News (Noticias) Tagged ‘Cuban’

Grammy Award-winning composer, saxophone and clarinet player Paquito D’Rivera has joined Bloggers United for Cuban Liberty bucl.org/ in condemning Monday’s arrest of dissident punk rocker Gorki Aguila by Cuban authorities. Cuban-born D’Rivera and Bloggers United for Cuban Liberty call for Aguila’s immediate release. “The rockers have historically been the most courageous and honest musicians in Cuba, standing up to the Castro regime, and Gorki Aguila is the latest in that proud line,” D’Rivera says. A Wednesday article from Miami Herald reporter Frances Robles www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/story/661345.html says Aguila, front man for the band Porno Para Ricardo, faces charges of “pre-crime social dangerousness.” Bloggers United for Cuban Liberty says this is a catch-all charge often used by the regime to repress dissent. According to the Miami Herald article, Aguila will face trial today, Friday August 29. “Make no mistake about it, the band’s lyrics harshly criticize the Castro dictatorship, and that is the real reason Aguila is being detained,” says Henry Gómez, spokesperson for Bloggers United for Cuban Liberty. “Aguila’s arrest is a blatant case of musical censorship on the part of the regime and shows that nothing has really changed in Cuba under Raul Castro since Fidel disappeared from the public eye two years ago.” D’Rivera urges his fellow musicians around the world to publicly express solidarity with Aguila and denounce this case of repression and censorship. “We need to stand together and honor these men with the guts to do what the vast majority of musicians in my impoverished country haven’t done,” D’Rivera says. Born in Havana, Cuba, Paquito D’Rivera is the winner of nine Grammy Awards. D’Rivera is celebrated both for his artistry in Latin jazz and his achievements as a classical composer. His numerous recordings include more than 30 solo albums. Bloggers United for Cuban Liberty bucl.org/ is a confederation of blogs and Web sites that pool resources and ideas for use in campaigns to raise awareness of the Cuban reality. For more information about Bloggers United for Cuban Liberty or the group’s condemnation against the arrest of Gorki Aguila, contact Henry Gómez. “

Outside on the sidewalk, a cigar maker is rolling stogies; and in the rear dining room, large tables of Latino families and friends are eating, drinking and laughing; wall-size murals and pictures of old pre-Fidel Cuba cover the walls; a jazz quartet with a Latin beat is playing away (they have music nightly); and the aroma of suckling pig, black bean soup, garlic, onions, and peppers fills the air.”*

What his teammates and coaches didn’t know was that like thousands of Cubans, Cordero defected from the Communist country by boat to the Florida coast. He survived shark-infested and stormy seas.

“It was incredible because I felt like, ‘man this is my last day of my life, I’m going to die,’” Cordero remembers. “*

Rick Sanchez is a Cuban-born correspondent and news anchor for CNN and CNN en Español. As one of the few Latino anchors on national news television, Sanchez has established himself as a seasoned journalist who has reported from war-torn Nicaragua, on the invasion of Grenada, and on the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier’s regime in Haiti. In addition, Sanchez was a major part of CNN’s Peabody Award-winning coverage of Hurricane Katrina, during which he reported for eight continuous hours during live coverage. He received the distinguished journalist award from the American Medical Association and an Emmy for an autodocumentary series called Cuando salí de Cuba (When I left Cuba) chronicling his rise from Cuban immigrant to his position a major American news correspondent. Recently, he has joined with Latino organizations SiTV and Voto Latino to promote the Crash the Parties contest, which will allow two aspiring young Latino journalists to attend the Democratic and Republican national conventions while gaining valuable job-shadowing experience from Sanchez. “*

On the surface, political life in Cuban Miami seems unchanged. Little Havana is still partly a Disney version of a displaced Cuba and partly a genuine community hub, where families who have long since left for suburbia still come for nostalgic weekend lunches. At the Versailles Restaurant, the community newspapers preaching no compromise with Castro are all that are on offer. For almost four decades, the Versailles has been an obligatory stop for Washington politicians courting the Cuban-American community, visits that, as photographs in the restaurant attest, have often involved putting on a white guayabera, the four-pocket dress shirt that often replaces a coat and tie in the Caribbean. This familiar theater of intransigence — a staple of South Florida life at least since the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, when C.I.A.-backed Cuban exiles tried to overthrow the new Communist regime — is ubiquitous. Some Cuban-Americans point hopefully to a softening in the Spanish-language, Cuba-focused radio outlets that now dominate the South Florida market. But for an outsider, what is striking is the degree to which the hard-line stance endures, since it might have been supposed that 50 years of failure to influence events on the island might have led to the conclusion that the hard-line position needed to be reconsidered. Most officeholders in Florida and, for that matter, most national politicians continue to at least pay lip service to the dream of a post-Communist Cuba, even though, early this year, Fidel Castro succeeded in seamlessly handing over power to his brother Raúl — testimony, if any was needed, to the stability of the regime.”*

Among Latinos in the U.S., there is no group that has been more reliably Republican than Cuban-Americans.

In South Florida, the solid Republican voting bloc is represented by three Cuban-American members of Congress. But this year, Democrats have mounted tough challenges against all three — evidence that the political preferences of Cuban-Americans may be shifting. “*

For the first time since they have been in Congress, Florida’s three Cuban-American Republicans find themselves in a brawl to stay in Washington.

A Democratic sweep is unlikely. But taking at least one out of the three seats would signal the collapse of the Cuban-GOP connection, which for three decades proved so fruitful to the party yet brought little benefit to the community and failed to move Cuba toward democracy. “*