BBC NEWS | Americas | New Bolivian leader visits Cuba

New Bolivian leader visits Cuba
Bolivian president-elect Evo Morales has arrived in
Cuba on his first foreign trip since a sweeping
election victory earlier this month. Mr Morales was
warmly welcomed by Cuban President Fidel Castro, who
sent a jet to collect him and about 60 supporters. Mr
Morales is set to become Bolivia's first indigenous
president next month. Correspondents say his meetings
with Fidel Castro are sure to be marked by anti-US
rhetoric and calls for Latin American unity.

'US nightmare'
An official Cuban government statement said Mr
Morales' visit was "in keeping with the historic and
profound relations of brotherhood and solidarity
between the Bolivian and Cuban people".
Mr Morales will also visit a number of other countries
including Brazil, China and South Africa - but not the
US - ahead of his inauguration next month. Earlier
this week, Mr Morales gave an interview to the Arabic
TV station al-Jazeera in which he accused President
George Bush of practising terrorism in Iraq. He also
said the White House had run a dirty campaign to try
to stop him winning office. US officials have said
they will judge Mr Morales by his actions, not his
words.

But correspondents say there is no doubt Washington is
concerned about a politician who has described himself
as a "nightmare for the US". Following his election
earlier this month, Mr Morales said he would join what
he called President Castro's anti-imperialist
struggle. Mr Morales was elected president with nearly
54% of the vote, the biggest support for any candidate
since democracy was restored in Bolivia in the 1980s.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4568534.stm

Published: 2005/12/30 16:03:59 GMT

© BBC MMV





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Morales gets warm welcome in Cuba

    HAVANA, Dec 30: Bolivia’s Socialist president-elect, Evo Morales, was 
welcomed in Havana on Friday with full honours and greeted at the  airport by a
bouyant Cuban President Fidel Castro.

     A military band played and an honour guard stood at attention as  Morales
arrived at Jose Marti airport at 10:10 am local time (1410 GMT)  for his first
visit abroad since winning Bolivia’s Dec 18 presidential  election.

     Castro had sent his private plane to bring Morales to Havana. After the 
president-elect stepped off the plane onto a red carpet, the two  leaders
embraced.

     Morales, who has never hidden his admiration for Cuba’s revolution, said he
felt “joy, great emotion to be here”.

     Morales’ choice of Cuba as his first visit abroad as president-elect 
underlines the political loyalties of the Leftist leader, who pledged  to join
Castro’s “anti-imperialist struggle” in a message to the Cuban  people the day
after his election.

     Alluding to a more Leftist trend in Latin America, Castro said: “It  appears
the map is changing, and we need to be reflective, to observe  well and to be
informed.”

     Despite US efforts to isolate Cuba, Castro enjoys close ties to  Venezuela’s
Leftist president Hugo Chavez and Left-of-center  governments have to come power
elsewhere in the region.

     Morales, an activist for coca farmers, has vowed to nationalize the  natural
gas industry and tackle poverty in one of the poorest countries  in the
Americas. He is a sharp critic of US free trade and drug  policies in the
region.

     In addition to Castro, Morales was greeted by Vice President Carlos  Lage
Davila, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque and other dignitaries.

     The visit, only two days before the 47th anniversary of Cuba’s  revolution,
“represents an important stimulus to strengthen the ties of  friendship and
cooperation” between Cuba and the new leadership in  Bolivia, Castro’s
government said in a statement.

     Morales is due to fly back to Bolivia on Saturday, also in Castro’s  jet, to
spend the new year in Oruro in the southern Andes, his birth  place.—AFP



---

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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

-----Forwarded Message-----
>From: walter tillow <wtillow@...>
>Sent: Dec 30, 2005 8:37 AM
>To: lasolidarity@...
>Subject: [LAsolidarity] Tell Chicago Mayor Daley to Accept Low Cost Oil Coming
from CITGO!
>
>Tell Chicago Mayor Daley
>
>Friday, December 30, 2005
>
>Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 03:01:25 -0500
>From: Mary MacElveen Mary@...
>subject: Tell Chicago Mayor Daley to Accept Low Cost Oil Coming from CITGO!
>
>Dear Folks,
>
>On our site, VHeadline.com, I read where the Chicago Transit Union has refused
an opportunity to alleviate commuting costs for hundreds of thousands in the
Windy City's low-income neighborhoods.  This is unacceptable.  To read our
article in full, please go to this link: Chicago is refusing Venezuelan
discounted oil to low-income neighborhoods After you have read our article in
full, I am strongly urging all of you to take action to demand that the elected
officials I wrote below take action and accept that aid package coming from
CITGO oil and President Hugo Chavez.  The contact information is provided for
your use below. I ask that you pass this on to others also urging them to
contact them as well.
>
>Thank you,
>Mary!
>
>
>Mayor Richard M. Daley
>Office of the Mayor
>City Hall - 121 N. LaSalle, Room 507
>Chicago, IL 60602
>Phone: 312-744-3334
>Fax:   312-744-8045
>Email: http://tinyurl.com/cqbc6
>
>
>To Mayor Daley,
December 30, 2004
>
>It has come to my attention that on December 28th, The Chicago Transit
Authority refused an opportunity to alleviate commuting costs for hundreds of
>thousands in the Windy City's low-income neighborhoods. Instead of accepting
>deeply discounted fuel from the Venezuela-owned CITGO Petroleum Corporation,
the city is instead raising fares to solve budget shortfalls. That is simply
unacceptable, Mayor Daley and it is up to you to fix this on behalf of those who
elected you to office.
>
>I am of the belief that this is purely a political move since there is heighten
tension between Washington, D.C. and Venezuela and the citizens of your city
should NOT be caught in the crosshairs.
>
>As a journalist for VHeadline.com which is a Venezuelan news site, I was sent
to the Bronx to cover that delivery and to see the faces of those who would
receive this oil was phenomenal.  A woman even came up to me and said: “Thank
you, President Chavez” When I saw the CITGO oil truck roll up after the signing
ceremony, my first thought was, the Calvary has arrived.  I felt that way and so
did others since Bush is doing nothing to help the poor in this country.
>
>Even Representative Jose Serrano stated: “America is not taking care of its
own”
>
>Both Representative Jose Serrano and Representative William Delahunt should be
applauded for brokering this deal with President Chavez and CITGO when President
Chavez traveled to this country back in September.  They both put people before
politics and you should do the same.  As I type this letter, I know that
residents in both Boston and in the Bronx are being kept warm and they have
President Chavez and the CEO of CITGO Felix Rodriguez to thank.
>
>I will be sending a copy of this letter out to Governor Blagojevich, Senator
Obama, Senator Durbin and out to many political activists.  I will also be
sending this out to those within the Chicago media.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Mary MacElveen
>Columnist for VHeadline.com
>mary@...
>
>
>Governor Blagojevich
>207 State House
>Springfield, IL 62706
>Phone: (217) 782-0244
>Fax:     (217) 524-6262
>Email: http://www.illinois.gov/gov/contactthegovernor.cfm
>
>Senator Barack Obama
>Washington D.C. Office
>713 Hart Senate Office Building
>Washington, D.C. 20510
>Phone: (202) 224-2854
>Fax:     (202) 228-4260
>Email: http://obama.senate.gov/contact/
>
>Senator Dick Durbin
>Washington, DC
>332 Dirksen Senate Bldg.
>Washington, DC 20510
>Phone: (202) 224-2152
>Fax:     (202) 228-0400
>Email: http://durbin.senate.gov/contact.cfm#contact
>
>
>http://www.vheadline.com/spanish
>
>http://www.vheadline.com/espanol
>
>http://www.vheadline.com/español
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>LAsolidarity mailing list
>LAsolidarity@...
>http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/lasolidarity
>free hosting provided by http://www.mutualaid.org/
>
>To unsubscribe, send a blank email to
LAsolidarity-unsubscribe@...

http://www.vheadline.com

You are receiving this email because you have subscribed to VHeadline.com
Venezuela; if you do not wish to receive any more news alerts, you must login to
VHeadline.com at http://www.vheadline.com/subscriber/member_details.asp and
change your membership preferences to reflect whether or not you wish to receive
email editions and/or promos.

Tell Chicago Mayor Daley

Friday, December 30, 2005

Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 03:01:25 -0500
From: Mary MacElveen Mary@...
ubject: Tell Chicago Mayor Daley to Accept Low Cost Oil Coming from CITGO!

Dear Folks,

On our site, VHeadline.com, I read where the Chicago Transit Union has refused
an opportunity to alleviate commuting costs for hundreds of thousands in the
Windy City's low-income neighborhoods.  This is unacceptable.  To read our
article in full, please go to this link: Chicago is refusing Venezuelan
discounted oil to low-income neighborhoods After you have read our article in
full, I am strongly urging all of you to take action to demand that the elected
officials I wrote below take action and accept that aid package coming from
CITGO oil and President Hugo Chavez.  The contact information is provided for
your use below. I ask that you pass this on to others also urging them to
contact them as well.

Thank you,

Mary!


Mayor Richard M. Daley
Office of the Mayor
City Hall - 121 N. LaSalle, Room 507
Chicago, IL 60602
Phone: 312-744-3334
Fax:   312-744-8045

Email: http://tinyurl.com/cqbc6



To Mayor Daley,
December 30, 2004



It has come to my attention that on December 28th, The Chicago Transit Authority
refused an opportunity to alleviate commuting costs for hundreds of
thousands in the Windy City's low-income neighborhoods. Instead of accepting
deeply discounted fuel from the Venezuela-owned CITGO Petroleum Corporation, the
city is instead raising fares to solve budget shortfalls. That is simply
unacceptable, Mayor Daley and it is up to you to fix this on behalf of those who
elected you to office.



I am of the belief that this is purely a political move since there is heighten
tension between Washington, D.C. and Venezuela and the citizens of your city
should NOT be caught in the crosshairs.



As a journalist for VHeadline.com which is a Venezuelan news site, I was sent to
the Bronx to cover that delivery and to see the faces of those who would receive
this oil was phenomenal.  A woman even came up to me and said: “Thank you,
President Chavez” When I saw the CITGO oil truck roll up after the signing
ceremony, my first thought was, the Calvary has arrived.  I felt that way and so
did others since Bush is doing nothing to help the poor in this country.



Even Representative Jose Serrano stated: “America is not taking care of its
own”



Both Representative Jose Serrano and Representative William Delahunt should be
applauded for brokering this deal with President Chavez and CITGO when President
Chavez traveled to this country back in September.  They both put people before
politics and you should do the same.  As I type this letter, I know that
residents in both Boston and in the Bronx are being kept warm and they have
President Chavez and the CEO of CITGO Felix Rodriguez to thank.



I will be sending a copy of this letter out to Governor Blagojevich, Senator
Obama, Senator Durbin and out to many political activists.  I will also be
sending this out to those within the Chicago media.



Sincerely,



Mary MacElveen

Columnist for VHeadline.com

mary@...



Governor Blagojevich

207 State House

Springfield, IL 62706

Phone: (217) 782-0244

Fax:     (217) 524-6262

Email: http://www.illinois.gov/gov/contactthegovernor.cfm



Senator Barack Obama

Washington D.C. Office
713 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone: (202) 224-2854
Fax:     (202) 228-4260

Email: http://obama.senate.gov/contact/



Senator Dick Durbin

Washington, DC
332 Dirksen Senate Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-2152
Fax:     (202) 228-0400

Email: http://durbin.senate.gov/contact.cfm#contact








http://www.vheadline.com/spanish

http://www.vheadline.com/espanol

http://www.vheadline.com/español

I picked up this pair of articles jut scanning my
usual websites, the Guardian (UK) and the BBC but
outside of the parameters of what could be considered
"pure" news, my usual areas of interest. After the
mildly paranoid article from the El Pais correspondent
in Havana which I translated and appeared in
yesterday's (29/12/2005)  listings I felt that it
would be a good antidote to signal where the Big
Brothers really reside. The NSA article isn't about
new material just that they have been caught with
their fingers in the pie. The second apparently an
innocent proposal from the UK to place a GPS device in
EVERY car to enable billing for road pricing etc (The
article cites the noble reason of being able to post
alert in the event of a road disaster but I and the
other paranoics who use this service can think of many
agencies that would be interested in the information
available. It seems to be the second major curtailment
of civil rights that the British public is prepared to
swallow without a murmur of protest, the first being
the widespread introduction of video cameras in public
places well in advance of other "liberal democratic"
countries. Strange too if you've followed the
political storm that's centred on the debate in the UK
over the introduction of "smart" identity cards
Happy New(s)Year
===============================================================
Guardian | US intelligence service bugged website
visitors despite ban

US intelligence service bugged website visitors
despite ban
· Agency apologises for use of 'cookie' tracking files
· Exposure adds to pressure over White House powers
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Friday December 30, 2005

Guardian
The intelligence service at the centre of the row over
eavesdropping tracked visitors to its website, despite
US government regulations. Monitoring files, known as
"cookies", were discovered by a privacy activist at a
time when the White House is on the defensive about
its use of the National Security Agency to monitor the
communications of US citizens.

Although the cookies were dismantled this week and the
NSA issued an apology on Wednesday, the episode will
add to pressure on the White House to engage in a
national debate about its use of the agency, and its
interpretation of the constitutional limits on George
Bush's presidential powers.

The chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, Arlen
Specter, confirmed this week that he intends to
conduct hearings into President Bush's secret order in
2002 authorising the NSA to conduct email and
telephone surveillance of US citizens without a court
warrant. The hearings are expected to get under way
next month.

"There likely will be a national debate about whether
the president really has the kind of power he's been
using," Mr Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, told
reporters.

In a posting on his googlewatch.org website a privacy
activist, Daniel Brandt, says he discovered that the
NSA was using tracking devices when he logged on to
the agency website on Christmas Day. He found the site
was using two persistent
cookies that would not expire until 2035, well beyond
the life of most computers.

While the use of cookies is seen as a convenience at
commercial websites, allowing a visitor access without
laboriously retyping passwords, their utility for
government websites - which do not typically have
repeat visits - is uncertain.

US government agencies have been barred from using
persistent cookies since 2000 because of privacy
concerns. The regulations were imposed after
disclosures that the White House drug policy office
had been using cookies to monitor visitors to its
anti-drug advertisements.

However, Mr Brandt and others have noted repeated
violations of the ban. Three years ago, the CIA
website was obliged to remove its cookies after Mr
Brandt noticed that the devices were still in use.
Following his latest discovery, Mr Brandt sent faxes
to the NSA public affairs office and the contractor
running
the agency's website. The agency issued an apology on
Wednesday.

Although privacy advocates yesterday said the episode
was of relatively limited concern given the scope of
the NSA's surveillance capabilities, the tracking was
viewed as an another example of unwarranted intrusion
by the intelligence service. "This illustrates the
principle that unchecked authority goes astray. In
this case, it's a relatively trivial infraction," said
Steven Aftergood, of the Federation of American
Scientists. "But to me the point is that we need more
aggressive and penetrating oversight than we have."

Since the New York Times disclosed the domestic spying
operation, the White House has worked strenuously to
damp down public outrage, arguing that the
surveillance was limited to those with known links to
al-Qaida. However, that posture becomes increasingly
difficult to maintain as new evidence surfaces on the
range of the NSA activities.

In a follow-up story, the New York Times reported last
week that the NSA had monitored far larger volumes of
telephone and internet communications than initially
acknowledged by the White House. Some of the
information was obtained after US telecommunications
companies allowed backdoor access to streams of
telephone and internet traffic.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
AND
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Navigating future for road
charges
Navigating future for road charges
       By Paul Rincon
       BBC News science reporter


Motorists are already beginning to embrace the idea of
satellite-navigation units in cars.And in a few years,
sat-nav will be doing far more than simply telling
drivers how to get to their destination. This week,
the first test satellite in Europe's 3.4bn-euro
(Ł2.3bn; $4bn)Galileo satellite-navigation system
blasted off on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome
in Kazakhstan.

The final global network of 30 Galileo satellites is
crucial to providing the high volumes of time- and
location-based data needed for new services such as
advanced sat-nav, mobile location data, natural
disaster surveillance and air traffic control.

Powerful applications are expected on the roads; the
Galileo network would allow a vehicle's exact
movements to be tracked, presenting new possibilities
for road-user charging and tolling.
The precision and availability of the Galileo signal
would facilitate the application of charges according
to the distance travelled by a vehicle, along with
other parameters."For example, you might want to vary
the charge according to speed, or whether someone is
travelling through a city centre," Hans-Peter
Marchlewski, general counsellor for the Galileo Joint
Undertaking, told the BBC News website.

Tax collection
The time signal produced by Galileo would also allow
different charges for driving at different times of
the day."This we are able to do without any support
from bridges or ground stations. You can do everything
with the [Galileo] signal," explained Mr Marchlewski.
Each motorist would, of course, need to carry a
satellite-linked "smart box" in their car, but
Galileo-based systems would also dispense with much of
the roadside infrastructure to collect tolls and
charges.

There have been quite significant studies which show
that revenue-neutral road-user charging would give you
quite significant gains in congestion reduction Prof
Mike McDonald, University of Southampton Galileo
sat-nav could potentially form the basis for general
"pay-as-you-go" road pricing proposed for the UK as a
replacement for road tax and petrol duty.However,
transport policy expert Professor Stephen Glaister,
from Imperial College London, says that "tag and
beacon" systems are also under consideration.

These employ two-way communication between a roadside
beacon and the vehicle. They are used in a
distance-related charging scheme for heavy goods
vehicles in Austria and a congestion charging scheme
underway in Trondheim, Norway. The American Global
Positioning System (GPS) is used for distance-related
heavy-goods-vehicle charging in Germany.

Busy roads
These current schemes reveal pros and cons for sat-nav
and beacon-based systems in road-user charging. "As
you pass the beacon you have a more solid
communication link, allowing you
to pass information both ways. The satellite system
has some problems with continuous communication when
you get shadowing by buildings," Professor Mike
McDonald, director of the Transport Research Group at
the University of Southampton, told the BBC News
website. "With satellite navigation, you don't get a
totally continuous signal but you get a much better
understanding of where the vehicles are and how they
are being
driven."

SAT-NAV AND ROAD SAFETY
'Smart box' would automatically transmit location of
vehicle
Emergency request could be triggered at airbag
inflation
Message might contain details of passengers, e.g. in
coaches
Real-time traffic data would guide others away from
scene
Future systems could warn of road dangers and take
control of vehicle, e.g. limiting speed

With Galileo and GPS, the satellite signal can be
supplemented where it drops out by ground stations,
although these must have a line of sight with the
vehicle.

European road users pay 330bn euros (Ł230bn; $390bn)
to governments through taxes each year. But along with
its importance in raising revenue, road-user charging
can play an important role in reducing congestion. "In
Brussels, we have the same transport situation as we
have in London. In Germany, it is the same situation,"
lamented Mr Marchlewski. "Galileo will not
reduce congestion directly, but it can be used for a
more intelligent distribution of vehicles."

Professor McDonald adds: "There have been quite
significant studies which show that revenue-neutral
road-user charging would give you quite significant
gains in congestion reduction."
By the same token, it could also be a powerful tool
for tackling carbon emissions, say some experts. But
environmentalists warn that shifting money away from
fuel duty would remove the incentive for motorists to
use greener vehicles.

