'Una Noche' Actors From Cuba Flee During Film's Tribeca Festival Premiere

Read about it HERE.

Selling trips to Cuba once was deadly, but no more

MH



Posted on Sun, May. 03, 2009
Selling trips to Cuba once was deadly

BY LUISA YANEZ, DOUGLAS HANKS AND LAURA FIGUEROA
lyanez@MiamiHerald.com
There was a time when advertising Viajes a Cuba on a storefront was an invitation to a pipe bombing.

In the politically charged Miami of the late 1970s and '80s, the FBI investigated more than a dozen blasts at Cuba travel agencies -- considered nests of Communist agents by staunch anti-Castro exiles.

Selling tickets to Havana could even get you killed. That's what happened to Carlos Muñiz Varela, a 26-year-old exile living in Puerto Rico who opened the first Cuba-approved travel agency. Thirty years ago this week, he was gunned down in San Juan.

But times have changed, and the travel agencies today worry little about political retribution.

''They want to call me a communist -- thank you very much,'' said a strident Francisco Aruca, the owner of Marazul Charters. Aruca, also a Miami radio host, is one of the more outspoken of the seven agency owners who book charters to Cuba. They all have permission from Cuba and the U.S. Treasury Department.

The long-standing and sometimes violent clashes between exiles who oppose anyone doing business with the island have disappeared -- welcome news to the agencies, where business has been booming since last month, when President Barack Obama lifted restrictions on Cuban Americans wanting to travel or send money to relatives on the island.

Armando Garcia, president of Marazul Charters, points no further than the windows of his Westchester storefront as indication that the climate for trips to Cuba has changed.

More than a decade ago, he had to install bullet-proof glass following a 1996 bombing that nearly gutted the store, which is across the street from The Falls on South Dixie Highway.

It was one of several bombing attempts against the company's three South Florida stores. ''People were scared for their lives,'' Garcia said. ``None of the employees wanted to tell relatives where they worked for fear of retribution. ''

OUT OF THE SHADOWS

Now customers sit in a row of chairs edged up against the window. Perception of those who travel to Cuba has also changed; it's no longer a dirty little secret.

''A lot of people were scared of telling their neighbors and friends -- they would lie about where they were going on vacation,'' Garcia said.

Miguel Saavedra, head of Vigilia Mambisa, a group that continues to picket those who do business with Cuba, said the travel agencies feed off Miami's poor exile community. ''Cuban exiles are victims of these agencies who prey off people traveling to see relatives by charging them exorbitant amounts of money that goes to the Cuba government,'' Saavedra said. ``These agencies make a pact with the devil.''

Bad blood between exiles and the Cuba travel agencies erupted in earnest in 1978 after a group of Miami Cubans, who became known as the Comité de 75, visited the island and negotiated with Fidel Castro for the release of 3,600 Cuban political prisoners.

NEW DEAL

More significantly, they also negotiated for travel to the island on what were called viajes de la comunidad -- for the first time, trips by exiles to visit Cuba.

The deal created a need for agencies to open for business in Miami, New Jersey and Puerto Rico. Cuba jumped in, creating Havanatur, a government agency charged with overseeing the venture with the U.S. travel agencies. But Aruca said Cuba originally had bigger plans. Cuban officials thought large American companies would jump in to book passage to the island -- much like they did before the 1958 Cuban revolution.

''They were ignoring the public relations aspect that many of these bigger companies would not want to get in the middle of U.S. and Cuban affairs,'' Aruca said. ``Once Cuba realized that no big travel outfits were signing on to coordinate trips, they realized they should work with the smaller Cuban-American businesses.''

The down side: The small agencies became a magnet for anti-Castro anger.

George Kiszynski, a special agent for the FBI in Miami during the late 1970s and '80s, was caught in the middle, assigned with stopping the rash of bombings. The bombings soon spread from the travel and packages-to-Cuba agencies to consulates of countries that did business with Cuba, and to persons believed to support the Cuban government and even the FBI and state attorney's offices in Miami.

''The interesting thing is that there were many bombers, not just one. That made it more difficult,'' said Kiszynski, now director of investigations for the Ackerman Group. It became so hectic, he created an ad hoc task force with other local law enforcement agents. ``We were pretty successful in arresting many of the bombers.''

Most of the bombs were set to go off in the early morning. ''If one had gone off during the day, it could have killed someone,'' he said. In Miami, no one was killed.

SHOOTING DEATH

In Puerto Rico, Muñiz was not as fortunate. With the blessing of Cuba, he had wasted no time scheduling the first flight through Viajes Varadero in December 1978.

Although he was only in his 20s, Muñiz was a dedicated political activist who supported Puerto Rican independence. He was a member of the leftist Antonio Maceo Brigade, said his best friend, Raúl Alzaga Manresa, current owner of the company.

Viajes Varadero made its inaugural flight with about 90 people aboard; Muñiz was among the passengers.

Four months later, he was shot in the head as he drove to his mother's house in San Juan. No arrests have ever been made. ''There had been threats, and our office had been bombed, but I guess we were too young to take the danger seriously; it was a mistake,'' Alzaga said.

The anniversary of Muñiz's death is being marked this week by Cuban government news sites.

''I don't like to use the word martyr, but I guess you can call Muñiz our martyr in the Cuba travel industry. He was the first and the only one directly killed over it,'' Aruca said.

For those agencies in business with Cuba, there are rules to follow. Initially, the travel companies had to follow conditions set by Havanatur -- among them, all flights had to be purchased with a seven-day stay in one of the state-run hotels.

Eventually agency owners were able to bargain to only require one night's stay in a hotel, and by the 1990s the hotel requirement was lifted.

Aruca said Marazul charged customers the cost of the flight and hotel stay, but barely broke even.

In the 1990s, travel agencies diversified by seeking out organizations, sports teams and schools that wanted to travel to Cuba for humanitarian and educational reasons, Aruca said.

Despite the domestic political controversy, winning permission from Washington for the flights is considered the easy part of the equation, said John Kavulich II, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. ''From the U.S. side, if you meet the criteria, you cannot be denied. There isn't a quota,'' Kavulich said.

On the Cuba side, it's another story.

''The Cuban government is going to favor those operators who have stated publicly that they oppose certain U.S. policies'' -- like Washington's trade embargo against the island, Kavulich said.

''They'll Google you,'' he added. ``Have you written letters, have you given testimony, have you been in the media opposing what the Cuban government feels are policies doing [Cuba] a disservice?''

Cuban Soccer Player-Defectors Adjust to a New Life

New York Times
May 9, 2008
Cuban Defectors Adjust to a New Life
By BILLY WITZ

LOS ANGELES — Under a sunny sky on a manicured soccer field, the drill was repeated over and over for 15 minutes. Maykel Galindo would settle a cross just outside the top of the penalty area, then try to figure out a way to put the ball past the man in goal.

Sometimes, Galindo demonstrated the skill that has made him one of the most dangerous strikers in Major League Soccer. Other times, it was the unfamiliar goalkeeper who would make an acrobatic save or force a miss that left his opponent cursing in Spanish.

Most of Galindo’s Chivas USA teammates and coaches, their practice over, watched from the sideline benches a routine that might have played out at any soccer club anywhere in the world: goal scorer versus goalkeeper.

But this scene in late April was not about mano a mano. It was Cubano a Cubano, a chance to look out and see not only the past but also a future.

“I felt like I was in Havana,” the goalkeeper, José Manuel Miranda, said through an interpreter.

Almost two months ago, Miranda was among seven players who walked away from Cuba’s under-23 men’s soccer team during an Olympic qualifying tournament in Tampa, Fla.

He recently joined two of the others — midfielder Yordany Alvárez and defender Yenier Bermúdez — on a four-day bus ride from Miami for a tryout with the Los Angeles Galaxy. After the Galaxy declined to offer them contracts, they trained for two days with Chivas USA, the other M.L.S. team in Los Angeles. But Chivas USA also declined to keep them on.

Despite the setbacks, Miranda, Alvárez and Bermúdez hardly seem discouraged. They met with an immigration official at the end of April to begin seeking work permits, driver’s licenses, Social Security cards and green cards.

For now, they are relying on the largess of a network that runs through Cuban and soccer communities in Miami, New York and Los Angeles. They have received food, clothing, transportation, a cellphone and lodging. They also have the opportunity to stay in shape by playing several semiprofessional games each week. They earn $40 to $50 each per game, which Miranda said was about five times their monthly salary at the national soccer academy in Cuba.

“The Cuban community is very tight knit and very good at taking care of their own people,” said Alicia Molina, a lawyer for the nonprofit International Institute of Los Angeles who is representing the players in their applications for work permits. “This is not a typical experience of an immigrant, but it is typical of a Cuban.”

