Cuban American

Leonard Pitts says Miami has "it" as a multicultural city, but the town is not mature enough yet to benefit (Inquirer, Aug. 25). The reason for the urban immaturity, he claims, is the sudden transfer of the Latin Grammys to Los Angeles because Miami could not guarantee the safety of some of the artists. I would like to offer an explanation. The Latin Grammys would have welcomed Cuban artists from the island itself and regaled them with awards. To the Cuban exile community in Miami, that is tantamount to having your current wife throw a birthday party in your house for your former wife - and then asking the poor woman to enjoy it. There are some deeply felt things that identify the character of ethnic groups and define their ethnic boundaries.

Reversing nearly 30 years of U.S. policy, President Clinton yesterday announced that fleeing Cubans intercepted at sea would not be allowed into the United States. Clinton said the Cubans would be detained at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He and other administration officials ducked questions about when they might leave there and where they might go. The President was acting to stem a growing wave of Cubans headed for South Florida. He warned that he was not going to permit a replay of the 1980 Mariel boatlift - a high-seas exodus to America of 125,000 Cuban refugees.

Somewhere in the blue-green expanse of the Florida Straits, the teenage boy bobbed on his makeshift raft, sending up unspoken prayers that the sharks would not devour him and that warm, compassionate currents would deliver him to the other side, to libertad, to freedom. Like thousands of others before and since, Julio Vila reached American shores - on his third try. "Two times I tried, two times I was caught," Vila, now 53, said on Friday as he stood with other protesters outside Elian Gonzalez's home in Miami and recalled events decades ago. "I was six years in Cuban jail.

For most of the 980 Cuban detainees, the modern detention center here was just another stop on the road to nowhere. Long before the State Department announced Friday that it had reached an agreement with Cuba to send 2,500 detainees back, the men confined to the isolated prison believed that they had been betrayed by the U.S. government and forgotten by the American - and Cuban-American - public. On Saturday, the frustration exploded when the prisoners rioted and burned down the federal detention center's administration building and took more than 20 hostages.

Had any tres leches lately? How about boniato? Skillet-fried, plantain-coated mahi-mahi, served, perhaps, with a side dish of tamarind tartar sauce? How about fufu? Ever hear of it? If you answer "no" or "huh?" to three or more of the above questions, then it's obvious that "nuevo Latino" cuisine - one of the hottest trends in the food world - is nuevo to you. And though it's relatively new to Philadelphia, its influence is growing. The fusion of flavors and cooking styles from Central and South America, Mexico and the Caribbean is the main attraction at several of the area's hippest new restaurants.

"Comunista! Comunista!" Marta Cunzio, a clothing factory worker, let out a piercing, acrimonious scream yesterday at the corner of Bergenline Avenue and 48th Street in this Cuban enclave of Hudson County, just minutes before the arrival of George Bush, her choice for president. With dozens of other Cuban-Americans, she screamed at about 20 supporters of Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis, who, with anti- Republican signs and a little bitterness of their own, were attempting to disrupt the harmony of a Bush rally.

MIAMI - Natalia Martinez speaks with a clinical distance when discussing her family's decision to leave Cuba two decades ago. But the graduate student's cool demeanor falls away when she speaks of returning to her homeland for the first time this week during Pope Benedict XVI's visit. "I am excited. I am nervous, and I'm anticipating confusion," Martinez, 25, said. She could be speaking for many of the more than 300 Cuban Americans who will form a delegation to Cuba led by Miami's Roman Catholic archbishop, Thomas Wenski.

MIAMI - Ozzie Guillen sat alone at a podium and began in Spanish, then halted in the middle of a sentence when his voice wavered. The chastened Miami Marlins manager took a sip of water and cleared his throat, then continued. Suspended for five games Tuesday for his comments lauding Fidel Castro, Guillen again apologized and said he'll do whatever he can to repair relations with Cuban Americans angered by the remarks. "I'm very sorry about the problem, what happened," said Guillen, who is only five games into his tenure with the Marlins.

What a disappointment to find columnist Leonard Pitts falling prey to the kind of simplistic, prejudiced generalizations he so often derides ("What next for Cuban exiles?" Aug. 21). This time, his focus is the group he terms the "Cuban exile community. " To hear Pitts tell it, these are fanatics who are "defined" by their animosity toward Fidel Castro. Forget that these "exiles" are dispersed throughout the United States and elsewhere. (My wife, a former Cuban refugee, has lived in this area for about 40 years.

President Clinton mulled conflicting recommendations from top advisers yesterday over whether to bring the full weight of the Helms-Burton Act to bear against foreign companies that use Cuban property claimed by Americans. Clinton returned from Camp David after studying briefing papers that essentially pitted his economic and foreign-policy advisers against the political team focused on his reelection bid. An announcement on his decision is expected today. The administration has been deluged with faxes from European diplomats threatening to retaliate against the United States if the law remains intact, and with calls from Cuban American Democrats vowing to desert Clinton in November if Helms-Burton is diluted.