Published Friday, September 6, 1996, in the Miami Herald.
TV links Miami, Havana in debate
Two foes politely talk, spar
CBS TeleNoticias
ELECTRONIC OPPONENTS: Jorge Mas Canosa, at left, in Miami, vs.
Ricardo Alarcon, in Havana.
CBS TeleNoticias
ELECTRONIC OPPONENTS: Jorge Mas Canosa, at left, in Miami, vs.
Ricardo Alarcon, in Havana.
* For extensive excerpts of the Alarcon-Mas Canosa debate,
please turn to Viewpoints, 17A. The wording in some
translations may differ slightly.
* The debate will air with English translations at 11 a.m.
Sunday on WFOR-Channel 4.
TV links Miami, Cuba in debate across straits
By JUAN O. TAMAYO
Herald Staff Writer
It was a snapshot of the Cuban conflict as jarring as the
handshake between Yasser Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu.
In one corner of the TV screen was Jorge Mas Canosa, head of
the Cuban American National Foundation. In the other was
Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly and
member of the Communist Party's Central Committee.
Alarcon raised eyebrows by saying that President Fidel
Castro's government has had ``significant failures'' over the
years. Mas Canosa surprised viewers by saying he could support
Alarcon if he won free and fair elections.
But the unprecedented program by CBS TeleNoticias Thursday was
less remarkable for what the two men said than for the fact it
was the first public debate of the Cuban conflict across the
Florida Straits in 37 years.
``To see them talking, not shouting and spitting, that was
something!'' said one employee of the Spanish-language
network. ``It gives you some hope that these two sides can
eventually talk.''
TeleNoticias broadcast the program, taped Aug. 23 via a
satellite linking Alarcon in Havana and Mas Canosa and
moderators in Miami, at the end of a one-hour show on CBS
anchor Dan Rather's recent interviews with Castro.
The network saw the two-hour special as a hit and is
considering doing it again, perhaps from Havana next time.
``Both sides thought it was hard but fair,'' said John Frazee,
vice president of CBS News Services. ``This is a political
story of immense importance and we want to further this
dialogue.''
Motivations unclear
Still unclear was why Alarcon took part in an event that might
be perceived as recognizing Mas Canosa as a legitimate
opposition leader and not the thuggish right-winger Havana
always paints.
``Obviously, it was a centrally made decision,'' said Lisandro
Perez, a Cuba expert at Florida International University.
Perhaps Havana wanted to put its nationalist, anti-Yankee
message before TeleNoticias' 14 million clients in Latin
America, North America and Europe, he speculated.
But the risk to Havana showed in its apparent lack of plans to
broadcast the program in Cuba -- it has not asked CBS for
permission to air it -- and its refusal to describe the show
as a debate even though it was clearly just that, begun with
the traditional toss of a coin.
``We never said a word to each other,'' Alarcon told Cuban
reporters recently, though they clearly did. Said Foreign
Ministry spokesman Marianela Ferriol: ``It means absolutely
nothing. There is no dialogue, there is no debate, there is no
recognition by Cuba of Mas Canosa.''
So what was it?
``Perhaps we can call it a confrontation of ideas,'' she told
Cuban reporters last week.
That it was.
History's verdict
Asked how history would judge Castro and the revolution,
Alarcon said: ``If we're going to judge the current situation,
I believe that already there have been significant failures.
This is the leader of a country who has been in an exceptional
dilemma. What country in the world could have survived'' the
economic collapse of the last five years?
But the final judgment, he added, will be that of ``the Cuban
people, of the men and women who struggle, who endeavor, who
sacrifice themselves and who fight for this country. That, no
doubt, will be favorable.''
He defended Cuba's record of achievements in health and
education, and noted that Washington refused to have normal
relations with Havana although it has relations with
governments ``that do not allow political parties, do not even
recognize women's rights, but have a lot of oil.''
He denied that Cuba abuses human rights and said the proof was
in the number of critics allowed to leave and settle in Miami.
Mas Canosa's charges that Cuba has 271,000 people in jail were
``lies'' and ``novels,'' he added.
Money from Moscow
Alarcon denied that the former Soviet Union had subsidized
Cuba -- Moscow simply paid fair prices for Cuban products, he
said -- and blamed the U.S. trade embargo for a good part of
Cuba's problems.
Mas Canosa complained about Havana's personal attacks on him
and denied that Cuban exiles are intolerant. Miami has many
``who sing the praises of the Castro government . . . who come
here to provoke the victims of Castro,'' he said.
Cuban exiles have as much moral right to help dissidents on
the island as the Castro supporters who sent him money and
weapons in the 1950s during the war against President
Fulgencio Batista, and that does not make the dissidents
``traitors,'' he said.
Asked what he wants for the Cubans in Cuba, Mas Canosa said:
``The same guarantees that the democratic system and market
economy offered us when we arrived, starving, in this
nation.''
``What we want for the Cubans on the island is precisely a
system that guarantees them the opportunity to be what we are
today -- independent people, economically independent.''
Alarcon said he could never support Mas Canosa as president of
Cuba, even if elected fairly, ``because he's not a Cuban.''
But Mas Canosa said that if Alarcon won democratic elections,
he would provide financial assistance to the government.
Previous meetings
Cuban officials have met with exile critics in the past, but
only with relative moderates and only behind closed doors.
Alarcon's debating Mas Canosa was more comparable to the
handshake Wednesday between the PLO chairman and the Israeli
prime minister.
CBS' Frazee said the idea for the debate came up after CBS
purchased TeleNoticias this summer, as TeleNoticias
correspondents and producers worked to shape 160 minutes of
Dan Rather interviews with Castro this spring into a one-hour
program.
``It was a collective decision,'' he said, to try to ensure
the program was perceived as fair by adding on a Havana-Miami
debate tightly structured to avoid a free-for-all.
Mas Canosa agreed to participate early in the planning, Frazee
added, and Maria Elvira Salazar, a Miami-born Cuban American
who often reports on Cuban issues, was given the task of
winning Alarcon's participation.
Salazar and Ricardo Brown, another Cuban American, were the
questioners in the first and last thirds of the debate. Mas
Canosa and Alarcon debated directly in the middle third.
© 1996 The Miami Herald.