Miami's Little Havana Finds New Foe in Venezuelan Leader
WALL STREET JOURNAL - By JOSE DE CORDOBA
MIAMI -- As if beleaguered Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez didn't have enough problems already, now the F-4 Commandos are on his case.
With headquarters in a shabby second floor walk-up in the down-at-the-heels neighborhood of Little Havana, the Commandos are one of a raft of tiny, and largely toothless, Cuban-American groups dedicated to the overthrow of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Not long ago, the self-proclaimed leader of the F-4 Commandos, Comandante Rodolfo Frometa, 56 years old, signed a "civic-military" allegiance with dissident Venezuelan Capt. Luis Eduardo Garcia, leader of the Venezuelan Patriotic Junta. The two groups have vowed to join their combined military experience and exchange "intelligence and counterintelligence" to combat Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Mr. Chavez, whom the groups brand as "traitors to the Latin American fatherland."
"Our goal is to see Venezuela and Cuba be free," says Mr. Frometa, a slight man who sports a black, Ho Chi Minh-style wispy beard and whose day job consists of chauffeuring elderly patients to a medical clinic. "We want Venezuela to be free by peaceful means but in Cuba the only way is through an insurrection."
These days, it's deja vu all over again in Miami.
For years, as Cuban exiles conspired first with agents from the Central Intelligence Agency, and then without them to topple the Castro regime, Miami was America's Casablanca -- a capital of hothouse exile politics, outlandish claims, fiery but mostly empty rhetoric, and spy-versus-spy hijinks. Then, during the turmoil that embroiled Central America in the 1980s Miami again became a sometimes-loony conspiracy central as the U.S. government funded Nicaraguan rebels in their fight to unseat Marxist Sandinistas. Die-hard anti-Castro Cuban exiles got in some licks in that fight, too, working hand in hand with Lt. Col. Oliver North and his crew to help thwart what they saw as Mr. Castro's Napoleonic ambitions in the region.
Now, as political conflict intensifies between Venezuela's volatile left-wing leader and a big chunk of Venezuelan society, Miami is being swamped by anti-Chavez Venezuelan emigrants. Tens of thousands have settled in south Florida in the past few years. The newly arrived Venezuelans are finding in the now well-established anti-Castro Cuban-American community eager allies in the struggle against Mr. Chavez, who is widely seen here as a bad copy of the septuagenarian Mr. Castro.
Indeed, Mr. Chavez, a self-proclaimed best friend and disciple of Mr. Castro, long ago won the unremitting enmity of Miami's Cubans. Among other things, he is providing the energy-starved Cuban regime with thousands of barrels a day of cut-rate Venezuelan oil -- even as Venezuela's oil exports to the U.S. have trickled to a tiny stream. He once proclaimed that he wants to plunge Venezuela into the same "sea of joy" where Cuba under Mr. Castro has been treading water for 44 years. Anti-Chavez Venezuelans charge that Mr. Chavez is getting help from hundreds of Cuban intelligence agents who have penetrated the country, although they offer little evidence.
"Just when we had that devil on the ropes, comes this guy, Chavez, and gives Castro a hand," grouses 66-year-old Antonio Esquivel, a Cuban-Venezuelan, who helped to organize a huge anti-Chavez protest march here. Like many other anti-Castro Cubans in Miami, he is eager to take on Mr. Chavez, which he sees as being the same thing as taking on Mr. Castro, although through peaceful means. "We are going to help take care of the friends of our enemies." The Jan. 18 march was a big success. An estimated 50,000 people, many waving Venezuelan flags, jammed Little Havana's main street.
To be sure, the main arena of the political confrontation between Mr. Chavez and his foes is in Venezuela, where Mr. Chavez's opponents have all but shut down the country's vital oil industry in a grueling six-week strike. Unlike Mr. Castro's opponents, many of whom fled the island following his 1959 takeover, Mr. Chavez's opposition is sticking around.
Times have also changed. These days Iraq is at the top of Washington's foreign agenda. Unlike earlier episodes with Mr. Castro and Nicaragua's Sandinistas, the U.S. isn't seeking to arm a force of Venezuelan exiles to send against the popularly elected Mr. Chavez.
But Capt. Garcia, 37, the leader of the Venezuelan Patriotic Junta seems to be hedging his bets. A strapping 6-footer whose close-cut hair is streaked with gray, Capt. Garcia was one of the first military officers to openly defy Mr. Chavez. During last April's abortive military coup against Mr. Chavez, Capt. Garcia was grazed by a bullet on the side of the head as he stormed the presidential palace by a back door.
Now Capt. Garcia says he is providing military training for some 50 members of the F-4 Commandos, 30 of them Cuban-Americans, the rest Venezuelans, in a shooting range close to the Everglades. "We are preparing for war," he says. Nevertheless, his movement opposes military coups. "Our struggle is to show the world how Chavez is the enemy of democracy."
Recently, Capt. Garcia's group created a stir in Little Havana when it sponsored a news conference by another Venezuelan military dissident, Maj. Juan Diaz Castillo. Maj. Castillo, who used to fly Mr.Chavez's plane, told a room crammed with Spanish-language reporters that Mr. Chavez had funneled a million dollars to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan through Venezuelan diplomats. The former pilot said Mr. Chavez had frequent secret meetings on secluded Venezuelan islands with Mr. Castro. He also asserted that Chavista partisans have been sent to Cuba for military training.
After the news conference, Maj. Diaz Castillo flew to Washington to work on a mysterious secret "mission," says Capt. Garcia. He hasn't resurfaced publicly since.
Venezuela's consul here says Mr. Chavez did make a donation to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to benefit Afghan refugees during the reign of the Taliban. His meetings with Mr. Castro are well known, but Cubans aren't training Venezuelans in anything except baseball, he adds.
One thing is certain: Because of the strong Miami-Caracas connection, the struggle between Mr. Chavez and his opponents is being followed more intensely here than anywhere else in the world outside of Venezuela.
In Miami, as in Caracas, it has become common to see car antennas bedecked with yellow, blue and red Venezuelan flags. Recently, about 50 Venezuelans picketed outside a Citgo gas station in upscale Key Biscayne, urging motorists not to buy gas from the fully owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company. "Fidel; it took you 44 years to create a clone, now you have it!" one sign said.
Earlier this month, two young Cuban-American disc jockeys became instant heroes when they telephoned the presidential palace in Caracas and tricked Mr. Chavez into holding a befuddled phone conversation with a tape of Mr. Castro. Not amused, the Venezuelan government is debating whether to seek legal action against the telephone pranksters.
In Miami's fiery Spanish-language radio talk shows, Carlos Matamoros is practically Mr. Chavez's sole defender, sallying forth once a week to praise Mr. Chavez's government. Mr. Matamoros has paid a high price for his pains. Recently, at a coffee shop, a little old Venezuelan lady rapped Mr. Matamoros on the forehead with her knuckles. "She said I was a Communist who didn't have any brains inside my head," he says.
