First of 2 movies on Che opens in Spain

"I didn't pretend to be Che but was Benicio acting as Che," said Benicio del Toro at a press conference in Madrid announcing the premiere in Spain of the movie Che, the Argentine, in which the actor plays the revolutionary leader Ernesto Che Guevara. Del Toro's performance earned him a Best Actor award at the recent Cannes Film Festival. The movie opens this week in Madrid; its sequel, Guerrilla, will be shown at a later date. Che, the Argentine covers the period between Guevara's first encounter with Fidel Castro and the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Guerrilla describes Guevara's activities in Bolivia prior to his death in 1967. "Che was a consistent man, as can be read in the diary he kept during his years in Bolivia," Del Toro said. "What impressed me the most was his energy and strength; you only have to see how he lived with asthma." The actor said that "Che Guevara would admire today's Cuba for maintaining its dignity in the face of a 50-year blockade and for its health and educational system. Knowing what has happened in the world since his death, he could see what's positive in today's Cuba, not just what's negative." Del Toro's next film appearance is in the title role of The Wolf Man, to be released next year. For reports on the press conference (in Spanish), click here and also here.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Is Jaled 'newsier' than Gustav?, Fidel asks

Nobody worried about Cuba's exposure to Hurricane Gustav, Fidel Castro complains in his latest "reflection," published Monday in the official daily Granma. "Two days ago [...] out of 11 international press reports devoted to Cuba, none told about the hurricane that moved toward our island and the feverish efforts of our Civil Defense," Castro writes. Instead, the news services, "echoing a Yankee press organization dedicated to the media war and campaigns against Cuba," reported about the defection of TV actor Yamil Jaled. (The "Yankee press organization" appears to be an allusion to El Nuevo Herald, which broke the news of Jaled's arrival in Miami.) "What a patriot! What a democrat! What a brilliant example," sneers Castro. "This way, the world is informed about a character a lot less known and important than Hurricane Gustav. They want to make a sacred cow out of him."
Whether more ink was spent by the world's media reporting on Jaled than on Gustav is debatable -- a nonstarter, some might say -- but Castro seems upset by the defector's renown. "I don't hate other human beings," he says, "but I do hate vanity, egocentricity, egoism, pedantry, self-sufficiency, the lack of ethics and other tendencies" of mankind. People need to think "about the need for modesty." Jaled has much to reflect on.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Freed rocker is ready to sing about Raúl

Interviewed by the Spanish newspaper El Pais, Cuban punk rocker Gorki Águila attributed the reduction in his charges (from "pre-delictive social dangerousness" to "disobedience") to "the pressure of people who gathered tightly around me. That is proof that when people unite to confront tyranny, things can be changed. They fear that what they do will become known and that they will be condemned internationally. That is why they reduced a possible 4-year sentence to a 600-peso fine. They want to appear as good people." Asked who he was referring to, Águila answered: "Those in State Security, the regime. But they didn't expect that I would have so much support. Justice here is not just blindfolded; it's got its nose, mouth and ears covered." Right now, Águila says, he is "in a sort of post-traumatic stress, after four days in the dungeons." But he's ready to record a new song, El Comandante II, an allusion to Raúl Castro; it is a sequel to El Comandante, a tune in which he sang about Fidel Castro: "He wants me to applaud after he speaks his delirious s***." Although free, Águila feels constrained: "This is like the Russian dolls. You come out of a small jail, only to go into a slightly larger one, and so on. I am now in a larger one, but there's always the risk I'll fall into the smallest doll." For the entire interview, in Spanish, click here. For Herald coverage of Águila's release, click here.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Blogger: Web, media helped to free rocker

