EDITOR'S NOTE

NEWS CENTER PUBLICATIONS of San Juan, Puerto Rico, has a single goal in mind: give you [the reader] an opportunity to look at Latin America in a simple, understandable way. We believe that to be a worthwhile mission for the following reason.

It is our contention that Western countries--including the United States--still face the enormous challenge of grasping cultural, linguistic and political reality of a second country. We can't solve the problem, but we can talk about it and give you an opportunity to think about it along with us as you read and hopefully enjoy our material.

Latin America is mentioned here because we feel we know more about it than other parts of the world, but it could be Africa, Asia or the Middle East. And it could be said, Latin America and people living in those other regions have failed to understand the West, but they indeed do a better job generally than Westerners. If that be true, they are forced to do so out of need. With so many failed governments and corrupt leaders, such people we call heroes subject themselves to one of life's most traumatic experiences. They--one family member or many family members--pack a bag and inject him, her or themselves with a new language, a different culture and a brand new political reality. And more often than not, their need is so acute they set off on their long journey with little or no money.

Such people--those heroes--face so many barriers for even the slimmest chance for a better life. Many achieve success. Others don't. They fall victims of depression, murder, rape and slave labor conditions. Even those with financial backing face rejection without proper cultural and political skills.

To the West, where they chose to make a new life or fail, westerners too often reject them out of hand. It would be too easy to say they do so out of ignorance. We prefer to say it rooted in a lack of knowledge about people, culture and language other than their own. 'If they don't do things the way we do, there most of something wrong with them,' it is said or thought too many times.

The West carries this tragedy even further. Western businessmen are sent to make money, diplomats are sent to make friends, journalists are sent to cover the news and missionaries are sent to spread the gospel. Yet, these often brilliant people too many times lack basic cultural, language and political skills to accomplish those important jobs.

In the end, those traveling to the West are confused and those receiving those heroes are angered. The issue is further complicated when Western leaders lack sufficient skills in dealing with governments who fail to provide a basic structure to allow our heroes an opportunity to support themselves and their families. If they did, they wouldn't immigrate to the West in the first place.

What has happened and what will happen to the 6-year-old Cuban boy, Elian' Gonzalez, is a classic example of how the U.S. official [it could happen to any administration and has] approach repeatedly failed in handling an alleged complicated legal and political problem. It was a failure of not accurately judging how best U.S. interests could be achieved when that interest is challenged by Cuba, the Spanish language and a dictator.

We think it is safe to say U.S. President Bill Clinton and U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno--both very intelligent people--have attempted to find a solution from only within a U.S. cultural and political point-of-view by excluding the Spanish language and Cuban politics.

We have seen the results: By taking the boy by force from his relatives' Miami home, Clinton and Reno have managed to alienate the Cuban-American community in south Florida and have managed to be manipulated into doing the work of Fidel Castro in Cuba. If they had followed a different approach by allowing the U.S. court system resolve the issue from the beginning, Clinton and Reno could have calmed down the Miami community and given Fidel Castro a lesson in how democracy works. It could have been that the court [as it finally did] would have decided to reunite father and son without the need of force and allow them to return to Cuba. .

As a first step in that direction, we're working on two new projects and both are in Spanish.

One is written by Rafael Matos and the other by Lane Carnes. Matos, currently the editor of the Spanish-language edition of the San Juan Star in Puerto Rico, has written a novel called "Yankee, Tango, Whisky." It's a dramatic story about a man raised in a Spanish-language community, joins the U.S. Army and fights a war in a third culture in Vietnam.

Lane Carnes, a college Spanish instructor in Texas, has written a collection of poems called: "Petalos Marchitados en una Pagina.' Carnes, raised in Puerto Rico, wrote his Masters thesis in the Spanish language, the first ever written at Southwest Texas in San Marcos. All other Spanish majors, until that time, had written theirs in the English language. He is one of a growing number who are truly bilingual and bi-cultural. He also has a good grasp of French.

We hope you will join us in this great reading adventure: to enjoy first of all and then perhaps get a fresh view of this wonderful world we all live in.

The Editors