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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald 5wx6w
Network to spotlight Cuban culture
in English
Cubana One network will air everything
from baseball to cooking shows.
By Christina Hoag, [emailprotected].
Posted on Mon, Oct. 27, 2003
A Cuban exile and a former Detroit television
executive are planning to launch a cable
channel that would exclusively air programming
about Cuba in English.
Called Cubana One Network, the Naples-based
company is currently meeting with cable
providers across Florida to sign up the
channel on their digital tier.
So far, three contracts are pending with
systems in Southwest Florida and more meetings
are scheduled, said Kevin Adell, president
of Cubana One, a nonprofit organization
he formed three months ago after moving
to Naples. Bright House Networks in Tampa,
Time Warner in Cape Coral and Comcast in
Naples are all considering the channel.
Adell's partner is Pedro Prado, a former
hotel executive who now runs his own hospitality
consulting firm in Naples and is a member
of the Cuban American National Foundation's
board of directors.
''As soon as we get a contract signed,
we can launch in about 45 days,'' said Adell,
who founded The Word Network, a Christian
cable channel aimed principally at a black
urban audience, and ran a television station,
both in the Detroit area. He moved to Florida
after a U.S. bankruptcy judge entered a
$6.4 million judgement against him in Michigan.
''The uplink studio is already in place,
the funding is already in place. I'm building
the platform and letting Cuban Americans
program it,'' said Adell, the primary investor.
''It's a great idea,'' said Joe Garcia,
executive director of the Cuban American
National Foundation. "The diaspora
is so widespread and we make a lot of news.
Putting it on satellite really gets it out.''
Approximately 2 million Cuban Americans
live in the United States, with the heaviest
concentration in South Florida. About a
million Cubans live elsewhere outside the
island, mostly in Latin America.
Adell said the idea hit him after moving
to Naples. ''I was watching programs in
Spanish and I realized there wasn't much
programming for this huge Cuban population
in Florida,'' he said. "A friend introduced
me to Pedro.''
Prado, who left Cuba in 1962 as part of
the Pedro Pan program that sent unaccompanied
children to the United States to escape
the Cuban revolution, was enchanted by the
concept. ''I have three daughters and six
grandchildren. They speak English and don't
know anything about Cuba. This is a way
to teach the new generations about their
heritage,'' he said.
Cubana One can also serve to teach other
communities about Cuba, Garcia said: "Cuban
culture right now is very in vogue.''
After teaming up, Prado and Adell found
that ''thousands of hours'' of programming
about Cuba and Cubans is available -- everything
from documentaries about cigar-making by
exiles in Ybor City and vintage cars in
Havana to biographies about personalities
such as the late salsa queen Celia Cruz.
''We can even pull down Cuban baseball
games on satellite from Europe,'' Adell
said. Prado added that the channel will
not do any business directly with the island.
Cubana One, which will employ about 30
people, also plans to produce its own shows,
such as Cuban cooking and news programs.
The channel's business model will be based
on PBS-style sponsorships, instead of commercial
advertising, Adell said. ''It's a soft-sell
approach,'' he said.
Prado said Cubana One will not be used
for overt political purposes. ''We are going
to celebrate Cuban culture and heritage
but also promote freedom,'' he said. "We
can state the facts so people can make their
own judgement.''
As an example, he cited TV Mart's
offer of footage of political prisoners
in Cuba. ''That's a fact -- people are incarcerated
because they don't think like the government,''
Prado said. "But we're not going to
promote any group against Cuba.''
Adell said his legal problems in Michigan
would not affect his new venture. ''That's
pending litigation and I won't comment on
it,'' he said. "It's personal. It has
nothing to do with this.''
PENDING TROUBLES
Last month a U.S. bankruptcy court judge
in Michigan ordered Adell to sell his $2.8
million Naples home in order to pay off
a $6.4 million judgement entered against
him in April.
The judgement resulted from an involuntary
bankruptcy lawsuit that Adell had filed
in 2002 against a luxury-home builder, John
Richards Homes, after a dispute over the
$3.1 million home the company was building
for him in a suburb of Detroit.
