-Caveat Lector- >From Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald Saturday, December 26, 1998 HEMINGWAY'S INSPIRATION He was so kind, says old man of the sea By HERDIS LUEKE in Havana Few people knew the author Ernest Hemingway as well as Gregorio Fuentes, the man who inspired the humble, weather-beaten Santiago in the novel The Old Man and The Sea. Gregorio was no longer a young man in 1951 when Hemingway wrote his masterful story of courage and resilience, the culmination of a lifetime of writing that earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature three years later. Today Gregorio is 101 and a legend, just like Hemingway, the only United States citizen to be revered as a national hero in communist Cuba. Visitors still flock to see Gregorio at the Terrace Cafe in his home village of Cojimar near the capital, Havana, and most of them want to know the same thing. What was Hemingway really like? "He was so human and so kind, I miss him a lot," said Don Gregorio, puffing on a thick Havana cigar and gazing out over the ocean. For 30 years Gregorio was "el Capitan", skipper of the Pilar, the boat that took the American writer on countless deep-sea fishing expeditions from Cojimar. The pair caught marlin together and developed a close friendship. Before he met Hemingway, Gregorio had captained merchant vessels around the world. He is descended from an old Canary Islands family, people renowned for their rude health. Gregorio was returning to Cuba from the United States one day when he came across two vessels in distress. "One of them was Hemingway's yacht," said the old man. Gregorio rescued the passionate deep sea fisherman and the American showed his gratitude by making the Cuban skipper of his new yacht, the Pilar, which he sailed to the island in 1934. Today the vessel stands in the garden of the Finca Vigia, Hemingway's old home, now a museum south of Havana. "Pilar is the name of the patron saint of the Canary Islands but also the Spanish word for pillar or column. My grandpa was the pillar of the Pilar," Gregorio's grandson and constant companion, Rafael Fuentes, said proudly. "They did such a lot together, they were inseparable. During World War II they fitted the yacht with cannon and patrolled Cuban waters in search of German submarines," Rafael said. Both men can consider themselves lucky they never found the enemy. Gregorio is still upset that he was unable to prevent Hemingway's suicide in 1961 a year after he had left his home in Cuba. On Hemingway's birthday, Gregorio strolls down to the jetty and recalls the happy days with his friend. He was bequeathed the author's yacht, but like a true revolutionary he donated it to the Cuban people and it went on display. The Marina Hemingway in Havana is still the venue for the annual Hemingway Cup, an international swordfish-catching contest, and every year Gregorio Fuentes is on hand. He signs the winners' certificates, said Rafael. "He's very alert and people are always asking his advice. He only needs to look at the sea and the clouds to tell if it's a good day for fishing." - Deutsche Presse Agentur ~~~~~~~~~~~~ >From Reuters Friday December 25 12:54 PM ET Cubans Savor Restored Christmas Day Holiday By Pascal Fletcher HAVANA (Reuters) - Some went to Christmas Mass. Others just spent a lazy day with family and friends. But all Cubans savored their first real Christmas Day holiday in nearly three decades Friday, taking a welcome break from the day-to-day grind of working and making a living. >From midnight Thursday, Catholic and other Christian churches opened their doors to celebrate Christmas Eve and later Christmas Day masses, drawing solid, although not massive, congregations and quite a few curious onlookers. ``This isn't just a December 25 holiday, this is the feast of Christmas,'' Cardinal Jaime Ortega told a crowd of several hundred, local people mingling with foreign tourists, who filled Havana's San Cristobal Cathedral for a midnight mass. ``You must go out and wish people, your neighbors on the streets, 'Happy Christmas','' he added. In a gesture widely seen as a sign of increased official tolerance toward religion, Cuba's communist government this month restored Christmas Day to the national holiday calendar. It had been abolished by the authorities nearly 30 years ago to concentrate national efforts on the strategic sugar harvest. Cuba's staid Communist Party newspaper Granma completely ignored the restored holiday Friday. Its front page hailed the rapid growth of the island's tourist sector and carried the headline ``Communist Youth celebrates 40 Januaries'' in reference to the upcoming 40th anniversary of Cuba's 1959 Revolution. But families across the Caribbean island took advantage of the restored holiday to revive the old tradition of the Christmas Eve meal, usually pork, rice, beans and vegetables. ``On other occasions, we'd just sit down and watch television. But this year we had a real family meal. We roasted a piece of pork that my daughter-in-law's family sent from Ciego de Avila province,'' said Lissete Medina, a housewife. ``We got into the spirit of things,'' she said. Havana's streets were generally quiet on Christmas Eve, although isolated groups of young revelers could be seen, some swigging cheap rum. A number of homes displayed Christmas trees and lights, winking and peeking shyly out behind windows. In his midnight mass homily, Cardinal Ortega said many Cubans were only just starting to rediscover Christmas. ``It's like a strange feeling...it's been so many years,'' he said. Repeating a theme that the Cuban Catholic Church has stressed over the last few days, Ortega urged citizens to seek the true spiritual meaning of Christmas, as a celebration of peace and love associated with the birth of Jesus Christ. But the priest saying midnight mass at the Jesus de Miramar church in Havana's elegant Miramar district was forced to appeal for silence several times as rowdy groups of youths, some apparently drunk, threatened to disrupt his service. One apparently inebriated man knocked over a table carrying the offering for the mass. He was hustled out. Police cars were later seen at the church, although no arrests were reported. