CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Cubans' return now up to Castro

Fifteen Cuban migrants repatriated to Cuba after landing on an abandoned bridge in the Florida Keys can return to the United States under a federal judge's order. But will Fidel Castro let them?

By Jay Weaver. jweaver@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Wed, Mar. 01, 2006.

A Miami federal judge on Tuesday ordered the U.S. government to make arrangements for 15 repatriated Cubans to be brought back to the United States after the judge ruled they landed on U.S. soil when they reached an abandoned bridge in the Florida Keys.

U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno found that the Cubans ''were removed to Cuba illegally'' in January after the U.S. Coast Guard wrongly concluded the old Seven Mile Bridge was not connected to the United States. Moreno's decision marks the first time the government has been ordered to allow Cubans into the United States after they've been repatriated to Cuba under the ''wet-foot, dry-foot'' policy.

Moreno gave the government a March 30 deadline to consider the Cubans' eligibility to obtain the appropriate federal documents to enter the United States. But the wild card in this extraordinary legal odyssey: Will Cuban leader Fidel Castro allow them to leave the island nation?

There is no guarantee.

Moreno's geographical finding was a critical point because under the government's decade-old policy, Cuban migrants who reach U.S. soil are allowed to stay and apply for residency, but those intercepted at sea are generally returned to Cuba.

The Keys bridge case exploded into a flash point for the exile community, which used it to confront the Bush administration's interpretation of the controversial policy.

The judge's finding only affects the 15 Cubans who reached the old Seven Mile Bridge -- not the government's overall wet-foot, dry-foot policy adopted by the Clinton administration.

JUDGE'S RULING

''The court finds that the historic bridge, which the state of Florida owns and pioneer Henry Flagler built to develop the tip of Florida, is indeed part of the United States despite its present lack of use,'' Moreno wrote in his 11-page ruling.

"Therefore, the Coast Guard's decision to remove those Cuban refugees back to Cuba was not a reasonable interpretation of present executive policy.''

The U.S. attorney's office declined to comment about the judge's order, issued late Tuesday. Prosecutors could appeal. The Coast Guard also declined comment.

One of the 15 Cuban migrants, Elizabeth Hernandez, 23, spoke with The Associated Press by telephone Tuesday evening from her family's home in Matanza.

''I am so happy,'' she said. "I always had hope I would be able to return.''

Her aunt, who lives in Hialeah, expressed thanks to the Miami-Dade community and the lawyers who challenged the government's decision to return the Cubans to their homeland.

'UNFAIR'

''I'm hopeful that the entire group can be brought back to this country, because what was done to them was very unfair,'' Mercedes Hernandez Guerrero told reporters, gathered for a news conference in front of the Bay of Pigs monument in Little Havana.

"I cannot wait for them to be here.''

Ramón Saúl Sánchez, who launched a 12-day hunger strike in January to persuade the Bush administration to talk with Cuban exile leaders long upset by the wet-foot, dry-foot policy, praised the judge's ruling.

''The judge made a decision that was in the hearts of everyone in Miami,'' he said.

COULD TAKE MONTHS

The team of lawyers representing the 15 Cubans expressed joy over Moreno's ruling, but cautioned it could be months before their clients might be able to return to the United States.

''It's always an amazing thing to see how our legal system works and to beat the government when they're wrong,'' said Wilfredo Allen, one of 14 attorneys who worked for free on the Cubans' case.

PAROLE

Allen said the government could grant humanitarian parole documents and/or visas to the 15 Cubans to allow their entry into the United States. But he acknowledged that Castro could be a barrier to their ultimate departure.

''To me, the biggest hurdle is getting the Cuban government to allow them to leave,'' Allen said. "They all have sponsors and places to live in Miami.''

Judge Moreno also recognized the potential difficulty in his ruling, citing the court's "lack of jurisdiction in Cuba.''

''Whether they will be permitted to leave a country where oppression has been the rule for the past 47 years is beyond any power granted to this court,'' he said.

The uncommon legal dispute erupted when the Cuban migrants were found on pilings in a section of the old Seven Mile Bridge near Marathon on Jan. 5 and then returned to Cuba on Jan. 9.

The Coast Guard determined that the old bridge pier had been abandoned and did not connect at either end to dry land in the United States, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Dexter Lee.

