Cuba thwarts U.S. efforts to help dissident

Miami Herald
posted on Thu, Nov. 16, 2006

PROMOTING DEMOCRACY IN CUBA | SECOND OF TWO PARTS
Cuba thwarts U.S. efforts to help dissidents
The United States has spent $7 million to teach Cubans journalism and English and to educate children of dissidents. But the efforts have fallen short.
By OSCAR CORRAL
ocorral@MiamiHerald.com

John Virtue crammed everything a reporter needed to know into a clandestine workshop for independent journalists in Havana four years ago. But he just couldn't squeeze in the ethics lessons.

Manuel David Orrio, a student with a limp, eagerly volunteered to teach the ethics class for Virtue, director of Florida International University's International Media Center.

On March 14, 2003, Orrio taught the course at the Havana home of then-U.S. Interests Section chief James Cason. Four days later, the Cuban government launched its biggest crackdown on dissidents and independent journalists in years. Seventy-five were imprisoned -- including 26 independent journalists.

Among the communist regime's star witnesses: Orrio, who was really a Cuban agent.

''He'd been under cover, an independent journalist for 12 years,'' Virtue said.

FIU is among a handful of American universities that have received more than $7 million in the past decade from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to train Cuban journalists, teach Cubans English, study property-rights issues and educate the children of dissidents at U.S. colleges.

But USAID's academic effort has fallen short of its mark, according to federal records, university reports and interviews with dozens of academic and U.S. experts. For example:

• FIU has received $1.6 million from USAID since 1999 to train journalists. As many as 214 students have taken a 2 ½-hour workshop or correspondence course or video conferencing. As of August, only four Cubans have completed all the required courses.

• Georgetown University has received $400,000 in scholarship grants to teach at least 20 Cuban students. USAID promised $400,000 more for other scholarships. In three years, Cuba has allowed only one student to leave for Georgetown.

• Loyola University in Chicago received a $425,000 grant from USAID in 2004 to teach English to Cubans on the island. It has yet to teach anyone under that program. Loyola suspended the program after its Cuban partners objected to the USAID connection.

• Creighton University in Nebraska received a $750,000 grant from USAID last year to study Cuba's confiscation of properties and create a model tribunal for property claims after Fidel Castro dies. Some Cuba experts say it's a waste of money -- because Creighton had no experience in Cuba-related property-rights research.

''I just want an opportunity for Cubans to come here, back and forth,'' said Adolfo Franco, the director of USAID's program for Latin America and the Caribbean. ``But you know what? The standard should be applied across the board in a fair way and not dictated by the Cuban government.''

Although its academic successes are few so far, USAID stands to garner up to $10 million more, thanks to the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba II, a group convened by President Bush and headed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez.

The commission has recommended spending $80 million more in the next two years for humanitarian aid, education, exchanges and scholarships for Cubans studying in the states.

Peter Orr, the first director of USAID's Cuba program, said USAID funding to universities is a waste: ``If you really don't want to achieve anything with the money, you throw money at a university who says we're going to have an exchange program, and they go ahead and give the grant, even though anybody who knows anything about Cuba knows it won't work.''

FIU PROGRAM

Throughout the seven years that FIU has tried to train journalists, the Cuban government has routinely blocked educators from visiting the island. Virtue, who held classes in Havana just once, tried to train Cuban students in third countries -- only to have the Cuban government withhold exit visas.

FIU resorted to training by mail, and now also video-conferencing from the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, where independent journalists attend a live session.

''I think we have shown good results for it,'' Virtue said.

Among the successful graduates is Claudia Márquez, who left Cuba two years ago for Puerto Rico and runs her own website and publishes stories on other Internet sites.

Said Márquez -- one of the four independent journalists who completed the program after studying journalism, ethics and investigative reporting: ``It was a huge opportunity, and I appreciate it very much.''

But some of the would-be Cuban journalists say the program can be frustrating.

