Chronicle on Cuba - June 2006

US-Cuba Relations

June 2: Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba's National Assembly, will be the guest speaker at the kickoff for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists' convention in Fort Lauderdale, organizers said. Alarcón, a controversial figure for South Florida's predominantly anti-Castro, Cuban-American community, will appear via satellite from Havana during the convention's opening session on June 14 to take questions from journalists. Cuban-born Mirta Ojito, a New York Times contributor and Columbia University journalism professor, will interview him, and audience members will submit written questions. "In South Florida, anything that has to do with Cuba is going to be controversial, and we know that," said NAHJ Executive Director Iván Román. "As journalists, we don't shy away from controversy or controversial figures." More than 2,000 journalists from the United States and abroad are expected to attend the 24th annual convention, which will be June 14-17 at the Broward County Convention Centre. (Sun Sentinel, 2/6/06)

June 2: The University of Miami -- in coordination with the American Red Cross of Greater Miami and the Keys and a slew of non-profit groups and local, state and federal agencies -- has completed what officials say is the most comprehensive plan ever put together in Miami to prepare for the critical days following the death of Cuba's communist leader, who will turn 80 this year. The greatest fear among the planning organizations is another mass migration along the lines of the Mariel boatlift in 1980 or the 1994 balsero crisis. Much of the report is dedicated to planning for such an event, such as assigning a county official as the point person and assigning specific tasks to deal with migrants. (The Miami Herald, 2/6/06) 

June 2: Cuba complained that the United States denied a visa to the head of its delegation to a UN AIDS conference, but a US spokesman said he applied too late. Cuba's Public Health Minister Jose Ramon Balaguer Cabrera did not receive a visa, while four other members of the Cuban delegation were allowed into the United States to attend the conference. The three-day conference was convened to plot a global strategy for battling AIDS. (Reuters, 2/6/06)

June 2: A toll-free number set up to receive interview requests from Cubans seeking tourist and business travel visas to the United States was shut down after just six days when it was barraged by a half-million calls. The US Interests Section in Havana, which reviews the non-immigrant visa applications, launched the phone-in service from a Mexico-based call center May 25. People in the United States could make appointments on behalf of relatives or friends in Cuba seeking 90-day visas. Interests Section spokesman Drew Blakeney said the phone lines were shut down by Sprint, the telecom company managing the infrastructure, after the call center's server crashed. Sprint officials dealing with the issue could not be reached for comment. The number of calls to the center skyrocketed from previous days, but Blakeney said he did not know why. In just six days, the system scheduled visa appointments through January 2007. As a result, the Interests Section said it is not taking new appointments but will honor those made on June 2 or earlier. (Sun Sentinel, 2/6/06)

June 5: A controversial children's book about Cuba should stay in school libraries, an advisory committee recommended, almost certainly setting up a showdown at the Miami-Dade School Board. The 16-member review panel debated for more than seven hours over two sessions, highlighting omissions and possible inaccuracies in the book “Vamos a Cuba” and its English-language counterpart, “A Visit To Cuba”. Ultimately, only one of those members -- child psychologist Lydia Usategui -- voted to remove the book, which opponents believe is an unreasonably sunny portrait of life under Fidel Castro. The majority of the panel -- which included educators, administrators and community members -- agreed the book was lacking in many areas, but found it sufficient to meet the needs of its kindergarten-to-second-grade audience. (The Miami Herald, 6/6/06)

June 5: The Bush administration suspended the operations of three of the main travel and remittance agencies to Cuba as part of its stepped-up economic war against the island.
The closure order came from the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) against La Perla del Caribe, Transeair Travel and Uno Remittance Inc.
The agencies received notifications from OFAC in which they were told that their licenses to provide services related to Cuba were being revoked. La Perla del Caribe has four offices in Miami-Dade County (two of those in Hialeah) and was considered one of the most popular and dynamic agencies for providing a wide range of services related to Cuba. Transeair Travel is based in Washington DC. (El Nuevo Herald, Granma, 6/6/06)

