Miami Dade College's Florida Center for the Literary Arts. The event is scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. at the college's Wolfson Campus, 300 NE Second Avenue, Chapman Conference Center. Admission is free.

El Nuevo Herald staff writers Wilfredo Cancio Isla and Helena Poleo contributed to this report.

Raul Rivero: A poet unbowed by Cuba's jails

Freed Cuban poet and journalist Raúl Rivero, in Miami this week to read his poetry, talked with The Herald about his career and how he survived prison.

By Fabiola Santiago. fsantiago@herald.com. Posted on Sun, Oct. 09, 2005.

For two years, Raúl Rivero, a man accused of wielding words as weapons and sentenced to 20 years in prison, sat in a solitary, humid cell so small there was barely room for him to stretch out his arms.

He slept on a metal bed with a thin foam mattress, used a hole in the ground to relieve himself, cleaned up in a spigot turned on only once a day for 15 minutes.

Under the dim light of a single bulb, he wrote love poems -- the only thing, his jailers warned him, he was allowed to write.

At first, inspiration didn't come easy for the dissident journalist who founded Cuba's daring independent press and became internationally known for his dispatches about the repression and starkness of life in Cuba.

But then, Rivero says, he let his mind wander back to the ''many, many women'' he loved, married, didn't marry, lost or left, and he began to eagerly pen odes to "love and ex-love.''

''Every time I finished a poem, I felt that they had not defeated me,'' said the 59-year-old, freed in April and now living in Madrid, where his jailhouse poems were published under the title Corazón sin furia (Heart Without Fury).

One of 75 journalists and dissidents accused of ''spreading enemy propaganda'' and jailed in a sudden crackdown in the spring of 2003, Rivero arrives in Miami today,, his first trip to the United States. He immediately travels to Indianapolis to deliver a report before the International Press Association on journalists still imprisoned in Cuba.

Back in Miami on Thursday, he will appear at a reading at Miami Dade College's Florida Center for the Literary Arts in celebration of his 60th birthday.

''El Gordo'' to his friends, Rivero spoke with self-effacing humor during a two-hour telephone interview with The Herald about his old life -- ''my shipwrecks'' -- and his new job at the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, where he pens a page on Saturdays.

Born in 1945 in the rural town of Morón in eastern Camagüey province, Rivero moved to Havana as a young man to study at the University of Havana, earning a degree in journalism.

SUPPORTED REVOLUTION

A supporter of the Cuban Revolution and already a poet, he became in 1966 one of the founders of El Caimán Barbudo, the new government's premier cultural magazine. He also worked in the state newspaper Juventud Rebelde and literary magazines La Gaceta de Cuba and Casa de las Américas.

He published two books of prize-winning poetry. Two of Cuba's best poets -- Eliseo Diego and Nicolás Guillén, the latter intricately linked to officialdom -- were his mentors and personal friends.

'He wrote what was called 'civic poetry' in which the homeland and the status of the nation are the subjects, and the language, although metaphorical and poetic, is conversational and reflective of the reality,'' says novelist and friend Eliseo Alberto, exiled in Mexico City and the son of Diego.

But it was in Moscow, where he served as correspondent for Prensa Latina from 1973-76, that he began to appreciate the differences between Western correspondents who freely reported on events, and the censorship to which his reports were subjected.

''I loved journalism, but I was no journalist at all,'' he says.

Rivero returned to Cuba to a job ''doing public relations'' at the Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC).

His ''long and painful process'' of disaffection with the government had begun, Rivero says, "but I was scared to take steps because I knew what happens to those who dissent.

"I was afraid, like everyone there now is very afraid, and that's why the government continues to exist in that great theater that is living in Cuba.''

He plunged, he says, into ''a stage of self-destruction,'' resigned from UNEAC, drank heavily, and lacked the discipline to do anything more than survive.

Then, in the summer of 1991, inspired by the Soviet collapse, writers Fernando Velázquez and María Elena Cruz Varela came to Rivero with a letter addressed to the government that asked for democratic reforms. They wanted Rivero to sign it.

He did, and so did eight other intellectuals. It became the historic ''La carta de los 10 (Letter of the Ten),'' and it marked Rivero's debut as a dissident. The letter's international furor forced the government to recognize the emerging dissident groups.

