Grupo de Apoyo a la Disidencia

If you believe a new book by two Cuban journalists, the prominent opposition leader used that handle for years as a government mole, passing information about dissidents and foreign diplomats to Havana's state security while living large on U.S. government funds.

Sanchez is one of Fidel Castro's most durable critics and a reliable source of information for Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. A 35-year veteran of Cuba's beleaguered dissident movement, he has been imprisoned, called a worm and a mercenary -- and now, Juana the spy.

Sanchez, 59, called the allegations a "colossal lie."

"And if I chose a name it wouldn't be Juana; it's something about Cuban machismo," he said, seizing a moment of levity in an otherwise unnerving day of self-defense as international reporters rushed to his home for a response after the book's release.

Titled El Camajan (a Cuban slang, meaning a freeloading opportunist), the 67-page paperback claims Sanchez has duped the international community, amassing cash from sympathizers abroad even as he approached state security in 1997 to become an informant.

"By order of the Minister of the Interior, Elizardo was decorated with the medal of distinguished service," said Lazaro Barredo, one of the book's authors and a member of Cuba's parliament.

Some in the audience at the news conference burst out laughing, but Barredo continued: "It may seem funny, but it's true. He really contributed to neutralizing activities of the Central Intelligence Agency in our country."

Sanchez, who was jailed for eight years in the 1980s, denied ever passing any information to government officials.

The book, he said, is a sad setup aimed at destroying his credibility and further weakening the opposition movement, which is struggling to recover from the jailing of 75 peaceful dissidents and independent journalists in the spring.

"It's just another chapter in the long dirty war the government has waged against us all to try to defame us, create distraction and confusion," Sanchez said.

He added that he has never hidden the fact he maintained a "fragile dialogue" with officials in an effort to seek an opening for the opposition movement and promote national reconciliation. In fact, his contacts began in 1988, between prison terms.

"Reconciliation presupposes forgiveness on a national level," he said. "I am willing to talk to Satan if that means I can improve my country. The only thing is, Satan is not willing to dialogue."

Dozens of times the officials visited his home or summoned Sanchez to government houses where food and drinks were served. Appealing to his credentials as a former youth Communist Party member and professor of Marxist philosophy, they pressed him to become a collaborator, he said. Instead of financial rewards, they offered ideological justifications.

"They said I was a revolutionary, a man of the left," he said. "They told me I was different from the others. At all times, while I was talking to them, I was conscious that I was being filmed."

Snapshots in the book show Sanchez toasting with several plainclothed officials and embracing a uniformed Interior Ministry colonel.

In one frame, the colonel leans in close to Sanchez.

According to Barredo, he was pinning a medal to Sanchez's shirt. Sanchez said the colonel was putting a pen in his pocket.

El Camajan is a sequel to another book titled The Dissidents, which was released in June and based on interviews with a dozen undercover agents who testified against their former colleagues in April.

While Cuba's dissidents have long known their groups are infiltrated, their phones tapped and their movements monitored, the books represent a departure for Castro's government, which in the past rarely referred to them by name or responded publicly to their activities.

Accounts of dissidents' money-grabbing and privileged lifestyles play on splits in the opposition, a classic divide and conquer tactic, some say. The books stoke suspicions both within and outside the dissident community that you can never really be sure who's an informant and who isn't.

"People here believe the state security knows everything," said dissident Maria de los Angeles Menendez. "When things like this happen, it gives them more reason to be afraid. In each of us they can see an agent."

Menendez should know. Two years ago, government officials "revealed" her husband was an alleged Castro agent -- posthumously no less.

Jesus Yanez Pelletier was an outspoken Castro opponent and former political prisoner who had saved the Cuban leader's life in 1953, when he defied orders to poison the young rebel after a failed insurrection attempt.

On the first anniversary of Yanez's death in 2001, plain-clothed government officials arrived at Havana's Colon Cemetery with a flower wreath to pay tribute to the man they claimed had spent years "penetrating the columns of the foreign and domestic enemy" as a secret agent.

Menendez was outraged at what she called a "poorly staged show" to discredit her husband's memory. She tried to tear up the wreath but was whisked away to a nearby police station, she said.

In an unusual twist, the group of government officials included Yanez's own son from a prior marriage, Jesus Yanez Querejeta, a Communist Party member who was estranged from his father.

Though the release of El Camajan led the evening news on Monday night and the Communist Party mouthpiece, Granma, dedicated its back page to "unmasking" Sanchez as an "unscrupulous master of deceit," the book has had little impact on longtime opposition leaders.

Several dissidents, including Oswaldo Paya, who last year won the European Union's highest human rights prize, immediately came out in Sanchez's defense.

Robert Pastor, vice president of international affairs at American University, who has known Sanchez for 15 years and last year arranged a meeting with former President Jimmy Carter, called the book "an act of desperation and quite pathetic."

Sanchez acknowledged it could sow further distrust among dissidents, but viewed it as a minor bump in a long road.

"It's probable that my circle of friends will be reduced," he said. "But my work won't be reduced."

Vanessa Bauza can be reached at vmbauza1@yahoo.com.

VETERAN DISSIDENT: Opposition leader Elizardo Sanchez talks with reporters at his Havana home in April. AP photo/Jose Goitia

PHOTO

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Castro: U.S. efforts to broadcast TV Marti will fail

By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ

23 August 2003

HAVANA (AP) - President Fidel Castro predicted that a new U.S. government attempt to use a satellite to broadcast news and talk shows hosted by exile leaders will fail.

Cuba calls the broadcasts by TV Marti an attempt by the U.S. government and Cuban exiles to impose their political views.

Castro said earlier efforts to thwart the Cuban government's jamming of TV Marti's signal have failed.

"Up to now, experience has shown that it has gone badly," Castro said Friday.

He commented on the new attempt by saying: "I read something about that and I was laughing. They are always inventing something."

The Miami-based Office of Cuba Broadcasting says that within days it will use a satellite located over the east Atlantic Ocean off the African coast to strengthen TV and Radio Marti signals.

TV Marti, which went on the air in 1990, broadcasts its signal from a balloon tethered to Cudjoe Key in Florida, about 20 miles east of Key West, Fla.

But because of Cuba's jamming of the signal, very few people on the island have ever seen TV Marti.

Only satellite dishes will be able to pick up the signal.

Although Cuba prohibits most ordinary citizens from having satellite dishes, as many as 20,000 families on this island of 11.2 million are estimated to have satellite antenna and reception equipment purchased illegally on the black market.

The government here has cracked down on the illegal dishes in recent months, seizing antenna and reception boxes brought in from Mexico and Miami.

The new American efforts to use satellite technology to broadcast to the island likely will result in increased enforcement against Cuban satellite-dish owners. Foreigners are allowed to have satellite dishes, but must purchase the service through a government agency.

The announcement about stepped-up broadcasting efforts comes amid criticism from Cuban-Americans that President Bush has not kept his election campaign promises to be tough on Castro's communist government.

Rush

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Indictment of Cuban pilots 'just cosmetic'

Publication: Baltimore Sun

Date: 08/24/2003

Author: Rafael Lorente

WASHINGTON - The indictment last week of two Cuban pilots and the former head of the country's air force for shooting down two Brothers to the Rescue airplanes likely won't be enough to quiet critics of the Bush administration in Miami who say they want tougher measures against Fidel Castro's government.

"Maybe it will help them with some people, but the consensus here is that this is just cosmetic," said Jose Basulto, founder of Brothers to the Rescue and the pilot of the one airplane that made it back after the 1996 attack by Cuban MiGs. Brothers to the Rescue operated search and rescue missions in the Florida Straits in the early 1990s but later began dropping leaflets and flying into Cuban territory. Today it is an anti-Castro group.

The Bush administration has been under severe criticism since it returned 12 Cuban migrants in July after getting assurances from Havana that they would not be executed and would receive prison sentences no longer than 10 years. In Miami's Cuban-American community that was tantamount to negotiating away due process with a dictator.

In Miami and Washington this week, most observers figured the White House announced the indictments and a plan to beam Radio and TV Marti into Cuba via satellite as a way to placate Cuban-Americans, whose votes could be critically important to President Bush's re-election next year.

"It's likely that the timing of this is designed to relieve some of the political pressure the administration is feeling from Miami," said William LeoGrande, a Cuba expert and dean of the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington.

White House supporters denied that claim, saying the murder indictments of Gen. Ruben Puente, the former head of the Cuban Air Force, and pilots Lorenzo Alberto Perez-Perez and Fransisco Perez-Perez, were in the works for years.

"This is a matter which has been seriously worked on for quite a while," said Al Cardenas, a Cuban-American lawyer and former head of the Republican Party of Florida. "It probably would have been done sooner if not for Sept. 11."

Coincidental timing or not, Cuban-Americans already are looking for more.

"It is far from enough. It is a very small first step and we are very happy about it," said Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, and one of the lead critics of the administration.

