CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Raul Castro says brother getting better

Posted on Fri, Feb. 09, 2007

HAVANA - (AP) -- Cuban leader Fidel Castro's health is improving and he is taking part in all important issues facing the government, his younger brother and acting President Raul Castro said.

Those comments came a week after a new government video showed a more robust image of the bearded rebel leader who in late July said that he had undergone intestinal surgery and was provisionally ceding power to his younger brother.

''He's getting better each day,'' the younger Castro said in brief comments to news media at the opening of an international book fair Thursday. "He's exercising much. He has a telephone at his side and uses it a lot.''

Raul Castro made a surprise appearance Thursday evening at the annual book fair -- an event his 80-year-old brother often attended in past years.

''He's consulted on the most important questions,'' Raul Castro said of Fidel. "He doesn't interfere, but he knows about everything.

''Luckily, he doesn't call me much,'' Raul joked, saying his older brother usually called on Vice President Carlos Lage and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque.

The 75-year-old Raul traded in his typical olive green uniform for a gray jacket over a pair of blue pants for the event at a Spanish fortress across the bay from Havana.

Arriving at the opening in a small bus, the younger Castro was accompanied by Culture Minister Abel Prieto.

Raul Castro's appearance at a purely cultural event was seen as highly unusual, and it was not immediately clear if it would mark the emergence of a new, more public persona. His informal comments to the press were the first since he assumed provisional power.

Since Fidel stepped down, Raul Castro has appeared in public and given speeches only when he has deemed it necessary.

In past years, the older brother had often enjoyed attending the opening of the book fair, arriving last year with his good friend and ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Fidel Castro's illness remains a state secret, but Cuban officials have denied past U.S. government reports that he suffered from terminal cancer. A Spanish newspaper reported last month that the leader had diverticular disease, a weakening of the walls of the colon common in older people.

A Jan. 30 video showed a stronger Fidel Castro who looked like he had gained weight during his convalescence. He looked far more gaunt and pale during a previous video released in late October.

In recent days, Chavez and some Cuban officials made encouraging assessments about Fidel's health. Venezuela's ambassador to Cuba Ali Rodriguez Araque said earlier Thursday that Castro had resumed eating after a long period of being unable to ingest solid foods.

2 Cuban army officers killed at jail

Three Cuban soldiers allegedly killed two superiors in a quest to help prisoners they were guarding to escape.

By Frances Robles. frobles@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Thu, Feb. 08, 2007

Two Cuban army officers were shot dead when three young conscripts detailed to a prison near the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba tried to help an inmate escape, a dissident Cuban news service has reported.

A dispatch by the Agencia de Prensa Libre Oriental (APLO), an independent journalists' group in eastern Cuba, said the incident -- fatal attacks on Cuban soldiers are rare -- took place Dec. 20 at the El Manguito prison.

The report said that when three conscripts detailed to the prison headed to the infirmary to subdue their superiors, an officer told conscript Yoelvis Delgado Arvelo to quit fooling around with dangerous weapons.

Delgado answered: ''I am not playing. This is the truth,'' and opened fire, killing Lt. Oliverio Orozco and 2nd Lt. José Antonio Tamayo, according to the report by APLO member Lisette Bravo.

The Miami Herald spoke by phone to Bravo, who wrote the story based on reporting by other APLO journalists. She filed the dispatch to Cubanet, an exile news organization based in Miami.

The incident has not been reported in Cuba's state-run media.

Bravo's article cited the mother of accused soldier Irán Cabrera León as saying the conscripts would likely face the death penalty. The mother could not be reached by The Miami Herald. The name of the third conscript involved was not known.

Havana human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez said he was convinced the incident was true because some of the human rights activists he works with spoke to the family of one of the accused. The families were instructed by the government not to speak to the news media or dissident groups, he added.

Sánchez said up to five people have been detained: three soldiers and two inmates.

''It has nothing to do with the opposition or any kind of political project,'' Sánchez told The Miami Herald by phone.

''I think it was an isolated incident which reveals, more than anything, the increasing degree of violence in Cuba,'' he said.