''I know many colleagues from the independent press in Cuba who registered [for the FIU course], sent in their work and nothing ever happened,'' said Juan Gonzalez Feble, an independent journalist in Havana, in a recent telephone interview. ``We never heard from them again.''

Virtue said many of the students may have sent in assignments and paperwork to be evaluated, but Cuban agents probably confiscated their work.

STICKING POINT

Because FIU's International Media Center is funded by USAID, it is not allowed to pay journalists in Cuba with government funding for their work, a policy that frustrates the program's directors. The center also edits work produced by independent reporters on the island and looks for publications outside Cuba to publish those reports.

''Many of the people dealing with Cuba, including many in the government, find it very frustrating not to be able to pay the journalists,'' Virtue said.

''It's great that the U.S. is helping the people of Cuba to achieve democracy,'' Feble said. ``They have to remember that the theater of operations is the island of Cuba. It's not Miami.''

UM PROGRAM

The University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies has received more money than any other academic institution to promote democracy in Cuba, about $2.5 million.

The program has produced several forums and about 35 research papers on what a post-Castro Cuba might encounter.

Roger Noriega, former undersecretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, said the USAID program should focus on groups that are helping people inside instead of academic studies.

''Frankly, I'm less interested in studies,'' Noriega said. ``My experience has been that these stacks of materials end up on people's bookshelves.''

The Cuba Transition Project, as the UM grant is named, is headed by UM professor Jaime Suchlicki. He has been a key player in the USAID strategy to try to democratize Cuba, managing more U.S. pro-democracy money than any other person as of 2005 -- more than $7 million since 1999.

About $5 million of those funds went to Cuba OnLine, a venture that published a newsletter, Sin Censura -- Without Censorship -- and specialized in mailing anti-Castro material to the island.

Part of Suchlicki's salary at UM is reimbursed with federal funds from the Cuba Transition Project; he also received a $2,000 monthly salary from USAID-funded Cuba OnLine, a program he said expired in September. And he hosts a show called Opiniones on Radio Martí, for which he is paid $100 a show, earning about $18,000 the past three years, federal records show. Suchlicki said he began the program after he was paid between $1,000 and $2,000 as a subcontractor for a consultant, Herbert Levin, hired by the Office of Cuba Broadcasting to analyze proposed programming changes.

''Nobody is going to buy me for $100 or $1,000. I'm an independent thinker,'' Suchlicki said.

GEORGETOWN

In Washington, Georgetown University had picked 20 Cuban students out of almost 400 applicants for scholarships, but only one has attended -- because the Cuban government won't let anyone else leave the island to study.

Georgetown spokesman Erik M. Smulson said in an e-mail that the 20 students were chosen ``on the basis of their leadership potential and academic aptitude.''

Georgetown has spent about $112,000 of the $400,000 for the one student's expenses, plus administrative costs of the program. A typical Georgetown student spends $48,000 a year to attend. The rest of the grant is still active, Smulson said.

USAID and Georgetown refused to provide copies of the grant application or to name the student.

Franco, the director of USAID's program for Latin America and the Caribbean, said the agency should not cease trying to give scholarships to Cuban students because the government doesn't let students out.

''The [proof] of the pudding in here is that the government of Cuba is scared to death to give an opportunity to the Cuban people to come to the United States and return to Cuba,'' Franco said.

LOYOLA UNIVERSITY

At Loyola University in Chicago, government and university officials in 2004 hailed the signing of a two-year, $425,000 USAID grant, for an exchange program for Cuban students called the ``Henry Hyde Program of People-to-People Development.''

Attending the ceremony: U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., a Loyola alumnus and chairman of the House International Relations Committee, and Franco.

The goal: teach English as a second language to people in Havana.

Loyola's Cuban partners refused to participate because Loyola was getting U.S. government money -- even though the Chicago school pledged that its program was apolitical. By April 2005, Loyola dropped the program but kept the grant in hopes of reviving the program.

When there was no U.S. government money involved, students at the Jesuit university taught English for two-week intervals at Centro LaSalle, a Catholic center in Havana.