As a result, the Cubans were not ''dry foot'' and could not remain in the United States, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Coast Guard.

The legal challenge, filed by the Cubans, their Miami relatives and the exile group Democracy Movement, claimed the bridge was part of the United States.

Moreno found that the bridge was indeed connected to the United States, contradicting the Coast Guard.

COURT STANDING

While Moreno differed with the government on this point, he agreed with authorities on another issue.

He found that only the 15 Cubans who landed on the old Keys bridge had standing, or legal right, to contest the government's wet-foot, dry-foot policy -- not some of their Miami relatives or the Democracy Movement.

El Nuevo Herald staff writer Rui Ferreira contributed to this report.

Cuban Jewish leader dies at 80

By Frances Robles. frobles@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Wed, Mar. 01, 2006.

When there weren't any Jews saying Friday night shabbat prayers in Havana, Dr. José Miller went house to house in his car to pick up the aged and bring them to temple.

When synagogues were deteriorated and abandoned, it was Miller, a dental surgeon, who got them renovated and reopened.

The president of Cuba's tiny Jewish community died Monday in Havana after suffering complications from heart disease. He was 80.

''If there is a Jewish com munity in Cuba, it's because of his leadership,'' said Eddie Levy, chairman of Jewish Solidarity, a South Florida organization which assists the Jewish community in Cuba. "It was his job, his work, his life.''

Levy said Miller helped resurrect a dwindling Jewish community by cutting through the red tape needed to reopen closed temples in Santiago and Camaguey. Under his leadership, a community that saw many members emigrate or die of old age suddenly celebrated weddings, conversions and even adult circumcisions.

Only about 1,200 Jews now remain in Cuba.

Miller's parents moved to Cuba from Lithuania in the early 1900s. Born in Yaguajay in 1925, he studied dentistry at the University of Havana and specialized in facial reconstruction surgery.

He retired in 1994 after a heart attack and dedicated himself to the Jewish community, serving as president of the Grand Synagogue of the Jewish Community.

He is survived by his wife, Dahlia, of Havana; daughter Miriam of Miami; and sons José David of Ottawa, Canada; Mihail of Hollywood and Irving of Israel.

Miller was buried Tuesday in the Jewish Cemetery in Guanabacoa, Havana.

U.S.-owned hotel ordered closed

Mexico City officials ordered the closure of a U.S.-owned hotel at the center of a diplomatic spat between the United States and Mexico over trade with Cuba.

By Kevin G. Hall, Knight Ridder News Service. Posted on Wed, Mar. 01, 2006.

MEXICO CITY - City officials ordered the closure of a major U.S.-owned hotel Tuesday in Mexico City, weeks after it became the center of a diplomatic flap when U.S. Treasury Department officials ordered it to expel a delegation of Cuban officials.

Signs posted at the María Isabel-Sheraton, which is across from the iconic Monument to Independence at one of the city's most prominent intersections, made no mention of the dispute, instead accusing the 755-room luxury hotel of violating unspecified city codes.

But the official who signed the closure notice, Virginia Jaramillo, the chief of the city's Cuahtémoc district, had promised to move against the hotel after the 16-member Cuban delegation was asked to leave Feb. 2.

U.S. Treasury Department officials said the hotel would have been in violation of the U.S. trade embargo of Cuba had it allowed the Cubans to remain, but Mexican officials said the U.S. order infringed on Mexican sovereignty and violated Mexican law.

It was unknown whether city officials had consulted Mexico's federal government before ordering the closure.

''Due to the infringement of local law, the Sheraton's activities have been suspended,'' the notice said in eight languages. "We are sorry for the inconvenience that this has caused. Thank you for your understanding.''

Large red signs reading ''closed'' in Spanish were on the hotel's doors.

The Sheraton's marketing director, Dolores Castillo, said the hotel was still open despite the closure notice. ''The hotel is operating at 100 percent,'' she said.

Hotel representatives were meeting with officials in an attempt to avoid expelling tourists, and people were allowed to enter the hotel.

Guests who were leaving for the most part declined to talk to reporters. One woman who said she was a member of the hotel's health club said managers had told her to call Wednesday to find out if the hotel would be open.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., which owns the hotel, and U.S. Embassy officials had no comment.