Monthly bill
Currently, the UK is the only EU member state
proposing pay-as-you-go charging. But this could
change. "As Galileo comes in it is quite likely to be
acquired for road-user charging.The issues are
political rather than technical," Professor McDonald
commented.       ...if you get a bill for a road you
haven't driven on at a time of day you weren't there,
what's the recourse for getting your money back?

UK's Automobile Association
Exactly how Galileo might be used in electronic fee
collection (EFC) - a catch-all term describing any
toll or charge applied electronically - will in large
part be left up to the individual member states, which
will continue to set their own policies.
Some Galileo initiatives for the road sector are,
however, being coordinated at the European level. The
European Commission is undertaking studies into the
idea of equipping heavy goods vehicles and coaches
with onboard terminals offering Galileo-based
services, especially in EFC.

The system might work something like this: hauliers
and coach operators would sign a contract with one or
more operators to use the services offered through the
onboard units. The terminals would then be used to
track the charges and tolls collected by vehicles on
their travels. These would be issued to clients as a
list of expenses much like a monthly credit card bill.


Emergency response
Initial versions of the terminals will need to work
with three key technologies: Galileo, GPS and the
microwave system used for tolling in France and Spain.
A spokeswoman for the AA motoring trust in the UK said
there was still some way to go in working out exactly
how such systems might work in practice.

THE GALILEO SAT-NAV FUTURE
Navigation for navigation's sake will not drive
applications.    Uptake pushed forward by services
that add value to data
Huge potential for internet-linked services run off
mobiles
  E.g. finding a restaurant, and directing you to
nearest ATM
Multimedia delivered to tourists' mobiles as they walk
around
'Guardian angel' services will locate separated
children

Possibilities are endless; mobile firms already
brainstorming
Database and billing companies planning for large
markets

In addition to EFC, the European Commission wants
these units to be used for fleet and freight
management and to launch emergency calls. Drivers
would use a small keyboard to enter certain parameters
at the beginning of a journey, such as how many
passengers were on a coach, or whether a lorry was
carrying hazardous chemicals. In the event of an
accident, the terminal would launch an emergency call
- perhaps triggered by the activation of airbags. The
call would also send the information entered by the
driver, allowing emergency services to adapt their
response to the situation. Using the Galileo signal,
the terminal message would also pinpoint the precise
location of the stricken vehicle.

Future vision
The price of one of these onboard units is currently
estimated at 400 euros (Ł270; $480), although it is
hoped that this could drop to 100 euros by 2010.
Eventually, new trucks and coaches in Europe would be
sold with the equipment already installed.
"If this system works for commercial vehicles, that
same technology will be readily available for use in
vehicle charging," says Mike McDonald. Regardless of
whether member states propose their own Galileo-based
road-user charging schemes, onboard units offering
Galileo-based services for ordinary motorists could be
available by 2015. These could offer route-guidance,
incorporating up-to-date traffic information,
but would also be enabled for insurance
pay-as-you-drive schemes. "There are drivers that
would encourage people to buy systems in vehicles that
have location-based data, ommunications and mapping,"
Professor McDonald explains."As they become universal,
the incremental costs for putting in road-user
charging and other applications will become very much
lower."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4552132.stm

Published: 2005/12/29 11:31:20 GMT

© BBC MMV





__________________________________________
Yahoo! DSL – Something to write home about.
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Online at: http://politicalaffairs.net/article/view/2479/1/140/
Secret Invasion: US Troops Steal into Paraguay

By W.T. Whitney Jr
Archives - Dates and Topics 2006 January Related stories: Globalization

12-29-05, 12:00 pm


(illustration by Victor Velez)
The Bush administration has sent troops into Paraguay. They are there ostensibly
for humanitarian and counterterrorism purposes. The action coincides with
growing left unity in South America, military buildup in the region and
burgeoning independent trade relationships.

In a speech on July 26 in Havana, Fidel Castro took note of the incursion and
called upon North American activists to oppose it. In that vein, an inquiry is
in order as to why the US government has inserted Paraguay into its strategic
plan for South America. In addition, we should look at factors that favor Bush
administration schemes for the region and others that work against US plans.

In December 2004, the Bush administration canceled $330 million in economic and
military aid to 10 South American countries. They were being penalized for
turning down a US request for granting its soldiers immunity from prosecution
for crimes they commit within the countries’ borders.

On May 5, however, the government of Paraguay took the bait. It signed an
agreement authorizing an 18-month stay, automatically extended, for US soldiers
and civilian employees. The previous limit had been set at six months. On May
26, in a secret session, Paraguay’s Congress passed legislation protecting US
soldiers from prosecution for criminal activity, both within Paraguay and by the
International Criminal Court.

Reportedly, 400 or 500 US troops – estimates vary – arrived in Paraguay on
July 1, with planes, weapons, equipment and ammunition. They are billeted at a
base near Mariscal Estigarribia, a small city located 200 kilometers from the
Bolivian border in the arid, sparsely populated Chaco area of Paraguay. That
facility, built by US contractors in the waning years of the Stroessner
dictatorship (1954-1989), offers a runway long enough to accommodate large
military transport planes and bombers. It provides barrack space for 16,000
troops.

Journalist and human rights activist Alfredo Boccia Paz, stated in Asuncion that
immunity from prosecution for US soldiers, extension of their stay, and joint
military exercises all provide the groundwork for the eventual installation of a
US base in Paraguay. He quoted Argentine Nobel Peace laureate Adolfo PĂ©rez
Esquivel: “Once the United States arrives, it takes it a long time to leave.
And that really frightens me.”

The US embassy in Paraguay declared that the United States has “absolutely no
intention of establishing a military base anywhere in Paraguay” and “has no
intention to station soldiers for a lengthy period in Paraguay.” The
government of Paraguay seconded that notion. Brazil, however, responded. In late
July, its army undertook military maneuvers along that country’s border with
Paraguay. Paratroopers staged a mock occupation of the Furnas electrical
substation, located on the Brazilian border with Paraguay.

Paraguay’s vice president, Luis Castiglioni, met with Vice President Dick
Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and former Assistant Secretary of State for
Latin American Affairs Roger Noriega last July in Washington. Observers
suggested that this welcoming committee was unusually high-powered for a
visiting vice president of a small South American nation. According to Rumsfeld,
experts would soon be going to Paraguay to develop a “planning seminar on
systems for national security.” The secretary visited Paraguay in August. The
FBI announced that it would be opening an office in Paraguay in 2006.

The official US version of the Paraguay initiative is that for the next 18
months, in addition to joint military exercises, 13 US military teams would be
working on humanitarian aide projects, provide counterterrorism and police
training and ameliorate the effects of poverty. It turns out that US military
personnel have been providing medical care for poor peasants in a northern
province since 2002. Boccia Paz commented: “These missions are always
disguised as humanitarian aid.… What Paraguay does not and cannot control is
the total number of agents that enter the country.”

There is of course no shortage of US bases in Latin America. They are located in
Guantánamo, Cuba; Fort Buchanan and Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico; Soto Cano,
Honduras; and Comalapa, El Salvador. New US air bases are situated in Reina
Beatriz, Aruba; Hato Rey, Curacao; and Manta in Ecuador. The latter was
officially described as a weather station on a dusty road, until it came out
that a full-fledged air base had materialized on the site at a cost of $80
million. Washington also operates a network of 17 land-based radar stations
(three in Peru, four in Colombia, plus 10 mobile radar stations in secret
locations.) All of these installations come are under the control of the US
Southern Command, based in Miami.

The US rationale for converting Paraguay into a military satellite is worth
exploring. For one thing, Washington is responding in catch-up fashion to
mounting popular resistance in the region to US bullying. In neighboring
Bolivia, for example, two US-friendly presidents have been chased from office in
the past two years. And mass opposition to the US-backed candidate in last
December’s national election was no exception to the trend.

There’s more. Paraguay’s neighbor, Uruguay, put a social democrat into the
presidency in 2004, and last February President Kirchner of Argentina violated
world financial orthodoxy when his government negotiated a 60 percent cut in
Argentina’s $82 billion debt obligations. Both Argentina and Brazil have
quietly rejected the FTAA. Paraguay has joined them in the South American Common
Market (Mercosur), which shelters its members from US and International Monetary
Fund dictates. For Paraguay to defect would serve US ends.

Washington took major exception to declarations emanating from a gathering March
29, 2005 of Brazilian, Colombian, Venezuelan and Spanish heads of state at
Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela. They had discussed the use of raw materials and
regional trade patterns to combat poverty and secure peace in South America. A
few weeks later Washington was miffed when its candidate for the secretary
generalship of the Organization of American States was rejected. And right under
the US nose, Latin American nations are coming together to form Telesur and
Petrosur, continent-wide television and energy corporations, and developing
banking services that serve people’s needs.


Natural resources may also figure into the US motivations for expanding its
military presence in South America. One branch of the main opening for a huge
Bolivian natural gas field apparently crosses the international border and is
accessible in Paraguay at the Independencia I site, not far from Mariscal
Estigarribia. If US troops occupied the base there, they would be in striking
distance of the Bolivian provinces of Santa Cruz and Tarija, where US natural
gas corporations are active. Bolivia will soon be voting on autonomy for the
provinces. A “yes” vote is expected to result in privatization. In the event
of civil unrest following that outcome, the corporations could call for military
protection.

The military base overlies the Guarani aquifer, one of the world’s largest
underground fresh water reserves. Already water wars have riled Bolivian
politics. Oligarchic interests in both the United States and South America have
great longings to advance the process of turning water into a commodity.

The Bush administration has an additional interest in Paraguay through its war
on terrorism. The so-called triple border, where Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay
meet along both sides of the Parana River, is the storied locus for smuggling,
money laundering, commerce in child prostitutes, counterfeit operations, and
fixing of illegal border crossings. Some 20,000 Middle Eastern, Muslim
expatriates, most of them Lebanese in origin, live in Ciudad del Este on the
Paraguayan side of the river and Foz do Iguacu in Brazil. The cities supposedly
are centers for Islamic extremism and sources of funding for terrorist groups.
Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah operatives reportedly have passed through the
area, and training camps, sleeper cells, and passport factories are said to be
located there. After September 11, 40 FBI agents joined Paraguayan colleagues to
investigate some of these networks. Dozens of suspects were arrested. US
military authorities advertise their operatives moving into Paraguay as experts
in counterterrorism.

US meddling in South America has great potential to add to existing tensions in
the region as it adds its might to ongoing South American military expansion.
According to Uruguayan Raúl Zibechi, an expert on the continent’s military
landscape, South America is experiencing unprecedented military growth. Nations
there have reacted to the excesses of US Plan Colombia and to new military
modalities, particularly the privatization of military forces on display in
Columbia. They are also attempting to emulate Brazil’s new posture of
strategic military autonomy. And, as is their habit, ruling circles in many
countries, following Washington’s lead, respond to social unrest through
military expansion.

In December 2004, Venezuela agreed to buy 110,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 33
helicopters and 50 fighter-bombers from Russia. Spain supplied Venezuela with
naval aeronautical material, 10 transport planes, and four coast-guard cutters.
Venezuela will be buying 50 training and combat jets from Brazil. Venezuela
earlier this year activated a two million-member reserve component of its
national military force.

Yet according to the journal Military Power Review Venezuela comes in at sixth
place among South American nations in terms of military strength. Brazil is far
in the lead; Peru places second; Argentina, third; followed by Chile and
Colombia.

Increased military power, operating in tandem with nationalist stirrings, may
inhibit US military meddling. Brazil, for example, with its own strategic
defense plan and brisk economic growth, is an unlikely US acolyte. The nation is
the 10th largest industrial power in the world and has become the world’s
fifth largest arms exporter. Brazilian industry builds warships, several types
of fighter jets, and is constructing a nuclear submarine. And to facilitate its
expanded trade with China, Brazil is paying 70 percent of the $1 billion cost of
a 1,500 mile long highway that extends from Peruvian ports to Santos on
Brazil’s Atlantic coast.

Brazil recently sent military planners to Vietnam to learn about guerrilla war.
The head of Brazil’s Amazon military command, General Claudio Barbosa, has
predicted that Brazil may in the future face wars similar to the war that
convulsed Vietnam and the one transpiring in Iraq now. The priority would be
guerrilla warfare, “an option the army will not hesitate to adopt facing a
confrontation with another country or group of countries with greater economic
and military power.” What nation could the general be thinking of?

Brazil opposes Plan Colombia. The nationalist orientation of its industrial
leaders persuaded them to put off joining FTAA. Brazil has no US bases on its
soil, nor does Brazil engage in joint military exercises with the United States.
Military cooperation between Brazil and Argentina apparently is flourishing, and
in February, Brazil signed strategic accords with Venezuela. The Brazilian
example of independent pursuit of national interests has emboldened other South
American nations.

The single-minded pursuit of national interests, however, may work against
popular struggle and Latin American unity. Analysts agree that Brazil and
Argentina’s preoccupation with internal interests has created a power vacuum
that encouraged Washington to court Paraguay successfully. Relations between the
two nations have long been plagued by trade clashes.

Ideally, Brazil might have utilized its economic power to further Latin American
unity and ward off predatory US behavior. Instead it operates according to free
market rules and, unlike Venezuela, looks for salvation through from the US-led
world market economy, distancing itself from Latin America’s agenda. Worse,
jostling for market advantage creates divisions that lay the region open to
tactics of divide and rule.

The Herculean labors of unified democratic struggle elsewhere in Latin America
point to strategies through which Bush scheming and US military probing in the
region might be resisted.
The example of the FARC-EP, in its survival and apparent growth, has meaning for
revolutionaries far beyond Colombia’s borders. The organization now maintains
a presence in nearly 100 percent of the municipalities in Colombia, and,
according to Monthly Review, “with the exception of Cuba, [the FARC-EP] has
become the largest and most powerful revolutionary force – politically and
militarily – within the Western Hemisphere.”

Chávez forces in Venezuela, under the aegis of the Bolivarian Alternative for
the Americas (ALBA), have fused the twin causes of Latin American unity and
social justice. Mass protests in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, even Chile keep empire
minders in Washington on edge. The point here is that growing solidarity on the
part of US activists with struggles throughout Latin America may act as a brake
on US meddling in Paraguay.

Opposition likely will materialize within Paraguay itself. In recent years
peasants there have mounted protests against privatization, economic
restrictions imposed by the International Monetary Fund, unfair land holding
patterns, and antiterrorism legislation.

There is no lack of awareness. Orlando Castillo of the human rights group
Servicio Páz y Justicia recalls that, “US soldiers taught torture and other
forms of human rights violations in courses at the School of the Americas.” He
warns that “the United States has strong aspirations to convert Paraguay into
a second Panama for its troops and is not far removed from reaching its
objective of controlling the Southern Cone.”

While attending the 2nd Jubilee South World Assembly in Havana, Sixto Pereira of
the Paraguayan Initiative for People’s Integration told Cuban-based Prensa
Latina:


     We demand the abolition of regulations that harbor and give impunity to
Pentagon troops. It is a demand in favor of Paraguay and Latin American
integration.



Pereira indicated that mobilization against the presence of US troops is gaining
momentum in Paraguay.



»

(Note: The CTA answer to its budget crisis is to raise fares
for people in places like Roseland (where there are no trains) and take away
their transfers (since they may not be able to afford or be able to use
weekly or monthly passes--making a trip downtown $8). This is "modern
management."......dd)  Chicago Turns Down Discounted Venezuelan Oil  by
Jessica Pupovac

         As Chicago's poorest face an increase to already-high public transit
fees, the city is ignoring an offer of discounted diesel fuel to benefit
low-income people.    Chicago, Dec 28 - The Chicago Transit Authority is
refusing an opportunity to alleviate commuting costs for hundreds of
thousands in the Windy City's low-income neighborhoods. Instead of accepting
deeply discounted fuel from the Venezuela-owned Citgo Petroleum Corporation,
the city is instead raising fares to solve budget shortfalls.

   In an October meeting with representatives from the Chicago Transit
Authority (CTA), the city's Department of Energy and other city officials,
Citgo unveiled a plan to provide the Chicago with low-cost diesel fuel. The
company's stipulation, at the bidding of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez,
was that the CTA, in turn, pass those savings on to poor residents in the
form free or discounted fare cards.

   But two months later, despite claims of a looming budget crisis, the CTA
president "has no intent or plan to accept the offer," according to CTA
spokesperson Ibis Antongiorgi. She gave no explanation.

   According to Venezuela's consul general in Chicago, Martin Sanchez, the
CTA has yet to inform his office of its decision to decline the discount
offer.

   In place of the proposed discount, which the CTA apparently does not want
Chicagoans to even know about, budget shortfalls will be addressed by fair
hikes. Chicagoans who are unaware of the Venezuela offer will be hit with an
increase of 25 cents per ride next month, and discounted route-to-route
transfers will be eliminated for passengers paying cash.

   "This is going to hurt the poor and the minority people, like me," said
Dorothy Chew, resident of Humboldt Park, where one-third of residents live
below the federally recognized poverty level - currently just $16,000 for a
family of three. Chew relies on the CTA to get to work and to Chicago
Commons, where she attends classes daily in preparation for taking her GED.
Since she rarely has money to invest in a fare card, she will be forced to
pay for transfers the majority of the time.

   Chew's classmate, Linda Cox, works a minimum-wage job and has been a
Public Aid recipient for 15 years. She also relies heavily on public
transportation.

   "I only earn $560 a month and of that, over $200 a month goes to my bus
fare," Cox told The NewStandard. "I have a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old
who
also need to get to school. If they change the prices and take away
transfers, there are going to be a lot of days missed. I already see no
money at the end of the month."
   The offer of discount fuel is not just confined to Chicago. Over the
Thanksgiving holiday, the first of Venezuela's "oil-for-the-poor" programs
in the US was launched. Citgo struck a deal with three nonprofit
organizations in the Bronx to deliver 5 million gallons of heating oil at 45
percent below the market price. The deal will amount to a savings of $4
million for the 8,000 low-income households slated to benefit from the plan.


   Citgo has made a similar arrangement with Citizens Energy Corp. in Boston
for the sale and distribution of 12 million gallons, saving low-income and
elderly residents there a total of $10 million. The company's website says
that it expects to expand the program to other boroughs in New York City and
that it is exploring the possibility of offering discounted fuel to
residents in Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

   However, in all of Illinois, only about 12,000 households use heating oil.

   So instead of fuel for heat, Citgo representatives offered the CTA a 40-50
percent discount on diesel fuel for buses to benefit Chicagoans most in need
of relief from soaring oil and gas prices this winter.

   "We didn't know how else to reach enough people," said Consul Sanchez.

   Another difference between the Chicago offer and the programs enacted in
the Northeast is that Citgo proposed to work with a government agency,
rather than nonprofit organizations. The CTA relies on the US federal
government - which is in a constant war of words with Venezuelan President
Chavez - for much of its funding. In fact, just weeks after Citgo made its
offer to the CTA, Congress signed the Federal Transportation Appropriations
bill, allocating $89 million in infrastructure project funds the CTA had
been seeking for years.

   Representatives from the US State Department and city officials, including
Aldermen involved in the negotiations and the Chicago Mayor's Office,
refused to respond to queries about whether international politics played
any part in the CTA's rejection of Citgo's offer.

