Cuban News November 27 2006

Larger than life even while ailing in hospital, Fidel Castro is casting a big question mark over his 80th birthday celebrations this week, as all Cubans wonder if they will get to see the revolutionary leader in the flesh.

Its been four months since Castro relinquished power temporarily to his brother and defense minister, Raul Castro, and postponed his birthday celebrations from August 13 to December 2, the 50th anniversary of his communist revolution in Cuba.

Castro underwent intestinal surgery in late July and while statements and letters from him have been read out, including by his friend and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, he has only been seen on television and in photographs, and speculation is rampant about his health.

The noise has come to a fever pitch amid preparations for his birthday celebrations, which get officially under way Tuesday and involve 1,500 guests from 76 countries, including presidents, ex-presidents, Nobel laureates, actors and musicians. The Cubans have not made the guest list public.

The week of festivities will climax on Saturday, when Cuba will hold its first military parade in a decade. Some 300,000 people are expected to march, as tanks, artillery and armored transport units will be rolled out and fighter jets will soar overhead.

It is then that all eyes will turn to the main podium to see if the grey-bearded leader is present and, if he is, judge whether he is strong enough to ever retake the helm from his brother.

Cuban authorities have been short on details as his health is considered a state secret. They say Castro is recovering but have not said when he might return to lead the country full-time.

After Castro's last five-minute television appearance October 28, Cubans are divided about their elderly leader's future.

"I think he's feeling better and maybe will make a public appearance at the parade ... but getting back to government again, to his usual job, I don't know. Its difficult for me to see that," said a 52-year-old radio worker who wished to remain anonymous.

"Its over, he's not getting back on his feet ever again," a dissident whispered.

"The boss is totally fit," said a retired leader of the Revolution Defense Committee.

Most Cubans when questioned about Castro's health simply raise their eyebrows and shake their heads in a silent "who knows?"

The fact any information on Casto's health is considered a state secret does not encourage easy conversation and most people avoid the subject.

Even medical doctors when consulted are reluctant to give an opinion on Castro's health, pointing out that little has been reported on the complicated intestinal surgery he underwent on July 27, and that a proper diagnosis is practically impossible.

Within a month of the operation, Castro said he had lost 18.6 kilograms (41 pounds). His usual proud, stout frame of a statesman had given way in pictures to a frail, weak-looking elderly hospital patient.

"I don't know what he's got, but his face, his cheekbones tell me he's not a healthy man. You also have to keep in mind that he's 80; he may get very good medical attention, but he also has a very tough lifestyle," one doctor said.

Meanwhile, Cuban officials here and abroad insist that Castro is recovering, and his friend Chavez seems increasingly enthusiastic about seeing him return to power.

"I think that soon we'll see Fidel Castro's second mandate. The first one lasted 40 years, and very soon the second one will begin," Chavez said on Saturday after showing a group of followers a letter Castro sent him.

Castro has tried to calm the speculation surrounding him by saying that his recovery "will be long and not exempt of risk."

Regardless of Castro's appearance in Saturday's parade, political observers will more readily focus on this year's second and final session of Cuba's parliament in the last week of December.

That's when economic plans and the budget are set for the next year, and Castro's presence at that meeting would speak volumes about his intention to return to office. cb/fgf/mk

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Castro health, future dominate 80th birthday event

By Jeff Franks

HAVANA, Nov 26 (Reuters) - A celebration this week of ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro's 80th birthday has turned into a high-stakes test of his health and political future as the world watches to see if he is well enough to attend.

After four months out of public view, the events starting on Tuesday may tell much about whether Castro is recovering from an undisclosed illness and can again govern the communist country he has led for nearly half a century.

Castro has been seen only in photos and videos since shortly before announcing July 31 he had intestinal surgery and temporarily put his brother Raul in control.

His gaunt appearance in an Oct. 28 government video led many to assume he is too ill to take back power.

The government has insisted otherwise, so this week's events, which culminate in a military parade on Saturday, are being closely watched as an indicator of the condition of the world's longest-serving leader.

Lately, officials have downplayed expectations he will join the celebration, but say he is recovering and will return to power eventually.

But a no-show or a brief appearance by a frail Castro will likely accelerate speculation he is fading into history, with the possibility that change will follow in one of the world's last remaining communist states.

"Fidel Castro would undoubtedly like to make a dramatic public appearance to reverse those expectations," said Dan Erikson of the Washington-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue.

He will have plenty of chances to do so at events that include a three-day colloquium on Castro, a "Cuban gala," a concert, an art exhibition and the military parade in Havana's Revolution Square.

Only those closest to Castro know whether he is capable of it. U.S. officials have said he may have terminal cancer, but admit they do not really know.

CELEBRATION POSTPONED

Castro turned 80 on Aug. 13, but put off a celebration planned for that day because it was too soon after his surgery.

He chose to have it on Dec. 2, the 50th anniversary of the day in 1956 when the yacht Granma brought him and his band of rebels from Mexico to launch their revolution against U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.

It was widely assumed, possibly by Castro as well, he would be well and in power again by that time.