The hotel is one of the city's best known. Adjacent to the U.S. Embassy, it's long been a symbol of American presence here.

That may have heightened Mexican resentment at the news that the Bush administration had pressured the hotel to expel the Cuban officials, who were attending a meeting with American oil-company executives about investment opportunities in Cuba's petroleum industry.

Mexican officials denounced the expulsion, and Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez complained to the State Department.

They didn't advocate closing the hotel, however. Jaramillo, who's the top administrative official of the district that the hotel is in, first suggested that step in early February, when she said inspections prompted by the expulsion had found violations of city building codes.

Sunday, former Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, campaigning for president in the city's main square, made an issue of U.S. policy toward Cuba. He promised that Mexico would return to its tradition of a ''noninterventionist'' policy, a slap at President Vicente Fox, who's sided with the United States by condemning the lack of civil liberties in Cuba.

Migrating dogs can be repatriated if caught at sea

By Casey Woods, cwoods@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Wed, Mar. 01, 2006.

He was captured on the high seas, like so many would-be Cuban migrants.

He spent six days on a Coast Guard ship, was fed twice a day, and earned himself a nickname: ''Midrats,'' Coast Guard slang for the midnight rations that are given to officers working the night shift.

The one thing he didn't get: an asylum hearing.

''We did let him visit with his family, though,'' said Coast Guard Petty Officer James Judge.

Midrats is a dog. He was repatriated with his family on Jan. 30 because they were caught at sea. Under the U.S. wet-foot, dry-foot policy, Cuban migrants caught at sea usually are returned to Cuba, while those who reach land usually can stay -- and with them their pets, provided they don't violate any U.S. laws.

Susie was among the lucky ones. The mutt made it to land with the Villadonga family of five in a homemade boat from Cuba in August. The family's little parrot, however, was seized by U.S. officials.

The Coast Guard has no record of how many animals are intercepted at sea from Cuban, Haitian or other migrants, though officials say that it is extremely rare.

''I've been here many years, and I can certainly say it doesn't happen very often,'' said Coast Guard spokesman Luis Diaz. "The boats are very crowded, and the smugglers are generally more concerned with bringing people.''

Immigrant advocates echo his analysis, though some say they hear of pets making the voyage from time to time. ''This is a very dangerous crossing,'' said Randy McGrorty, executive director of Catholic Charities legal services. "Most of the time people have a hard enough time bringing their children.''

REPATRIATED PET

So Midrats must have been special, to warrant a spot on his family's vessel. He was picked up 50 miles south of Key West by the Coast Guard cutter Reliance. On the homemade raft with him were 10 men, three women, a 14-year-old boy, and a 15-year-old girl. It's unclear to whom he belonged.

His lineage, and his real name, are unknown. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that conducts the onboard asylum hearings for those picked up at sea, does not release names because asylum petitions are confidential. .

The commanding officer on each Coast Guard ship has the discretion to bring interdicted pets on board, though livestock is prohibited.

''I understand he prefers cats to dogs, but chose to keep the migrants and the dog together,'' Diaz said of the Reliance's commanding officer.

Midrats and the migrants were returned together to Bahia de Cabañas.

Though his case might inspire some jokes -- think ''wet-paw, dry-paw'' -- the migrants faced with leaving pets behind see it as intensely serious.

''Some people say they are not going to leave pets behind,'' said Raúl Hernández, from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Migration and Refugee Services. "It goes without saying that for animal lovers, pets are part of the family.''

Even those who manage to make it with their pets face the pain of separation.

LOST A PET

Luis Villadonga, 35, brought talkative parrot Cuca and caramel-colored mutt Susie with him and his family from Cuba. After the scorching 36-hour voyage led them to Key West, both pets were confiscated by U.S. authorities for quarantine.

Cuca was never returned.

''They told us the birds were in danger of extinction, so they couldn't give it back,'' Villadonga said. "We've taken care of Cuca since it was born, giving it food from our own hands, so it was terrible to lose Cuca.''

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent Jennifer English said Cuca is being held in a bird housing facility pending forfeiture proceedings, after which it will be donated to a public institution, such as a zoo.