The young soldiers left the prison armed with Soviet-style rifles, but were caught nearby, according to Bravo's report. One inmate was shot and injured by the police.

Bravo told The Miami Herald that the inmate had persuaded the soldiers to help him escape with promises of helping them flee Cuba.

Cuban conscripts, usually in their late teens, are assigned the least desired jobs and are generally the least disciplined members of the Armed Forces, said National War College Professor Frank Mora, who studies the Cuban military.

U.S. public's feelings mixed on Castro

Most Americans dislike Fidel Castro, an AP poll indicated, but they also think diplomatic relations with Cuba should be restored.

By Anne Gearan, Associated Press. Posted on Thu, Feb. 08, 2007

WASHINGTON - In nearly equal measure, Americans say they don't like Cuban President Fidel Castro but do want the United States to reestablish regular diplomatic relations with the communist island nation after 46 years of estrangement.

Less than half of those polled think Cuba will become a democracy after the 80-year-old revolutionary leader dies or permanently steps aside. However, 89 percent in The Associated Press-Ipsos poll say they think Cubans will be better off or about the same when Castro is gone.

''It's probably not very likely in the short term,'' Kelly Shanley, 29, of North Haven, Conn., said of prospects for a democratic shift. "I just hope for the citizens of Cuba that it's something that's realized in the next few decades.''

Castro has appeared to be in failing health for six months and has temporarily shifted power to his younger brother Raúl. Rumors have been rampant about his ailments and how long he can survive.

The poll suggests the Cold War animosity that has defined U.S.-Cuba relations for nearly a half-century may be fading. Although U.S. administrations from left to right have called Castro a dictator and a tyrant and have spent millions trying to undermine him, 27 percent of poll respondents said they hadn't heard enough about Castro to form an opinion.

The poll showed 64 percent of respondents had a very or somewhat unfavorable opinion of Castro, the revolutionary leader who has said he will be a Marxist-Leninist until the day he dies.

''He hasn't done much for his country. The country has not progressed,'' said Shiraz Damji, 61, of Woodland Hills, Calif.

Castro got slightly better reviews from younger people -- 60 percent of those under 35 had an unfavorable view of Castro while 66 percent of older people felt that way -- and younger people were more likely to reserve judgment about him. Among people 18-34, 35 percent said they don't know enough about Castro to have an opinion, while 24 percent of those 35 and older said that.

Even so, a large majority of people -- 62 percent -- said the United States should reestablish diplomatic ties. The scant contact between the two countries is now handled through Switzerland or via low-level diplomatic offices called interests sections.

The U.S. cut off diplomatic ties with Cuba in 1961, two years after Castro led an armed revolution that drove out U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. Decades-old trade and travel embargoes made it illegal for U.S. businesses to trade in an economy they once dominated. Few Americans have visited Cuba.

Nearly half of those polled, 46 percent, said they would not be at all interested in vacationing in Cuba. Forty percent of those polled said they would be interested in vacationing there if a long-standing travel ban were lifted.

The poll of 1,000 adults was taken Jan. 30-Feb. 1 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Polar opposites unite against Cuba policy

U.S. Reps. Bill Delahunt and Jeff Flake are an odd couple who disagree on just about everything -- except changing U.S. policy on Cuba.

By Pablo Bachelet, pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Tue, Feb. 06, 2007

WASHINGTON - It's hard to find common ground between Reps. Jeff Flake and Bill Delahunt -- except on how the United States should deal with Fidel Castro's regime.

The Republican Flake, 44, a Mormon with beach-boy looks, represents Mesa, a solidly Republican Phoenix suburb. An ardent backer of free trade and small government, Flake was first elected in 2000, when he beat three other Republicans in a primary by campaigning as the most conservative of the lot.

The silver-haired Delahunt, 65, is Catholic and an unabashed liberal. A Democrat, he represents Massachusetts' sprawling South Shore district, which includes the hyper-rich islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.

Flake says he and Delahunt are the ''ideological bookends'' of the Republican and Democratic parties.