A judge dismissed Adell's suit, ruling
it was groundless and had been filed in
bad faith, and ordered Adell to pay damages
to John Richards Homes, which says the lawsuit
has wrecked its business.
To avoid paying the judgement, Adell took
advantage of Florida's liberal bankruptcy
laws, which hold that primary residences
cannot be seized to pay creditors, John
Richards Homes stated.
LOCAL LOOPHOLE
Immediately following the judgement, Adell
cashed $1.7 million worth of U.S. Treasury
bills, sold 10 luxury and vintage automobiles
for $536,000, withdrew $300,000 from a bank
, and borrowed $300,000 from his
father in order to buy the waterfront mansion
in Naples with cash, according to a source
close to the case.
Although Florida law protects the homeowner
in such cases, Eastern Michigan Chief Bankruptcy
Court Judge Steven W. Rhodes ruled Sept.
17 that federal bankruptcy law supersedes
state law and that he ''simply cannot find
that Adell had the actual intention to permanently
live in Florida.'' Rhodes ordered Adell
to sell the Naples home. Adell is appealing
the ruling.
Florida's lenient bankruptcy laws have
attracted many high-profile millionaire
debtors over the years.
Actor Burt Reynolds owed $10 million to
creditors in 1996 but continued to reside
at a $2.5 million estate in Hobe Sound;
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie
Kuhn kept his $1 million home in Ponte Vedra
Beach despite the failure of his New Jersey
law firm in 1990, and corporate raider Paul
Bilzerian hung on to his 10-bedroom mansion
despite twice filing for bankruptcy protection
after a conviction for securities fraud.
Federal legislators and legal appeals have
tried several times to curtail the Homestead
Law's liberal provisions, but have failed.
Despite his legal problems, Adell is upbeat
about the new Cubana One venture. ''We've
gotten a lot of for it,'' he said.
"People realize the potential for this
market.''
Havana praises U.S. vote against Cuba
travel ban
Cuban officials said they know President
Bush will veto easing of the travel ban
to Cuba, but they're sure most Americans
such a change.
By Nancy San Martin, [emailprotected].
Posted on Sat, Oct. 25, 2003
CONGRESS
Cuban officials Friday said the U.S. Senate
vote on easing the ban on travel to Cuba
confirmed that most Americans want to improve
relations with Havana but acknowledged the
initiative may be blocked short of becoming
law.
''It's new proof that both [Congress] chambers
are in favor of a political change, just
like the majority of North American society,''
Foreign Minister Felipe Prez Roque
was quoted as saying by the Spanish EFE
news agency.
But Roque acknowledged that President Bush
has threatened to veto the measure if it
is approved by the full Congress. The president,
in fact, recently vowed to tighten the restrictions
on travel to the island.
'CORRUPT MINORITY'
''I don't know what new trick President
Bush will use to avoid [change],'' Roque
said. "I guess he could veto, ignoring
the public opinion of his country to favor
groups from the small and corrupt minority
in Miami.''
National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcn
said that while the measure approved by
the Senate Thursday likely will not survive,
"either way, events like this . . .
[are] indicative of the will of the majority
of North American legislators in the case
of Cuba.''
Alarcn added that Bush was being
pressured ''from the bottom'' by the growing
demands for an end to Washington's ''hostile
and war-like politics'' toward Cuba, EFE
reported.
The Communist Party newspaper Granma did
not mention the Senate vote in its editions
Friday. Several similar measures have been
approved by the Senate and House, but GOP
leaders always blocked approval.
MIAMI REACTION
In Miami, Spanish-language talk radio shows
barely mentioned the Senate vote. Cuban-American
groups opposed to any easing of U.S. sanctions
expressed confidence that Bush would veto
the measure while those that an
easing of restrictions praised the Senate
vote.
''The Senate has taken the side of both
Cubans and Americans who overwhelmingly
an end to travel restrictions,''
Ricardo Gonzalez, president of the Cuban
Committee for Democracy, said in a written
statement.