Award-winning blogger Yoani Sánchez, one of few spectators at the trial of Gorki Águila, Friday in Havana, (click for Herald report) posted a very brief entry in her website on Saturday apologizing for being unable to report on the punk rocker's court appearance. Hurricane Gustav was near and she had to hunker down until the storm passed, she said. But she had time to write this: "Never before, as in the previous two days, have I seen international public opinion, the broadcast media and part of Cuba's civilian society coincide and unite like this. Yesterday we demonstrated that the wall can be pushed if we do it together. We have forced [the authorities] to retract, to undo the injustice and this is a very good precedent for us and extremely dangerous for them. The Internet proved that it can serve in the Cuban case as a virtual field where we can join efforts. I hope that the centimeters we gained by pushing the boundaries will be followed by meters and meters of regained freedoms."
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Cubans want change, says Milanés

Nueva-trova singer Pablo Milanés continues to speak out on the situation in Cuba during his tour of Spain. Here's some quotes from an interview with Periodismo Digital this week in Madrid.
Q.: Paraphrasing [your] song I Do Not Ask You, what would you NOT ask Cuba today?
A.: I would not ask it to continue this situation. I would ask it to change, to finish changing, because the entire country is asking for it. We have made a change that is still flirting with reality and the facts. I am confident these things will occur. I do NOT ask for the situation to stagnate.
Q.: Are you a bit disappointed that after Castro comes another Castro?
A.: That was expected, more so when people expect an immediate reaction in favor of changes.
Q.: Do you think it's the beginning of a new Cuba?
A.: Yes, the people are expecting it anxiously, although it's coming too slowly for everyone.
Q.: Do you think the people are asking for it with sufficient energy?
A.: Yes, they're asking for it peaceably and with sufficient energy. There are assemblies, there are meetings, opinions, and those things are being done.
[See also our July 14 blog entry "Milanés: 'No queers in the Party.'"]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Works by Lam on display in L.A.

An exhibition of paintings by Wifredo Lam (1902-82) opened this week at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, Calif. According to the Los Angeles Times, it is "the largest American museum exhibition of Lam's work since his death and the only one outside New York in nearly half a century. Spanning his career, Wifredo Lam in North America is drawn from eight public and numerous private collections. Organized by the Haggerty Museum of Art at Milwaukee's Marquette University, the 57 paintings on canvas and paper [...] offer a concise introduction to a complex artist's work." For a review by Times art critic Christopher Knight, click here. [Photo shows: Woman With Long Hair (1938), one of the paintings in the exhibition.]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

More raves for book on pre-Castro Cuba

Rachel Kushner and her publisher, Scribner, must be thrilled by the good reviews her book Telex From Cuba has gotten. "And they're more than well deserved," The Washington Post says in its own review, published Friday and wryly titled "Back when Cuba was libre." The novel "is a pure treat from the cover to the very last page," writes Post reviewer Carolyn See. "It's the kind of thing you should stock up on to give sick friends as presents. They'll forget their arthritis and pneumonia, I promise, once they walk into a land that's gone now, but not yet quite forgotten: Cuba in the last few years before Fidel Castro took over." Cuba seen through the eyes of Americans living and working in Oriente province. That Cuba is a land "lost and gone, a world we'll never see again, any part of it. Rachel Kushner uses her considerable powers to bring it back for us, one last time."
To read the review in full, click here. For a previous Cuban Colada item on Kushner's book, read our July 5 entry, "Critics praise novel about Cuba in '50s." [UPDATE: Three more positive reviews appeared Sunday, in The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, The Dallas Morning News and The Columbus Dispatch. And Kushner will appear at Books & Books in Coral Gables at 8 p.m. Thursday the 24th.]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Milanés: 'No queers in the Party'

