Chronicle on Cuba - March 2004

Exile Community

March 2: A survey shows that more than one-third of South Florida Hispanic voters -- a group consisting primarily of GOP-leaning Cuban Americans -- disapproves of the job president George Bush has done ''promoting democracy and regime change'' in Fidel Castro's Cuba. Those results, compiled for Univision Channel 23 by Washington pollster Rob Schroth, are the latest indication that Bush could be hurt politically by complaints from some exile leaders that he has failed to deliver on campaign promises to crack down on Castro. (The Miami Herald, 2/3/04)

March 2: The Cuban government announced that it will ease entry visa requirements for Cuban exiles who want to visit the island, and once again condemned the travel restrictions imposed by the United States. As of June 1, most Cubans living abroad who want to visit Cuba will be able to do so with just a valid passport approved by the Cuban government, the Cuban Interests Section in Washington announced. The measure excludes the "small minority" of Cubans who have taken part in "terrorist and/or repugnant activities to destroy their country," Dagoberto Rodriguez, head of the mission, said at a press conference. (EFE, 2/3/04)

March 3: Belen Jesuit Preparatory School in West Dade, founded in Cuba in 1854 and billed as the South Florida school with the oldest history, celebrates its 150th anniversary this week. The mayor of Miami and a rising star of Broadway were educated there, as was the former CEO of Coca-Cola, not to mention Fidel Castro. By the time 80 communist soldiers occupied the school's campus for Castro in January 1961, it had 60 acres with 1,200 students. On Septtember 17 of that year, 26 Jesuit priests -- expelled by Castro -- boarded the Covadonga ship and headed for Miami. What used to be a school of Cuban Americans now comprises about 1,000 students from 27 different countries, most of them Latin American, European and Cuban American. (The Miami Herald, 3/3/04)

March 10: Two wealthy, conservative Cuban exiles have formed a new group and conducted a poll to help influence the US electoral debate. Miami car dealer Gus Machado and Leopoldo Fernandez Pujols, a Cuban exile who built a pizza empire in Spain, have enlisted the aid of Washington lawyer Mauricio Claver-Carone to represent their group, Cuba Democracy Advocates. Its first major action: hiring Miami-based Campaign Data Inc. to survey 600 Cuban-American registered voters in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Their poll shows that Cuban Americans maintain hard-line attitudes toward Fidel Castro and want to continue the US embargo. It also found that there is little support for Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá's Varela Project, and that many younger Cuban Americans -- nearly 46 percent of the respondents between 18 and 39 years old -- say the United States should take military action against Castro. The margin of error was plus or minus three to five percentage points. (The Miami Herald, 11/3/04)

March 11: There are growing indications that Cuban exile voters will once again play a key role in November's presidential elections: Pollsters say Florida's estimated 500,000 Cuban voters could be a deciding factor in the state's election, which in turn may -- as it did in 2000 -- decide the national election. ''The Cuban exile vote will be as important, if not more, than in the past,'' pollster Sergio Bendixen told me Wednesday, a day after the Democratic Party primary in Florida. ``As long as they continue voting as a bloc, and as long as Florida remains one of the closest elections, the Cuban vote will play a key role.'' According to several pollsters, South Florida's Cuban exile voters will be courted heavier by both parties than in the 2000 elections, mostly because they tend to turn out in huge numbers, and because the Bush-Cheney campaign can no longer take them for granted. (The Miami Herald, 11/3/04)

March 11: The former Cuban fighter pilot who escaped from his country in a stolen MiG-23 in 1991 then returned the next year in a light plane to land on a rural highway and pick up his family has rejected five draft screenplays of his story. The 45-year-old Lorenzo, who now owns a construction company in Orlando, is a private man. The story made international news when the Cuban air force major defected in a MiG-23 and landed at a US military base in Key West, Florida. But he trumped his own feat when - in a spectacular and dangerous operation - he returned to Cuba in a rented puddle-jumper and picked up wife Vicky and sons Reyniel and Alejandro on a highway near a beach in the western province of Matanzas. Skimming the sea to avoid being detected by radar, he was able to land as night was falling on the rural highway, where he nearly crashed into a bus. With the motors running, his family, hiding in the bushes of the nearby beach, boarded the plane and Lorenzo managed to take off and escape Cuban air space before MiGs could be scrambled to shoot him down. (EFE, 11/3/04)