Loyola and USAID refused to provide copies of the grant application. Hyde didn't return phone calls and e-mails seeking comment.

CREIGHTON

At Creighton, USAID gave the law school in Nebraska a $750,000 grant last year to study the issue of property restitution for Cubans who lost land to Castro's revolution. USAID's Franco graduated from Creighton Law School.

USAID spokeswoman Jessica Garcia said Franco did not influence the award. She also said the agency seeks grant applications, and a government interagency committee reviews, ranks and recommends applicants.

''Creighton won the award through the competitive [bidding] process,'' Garcia said in an e-mail. USAID would not specify what other institutions bid for the grant.

A Government Accountability Office audit released Wednesday said, ''the USAID Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean authorized the negotiation of awards for both unsolicited and solicited proposals.'' The audit also said USAID's Cuba program office, which is overseen by Franco, ``recommends USAID democracy assistance awards.''

Creighton Law School Dean Pat Borchers acknowledged the university had no experience in Cuba property research but said the school is qualified to produce the report. Two of Creighton's seven grant researchers speak fluent Spanish, Borchers said. He said he wrote a law school case book that included ''materials'' on the 1996 Helms Burton law, which governs U.S. policy toward Cuba. And some in the research team also have experience in conflict resolution law, Borchers added.

Creighton researchers have traveled to Miami to consult experts, Borchers said. One of them is Nick Gutierrez, a local lawyer who has established a niche practice representing people who want their property back or compensation for their loss.

''I think they need some guidance,'' said Gutierrez, who said he met with Creighton representatives at a Cuban American Bar Association conference in June. ``I am surprised that they [Creighton] got it [the grant]. I'm not so surprised when I see that Adolfo Franco from USAID is an alumnus.''

Franco said through a spokeswoman that he ''played no role whatsoever'' in the award.

Gutierrez said Creighton's distance from the exile community can help it come up with a credible report. If such a report came from a South Florida institution, Gutierrez said, ``maybe people would feel it's not completely independent because it might be a mouthpiece for the Cuban exile community.''

COSTLY OVERHEAD

Another U.S.-funded organization that helps promote democracy in Cuba -- The National Endowment for Democracy -- won't fund universities because administrative and overhead costs run as high as 65 percent at universities, said NED Vice President Barbara Haig.

''Is there a shortage of research on Cuba? I don't think there really is. It's just very painful to pay that kind of indirect cost rate,'' said Haig, adding that other programs keep administrative expenses at one-third those rates.

Georgetown declined to specify those costs, and Loyola did not respond to an e-mail request. Creighton officials said their program's indirect costs were 42 percent, and FIU's international media program's indirect costs were 24 percent.

Julio Aliaga Pesant, an independent journalist and former University of Havana professor expelled two years ago for his political beliefs, said the U.S. should spend the money inside Cuba.

''I think that with one-tenth of what the U.S. government gives to exterior projects, they'd subvert the government in Cuba if they got it to the right groups and people here,'' Aliaga Pesant said.

Yet another UN embargo vote

Posted on Thu, Nov. 09, 2006

UNITED NATIONS
End Cuban embargo, U.N. urges U.S.

BY EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press

NEW YORK - The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to urge the United States to end its 45-year-old trade embargo against Cuba after defeating an Australian amendment calling on Fidel Castro's government to free political prisoners and respect human rights.

It was the 15th straight year that the 192-member world body approved a resolution calling for the U.S. economic and commercial embargo against Cuba to be repealed ``as soon as possible.''

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque told the assembly ``the economic war unleashed by the U.S. against Cuba, the longest and most ruthless ever known, qualifies as an act of genocide and constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and the charter of the United Nations.''

Delegates in the General Assembly chamber burst into applause when the vote in favor of the the resolution flashed on the screen -- 183-4 with one abstention. That was a one-vote improvement over last year's vote of 182-4 with one abstention. Joining the United States in voting ''no'' were Israel, Marshall Islands and Palau, while Micronesia abstained.