Nueva-trova singer Pablo Milanés might not get a warm reception from the government when he returns to Cuba after his current tour of Spain. In an interview published Sunday in the Crónica supplement of the Spanish daily El Mundo, the artist made a couple of statements that may raise official hackles. Here are excerpts:
Q.: How are things in Cuba?
A.: I grew up in this Revolution, I fight for it and, because I've been very critical of it, I have suffered all kinds of insults, all kinds of injustice. But I'm still here, fighting for it. What I don't understand is how everything stays the same; and that is why, as a revolutionary, I demand changes. Now we have a new opportunity, like the one that arose when the Soviet Union collapsed and we could all have found our own independent path. But we didn't. The people expect changes; the world is expecting them.
Q.: Some promises have been made, apparently sincere.
A.: The government said a year ago that many things were going to change, but we stayed the same and the people are very desperate. Raúl Castro still has not had an opportunity to demonstrate what he thinks, because his brother Fidel is there and still emits his opinions. Owning a telephone and being allowed to enter a hotel is not reform. When it comes to freedoms, we're going backward. We're returning to the past.
Q.: Gay Pride Day was just celebrated throughout the world. Are things improving in Cuba for homosexuals?
A.: I don't know what to tell you. I have many homosexual friends who still complain that they are discriminated against, that they lack opportunities. There are no queers in the [Communist] Party. And those are signs that they are still alienated. To the best of our knowledge, none of the rulers have come out of the closet yet.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

'Che' iffy for Havana Film Festival

Director Steven Soderbergh's movie Che, featuring Benicio del Toro in the title role, will not be shown at the Havana Film Festival next December if it "deforms the relationship" between the late Ernesto Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, the French agency AFP has reported. The festival's director, Alfredo Guevara (no kin to Che), told AFP: "I have not seen the movie and I don't want to be prejudicial, but I am very partial. If [the film] contains any attack against Fidel, it will not make it" to the festival. Guevara said he was a witness to Che's and Fidel's close relationship and therefore "will never accept a deformation of that history. I've heard that [the film] deforms the relationship. I don't want to be prejudicial. I want to see it."
So far as is known, Che still lacks a U.S. distributor. New York Magazine last week told of a rumor that the film would be shown at the New York Film Festival in September. Also, there have been rumors of a deal with HBO that would allow the telecast of the four-hour-long Che as a miniseries. [PHOTOS: Guevara today and in an undated snapshot with Che. Del Toro in the role of Che.]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Love in the time of migration

A Cuban film that brings together Romeo, Juliet and emigration will open Tuesday in Havana, the French news agency AFP reported. Personal Belongings deals with Ernesto, a young man who has been trying for three years to emigrate and lives in his car, his suitcases packed, and Ana, whose family fled the island in a raft but who insists in staying. They meet and fall in love, knowing that their future together is uncertain. The movie's writer-producer-director, Alejandro Brugués, told AFP that emigration was his "excuse to make a love story about people who are completely different." The film "is like Romeo and Juliet, except that, instead of having their families to contend with, they are faced with the way in which they choose to live." The movie, which won a prize at the 2007 Havana Film Festival, will be shown nationwide on Thursday.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Critics praise novel about Cuba in '50s

Book reviewers are kind to Rachel Kushner, whose first novel, Telex From Cuba, was published this weekend by Scribner. The plot is set in Oriente province during the six years prior to the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista and deals with the lives of Americans who worked for the United Fruit Company and the Nicaro nickel mines. Sample comments:

• The New York Times describes the novel as "multilayered and absorbing," a book whose "real draws are its complex relationships and well-researched cultural context." Kushner's "intimate knowledge of her novel’s world and characters" contributes to make Telex "a dreamy, sweet-tart meditation on a vanished way of life and a failed attempt to make the world over in America’s image."

• Kushner's "compelling debut novel" recreates "the crisp world of Anglo privilege [Castro's revolution] overturned," says the Los Angeles Times in a review that includes a long interview with the author. Kushner's account of her research in Cuba makes for instructive reading.
• According to Publishers Weekly, "Kushner's colorful, character-driven debut succinctly captures the essence of life for a gilded circle of American expats in pre-Castro Cuba, chronicling a mélange of philandering spouses, privileged carousers and their rebellious children."
• Telex "is a work of great care and research [...] recreating a place that history has erased from the map," says Book Forum. "Kushner is adept at profound description and real suspense."