Villadonga's three young nephews took Cuca's loss hard, especially 12-year-old Jordan. ''He was so upset he had to have therapy,'' Villadonga said. "He said to me that if he had the choice between coming here and losing his bird, or staying in Cuba, he would have stayed in Cuba.''

Schools face ban on trips to Cuba

A South Florida legislator's proposal would restrict state-run universities from travel to Cuba and other 'terrorist states,' but some academics have dismissed it as a grab for political attention.

By Oscar Corral And Noah Bierman, ocorral@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Tue, Feb. 28, 2006.

State Rep. David Rivera wants to make it impossible for state-run colleges and universities to sponsor or promote trips to Cuba, even for legitimate research -- a move slammed by several professors as an attack on academic freedom.

Rivera said the recent arrests of Florida International University professor Carlos M. Alvarez and his wife, Elsa, an FIU counselor -- both accused of being agents for Cuba for more than two decades -- compelled the Cuban-American legislator to draft the bill. Carlos Alvarez mostly traveled to Cuba as a facilitator for a group not affiliated with FIU.

''The FIU spy case vividly demonstrates the security risks associated with state employees traveling to terrorist countries,'' Rivera said. "The integrity of the university and the entire university community is undermined by this activity. My bill simply seeks to protect higher education from the threat of espionage activities.''

FIU professor Lisandro Perez, who has traveled to Cuba often for research, called Rivera's bill "political demagoguery.''

''He [Rivera] wants to build a career using the Cuba topic, which you can always count on here locally to grab people's emotions,'' Perez said. "This is just a blatant effort on his part to get some political limelight.''

The bill would specifically prohibit colleges and universities from using any state funds, as well as private donations and grants, to "implement, organize, direct, coordinate, or administer activities related to or involving travel to a terrorist state.''

The proposal uses the U.S. State Department list to define terrorist states, including Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Syria.

Since 1988, FIU has prohibited using state money for Cuba travel, said the school's interim provost, Ronald Berkman. Instead, professors use grants. ''I think when people travel for bona fide research activity that they are not undermining the integrity of the university,'' Berkman said.

University administrators and professors said the proposal has a chilling effect that injects politics into research and attacks academic freedom. ''It's a bad idea for politicians to get involved in areas of research and free inquiry. There are plenty of laws on the books against subversive activity,'' said James J. Sheehan, a Stanford University history professor and former president of the American Historical Association. "Visiting a place, studying a place, speaking freely about a place -- these are things that are really essential for a democracy to work.''

PRESSURE ON ACADEMIA

Professors who study in politically sensitive areas such as the Middle East have been under increasing pressure after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Sheehan said. Such restrictions, while intended to harm totalitarian regimes, can undermine democratic values, said Sheehan, not speaking for the association.

Professors who have traveled to Cuba for research also criticized the bill.

University of Florida Professor Terry McCoy, an expert in Latin American Studies, who traveled to Cuba in 1996 to research the marine environment, said the bill is counterproductive.

''The post-Castro era is getting closer,'' McCoy said. "It's going to happen probably within the next five and certainly within the next ten years. And that's going to be an unstable time. It would be in [America's] interest to have institutional academic relationships in place.''

Further curtailing academic travel to Cuba could lead to a vacuum in knowledge, and therefore bad decision-making, said Loyola Marymount Professor Fernando Guerra, a Mexican-American professor in Los Angeles who has traveled to Cuba to research its housing. Guerra concluded Havana had the poorest housing stock of eight cities he researched in the hemisphere, a result of bad governmental policy.

''This is not about how to do good research or inform people, this is about symbolic politics,'' Guerra said of Rivera's bill. "People say they are against the Castro regime and would like to punish it, but there are many other ways of doing that. I think something like this helps make people more sympathetic to Castro.''

Academics say federal restrictions on Cuba travel are already hard to overcome.

''If the aim of the sponsors of the legislation is principally Cuba, it's hard to see what there is about the federal legislation which is not sufficient for the folks in Florida,'' said Jonathan Knight, director of the American Association of University Professors' program in academic freedom and tenure.

Rivera proposed a similar bill two years ago, but it died in the Senate. House speaker-elect Marco Rubio said he supports more restrictions.

Downed exiles' story told in documentary

A new documentary about the four Cuban exiles shot down over the Florida Straits by a Cuban fighter jet 10 years ago debuted Sunday in Miami.

