Russian women stranded in Cuba since USSR fall
rueters
By Anthony BoadleWed Sep 5, 8:50 AM ET
They came from Russia with love to a tropical socialist utopia when the going was good.
They were young women romantically drawn to Fidel Castro's revolution, a breath of fresh air on a distant Caribbean island for those who were disillusioned with Soviet communism.
But when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, hundreds of Russian women who married Cubans and moved to Cuba were cut off from home and stranded in poverty as the Cuban economy plunged into deep crisis.
For those who had lived through the hardships of World War II in Russia as children, the long blackouts and the lack of food, medicine and fuel for transport were a cruel flashback.
"We were young and Cuba was beautiful when we got here," said film historian Zoia Barash, who arrived in 1963. Cuban leaders were so young compared to the Soviet gerontocracy and abstract art was not seen as incompatible with communism.
Her hopes of finding "true socialism" were dashed, though, as Cuba copied the Soviet model, with sweltering heat added.
"Today our situation is difficult, as it is for the whole country," said Barash, 72, who cannot make ends meet on her 260 peso ($10) monthly pension after 30 years working for the Cuban film industry.
About 1,300 women from Russia and former Soviet republics Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan still live in Cuba, scraping a living as best they can.
In an old mansion belonging to the Russian Embassy, two women run a store selling anything from vodka and pickled gherkins to imported toothpaste, Pringles and Viagra pills.
The harshest aspect is not being able to travel home. Cuba used to grant them subsidized tickets every five years, paid for in pesos. But Cuba's airline stopped flying to Moscow and tickets must now be paid for in hard cash few can afford.
"My father died in 1994 and I could not go to his funeral," said Zita Kelderari, a Ukrainian gypsy, in tears.
The Flamenco singer fell for a Cuban helicopter pilot in Kiev in 1985 and sailed to Cuba on a Soviet freighter loaded with Yugoslavian butter. When he defected to the United States a few years ago, she was left penniless in Cuba.
Only the women lucky enough to receive money from their relatives get to travel these days. On a Cuban pension alone, it would take 10 years to gather the cost of a flight home.
For most it is too late to go back and start a new life. Many are grandmothers with families to look after.
The blackouts are gone and food supplies have improved since the dark days of Cuba's post-Soviet crisis. But housing remains dilapidated and overcrowded, few have cars and access to the Internet is expensive.
NO BOOKS, NO NEWS
Havana's Russian bookstore closed when "perestroika" reforms took hold in Moscow under Mikhail Gorbachev. Newspaper and magazine subscriptions were stopped, cutting off information from Russia.
Despite the problems, some women have pressed ahead.
"I don't know what nostalgia is. There is no point sitting around crying," said Natalia Balashova, who set about uniting the women in a cultural club for Russian speakers.
Balashova's father was a Bolshevik and she was drawn to Cuba in 1969 as much by love of the Cuban military officer she met in Moscow as by Castro's "bold" transformation of Cuba.
"I knew what to expect. Cuba was building socialism and had its difficulties. We came willingly, out of love," she said. Still, she felt "shipwrecked" when her country disappeared.
Balashova said she tapped her inner reserves and wartime improvisations she learned from her mother to cope with the crisis, such as using crushed egg-shells for cleaning powder.
After a 14-year hiatus, she returned to Moscow last year, invited to attend a world conference of Russians living abroad, and got to meet President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin.
DEPORTED FROM CUBA
Elena Verselova, who was struggling to get ahead after two Cuban divorces, took her activism in a different direction. She became a dissident on Cuba's depressed Isle of Youth.
Verselova was deported by the Cuban government on July 26, according to her daughter Diana Aguilar, who arrived from Russia when she was a nine-month baby in her mother's arms.
Verselova was harassed and threatened by Cuban police, and eventually arrested, her daughter said. The family had to sell hard-won electrical appliances to pay for her ticket to Moscow, where she arrived with $170 in her pocket to start a new life.
"They didn't let us say good-bye to her," said Aguilar, 22, a University of Havana student. She said the Russian consulate in Cuba refused to help her mother even locate family members in Vladimir, 115 miles east of Moscow.
"I hope to leave Cuba to join my mother. I want to return to my roots in Europe," said the blond student.
A Cuban documentary "Todas iban a ser reinas" (They were all going to be queens) made last year captured the isolation of women from seven former Soviet republics living in Cuba.
"It was a migration of love, a part of our shattered utopia," said director Gustavo Cruz. "They worked in our country for many years. It would be ungrateful to forget them."
Women from other former Soviet bloc countries were also stranded in Cuba and forgotten by post-communist governments.
Stasia Strach, 65, is one of 49 native Poles living in Cuba -- only three of whom are men. The view from her small apartment overlooking Havana's Malecon, or sea-wall, is spectacular. But the elevator packed up years ago and the 130 steps are a daily effort. Going home is out of the question.
"What would I do in Poland, beg at the door of a church?" she said. "I have no pension and nowhere to go."
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Palo in Caracas
From the Los Angeles Times
COLUMN ONE
Not even the dead are safe in Caracas
A ghoulish crime wave in the Venezuelan capital supplies a black magic cult whose popularity is fueled by faith and politics.
By Chris Kraul
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 5, 2007
CARACAS, VENEZUELA — Skulking in the dead of night in the remote and overgrown Las Pavas section of the Southern Municipal Cemetery, robbers armed with crowbars and sledgehammers first shattered the tomb's concrete vault and the granite marker that read, "To our dear wife and mother in heaven, Maria de la Cruz Aguero."
Then they lifted the coffin lid and stole leg bones and the skull of the woman, who had died Sept. 9, 1993. They sold the bones for $20 each, the skull for as much as $300, said Father Atilio Gonzalez, the cemetery's resident Roman Catholic priest.
Sometimes entire skeletons, particularly those of children, are stolen from crypts in this final resting place of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, including three former presidents.
"These unscrupulous people are insulting God and committing a mortal sin," said Gonzalez. He said that graves in the city's largest cemetery are robbed every night, and it's getting worse. "They have perfect liberty to desecrate the tombs because the government does nothing to stop it."
The desecration of the woman's tomb was part of a ghoulish crime wave, including assaults, rapes and dope deals, that has made the cemetery so dangerous that funeral home workers say they carry weapons whenever they have to go there. Parts of the vast cemetery, particularly the remote hillside sections reserved for the poor, are in ruins and choked with weeds, providing perfect cover for thugs and the homeless.
