Cubans

The morning after he thought he would die, Alexi Herrera made it to America. Paddling 120 miles from Cuba, Herrera arrived yesterday in Florida waters, crowded with his brother, cousin and friend onto a haphazard raft made of no more than two tractor-tire inner tubes and two patches of canvas. The four men pushed off from their poverty-stricken homeland at 2 a.m. Sunday. After four days of rowing without even a compass, as sharks circled and the sun baked and their food sank and their hope vanished, the weary men became the most recent arrivals in a new wave of Cuban boat refugees.

The Perez Family opens with mambo music and a camera-glide down a beach strewn with stuff - so much stuff that it's soon apparent we're watching somebody's dream. There are balls and chairs, bow-tied waiters and potted palms. There are cabanas and classical busts perched on pillars. There are bicycles and prams. There's a vintage automobile with fins like a giant red shark's. There are men dressed in black-tie and women in white gowns wading zombie-like into the water. You get the feeling that Mira Nair, the director, told the prop guys to throw whatever, and whomever, onto the sand.

What does a Cuban look like? That's what Fernando Boyd finds himself wondering nowadays whenever he passes a man wearing the uniform of the Panamanian Defense Forces. "Some people say if you see a soldier with a mustache and longer hair, it must be a Cuban because the regular Guardia wouldn't allow it," said Boyd, a leader in the Civic Crusade group opposing the regime of PDF strongman, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega. "But I keep staring at them, and frankly, I can't tell if they're Cuban or not. Many of them look like Panamanians, anyway.

Cuba's national baseball team headed to Baltimore yesterday, getting an airport send-off from Cuban leader Fidel Castro. After sorting out visa problems that delayed the flight from Havana, the team boarded a charter about 5 p.m. EDT for tonight's exhibition game with the Orioles. However, the delay meant the Cubans had to cancel their workout yesterday at Camden Yards and a reception in the team's honor. The visa problems, concerning some in the delegation of more than 300, were resolved Saturday night.

Kathleen Parker is a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel Ask 1,000 people when President George W. Bush's birthday is, and 999 probably will shrug. Ask 1,000 Cubans when President Fidel Castro's birthday is, and most likely 999 will know. Just one of the small and delightful differences between a free country and a communist dictatorship. On Saturday, while Bush and a small group of journalists took a 17-mile mountain bike ride on the President's Texas ranch, Castro celebrated his 79th birthday to the usual state-mandated fanfare.

HAVANA - Pope Benedict XVI prayed for freedom and renewal "for the greater good of all Cubans" before the nation's patron saint Tuesday, but the island's communist leaders quickly rejected the Roman Catholic leader's appeal for political change after five decades of one-party rule. The exchange came hours ahead of a 55-minute closed-door meeting with President Raul Castro on the pontiff's second day on the island. Brief video feeds showed Castro greeting Benedict at the Presidential Palace and then later seeing him off. There was no visit to see Fidel Castro, though a Vatican spokesman would not rule out the possibility of a meeting before the pope departs Wednesday afternoon.

Blas Roca Calderio, 78, a leading theoretician of the Cuban revolution and one-time head of Cuba's Communist Party, has died in Havana, the official Cuban news agency Prensa Latina reported. Mr. Roca died Saturday after a long struggle with cancer. Yesterday, thousands of Cubans poured into the Plaza de la Revolucion, where his body lay in state inside a monument to Cuban independence fighter Jose Marti. About 200,000 people - 10 percent of Havana's population - were expected to pass through the plaza before ceremonies, televised live through the day, ended late yesterday.

"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.

On the dusty baseball field at Havana's School of Chemistry, where third base is a rock and the slogan on the center-field wall, "Martires de Giron," commemorates the Cubans who died at the Bay of Pigs, the local ballplayers in ancient, mismatched uniforms turned yesterday afternoon to watch history arrive in a brand-new bus. Out beyond the cinder-block fences and eucalyptus trees lining this salamander-laden diamond in West Havana, the Cubatur...