To read other reviews, do a Google search on RACHEL KUSHNER and TELEX.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Journalists hail a colleague: Fidel Castro

Communications Minister Ramiro Valdés Menéndez addressed the preliminary session of the Eighth Congress of the Cuban Journalists Union (UPEC) at the Palace of Conventions, the newspaper El Habanero reported Thursday. The 189 delegates in attendance approved the Journalists' Code of Ethics and the revised statutes of their organization. On opening day, Friday, they will witness the presentation of a new book, Fidel Journalist, a collection of the writings of Fidel Castro going back to his youth. According to El Habanero, the book contains "the knowledge of the world, well-pondered words, humor, irony, wisdom, heartfelt praise, deep questioning, decisive affirmations, vital questions," written by a "legendary guerrilla and statesman" and "a journalist through-and-through." Critical acclaim, indeed. After a new board of directors and a new national committee are confirmed, the Congress will close Saturday.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Up, up and away. Literally.

If you like historical trivia, you may be interested to learn that Sunday was the 152nd anniversary of an event that originated a popular saying. On June 29, 1856, a Portuguese tent maker who lived in Havana, Matías Pérez, climbed into the gondola of a hot-air balloon and lifted off in quest of excitement, perhaps even fame. Ever since the Montgolfier brothers flew the first hot-air balloon in France in June 1783, interest in ballooning had spread from Europe to the Americas. (The first balloon flight in the United States took place over Philadelphia in January 1793; the first manned flight over Buenos Aires, in October 1856.) Pérez's balloon, the Ville de Paris, rose from a public square in Havana, drifted along the Almendares River and vanished over the Straits, never to be seen again. To this day, when someone disappears without trace, Cubans traditionally say: "He flew off like Matías Pérez."
---Renato Pérez (no relation) Pizarro.

1971 musical hit will premiere in Havana

Better late than never. Nearly 37 years after its premiere on Broadway, the rock musical Jesus Christ Superstar will be presented in Havana. A dramatized version of the last seven days in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, the show opened on Oct. 12, 1971, at New York's Mark Hellinger Theater. It was the first musical by Tim Rice (lyrics) and Andrew Lloyd Webber (music) to be produced on the professional stage. The original-cast recording topped the U.S. album charts three times, with I Don't Know How To Love Him one of the most popular songs. On Saturday the 28th, at 6 p.m., the show will go on at the Centro Hispanoamericano de Cultura, performed by members of the Lyric Song Institute under the direction of Katia Caso. To borrow the title of one of the tunes, Hosanna!
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Del Toro gets Cannes prize for 'Che'

Benicio del Toro won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday for his performance as Ernesto Che Guevara in the film Che. The nine-judge vote was unanimous. "I'd like to dedicate this to the man himself, Che Guevara, as well as to [director Steven] Soderbergh," the Puerto Rican actor said, after accepting the award. "I wouldn't be here without Che Guevara, and through all the awards the movie gets you'll have to pay your respects to the man." Miamians will have to wait a while before they can see the 4½-hour film; so far, it has attracted no distributors in the U.S. For Herald coverage of the Cannes awards, click here. [UPDATE: In Vienna last week, Guevara's son Camilo told the French news agency AFP that he hoped a Cuban director might also one day make a film about his father. Click here.]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

'Che' opens to mixed reviews

Steven Soderbergh's movie "Che," with Benicio del Toro in the title role, opened Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival. Here are some of the early reactions.
• The Guardian (Britain) describes it as "virile, muscular film-making, with a charismatic performance by Benicio del Toro," but cautions that it is a "flawed masterpiece: enthralling but structurally fractured." Still, the reviewer adds, "Che" is "big, bold, ambitious [...] never boring and often gripping."
• The Telegraph (Britain) sees it as "a brave and gorgeously photographed film whose seriousness and captivating story offer a cinematic experience beyond the extraordinary."
• The Edmonton Sun (Canada) calls the 4½-hour film "a thrilling spectacle."
• The Toronto Star (Canada) disagrees, saying it "reeks of authenticity but also of self-indulgence." It "goes over like a lead piñata," the critic sniffs.
• The Hollywood Reporter considers it an "earnest" biopic that "lacks cinematic flair." Still, it "will inform and [...] excite viewers everywhere."
• The New York Times points out that Ernesto Che Guevara's "brutal role in turning a revolutionary movement into a dictatorship goes virtually unmentioned," and that Del Toro's "soulful and charismatic performance" presents an image "at best naive and incomplete, at worst sentimental and dishonest."
• "An incredibly ambitious, highly detailed mess," quibbles Roger Friedman of Fox News.
• An account of the making of "Che" can be found in The Globe & Mail (Canada).
So far, the film has no distributors in the United States. To read other reviews, call up Google News and use the search words CHE BENICIO.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Speaking about movies...