The assembly voted on the resolution soon after adopting a resolution to take ''no action'' on the Australian amendment, which meant it could not be added to the Cuban draft. That vote was 126-51 with five abstentions.

The proposed amendment stated that the U.S. laws and measures ``were motivated by valid concerns about the continued lack of democracy and political freedom in Cuba.''

It would have had the assembly call upon ``the Cuban government to release unconditionally all political prisoners, cooperate fully with international human rights bodies and mechanisms, respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and comply fully with its obligations under all human rights treaties to which it is a state party.''

Castro's health reportedly deteriorating

Posted on Sun, Nov. 12, 2006
Miami Herald
U.S.: Castro's health is deteriorating

KATHERINE SHRADER
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The government believes Fidel Castro's health is deteriorating and that the Cuban dictator is unlikely to live through 2007.

That dire view was reinforced last week when Cuba's foreign minister backed away from his prediction the ailing Castro would return to power by early December. "It's a subject on which I don't want to speculate," Felipe Perez Roque told The Associated Press in Havana.

U.S. government officials say there is still some mystery about Castro's diagnosis, his treatment and how he is responding. But these officials believe the 80-year-old leader has cancer of the stomach, colon or pancreas.

He was seen weakened and thinner in official state photos released late last month, and it is considered unlikely that he will return to power or survive through the end of next year, said the U.S. government and defense officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the politically sensitive topic.

With chemotherapy, Castro may live up to 18 months, said the defense official. Without it, expected survival would drop to three months to eight months.

American officials will not talk publicly about how they glean clues to Castro's health. But U.S. spy agencies include physicians who study pictures, video, public statements and other information coming out of Cuba.

A planned celebration of Castro's 80th birthday next month is expected to draw international attention. The Cuban leader had planned to attend the public event, which already had been postponed once from his Aug. 13 birthday.

Posada deadline set

Decision time on Cuban's detention
The U.S. government has until Feb. 1 to prosecute Luis Posada Carriles, wanted abroad in a jet bombing case.

LA Times
By Carol J. Williams
Times Staff Writer

November 7, 2006

MIAMI — He has admitted to bombing Havana hotels, served time for plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro and for more than 20 years was a fugitive from charges of blowing up a Cuban airliner.

But 17 months after Luis Posada Carriles was arrested and sent to a Texas immigration lockup, U.S. officials have declined to label him a terrorist or charge him with a crime. On Friday, a federal judge in El Paso gave the U.S. government until Feb. 1 to bring a case against Posada or the reputed bomber will be freed.

He has become a political liability for the Bush administration in its declared global war on terrorism.

As a veteran of nearly five decades of covert operations in Latin America, including the Bay of Pigs invasion, clandestine Cold War actions and the Iran-Contra affair, Posada knows where Washington's bodies are buried.

If Posada, 79, were to be prosecuted, he probably would seek to defend himself against any criminal charges by arguing that his violent actions were on behalf of his CIA masters.

His Miami lawyer, Eduardo Soto, alluded to his client's past collaboration with U.S. intelligence services as he pressed the Cuban militant's unsuccessful quest for political asylum.

"A public trial of Luis Posada would certainly reveal embarrassing details on the degree to which U.S. covert operatives used terrorism as a tool in the 1960s," said Peter Kornbluh of the independent National Security Archive at George Washington University.

Kornbluh has compiled declassified CIA and FBI evidence of Posada's role in the 1976 plane bombing, near Barbados, of a Cuban airliner in which all 73 on board died. Among the documents in the archive's online dossier is one recently obtained through Freedom of Information Act litigation that shows Posada informed his CIA minders of the plot to blow up the airliner three months ahead of the attack.

The administration has avoided bringing a criminal case against Posada, who enjoys strong support among Miami's politically powerful Cuban exiles, by handling him like any other immigration offender and simply seeking his deportation.

Posada returned to Florida in March 2005, reportedly on a fellow exile's shrimp boat sent to fetch him from an island off the Yucatan Peninsula. He'd made his way there six months after being pardoned by outgoing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso in August 2004 after serving four years for attempting to kill Castro at a Panama summit in 2000.

