Thousands rally on Calle Ocho - Continuing call to change Cuba's regime

A 12-block-long surge of demonstrators, most of them Cuban Americans, flowed across the heart of Little Havana on Saturday to pump up support for a litany of struggles that stretched from the future of Cuba to the war in Iraq.

With chants of ''Long Live America!'' and ''Long Live A Free Cuba!'' they applauded the Bush administration's tough stance against terrorism and likened Cuba's Fidel Castro to Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

But the sea of red, white and blue flags along Southwest Eighth Street, known more commonly as Calle Ocho, also conveyed one distinct message: that the exile community in Miami has not shifted to a more moderate position in bringing about democratic reform in Cuba, despite recent polls indicating that today's exiles favor a more pragmatic approach.

''All those people going around with their little surveys should take a look at Calle Ocho,'' an animated U.S. Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, R-Miami, said to resounding applause. ``The exile community does not get confused. It does not make mistakes. The ones who are mistaken are those who are trying to discourage us.''

Carlos Saladrigas, chairman of a prominent Cuban-American organization that has commissioned several polls on the exile community, said the rally did not contradict the results of surveys by his group and The Herald.

''To pretend that a march or a demonstration is an indicator of the will of the majority is inaccurate and even demagogy,'' said Saladrigas, chairman of the Cuba Study Group. ``Polls are a statistical analysis with a high degree of accuracy. The polls indicate an overwhelming rejection of Fidel Castro and his regime and an overwhelming support of dissidents on the island. The more subtle change in Cuban Miami reflects different tactics for achieving democratic reform in Cuba.''

Some analysts said the show of support on Calle Ocho also was a display of political power.

''What we're reminded is that what matters in politics is the voters, and these are the voters,'' said Dario Moreno, a political science professor and director of Metropolitan Center, a Florida International University institute that studies the politics, demographics and the economy of South Florida.

Miami police estimated the crowd at 40,000, with marchers lined along Southwest Eighth Street between Fourth and 16th avenues. Organizers were tallying their own crowd estimate Sunday evening but said they believed the figure to be considerably higher.

Díaz-Balart was joined at the demonstration by his brother U.S. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, R-Miami, a freshman in Congress, and U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami.

Saturday's gathering comes as more than 600 exiles prepare to travel to Havana next month to meet with Cuban officials at the ''Nation and Emigration'' conference scheduled to take place April 11-13.

''This rally is a political game,'' said Max Lesnik, a longtime activist who plans to attend the Havana conference. Rally organizers ``are trying to put the brakes on the moderate voices.''

''If this turns into the symbolic voice of Miami, Miami loses,'' Lesnik said. ``It will depict the community, once again, as sectarian, intransigent and out of sync with changing times.''

Said Moreno of FIU: ``This rally shows, first of all, how difficult it is for some of the people who had sponsored the surveys to reflect change in the community, because a survey is sort of the first step in any political campaign. The question is, how do you use the information?

''On big-ticket items, such as the embargo, the three Congress members are right: The exile community hasn't changed,'' Moreno said. ``On issues from travel to humanitarian aid, food sales and support for dissidents, there is a much more varied position than what was reflected at the rally.

''Those who want to change policy, who want to see the community change, have to transfer the opinion polls to the campaign themselves,'' he said. ``The three Congress members who were present at the rally are able to prove their power in the voting booth.''

As Lincoln Díaz-Balart spoke on a stage set up at Southwest Fourth Avenue, a small plane flew overhead with an advertisement banner calling for the freedom of five Cubans convicted by a Miami jury of trying to infiltrate U.S. military bases and Cuban exile groups in South Florida.

Longtime activist Ninoska Pérez Castellón, one of the rally organizers, used the opportunity to take a jab at the Cuban government and illustrate what she called the essence of democracy.

''That plane is paid for by the Cuban government,'' Pérez said as the crowd looked up. ``They are asking for the liberty of five assassins. See, that's the definition of a true democracy. Here, a plane can fly overhead without being shot down.''