   Some critics of President Chavez say his offer of cheap fuel to low-income
communities in the US is a political ploy to win the support of the American
people. Larry Birns, executive director of the progressive think tank,
Council on Hemispheric Affairs, said Chavez is trying to counter Bush
administration criticisms with "petro-diplomacy." Birns, who criticizes
both
US policy toward Venezuela and Chavez's confrontational style, told TNS,
"There is a certain amount of humor involved in needling the Bush
administration for neglecting it's own while attempting to stand tall in
Latin America."

   However, as Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research -
another progressive think tank - pointed out, the Venezuelan government has
been providing cheap fuel to several countries in Latin America. Weisbrot is
a staunch supporter of the Chavez administration.

   "It is part of [Venezuela's] policy to compensate for the impact of the
high oil prices on poor people," he said. "They don't have any grudge
against the American people; it's just the Bush administration that they
don't like."

   Consul Sanchez echoed this sentiment. "Any corporation that makes a big
profit in a community owes that community something in return," he said.
With one of Citgo's three light-oil refineries located in nearby Lemont, 30
minutes outside the city, Sanchez said, Venezuela has "a special
relationship with people and community organizations in Chicago."

   There remains no sign, however, that the government of Chicago will take
Citgo and Venezuela up on the unilateral offer.


       C 2005 The NewStandard. See our reprint policy.

(Here are detailed reports on Evo Morales's visit to Havana this
past weekend. He was flown here in Fidel Castro's private jet and
stayed just for two days, but they were very busy days as these
reports indicate. The second of these articles provides a broad
overview at the life of Evo Morales as an individual leader.)
=================================================================

GRANMA
January 1, 2005

A Brotherly Encounter

Fidel Castro and Evo Morales Sign Bilateral Cooperation Agreement

http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/secciones/ingles/noticias/art65.html

Intense talks took place between the Cuban and Bolivian delegations.
The two presidents held a lively exchange with Bolivian students and
parliamentarians

JoaquIn Rivery Tur

Foto: JORGE LUIS GONZÁLEZCuban President Fidel Castro and Bolivian
president-elect Evo Morales signed a bilateral cooperation and
solidarity agreement Friday evening in Havana. The accord covers
primarily the areas of healthcare, education and sports.

The visiting dignitary publicly read the agreement, whose first
clause deals with the establishment of a non-profit Cuban-Bolivian
entity to provide free eye-care for Bolivians.

Cuba will contribute with the most advanced equipment and
specialists, who will work alongside Bolivian doctors graduating from
the Havana-based Latin American School of Medical Sciences.

The National Ophthalmology Institute of La Paz, recently equipped by
Cuba, will also have a center in Cochabamba and another in Santa
Cruz. In addition, Cuba will offer Bolivia 5,000 scholarships for
future doctors and specialists.

The agreement further includes Cuban assistance for a nationwide
literacy campaign in Bolivia. The program is due to start in July and
will extend over a 30-month period. Cuba will also provide assistance
to the Andean nation in several sport disciplines.

INTENSE CONVERSATIONS

Foto: JORGE LUIS GONZÁLEZIntense talks were held between Fidel Castro
and Evo Morales following the arrival of the Bolivian
president-elect. During the talks, numerous issues of mutual interest
were discussed.

In a very lively exchange with Bolivian parliamentarians and with
students undergoing courses in Cuba, Fidel explained that the talks
had extended over many subjects and said he was very satisfied and
happy, and eager for greater cooperation. He spoke at length about
Bolivian students in Cuba, most of them to study Medicine.

The Cuban president noted that following the October earthquake in
Pakistan that caused countless deaths and injured, there are now more
than 2,300 doctors including full teams of orthopedic surgeons,
intensive care experts and other specialists, all of whom he said are
carrying out very important work in the face of the catastrophe.

Fidel Castro said that nearly a third of humanity –billions of
people- are in need of doctors. He added that even in the United
States there are many people who can’t afford medical or dental
services.

In a moving statement in which she defended Latin American unity and
the ideals of Bolivar and Marti, a young Bolivian student declared:
"Here is an army of Bolivians willing to serve anywhere in the world
as well as struggle for a better future in Bolivia." She added, "We
will make up the army of white coats that our Americas should have
always had."

The student’s statement was followed by the words of several Bolivian
legislators who expressed their gratitude to Fidel Castro and the
Cuban Revolution for their assistance in the struggle for social
justice and against US imperialism.

A Bolivian miner then presented Fidel with a miner’s helmet which the
Cuban leader promptly put on his head.

STATEMENTS BY EVO MORALES

Foto: JORGE LUIS GONZÁLEZEvo Morales noted that Cuba is the first
country he visits as Bolivia’s president-elect and that he was
excited by the invitation. He said the encounter is one of two
generations of struggle for dignity, a meeting of two revolutions.

He added that the struggle of the Cuban people, and above all that of
Ernesto "Che" Guevara, was not in vain. They left the seed and now
there are fruits, not just in Bolivia but throughout Latin America,
said Morales.

Regarding the results of the Bolivian general elections, Morales
said: "I want to say mission accomplished in this struggle for
solidarity and humanity. This victory also belongs to the Cuban
people, who are forever fighting for social justice."

Speaking to the Bolivian students, Morales said a battle for life was
just beginning. "I am very flattered by this victory and very
grateful to the young people for their inspiration and
recommendations."

"I want to say to Fidel, to Chavez (with whom they spoke on Friday),
to other presidents, that we ask for your support in the struggle on
social issues. We are determined to end the evils in the country and
to do so we need the help of others."

"Together, united, we are going to change history, not only in
Bolivia but in all of Latin America and free ourselves from US
imperialism."

In a special address, Argentine writer and legislator Miguel Bonasso
called the meeting of Fidel Castro and Evo Morales a historic event.
He said it was a privilege to have been a witness to the way in which
a united Latin America can be built, like the one dreamed of by the
heroes of the first independence.

This battle being waged by President Fidel Castro, of exporting
doctors to other countries where they are needed, is rendering Cuba
as the most humanistic society on Earth, Bonasso said emphatically.

PRESS CONFERENCE

Foto: JORGE LUIS GONZÁLEZAfter the signing of the agreement and their
exchange with Bolivarian students and parliamentarians, both leaders
answered questions from the press.

Replying to the first question, Fidel stressed that Cuba had been
waging its struggle for 47 years, and that brother Evo—as he called
him— possesses all the qualities needed to lead his country and his
people during these difficult and singular times.

Fidel said that initially there was uncertainty about what sort of
lead Evo would come away with after the first round and that people
were worried about the manipulations in the Bolivarian Congress that
a less than majority victory could lead to. But, he said, the US
already knew that Evo was going to win with more than 50 percent of
the popular vote.

It was a miracle election —President Castro noted—, an election that
shook the world, the US empire and the unsustainable order imposed on
underdeveloped nations. And now Washington can no longer resort to
dictatorships as they did in the past, because US imperialism lacks
those instruments now, and even if they had them, he said, they would
not be able to apply them.

"Will the US government be offended if Cuba helps increase the life
expectancy of Bolivians?" –Fidel Castro asked—"Will they be offended
if we help reduce infant mortality?"

Asked whether he felt his visit to Cuba would jeopardize relations
with the United States, Evo Morales said that he has never had good
ties with Washington because the US government has always accused him
of everything thinkable, but that he would prefer to have normal
relations.

"These agreements we have signed are for life, for humanity, they are
not a crime, even though they might be for the United States."

"Even if they come with threats, blackmail and pressure, we will not
be the least bit afraid," Evo Morales said. "Let those who don’t want
to support us, not support us."

During Morales’ visit, Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban
National Assembly, held a meeting with Bolivarian congresspersons,
where he read a message of solidarity from the Cuban parliament and
the Council of State in support of Evo Morales and the Bolivian
people.

A number of Cuban leaders took part in the meeting between Evo and
Fidel including Ricardo Alarcon; Carlos Lage, vice-president of the
Council of State; and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque.

Biographical Sketch of Bolivian President-Elect Evo Morales

Evo Morales Ayma was born October 26, 1959 in the community of
Isallavi located in Sullka, one of three communities that make up the
canton of Orinoca in the Oruro Department of Bolivia.

He is the son of Dionisio Morales Choque, who passed away in 1985,
and Maria Ayma Mamani, who died in 1992. He has one sister, Esther,
the eldest sibling, and one brother Hugo, the youngest, both live in
Oruro. The Morales Ayma’ family were made up of seven siblings, four
of whom passed away at very young ages.

In 1964, Morales began studying at the district public school. For
the last two years of secondary studies, he went to the city of
Oruro, where he worked at a brick-making business and a bakery while
attending school.

A year later, he completed his military service at the Centro de
Instrucción de Tropas Especiales (Training Center for Special Troops)
in Cochabamba.

His parents were farmers who found themselves forced to emigrate from
their natal Oruro to the area of Cochabamba in the province of
Chapare. Morales went with his parents and it was here that he began
his career as a union activist near the end of 1979.

In recognition of his natural athletic abilities and participation in
union activities, he was named secretary of sports of the Sindicato
de Colonizadores union in Chapare in 1983.

In 1985 he was elected General Secretary of this union.

In 1988 he became Executive Secretary of the Federacion de Cocaleros
del Tropico (Federation of Coca-Leaf Growers of the Tropics).

In 1996 he was elected President of the Six Federations of Coca Leaf
Growers of the Tropics. This movement entered into politics changing
its name to Instrumento por la Soberanía de los Pueblos (Tool for the
Sovereignty of the People), IPSP.

In 1997 he was elected as a member of the National Congress from the
27 electoral district of Chapare.

In 1999 the IPSP ran in municipal elections as the Movement towards
Socialism (MAS) party.

In January 2002, he was expelled from the National Congress as a
result of a sinister political smear campaign against him which
distorted and manipulated his defense of the historic right of small
farmers to cultivate coca leaves for traditional uses.

In the June 2002 general elections, Morales’ MAS party garnered
581,884 votes, 22 percent, with 36 representatives elected to
congress, becoming the party with the second largest representation
in the legislature.

On December 18, 2005, Evo Morales became president-elect of the
Republic of Bolivia, with more than 54 percent of the popular vote,
the largest majority in the last 30 years.

With this overwhelming support, the Bolivian people showed that they
trusted the honest, incorruptible and austere political history of
comrade Evo Morales and embraced his historical stance in favor of
the indigenous peoples and the general population, and in defense of
the rights of rural people, and his demand that the Bolivarian people
regain control over the country’s natural resources.

Through his revolutionary history, Evo Morales has identified himself
with the just causes of Latin America including the Bolivarian
revolutionary process currently underway in Venezuela and its leader,
President Hugo Chavez Frias. Evo Morales has always expressed his
militant support and solidarity towards the Cuban Revolution and the
Cuban people and has publicly denounced the US blockade against Cuba.
In recent years, he has visited Cuba several times and has met with
Commander in Chief Fidel Castro.

Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales on Friendly Visit to Cuba

Prior to his taking of office and at the invitation of the President
of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers of the Republic
of Cuba, Commander in Chief Fidel Castro, Bolivian President-elect
Evo Morales begins Friday a friendly visit to Cuba, accompanied by an
important delegation from his country.

This latest visit to Cuba by comrade Evo Morales takes place in the
framework of the historic and deep relations of fraternity and
solidarity existing between the Cuban and Bolivian people, and amid
the excellent level of political ties between the leadership of the
Cuban Revolution and Movement to Socialism, headed by the
distinguished Bolivian leader.

The presence of Evo Morales in Cuba on the eve of the 47th
Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution honors and brings full
satisfaction to the Cuban people and constitutes an important
incentive to strengthen the bonds of friendship and cooperation
between the Cuban government and the government-elect of Bolivia,
committed as both are to consolidate a genuine Latin American
integration based on solidarity and humanism that bring about real
development and well-being for all Latin Americans.

During his stay in Cuba, Evo Morales and his accompanying delegation
will hold work meetings with Commander in Chief Fidel Castro and
other Cuban leaders.

From the Marxmail list.
Moderated by Louis Proyect
January 1, 2005

Joaquin Bustelo
jbustelo@...

Virtually nothing has been reported by the English-language
imperialist news outlets on Evo Morales's visit to Cuba, but I think
it is of extraordinary significance and comrades should be aware of
what was done and said. It tells me THIS New Year is going to be a
VERY New Year in Bolivia, and perhaps all of Latin America.

Evo was in Cuba for a very long workday, arriving Friday morning and
leaving in the predawn hours of Saturday morning after signing a
bilateral cooperation agreement. According to press reports, Fidel
and Evo met for 15 hours, in conversations that the Cuban leader
described as having taken up many areas, and held "almost as if in
family."

The two leaders also talked by telephone with Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez. After returning to Bolivia, Evo's press officer
announced that the next stop in the president-elect's several-nation
international tour will not be Spain, as originally planned, but
Venezuela, although it will be an abbreviated stopover of a few hours
on the way to Spain.

The cooperation agreement was signed before a town-hall type meeting
with Bolivian students in Cuba, during which Fidel wore a miners
helmet that was given to him by a miner that formed part of Morales's
delegation, and which was followed by a question and answer session
from the press.

Under terms of the Cuba-Bolivia agreement, which technically will go
into effect as soon as Morales is formally sworn in January 22, Cuba
will provide technical resources and other support for a literacy
campaign that will begin in July. Morales emphasized that this
campaign would be of special benefit to women in the countryside.

"In a year and a half we plan to teach everyone in Bolivia how to
read," he said. "It's not possible that in the third millennium there
continue to be illiterates in Bolivia. The State has neglected
peasant women."

Cuba pledged full scholarships for 5,000 medical students in the next
two years, in addition to some 800 Bolivians who have been already
attending the Latin American Medical School or other universities on
the island, and is setting up three eye clinics with all necessary
equipment, supplies and personnel to offer free services to Bolivians
who can't afford the services of eye doctors and surgeons. This is an
expansion of a program that was originally an initiative with
Venezuela and is being taken to other countries in the region.

Cuba will also help the Bolivian Government develop its sports
programs.

Asked about possible U.S. reactions to closer ties between Havana and
La Paz, Fidel responded, "How could it be possible that the
government of the United States could feel offended because Cuba is
cooperating with a sister nation?"

For his part, Morales reiterated a theme of his campaign, that he
will not tolerate "blackmail or threats" from Washington. "I've never
had good relations with the United States Government," he said, "but
I have had good relations with the people of the United States. The
U.S. Government is constantly accusing me of everything: of being a
drug smuggler, of having a cocaine Mafia, of being a terrorist. So
why should I seek relationships with the U.S. Government? If they
want to, they should respect the sovereign will of the people; if
they want bilateral diplomatic and trade relations, let's do it, but
without subjugation, without subordination, without conditions,
without blackmail."

The Havana correspondent of the Mexican Milenio newspapers said
Morales had returned to Bolivia "after warning that Bolivia would
follow a socialist path 'with or without the United States.'

"Morales ruled out that the government of President George W. Bush
'can stop' the 'new era' that in his opinion is taking shape in the
region under the leadership of Castro and Hugo Chavez (the Venezuelan
leader) who Morales called 'the commanders of the freedom forces of
the Americas'....

"Morales said the agreement, the first public result of some 15 hours
of private talks with Castro which Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez
joined by telephone, is a result of 'the struggle of the Cuban
people, and especially the struggle waged by Che Guevara.'

"'Without that seed, the struggle for change of the Bolivian people
would not have been possible,' he said."

And the Cuban daily Granma reported that "On the results of the
elections, Evo emphasized that 'I want to tell you that the mission
has been accomplished in this fight for solidarity and humanity. This
victory is also the victory of the Cuban people, who are permanently
fighting for social justice.'...

"Together all of us united we are going to change the not just the
history of Bolivia but of all Latin America and we are going to free
ourselves from North American imperialism," Granma paraphrased
Morales as saying.

"The Argentine member of parliament and writer Miguel Bonasso said he
considered the meeting of Fidel and Evo Morales to be a historic
event, and said it was a privilege to be a witness to how we are
building the Great Homeland in America, as was dreamed of by the
leaders of the struggle for our first independence.

"With this humanist battle that President Fidel Castro is waging by
exporting doctors to other countries, this is the most humanitarian
society on earth, he said."

Asked what advice he had given Morales, Fidel preferred to highlight
the historic significance of the victory and expressed his full
confidence in the Bolivian president-elect: "Our brother Evo has all
the qualities needed to lead his country."

After a 6-hour stopover in Venezuela on Tuesday, Morales heads to
Spain, France, Holland, South Africa, China and Brazil.

* * *

Some observations on these and other reports.

1. Morales is clearly and unambiguously projecting his government not
just as part of what might be called the broader anti-FTAA bloc in
Latin America, which in addition to Cuba and Venezuela also includes
the governments of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, and has been most
visible in trade and diplomatic negotiations, but as one of now three
revolutionary governments in the region.

2. If the reports of Morales's stance towards the United States are
correct, and there really are no contradictions among the various
reports, and they echo the statements Morales made on CNN en Espańol
the day after the elections, it would seem Morales views a cutoff of
U.S. "aid" to Bolivia as simply a fact. Most of the aid --2/3rds-- is
military and related aid for Washington's "war on drugs" against the
Indian peasantry and of course would not be wanted anyways, apart
from the fact that really, the last thing the Bolivian people need is
close ties between the national army and the Pentagon. But
politically, this means that from the outset the U.S. is taking a
sharply confrontational approach to the new government.

3. The somewhat irregular protocol followed by Cuba --and I suspect
Venezuela will do something similar-- of treating Morales already as
formal president of his country is, I believe, meant to set a
precedent for the quasi-state visits to follow. Cuba's signing a
formal cooperation agreement is along the same lines, but is also
obviously meant to shame/pressure governments like that of Spain to
make commitments *now,* rather than following the usual routine of
low level talks, followed by ministerial level meetings culminating
many moons in the future with a formal state visit where the
agreements would be formally signed. In this regard, Morales is
saying especially in relation to Spain that he isn't going there to
demand compensation for the last 500 years but to have a democratic
dialogue and so on. Which is, of course, a way of raising that Spain
in fact owes them for the last 500 years.

Diplomatically, it is an extremely aggressive stance, but it makes
HUGE political sense. The message is: "Here is the first head of
state since Bolivia existed that actually is of and represents the
MAJORITY of the country --the indigenous majority the Europeans tried
to exterminate-- and you're NOT going to treat him with the honors
due a head of state on some bullshit technicality about the oath of
office?" It is a way of underlining the extraordinary POLITICAL
significance of Evo's election by bending the rules of protocol.

The internet edition of the Cochabamba newspaper "Opinion" put it
this way: "Havana's José Martí airport became the scene of a historic
moment in the memory, not just of Bolivia, but of the entire
hemisphere because it was these that for the first time an indigenous
person received the military honors of a Head of State."

4. The importance of Cuba as an already consolidated socialist
revolution that has scored tremendous advances in fields like
education and health care and maintains an internationalist,
revolutionary policy, becomes clear now, because it allows new
revolutionary governments to immediately provide real social
benefits, especially to the urban and rural poor who are largely
outside the formal economy, without a long process of "bootstrapping"
-- building up the necessary personnel, equipment and supplies and so
on.