June 5: The US government accused 12 countries, among them Cuba and Venezuela, of not making even minimally sufficient efforts to combat people trafficking. The annual "Trafficking in Persons" (TIP) report released by the State Department divides the world's countries into three "tiers" based on their efforts to combat human smuggling, and the middle group - those nations who make some efforts to halt the practice but do not do enough, in Washington's opinion - includes a "watch list" of those countries that are receiving special scrutiny. The 12 countries on the "black list" - the third tier, or nations that do not make even the basic efforts to halt human trafficking - may be subject to sanctions by Washington, including the withholding of non-humanitarian and non-trade-related assistance. The United States places Cuba among the countries that are doing little to erradicate human trafficking and calls the island one of the world's main destinations for sexual tourism, the victims of which include a large number of minors. The report notes that it is difficult to calculate the dimensions of the problem in Cuba because of the "closed nature" of the Cuban government and the lack of non-governmental information. [Trafficking in Persons Report. Country Narratives: Cuba] (EFE, 6/6/06)

June 5: US union leaders demanded that Fidel Castro free independent union leaders from prison in Cuba. In a letter sent to the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, the leaders from 23 American trade unions asked for the release from prison of eight Cuban workers who tried to form independent trade union organizations. (MartiNoticias, 5/6/06)

June 5: Representative Charles Rangel, a frequent critic of the US embargo against Cuba, met with Fidel Castro on a trip to the island in 2002, but only acknowledged that the Cuban government picked up part of the tab when a watchdog group began making recent inquiries. The New York Democrat changed his travel disclosure form for the April 2002 trip and reimbursed the Cuban government and a New York grocery store owner $1,922 for his son's expenses after the Centre for Public Integrity, a non-partisan group that focuses on open records, raised questions about the trip. House ethics rules permit private sponsors of lawmakers' trips to cover the cost of the member of Congress and one relative -- in Rangel's case, his wife Alma, who also went on the trip. The government watchdog group, which released an extensive review of congressional travel, noted that congressional travel disclosure forms ``are supposed to make the sponsor and purpose of privately funded trips transparent to the public.'' (The Miami Herald, 8/6/06)
 
June 6: In an effort to free Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles from federal detention and help him qualify for US citizenship, his attorney may call on US Senator John Kerry and Oliver North of Iran-contra fame to testify about Posada's ties to the US government. Posada's lawyer, Eduardo Soto, said that he is considering subpoenaing Kerry and North because their testimony may assure US immigration officials that Posada was working for the US government during the contra war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the mid-1980s. Soto said Posada, who was once a legal US resident, should receive US citizenship because he served as an active-duty soldier for the US Army in Vietnam, and later as a paid US agent in Nicaragua. ''He was the lead prosecutor in Iran-contra,'' Soto said of Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who unsuccessfully challenged President Bush for the White House in 2004. ``He is a man who has personal knowledge of investigations, reports, testimony, everything that Iran-contra entails.'' (The Miami Herald, 7/6/06)

June 8: Charges that a husband and wife acted as agents for Cuba should be dismissed because the FBI's case is built on broken promises not to prosecute if the man cooperated with the investigation, defense attorneys said. Those contentions contained in defense motions will be the focus of a June 14 hearing in Miami before US District Judge K. Michael Moore, who will determine if the case against Carlos and Elsa Alvarez should be dismissed. The couple, who worked at Florida International University, have been held without bail since being arrested in January. The indictment charged that for 30 years, the Alvarezes supplied non-classified information to the Cuban intelligence agency, mostly about anti-Castro Cuban exile groups in Miami. (Sun Sentinel, 8/6/06)

June 9: Castro called the US air strike that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi a "barbarity," saying he should have been put on trial. The United States acted as "judge and jury" against the leader of the al-Qaida in Iraq, Castro said. "They bragged, they were practically drunk with happiness." "The accused cannot just be eliminated," he told a literacy conference. "This barbarity cannot be done." (AP, 10/6/06)

June 12: A group of eight Cuban immigrants arrived to Mona Island, west of Puerto Rico, police reported.  The group, seven men and one woman, arrived in Playa Mujeres in a boat that went back to Dominican Republic without having been detained by the authorities. (AFP, 14/6/06)

June 12: The Cuban government cut off electricity to the US diplomatic mission in Havana a week ago, and US requests for power to be restored have gone unanswered, the US State Department said. The facility has been operating with generator power.
Work at the mission continues, including interviews of refugees and outreach programs for the Cuban people, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. "I would just say that the bullying tactics of the Castro regime aren't going to work," he added. He said Cuban authorities also reduce the availability of water to the mission from time to time.
McCormack said he suspects that the decision to cut the power was in response to efforts by the mission to provide information to the Cuban people. "That, of course, is not something that the Castro regime takes kindly to," he said. (AP, 12/6/06)