One of the five was convicted of murder conspiracy charges in a Cuban MiG attack that killed four Miami pilots in international airspace between Florida and Cuba in 1996.

Even as exiles at the rally maintained that the community remains unchanged in its views, Pérez's prominence on a stage shared by South Florida's three Cuban-American lawmakers was indicative of a transformation in the exile leadership.

Pérez is among those who lead a splinter group known as the Cuban Liberty Council, comprising mostly former board members of the Cuban American National Foundation.

Joe Garcia, executive director of CANF, said there was no disagreement among exiles about maintaining current U.S. policy; the dispute centers on whether democratic reform should be fostered from within the island or from Miami.

Fidel Castro - Cuba

Chávez's Bolivarian Circles in South Florida - 17 around U.S. - Spreading around world *** Circle leaders draw strength from what they say is a growing Bolivarian international network. The U.S. circle members will hold their first national assembly in New York in March, and Chávez representatives from Venezuela plan to attend.

The Venezuelan government also will host an international Bolivarian Circle meeting in April in Caracas. ''There are circles in Bilbao, Madrid, Denmark -- all over the place. It's really neat,'' said Guillermo García Ponce, Chávez advisory committee coordinator, in an interview with The Herald in Caracas. He acknowledged that South Florida has become an anti-Chávez stronghold. ''I suppose [the Miami circle] will have to keep a low profile,'' García said.

Anti-Chávez activists say they do not oppose the presence of a Bolivarian Circle in Miami as long as it doesn't instigate the violence they allege the circles have caused in Venezuela -- a claim Soto and others deny. ''The government has allowed the Bolivarian Circles to attack the newspapers, attack the reporters,'' said Raúl Leoni, a Venezuelan opposition leader who lives in Weston. ``The fact that you win an election doesn't make you eternal if you're not doing your job correctly.''

……………..The Bolivarian Circles -- along with Chávez's controversial 1999 ''Bolivarian constitution'' -- are part of his overarching ``Bolivarian Revolution.'' Some 70,000 circles exist in Venezuela, made up largely of the working class. Typically, they meet weekly and engage in humanitarian projects such as providing food for the poor -- with military financing -- and building schools. Critics compare the circles to Fidel Castro's Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.***

Authorities investigate terror link - Venezuelan al-Qaida operative***Latin America's loose borders, weak legal systems and poor regional cooperation have long allowed some areas to become minor havens for activities linked to international terrorism.

Venezuela's Margarita Island, a tourist destination with a large Arab population, has been identified as a source of funding and site of money laundering for the Hezbollah and Hamas militant groups.

Investigators say Rahaman has ties to the region where the borders of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil meet. Local Arab traders there are accused of sending millions back to Hamas and Hezbollah. U.S., Argentine and Israeli authorities believe the area was the launching site for bombing attacks in Buenos Aires, Argentina, against the Israeli Embassy in 1992 and a Jewish community center in 1994 that left 86 dead.

Brazilian federal police also said recently that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged al-Qaida chief of operations and Sept. 11 mastermind who was arrested earlier this month in Pakistan, visited the triple-border region at least twice in the 1990s.

And in 1999, police captured an Egyptian terror suspect affiliated with al-Qaida who established himself at the triple border in order to set up a network there, according to Argentine intelligence documents.

Rahaman had phone contact and other ties with suspected extremists in the triple border region, a U.S. official said in an interview. It is not clear whether Rahaman traveled to the area, the U.S. official said.

Investigators in Europe and Venezuela have not yet determined what Rahaman's target might have been, the U.S. official said.

But if he turns out to have been part of an al-Qaida operation, it would mark the first time the group has tried to launch an attack from Latin America, raising fears of a new front in the U.S. government's war on terror just hours from Miami. U.S. law enforcement officials are monitoring the case, but have not opened an official investigation.

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert who heads the Washington office for Rand Corporation, noted that al-Qaida's Web site was paid for from a Caracas-based bank account for a brief period last year.

Al-Qaida "may see Latin America as an area where nobody is looking for them," Hoffman said. "They see breathing space and room to maneuver."***

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