This is combined with the existence of the Bolivarian revolution and
the very favorable situation in the world market for crude oil
producers, which will facilitate the financing of various projects.

And actions like the 2,300 fully equipped Cuban doctors now in
Pakistan in the wake of the devastating earthquake will highlight to
those with a sense of history what the Soviet Union SHOULD have done
over the decades but FAILED to do because of the bureaucracy's
abandonment of internationalism and how this extinguished the spirit
of revolution among the Soviet working people -- and helps to explain
why the USSR and copycat regimes in Eastern Europe collapsed, but
Cuba, the most vulnerable, exposed and economically smallest of the
socialist countries did not.

5. Fidel has yet to make a more extensive statement along these
lines, at least not that I've seen, but I think attention should be
paid to his judgment that the Latin American political situation is
on the verge of a historic change. After expressing his confidence in
Evo's leadership, according to the Milenio newspapers correspondent's
report, he "wished eternal honor and glory to this great people at a
crucial moment when ... one gram can tilt the balance of history in
this hemisphere."

GRANMA
January 1, 2006

Evo Morales Invites Civic Groups to his Inauguration

LA PAZ, December 28.-Bolivian president-elect, Evo Morales, plans to
convert his January 22 inauguration into a "world gathering of social
movements," said spokesperson Alex Contreras on Wednesday.

Contreras was quoted in news reports as saying that among the nearly
200 organizations invited are the Zapatistas from Mexico, Brazil's
Landless Movement, the Bolivarian Circles from Venezuela, the
"Piqueteros" of Argentina, and the National Council of Indigenous
Peoples of Ecuador.

Already confirming their presence at the swearing-in ceremony are
Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona, singer-songwriters Piero of
Argentina and Silvio Rodriguez of Cuba, and Jose Saramago from
Portugal, Nobel Prize in Literature. The list of invitees includes
Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, former South African president
Nelson Mandela, Nobel Peace Laureates Rigoberta Menchu and Adolfo
Perez Esquivel, and Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano.

Contreras said that some 800 different media outlets are expected in
La Paz for the inauguration ceremony.

Meanwhile, the president-elect was honored on Wednesday by thousands
of farmers in the town of Eterazama in Chapare, the region in central
Bolivia where the indigenous leader began his political career a
decade ago.

Garlands of coca leafs, flowers and musical bands welcomed Morales in
the first celebration of his resounding victory in the December 18
presidential elections. Since Bolivia's return to democratic rule in
1982, Morales "will be the first to receive his credential as
president-elect [after the first round of voting]," said National
Electoral Court (CNE) president Oscar Hassenteufel.

The CNE is planning a ceremony on January 10 to present confirming
documents to the president, vice-president and the 157 legislators,
explained Hassenteufel. In the five previous presidential elections
no candidate has obtained a 50 percent majority and under Bolivian
electoral law the president was designated by the Congress.

In preliminary returns Evo Morales won with over 54 percent of the
vote. The official results are due January 5.

Interesting stats at the end of this article. In 2005, there were
way more illegal migrants "fleeing" the Dominican Republic (4,388)
than Cuba (2,866). And DR has a smaller population.

Must be that repressive capitalist regime in Santo Domingo. Maybe it
is time to extend the US "wet-foot-dry foot" policy to them as
well.  ;^)

Dan
Visit my CUBA: Issues & Answers website at
http://www.netcom.ca/~dchris/CubaFAQ.html


87 Cuban migrants arrive on Florida's coast

MIAMI (Reuters) - Eighty-seven Cuban migrants reached Florida's
coast on Friday, including a group of 28 who waded ashore in a Miami
Beach waterfront park.

Federal officials said most of the migrants appeared to have been
brought to the United States by smugglers who carry Cubans in fast
boats across the 100 miles of open water that separates the
communist-ruled island from Florida.

The arrivals capped a year in which unusually high numbers of Cubans
and Dominicans left their Caribbean homelands looking for better
living conditions in the United States.

Fifty-six Cubans landed in the Florida Keys and three came ashore in
Key Biscayne, a wealthy island town near Miami.

The 12 men, seven women and nine children who landed at Miami Beach
told police they left Cuba on Wednesday in a makeshift boat, which
began to sink somewhere between Cuba and Florida.

They said they were picked up by a yacht and dropped off in waist-
deep water just off South Pointe Park in Miami Beach, which is
alongside Miami's main shipping channel in the shadow of luxury
condo towers.

"They were all in pretty good shape," Miami Beach police spokeswoman
Arley Flaherty said. "They were a little dehydrated, cold."

But Steve McDonald, an assistant chief with the U.S. Border Patrol,
said the Miami Beach incident and some of the other landings bore
the hallmarks of smuggling operations. The boats were nowhere to be
found and the migrants were less disheveled than they would have
been after days at sea, he said.

"We think they're smuggling-related," he said.

Under the U.S. "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy, Cubans who are
interdicted at sea are routinely taken back to Cuba, while those who
manage to set foot on land are allowed to stay. McDonald said 801
Cubans had landed in Florida since the start of the federal fiscal
year on October 1. The U.S. Coast Guard has picked up 2,866 Cubans
at sea in 2005, nearly twice as many as last year and the highest
number since 1994, when more than 37,000 were intercepted in a major
exodus from the island.

Only Dominicans have taken to sea in greater numbers in the
Caribbean region -- 4,388 as of Thursday, nearly matching last
year's total of 4,568.

Fewer Haitians have attempted the journey this year -- 1,828 have
been intercepted compared with 3,078 last year, according to Coast
Guard statistics.

http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?
type=domesticNews&storyID=2005-12-
30T204913Z_01_EIC074934_RTRUKOC_0_US-CUBA-USA-MIGRANTS.xml

A.N.S.W.E.R. Film Series in Ventura County
The Greening of Cuba & Hasta la Victoria Siempre

Thursday, January 5 at7:30 pm
The Underground
3367 Telegraph Rd. Ventura 

Join us to initiate 2006 and pay tribute to the achievements of
revolutionary Cuba.
We'll screen two rare films about Cuba and have plenty of political
discussion.

The Greening of Cuba: Challenged with growing food for 11 million in the
face of the
continuing U.S. blockade, Cuba embarked on the largest conversion to organic

farming ever attempted in the 1990s. The Greening of Cuba reminds us that
developed and developing nations alike can choose a healthier environment
and still
feed their people. (38 min, 1996)

Hasta la Victoria Siempre (Forever Until Victory): This film by Cuban
director Santiago
Alvarez contains televised speeches by Ernesto Che Guevara, intercut with
photographs and footage from the hills of Bolivia. (28 min, 1965)

For more info call 323-464-1636 or e-mail answerla@....

(Thanks to Jane Franklin for sharing this story. We have
cleaned up the formatting, but otherwise not changed it.)
=========================================================

Batista and Regime Flee Cuba; Castro Moving to Take Power; Mobs Riot
and Loot in Havana

ARMY HALTS FIRE

Rebels Seize Santiago and Santa Clara-- March on Capital
By R. HART PHILLIPS

RELATED HEADLINES

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Vandalism

OTHER HEADLINES

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Soviet and Chinese Print Shops Are Closed

Eisenhower Firm on Berlin Stand; Rebukes Moscow: Swift Reply to
Soviet Plea for End to 'Cold War' Bids Kremlin Show Good Faith

Military Hints End of Manned Planes

Rockefeller Bids State Show Way To Better World: Scope of Inaugural
Speech Intensifies Speculation on G.O.P. Nomination in '60: Governor
Lists Goals: Pledges Increased Freedom of Opportunity -- Scorns
Ideological Labels

I.G.Y. Emphasized Weather Studies: 4 Jet Streams Discovered -- First
Data Gathered on Antarctica's Winter

Social Security Gets Fiscal Bill of Health

Clashes With Reds in Iraq Reported

Police Found Cool to Hoffa's Appeal

Havana, Friday, Jan. 2 -- Fulgencio Batista resigned as President of
rebellion-torn Cuba yesterday and fled to exile in the Dominican
Republic. The rebel forces of Fidel Castro moved swiftly to seize
power throughout the island.

Dr. Manuel Urrutia, Senor Castro's own choice, appeared likely early
this morning to become the provisional President. Col. Ramon Barquin,
who had been imprisoned for conspiring against the Batista
Government, was brought here by military plane from the Isle Pines
penitentiary and named chief of the joint staffs.

Colonel Barquin immediately sent out a call to Senor Castro to come
to the capital with Dr. Urrutia and set up a new Government. The
rebel leader and his forces had entered Santiago de Cuba late
yesterday and had taken over the Moncado army post without firing a
shot. About 5,000 soldiers there surrendered.

Key Cities Captured

Truckloads of soldiers moved into Havana last night to maintain order
in conjunction with militia of Senor Castro's 26th of July Movement,
who were also patrolling the streets armed with machine guns and
rifles.

The rebel forces forged ahead throughout the island. While some
insurgents spread out from Santa Clara, capital of Las Villas
Province, which they had seized Wednesday, other groups announced the
capture of Camaguey.

General Batista led an exodus from Cuba that has reached a total of
perhaps 400 persons fleeing by ship and plane to the United States
and the Dominican Republic. They included key political and military
leaders and their families.

Piedra Is Rejected

Calling his military chiefs together early yesterday at Camp
Columbia, army headquarters, General Batista, strong man of Cuban
politics for most of the period since 1933, declared he was resigning
"to prevent further bloodshed."

He left behind a junta headed by Gen. Eulogio Cantillo, recently the
commander in Oriente province, the center of the Castro revolt. The
junta immediately designated Dr. Carlos Piedra, the oldest judge of
the Supreme Court, as provisional President in accordance with the
Constitution of 1940.

General Cantillo took over as chief of staff of the army. Dr. Gustavo
Pelayo was designated Premier.

But Senor Castro declared that his insurgents would remain on a "war
footing" and refused to accept the designation of Justice Piedra as
provisional President. The Supreme Court refused to administer the
oath of office to the Justice.

The rebel leader called a general strike for today in protest against
the Piedra regime. He demanded that Dr. Urrutia, former judge of the
Urgency Court of Santiago de Cuba, be installed as the provisional
President, as he had proposed a year ago.

The Cane Planters Association of Cuba, speaking for the island's
pivotal sugar industry, last night issued a statement supporting
Senor Castro and his movement.

General Cantillo, as army chief, issued a cease-fire order to troops
throughout the island. Political prisoners were being freed in Havana
and the interior. Yesterday afternoon several hundred in Principe
Fortress in Havana were released.

Restaurants Barricaded

Since it was New Year's Day, commerce and industry were halted.
Restaurants, cafes and grocery stores closed their doors as rioting
began. Mobs broke windows and looted some stores. The police fired on
the mobs and a number of persons have been killed and wounded.

A mob set fire to the plant of El Tiempo, a newspaper owned by
Senator Rolando Masferrer. Senator Masferrer, an intimate friend of
General Batista, had a private army of some 2,000 operating in
Oriente Province. They were accused by the inhabitants of many
killings and tortures. The office of Dr. Rafael Guas Inclan, elected
Mayor of Havana in November, was burned.

As the news of the fall of the Government spread early yesterday, the
public poured into the streets.

The black and red flag of the 26th of July Movement, headed by Senor
Castro, appeared on automobiles and buildings. Cars raced through the
streets with horns blowing.

Mob Destroys Gambling Casino

Firing broke out near the docks, but details were not immediately
available. A mob destroyed the new gambling casino in the Plaza
Hotel.

Amleto Battisti, owner of the Sevilla Biltmore Hotel and its casino
and a Representative in Congress, took refuge in the Uruguayan
Embassy.

Armed young rebels seized the radio stations. Broadcasts called on
the people to remain calm and orderly.

Crowds also attacked the Banco de la Construccion in the Central
Plaza.

Latin-American embassies were crowded with officials who had taken
political asylum. Hundreds of others were hiding in the city.

In the afternoon the National Association of Newspapermen declared a
strike until the situation was clarified. But several Havana
newspapers had published extra editions.

Cruise Ships Leave Port

United States Ambassador Earl E. T. Smith warned American citizens to
take "appropriate precautions." Two big cruise ships with many
American tourists aboard, in Havana harbor for the New Year's
holiday, left yesterday.

Many tourists were stranded here by the swift fall of the Government.
Plane service was curtailed for a time and ships arriving at Havana
were unable to dock owing to the strike. The United States Embassy
said it was trying to arrange transportation for a large number of
tourists and some students who had asked its assistance.

Later, it was announced that it was arranging for a ship to come from
Key West today to pick up stranded citizens.

City Almost Deserted

Restaurants and other establishments that closed during the rioting
did not open because personnel heeded the strike call. However, most
hotels supplied their guests with meals.

The resistance movement told the public that the strike would not
include telephones, broadcasting and power services.

At night Havana was almost a deserted city, the inhabitants remaining
in their homes. Only a few automobiles moved on the streets. The mobs
had disappeared.

In the luxurious Miramar residential section, a few of the homes of
high officials were looted, including that of the chief of the
national police, Pilar Garcia, who fled in the morning.

No Patrolmen Seen on Street

No policemen on foot were seen patroling the streets of Havana. Some
patrol cars drove about. The lack of display of force was in
startling contrast with the number of armed forces that patrolled the
city and guarded strategic points heretofore.

Later last night, troops and militiamen took over the task of
guarding the city.

Eusebio Mujal, secretary general of the Confederation of Cuban
Workers, sought asylum in the Argentine Embassy. Senor Mujal and his
labor leaders strongly supported the Batista regime.

_____

Montevideo Legation Seized

Montevideo, Uruguay, Jan. 2 (Reuters)--Cuban exiles occupied the
Cuban legation building here tonight after it had been handed over by
the Consul. Carlos Baruff, representative of the Cuban rebel leader,
Fidel Castro, is expected here from Buenos Aires tomorrow.

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Reading their way to Havana
Not content with exploring travel writing, seminar launches a trip to
Cuba.
By Chauncey Mabe
January 1, 2006
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/booksmags/sfl-bk01kwlitjan01,0,2605710.
story

For the first time in its 24-year history, the Key West Literary
Seminar will do more than talk. Organizers are not only bringing in
the usual slate of international authors to explore a customarily
wide-ranging subject -- "The Literature of Travel, Adventure, and
Discovery" -- they're also taking a trip of their own.

To Cuba.

Immediately after the conclusion of the seminar in Key West, which
runs Jan. 5-8, executive director Miles Frieden, a group of seminar
attendees and a handful of the authors will head to Havana for a
four-day junket.

"Few places in the world are the equivalent of Cuba as an adventure
travel destination," says Frieden, who visited the island two years
ago. "On some level it's forbidden, on some level it's untouched."

Both the seminar and the trip to Cuba are fully subscribed, and have
been for months. Organizers did not advertise the trip abroad,
offering it only to those signed up for the seminar weekend in Key
West, which usually sells out months in advance.

"We're not in the tour business," Frieden says. "The trip is really
an adjunct to the seminar."

Frieden remains leery of saying much about the venture for fear of
upsetting anyone who might have the authority or influence -- in
either the United States or Cuba -- to stop it at the last moment.
Relations between the two nations have soured as the Bush
administration adopted an increasingly harder stance toward Fidel
Castro's regime.

"Even as recently as two years ago, when I was there, Cuba seemed
wide open," Frieden says. "There was no surveillance, no restrictions
on my movements. The Cubans were open in their conversations even to
the point of criticizing their government. My understanding is that
it's changed dramatically since then."

Humanitarian lit

In order to obtain permission to travel from the U.S. government,
organizers had to cast the excursion as a "humanitarian" trip.
Cultural travel to Cuba, Frieden says, is not being approved at
present.

"Our chief barrier was obtaining a humanitarian license," says
Frieden. "So first and foremost it's a humanitarian trip. We will be
delivering medical and school supplies to the Cuban people.

"Beyond that, because we are a literary organization, we will explore
the writers and literature of Cuba to the greatest extent possible."

Frieden politely declines to discuss the seminar's Cuba itinerary,
other than to say, "We're meeting up with anyone we can arrange."

But the orientation packet sent to those going on the trip lists a
full slate of activities, including a talk from Maritza Corrales,
author of The Chosen Island, an oral history of Jews in Cuba; a visit
to the Museum of the Revolution; a talk by poet Pablo Armando
Fernandez, and a tentative visit to Ernest Hemingway's home, Finca
Vigia, where the great American writer composed The Old Man and the
Sea.

"We'll go to Hemingway's house if it's available," Frieden says. "It
was damaged by one of this year's hurricanes, and I'm told it's been
deteriorating for years."

Of course, Hemingway's other notable residence is a small mansion in
Key West, where he lived during what some critics consider his most
productive years. It's been a well-maintained literary landmark for
decades.

Inner edge, outer edge

Even those not going to Cuba -- approximately 400 book lovers attend
the seminar each year -- should have a lively intellectual weekend in
Key West.

Among the 23 authors is keynote speaker Pico Iyer, a leading travel
writer and author of a novel set in post-revolutionary Cuba; Tim
Cahill, known for his humor as well as the risky trips he takes;
acclaimed essayist Gretel Ehrlich; pioneering women's travel writer
Mary Morris; and National Book Award winners Robert Stone and Peter
Matthiessen.

Frieden makes a distinction between traditional travel writing,
subject of the seminar in 1991, and "the literature of travel,
adventure, and discovery."

"The previous one was specifically travel," he says. "This one
attempts to broaden the focus not only to adventure, a subspecies of
travel, but much more on the discovery aspect. It looks at the inner
journey as well as the outer journey. And that's our attempt to
anchor it in literature, which is always about the inner journey."

That theme is "implicit in the variety of writers" scheduled for the
seminar, Frieden says. Some, like Stone, do not write nonfiction
travel at all, but use travel experience to anchor their fiction.
Others, like National Geographic correspondent Kira Salak, the first
person to kayak solo down the Congo River, use adventure travel to
confront what Frieden calls "the edge."

"An inner edge, and an outer edge," explains Frieden. "When you
travel as primitively as she does, it can't help but be a challenge,
to nature and to the self. We have so little chance to test the edge
in modern life."

A real `there'

Indeed, many of these writers are obviously questing for more than
the complacent comforts of life in modern America, where, no matter
what region or city you visit, you find the same coffee shops, the
same clothing stores, the same restaurants.

Hemingway, whose Key West legacy was one of the original inspirations
for the seminar, was among the first to recognize the impending
homogenization of American life. When the Overseas Highway linking
Key West to the rest of the Keys and the mainland was completed in
1938, he famously packed up and moved to Cuba.

Frieden experienced something similar when he lived in Japan.

"So much of the world has become McDonalds, Mrs. Fields," he says.
"When I first went to Japan it was such a luxury to be shipped a
package of Mrs. Fields cookies. But by the time I left four years
later, they were opening the first outlet over there.

"That's why we're going to Cuba," he adds. "I've not experienced a
country less Americanized, so there is a real `there' there to be
discovered."

Chauncey Mabe can be reached at cmabe@... or
954-356-4710.

coming next year

Next year's Key West Literary Seminar, with the arch and
self-consciously literary title Wondrous Strange: Mystery, Intrigue &
Psychological Drama, is set for Jan. 11-14, 2007. Anyone interested
in attending should sign up now, as it will likely be fully
subscribed before Easter, if not Valentine's Day. Visit
keywestliteraryseminar.org or call 888-293-9291.