'NEVER A MILITANT'

Not wanting to engage in political militancy -- ''I was a fellow traveler of communists, but I've never been a political militant in the party or youth groups, among other reasons, because I lack the discipline and it bores me,'' he says -- Rivero didn't affiliate with Cruz's group, Criterio Alternativo.

Instead, he turned his attention to his calling: journalism. He founded Cuba Press, a group of journalists who would report on life in Cuba and send their news abroad.

''It was a delirious idea at the time,'' Rivero says.

Cuba lacked adequate telephone connections, people went to prison for lesser affronts and the cut-off of aid from the Soviet Union had prompted unprecedented shortages. The journalists lacked the basics: paper, pen, computers, phone lines.

But using diplomatic connections, foreign visitors and foreign press, Rivero began to get his dispatches out, reporting on the dissident movement, on the shortages, on government actions.

El Nuevo Herald, and sometimes The Herald, ran the pieces in Miami. Madrid-based journalist Carlos Alberto Montaner published them in his news service Firmas Press, which serviced Latin America and Spain.

Rivero -- until then jobless and living ''the marginal life, buying and selling in the black market, stretching a $30 payment for a poem published in Mexico, always risking arrest'' -- became an internationally recognized writer.

Albeit, a struggling one.

'Whenever a foreign journalist came to interview or visit me and said, 'What can I do for you?' I would answer, 'Leave me your pen.' ''

He and others believe his stature kept him out of prison for 10 years, although he was harassed by police and pro-government mobs, his phone line was continually disconnected and he was detained for days at a time at the fierce Villa Marista in Havana.

''That's the place where they try to rob you of your soul, drive you insane with the tactics,'' he says.

He didn't buckle.

20-YEAR SENTENCE

Then came the unexpected crackdown in 2003, the arrest, the trial in which he got to see his lawyer only minutes before the proceedings began, the government's case claiming his journalism was ''at the service of the United States against Cuba,'' the harsh sentence of 20 years.

The prospect of going to prison, where political prisoners are mixed in with killers to further punish them, was so terrifying, ''I was afraid of my own fear,'' Rivero says. "I was afraid of not being able to stand it. Everything is programmed to undo you as a human being.''

He endured, and an international campaign for his release was waged.

Through it all, he kept writing.

A lot of it was about ''the moral degradation'' of Cuban society.

''The old lady from my block who testified against me at my trial gets relief packages from her sister in Miami,'' Rivero says. 'I used to tell my wife, 'Look at her, she's getting her chocolates so she can have the energy to persecute me.' ''

Then, in a more serious tone, he adds: "The material reconstruction of Cuba will be easy. All it takes is money and everybody knows where the money is -- Miami. But the bigger problem is going to be the spiritual reconstruction of a nation that has been surviving by lying all day long and stealing from the only rich entity -- the government.''

'CAN'T WAIT' FOR MIAMI Six months into his exile, Rivero is a sought-after source on Cuban affairs -- and on the 26 independent journalists who remain in prison in perilous health.

He was in Switzerland on Wednesday, where he made public appearances and met with some of the 1,700 Cuban exiles living there.

He came home to a house full of journalists wanting to interview him before he left for Miami.

''We can't wait to get to Miami,'' he says. "It will be a sentimental trip, like going to Havana.''

Besides his job at El Mundo, Rivero is finishing a manuscript, Vidas y oficios (Lives and Occupations), mostly testimonials inspired by stories he heard in prison.

The collection of love poems -- whisked out of Cuba while he was still in prison by Rivero's wife, Blanca -- are a hit.

Priced at $21.99, only a handful of copies remained last week of the slim, bright yellow book at Miami's Cuban bookstore, Ediciones Universal.

''It's a very special book because it was edited by the police,'' Rivero quips.

Before he could give the poems to his wife during her visits, allowed only once every three months, Rivero had to hand his poems over to the prison guard assigned to him for his approval.

He would hand in 10, Rivero says, get seven back.

''He always felt obligated to censor something,'' he says.

Then he laughs: "It didn't matter. He censored the silliest poems.''

Invitations create diplomatic flap

The Cuban government boycotted a German embassy holiday party because of the embassy's decision to invite dissidents.

By Frances Robles. frobles@herald.com. Posted on Thu, Oct. 06, 2005.

Miffed because dissidents who oppose Fidel Castro were also invited, the Cuban government boycotted Germany's National Day celebrations this week, dealing another setback to the island's relations with the European Union.