But they share a passionate rejection of U.S. policy toward Cuba, and their dogged persistence has made them de facto leaders of the congressional camp opposed to U.S. sanctions on Cuba.

And now the unlikely duo is stepping up their crusade to ease the sanctions through a host of amendments, bills and hearings. They have tried this before, but the context is vastly different now: Democrats control Congress, President Bush is on the defensive and Castro is gravely ill.

Dan Erikson, a Cuba analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington, D.C., says that under a Republican Congress, Flake and Delahunt were confined to the ''role of provocateurs,'' with little practical impact. Now, he says, the obstacles to lifting sanctions "are dramatically reduced.''

Delahunt and Flake argue that after more than four decades, the sanctions have failed to bring down communist rule on the island, and have reduced U.S. influence there and angered allies. They want the Bush administration to open talks with Havana, and are in a position to push their views.

SUBCOMMITTEE ROLES

As of Jan. 23, Delahunt chairs the powerful International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He has pledged to investigate U.S. aid to promote democracy in Cuba.

Flake, who sits on the same subcommittee, plans to offer legislation that would allow U.S. oil companies to provide services and supplies for exploration in Cuba waters. He has also offered legislation -- with influential New York Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel -- to lift the ban on U.S. citizens and residents making tourist trips to Cuba and wants to make it easier for the Cuban government to pay for U.S. imports.

Delahunt introduced a bill that would lift restrictions on Cuban-American visits to the island -- limited now to once every three years. The Massachusetts lawmaker says he believes all U.S. citizens should be allowed to travel to Cuba, but he has settled on this ''modest'' proposal because he ''understands how passionate'' Cuban Americans are about Castro. At any rate, he says, the mood in Miami is shifting on sanctions, and he thinks his proposal will be well received.

Critics say Delahunt and Flake are pandering to a ruthless dictator, and that negotiating with Castro's designated successor, his brother Raúl, would only lend legitimacy to his rule.

''Recognizing Raúl Castro as the de facto leader would be an act of infamy,'' said Roger Noriega, a former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. 'Raúl's hold on the military is shaky, and it is based almost entirely on his perception that he can 'do business' with the gringos and keep the ball in the air for the regime's cronies.''

Flake and Delahunt ''don't realize that any perception of weakness from the Democratic Congress . . . only makes Raúl look for ways to simply hang on to power until the '08 elections in the hope that a Democratic president wins, and together with a Democratic Congress comes to [Cuba's] financial rescue,'' said Mauricio Claver-Carone, a Washington lobbyist for the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee.

Flake's and Delahunt's passion for Cuba seems odd. Their districts don't have commercial stakes in Cuba or large populations of Cuban Americans.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCES

As it turns out, their involvement is more personal, going back many years.

Flake first became intrigued by Fidel Castro when he did missionary work in Southern Africa, where Cuba had active military involvement. As executive director of a democracy promotion group in the late 1980s, he dealt with Namibian independence leaders who spurned communism but revered Castro for his support of their cause.

''They loved the man,'' he told The Miami Herald.

He does not share their reverence, he says, and on his five trips to Cuba since getting elected, he has met with many Cuban officials but, when offered, declined to see Castro.

Flake, who hopes to move up to the Senate someday, seems to relish his role as a maverick. He has opposed his party's hard-line stance on immigration and criticizes his colleagues for allowing government spending programs to balloon out of control. For this, his office says, he was dumped in mid-January from his seat on the House Judiciary Committee.

Delahunt first went to Cuba in 1988 as a Massachusetts district attorney. A human rights group took him to visit jailed dissidents and push for their release. It happened a year later.

Ever since then, he has been ''fascinated'' by the U.S.-Cuba relationship, Delahunt told The Miami Herald. He has met with Castro so often he has lost count.

''About 10 times,'' he ventured.

Delahunt bristles at the notion that he is insensitive to the plight of political prisoners in Cuba. He considers himself a friend of dissident leaders like Oscar Espinosa Chepe, and he worked behind the scenes to try to secure their release from prison.