Copyright C 2005, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

(It's interesting to note how, in the past, when the US got some
resolution through by as little as a one-vote margin with less
than a majority vote due to the abstentions, it would trupet the
claim that the UNHRC had "condemned" Cuba's human rights record.
After a time this began to wear thin when the UNHRC reclined to
even take up the US torture camp at Guantanamo and so on. Now it
seems there's a move afoot to gut the UNHRC completely. It's so
Ironic to read HRC saying' If you're a thung, you want to be on
the commitee that tries to condemn thugs" when Washington has
used the UNHRC as an anti-Cuba platform for so many years...)
================================================================

U.N. leaders seek fast replacement for rights council
By Warren Hoge The New York Times
South Florica Sun-Sentinel
January 1, 2006

UNITED NATIONS . U.N. officials have decided they must act within
weeks to produce an alternative to its widely discredited Human
Rights Commission to maintain hope of redeeming the United Nations'
credibility in 2006.

The commission, based in Geneva, has been a persistent embarrassment
to the United Nations because participation has been open to
countries like Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe, current members who are
themselves accused of gross rights abuses. Libya held the panel's
chairmanship in 2003.

"The reason highly abusive governments flock to the commission is to
prevent condemnation of themselves and their kind, and most of the
time they succeed," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human
Rights Watch. "If you're a thug, you want to be on the committee that
tries to condemn thugs."

Mark Malloch Brown, chief of staff to Secretary-General Kofi Annan,
noted that with two other crucial steps toward reform in place -- a
new Peacebuilding Commission to help countries emerging from war, and
a biennial budget under an arrangement laying the groundwork for
major management change by June -- the rights commission had taken
center stage.

Annan begins his last year in office with a mandate to bring
fundamental and lasting change to the beleaguered institution, which
has struggled through a period of scandal and mismanagement.

Negotiators have been struggling for months over the terms of a new
Human Rights Council that Annan proposed last spring to replace the
commission. A hoped-for agreement in December did not materialize.

Negotiators resume talks on Jan. 11 and must settle on a resolution
for the new council soon after to have it in place by March, when the
commission reconvenes in Geneva.

"The commission should hold that meeting with the understanding that
it is going to be its last meeting," said Ricardo Arias, the
ambassador of Panama, who is one of the leaders of the group drawing
up the new Human Rights Council.

Copyright C 2005, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

(Bringing terrorist exile militants like Posada Carriles into the
United States was but one of these men's long acts in their war
against the Cuban Revolution. Here is another episode in the war.
There are several others now posted to the Herald's website, too.)
================================================================

MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Sat, Dec. 31, 2005

Shrimping boat captain recounts clandestine trip to Cuba in 1995

BY OSCAR CORRAL
ocorral@...

The captain of the Santrina is now in his 70s, but he has never given
up the fight against Fidel Castro.

Jose Hilario ''Pepin'' Pujol, who insists he was trained by the CIA
and conducted many raids, said he is an expert in infiltrating Cuba
by sea. He gave the following account of a 1995 trip he steered to
Cuba on another boat:

Pujol dropped off Santos Armando Martinez Rueda and a friend near
Puerto Padre. The men dropped off supplies in Cuba, Pujol said,
before he smuggled them back out.

''I delivered them and took them out, to infiltrate,'' Pujol said.
``But later they went in with false passports from Costa Rica.''

Asked what the purpose of Martinez Rueda's mission was, Pujol first
said he never asked the details of people's missions. Then he said
Martinez Rueda and the other man wanted ``to kill Fidel.''

In March 1995, Cuban security agents dismantled a bomb at a Varadero
Beach resort and captured Martinez Rueda and Jorge Enrique Ramirez.

Cuban state-run media reported Martinez Rueda and Ramirez had
previously infiltrated through the province of Las Tunas carrying 51
pounds of C-4 explosive. Puerto Padre is in Las Tunas. The men were
convicted in 1996 and remain in Cuban prisons.

According to evidence offered at a 1998 trial covered in Havana by
The Miami Herald, the Varadero bomb was among 15 bombings carried out
or attempted in Cuba from 1992 to 1998.

Interior Ministry Col. Adalberto Rabeiro testified at the time that
parts of the campaign, which culminated in the death of an Italian at
a Havana hotel, were carried out through Cuban exile militant Luis
Posada Carriles, thought to be living in El Salvador. Posada has
claimed responsibility and then denied involvement in those bombings.

(The Santiago Alvarez defense is now saying that Washington is in
cahoots with Fidel Castro to go after Alvarez and company and we've
still got plenty to learn as this story continues to unfold:

("Abascal also denied accusations by supporters of Alvarez and Posada
that he is working for the U.S. and Cuban governments as a double
agent.")
==================================================================

MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Sat, Dec. 31, 2005

'Confidential source' turns evidence against his friend

BY OSCAR CORRAL
ocorral@...

Given the choice between loyalty that could lead to imprisonment and
betrayal that would secure freedom, Gilberto Abascal chose to turn
state's evidence against a man who friends say treated him like a
son.

''If you had to choose between one side or the other, who would you
choose?'' Abascal told The Miami Herald in an exclusive interview.

Labeled a ''confidential source of previous proven reliability'' in
the government's case against Santiago Alvarez, Abascal admits he
helped the federal government in the weapons case against Alvarez and
is now being protected by U.S. officials.

Alvarez, 64, the benefactor of Cuban exile militant Luis Posada
Carriles, was arrested in November on federal weapons charges along
with his friend, Osvaldo Mitat, 63.

''I feel what I did was right,'' Abascal said by phone from an
undisclosed location.

Court records note the ''confidential source,'' phoned federal agents
to tip them off that Alvarez ordered him to deliver the weapons to
Mitat.

Abascal said he did not call federal agents about the cache of
weapons. He said agents did not pressure or coerce him into
cooperating.

Abascal also denied accusations by supporters of Alvarez and Posada
that he is working for the U.S. and Cuban governments as a double
agent.

''Those are all lies,'' Abascal said, adding he has been denied entry
into Cuba to visit family. ``If I were a double agent, I'd be in Cuba
already.''

Alvarez's friends paint a picture of a troubled Abascal who needed
medication to deal with life's challenges.

Abascal told The Miami Herald he only takes pills for insomnia: ``I
can't sleep if I don't take medicine.''

(This is the longest of the stories in the MIAMI HERALD on Santiago
Alvarez and his collaborators, charged by Washington with possession
of weapons -  really terrorist weapons -  and other charges. Alvarez,
who is not a U.S. citizen, hasn't been charged with bringing Posada
into the United States. This could cost him his US green card. It's
also not clear from this if the Herald's reporters had access to
Alvarez and Mitat who are in custody to interview them. There still
must be much more to this story as it continues to slowly unfold.
Keep in mind that as this is going on, Washington is continuing to
press ahead with the Cuban Five case, AND, the matter of Posada's
illegal entry into the US and Venezuela's extradition of Posada is
still on the table, having not yet been responded to by Washington.)
====================================================================

MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Sat, Dec. 31, 2005
LUIS POSADA CARRILES CASE
One mysterious voyage links five
The five men who took a voyage aboard the shrimping boat Santrina
in March are now linked by intrigue, deception, federal charges
and Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles.
BY OSCAR CORRAL AND ALFONSO CHARDY
ocorral@...

The lines of the Santrina are hardly the sort to quicken pulses; it's
a simple shrimp boat, really, nothing more.

Yet this shrimper is freighted with the stuff of intrigue: suspected
conspiracy plots, betrayal, a secret weapons cache linked to one of
the shrimper's owners -- and an array of ties to Luis Posada
Carriles, the CIA-trained, anti-Castro militant who has been accused
of acts of terror.

The Santrina, described by its owners as a vessel for teaching diving
and appreciation of the sea, floats idly on the work-a-day waters of
the Miami River.

In March, it bobbed off Mexico's Caribbean coast -- just miles from
where Posada said he plotted his politically combustible entry to the
United States.

That mysterious voyage -- Fidel Castro claims the Santrina's mission
was nothing less than to sneak Posada into Florida -- remains
unexplained. The men who participated in it deny they had steamed to
Isla Mujeres to pick up Posada. But they give differing accounts of
what they were doing there. They are:

VOYAGERS

• Santiago Alvarez, 64, Posada's benefactor and one of the Santrina's
owners. He is behind bars, following his arrest Nov. 19 on weapons
charges for illegal possession of machine guns, ammunition, a
silencer and grenade launcher, which the government says were kept at
a Broward apartment complex Alvarez owns.

• Osvaldo Mitat, 63, employed by Alvarez as a handyman who helped
with the upkeep of Alvarez's properties. He, too, is in jail, facing
weapons charges. Both men have pleaded not guilty.

• The Santrina's captain, Jose Hilario ''Pepin'' Pujol, 76, who says
he sailed to Cuba on another boat a decade ago in attempts to
infiltrate two anti-revolutionaries into the island in a plot to kill
Castro. The ploy ended with the two men behind bars in Cuba,
convicted of attempted bombings in what Cuban officials have labeled
a terror campaign they say was partially masterminded by Posada.

• Gilberto Abascal, 40, who cooperated with the federal government to
turn state's evidence against Alvarez and Mitat, culminating in the
pair's November arrests in South Florida. Abascal told The Miami
Herald he did ``what I feel is right.''

• Ruben Lopez Castro, 67, owns the house where Posada is said to have
stayed for about six weeks while he was in hiding in Miami and where
Posada was detained May 17, friends said. Lopez Castro, reached by
phone, declined to comment.

PUT TO THE TEST

The Posada case caused a firestorm in Miami this year, testing
Washington's commitment to the war on terror, threatening diplomatic
ties between the United States and one of its biggest oil providers,
Venezuela, and jeopardizing President Bush's relationship to one of
his most loyal Republican constituencies, the Cuban exile community.

The controversy began shortly after the Santrina visited Mexico and
Posada appeared in Miami.

Five years earlier, Alvarez and other friends, including 42-year-old
construction manager Ernesto Abreu, started Caribe Dive & Research
Foundation, a nonprofit diving school they said was meant to increase
students' appreciation of the sea.

In 2002, the group bought the Santrina, an old shrimping boat, in
Louisiana and brought it down to Miami. During the boat's renovation,
Pujol and Mitat met Abascal, whom Alvarez had hired as a welder to
work on the Santrina. Pujol said Alvarez thought of the younger
Abascal as a son.

Abascal, a Cuban immigrant, had arrived in the United States in the
late 1990s. He developed a reputation as an accident-prone handyman
who liked to talk about women, said Pujol and Abreu, who is listed as
the president of Caribe.

''His conversations were always about things that had no importance,
like women, or girlfriends,'' said Pujol of Abascal.

Alvarez asked Pujol to come teach boating classes to Caribe students.
Pujol said that since Caribe opened, it has taught 20 to 30 people,
but that Abascal never wanted to take the classes.

In mid-March, Alvarez and the others took the Santrina to the Bahamas
and then headed west toward Isla Mujeres.

Posada acknowledged in a May interview he was in Cancún around the
same time the Santrina was in Isla Mujeres, which is two miles north
of Cancún.

DIFFERENT REASONS

But crew members and friends of Alvarez gave different reasons for
the trip.

Pujol: ``To make contacts in Mexico to see if people wanted to train
[to steer boats and dive] with us.''

Abreu: ``They had put a new propeller in and were testing it.''

Alvarez: ``We made contact with two or three people. I can't say that
[the trip] had absolutely nothing to do with Posada because I've been
in touch with him for years, but I can say that I didn't bring him.
Santrina didn't bring him.''

The one-day trip to Isla Mujeres underscored Abascal's lack of sea
legs, Pujol said. Seasick, Abascal curled up in a cabin below deck on
the 85-foot Santrina as it lurched on turbulent seas.

Pujol, the ship's captain, struggled to keep the current from
twisting the ship into the rough water as the wind blasted the crew
with salty spray. Still, the crew paused for a nostalgic glance of
Pinar Del Rio's mountains -- jagged teeth on Cuba's horizon barely
100 miles from Isla Mujeres.

The Santrina ran aground in shallow waters outside Isla Mujeres'
port, attracting the attention of Mexican authorities, Pujol said.
Once they got the boat free and at port, Pujol said Abascal told the
group he was going to visit a girlfriend and left.

''[Abascal] said he was going to give me a picture of his friend in
Isla Mujeres, but I never saw it,'' Pujol said.

In May, Alvarez told The Miami Herald he used the Santrina to travel
to small foreign ports as a way to avoid being detained or questioned
at international airports.

All the men say they did not take Posada back with them. It's not
clear if they met with him at the Mexican port. ''I don't remember if
Posada was there,'' Pujol said. Abascal said he did not see Posada in
Isla Mujeres.

Alvarez, Pujol, Posada and the U.S. government maintain a coyote
smuggled Posada across the Texas border days after the Santrina's
trip.

Posada is now in detention in an immigration facility in El Paso,
where a judge recently ruled he could not be deported to Cuba or
Venezuela because he may face torture there, though he may be
deported to a third country yet to be determined.

Venezuela wants the United States to extradite Posada to face trial
for his alleged role in the bombing of a Cuban jetliner in 1976 that
killed 73 people when it departed Barbados on the way to Jamaica. The
accused plotters, including Posada, were all living in Venezuela.

After Posada's capture, FBI agents began interviewing the passengers
of the Santrina and other friends of Alvarez.

Sometime during the summer, Abascal told Pujol the FBI had been
questioning him and putting pressure on him, Pujol said.

The FBI also has questioned Pujol, he said.

A MISCALCULATION?

Pujol believes Alvarez made a mistake in granting a clandestine news
conference for Posada in May, because it provoked the authorities.

''The correct thing would have been to take Posada directly to the
CIA, not take him to the television,'' Pujol said.

Shortly after the news conference, which was held the day The Miami
Herald published an exclusive interview with Posada, federal agents
detained Posada at Lopez Castro's house, said Abreu and a witness who
asked not to be named.

Posada's last Cuban meal as a free man consisted of congrí (a rice
and beans dish) and ropa vieja (shredded steak in tomato sauce).

From: Circles Robinson [mailto:circlesrobinson@...]
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 6:21 AM
To: walterlx@...
Subject: article on nica plus happy new year

Walter here´s an article about a film just premiered in Nicaragua
and which previously won an award at the Havana Film Festival.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!,
Circles


Nicaragua Film Provides Election Year Reflection

By Circles Robinson

www.circlesonline.blogspot.com

A new film by Swiss director Kristina Konrad provides a long awaited
20-year retrospect of Nicaragua, its frustrated revolution, and the
lives of some of those who dared to dream and risk everything for a
brighter future. It comes just under a year before the November, 2006
general elections.

The 84-minute documentary, titled: "Nuestra America: Todo cambia
cuando te has decidido" (Our America: Everything changes when you’ve
made a decision,) was premiered in Nicaragua to packed audiences
December 19-23 in Managua, Leon and Granada. Earlier in the month it
won an award at the prestigious Havana Film Festival as the best film
about Latin America by a director from outside the region.

Our America asks complicated questions like: Where is Nicaragua
today?, Did Yesterday’s Nicaragua really exist? It provides answers
from a human, feminine and internationalist perspective, avoiding
rhetoric or simplistic explanations about the Sandinista Revolution
(1979), the loss of political power (1990) and the situation of
Nicaraguans today.

Nearly two decades after filming in war torn Nicaragua, Konrad
returns with a photograph of two young women in a battalion of the
Sandinista Army, hard pressed to defend the country against the
“Contras” trained and armed by the US under the Reagan
administration.

The director, full of her own vivid memories and questions of what
happened, first finds Magaly Cabrera, today a struggling lawyer in
Leon who works with indigent clients. With Magaly, she searches and
finds Cecilia Rojas, now a door-to-door salesperson for Avon
cosmetics.

Both live simply raising their families with economic difficulties.
As they recall their past and describe their current lives, the
viewers, like the director, gain valuable insight into the open
wounds of a chapter in Nicaraguan history closed like a slammed door.

When asked where the revolution left its mark, Konrad said it was
Nicaraguan women that benefited the most. “For the first time women
could leave their traditional role.” Reflecting on their reliability
and sense of responsibility she adds: “There are still many
[international] organizations that work in Nicaragua and everyone
says they prefer to work with the women.”

Back in the capital, Managua, Francisco Ramirez, 53, describes his
experiences over 30 years as an employee at the Intercontinental
Hotel, one of the only two large buildings that survived Managua’s
devastating 1972 earthquake.

Ramirez worked at the hotel when the dictator Somoza was its main
owner. He stayed on when the victorious young Sandinistas took over
the luxury establishment as a temporary seat of government and
lodging for displaced militia members. In the following decade he saw
many foreign young people pass through “poorly dressed and with foul
odors,” and he was still around in the 1990s after it was
re-privatized, now to foreign hands. Ramirez is the prototype of the
worker loyal to management. With total frankness he explains his
philosophy: “Classes have to exist. There has to be rich and poor.
Without the rich there would be no one to give work to the poor.”

Another interviewee is Herty Lewites, 63, then the popular Sandinista
mayor of Managua. Lewites was filmed before he finished his term in
early 2005. I asked Konrad for her reaction when she leaned that
Lewites had challenged Daniel Ortega for the Sandinista nomination
for president?

“When I interviewed Herty he was still the mayor of Managua. I heard
things because people liked him. There were rumors. I have his answer
to a question that I didn’t use in the film, about whether he would
like to be president. He replied: ‘I believe that anyone would like
to be president if the people supported them.’” The documentary
allows viewers to get to know Lewites, his past as an active
collaborator of the guerrilla movement fighting Somoza, his years as
the Sandinista Minister of Tourism and some of his ideas on life and
Nicaragua.

Enrique Fonseca, 73, an indigenous poet, is restless and insightful
swinging in his hammock behind his humble rural home. Without saying
it, he plays with the unpredictable Nicaraguan “gueguense” that
surprises when least expected. He and others note the human costs in
the war to overthrow Somoza and then to defend the country, which
barely had time to breath between conflicts.

Fonseca asks the question on the minds of many young Nicaraguans, who
were either virtually abandoned by their revolutionary parents who
gave their all to the revolution and the monumental task of building
a new country from scratch, or were born in the post-revolution
period. The question “for what?” reflects a painful recognition of so
much sacrifice for apparently so little.

However, the courage of the young Nicaraguans that fought to end
Somoza’s rule and then defended the revolution can be summed up in
one scene early on in the film while the director is still looking
for the two women in her photograph.

Josefina Ulloa, 46, recalls, as if it were yesterday, the tense
moments over 25 years before when she belonged to a squad of ten
poorly equipped Sandinistas looking to seize weapons in the
countryside in order to fight Somoza’s National Guard.

At one moment a complaining youth in her group said he was going to
return home because he didn’t have a weapon. Josefina recalls that
there was “no room for traitors or cowards” with so much danger
facing them. She told the young man: “If its because you don’t have a
weapon, take mine”, and she picked up a piece of wood and continued
on.

Her nighttime mission was to enter the house of a “Juez de Mesta”
–the local power of the dictatorship in the countryside- to obtain
his weapon for the revolutionary cause.

Trembling inside, she busted into the house pointing her piece of
wood as if it were a rifle, screaming that the house was surrounded
and telling those inside not to turn on the light (which would have
revealed her bluff). She then demanded the feared man turn over his
pistol.

