For anyone traveling to Cuba in the future, you MUST pick up
the June issue of Cigar Aficionado magazine!!!!! The whole
magazine is dedicated to CUBA!! They have articles about:
hotels (along with prices, phone, address), buying cigars
and the best places to enjoy them, drinking rum (and the
best places to go), Cuban music, a review of the different
restaurants in Habana, fishing @ Marina Hemingway, etc.,
etc. - all with GREAT pictures of Cuba!!!!! I dare say it's
one of the BEST resources for anyone interested in visiting
Cuba. And if you're not interested in going, you will be
after reading this issue. You can get a snapshot of what
this issue is like by going to www.cigaraficionado.com!!!
Enjoy!!!!! For real!!!!!
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Awesome pictures. Really interesting article. I thought
it was a great piece.
March April issue to Trips magazine similar depth but less
up scale. More street level observations.
Thanks Diago and Gary!
Dade rescinds ban of cigar magazine at airport stores
By CAROL ROSENBERG
Herald Staff Writer
Faced with mounting protests, Miami-Dade County leaders
decided Sunday to lift a ban on sales of the June edition of
Cigar Aficionado magazine at Miami International Airport.
The glossy publication with Fidel Castro and Bill Clinton
on the cover could hit airport newsstands as early as this
morning.
``Basically what I'm going to do . . . is give the order to
put it back on the shelves,'' Dade Aviation Department
Director Gary J. Dellapa told The Herald on Sunday night.
``Even though we have to be sensitive to the Cuban exile
community here, in the end, we have to come down on the side
of what has been the tradition in the United States of
freedom of expression and freedom of the press. If people
don't want to buy it, they don't have to buy it.''
Bureaucrats at the county-managed airport instructed their
subcontractor last week to keep the 282-page edition off all
18 newsstand shelves because they decided the edition,
featuring a travel guide for the communist-led island, was
flattering to Castro and the Cuban government.
The American Civil Liberties Union threatened a lawsuit.
Mayor Alex Penelas said he was worried that the action could
constitute censorship, and the magazine's managing editor
said that by seeking to silence alternative opinions
about Cuba, the county was acting like Castro's regime.
On Sunday, Penelas said he read the magazine and -- although
he was offended by its content -- believed the county should
defend press freedoms.
``Banning the sale of this issue of the magazine at Miami
International Airport goes against some of the very
principles which make this nation the free society it is,''
he said.
He ordered County Manager Merrett Stierheim to order Dellapa
to tell the subcontractor to place the $4.95 edition in
newsstand racks, as usual.
``I think that's great. In truth, everybody benefits,'' said
Cigar Aficionado managing editor Gordon Mott, when told
Sunday night of Dade's decision. ``I think the magazine is
at least establishing the groundwork to begin a little bit
more rational and open discussion of the embargo.''
Penelas said the magazine's coverage was ``a total
misrepresentation of the state of affairs in Cuba, which
recently was condemned in Geneva by the United Nations
Commission on Human Rights.''
In part, the magazine characterizes Cuba as a desirable,
exotic haven for tourism, teeming with sizzling nightlife,
offering grand hotels and international gastronomy.
Editorially, it also urges Washington to rethink its
decades-old economic embargo.
Told that the mayor didn't like the edition, Mott replied,
``It's a free country.''
Dellapa, who initially supported the ban, said it was
decided last week by Myra Bustamante, assistant director of
the Aviation Department for business and finance, after an
unidentified employee of the vendor, Sirgany Century,
inquired whether the company could withhold it from the
shelves.
Bustamante was out of town over the weekend and could not be
reached for comment.
A few years back, Dellapa said, Sirgany similarly withheld
sales of a Cuba travel guide. But he characterized the case
as different because it was a one-shot publication, not an
edition of a regularly sold magazine being withheld because
of its content.
Civil liberties lawyer Lida Rodriguez applauded the
decision.
``It's nice to see the quick reaction of the mayor and to
see that this kind of speech is not suppressed in Miami,''
said Rodriguez, secretary of the Dade and Florida ACLU
chapters. ``It is very reassuring and should give every
citizen a sense of comfort that our mayor, while expressing
his distaste for the content, understands the very important
First Amendment issues involved.''
Rodriguez said ACLU lawyers could still sue the county to
protect the magazine's right ``to make sure it doesn't
happen again in a week or two weeks because of popular
opinion.''
Dellapa said he was preoccupied with a County Commission
meeting Thursday and supervising a multimillion-dollar
United Airlines contract Friday, so he was unaware of the
entire decision-making process -- and had not read the
magazine.
Dellapa also said he had already independently decided to
rescind the ban over the weekend. But Penelas made the
decision, also independently, and issued the order Sunday.
E-mail to The Herald continued Sunday opposing the county's
ban.
``This decision is the product of a few well-placed
anti-Castro fanatics attempting to impose their narrow views
on an entire community and, now even on citizens of the
entire world,'' said Alonso Rhenals, president of the
Colombian-American Democratic Council of Miami-Dade County.