Garcia and others want to see changes in the way Cuban migrants picked up at sea are interviewed by American officials to allow them to make their case for political asylum in the United States. Currently, most migrants are sent back to Cuba under a policy instituted by the Clinton administration that calls for sending back Cubans who do not make it to U.S. shores.

"I don't think it's a process when you pick up a dehydrated, hungry, sun-burned guy and toss him on the deck of a heaving ship and ask him a few questions before sending him back," Garcia said.

Garcia and others also are calling for a large increase in assistance to Cuba's dissident community, an indictment of Castro and his brother Raul Castro for the 1996 shootdowns and stronger efforts to get Radio and TV Marti broadcasts into the island. The satellite transmission will only help a tiny fraction of people who have dishes, many of whom are government officials, they say.

Paraguayan writer Roa Bastos receives Cuba's highest award.

Havana, Aug 23 (EFE) - Cuban President Fidel Castro has awarded Paraguayan writer Augusto Roa Bastos with the Order of Jose Marti, the country's highest decoration for foreigners and named for the Cuban independence fighter.

After receiving the award Saturday in the Palace of the Revolution, Roa Bastos said he was overwhelmed at the honor.

Roa Bastos, 86, arrived at the ceremony in a wheelchair because he suffered a slight leg injury aboard the flight which brought him to Cuba last week.

Castro had invited the writer to visit after he met him while attending the recent inauguration of Paraguay's new presdient, Nicanor Duarte.

Roa Bastos, whose best-known and most highly praised work is "Yo, el Supremo", praised the Cuban revolution which he said was admired around the world.

In remarks about the Paraguyan writer at the ceremony, the president of the Cuban cultural institution Casa de las Americas, poet and essayist Roberto Fernandez Retamar, noted that Roa Bastos had been a fervent supporter of the revolution since its earliest days.

On Friday, the writer presented a new Cuban edition of his first novel, "Hijo de Hombre".

Roa Bastos arrived in Havana last week and during his ten-day stay his to receive a medical checkup before returning home, sources close to the novelist said.

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Editorial: Mexico Detours on Rights

Publication: Los Angeles Times

Date: 08/23/2003

Vicente Fox made human rights a centerpiece of his presidential campaign three years ago, signaling its importance in Mexico's foreign policy and that abuses would not be tolerated at home. Jorge Castañeda, Fox's then-foreign minister, followed up and made Mariclaire Acosta, a respected, longtime advocate, his vaunted deputy for human rights. The three then undertook steps that were unprecedented for Mexico, including correctly criticizing Cuban dictator Fidel Castro for his wrongs on human rights.

So what is the world to think now that Castañeda is gone and his successor, Luis Ernesto Derbez, last week not only fired Acosta but also abolished her post?

Acosta will continue her good works with a public or private group lucky enough to have her services. But Fox and Derbez need to labor to lift the shadow they have cast over Mexico's reputation as a country that champions human rights. The loss of Acosta is unfortunate for a nation that recently was making history signing international human rights accords, opening itself to scrutiny by human rights groups and denouncing human rights violations in foreign countries.

Acosta's dismissal is especially ill timed considering that two respected monitoring groups have just issued separate scathing reports on human rights woes in Mexico.

Last month, Human Rights Watch detailed the failures of the special prosecutor's office, set up in November 2001 to investigate and prosecute past abuses in Mexico. The watchdog group said the office had accomplished little and might lack the powers and resources to tackle its assignment. Its investigations also have been undermined by an uncooperative military that, among other things, has limited access to declassified documents. Human Rights Watch rightly says Fox must take "immediate and decisive action" to get the office on track.

He and other Mexican officials also have their hands full with what Amnesty International says is the "pervasive failure of the authorities to address" a decade of killings and abductions of women in the state of Chihuahua, particularly in the border city of Juarez. The number of victims since 1993 is still undetermined; the Mexican attorney general's office lists 261 women slain in Juarez, and Amnesty estimates the toll at 370. Though Mexican courts have convicted 79 murderers and linked them to these killings, Amnesty reports that "in the vast majority of these cases justice has not been done."

Indeed, Mexico has unfinished work not just on the Chihuahua killings and with the special prosecutor's office but in the whole area of human rights. It needs to get back to a progressive path.

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Cuba dissident on quest for change

Publication: Dallas Morning News

Date: 08/24/2003

Author: Tracey Eaton / The Dallas Morning News

HAVANA – Alone and nearly blind in one eye, a 68-year-old Cuban exile wants to bring democracy to the Western Hemisphere's last Marxist outpost.

Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo has already spent nearly 22 years in prison for opposing Fidel Castro. Undeterred, he's trying to organize a new opposition group in Cuba, risking deportation or another jail sentence.

"I could be kicked out of Cuba at any time for what I'm doing. I recognize that," he said. "Opposition groups are illegal in Cuba."

Cuban officials haven't responded publicly to his unusual quest. But privately, he said, they are "tremendously annoyed" by his dissident activities.

"What I want is that they recognize my status," he said. "As a Cuban, I have the right to stay here for the time I desire."

His visa will expire in early September, however.

Mr. Gutiérrez Menoyo was born in Spain in 1934, and his family settled in Cuba in 1948.

In 1957, he founded an independent rebel force – the Second Front of Escambray – and helped defeat then-dictator Fulgencio Batista.

Ignored by history

"At one time, I led 3,000 men," he said. "But you don't hear anything about that in Cuba. They've tried to erase me from history."

After the rebels declared victory in January 1959, Mr. Gutiérrez Menoyo and Mr. Castro had a falling out.

Mr. Gutiérrez Menoyo left the island and co-founded Alpha 66, a paramilitary group based in Miami. He and other Alpha 66 members returned to Cuba in December 1964 and tried unsuccessfully to topple the socialist government.

He was arrested in 1965 and initially sentenced to die by firing squad. That sentence was reduced to 30 years after he agreed to appear on Cuban television and say that his efforts to topple the government were not supported by the Cuban people.

While in prison, Mr. Gutiérrez Menoyo organized hunger strikes and refused to wear inmate garb, spending most of his time in his underwear. He said he was beaten, suffering broken ribs and a severe eye injury. He also lost most of his hearing in one ear.

He was released in 1986 and returned to the United States.

Peaceful activism

In 1993, Mr. Gutiérrez Menoyo renounced violence as a way to bring change to Cuba and founded Cambio Cubano, a moderate exile group. In 1995, he met with Mr. Castro and asked that his group be allowed to open an office in Havana, a request that was denied.

Some exiles in South Florida condemned him for meeting with the Cuban president, and he was shunned for years. But as time passed, opinion surveys show, more Cuban-Americans agreed that peaceful conversation – and not violence – is the best way to transform the Cuban government.

Now, though, Mr. Gutiérrez Menoyo said he believes a more activist approach is needed, and that's why he decided to live out his last years in Cuba.

"We've tried to dialogue with Cuban officials," he said. "But it's been a waste of time. I came to Cuba to make up for that wasted time."

He arrived July 20 for a vacation with his wife, Gladys, and their three sons, Carlos, Miguel and Alex. Three weeks later, at Havana's international airport, he announced he was staying.

Mr. Gutiérrez Menoyo said he hasn't worked out the details of his planned group, but makes clear that he favors peace and reconciliation, not confrontation.

If Cuban leaders don't plan a political and economic transition, he said, there could be civil unrest or worse.

He runs the risk of arrest. Political dissent in Cuba is taboo. In March, 75 dissidents, journalists and other activists were arrested and sentenced to up to 28 years in prison. Cuban authorities said they were directed and financed by the American government; U.S. officials denied that.

In any case, Mr. Gutiérrez Menoyo said he hasn't asked for, and would not accept, U.S. support.

"They can't say I'm anyone's agent," he said. "I don't support any political opposition that is supported by a superpower."

He does not agree with the longtime American ban on trade with Cuba, saying that economic sanctions only bring more suffering. But he said he's convinced that democratic change in Cuba is inevitable.

Castro loyalists say the socialist system will endure.

E-mail teaton@dallasnews.com

Chicago Tribune

August 24, 2003 Sunday, CHICAGOLAND FINAL EDITION

HEADLINE: Cuba travel getting tougher again

BYLINE: By Jane Engle, Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times.

The rumba party isn't over yet for U.S. travelers to Cuba, but the lights have dimmed, the music is fading, and guests are starting to leave. It may be time to grab that last dance--or is it?

A year ago, business was booming for non-profits that each year send an estimated 20,000 Americans to Cuba. Then in March the U.S. Treasury Department said it would stop issuing "people-to-people" licenses, which many of these operators use. As the remaining licenses expire--most in November or December--so do these trips.

By next year, non-profits I talked with expect to have virtually ended their Cuba travel programs or plan to be offering far fewer departures--in one case, only one-fourth as many. Meanwhile, they are scrambling to redesign tours to qualify under other, more restrictive licensing categories.

The bottom line: It looks as though you'll still be able travel to Cuba legally next year, but on fewer and more limited itineraries that may require, for instance, that you spend virtually all your time doing research or delivering humanitarian aid. Trips may also become pricier, mostly because the non-profits' staffing costs will be spread over fewer tours.