In the past when graves were robbed, the primary objective was to steal personal effects such as jewelry or gold dental fillings, said Odalys Caldera, an investigator in the city's judicial police. Today, thieves are pillaging the graves for darker reasons.
The buyers of the bones are paleros, the practitioners of a black magic cult related to Santeria whose rise in popularity here is fueled by a strange brew of faith and politics.
"Santeria, witchcraft and black magic are much more out in the open now. That's the reason," Caldera said. "Of course the state is aware of the robberies, but hasn't taken the necessary steps to impede them."
Santeria, which combines Catholicism and African and indigenous spiritualism, was brought to the New World by slaves from Africa centuries ago and still thrives, particularly in Cuba, Haiti, Brazil and, increasingly, Venezuela. It is also popular in regions of the United States with strong Caribbean immigrant communities, such as south Florida, Washington and Los Angeles,areas where hundreds of thousands are thought to practice it.
Although most Santeria followers steer clear of the use of human remains and Satanism, the paleros embrace them. They use bones in black magic rituals in which the objective is to cast evil spells on enemies: to induce bad luck for an unfaithful spouse, a car accident for unwanted in-laws, a serious illness for a business competitor, Gonzalez said.
Police, church officials and historians offer a variety of theories for the rise in Santeria generally and of black magic in particular in Venezuela. Some, including anthropologist Rafael Strauss, point to the vacuum left by the Roman Catholic Church, which, as in many other Latin American countries, has lost believers in Venezuela to evangelical and other Protestant religions. Church rolls also are suffering from a lack of interest among younger people.
"We are seeing a new syncretism that is uniting parts of different religions," said Strauss, a retired University of Central Venezuela professor. "It's how people make it easier to meet their spiritual needs."
Gonzalez acknowledged that the country is suffering a crisis in belief.
"People are losing faith," he said. "Instead of assuming responsibility to accomplish something good, they resort to witchcraft, which they see as the easy way."
But others see politics at work. Father Manuel Diaz is a parish priest in the El Hatillo suburb of Caracas where three Santeria babalaos, or shamans, have recently opened centers. He says the government of leftist President Hugo Chavez is encouraging the rise of Santeria to counter the authority of the Catholic Church, which Chavez has viewed as his enemy.
In a pastoral letter to his parishioners last month, Diaz said the government has a "concrete objective, to undermine the authority of the church and align its faithful with certain ideologies." In the letter, he wrote that leaders of the movement to discredit the church were coming from an unnamed "Caribbean country," presumably Cuba.
Although Santeria and other spiritualist religions have been present in Venezuela since Spanish colonial days, the rise of black magic, including that practiced by paleros, is relatively new, said Maria Garcia de Fleury, a comparative religions professor at New Sparta University in Caracas.
"We've always had a little witchcraft, but nothing like what has been unleashed recently," De Fleury said. "This is not Venezuelan."
Without offering hard evidence, De Fleury and some church officials blame the growing presence of Santeria on Cuba, which she says is exporting babalaosalong with doctors, teachers and sports trainers to Venezuela as part of closer economic relations with Chavez.
"It's because the government is behind Santeria, promoting it, letting in Cuban babalaos who are proselytizing very actively," De Fleury said.
While not addressing Santeria, Chavez in a February 2003 broadcast of his "Alo Presidente" TV talk show denied that he was a believer in black magic. He is known to be a mystic of sorts, and some say that he believes he is the reincarnation of a 19th century Venezuelan leader, Ezequiel Zamora.
"President Chavez, who knows the mentality of Venezuelans, takes advantage of their magical religious imagery to further his popularity and his revolution," university professor Angelina Pollak-Eltz said in an essay shortly after Chavez took power in 1999.
Yarlin Mejia, a hotel worker who is also a babalao in the Catia slum of Caracas, said the majority of Santeria believers stay away from witchcraft. "The paleros work for evil," Mejia said. "I do it differently. I work for positive things."
Half a dozen people come every Sunday to Mejia's house, where his ceremonies involve "white magic" -- rituals that aim to help believers attain specific goals, be it a new house, a better job or success at school. A chicken is usually sacrificed. Mejia says interest is growing and attributes it to the presence of Cubans.
"They're everywhere," Mejia said.
Father Gonzalez, whose parish could be said to include the hundreds of thousands of dead that populate the Southern Municipal Cemetery, made a baleful round of the grounds recently to assess the losses.
Half a dozen more graves had been "profaned" over the weekend in the Black Road section of the cemetery, a place of paupers' graves where 70% of the tombs have been robbed, he said.
He said lax municipal vigilance has turned the cemetery to which he has given heart and soul for 18 years into a frequent crime scene. Three or four armed assaults a week and several rapes a month happen here.
Maria Machado, who had come to visit the grave of her husband, Jose, who died in 2000, said she feared for her life each time she paid her respects.
"It wasn't this way before, when there was another president," said Machado, whose husband's grave was bordered by several looted tombs, one of which contained the carcass of a chicken sacrificed in a Santeria rite.
"I'm worried I'll come here some day and my husband will be gone," Machado said. She and her two grandchildren were the only visitors in the Las Pavas section of the cemetery, which when founded in 1867 was far beyond the southwestern borders of the city.
On a recent day, the cemetery was the scene of a macabre ritual that has become a regular occurrence whenever a young gang member is buried, Gonzalez said. It provided another example of the lawlessness here.
During the funeral procession for a 25-year-old gunshot victim, friends suddenly halted the cortege and removed the corpse from the coffin to give it one last joy ride around the cemetery on the back of a buddy's motorcycle.
As a final homage before burial, the dead man was given a 30-gun salute -- from pistols fired by his pals. One of the bullets punctured the umbrella of Father Gonzalez, who officiated at the burial.
"Now I suffer not just from the pain felt by the loved ones of the dead," he said, "but for the lack of respect for this holy place."
chris.kraul@latimes.com
COLUMN ONE
Not even the dead are safe in Caracas
A ghoulish crime wave in the Venezuelan capital supplies a black magic cult whose popularity is fueled by faith and politics.
