The sound of Castro's silence

I am not on a balcony overlooking the cityscape, the bustle of Pope John Paul II's landing, the curve of the sea against the Malecon.

I am not one of the thousands of foreign journalists allowed to travel to the island for this historic episode. I am among the scores of journalists simply blown off by the Cuban government. I am among those who applied for visas to cover the pope's trip, only to be subject to official silence from the Cuban government. I am among the punished, for it appears my newspaper is one of the organizations Fidel Castro put on ``timeout'' this week for our coverage.

To Cuba, it appears, we are more dangerous than the pope himself.

Journalistic tradition, as it has related to Cuba in the past few years, would dictate that I keep quiet about the entire ordeal. To speak out, after all, could torpedo a journalist's possibility of future access. And that could torpedo the goal shared by the important news organizations in this country: stationery that reads ``Havana Bureau.''

In the race for Havana bureaus, American news organizations too often have allowed the Castro regime to do what would never be tolerated of any other government in the hemisphere -- choose which journalist gets in, to dangle visas over our heads as if they were Pulitzers or Peabodies.

By consequence, the Cuban government has finagled editorial rights from some of the most respected newsrooms in America.

There is a price attached to the letterhead. Declared and properly documented journalists must endure official scrutiny and the obligatory dog-and-pony shows staged to propagate the image of a quaint and embattled developing nation.

Even though more powerful and profound stories are routinely filed by undetected journalists posing as tourists, American news powers rarely seem to ask themselves the most elementary questions: What good is a bureau in Havana if you can't cover a rash of hotel bombings? What good is it if you're going to be scooped by the press in Miami?

I am not writing this from Havana. I am in Miami watching a live shot by a U.S.-born journalist. The camera pans the faces of Cubans in the street, the faithful raising hands in prayer at church, the crumbling facades of a city I love.

There is a sour knot in my belly as I catch glimpses of Havana, the slow gait of pedestrians on a particular street. I wonder what the TV reporter is feeling right there, right now, in the warm night of Cuba. Does his heart ache with melancholy? Do the people remind him of anyone in his family -- his grandma, his cousin?

I should be there, I know in my heart, not just because I am a journalist, but also because I was born there. I was born 17 days after the revolution in a small town on the northeastern tip of the island. I was baptized on April 5, 1959 by Father Francisco de Salazar at the church of San Jose, in the Diocese of Holguin. My childhood and adulthood in the United States has never erased the Oriente lilt in my Spanish.

I was born in the same province as Fidel Castro, the province that enshrines the Virgin of Charity. I am not an alien to Cuba, even though its government of the moment takes me for one. I should not even need a visa to step upon my native soil. Cuba belongs to me as much as it belongs to any random comandante.

Unfortunately for Castro, his government underestimated the collective force of the international press broadcasting from Havana this week. The initial stories have been anything but fluff jobs. The glow the visa merchants may have expected has darkened into a realistic storm cloud.

In the end I'm sure Castro will find at least one positive in the hard news: nearly 3,000 fewer journalist visas to process.

Copyright © 1998 The Miami Herald