If you're thinking of going illegally on your own, without a licensed group or by traveling through Canada or Mexico, think again. The Treasury Department is cracking down on these trips too.

The department last year assessed penalties on about 450 alleged violators, spokesman Taylor Griffin said. That's only a fraction of the estimated 22,000 to 60,000 people who go to Cuba illegally each year, but it's several times the number typically penalized under previous administrations. Fines can range up to $55,000 under civil law; criminal penalties can include 10 years in jail or a $250,000 fine.

Ignorance is no excuse. Joan Slote, a 75-year-old San Diego woman who has become a cause celebre for advocates of Cuba travel, was fined nearly $8,000 in 2001 after joining a bicycle trip in Cuba sponsored by a Canadian company. She said she didn't know her visit was illegal. (Last month she negotiated the penalty down to $1,907.)

"The Bush administration is committed to full and fair enforcement of the U.S. sanctions against Fidel Castro's Cuba," Griffin said.

That attitude is putting a chill on a 4-year-old thaw in U.S. travel to Cuba, which has been tightly restricted during four decades of trade sanctions designed to isolate the communist island 90 miles off the coast of Florida.

Technically it's not illegal for Americans to travel to Cuba under the convoluted regulations. It's just illegal to spend money there, with certain exceptions. These include people visiting close relatives or traveling as part of their work, such as journalists, government employees and professionals attending conferences.

Other Americans can travel to Cuba with educational or religious institutions or with other groups, mostly non-profits, that have secured so-called "specific licenses" from the Treasury Department. These licenses authorize trips for specific purposes, such as professional research or to attend workshops.

About 154,000 Americans went to Cuba legally last year, said John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council Inc., a New York-based non-profit organization that advises businesses on dealing with the island. He estimated that at least 85 percent of them were people of Cuban descent visiting family.

He estimated that 70 percent of the rest, or 16,000, went with groups that held one type of specific license: for educational activities that promote "people-to-people contact."

Treasury began to issue these broadly worded licenses in 1999 under the Clinton administration, and such trips have since burgeoned.

The boom, those familiar with the situation said, brought unscrupulous use of the license. "It was beginning to be used for tourist travel," Griffin said. In the view of the Bush administration, that "does little more than line the pockets of the Castro regime."

Kavulich was more blunt. He said, "some two-bit hustlers" tried to profit at the expense of the program by, among other ploys, making business deals while traveling on the license or trading it to unauthorized parties.

Critics have accused the Bush administration of clamping down on the licenses to curry favor with anti-Castro expatriate Cubans; they note that restrictions on visiting relatives in Cuba and sending them money have been loosened. They also say the ban on people-to-people contact is unfair because many groups use the license legitimately.

Malia Everette, director of the Reality Tours program of Global Exchange, a non-profit that sends about 2,000 people a year to Cuba, said the loss of the people-to-people license threatened her group's most popular trips, such as the nine-day "Cuba at a Crossroads," an eclectic blend of music performances, art gallery visits and economic briefings.

The 2004 schedule has been put on hold, she said, while Global Exchange reapplies under new license categories. If the organization is lucky, it may be able to salvage about two of the eight trips a month it usually makes, she said. Other tour operators had similar stories to tell.

The last dance to Cuba? Not quite, but the clock is ticking.

Besides Global Exchange (415-255-7296; www.globalexchange.org), other non-profits with space on Cuba trips this year include New Rochelle, N.Y.-based Cross-Cultural Solutions (800-380-4777; www.traveltocubanow.com) and the New York-based Center for Cuban Studies (212-242-0559; www.cubaupdate.org).

For a summary of Cuba travel rules, visit www.treas.gov/ofac. (Click on "Sanctions Program and Country Summaries," then select "Cuba.")

GRAPHIC: PHOTOPHOTO: Illustration by J.D. Crowe.

LOAD-DATE: August 24, 2003

Daily News (New York)

August 24, 2003, Sunday SPORTS FINAL EDITION

SECTION: SUBURBAN;

Pg. 3

LENGTH: 599 words

HEADLINE: NEW CUBA CONTROVERSY

BYLINE: BY ALBOR RUIZ

BODY: That hundreds of Cubans leave their country for the U.S. is nothing new. What is new is for Cubans already in this country to go back to their native soil, renouncing the comforts and riches of development.

Yet that is exactly what former revolutionary comandante Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo did on Aug. 8.

The one-time Fidel Castro ally in the struggle against dictator Fulgencio Batista, who later spent 22 years in a Cuban jail for his armed opposition to the Communist regime, surprised even his own wife and children when he told them at Havana's Jose Marti Airport, after a two-week vacation in Cuba, that instead of going back to the safety of Miami with them, he had decided to remain on the island without the Castro government's authorization.

"I am more useful here than abroad," said Menoyo in Havana, while calling on Castro's government "to open legal spaces to the opposition."

And he added: "I want to identify, by means of dialogue, peaceful ways of understanding and reconciliation between all Cubans."

Wait-and-see stance

Although accusations of his being a Communist collaborator and playing Castro's game immediately came from hard-liners in the South Florida Cuban-American community, reality is far more complex - and far more interesting.

In fact, more moderate Cuban-Americans, mindful that the former comandante's action could perhaps open a new avenue to understanding and peaceful reform, adopted a respectful, even admiring attitude of wait and see.

"This is a man I respect," said Samuel Farber, a Cuban-born political science professor at Brooklyn College. "But I just don't know enough about this particular event to give a considered opinion. We will have to watch what happens in the coming months."

Gutierrez Menoyo's wife, Gladys, the mother of their three sons - ages 13, 11 and 9 - defended his decision in Miami.

"He still wants to achieve the revolution that he fought for many years ago," she said.

Gutierrez Menoyo, though, has been a controversial figure since he arrived in Miami in 1986 after being released from jail. At that time, he declared that he had decided to oppose Castro, and in 1993 he founded Cambio Cubano (Cuban Change), a moderate group seeking to effect reforms in Cuba through dialogue.

As a result, the powerful ultraconservative Cuban-Americans in South Florida did their best to vilify and ostracize him.

Quixotic figure

Gutierrez Menoyo, an old-style revolutionary, was never afraid of attacking hard-liners who asked for a U.S. invasion of Cuba and advocated the failed, four-decade-old trade embargo while staying safely behind in their air-conditioned Miami homes.

And, proud of his independence from Washington, he did not hesitate to criticize dissidents on the island as willing or unwilling pawns of the hostile and mistaken policies toward Cuba carried out by the U.S. Interest Section in Havana.

Gutierrez Menoyo, now 68 and nearly blind, is an almost Quixotic figure.

Whatever one may think of his political position, he is in Cuba risking his freedom and his comfort, while his most virulent critics remain safely in Miami.

Yet the potential success of his aspirations is, at best, doubtful.

"The differences between Cubans cannot be resolved until the difference between the U.S. and Cuba are resolved. That is the key issue," said Max Lesnik, a Cuban-American political analyst in Miami. "But Gutierrez Menoyo doesn't see it that way. He sees it as a conflict between two comandantes that the two of them can resolve among themselves."

Let's wait and see.

E-mail: aruiz£edit.nydailynews.com.

The Associated Press

August 25, 2003, Monday, BC cycle

HEADLINE: Third Cuban athlete defects at World Gymnastics Championships

BYLINE: By JEREMIAH MARQUEZ, Associated Press Writer

DATELINE: MONTEBELLO, Calif.

A female Cuban gymnast has joined two of her teammates by defecting during the World Gymnastics Championships.

Janerky De La Pena, 20, left her team's hotel in Anaheim late Saturday and was picked up by the uncle of 24-year-old teammate Michel Brito Ferrer, who defected Aug. 17.

Teammate Charles Leon Tamayo defected Aug. 18. All three athletes are staying at the Los Angeles home of Ferrer's uncle, Ramon Ferrer.

The athletes are seeking political asylum and plan to present themselves to U.S. immigration authorities later this week, said attorney Luis Carrillo.

"We're here because we feel free," Tamayo said Sunday at a news conference at Carrillo's Montebello law office. "We're running away from the political oppression."

The gymnasts said they had not planned their defections while in Cuba. They stressed that their decisions were made without assistance from any groups in the United States or Cuba or other teammates and coaches.

The three told their parents about their decisions after defecting, Carrillo said. He said the athletes worried about repercussions for their family members, but said their parents support them.

Carrillo said the three were dissidents fleeing political persecution. He voiced confidence they would win asylum. "It would be the height of hypocrisy if they don't grant these three dissidents asylum," he said.

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Dan Kane declined to comment on their specific cases. He said Cubans who enter the United States trying to defect usually face fewer obstacles than other immigrants.

Cuba's team didn't compete in the women's team competition because it only sent two gymnasts. De La Pena competed in only three events in the preliminaries, and failed to qualify for the all-around or any event finals.

She was ranked 25th in the all-around in the 2001 World Championships.

