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Cuba: US Broadcasts a 'Provocation' in Already-Tense Relations - Platt Amendment***"As a special surprise by the Bush administration, kept like a big war secret," the transmission interrupted normal local TV programming in several Cuban provinces for two hours, Granma reported Wednesday. Radio Martí also came on the air at several new frequencies, it added. A year ago, Bush promised the Cuban exile community in Miami that the power of Radio and TV Martí would be boosted in order for broadcasts to reach Cuba more successfully. But Tuesday's effort coincided with a new wave of blackouts in the Cuban capital and several provinces, blamed by officials at the state-run power company on breakdowns in two main generators. The power outages may have minimized the success of the U.S. broadcasts.

Radio and TV Martí, which were created in the 1980s to beam news and information to Cuba critical of the socialist government of Fidel Castro, are seen here as just one more example of Washington's continued aggression towards the island. Havana also rejects the celebration of May 20 as Cuban Independence Day, which is observed by Cuban exiles in the United States. On May 20, 1902 the Republic of Cuba was declared after three years of U.S. military intervention. Prior to its withdrawal, the United States inserted the Platt Amendment into the Cuban constitution, authorizing Washington to intervene in the country whenever it deemed necessary.

The White House special envoy for Latin America, Otto Reich, told the press that the transmission of a four-hour program Tuesday formed part of an "initial test phase which will be followed by others." With this gesture aimed at appeasing the most radical faction of the anti-Castro Cuban exile community, Bush limited his May 20 speech to expressing his "hope...for the Cuban people to soon enjoy the same freedoms and rights that we do." ***

The Cuba Notebook - Distraught mom grieves for executed son Garcia is at a loss to explain why her son attempted such a brazen and dangerous exit. He never tried to leave the island as a rafter, she said, and he was too young to have applied for the last visa lottery issued by the U.S. Interests Section in 1998. She doesn't know what sparked his decision to board that ferry, precisely on her 45th birthday, and offers her only answer as she looks around her barren room. "It was my need that made him do it," said Garcia, who ekes out a living running a fruit and vegetable stand in one of Havana's neighborhood markets. "He would say, `I can't stand to see you get up at 3 a.m. with that cart on the street.' "

As she talks into the early evening, the sunlight dims and the room goes dark. She and two daughters rely on the light from the kitchen since the bulb that hangs over the living room is burnt out and there is no money to buy another. Today Garcia is pulling her life together after her son's execution. She spends most of her days in her small apartment, nursing her chronic migraines on the cot she and her family pulled from a trash bin -- the only furniture in the room save three chairs.

She says she worries about being watched by Cuba's security, and that many of her neighbors have stopped talking to her. Now she plans to apply for an exit visa to the leave the island, saying the "rage in my heart" over her son's execution is so great she can barely breathe some days. Last week, she contacted one of Cuba's leading opposition activists, Elizardo Sanchez, and Cuba's Cardinal Jaime Ortega for help to begin the process.***