CUBAN AMERICANS SECTION - Havana Journal
(Original title: In tough economic times, public opinion shifts on Cuba embargo)
By David Adams | TampaBay.com
We all know how Cuba excites passions in political debates from Miami to Tampa.
Thursday night, Rep. David Rivera, a Miami Republican, and Naples cattleman John Parke Wright IV locked horns over United States policy toward Cuba in a debate held in the wood-paneled enclave of downtown Tampa’s University Club.
Rivera, a rising Cuban American political star, voiced the unbending attitudes of Miami’s hard-line exile community — no normalization of relations until democratic elections are held and the political prisoners are freed. Wright,…
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By CURT ANDERSON | Associated Press
(original title: Judge: Cuba must pay $27.5M for jailing journalist)
MIAMI — A federal judge ordered the Cuban government and the ruling Communist Party on Wednesday to pay $27.5 million in damages to the mother of a journalist jailed since a 2003 crackdown on dissent.
U.S. District Judge Alan S. Gold ruled in the case of Omar Rodriguez Saludes, who is serving a 27-year sentence in Cuban prisons that the judge described as “deplorable and degrading” in his 13-page order.
“During his imprisonment, he has been beaten, starved, given poor food, placed in solitary…
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By MIKE SCHNEIDER | Associated Press
Republican Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida said Friday he will resign from the Senate as soon as a replacement can be appointed, leaving the seat more than a year before his term ends.
Martinez, the only Hispanic Republican in the Senate, revealed his plans in a statement to supporters and was expected to publicly announce the decision Friday afternoon in Florida.
The first-term senator already had announced in December that he would not seek re-election in 2010, but he had fended off rumors that he would give up the seat early.
His decision puts…
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BY JAY WEAVER | Miami Herald
The trademarks for two famous Cuban brands—Havana Club rum and Cohiba cigars—could be sold to the highest bidder if a Miami-Dade family who lost a loved one to Castro’s firing squad prevails in court.
Relatives of the late Bobby Fuller, who won a $100 million wrongful-death judgment against the Cuban government, urged a Miami-Dade circuit judge Tuesday to order the sale of Havana Club, Cohiba and 12 other Cuban trademarks to help satisfy their award.
Their legal move will spark a sure-fire controversy, because litigation over Cuban trademarks…
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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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