But, Delahunt adds, if human rights were the only guidepost for foreign policy, "we would not be importing oil from Saudi Arabia.''

Flake and Delahunt led a 10-member congressional delegation to Cuba last month. Media hype was high given speculation that Castro was dying. They reported back that all is quiet on the island.

''What was surprising,'' Delahunt said recently, "was that there was nothing surprising.''

Flake says the post-Fidel Castro transition is under way and the U.S. government should therefore begin a debate on "where our policy goes from here.''

He says the Cuba policy contradicts Republican principles that more trade and engagement help the cause of democracy. He criticizes U.S. financial aid for Cuba democracy efforts as a ''jobs program'' for South Florida, and Radio and TV Martí broadcasts as ''over the top'' and "beneath us.''

Flake says that, in the end, events in Cuba will drive what happens in Washington.

Castro's demise, he said, will make it ''easier to make bigger steps'' in Washington to change policy.

Miami Herald staff writer Oscar Corral contributed to this report.

Bush budget pushes more aid to Latin America

The Bush administration's proposed budget would increase U.S. aid to Latin America slightly and boost funding for Cuba democracy programs.

By Pablo Bachelet, pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Tue, Feb. 06, 2007

* Document | Read the State Department's 2008 budget request
* Document | Read the Colombian government's 2007-2013 budget proposal (in Spanish)

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's new budget calls for a slight increase in U.S. aid for Latin America, with a few targeted nations like Colombia, Ecuador and Haiti getting the lion's share of the money, and a big jump in U.S. funding for controversial programs to promote democracy in Cuba.

The 2008 fiscal year budget request released Monday asks for $46 million for the Cuba programs, compared to $9 million in the 2006 budget.

In the budget proposal, the State Department seeks $446 million for Colombia security forces in 2008, a slight decrease from $457 million in 2006. The budget also calls for $139 million for social programs for the world's leading cocaine producer.

State Department officials declined to comment on the numbers until Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice presents the budget request to Congress later this week. The 2008 fiscal year starts Oct. 1 of 2007 and ends a year later.

In its written budget presentation, the State Department said total aid to Latin America would amount to $1.6 billion, a 4 percent increase over the 2006 budget. The administration has long denied complaints that it is ignoring Latin America's social needs, and its budget document says U.S. aid to the region nearly doubled under President Bush.

The increase includes money spent through the Millennium Challenge Corp., which conditions aid to countries complying with a set of policy benchmarks like combating corruption and respecting private property.

Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Haiti would account for 70 percent of the 2008 budget request for the Western Hemisphere.

The proposed boost to Cuba programs is in keeping with last year's recommendations by an interagency commission to augment such aid to $80 million over two years in order to help and hasten a move toward democracy on the island. The 2008 budget proposed $38.7 million for Radio and TV Martí -- similar to current levels.

The Cuba programs usually come under attack in Congress, where a group of lawmakers tables amendments that seek to cut or eliminate the programs. The attempts have been unsuccessful so far.

The administration also wants a big increase for HIV/AIDS programs for Haiti, from $47 million in 2006 to $83 million. The 2008 budget's numbers on Colombia sparked some criticism that Washington is still directing too much money into Colombia's security forces and too little for social and other programs in that country.

'After weeks of talk about a new 'social' approach to aid to Colombia, the aid request for next year looks almost exactly the same as the past several years,'' said Adam Isacson, a Colombia analyst for the Washington-based Center for International Policy, who favors more spending on social programs.

European donors were expected to fund the social programs when Plan Colombia was unveiled in 1999 as a way to help the country attack its cocaine and heroin industries. But the Europeans never provided the level of financing the Colombians had hoped for.

Unofficial copies of the Colombian government's proposals for a second phase of Plan Colombia, first published in Bogota and obtained by The Miami Herald, show the government there wants to spend $44 billion in the 2007-13 period, of which only 14 percent would be for the security forces.

The 77-page document does not say how Colombia will raise the $44 billion. The U.S. government has provided some $4 billion to the first phase of Plan Colombia since 1999.

