keysnews.com Citizen Staff Report ROB O'NEAL/The Citizen

Key West Cuba Heritage Institute president John Cabanas addresses a crowd of more than 100 participants in the celebration of Jose Marti's 150th birthday at Bayview Park Tuesday afternoon.

KEY WEST -- Jose Marti, whose birthday was 150 years ago Tuesday, was remembered during a ceremony at Bayview Park Tuesday with Cubans and Americans alike gathering at the corner of Virginia Street and Jose Marti Drive.

Born in Havana in 1853, Marti spent his life fighting for the freedom of Cubans and other Latin American countries as well. He was deported to Spain in 1871 for speaking out against the colonial rule of the Spanish and lived in New York City, Mexico City, and Venezuela before returning to Cuba for his final fight for Cuba's freedom.

Marti proclaimed the formation of the Partido Revolucinario Cubano from the balcony of the San Carlos in 1892, unifying the pro-independence factions in exile.

His vast experience and education served him well and his words, to this day, mean much to people on both sides of the Florida Straits. The Marti monument at Bayview park was built in Cuba and donated to the city of Key West in 1936 in honor of the nine times the political activist, poet, journalist and teacher visited Key West.

Cubans immigrating to Key West at the time brought with them their tobacco rolling skills, making Key West the richest city in the United States per capita. The money was used to fuel the revolution against Spain with Marti as a founding member of the Cuban Revolutionary Party.

One of Marti's most famous poems was put to music and given the name "Guantanamera," with the underlying theme being that of peace and beauty. Marti was killed by Spanish troops in Dos Rios in the province of Granma, Cuba, on May 19, 1895.

www.canoe.ca, January 31, 2003 By TODD NOGIER, BUSINESS EDITOR

 Two more of Canada's largest oil companies reported massive increases in profits, boosted by sky-high oil and gas prices at the end of 2002.

Petro-Canada said yesterday its fourth- quarter earnings soared 440% over the same quarter last year to $356 million while Shell Canada's profits jumped 45% to $247 million.

They are the latest oil firms to enjoy the bonanza in the oilpatch which has seen the country's four largest integrated companies -- which produce, refine then sell petroleum products -- rake in a total of $1.3 billion in profits in the final three months of 2002.

The fourth quarter capped off what Petro-Canada's CEO Ron Brenneman called "a water-shed" year for the Calgary-based company, which earned $974 million last year.

"We were really firing on all cylinders," Brenneman told analysts after releasing the sterling quarterly report.

Shell Canada also saw a big rise in profits on the quarter and on the year earnings hit $561 million.

"Good operational performance, following an extensive second-quarter maintenance schedule, allowed us to benefit from improved commodity prices and refining margins in the second half," said CEO Tim Faithfull.

The industry is riding a wave of strong oil prices which have jumped more than 30% in the last three months on fears world supplies could plummet due to the combination of an workers' strike in Venezuela and war in the Middle East.

Canadian natural gas prices surged more than 60% at the end of 2002 as cold weather in key regions of the U.S. sent demand skyrocketing.

Husky Energy, the only remaining major integrated in the country yet to divulge its fourth- quarter earnings picture, is set to report Feb. 6.

While the fourth-quarter gusher may look good on the balance sheet, most experts predict lower prices ahead after the Iraqi and Venezuelan situations subside.

"Whenever oil and gas prices are as high as they are today, the balance of probabilities is that they're going to be lower," said Gord Currie, an analyst with Canaccord Capital.

"I think it's just a question of time -- is it the second quarter or a year from now, we don't know. But it would be very difficult for 2003 to measure up."

But in the case of Petro-Canada and Shell, both can look forward to a big year.

Petro-Canada is enjoying a strong production increase from Veba Oil & Gas, which it purchased last year for $3.2 billion, good performance at its East Coast operations and improving retail sales.

Shell will reap the 155,000 barrel-a-day production from its marquee Athabasca oilsands project which started operations in December and will hit its peak later this year.