March 15: Organizations of Cuban exiles, “¡Ya! (Enough!)” and Unión Liberal Cubana (Cuban Liberal Union), announced their intentions to communicate their concern for the current human rights situation on the island to the newly elected Spanish president, PSOE leader José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. (Europa Press, 15/3/04)

March 18: Seventy five people -- teachers, priests, students, librarians, historians, entrepreneurs, artists and activists -- each representing one of the 75 Cuban dissidents and opposition leaders arrested beginning a year ago, will demonstrate in Miami. They will stand along Biscayne Boulevard, each with an 8-by-10 photograph of an independent teacher, writer, doctor, lawyer, librarian or human rights activist who was summarily tried and sentenced to long terms for ''crimes against the state.'' The photographs will be attached to a 12-foot board, creating a mural that may later be put on display. N earby, a makeshift cell will hold a typewriter and tape recorder, papers and pencils, books and blackboards -- things confiscated from raids on the dissidents' homes and used as ''evidence'' in their trials. ''There will also be a Cuban flag inside the cell. The entire nation is in prison,'' said Marilú del Toro, a spokeswoman for the Cuban Democratic Directorate, a nonprofit organization that supports island dissidents and organized the noontime demonstration in Miami. (The Miami Herald, 18/3/04)

March 18: A large majority of Hispanic Republicans in Miami-Dade County support President Bush in his reelection bid, but almost as many feel that he needs to get tougher on Cuba or risk losing their support, according to a new poll. The findings suggest that while the president remains popular among Cuban Americans, there is room for the Democrats to take advantage of their frustrations and siphon off some of their votes, the pollster says. ''The dissatisfaction with Bush shows that people are unhappy with his Cuba policy,'' said Florida International University Professor Dario Moreno, whose company, Campaign Data, conducted the poll for BellSouth. Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, ''has not announced a plan for the democratization of Cuba and has not released what his Cuba policy is. Until now, Cuban Americans don't have an alternative.'' The questions on Bush and Cuba were part of a larger poll that Campaign Data conducted on state legislative issues -- such as healthcare and education -- for BellSouth. In response to the question, ''How likely are you to vote for the reelection of President George W. Bush?'' about 88 percent of respondents said they were likely or very likely. Then another issue was raised: ''In August 2003, Miami's 11 Hispanic legislators sent a letter to Bush urging him to take a tougher line toward the Castro regime. The letter warned the president that if he did not toughen his stance toward Cuba, he could not expect the strong support of the Cuban community in the presidential election.'' Seventy percent agreed or strongly agreed. (The Miami Herald, 18/3/04)

March 18: The Cuban exile community joined an international effort to mark the first anniversary of Havana's harshest opposition crackdown in years, during which 75 peaceful dissidents were sentenced to prison terms of up to 28 years. Writers, artists, journalists, students, clergymen and human rights activists were among those demanding the immediate release of the dissidents at a ceremony held in tandem with other similar gatherings in cities across the United States, Europe and Latin America. Each participant placed the photograph of one of the 75 prisoners on a mural located in front of the Friendship Torch in downtown Miami. Next to the mural, organizers built a replica of a jail cell 3 meters (9 feet) by 2 meters (6 feet) with some of the items that were confiscated from the dissidents by Cuban authorities: typewriters, computers, radios, paper, pencils and plastic chairs. (EFE, 18/3/04)

March 18: Cuban exiles' groups in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are commemorating the first anniversary of the repression unleashed by Fidel Castro's regime in 2003, during which 75 dissidents, journalists and human rights activists landed in jail. (Radio y TV Marti, 18/3/04)

March 18: Miami-Dade detectives arrested the reputed ''Godfather of the Cuban Mafia'' in the fruit and vegetable section of his neighborhood Publix supermarket -- in the latest attempt to dismantle a violent crime family that has generated more than $1 billion over the last four decades. José Miguel Battle Sr., the 74-year-old Bay of Pigs veteran and alleged king of the bolita numbers rackets, was charged along with 24 associates in a federal racketeering indictment detailing decades of illegal bookmaking, drug trafficking and money laundering -- all of it backed by murder, arson and witness intimidation. ''These are the top 25 guys,'' said Miami-Dade Police Director Carlos Alvarez. ''We've dismantled this entire organization. They called it ``The Corporation'' because they ran it like a corporation -- a corporation that made a lot of money.'' Federal prosecutors are hoping to force the organization to forfeit more than $1.5 billion in assets -- essentially everything they allegedly earned since 1964. (The Miami Herald, 18/3/04)