By Robert L. Steinback. rsteinback@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Mon, Feb. 27, 2006.

Ten years after a Cuban government MiG fighter destroyed two unarmed civilian airplanes belonging to the Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami audience got its first look Sunday at a documentary film of the crisis -- co-produced by the niece of one of the four victims.

The English-language film, titled Shoot Down, is an attempt to create a thorough and unbiased review of the Feb. 24, 1996, incident and to document the range of opinions expressed by key players of the moment.

''As a documentarian, it's my job to try to have journalistic integrity and to tell a complete story,'' said writer, director and co-producer Cristina Khuly, whose uncle, Armando Alejandre Jr., 45, died over the Florida Straits a decade ago.

"A polemic has its place, but if we really want to reach the broadest possible audience, we have to address how it is that certain people's opinions and misconceptions [about the event] came to exist.''

The other victims were Carlos Costa, 29; Mario de la Peña, 24; and Pablo Morales, 29.

Sunday's audience, which nearly filled the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Miami, gave the film sustained applause at its conclusion.

''It was very balanced in what they presented,'' said Miamian Eduardo Prats.

Except for a 13-minute recreation of the fateful flights performed by actors, the documentary relies on interviews with key players, archival video footage and some graphic visual elements to tell the story.

Even a news clip of Cuban President Fidel Castro taking responsibility for the shoot-down while also claiming the moral high-ground -- a comment that drew derisive laughter, hisses and one cry of ''Asesino!'' [assassin] from the audience -- made the film.

Perhaps the most dramatic sequence featured authentic audio clips of the Cuban pilots getting their orders to fire on the two Cessna aircraft, then hooting with glee as one plane takes down the targets, played against video placing the audience inside or alongside the doomed airplanes.

Sisters Catalina Quadreny-Castillo and Diley Polini -- whose mother is a cousin of victim Costa -- said they weren't aware of the growing political tension between the United States and Cuba over previous Brothers overflights of Cuba, and about warnings that the Cuban government might react violently.

''I wasn't aware that was a special day that they shouldn't have flown,'' Polini said. "I wasn't aware that there had been problems to that extent.''

Khuly, who grew up in Miami, now lives in New York with her co-producer and husband Douglas Eger.

The couple said they will enter the movie, which cost less than $500,000, in various film festivals while seeking a distributor that might arrange for theatrical release.

'Viva Cuba' doesn't stand alone

By Fabiola Santiago. fsantiago@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sun, Feb. 26, 2006

Although it may be the most controversial, Viva Cuba is not the only film in the festival that deals with hot Cuban topics.

Filmmakers from Spain, The Netherlands and the United States also are bringing movies and documentaries with historical and contemporary storylines dealing with Cuban issues.

There's the premiere of Lost City, a production with a 1950s Havana setting based on a script by the late novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante and championed by Cuban-American Andy García, who directed and starred.

There's also a re-issue of the 1999 Buena Vista Social Club documentary, part of a tribute to its German director, Wim Wenders.

Other highlights include:

o Una rosa de Francia (A Rose From France), perhaps the most anticipated film from inside the island because it features two leading figures in Cuban film, both of Oscar-nominated Strawberry and Chocolate fame -- screenwriter Senel Paz and actor Jorge Perugorría.

Filmed in Cuba by Spanish director Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón in collaboration with the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC), Una rosa de Francia recreates 1930s Havana and a rum-smuggling operation to the United States at the height of Prohibition.

o Benigno, Farewell to a Revolution is a documentary made by Marlou van den Berge of The Netherlands about the life of Benigno, a former Cuban guerrilla who fought alongside Ernesto ''Che'' Guevara and survived the ambush in Bolivia that killed Guevara.

Now a refugee in Paris, he struggles with the language to get enough work as a plasterer. Benigno's testimony of how ''Fidel fooled us, betrayed us,'' is powerful and moving, given the simplicity and deep sorrow with which he tells his story of going from idealist to exile.

He met Guevara and Fidel Castro when he was just 17 and they showed up at his mountain cabin asking to buy his pig. Benigno and his young wife roasted the pig and fed the rebels. Days later, Batista's army showed up when Benigno was out, and no questions asked, shot up the cabin with his wife inside.