Through pure courage she accomplished her task, like so many others
carried out by her generation, committed to give their all for a
better future.

Things became much more complicated after losing power on February
25, 1990. The film comments that the FSLN –born as a guerrilla
movement in 1961 and which governed from July 19, 1979 to April 25,
1990- has become just one more political party, hinting that it lost
much of its previously held ethical capital.

In her personal reflections on the Nicaraguan revolution, Konrad
noted that she had come from wealthy Switzerland: “It was my first
experience in a poor country and first experience with a revolution.
What most impressed me was seeing an entire country in motion. Their
was hope that things would get better.” She added, “Not everything
was roses, there were also a number of things that didn’t work; they
had little experience. However, they struggled a lot, their was great
movement and I can also remember the humor of the people. I never
laughed so much than with the poor Nicaraguans in the middle of the
war. And besides, everyone made poetry!”

The documentary also shows that the ideals of the revolution are
still simmering on the back burner, independent of the difficult
situation the country finds itself today.

For those without much knowledge about Nicaragua the film gives an
ample look at the country’s recent history without sermons, one of
its greatest and needed attributes. For those who hold the Central
American country dear to heart, you can count on an emotional and
thought provoking hour and a half.

To obtain more information on the distribution of “Our America”
write… <konrad@...>

(The status and influence of the afro-Cuban syncretic religions
here in Cuba is quite remarkable and many people here seem to
have no problem at all reconciling a variety of belief systems
which might otherwise seem quite contradictory. While having a
New Years Eve dinner in the small provincial city of Bartolome
Maso, in the home of a local president of the block's Committee
to Defend the Revolution, I noted a Santeria altar, a Christian
wall calendar and a small Christmas tree. The President is also
a very proud veteran of Cuba's military support to the Angolan
independence struggles in the 1980s. Reports on the predictions
by the Santeria priests will also be given in the Cuban media.)
===============================================================

MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Tue, Jan. 03, 2006

Priests see bad omens
Santería priests warn of more disease, broken accords
and corruption in the coming year.
BY ANDREA RODRIGUEZ
Associated Press

HAVANA - Priests of the Afro-Cuban religion Santería called on
islanders Monday to be wary of diseases, broken agreements and
corruption as they issued their much-anticipated predictions for the
New Year.

Although the annual ''Letter of the Year'' is vague enough to be
interpreted in a variety of ways, Cubans anxiously look forward to it
each January.

Several competing groups of Santería priests, or babalaos, gather
every New Year's Eve for religious ceremonies that include chanting
and animal sacrifices. Predictions are announced in the first days of
the New Year.

Santería is a mix of spiritual traditions carried here by African
slaves and of Roman Catholicism brought by Spaniards. The faith is
practiced throughout Cuba; even many members of the Communist Party
follow its rituals and look forward to the predictions each year.

The ''10 de Octubre'' group of nearly 900 priests, named for the
Havana municipality where it is based, issued the warning about
disease, ruptured accords and increased corruption.

The group said the Santería orishas, or gods, ruling 2006 will be
Obatala, god of wisdom and justice represented in the Roman Catholic
faith as Our Lady of Mercy, and Ochun, the goddess of maternity and
newborns, whose representation is Cuba's patron saint, the Virgin of
Charity.

The priests urged Cubans to watch out for cerebrovascular problems,
stomach disorders, hormonal ailments and unknown diseases.

Society as a whole can expect an increase in crime, particularly
corruption; broken agreements, including international accords; and a
risk of drought and other natural disasters.

A different Santería group, the Yoruba Association, which is more
closely allied with Cuba's communist government, had similar
predictions with some variations and said the orishas ruling 2006
would be Oggun, associated with St. Peter in Roman Catholicism, and
the Virgin of Charity.

The Yoruba group called for Cubans to pay attention to their health,
especially cardiovascular ailments and mental problems.

It warned against violence and alcohol and drug abuse, calling for
the exercise of intelligence, humility and the guarding of secrets.

The Yoruba Association also called on Cubans not to underestimate the
power of meteorological phenomenon.

(Washington's relentless campaign to destabilize Cuba, violating
all international laws in these areas, is unending. They also go
completely unreported outside of the Miami media where they are
always given large coverage. Most people in the United States
haven't any idea of the efforts Washington makes in this war and
if they did, they might ask questions about whether there is any
reason for US funds to be spent on such activities while society
is unable to meet its obligations to its citizens, such as in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and so on.)
=================================================================

MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Tue, Jan. 03, 2006

CUBA
Plane may help overcome Cuba's `news blockade'
TV and Radio Martí prepared to hit the skies with a new aircraft
they hope will break through Havana jammers and the Cuban
government's monopoly on the island's media.
BY PABLO BACHELET
pbachelet@...


WASHINGTON - One TV Martí show features an actor portraying Cuban
leader Fidel Castro as a cranky and infirm boss. Another has a Havana
woman complaining about the nearly constant electricity blackouts.

Most Cubans are unable to view these political satires because of
their government's powerful jamming.

But TV and Radio Martí are preparing to hit the skies this spring
with a new broadcasting airplane they hope will improve their ability
to break through the jamming and the Cuban government monopoly on the
island's mass media.

The aircraft will replace a Pennsylvania National Guard Commando Solo
C-130 that has been transmitting to Cuba for four hours on weekends.
The aircraft has also been used to broadcast to Iraq and Afghanistan.

TV and Radio Martí usually broadcast from a blimp tethered in the
lower Florida Keys, but it was knocked out by last year's hurricanes
and has not been replaced. Cuba has been largely successful in
jamming the signals since the radio opened in 1985 and the TV station
followed in 1990.

Supporters say the addition of the mobility and broadcasting strength
of the new aircraft, expected to be delivered in the spring, will
give the station the technological punch needed to overcome the
jamming.

The television station has broadcast on UHF channels from a blimp in
Cudjoe Key and on a VHF channel with Commando Solo. It also uses the
HispaSat1 satellite. The radio station now broadcasts on shortwave,
AM and FM frequencies from transmitters in Marathon and Summerland
Key, as well as North Carolina and California.

The new broadcast aircraft will allow Radio Martí to transmit more
effectively on the FM band, officials say, and TV Martí to spread its
signal well outside Havana, so that Cubans in the provinces will be
able to videotape its programs and pass them on.

FOUR ANTENNAS

Cuba's jamming of both radio and TV signals is strongest around
Havana, which has about 2.2 million of the island's 11 million
people. Pedro Roig, the head of Radio/TV Martí, said the Cuban
jamming comes from four antennas on some of Havana's tallest
buildings.

Roig said the TV signal will also be added to the DirecTV satellite
lineup. Although Cuban regulations make it almost impossible to have
a private satellite reception dish, they are easily available on the
black market.

''The object is to use as many [transmitting] channels at our
disposal,'' said Joseph O'Connell, the spokesman for the
International Broadcasting Bureau in Washington, the U.S. government
entity that controls Radio/TV Martí.

TV Martí is also preparing to add a second newscast in the evening,
O'Connell said, and the radio and TV news operations were combined
earlier last year to improve coverage and efficiency. Radio Martí,
which according to surveys of Cubans arriving in Miami, has seen its
market share slide in recent years, has changed to an all-news and
information format.

Jorge Luis Hernández, director of broadcasting operations of Radio
and TV Martí, said management has been trying for a more youthful,
modern feel and added more satires to the TV lineup. La Oficina del
Jefe -- The Office of the Boss -- a spoof on Castro, is especially
popular, Hernández added.

Congress last month allotted $10 million for the new aircraft, on top
of $28 million to cover operating expenses for Radio/TV Martí. The
damaged blimp will also be replaced at a cost of $1.7 million.
Officials have not determined the kind of aircraft or whether it will
be leased or purchased, O'Connell said.

Cuban dissident Vladimiro Roca and independent Havana journalist
Angel Pablo Polanco told The Miami Herald in telephone interviews
that the broadcasts help counter the propaganda of the Cuban
government, which controls the island's mass media.

But some critics say the stations are a waste of U.S. taxpayers'
money and that the Cuban government should have little difficulty
jamming the new plane's signal.

''Just because the plane's moving around doesn't change the fact that
[the signal] is broadcast on a frequency. . . . The Cubans figure out
what frequency it's on; they jam it,'' said John Nichols, a
Pennsylvania State University professor who has researched Cuban
communications issues.

O'Connell also acknowledged the aircraft will only fly in U.S.
airspace -- limiting how closely it can approach Cuba -- to avoid
violating international treaties on telecommunications. Havana has
long argued that Radio/TV Martí, even by broadcasting from U.S.
airspace, violates the regulations by aiming its signals at Cuba.

But Radio/TV Martí officials insist they have evidence suggesting the
aircraft will significantly add to their broadcasting punch.

The station has received more than 600 calls from Cuba during the
Commando Solo flights. ''We have never before had such a feedback
from people who have seen our broadcast,'' Roig told The Miami
Herald.

Polanco said TV Martí could be viewed for the first time in the
provinces, and sometimes on the western and eastern outskirts of the
capital, during the Commando Solo flights.

Jammers work by transmitting on the same frequency as the targetted
signals. And they usually have the upper hand because they are closer
to the receivers, said James Lewis, a former U.S. diplomat.

`PUNCH THROUGH'

Lewis said one way to overcome the jamming is to ''punch through'' by
using a more powerful transmitter or broadcasting from multiple
sources -- like the airplane, blimp and ground stations. Cubans could
then counter by boosting the potency of their own jamming stations.

''It's hard to stress the [jamming] system to the point of failure
with something like this,'' Lewis said, adding that the airplane
would be simply ''more annoying'' to the jammers than a balloon or
fixed station. News of the aircraft's planned purchase also sparked
new attacks by critics of Radio/TV Martí who argue the programming
lacks credibility among Cubans.

''It abandons news judgment when sensitive issues are in play,'' said
Phil Peters, a Cuba analyst with the Lexington Institute, a
conservative Washington think-tank.

Roca said Radio/TV Martí has ''plenty of credibility'' and added:
``It is important that we get different . . . opinions or criteria
and news, to break the Cuban government's news and information
blockade.''

''We follow [government] standards and guidelines,'' said TV Martí's
Hernández. ``We try to offer to the people of Cuba the window of
opportunity to give them all the information the Cuban government
denies them.''

Miami's long history as a haven for Cuban exile terrorist militants
like Posada, Bosch and so many others may be brought once again into
the light of day by this case. Jim Mullin of the Miami New Times in
his BURDEN OF A VIOLENT HISTORY provided a broad sweep of the record
of this milieu, published over five years ago, but still very much
relevant as the matter of the Cuban Five, the case of Santiago Alvarez
whose defenders are fighting to bring his case INTO Miami, and other
matters continue to come into the public light anew, as we read here.
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/2000-04-20/news/mullin.html or
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs135.html if the above doesn't open.

("Digging into a decades-old, politically sensitive case opens a door
into the past, though, that some in Miami would prefer stay firmly
shut. Many of those in the thick of Cuban political life back then
won't talk about the Peruyero case on the record 29 years later.
Elected officials, former Miami radio employees, ex-cops -- they say
they don't have to look over their shoulders anymore. They don't want
to start now.

(''Miami in those years was much different than it is now,'' said
Guarione Diaz, president of the Cuban American National Council, a
non-profit human services organization founded in 1974. ``There were
bombings to federal offices and also to homes of Cuban exiles,
assassinations and attempted assassinations. It was the last remnant
of a philosophy that the ends justify the means, all of it to topple
Castro.''")
==================================================================

MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Sun, Jan. 01, 2006

COLD CASE FILES
Old murder, new resolve for victim's daughter
For 29 years, the murder of a Cuban exile leader has gone unsolved.
But his daughter, a Miami- Dade detective, won't stop trying to
solve the most important case of her life.
BY AMY DRISCOLL
adriscoll@...

The eyes of the dead stare at detective Nelda Fonticiella as she
searches for her father's face on the wall of photos at the Bay of
Pigs museum in Little Havana.

She finds his picture down on the left, near the display case of
tarnished bullets and worn Cuban flags. All around her are snapshots
of other veterans: baby-faced youths, Elvis types in glamour shots,
steely-eyed men who gave their lives in the failed 1961 attempt to
overthrow Fidel Castro.

She studies the photo for a minute -- the man with the mustache
regards the camera gravely -- but it reveals nothing new.

For 29 years it has been this way. A father frozen in time. A
daughter frustrated by unanswered questions. A detective who cannot
solve the one murder mystery that matters most: the assassination of
her father, Cuban exile leader Juan Jose Peruyero, on the streets of
Little Havana in 1977.

''I don't think it's a matter of closure. There is no closure when
you have this hole in your life. But it's a matter of justice,'' said
Fonticiella, 46, a veteran Miami-Dade cop who serves as a spokeswoman
for the department. ``That's what I have come to understand in all
these years of trying to make sense of it.''

Now, as the anniversary of Peruyero's murder approaches, some news at
long last: His case is being reexamined by Miami police, with help
from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. There's no statute of
limitations in murder cases. The killer might still be caught.

''Do I have hope? Absolutely,'' Fonticiella said. ``I have to try.''

She was 17, a teenager in typing class at Miami Senior High, when her
dad walked from their Little Havana house toward his green El Camino
and straight into an ambush. The Bay of Pigs veteran and ex-leader of
the famed Brigade 2506 caught six bullets in the back on Jan. 7,
1977.

He died with $3 and a tiny Cuban flag made of paper in his pocket.

The headlines read: Cuban Exile Leader Slain Outside His Miami Home;
Castro Agents Blamed. Twenty-five hundred people turned out for the
funeral, including a former Cuban president and Castro's sister,
Juanita. Peruyero's name was added to a list of prominent exile
killings in the mid-1970s that would remain unsolved nearly three
decades later.

Miami back then was a place of turbulence, terror and intrigue, a
hotbed for anti-Castro plots, the center of the world for Cuban
exiles. Dozens of bombings and at least nine killings of high-profile
exiles reportedly were linked to the political situation, with many
of the murders instantly blamed on Castro agents.

For many, that's an era best left in the past, but Fonticiella can't.
She became a cop in part because her father's murder had never been
solved. Her family still keeps bits of his interrupted life in a
plastic box: his green bottle of Brut cologne, his bathrobe,
scrapbooks from the Bay of Pigs invasion, the watch and gold ring
from Brigade 2506 he wore the day he died.

''If it were me, he would never have rested until he found justice,''
she said. ``So I can't rest.''

Fonticiella thinks today's technology may be key. For years, she's
been reading stories about DNA tests and fingerprint databases
breaking open old cases. In her dad's case, she knows the original
investigators found fingerprints, bullets, even a jacket that was in
a car police believe the killers used. Could there be a hair or some
other trace evidence to be analyzed?

REINVESTIGATION

PROBE EXAMINES

OLD FINGERPRINT

The reinvestigation began this fall. Miami police's cold case
detective, Andy Arostegui, already has sent the clearest fingerprint
-- taken from the rearview mirror of the car -- to the FBI crime lab.
That was about two months ago and he's still waiting for word. He
also has requested the remaining evidence, long since boxed up, from
police storage.

Is the case solvable? Arostegui, who cleared 22 cold cases in the
last two years, is noncommittal.

''You never know,'' he said, with a shrug. ``You just never know. The
print could come back tomorrow with a hit.''

That's all Fonticiella wants. A shot.

''Wouldn't it be great if technology could solve this? If a
fingerprint they run through the database brings up something?'' she
said. ``I mean, it does happen sometimes.''

Digging into a decades-old, politically sensitive case opens a door
into the past, though, that some in Miami would prefer stay firmly
shut. Many of those in the thick of Cuban political life back then
won't talk about the Peruyero case on the record 29 years later.
Elected officials, former Miami radio employees, ex-cops -- they say
they don't have to look over their shoulders anymore. They don't want
to start now.

''Miami in those years was much different than it is now,'' said
Guarione Diaz, president of the Cuban American National Council, a
non-profit human services organization founded in 1974. ``There were
bombings to federal offices and also to homes of Cuban exiles,
assassinations and attempted assassinations. It was the last remnant
of a philosophy that the ends justify the means, all of it to topple
Castro.''

Solving cases like Peruyero's, with the political complications and
lingering fear, is no easy task, noted Raul Diaz, a former county
detective who helped work many of the exile murders and bombings.

''There are still enough witnesses available where they can probably
close one or two of those cases,'' he said. ``Peruyero? I don't know.
Peruyero is a hard case.''

Fonticiella, who said she has heard her father was on a hit list
along with other prominent exiles, knows ``there are people who don't
want me looking into this, who don't want it brought up again.''

''Some of them are even friends of my father's,'' she said, sitting
in the Juan J. Peruyero Museum and Manuel F. Artime Library. ``But I
need to do this. I need to know.''

ANOTHER GENERATION

GRANDSON SHOWS

NEW INTEREST

She shows Peruyero's picture to her son, Danny, who graduated from
the police academy last year and joined the Miami-Dade police, her
department. A lot has changed in two generations, though. Only
recently has he become more interested in learning about his
grandfather's efforts to overthrow Castro.

''After my father was killed, I remember seeing men carrying
ammunition out the back door of the house. We had it stored in the
basement, things like bazookas and mortar [rounds] and bullets,''
Fonticiella recalled. ``I just thought it was normal. I thought
everyone had that. That's how things were back then.''

In the cold-case office of the Miami Police Department, a crowded
room tucked in the back of the homicide unit, two cardboard boxes
with ''Peruyero'' written on their sides offer a slice of that world.

Inside, the reports begin with the day of the shooting and continue
with daily dispatches in the weeks and months that followed. The
documents, handwritten or typed with carbons, detail hundreds of
leads tracked by detectives, many long gone from the department.

Edward Carberry, now working in the county inspector general's
office, was the lead detective on the case initially.

''Most homicide cops have cases they still think about,'' he said.
``For me, this was one of them. The kind that just haunts you.''

He was on dayshift, 7 to 3, when he was called to the murder scene.

''It was total bedlam. Lots of hysteria, screaming, crying,'' he
remembered. The shooting took place a few feet from the Peruyero
house, 1761 NW Third St., near the Orange Bowl. For months after, no
one would park there.

Witnesses saw a car slow down as it pulled alongside the 47-year-old
man. They said Peruyero turned toward the car, then spun away, as
gunfire erupted.

''It was a busy spot. There were a lot of people out and a lot of
witnesses who saw a man's arm come out the window and start
shooting,'' Carberry said.

Before Peruyero died, he was able to tell police that he knew his
assailants and describe the car they drove. Two days later, police
found it, a gold 1968 Cadillac Eldorado, at 2100 NW Seventh St. It
had been purchased for cash seven days before the shooting.

In the ensuing weeks, records show, police questioned dozens of
people, explored several different theories -- everything from Castro
agents to drug dealers to a connection with the 1976 bombing of radio
commentator Emilio Milian, a close friend of Peruyero's -- and
compared fingerprints found at the scene to those taken from more
than 50 potential witnesses. They administered lie detector tests to
about half a dozen people.

Police also took note of Peruyero's politics. Ardently anti-Castro,
he had spoken out against terrorist activities and a year earlier had
lost control of the Bay of Pigs veterans' association.