Castro has towered over Cuba since taking power in 1959 and becoming a world figure for his defiance of a hostile United States. Cubans revere him in many ways, but there is discontent with his state-controlled economy which provides jobs that pay the average person $15 a month.

The Oct. 28 video shook the confidence of many Cubans that the only leader most have ever known will return to power. A common refrain is that even if he survives his illness, at 80 he no longer has the energy to rule.

"I'm only 50 and I couldn't do it. Time is against him," said store clerk Oswaldo Diaz.

They express no strong feelings for Raul Castro, who has been defense minister for 47 years but always in his older brother's shadow. Most say they hope a change in leadership will put more money in their pockets.

"Why can't they do what the Chinese have done?," said a taxi driver who gave his name only as Ernesto, referring to the economic liberalization of the Chinese communist government.

Many analysts and Havana-based diplomats believe Fidel Castro is unlikely to be more than a figurehead even if he survives.

"We think the regime is firmly in control. There is a succession in place, and Raul is the man in place," a Latin American diplomat said.

He brushed off a possible appearance by Fidel Castro as little more than "an internal matter" at this point.

But others are not ready to write off the bearded leader who has survived the attempts of 10 U.S. presidents to oust him, either by force, assassination or economic pressure.

"Clearly he is not the force he once was, but we have learned not to speculate when it comes to Fidel Castro," said a Western diplomat.

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Castro keeps foes off-balance as Cuba gets set to celebrate Impending festivities heighten speculation on the leader's health and plans for the succession, reports Marc Frank.

By MARC FRANK

Financial Times

25 November 2006

When Fidel Castro announ-ced on July 31 that he had temporarily handed over power to his brother, Raul, some wondered whether the statement read over the state-run media was really his - but not those who knew him well. For Mr Castro, even while apparently fighting for his life, added that he wanted to turn his birthday into a patriotic event.

It would take "various weeks of rest" to recover from "an acute intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding which obliged me to undergo a complicated surgical operation", Mr Castro said. And then he pulled a typical stunt.

"I would ask everyone to postpone the anniversary of my 80th birthday, which thousands of personalities so generously agreed to celebrate on August 13, to December 2 of this year, the 50th anniversary of the Granma landing," he said, referring to the day on which he arrived by boat from exile in Mexico to fight in the mountains. A military parade will honour both that anniversary and Cuba's revolutionary armed forces.

If there are those in the birthday crowd who are ready to cheer free healthcare and education but remain queasy over the politics and more violent aspects of making and defending the revolution, Mr Castro will not worry too much. He will have used his misfortune to ensure attention for Cuba's show of force while claiming that the US might attack at any moment.

Events in the months since Mr Castro's announcement have also borne his marks. The mystery over his illness, and even over where he is recovering, has kept his enemies off balance as a succession apparently unfolds under their noses. That process has created even more attention for the comingcelebrations.

"Fidel has everyone going crazy. The whole world is waiting to see what he does or doesn't do," says Ernesto, a 42-year-old resident of Villa Clara province. The parade is still on, complete with thousands of troops, vintage Soviet tanks and other hardware that have been rolling through the Plaza de la Revolution for rehearsals in the past few days, snarling up traffic in Havana as Mig fighters fly overhead.

As for the birthday party, a compromise appears to have been worked out, with the concerts, art show and symposium on Mr Castro's life and legacy that make up the celebration taking place from November 28 to December 1, allowing a graceful way out to those who wish to skip the military parade on December 2.

But the question many people are asking is: does Mr Castro now need a way out as well? The last time anyone saw the commandante was in a video on October 28, in which he appeared frail and had such difficulty walking that many wonder what role he might realistically play in the show.

"Whether or not Fidel Castro shows up for the festivities, they mark the beginning of a new era," says Julia Sweig, the director of Latin America studies at the US Council on Foreign Relations, "with the succession government largely consolidated and the powers-that-be telling the world that they are confident at home and ready to take on any foreign power."

Most western diplomats believe that Mr Castro is too weak to sit for long under the sun in the plaza where he used to speak for hours at a time. At best, he might appear for a few moments to salute the troops.

Many Cubans agree. "I do not believe he is in condition for the military parade but I think he will participate in some form in the activities for his birthday," says Maria Arteag, a public health worker.

Alfredo Vera, the co-ordinator of the birthday events, which are sponsored by the Ecuador-based Guayasamin Foundation, named in honour of the late Ecuadorean painter and friend of Mr Castro, was vague at a Havana press conference.

"In the opportune moment, in the midst of Fidel's disciplined process of recovery, he will decide the circumstances in which it will be possible for him to accompany those of us who will be here," Mr Vera said.

Antonio Martinez, a 70-year-old pensioner, seems, like many others, to relish the international attention Mr Castro has once more drawn to Cuba.

"I don't know if Fidel will be at the plaza or not but I promise you it will be the most televised spot on Earth that day," he says, with a chuckle and a wink.