By Chris Kraul
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 5, 2007
CARACAS, VENEZUELA — Skulking in the dead of night in the remote and overgrown Las Pavas section of the Southern Municipal Cemetery, robbers armed with crowbars and sledgehammers first shattered the tomb's concrete vault and the granite marker that read, "To our dear wife and mother in heaven, Maria de la Cruz Aguero."
Then they lifted the coffin lid and stole leg bones and the skull of the woman, who had died Sept. 9, 1993. They sold the bones for $20 each, the skull for as much as $300, said Father Atilio Gonzalez, the cemetery's resident Roman Catholic priest.
Sometimes entire skeletons, particularly those of children, are stolen from crypts in this final resting place of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, including three former presidents.
"These unscrupulous people are insulting God and committing a mortal sin," said Gonzalez. He said that graves in the city's largest cemetery are robbed every night, and it's getting worse. "They have perfect liberty to desecrate the tombs because the government does nothing to stop it."
The desecration of the woman's tomb was part of a ghoulish crime wave, including assaults, rapes and dope deals, that has made the cemetery so dangerous that funeral home workers say they carry weapons whenever they have to go there. Parts of the vast cemetery, particularly the remote hillside sections reserved for the poor, are in ruins and choked with weeds, providing perfect cover for thugs and the homeless.
In the past when graves were robbed, the primary objective was to steal personal effects such as jewelry or gold dental fillings, said Odalys Caldera, an investigator in the city's judicial police. Today, thieves are pillaging the graves for darker reasons.
The buyers of the bones are paleros, the practitioners of a black magic cult related to Santeria whose rise in popularity here is fueled by a strange brew of faith and politics.
"Santeria, witchcraft and black magic are much more out in the open now. That's the reason," Caldera said. "Of course the state is aware of the robberies, but hasn't taken the necessary steps to impede them."
Santeria, which combines Catholicism and African and indigenous spiritualism, was brought to the New World by slaves from Africa centuries ago and still thrives, particularly in Cuba, Haiti, Brazil and, increasingly, Venezuela. It is also popular in regions of the United States with strong Caribbean immigrant communities, such as south Florida, Washington and Los Angeles,areas where hundreds of thousands are thought to practice it.
Although most Santeria followers steer clear of the use of human remains and Satanism, the paleros embrace them. They use bones in black magic rituals in which the objective is to cast evil spells on enemies: to induce bad luck for an unfaithful spouse, a car accident for unwanted in-laws, a serious illness for a business competitor, Gonzalez said.
Police, church officials and historians offer a variety of theories for the rise in Santeria generally and of black magic in particular in Venezuela. Some, including anthropologist Rafael Strauss, point to the vacuum left by the Roman Catholic Church, which, as in many other Latin American countries, has lost believers in Venezuela to evangelical and other Protestant religions. Church rolls also are suffering from a lack of interest among younger people.
"We are seeing a new syncretism that is uniting parts of different religions," said Strauss, a retired University of Central Venezuela professor. "It's how people make it easier to meet their spiritual needs."
Gonzalez acknowledged that the country is suffering a crisis in belief.
"People are losing faith," he said. "Instead of assuming responsibility to accomplish something good, they resort to witchcraft, which they see as the easy way."
But others see politics at work. Father Manuel Diaz is a parish priest in the El Hatillo suburb of Caracas where three Santeria babalaos, or shamans, have recently opened centers. He says the government of leftist President Hugo Chavez is encouraging the rise of Santeria to counter the authority of the Catholic Church, which Chavez has viewed as his enemy.
In a pastoral letter to his parishioners last month, Diaz said the government has a "concrete objective, to undermine the authority of the church and align its faithful with certain ideologies." In the letter, he wrote that leaders of the movement to discredit the church were coming from an unnamed "Caribbean country," presumably Cuba.
Although Santeria and other spiritualist religions have been present in Venezuela since Spanish colonial days, the rise of black magic, including that practiced by paleros, is relatively new, said Maria Garcia de Fleury, a comparative religions professor at New Sparta University in Caracas.
"We've always had a little witchcraft, but nothing like what has been unleashed recently," De Fleury said. "This is not Venezuelan."
Without offering hard evidence, De Fleury and some church officials blame the growing presence of Santeria on Cuba, which she says is exporting babalaosalong with doctors, teachers and sports trainers to Venezuela as part of closer economic relations with Chavez.
"It's because the government is behind Santeria, promoting it, letting in Cuban babalaos who are proselytizing very actively," De Fleury said.
While not addressing Santeria, Chavez in a February 2003 broadcast of his "Alo Presidente" TV talk show denied that he was a believer in black magic. He is known to be a mystic of sorts, and some say that he believes he is the reincarnation of a 19th century Venezuelan leader, Ezequiel Zamora.
"President Chavez, who knows the mentality of Venezuelans, takes advantage of their magical religious imagery to further his popularity and his revolution," university professor Angelina Pollak-Eltz said in an essay shortly after Chavez took power in 1999.
Yarlin Mejia, a hotel worker who is also a babalao in the Catia slum of Caracas, said the majority of Santeria believers stay away from witchcraft. "The paleros work for evil," Mejia said. "I do it differently. I work for positive things."
Half a dozen people come every Sunday to Mejia's house, where his ceremonies involve "white magic" -- rituals that aim to help believers attain specific goals, be it a new house, a better job or success at school. A chicken is usually sacrificed. Mejia says interest is growing and attributes it to the presence of Cubans.
"They're everywhere," Mejia said.
Father Gonzalez, whose parish could be said to include the hundreds of thousands of dead that populate the Southern Municipal Cemetery, made a baleful round of the grounds recently to assess the losses.
Half a dozen more graves had been "profaned" over the weekend in the Black Road section of the cemetery, a place of paupers' graves where 70% of the tombs have been robbed, he said.
He said lax municipal vigilance has turned the cemetery to which he has given heart and soul for 18 years into a frequent crime scene. Three or four armed assaults a week and several rapes a month happen here.
Maria Machado, who had come to visit the grave of her husband, Jose, who died in 2000, said she feared for her life each time she paid her respects.
"It wasn't this way before, when there was another president," said Machado, whose husband's grave was bordered by several looted tombs, one of which contained the carcass of a chicken sacrificed in a Santeria rite.
"I'm worried I'll come here some day and my husband will be gone," Machado said. She and her two grandchildren were the only visitors in the Las Pavas section of the cemetery, which when founded in 1867 was far beyond the southwestern borders of the city.