Benigno joined the rebels, trained and fought with them, then rode triumphantly into Havana in 1959.

His story was turned into a telenovela, which aired on Cuban state television, and on the surface it seemed Benigno was part of the regime. But, he says, he had become disenchanted with Castro, who "betrayed all the principles of justice we fought for.''

Benigno spent decades afraid of the tactics with which Castro ''got rid'' of opponents and people ''who were shining more than he,'' like Camilo Cienfuegos and Guevara. Benigno is no stranger to Miami. After he was exiled in 1995, he stopped here and appeared several times on Cuban talk shows.

Benigno is the Amsterdam-based filmmaker's first full-length documentary, but she made two other documentaries on Cuba -- La vida es así (Life is That Way) about musicians of La Vieja Trova and pianist Ramón Valle, and also Surviving Cuba.

o Malas temporadas (Hard Times) is a Spanish film by renowned director Manuel Martín Cuenca. It features a Cuban exile dreaming of Miami, unable to accept his life in Madrid.

Carlos (played by Eman Xor Oña) makes a living selling smuggled Cuban cigars, and, like all of the characters in the film, is going through a rough period. A former pilot, he's trying to recover a valuable painting and is having an affair with a friend's wife, who uses a wheelchair.

Cuenca, the director, is also known for the documentary on Cuban baseball, El juego de Cuba, and was in Miami last year for the showing of his award-winning film, La flaqueza del bolchevique, a visit he also used to scout for Cuban actors here.

White House 'committed' to meeting exile leaders

A White House meeting with Cuban exile leaders to discuss the wet-foot, dry-foot policy may be held within two weeks.

By Oscar Corral, ocorral@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sat, Feb. 25, 2006.

The White House and Cuban-American leaders are finalizing the date for a meeting next month to discuss the Cuban migration accords and the controversial wet-foot, dry-foot policy.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said the tentative date for the meeting is March 8.

White House spokesman Blair Jones did not confirm a date, but said, "We are committed to holding a meeting as soon as possible.''

The White House agreed last month to meet with Cuban-American leaders to discuss U.S.-Cuba migration policy after a well-known Cuban exile activist went on a hunger strike to protest the repatriation of 15 Cuban migrants who had been found by the Coast Guard standing on the pilings of the old Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys.

The Coast Guard concluded that because that section of the bridge -- which has missing pieces -- was not connected to land, the migrants were ''feet-wet'' and sent them back to Cuba.

Ros-Lehtinen and other U.S. congressional representatives had been asking the White House to review the wet-foot, dry-foot policy for years.

The policy requires that most migrants picked up at sea be repatriated, while those who make it to land usually can apply for residency.

The policy only applies to Cubans. Haitian migrants caught at sea or on U.S. land, for instance, rarely are allowed to stay in the United States.

The wet-foot, dry-foot policy was implemented under the Clinton administration in response to the 1994 Cuban rafter crisis.

Before that, most Cubans picked up at sea were brought to the United States because the policy took into account that they were fleeing a communist dictatorship.

Cuban-American leaders hoped that the Republican Bush administration would revoke, or at least change, the policy to allow the migrants access to lawyers and contact with family members on humanitarian grounds.

Two U.S. senators in Miami on Thursday agreed that the White House should review the policy. Sen. John McCain, in town for a fundraiser and to plug a new immigration bill, said the repatriation of the Cubans found on the bridge "fueled the fire and resentment against this policy. . . . It should be reviewed.''

Sen. Bill Nelson said the Coast Guard ''wrongly applied'' the policy on the 15 migrants and agreed that it should be more humanitarian, but said it needs to be maintained to control the nation's security.

''We need a consistent way of handling wet-foot, dry-foot without some of these ridiculous things,'' Nelson said.

Ros-Lehtinen said she hopes the Bush administration responds positively.

''We hope they take our recommendations seriously,'' she said.

Congress members want to put pressure on Bahamas

U.S. congressional representatives threatened to hit the Bahamas with economic penalties if it doesn't release two Cuban dentists being detained in a prison there.

By Oscar Corral, ocorral@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Fri, Feb. 24, 2006.

Two Florida members of Congress are threatening to push for economic sanctions against the Bahamas that could affect its tourism industry if island officials do not free two Cuban dentists who have been in immigration detention there for 10 months.