2 Cuban dissidents released from jail

The number of political prisoners in Cuba dropped to 280 after two dissidents were freed from jail.

By Frances Robles. frobles@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Tue, Feb. 06, 2007

The warden at Las Canaletas jail in Matanzas, Cuba, approached political prisoner Julio César López as he napped, and uttered two surprising words: "You're free.''

''I had prepared for this moment in my mind many times: If they tried some kind of trick or threat, I was going to turn right back around to my cell,'' López said by telephone from Havana on Monday. "But actually they were very diplomatic and told me I was being released.''

López was one of 30 political activists arrested July 22, 2005, just before a planned protest in front of the French embassy in Havana. The rally never took place, and instead López spent 1 ½ years in jail without charges or a trial.

He and another of the protesters, Raúl Martínez, were released Saturday without explanation, dropping the number of political prisoners in Cuba to 280, said Elizardo Sánchez, of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights. That number stood at 333 one year ago, but Sánchez is hesitant to call it a trend.

''This is a statistical phenomenon, not a reflection of a trend,'' he said. "We continue to see people being released from jail . . . one drop at a time, but remember that Cuba still has one of the highest number of political prisoners in the world.

"It's a visible decrease, but at the same time, we also see long prison sentences being replaced with other forms of harassment, such as short detentions of a few days, interrogations and threats.''

Other men arrested in the sweep, such as René Gómez and Miguel López Santos, remain jailed.

''I think [interim president] Raúl Castro understands that the Cuban people are Fidelistas -- they are not Raulistas,'' López said.

"Raúl has to win the trust of the people as Fidel did in 1959. To me, he is looking for ways to reach out to the people by doing things like releasing political prisoners.'''

In December, the government released Héctor Palacios, one of the 75 dissidents jailed in a 2003 nationwide crackdown.

In Cuba, dissent by invitation only

In the first sign of internal dissent in Cuba since Fidel Castro ceded power six months ago, intellectuals held a forum to discuss government censorship in the 1970s.

By Frances Robles. frobles@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sat, Feb. 03, 2007

One by one, Cuban artists and intellectuals in Havana did something unprecedented this week: They stood before the government and criticized a particularly harsh era of censorship -- out loud and in the open.

Perhaps even more surprising than the conference held Tuesday to discuss a dark period of Cuban cultural oppression was what happened outside: a protest by those shut out of the invitation-only event. Also out loud and in the open.

''I don't know how important it can be, but what's true is that I have never seen anything like that in Cuba,'' Cuban writer Ena Lucía Portela told The Miami Herald in an e-mail. "It was rudimentary, passionate, incoherent, but it was the closest thing to freedom of expression I have seen in this country in my entire life.''

In a move that Cuba experts say signals a significant shift in Cuban domestic policy, the government led by interim President Raúl Castro appears to be cracking open the door to debate. After Castro publicly asserted he was open to discussion, and later convened a committee to study flaws of socialism, experts say there has been a clear changing of the guard in Cuba, one that allows at least controlled discussion.

In the first sign of internal dissent since Fidel Castro ceded power six months ago, intellectuals furious over the television appearances of 1970s-era government officials responsible for a crackdown on intelligentsia convened a conference to discuss it. But while the event was an extraordinary display of criticism, opponents of the Castro brothers point out that the conference was not open to the public, suggesting that the steps the government has taken toward discussion are small and wobbly.

PROVOCATIVE PROFILE

The flare-up was triggered when Cuban TV ran a laudatory profile last month of Luis Pavón Tamayo, the former chairman of the National Culture Council. Pavón's five-year reign was dubbed the ''The Gray Quinquennium'' -- The Five Gray Years -- for its record of arrests and censorship.

A flurry of e-mails condemning the TV appearances swept Cuba's cultural community, leading to a rare statement by the artists' guild published in the state-controlled newspaper, Granma, which denounced the TV shows.

''The act established a turning point that we hope will be irreversible,'' writer Reynaldo González, winner of the 2003 National Literary Prize, said in an e-mail to The Miami Herald. "And it has created an echo that will be difficult to stifle, even if someone tries to do so.''