Moscoso's clemency decree for Posada and three U.S. militants was seen as a favor to the Bush administration in a presidential election year when the Cuban exile vote in Florida was vital.

Posada moved about Miami with impunity, despite indignant demands for his extradition by Cuba and Venezuela, where he is a naturalized citizen. Authorities arrested him two months after his arrival when he invited journalists to his Miami residence for a news conference.

A federal immigration judge in El Paso, where Posada has been held since May 2005, ruled last year that he should be deported to a country other than Venezuela or Cuba, which want to try him for the jetliner bombing. The federal government has spurned those countries' extradition requests, contending Posada would be at risk of torture or execution.

The State Department approached at least six friendly foreign governments to take Posada, but Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica and El Salvador all refused. The Mexican government later said it would hand Posada over to Cuba if he reentered Mexico.

Soto argued in August that U.S. authorities couldn't hold Posada indefinitely after abandoning efforts to send him abroad. U.S. Magistrate Norbert Garney agreed, and recommended in September that Posada be released.

In October, the Justice Department urged the court to keep Posada in jail.

"Luis Posada Carriles is an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks. The Department of Justice believes that Posada is a flight risk and that his release would be a danger to the community," said spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement then notified Posada that the government had decided to prolong his detention because of concerns that his release "would have serious foreign policy consequences," according to an agency statement.

Under anti-terrorism powers claimed by the administration, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has only to ask Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzalez to brand Posada a terrorist to keep him locked up while the government pursues criminal action, said David Sebastian, Soto's paralegal on the case.

Much as the administration can indefinitely detain terrorism suspects at Guantanamo without legal recourse or formal charges, it can hold Posada on grounds that he poses a national security threat. The Justice Department missive makes clear that the administration considers him a terrorist but has yet to pursue that formal designation.

Soto has filed a writ of habeas corpus challenging the government's continued jailing of Posada on the immigration violation. That move presents a dilemma for the administration: It could be forced to let a man they call a terrorist walk free or prosecute him and risk public airing of some of Washington's darkest secrets.

U.S. District Judge Philip Martinez on Friday gave the administration the Feb. 1 deadline to prosecute or release Posada.

Neither the State Department nor the Justice Department would say what, if any, actions were being taken to ensure Posada remains in detention.

Posada's fellow militants launched a petition drive demanding that the administration release him before today's election or risk losing support for GOP candidates from among the anti-Castro constituency.

"Some of us vote for President Bush. Others, like me, vote against him because he doesn't do anything for Cuba," said Juan Torres Mena, a vice director of the Brigade 2506 Bay of Pigs veterans association.

"Those fighting against communism are in jail now," he said. "Before we were freedom fighters. Now we're terrorists."

Fidel Castro shown on Cuban TV, walking, reading

Fidel Castro shown on Cuban TV, walking, reading

By Anthony Boadle2 hours, 35 minutes ago

Cuban leader Fidel Castro defiantly dismissed rumors that he was dead on Saturday in television images showing him walking, talking on the telephone and reading the day's newspapers.

In the first images of him issued in six weeks, Castro said he was taking part in government decisions, following the news, and making regular phone calls as he recovers from emergency intestinal surgery in late July.

"Now that our enemies have prematurely declared me dying or dead, I am happy to send my compatriots and friends around the world this short film material," Castro said.

"Now let's see what they say. They will have to resurrect me," the gray-bearded leftist firebrand said.

The images showed a gaunt-looking Castro browsing through Saturday's ruling Communist Party daily Granma, walking slowly out of a lift in a track-suit and talking on a telephone in a loud, clear voice.

A television presenter said the images, aimed to quell rumors of Castro's death started by Cuban exiles in the United States, were recorded on Saturday afternoon.

Castro's prolonged absence from public view set off rumors in recent weeks that the 80-year-old leader was dead and change imminent in Cuba, one of the world's last communist-run nations.