Writer-producer Bobby Moresco ("Crash") plans to make a film about Alina Fernández Revuelta, Fidel Castro's daughter, The Hollywood Reporter disclosed Tuesday. Fernández fled the island in 1993 and lives in Miami; she is an outspoken critic of the Cuban government. Moresco and his co-producers "are not planning to do a biopic or a simple escape story but are envisioning a [multiple-story plot] that will show the Cuban and American perspectives and ideologies along with Fernández's story," THR reported.  "The project also will seek inspiration from her memoir." Fernández will be a story consultant and do publicity for the project. She told THR that, since her defection, "I have been trying to show what is going on in my country, trying to make people a little more aware of how glorious [Cubans] are, and how many limitations we have. [...] You know so little about us."
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

'Che' film set for Cannes premiere

The Cannes Film Festival will open Wednesday and "Che" will be among its offerings. The film, which features Puerto Rican actor Benicio del Toro as Ernesto Che Guevara and Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro as Raúl Castro (below), was not fully edited last month and there were questions about its inclusion in the festival. But director Steven Soderbergh rushed through the editing and the 4-hour-28-minute film will be shown May 21 in two installments, "The Argentine" and "The guerrilla." The script is based on Guevara's diaries, written in Cuba in the 1950s. According to the Reuters news agency, Santoro spent two months in Cuba last year, staying in the Sierra Maestra and visiting the house where the Castro brothers were born. "I loved Cuba, had wonderful days there," Santoro told Reuters. "I feel a bit Cuban too. It was a very strong experience." Asked about Raúl today, Santoro was diplomatic: "I cannot do a political analysis about him."
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Interesting play, flawed performance

"All Eyes and Ears," a play by Marielito Rogelio Martínez, opened Monday in New York City. The plot, set in Cuba in 1961, is promising: A family of working-class Cubans moves into a mansion vacated by a rich family who fled to Florida, and all are dazzled by the lavishness of their new home. The husband is a bus driver, the wife a CDR informer, the daughter a teenage Pioneer. According to Backstage weekly, the playwright "includes many intimate details of daily life [post-Revolution] but, unfortunately, the narrative quickly becomes muddled with too many competing viewpoints, subplots and biases to create a coherent story." Variety magazine faults the performers. Director Eduardo Machado "has not settled on a firm interpretive platform for his cast, and they are as much at sea as we are," its review says. The New York Times calls the play "interesting but overstuffed." [At the Lion Theater, 410 West 42nd St., through May 22.]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Cuban heat, Canadian cool

The writer's description of singer Alex Cuba catches your eye: "There's this towering Afro reminiscent of Sly Stone's, the bushy sideburns that jut out of the corners of his mouth, the tight-as-tupperware ripped jeans, the big brown eyes, and the toothy white smile Al Green used to flash, back in the '70s." Cuba (born Alexis Puentes) is "like Marvin Gaye singing soul for a new generation -- a Spanish-speaking audience hungry for something more organic and tangible than your typical Latin-pop star." How this native of Artemisa made it to British Columbia and became a musical success in Canada makes for fascinating reading. To access the story in Sunday's Boston Globe, click here. And check out what Cuba says about the Miami music scene.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