On a recent day, the cemetery was the scene of a macabre ritual that has become a regular occurrence whenever a young gang member is buried, Gonzalez said. It provided another example of the lawlessness here.
During the funeral procession for a 25-year-old gunshot victim, friends suddenly halted the cortege and removed the corpse from the coffin to give it one last joy ride around the cemetery on the back of a buddy's motorcycle.
As a final homage before burial, the dead man was given a 30-gun salute -- from pistols fired by his pals. One of the bullets punctured the umbrella of Father Gonzalez, who officiated at the burial.
"Now I suffer not just from the pain felt by the loved ones of the dead," he said, "but for the lack of respect for this holy place."
chris.kraul@latimes.com
Friday, August 24, 2007
Castro rumors circulating -- again -- Friday
MH
Posted on Fri, Aug. 24, 2007
Castro rumors circulating -- again -- Friday
By LYDIA MARTIN
On Friday, the rumors heated up again for the third week in a row: Fidel Castro's death would be announced, first at 2 p.m., then at 4, then at 5.
For the past year, since the Cuban government announced that Fidel had ceded power to brother Raúl following intestinal surgery, rumors that he's on the brink of meeting his maker keep boiling over and dying down, creating a roller coaster of emotion for exiles and islanders.
This Friday, teary callers told Ninoska Pérez of Radio Mambí they were sure this was it, and Pérez, as usual, reminded ``The moment will come, but this is not the moment.''
At Aaction Home Health in Hialeah, office workers were abuzz because somebody from Cuba called a colleague to say folks in Havana were starting to take to the streets in anticipation of the news. At the University of Miami, media relations officers worked the phones in search of confirmation.
But once again, none of the rumors seemed to be panning out.
For many, waiting for proof has become like the low-grade anxiety that comes when you're bracing for a hurricane that may or may not hit. Even though it seems clear there won't be any real change on the island immediately after Castro's death, the exile community is holding its breath and preparing for something big nonetheless. Everyone knows whatever happens will be disruptive in some way. Or, at least, emotionally unhinging.
Last weekend, the rumors also reached fever pitch. The media perked up and started another round of the confirmation game. Calls flooded Miami Mayor Manny Diaz's office. The University of Miami and its Cuba experts wound up on high alert. And the community started rumbling anew, parents reaching out to children, friends calling friends.
''Last Friday, when the rumors started again, my phone rang off the hook,'' says Andy Gomez, senior fellow at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban & Cuban-American Studies. ``It was everybody. Friends, family, the State Department. People went nuts. ''
Another false alarm. Which, in an ironic way, was a relief to many who yearn for the end of Castro but know they'll have to put their lives on hold to deal with its aftermath.
'Every time I buy a plane ticket to go somewhere with my family, I always say, `If Fidel doesn't die,' '' says Maria Elvira Salazar, host of WSBS-SBS 22's) talk show Polos Opuestos (Opposite Poles). ``In a way, this is going to be like Hurricane Andrew times 10. We don't know what's going to happen, besides the idea that there will be a pharaonic funeral. But we know when he dies, everything will revolve around his death. [Mega TV will] be on 24-7 for God knows how many days.''
Many South Florida Cubans jokingly say they hope Castro will make it through another weekend. But underlying such nonchalance is the anxiety of knowing that eventually they'll have to grapple with something huge.
'I did say last week, `If he's going to die, let him do it on a Monday,' '' says Bárbara Gutiérrez, a media relations officer at the University of Miami and former editor at El Nuevo Herald. 'When the new rumors started, I felt like, `Oh no. Here we go.' Because when this happens, it won't be just dealing with work,'' Gutiérrez says. ``It'll be dealing with my mother, who will want to go out and celebrate. It will be dealing with my own feelings. It will be dealing with the fact that in my family there are a lot of older people who we will have to be careful with, because the emotion of it all could make them sick.''
For now, though, the older generation in particular is keeping a stiff upper lip, says Radio Mambí's Armando Perez Roura, a longtime Cuban radio personality who has been poised to break the news of Castro's demise for decades.
''This is definitely the calm before the storm,'' Perez Roura says. Afer all, he says, it was a younger, more recentlyarrived Cuban crowd that jumped the gun and swarmed Calle Ocho to celebrate Castro's death when news of his ceding power broke at the end of July last year.
''The rest of us have spent a lot of years in this process,'' Perez Roura says. ``Waiting for something to happen, hearing rumors that never turn out to be true. We're not going to react until we know for sure.''
''Both in Cuba and in exile, you can breathe a very tense calm,'' says Ramon Colas, who helped start Bibliotecas Independientes (Independent Libraries) in Cuba and left the island in 2001. He now runs a Cuba race-relations project in Mississippi but still has regular exchanges with folks on the island.
'Everybody is waiting to be able to say with certainty, `El viejo se fue' [the old man is gone], but we know how much the Cuban government manipulates the truth. We know they can be the ones to launch rumors that he is dead in the first place, just to gauge our reaction. So we stay guarded.''
That emotional limbo can be damaging, says Dr. Julio Licinio, chairman of UM's psychiatry department.
''Emotionally, people need a concrete event to be able to deal with something and move on. Sort of like when people need to see the body of somebody who has been missing in action to be able to get to the next stage,'' Licinio says. ``With Castro, there is nothing concrete. He keeps lingering. When something is unresolved, it makes you emotionally unsettled. It's a chronic stress that can precipitate other things. Even if you are not clinically depressed or have another psychiatric situation, you still can't quite function normally.''
Which is why Sonia del Corral was glad that her father, Victor del Corral, founder of the famed Victor's Café in New York, died when he did.
'It might seem weird to say, but my father was fine when he heard that Fidel was sick and had ceded power to Raúl. The next day he had a heart attack and slipped into a coma. So he died thinking Cuba was about to be free. He didn't have to stick around for another year of the waiting game and then maybe not outlive Castro. I'm happy that he was able to say to me, `Ya, hija, ya.' '' (It's over, daughter, it's over.)
Oscar Haza, host of WJAN-America TeVe Channel 41's popular A Mano Limpia (The Gloves Are Off) hears the anxiety in the voices of viewers who call in to check on the rumors.