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Venezuela Chavez: Cuba's Castro Recovering,Mentally Sharp

25 November 2006

CARACAS (AP)--Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez rejected rumors Saturday that his ailing ally, Cuban leader Fidel Castro, has lost his mental sharpness while recovering from intestinal surgery.

"I received a letter (and) I want to make it public before the world because some say that Fidel is dying, that he's a vegetable, no," said Chavez, rejecting the rumors about Castro during a government event in western Zulia state.

Chavez, a leftist former paratrooper seeking re-election on Dec. 3, said Castro could be preparing to return to power, but the Venezuelan leader didn't provide any details.

Chavez has kept close tabs on Castro's health since the Cuban leader underwent surgery and temporarily ceded power to his brother, 75-year-old Defense Minister Raul Castro, on July 31. Chavez visited Castro in Havana to mark his birthday on Aug. 13.

The specifics of Castro's ailment and the nature of his surgery have been treated as a state secret.

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Cubans to mark Castro's 80th birthday, with or without him

HAVANA, Nov 26, 2006 (AFP) -

Cuba is abuzz with big celebrations to belatedly mark Fidel Castro's 80th birthday, going ahead whether or not the communist stalwart, little seen since undergoing a major operation, takes part, officials say.

Castro turned 80 on August 13, but the national party was put off because of his intestinal surgery just weeks earlier.

Instead, December 2 was picked for the fiesta because it marks the 50th anniversary of the day Castro and 81 bearded rebels -- including brother Raul and Argentine-born revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara -- returned from exile in Mexico aboard a yacht named Granma, launching a military campaign that would topple US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

A week of festivities got under way Friday and will climax on December 2, when Cuba will hold its first military parade in a decade.

But the party comes amid intense speculation over the health of Castro, who on July 31 temporarily ceded power for the first time in more than four decades in power to Raul, the defense chief.

Speculation has grown about the grey-bearded leader's health as rumors swirl in US media that he is suffering from end-stage cancer.

Cuban authorities have been short on details as his health is considered a state secret. They say Castro is recovering but have not said when he might return to lead the country full-time.

"He is continuing to recover, his health continues to improve, and we all are very optimistic about his recovery, when that is possible, when his doctors say so, but we are satisfied that he is recovering," Vice President Carlos Lage told local radio on November 21.

But Lage still did not say whether Castro would participate in the birthday bash.

Some 300,000 people are expected to march in the December 2 military parade, as Cuba's tanks, artillery units, and armored transport units will be rolled out and fighter jets will soar overhead.

Cuban officials say that some 1,500 special guests are attending the events, including presidents, ex-presidents, Nobel laureates, actors and musicians. They have not made the guest list public.

Since his surgery, Castro has not appeared in public but photographs and short video images of him have been released, in which he appeared gaunt but in good spirits. The last video was released October 28 amid rumors he was gravely ill or dead.

Meanwhile his temporary replacement, Raul Castro, 75, who was little known outside his military sphere of influence until now, has taken to his higher-profile role with discretion and humor.

At a September summit of the Non-Aligned Movement hosted by Havana, he strode the world stage for the first time in a leadership role appearing at ease, sometimes trading his customary military garb for a business suit.

Although he often is described as less charismatic than his brother Fidel, he appears comfortable speaking publicly when he chooses to do so.

Like Fidel, Raul Castro spoken out against the corruption riddling Cuban society since he took Cuba's helm.

Surrounded by top Communist Party loyalists, he has launched audits of state enterprises and unveiled new disciplinary sanctions.

If Fidel Castro appears at the celebrations "it would mean that his health crisis is behind him," Franco-Spanish author Ignacio Ramonet, who wrote the recent "Cien horas con Fidel" ("100 Hours with Fidel") authorized biography of the Cuban leader, said on a show on state television.

But the show's presenter, Randy Alonso, added that the most important thing in the birthday party would be "to bring there more than the physical presence of Fidel -- his ideas, the ideas of the revolution."

Dissident Elizardo Sanchez challenged the impression that all was well in Cuba as the celebrations take off, however.

"Corruption is widespread. They are not going to be able to contain it because it comes hand-in-hand with totalitarian regimes."

"The key is not whether the head of state will be able to return to power or not. It is whether there is a political will for reform in Cuba. And that is what I do not see anywhere," said Sanchez.

mis/mdl/pmh

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Fidel Castro: Quixotic Communist and thorn in US side

HAVANA, Nov 25, 2006 (AFP) -

Fidel Castro, whose 80th birthday Cuba is celebrating this week, has for more than four decades defied US efforts to end his rule as the only Communist leader in Latin America.

Until surgery sidelined him in July 2006, the bearded "Comandante" held Cuba's reins tightly, making sure its one-party system quashed dissent and controlled society despite a US economic embargo, efforts by enemies to kill him and a US-abetted invasion attempt.

Since July 31, his brother, defense chief Raul Castro, has served as Cuba's interim leader.

Fidel Castro, who turned 80 on August 13 but delayed celebrations after intestinal surgery, has seen 10 US presidents take office since his 1959 revolution. His rise to power abruptly ended decades of US dominance of the Caribbean island that resulted from the 1898 Spanish-American War.