June 13: State-supplied electricity flowed again at the US diplomatic mission in Havana, even as Cuba termed a "blatant" lie US charges that power had been deliberately cut more than a week ago. "The lights came back on in the early afternoon," said mission spokesperson Drew Blakeney, who attributed the service renewal to international coverage of the US charge. But Blakeney said he doubted problems with Fidel Castro's government were over. "We need visas for our personnel who are going to work here, both on a long-term and short-term basis," he said. "We need permission to import cars, we need a regular supply of electricity, we need a regular supply of water (…) or obviously our presence here is unsustainable." The Castro government said earlier that the Bush administration and Miami-based Cuban-American groups were seeking a pretext to close the mission and end limited cooperation between the long-time ideological foes on immigration and other matters. "They lie blatantly (…) We categorically deny that there have been premeditated electricity cuts," a statement carried by all state-run media said. [Editorial Granma] (Reuters, 13/6/06)

June 13: The State Department said that it is not prepared to except Cuban authorities' claim that a cut off of power to the US Interests Section in Havana can be attributed to bad weather. At his daily press briefing, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told a reporter who cited the Cuban statement: "You'll excuse me if I don't take that explanation at face value." "Look, you know, this is an authoritarian regime. It's not as though they don't control the power company and whether or not the power gets cut off to the US Interests Section. And I would note it is very, very strange, and I lay this out for whether it's coincidence or not, but it's the only building or compound on the block that doesn't have power. So - and we did pay our power bill," the official said. (EFE, 13/6/06)

June 13: Firms including Marathon Oil are lobbying congress to be allowed to bid for oil and natural-gas deposits in Cuban waters. They are backed by Republican legislators bucking Bush by supporting legislation to exempt the oil firms from the 1962 Cuban trade embargo and a ban on drilling within 160km of US shores. The US need for energy and the likelihood that foreign companies will rush in to drill justifies the exemption, advocates say. “Are we supposed to sit by and let China drill in our own backyard?” asked senator Pete Domenici, chairman of the senate energy committee, a co-sponsor with 12 other legislators of legislation exempting the US energy companies. (Bloomberg, 13/6/06)

June 14: It was billed as a conversation between a top Cuban government official and a Cuban-American journalist, but it turned into a debate over contentious issues that have long strained US-Cuba relations. Before a group of journalists and media executives on the opening day of the NAHJ convention, Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba’s National Assembly, squared off against Columbia University journalism professor and New York Times contributor Mirta Ojito, a Cuban exile who left the country in 1980 as part of the Mariel boatlift. They covered a familiar list of issues: imprisoned Cuban journalists, immigration and the US embargo. On the embargo, Alarcon said that, “I hope the US would realize that the law is no longer relevant. The U.S. has pretended for many years to dominate us. The embargo is a policy that has been condemned year after year, and it’s not working.” (Latino, 14/6/06)

June 14: The House of Representatives voted to make it easier to sell US farm products to Cuba by overriding a Bush administration requirement to pay in cash before the ship leaves harbor. By voice vote, the House adopted language allowing payment to be made before the goods change hands, a more common approach for cash sales that also speeds delivery. It became part of a Treasury funding bill passed on a 406-22 vote. Representatives killed two other proposed amendments aimed at revising US relations with Cuba, including one to end the US economic embargo in place since the early 1960s. (Reuters, 14/6/06)

June 14: A controversial children's book about Cuba -- and similar books from the same series about other countries -- will be removed from all Miami-Dade school libraries after a School Board vote that split Hispanic and non-Hispanic members in an incendiary political atmosphere. Only the Cuba book, “Vamos a Cuba”, and its English-language counterpart, “A Visit to Cuba”, were reviewed through the district's lengthy appeals process. Some board members who voted for the ban admitted they had never seen other books in the series, which features 24 nations including Greece, Mexico and Vietnam -- none of which had been formally objected to by anyone. (The Miami Herald, 15/6/06)