'The latest is that he died last Saturday at 4. And they have mobilized troops in Oriente. I talk to people around town. And even though they may not have hope that there will be immediate change in Cuba, they still need to know Castro is no longer with us. That in itself is a milestone they need to witness. So many say the same thing, `I regret that my father, or my mother, or my spouse, didn't live to see his end.' That is the reaction at all of the recent funerals I've been to.''
And so Haza, knowing how desperate the Cuban community is for confirmation of Castro's death, has tried to find the way to calm folks whenever new rumors get them riled.
'I say, `Don't pay attention to all the rumors. When you tune in and you hear me say `Ya,' you will know that means 'Ya.' ''
Posted on Fri, Aug. 24, 2007
Castro rumors circulating -- again -- Friday
By LYDIA MARTIN
On Friday, the rumors heated up again for the third week in a row: Fidel Castro's death would be announced, first at 2 p.m., then at 4, then at 5.
For the past year, since the Cuban government announced that Fidel had ceded power to brother Raúl following intestinal surgery, rumors that he's on the brink of meeting his maker keep boiling over and dying down, creating a roller coaster of emotion for exiles and islanders.
This Friday, teary callers told Ninoska Pérez of Radio Mambí they were sure this was it, and Pérez, as usual, reminded ``The moment will come, but this is not the moment.''
At Aaction Home Health in Hialeah, office workers were abuzz because somebody from Cuba called a colleague to say folks in Havana were starting to take to the streets in anticipation of the news. At the University of Miami, media relations officers worked the phones in search of confirmation.
But once again, none of the rumors seemed to be panning out.
For many, waiting for proof has become like the low-grade anxiety that comes when you're bracing for a hurricane that may or may not hit. Even though it seems clear there won't be any real change on the island immediately after Castro's death, the exile community is holding its breath and preparing for something big nonetheless. Everyone knows whatever happens will be disruptive in some way. Or, at least, emotionally unhinging.
Last weekend, the rumors also reached fever pitch. The media perked up and started another round of the confirmation game. Calls flooded Miami Mayor Manny Diaz's office. The University of Miami and its Cuba experts wound up on high alert. And the community started rumbling anew, parents reaching out to children, friends calling friends.
''Last Friday, when the rumors started again, my phone rang off the hook,'' says Andy Gomez, senior fellow at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban & Cuban-American Studies. ``It was everybody. Friends, family, the State Department. People went nuts. ''
Another false alarm. Which, in an ironic way, was a relief to many who yearn for the end of Castro but know they'll have to put their lives on hold to deal with its aftermath.
'Every time I buy a plane ticket to go somewhere with my family, I always say, `If Fidel doesn't die,' '' says Maria Elvira Salazar, host of WSBS-SBS 22's) talk show Polos Opuestos (Opposite Poles). ``In a way, this is going to be like Hurricane Andrew times 10. We don't know what's going to happen, besides the idea that there will be a pharaonic funeral. But we know when he dies, everything will revolve around his death. [Mega TV will] be on 24-7 for God knows how many days.''
Many South Florida Cubans jokingly say they hope Castro will make it through another weekend. But underlying such nonchalance is the anxiety of knowing that eventually they'll have to grapple with something huge.
'I did say last week, `If he's going to die, let him do it on a Monday,' '' says Bárbara Gutiérrez, a media relations officer at the University of Miami and former editor at El Nuevo Herald. 'When the new rumors started, I felt like, `Oh no. Here we go.' Because when this happens, it won't be just dealing with work,'' Gutiérrez says. ``It'll be dealing with my mother, who will want to go out and celebrate. It will be dealing with my own feelings. It will be dealing with the fact that in my family there are a lot of older people who we will have to be careful with, because the emotion of it all could make them sick.''
For now, though, the older generation in particular is keeping a stiff upper lip, says Radio Mambí's Armando Perez Roura, a longtime Cuban radio personality who has been poised to break the news of Castro's demise for decades.
''This is definitely the calm before the storm,'' Perez Roura says. Afer all, he says, it was a younger, more recentlyarrived Cuban crowd that jumped the gun and swarmed Calle Ocho to celebrate Castro's death when news of his ceding power broke at the end of July last year.
''The rest of us have spent a lot of years in this process,'' Perez Roura says. ``Waiting for something to happen, hearing rumors that never turn out to be true. We're not going to react until we know for sure.''
''Both in Cuba and in exile, you can breathe a very tense calm,'' says Ramon Colas, who helped start Bibliotecas Independientes (Independent Libraries) in Cuba and left the island in 2001. He now runs a Cuba race-relations project in Mississippi but still has regular exchanges with folks on the island.
'Everybody is waiting to be able to say with certainty, `El viejo se fue' [the old man is gone], but we know how much the Cuban government manipulates the truth. We know they can be the ones to launch rumors that he is dead in the first place, just to gauge our reaction. So we stay guarded.''
That emotional limbo can be damaging, says Dr. Julio Licinio, chairman of UM's psychiatry department.
''Emotionally, people need a concrete event to be able to deal with something and move on. Sort of like when people need to see the body of somebody who has been missing in action to be able to get to the next stage,'' Licinio says. ``With Castro, there is nothing concrete. He keeps lingering. When something is unresolved, it makes you emotionally unsettled. It's a chronic stress that can precipitate other things. Even if you are not clinically depressed or have another psychiatric situation, you still can't quite function normally.''
Which is why Sonia del Corral was glad that her father, Victor del Corral, founder of the famed Victor's Café in New York, died when he did.
'It might seem weird to say, but my father was fine when he heard that Fidel was sick and had ceded power to Raúl. The next day he had a heart attack and slipped into a coma. So he died thinking Cuba was about to be free. He didn't have to stick around for another year of the waiting game and then maybe not outlive Castro. I'm happy that he was able to say to me, `Ya, hija, ya.' '' (It's over, daughter, it's over.)
Oscar Haza, host of WJAN-America TeVe Channel 41's popular A Mano Limpia (The Gloves Are Off) hears the anxiety in the voices of viewers who call in to check on the rumors.
'The latest is that he died last Saturday at 4. And they have mobilized troops in Oriente. I talk to people around town. And even though they may not have hope that there will be immediate change in Cuba, they still need to know Castro is no longer with us. That in itself is a milestone they need to witness. So many say the same thing, `I regret that my father, or my mother, or my spouse, didn't live to see his end.' That is the reaction at all of the recent funerals I've been to.''