Milian, who lost his legs in the attack on him, told police at the
time that Peruyero had called him the night before the shooting to
tell him he'd discovered new information about the bombing. The two
men were set to meet the day of Peruyero's murder, Milian told
police.

LINGERING QUESTIONS

ONE STILL CONSIDERED

`PERSON OF INTEREST'

Early on, though, detectives publicly focused on two men, Jesus Lazo
and Valentín Hernández. The men already were wanted for questioning
in the 1975 shooting of Luciano Nieves, an exile leader who preached
peaceful coexistence with Cuba, at the former Variety Children's
Hospital. Both were believed to be members of the Pragmatista
organization, an anti-Castro Cuban terrorist group.

Lazo was never found but Hernández was caught and convicted in 1979
for the Nieves murder. Two months after his life sentence was
imposed, Miami police gave him a lie-detector test in the Peruyero
case. Documents show the examiner found deception on four questions,
including: Did you shoot and kill Juan Peruyero?

Arostegui said he considers Hernández ``a person of interest.''

''There are a lot of avenues to pursue,'' he said. ``That's one of
them.''

Hernández, released on parole in 2004 and living in Naples, said he
was not involved in the Peruyero shooting. He wasn't even in the
country at the time, he said. He was in Colombia, trying to get a
visa to live in Chile, he said. He also said he was given information
from police, via his lawyer, that another man who was killed in a
gangland-style shooting in March 1979 was the real killer.

''His face is my face -- exactly like mine, even the mustache,
everything,'' he said.

His attorney, Nathaniel Barone Jr., said he remembered ''something to
that effect'' but he couldn't recall specifics. He said he believes
Hernández was in Colombia at the time of the Peruyero murder.

Hernández, now 63, said he failed the lie-detector test in 1979
because it wasn't correctly administered and also because he was
upset by his conviction in the Nieves case.

He offered his own theory on Peruyero's death: The Bay of Pigs
veteran was serving as a bodyguard for a man involved in drugs, he
said. A dispute arose and Peruyero was caught in it. Hernández said
the murder had nothing to do with him.

``I am a 1,000-percent anti-Castro person, not what is portrayed of
me. I fight against Castro in Cuba. I am not a murderer. I never
killed anyone in my entire life.''

Carberry, the former detective, said police were never certain who
committed the murder.

''To this day I'm not sure,'' he said. ``We tried to keep an open
mind. Back in those days, the first cry was always that Castro agents
were suspected. While I'm sure that was happening -- there were
Castro agents around -- it was only one factor. We had to weigh all
of these things.''

Hernández said he is untroubled by questions about the past. He
lives, he said, `` . . . in peace with my conscience and my children
and all I care about is love and forgiveness. . . . God forgives me
for my sins, I have to forgive everybody.''

He offered this for Peruyero's family: ``I feel sorry for what
happened to him because he was my friend.''

The words are wasted on Fonticiella. ''What I want,'' she said, ``is
for someone to answer for this crime. Justice. It's that simple.''

MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Sun, Jan. 01, 2006

LITTLE HAVANA
'Dedicated' doctor ready to retire at 83
After half a century of seeing patients,
Dr. Francisco Delgado announced his retirement at 83.
His patients are taking it hard and say they will miss his friendly and
caring methods.
BY ANDREA TORRES
atorres@...


Cuban-born Dr. Francisco Delgado's appointment book has overflowed
since he first opened the doors of his Little Havana office more than
30 years ago.

The waiting room, marked by its signature Cuban coffee aroma, is
usually filled with talk of ailments he has helped to cure, and
dreams of outliving Fidel Castro.

On Saturday, an air of sadness filled the room. The announcement his
patients most feared hung on the door: ''There will not be any more
appointments after December 31st,'' read the sign in Spanish.

''My time has come to retire,'' said Delgado, 83.

His patients had hoped that time would never come.

''This is a great loss for so many of us,'' said Cecilia Del Carmen
Hidalgo, 68, who has been Delgado's patient since she was a child in
Cuba. ``There are doctors everywhere, but none like him. He is
unique.''

With the help of Hortensia Delgado, 77, his longtime nurse, office
administrator and wife, he attended to his last line of patients on
Saturday.

The small waiting area at Delgado's office seats 11. By 9:30 a.m.,
about 26 patients with a three- to four-hour wait ahead of them sat
in their cars and stood outside the office.

''We have so many regulars: There is the group of Chinese, the group
of Catholic nuns, then there are the factory workers that will
sometimes ask to see him at 5 a.m.,'' said Hortensia Delgado. ``He
never says no.''

GIFTS FROM PATIENTS

His seven children are familiar with his dedication, the early
morning lines of patients, and the animals, homemade goodies,
vegetables and fruits patients would bring in exchange for medical
treatment when they didn't have money to pay their bills.

''Patients came in at all times of the day, whether the office was
open or not,'' said his daughter, Teresa Delgado, 49.

Like Hidalgo, Jose Noy, 84, has been Delgado's patient since the
doctor graduated from the University of Havana and Calixto Garcia
Hospital in Havana in 1943. Delgado and his wife then opened a
private clinic at their home in Sancti Espíritus, Cuba.

''Doctor Delgado is an old-fashioned health professional with a
caring spirit,'' said Noy after wiping a tear. ``He is just
irreplaceable.''

Delgado had been a renowned orthopedic surgeon in Cuba. In 1959,
Castro's officials closed his office and arrested him on political
charges. He remained jailed for almost a year. He believes being one
of few orthopedic surgeons won him his freedom.

He left Cuba for Miami in 1970, passed a board exam, began to work at
South Miami Hospital, and in 1973, opened his office, at 285 NW 27th
Ave., in Little Havana. Soon word of mouth caused his patients to
flock to his office.

''He has dedicated his life to his patients,'' said Hortensia
Delgado, while a Spanish bolero El Ultimo Adios -- The Last Goodbye
-- played in the background.

SHED TEARS

Armando Betancourt, 93, stood in the waiting room after seeing the
doctor, amid the religious prayers tacked to the walls and the
paintings of Sancti Espíritus the doctor and his wife believe have
filled some with hope.

He shed a tear or two. Delgado could always cure his aliments. But
Saturday, he could not cure his nostalgia.

''It has been so many years. He never once turned me back for not
being able to pay,'' Betancourt said. ``He promised we would keep in
touch. . . . He will always be my family doctor.''

(Though this mentions the "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy unilaterally
implemented by Washington, it omits any mention of the Cuban Adjust-
ment act which guarantees Cubans who get to the United States a
green card within a year and a day, as no other citizen of any other
country on the planet is guaranteed. And while blackouts here in Cuba
remain a persistent nuisance, many steps are quickly taken when they
take place, and more so following hurricanes, to bring life back to
normal. The Herald always accentuates the negative, presenting an
image far worse then someone actually here in Cuba experiences.

Andres Gomez explains some important parts of what the Miami Herald
leaves out in his recent commentary about the Cuban Adjustment Act:
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/secciones/ingles/noticias/art60.html
===================================================================

MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Fri, Dec. 30, 2005

THE CARIBBEAN
Migration to U.S. soared in '05
The number of migrants heading to the United States from Cuba
and the Dominican Republic was unusually high in 2005.
Experts say both the economy and political policies fueled the upsurge.
BY OSCAR CORRAL
ocorral@...

The constant blackouts, the dismal economy, the messages of false
hope from Fidel Castro. It was all too much for Estrella Fresnillo, a
well-known Cuban journalist.

Fresnillo left Cuba behind this year to come to the United States,
joining a growing wave of immigrants from across the Caribbean taking
to the seas -- or sneaking through U.S. land borders -- in search of
a new life.

This year, the Coast Guard interdicted almost twice as many Cubans at
sea than last year -- more than any year since 1994, when a rafter
crisis of 37,000 prompted the United States and Cuba to strike up a
rare dialogue to implement a controversial new immigration policy.

The Coast Guard also intercepted almost four times as many Dominicans
at sea but caught fewer Haitians trying to reach Florida this year
than in 2004. Interdictions of Haitians last year set a record for
the past 10 years.

Although Fresnillo did not enter by sea, she is part of another
fast-growing group of Cuban migrants who entered the United States
illegally by land. Fresnillo crossed from Canada to Buffalo, N.Y., in
September.

As many as 7,610 Cubans entered the United States through its
southern border in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to
U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The Coast Guard interdicted 2,866 Cubans at sea in 2005, up from
1,499 in 2004. Many more also made it to shore in South Florida than
last year. Border Patrol spokesman Steve McDonald said 2,530 Cubans
were detained in South Florida in 2005, up from 955 the year before.

''The situation in Cuba is worse than ever,'' Fresnillo said. ``I've
never seen so many blackouts, and the hurricanes coming through were
horrible. I am part of a generation of people that is
disillusioned.''

The U.S. State Department said several factors have contributed to
the uptick in migrants. Aside from widespread blackouts, the Cuban
government is taking a much bigger bite -- up to 18 percent -- of
every dollar sent by relatives. And new U.S. rules imposed in 2004
restrict the amount of remittances U.S. relatives can legally send to
their families to $100 a month.

''The crackdown on dissidents is also a major factor,'' said a State
Department official who asked not to be named. ``This year, the
Cubans were promised more than in the past, especially with [Fidel
Castro] saying they are coming out of their special period. But the
average Cuban looks around and realizes it's just not getting any
better.''

U.S.-Cuba immigration policy took center stage this year after
several high-profile incidents involving clashes between the Coast
Guard and Cuban migrants at sea. In one incident, a go-fast boat
smuggling Cubans capsized following a chase by a Coast Guard vessel,
and a 6-year-old boy drowned.

''From what we've seen and heard here, the latest trend in migrant
smuggling from Cuba is the go-fast boat,'' said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr.
Chris O'Neil. ``For those that go the route of migrant smuggling,
they leave themselves at the mercy of smugglers who don't have an
interest in their safety. They are interested in the cash.''

After the 1994 crisis, the United States implemented the
controversial ''wet-foot, dry-foot'' policy, which generally allows
Cubans who make it to U.S. shores to stay in the country but mostly
guarantees repatriation to Cuba for those interdicted at sea.

In a report earlier this year, the State Department accused Cuba's
government of refusing to comply with the 1995 migration accords,
which were designed to prevent another exodus. The report said Cuba's
government doesn't try to stop migrants on vessels while they are
still in Cuban territorial waters, and it refuses to issue exit
permits to many citizens who receive U.S. travel documents allowed by
the accords.

U.S. Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart said the 1995 accords should be
``abrogated. It's fundamentally flawed and immoral. . . . I would
eliminate the migration accords. But I haven't been able to convince
President Bush of that.''

Cubans aren't the only ones taking to the seas in a growing tide. The
number of Dominicans interdicted by the Coast Guard has grown more
than fivefold from about 801 in 2002 to 4,388 in 2005.

Eduardo Sanchez, a representative of President Leonel Fernandez's
Dominican Liberation Party, blamed, in part, a global economy for the
exodus. He also said the higher number could mean the Coast Guard has
stepped up its efforts to intercept Dominicans -- most of them
heading for Puerto Rico.

''Although the economy is growing, the distribution of that wealth is
much slower,'' Sanchez said. ``The poorer people, who risk themselves
to come to the U.S., always have an incentive.''

Despite the turmoil in Haiti, the number of Haitian migrants
interdicted by the Coast Guard in 2005 -- 1,828 -- is less than last
year's 3,078. Most of them are taken back to Haiti.

Activists in Miami's Haitian community warn that the lower number
should not be interpreted to mean that conditions in Haiti are
improving.

''Things have never been worse than they are now in Haiti -- the
violence, the misery, the poverty. It has been called a failed
state,'' said Steven Forester, policy advocate for Haitian Women of
Miami. ``It is simply wrong that anybody should be returned to Haiti
at this point.''

Conditions also seem to be getting worse in Cuba, according to Cubans
who left this year.

''Popular rebellion and discontent have increased in the last two
years, and at the same time government repression is increasing,''
said dissident Manuel Vasquez Portal, who left Cuba with a visa in
June. ``Life for us in Cuba had become impossible.''

US Should Join Latin America's War on Poverty
By Circles Robinson*
www.circlesonline.blogspot.com

Havana, January 1, 2006--The political map of Latin America continued
to be redrawn in 2005 with the taking of office of Tabare Vazquez in
Uruguay and the recent landslide electoral victory of indigenous
leader Evo Morales in Bolivia.

The continent's growing push for unity and determination to fight
poverty and exclusion is something that should be hailed instead of
rejected by the United States.

The expansion of free market policies in the region under the Clinton
and Bush administrations gave US corporations their chance to provide
the promised development to hundreds of millions of impoverished
Latin Americans.

However, virtually all analysts agree that they failed badly, and
instead of progress, the majority actually lost ground in their
standard of living, access to social services, and hope for a
brighter future.

The election in recent years of progressive socially minded
governments in Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil, the growing popularity
of President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and the victory of Evo Morales
in Bolivia are a direct reaction to disastrous economic and social
policies. A similar result in Mexico and Chile is also on the horizon
during the coming year.

Cuba has taken a totally opposite approach from the US in the face of
the changes in Latin America. The island has opened the doors of its
prestigious universities to thousands of scholarship students from
throughout the continent and beyond, and generously provided doctors,
educators and sports trainers to a host of nations both with pro and
anti-Cuban governments.

The Bush administration, for its part, has fruitlessly spent tens of
millions of dollars and scores of CIA operations to support
candidates and governments in its pocket, whose promises of
neoliberal prosperity are growingly rejected by the majority
populations. The presence of US troops in several Latin American
countries has also received widespread resentment.

Besides its long track record of assassination attempts and blockade
to reverse the Cuban revolution, the US backed a short-lived coup in
2002 against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and most lately ran a highly
funded campaign against Evo Morales out of the US embassy in La Paz.

Such a strategy has backfired, not because the private media has
turned left, which it hasn't, but instead because Latin Americans are
increasingly seeing through decades of promises that Washington and
its closely allied leaders have been unable to deliver on.

So why continue a failed policy? Why allow anti-US imperialism to be
a magnet for electoral victories?

A much more sensible strategy -apparently out of the cards with the
present administration- would be to embrace the efforts to bring
modest improvements to all Latin Americans and allow the continent
rich in natural resources and human potential to develop out of the
dark ages.

With or without the United States, such change is already underway.
It won't be a short battle because the effects of centuries of
exploitation, corruption, oppressive foreign debt, cultural
penetration and consumerist influence are not easily erased.

Nonetheless, if the US continues its same course, supporting sell-out
leaders and policies that only benefit a small elite, the forging of
a new Latin America, the one dreamed of by liberation heroes Simon
Bolivar and Jose Marti, may come sooner than thought possible only a
few years ago.

*Circles Robinson is a US journalist living in Havana.

MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Fri, Dec. 30, 2005

LAW ENFORCEMENT
Bullets and bad guys: ATF's top Miami agent has seen it all
Julie Torres is the first Hispanic woman to lead a major field office
of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver@...

Just before the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, Julie Torres threw
herself on top of an Army general and pushed him under a Jeep as
Panamanian troops opened fired on them.

A few years later as an undercover federal agent, she sucked the
brains out of a pigeon's head in a Santería ceremony to infiltrate a
weapons cell. And later she risked her life to bring down a notorious
firearms dealer.

As the only child of working-class Cuban exiles, no one would have
predicted the shy girl from Little Havana would find success
venturing along such a dangerous career path.

Today, the 43-year-old Cuban immigrant is the first Hispanic woman in
charge of a major field office at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives.

She says being a woman in a macho man's world never mattered as she
rose from undercover agent to the top ATF job in Miami, responsible
for South Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

''It's not about your gender,'' Torres said during an interview last
week in her Doral office. ``It's about who you are as a person.''

Torres was born in Cuba's Pinar del Río province in 1962, just three
years after the Castro revolution. In 1968, a future uncle, Alfredo
Otero, arranged for her family to travel to Miami on a Freedom
Flight.

JOINED THE ARMY

Those early immigrant years were rough: Her mother, Rosa, worked in a
Hialeah curtain factory. Her father, Jose, parked cars at the Dupont
Plaza Hotel and later opened a vinyl-top business. But his years of
drinking and abusive behavior broke up the marriage.

To get ahead, the young Torres finished an associate's degree at
Miami Dade College and joined the Army in 1982. ''That was a big
turning point in my life,'' she said.

She eventually joined the Army's Criminal Investigation Command,
which probes military crimes and protects senior officers.

PANAMA INVASION

In that latter role, Torres traveled to Panama to guard then-Brig.
Gen. Marc Cisneros at Fort Amador. The year was 1989.

The U.S. military was preparing to invade the country to oust its
dictator, Manuel Antonio Noriega, who was suspected of involvement in
Colombian drug trafficking. The night before the Dec. 20, 1989,
invasion, Noriega's military sprayed the U.S. military command on the
outskirts of Panama City with machine gun fire.

''I grabbed the general from the back, threw him to the floor and
rolled him under a Jeep,'' Torres recalled.

Cisneros, who later awarded her the Army Meritorious Service Medal,
said her action buried any myth about the ability of women to serve
in the military.

While stationed in Panama for two years, Torres said her mentor, CID
supervisor Mike Hiser, helped her enroll in Florida State
University's local campus. She studied at night, earning a criminal
justice degree, and achieving her dream of being a Seminole graduate.

In Panama, Torres said she worked with a host of federal agencies:
FBI, DEA, ATF and Customs. After the tour of duty, she left the Army
and joined Miami's ATF office as an agent. The agency appealed to
her, she said, because it seemed more ''down and dirty'' than the
others.

`EXCEPTIONAL PERSON'

The man who first interviewed her was ATF recruitment supervisor Jim
Pherson. ''It was obvious right off the bat that she was an
exceptional person,'' he said, rattling off her military background,
her FSU degree and her bilingual skills.

Torres, the first Hispanic woman hired by ATF in Florida, plunged
into undercover work, using her quiet, unassuming personality to
penetrate weapons rings in the Spanish-speaking underworld.

She often played the role of the wife on husband-wife undercover
teams, working with informants to purchase firearms from dealers.

Her work didn't go unnoticed.

In 1994, the Florida Crime Commission recognized her as the law
enforcement officer of the year. The resolution, signed by then-Gov.
Lawton Chiles, cited her infiltration of a gang of illegal firearms
and explosives traffickers in Miami, and her entering a burning home
in her neighborhood to rescue two elderly women.

UNDERCOVER WORK

But one undercover case spooked her. In 1995, she went to buy some
weapons from a Miami dealer named Carlos Gonzalez. She was wearing a
wire, but ATF agents outside could not pick up any of their voices.
The dealer wanted her to try out a Mac 11 with a silencer by shooting
it into a phone book in his backyard.

''I felt something bad was going to happen,'' she recalled. ``I had
to work my way out of it.''

Torres said she told the dealer that she didn't see the point of
shooting the machine gun because ultimately her ''husband'' was going
to make the final decision. She paid him, then left.

The experience -- along with the risk of running into prior suspects
-- convinced her to leave undercover work.

She has since ascended from group supervisor to assistant to the
special agent in charge of the Miami ATF office to the top job in
April 2004. Among her biggest cases:

Last year, a leaky toilet in a west Miami-Dade storage facility led
ATF agents to uncover hundreds of weapons and hundreds of thousands
of rounds of ammunition destined for Colombian rebel and paramilitary
forces.