Defections by Cuban athletes are not uncommon. Three Cuban athletes defected earlier this month to the Dominican Republic, where they were competing in the Pan American Games.

GRAPHIC: AP Photos CARM102, CARM104

LOAD-DATE: August 25, 2003

THE NATION

Iran and Cuba Zap U.S. Satellites ; Acting on behalf of the mullahs in Tehran, Fidel Castro has been jamming U.S. satellite broadcasts into Iran from an electronic- espionage base outside of Havana.

J. Michael Waller, INSIGHT

2,774 words

1 September 2003

Insight Magazine

State sponsors of terrorism not only threaten U.S. interests on land, at sea and in the air, but now they have teamed up to attack U.S. assets in space. By successfully jamming a U.S. communications satellite over the Atlantic Ocean, the regimes of Cuba and Iran challenged U.S. dominance of space and the assumptions of free access to satellite communication that makes undisputed U.S. military power possible.

The Bush administration, meanwhile, appears paralyzed about how to cope with this latest threat, which one U.S. official likens to an "act of war." The target of these terrorist states: Telestar-12, a commercial communications satellite orbiting at 15 degrees west, 22,000 miles above the Atlantic.

At press time, nearly a month has passed since the Cuban government began jamming U.S. government and private Persian- language TV and radio broadcasts into Iran. At a time when international political change and military action can be decided within a matter of days, the U.S. government assumes unfettered access to communications satellites to be a crucial tool of statecraft. Americans use satellites to broadcast and relay radio and TV programming into denied areas such as North Korea, Cuba, Iran, the People's Republic of China and even friendly countries.

A hostile attack on a U.S. communications satellite, even if that attack only jams a signal for a few days or weeks, could be decisive in the current environment of geopolitical instability. The Pentagon sees communications satellites as vital tools to promote "regime change" where hostile or terrorist-sponsoring governments can be undermined from within simply by broadcasting honest and accurate news and information to truth-starved populations. The Bush administration belatedly has recognized the power of news in places such as Iran, where popular demonstrations against the theocracy of mullahs have been building for several years.

The jamming of Telestar-12 began on July 6, coinciding with the startup of a new Persian-language TV news broadcast to Iran sponsored by the Voice of America (VOA). The VOA started the half- hour evening program, News and Views, just as a new wave of pro- democracy protests was about to challenge a regime the White House considered part of the "Axis of Evil" along with North Korea and the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Iranian television is censored to redact news about the increasing unrest against the government.

"The program had been designed to give Iranian audiences more truthful, objective news than is available through state-controlled media," says Steven Johnson, a former State Department official and public-diplomacy expert now at the Heritage Foundation. Iranian journalists working inside their country provide the VOA with news stories and video footage. The program augments impressive 24-hour TV-broadcasting efforts by Iranian expatriates in California and praised by President George W. Bush in a July 29 press conference [see p. 36].

Satellite television has grown in popularity in Iran as a way of receiving quality entertainment and news a far cry from the rerun fare and regime propaganda broadcast on Iran's six major channels. Though the regime banned satellite dishes in 1995, Iranians now own more than 1 million of them, many of which are small and easily concealed. About six Persian-language TV channels, run by Iranian expatriates, also are beamed into Iran. Those broadcasts are uplinked to the Telestar-5 satellite orbiting above the territorial United States, downlinked to the Washington International Teleport in Northern Virginia and then uplinked again to Telestar-12 above the Atlantic, where they are beamed down to Iran. Satellite- broadcasting experts say that Tehran is not able to jam Telestar-12 directly because its stationary orbit is out of the range of that country's antenna-based jammers. But, while the mullahs can't touch Telestar-12, their ally in Havana can and does.

When Telestar-12's owner, Loral Skynet, learned of the jamming it hired Chantilly, Va.-based Transmitter Location Systems LLC (TLS) to use its orbiting geolocation system to vector in on the source of the interference with the satellite's transponders. Within three days, TLS had the location: 22 degrees, 55 minutes, 43 seconds north by 82 degrees, 23 minutes, 19 seconds east Bejucal, a Russian-built electronic-intelligence facility about 20 miles southwest of Havana.

A June 2001 study examined the Bejucal base's offensive capabilities apart from espionage. Authored by Manuel Cereijo, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Florida International University, the study found that Bejucal, with 10 antenna arrays, was equipped to launch electronic attacks on U.S. computer systems. Specifically, it warned that Cuba could wage denial-of-service attacks that "prevent or inhibit the normal use or management of communications facilities."

In a follow-on study released last February, Cereijo wrote, "Bejucal is an electronic-espionage base used by the Cuban military intelligence to intercept and process international communications passing via communications satellites." Desmond Ball, a professor with the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at Australia National University, says that the People's Republic of China has operated from Bejucal since early 1999, following a February 1998 cooperation agreement. Ball says that Bejucal's main functions are interception of telephone communications and conducting "cyberwarfare."

If the Bush administration already had been floundering at political action and political warfare against enemies abroad, it was caught with its pants down by the time VOA started its low- budget news show for Iran. Intelligence analysts are not sure about the extent of Chinese technical involvement, but the Cubans were able to stop a new U.S. hearts-and-minds campaign with the flip of a switch.

As soon as the jamming was identified and related facts were in, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, chairman of the independent Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) that oversees VOA, went on the attack, saying the jamming was "illegal and interferes with the free and open flow of international transmissions." But the rest of the Bush administration went into default mode, filing diplomatic protests and trying to persuade international satellite-service providers to deny service to Cuba. "We raised the jamming with the government of Cuba. The interference with Loral Skynet commercial satellite transmissions appears to emanate from the vicinity of Cuba and does appear to be intentional," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters on July 18. Nearly a month later, the transmissions to Telestar-12 still were being jammed, according to Zia Atabay, president of National Iranian Television (NITV), a private and independent channel that broadcasts from its studios in Woodland Hills, Calif.

At least NITV's 24/7 broadcasting still was under constant jamming attack. Interviews with several U.S. officials produce conflicting information about what happened with the VOA transmissions to Iran. Some flatly say that the jamming continues. Others claim the jamming has stopped. One published account states that the jamming ended on July 14, while another says that VOA rerouted its Persian-language programs through other satellites. Still other officials say they aren't sure.

Atabay thinks the State Department cut a deal with Cuba or Iran, persuading the jammers to let VOA's half-hour of news get through to Iran but leaving the full-time private broadcasters to fend for themselves. "These days I'm going nuts because I can't believe that our government doesn't take it seriously," says Atabay. "They are still jamming our signal. NITV is on the same satellite, Telestar- 12, as VOA, on different platforms, but both are jammed. Last month, [Secretary of State Colin] Powell was talking softly about Iran, but Iranians are upset because they think there's a deal to [cut us off]. This is a violation of international law. If they [the Iranian and Cuban governments] can block my broadcasts and bankrupt me, tomorrow they will go after another one. Tomorrow they can go after CNN or CBS." Fox News has covered the fate of NITV, Atabay reports, but "CNN didn't say a word."

The Cuban government, through its daily Communist Party broadsheet, denies all allegations. It accused BBG Chairman Tomlinson of making a "string of anti-Cuba lies" by calling the jamming "a serious threat to satellite communications." The Cuban foreign ministry assailed the United States for what it called "radio-electronic aggression against Cuba" in the form of Washington's broadcasts to the island. But the Castro regime praised the U.S. State Department: "Instead of publicly lying as Mr. Tomlinson did, [U.S. authorities] handed over two diplomatic notes asking for the cooperation of the Cuban government and presenting technical information on supposed Cuban interference with U.S. communications."

Broadcasting is a major instrument of warfare on both sides of the war on terror, just as it was during the Cold War, when decades of balanced truth-telling by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/ RL) helped to roll back the thick fog of communist censorship and hastening the collapse of the Soviet empire.

Havana openly acknowledges jamming U.S. TV and radio broadcasts into Cuba, including TV Marti. "With every right, Cuba has interfered, is interfering and will continue to interfere solely with the illegal radio and television transmissions that the U.S. government is sending to our country," the Cuban foreign ministry said in a July 18 communiqu. "In that we are aided by the sovereign right to defend our radio-electronic space from the subversive radio and television aggression directed at our country since the early years of the revolution." Havana is working in the United Nations to codify into international law the legality of state ownership of the news media and jamming of unauthorized broadcasts.

U.S. broadcasting into Cuba via Radio Marti and TV Marti has been met with a wall of jamming from Havana for two generations. "For nearly four decades Cuba has maintained sophisticated, electronic intelligence-gathering and offensive capabilities, which range from tapping U.S. phone conversations to jamming radio-communications signals and launching computer viruses. To date, U.S. decisionmakers have done little more than work around them, since they were never considered serious threats," says the Heritage Foundation's Johnson. Jamming Telestar-12 for Iran, he asserts, should prompt U.S. officials to take Cuba's information-warfare capabilities seriously. And it should be met with a tough response, administration supporters say. "Interfering with outside transmissions intended for a third country borders on hostile action," says Johnson. "A weak response may invite further mischief." But a "ham-handed" response, Johnson adds, might give Cuban dictator Fidel Castro a martyr image he craves.