June 14: The recently passed Florida law that essentially bans state academic travel to Cuba promised to escalate into a constitutional battle when Governor Jeb Bush signed it into law in May. The American Civil Liberties Union, representing several professors from state universities, filed a lawsuit against Florida officials in federal court, claiming the travel ban is unconstitutional. The group also demands a temporary injunction to prevent the law from taking effect while the case is in court. ''This act is terribly misdirected,'' Randall Marshall, legal director of the ACLU of Florida, said of the new law. ``This is unconstitutional, and we hope to have this law struck down very shortly.''  
(The Miami Herald, 14/6/06)

June 14: Cuba's future may not be predictable, but the South Florida business community now has a much clearer picture of the island economy and the challenges ahead than it did when the Soviet bloc first began to unravel and undermine the Cuban economy. The half-day conference, "A Future and Free Cuba -- Opportunities and Threats for Florida," touched on areas where Cuba will complement Florida -- trade, investment and services -- and where it will compete -- tourism and agriculture. Speakers discussed Cuba's future needs and various scenarios for South Florida after the death or retirement of Fidel Castro and the possible succession of his brother, Raul.  "This is a bankrupt economy," said Andy Gomez, a senior fellow at the Institute of Cuban and Cuban American Studies at the University of Miami. "Only Haiti is poorer." (The Miami Herald, 15/6/06) 

June 14: Florida's determination to block oil drilling close to its coastline irritates some members of Congress. And this week they weren't shy about expressing their frustration, with one House member asking how the state can ''dictate to America'' where to drill.  
Colleen Castille, secretary of Florida's Department of Environmental Protection, took a drubbing from members of the House Resources Committee as they reviewed the latest gambit to open offshore waters to drilling -- offer states a share of the royalties if they agree to permit energy exploration along their coasts. Though Castille said her boss, Governor Jeb Bush, isn't necessarily opposed to the legislation -- provided it gives Florida a significant buffer -- the state's no-drill position came under fire from lawmakers who want to open the outer continental shelf to drilling but have been thwarted by the governor and the Florida congressional delegation. (The Miami Herald, 16/6/06)

June 15: Pastors for Peace, an ecumenical solidarity movement, condemned what it called the immoral and cruel US blockade on Cuba, noting that it impedes provisions of food, medicines and other supplies to the Caribbean island. According to a press release from the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), in June and July the 17th US-CUBA Friendship Caravan will visit more than 120 US and Canadian cities through 13 different routes to collect supporters, donations and funds for its solidarity cause with Cuba, announced IFCO, which is headed by the Reverend Lucius Walker. (Prensa Latina, 17/6/06)

June 16: The US University of Yale has donated to Cuba a collection of unpublished documentary films shot on the island between 1964 and 1969 and several movies filmed from 1957 to 1959. These historic documents, work by US filmmaker David Stone, were delivered to the History Institute in Cuba, Granma newspaper reported. Together with the 62 digital films, another 5,000 photos, most of them unpublished, were also donated. (Prensa Latina, 17/6/06)

June 17: A small group of Baptists, sponsored by the Cary-based North Carolina Baptist Men, has just returned from working to build a retirement home in Cuba. "On any given Sunday in Cuba, there are over 200,000 people worshipping in Baptist churches," said Neil Yarborough, an attorney back from his second trip since December 2004. Yarborough put aside his legal business, and with a religious visa in hand, he led seven people, including a son and a daughter, to the city of Santiago, located on the eastern end of Cuba. Yarborough, of Fayetteville, spoke of seeing well-educated people trying to live in a depressed economy. He cites a more-than-40-year US embargo, the meltdown of the Soviet empire in the early 1990s and "probably the inefficiencies of communism, too," as reasons he believes Cuba is so poor. "I mean, there's a lot of things that Fidel did that probably helped people, but the country would collapse if it wasn't for an effective black market," he said. (The Herald Sun, 17/6/06)

June 19: The presence of Chinese oil rigs along the coast of Cuba and a new attempt in Congress to tap the eastern Gulf of Mexico are putting pressure on Florida to allow American companies to drill for oil and natural gas near the state's shores. Drilling advocates unveiled a proposal that would remove the federal ban on drilling 100 miles beyond the coast and offer states financial incentives to allow it closer. At the same time, some drilling advocates in the House and Senate are pressing to compete with companies from China, Canada and other countries to explore off the Cuban coast only 50 miles from Key West. (The Miami Herald, 20/6/06)

