Friday, August 4, 2006

by Randy Nieves-Ruiz

MIAMI, USA (AFP): Moderates among Miami's Cuban exiles on Wednesday branded open displays of jubilation over Fidel Castro's illness frivolous and embarrassing to the 800,000 Cuban-Americans there.

"It's like a Marlins ball game," said radio commentator Max Lesnick, referring to Florida's baseball team.

A veteran anti-Castro activist, but also a moderate who opposes Washington's 44-year-old embargo on Cuba, Lesnick favors dialogue with the communist government.

He pointed out that only a small number of the hundreds of thousand of Miami's Cubans joined in.

"These people have little human feeling. We are talking about the Cuban community in Miami that has about 800,000 people, and those celebrations did not involve more than 2,000 people; we can say that it is not all the Cuban exiles."

Lesnick's magazine Replica was destroyed by a bomb in 1981, which he suggested came from anti-Castro hardliners angered that he favored holding talks with Havana over freeing political prisoners.

But he represented the views of a number of Miami's Cubans who feel embarrassed by the outbursts of cheering, horn-honking and general partying Tuesday and Wednesday after Cuba announced that Castro had ceded power to his brother Raul while he recuperates from gastrointestinal surgery.

The first to openly criticize the celebrations was Castro's sister, Juanita Castro Ruz, herself exiled in Miami over political differences with her brother.

"He's my brother, just the same. Blood is thicker than water, and I stick by that," she told local television.

"We are not putting our best faces forward by celebrating like this before the whole world."

Alfredo Duran, of the Cuban Committee for Democracy, which also supports dialogue and trade with Havana, said he doesn't believe it was good to celebrate Castro's suffering: "It looks as though we are celebrating Raul's takeover."

"The only protests take place after 5:00 pm in front of (the restaurant) Versalles where 2,000 people show up in front of the cameras," he noted.

Joe Garcia, former director of the more hardline Cuban American National Foundation, one of the largest US-based anti-Castro groups, did not criticize the celebrations, though he called them slightly ghoulish.

"We can't take the fun away from them," said Garcia, who left the foundation to join the US Democratic Party.

"Although they appeared to the world to be a little ghoulish, it seems to me that among Cubans, if Fidel Castro comes out tomorrow and gives a three-hour talk, it will depress the mood a little bit."

Miami has waited eagerly for three days for news about Castro, the only news of whom has come from his sister, who said Tuesday that a friend in Cuba told her he was out of intensive care and "very alert".

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