Cuban sister city urged --Embargo makes that bad idea, critics say

nola.com Sunday April 20, 2003 By Joan Treadway Staff writer

Randy Poindexter has been trying for a year to give the city of New Orleans what she considers a significant gift, one that might be rescinded if it's not accepted soon: a "sister city" relationship with Cuba's Port of Mariel.

Poindexter believes a relationship would foster trade and cultural ties. But her gift, not surprisingly, is a Trojan horse in the eyes of some Cuban-Americans in the New Orleans area. They insist it would violate at least the spirit of the long-standing trade embargo against the communist nation and help Cuba's aging dictator, Fidel Castro, cling to power.

A portraitist, sculptor and the proprietor of a Garden District bed and breakfast, Poindexter, 54, got a preliminary agreement to the partnership a year ago from officials in Mariel. But on a trip to Cuba this month, she learned that San Antonio, Texas, and several other American cities are interested in connecting with Mariel, and that if New Orleans officials don't act quickly, it might be too late.

Poindexter said she was encouraged by a letter she received about a week ago from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. "I am impressed by your arguments to forge favorable trade relations with the City of Mariel," Nagin wrote. "With an eye to your recommendations, we will seriously consider Mariel for the Sister Cities program."

This seemed to be a shift from a February letter to Poindexter from Gina Nadas, director of international trade development in the Mayor's Office of Economic Development: "We will postpone any consideration of Cuban cities for Sister City agreements until such time as the embargo (against Cuba) were to be lifted."

Nadas said last week that the two letters do not contradict each other. "The mayor and I are on the same page," she said. Her office uses sister city agreements primarily for trade, and since full trade with Cuba is not allowed now, she is more interested in other markets. She said that when Nagin stated "we will seriously consider Mariel," he meant only after the embargo is lifted.

Of the 19 sister city agreements that Nadas has learned about since arriving at City Hall last fall, she said several represent good opportunities for trade, including those with Caracas, Venezuela; Merida, Mexico; and Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Supporters and critics

Poindexter said she and some of the 50 local residents who support her plan soon will seek a meeting with Nagin, both to clarify his position and to lobby for the proposal.

One backer, Romualdo Gonzalez, has written to Nagin, stating that the relationship would not violate the embargo and that Mariel is "the premier cargo port on the island."

Gonzalez, a local Cuban-American lawyer, said last week that he thinks the best chance for a change in Cuba's government will come "from a policy of engagement." This approach has worked in the former Soviet Union, China and Vietnam, he said.

Another supporter of the proposal is Cesar Martino, president of The Vega Group, which plans special events. Martino, who also is Cuban-American, said Mariel is undergoing an expansion that will include development of a free-trade zone.

But opposition forces are lining up as well.

George Fowler, an attorney for the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation, which is anti-Castro and pro-embargo, said he too plans to talk to Nagin. He opposes the plan because Cuba is still listed by the State Department as a "terrorist" country. Developing a relationship with one of its cities would be "like becoming a sister city to Tikrit, when Saddam was still in power," he said.

The timing couldn't be worse, Fowler said, because Cuba has just cracked down on political dissidents, imprisoning about 70 of them, some for more than 20 years. Three people trying to escape Cuba in a hijacked ferry recently were executed, he said, noting that Mariel became a symbol of Cuba's yearning for freedom when 125,000 embarked from the port during the 1980 boatlift to the United States.

While Poindexter stresses that the sister city relationship is "apolitical" and a "people-to-people" effort, Fowler countered that "there can't be a people-to-people relationship when one person is on top (in Cuba)." Even the artists involved in any exchange wouldn't be free to express themselves, he said.

Felipe Cortizas, owner of the Liborio Cuban Restaurant in downtown New Orleans, opposes the plan for reasons both political and personal: His grandmother almost didn't make it to New Orleans when she was trying to leave Cuba in 1960. For trying to escape, she was briefly jailed and threatened with death by a firing squad, he said.

Mobile, Ala., blazed trail

Controversial or not, about 20 American cities have formed sister city relationships with an equal number of Cuban cities, said Lisa Valanti, president of the U.S.-Cuba Sister Cities Association in Pittsburgh. They abide by the rules of the embargo, and none has been penalized, she said.

Poindexter's point that New Orleans could lose Mariel is well-taken, Valanti said. Some Cuban cities are considering partnering with more than one American city, but others have rejected the idea of multiple partners.

Through her own involvement, Valanti said she has become a godmother to the child of a Cuban woman who works for her as a translator when she visits the island.

Mobile, Ala., was the first American city to connect with a Cuban city -- Havana. The decade-old partnership has meant not only friendships, but also business, said Gene Lambert, Mobile's international protocol officer. One outgrowth of the sister city relationship he cited was a pledge Cuba made in February to purchase $10 million worth of agricultural products from Alabama, which is allowed under an easing of the embargo three years ago.

But Oakland, Calif.'s, 3-year-old sister city partnership with the city of Santiago de Cuba has led to discord. Differing political factions have tried to exploit the relationship to their own advantage, said Simon Bryce, Oakland's chief of protocol. He is trying to pull together the community, so that the relationship can be more productive, he said, but right now, it's "polarized."

. . . . . . . Joan Treadway can be reached at jtreadway@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3305.