Chronicle on Cuba - March 2006

Exile Community

March 2: Anti-Castro Cuban exiles have scheduled an auction of 50 paintings by accused terrorist and amateur artist Luis Posada Carriles to help defray the jailed militant's legal expenses. The exhibition and sale is set in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood. "The sale's going to be very successful. People have called from other states asking to buy up to two pictures (each) by Posada Carriles and to get information on payment methods," Abel Nieves, one of the directors of the organization arranging the event, told the press. The paintings were created during Posada's 2000-2004 imprisonment in Panama and in jail in the United States, where he was taken into custody last May. (EFE, 3/3/06)

March 8: In a day that underscored tension between some Cuban exiles in Miami and the Bush administration, Cuban-American leaders met with federal officials in Washington to ask for a new US-Cuba migration policy, while others called the meeting partisan. The Cuban-American group wants the administration to change the controversial wet-foot, dry-foot policy in which Cubans caught at sea are generally returned to the island while those who reach US soil are allowed to stay. At the White House meeting, Republican US Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart and several spiritual leaders from Miami's Cuban exile community asked federal officials from the departments of State and Homeland Security to make the policy more humanitarian for Cubans. ''The meeting was designed to allow for a serious dialogue, and does not signal any change in policy as it relates to Cuba or any other country's migrants,'' said White House spokeswoman Maria Tamburri. The meeting came almost two months after the Coast Guard repatriated 15 Cubans found on the old Seven Mile bridge in the Florida Keys -- a move that set off controversy and a 12-day hunger strike by the Democracy Movement's Ramon Saul Sanchez. (The Miami Herald, 9/3/06)

March 9: While Cuba played the Netherlands in the World Baseball Classic, a spectator in the stands raised a sign saying: "Down with Fidel," sparking an international incident that escalated with the velocity of a major league fastball. The image of the man holding the sign behind home plate was beamed live to millions of TV viewers - including those in Cuba. The top Cuban official at the game at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan rushed to confront the man. Puerto Rican police quickly intervened and took the Cuban official - Angel Iglesias, vice president of Cuba's National Institute of Sports - to a nearby police station, where they lectured him about free speech. "We explained to him that here the constitutional right to free expression exists and that it is not a crime," police Col. Adalberto Mercado was quoted as saying in El Nuevo Dia, a San Juan daily. The brouhaha gathered steam when Cuba's Communist Party newspaper, Granma, called the sign-waving "a cowardly incident." Cuba's Revolutionary Sports Movement exhorted Cubans to demonstrate in Havana, saying US and Puerto Rican authorities were involved in "the cynical counterrevolutionary provocations." An anti-Castro Web site, therealcuba.com, identified the protester only as Enrique, and carried his own account of the incident. (AP, 9/3/06)

March 9: South Florida's Cuban-American community is not as preoccupied with Fidel Castro and communist Cuba as it previously was, according to a new poll being released. Asked what's the most important political issue, 33 percent of respondents said the war in Iraq and terrorism. Twenty-seven percent put Cuba and Castro at the top, while 11 percent said the economy is most important. The poll, conducted in February of 600 Cuban Americans in Miami-Dade, shows the broadening of opinion in the community as younger generations and new arrivals focus on other issues beyond communist Cuba, the pollsters noted. The survey was conducted by two researchers outside of Florida -- Jessica Lavariega Monforti, a political science professor at the University of Texas-Panamerican, and Lisa García Bedolla of the University of California at Irvine. They presented their results at an event organized by Florida International University. The researchers conclude that national security issues will be more important for Cubans and Cuban-American voters in 2008 than US-Cuba policy. ''I think what we are looking at is a much more complicated view of this community than we've seen in the past,'' said Jessica Lavariega Monforti, a political science professor at the University of Texas, Pan American. ``You have to engage this community on issues other than Cuba.'' (The Miami Herald, 9/3/06)