After seizing power, Castro, a Jesuit-schooled lawyer, in time publicly aligned himself with the Soviet Union and the Cold War's Eastern Bloc.

Through subsidies and barter, Moscow and its allies bankrolled Castro's tropi-communism until 1989, when the Eastern Bloc's demise sent Cuba into an economic tailspin.

The full meaning of Havana's Cold War alliance with the Soviets was driven home in historic and nerve-wracking fashion in the 1962 Missile Crisis, when Washington got wind that Castro was letting Moscow put possibly nuclear-tipped missiles on Cuban soil.

That move brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, with Washington determined to prevent the Soviet Union from having atomic weapons aimed at the United States from an island just 144 kilometers (90 miles) off its southeastern flank.

Castro became an icon of international socialism when the Cold War was in its prime. He sent as many as 15,000 soldiers to help Soviet-backed troops in Angola in 1975 and dispatched Cuban forces to Ethiopia in 1977.

A driving force behind the Non-Aligned Movement, Castro also has been an energetic symbol of independence for developing countries, demonstrating that a sovereign nation, however small, could thumb its nose at US policy and appear to get away with it.

Castro, just 32 when he became Cuba's leader, has been a perpetual thorn in the paw of the United States, which was both alarmed and embarrassed by the establishment of a Communist-bloc nation so close to its own shores.

Known for his fiery, long-winded oratory, the tempestuous Cuban president has regularly fixed blame for Cuba's hardship on the US economic embargo that Washington hoped would foment rebellion.

The United States has invaded the island before, Castro has reminded the 11 million Cubans constantly, and could do so again at any time.

Since losing Moscow's massive subsidies in 1989, Castro has allowed some minor economic reforms and opened up to international tourism, which are propping up the economy on the Caribbean's largest island.

But as China embraced a mixed economic system when it undertook reforms, the Cuban regime has backtracked on even minor reforms and stuck to its centralized economic model.

Havana instead is now being bankrolled by a new ally: Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, whose country supplies Cuba with cheap oil and is its main trade partner, ahead of China.

Born August 13, 1926 to a prosperous Galician immigrant landowner and a Cuban mother of humble background, Castro was a quick study and a promising baseball pitcher who, as a youth, dreamed of playing in the US big leagues.

But after his revolution, Castro broke off diplomatic ties with Cuba's giant neighbor to the north in January 1961 and expropriated US companies' assets totaling more than one billion dollars.

Three months later, he weathered a US-backed invasion effort by some 1,300 CIA-trained Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs.

And though Castro famously said "history will absolve me," apparently not all of his friends are ready to do so.

Brazil's leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on October 19 that he was disappointed that Castro appears to have missed his chance to implement a "democratic opening" with the transfer of power to his brother Raul.

Cuban officials have argued that their communist system is more democratic than what they say are corrupt Western electoral politics.

Many rights groups in turn decry what they say is Cuba's denial of its citizens' civil liberties. bur/mdl/pmh

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Dissidents ask U.S. to end restrictions on aid, trips to Cuba

Havana, Nov 24 (EFE).- Several high-profile Cuban dissidents asked Friday that the United States end its restrictions on sending aid and traveling to the Communist-ruled island on the grounds that they are not helping the strategy of the internal opposition there.

The request was contained in a communique signed by: Marta Beatriz Roque, leader of the Assembly to Promote Civil Society; Gisela Delgado, wife of political prisoner Hector Maceda and a member of the Ladies in White movement; Elizardo Sanchez of the Cuban Human Rights Commission; and Vladimiro Roca, spokesperson for Todos Unidos (All United).

In the communique, the dissidents regretted the improper use of funds provided by the United States to help organizations opposing the Fidel Castro regime and underscored the need to "achieve greater efficiency in the use of said funds."

One possible way of doing it, they said, would be eliminating a series of restrictions on sending aid and traveling to Cuba which, they said, "in no way help the pro-democracy struggle" being waged inside that country.

"We hope that the mistakes made are corrected and that a greater amount of aid reaches pro-democracy activists so they can more swiftly achieve economic, political and social freedom in our country," the brief communique said.

A report by the U.S. General Accountability Office said this month that there have been irregularities in using part of the almost $74 million sent by Washington to Cuban opposition groups between 1996-2005.

According to the report, part of the funds for programs preparing the transition in Cuba were used to buy such items as video-game consoles, a bicycle, a leather coat and chocolates. EFE

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Posted on Sun, Nov. 26, 2006

FIU helps Cuban journalists

Miami Herald

As a journalist whose specialty is ethics, I was disappointed to read the references to Florida International University's training of Cuban independent journalists (Cuba thwarts U.S. efforts to help dissidents, Nov. 16). It bolstered an impression of failure, namely, that only four students have completed the ''required'' courses.

I made it clear to reporter Oscar Corral that our program has no set number of ''required'' courses. Many journalists preferred to participate in group study of the courses with colleagues in their news organizations rather than complete lessons individually. One journalist this year used the courses to give workshops to new, independent journalists. The story also ignored the fact that FIU's International Media Center critiques and returns articles to the writers with written comments and suggestions, which many journalists feel is more practical than the courses, especially for those long removed from school.