'El Gallego' is named education czar

Gen. José Ramón Fernández Álvarez, a vice president of the Council of Ministers, has been asked "to guide, control and coordinate the ministries of Education, Higher Education, the INDER [Cuban Sports Institute] and other organizations, such as the centers of military training," Radio Habana announced Monday. The appointment was made during a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party. No formal title was immediately given to the post.
Fernández, a former Deputy Minister of the Armed Forces (1968-70) and former Minister of Education (1972-90), is 84. Popularly known as "El Gallego" (The Galician), he is president of the Cuban Olympic Committee.
The Ministry of Education was shaken April 22 when Minister Luis Ignacio Gómez Gutiérrez was sacked and replaced. Cuban leader Raúl Castro reportedly wishes to combine the ministries of Education and Higher Education as part of his campaign of organizational reforms.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Fidel vilifies fired education chief

In a column partly cryptic and mostly critical, Fidel Castro on Wednesday reviled Cuba's ousted Education Minister, saying the official, Luis Ignacio Gómez Gutiérrez, "was truly worn out" and "had lost [his] energy and revolutionary conscience."
The article, titled "The living and the dead," appeared in the Communist Party daily Granma.
According to Castro, Gómez kept boasting to foreign visitors that he, not his institution and colleagues, should receive credit for the ministry's achievements in education.
And Gómez spent too much time traveling abroad -- one trip per month for the past three years -- ostensibly on "international cooperation" tours, Castro added.
For those reasons, "we no longer have confidence in him; clearer yet, no confidence at all," so "I resolutely support the decision of the Party and the Council of State to replace [him]," Castro wrote.
"In this special and important case, my personal opinion notwithstanding, I was fully consulted and informed," the Cuban leader wrote. "I therefore assume full responsibility for this decision, whatever the reactions and consequences may be."
Gómez's ouster was announced in Granma on Tuesday. He was replaced by Ana Elsa Velázquez Cobiella, dean at a teachers' college in Santiago de Cuba.
In a parting shot at the ousted minister, Castro said that "I shall never resign myself to the idea that the desire for power be fueled by selfishness, self-sufficiency, vanity and the alleged indispensability of any human being."
He closed with this puzzling statement: "We the living and the dead shall fight!"
---Renato Pérez Pizarro

Education minister is replaced

Cuba's Minister of Education was removed and replaced by a college dean from Palma Soriano in Santiago de Cuba, the Communist Party daily Granma announced Tuesday.
The three-paragraph "official note" stated simply that "the Council of State, at the request of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Party, agreed to remove Luis Ignacio Gómez Gutiérrez from his post as Minister of Education and to replace him with comrade Ana Elsa Velázquez Cobiella, the current Dean of the Frank País García [Pedagogic] Superior Institute in Santiago de Cuba."
"Comrade Ana Elsa Velásquez holds a Doctorate in Educational Sciences and is a Deputy to the National Assembly of the People's Power," the note adds, without disclosing the reasons for Gómez's dismissal or what assignment he will be given next.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro

Cuba's Pulitzer for Fidel?

Fidel Castro should be awarded the José Martí Journalism Prize for his lifetime contribution to news analysis and editorial writing, some Cubans believe.
A group of news writers from Ciego de Avila province told the newspaper Juventud Rebelde they will make the proposal at the congress of the Cuban Journalists Union in June. The Martí award is Cuban journalism's highest honor.
"From his very start as a fighter, [Castro] wrote articles denouncing the corruption of the Authentic Party governments in power during the 1940s and early 1950s," the proposal says. His writings reportedly appeared in the newspaper Alerta and the magazine Bohemia.
"Added to his journalistic practice, which continued during the insurrection and after the triumph of the Revolution, are his current Reflections, characterized for their prior exhaustive research, confirmation of their sources, and clarity of the theories expounded," notes the proposal.
Castro's articles, known as "Reflections of comrade Fidel," appear regularly in Granma, the Communist Party daily. To read Saturday's article, "Bush, millionaires, consumerism and underconsumption," click here.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro
 

Blogger: 'I can't believe it!'

The following reaction was posted by Cuban philologist Yoani Sanchez on her blog, Generation Y, after learning that the Spanish newspaper El Pais had awarded her a prize for social commentary online. (Read Herald story here.) Translated by The Miami Herald.