The Center for Security Policy sees the issue differently. "Bejucal is now a terrorist asset," it says in a statement. "It gives Castro enormous abilities to conduct information warfare against U.S. assets in space and presents a major threat to U.S. space dominance. It is difficult to overstate the gravity of this development. President Bush should order the destruction of the Bejucal facility now before the threat worsens." Yet the Bush administration acts as though it's helpless, according to NITV's Atabay: "I don't believe it can happen, that America cannot deal with a terrorist government."

Iran is playing tough not only at home but against U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, mainly using political warfare. "The Iranians are interfering through the Ministry of Intelligence and the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps]," a top U.S. official tells Insight. "They are quite active along the border and particularly in the south."

From the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar in the south, the state of Qatar and members of Qatar's ruling Wahhabi family play both sides of the terrorism war. While hosting the theater headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, the Qatari regime and members of the ruling family co-own the pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera, filling Arab TV viewers with anti-American invective [see "Live From Qatar: It's Jihad Television," March 4, 2002]. "Al-Jazeera's role is extremely unhelpful" to U.S. antiterrorism efforts and to pacification of Iraq, a senior U.S. official tells Insight. The State Department, he says, already has issued dmarches to the government of Qatar, without meaningful results.

Meanwhile, Iranian broadcasts into Iraq are intended to incite, organize and reinforce opposition among Iraqi Shiites to the United States and its allied occupation coalition, according to a Pentagon analyst. The United States is acting equally helpless in Iraq, according to a senior administration official. Commenting on foreign hostile TV broadcasting of anti-American messages into Iraq, the official says, "I can't stop Iranian TV. I wish I could. I can't stop Al-Jazeera. I wish I could."

With that defeatist approach, the United States risks losing the peace in Iraq and handing the country over to the Iranian mullahs and the Wahhabis, critics say. BBG Chairman Tomlinson sees an even larger dimension: a threat to U.S. space dominance. The Telestar-12 incident, he says, "has ominous implications for the future of international satellite broadcasting."

J. Michael Waller is senior writer for Insight.

+++++

Details About the Telestar-12 Satellite

Type: Communications satellite. One of eight currently in the Telestar series, and considered one of the most technologically advanced.

Owner: Loral Skynet of New Jersey. Management and control center in Hawley, Pa.

Launched: October 1999, aboard Ariane 44LP.

Coverage: North America as far west as Cleveland and Atlanta; the majority of South America; Europe as far east as the Ural Mountains in Russia and south into North Africa; the United Arab Emirates; South Africa.

Orbit: Geosychronous orbit, 15 degrees west.

Markets: Video for broadcast and business television; high-speed Internet access and private multimedia services to link both sides of the Atlantic.

Source: Loral Skynet

+++++

Expatriate Television Excites Iran

Private citizens started a successful news and information operation against the Iranian regime long before the U.S. government decided to do so at the Voice of America. Iranian-American businessmen in California, not federal diplomats or information warriors, founded the first significant TV stations to break through the fundamentalist regime's censorship, even as U.S. government broadcasts seemed carefully tailored not to offend the mullahs.

One of the half-dozen expatriate channels is National Iranian Television (NITV) based near Los Angeles. Rock musician Zia Atabay started NITV several years ago as a business to serve the nearly 1 million Iranian expatriates and Americans and Canadians of Iranian descent who now live across North America. Soon, however, Atabay's channel took on a political dimension to try to liberate the land of his birth after a technical glitch accidentally uplinked the signal to a satellite that beamed the programming into Iran. NITV was an instant hit, with thousands of callers from Iran flooding NITV's telephones and fax machines, turning the channel into an interactive forum for Iranians anxious to expose the corruption and cruelty of the regime, while serving as a 24-hour telebridge to the United States.

The regime soon jammed the transmissions, but NITV raised more funds for stronger, seemingly jamproof, uplinks via Telestar-12.

Since the Cuba-based jamming of Telestar-12, Atabay's privately funded enterprise is pushing him toward bankruptcy, forcing him soon to lay off workers.

So what is the Bush administration doing to support NITV? On July 29, President George W. Bush in his press conference made a pointed reference to Atabay's efforts. "There's a TV station that is broadcast out of Los Angeles by one of our citizens. He has footed the bill. It's widely watched. The people of Iran are interested in freedom and we stand by their side." The president apparently had not been briefed on Cuba's jamming.

"In no way are they helping us," says an NITV staffer, before tracking down Atabay for this reporter. "I'm an American," Atabay tells Insight. "I'm American, but my government doesn't support me. I told the State Department, 'If I'm doing something wrong, tell me, what did I do?' They said, 'You're doing great.'"

By not supporting the most influential Iranian-American broadcaster, the Bush administration is by inaction handing a victory to the mullahs ruling Teheran. In Atabay's words, "They are going to shut my mouth in America by remote control from Iran."

Document INSI000020030825dz9100008

Features

Havana;The City Page;Cuba

Jonathan Futrell

1,703 words

24 August 2003

The Sunday Times

Old Havana has a smart new look. Long live the evolution, says Jonathan Futrell

Havana used to be a bit of a headache for travellers. Of course, you wanted to go there -it's one of the most exciting, life-affirming cities in the western hemisphere. But when you did, there was nowhere decent to stay, and the food was, frankly, terrible.

What a difference five years makes. Back then, there was a solitary boutique hotel in La Habana Vieja -Hostal Valencia -and virtually nowhere to get a decent meal.

Today, there are almost 20 small hotels and scores of new restaurants. Old Havana is being gentrified -and without any loss of innocence or authenticity. The fabric of the place survives.

The new hotels are all fashioned from former mansions -you can see similar refurbishments underway across town. In contrast to other parts of Cuba, such as the infamous Varadero beach strip, the worst sins of mass tourism - monstrous high-rise hotels, low-quality international cuisine -have been avoided.

Instead, the old town has been rejuvenated: its pretty Spanish squares cleaned up and floodlit at night, its cobblestoned roads closed to traffic by rows of ancient cannons.

For those who would prefer their Havana with the rough edges left on, thank you very much, there is always Centro Habana. Next to the old town, it is every bit as architecturally stimulating and evocative, but remains, reassuringly, just that little bit shabby.

Feel the pulse: the cheapest and best way to get a taste of this beautiful and anarchic city is at a plastic table outside the 24-hour Capitolio Bar, at Parque Central. It's on the fault line between La Habana Vieja and Centro, and thrums with life.

A dollar buys a Cuban Cristal beer and a front-row seat to view all that is balmy, sexy, seductive and bizarre about this faded beauty. Expect a parade of vintage US cars, paunchy men in panama hats, with pencil moustaches, waves of Lycra and flashing smiles.

Museums: little museums are springing up all over La Habana Vieja. They're a cheap diversion, but you're better off concentrating on the big stuff, notably the Museum of the Revolution inside the former presidential palace (Refugio 1; Pounds 2.75; 9am-4.45pm, closed Sunday). You can't miss it -outside, there's a collection of tanks, military aircraft and even an armoured tractor. Inside, there is a fascinating account of the 1959 revolution. Some of the rhetoric is comically cliched, but the blood and the passion is all there.

The other must-see is the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Calle Trocadero; Pounds 3; Tuesday-Saturday 10am-6pm, Sunday 10am-2pm) -recently renovated and offering a marvellous glimpse of colonial Cuba, plus works by notable European painters such as Goya and Velazquez.

Vedado: the architectural flip side of Havana -very different from the rich colonialism of Old Havana -is the Vedado, a kilometre to the west of the Capitolio. This is a sort of Miami South Beach writ large (minus the pastel paintwork), an art-deco district of stunning villas, hotels and casinos.

From the former Hilton hotel, renamed Habana Libre after the revolution, drop south along Avenida de la Universidad to the Soviet-style Plaza de la Revolucion. Its centrepiece is a statue of Jose Marti, the poet and essayist who did much to shape Cuban independence. On the north side of the plaza is a vast mural of that most charismatic of revolutionaries, and T-shirt icon, Che Guevara.

Shopping: Havana has lots of good local art. I paid Pounds 13 for a small, two-colour block print at Israel Gonzalez Rivero's studio (Obispo 255); larger, framed paintings go for 10 times that. Back towards the Capitolio, Galeria Manos (Obispo 411) is an artisans' co-operative, with splendid handmade crafts, from pottery to humidors, jewellery to papier-mache dolls.

You'll be forever coming across traditional Cuban shirts (guayaberas) - four-pocket, short-sleeve jobs from Pounds 5-Pounds 7.50. They're cheap and look good, but if you prefer cotton to nylon, try El Quitrin, a couple of doors along from the tourist information office. This delightful rococo boutique has handmade linen clothes for both men and women, from Pounds 20.

There is a colourful daily trinket market in front of the Castillo de la Real Fuerza, overlooking the harbour; and if your Spanish is up to it, there's a fascinating book market on Plaza de Armas.