The question of whether to invite political dissidents to European embassy parties in Havana has been the subject of a diplomatic battle since the Cuban government's round up of 75 dissidents two years ago. The European Union started inviting dissidents to its parties as a show of support. In turn, Castro's government snubbed European diplomats in Havana.

In January, European Union embassies quit inviting dissidents to soirées because the action was seen as antagonistic to Castro at a time the European bloc was trying to initiate talks with the government. But several former Soviet states like the Czech Republic balked, and in June, the EU quietly reversed the move, letting each nation make its own call.

''To me the greatest consequence of being invited to these events is the moral recognition, of being treated like a person in a country where we are treated as nonpersons,'' dissident Vladimiro Roca said by phone from Cuba. "For us, the gesture of solidarity is extremely important.''

But resorting to party invitations as a substitute for diplomacy was ill-advised and served only to provide Castro with ammunition, said Joaquín Roy, director of the University of Miami's European Union Center.

''There's no substance,'' he said. "It doesn't solve anything. The end results is that there is one winner, the Cuban government, and one loser, the dissidents.''

Roca attended Monday's party at the Germany embassy, celebrating the 15th anniversary of the nation's reunification.

German diplomats invited both Cuban government officials and dissidents but at different times of day. The move underscored the EU's difficulty in speaking with a single voice on controversial topics.

''It does not help us move forward,'' said Amadeu Altafaj, spokesman for the EU commissioner of development. "We were trying not to use the celebrations as a kind of challenge. Political dialogue has to be the main tool.''

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solano was quoted in Brussels Tuesday as telling the European parliament that it would be ''a little absurd'' to have embassies and no diplomatic relations with the Cuban government.

''For that, it's better to close the embassies and withdraw the ambassadors,'' he said.

The German embassy in Havana referred calls to its foreign ministry in Berlin, which did not return a call seeking comment.

Cuban Interests Section spokesman Lázaro Herrera did not return a telephone message.

Twenty FIU students fast in support of jailed Cubans

By David Ovalle, dovalle@herald.com. Posted on Wed, Oct. 05, 2005.

A group of Florida International University students fasted Tuesday afternoon to show solidarity with two jailed Cuban dissidents who are on a hunger strike protesting long prison terms and dismal conditions.

About 20 students sat in silence at the university's food court, holding signs depicting Victor Rolando Arroyo and Félix Navarro Rodríguez, who were jailed by the Castro regime in a dissident roundup more than two years ago.

''What's happening there is an injustice,'' said Veronica Valdes, 21, a senior majoring in international relations. "They're denying people basic human rights.''

Their health faltering, Arroyo and Rodríguez were transferred this week from a prison infirmary in Cuba's Guantánamo province to separate jails elsewhere on the island, the Spanish news agency EFE reported this week.

Arroyo, a journalist, began his hunger strike Sept. 10, EFE reported.

He was accused of ''undermining national independence'' and sentenced to 26 years in prison in March, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Rodríguez, sentenced to 25 years, began his own hunger strike a few days later.

The FIU students, some Cuban Americans like Valdes, organized Tuesday's fast with the help of Directorio Democrático Cubano (Cuban Democratic Directorate), a Hialeah-based organization that supports pro-democracy movements on the island.

''These young people just contacted us,'' said executive director Janisset Rivero. "For us, it's great because there is a need for new people to come into this struggle.''

Miami filmmaker spotlights fading 'Jewban' community

By Oscar Corral, ocorral@herald.com. Posted on Tue, Oct. 04, 2005.

After downing three cafes con leche at an Eighth Street café, Rhonda Mitrani's conversation accelerates into a mix of views about her Cuban-Jewish heritage, the movie she made about it and the message it conveys to people who catch it on TV this week.

Invoking a Woody-Allenesque anxiety, Mitrani toggles back and forth between hopes for the future of Cuban-Jewish traditions and sweeping assertions of their imminent demise.

Her cultural background -- a mélange of Cuban and Sephardic Jew with a dash of Argentine blood -- both defines and, at times, stumps her, and it is what she drew upon to make her documentary, Cuba Mia (My Cuba).

''The Cuban-Jewish community I grew up in doesn't exist anymore. It's done,'' Mitrani, 32, asserts. Then she backtracks. "Well, it does exist. It has changed.''