It is not, however, the typical path for a Cuban soccer player. Nearly 150 baseball players are known to have defected from Cuba, according to the Web site Cubanball.com. Among them are well-known major leaguers like Orlando Hernández, Liván Hernández and José Contreras.

But before Galindo’s defection during the Concacaf Gold Cup in 2005, when he sneaked out of the team hotel in Seattle, hopped on a city bus and asked the driver to call a Spanish-speaking high school teacher he had just met, soccer players only occasionally left for the United States. And none have caused more than a ripple in M.L.S.

After playing two seasons in Seattle for a second-tier pro league team, Galindo joined Chivas USA last year and became one of the league’s top scorers, with 12 goals, as his new team compiled the second-best regular-season record in M.L.S. This season, he is making $79,500.

In Cuba, the three young players became familiar with Galindo’s success because they watched pirated broadcasts of M.L.S. games. Miranda described their defections as “an important experience” because it planted the idea that they could make a living doing what they love.

“The idea of playing professional sports was completely foreign to us,” Miranda said. “It hadn’t occurred to us as an option.”

The role of flag bearer is one that Galindo plays reluctantly. He has been hesitant to comment about Cuban issues, including Fidel Castro’s passing of power to his brother, Raúl, earlier this year.

“When the seven guys left in Florida, the head of the Cuban soccer federation announced that Maykel is responsible for that,” said Galindo, who said he had not met the three players here until last week. “When I decided to come, I did it by myself. I didn’t recommend anybody else do it. But now that they’re here, I’m going to do what I can to help them.”

Galindo said there were no repercussions for his family when he left.

But after his defection, Bermúdez said his brother was dismissed from Cuba’s under-20 team. And when he called his mother from Florida, he said, the line was cut off. Bermúdez also left a girlfriend behind.

“I feel responsible for my brother,” he said through an interpreter. “It wasn’t his fault. It was my fault. He knew nothing.”

This and being branded a traitor by Cuban officials only increase his desire to succeed.

Bermúdez and Alvárez are 22, and Miranda is 21. Each showed his capabilities on the field in Florida, when Cuba tied the heavily favored United States, 1-1. Miranda made eight saves, Alvárez assisted on the goal and Bermúdez captained the team.

Chivas USA Coach Preki, who gave extensive tryouts to two other Cuban defectors last summer, said their will and skill would be tested.

“It’s about surviving, and Maykel is a survivor, but Maykel also has a quality,” he said, noting Galindo’s speed. “It goes hand in hand. You can bring a survivor here, but can he play the game?”

Paul Bravo, the Galaxy’s director of soccer, said the three men will probably be best served playing in the lower-level United Soccer Leagues.

“These guys are good athletes and have good minds for the game,” Bravo said. “I hope they make it. It’s not easy to walk away from the possibility of going to the Olympics, but they’re like a lot of people in Cuba — not just athletes. They’re looking for a better way of life.”

Alvárez and Miranda expressed disappointment with how the Galaxy tryout went, but they shrugged it off as a learning experience. In the last two months, they have had plenty. There was the cross-country trip, in which they did not shower, they survived on soda and junk food, and they endured standing at the side of a highway outside San Antonio one night when their bus broke down. There was practicing with David Beckham, whose poster hung in Miranda’s room in Cuba.

“They’re very happy now,” said Federico Velasquez, a Cuban immigrant and high school Spanish teacher from West New York, N.J., who has been their de facto agent, calling teams and finding places for them to stay. “They know everything is not easy, but they want to play professionally. They appreciate the opportunity they are getting.”

They hope, if work permits are secured, for another tryout. Until then, they will play as often as they can and take everything in, as they did recently on the freeway. They were quietly taking in sights that seemed foreign at every turn when they spotted a familiar one up in the hills.

“It was the sign that read Hollywood,” Bermúdez said. “We started taking photos. We’d only seen it in films.”

As he spoke, he became animated, his voice rising and eyes widening. It was as if, in his own mind, he was picturing something else he had seen before — a Hollywood ending.

The coddled "terrorists" of South Florida

Salon.com
The coddled "terrorists" of South Florida
Anti-Castro Cuban exiles who have been linked to bombings and assassinations are living free in Miami. Does the U.S. government have a double standard when it comes to terror?

By Tristram Korten and Kirk Nielsen

Jan. 14, 2008 | On a hot subtropical Sunday, deep in the humid brush bordering the Everglades west of Miami, Osiel Gonzalez squints down the worn barrel of an AK-47 rifle and squeezes the trigger. With a crack and kick the bullet whizzes over a field of neatly trimmed grass and hits a human silhouette on a paper target 40 yards away.

Gonzalez wipes the sweat off his brow and smiles. Perspiration stains the neck and armpits of his camouflage jacket. All around him are men in fatigues, some flat-bellied on the grass shooting rounds, others cleaning their weapons or picking through ammunition boxes. The air is thick with cigar smoke. At age 71, Gonzalez is still one of the best marksmen at this training camp for Alpha 66, the paramilitary Cuban exile group formed in 1961 "with the intention of making commando type attacks on Cuba," as the organization's Web site baldly puts it. Gonzalez hopes to put his skills to use when the second revolution comes, the one that will tear his homeland free from the grip of communist dictator Fidel Castro. At that point Gonzalez hopes to have a Cuban soldier in his sights, not a paper silhouette.

Plans to attack Cuba are constantly being hatched in South Florida. Over the years militant exiles have been linked to everything from downing airliners to hit-and-run commando raids on the Cuban coast to hotel bombings in Havana. They've killed Cuban diplomats and made numerous attempts on Castro's life.

But, other than an occasional federal gun charge, nothing much seems to happen to most of these would-be revolutionaries. They are allowed to train nearly unimpeded despite making explicit plans to violate the 70-year-old U.S. Neutrality Act and overthrow a sovereign country's government. Though separate anti-terror laws passed in 1994 and 1996 would seem to apply directly to their activities, no one has ever been charged for anti-Cuban terrorism under those laws. And 9/11 seems to have changed nothing. In the past few years in South Florida, a newly created local terrorism task force has investigated Jose Padilla and the hapless Seas of David cult, and juries have delivered mixed reviews, but no terrorism charges have been brought against anti-Castro militants. The federal government has even failed to extradite to other countries militants who are credibly accused of acts of murder. Among the most notorious is Luis Posada Carriles, wanted for bombing a Cuban jet in 1976 and Havana hotels in 1997. It is, perhaps, a testament to the power of South Florida's crucial Cuban-American voting bloc -- and the political allegiances of the current president.

In Greater Miami, home to the majority of the nation's 1.5 million Cuban-Americans, the presence of what could credibly be described as a terrorist training camp has become an accepted norm during the half-century of the anti-Castro Cuban diaspora. Alpha 66 and numerous other paramilitary groups -- Comandos F4, Brigade 2506, Accion Cubana -- are so common they've taken on the benign patina of Rotary Clubs with weapons.

But Alpha 66 members are eager to remind you that even if they are graying and prosperous they are not toothless old tigers. Their Web site boasts that "in recent years" they've sabotaged Cuba's tourist economy by attacking hotels in the beach resort of Caya Coco. At the group's headquarters in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami, the walls are hung with the portraits of dozens of men who have died on Alpha 66 missions.

To reach Alpha 66's South Florida camp you have to drive to the farmlands west of Miami's sprawl, then wait for a guide. You follow the guide down a winding, pitted dirt road for a few miles until you get to a gate and a yellow watchtower hung with an old-fashioned school bell. Behind a wall of trees and shrubs is a compound that looks like a hunting lodge. A low-slung wood-plank bunker with a deck and awning provides refuge from the sun.

Before hitting the range, the men -- there are no women here today -- had done maneuvers, marching in double file around the field, while a short, barrel-chested former Cuban army officer named Ivan Ayala barked directions: "Columna izquierda!" Many of the aging, uniformed men laboring to make it around the field are veterans of the failed CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and alumni of Castro's jails. Some, like Osiel Gonzalez, even fought alongside Castro against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, before Castro's turn toward communism. Most, if you believe them, have a "commando" mission or two with Alpha under their belts -- landing on a remote beach and burning sugar cane fields, or strafing a shoreline with machine-gun fire. In other words, they've walked the walk of counterrevolutionary violence, even if it's now reduced to a shuffle.

They deny they have anything in common with the militants hiding in the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan. "No, we are not terrorists," says Gonzalez, the second-in-command and a co-founder of the group who, when he is not donning fatigues and shouldering a rifle, is a financial consultant. "We don't want to kill civilians."

