Chronicle on Cuba - September 2006

Exile Community

September 4: About 10 women from Women for Human Rights International wanted their one-mile walk to Bayshore Drive to resemble the weekly walks of Las Damas de Blanco. Every Sunday, since 2003, Las Damas de Blanco have attended Mass at the Santa Rita church in Havana's Miramar neighborhood. After the service they walk peacefully through the streets, flowers in hand, displaying photos of loved ones languishing in Cuban prisons for dissenting with the country's totalitarian regime.  During Sunday's "Walk for Dignity & Freedom," in Coconut Grove, Women For Human Rights International joined Las Damas de Blanco, or The Ladies in White, in calling for provisional Cuban President Raul Castro's unconditional release of the country's political prisoners. Women For Human Rights International was founded in Miami in 1988 to fight for social justice around the world. Like Las Damas de Blanco, the group hopes national and international communities will urge the Cuban government to grant amnesty to political prisoners. Organizers hope Sunday's walk will be the first of many solidarity walks to be held at least once a month, said Marivi Prado, president of Women for Human Rights International. The next walk will begin in downtown Miami, at a date yet to be announced. (The Miami Herald, 4/9/06)

September 11: Several Cuban-American business leaders are seeking to boost the Cuban entrepreneurial spirit with small business startup loans that they believe could help stimulate the island's economy, but the plan first has to overcome restrictions enforced by the US and Cuban governments. The idea is to give microloans to people who want to start businesses such as selling food in the street. But the plan is a long shot, said Carlos Saladrigas, co-chairman of The Cuba Study Group, a nonpartisan Washington-based organization that has pledged $10 million in seed money. The Cuban government prohibits most private enterprise, while US law sets strict limits on sending money to the communist nation. Officials with the US State and Treasury Departments had no immediate comment on the proposal. And despite Fidel Castro's recent hand-off of power to his brother Raul, there is little sign of any major changes in Cuba's economic policies. ``But we believe we have to take risks and seize opportunities, and we believe change is under way in Cuba,'' Saladrigas said. ``Raul Castro is not a spring chicken, and collective leadership always harbors the seeds of reform.'' (Sun Sentinel, 11/9/06)

September 13: A Miami exile leader announced plans for a symbolic demonstration in the waters off Cuba. The reason: to get the group's call for democracy on the island heard by the 116 foreign leaders attending a summit in Havana. ''We are asking for free elections in Cuba, not a succession of power from brother to brother as if Cuba were a dynasty,'' said Rámon Saúl Sánchez, head of the Democracy Movement. The group is staging its ''maritime demonstration'' to attract the attention of leaders from mostly developing nations attending this week's 14th annual summit of the Nonaligned Movement, which ends on September 16. At a press conference, Sánchez said the group's yacht, the 39-foot Democracia, will leave from Key West's Municipal Marina after midnight on September 15 and head toward the 12-mile limit of what Cuba considers its territorial waters. The Democracia will ferry electoral ballots, fly a white flag, display giant posters of Cuba's political prisoners and drop white roses on the water. Mirrors will be flashed toward the island. About 20 people will be onboard. (The Miami Herald, 12/9/06)

September 13: Huber Matos, a leader of the Cuban Revolution who later spent 20 years as a political prisoner of the Castro regime, hailed Costa Rican President Oscar Arias for urging an end to the US embargo to give a boost to democratization in Cuba. Matos said in a letter released in Miami that Arias's "formula (…) very probably does not interest the Castro (brothers)," but it is a way to "bring about a change on the island." In a commentary published last month in the Costa Rican daily La Nacion, Arias said that the lifting of Washington's four-decade-old economic embargo as well as the closing of the US Navy base at Guantanamo could bring about a democratic transition in Communist Cuba. Matos, 80, said that Arias's message seeks to support the democratic aspirations of the Cubans on the island and, in that sense, the lifting of the embargo is an opportunity that could "lead to the changing of the economic system," which would imply "a change in the political system." (EFE, 13/9/06)

September 19: Some Cuban exiles, upset about the firing of two El Nuevo Herald reporters and a freelancer who received thousands of dollars in US government pay as correspondents for Radio and TV Martí, protested the dismissals and launched an Internet campaign. “We reject the efforts of The Miami Herald to silence our voice in Cuba,'' Remedios Díaz-Oliver of the Cuban Liberty Council said at a news conference. ``These journalists were professional and ethical.'' Also a website urged visitors to sign an online petition and download a letter addressed to Gary B. Pruitt, president and chief executive of McClatchy Co., parent company of The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald. The letter requests that a panel be established to determine whether the Miami Herald Media Co. should have fired the three journalists. (The Miami Herald, 20/9/06)

September 20: Prominent Cuban intellectual, Mario Parajón, member of the legendary Grupo Orígenes, which exerted a profound influence on Cuban intellectual life in the second half of the XXth century, died in Madrid at the age of 77. (El Nuevo Herald, 22/9/06)

September 21: Italian filmmaker Angelo Rizzo, author of a recent movie depicting the death of an Italian tourist in 1997 during a wave of terrorist attacks in Havana, blamed the “anti-Cuban mafia” for the burning of two vehicles in front of his house, near Milan. In statements to the Cuban official newspaper Granma, the filmmaker said “the car burnings are related to my film; it’s awful.” (ANSA, 21/9/06)