Most egregiously, the article fails to mention that FIU has been quietly editing and offering some of the Cuban independent journalists' stories to select Latin American newspapers, securing for them a degree of recognition in the hemisphere that they didn't have before. More than 40 leading newspapers have published their work, among them El Mercurio of Santiago, El Comercio of Lima, El Tiempo of Bogotá and El Universal of Caracas. FIU pays the journalists for the articles with nongovernment funds from a foundation for that purpose.

We also helped one journalist get her articles published in The San Antonio Express-News in Texas.

This led to articles in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The International Herald Tribune in Paris.

After being involved in the training of more than 8,000 mid-career journalists in 15 Latin American countries, I can confidently say that the success of a journalism-training program can only be effectively measured years after it has been completed.

Counting completion rates is only a procedural measurement that can blur the real results. Counting the number of participants who have advanced in their careers, assumed positions of leadership in the media and come back to thank you for your help is a more accurate measure.

JOHN VIRTUE, director, International Media Center, FIU, Miami

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A showcase for Cuban writings and artwork

By Fabiola Santiago, The Miami Herald

McClatchy-Tribune Business News

27 November 2006

The Miami Herald (MCT)

Nov. 27--In a marriage of art and literature, a new anthology of contemporary Cuban writing is showcasing the artwork of acclaimed Cuban painters living in France, Mexico and the United States.

Voces de Cambio: Nueva literatura cubana (Voices of Change: New Cuban Literature) features the work of Miami-based master Cundo Bermudez, sculptor Gay Garcia, painters Miguel Padura, Luis Vega, Silvio Gayton, Carlos Aulet, and the late Jose Maria Mijares.

The book -- published in a partnership between Mexico City's Ediciones el Cambio and the independent libraries of Cuba -- will be presented at 7 p.m. Tuesday at The Americas Collection, 2440 Ponce de Leon Blvd., in Coral Gables.

"The combination of writers who live in Cuba and the visual artists who live outside of Cuba learning from one another is encouraging," says Julieta Valls, a consultant to the Pan American Development Foundation, which funded the project and has been supporting the work of independent libraries for years. "An integration, a rapprochement is very valuable."

Voces de Cambio features the poetry and prose of 21 independent writers on the island. They are all winners of the literary contest El Heraldo organized by the Independent Libraries of Cuba with the support of the foundation.

Among the writings: Guillermo Farinas Hernandez's testimony of his hunger strike to demand Internet access. Luis Guerra Juvier's journalistic account, "Waiting for Justice: A Grandmother's Lament," the story of Avelina Diaz Lopez, grandmother of one of three youths executed in 2003 for attempting to flee Cuba by stealing a Havana ferry.

Many of the artworks featured in the book are from the private collection of Nunzio Mainieri, a Miami doctor, artist and collector, Valls said. The five Miami artists participating in the project will stage a one-night exhibit at Tuesday's presentation.

Another event, an official book launch, is scheduled at 8 p.m. Dec. 14 at Books & Books in Coral Gables.

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FT WEEKEND MAGAZINE - Book Reviews

Hold that front page When a journalist got his facts wrong, revolution - and a broken career - were the result.

By RICHARD LAPPER

25 November 2006

Financial Times

The Man Who Invented Fidel: Castro, Cuba and Herbert L. Matthews of The New York Times

by Anthony DePalma

Public Affairs Pounds 15.99, 320 pages

FT bookshop price: Pounds 12.79

In February 1957 a veteran American war reporter called Herbert Matthews disguised himself as a tourist and travelled from Havana to the foothills of the Sierra Maestra in eastern Cuba.

After an all-night hike Matthews, then 57, met Fidel Castro, the leader of a small band of left-wing guerrillas that had recently landed on Cuba's eastern coast. The result of the encounter was a three-hour-long interview. When published as a series of articles in The New York Times, the exchange proved to be pivotal to the fortunes of both men.

The interview - also reproduced secretly in Cuba - consolidated Castro's reputation as a credible alternative to Fulgencio Batista, the right-wing dictator, and paved the way two years later for the eventual success of the rebels' armed campaign. Nearly 50 years later, Castro, now 80, is - despite the recent deterioration in his health - still at the centre of Cuban politics. And the myths surrounding him are as powerful as ever.

For the interviewer, however, the "scoop" had disastrous consequences. After Castro came to power in 1959, it emerged that Matthews had unwittingly exaggerated the strength of the guerrilla army - and so made it noticeably easier for its supporters to raise funds.

On a visit to New York shortly after his triumph, Castro even boasted that he had duped Matthews, adding to the concerns of his editors at the Times who were already alarmed about the partiality of his reporting.

As Cuba shifted sharply to the left in the early 1960s and the Florida Straits became a new front line in the cold war, Matthews continued to visit Cuba and defend its new government. Initially inundated with congratulatory letters, Matthews soon found himself receiving hate mail. Matthews' story ends sadly, with the journalist dedicating the remaining years of his life to an attempt to salvage his reputation.