And so Haza, knowing how desperate the Cuban community is for confirmation of Castro's death, has tried to find the way to calm folks whenever new rumors get them riled.
'I say, `Don't pay attention to all the rumors. When you tune in and you hear me say `Ya,' you will know that means 'Ya.' ''
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Travelocity fined $183,000 for booking trips to Cuba
MH
Posted on Tue, Aug. 14, 2007
Travelocity fined $183,000 for booking trips to Cuba
BY DOUGLAS HANKS
Travelocity was fined nearly $183,000 for booking roughly 1,400 Cuba trips between 1998 and 2004, apparently the first time Washington has cracked down on a major online travel provider for violating the 1963 embargo on the communist nation.
Travelocity blamed the 1,458 violations on technical issues that were corrected years ago. ''In no way did the company intend to sell trips to Cuba,'' the spokeswoman, Ashley Johnson, wrote in an e-mail Tuesday. ``The trips to Cuba . . . were unintentionally booked online because of a technical issue several years ago and it's just now being settled.''
Johnson said the trips were booked in the United States. But Travelocity's penalty comes amid conflicts over foreign arms of U.S. firms selling trips into the popular Caribbean vacation spot. And it touches on the complications of isolating a country commercially amid an increasingly global and digital economy.
Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control also fined American Express Travel for allowing its Mexican subsidiary to book two groups on Cuba trips in December 2002 and October 2003. But while American Express paid $16,625 for its two incidents, Travelocity was fined $182,750 for 1,458 violations, OFAC disclosed Saturday.
The Travelocity fine is the second-highest imposed by the OFAC during this fiscal year, ending Sept. 30. The highest fine -- $220,000 -- was levied on LogicaCMG of Lexington, Mass. Its predecessor, CMG Telecommunications, exported computers, electronic components and technical support knowing the goods were destined for Cuba in 2001.
FAMILIAR TERRITORY
The penalties do not seem to open up a new front in the Bush administration's energetic enforcement of laws designed to hurt Cuba's economy. Experts on the embargo said federal law is fairly clear that foreign subsidiaries of U.S. firms can't do business in Cuba, and that OFAC clarified the matter with travel companies five years ago.
At the time, an unknown Internet travel company had requested permission for its foreign website to book Cuba trips for people not subject to U.S. jurisdiction -- namely the 2 million people who vacation in Cuba each year.
The company, whose name OFAC did not disclose, noted travel providers had always been free to include information on Cuba flights, hotel rates and air fares on digital booking systems used by travel agents. Why should the online version be any different?
But in a 2002 letter, OFAC's director at the time, Richard Newcomb, said the Internet had transformed those booking systems into commercial ventures where financial transactions take place. As a result, the subsidiary was banned from selling Cuba trips. Clif Burns, an export lawyer specializing in Cuba, said the matter seemed settled with the letter. An OFAC official who did not want to be identified said Travelocity was the first large online travel provider to face an OFAC fine.
COMPLEX ISSUE
Still, the issue has gotten complicated amid the globalization trend.
Burns said European Union regulations bar companies operating in member countries from denying commerce to Cuba -- a rule that would apply to U.S. subsidiaries. He said EU regulators have not enforced the 1996 rule, so most U.S. companies adhere to Washington's protocol toward Havana.
And Kayak.com, a popular travel website operated out of Norwalk, Conn., does advertise Cuba vacations. Though Expedia, Travelocity and other large travel sites set their own prices, Kayak merely receives ''referral fees'' from travel providers who get business through the site, spokeswoman Kellie Pelletier said. Because of that, she said, it is free to post the Cuba offerings.
Founded in 1996, Travelocity is the sixth-largest U.S. travel agency; it ranks second in Internet sales. In 2006, the company booked $10.1 billion in travel worldwide.
Jorge Piñon, a senior research associate at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, said the issue of online Cuban commerce can get complicated when dealing with U.S. websites.
''There's a lot of other things you can do with Cuba vis-à-vis the Internet,'' he said. ``I could be buying Cuban cigars in Spain [but] using an Internet service provider which is owned by a U.S. corporation.''
El Nuevo Herald staff writer Wilfredo Cancio Isla contributed to this report.
Posted on Tue, Aug. 14, 2007
Travelocity fined $183,000 for booking trips to Cuba
BY DOUGLAS HANKS
Travelocity was fined nearly $183,000 for booking roughly 1,400 Cuba trips between 1998 and 2004, apparently the first time Washington has cracked down on a major online travel provider for violating the 1963 embargo on the communist nation.
Travelocity blamed the 1,458 violations on technical issues that were corrected years ago. ''In no way did the company intend to sell trips to Cuba,'' the spokeswoman, Ashley Johnson, wrote in an e-mail Tuesday. ``The trips to Cuba . . . were unintentionally booked online because of a technical issue several years ago and it's just now being settled.''
Johnson said the trips were booked in the United States. But Travelocity's penalty comes amid conflicts over foreign arms of U.S. firms selling trips into the popular Caribbean vacation spot. And it touches on the complications of isolating a country commercially amid an increasingly global and digital economy.
Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control also fined American Express Travel for allowing its Mexican subsidiary to book two groups on Cuba trips in December 2002 and October 2003. But while American Express paid $16,625 for its two incidents, Travelocity was fined $182,750 for 1,458 violations, OFAC disclosed Saturday.
The Travelocity fine is the second-highest imposed by the OFAC during this fiscal year, ending Sept. 30. The highest fine -- $220,000 -- was levied on LogicaCMG of Lexington, Mass. Its predecessor, CMG Telecommunications, exported computers, electronic components and technical support knowing the goods were destined for Cuba in 2001.
FAMILIAR TERRITORY
The penalties do not seem to open up a new front in the Bush administration's energetic enforcement of laws designed to hurt Cuba's economy. Experts on the embargo said federal law is fairly clear that foreign subsidiaries of U.S. firms can't do business in Cuba, and that OFAC clarified the matter with travel companies five years ago.
At the time, an unknown Internet travel company had requested permission for its foreign website to book Cuba trips for people not subject to U.S. jurisdiction -- namely the 2 million people who vacation in Cuba each year.
The company, whose name OFAC did not disclose, noted travel providers had always been free to include information on Cuba flights, hotel rates and air fares on digital booking systems used by travel agents. Why should the online version be any different?
