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Posted on Wed, Mar. 27, 2002 in
The Miami Herald
Cuba flails Mexico foreign chief
HAVANA - (AP) -- Cuba accused Mexico's foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda,
on Tuesday of orchestrating Fidel Castro's sudden departure from the U.N.
poverty summit in northern Mexico last week, insisting it had proof to back up
its claims.
The attack on Castañeda in the Communist Party daily Granma was the
most serious incident in recent sparring between the two nations' foreign
ministries.
Although it called Castañeda the ''diabolical and cynical architect''
of Castro's decision to leave the forum, Granma insisted that Cuba wants good
relations with Mexico "and not harm in the least the authority and prestige
of President Fox.''
''We ask for nothing more than an end to the provocations, insults, lies and
macabre plans of Mr. Castañeda against Cuba,'' the newspaper said in an
editorial. "Otherwise, there remains no other alternative than to divulge
that which we have not wanted to divulge, making dust of his false and cynical
pronouncements.
''Cuba has irrefutable proof of all that occurred,'' it added.
After Castro suddenly left the forum in Monterrey on Thursday, Cuban
officials claimed that Mexico bowed to pressure from the United States to ensure
that Castro did not attend the meetings of heads of state being held in
conjunction with the U.N. gathering.
Both countries denied those charges.
Cuba didn't single out Castañeda for attack until Tuesday.
In Mexico City, meanwhile, some Mexican lawmakers are demanding an
explanation from Castañeda, and others want him fired over the incident
with Castro.
Politicians from the far left of Mexico's political spectrum accused Castañeda
on Monday of turning his back on Mexico's foreign policy in order to placate
President Bush, who made it clear he did not want to cross paths with Castro at
the U.N. meeting.
''Precisely because of one person, the relations that Mexico and Cuba have
enjoyed for many years are in danger,'' said Congressman Sergio Acosta Salazar,
of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party.
Several opposition politicians, including members of the former ruling
Institutional Revolutionary Party, said they would ask Castañeda to
appear before Congress as soon as next week to explain his actions.
Judge dismisses suit by INS agent who claimed retaliation after Elian
Gonzalez raid
By The Associated Press. Posted on Tue, Mar. 26, 2002
MIAMI - A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit brought by an
immigration agent who claimed retaliation following the Elian Gonzalez raid.
U.S. District Judge Alan Gold agreed with the recommendation made by a
federal magistrate in the lawsuit brought by INS agent Ricardo Ramirez. The
magistrate had said the lawsuit should be dismissed as an employment dispute
governed by civil service law.
The lawsuit named former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, former
Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner and several
other defendants.
Ramirez, who is of Mexican-American descent, asked for a transfer to Texas
more than eight months ago and has filed a grievance over alleged mistreatment
by supervisors after the April 2000 raid.
He said he has been the target of both official and anonymous threats.
Gold wrote that while the "court is troubled by the allegations
contained in Ramirez's complaint, which reveal an elaborate conspiracy to
penalize a federal employee for truthfully providing information, it cannot
supplant the method created by Congress for such federal employees to redress
their grievances.''
Ramirez cited examples of bias at the Miami INS office around the time of
the raid that included a slash mark through the Cuban flag, a Miami seal bearing
the words ''Banana Republic'' and the words ''Kick me'' on pictures of Elian.
He said he was put on track for firing after he reported the incidents and
took photos of a message -- ''We know it's you. Watch out traitor'' -- on his
car.
Ramirez sued Attorney General John Ashcroft last November, contending that
he has failed to stop an anti-Hispanic bias in the INS's Miami district. The
case is pending.
Judicial Watch chairman Larry Klayman, Ramirez's attorney, said he intends
to appeal.
''We will get justice for Rick Ramirez,'' Klayman said.
Charles Miller, a Department of Justice spokesman, said the department was
satisfied with the judge's order.
Elian's Miami relatives unsuccessfully fought in court to keep Elian in the
United States after his mother drowned during a boat crossing from Cuba to
Florida in November 1999. The boy returned to Cuba with his father the following
June.
Quiet ways help him get Cuban films
Posted on Wed, Mar. 26, 2002 .
Perhaps it's Alejandro Rios' mild manner that lets him get away with murder
in Miami.
