CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Migrants' relatives call on president to free 33 Cubans

By Alfonso Chardy, achardy@herald.com. Posted on Fri, Nov. 11, 2005.

The scene played out Thursday as it has for a decade in South Florida: Protesters calling on the president to set free Cuban migrants held by U.S. officials on the high seas, lawyers feverishly filing motions in Miami federal court, carnations tossed into turquoise waters amid prayers for divine intervention.

All the while the bodies of Isabel Menéndez Machado, 74, and Luisa Cardentey, 60, rest in a legal limbo here. Their relatives refuse to bury them until the 33 Cubans who traveled with the women can come ashore to attend the funeral.

The migrants are facing repatriation after their boat capsized Saturday south of Key West drowning Menéndez and Cardentey. Relatives of the two women protested in front of a Coast Guard station in Miami Beach Thursday and asked a federal judge to order Homeland Security to let them come ashore.

The civil action and the protest, led by a Cuban exile who pioneered traffic-blocking demonstrations against Cuban migrant repatriations, came on the fifth day of a standoff between the U.S. government and family members over whether the 33 migrants will be sent home.

Under the current wet-foot, dry-foot policy, Cuban migrants intercepted at sea are generally repatriated while those who reach U.S. shores are allowed to stay. The policy began in 1995 when the United States and Cuba struck an immigration deal that ended the 1994 rafter exodus that brought more than 37,000 Cubans to the United States.

Democracy Movement leader Ramón Saúl Sánchez, who organized traffic-blocking civil disobedience actions as soon as the deal was announced, led Thursday's 15-minute protest in front of the Coast Guard station.

APPEAL TO PRESIDENT

About 30 family members and friends of the 33 Cuban migrants on the cutter paraded on a bridge sidewalk in front of the Coast Guard facility. They carried white carnations, pictures of some of the migrants on the cutter and of the two women who drowned, and handwritten signs urging President Bush to order the Coast Guard not to repatriate their relatives, including more than a dozen children.

''Mr. President, let our children on the cutter be free,'' read a sign carried by a man at the head of the protest -- José López, a Tampa resident whose 17-year-old daughter, Days Yero, was aboard the boat.

Yero, brought ashore because she has a green card, was among the protesters along with Jorge Ernesto Leyva, the pilot of the capsized boat who was initially detained as a migrant smuggling suspect.

He was released Wednesday without being charged and without explanation, according to one of his lawyers in the Coral Gables law firm of Eduardo Soto.

''We need President Bush's help,'' Yero said.

Sánchez, who acted as a spokesman for the protesters, said the demonstration should be seen as a reminder to Bush to change the wet foot-dry foot policy, which he called "unfair.''

At the end of the demonstration, the protesters prayed in a circle and then threw the white carnations into the sea.

COURT MOTION

As the protest unfolded, Soto's lawyers were in Miami federal court filing their motion seeking a court order to prevent Homeland Security from repatriating the migrants still on the cutter. The six-page motion says the migrants are ''entitled'' to consult their lawyers on their possible asylum claims and need to come ashore and be paroled so they can serve as witnesses in the case Soto's office wants to develop against the Coast Guard's handling of the capsized boat.

''The only manner in which a full investigation of the unfortunate incident may be achieved is for the Department of Homeland Security to immediately parole all of the witnesses present on board the demised vessel,'' the motion states.

Matthew Archambeault, a lawyer in Soto's office, said Judge Marcia Cooke has the case.

VESSEL CAPSIZED

The boat capsized Saturday evening about 75 miles south of Key West when the Coast Guard cutter Metompkin arrived at the scene. Yero said that as she and other migrants were being taken to the cutter, the boat flipped in rough seas.

Yero initially said she thought the Coast Guard was chasing the migrant boat. But in an interview Thursday, Yero said she was mistaken and that Leyva, the boat pilot, told her later that he needed help because of the rough seas and summoned the Coast Guard by radio.

Soto's emergency motion, however, quotes Yero as saying that the migrant boat capsized "as a result of the wake from the Coast Guard rescue boat.''

U.S. denies a visa to prize-winning scientist

A Cuban scientist who won an award for his work wasn't allowed into the United States to accept it.

By Frances Robles. frobles@herald.com. Posted on Thu, Nov. 10, 2005.

A Cuban scientist who invented a synthetic vaccine against meningitis could not pick up a prestigious award Wednesday night in California because the State Department denied him a visa, the museum giving him the prize said.

Vicente Vérez Bencomo was one of 25 scientists around the world honored by the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose for using technology to benefit mankind. Vérez was among 580 applicants for the award.

Vérez led an international team that developed Qim-Hib, a carbohydrate-based vaccine that fights haemophilus influenza Type B, the bacteria behind pneumonia and meningitis in children younger than 5. The bacteria kills 750,000 children a year.

''It's frustrating,'' museum spokesman Tony Santos said. "We wish that hadn't been the government's position. The doctor is making the best of technology, and it's not to make people more money, but to help the world.''