March 23: Delfín Fernández, who was part of Fidel and Raúl Castro's inner circle, knows everything from why the Cuban leader incinerates his dirty underwear to his cravings for pricey Spanish ham. Fernández says chief of bodyguards, Bienvenido ''Chicho'' Perez, told him the Cuban leader has his underwear burned to foil any assassination plots with chemicals during laundering. And he knows Fidel's capricious appetite for Serrano hams, having been sent to Spain to bring $2,500 worth of the “pata negra” delicacy back to Cuba. He knows well the Castro brothers' doctors and children, having vacationed with them at lavish oceanfront homes on the island. Former CIA analyst Brian Latell, a senior researcher at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies, said he spent several hours meeting with Fernández in Miami earlier this year for academic research. ''A lot of the stories he told me were fascinating, and I found almost all of them to be highly credible,'' Latell said. Fernández said he defected in Spain in 1999 on a trip to Europe to drop off Raúl's daughter, Mariela Castro Espin, in Italy to visit her father-in-law and pick up a Rotweiller in Germany for Fidel. (The Miami Herald, 23/3/06)

March 25: A growing number of exiles choose Cuba to rest in peace. It costs more and takes longer, but more Cubans are fulfilling their wish to return to the island -- even after death. Funeral directors say the number of shipments has doubled in the past year or so as domestic funeral costs rise, more people realize tightened remittances and other restrictions do not apply -- and older generations of Cuban exiles continue to die. There are no records on how many bodies are shipped annually to Cuba, according to the office of Vital Statistics for Florida, the Cuban Interests Section, and the US Treasury Department, which oversees the trade embargo with Cuba. Some Cuban exile leaders and Cuban funeral home operators oppose the practice, contending it aids the Castro government, which collects fees on shipments. ''The only purpose it serves is to give Castro money,'' said Jose Basulto of Brothers to the Rescue, an anti-Castro group that flew missions searching for Cuban rafters. ''Does Fidel Castro benefit? Yes,'' said Joe Garcia, former executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation. "But you know what? Fidel Castro benefits more from other things than a poor guy sending his dead mother back. If my mother asked me to bury her on the moon, I would send her to the moon.'' Garcia did fault the Cuban government for what it charges for the process. The average cost, excluding airfare and storage of the body: $2,795 for a body; $2,000 for ashes. A chunk of the money -- $1,120 -- goes to the Cuban government. (The Miami Herald, 25/3/06)

March 28: Cuban exile Rafael Rojas, who lives in Mexico, won the 34 th Anagrama Essay Awards with the book “Tombs without Peace. Revolution, dissidents and exile of the Cuban intellectuals” (Tumbas sin sosiego. Revolución, disidencia y exilio del intelectual cubano), a brief intellectual history of Cuba. (Europa Press, 28/3/06)

March 27: Jorge Mas, chairman of the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation, sent US President George Bush a letter asking if the administration had changed its position on the Helms-Burton law. The letter criticized US Representative Lincoln Díaz-Balart's statements, saying CANF members ''do not consider it beneficial to alter or suggest altering Helms-Burton now or at any time in the future.'' It added that the Castro brothers should leave Cuba if they are serious about a transition to democracy. Díaz-Balart issued a statement saying that his views on Helms-Burton had been misrepresented, restating his key conditions and saying that CANF could have saved itself the time by telephoning him for his comments. Díaz-Balart had told The Miami Herald in a recent interview that while he supports the law, he would favor lifting some of the sanctions if Havana freed all political prisoners, legalized opposition parties and promised free elections -- regardless of who rules Cuba. (The Miami Herald, 28/3/06)

March 29: Some 20 demonstrators angered by a ceremony honoring a Cuban defector stormed into Puerto Rico's statehouse, breaking tables, windows and a glass case covering the US territory's constitution. The demonstrators were angered by a tribute lawmakers were paying to Julio Labatut, a Cuban dissident and a renowned florist honored for his charitable works and entrepreneurship in Puerto Rico. Some alleged Labatut was involved in the unsolved 1979 killing of Carlos Muniz Varela, an activist for Puerto Rico's independence with close links to the Cuban government. Labatut, who was part of a group of Cuban exiles that encouraged Cuban athletes competing in Puerto Rico in the early 1990s to defect from Cuba, said he was insulted by the protest. (The New York Times, 30/3/06)