CUBAN AMERICANS SECTION - Havana Journal
By CURT ANDERSON | AP
A Miami judge has awarded more than $1 billion in damages to a Cuban-American who was involved in the 1967 capture and killing of revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Peter Adrien said Friday he was sending a signal to the Cuban government. Such a large award may be impossible to collect but attorneys involved in the case insist they’ll try.
The award came in a lawsuit filed by Gustavo Villoldo, who blamed Guevara, Fidel Castro and others for his father’s 1959 suicide in Cuba. The family fled to the U.S.
The 76-year-old Villoldo…
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Rob Sequin | Havana Journal
Megan Williams, the Director/Producer of Tell Me Cuba sent me the DVD and asked me to have a look at it. We had a brief phone conversation but we did not talk about politics too much so I wasn’t sure which way the film would lean. Of course I was assuming there would be a “leaning” since the subject matter is Cuba. So, I began to watch the DVD with an open mind looking for the leaning.
The documentary leads off with a brief overview of the history of…
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David Adams | St Petersburg Times
Miami’s “Calle Ocho” always sounded more exotic than it actually was. Officially known as SW Eighth Street, the main thoroughfare running east-west through the heart of Little Havana, the city’s Cuban-American district, never had much to offer visitors apart from some cheap restaurants serving rice and beans and sweet Cuban coffee, and old men in hats chewing cigars and playing dominoes.
In fact, its neglected streets, low-income housing and rising crime led many Cuban-Americans to pack up and leave. The district could have been renamed Little Central America after an influx of…
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By WILL WEISSERT | Associated Press Writer
The human mule is in her 70s, gaunt and hunched over with short, white hair and the deeply wrinkled face of a chain-smoker.
She lives in Miami with her daughter but wanted to see her son and grandson in Cuba. After nearly three years of saving, she still didn’t have the $500 she needed for a plane ticket.
So she knew exactly which Little Havana travel agency to visit — and agreed to haul clothes, canned meat and evaporated milk to strangers in Cuba for a free seat on a charter flight.
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On May 15th, 2009 Touro College Sunset branch in Brooklyn acquired the painting “Art Gallery” by Cuban American Artist Jose Acosta. The painting will be displayed at the Touro College Sunset branch, as this is the branch with the largest population of Hispanic students.
Jose Acosta was awarded an Honorary Diploma by Touro College on this day by Millie Colon the Director of Touro College Sunset branch. In Attendance were Dr. Arturo Alvarez, Dr. Hernando Merchand, Dr. Elelis Pena, Numerous Students and the Press.
Jose Acosta is a Cuban-American Artist. Born in San Jose…
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BY LUISA YANEZ, DOUGLAS HANKS AND LAURA FIGUEROA | Miami Herald
There was a time when advertising Viajes a Cuba on a storefront was an invitation to a pipe bombing.
In the politically charged Miami of the late 1970s and ‘80s, the FBI investigated more than a dozen blasts at Cuba travel agencies—considered nests of Communist agents by staunch anti-Castro exiles.
Selling tickets to Havana could even get you killed. That’s what happened to Carlos Muñiz Varela, a 26-year-old exile living in Puerto Rico who opened the first Cuba-approved travel agency. Thirty years ago this week, he was gunned down…
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By Saul Landau | Progreso Weekly
(This conversation took place on April 1, 2009. Our film crew received Justice Department approval to talk with “the prisoner,” with a prison official in the room. Before his 1998 arrest, Gerardo directed the operations of the other Cuban State Security agents who infiltrated violent groups in the Miami area for the purposes of stopping them from carrying out terrorist attacks on tourist sites in Cuba. We took complete and…
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AFP
Cuban-Americans are glad they no longer have US restrictions on how often they can visit the island, but in times of global economic crisis plenty are not planning to pack their bags soon.
For Mario Salazar, who came to Miami from Cuba 23 years ago, the landmark gesture by President Barack Obama to end travel restrictions is a non-starter.
The move “is good news, at the really worst time,” he says.
“I can’t really even think about that now. I hardly have enough money to pay the bills and feed my family,” added the 47-year-old, who works on a…
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Damien Cave | Miami Herald
A 14-page proposal from the Cuban American National Foundation lays out what the document calls “a break from the past” that would “chart a new direction for U.S.-Cuba policy.”
It is the basis of an ongoing discussion with the Obama administration, White House and foundation officials said, and it amounts to the group’s most significant rejection of a national approach to Cuba that it helped shape and that has been defined by hostility and limited contact with the island.
Foundation officials described it as an effort to direct attention away from Fidel and Raúl Castro…
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Patrick Doherty | The Havana Note
Senator Menendez, the Dike has Burst
There he was, Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, holding forth from the well of the Senate making his Alamo stand against some very innocuous provisions to allow Cuban-American family members travel to Cuba and for American agricultural producers to carry out the business they already do with Cuba more efficiently during a time of economic recession.
Most analysts I speak with say this was a picture of a man trying to put his finger in a dike,…
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