The U.S. House last month also voted to
ease travel restrictions as part of its
version of a $90 billion bill to fund the
U.S. Transportation and Treasury department
programs. House and Senate leaders must
still work out differences between their
two bills.
The Treasury Department estimates that
about 160,000 Americans, half of them Cuban-Americans
visiting family , traveled to Cuba
legally last year.
Deconstructing a famous uncle and his
life in Cuba
By Curtis Morgan, [emailprotected].
Posted on Sun, Oct. 26, 2003
Hilary Hemingway will appear at 5 p.m.
Nov. 8 in Room 1101 with Alfredo J. Estrada.
When Hilary Hemingway was growing up in
Miami Beach, famous uncle Ernest might as
well have been one of his own fictional
heroes.
The author, who killed himself just before
she was born, existed only in photos --
the burly man with big fish, big game, beautiful
women -- and words, of course, countless
words. There were his own in the novels
and the stories and the letters, and the
tales told by family and her father, Leicester,
Ernest's younger brother.
Now, at 42 with her second book on the
writer, Hemingway in Cuba (Rugged Land Books,
$34.95), she finds herself seeing the man
beneath the iconic cloak.
''I have begun to actually understand who
my uncle was as opposed to just my father's
brother,'' says Hemingway, a writer, television
producer and documentary filmmaker who lives
in Cape Coral. "It was sort of a self
discovery of who this guy was and why everyone
makes such a fuss over him.''
In Hemingway in Cuba, she makes it easy
to understand the fuss. Uncle Ernest led
a life every bit as rich as his own fiction.
The book, written with scholar Carlene Brennen,
covers Hemingway's adventures and misadventures
in a place he lived and loved for 20 years,
a period of personal and professional tumult.
Hemingway went through wives and girlfriends.
He saw his reputation erode with critics
over the aging man-younger woman romance
of Across the River and Into The Trees then
rescued by his last great work, The Old
Man and The Sea.
''He needed the equivalent of that huge
marlin to be a hero again in the literary
world,'' Hilary Hemingway said.
The book is largely a collection of scenes
focusing on revealing encounters or relationships:
Hemingway chases marlin or Nazi subs on
his beloved Pilar, punches out a loud-mouth
drunk or falls into the arms of a flirtatious
young beauty named Jane Mason, who just
happened to be married to somebody else.
"As he jotted down his thoughts, Papa
heard a tapping on his bedroom window, light
as the pecking of a bird, but curiously
rhythmic. He went over to the tall, shuttered
window and pulled it open. He saw a pink
scarf and a flutter of blond hair as Jane
Mason smiled and bent down.''
Drawn from family tales and letters, the
book has an intimate feel accented by 150
sepia-toned photos. Throughout these vignettes,
Hilary Hemingway sprinkles similar ages
from his novels, and it's fascinating to
see how experience replayed in fiction --
sometimes closely, sometimes cruelly or
tenderly tweaked.
''You may not be able to do this with all
authors,'' she said. "He pulls so much
from his real life to the point where it
was almost embarrassing to the people who
were hanging out with him.''
Hemingway in Cuba also explores Finca Vigia,
Ernest's home in Cuba the government there
has recently opened, includes Castro's take
on the author, and concludes with a contemporary
tour of the Cuban countryside.
For Hilary Hemingway, her family has been
a rich source of material. She won state
and national writing awards in the 1980s
for a never-produced screenplay called A
Light Within the Shadow, about her father's
struggles to write in the shadow of his
older brother. Leicester committed suicide
in the family's Miami Beach home in 1982
after a struggle with diabetes, a bad heart
and other infirmities.
Along with writing skill, Hilary Hemingway
also inherited the adventurous spirit of
her uncle and father, who at 19 built a
boat and sailed across the Gulf of Mexico
to Cuba. At 14, she took a small Boston
Whaler from Miami Beach to Key West, then
wrote about it for The Herald. She later
earned a marine mechanic's certificate on
orders from her dad, who said if she were
going to own boats, she ought to know how
to fix them.
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