Miami News Blog

Pánfilo is back.

A Cuban with a major drinking problem, Pánfilo stumbled onto a video interview with a Cuban rapper earlier this year and became an overnight sensation, logging nearly 750,000 hits on YouTube and becoming a hot topic of debate across Miami's Cuban community.

In his latest video appearance -- aired Wednesday night on Channel 41's Cuban talk show A Mano Limpia -- Pánfilo launches into a drunken rant, calling Raul Castro ("Raulita") a "faggot" and saying he "shits on Fidel's mother." He also says he'll leave Cuba in a bucket if he has to.

When Miami sports agent Juan Ignacio Hernandez Nodar, 51, flew into Miami Friday after spending 13 years in a Cuban jail, he felt a bit like Rip Van Winkle. The small children he had left behind were all grown up and Miami had sprouted a new skyline.

Hernandez, who tried to help Orlando "El Duque Hernandez" and other baseball stars defect from the Communist island, served "every last day" of his 15 year-sentence. (A Cuban jail-year is 10 months long.) And he believes what he did was right.

"What we did we did it with the best knowledge that we were doing good for people," Hernandez Nodar said shortly after arriving on a Taca flight from Cuba.

It's a measure of the new exile tolerance that a heralded band from Cuba is headed for Miami, and -- at least so far -- no one is talking about protests, pain or politics.
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The Septeto Nacional made its last U.S. appearance at the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago, where it won a Gold Medal by spreading the Afro-Cuban music made popular in the 1930s called "son." That was long before the Buena Vista Social Club, which Ry Cooder made  famous.

Now, they're not only going back to the Windy City, but they plan an unexpected stop in Miami, New Times has learned.

The legendary group -- composed of the fourth generation of musicians who've kept the music of its prolific founder and composer Ignacio Piñeiro alive -- will play two shows at Hoy Como Ayer, a cafe night club on SW 8th Street and 22nd Ave., Saturday, November 21.

"They've never received the recognition they deserve," said Fabio Diaz, one of the nightclub's owners.

1959 Buick for sale on Revolico.

​So you had your heart set on that 1959 Buick advertised on Revolico and forgot to write the contact number down? You might have blown your chance.

Reuters is reporting that the popular Cuban version of Craigslist -- which boasts 1.5 million page views a month -- is being blocked. It's unclear whether the government is redirecting the requests to Google.

The state-run monopoly, ETECSA -- a joint venture with Telecom Italia -- controls the Internet on the Communist-run island.

At least one computer nerd has circulated an email with instructions on how to bypass the content filter, which is reportedly being used by 40 countries to block everything from dissident blogs to kiddie porn.

​For the first time in its 15-year history, the National Circle of Journalists from Cuba did not give out an award recognizing a heroic colleague on the mainland when they commemorated Cuban Journalist Day on October 25.

It wasn't that reporters on the island were no longer risking arrest by stealthily passing information to a foreign correspondent. Or that there weren't still those posting anonymous blogs on the tightly State-controlled Internet. Or even that mimeographed dispatches were no longer being surreptitiously distributed.

The problem, group leaders say, was that the circle couldn't contact any of the candidates to inform them they would be winning an award that could place them "at great risk."

"There is a repressive wave in Cuba that has risen," says Jose R. Carreño, the group's president and a former political prisoner under the Castro regime. "We tried to make contact through various means."

Robert Kelly certainly has the tricks of the spy trade down pat.

​He talks in mysterious acronyms, like "NOC" -- which stands for "no official cover." He refuses to have his photo taken. He talks about elaborate take-downs and ruses straight out of a Burn Notice plot.

Getting the full truth is much harder. But as tough as it is to verify, Kelly's story is fascinating.

Kelly first approached me over the summer, with a great hook: A white American without a lick of Spanish, Kelly says he infiltrated Castro's spy service, known as the Intelligence Directorate or DI, and spied on a range of Miami's exile community -- including Rep. Illeana Ros-Lehtinen -- for the dictator.

And Kelly says that, in reality, he was working as a double agent for the FBI the whole time.

Verifying Kelly's tale is much, much trickier, which is why I never ended up writing a story about his claims. But now Kelly is appearing on MegaTV, the Spanish language Channel 22, to tell his tale. (His first segment, an interview with Maria Elvira Salazar, aired last night at 8 p.m.).

In light of Kelly's local TV interviews, I think it's worth revisiting what he told me. Click through for the whole story.

Photo via Patriagrande.net

​Today marks the 50th anniversary of the mysterious disappearance of Camilo Cienfuegos, a Cuban revolutionary who combined the bohemian aura and looks of Jim Morrison (a full decade earlier) with the flowing, catlike moves of Bruce Lee. (He was said to kill the enemy and catch his rifle before it had time to hit the ground.)