"Our goal is to free our country for our children and grandchildren," drawls Al Bacallao, who has already retreated to the porch's shade behind Gonzalez and the shooting range. The 61-year-old Bacallao was raised in Georgia after arriving from Cuba at age 8, and is the rare Cuban exile with a Southern twang. "The United States fought for its liberty, why can't we?"

But Alpha members may have a fluid definition of what a civilian is. Raking the coast with .50-caliber machine-gun fire certainly does not exclude civilian casualties, nor does attacking tourist spots. By his own admission, Bacallao, who joined Alpha 66 23 years ago, has gone on several missions to Cuba. In 1993 U.S. authorities arrested him and a boatload of other men setting out for the island.

"Our plan was to land and make a hit and run -- those are the best actions, you know," recounts Bacallao, as rifle shots punctuate the air. "And we had everything on board; a .50 caliber gun, hand grenades, AK-47s, plastic explosives. We had enough to blow up Florida, Georgia and Alabama!" He lands hard on the "bam" in Alabama. Then he laughs. "But we broke down. The motor started failing and the currents were strong. Eventually we were picked up."

"Let me tell you, we were treated like animals," he says. "And all we were trying to do was liberate our country."

But if he was treated like an animal, he is not in a cage. Federal prosecutors charged him and his companions with illegal weapons possession but a judge dismissed the case against most of the men, and a jury found the rest not guilty. Like other anti-Castro exiles before him, despite violent acts he is free to continue reporting to the training camp, and free to continue preparing for counter-revolution.

When it comes to South Florida and terror, the official line from current and former federal law enforcement officials is that the law is enforced without fear or favor. The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, R. Alexander Acosta, declined comment for this story, but several of his predecessors insisted to Salon that the law is applied objectively and without regard to local or national politics.

"I don't think there has ever been or is presently a refusal to consider more aggressive charges if the evidence truly sustains them," asserts Kendall Coffey, who was the Southern District's U.S. attorney from 1993 to 1996 and is now a prominent defense lawyer. Coffey adds that he never experienced pressure from his bosses in Washington regarding Cuban militants. "Not at all," he says.

"The politics of a case simply do not come into play," states Guy Lewis, U.S. attorney in South Florida from 2000 to 2002.

Judy Orihuela, spokeswoman for the FBI's Miami office, insists the agency will investigate any group that intends to violate U.S. law and poses a violent threat. At the Department of Justice in Washington, Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the national security division, rejects the notion that federal law enforcement shows leniency toward exile militants. Boyd maintains the DOJ would never attempt to influence a local case for political reasons and is blind to community or political pressure. "We pursue charges based on the evidence, not on other considerations," he says.

"That's sheer bullshit," counters Wayne Smith, who was chief of mission at the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba under Presidents Carter and Reagan from 1979 to 1982, making him the de facto U.S. ambassador to Havana. Smith, who now runs the Cuba Program at the D.C.-based Center for International Policy, invokes the names of two of the most notorious Cuban exiles to argue that the U.S. does, in fact, play favorites. "We are certainly not applying these laws objectively in the case of Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and a whole lot of others who have been involved in terrorist activities. We say that countries must take action against terrorists, but we're clearly not. And I think it's because we're sympathetic to their actions."

At the beginning of Castro's reign, the U.S. was more than sympathetic to the militant exiles. In the 1960s, the U.S. government actively encouraged and supported anti-Castro violence, including the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion. "Throughout most of the 1960s, rolling back the Cuban revolution through violent exile surrogates remained a top U.S. priority," says Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive and a specialist on U.S. policy toward Cuba. With exile involvement, the U.S. government made numerous attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro between 1961 and 1975, though the number cited in the title of the British documentary "638 Ways to Kill Castro" may be an exaggeration. Many anti-Castro Cubans went to work for U.S. intelligence and compiled long résumés of covert activity. In the 1980s, some assisted with the Reagan administration's covert effort to arm the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

Cuban-American entanglement with the CIA eventually bled into U.S. politics; two of the five "plumbers" who broke into the Democratic Party's national headquarters at the Watergate in 1972 were Cuban-American. Tolerance for anti-Castro militancy, meanwhile, also had domestic consequences. Throughout the '60s and '70s and into the '80s, exiles carried out dozens of bombings and assassinations in Miami and other American cities, targeting people they deemed too accommodating to the Castro government.

Over time, as Kornbluh notes, the exiles seemed to change their approach somewhat as they aged and as they prospered economically -- and as the CIA backed away. By the 1980s, says Kornbluh, support for militancy "shifted from official funding to private backing from wealthy Cuban-Americans." Much of the anti-Castro activism among Cuban-Americans was directed by a Miami businessman named Jorge Mas Canosa, head of the Cuban American National Foundation. Cuban intelligence, and even anti-Castro militants, have linked CANF to violent plots targeting Cuba.

Still, however, the militants continued to train within the borders of the U.S., and to amass weaponry. Retired Army Col. Larry Wilkerson remembers attending briefings during Caribbean war game exercises from 1992 to 1997 where he learned of the exiles' capabilities. "We would always be fed this intelligence and I was astounded at how many suspected caches of arms they had access to not just in Florida, but in California, New Jersey and other places; light machine guns, grenades, C4, dynamite, all manner of side arms and long arms," recalls Wilkerson, who was former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff from 2002 to 2005. "It was a veritable terrorist haven. This is Hezbollah in Florida, if you're looking at it through Havana's eyes."

In general, it would be hard to deny that the U.S. government has at least created the appearance that it is willing to tolerate a great deal of legally questionable behavior. But to be fair, even if federal prosecutors want to be objective, they are part of a political culture where such decorous sentiments aren't always honored. Juries, judges -- even the prosecutor's families -- are liable to feel the tug of local anti-Castro feeling. "I welcome the opportunity of having anyone assassinate Castro," Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami recently told a British documentary crew. Ros-Lehtinen, who has also publicly expressed support for famed militant Orlando Bosch, is married to Dexter Lehtinen, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.

Even outside South Florida, juries can balk at convicting anti-Castro exiles. In 1997, the U.S. Attorney in Puerto Rico charged seven Cuban exiles with attempted murder of a foreign official after authorities searched a boat in Puerto Rico and found sniper rifles and night vision goggles, and interviewed a defendant who revealed a plan to whack Castro in Venezuela. The defendants tried to get a change of venue to South Florida and failed, but still succeeded in finding a sympathetic panel. A Puerto Rican jury acquitted the men of the attempted murder charges.

In perhaps the highest-profile criminal case involving Cuban exiles, federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., were unable to keep suspects in the assassination of former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier behind bars. Five Cuban-Americans were alleged to have played roles in the murder of Letelier and his American aide by car-bomb in D.C. in 1976. Three years later, Alvin Ross Diaz and Guillermo Novo Sampoll were convicted of murder and conspiracy to murder a foreign official and sentenced to life. Novo Sampoll's brother Ignacio was convicted on lesser charges.

Ross Diaz and Guillermo Novo Sampoll ended up serving less than five years, however, after winning a new trial and then acquittals. Ignacio Novo Sampoll, whose initial sentence was only three years, also had his conviction overturned on appeal. The last two defendants, Virgilio Paz Romero and Jose Dionisio Suarez Esquivel, eluded capture for 15 years, and then cut deals allowing them to serve less than a dozen years apiece. After his release, Guillermo Novo Sampoll would be arrested in Panama for plotting to murder Fidel Castro.

Today, federal law enforcement's de facto approach toward militant exiles seems to be to infiltrate and monitor them and attempt to disrupt their "missions" as they're launched. The Cuban government would maintain that the U.S. does not show sufficient interest in this limited task.

In 1997, Cuban intelligence agents discovered an exile plot to blow up airplanes carrying tourists to and from Cuba, according to a report released by the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, Havana's diplomatic post in the U.S. Castro himself wrote a letter to then-President Clinton asking for help investigating the plot, given the potential impact on both countries.

On June 15, 1998, a delegation of FBI agents went to Havana. The Cubans say they gave the agents documents, surveillance videos and samples from a defused bomb found in one of the hotels. The Cubans alleged the evidence led back to individuals in Miami. But when the FBI left, the Cubans claim they never heard anything more about the matter. Instead, three months after returning stateside, FBI agents arrested a network of 10 Cuban intelligence agents -- the source of much of the shared bombing information. Five of them pleaded guilty and received minimal sentences. Five others are serving terms ranging from 15 years to life. Havana has waged a prolonged propaganda campaign to free them.

One former law enforcement official dismisses the Cuban government's version of events. "They gave the FBI manila folders with a bunch of newspaper articles in them," the official scoffs, pointing out that the spy network had been under investigation for more than a year before the arrests.