June 20: Cuba hailed the opening of the new UN Human Rights Council, praising its own election as a founding member of the 47-nation body and the exclusion of the United States, which declined to stand as a candidate. Cuba -- which has been criticized by the United States and rights groups for its record -- said its victory in the May election was a reward for its humanitarian work, including the contributions of its doctors in 70 other countries and cost-free surgery by Cuban eye specialists for patients from elsewhere in the Caribbean and Latin America. US officials in Geneva said they were not immediately able to comment. "Today is a particularly symbolic day. Cuba is a founding member of the Human Rights Council, and the United States is not," Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said. "The absence of the United States is the defeat of lies; it is the moral punishment for the haughtiness of an empire. "The election entailed a demanding assessment. Each one got what they deserved," Perez Roque added. (CNN, 20/6/06)

June 19: Despite a setback in the US Supreme Court, Cubatabaco, the Cuban cigar company, announced that it will continue to fight for the rights to the COHIBA trademark in the United States. COHIBA is Cuba's most renowned cigar brand, but cannot be sold in the US because of the US economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba. Cubatabaco made its announcement in response to the US Supreme Court's June 19, 2006 order denying review of a lower court ruling that, in the absence of specific US government permission, the US blockade bars Cubatabaco from obtaining judicial protection of its COHIBA trademark in the United States. Cubatabaco will now pursue its pending application for US government permission from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which administers the US blockade. (PRNewswire, 19/6/06) 

June 19: A woman accused of spying for the Cuban government has been freed on bond after five months in jail. Elsa Alvarez left the Federal Detention Center in Miami after family members put up their homes as collateral for her $400,000 bond, but her movements are restricted. Alvarez and her husband, Carlos, a Florida International University professor who remained jailed, are charged with failing to register as agents of a foreign government. Prosecutors contend they spied for Fidel Castro's government for decades, mainly reporting on activities of Miami's large Cuban-American exile community and US political developments. They were arrested in January and have pleaded not guilty to the charges. (AP, 20/6/06)

June 19: Cuban and American academics are participating in the 18th Conference of Philosophers and Social Scientists being held at the University of Havana. In his opening words, Jose Carlos Vazquez, dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and History at the University of Havana, said representatives of 15 US universities are attending the event despite efforts by the Bush administration to impede exchange between the two countries’ professionals. Cliff Durand, coordinator of the research network of the Association of Radical Philosophers of the US and a member of the Center for Global Justice, noted that in the last two years the number of US academics attending has declined due to the anti-Cuba policy of the Bush administration. (Granma, 22/6/06)

June 20: Cuba and the United States accused each other of violations as the gloves came off on the second day of a new UN human rights forum intended to rise above finger-pointing. Cuba's Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque accused the United States of running a ``concentration camp'' at its Guantanamo naval base on Cuba, where some 460 terror suspects are being held. Perez said in a speech that his country would ``speak out for the rights of American people'' as the United States does not have a seat on the 47-member UN Human Rights Council. But his remarks drew a sharp rebuke from the US observer delegation for what it called Cuba's ``gratuitous and unfounded attacks'' against the United States. ``The American people need no one else to speak for them, particularly officials of an autocratic government,'' US political counselor Velia De Pirro said in a right of reply to the remarks from the communist country's representative. The US delegate noted that Cuba, like other states, to win election to the new human rights body,  had pledged to promote human rights both in its territory and elsewhere. (Reuters, 20/6/06)

June 20: A toll-free number for Cubans seeking visas to the United States is working again, less than three weeks after the US Interests Section in Havana was forced to shut down the hotline due to a flood of a half-million calls. The number, available to people in the United States making interview appointments for Cubans requesting 90-day tourist or business visas, resumed full service, the Interests Section said in a statement. The Interests Section initially launched the toll-free service in late May. It was cut off on June 2, after six days, because the Mexico-based call center's infrastructure could not handle the volume of calls -- which received from tens of thousands daily calls to a half-million in just one day. It was not known whether the calls were legitimate or due to sabotage; the Interests Section said it did not know the reason. (Sun Sentinel, 21/6/06)

