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Recent Articles By Janine Zeitlin

National Features

Siomara Alonso flipped through Reader's Digest one humid May night in 2004. The 50-year-old natural beauty with caramel hair sat alone on a suburban back patio.

She couldn't see the stars or sky.

She longed for the space of her mountain farm in Venezuela and the high-ceilinged home she had left behind. Suddenly her cousin Yoli shouted from inside the cramped three-bedroom Kendall house: "Hurry! Come quick!" Siomara bolted to the living room, where she had been crashing on a sofa bed since late February.

The 11:00 news flashed to the South American home where she and her husband had lived for two decades. Dozens of strangers appeared, trashing the couple's handmade shutters with hammers and tearing down the oak blinds inside. The piano clanged off-key as it tumbled down a hill. Books burned in the yard.

A broadcaster explained that neighbors were enraged that Robert Alonso — Siomara's husband — had been training terrorists. A few days before, the government had arrested more than 70 Colombians on and near the property. They were said to be paramilitaries plotting the overthrow or assassination of President Hugo Chávez.

From the couch, Yoli hurled curses at the tiny old TV set. Siomara stood silently. Shocked and numb, they watched as people in ratty clothes, some missing teeth, dumped the silk and cotton contents of Siomara's top dresser drawer onto the brown, sun-dried Spanish tile floor. They stomped on her pink and white underwear. Those were not her neighbors.

She sobbed over what her life had become. Robert was in hiding. How would she support her two sons, ages nine and 11, who were sleeping in a spare room nearby? Home as she knew it was gone.

These days Robert and Siomara live in a secret Kendall location. He is a Venezuelan outlaw accused of urging his countrymen by radio, newspaper, and Internet to hit the streets and cause anarchy.

Robert dubs the plan that caused him to flee his homeland La Guarimba, and says it's nonviolent. But the last time he made his pitch for revolt — in 2004 — at least 13 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded in clashes. "If you don't follow the instructions, it's not my fault.... When you commit yourself to something, you have to quemar los barcos, burn the ships. There's no way out," says the 57-year-old with a shock of white hair and an ample belly. "We're at war."

Robert and Siomara ("my friends call me Siomi") Alonso are both Cuban by birth. She comes from Havana, the only child of an insurance broker and stay-at-home mother. Her family left the island in August 1960, a year after Fidel Castro's forces overthrew President Fulgencio Batista's regime. Her father arranged a job transfer to Caracas, and for Siomi, Cuba became nostalgia flashes — lizards in the back yard, rocking chairs, and the smells of her grandmother's home. She's unlike Robert, who is plagued by the unrelenting gnaw of Cuban politics.

Roberto Alonso Bustillo was born in August 1950 in the tranquil province of Cienfuegos, where, he says, the "smell of the sea filled our lungs every morning, and one car, if even, passed every half-hour." He was a squirrelly, mischievous kid who favored horseback riding, fishing, and playing cowboys and Indians. One time the boy rubbed a piece of candy in some leaves that made it spicy-hot, then rewrapped it, and gave the sweet to a friend.

On January 3, 1959, the eight-year-old reached out to Fidel Castro during a parade. He felt hopeful about the triumph of the revolution. A couple of years later, Robert remembers, he was pedaling up to his family's upper-middle-class home. (They belonged to a yacht club nearby.) There he saw his parents giving away their furniture, clothes, and TV sets to friends. He says his father, Ricardo, took a baseball bat to their chandelier. They didn't want Castro's government to inherit their possessions.

That night Ricardo, his wife Conchita, their three children, and a Pekingese dog named Chato piled into a borrowed car and left the empty home. They headed for Havana. There a veterinarian friend forged documents showing Chato was a mutt. (Castro wouldn't let anything valuable leave the country, including pups, Robert says.) Three days later, on Robert's 11th birthday, the family departed for Caracas with 13 suitcases aboard an old Spanish ship.

People gathered at the docks and shouted, "Gusanos! Imperialistas!" But soon those chants drifted unheard into the wind. During the trip, Conchita knelt before Robert and explained his parents were "counterrevolutionaries." She hugged him and said Fidel was a bad man. "That morning of the 24th of August 1961, I became Cuban," he would later write in an essay.

At the first pensión, or boarding house, in Venezuela, the family shared a bathroom with prostitutes, Robert recalls. (Robert, who has knack for storytelling, claims they drifted to 10 pensiones that year; his brother, Ricardo Jr., and sister, Maria Conchita, now a famous actress, peg it at two or three.) Soon Ricardo found a gig selling used cars. Robert and his brother passed out flyers at a stoplight.

