Reply #19: Thanks for the information

[Judi Lynn]

It's interesting learning that Ninoska Pérez Castellón is currently the spokescritter for the Cuban Liberty Council. It wasn't that long ago she was an official insult-hurler for the Cuban American National Foundation.

What a delightful person. You may remember seeing her on tv, night after night after night, on all the cable news shows telling Americans where they should head in on the Elián dispute. I saw her get right in the face of a reporter once, in front of the Gonzalez house, shouting "There is no Cuban Mafia."



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(snip) Miami not so virtuous

I also have trouble imagining Miami as an area of sweeping democratization. One should remember the report a few years ago, published by Americas Watch, significantly the only one it has published on human rights abuses in the United States. It condemned the tactics of intimidation and harassment of anyone in Miami who sought a policy of dialogue with the Castro government. Bombs were planted, opponents killed, and reputations destroyed.

Ackerman would have us believe that things have changed drastically. I wonder. Early in March of 1997 Andy Montañez, a Puerto Rican salsa singer was banned from performing in the Festival de la Calle 8, in the heart of Miami's Cuban district. He had been invited to sing and had a contract to do so. Two weeks earlier he had welcomed Cuban singer Silvio Rodriguez to Puerto Rico, and had given him an embrace on stage. For the festival organizers back in Little Havana this was too much and he was asked not to come. In an editorial published in the Miami Herald on March 13, Lisa Versaci, a local arts coordinator, wrote, "We're living in a city where intimidation, whether real or perceived, has the same chilling effect."

Ackerman does not pay enough attention to the dynamic of hostility, wrapped in a "take no prisoners" approach (found both sides of the Florida straits) and cloaked in rabid anti-Castroism that exists in Miami. Ninoska Pérez Castellón, a radio personality and spokeswoman for the conservative Cuban-American National Foundation, phones government offices in Cuba and interviews unsuspecting functionaries, seeking to embarrass them. Some of these calls are later played on the air. In March, she tracked down the Foreign Minister in Brazil at the residence of the Cuban ambassador. When she got the Minister on the phone, she berated him. "I'm calling to show that I'm capable of bringing you to the phone. That you are a clown, and to tell you to put an end to repression in Cuba." (snip)

http://www.peacemagazine.org/fulltext/all-vol13no3.html