June 21: The Miami-Dade school district's own Student Government Association joined the American Civil Liberties Union in filing a federal lawsuit challenging the School Board's decision to ban controversial children's books about Cuba and 22 similar books about other countries. ''We as students are thirsty for knowledge, but the School Board's decision hinders that thirst,'' said Ronald Bilbao, immediate past president of student government, who graduated this spring from South Miami Senior High. ``We don't ban books in America, period.'' The groups argued that the two books at the center of the controversy -- Vamos a Cuba and its English-language counterpart, A Visit to Cuba -- were removed purely because they were politically unsavory. ''This is what happens in communist countries; this is what happens in communist Cuba,'' said Virginia Rosen, president of the ACLU's Greater Miami chapter, who said it was ``a case of a school board gone wild.'' (The Miami Herald, 22/6/06)

June 24: Four engineering students from Bristol University are preparing to fly to Havana in an attempt to improve the Cuban capital's water supplies. The students belong to the university's Engineers Without Borders society which is working on a project to optimise and control urban Cuban water. They aim to test their system in the area of the Polytechnic University of Havana, which serves 5,000 people. The final project's aim is to set up an efficient automated water network. (BBC, 24/6/06) 

June 25: Miami-Dade County police found 39 Cuban immigrants in a public park after they were smuggled in by speedboat, authorities said. The 28 men, eight women and three children were uninjured and seemed healthy when they were found in Crandon Park, said US Border Patrol spokesman Steve McDonald. Border Patrol took them into custody. No smugglers had been identified. Boarder Patrol agents were unsure how many people were involved in the smuggling and if the smugglers were part of the group in custody. (Sun Sentinel, 26/6/06) 

June 26: A group of Americans clinging to makeshift rafts made of cardboard and Styrofoam have managed to sail to Cuba, seeking refuge. The so-called, "Anti-Freedom Flotilla" sailed from the United States. A leader of the group of five men and two women said they were fleeing the tyranny of high credit card debt and rising interest rates. The spokesman, Thurley Howell, 42, told reporters that he could no longer live in the manner to which he had grown accustomed in the United States, and so sought a better life for himself and his wife, Lucy. "We had a mountain of credit card debt, and a mortgage payment to make. When I looked for a bill consolidation loan, I discovered that interest rates had gone through the roof," he was quoted as saying. Howell, a day trader, lived in a poor section of Boca Raton, a neighborhood of $500 million dollar mansions. "There is just no way I could make those kind of payments, so I decided to come here." When informed of the American flotilla, Fidel Castro immediately rushed to the beach to survey the situation. "Of course we will make a place for our American brothers and sisters," he said. Although, he admitted that Cuba had no need of day traders, accountants or insurance adjusters, homes would be prepared for the new arrivals. "We will prepare a home for them in the manner to which WE have grown accustomed," he was quoted as saying. (Reuters, 26/6/06)

June 27: US academic researchers caught in the contentious relations between the United States and Cuba said they are concerned research that could benefit both countries will be suspended. The tense relations between Havana and Washington deteriorated even further early this month, when the United States Interests Section in Havana accused authorities of harassment, reporting interruptions of water and electricity to the office.
The Cuban government responded with an editorial in the local press, accusing Washington's representatives of searching for pretexts to once and for all put an end to what little relations are left between the two countries. Professor Charles Verharen, of the Washington-based Howard University, told the press that "it is getting harder" for US citizens who want to visit the island nation, and said his status as a researcher is the only reason he was able to get into Cuba. He said that academic bilateral relationships are "indispensable; communication among academics is a prerequisite for building a theoretical foundation through which the two countries can begin to bridge their gap." (IPS, 27/6/06)

June 28: Nineteen Cuban immigrants arrived in a dessert Puerto Rican island. Sailing from Dominican Republic in two different boats, the first group of six men and two women arrived at Playa Ubero in Mona Island, while the other eleven immigrants reached Mujeres Beach later same day. According to police reports, the first group traveled in a boat that immediately returned to Dominican Republic. (AP, 29/6/06)

June 30: Cuban librarians criticized attempts by the Miami-Dade County school board to ban a children's book because of its positive depiction of life on the communist-run island. ``It's outrageous the Miami school libraries would prohibit the presence of the book ``Vamos a Cuba'' because it shows the truth about how our children live,'' librarian Margarita Bellas Vilarino told the communist youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde. Bellas, of the Cuban Association of Librarians, and Abel Ponce, of the Jose Marti National Library in Havana, told Juventud Rebelde that government-run libraries island-wide were protesting the Florida book ban. (AFP, 30/6/06)