As told by Anthony DePalma - himself a New York Times reporter - in The Man who Invented Fidel, this tragic tale makes compelling reading. That is partly because of DePalma's sympathy for his subject. He paints a picture of a brave, hardworking, experienced and passionate reporter. Before his Cuban adventures Matthews had followed Italian troops into Ethiopia and accompanied Republican forces in Spain, where he became a close friend of Ernest Hemingway, as well as filling posts for The Times in London, Paris and elsewhere in Latin America. Many of the charges against him were overblown, says DePalma. Matthews was not a man easily taken in - a "useful fool", as Communist leaders would have put it.

Matthews did exaggerate the size of Castro's rebel force, but his mistake was genuine. Information gleaned from the field was carefully weighed up alongside that from secondary sources. While interviewing Castro, for example, he "had the presence of mind" to count each one of the individuals he saw, and his estimates of guerrilla strength squared with what he had been told by several different sources.

Nevertheless, DePalma writes that Matthews' work was "defined by his bias and by the open way in which he acknowledged that he was taking sides". Partly because of his own sympathy for the rebel cause, Matthews continued "to perceive Castro as an idealist" long after the Cuban leader "had transformed himself into a demagogue". Matthews fiercely defended the objectivity of his reporting, but "his rigid self-confidence deluded him about the words he wrote and the impact they had".

It seems a harsh judgment. After all, Matthews' mistakes are not in the same league as such falsifiers as The New York Times's Jayson Blair, who plagiarised reports and deliberately invented quotes before being exposed in 2003. But DePalma is writing at a time when many in the American media see bias, albeit a bias very different to that championed by Matthews, as a positive virtue. And DePalma is right to insist that journalists try to be as objective as they possibly can be when they write about those in power.

Richard Lapper is the FT's Latin America editor.

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Castro's second comingA dupe? Or great journalist? The tale behind the 'most glorious resurrection in 2,000 years'

Oakland Ross

Toronto Star

26 November 2006

The Toronto Star

Anthony DePalma came to town the other day, not to bury Fidel Castro and not to praise him, but to tell a riveting tale about the bombastic, bearded Cuban comandante and the star-crossed American newspaper reporter who "invented" him.

It's the story of Herbert Lionel Matthews, a 57-year-old New York Times correspondent with a wonky heart and a career in decline who had the good fortune - combined with a dollop of daring - to spend about three hours in Castro's presence at the dawn of a February day nearly 50 years ago.

Thanks to that brief encounter, high in the densely forested hills of eastern Cuba, Matthews was almost immediately transformed from an ink-stained has-been into a roaring lion of his profession, although he would later suffer many cruel reverses on the same account.

As for Castro, he effectively returned from the dead, emerging from the ashes of his purported demise as a flamboyant and romantic folk hero, a sort of Latino Robin Hood - an image that seized the imaginations of Americans and Cubans at the time and that continues to flourish in many quarters.

Castro also launched himself on the road to an astonishing revolutionary triumph that would be his just two years later, an event that dramatically altered the history of Cuba and the Americas and that resounded around the world.

Not bad for one interview, conducted outdoors without a tape-recorder or even a proper notebook. Castro being Castro - a man for whom a three-hour monologue is merely a good way to clear one's throat - it is quite likely that Matthews didn't even have to ask any questions, or at most just one or two.

"It was the most glorious resurrection in 2,000 years," said DePalma, who was in town recently to talk about the subject to students and teachers at Ryerson University's journalism department.

"Resurrection" is right.

Prior to that meeting in a forest clearing in eastern Cuba, Castro was generally presumed to be dead, along with most of his 80 or so men, following an ill-planned and harebrained invasion of Cuba two months earlier - a version of events that had already appeared on the front page of The New York Times.

But that version was mistaken, as Matthews discovered when he encountered the fabled Cuban revolutionary, very much alive, high in the Sierra Maestra on a freighted morning in February 1957.

A Times reporter himself - he has previously done stints as the paper's bureau chief in Mexico City and Toronto - DePalma grapples with the manifold and slippery nature of truth in his engrossing and beautifully crafted account of the interwoven destinies of Herbert Lionel Matthews and Fidel Castro Ruz, The Man Who Invented Fidel (PublicAffairs, 2006).

"It's just one of those meetings where the two people most suited - or least suited - are thrown together by history," said DePalma, who sports a beard himself, a trim salt-and-pepper goatee, but whose resemblance to Castro pretty much stops there. "It led me into a broader investigation into what was truth, what was bias."

DePalma's timing is nigh on perfect, considering that these are the very questions that have been consuming his own newspaper in recent years in the wake of two very public scandals involving Times reporters Jayson Blair (who famously fabricated the truth on repeated occasions) and Judith Miller (who famously misrepresented it in her reporting about Iraq).

Meanwhile, Cuba has edged its way back into the international headlines as its 80-year-old helmsman slowly recovers - or fails to recover - from a debilitating but unidentified malady that has obliged him to surrender day-to-day authority to his somewhat younger brother, Raul.