When the feds do disrupt a mission and federal prosecutors do follow up criminally, they often charge the exiles with illegal weapons possession, a crime that carries a five-year prison sentence, rather than more serious offenses. Prosecutors have proven willing to accept lenient plea bargains and ask for lenient sentences. They have done so despite the fact that in 1994 and 1996, Congress passed laws that would give them far greater latitude to crack down on violent anti-Castro militants.

The 1994 Violent Crime and Control and Law Enforcement Act, an anti-terrorism measure passed after the first attack on New York's World Trade Center, made it illegal to knowingly provide material assistance for terrorist activity. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 was also intended to deter terrorism. The section titled "Conspiracy to Harm People and Property Overseas" states that anyone within the jurisdiction of the U.S. who conspires to commit "an act that would constitute the offense of murder, kidnapping, or maiming" abroad faces punishment up to life in prison.

During the Clinton administration, no anti-Castro militants were prosecuted under those laws. And then came the Bush administration, and 9/11.

In 2001, George Bush was inaugurated as president on the strength of Florida's 25 electoral votes. One reason he got close enough in the state's popular vote for the U.S. Supreme Court to hand him the victory was because Florida's Cuban voters supported him by a lopsided ratio of 4 to 1. His brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, had already established ties to the state's Cuban community, which had supported him by a similar margin in the gubernatorial election two years earlier. Jeb had also served as a campaign manager for Cuban-American Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in 1988, and during that campaign had called his father, George, then the vice president and a candidate for president, to enlist his help in blocking the deportation of militant Orlando Bosch.

All three Bushes have relied on Cuban-American money and support to carry Florida. In 2004, President George W. Bush placed new restrictions on U.S. citizens and Cuban residents in the U.S. who want to visit relatives on the island, and increased enforcement of the embargo against Cuba. To date, his administration has not invoked the 1994 and 1996 anti-terror laws against any anti-Castro militants.

The support of unsavory characters simply because they were fighting our fight was more understandable when we were engaged in a global war on communism. But given the Bush administration's "war on terror," some experts think our government's approach to Cuban militants within our own borders harms our credibility. "There's always some discretion allowed prosecutors, but generally the goal is to apply the laws equitably," explains Peter Margulies, a law professor at Roger Williams University School of Law, who has written about anti-terrorist laws and formerly taught at St. Thomas University in Miami. "If you don't, you undermine the legitimacy not only of U.S. law, but our standing in the world. Governments in Latin America now profoundly distrust us because we don't apply the same rules when dealing with Cuba that we do to the Middle East."

Under Bush, the FBI continues to monitor Cuban groups, but Miami spokeswoman Judy Orihuela says the agency considers the militants to be of "diminished capacity." The administration has its own ideas about who is and isn't a terrorist.

In August 2007, less than 30 miles from the Alpha 66 training camp, a federal jury in downtown Miami convicted a Brooklyn-born Muslim convert named Jose Padilla of conspiracy to kidnap, maim or kill people abroad. His sentencing hearing began last Wednesday; he faces up to life in prison. Although the military originally alleged he planned to detonate a dirty bomb in the U.S., the criminal case finally brought against him charged he plotted overseas attacks and plotted to provide support to terrorists as part of a U.S.-based terrorist cell. Prosecutors used the 1996 terrorism law in this case.

In December 2007, a federal jury failed to convict any of seven adherents of the Seas of David group of terror-related charges. The members of the tiny religious sect, who were also charged under the 1996 law, had allegedly conspired to purchase weapons from an informant they believed to be a representative of al-Qaida, and were supposedly plotting to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago and a federal building in Florida. When the FBI raided the group's headquarters, the most serious weapons agents found were three machetes and some handgun bullets. They never found any plans for a terrorist plot. The jury acquitted one man on all charges and could not agree on verdicts for the other six defendants. The judge declared a mistrial; the U.S. Attorney's office plans to retry the men in 2008.

The 1994 and 1996 anti-terror laws have been invoked more than 40 times since 9/11, but never against anti-Castro militants. If authorities in South Florida wanted to apply the same scrutiny to Cuban-Americans that they applied to Padilla, who is Puerto Rican, and the Seas of David group, which was largely Haitian-American, they could surely find some suspects who have both a training camp and more weaponry than machetes. Among the South Florida residents who might bear some scrutiny:

Santiago Alvarez and Osvaldo Mitat -- Cuban authorities allege that Alvarez, a founder of Alpha 66 who is now a Miami developer, was on board a motorboat that strafed the shoreline of a Cuban fishing village in 1971 killing two men and wounding four others, including two young girls.

Alvarez is known to have provided financial and other material support to Luis Posada Carriles and other militants. In April of 2001 Cuban authorities reported capturing three Miami area residents after they clambered ashore with AK-47 assault rifles, an M-3 carbine fitted with a silencer and three semi-automatic Makarov pistols. While in custody, one of the men phoned Alvarez, while Cuban agents recorded the call. "The other day, when you told me about the Tropicana, do you want me to do something there?" Ihosvani Suris de la Torre asked, referring to a popular nightclub. Alvarez responded: "If you want to do that there, so much the better. Makes no difference to me." Cuba asked the FBI to do a voice analysis to prove it was Alvarez. The FBI has never acknowledged opening an investigation. The Cuban government released a transcript of the call to foreign journalists and broadcast audio of it on national television.

Through his lawyer, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida Kendall Coffey, Alvarez told Salon he was not involved in the operation and was only trying to help Suris; he knew the call was being recorded, and that Suris faced the firing squad, so he wanted to say something that would make Suris appear to be providing valuable assistance to his captors.

But Alvarez sounded supportive in a 2001 interview with the Miami New Times. "My first connection with them is that we all believe that in order to fight Castro we have to fight in Cuba," he said in a previously unpublished portion of the interview, adding, "We're not terrorists."

In 2005 federal agents searched an apartment Alvarez kept north of Miami in Broward County and found a store of military hardware including an M-11 A1 machine gun, two Colt AR-15 assault rifles, a silencer, and a Heckler & Koch grenade launcher. Agents arrested Alvarez and his assistant, Osvaldo Mitat.

According to Peter Margulies, prosecutors could have considered charging Alvarez with providing material support for terrorist activity, which carries a sentence of 15 years to life. Instead, they charged Alvarez and Mitat with seven counts of illegal weapons possession.

Both pleaded guilty to one of the counts. The judge sentenced Mitat to about three years and Alvarez to just under four years. "While I have always been passionately interested in a free and democratic Cuba, I recognize that any conduct of mine must occur within the bounds of the law," Alvarez stated at his sentencing. After the plea, Alvarez supporters, who were able to remain anonymous, brokered a deal with prosecutors through a lawyer. In exchange for even more weapons, including 200 pounds of dynamite, 14 pounds of C-4 explosives and 30 assault weapons, the judge further reduced Alvarez's sentence to 30 months.

"Alvarez and Mitat are the paradigm of Miami justice," Miguel Alvarez, chief advisor to Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba's National Assembly of the People's Power, says wryly. "They confiscate a cache of arms from them, they try them, and when they turn over another cache of arms, they reduce their sentences. It's amazing."

Wonders Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive: "What was all that hardware for? Why did they let him plea bargain without getting the story on what he planned to do with all those weapons?"

"You can bet your bottom dollar," says Jose Pertierra, the Washington, D.C., attorney hired by the Venezuelan government to press for the extradition of militant Luis Posada, "if their names were Mohammed they wouldn't be as lenient and they'd certainly be looking for the rest of the arms."

Gaspar Jimenez -- Jimenez was indicted in the 1976 car bombing of Cuban-American radio commentator and critic of exile violence Emilio Milian in Miami. The U.S. attorney dropped the charges. In 1977 Mexican authorities arrested Jimenez and two others for attempting to kidnap the Cuban consul and killing the consul's bodyguard. Jimenez escaped and was rearrested in Miami in 1978. He was deported to Mexico and served less than three years. In 2000, he was jailed in Panama for attempting to assassinate Castro, as were Guillermo Novo, Pedro Remon and Luis Posada Carriles. All four were pardoned by the Panamanian president in 2004.

Pedro Remon -- One of the four exiles arrested in Panama for the Castro assassination plot, Remon was also arrested in 1985 in the United States for a bombing at the Cuban mission to the United Nations in New York. He was indicted for the murder of Cuban diplomat Felix Garcia-Rodriguez in New York and the attempted murder of the Cuban ambassador. He was sentenced to 10 years on reduced charges.

And then there's Luis Posada Carriles. With Orlando Bosch, he is a suspect in the 1976 bombing of a Cubana Airlines flight that killed 73 people. Posada is perhaps the most wanted of all of Miami's militants. "Certainly what Posada is accused of fits [the] standard [of the terrorism acts]," says Margulies.

