Miami's Cuban Connection

Free Speech a Theme for Young Cuban Americans

Ricardo Rodriguez sampled the bittersweet taste of free speech this week, as he sat in his classroom at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School in Miami and watched a Channel One news segment, which featured a Cuban high school girl defending Ernesto ''Che'' Guevara and the Cuban revolution.

As a Cuban American whose grandfather had a business confiscated by Cuba's communist government in the early days of Fidel Castro's revolution, Ricardo wasn't happy listening to someone rave about the system that he abhors.

But he and 7 million other students in the United States sat through a four-day series this week about Cuba, its youth and the dark side of the Cuban revolution. The series is part of a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation-sponsored campaign on how the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment -- which protects freedom of speech, press and religion, and the right to assemble and petition the government -- affects teenagers.

CHECK OUT ARTICLE AND VIDEO:

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16548573.htm

How Will Embargo End?

Havana Journal poses an interesting question: who is more capable of ending the US embargo: Raul Castro or George W. Bush? What do you think?

Financial Times Weighs In On Miami Exiles

Andy Gomez left Cuba at the age of five, in 1961, three days before the Bay of Pigs invasion that failed to unseat Fidel Castro. Like many of the 700,000 Cubans in Miami-Dade county, Gomez still speaks English with a Cuban accent, and like most of them he has prospered in the US. He earned degrees from Harvard, raised children, grew a distinguished moustache, and became the University of Miami's foremost expert on Cuba.

His office is housed in the Casa Bacardi, a building sponsored by the Cuban rum family, on the university's sunny campus. In one corridor hang photographs of the family home in Havana, taken by Gomez on a working visit to Cuba. You can see sewage running on the street outside. "If my parents saw it they would be really disappointed," says Gomez.

The house is now inhabited by a government official's family, but Gomez's father still keeps the deed in a safe in his bedroom in Miami. That was the dream of exiled Cubans - el exilio - here: to reclaim lost Havana. But Gomez says it will never happen. "Dad turns 80. It's very sad. My brother and I were talking about the deed yesterday. What is it worth? Nothing."

While Fidel Castro, also recently 80, is ailing or dying, the exiles are giving up their old dreams. Most know they will never again live on the island 90 miles across the Florida straits, not even if it goes democratic after Castro's death.

The traditional image of the exile - an angry former plutocrat, armed, and obsessed with Fidel - is out of date. Most exiles now accept that their decades of fist-waving at Castro - the Bay of Pigs, countless attempts to assassinate him, the American economic embargo - achieved nothing. Before illness forced Castro to hand over to his brother Raul last July, he had become the world's longest-lasting leader. "No Fidel, no problem," bumper stickers in Miami once said, but most exiles now realise that Cuban communism might outlive him.

http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto011920071140291379&page=1

Cuban American Soldier Fights Travel Restrictions

National Guard Staff Sgt. Carlos Lazo, who couldn't visit his sons in Cuba two years ago because of U.S. policy, wrapped up a lobbying mission to Washington this past week that culminated with an appearance on CNN.

Lazo led a group of about 15 Cuban Americans to encourage lawmakers in the new Democrat-controlled Congress to lift the restrictions on family travel that allow Cuban exiles to visit immediate family on the island only once every three years.

Lazo, whose sons eventually came to live with him in Seattle, said he is optimistic that U.S. policy toward Cuba travel could change soon.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/16503984.htm

The Potential Role of American Business in Cuba

FROM TODAY'S HERALD:

From small South Florida businesses run by Cuban exiles to multinationals with sprawling global operations, many companies have long had a Cuba plan in a drawer or a file somewhere, ready for the day when the U.S. trade embargo is lifted.

Companies are now dusting off those business blueprints as it looks increasingly likely that Fidel Castro's intestinal illness is terminal or may prevent him from returning to power -- paving the way, some speculate, for an economic opening with Cuba, along the lines of China or Vietnam.

Although the nation of 11.3 million people represents a virgin market for all types of products and services, several sectors appear riper for immediate investment than others.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16503046.htm

When The Media Comes Calling

I've been getting phone calls from national and international media outlets looking for insight into Miami's Cuban exile community and the situation on the island. I'd like to pose a question to readers: how do you want Miami's exile community to be portrayed by the media this time around?

What would you say to reporters who ask you what the mood is like in Miami over Fidel's illness and the future of Cuba?

Witness Against Posada Finds Bomb Under his Truck

An FBI informant who is a key witness against anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles discovered a pipe bomb attached to the bottom of his pickup truck Sunday and drove it to the Hialeah Police Department, law-enforcement authorities say.

Gilberto Abascal -- whose testimony also helped convict anti-Castro activists Santiago Alvarez and Osvaldo Mitat on weapons charges -- somehow spotted the device strapped to the undercarriage of his red 2005 Ford F-150 truck while he cruised around Hialeah, two federal investigators familiar with the incident said.

PHOTO: ABASCAL

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/front/16485137.htm

St. Pete Times: Corruption Plagues Cuban Economy

By DAVID ADAMS, Times Latin America Correspondent
Published January 15, 2007

HAVANA - A common refrain heard on Cuban streets is that the difficulty of making ends meet has turned ordinary Cubans into petty criminals.

Stealing from state workplaces or operating small, illegal businesses is so common that Cubans dismiss it as an almost acceptable part of daily life.

They even have a phrase for these underhand deviations: por la izquierda, on the left.

Before he was hospitalized in July, Fidel Castro had raised the anti-corruption battle cry. In a major speech in November 2005 he warned that the revolutionary process "could fall apart" if corruption was not aggressively tackled.

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/01/15/Worldandnation/Cuba_s_economy_rife_w.shtml

Spanish Paper: Castro in Grave Condition

MADRID, Spain - Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro has had at least three failed operations and complications from an intestinal infection and faces "a very grave prognosis," a Spanish newspaper reported Tuesday.

A Cuban diplomat in Madrid said the reports were lies and declined to comment.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16468022.htm

Group States Ten Reasons to Change Policy Toward Cuba

The Center for Democracy in the Americas, joined by U.S.A. Engage, today released In Our National Interest: The Top Ten Reasons for Changing U.S. policy toward Cuba.

"This top ten list is a powerful reminder to Congress and all Americans that sanctions against Cuba do nothing but violate American values, cost American jobs, stain our image overseas, and breach our basic rights," said Sarah Stephens with the Center for Democracy in the Americas.  "As Cuba enters a new era, so should America, and replace our policy of isolating Cuba with one favoring engagement, travel, and trade."

Grounded in research and reality, "In Our National Interest" states the key arguments in fourteen pages with backup research and a powerful clarity:

1 The policy has produced nothing in decades
2 Enforcing the policy drains resources from the war on terror
3 The policy hurts American companies and American workers
4 The policy is an assault on family values
5 The policy infringes on the rights and liberties of all U.S. citizens
6 The policy hurts America's image abroad
7 The Castro government uses our policy to advance its own ends
8 The policy puts political interests above the national interest
9 Important people oppose the policy and want to see it changed
10 The policy stops Americans from doing what they do best

The Center for Democracy in the Americas (CDA) -- http://www.democracyinamericas.org/ -- is devoted to changing U.S. policy toward the countries of the Americas by basing our relations on respect and dignity, and fostering dialogue particularly with those governments and movements with which U.S. policy is at odds.