When the Creole Choir of Cuba spent a couple of months in Haiti last year after the earthquake, they did so not as representatives of the Castros, but as Cubans of Haitian descent. The two nations have always had a bond - many Cubans, especially in the east, are of Haitian descent, and the 10 members of the group all fit this description. The group's bicultural orientation resulted in fascinating music Sunday night at the Painted Bride. The six women and four men sounded like a mass choir, with wide-range, multipart harmony supported by the deep and solid bass vocals (sounding like a human marimbula)

The biggest story coming out of the Tribeca Film Festival – besides, of course, the U.S. premiere of Tattle's movie, "Hysteria – is the true-life tale of what happens when two Cuban actors on the way to the festival disappear en route to the film's premiere. Javier Nunez Florian and Analin de la Rua de la Torre disappeared in Miami during a layover on their way to see their film "Una Noche. " "Una Noche," written and directed by Lucy Mulloy, is about impoverished teenagers who decide to defect to the United States.

It's hard to believe that it's been 11 years since album-buying audiences first got a taste of Mexico's Rodrigo y Gabriela - or Rod y Gab as they're affectionately known - when the duo's Foc was released. That first jolt of quickly flittering, densely percussive, hard and fast acoustic guitar music from Rodrigo Sánchez and Gabriela Quintero still sounds frenziedly fresh. It's nearly as experimental as their jabbering cover version of Metallica's "Orion" (the pair did meet playing in a thrash band)

MIAMI - Agustin Roman, the first Cuban to be appointed bishop in the United States, has died in Miami. He was 83. The Archdiocese of Miami announced Roman went into cardiac arrest and died last Wednesday. He had suffered from heart disease for several years. Archbishop Thomas Wenski called Roman a "great patriot" to the Cuban nation. Officials say Roman and 132 other priests were expelled from Cuba in 1961. He arrived in Miami, where he became a spiritual leader and advocate first for Cuban exiles and later for many other immigrants, including Haitian refugees.

ON THE CARRETERA CENTRAL, Cuba - "Subanse," climb aboard, I said repeatedly, pulling the right wheels of my eight-seat van off the dangerous two-lane highway that snakes hundreds of miles across an island most Americans consider off limits. Ostensibly, I was in Cuba to cover Pope Benedict XVI's visit. But over the week and across the Ohio-size country, I gave more than five dozen Cubans a botella - in Cuban slang, a ride. My riders gave an unvarnished view of the country.

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.

HAVANA - Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday concluded his first trip to the Spanish-speaking Americas, launched with a condemnation of Marxism and drug-war violence and ending with a forceful plea for "genuine freedom" as he preached from the symbolic heart of Cuba's leftist revolution. Standing under larger-than-life portraits of revolutionary heroes such as Che Guevara, the pope admonished Cuban authorities for not doing enough to allow the public exercise of religious faith. Later, he met with former President Fidel Castro, and the two octogenarians joked about the hardships of being old men. Dressed in a gilded miter and robes of purple in keeping with the Lenten season, Benedict rode the popemobile into the Plaza of the Revolution and celebrated an open-air Mass witnessed by an estimated 300,000 Cubans and other Latin Americans.

HAVANA - Pope Benedict XVI prayed for freedom and renewal "for the greater good of all Cubans" before the nation's patron saint Tuesday, but the island's communist leaders quickly rejected the Roman Catholic leader's appeal for political change after five decades of one-party rule. The exchange came hours ahead of a 55-minute closed-door meeting with President Raul Castro on the pontiff's second day on the island. Brief video feeds showed Castro greeting Benedict at the Presidential Palace and then later seeing him off. There was no visit to see Fidel Castro, though a Vatican spokesman would not rule out the possibility of a meeting before the pope departs Wednesday afternoon.

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.

Orlando R. Barone is a freelance writer in Doylestown A recent study by the Pew Research Center reveals that interracial and interethnic marriages have risen quite a bit in recent years. I'm guessing it's the food. When I was a child, our traditional dinners were a tumultuous festa of antipasto, wedding soup, ravioli (served in a huge dish that only my mother could lift . . . and we had four adult males in the family), braciole . You get the picture. Any course of which would have sufficed as a very complete meal.

Angela Castro, 88, the eldest sister of Cuban revolutionary leaders Fidel and Raul Castro, has died after a long illness, a sister who lives in exile confirmed Wednesday. Ms. Castro was the first of the seven Castro brothers and sisters to die, and her passing served as another reminder of the looming mortality facing the entire clan. Fidel Castro, who stepped down in 2006, is 85; brother Raul, who took his place as president, is 80. Ms. Castro's death was confirmed by Juanita Castro from her home in Miami.