But in a 2002 letter, OFAC's director at the time, Richard Newcomb, said the Internet had transformed those booking systems into commercial ventures where financial transactions take place. As a result, the subsidiary was banned from selling Cuba trips. Clif Burns, an export lawyer specializing in Cuba, said the matter seemed settled with the letter. An OFAC official who did not want to be identified said Travelocity was the first large online travel provider to face an OFAC fine.
COMPLEX ISSUE
Still, the issue has gotten complicated amid the globalization trend.
Burns said European Union regulations bar companies operating in member countries from denying commerce to Cuba -- a rule that would apply to U.S. subsidiaries. He said EU regulators have not enforced the 1996 rule, so most U.S. companies adhere to Washington's protocol toward Havana.
And Kayak.com, a popular travel website operated out of Norwalk, Conn., does advertise Cuba vacations. Though Expedia, Travelocity and other large travel sites set their own prices, Kayak merely receives ''referral fees'' from travel providers who get business through the site, spokeswoman Kellie Pelletier said. Because of that, she said, it is free to post the Cuba offerings.
Founded in 1996, Travelocity is the sixth-largest U.S. travel agency; it ranks second in Internet sales. In 2006, the company booked $10.1 billion in travel worldwide.
Jorge Piñon, a senior research associate at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, said the issue of online Cuban commerce can get complicated when dealing with U.S. websites.
''There's a lot of other things you can do with Cuba vis-à-vis the Internet,'' he said. ``I could be buying Cuban cigars in Spain [but] using an Internet service provider which is owned by a U.S. corporation.''
El Nuevo Herald staff writer Wilfredo Cancio Isla contributed to this report.
Santeros have neighbor problems
MH
Posted on Tue, Aug. 14, 2007
Santeros have neighbor problems
BY TERE FIGUERAS NEGRETE
The clash between Santeria practitioners and their suburban neighbors in Coral Gables is not an isolated incident.
Consider:
• Last year, a veteran Miami-Dade firefighter was arrested on felony trespassing and animal cruelty charges after a confrontation with a Redland neighbor who caught him dumping a goat on his property.
The firefighter, Adolfo Perez, said he removed the animal carcass -- as well as other animal remains -- from the man's property after he realized it was private property, and provided him a business card identifying himself as a priest.
The neighbor, Art Valencia, a retired schoolteacher, turned the business card over to police. ''I don't care what they do, but I shouldn't have to smell dead animals at my home,'' he said.
The animal cruelty charges eventually were dropped, and Perez pleaded guilty to the felony trespass charge -- a conviction that also got him a formal reprimand from the fire department last month, said spokeswoman Elizabeth Calzadilla-Fiallo.
''I thought I was going to lose my job,'' said Perez, who is two years from retirement.
• In December, Juan Cabrisas hosted a gathering for fellow practitioners at his home at 6025 SW 35th St. He hired two off-duty Miami-Dade police officers to help handle traffic and ensure they were in compliance with local codes.
Another county officer, however, arrived at the home to investigate noise complaints and vehicles parked along the sidewalk. The homeowner was not cited; the incident report notes only that Cabrisas was asked to turn down the music.
But the ceremony was disrupted, the priests' ritual space invaded and worshipers were put on the defensive, said Santeria priest Ernesto Pichardo. ''It was overkill,'' he said.
• In an August 2006 ordination, three practitioners, including the newly ordained priest, were arrested during a Santeria celebration in the block of 17000 SW 182nd Ave and charged with animal cruelty. Those charges were later dropped, according to the state attorney's office.
• Residents living off Bird Road and Southwest 129th Avenue, where home prices have recently soared above $1.5 million, have complained of a neighboring home purchased by a Santeria church -- claiming the sounds of livestock, crowds of worshipers and parked cars blocking the street are a nuisance. The county's Team Metro, which handles such complaints, has visited the home several times since 2001. The cases were closed after the owner provided permits for the gatherings.
• Complaints about an area off of Miller Drive and Southwest 82nd Avenue Road -- a favorite dumping ground for sacrificed animals thanks to its proximity to a rail line that has religious significance to santero practitioners -- prompted the county to install cameras to catch illegal dumping and strike a special deal with railway executives to help clean up the piles of dead animals.
Posted on Tue, Aug. 14, 2007
Santeros have neighbor problems
BY TERE FIGUERAS NEGRETE
The clash between Santeria practitioners and their suburban neighbors in Coral Gables is not an isolated incident.
Consider:
• Last year, a veteran Miami-Dade firefighter was arrested on felony trespassing and animal cruelty charges after a confrontation with a Redland neighbor who caught him dumping a goat on his property.
The firefighter, Adolfo Perez, said he removed the animal carcass -- as well as other animal remains -- from the man's property after he realized it was private property, and provided him a business card identifying himself as a priest.
The neighbor, Art Valencia, a retired schoolteacher, turned the business card over to police. ''I don't care what they do, but I shouldn't have to smell dead animals at my home,'' he said.
The animal cruelty charges eventually were dropped, and Perez pleaded guilty to the felony trespass charge -- a conviction that also got him a formal reprimand from the fire department last month, said spokeswoman Elizabeth Calzadilla-Fiallo.
''I thought I was going to lose my job,'' said Perez, who is two years from retirement.
• In December, Juan Cabrisas hosted a gathering for fellow practitioners at his home at 6025 SW 35th St. He hired two off-duty Miami-Dade police officers to help handle traffic and ensure they were in compliance with local codes.
Another county officer, however, arrived at the home to investigate noise complaints and vehicles parked along the sidewalk. The homeowner was not cited; the incident report notes only that Cabrisas was asked to turn down the music.
But the ceremony was disrupted, the priests' ritual space invaded and worshipers were put on the defensive, said Santeria priest Ernesto Pichardo. ''It was overkill,'' he said.
• In an August 2006 ordination, three practitioners, including the newly ordained priest, were arrested during a Santeria celebration in the block of 17000 SW 182nd Ave and charged with animal cruelty. Those charges were later dropped, according to the state attorney's office.