In November, ATF agents seized machine guns, assault rifles, a
grenade launcher and a silencer from Santiago Alvarez and Osvaldo
Mitat, two Cuban exiles closely linked to anti-Castro militant Luis
Posada Carriles, who is in federal immigration custody.

Posada is wanted by both the Cuban and Venezuelan governments for the
1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner and a string of hotel bombings in
Havana in 1997 and 1998.

Nearly two years into the job, Torres credits her military experience
with transforming her life and career: ``The military provided me
with opportunities that I just couldn't have gotten anywhere else.''

Hi Walter and a Happy New Year.

I feel it is important to point out to your readers that the
disillusionment indicated relates to a certain section of the Cuban
population who have seen their living standards fall as a result of the
strengthening of the Convertible Cuban Paso against the US Dollar.

Those who's well-being is tied to the US rather than the Cuban economy
will continue to see their living standards fall in 2006 (and beyond) as
the plan to eliminate the US dollar gathers pace.  This is only partly
controllable by the Cuban government.

The strengthening of the Cuban Paso is part of a long term plan to merge
the domestic and the convertible pesos which is very good news for all
Cubans who are in receipt of pay checks in pesos.  All of them (the
overwhelming majority of the Cuban population) have seen a massive hike
in their purchasing power in the last year.  Sure, its not going to be
pleasant for the minority population who have come to rely on USD.  They
have had it good for the past few years but now the party is over.

The other side of the squeeze - the ongoing slide in the value of the US
dollar on world markets is not the Cuban government's responsibility.
It even effects US citizens living in Ireland and working for US
corporates who happen to be paid in US Dollars.  They have seen the
purchasing power of their earning plummet by almost 30% in the past 2
years.  In response, many express similar disillusionment with the Irish
economy and seek to return to the USA.  The truth is that the Irish
economy has out performed just about every other economy (with the
possible exception of China) over the same period - yet those reliant on
the US dollar are getting poorer relative to their Irish co-workers who
are paid in Euro.

Seeing such adjustments as evidence of Cuban economic decline - which it
isn't - requires a very peculiar prism through which to be looking.  But
then, what else would you expect from the Miami Herald?

The truth is that this is actually good news for the Cuban Government.
As the USA's purchasing power in Cuba weakens, it becomes more difficult
for them to attract the kind or mercenaries they need to achieve their
nefarious goals.  This year it will cost the US Interests Section 35%
more to "buy" the support of certain individuals Cubans than it did two
years ago.  It is no wonder they are disillusioned - disillusioned
mercenaries is something I, for one, can live with.

My advice to the disillusioned mercenaries is that they should empty
their mattresses and buy their way on board an illegal people
trafficking fast boat to take advantage of the fact that they are the
only human beings on the planet who are entitled to entry into the USA,
no questions asked.

One less mercenary for Cuba to worry about, one more welfare burden on
the USA.  For Cuba Inc. the real party is just beginning.

Simon,
Dublin.



-----Original Message-----
From: CubaNews@yahoogroups.com [mailto:CubaNews@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of Walter Lippmann
Sent: 03 January 2006 12:12
To: CubaNews
Subject: [CubaNews] Migration to U.S. soared in '05 (MH)


(Though this mentions the "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy unilaterally
implemented by Washington, it omits any mention of the Cuban Adjust-
ment act which guarantees Cubans who get to the United States a green
card within a year and a day, as no other citizen of any other country
on the planet is guaranteed. And while blackouts here in Cuba remain a
persistent nuisance, many steps are quickly taken when they take place,
and more so following hurricanes, to bring life back to normal. The
Herald always accentuates the negative, presenting an image far worse
then someone actually here in Cuba experiences.

Andres Gomez explains some important parts of what the Miami Herald
leaves out in his recent commentary about the Cuban Adjustment Act:
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/secciones/ingles/noticias/art60.html
===================================================================

MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Fri, Dec. 30, 2005

THE CARIBBEAN
Migration to U.S. soared in '05
The number of migrants heading to the United States from Cuba
and the Dominican Republic was unusually high in 2005.
Experts say both the economy and political policies fueled the upsurge.
BY OSCAR CORRAL ocorral@...

The constant blackouts, the dismal economy, the messages of false hope
from Fidel Castro. It was all too much for Estrella Fresnillo, a
well-known Cuban journalist.

Fresnillo left Cuba behind this year to come to the United States,
joining a growing wave of immigrants from across the Caribbean taking to
the seas -- or sneaking through U.S. land borders -- in search of a new
life.

This year, the Coast Guard interdicted almost twice as many Cubans at
sea than last year -- more than any year since 1994, when a rafter
crisis of 37,000 prompted the United States and Cuba to strike up a rare
dialogue to implement a controversial new immigration policy.

The Coast Guard also intercepted almost four times as many Dominicans at
sea but caught fewer Haitians trying to reach Florida this year than in
2004. Interdictions of Haitians last year set a record for the past 10
years.

Although Fresnillo did not enter by sea, she is part of another
fast-growing group of Cuban migrants who entered the United States
illegally by land. Fresnillo crossed from Canada to Buffalo, N.Y., in
September.

As many as 7,610 Cubans entered the United States through its southern
border in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to U.S. Customs
and Border Protection.

The Coast Guard interdicted 2,866 Cubans at sea in 2005, up from 1,499
in 2004. Many more also made it to shore in South Florida than last
year. Border Patrol spokesman Steve McDonald said 2,530 Cubans were
detained in South Florida in 2005, up from 955 the year before.

''The situation in Cuba is worse than ever,'' Fresnillo said. ``I've
never seen so many blackouts, and the hurricanes coming through were
horrible. I am part of a generation of people that is disillusioned.''

The U.S. State Department said several factors have contributed to the
uptick in migrants. Aside from widespread blackouts, the Cuban
government is taking a much bigger bite -- up to 18 percent -- of every
dollar sent by relatives. And new U.S. rules imposed in 2004 restrict
the amount of remittances U.S. relatives can legally send to their
families to $100 a month.

''The crackdown on dissidents is also a major factor,'' said a State
Department official who asked not to be named. ``This year, the Cubans
were promised more than in the past, especially with [Fidel Castro]
saying they are coming out of their special period. But the average
Cuban looks around and realizes it's just not getting any better.''

U.S.-Cuba immigration policy took center stage this year after several
high-profile incidents involving clashes between the Coast Guard and
Cuban migrants at sea. In one incident, a go-fast boat smuggling Cubans
capsized following a chase by a Coast Guard vessel, and a 6-year-old boy
drowned.

''From what we've seen and heard here, the latest trend in migrant
smuggling from Cuba is the go-fast boat,'' said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr.
Chris O'Neil. ``For those that go the route of migrant smuggling, they
leave themselves at the mercy of smugglers who don't have an interest in
their safety. They are interested in the cash.''

After the 1994 crisis, the United States implemented the controversial
''wet-foot, dry-foot'' policy, which generally allows Cubans who make it
to U.S. shores to stay in the country but mostly guarantees repatriation
to Cuba for those interdicted at sea.

In a report earlier this year, the State Department accused Cuba's
government of refusing to comply with the 1995 migration accords, which
were designed to prevent another exodus. The report said Cuba's
government doesn't try to stop migrants on vessels while they are still
in Cuban territorial waters, and it refuses to issue exit permits to
many citizens who receive U.S. travel documents allowed by the accords.

U.S. Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart said the 1995 accords should be
``abrogated. It's fundamentally flawed and immoral. . . . I would
eliminate the migration accords. But I haven't been able to convince
President Bush of that.''

Cubans aren't the only ones taking to the seas in a growing tide. The
number of Dominicans interdicted by the Coast Guard has grown more than
fivefold from about 801 in 2002 to 4,388 in 2005.

Eduardo Sanchez, a representative of President Leonel Fernandez's
Dominican Liberation Party, blamed, in part, a global economy for the
exodus. He also said the higher number could mean the Coast Guard has
stepped up its efforts to intercept Dominicans -- most of them heading
for Puerto Rico.

''Although the economy is growing, the distribution of that wealth is
much slower,'' Sanchez said. ``The poorer people, who risk themselves to
come to the U.S., always have an incentive.''

Despite the turmoil in Haiti, the number of Haitian migrants interdicted
by the Coast Guard in 2005 -- 1,828 -- is less than last year's 3,078.
Most of them are taken back to Haiti.

Activists in Miami's Haitian community warn that the lower number should
not be interpreted to mean that conditions in Haiti are improving.

''Things have never been worse than they are now in Haiti -- the
violence, the misery, the poverty. It has been called a failed state,''
said Steven Forester, policy advocate for Haitian Women of Miami. ``It
is simply wrong that anybody should be returned to Haiti at this
point.''

Conditions also seem to be getting worse in Cuba, according to Cubans
who left this year.

''Popular rebellion and discontent have increased in the last two years,
and at the same time government repression is increasing,'' said
dissident Manuel Vasquez Portal, who left Cuba with a visa in June.
``Life for us in Cuba had become impossible.''





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More Latinas choosing Islam
Converts say its emphasis on family and women's roles echoes
traditional Hispanic values.
By Tal Abbady
Staff Writer

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-pconverts03jan03,0,4971
871.story

January 3, 2006

Melissa Matos slips into an easy communion with her newest circle of
friends.

At regular meetings, they invoke their families' native towns in Cuba
or the Dominican Republic, or recipes for arroz con pollo. English is
interspersed with Spanish. And, posing no incongruity to the women,
hijabs, or Muslim head scarves, frame their faces.

When she converted to Islam in May, Matos, a Dominican-American
raised as a Seventh-day Adventist, expected the passage to be lonely.

"I said to myself, `Great, I'm going to be the only Muslim Latina in
the whole world,'" said Matos, 20, a student at Florida International
University who recently joined a group of Latina converts to Islam.

Scholars say Matos is part of a growing number of Latin women
converting to Islam for its emphasis on family, piety and clearly
defined women's roles, values converts say were once integral to
Hispanic culture but have waned after years of assimilation.

The women are among 40,000 Hispanic converts to Islam in the United
States, according to the Islamic Society of North America. About a
decade ago, Latino converts began forming Internet groups such as the
Latino American Dawah Organization and the women's group Piedad that
trace Hispanics' ties to Islam back to the Spanish Moors.

Grass-roots leaders say the number of converts grew sharply after the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, bucking a trend of thought among Americans
that links Islam to terrorism.

Sofian Abelaziz, president of the Miami-based American Muslim
Association of North America, said one indication of the conversions
is the demand for Spanish-language copies of the Koran, which spiked
after Sept. 11. In the past two years, the group has filled orders
for 5,500 Spanish-language Korans for schools, cultural institutes
and prisons around the country, out of 12,000 orders total.

Matos and other converts say the recent media spotlight on Islam was
their first exposure to the faith and spurred further learning.

"[Before] I picked up the Koran, my attitude was, `There's something
wrong with this religion,'" said Matos, 20, of Miramar. A friend gave
her a copy of the Koran. "But then I saw it was filled discussions of
grace from God, of the protection of things we talk about as human
rights, of a universal brotherhood. ... This is a religion that
encourages thinking and contemplation," she said. In May, Matos
converted by reciting the shahada, a prayer in which converts attest
to their belief in Allah and Mohammed in front of Muslim witnesses.
Islam now circumscribes her life. She is studying Arabic, prays five
times a day, wears a hijab and follows Islamic dietary laws.

"There is no conflict between my Dominican heritage and Islam. I grew
up in a culture where you have a family you love and you take care of
one another, and Islam complements those values," Matos said.

Matos' conversion rattled friends and family members who linked Islam
with Taliban-style oppression, but scholars say Latina converts are
practicing a confessional Islam that offers strong moral guidelines.

"People might ask, `Why would women convert to a religion that is so
traditional in its gender roles?' But that's part of the appeal.
There's a recovery of dignity," said Manuel Vasquez, religion
professor at the University of Florida. "Second-generation Latinas
are caught between the morality of their parents and the morality of
the larger mainstream society. Islam offers a clear code. Women ...
know they are respected, taken care and protected from the negative
influences of secular society. It's a kind of empowerment they don't
experience in a culture that is constantly sexualizing them, and
Latinas are particularly sexualized."

The converts may be fashioning a form of Islam that meets their needs
in a country that allows them to do so.

"It's a comment on our society, on the fragmentation of American
family life," said Leila Ahmed, a Harvard University professor who
has written extensively on gender in Islam. "We have to bear that
this is happening in America, where there is freedom of choice. These
women are not converting in order to go and live in Saudi Arabia. We
also don't know how permanent these conversions are in a country
where people convert two or three times in their lives."

Like many converts, Matos calls herself a "revert," a reference to
the Muslim belief that everyone is born in a state of submission to
Allah. Being Hispanic and following Islam now are inextricable.

"When I meet with [my group] we speak in Spanish," she said. "We'll
talk about what it was like back in Cuba or the Dominican Republic.
And yet we're all wearing hijabs. It reminds me of the universality
of Islam."

Religious leaders say the Latina converts assimilate easily into
Islam.

"What they see in Islam is what their parents used to practice: that
respect for elders, the care and protection that husbands are
obligated to give their wives," said Maulana Shafayat Mohamed,
director of the Darul Uloom Islamic Institute in Pembroke Pines.
"Many converts tell me, `This is how my parents grew up.'"

When a Hispanic Muslim friend slipped a copy of the Koran into her
hands, Marie Hernandez found "a total way of life."

"I started reading about the life of the Prophet Mohammed, and I was
convinced that this is the true prophet of God," said Hernandez, 22,
of Boca Raton. "This is the message I have to follow."

Islam also was a powerful antidote to a troubled adolescence, during
which Hernandez left home for two years.

Conversion meant the end of partying, very little television and
waking up at 5 a.m. for her first prayers. It also meant reconciling
with her Honduran-born Catholic parents and becoming a Muslim wife.
She met her husband, an Egyptian, through a meeting arranged by her
imam. They have a 20-month-old toddler, Fatimah, named for the
Prophet Mohammed's iconic daughter.

"At first my parents thought it was weird, and they were scared,"
Hernandez said. "They thought I might get too extreme in my worship.
But now we have a beautiful relationship. Part of being a Muslim is
to honor your parents, and I started treating my dad the way I should
have."

A strong draw for Hernandez was the idea that for Muslims, Islam is
the culmination of all religions. In the Koran, Jesus is venerated as
a prophet, and entire passages are devoted to the Virgin Mary -- a
ubiquitous figure in Latin American culture.

"It's important to know that Jesus and Mary play a role in Islam.
Most Latin Americans are Catholic because that's all they know,
that's what their predecessors were," said Hernandez, who cooks
tamales to celebrate the end of Ramadan.

Converts say they are evidence that Latino identity is in flux.

"One reaction Latinos have with regard to Latinos who come to Islam
is, `You're leaving your religion! You're leaving your culture!' But
Latino culture is evolving," said Juan Galvan, president of the Texas
chapter of the Latino American Dawah Organization.

"It's quite possible that Islam will one day be inseparable from
Latino culture just as Christianity is."

Roraima Aisha Kanar, 52, is from a family of Cuban exiles who fled
Cuba in 1959 and settled in Miami. Dissatisfied with Catholicism, she
converted to Islam 30 years ago.

"My mother was devastated. I couldn't go to the beach and wear a
bathing suit. I had to be covered and not wear makeup. I couldn't
wear low-cut dresses. I felt like telling her, `Do you mean to tell
me that's what's important in life?'" she said. "I think Latinas who
convert are looking for a culture that we'd always had and then lost:
strictness in the family, respect towards the elderly, moral and
spiritual ties and the importance of having God in your life. Our
grandparents had values similar to that. As converts we're just
coming back to our roots."

After her conversion, she grew apart from her nightclub-hopping
friends. She married a Turkish man with whom she has three children.

For Kanar, wearing the hijab, which some see as a sign of
subjugation, is liberating.

"I lived through the '70s women's-lib movement," said Kanar, who
works in accounting and owns a real estate business. "As a woman you
wanted to be accepted as a person with a brain and not just a sexual
object that had to be looking pretty to men all the time. I saw
covering as something that would give me a lot of self-esteem. It
did."

Kanar says she has straddled her Latino heritage and Islam
comfortably.

"As soon as you speak to me you forget I'm wearing a hijab. I'm
Cuban, and I speak with my hands. I love Celia Cruz. We don't go to
Calle Ocho and we don't celebrate Christmas. We eat Spanish food, and
though we won't have pork, we can do a nice lamb. What does it mean
to be a Cuban, really? I feel Cuban, but I'm a Muslim Cuban."

Tal Abbady can be reached at tabbady@... or
561-243-6624.

Copyright C 2005, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Cuban Foreign Minister Highlights Country's Caribbean Support

Havana, Jan. 3 (AIN) Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque
highlighted the island's commitment to member countries of the
Association of Caribbean States (ACS) while meeting with that
organization's General Secretary Ruben Silies Valdez.

In discussions held at the Cuban Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Perez
Roque expressed his gratitude for ACS's support in the implementation
of agreements signed during a recent summit of the association held
in Panama.

The Cuban minister stressed that important actions are underway to
foster Latin-American integration, while preserving the continent's
diversity. Perez Roque said the visit of ACS's general secretary will
allow the discovery of new ways for Cuba to strengthen its work
within the association.

Ruben Silies Valdez commented that Cuba is one of the countries that
best demonstrate its commitment to ACS and its willingness to move
forward as a member of the association. He emphasized that the
organization is a vehicle that serves better balanced integration.

Valdez explained that most members of the Caribbean group are
countries with weak and vulnerable economies, so that Cuban support
is fundamental for achieving integration. He made it clear that
following the Panama summit, ACS has a new challenge: to broaden the
scope and social impact of the association's strategies.

The guest arrived in Cuba on Monday at the official invitation of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Valdez will remain in Cuba until January
5.

Included in his working agenda, the visitor is expected to meet with
the ministers of tourism and transportation and will visit the
Latin-American Medical School in Havana.

Cuba Evaluates Community-based Universities

Havana, Jan 3 (AIN) The achievements of the Cuban program to make
university education available at the community level will be
analyzed at the Fifth International Congress on Higher Education,
University 2006.

The event, scheduled for February 13-17 in Havana, has as its main
objective to examine strategies to guarantee a lifetime of
educational opportunities for a majority of the world's population,
something already a reality in Cuba.

The creation of municipal university centers, which concluded in the
year 2005, is considered one of the most important educational
reforms implemented last year in Cuba.

More than 2,000 university extension centers were set up in all the
169 municipalities on the island. The effort is considered a way of
increasing social justice for Cubans by expanding the educational
possibilities for all young people.

University 2006 will examine possible transformations in higher
education systems that would give those institutions a key role in
developing actions to attain sustainable development in different
countries.

In addition, the congress seeks to facilitate the exchange of
experiences and research results in different countries on the
advanced training of educational experts and university professors.

Establishing forms of international cooperation aimed at increasing
the quality of education in the world is another goal of the forum.

Cuba has been the host of the International Congress on Higher
Education, held every two years since 1998.

Some 2,000 foreign delegates have already confirmed their
participation at the Fifth International Congress on Higher
Education, University 2006, among them, higher education ministers
and rectors.

ycr