The rumor mill was fueled last week by Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva when he inadvertently implied Castro was dead and by a Caracas newspaper report that said Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Cuba's main ally, had visited Havana secretly to say good-bye to Castro.

Castro was forced to relinquish power temporarily for the first time since his 1959 revolution to his younger brother Raul on July 31 after undergoing surgery to stop intestinal bleeding.

Earlier this month, Time magazine quoted an unnamed U.S. official saying that Castro had terminal cancer.

Cuban officials have denied Castro has stomach cancer and insist he is recovery gradually and will return to lead the country. But they have given no details of his illness, which are a closely guarded state secret.

Raul Castro, 75, has not been seen in public for three weeks. Camera-shy and less charismatic then his brother, Raul hosted a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement of developing nations in September when the president failed to appear.

Cuba has remained calm in Castro's absence. Most Cubans expect their leader to appear in uniform on December 2 for a military parade marking the 50th anniversary of his landing with a handful of guerrillas to start an armed uprising in the Sierra Maestra mountains of eastern Cuba.

Castro called the rumors of his death "foolish" and said they stimulated him to continue "working and fighting."

He ended his video message with his usual slogan "Patria o muerte, venceremos!" (Fatherland or death, to victory).

Bebo Valdés

NYT
October 13, 2006
Listening With: Bebo Valdés
Far From Cuba, but Not From His Roots
By BEN RATLIFF

BRANDBERGEN, SWEDEN

THE Cuban pianist Bebo Valdés, who will receive a proper welcome from Jazz at Lincoln Center this weekend, lives here, just outside Stockholm, with his wife, Rose Marie, in a small ground-floor apartment. Its shelves and walls serve as a kind of index to his remarkable life.

There are books of sheet music by Rachmaninoff and Chopin; a photo of him in a tuxedo, tall and commanding, on the cover of “Cha Cha Cha & Mambo for Small Dance Bands,” a book he wrote and published in Havana in the 1950’s, aiming at the English-language market; paintings by Haitian artists; Joseph Schillinger’s “System of Musical Composition,” the dense theoretical books beloved by intellectual musicians of the 1940’s and 50’s that break down melody, harmony and rhythm into mathematic logic. There is, incongruously, a shelf of pop-music lead-sheet books like “100 of the Greatest Easy Listening Hits,” all well thumbed. Then there are some recent awards, including several Grammys, and a ceremonial key to the city of Miami.

To explain all this requires going back a bit. Slavery officially ended in Cuba in 1886. Ramon Valdés, universally known as Bebo, was born in 1918. His mother came from a Spanish family, and his paternal grandfather was a slave. Afro-Cuban jazz is the ultimate mixture of African, European and New World culture. It is not at all uncommon for a Latin jazz group now to put the batá, the two-headed drum of Yoruban religious music, alongside elements of European harmony and American swing. But hand drums were effectively prohibited in Cuba in the early 20th century, and Mr. Valdés remembers a time when the batá was never, ever used in dance music. He reckons he was the first to do so, in 1952.

He graduated from the Conservatorio Municipal in Havana. “It was the poor man’s conservatory, and the best,” he insists. A gifted arranger, he worked with his hero, Ernesto Lecuona — probably the greatest Cuban composer of the 20th century — after graduating in the mid-40’s.

Mr. Valdés was in the inner circle of musicians who developed the mambo, along with the multi-instrumentalist Orestes Lopez and his brother, the bassist Israel (Cachao) Lopez. For much of the 1950’s, during the height of the mambo’s popularity, Mr. Valdés was the pianist of the house orchestra at the Tropicana, the biggest nightclub in Havana, and the club’s musical adviser. He played with, or arranged for, most of Cuba’s star singers and musicians, including Beny More (who sang with the orchestra at Tropicana), Miguelito Valdés, Pío Leyva and Chano Pozo. When Nat King Cole, a habitué of the Tropicana, came to Havana to record his Spanish-language record “Cole Español,” Mr. Valdés played piano and arranged the album. He was the epicenter of a thriving world.