PETRO-CANADA

• Fourth quarter 2002 profit: $356 million.
• Fourth quarter 2001 profit: $66 million. ESSO
• Fourth quarter 2002 profit: $454 million.
• Fourth quarter 2001 profit: $194 million. SHELL
• Fourth quarter 2002 profit: $247 million.
• Fourth quarter 2001 profit: $170 million. SUNCOR
• Fourth quarter 2002 profit: $258 million.
• Fourth quarter 2001 profit: $26 million. HUSKY
• Fourth quarter 2002 profit:TBA Feb. 6.
• Fourth quarter 2001 profit: $49 million.

www.heraldtribune.com By ALEXANDRA OLSON Associated Press Writer

Diplomats from the United States and five other countries met with President Hugo Chavez and opposition leaders Friday, seeking a deal for early elections and an end to a two-month strike.

With indications the strike was dying down, opponents were hoping international pressure on Chavez to negotiate would help revive their drive for early balloting.

But Foreign Minister Roy Chaderton said the government had no intention of pledging to end Chavez's term early.

"The government has no interest in doing away with itself," Chaderton said Friday.

To demonstrate that discontent with Chavez continues, tens of thousands of opponents protested government investigations into three independent television stations accused of supporting the strike.

Envoys from the United States, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Portugal and Spain made no comments after meeting with Chavez and strike leaders. Later Friday, they were to attend negotiations sponsored by the Organization of American States.

The diplomatic group is urging both sides to accept one of two proposals made by former Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter.

One is to hold a recall referendum on Chavez's rule halfway through his six-year term, or August. Venezuela's constitution allows opponents to petition for such a vote by gathering signatures from 20 percent, or 2.4 million, of the country's 12 million registered voters.

The other - favored by Chavez opponents - calls for ending the strike in exchange for a government pledge to push through quickly a constitutional amendment cutting Chavez's six-year term to four years, clearing the way for early elections.

The government has managed to raise oil production beyond 1 million barrels a day - a third of normal, signaling that Chavez was regaining control of the state oil monopoly, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., where the walkout is the strongest. Oil provides 70 percent of export revenue and half of government earnings. Before the strike, Venezuela was the world's fifth-largest oil exporter and a major supplier to the United States.

In another sign the strike was weakening, private banks announced they would restore normal working hours next week after two months of opening just three hours a day. Also,factories, schools, shopping malls and franchise restaurants are discussing opening next week, fearing bankruptcy.

The Bush administration has promoted early elections as a solution to the crisis.

Chavez has irritated Washington by cozying up to Cuba and criticizing civilian deaths in the U.S.-led bombing campaign against Afghanistan. Chavez tried unsuccessfully to widen the negotiating group to include governments more friendly to him. The strike, although it is faltering, has plunged Venezuela's already fragile economy into deeper straits. By government estimates, the country has lost $4 billion. Private economists warn the economy could shrink 25 percent in the first three months of the year after contracting an estimated 8 percent last year.

The Central Bank was forced to suspend dollar sales after the bolivar currency plunged 25 percent this year.

Last modified: January 31. 2003 8:19PM

www.globeandmail.com By MICHAEL POSNER Friday, January 31, 2003 – Page R4

Estela Bravo's Castro lovefest is one of a series of new looks at El Presidente, writes MICHAEL POSNER

At some point, some filmmaker ought to undertake the definitive documentary of Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz. Depending on your politics, the charismatic El Presidente, architect of the Cuban revolution and its leader for more than 40 years, is either a towering hero or a demonic spoke in George W. Bush's axis of evil. In the former role, he successfully defies a crippling, four-decade-long American economic blockade, survives repeated assassination attempts organized by the CIA, and establishes enviable standards of national health and education.

In the latter, he's an old-style dictator, addicted to power, who jails dissidents, represses free speech, and restricts the right of association.

The real Castro no doubt lies somewhere between these polarities, but he's unlikely to be found in any of the three recent films about him.

These include Dear Fidel: Marita's Story,a bizarre but fascinating personal account of a young woman's love affair with Castro in 1959 in the weeks after he took power and her subsequent recruitment and training by the CIA as an assasin; it was released last year.

