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Miami DJs Claim Phone Prank on Castro
1 hour, 50 minutes ago Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!
By RACHEL LA CORTE, Associated Press Writer
MIAMI - Two radio show hosts who duped Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez into believing he was speaking by phone with Cuban President Fidel Castro (news - web sites) now claim to have similarly tricked Castro.
A recording provided by the Cuban-American radio announcers has a man they say is Castro responding for about four minutes Tuesday to snippets of a tape recording of Chavez, a Castro friend.
He catches on to the prank after he is called an assassin and the conversation disintegrates into him denouncing the caller with a stream of obscenities.
The call was played on Miami’s WXDJ-FM on Tuesday; disc jockeys Joe Ferrero and Enrique Santos tricked Chavez in January.
“This was a big, big fish that we were trying to get,” Ferrero said. “Castro really has his people well-trained to avoid these kind of situations, but we were able to persuade all these people.”
In Havana, Cuban officials who did not want to be identified said Wednesday they did not know about the prank and could not comment.
Venezuelan Embassy spokesman Andres Izarra said he hadn’t heard the recording and couldn’t confirm whether the DJs actually got through to Castro.
Regardless, “it’s another prank by these people who are very irresponsible and unethical,” he said. “We totally reject these types of jokes.”
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030618/od_nm/odd_cuba_radio_dc_1
Cuba’s Castro Apparent Victim of Radio Prank
Wed Jun 18, 8:16 AM ET Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Frances Kerry
MIAMI (Reuters) - Cuban President Fidel Castro (news - web sites) or someone sounding very much like him fell for a trap laid by Miami radio pranksters on Tuesday, thinking he was talking on the phone to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and abusing the callers when he realized he was being duped.
The radio station, Spanish-language station El Zol 95.7, delightedly and repeatedly broadcast the recording from its popular program “El Vacilon de la Manana” (Morning Joker) in a city that is home to many anti-Castro exiles.
There was no immediate way of telling whether it really was Castro on the line, but to Spanish speakers familiar with the Cuban leader’s well-known voice it seemed to be him. There was no immediate reaction from government officials in Havana.
The Vacilon hosts, Enrique Santos and Joe Ferrero, used the same technique they used in January to catch Chavez on the program, when they cobbled together real phrases spoken by Castro to make the Venezuelan leader think he was talking to his Cuban ally.
This time, they used phrases spoken in a speech by Chavez.
A presenter posing as a Chavez aide wound his way through a series of Cuban official switchboards — receptive because Chavez is a strong Castro admirer — with a story that Chavez needed to speak to Castro because he had lost a suitcase with sensitive documents on a recent trip both leaders made to Argentina.
Finally, Castro came on the line and listened to the story of the suitcase.
The Chavez “aide” asked Castro if he agreed to help by getting his security detail hunt down the suitcase and the Cuban leader said, “I absolutely agree.”
“Do you agree with the shit on the island (Cuba), killer?” the Chavez “aide” asked, quickly adding, “You fell for it” and announcing he was on the Miami radio program.
“What did I fall for, you shit?” said Castro. “What did I fall for, bastard?,” he said. He added a few more words of strong abuse before hanging up, as whoops of joy erupted at the Miami end of the call.
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030618/ts_alt_afp/us_cuba_prank_030618222322
Castro apparently falls victim to Miami radio prank
Wed Jun 18, 6:23 PM ET Add U.S. National - AFP to My Yahoo!
MIAMI (AFP) - Cuban leader Fidel Castro (news - web sites) apparently fell victim to a prank by a Miami radio station, and used crude expletives against Miami talk show hosts who led him to believe he was on the phone with his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez.
AFP/File Photo
The recording of the conversation was repeatedly aired since Tuesday by the Spanish-language radio station El Zol 95.7, which had already played a similar prank on Chavez in January, pretending Castro was on the line.
The make-believe Chavez sought help from Castro in tracking down a suitcase containing secret documents he said he lost during the leaders’ recent trip to Argentina.
Eventually, a man posing as a Chavez aide asked Castro: “Do you agree with the shit on the island, murderer?” and added, “You fell for it … the whole of Miami is listening to you, Fidel Castro.”
“What did I fall for, you shit,” the irate Cuban leader answered, adding further crude expletives, including references to the anatomy of the host’s mother.
“He used very obscene words the president of a country should never use,” said the radio host Joe Ferrero said later.
Castro eventually hung up, ending the 25-minute conversation.
The radio station used the same technique it had employed for the Castro imitation in January, piecing together fragments from Chavez speeches.
Miami is home to close to 700,000 Cuban exiles and Cuban-Americans, many of whom staunchly oppose Castro’s communist government.