He had five children in Cuba, including Chucho Valdés, who has since become one of the greatest pianists in the world. In 1960, after the revolution, the senior Mr. Valdés fled Cuba — first to Mexico, where he worked in television and in the recording studios, and then to Spain. In Stockholm, on a European tour with a group called Lecuona’s Cuban Boys, he met and fell in love with Rose Marie Pehrson. He was 44, and she was 18.

It was 1963. He wanted to relocate to New York, but, as a black man with a white wife, he was warned by friends against moving to the United States. For a while he bided his time: he remembers being of the opinion that Castro’s regime would not last much longer.

He has never returned to Cuba. He stayed in Stockholm, starting a new family and playing piano in hotel lounges for more than 30 years. (Hence the easy-listening songbooks.) He has a working musician’s pride, and no regrets.

His reputation flourished again at a point in his life when most musicians are busy resisting decline. In 1994, at the behest of the Cuban jazz saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera, he recorded “Bebo Rides Again,” his first album in three decades. It was to be a loose, jam-session record, but Mr. Valdés insisted on structure. He arranged nine of his own songs for a nonet in two days.

In 2000 he took part in “Calle 54,” Fernando Trueba’s documentary film about Latin jazz. Subsequently Mr. Trueba formed a record label with the film and music historian Nat Chediak and made a series of recordings involving Mr. Valdés. One of them, “Lágrimas Negras,” an album of boleros by Mr. Valdés and the flamenco singer Diego El Cigala, sold nearly a million copies, mostly in Europe. In Madrid and Barcelona particularly, crowds have started to applaud him on the street and in restaurants. He has done better financially in his 80’s than at any other time in his life.

He has released three more albums since “Lágrimas Negras,” including “Bebo de Cuba,” a double disc that won a Grammy and a Latin Grammy last year. It includes his “Suite Cubana,” which will be performed tonight and tomorrow at Rose Theater with Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra.

Mr. Valdés turned 88 on Monday. He and Rose Marie live not far from their two Swedish-born sons, Rickard and Raymond.

He is cheerful, and extremely punctual. He takes small steps and moves quickly, especially toward his piano. He claims he is never tired. (“And I’m not bragging,” he said.) He practices scales and arpeggios for 30 minutes daily and prefers to eat one meal, around lunchtime. He talks about rhythm analytically and does not dance well; he seems to take a kind of pride in this. He does not drink alcohol but takes in prodigious amounts of American coffee.

Mr. Valdés spoke in Spanish, with a translator, with little sprays of English. His memory for names and dates is sharp, and for a journalist’s visit, he prepared a precise list of music to listen to, each piece keyed to particular fascinations.

The first piece was by his hero, Ernesto Lecuona. We heard Lecuona himself play his short piece “La Paloma,” which incorporates late-Romantic rhapsodies and elegant dance rhythms in flexible tempo.

“I first heard of Lecuona when I was in conservatory, in 1934,” Mr. Valdés said. Was his music taught in conservatories then? “Oh, no, no,” he said, surprised by the idea. “Only classical. Everything we learned in conservatory was before Cervantes.”

He was speaking of Ignacio Cervantes, the Cuban composer who died in 1905. A conversation with Mr. Valdés goes this way. You are immersed in about 150 years of Cuban music, stretching from African- derived abakuá chants to contradanzas to boleros to mambo and modern Latin jazz. At the mention of Cervantes’s name, Mr. Valdés sits at the piano and performs all of Cervantes’s short, stately “Danza No. 1.”

“He was Lecuona’s favorite,” he remembered. “You couldn’t criticize Cervantes around him. He did wonderful things, but rhythmically, he copied Saumell.” (The reference was to Manuel Saumell Robredo, considered the father of Cuban contradanza.) He played part of “Danza No. 1” again, emphasizing the syncopated five-note pattern called the cinquillo, which he says is what makes the contradanza particularly Cuban.

He got back to the Lecuona. “He’s doing three things at the same time. The left hand plays the rhythm, the accompaniment, and the right hand the melody. On top of that there’s a lot of improvising.”