As a result, the short-term outlook for Cuba may be summed up in two words - a deathwatch - and festivities to mark Fidel's 80th birthday have been shifted from last Aug. 13, the correct date, to next Saturday, the 50th anniversary of the day in 1956 when Castro landed on the southeastern shore of the island, along with Ernesto "Che" Guevara and about 80 other intrepid revolutionaries, to begin their campaign to overthrow U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.

Within a matter of days, all but a dozen of them were dead, slaughtered in encounters with the dictator's armed forces. But Castro survived and fled along with his rump of poorly armed companeros into the highlands of eastern Cuba, where they would begin their unlikely struggle for power.

It was a disastrous start to a woefully improbable campaign, and the whole bedraggled and undermanned enterprise could have collapsed on a hundred different occasions, in a hundred different ways. Castro, however, had an idea.

Already written off as dead by most people in Havana and Washington, he decided to expose the exaggerated nature of those reports by conducting an interview with a U.S. newspaper reporter. He didn't know which U.S. newspaper reporter, and he didn't much care.

Anybody with a Yankee press card and a pen would do.

Enter Matthews, who happened to be in Cuba at the time, along with his wife, Nancie. He meant to do some reporting, but he had no idea he would be reporting on a scale such as this.

"Miraculously, into his life falls the opportunity to change history," said DePalma. "It's pretty heady stuff."

The result, among many other things, is a cautionary tale about all that can go awry when a reporter gets too close to his or her story - especially when that story stands to affect the fates of nations.

A soft-spoken, thoughtful man who has covered some explosive stories of his own, including the Zapatista uprising in Mexico during the early 1990s, DePalma has about him a donnish air.

For his Toronto visit, he sported a blue Oxford-cloth dress shirt, an intricately checked necktie, and a very respectable looking navy-blue blazer worn above grey flannel slacks.

In many ways, he was the ideal man to take on the story of Matthews and Castro. He is fluent in Spanish, he has covered much of Latin America as a reporter for the Times, and his wife, Miriam, is Cuban-born. She spent her early childhood on the island until being obliged to flee Havana with her family following the calamitous Bay of Pigs invasion by U.S.-backed anti-Castro rebels in 1961.

Vaguely familiar with the story of Matthews and his historic encounter with Castro, DePalma soon found himself unearthing layer upon layer of unexpected and provocative detail as he delved more and more deeply into his subject.

"What about Matthews?" he asked. "Was he a dupe? Was he used by Castro?"

Or was he an enterprising reporter who wrung every drop of advantage possible from what any fool would recognize as a sensational, once-in-a-lifetime story?

It was Matthews himself who would later claim to have "invented" Fidel, but you could as easily argue the opposite case, that it was Fidel who created Matthews. Either way, the American spent the rest of his life imprisoned by the role he played in Castro's rebirth and the eventual triumph of the Cuban revolution.

The encounter with Fidel was by far the greatest scoop of Matthews's career, but it also contained the seeds of his unmaking. The interview formed the basis for three blockbuster articles that appeared in the Times, two of them on the front page, all aggressively promoted in advance. They had an undoubted impact on history, albeit in a way that many at the newspaper would come to regret.

Matthews, of course, had been absolutely enthralled by Castro - as perhaps a more skeptical journalist would not have been - and his glowing depiction of the tall, hirsute revolutionary in the freshly ironed fatigues established in the public's mind an image of the man that was to prove uncannily persistent and undoubtedly helped to clear his route to power.

For Matthews, who continued to travel to the island following Castro's triumph and enjoyed greater access to the Cuban leader than any other American before or since, that first stirring impression of the guerrilla commander striding up through a Caribbean forest with a rifle slung over his broad shoulders never entirely lost its seductive power.

"It obsessed him," said DePalma. "It became the focus of his entire life."

Unfortunately for Matthews, that bright, shining image turned out to be wrong, or incomplete anyway.

Swayed by the romance and drama of the moment, Matthews made the mistake of taking Castro at his word, presenting him as a committed democrat who wanted only to restore constitutional rule to his homeland, who entertained a few vague, slapdash notions of social justice, who was favourably disposed toward Washington, and who had no personal ambition to seize power.

This version of the truth - likely not very accurate even at the time - was quickly overtaken by subsequent events.

Castro, of course, did seize power. He did prove to have inflexible ideas about how to exercise it. He was not a good friend to Washington (not that Washington was much of a pal to him). And he promptly revealed himself to be rather less than a model democrat.

In other words, Matthews got the story wrong - or at least this was the eventual verdict of his peers, his own newspaper, and most of his compatriots, to say nothing of the thousands of Cubans who soon were fleeing their "liberated" country.

Matthews would never concede he had missed the story, or any part of it, and he went to his grave in 1977 still insisting that Castro was not, and never had been, a Communist.

"It becomes more and more ridiculous and more and more strained," DePalma said, referring to Matthews's convoluted attempts at self-justification. "It's pretty painful to watch."

On the other hand, as DePalma makes clear, it is probably unfair to expect any journalist to have known in 1957 what Fidel Castro would become in 1960 and beyond.