Cigars: Keen to see piles of damp tobacco leaves hung across brown female thighs? Take a cigar-factory tour. The loveliest and most evocative is the Partagas factory (Industria, 520), directly behind the Capitolio. Admission is Pounds 6 and the tour takes in the rezagadoras (women grading leaves on their thighs), the torcedores (rollers), and finally the escogedors, who grade the cigars according to shade.

Under no circumstances buy cigars from anywhere other than an official retail outlet. Cigars in Cuba cost roughly a third of their UK price, so it really isn't worth the risk of being burnt by a street hustler. There is a cracking shop at Partagas, stocked with all the "sticks" rolled at the factory. There are also Casas del Habano (government cigar shops) in most of the international hotels, and a lovely one in the Old Town, at Cuba 64.

My own favourite is on the mezzanine at the hotel Conde de Villanueva (Calle Mercaderes 202). It has all the major brands, plus its own cheaper, yet delicious, cigars in all the popular sizes.

Feeling funky: all anyone needs in Havana is a smoke, some music, and a mojito.

Mojitos are tall cocktails made with white rum, sugar, lime, soda water and mint.

For me, the best are served on the terrace at the Hotel Nacional (Calle O, Vedado; 00 53 7-333564), where you can sip to the accompaniment of a cheesy guitar trio as the warm breeze rolls in off the ocean. It's a sexy, high-rollers' hang-out, where I saw Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss run for cover.

The best place for free live music in La Habana Vieja is Cafe Paris, on the corner of Obispo and San Ignacio. Excellent local bands play until after midnight. It's a good place to buy CDs, too -they are 30% cheaper than at the airport duty free.

Other late-night music venues come and go fast, but the Casa de la Musica (Calle 20) remains. This intimate club is packed, hot and flirty until gone four in the morning. Admission is Pounds 10-Pounds 12, depending on the band.

Getting there: the only direct flights to Cuba from the UK or Ireland are from London: Air Jamaica (020 8570 7999, www.airjamaica.com ) has direct flights from Heathrow with fares from Pounds 516; Cubana (020 7537 7909, www.cubana.cu ) flies from Gatwick, from Pounds 432.

Ebookers (0870 010 7000, www.ebookers.com ) has fares from Heathrow and Manchester from Pounds 441, with Iberia via Madrid; and also from Birmingham and Edinburgh from Pounds 501 -both with Air France via Paris. Or try Trailfinders (020 7938 3939, www.trail finders.com), Travelocity (0870 111 7060, www.travelocity.co.uk ) or Airline Network (0870 241 0011, www.netflights.com ).

Gohop.com (01 241 2389, www.gohop.com ) has fares from Dublin from E665, with Iberia via Madrid.

Tour operators: Special Places (01892 661157, www.special places.co.uk) has seven nights' B&B at the Beltran from Pounds 710pp, including flights and transfers.

Alternatively, try CaribWorld (0870 076 6733), Cox & Kings (020 7873 5006), Journey Latin America (020 8747 8555), Regent Holidays (0117 921 1711), South American Experience (020 7976 5511), Trips Worldwide (0117 311 4402), or Ultimate Travel (020 7821 2772).

Sunway Holidays in Ireland (01 288 6828, www.sunway.ie ) has seven nights' B&B at the Ambos Mundos from E907pp, including flights from Dublin and transfers.

Jonathan Futrell travelled as a guest of Special Places

Havana for every budget

ON THE CHEAP

In the heart of La Habana Vieja, Hostal Valencia (Calle Oficios 53, 00 53 7-623801) is a boutique hotel in an 18th-century mansion, with a leafy courtyard and the best paella in the city; rooms from Pounds 37.

Panaderia San Jose is a popular bakery on Obispo that hasn't been discovered by tourists. Try the delicious savoury tarts, pastel de frutas (fruit tart) and palmere (palmier) for 15p each.

After a humid day pounding the streets, there is no finer way of returning to your hotel than in a bicitaxi, a tricycle with two seats and a canopy to keep off the sun. About Pounds 1.50 for 10 blocks, but always fix the price before you set off.

MIDDLE OF THE ROAD

Brand-new this year, Beltran de Santa Cruz (Calle San Ignacio; 00 53 7-860 8330) is an airy hotel in sandstone and indigo, with huge rooms from Pounds 55.

Paladares are family-owned restaurants with a maximum of eight tables, where the food is hearty and fresh. El Rincon de Eleggua (Aguacate 257) is one of the best: a meal of fresh fish, rice, salad and a drink costs about Pounds 6.

The Playas del Este are a 10km string of pine-fringed beaches; the nearest, Tarara and El Megano, are a Pounds 5 taxi ride away. Stop off on the way to explore the 16th-century Eastern Fort (Pounds 1.25).

NO EXPENSE SPARED

Conde de Villanueva (00 53 7-629293) is the loveliest boutique hotel in the Old Town: nine vast rooms set around a stunning courtyard, from Pounds 100.

For atmosphere you can't beat, try Restaurant Plaza de Armas, on the top floor of Hotel Ambos Mundos (860 9531): fabulous views and the sounds of salsa drifting up from the street. About Pounds 18 a head.

You haven't lived until you've been to the Tropicana nightclub: the combination of flesh, rhythm and spectacle make it a night to remember. Terrible food, though.

From Pounds 40, bookable from any hotel.

August 25, 2003 Monday FL EDITION

HEADLINE: A SMEAR CAMPAIGN;

CUBA TRIES TO DISCREDIT DISSIDENTS

Cuba's smear campaign against Elizardo Sanchez reveals more about its own desperation than about the longtime human-rights activist. The regime wasn't satisfied with locking up 75 dissidents on prison terms totaling 1,454 years. Now, it is angling to finish the job by attempting to discredit the few critics it didn't jail -- most likely because, like Mr. Sanchez, they are internationally prominent. Who is next? Vladimiro Roca and Oswaldo Paya?

A pathetic book written by regime lackeys and published by the Communist Party paints Mr. Sanchez as a state-security snitch. Now Cuba wants us to believe that its secret police would want to burn an asset who provided ''important information'' about diplomats and other foreign officials, mostly from the United States and Spain. What bunk.

None of this is new, of course, particularly for the Cuban dissidents who have been persecuted and infiltrated by state-security agents for decades. Most dissidents learned long ago not to keep any secrets. They know that state security will find out in any case, and will use whatever they find against them. In Cuba's arbitrary legal system, virtually anything can be deemed illegal.

Consider the indictments of the recently sentenced dissidents. Their ''crimes'' include publishings articles abroad and having fax machines and politically incorrect books. We know, too, from the accounts of the victims, that state-security moles sow doubts and pit dissidents against each other. We also know that from the courtroom theatrics of three such moles who recently testified against dissidents whom they had befriended in order to betray.

If anything, Cuba's secret police have obtained copious information about Mr. Sanchez's activities and visitors via bugs, phone taps and surveillance. They needn't have bothered. As head of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, Mr. Sanchez has spoken out openly against abuses and provided critical information on Cuba's political prisoners for decades. He also has paid the price for breaking with the regime, having served four years in prison in the early 1980s.

Yes, in Kafkaesque Cuba it's hard to know for sure who works for state security. But that repressive machine ultimately will wither before the power of those who speak the truth.

LOAD-DATE: August 25, 2003

August 25, 2003 Monday FL EDITION

HEADLINE: Latin leaders look to expose abuses;

Former regimes have dark histories

BYLINE: BY KEVIN G. HALL; Knight Ridder News Service

DATELINE: ASUNCION, Paraguay

BODY:

Unwilling to forget their nations' horrid pasts, leaders in Argentina, Brazil and Chile are taking new steps to expose the killing, torture or other abuse of thousands of their countrymen by right-wing dictators from the 1960s to the 1980s.

The latest action came Thursday, when Argentina's Senate, pushed by liberal President Nestor Kirchner, voted overwhelmingly to revoke amnesty laws passed in 1986 and 1987 that had protected generals and their henchmen from prosecution.

Some of the motivation behind the new aggressiveness is personal: The old regimes oppressed, imprisoned or very personally offended three of the new left-liberal presidents: Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Chile's Ricardo Lagos and Kirchner. The cleansing initiatives are widely popular, and easier now that the old regimes' leaders, such as Chile's ailing Gen. Augusto Pinochet, 87, are no longer intimidating figures.

CLEANING HOUSE

It is also important for Latin countries to clarify their recent dark histories and to stop sanctioning human-rights criminals who have lived and often prospered in their midst, many victims and their advocates say.

Marcial Riquelme, a Kansas State University scholar who fled Paraguay's military regime 40 years ago, called the region's new effort ''a recovering of the collective memory.'' Until there's an accounting of what happened to the victims, Riquelme said, ''It is like an air crash where no bodies were recovered.''

Kirchner, the most aggressive cleanser, easily won revocation of the amnesty laws on a 43-7 Senate vote with one abstention.