Mr. Valdés revered Lecuona for the prodigious keyboard talents lying underneath his gifts as a composer: he was performing at the age of 5.

“He was a great person, Ernesto, and a great musician. When he won a piano competition in Paris, in 1928, they asked him to play something of his own, and he played ‘La Comparsa.’ The ovation was enormous. With the money he made from winning the competition, he bought himself a farm, which he called La Comparsa. I think maybe it’s spiritual. When we were filming ‘Calle 54,’ I didn’t know what to play. So I played ‘La Comparsa,’ and for a lot of people, it’s their favorite part of the movie.”

We moved on to Art Tatum. “My favorite pianist,” he boomed. “He and Bill Evans.” Unstoppable, he played Evans’s “Waltz for Debby,” complete with a full chorus of rigorous improvisation. “I love to improvise,” he said.

We listened to Tatum playing “Without a Song,” solo, from the 1955 recordings made at a private party in Beverly Hills. It is fully animated, never staying in one rhythm, with tremendous, crashing, full-keyboard runs — always through appropriate chord changes — functioning as steppingstones. “It’s virtuosic in technique — totally classical, with modern harmony,” he said. “He was the first pianist I ever heard playing modern harmonies and playing them with heart.”

Tatum, he added, “was always improvising. He would change time signatures, put one harmony on top of another. I try to imitate him at times, but who am I?”

When Mr. Valdés was solidifying his reputation in Havana, several of his compatriots were making waves in New York. (Mr. Valdés never spent time there: offered a visa for only 29 days in the 40’s, he decided against such a short stay.) In 1947 Dizzy Gillespie’s big band was joined by the conga player Chano Pozo, who drilled the band in how to play the tumbao, the conjunction of rhythm-section lines in Cuban music. The band’s great document of the period is the song “Manteca,” which became a hit in the United States.

Mr. Valdés maintains that Gillespie’s American band played the Cuban rhythms perfectly. He put the track on. “What I hear most is the conga, and the changes in the bass. And the boom-bah, boom-bah,” he sang, imitating the baritone saxophone.

“That’s all the tumbao of mambo,” he said. “It’s completely the mambo style of Cachao.” Halfway through, the song lifts out of Cuban rhythm into jazz swing, with more arranged harmony, and he savored the shift.

Right after this, he put on a Frank Sinatra track from 1960, “Nice ’n’ Easy,” arranged by Nelson Riddle. It has the midtempo bounce of Sinatra records at the time, a rhythmic feeling that thrills Mr. Valdés. “Nobody can play music like that except in America, that kind of swing, that time,” he said. “It’s impeccable. The most difficult thing in the world is to play slowly and keep time. When I listen to this, I see American black people dancing.”

“Even though I’m Cuban, I’m really an American arranger,” he reflected. “Because the way I write has as much to do with American music as it does with Cuban music. And at the same time it has to do with the fugue.” (An example of his fugue writing comes in the middle of “Devoción,” a beguiling part of his “Suite Cubana.”)

It was pointed out to him that fugues have little to do with Cuban or American music. “Yes, but I do it anyway,” he said. “Why shouldn’t I, if I know how?”

He brought out the sheet music to Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, to use as a reference as we listened to it. “I was studying composition and harmony when I heard this performed by the Havana Symphony, in the 40’s,” he said.

What he wanted to show, in the third movement of the piece, was how the composer builds a beautiful, fragile melody, then protects it as the orchestra swells around it. “When I hear the music build to a crescendo, I feel like crying,” he said.

I asked if he was able to use this device in his own arranging. “Whenever I can get away with it,” he thundered. He put on “Copla No. 4,” the guajira section of his “Suite Cubana,” to demonstrate. It has the same effect: big, brass-heavy crescendos, building in intensifying shades and colors around the melody.

“When you know classical music, you can do what you want to do,” Mr. Valdés said, and then he recited an old maxim to indicate that he had succeeded on his own terms: “Es mejor ser la cabeza de un perro que la cola de un tiburón.” It’s better to be the head of a dog than the tail of a shark.