• Residents living off Bird Road and Southwest 129th Avenue, where home prices have recently soared above $1.5 million, have complained of a neighboring home purchased by a Santeria church -- claiming the sounds of livestock, crowds of worshipers and parked cars blocking the street are a nuisance. The county's Team Metro, which handles such complaints, has visited the home several times since 2001. The cases were closed after the owner provided permits for the gatherings.
• Complaints about an area off of Miller Drive and Southwest 82nd Avenue Road -- a favorite dumping ground for sacrificed animals thanks to its proximity to a rail line that has religious significance to santero practitioners -- prompted the county to install cameras to catch illegal dumping and strike a special deal with railway executives to help clean up the piles of dead animals.
For santeros, religious freedom is anything but
BATTLE VAUGHAN/MAIMI HERALD STAFFPractitioners of Santeria, most notably Ernesto Pichardo, the South Florida priest who won a landmark Supreme Court decision sanctioning animal sacrifices, say the complaints -- and official reaction to those complaints -- come from a misunderstanding of his religion at best, outright bigotry at worst.
Posted on Tue, Aug. 14, 2007
For santeros, religious freedom is anything but
BY TERE FIGUERAS NEGRETE AND ELAINE DE VALLE
Noriel Batista has had little peace since a swarm of Coral Gables police officers burst onto his property, disrupting a Santeria ritual intended to initiate him into a special order of his religion's priesthood.
''It has ruined my life,'' said Batista, a Cuban-born pharmacy owner who bought the home on Casilla Street nine years ago.
Business at his Coral Way pharmacy has suffered, he says. Neighbors expressed outrage that animal sacrifices -- in this case, 11 goats and 44 fowl -- were taking place in the City Beautiful.
Shortly after the June incident made the news, Batista received a handwritten note, scrawled in the margins of a Miami Herald article: America has become a dumping ground for trash like you. Go back to Cuba and take your animal sacrifices with you.
The incident, which brought television cameras and patrol cars to the quiet, tree-lined neighborhood in early June, highlights the tension between adherents of a religion most notorious for its practice of animal sacrifice and neighbors in the increasingly affluent suburban areas where the religion is spreading and taking root.
Practitioners of Santeria, most notably Ernesto Pichardo, the South Florida priest who won a landmark Supreme Court decision sanctioning animal sacrifices, say the complaints -- and official reaction to those complaints -- come from a misunderstanding of his religion at best, outright bigotry at worst.
''When we hear about Santeria in Coral Gables, it's as if Santeria doesn't have a right to be in Coral Gables,'' said Pichardo, the head of the Church of Lukumí Babalú Ayé. His members were performing the disrupted June ritual to initiate Batista into the order of Balogún, entitling him to conduct animal offerings, a sacred precept of the religion that traces its roots to West Africa.
NOT IN MY BACKYARD
''But it's OK if it's in Little Havana, or it's all right if we do it in Hialeah,'' said Pichardo. ``As long as it is marginalized, and only appears in the lower strata of society, then it's OK.''
Pichardo has asked Coral Gables mayor Don Slesnick for an official apology and religious sensitivity training for the department's police force. Slesnick, who drew kudos from scores of residents for speaking out against the sacrifices, said he is respectful of santeros. ''I have requested that the city attorney do an exhaustive investigation of the current status of the law,'' he said.
''We not only have to observe the constitutional right for religious freedom, but we have to also concern ourselves with the quality of life in our neighborhoods,'' he said. ``There is the safety and health issue, sanitation issue dealing with dead animal carcasses.''
Santero priest Jesús Suárez, who helped officiate the ceremony at Batista's home, said he tried to explain to officers that they were interrupting a religious event. It was only after several hours and a consultation with the Miami-Dade state attorney's office that police allowed Suárez and another priest to continue.
''They ordered us out of the house, desecrated a holy space, treated us like criminals,'' he said.
Neighbors said that while they respect Batista's right to practice his faith, they wish he would not be so public about it.
''I just think they should do those things away from neighborhoods, where there are no kids and nobody can see those things,'' said Ricardo Celiz, a sports anchor for Univisión's Spanish-language broadcast network, TeleFutura. His family, including two small children, lives four houses away.
NO `DEAD ANIMALS'
''And definitely I don't want them to see any dead animals at that house,'' he said.
The tensions are understandable as second- and third-generation adherents, most of them from Cuba and other Latin countries, move up the economic ladder and out of the old neighborhoods, said Miguel De La Torre, author of Santeria: The Beliefs and Rituals of a Growing Religion in America.
The popularity of Santeria, also called Lukumi, among non-Latins is another factor -- notably black Americans embracing their African roots, he said.
''There is a fear that is rooted in racism,'' said De La Torre, an associate professor of ethics and director of the Justice and Peace Institute at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. 'This religion is practiced by Latinos, or people of African descent. It's an element of `Oh, look at these primitive people sacrificing animals.' ''
Those fears echo the early days of the religion, which arose as African slaves in Cuba masked their religion from colonial masters by masking their orishas, or gods, with the faces of Catholic saints.
''For some people, moving up the economic or social ladder means assimilation, putting away the old religion,'' he said. 'But then you have a generation that says, `I will live in an upscale neighborhood, but I will also have my santos, thank you very much.' ''
De La Torre has experienced that ambivalence firsthand.
A Cuban-born child of santeros, he broke away from the religion to become an ordained Southern Baptist minister. He has since made peace with his parents' faith.
''It's part of my cultural DNA,'' De La Torre said.
Battles over Santeria have sprung up in places far from the big-city botanicas of Miami and New York.
In the town of Euless, Texas -- a city of about 50,000 outside of Fort Worth -- a Puerto Rican santero priest is fighting City Hall for the right to kill animals in his home, located in a quiet suburban cul-de-sac.
The priest, Jose Merced, filed a federal discrimination suit.
STRANGE COMPROMISE
Euless officials offered a compromise: He could kill chickens but not goats.
Merced rejected the offer; the case is still pending.
In South Florida, the cases rarely reach beyond that of nuisance complaints -- although several of Pichardo's acquaintances have been arrested on charges related to their Santeria practices. They include a Miami-Dade firefighter -- and fellow priest -- who was charged with felony trespass and animal cruelty after dumping an animal carcass in a Redland neighborhood. The animal cruelty charges were eventually dropped.
For Batista, the incident at his Gables home has been deeply unsettling.
''I thought this was a free country,'' said Batista, becoming visibly upset. ``But I don't feel like a free man.''
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