To the shock of retired generals, Kirchner earlier had refused to block Mexico's extradition of an Argentine accused of torture to Spain for a human rights trial. He also is weighing a Spanish prosecutor's request that he extradite top generals suspected of murdering Spaniards in Argentina.

THOUSANDS MISSING

Between 9,000 to 30,000 Argentines were killed or ''disappeared'' during successive dictatorships from 1976 to 1983. Kirchner, briefly detained by the dictatorship while in college, promised in his inaugural address May 25 to settle unanswered questions in his country's dark past.

Next door in Brazil, da Silva was among those imprisoned for union and opposition activities in the 1964 to 1985 era, when military dictators ruled. His mother died while he was jailed. His current chief of staff, Jose Dirceu, once was exiled to Cuba. The president of his political party was a guerrilla captured by military rulers. Da Silva's government launched a revamped commission into political disappearances Aug. 14, with orders to be more aggressive in getting at the truth.

Some of the most-publicized human rights initiatives have been in Chile, where efforts to try Pinochet on charges of masterminding a campaign of torture and political murder drew worldwide headlines in 2000 and 2001. He avoided trial on grounds of age and health. However, Lagos, the first socialist elected president since Pinochet toppled socialist Salvador Allende in 1973, announced in an emotional address to the nation Aug. 12 that his government would intensify its effort to investigate crimes of the Pinochet era. It already has documented 3,198 deaths during the dictatorship and compensated many of the victims' families.

MONEY FOR VICTIMS

Lagos, who had been slated to be Chile's ambassador to the Soviet Union until Pinochet's coup derailed his career, promised $30 million in additional compensation for Pinochet's victims.

In Paraguay, where strongman Gen. Alfredo Stroessner ruled from 1954 to 1989, authorities also are looking back. The new Congress is taking up a measure to create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission similar to one operating in Chile, and for the first time in generations, the new president, Nicanor Duarte Frutos, inaugurated Aug. 15, has no ties to the old dictatorship. Rights activists hope for new probes into the deaths or disappearances of somewhere between 300 and 30,000 Paraguayans in the Stroessner era.

''There has not been a political will to know what happened,'' said Martin Almada, who won a historic court ruling freezing the assets of Stroessner. Almada is seeking redress for the death of his wife, who died of a heart attack in 1974, after being forced to listen by telephone as he was tortured.

LOAD-DATE: August 25, 2003

washingtonpost.com

Latinos or Hispanics? A Debate About Identity

By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 25, 2003; Page A01

On a recent summer's day, Sandra Cisneros walked into Valenzuela's Latino Bookstore and thought she had discovered a treasure. It was one of the few independent book sellers in her home town of San Antonio, and on top of that, she said, its name appealed directly to her.

But within minutes, her mood changed. A clerk innocently used a word to describe a section of books that made Cisneros's skin crawl. "She used the word Hispanic," Cisneros said, her voice dripping with indignation. "I wanted to ask her, 'Why are you using that word?'

"People who use that word don't know why they're using it," said Cisneros, a Mexican American poet and novelist. "To me, it's like a slave name. I'm a Latina."

That declaration -- "I'm a Latina" -- is resounding more and more through the vast and diverse Spanish-speaking population that dethroned African Americans as the nation's largest ethnic group a few months ago.

It is also deepening a somewhat hidden but contentious debate over how the group should identify itself -- as Hispanics or Latinos. The debate is increasingly popping up wherever Spanish speakers gather.

It was raised last month at the National Council of La Raza's convention in Austin. The Internet is littered with articles and position papers on the issue. Civic organizations with Hispanic in their titles have withstood revolts by activist members seeking to replace it with the word Latino.

Cisneros refused to appear on the cover of Hispanic magazine earlier this year because of its name. She relented only after editors allowed her to wear a huge faux tattoo on her biceps that read "Pura Latina," or Pure Latina.

Another Mexican American writer, Luis J. Rodriguez, only reluctantly accepted an award from a Hispanic organization "because I'm not Hispanic," he said.

Some have called the argument an insignificant disagreement over words that is being blown out of proportion. But others believe such labels can change the course of a people, as advocates of "black power" showed when they cast aside the term Negro during their crusade for self-determination amid the 1960s civil rights movement.

"I think the debate reflects the flux this community is in right now," said Angelo Falcon, a senior policy executive for the Puerto Rican Legal and Education Fund. "It's almost like a story where you ask, 'Where might this community be going?' "

Although the terms Latino and Hispanic have been used interchangeably for decades, experts who have studied their meanings say the words trace the original bloodlines of Spanish speakers to different populations in opposite parts of the world.

Hispanics derive from the mostly white Iberian peninsula that includes Spain and Portugal, while Latinos are descended from the brown indigenous Indians of the Americas south of the United States and in the Caribbean, conquered by Spain centuries ago.

Latino-Hispanic is an ethnic category in which people can be of any race. They are white, like the Mexican American boxer Oscar de la Hoya, and black, like the Dominican baseball slugger Sammy Sosa.

They can also be Ameri-Indian and Asian. A great many are mixtures of several races. More than 90 percent of those who said they are of "some other race" on the 2000 Census identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino.

"As a poet, I'm especially sensitive to the power a word has," said Cisneros, who wrote the books "Caramelo" and "The House on Mango Street." "It's not a word. It's a way of looking at the world. It's a way of looking at meaning."

Duard Bradshaw has a different opinion. "I'll tell you why I like the word Hispanic," said the Panamanian president of the Hispanic National Bar Association. "If we use the word Latino, it excludes the Iberian peninsula and the Spaniards. The Iberian peninsula is where we came from. We all have that little thread that's from Spain."

A survey of the community conducted last year by the Pew Hispanic Center of Washington found that nearly all people from Spanish-speaking backgrounds identify themselves primarily by their place of national origin.

When asked to describe the wider community, more than half, 53 percent, said both Hispanic and Latino define them. A substantial but smaller group, 34 percent, favored the term Hispanic. The smallest group, 13 percent, said they preferred Latino. A survey by Hispanic Trends magazine produced a similar finding.

But advocates for the term Latino were unfazed.

"The very fact that it's called the Pew Hispanic Center tells you something," said Fernando Guerra, the Mexican American director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. "The fact that Hispanic is in the name of the organization . . . biased the question."

The term Hispanic was given prominence by the Nixon administration more than 30 years ago when it was added to the census questionnaire in 1970. Although that year's count of the large Mexican American, Puerto Rican and Cuban American populations was a disappointment, a seed had been planted.

By the 1980 Census, Hispanic had become fixed as the official government term. It appeared not only on census forms, but also on all other federal, state and municipal applications for employment, general assistance and school enrollment.

"It's a great gift that the government of the United States gave us," said Vincent Pinzon, the Colombian president and founder of the Americas Foundation. "If you want to acquire political muscle in this country, and you say you're just Argentinian or Colombian, then you have none."

But Mexican American activists in California and Puerto Rican activists in New York were not pleased. They favored a term that included the brown indigenous Indians who they believe are the source of their bloodline.

"Hispanic doesn't work for me because it's about people from Spain," said Rodriguez, author of the book "The Republic of East L.A." "I'm Mexican, and we were conquered by people from Spain, so it's kind of an insult."

Rodriguez's views are typical of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles, the epicenter of immigrants from that country, and the Chicano rights movement.

The term Chicano is thought to have originated as slang that described immigrants and refugees from the Mexican revolution. The term later evolved to define the uprising of Mexican American reformers and rights activists as well as farm laborers and other workers who lived in squalor while toiling for low pay.

As activists from other Latin countries joined the movement, Latino was adopted as an umbrella term for all groups.

"In L.A., if someone says he's Hispanic, and he's not from the East Coast, you begin to question this guy," said Guerra, the Loyola Marymount professor. "It means he didn't grow up in a Latino neighborhood."

In Washington, where the Pew Center is located, Salvadorans who dominate the area's large Central American population say "somos Latinos" -- we are Latinos -- according to José Ramos, director of the United Salvadoran American Civic Committee.

"Hispanic is a category for the U.S. Census," he said. "It's a formality. For me, the correct term is Latino. It identifies people who speak the same language, people who share a vision of the historical meaning of our community. I am Salvadoran, and I am Latino."

But Cuban immigrants in Miami, conservative Mexican Americans in Texas and a group of Spanish descendants in New Mexico are among the groups that strongly identify themselves as Hispanic.

The word Latin dates to an 18th century spat between England and France, according to a historical resource guide written by journalist Frank del Olmo for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Latin was used to distinguish Italy, France, Spain and their conquered territories in the Americas from the British empire and its colonies. Latino was popularized during the social movements of the 1960s, Guerra and other historians said.

The disagreement over the pair of ancient terms is an annoyance to some. When the subject came up at the National Council of La Raza's annual meeting, Lisa Navarette, the group's Cuban American spokeswoman, dismissed it. "We've got so many real important issues to work on, we can't be bothered with this nit-picking."

The community indeed faces daunting challenges: high unemployment, a skyrocketing high school dropout rate, widespread opposition to immigration reform and crowded communities.