A magazine editor convoked a conference led by writer Ambrosio Fornet and attended by Culture Minister Abel Prieto to debate the topic. But tickets were given only to some 450 people.

YOUNG EXCLUDED

Reports from Cuba say young writers who were not invited protested outside.

Portela, 34, wasn't invited, and viewed the conference as a white-wash. ''A half-century of lies is not something that can change overnight,'' she said.

Former Cuban political prisoner Manuel Vásquez Portal agreed, saying it was nothing but a political ploy aimed at identifying dissenters.

''Look, Raúl Castro is a soldier. Soldiers don't debate. They order,'' said Vásquez, a former independent journalist. "If he wants to debate, he'd free prisoners of conscience and invite them to debate.''

Prieto did not return e-mails requesting comment. Fornet sent a copy of his speech, in which he acknowledged that today's young Cubans don't know about the Pavón period -- because nobody ever told them.

''When evoking the Gray Quinquennium, I feel that we're plunging headlong into something that not only deals with the present but also projects us forcefully into the future,'' Fornet said, 'even if only because of what [Spanish philosopher Jorge Ruiz de] Santayana said: 'Those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it.' That danger is precisely what we're trying to conjure here.''

Florida International University Professor Uva de Aragón said the fact that the event took place shows Cuba is changing.

'The first time I heard Raúl say 'open to discussion,' I knew Fidel was no longer in control,'' she said. "It should not be that much surprising. They must realize things are coming to an end. I think at this point, intellectuals figure they have nothing to lose.''

Miami Herald translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report.

Charlize makes Cuba documentary

Posted on Sun, Feb. 04, 2007

Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron has stepped from in front of the camera to behind it, reports ABC News.

Her first documentary, East of Havana, which hit select theaters Friday, focuses on the men and women of Cuba, their music, their life, and their quest for social justice.

Theron visited Good Morning America to talk about the politically charged film, saying she was inspired by the young people she met while making the film, people who risked their lives by speaking out.

''It's amazing to me how resilient people become; such a love for people who grow up in harsh landscapes,'' she said. "They naturally have this instinct to survive, no matter what.''

Theron said that many of the young people she met questioned Fidel Castro's regime.

'I think the younger generation is starting to say, 'You know what -- it doesn't work. We're not happy. We want to have freedom of speech. We want to be able to travel,' '' she said.

Pedro Knight, 85: Celiz Cruz's partner in music and life

By Lydia Martin. lmartin@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sun, Feb. 04, 2007

Pedro Knight, husband, musical director and inseparable companion of salsa queen Celia Cruz, died Saturday morning at Methodist Hospital in Arcadia, Calif. He was 85.

The cause of death was not released, but Knight had been in failing health for the past couple of years, suffering complications from diabetes and a series of strokes.

The man who began fading as soon as Cruz died in July 2003 and said time and time again that he yearned to join his wife of 41 years in the afterlife is expected to finally rest beside her in a crypt for two at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, N.Y.

''Sometimes I just want my time to come already so that I can be with her,'' Knight, who toward his end was involved in lawsuits brought against him by Cruz's sister and his own daughter, told The Miami Herald in 2004.

Knight and Cruz met in the storied, swinging Havana of the 1950s, when he played lead trumpet and she was lead singer for one of Cuba's hottest bands, La Sonora Matancera.

They left Cuba in 1960 and married in 1962. Cruz was already a star in her homeland, but her popularity skyrocketed in the early days of the New York salsa scene, which is when Knight laid down his trumpet to help manage his wife's career.

Until she was quieted by brain cancer at 77, Cruz didn't climb a stage anywhere in the world without the tall, dapper Knight at her side. He was a striking figure in trademark mutton chops and suits, baton always in hand.

ROMANCE FOR DECADES

The Queen of Salsa and her cabecita de algodon (little cottonhead), retained an old-fashioned romance through the decades, he opening doors and taking her arm even to cross the street, she insisting on packing his bags every time they traveled and cooking all of his meals herself when they were home in Fort Lee, N.J.