"The Santiago and Posada cases create some real questions about whether we are applying the law in this matter in an objective manner. The premise of the anti-terrorism laws, including providing material support, is that people who are in this country shouldn't plan violence in another country, because 1) it is inherently wrong, particularly if it involves civilians, and 2) it can entangle the U.S. in complications, including war."

But the idea of indicting Posada as a terrorist would prompt laughter in many Cuban exile circles, if not a few bomb threats.

It's a warm night in Westchester, a largely Cuban suburb southwest of Miami. Shade trees sway outside the folksy Miami Havana restaurant; inside waiters pour sangria in the rear dining room, which is packed with heavily perfumed women draped in gold jewelry and men in starched guayaberas. Alpha 66 is hosting this fundraiser to repair storm damage at its training camp, but it is also a pep rally for "the struggle," la lucha.

Shortly after the American and Cuban national anthems play over a scratchy sound system but before the chicken and rice is served, an old man with neatly combed white hair enters through the French doors. He is barely visible behind a scrum of men who quickly surround him. Diners crane to see. They begin to whisper. Then clap. Soon there is a standing ovation. Luis Posada Carriles, the hero of the counter-revolution, is making his way to the head table.

"Bambi" Posada, 79, is wearing a light gray suit, white shirt and dark tie. As he sits down, the crowd asks him to speak. Talking publicly is not his strong suit after an assassination attempt in 1990 took out a chunk of his tongue. Nonetheless he mumbles a thanks to the crowd for their support, then sits down. During dinner a 9 mm Beretta pistol is raffled. The winner is a young mother.

The Cuban government has implicated Posada in a series of 1997 Havana hotel bombings, which killed an Italian tourist and injured 11 people. In 1998 Posada, a former CIA and Venezuelan intelligence operative, told the New York Times that he was responsible for the bombings. The Venezuelan government wants Posada for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner, which killed 73 people. Although Havana-bound Cubana Flight 455 originated in Trinidad and Tobago, the plot was allegedly hatched by Posada in Caracas. Two men who worked for Posada admitted to the crime, but Posada has repeatedly denied any involvement in that attack.

Venezuelan authorities arrested Posada and Orlando Bosch in 1976 for planning the bombing. Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985, in an operation allegedly funded by Jorge Mas Canosa, and fled to El Salvador. He then began working for a CIA-led gun-running operation. Posada was paid $3,000 per month by Oliver North deputy Maj. Gen. Richard Secord to funnel guns to the Nicaraguan Contras. After the Iran-Contra debacle, he remained in Central America as an advisor to the Guatemalan government.

In 2000 Panamanian authorities arrested Posada and three Miami Cubans for a plot to bomb a Panamanian auditorium where Castro was scheduled to give a speech. Posada was in possession of a gym bag full of C4 explosives. The four men were convicted on related charges in 2004; one was a CANF employee, another was Pedro Remon. Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso, a close U.S. ally, pardoned all four men that same year just before she left office. All of them returned to Miami except Posada.

In 2005 Posada entered the U.S illegally; he was later arrested with a false passport and jailed. He requested political asylum in April and the Venezuelan government requested his extradition in May. A U.S. immigration judge in Texas rejected Venezuela's request when prosecutors did not challenge Posada's assertion he'd be tortured if sent back. Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega said publicly in 2005 that the Cuban and Venezuelan charges against Posada "may be a completely manufactured issue." Posada was held by U.S. immigration authorities from May 2005 to April 2007, when he was released on bail. In May 2007, a U.S. district judge tossed out all charges of immigration fraud against him.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a Castro ally, has vowed to do all he can to prosecute Posada. "They have wanted to stonewall the extradition by giving the appearance of criminal prosecution on lesser matters," says Jose Pertierra, Venezuela's Washington attorney. "They use that at diplomatic meetings. They tell government officials from Venezuela, 'We're taking care of the Posada matter. We have a criminal investigation going on.'"

Whatever authorities might be investigating, whether it is Posada's role in the Havana bombings or his fake passport, "doesn't even compare with an extradition involving 73 counts of first-degree murder," Pertierra says. "Can you imagine Osama bin Laden [entering] Pakistan on a camel," he adds, "and Pakistani immigration authorities telling the White House that they don't want to extradite Osama bin Laden for murder because they've got him on an immigration charge?"

Eduardo Soto, Posada's lawyer in the immigration case, asserts that the international convention against torture prohibits his client's extradition to Venezuela. "You could be a convicted mass murderer, you could be Adolf Hitler, it matters not, if there is a possibility that he would be tortured in countries that would [otherwise] be entitled to take him," Soto says. It helped Posada's case that federal prosecutors didn't contest this claim.

There is another option. "Either extradite him to the country that is demanding him, Venezuela, or try him as if the act, the bombing of the Cubana plane, had been committed in U.S. territory," says Cuba's Miguel Alvarez, citing agreements hammered out at the Montreal Convention of 1991 on explosives, one of a series of international conventions meant to spell out the obligations of national governments when terrorism occurs.

Back at the Miami Havana restaurant, Posada has been joined at the front table by an old comrade in arms. Sitting next to Posada is Pedro Remon, who shared a cell with Posada in Panama. Remon stands up to speak. "It's an honor to have gathered here tonight for a just cause," he tells the crowd. "To cooperate with an organization that has been the vanguard over so many years of struggle against communism in Cuba."

Remon's years behind bars give him, like Posada, a kind of elder statesman status among the exiles, and prison has hardly diminished his resolve. Athletic with a thick mustache, he still believes in groups like Alpha 66. "The organization has been strengthened," he tells Salon in an interview at the restaurant. "They have very good new people who are dedicated to the cause of Cuba." And he laments the absence at the fundraising dinner of comrade-in-arms Santiago Alvarez. "I'm very hopeful he'll be with us soon," he says.

Posada is less talkative with strangers. "I'm sorry, I still have a legal matter." After dessert he politely waves goodbye to his supporters and heads for the door escorted by Alpha 66's jefe militar Reinol Rodriguez.

Rodriguez, a towering man with white hair and mustache, returns to the dining room and stands with a group of men in a half-circle, including Al Bacallao, who back at the training camp talked about his 1993 arrest on a weapons-laden boat headed for Cuba. They've loosened their collars, rolled up their sleeves, and are talking hopefully about the hot summer in Havana and how the heat might fuel discontent. "We're waiting for the spark," Rodriguez says. "We're ready to go when the moment comes."

"We have what it takes," Bacallao adds extending his hands as if he were holding a couple of melons. "Cojones."

-- By Tristram Korten and Kirk Nielsen

Cubans in Spain: In Cultural Haven, Cubans Need Not Choose Sides

NYT
August 3, 2007
Madrid Journal
In Cultural Haven, Cubans Need Not Choose Sides
By MIRTA OJITO

MADRID — This is surely not the only city in the world where a handful of Cubans can spend a day together and avoid talking politics. But it is certainly the preferred one for Cuban artists and intellectuals of all political stripes, who find the freedom here that they could never have in Havana and the opportunities that may elude them in Miami, both polarizing cities in the endless debate about Fidel Castro and the nature of exile.

To wit: In a nondescript musical studio here recently, two Cubans who for years were separated by politics got together to record an album and announce their first joint concert tour of Spain. They were the legendary pianist Bebo Valdés, 88, who left Cuba in 1960 and has vowed not to return until there is a democratic government in place, and his son, the jazz pianist Chucho Valdés, 65, who keeps a home in Havana and still informs the Cuban Ministry of Culture of his artistic whereabouts.

With two Cuban exiles from Miami, the producer Nat Chediak and his wife, Conchita Espinosa, and a Cuban-American filmmaker, Carlos Carcas, who was raised in Miami and lives in Madrid, they talked mostly about music, not an unusual scene in a city that has become a welcoming neutral ground for the great many Cuban artists and intellectuals who live here.

“Madrid has been one of the few places in the world where they have been able to find a breather,” Mr. Chediak said.

Cultural expressions — from literature to music — that cannot possibly take place in Havana because of government censorship and may be difficult to negotiate in Miami because of the fervent politics of some Cuban exiles, are finding an outlet and an audience in the country many Cubans still call, and not always in jest, la madre patria, the mother country.

The reasons vary, and range from Cuba’s shared heritage and language with Spain to the fact that for many Cubans, Havana and Miami continue to be the two extremes of a political spectrum that forces Cubans to define themselves by making only one, but crucial, decision: the rejection or acceptance of the Castro brothers’ government by opting for exile or staying on the island. Miami begs the question; Madrid accepts ambiguity.