That part of the philologist still inside of me -- which knows about literati, philosophers and academic names -- is jumping up and down with joy because of the Ortega y Gasset journalism prize I've just been awarded. The blogger, on the other hand, feels that the many obstacles to access the Internet, the many [computer] flash-memories taken from here to there, have been worth the trouble.

All I can remember is that it was April -- Eliot had already commented on the cruelty of spring -- when I decided to exorcise my demons in a blog. I began by expelling the most paralyzing of them, the demon that makes us resort to the mask, the disguise and silence. Second in the line of evictees was the apathy of those who know that little can be done. By mid-August, a legion [of demons] representing frustration, disenchantment and doubts were drained away with every post. What seemed to be a personal therapy to shake away all those ills became a space for many people who -- by curious coincidence -- also had their own demons.

Readers, I am only the face on the side column in this site. You polemicists, pyromaniacs, censors and boycotters are, after all is said and done, the people who make the blog.

Cuban TV defector explains why artists and athletes flee island

Among reasons cited for the more evident defection of artists and athletes from Cuba in recent times is the limited amount of money professionals make on the island and how many of them are forced to moonlight in the tourist service industry.

Carlos Otero, a popular Cuban television personality who defected through Canada in December, told The Miami Herald that many professionals he knew in Cuba had to work for tips in the tourist hotels and restaurants to make ends meet.

“There are engineers in Cuba, architects, for example, working as waiters and bartenders because their professional salaries are not enough to feed their families,’’ said Otero, talking about reasons why many professionals flee abroad.

He said an engineer earns about 600 pesos a month, which is only about $24. Thus, he added, many professionals supplement their regular salaries with dollar tips at tourist sites -- sometimes taking home $15 or $20 a night.

Soon after Otero arrived, he became host of the comedy and musical show Pellizcame que estoy sonando (Pinch me because I’m dreaming) on AmericaTeVe Channel 41 in Miami.

Otero is one of several artists and athletes who have defected from Cuba since Fidel Castro took ill in July 2006 and ceded power to his younger brother Raul -- who formally assumed the duties of president last month.

-- Alfonso Chardy

Twin ballet dancers split by Cuban Revolution featured in FIU film screening

One stayed. The other fled.

Now the wrenching story of the twin Cuban ballet sisters Ramona and Margarita de Saa is told in a documentary film, Mirror Dance, that will be shown later this month at Florida International University.

The screening of the film by Frances McElroy and Maria Teresa Rodriguez is scheduled to take place March 26 starting at 7:30 p.m. at FIU’s University Park Campus Graham Center, Center Ballroom -- at  Southwest Eighth Street and 107th Avenue.

The screening will be followed by a discussion featuring Margarita de Saa.

The twins split in 1964 when Margarita left Cuba. But reconciliation came in 2004 and that is part of Mirror Dance, a documentary that aired in 2005 on PBS’ Independent Lens film series.

The FIU event is free and open to the public. Parking is available at the Blue and Gold Garages by using the entrance at Southwest 107^th Avenue and 16^th Street. The film is in Spanish with English subtitles and the discussion will be in Spanish and English.

The event is a presentation of FIU’s Cuban Research Institute.

-- Alfonso Chardy

UM Plans Cuba Conference on Property

The University of Miami plans to host a conference this week at its campus in Coral Gables on property confiscations and national heritage in Cuba.

Titled An Alternative Vision of the Cuban Revolution, the conference is scheduled for Thursday evening at the Casa Bacardi/Olga-Carlos Saladrigas Hall at UM’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, 1531 Brescia Avenue.

It is the first in a series of conferences the institute plans on what it calls the “looting’’ of the island’s heritage by the communist government in Cuba.

Panelists at the conference, scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m., include Tania Mastrapa, founder of Mastrapa Consultants, which specializes on confiscated properties, and Jesus Rosado, specialist in works of art and former curator of the Museum of Art in Havana.

The event is open to the public but reservations must be made by calling the institute at 305-284-2822. Seating is limited.

-- Alfonso Chardy