Cienfuegos was so popular that when his death on October 28, 1959, was announced, the Cuban people flocked to the shore and tossed flowers into the sea that had swallowed his Cessna 310 during a night flight from Camagüey to Havana.

On Wednesday, the ritual will continue as schoolchildren toss flowers into the ocean and rivers. It will all be capped with the unveiling of a 16-ton steel sculpture as tall and as heavy as the likeness of Che it will accompany.

In Miami, exiles will continue to point the finger at Fidel. They contend he not only quietly pushed Che out of the country, but also had Camilo, who was said to be more popular than El Comandante, killed.

Here at Riptide, we've had a lot of fun lately with recently declassified CIA documents.

via Wikimedia Commons

Who is on that grassy knoll?

​Last week, the spooks gave us files from the 60s that proved Luis Posada Carriles -- Miami's most famous terrorist still walking the streets today -- used to snitch for the agency back in the day.

Even more shockingly, the CIA's new files showed that Jorge Mas Canosa -- the founder of the Cuban American National Foundation so revered in Miami that we renamed Biscayne Boulevard after him and gave him a middle school -- sponsored Carriles and other terrorists and plotted to blow up Cuban ships off the coast of Mexico.

So it's with great regret that we read a new report in the New York Times today about some files the boys in Langley won't give out.

Apparently, the agency is refusing to release hundreds of pages of field reports about a former Miami station chief named George E. Joannides, whose job was to run the hundreds of anti-Castro agents living in the Magic City.

Why should you care? Only because Mr. Joannides and his merry band of anti-Fidelistos are smack in the middle of every JFK assassination conspiracy theory on the planet.

via Wiki Commons

​TeleCuba, a small Miami firm, says it has won permission from the Treasury Department to lay the first fiber-optic cable between Miami and Cuba. The announcement comes after the Obama administration eased some restrictions on telecom links to Cuba in April.

The line could make calling from Miami to Cuba a lot cheaper, as well as spread Internet access to the Cuban people, but the Communist government will have the final say about that.

The Cuban government places tight restrictions on Internet access. Only government employees, academics, and researchers are allowed to have their own accounts, but even then, many sites are blocked.

However, a small number of dissident bloggers, such as Yoani Sanchez, have been able to work around the rules to communicate with the outside world. New Times' feature story two weeks ago chronicled Revolico, a Craigslist-like website, that brings Cuba's capitalist black market online.

TeleCuba expects the line to be operational by mid-2011.

Without any fear of being sued or hit with a massive boycott, we're going to say it right up front, in plain English: Jorge Mas Canosa sponsored terrorism.

via wallyg's flickr

A monument to Jorge Mas Canosa.

​Boom. Feels good, right?

For years, the press quaked in fear of criticizing the most powerful exile in America, the founder of the Cuban American National Foundation and a lobbyist with the ear of many a president. And for good reason.

Canosa sued the crap out of the New Republic in 1994 for calling him a "mobster" and won $100,000 and an apology. A few years ealier, he had led a crippling boycott of the Herald, inspiring the less tactful in Little Havana to set newspaper boxes on fire or to soak them in urine.

Now, courtesy some vintage CIA reports declassified yesterday by the National Security Archive, it's clear that Canosa did a lot more than lobby against Fidel Castro.

According to the papers, (which you can read here), he personally gave $5,000 to famed terrorist Luis Posada Carriles (who doesn't look too good himself in the new documents) to blow up Cuban and Soviet vessels off of Veracruz, Mexico. From the 1965 report:

Jorge Mas Canosa ... had proposed to a demolition expert that he travel to Spain, Mexico and other Latin American countries ... and place bombs in Communist instillations ... As of June 28, Mas Canosa had in his possession 125 pounds of pentolite (an explosive) which had been purchased at $3 per pound.

He had approached Ramon Escarda Rubio and another Cuban, frogmen acquainted with demolition gear, to place charges on the vessel. The plan calls for three small charges to be placed close to the midships centerline on the underwater hull. If the charges go off as planned, a 14-foot hole will be blown in the ship's bottom.

via Revolico

This hot little number didn't even make our list. But you could buy it from Maykel for about $7,000.

​In this week's feature story, you can read all about Revolico. The website -- a Craigslist for Cuba -- is changing the way Cubans do business in the Caribbean communist stronghold by bringing the nation's rampant black market online for the world to see.

Cuba's socialist constitution forbids pretty much all private enterprise, but you can find anything and everything for sale on Revolico: computers, DVDs, diapers, Chinese lessons, massages, bikes, tennis shoes. It's a capitalist Valhalla and an obvious crack in Fidel Castro's grip.

It's also a great place to see some ridiculous rides. In Cuba, with a few exceptions, only cars made before 1960 are allowed. The island is choked with barely running "Yank tanks" -- and a bunch are for sale on Revolico.

Riptide has combed through Revolico for the sweetest of the sweet cars for sale. Click through for our Top 10.