“In Cuba and Miami, there is no middle ground,” said Boris Larramendi, 37, one of the lead musicians of Habana Abierta, a group that has already released three albums in Madrid and has played both in Cuba and Miami. “Here you can feel somewhat distant from both extremes and take certain positions that would be difficult to maintain in Havana or Miami, particularly in Cuba, where I know that if I said the things I say here, I’d be jailed.”

Cuban performers and intellectuals who live in Madrid say they do not necessarily reject the option of living in South Florida. Spain has simply become an increasingly easier country to get to because the Cuban government is more lenient with exit permits to Europe than to the United States. Those who decide to stay here find a welcoming attitude because of the familiar ties that for generations have bound the two countries together.

Washington’s policies, too, have contributed to the mushrooming presence of Cuban intellectuals here. While a decade ago, under President Clinton, Cuban academics and artists freely traveled to cities like New York, Chicago and Miami, and returned to the island, or not, the Bush administration has severely curtailed such cultural exchanges. They are happening, instead, in Spain’s universities, cafes and concert halls.

It is difficult to determine who among the Cubans here intends to stay or is just passing through. Kelvis Ochoa, one of the lead musicians of Habana Abierta, for example, is now in Cuba. Mr. Larramendi said he did not know if Mr. Ochoa planned to return or stay. He has not asked.

Some writers and musicians say they will never live in Cuba again under the Castro government; others are reluctant to commit publicly to any political position for fear they will not be allowed to return to their families on the island. The result is a revolving door of Cuban intellectuals and artists.

“Here, what’s important is your work, not your biography,” said Antonio José Ponte, a 42-year-old Cuban writer who has lived in Madrid for one year. “In a city like Miami people want to know who you are, what you think, when you left. They want to know who they are talking to. Here, the outlines are fuzzier.”

Yet, Mr. Ponte said he understood that eagerness to know: “It’s the nature of the altered and confusing state of being an exile.” The increasing importance of Spain in Cuba’s cultural life is the newest twist in the relations between the countries. In the 19th century, when Cubans were waging war against Spain to obtain their independence, rebels were sent here as punishment. Later, many Spaniards escaping the civil war here found refuge in Cuba. And, in the 1960s, Cuban refugees fleeing Castro found haven here, but the majority eventually moved to Miami or Puerto Rico. Now, for those eager to have close contact with Cuban artists and thinkers, Madrid has become a necessary stop.

“It’s been an accidental and slow process,” said Raúl Rivero, who left Cuba for Madrid in the spring of 2005, after two years of imprisonment for his work as an independent journalist and dissident.

Even if they could travel to Miami, many artists and intellectuals choose to stay here for “practical reasons.” They have the backing of publishing houses, art galleries and even the film and television industry, in a country where the Spanish-language market is not a niche business, but the only one.

Yet, Mr. Rivero said going to Miami was a problem for Cuban intellectuals and artists who were simply passing through because the Cuban government scrutinized those visits.

Some artists, like Chucho Valdés, have reached such heights of popularity and professional achievement that they have much more freedom than younger, emerging artists. Mr. Valdés informs the Cuban Cultural Ministry of where he performs, but he does not seek permission, he said.

He would be eager to play in Havana with his father, he said. Then he paused. “But I don’t know if Bebo will be willing to go. That’s a different story.”

His father said there was no reason for him to return to Cuba.

“If the regime changes and there is a constitution and I don’t have to ask permission from anyone to return to my own country, then I’ll go back and play,” he said. “And that would be a joyful day.”

Plan prepared for Cuban exodus

Posted on Fri, Feb. 16, 2007

MIAMI HERALD EXCLUSIVE | GUANTANAMO BAY
Plan prepared for Cuban exodus
The Bush administration will build a new facility to detain migrants in Guantánamo amid stepped-up preparations for dealing with a post-Castro Cuba.
By PABLO BACHELET
pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com

WASHINGTON - Concerned about a possible mass exodus of Cubans, the Department of Defense plans to spend $18 million to prepare part of the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay to shelter interdicted migrants, U.S. officials told The Miami Herald.

The new installation is needed because terrorism suspects occupy space on the base used in past emergencies to hold large numbers of migrants, Bush administration officials directly involved said. They note that the facilities are designed to house people from any Caribbean nation who attempt to enter illegally -- not just Cubans.

But they say privately that Fidel Castro's illness and temporary hand-over of power to his brother Raúl last summer injected a renewed sense of urgency into plans to handle a mass exodus. The administration quietly requested the funds about a month ago and Congress has approved it, The Miami Herald was told.

The officials, who were authorized to speak on the subject but requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of Cuban issues, say there is no sign a Cuban migration crisis is brewing, but they acknowledge predicting one is difficult. The 1980 Mariel boatlift, which saw 125,000 Cubans arrive in Florida, began when a group of Cubans tried to storm the Peruvian embassy in Havana.

BIGGER PLAN

The $18 million initiative is part of a broader U.S. government effort to prepare for the death of Castro. The administration will not say how many migrants it believes might flee Cuba or even if any will do so, but one expert warned that up to 500,000 may try to leave the island after Castro's death.

Top Bush Cabinet officials have met at least twice since December to review Cuba contingency plans. On March 7 and 8, the Department of Homeland Security will lead an exercise in South Florida involving the Coast Guard and dozens of federal, state and local agencies, focused on stopping U.S. boaters from picking up rafters.

The U.S. Navy base, on the eastern tip of Cuba, apparently would be used as a shelter of last resort if the volume of Cubans interdicted at sea overwhelms the U.S. policy known as ``wet foot/dry foot.''

Under that policy, Cubans who make it to U.S. territory are allowed to remain. Those intercepted at sea are interviewed aboard Coast Guard vessels and most are repatriated to Cuba. A few who have been found to credibly risk persecution if returned to Cuba have been taken to Guantánamo for more interviews while U.S. officials arrange for their resettlement in third nations.

U.S. officials refused to say whether the wet foot/dry foot policy will be changed in case of an exodus, since such an announcement might prompt many Cubans to leave.

For years, migrants captured during surges ended up in tent camps at Guantánamo on a bluff called Radio Range, on the larger Windward side of the base.

1994 MIGRATIONS

At the height of the last migration crisis in 1994, more than 32,000 Cubans and 21,000 Haitians overwhelmed the base in tent cities. Most of the Cubans were later sent to the United States. Most of the Haitians were sent home.

The Pentagon has since built its sprawling terrorism detention and interrogation center at the site of the old tent camps, limiting shelter space. The plan would put them on the smaller Leeward side, which has an airstrip but no docks for large ships.

''The capacity to process migrants at Guantánamo is an integral part of our overall plans to ensure that any attempted mass migration in the Caribbean is not successful,'' said one official, who also declined to be identified. The official said the new facility is ``part of prudent contingency planning.''

''The U.S. has established avenues for safe, orderly, legal migration from the various countries in the Caribbean,'' the official added. ``Any effort to send people to the United States via unsafe and illegal means will not succeed.''

The Pentagon already has solicited construction bids for the new facility. The $18 million would pay for things like land leveling, sewage and electrical infrastructure, bathrooms, dining facilities and administrative offices to process asylum applications. The installations will be initially designed to handle about 10,000 migrants, officials say, though more can be quickly accommodated if needed.

SCENARIOS

Andy Gomez, senior fellow at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, says focus groups and other interviews show many young Cubans are eager to leave.

''If the economic conditions do not get better, there is the strong possibility that as many as 500,000 Cubans will want to leave the island in all directions,'' he says. ``The other possibility will also be a large group of Cubans rushing the U.S. base in Guantánamo or foreign embassies in Havana.''

Latin American countries may be reluctant to take in numerous migrants, he added.

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard is finalizing plans for an exercise next month that will involve scores of vessels.

Rear Adm. David Kunkel, head of the Coast Guard's South East District, is in charge of coordinating interdiction efforts among many agencies, including the U.S. Navy and Miami-Dade Police.

''We would be concerned with boaters leaving from South Florida marinas to potentially increase the problem,'' said Jim Watson, chief of staff of the South East District. He said ''deterrent elements'' would be tested.

Miami Republican Reps. Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, who have been briefed on preparations, could not be reached for comment.

Miami Herald staff writer Carol Rosenberg contributed to this report

New York Times: After Castro

January 21, 2007
After Castro
What Was Once Theirs
By ANTHONY DePALMA

FOREIGNERS almost never show up on the ragged streets of the old town across the bay from Havana. But there was a knock recently on the front door of the battered yellow house in Guanabacoa that is home to Marielena and Francisco, a working-class couple, and outside stood an American.