Cruz and Knight had been nothing more than friends who worked in the same band for 12 years before Knight found the courage to even hint at his real feelings. And when he finally did, Cruz demured.

''She said she didn't want to be with me,'' Knight told The Miami Herald in 2004, after a graveside memorial marking the first anniversary of Cruz's death.

"She said musicians had too many women and she didn't want to suffer. And, well, it was true. I had a lot of women. But I told her that if she would have me, she could leave that problem to me. . . . And I stopped seeing all the women. I forgot about every single one. Because Celia was the most special woman in the world.''

''They were two bodies with one soul,'' Omer Pardillo, Cruz's former manager, told The Herald in 2006. He did not respond to several calls Saturday.

The end of Knight's life was consumed with mourning his wife -- and mired in lawsuits brought by Cruz's younger sister, Gladys Becquer, and his own daughter from a previous marriage, Ernestina Knight.

They originally accused both Knight and family friend Luis Falcón (who Knight had been living with near Los Angeles since Cruz's death), of misleading them into giving back more than $400,000 that each received as beneficiaries of an annuity the couple held jointly.

More recently, Pardillo, an executor of Cruz's estate, filed a suit against co-executor Falcón, who started Cruz's fan club when he was 10 and over the years became known as an adoptive son to the couple.

Pardillo accuses Falcón of spending money intended for Knight and of not providing him adequate care at the end. Gilberto Garcia, the New Jersey lawyer forBecquer, Ernestina Knight and Pardillo, says Falcón has blown through $4 or $5 million left by Cruz.

''We had filed a complaint asking Falcón for an accounting,'' Garcia said Saturday. "A judge appointed a guardian at litem for Pedro, and we were due before the judge this coming Friday. But Falcón has not answered. We understand he is representing himself.''

Knight was dropped from the original suit brought by Becquer and Ernestina, Garcia said, because he suffered from "advanced dementia and didn't have anything to do with this.''

Falcón could not be reached for comment Saturday. ''This whole thing has really hurt Pedro,'' he said when he last spoke to The Herald in 2006.

MIRED IN LAWSUITS

Becquer's lawsuit claims that Falcón, an importer of religious figures and a follower of Santeria, is a priest, which he denies, and says that as spiritual advisor to Cruz and Knight, he began encroaching on business decisions.

''Celia and I never spoke about religion,'' Falcón told The Miami Herald then. "Her beliefs were always very private. The family now wants to say that I magic-ed her up. They want to take her power away from her, like she and Pedro couldn't think for themselves.''

'IT'S VERY SAD'

''It's very sad. It's very sad that I got a call this morning saying my father was dead, but that I don't know much else about it,'' said Ernestina, reached at home in Tampa on Saturday afternoon. "I had not been able to see him in a while.''

Becquer could not be reached.

But Becquer's daughter, Celia Maria Cody, who lives in Atlanta, said in 2006 that she only had praise for Knight.

"He was a good man. I loved him very much. I appreciate everything he did for me and my family. Contrary to the way it's now playing out publicly, they were both great people and I want them to be remembered that way.''

In addition to Ernestina, Knight is survived by four other children who live in Cuba: Pedro, Roberto, Emilia and Gladys.

Havana heartbreak

The author plays with the reader by mixing true events of Cuba in the '50s with imaginary ones.

By Enrique Fernandez, efernandez@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sun, Feb. 04, 2007

DANCING TO 'ALMENDRA.' Mayra Montero. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 264 pages. $25.

Novels are chronicles of heartbreak; the greater the novel, the greater the heartbreak. The first and greatest novel, Don Quixote, ends with the greatest heartbreak: the protagonist's recovery of his sanity, which saddens the friends around his deathbed and readers as well, as we see the Don awaken from ''the impossible dream,'' then die.

In Mayra Montero's masterful Dancing to 'Almendra', some of the characters enter the story already heartbroken, and their bodies are broken too. Yolanda, the nightclub worker, lost an arm in a sword trick gone wrong when she was a magician's assistant. Rodney, the choreographer at Havana's famous Tropicana, is a leper whose body is actually breaking off in pieces.