U.S. Republican Reps. Connie Mack and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said Thursday they may ask the federal government to take a number of steps to pressure the Bahamas. Criticism of the Bahamas has increased since a Spanish-language TV journalist was allegedly beaten by a jail guard earlier this month after he interviewed Cuban migrants detained at the Immigration Detention Center on Carmichael Road in Nassau.

''You've left us no choice. Congress must now consider every available consequence,'' said Mack, a member of the House International Relations Committee.

Mack said options on the table include "rethinking the existing U.S. preclearance customs policy, congressional hearings that [would] reexamine the relationship between the U.S. and the Bahamas, and . . . other measures that could reduce our economic support of the Bahamas.''

In a statement, the Bahamas Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded that the island government ''cannot be drawn into the rhetorical war of words between members of the legislative branch in the United States and the Cuban government on migration issues.'' It pledged to ''resolve this matter'' according to international law and migration accords between Cuba and the Bahamas.

Cuban dentists David Gonzalez-Mejias and Marialys Darias-Mesa have been in the Bahamas for 10 months, despite having received permission to migrate legally to the United States, Mack said.

Mack, Ros-Lehtinen, and other U.S. representatives and senators, say the Bahamas is caving in to pressure from Cuban leader Fidel Castro by detaining the dentists.

Ros-Lehtinen explained that only five countries have preclearance authority.

''If the United States were to yank the preclearance designation, then passengers would have to pay a heavier tax on destination charges and the deboarding of passengers from the cruise ship into the Bahamas would take longer,'' she said. "Some tourists and cruise lines would rethink having Bahamas as their destination.''

Nearly 6 percent of cruise itineraries worldwide include stops in the Bahamas, according to the Cruise Lines International Association representing travel agencies.

Despite the political tough talk of sanctions, a cruise-industry official said any change in the preclearance policy should not adversely affect passengers. Christine Fischer, spokeswoman for the International Council of Cruise Lines, an Arlington, Va., trade group, said cruise-ship passengers don't go through customs at ports of call in the Bahamas. Rather, they go through customs upon their reentry into the United States.

Family members of the two dentists said they just want to reunite with their loved ones as soon as possible. Ihovany Hernández, husband of Darias-Mesa, broke down crying during a news conference with Mack and Ros-Lehtinen in Miami. ''I've lived with uncertainty these 10 months,'' said Hernández. "I've been to the Bahamas 19 times. My wife has been mistreated psychologically.''

Dayami Inda, the wife of Gonzalez-Mejias, said the Bahamas shouldn't send her husband back to Cuba because the communist government would mistreat him. She said their daughter misses her father.

Miami Herald staff writer Amy Martinez contributed to this report.

Film wars: Miami festival is ground zero for cultural clashes over Cuba

By Fabiola Santiago. fsantiago@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sun, Feb. 26, 2006.

Coming from Havana, where cultural products are often wielded like weapons of war, there's no avoiding the political fireworks that a new award-winning film generates.

This year, the heat is focused on Viva Cuba, a children's movie by Juan Carlos Cremata, an island director whose own life has been shaped and swayed by the stormy winds of politics, as it is for the protagonists of his film.

Viva Cuba is one of several movies and documentaries with unique takes on the Cuban drama showing at the Miami International Film Festival that starts Friday and runs through March 12.

It stars Malú, a sassy 10-year-old who doesn't want to leave Cuba with her mother and runs away with her best friend and neighbor, Jorgito.

The two children, whose families hate each other and are poles apart politically and socially, embark on an adventurous trek from Havana to Maisí, the easternmost corner of the island, where Malú's divorced father works as the lighthouse keeper.

Malú, who has not seen her father in years, wants to ask him not to sign the permission form for her to leave Cuba with her mother, who has married a foreigner.

''I don't want a new school, I don't want to make new friends,'' she tells Jorgito.

They pledge each other a forever friendship, a promise that will be tested throughout the trip as they flee police, hitch rides, make up stories and steal food to survive.

As humorous as it is sad, the film won the Best Children's Film award at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival and it was Cuba's unsuccessful entry at the Academy Awards.

The story of Malú (played by Malú Tarrau) and Jorgito (Jorgito Miló) becomes most remarkable in that their two families represent the Cuban divide.