Then there's Commandante,a new film (and first documentary) by Oliver Stone, based on dozens of hours of conversations between the largely worshipful filmmaker and Fidel; it was screened at the Sundance Film Festival last week and is scheduled to be aired on HBO later this year.

And finally, Fidel, The Untold Story,by Estela Bravo, a New York-born documentarian who has lived in Havana since 1963. Originally made for Britain's Channel 4 a couple of years ago, it's been refashioned with some new material for its current theatrical release (it opens in Toronto today, in Vancouver next month and elsewhere in March).

Bravo, who turns 70 this year, has made 30 other documentaries (she started at age 47), almost exclusively about Latin America. For this project, a decade in the making, she managed to win access to Cuba's national film archives -- and lucky she did.

These clips provides Fidel with most of its best moments, including the symbolic dove that alights on Fidel's shoulder during his victory-celebration speech to tens of thousands of Cubans on Jan. 1, 1959.

Asked by Steven Spielberg last year how he felt about this, Castro said "not too good," because the bird had deposited an unwanted memento down the back of his military tunic.

There's also footage of El Presidente, spurning the advice of his generals, and leading the troops to the front during Washington's abortive 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

Essentially, however, Fidel is a gallery of adoring, uncritical talking heads. All the reliable lefties are trotted out -- Angela Davis, U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel, Nelson Mandela, former U.S. attorney general Ramsay Clark -- all singing variations on a theme.

The theme, accurate as far as it goes, is Castro's almost miraculous ability to endure Washington's (and the Cuban émigré community's) unrelenting, four-decade campaign to topple him and his socialist cadres, including something like a dozen assassination attempts. Washington's implicit goal: to return Cuba to what it was before Castro overthrew General Fulgencio Batista in 1959: a de facto colony, by day a looting ground for Big Sugar and Big Liquor, by night a Mafia-run casino and nightclub playground for American sybarites.

In the intervening decades, the United States has successfully deployed similar weapons to repel virtually any attempt at socialist-style reform anywhere in Latin America -- in Allende's Chile, in Bishop's Grenada, and in Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua. The current target is Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.

Only Castro, so far, has been able to withstand the pressure, though it must be obvious that if he constituted a more significant threat to American economic or political interests, Washington would not hesitate to orchestrate his removal.

In other words, he owes his survival, in part, to his relative irrelevance -- but remains (especially since the collapse of the former Soviet Union) all the more useful for propaganda purposes: the Communist bogeyman only 90 miles from Miami. In turn, the American embargo, porous though it is, can be used by Castro to rationalize all sorts of domestic shortcomings.

None of this fairly obvious analysis, however, makes it into the film. Nor is there more than a token suggestion that Castro's Cuba is anything but a sweet socialist paradise.

Bravo makes no apology for the film's lack of even-handedness.

"What have you seen here about Cuba?, she asked during a recent interview. "Everything negative. This is the other side."

Originally, she said, she started the film with a segment that introduced claim and counterclaim about Castro.

"But it didn't really work," she added. "And then I thought, 'Well, what do I think? Why do I have to be so-called objective? Why don't I say what I think is the truth? What is a documentary? It's a point of view.' Well, this is mine."

Thus Bravo, daughter of a New York union organizer and married for more than 40 years to a professor of bioethics teaching at the University of Havana, glosses over issues and events that might challenge the authenticity of the island paradise, such as the 100,000 Cubans who voted with their feet during the Mariel boat lift of the early 1980s, and Castro's own illegitimate daughter, Alina Fernandez (one of a rumoured eight children he has fathered by various wives and consorts), who went into exile in Spain.

Indeed, Bravo is now trying to finish Operation Peter Pan,a documentary about some 14,000 Cuban children sent to the United States by their parents to escape the Cuban revolution. That airlift, organized by the Catholic Church and the U.S. State Department, became part of the campaign to undermine Castro's regime.