The stranger explained that his wife had lived in that four-room house as a child. In 1962, almost four years after Fidel Castro took power, she and her family fled to New York, and now she wanted pictures to show their children where she had twirled in the patio and sung old Spanish ballads as she grew up in another time, and another world.

Marielena welcomed the stranger, but Francisco (he was afraid to give his last name) stood with arms folded over his bare chest. “You came here all the way from America just to take pictures,” he said suspiciously. “Are you going to reclaim this house?”

The stranger in Guanabacoa (pronounced hwan-ah-bah-COE-ah) had no intention of reclaiming the shoebox house or anything else. I know, because I was the person who knocked on that door during a trip to Cuba last year. My wife, Miriam, lived in that house until she was 10. When she saw the photographs I carried back, she was overcome with bittersweet emotion. Though now faded and chipped, the pink paint on the walls and the green and red tiles on the floor were still there, 44 years later.

Nothing had changed and, of course, everything had changed in the years since the revolution triumphed. That’s the phrase Fidel Castro’s regime has always used — “the triumph of the revolution” — and it slips off the tongues of even those Cubans who have benefited little from his rule.

But now, as they await the demise of the only leader most of them have ever known, Cubans are forced to reconsider what the revolution has meant. Many on the island are caught between two fears — today’s and tomorrow’s. Where will they find the money, energy and enterprise to get themselves and their children through another day? And when Fidel dies, will the 1.5 million Cuban-Americans in Florida and New Jersey return to take back what once was theirs? Mr. Castro, who confiscated private property throughout the island nearly 50 years ago, has exploited such anxieties to bolster a sense of national identity, and those fears have only intensified during his long illness.

And not without reason. The United States maintains a list of some 5,911 compensation claims by American companies and United States citizens dating from the revolution. Including interest, they are now worth more than $6 billion. And lawyers in Florida and the New York area are girding for one heck of a fight.

To Cubans who stayed, those who left are “gusanos,” worms that crawled away from the homeland. The government turned over any house left behind to other Cubans long ago, and after so many years the current residents believe these houses belong to them, though they hold no title because technically everything in Castro’s socialist enclave belongs to the state.

Few exiles have papers either, and unlike the American citizens of a half-century ago whose claims were registered by Washington, Cubans who lost property had no mechanism in their own country for recording their losses.

But so much time has passed that many gusanos agree that they no longer have a legitimate claim to the houses and small properties they left behind. Miriam’s family never even owned the house in Guanabacoa, and no one claims it as theirs.

Several public opinion polls and surveys of Cuban-Americans conducted recently in South Florida and North Jersey show that a declining percentage of the diaspora still dreams of reclaiming houses. This is especially true among the younger generation, whose members never lived in Cuba.

Still, some exiles did sneak out deeds and have fished them out of strongboxes since Fidel became sick. While some undoubtedly will try to reclaim former residences, most want factories, mills and other commercial properties.

“Cubans are not going to fight over the last few crumbling homes,” said Nicolas J. Gutiérrez Jr., a 42-year-old Cuban-American lawyer in Miami who represents many business claimants and for himself seeks the return of two sugar mills, 15 cattle ranches, a food distribution center and more. “Out of the hundreds of people I represent and the thousands I talk to I’ve never met anyone who says he’s going to go back there and kick people out. On a base level, that would be immoral.”

Even so, the fear held by people like Marielena and Francisco matters, having been planted by the regime and nurtured by a controlled press that issues regular warnings about ignoble gusanos and what they might try in a moment of crisis.

This dense cloud of uncertainty has been hanging over Cuba since the summer, when Mr. Castro, who is 80, ceded power to his brother, Raúl, who is 75. For most Cubans, the fear of the future has little to do with who eventually replaces “El Commandante.” Rather, most are consumed by the contradiction between longing for change and fearing that change will come.

All but the most strident military families and pampered government officials hate the current economic system. They have had it with ration books and wartime restrictions — one tasteless roll a day, and every month eight eggs, a few pounds of chicken and a half-pound of something called “ground-up texturized soy” among other basics. But they also can’t imagine life without such subsidized guarantees.

They also resent a two-tier currency system that makes many consumer goods available to tourists, but out of reach for Cubans. And capitalism itself seems brutal and forbiddingly unequal, a system they can glimpse only when it rubs shoulders with shabby Castro-style Communism in hotels they cannot enter and restaurants that let them in only if they are on the arm of a foreigner.

So engulfed have they been in the daily struggle to survive that many Cubans told me they wanted just to forget about the transition now taking place. The regime seemed willing to assist them. Visiting relatives in La Lisa, a poverty-stricken area outside Havana with a forest of six-story Soviet-style housing blocks, I saw what looked like a water tanker in a public square one Saturday night. Crowds thronged, and I could tell that it wasn’t water that flowed from the tap. It was cheap beer. A bucket and a few centavos could make the weekend pass more quickly.

Still, there continues to be an undercurrent of pride in Fidel’s ability to stand up to so many American presidents for so long, and a deeply rooted resentment of the United States and its embargo. So whenever Fidel dies, there is likely to be a great show of grief in Cuba, and a funeral fit for a pharaoh.

But the next day will bring the longed-for, dreaded future — the specter of a new encounter with the outside world that will challenge the efforts of Cuba’s current leaders to make certain that Fidel Castro’s Revolution survives his death.

Already, the leaders are making him more myth than man. New billboards have sprouted along the main highways around Havana: “Fidel Es Un País” — Fidel is a country.

But Cuban-Americans in the United States don’t see it that way. And it isn’t likely that Marielena and Francisco and other ordinary Cubans do either.

When Fidel no longer looms over Cuba, it is much more likely that both sides will focus on what happens when there is another knock at the door, and another stranger asks to come in.

Some Cuban Exiles Give Up the Wait

From the Los Angeles Times
Some Cuban Exiles Give Up the Wait
Even if the Castro regime falls, there are expatriates entrenched in Miami who no longer seek to recapture their old lives on the island.
By Miguel Bustillo
Times Staff Writer

August 2, 2006

MIAMI — This city's voluble Cuban exiles, who have been on a collective Fidel Castro death watch for decades, shouted in the streets in a state of ecstasy Tuesday after the communist regime's surprising announcement that the charismatic caudillo had handed the reins of power to his brother.

Yet for many of the aging Cubans who came to the United States generations ago to flee Castro, the mood of exultation soon gave way to a sober realization: The dictator's long-awaited final hour will come too late for them to reclaim their lost lives.

Many Cuban exiles said they no longer harbored dreams of a glorious return home to open businesses and reclaim family properties in a free Cuba, as they did 10 or 20 years earlier. They are grounded in this country, their children are lifelong Americans, and they plan to stay.

"Why would I want to go to a country where I don't know anyone anymore, to a big house that needs hundreds of thousands of dollars of work?" asked Raquel Blizard, 70, whose aunt had willed to her a mansion, with a wrought iron veranda and ample servants' quarters, in Havana's once-fashionable Vedado neighborhood.

"My family, my husband and my children, they're all here now."

Calle Ocho, the heart of Miami's Little Havana neighborhood, was flooded with exiles waving Cuban flags, dancing and honking horns in cacophonous celebration, after Castro's secretary went on television Monday evening and said Castro, 79, was temporarily ceding power to his brother Raul, 75.

Trucks blared the Cuban national anthem on loudspeakers, while anti-Castro activists in guayabera shirts joyously waved banners that declared, "The tyrant is dead."

"There is a tremendous amount of excitement," said Miami's Cuban-born Mayor Manny Diaz, as he mingled at Versailles restaurant, the epicenter of the exile community. "This is a totalitarian government that has destroyed families, and it may be coming to an end."

Yet many of the Cuban exiles standing along the street made it clear that although they held an inexorable hatred for Castro, and a profound hope that they could live to see their old country returned to freedom, they were Americans now.

"Some people will leave Miami for Cuba, and the real estate market will probably drop," if the Castro government falls, said Mario Torralbas, 72, a retired dentist who stopped by Calle Ocho to revel in the emotion of Tuesday's moment. "But I bet you within a year, those people will be back in Miami. It's going to be very hard to fix the mess this man has made."

The Cuban government emphasized that the transfer of power to Raul Castro was only temporary while Castro recovered from emergency surgery — and the White House said its intelligence sources believed Castro was indeed alive.

Nonetheless, many Cuban exiles used to parsing the propaganda of the communist regime were convinced that the bearded strongman, who reportedly had Parkinson's disease, was dead and that the decision to transfer power was an attempt to soften the blow to the Cuban people. (A statement from Fidel Castro, in which he claimed to be "stable" and said "as for my spirits, I feel perfectly fine" was read on Cuban television Tuesday.)

Some, such as Rodolfo Frometa, the director of the paramilitary group Comandos F-4, spoke of seizing the opportunity to foment a rebellion and reestablish a democracy.