But the issue isn't apt to disappear. A few years ago, Bradshaw's group, the Hispanic National Bar Association in Washington, had to fight off a resolution by a group of members to remove the word Hispanic from its name and replace it with Latino.

Last semester, students at Southern Methodist University in Dallas talked about changing the name Hispanic Student Services. And earlier this year, Cisneros, the author who abhors the word Hispanic, refused to accept an award from a Hispanic organization.

At the Latino bookstore Cisneros visited, owner Richard Martinez didn't know what to think. "I don't know which is correct," he said. "I'm a Mexican, a Latino, a Hispanic, whatever. Be who you are. Be proud, like everyone else."

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Press Release
22 August 2003

Increased suppression of cultural expression in Cuba leads the
Prince Claus Fund to withhold support from the 2003 Havana Biennial

As a result of the arrest of 75 Cuban cultural and social activists in
recent months and their being sentenced to harsh terms of imprisonment of up
to 28 years, the Prince Claus Fund has decided not to provide financial
support to the 8th Havana Biennial, which will be held in November 2003. All
those sentenced were engaged in the critical Cuban cultural and social
arenas. The convictions signal a significant deterioration of the situation
for intellectuals and artists. The body responsible for organising the 8th
Havana Biennial, which is an internationally acclaimed platform for
non-western art, is associated with the government and has not distanced
itself from the policy of prosecution. As a result, the Prince Claus Fund is
forced to withdraw its collaboration.

The Prince Claus Fund was a key financier of the 7th Havana Biennial in
2000, contributing 90,000 euro because of the high quality of the exhibition
and the emphasis on intercultural exchange with artists in Latin America,
the Caribbean, Asia and Africa. Another reason for support was that the
Biennial gave Cubans - living in a country in which the independent
provision of information is scarce - access to international cultural
developments. These reasons would have applied this time as well. The Fund
nevertheless considers that it would be inappropriate to collaborate
directly or indirectly with a government that pursues a policy of severe
repression.

The Prince Claus Fund sees its task as drawing attention to the difficult
situation in which artists and intellectuals find themselves in Cuba at the
moment. Under the present circumstances, it is particularly important to
stand up for those who struggle peacefully for freedom of speech and for
free cultural expression.

The Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development

The Prince Claus Fund is a platform for intercultural exchange. In
collaboration with people and organisations in Africa, Asia, Latin America
and the Caribbean, the Fund realises contemporary activities and
publications in the fields of culture and development. The Prince Claus
Awards are part of this policy. Special attention is paid to what are called
zones of silence, areas where people are deprived by political or economic
circumstances of the opportunity for free cultural expression. This is why
the Fund gave an award in 1999 to the Cuban cultural periodical Vitral,
which operates as a volunteer organisation, albeit on the fringe, supported
by the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba.

For more information, please contact the Prince Claus Fund, The Netherlands,
tel + 31.70.427.43.03, fax + 31.70.427.42.77, m.tummers@princeclausfund.nl

washingtonpost.com
Doctors Rouse Suspicion in Venezuela
Chavez Opponents Say Cubans Are Sent to Slums to Bolster President, Not Provide Care

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 24, 2003; Page A20

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Margarita Mendez has been a prisoner of her address for decades. She lives in a cement home on a hillside in San Pablito, a grim shantytown among the many that ring this city in what is popularly known as the "misery belt."

To reach the pathways that weave through her streetless slum, Mendez, 63, must climb a steep flight of stairs behind her house. But a severe case of varicose veins has swollen her lower legs, and they are covered with pink, raw blisters. She says she has only scaled the staircase a half-dozen times in the past decade to make the 30-minute trip to the closest general hospital.

"The last time I went they told me they would have to amputate," said Mendez, sitting in a tiny blue house where she has lived for a quarter-century. "So I never went back."

She no longer has to. For the past two months, a doctor, Roberto Hernandez, has braved her back steps, ducked beneath the laundry lines, and delivered medicine and care to her three times a week. Hernandez is Cuban, one of nearly 900 doctors from the Communist country who have arrived in this capital's neglected shantytowns in the past three months.

Their presence has revived the debate in Venezuela over what has been one of the most polarizing elements of President Hugo Chavez's populist program: his unabashed affinity for Cuban leader Fidel Castro and the authoritarian system that opponents of Chavez fear he intends to impose here.

Chavez says Hernandez and his colleagues are doctors only, doing work that should be done by Venezuelans, many of whom are afraid to venture into the hills. But the president's opponents say the Cubans are political agents here to help Chavez organize Venezuela's poorest neighborhoods in his defense as a recall campaign against him gets underway. Last week, Venezuela's First Administrative Court ruled that 417 Cuban doctors could no longer work in the Libertador district, one of two districts in the capital where they are present, for licensing reasons. Chavez officials said they would ignore the ruling, dismissing it as politically motivated.

"The most important thing is that for the first time people in these neighborhoods have a say over their health," said Ruth Cartaya, the Libertador district's health coordinator. "In Venezuela, we have excellent doctors. What we want is for them to identify with our people and the reality of their lives."

Since his 1998 election, Chavez has injected his class-based politics into nearly every aspect of Venezuelan life, even medical care. Political analysts and diplomats here say Chavez is seeking to weaken Venezuela's traditional sources of power, including its professional associations, and energize his base among the poor and politically disaffected.

Chavez has embraced Castro, but he has never explicitly endorsed the autocratic aspects of the Cuban government. Chavez has held up Cuba's universal health and education systems as models he intends to copy, generating intense resistance from Venezuela's doctors and teachers and from the United States.

The doctors program, known here as "Inside the Neighborhood," stems from an agreement signed in 2000 between Chavez and Castro that sends 53,000 barrels of cut-rate Venezuelan oil a day to the energy-starved island. In return, Cuba has sent sports trainers, doctors and teachers to Venezuela, although never as many as it has sent recently.

In the past, Venezuelan leaders of far different political leanings have attempted similar if less ambitious programs. Carlos Andres Perez, the target of a Chavez-led military coup in 1992, imported Cuban doctors to work in the countryside. Henrique Salas Romer, who lost to Chavez in 1998, brought in Cuban sports trainers when he was governor of Carabobo state.

"Bringing in a few Cubans is not a big problem," said Salas Romer, who intends to run for president to replace Chavez if the recall effort that began last week is successful. "The problem is that what Venezuela is bringing in now are not doctors, but political activists."

Although the opposition says the program is part of Chavez's goal to "Cubanize" Venezuela, there is little evidence that the Cuban doctors are carrying out political activities in the shantytowns. Several residents treated by the Cuban doctors said in interviews that politics were never mentioned during their visits.

"These are not shock troops," said a Western diplomat here from a country generally at odds with Cuba. "Are they proselytizing in favor of their country? Maybe on the margins. But they are what they claim to be, to a large extent."

Venezuela's medical students are obligated to practice in poor urban neighborhoods and the countryside as part of their training, but as a rule, the poorest sectors are woefully underserved.

The Venezuelan Medical Federation, a trade group with 45,000 members, contends that it is Chavez who has undermined the public health system. Douglas Leon Natera, the federation's president, said the national health budget has declined 30 percent under Chavez, leaving many neighborhood clinics without adequate funding. Roughly 9,000 doctors are underemployed or without work.

"What we can conclude from all of this is that the health of the people is not important to this president," said Leon Natera, who estimates that 90 percent of his members oppose the government. "There is no doubt that this is being used by the president on behalf of a Marxist program."

Settled by rural migrants looking for work decades ago, San Pablito and the other colorful shantytowns that climb up Caracas's lush hills have been fearsome places for years. No roads reach them. Only uneven staircases and pathways ribbon through the tin-roof jumble. In San Pablito, home to roughly 2,000 families, a maternity hospital is a 10-minute walk away. But the closest general hospital is a half-hour drive by car, a luxury most residents here do not have.

Gang violence, mostly over the drug trade, leads to daily casualties. Now, though, the gangs in some neighborhoods have agreed to allow the Cuban doctors to work freely. Hernandez passes through gang-controlled areas under escort. At each gang border, he is handed off to a rival gang.

"This effort is taking place amid the war of the hillsides," said Lenin Salazar, 44, the shaggy-haired, good-humored organizer of the program in San Pablito. "Now the people in these places are saying, 'No, this doctor is ours. Don't hurt them.' "

Hernandez, 38, is among the vanguard of Cuban doctors. He came from Cienfuegos, a city on Cuba's southern coast, where his wife and three children live. He can expect to see them for two months over his two-year assignment to Venezuela.

For his work, Hernandez receives food, lodging and $160 a month. But he has been welcomed like family in a slum suffering from public health problems associated with poverty and a traditional lack of attention from Venezuelan doctors. A recent poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a U.S. polling firm, found that 37 percent of those questioned supported the presence of Cuban doctors in Venezuela, a number just slightly higher than Chavez's approval rating.

"If I were here as a political emissary, I would t


Grupo de Apoyo a la Democracia / Support Group to Democracy