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Separated by Castro, a kiss

A moment with Cuba's leader divided a Miami lawyer and her best friend.

By MEG LAUGHLIN
Published February 11, 2007

One day about 12 years ago, Magda Montiel Davis kissed Fidel Castro. Both cheeks.

She was in a reception line in Havana. She called him "a great teacher" and thanked him for helping her people. By the time she returned to Miami, the kiss and her words were playing nonstop on local TV.

Overnight, Davis, a prominent immigration attorney, became a pariah in South Florida, where hating Castro is a way of life for many people. There were death threats, bomb threats, obscene calls and spitting. Most of her staff quit, including her best friend, Lazara Balsiero Pittman, an attorney in her office.

Pittman told Davis: "I have a deep pain in my chest over what you said to that man. You must take it back."

But Davis refused. Yes, there was bad about Castro's revolution in Cuba, she said. But there was good, too, and no one in Miami was allowed to say that without being ostracized. She would not give in and recant, she told her friend.

"I have to do what I think is right, not what you think is right," Davis said.

With the storm still raging, Davis quietly returned to Cuba on a humanitarian visa four months later - a trip that was the first of many over the next decade. On those trips, she and Castro developed a cordial relationship.

On that first visit back, he summoned her to his office. "All I could think was: 'If a film of this appears on TV, I'm dead man walking,' " Davis said.

But it didn't.

On that August night in 1994, Castro came out from behind his Scandinavian teak desk and sat in a chair. He offered her ham croquetas from a tray. When she said she was a vegetarian, he shot back in Spanish, "Don't worry. There's hardly any meat in them."

He spoke briefly about shortages in Cuba, then moved to the kiss, the video and the Miami reaction.

"I know you've been through a lot, but try not to have fear," he told her, always speaking in Spanish. "If I had let fear control me, I would not have continued as president.

"Focus on those who support you, as I have," he said.

Then, he turned to the subject of Miami.

"The word is they are going to invade us," he said.

His voice rising with emotion, he continued: "They'll have to take us dead."

Davis remembers thinking: "Don't include me in that 'us.' "

An old Cuban expression crossed her mind: "En este velorio yo no quiero vela." For this funeral, I don't want a candle.

She was surprised at how inquisitive he was. He wanted to know about the beaches of South Florida, the length of the coastline, the population count, what people did for fun. Did they sun, swim, play dominos, listen to music?

"I was wondering if there was some military angle," Davis said. "I didn't think there was, but I was glad I didn't know the answers."

After addressing him with the informal "tu" instead of the more respectful "usted," it occurred to her she had made a huge faux pas.

"But with all I'd been through," she said, "I figured he owed me tu over usted."

When she returned to Miami she sent Pittman a 1992 novel about life in Cuba called Dreaming in Cuban, by Cristina Garcia. Her note said: "Go and see for yourself."

Pittman ignored the overture.

When Davis returned to Cuba in early 1995, as part of a group taking medicine, Castro called for her again.

This time, he mentioned a fisherman Davis was trying to get out of Cuba. Sitting in his office on a sofa covered with animal skins, he sipped mango juice and commented: "This fisherman is much younger than his American fiancee. These kinds of marriages seldom work."

When Davis protested, saying she knew men who loved older women, he held his palm up to silence her. Nevertheless, a few months later, the papers came through for the fisherman.

Upon returning to Miami, Davis learned Pittman had hired her secretary out from under her.

"Another nail in the coffin," Davis said.

At the next meeting with Castro, in 1996, he told her he knew she had converted to Judaism "because of her marriage."

She wondered how he knew anything about her marriage or religion, but answered that she was Jewish by choice, not to please her husband.

"Despite Fidel's talk about the equality of the Revolution, I noticed he's got kind of a sexist thing going," she said.

The next year, her husband, Ira Kurzban, went to Cuba with her and met Castro.

Kurzban's first words to the Cuban president: "Mr. President, what happened with the video?"

Meaning: How did you let the kiss video get on American TV?

After a strained silence, Castro responded, "Oye, a mi siempre me dejan con los platos rotas." Listen, I always get blamed for the broken dishes.

Back in Miami, more than three years into their break, Pittman called Davis out of the blue. "I'm not mad anymore," she told Davis.

When Davis told Pittman about her meetings with Castro and her plans to write a book about the kiss and what happened after, Pittman shrugged: "I don't see how things could get any worse for you," she said. "But, this time, I'll stick by you."

"There was a time when I would have been furious," Pittman said. "But I realized the same people who badmouth Magda for her relationship with Cuba, go to her to get their people out, and she does, which shows talking works better than scorn."

Davis told her she thought Cuban exiles in Miami had matured: "Just about everyone, including you and me, has mellowed," she said.

In July 2001, Davis returned to Cuba with her husband who was accompanying his client, Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Many of the Cuban officials, who knew her in a different context, failed to recognize her.

Castro was the exception.

"Magda!" he yelled from the stairs of the Revolutionary Palace. "Como esta el caballerito?" How is the little gentleman, referring to President Bush.

"How do you think he is?" Davis yelled back. But Castro didn't answer.

In 2004, when she went to a conference in Havana, she spoke briefly to Castro for the last time. They were in a reception line similar to the one in 1994, where all of her troubles began.

She told him she was writing a book, about her life since the kiss.

"If I wrote a book about my life, it would be this thick," he said, holding his hand out, six feet above the floor.

She nodded and moved on.

Since then, Davis has continued to work on her book, which she hopes will come out next year. When Castro became gravely ill in August, she and Pittman followed the news on Castro's health and discussed him daily.

"Magda wants me to wear black when he dies," said Pittman. "I will - my little sexy black dress to the Brothers to the Rescue banquet."

"A funeral would be more fun," Davis said.

But while the two women continue to disagree on what they want to happen to the Cuban leader, they still agree on one thing: Fidel Castro will not come between them.

"If we can't be friends despite our differences, what hope is there for Cuban exiles in America?" asked Pittman.

Besides, she says, she hopes Castro hangs on for at least another year.

"Not because I care about him," she says, "but to help my best friend with book sales."

Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report. Meg Laughlin can be reached at 727893-8068 or mlaughlin@sptimes.com.

[Last modified February 10, 2007, 20:09:58]