Santos said behind-the-scenes pleas to embassies in Havana and appeals by members of Congress were in vain.

The decision was particularly puzzling, Santos said, because Vérez has traveled to the United States before, as recently as March. It was the first time in the five years the contest has existed that the museum was unsuccessful in getting a visa for a winner.

''He's been all over the world; he's a trustable man,'' said René Roy, a University of Quebec chemistry professor who co-invented the product with Vérez. "There's no understandable reason.''

The U.S. State Department in Washington and U.S. officials in Havana declined to comment on the case, citing privacy rules. Vérez could not be reached for comment.

Bush's Latin team shuffled

New appointments in Washington's Cuba policy lineup could affect the U.S. stance toward the Castro government.

By Pablo Bachelet, pbachelet@herald.com. Posted on Thu, Nov. 10, 2005.

WASHINGTON - Four new Bush administration appointments to positions that affect U.S. policy on Cuba, plus a pledge to restart a presidential commission on the island's future, are stoking hopes among some Cuban Americans for a further tightening of sanctions on Havana.

Among their hopes are a revision of the 1995 immigration agreements with Havana that led to the wet-foot, dry-foot policy for Cuban migrants and the full implementation of Helms-Burton sanctions against some foreign investors in Cuba.

The personnel changes on Cuba policy are part of the biggest reshuffle of the State Department's Latin America team since President Bush took office in 2001. Chief among them is the arrival of Thomas Shannon as assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, the region's top diplomatic post.

Shannon's previous post running the Latin American team at the White House's National Security Council went to Dan Fisk, a former aide to retired Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) who helped draft the Helms-Burton Act in 1996 and has consistently advocated hard-line positions on Cuba.

Fisk, formerly No. 3 in the State Department's Western Hemisphere team, with responsibilities for Cuba, Central America and the Caribbean, boasted last year that the recent tightening of U.S. sanctions was "challenging the regime in a way that it has not been challenged at least in the last 25 years.''

Among other new Cuba faces: Michael Parmly, head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana, and Stephen McFarland, head of the Cuban affairs desk at the State Department, both of whom quietly took over this summer.

Then there is Caleb McCarry, the Cuba transition coordinator at the State Department -- a potentially powerful post filled in late July after it was recommended by a Cabinet-level panel that Bush created, the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba.

McFarland is a career diplomat specializing in Latin America and last served as the deputy chief of mission in Venezuela, where he made a name for himself by daring to go outside the U.S. Embassy compound to confront anti-U.S. demonstrators. At the Cuba desk, he replaced Kevin Whitaker, who took McFarland's old job in Caracas.

Parmly, a human-rights and European affairs expert with recent stints in Afghanistan and Bosnia, replaced James Cason in September as the head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana -- a sort of embassy because the two countries do not have formal diplomatic relations.

A Catholic, Parmly has been attending Mass regularly in Havana and is believed to be reaching out to the church in Cuba, an institution that might play a role in post-Castro Cuba. But so far, he has kept a low profile compared to Cason, whose public displays of support for dissidents regularly infuriated President Fidel Castro's government.

But Cuban Americans are especially encouraged by McCarry's comments to The Herald that he wants to reconvene the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, whose recommendations last year led to a tightening of sanctions intended to deny outside resources to the Castro government.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would head the commission, although some Washington analysts speculate that Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, a Cuban American, might be asked to act as co-chairman.

''It's a wonderful thing,'' said Frank Calzon, who heads the Washington-based Center for a Free Cuba. "It means that despite the many urgent and important things that are going on, the secretary will focus on Cuba and the region.''

McCarry declined to give details on the commission's future work. He said only that the idea is to follow up on the 2004 report, which looked at ways to hasten and prepare for the fall of Castro.

''At this point, we're going to be looking at where we are and where we want to go,'' said McCarry, long an influential but little-known House International Relations Committee aide close to the panel's powerful chairman, Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill..

Otto Reich, a former Bush White House special envoy to the Western Hemisphere who worked closely with the commission to develop its recommendations, said an update was due on several U.S.-Cuba policy fronts.

Reich said the commission could review the policy in which Cuban migrants interdicted at sea are returned to the island, while those who land here are allowed to stay. He said the policy was unfair because the U.S. government never turned back refugees fleeing communist countries in Europe.

But critics say the 2004 report and any future moves by the commission are just another example of failed U.S. interventionism on Cuba.

''None of the steps have the slightest possibility of bringing down the Castro government,'' said Wayne Smith, a former head of the U.S. mission in Cuba and now with the Center for International Policy, a Washington advocacy group.

Some Cuban-American activists hope that President Bush will enforce a long-suspended provision of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act that denies visas to foreigners who invest in Cuban properties seized by the Castro government from Cuban citizens or residents.

''Our hope is that he's going to peel away at some of that bureaucracy,'' said Mauricio Claver-Carone, a director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee.