But Yolanda's mutilation is nothing compared to the pain she will suffer when she confesses her love to Rodney, who is gay. Yolanda is willing to endure his leprosy and his homosexuality because her love is that strong. Yet all her declaration does is trigger Rodney's confession of his own heartbreak, long ago, when he lost the beautiful Swedish boy who was his lover and whom he likely infected with leprosy. Yolanda is devastated.

But heartbreak, in Montero's world of Havana nightlife in the late '50s, doesn't end there. Joaquín, a Havana youth from a well-off family, doomed to nurse his dreams of being an ace reporter while he writes showbiz profiles and human interest stories for the city's most prestigious -- and conservative -- newspaper, makes an incredible discovery: the connection between the escape of a hippopotamus from the Havana zoo and the killing in the New York Park Sheraton Hotel's barbershop of the notorious mafioso Umberto Anastasia.

Sleuthing plunges Joaquín into the underworld, as the top mobsters plot to divide up the new gambling business flourishing in Havana. The investigation will take him to New York, but not before Joaquín, who is drawn to older women, falls for the one-armed Yolanda, who was earlier hooked up with . . . .

But why give away any more of the plot? This is, after all, a crime story, and the plot will thicken until it curdles. There are subplots involving a magician and his Chinese assistant; a zoo worker who feeds pieces of human bodies to the beasts; and an older woman, Aurora, the first to break Joaquín's heart, who dances the famous danzón Son de Almendra, with an even older man, Meyer Lansky.

Storylines entwine until they become one strong cord that will either strangle Joaquín or save him from drowning. Indeed, cords, or at least lines with hooks on them, are a leitmotif that emerges time and again in the novel. Characters use many imaginary hook-and-lines to ensnare each other sexually and bring about a downfall. As in a Greek tragedy, everything seems predestined from the beginning by capricious gods.

It's worth remembering that the first detective story of Western literature is not a novel or even Poe's short story The Murders at the Rue Morgue -- often cited as the first of the genre, when all it did was to set down its conventions -- but the mother of all tragedies: Oedipus Rex. The original noir hero, Oedipus sets out to find out the truth, only to sow grief and destruction in his wake -- and to learn that he is the guilty party he was seeking.

Joaquín solves the mystery, but so what? His heart is broken as much as everyone else's, plus he gets a couple of fierce beatings and some really terrible scares. And history runs on a bigger track than a rookie journalist sleuth or even the top capi of the American mob. After all, this is Cuba in the late '50s, and so one unnamed character plays a bigger role than anyone else: Fidel Castro.

In the end, even a big-time mobster such as Santos Trafficante will wind up in Castro's jail, though he will be released. The American mafia will not return to Cuba, nor will any other Americans, innocent or guilty. The Revolution will run over Joaquín, Yolanda, Rodney, the mafiosi, everybody.

But before that happens, what a story! Montero has played her usual sleight-of-hand. Yes, Anastasia was hit at the barbershop of the Park Sheraton, ''his face smothered with lather, like a partially decorated cake.'' And, yes, a hippo did escape from the Havana zoo. But not on the same day, nor did the events have anything to do with each other. Montero is playing with the reader by mixing reportage -- she is, after all, a journalist -- with imagination.

And, most definitely, Rodney was gay, and he did suffer from leprosy, but most of all he was the greatest choreographer in the golden age of Havana's nightclub life.

Real detail is piled on real detail, piled on imagination. The doomed loves of Dancing to 'Almendra' are Montero's imaginings. Or are they? In a teasing author's note, which begins with the usual acknowledgements of thanks to those who helped Montero research this historical novel, she ends by thanking Meyer Lansky's old bodyguard and driver. ''Through him,'' Montero writes, handing the reader the final blow, "I learned that Lansky fell madly in love with a beautiful Cuban who lived on the Paseo del Prado. Late in 1957 [precisely when the novel takes place] he moved in with her. Her name was not Aurora.''

Enrique Fernández is the Miami Herald's Critic at Large.

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