The official news agency Prensa Latina reported that the nomination of Orange County Chairman Mel Martínez to the Cabinet post was payback for ``the help [Bush] received from Cuban Americans in Florida, who helped him defeat his Democratic rival, Albert Gore.''

The agency describes Martínez as ``a rabidly anti-Cuban Republican'' and ``an unconditional ally of the Bush family'' who is ``one of the political hacks in Florida's Cuban communities.''

Bush ``stole the election, an act of fraud that bore the fingerprints of the extreme right of Florida's Cuban community,'' the report said.

According to Prensa Latina, Martínez's nomination settles ``Bush's debt of gratitude toward [Florida Cubans], the only Hispanics who voted in bloc against Gore because the Democratic administration authorized the return to Cuba of the kidnapped boy Elián González.''

Martínez ``demanded the government of William Clinton and Gore to allow the boy . . . to remain in the United States, despite the opposition of the boy's father, a resident of Cuba,'' the agency said.

Martínez himself ``was removed from Cuba in 1962 at the age of 15, one of 14,000 children extracted from the island by the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. State Department and the Catholic Church hierarchy in the so-called Operation Peter Pan,'' the report said.

-- RENATO PEREZ