Protesting Cuban art is beyond tired. But there are still those who join the
knee-jerk bandwagon whenever anybody from the island brings their act here. So
why is it you never find a screamfest outside any of the events Rios organizes?
Rios has been clearly playing ball with somebody on the island to be able to
bring the films he has brought over the past decade for his Cuban Cinema Series
at the downtown campus of Miami-Dade Community College.
The Miami premiere of the wildly successful Fresa y Chocolate (Strawberry
and Chocolate) in 1994 was a historic moment, the first time a Cuban film played
here and there simultaneously. Rios got his hands on it almost a year before the
film went into distribution in the U.S.
And he got his hands on it because he has long had a hook-up in Havana.
Having an open line of communication with anybody from the island is the sort of
thing that could automatically brand you a suspicious character in el exilio.
But Rios, who has brought more than a hundred films from the island, plus dozens
of directors, producers and actors, has always risen above that sort of
pettiness.
''Perhaps Havana hasn't changed much. But Miami has,'' Rios says. "As
long as you do things with a certain measure and a certain intelligence, and
without a desire to provoke just for the sake of provoking, you can bring just
about anything you want from the island and have support from the community.
What you can't do is show up in a community and defy it, like Los Van Van did
when they played here.''
Rios worked at the Cuban Book Institute promoting Cuban authors until 1992,
when on a cultural exchange trip to Mexico, he decided to cross the Rio Grande
and ask for political asylum in the U.S.
''He has been quietly triumphant,'' says Beth Boone, artistic and executive
director of the Miami Light Project, which on April 9 will present Cuba's rumba
masters, Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, at the Jackie Gleason Theater.
"Alejandro has been chipping away at the concrete wall. I think it's
because he's never done it in an attention-grabbing way. He's like a great
diplomat who has provided academic and historic context. His message is: like it
or not, this is relevant. And in fact, most people do like it.''
Rios is hardly the typical Miami promoter who turns selling any act from
Cuba into a circus. Which is probably why his films draw standing-room-only
crowds and no protests. ( It makes a huge difference that the Cinema Series is
free, so there's no question where the money goes.)
But even when the anti-Cuba climate got stirred into a hurricane, Rios
inspired pacific cultural exchange.
Hard to forget the mob that heckled folks trying to enter the Gusman one hot
July night in 1996 for a concert by Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba.
But just 10 days after that fiasco, while the controversy over Rubalcaba
still burned, more than 500 people crammed into the auditorium at Miami-Dade to
see one of Rios' films from Cuba.
There was not a single placard protesting the screening of Maite, which
premiered at the Havana Film Festival a year earlier.
''You have to have faith in the artists,'' says Rios. "I get questioned
by Cuban radio for some of the films I bring. Should we consider any of the work
that comes out the ICAIC (the Cuban Film Institute) valid? Of course we should.
You have to have confidence in the the screenwriters, the directors, the actors.
Being artists, they are going to find a way for their art to shine through.''
There are probably more people in Cuba who attack Rios than in Miami. A few
years ago, he got a threatening telegram from the ICAIC, which doesn't always
love it when Rios gets his hands on a Cuban-made film.
"They said I was trying to profit off of Cuban patrimony, but of course
everybody knows I've never charged a penny for any movie. I always have
permission to play the movies I get from Cuba. But it's usually secret
permission. It's permission from the director or the producer, somebody like
that who quietly finds a way to get the movie here.''
A couple of weeks ago, as a birthday present to his friend Pepe Horta, who
runs Miami Beach's Cafe Nostalgia, Rios played a short filmed in Havana in 1958.
It's been kept under lock and key at the ICAIC because of its subversive
message.
The explosive piece of contraband, titled 23: El Broadway Habanero, a
commercial for tourism depicting a hopping street in the Vedado section of
Havana.
''What it shows is great life in Havana in 1958. The clubs open all night,''
says Rios. "You see Olga Guillot buying a car. It shows that Cuba was a
country that existed. But it was shot precisely before the revolution came, so
the ICAIC has it put away.''
So why are artists from Cuba so obsessed with showing their work in Miami, a
town that, on the surface, seems less than welcoming?
''You can take your work to Mexico, Spain, Boston, New York. But Miami is
the other part of Cuba. There are a lot of things that separate us, but there
are also a lot of things that bring us together,'' says Rios, who helps keep
that connection alive. | 