March 19: Six in 10 Cuban-American voters say they are likely to vote for President Bush in November, a substantial drop from the votes he received in 2000 and a possible reflection of long-simmering tensions between exiles and a White House that some in the community feel has fallen short of its tough anti-Fidel Castro rhetoric. Bush is estimated to have garnered about 80 percent of the Cuban-American vote in the 2000 election, thanks in large part to anger over the Clinton administration's return of Elian Gonzalez to Cuba. But in a recent poll of Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, only 58.4 percent of registered voters said they would definitely or probably vote for Bush in November. About one-quarter said they were undecided, with the rest saying they would probably not or definitely not vote to re-elect the president. Bush won Florida by just 537 votes after a disputed election in 2000, so any drop in support or turnout among Cuban-Americans is a cause for concern among Republicans. "There is no Elian to kick around anymore," said Guillermo Grenier, a sociologist at Florida International University and the author of the poll. The survey was conducted January 30 through March 16 by Florida International University in partnership with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Miami's WTVJ-Channel 6. The survey of 1,807 Cuban-Americans included registered voters and nonvoters and has a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points. (The Miami Herald, 20/3/04)

March 22: The Supreme Court of the United States rejected a case brought by the Miami supporters of Elian Gonzalez, who said their rights were violated by the government raid that took the boy from them. The high court rejection ended a case that once gripped the nation. It was only the latest case -- but possibly the last -- involving the boy, who was taken from Cuba by his mother, who died in the crossing to the United States. The group's case was filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest legal group in Washington. In a petition to the Supreme Court, Judicial Watch argued that plaintiffs alleging civil rights violations against defendants claiming qualified immunity should not be held to a heightened standard of pleading, as the appeals court ruled. (UPI, 23/3/04)

March 22: Lincoln Díaz-Balart, a Republican legislator of Cuban descent, has called for the elimination of Fidel Castro and the insertion of US spies among foreign tourists visiting the Caribbean island. During an interview with Miami TV's Channel 41, Díaz-Balart told Oscar Haza that, "In Cuba, an assassination is imperative." When asked whether a US congressman should be promoting the assassination of a foreign head of state, the lawmaker said, "I do believe it should be done." (La Jornada, 24/3/04)

March 27: Leaders of the Venezuelan and the Cuban opposition in Miami called on the international community to take action in response to the severe political and institutional crisis taking place in the South American country. The call was issued at a march organized by Cuban and Venezuelan exile groups to protest against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro on Miami's famous Calle Ocho in the neighborhood known as Little Havana. According to police, some 2,000 protesters participated in the march. (The Miami Herald, 27/3/04)

March 27: Around a dozen members of the support committee of journalist and poet Raúl Rivero handed out postcards and books, some of which are banned in Cuba, to French tourists leaving for Havana from Charles de Gaulle airport at Roissy, north of Paris. Activists handed the books to the tourists so that they can give them to Cubans in the street or to the "independent libraries" the addresses of which were listed for them. The campaign, launched by the human rights organisation Pax Christi-Hollande, was due to be replicated simultaneously in several European countries. (NetforCuba.Com, 27/3/04)

March 27: About 50 Cuban residents in Spain took part in a demonstration outside the Cuban Embassy in that country, demanding freedom for the 75 dissidents incarcerated in the island, and for all the Cuban people. (Europa Press, 27/3/04)

March 30: José María Mijares, world renowned for his mastery of oil painting, his pioneer exploration of geometric abstraction in Cuban art of the 1950s and his neobaroque compositions of the exile period, died of lung and heart problems in Coral Gables. He was 82. Mijares left Cuba but Cuba never left Mijares. ''In my subconscious there is an inner landscape that is Cuba,'' the painter said in an interview in 2001. "Since I was exiled at an older age, that landscape cannot be erased.'' Indeed, images of his native country blossomed frequently on his canvases. (The Miami Herald, 31/3/04)