"Many times, we have heard rumors suggesting that Castro was dead only to see him give a four-hour speech a week later. But this time, I am sure that he is gone," Frometa said. "If he had any air left in his lungs, he would have gone on Cuban television himself and read that paper explaining what was happening, because Fidel understands the power he has over the people."

Others voiced less radical plans of action and predicted that if Raul Castro is in charge, the Cuban government will collapse on its own. Raul Castro, they said, does not possess the political dexterity or mesmerizing rhetoric that made Fidel Castro the exiles' archenemy for nearly half a century.

"Raul can't handle this," said Javier Sotolon, who came to the U.S. as a teenager 13 years ago and who skipped out on his job as a cement mixer to attend the anti-Castro celebration.

"Fidel is one of a kind," he added, holding his index finger in the air for emphasis. "No one else can hold that country together."

Although some of the exiles are nostalgic about their country and restoring an idealized Cuban society, the passage of time has dulled those dreams for many.

Fifteen years ago, a Miami Herald poll showed that one-fifth of the region's Cuban exiles — a significant slab of the city's financial and cultural bedrock — planned to return to Cuba the minute Castro lost power.

A virtual government in exile of elite Cubans, established with strong support from former presidents Reagan and Bush, and led by influential businessman Jorge Mas Canosa, stood waiting for Castro's demise.

Miami leaders faced serious questions about what would happen to their city's economy if the Cuban immigrants who did so much to transform it from a swampy backwater into a world-class metropolis suddenly decided to leave.

But Mas Canosa is now dead, along with many other members of his purported government in exile, and Cuba experts question whether many of Miami's remaining first-generation Cubans really want to go home at this point. At most some say, only about 10% of South Florida's estimated 800,000 Cuban immigrants would have a serious interest.

Moreover, Miami is now a cosmopolitan gateway to Latin America, with immigrants from dozens of nations, and no longer depends so heavily on the Cuban exiles to power its diverse economy.

"The much more likely outcome is going to be mass migration to the United States, not the other way around," said Damian J. Fernandez, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.

"But I really don't believe we will see a one-or-the-other scenario. We will find great fluidity across the straits, with people investing in both nations, and a return to the era of the 1920s, where these two areas where closely connected."

Miami santero/drummer faces deportation

From miaminewtimes.com
Originally published by Miami New Times 2005-09-29
©2005 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved.

Exit Philbert
Immigration wants to deport a well-known santero/drummer over five stolen shirts
By Mariah Blake


Jonathan Postal
Armenteros ain't crooning at Krome


Who / What:
Philbert Armenteros
Three-year-old Jorge Armenteros giggles and shrieks as he patters around barefoot on the tile floor of a Burger King in Little Havana. His brother Eric, a lanky six-year-old, happily wolfs down Chicken Tenders. French fries are scattered on the table in front of him, and ketchup is smeared on his white tank top.

Neither of them, nor Jorge's twin sister Raquel, knows that their dad Philbert might never come home again. And their mom, Luz Preciado, wants it to stay that way. "I tell them that their dad went on a trip," she says. "I want them to keep the good image they have of him. He's their role model."

Philbert Armenteros is a singer and percussionist best known for his throbbing, hypnotic rhythms rooted in Afro-Cuban tradition. He has performed and recorded with internationally renowned acts such as Don Dinero and Yerba Buena. And his burly six-foot-three frame and gold-tooth smile are fixtures in Miami's Latin music scene, where he has played with numerous groups, among them Palo!, the Nag Champayons, and his own band, Aina.

Music is not only a job but also a form of worship for Armenteros, a Santería priest who has played regularly at drumming ceremonies, where he beckoned the gods to Earth with fierce batá rhythms.

Now Armenteros, who has a green card and has lived in the United States for more than a decade, has been detained by immigration officials and is facing deportation. The 28-year-old has been at the Krome Detention Center since this past August 10. The apparent reason: He pled guilty to stealing three polo shirts and a couple of sweater vests from a Dillard's department store more than seven years ago.

"It's really ridiculous," says Anna Bryant, who tends bar at Jazid, a hip South Beach club where Armenteros played regularly. "So many people who live in this country do much worse things and only get a slap on the wrist. If he leaves, we're losing a really amazing person and a great musician. And what for?"

Armenteros was born in late Seventies Havana and early on discovered his twin passions -- Santería and music. His family was made up of santeros, or Santería priests. And his great grandmother, Mercedes Alfredo, danced and sang with the well-known rumba group Clave y Guaguanco, as well on Radio Cadena Havana and at Santería ceremonies. She served as Armenteros's spiritual guide and taught him music and dance while he was still a toddler. By age five, he was performing at ceremonies and festivals. He continued to drum and sing his way through Cuba until moving to Miami eleven years ago.

Almost as soon as he arrived here, Armenteros began getting into trouble. In December 1995, police picked him up for shoplifting, but the charges were eventually dropped. Seven months later, police charged him with possession of one joint and a small package of cocaine, according to court documents. This time he was released without a trial on the condition that he complete a drug treatment program, which he eventually did.

For a while Armenteros steered clear of the law. Then, on January 16, 1998, he walked into a Dillard's department store in Broward toting a gift box covered in green Christmas wrapping. The box had a slit on one side, and Armenteros shoved three polo shirts and two sweater vests, valued at $365, into it. He then attempted to leave, but an officer nabbed him outside the store. In March of that year, Armenteros pled guilty to grand theft and received three years' probation. Grand theft is considered an aggravated felony, a deportable offense, according to a 1996 federal law.

Homeland Security spokesperson Barbara Gonzalez wouldn't specify why Armenteros has been detained, but Preciado says it's because of the Dillard's incident.

In August 1998, Armenteros was arrested again for violating probation by smoking marijuana and failing to pay fines. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail. During this turbulent period, Armenteros met Preciado at a Santería drumming ceremony in Naples, Florida. She was seventeen years old and pretty, with soft, almond-shape eyes and a smattering of freckles sprinkled across her round face. "We started talking, and we hit it off right away," Preciado says. Within months, she was pregnant. And in July 1999, when Armenteros was 21 years old, their eldest son, Eric, arrived. In August 2002, Preciado gave birth again, this time to the twins, Jorge and Raquel.

For the first five years, the couple's relationship was bumpy, but Preciado says Armenteros was always a deeply devoted father. There were no new criminal charges, and his musical career flourished. He also began helping to organize music showcases, such as the Afro Roots World Music Festival, and became involved in projects to educate people about traditional Cuban music and culture, particularly his religion, Santería. He wrote regularly for Olofin.com, an online Santería magazine, and he recently made a presentation at Florida International University. "His goal is to dissolve fear," says José Elias, who plays guitar in Armenteros's band.

Armenteros began teaching his own children Afro-Cuban music and dance while they were still in diapers, and took them to Cuba to be initiated as santeros when Eric was three and the twins were five months old. He returned to Cuba with the children in May 2004 for ritual animal sacrifices, which he believed would protect them. During the trip, Preciado says, thieves broke into Armenteros's rental car and snatched his Sony digital camera along with his passport and green card.

When he returned to the United States, Armenteros was issued a temporary green card, which was good for only one year. In late June of this year -- less than two months before he was detained -- he bought a three-bedroom house on NW 56th Street near Eighteenth Avenue for his family. Around the same time, his band, Aina, found a weekly gig at Jazid. Employees there describe Armenteros as a sort of gentle giant. "He's a great big guy with almost frighteningly large hands," says bartender Anna Bryant. "But he's always smiling and polite, and he never drinks."

On August 10, Armenteros went to an Immigration Services office to renew the temporary green card, according to Preciado. That's when he was detained. Hours later, he called Preciado and told her, but she didn't believe him. "I thought it was a joke," she says. "He told me he was serious, and I burst into tears. But I still didn't believe it was really true."

Soon, Preciado says, she was flooded with phone calls from Armenteros's fans and fellow musicians, some of them strangers, offering help. Many who had hired him to play at Santería drumming rituals offered to postpone their events until Armenteros was free. Aina continues to play its weekly Jazid gig but has drawn sparser crowds.

Armenteros's fate remains an open question. His first deportation hearing, held September 22, was inconclusive. It's unclear what will happen if the judge rules against Armenteros, since the United States rarely deports people to Cuba.

Meanwhile, Armenteros missed the twins' birthday August 24. Preciado is struggling to keep the family afloat while holding down a job as a receptionist. Finances are tight. And she says all of the children have begun wetting their beds again. "Everybody makes mistakes," Preciado remarks wearily. "Philbert's paying for his. But it's not just consequences for him. It's a consequence for everyone."