McCarry declined to answer questions on enforcing the provision of the Helms-Burton Act. But his office door has a sign pinned on it that says, "Viva la Helms-Burton.''

Again, U.N. vote urges end to Cuba embargo

For the 14th straight year, the U.N. General Assembly called on the United States to end its trade embargo against Cuba. Cuban officials hailed the 182-4 vote but knew it would be ignored.

By Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press. Posted on Wed, Nov. 09, 2005.

UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly urged the United States on Tuesday to end its 44-year-old trade embargo against Cuba, a call U.S. Ambassador John Bolton dismissed as "a complete exercise in irrelevancy.''

It was the 14th straight year that the 191-member world body approved a resolution calling for the U.S. economic and commercial embargo against Cuba to be repealed "as soon as possible.''

The vote was 182-4, with 1 abstention, a higher ''yes'' vote than last year's vote of 179-4 with 1 abstention. Many delegates in the General Assembly hall burst into applause when the result was flashed on an electronic screen.

The United States, Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands voted against the resolution, while Micronesia abstained. Four countries did not indicate any position at all -- El Salvador, Iraq, Morocco and Nicaragua.

NONBINDING MEASURE

The resolution is not legally binding, and Cuba's Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque noted that the U.S. government has ignored it for the past 13 years. But he said that that didn't diminish "the legal, political, moral and ethical importance of this vote.''

In Cuba, hundreds of government supporters in Havana's convention center shouted in glee and jumped up and down when the result was announced. State-run television showed high-ranking officials among those gathered to await the news, but Cuban President Fidel Castro did not appear to be there.

Bolton chose to attend a Security Council meeting to vote on an Iraq resolution rather than the General Assembly vote on Cuba.

Cuba launched a broad public relations campaign drawing attention to its complaints against the embargo, and speaker after speaker in the General Assembly debate opposed the U.S. sanctions imposed after Castro defeated the CIA-backed assault at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.

TIGHTER EMBARGO

The embargo, aimed at toppling Castro's socialist system, has been steadily tightened under President Bush's two terms. Pérez Roque said ''most likely'' Bush would tighten the blockade even further.

''Never before, as in the last 18 months, was the blockade enforced with so much viciousness and brutality. Never before had we seen so cruel and relentless a persecution by a U.S. administration against the economy and the right of the Cubans to a dignified and decent life,'' the Cuban minister said.

But Pérez Roque stressed that "the U.S. government is delusional with the idea that it can overthrow the Cuban revolution.''

2 Cuban migrants drown

Two Cuban women drowned in an alleged smuggling attempt off Key West as a Coast Guard crew was attempting a rescue.

The Associated Press. Posted on Mon, Nov. 07, 2005.

Two Cuban women died when they were trapped underneath a boat that capsized during a suspected migrant smuggling operation in the Florida Straits, the U.S. Coast Guard said Sunday.

The 28-foot, center-console speedboat with 37 people aboard was taking on water in four- to six-foot seas Saturday when a Coast Guard cutter found it, Petty Officer Dana Warr said.

A rescue boat was launched and crew members gave life jackets to everyone aboard, Warr said. The crew removed 15 people from the boat and transferred them to the cutter on the scene, about 65 miles south of Key West.

As the rescue crew returned to the boat, it capsized under a wave and dumped 22 people into the water.

All but two people were rescued, and the bodies of two women wearing life jackets were found early Sunday under the boat, the Coast Guard said. The women were identified by relatives in the group, but their names were not released.

''There were 37 people on a 28-foot boat, and it was grossly overloaded, probably beyond the specifications of that boat,'' Warr said.

The 35 Cubans and the two bodies have been transferred to a Coast Guard cutter. The bodies were being taken to the Monroe County medical examiner in Key West, Warr said.

One suspected smuggler was among the group on the cutter, Warr said. The group will be interviewed by U.S. officials to determine their status.

Under U.S. policy, Cuban migrants intercepted at sea are usually returned to Cuba, though some are also taken to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay for possible resettlement in a third country. Those who reach U.S. soil are generally allowed to stay.

This weekend's incident is the second in less than a month where a Cuban migrant died at sea.

On Wednesday, two men pleaded guilty to organizing a smuggling trip that resulted in the death of a 6-year-old boy. In that case, a speedboat loaded with 31 people capsized as it fled the Coast Guard, but only the boy died.

Alexander Gil Rodriguez, 25, and Luis Manuel Taboada Cabrera, 28, Cuban nationals who had immigrated to Miami, will face a maximum sentence of 10 years and a $250,000 fine at a Jan. 24 hearing.

And on Saturday, the bodies of three women washed ashore on Pompano Beach, possibly victims of a Haitian migrant-smuggling operation.

Shortly before the bodies were discovered, a Broward Sheriff's deputy spotted about a dozen migrants running from the water. Five were later caught. Eight others were reported to have escaped.

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