Many wealthy Cubans made the same miscalculation Matthews did, contributing large sums of money to a cause that would later prove to be their undoing, no doubt a source of bitter reflection as they frantically packed their bags and absconded for Miami.

Matthews suffered grave setbacks as well.

"He was quickly becoming that most pitiable kind of journalist," writes DePalma, "the one muzzled by his own publication."

In the obituary that appeared following Matthews' death from a cerebral haemorrhage at age 77, the Times referred to the long-time foreign correspondent - who provided distinguished, courageous coverage of the Italian campaigns in Abyssinia as well as the Spanish Civil War - as "one of the most criticized newspapermen of his time."

Not much of an epitaph.

As for Castro, he has survived his former interlocutor by three decades and counting, but it's widely assumed that his days are numbered now.

Many doubt that he will appear in public on Saturday when his 80th birthday is formally celebrated in Cuba, and DePalma does not believe he will ever again exercise genuine political power on the island.

As for absolute truth: In the end, perhaps, it resides only in the grave - a stern principle that's as implacable for journalists as it is for their "invented" revolutionaries.

03778-351756.jpg | TOP: Herbert Matthews Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University BOTTOM: MAtthews family collection Above: The famous interview in 1957. Fidel told Matthews he wanted to restore the country's constitution and that he was friendly to Washington. When the opposite turned out to be true, Matthews (below, in a New York Times publicity still) saw his career tumble. | ;

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CUBA-EMBARGO FOES SEE HOPE IN NEW CONGRESS

By William E. Gibson and Vanessa Bauzá Staff writers

27 November 2006

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

WASHINGTON

For the past three years, Wendy Alonso has felt trapped by strict U.S. travel restrictions that have kept her from visiting her father, grandmothers and other relatives in Cuba.

Now, like other Cuban-Americans yearning to see their families, and farmers eager to sell goods to Cuba, Alonso hopes for brighter prospects when Democrats take control of Congress next year.

"It's all about the family," said Alonso, 18, of Tamarac. "I don't really care about anything else. I really do hope they change the law so at least people like me can go [to Cuba] every year."

Proponents of easing travel restrictions and other sanctions, emboldened by this month's congressional elections, foresee a more receptive climate for new policies to help Americans connect with the Cuban people. The Cuban-exile lobby, weakened by fragmentation and the departure of allies on Capitol Hill, is looking to President Bush to wield his veto power to protect the U.S. embargo.

"Our job will be tougher now," said U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, a champion of sanctions against Cuba. "The Cuban dictator is going to have strong allies in positions of power in Congress. But I am absolutely convinced that the cause of freedom in Cuba is going to prevail no matter what the efforts are to prolong the dictatorship."

All sides in the long-running U.S. debate say they want to encourage democracy and free markets in Cuba. While Diaz-Balart and many hard-line Cuban exiles argue that travel and commerce would prop up the Fidel Castro government, advocates for a new policy say American engagement would encourage reforms as Cuba heads toward a post-Castro transition.

"I think we will see some legislation come forward but not as much as we would like," said Alfredo Duran, president of the Cuban Committee for Democracy, a Miami-based group of moderate Cuban-Americans generally opposed to embargo policies.

Easing travel restrictions, especially for Cuban-American families, is the first step, he said.

"Cubans need to be part of the 21st century," Duran said, "and the people best able to give them that opportunity and take away their fears are their relatives."

Nobody expects removal of the U.S. embargo or establishment of normal relations with Cuba any time soon. But some House members, while preparing to visit Cuba next month, see a clear path for legislation that would loosen the rules on travel and remittances, particularly by Cuban-Americans who want to deliver goods to their families.

Further fueling prospects for change is a congressional investigation into questionable U.S. spending on programs intended to undermine the Cuban government, including money spent for such items as computer games, crab meat and leather coats. A study by the Government Accountability Office found mismanagement and lax oversight of portions of the $73 million paid to U.S. organizations from 1996 to 2005 to promote democracy in Cuba, most of it awarded without competitive bids.

Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., who will become chairman of the House International Relations Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, promised hearings as early as January on the findings.

Looking beyond the hearings, anti-embargo forces hope to eventually make it easier for farmers to sell food to Cuba and to develop academic exchanges.

And they plan to press legislation that would allow American companies to bid for contracts to drill for oil and gas along the Cuban coast. Cuba is forming contracts with companies from China, Canada and Europe to explore offshore energy sources.

"If there's going to be drilling in the Florida Straits 50 miles from the Keys, my guess is that Floridians and Americans in general would rather it be done by U.S. firms with better and safer technology," said Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who for years has tried to allow more American engagement with Cuba.

Flake and about a half-dozen fellow House members plan to meet with Cuban officials, U.S. diplomats and dissidents on a trip to Havana next month, partly to talk about obstacles to U.S. sales of food to Cuba.

"I think we have the planets aligned now," Flake said. "We see more support for change in South Florida. The GAO report has got to be intensely embarrassing to the Bush administration. You can add to that the new Congress and changes in Cuba, with Fidel unlikely to resume his position in full capacity."