To be fair, Fidel is not completely one-sided: There is a brief clip of CBS newsman Mike Wallace interrogating Castro on human rights. But it makes no pretense to being a paradigm of balance. The Cuban émigrés who appear talk about the Castro they knew growing up -- yet never address the question of why they left the country.

Bravo insists, however, that it is not a piece of Cuban propaganda, but an English film (made for less than half-a-million dollars, U.S.), initiated by British film producer Uri Fruchtman. In fact, when she first asked permission to access the national films archives, Castro sent back the reply, "Why don't you do it after I'm not here any more?" Later, he changed his mind.

After Operation Peter Pan, Bravo plans to turn to The Found Children of Argentina,a sequel to a documentary she made about children lost during the so-called Dirty War of the 1970s.

"They've found 51 so far -- and there are some incredible stories."

www.bayarea.com Posted on Fri, Jan. 31, 2003 JORGE RUEDA Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela - Government foes facing dwindling support for a two-month strike sought international backing Friday in their drive to shorten President Hugo Chavez's term.

High-level envoys, meanwhile, from the United States, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Portugal and Spain - dubbed the "Group of Friends" - were to meet with Chavez and opposition leaders Friday. The group also planned to attend negotiations sponsored by Cesar Gaviria, secretary-general of the Organization of American States.

The envoys are urging both sides to agree on one of two proposals made by Nobel Peace laureate and former President Jimmy Carter. The first is to amend the constitution to shorten Chavez's term and clear the way for early elections. The second is for both sides to wait for a midterm referendum on Chavez's rule.

The diplomatic push for a settlement came as shopping malls, banks, franchises and schools prepared to reopen next week. Production also was creeping upward in the oil industry, where the 61-day walkout has been the most damaging.

The opposition called the strike on Dec. 2 to demand a nonbinding referendum on Chavez's rule in February. It later upped the ante to demand Chavez's ouster.

But the Supreme Court, citing a technicality, indefinitely postponed the referendum. Chavez shows no signs of leaving.

Opponents were planning an afternoon march on the Melia hotel - where the foreign diplomats are staying - to protest government investigations against three private television stations accused of supporting efforts to overthrow Chavez. The investigations could culminate in the shutdown of the stations.

The opposition has proposed a constitutional amendment that would cut Chavez's term from six years to four and clear the way for presidential and congressional elections this year. The opposition plan also calls for a new elections council and a Supreme Court ruling to determine when a referendum on Chavez's rule can be held.

Under the proposal, Chavez and pro-government lawmakers could run for re-election. He has been president since 1999 and his term ends in 2007.

The government said it was studying the opposition's proposal but won't allow it to shorten Chavez's term.

Strike leader Manuel Cova of the Venezuelan Workers Confederation said Thursday a new presidential election could be held as early as March and should be done this year.

"To do this we need the guarantees of the international community," Cova said. "If we don't do it this year, we'll be in prison, or in exile, there won't be press freedom."

Opposition groups are organizing a nationwide campaign on Feb. 2 to collect nearly 2 million signatures needed from Venezuela's 12 million voters for the amendment proposal.

Both sides recognize international mediation "is essential to open the path for negotiation," said Gaviria, who has tried to broker an end to the political tug-of-war since November.

Chavez has welcomed the "Group of Friends" initiative, but he has warned others not to meddle in Venezuela's domestic affairs. He also has vowed not to strike a deal with an opposition he refers to as a "coup-plotting oligarchy." Chavez was briefly ousted in a failed April coup.

The standoff has devastated Venezuela's oil-dependent economy, though the government has revived production to about 1 million barrels a day. Output fell to about 200,000 barrels a day in December from the norm of more than 3 million.

Analysts predict the economy will shrink 25 percent this year after an 8 percent contraction last year. Unemployment has reached 17 percent and is expected to rise.

The government has slashed its 2003 budget by 10 percent from $25 billion and announced it will cut the state-owned oil monopoly's budget from US$8 billion to $2.7 billion.

Oil accounts for half of government income and 30 percent of Venezuela's $100 billion gross domestic product.