Jorgito's parents have supported the regime and continually ''make sacrifices'' for it, enduring a life of few frills. Malú's mother is ''tired, so tired I can't take it anymore,'' as she whispers into the phone to her foreigner boyfriend. She sees leaving Cuba as the only way out of her dismal life.

Cremata's previous film, Nada+ (Nothing More), also dealt with the subject of exile. It featured Carla, a bored postal clerk who dreams of reuniting with her parents in Miami, and as she waits, intercepts and rewrites other people's mail in hopes of making their lives brighter.

''The tragedy of whether to leave or not to leave Cuba is always in his head,'' Alejandro Ríos, a film expert who runs the Cuban Film Series at Miami Dade College, says about Cremata.

Currently in Melbourne, Australia, to promote Viva Cuba, Cremata -- who cited the time difference as a reason why he couldn't be interviewed for this story -- has walked the tight rope of staying vs. exile himself.

His family is what in Cuba is described as ''integrada,'' full participants and supporters of the system. Cremata's father, an airline worker, was killed in the 1976 Cubana Airlines bombing linked to two Cuban exiles. Like those on the downed flight, he's hailed in Cuba as "a martyr.''

On the other hand, as an intellectual and filmmaker who operates within Cuba's official film industry, Cremata has enjoyed access to capitalist privileges.

At the height of the Clinton administration's people-to-people contact policy, Cremata lived in New York for a year as a Guggenheim fellow. He has also lived in Buenos Aires and visited Miami.

And now, as Viva Cuba airs at Miami's headliner film festival, it's not so much what Cremata's movie says about the choice of leaving Cuba that's causing a stir in the Cuban diaspora. It's what he's saying from Havana, as quoted in the Cuban press and in Europe.

In an EFE agency report published in the Spanish daily El País, Cremata said that leaving Cuba "is a personal problem and not political, that also happens in Mexico and Morocco.''

In the Cuban press, he was quoted making government-style, militant comments in an interview to introduce his film to the Cuban public.

''What the terrorists wanted was to shut us up, silence us, shadow us, frighten us,'' he says. "And we did what we know how to do best, we won once more the opportunity to yell, time and time again before the whole world, Viva Cuba.''

It's made people who like his film shake their heads.

''His talking a lot of crap is lamentable,'' Ríos says."He should let his film speak for itself.''

Two Cuban writers -- Duanel Díaz in Madrid and Antonio José Ponte in Havana -- have written essays on www.cubaencuentro.com, a respected news, culture and opinion magazine, debating the shortcomings and merits of Cremata's film in portraying the Cuban reality.

''It's difficult for whoever has followed Juan Carlos Cremata's comments, interviewed over and over . . . not to interpret them as pure political opportunism,'' Ponte writes.

Cremata's interviews in the Cuban press, which started off with the issue of terrorism, have ''nothing to do with the plot of his film,'' but it got his film booked in every movie house across the island -- and a lot of press, Ponte notes.

After seeing the film in Havana for two pesos, Ponte adds, "this story of love between two children, which began with grace and agility, doesn't deserve the publicity hijinks of its maker.''

Díaz's article, titled ''Too many palm trees and not enough cows,'' also calls Cremata "opportunistic.''

The film, he says, ''obviates'' issues such as the fact that all Cubans have to ask the government for permission to leave the country, that they are issued food ration cards, are not allowed to enter national hotels, "and can't even sacrifice their own cow, if they ever got one.''

In the EFE report published in Spain, Cremata said he made the movie with only $45,000 and a staff of 15.

The child actors are from the children's theater group La Colmenita, which Cremata's brother, Carlos Alberto, runs in Havana. Other relatives also had a prominent role. His mother, Iraida Malberti, an experienced children's television programmer, co-directed the film. Cremata's grandmother played the role of Malú's abuela.

The 44-year-old director is not expected to come to Miami for what will be the North American premiere of his film.

But in the audience will be a special guest -- the mother of the actress who plays Malú's mother, Larisa Vega. She has lived in Miami since 1998, separated from her only daughter, Ríos says.

She declined to speak to reporters.

''I don't want to hurt my daughter,'' Ríos says she told him. "I have already seen the movie and cried, but I've bought tickets to every show. I want to see it with the public here.''

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