Cuba Mia is an award-winning documentary Mitrani first exhibited at the 2002 Miami Film Festival; it tracks her parents and some Jewish friends as they return to their childhood neighborhoods in Cuba after 40 years.

It will air on WPBT Channel 2 at 9 p.m. Wednesday in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month and the Jewish New Year.

Cuba Mia's chronicling of the 1998 trip, sponsored by the Jewish Solidarity Foundation, finds its protagonists on an emotional stroll through their pasts, visiting childhood homes, neighbors, businesses and temples of worship.

Many of those places are now either in ruins or frozen in time without as much as a new coat of paint.

In the 1940s and 1950s, there were an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 Jews in Cuba, most of them of European or Russian ancestry.

Today, there are only a few hundred Jews there. Most have left.

KEEPING TRADITIONS

Mitrani hopes her movie serves as both a way to preserve the past for future generations and as an educational tool for Cuban Jews who want their traditions to prosper.

''The stories in the movie are universal,'' Mitrani said. "They are about finding your roots.''

Bell ''Cookie'' Stabinski, 56, and her husband Luis, 60, were part of the group that traveled to Cuba.

Cookie Stabinski described the trip as ''sweet and sour.'' She said it was ''beautiful'' to see Cuba through the eyes of her childhood, but ''devastating'' because of how decrepit everything was.

Her parents, she said, scolded her for going to Cuba while Fidel Castro was in power, which made her feel guilty about the whole thing. But she doesn't regret it.

''The Cuban-Jewish community was very close-knit. Everybody knew each other and went to the same synagogue,'' Stabinski said. 'It translated here at the beginning of el exilio, but our children's generation seems to be completely blending into the American way. They are American and they are Jewish. The 'Juban' thing, sadly for us, is finishing. As we age this is all going to really disappear.''

FADING DIASPORA

As in Cuba, Miami's Cuban Jewish diaspora is fading.

Miami's oldest Cuban Jewish synagogue, the Cuban Hebrew Congregation, Temple Beth Shmuel, at Michigan Avenue, may not be able to survive for long because it has been losing members for years, said Bernardo Benes, a member who co-founded the synagogue more than 40 years ago.

''We don't have a future,'' Benes said. "If there's someone that wants this organization to survive, it's me. But you have to be realistic when you see all the members disappearing.''

In the 1960s, the Cuban Hebrew congregation included about 825 paying families, but has since steadily shed members.

Today, only about 400 families belong to the synagogue, and only about half of them attend services, Benes said.

He thinks the synagogue will soon have to merge with another one.

Amalia ''Male'' Nick, 54, is one of the women featured in Cuba Mia. She thinks the film is a priceless educational tool for future generations. But she, too, doesn't think her Cuban-Jewish heritage will survive much longer.

''Most of our children are assimilating, marrying Americans,'' she said. "I don't think they are really going to keep that Cuban heritage much longer, unfortunately.''

Many Cuban Jews are now part of congregations that were once more Americanized but have opened their doors to Latin Jews. Elias Mitrani, Rhonda's father, belongs to Temple Menorah, a conservative congregation in Miami Beach.

RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS

He keeps a kosher house and hopes to pass his religious traditions to his children. Rhonda's mother, Aida, is Argentine.

''The movie is Rhonda's little baby,'' Mitrani said. "Even though the United States is my country, I've always felt I'm a Jewban, very Cuban and Jewish.''

Mitrani moved to Florida in 1955, before the revolution that brought Castro to power.

He says his family left for economic reasons, not political ones.

Rhonda Mitrani said she is not very religious and doesn't practice much Judaism, but she still honors some of the traditions such as Shabbat dinners on Fridays.

Rhonda Mitrani's strong family ties are one of the reasons she chose to move back to Miami after living for several years in New York, where she did a stint at Miramax films.

As a young filmmaker, she has a bit of an activist streak. She is currently working on a documentary about dolphin strandings along Florida's coasts, and a romantic comedy about a fair-skinned Latin girl living in New York who is drawn back home to Miami for family reasons.

Mitrani stares into the cup she is sipping from at the Eighth Street café. It's too much caffeine for a single morning.

''I'm proud of this first piece,'' she said, thinking about it a bit. Then she corrects herself, displaying an artistic humility.

"I'm not proud. I'm happy.''

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