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ >From Reuters Thursday December 24 12:05 AM ET U.S. Expels Three Cuban Diplomats For Spying <Picture: Reuters Photo> Reuters Photo By Anthony Boadle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States Wednesday ordered three Cuban diplomats at the United Nations to leave the country for allegedly running a spy ring in Florida, U.S. officials said. The three diplomats were given until next week to pack their bags after the Federal Bureau of Investigations found they were connected to a network of Cuban spies uncovered in Florida, the officials said. ``It is safe to assume that one or more of these diplomats in New York were case officers, paymasters or couriers,'' an official in Washington told Reuters. There is no known precedent of a Cuban spy network being dismantled in the United States. The unexpected throw-back to the Cold War started when 10 people were arrested in Florida on Sept. 13 and accused of spying on U.S. military bases and Cuban exile groups for Cuba's Communist government. It was the largest known round-up of agents from Havana since President Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution turned relations with Washington hostile. State Department spokesman James Rubin said the three Cuban diplomats were told to depart ``for activities incompatible with their status as members of the U.N. mission.'' ``This action was taken as a result of evidence developed during an exhaustive investigation by the FBI,'' he said. Two other Cuban U.N. diplomats implicated by the probe had already left the country since September, Rubin said. ``We cannot accept violations of U.S. laws and endangerment of our national security interests,'' Rubin said. In Havana, Cuban Foreign Ministry officials said they were aware of the U.S. expulsions but had no immediate comment. Cuba's tightly-controlled state media carried no immediate reports on the ordering out of the Cuban diplomats, so most Cubans were unaware of the news. A U.S. diplomatic source in New York said the three Cuban diplomats were given until Monday to leave the United States. The source identified the diplomats as Eduardo Martinez Borbonet, a first secretary; Roberto Azanza Paez, a third secretary; and Gonzalo Fernandez Garay, an attach De. The U.S. source in New York said a note was sent to the Cuban U.N. mission Monday giving it 24 hours to respond. No reply was received and a second U.S. note was sent early Wednesday giving the Cubans until Monday to leave. The 10 people -- including two married couples -- awaiting trial in Florida were accused of gathering information on U.S. military installations for Havana and trying to infiltrate anti-Castro exile groups. On the surface, the eight men and two women led ordinary working lives in south Florida's large Hispanic community. But U.S. officials in Miami said the group had tried to infiltrate Southcom, the United State's military headquarters in Miami for the southern hemisphere, and had planted an agent at the U.S. Navy's Boca Chica Naval Air Base in Key West. Two Cuban-American politicians said they hoped the actions signaled the start of a U.S. counterattack against Havana. Republican U.S. Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen also took a swipe at the Clinton administration, which they accuse of not being tough enough in its policy toward Cuban leader Fidel Castro's communist government. ``We are optimistic we have not seen the last of these arrests or expulsions,'' Ros-Lehtinen told a news conference. ``The evidence is overwhelming, and it was high time the administration finally stopped looking the other way, which is what they've been doing for years, and start really looking into this information,'' she said. The Pentagon said earlier this year, before the arrests, that it no longer considered Cuba a military threat. U.S. officials say several alleged agents had joined Cuban exile groups posing as dissidents. One piloted a boat toward Cuban waters in a protest flotilla organized by the Miami-based Democracy Movement, while another was a member of Brothers to the Rescue, the exile group at the center of an international furor in February 1996 after Cuban MiGs shot down two of its planes, killing four people. The 10 were charged with acting as agents of the Cuban government, conspiring to defraud the U.S. government and conspiring to gather and deliver defense information to aid a foreign government. If found guilty, they would face life imprisonment and fines of up to $750,000. The last time a Cuban diplomat was expelled was in 1995, when three members of the mission were expelled for fighting with anti-Castro protesters in New York. One Cuban was expelled in 1992 for actions incompatible with his diplomatic status. ``We hope there will not be tit-for-tat expulsions,'' a State Department official said. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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