Next their father set up a rattan-importing business. Ricardo Jr. immersed himself in student politics, but Robert wasn't interested. When Robert was around 15 years old, his parents sent him to the United States, where he lived with family friends on a farm in Washington state. There he learned to chop wood, tend pastures, and make taffy.

His sister later joined him. Once they performed together in a talent show. She sang and Robert, an aspiring musician who resembled Elvis, accompanied her on Spanish guitar. After graduating from high school, he studied business in Spokane. In 1972 he traveled to Munich to study TV and film production, and then to Scotland for communications classes.

Write Your Comment show comments (19)

  1. Janine, I love you!!!! You made me cry!!!! You have the ability to exactly portrait my feelings and allow people to grab the emotions and sorrow, also the love and commitment involved. Please promise me that when you come back from your vacation, you will call us so we can get together and have lunch with us during the weekend. Thank you very much, you showed his family and human side that he has always had, no matter what trouble is he getting into.
    All my love and kisses,
    Siomi

    Comment by Siomara Alonso — October 11, 2007 @ 11:28AM

  2. I feel just like Maria Conchita. Chavez is a tyrant and is doing the same thing to venezuela as Castro did in Cuba. He hates capitalism but yet owns shares of Citgo, Verizon and other American companies. He is a two-faced "Mr. Potato" looking, ill-mannered being who cannot even speak properly when addressing a crowd. I am not Cuban nor Venezuelan, but I wish peoplewould open up their eyes and see what he is doing.

    Comment by Vivian — October 11, 2007 @ 11:57AM

  3. God bless you people for this Godly movement ten fold. I want to thank you guys deeeeeeeeeeeeeeply for this GREAT post/document. It has further enlightened me in MY OWN MOVEMENTS to save this world in which we must live and constantly find solutions. We should unite our forces. I am of great asset, for with God nothing can be stopped. I also want to express my condolences and sorrow for the loss of your valuables in Venezuela... and more, I too have intense history and story. I would like to expose what i know and be an addition to 'the fam'.

    "Dios con migo y el mundo tambien."

    Comment by Arnold Hernandez — October 11, 2007 @ 01:24PM

  4. What a story!!! Wow!

    Comment by Mike Olsen — October 11, 2007 @ 06:20PM

  5. Alonso has been my hero for many many years now. He is the only Venezuelan who has fought Chavez, the rest are fake-warriors. Robert Alonso is for real! God bless him and his family for ever. Viva Robert Alonso!

    Comment by Marisol B — October 11, 2007 @ 06:23PM

  6. What a great article. I would like to read the book written by Gerard de Villiers. Is there a place where I can buy the book here in Miami?

    Comment by Norma Gutierrez — October 11, 2007 @ 06:53PM

  7. I didn't have enough! What a great story. My congratulations to all of you!

    Comment by Tim Grator — October 11, 2007 @ 07:53PM

  8. I was in Venezuela during La Guarimba. We couldn't get out of our hotel (Hotel Tamanaco) from where we had a great view of a large part of Caracas. It was very exciting watching from our hotel, on top of a hill. We thought we were going to see the end of Chavez right there, unfortunally it didn't work and now I know why. I have read a lot about La Guarimba and Alonso, but this is the best article I have read about him and his "lucha", as you call it. Great job! Keep it up!

    Comment by Rigoberto Rodríguez — October 11, 2007 @ 07:59PM

  9. Alonso is a fighter, there is no doubt about it. We should all keep an eye on him. Chavez is doing so, because he knows what's comming to him from Alonso. Good article.

    Comment by Mary W. — October 12, 2007 @ 12:21AM

  10. Viva la familia Alonso.

    Comment by Mario Nova — October 12, 2007 @ 07:49AM

  11. The Cuban exile has much to learn from Robert Alonso.

    Comment by MM — October 12, 2007 @ 03:18PM

  12. Maria’s Conchita Alonso is more than just an middle-aged Cubo-Venezuelan former starlet with a fondness for bad plastic surgery and (eek) graphic exhibitionism: she’s also the sister of a real live terrorist! Alt-weekly Miami New Times printed an odd, fawning interview with Robert Alonso today, and while it’s mercifully crotch-shot free, it’s sure to make you gag in other ways.

    You see, Robert Alonso is just a sweet old romantic who likes daisies and Englebert Humperdink. And this whole having to run away from the law thing is really taking a toll on his poor old wife. And besides, the terrorism was totally everybody else’s responsibility:

    “Robert dubs the plan that caused him to flee his homeland La Guarimba, and says it's nonviolent. But the last time he made his pitch for revolt — in 2004 — at least 13 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded in clashes. "If you don't follow the instructions, it's not my fault...”
    Oh, and “he's working with others to form cells in Nicaragua and Cuba.” So what does his kinda almost famous sister think about all this?

    “Oh please,” she says. “Terrorists are people who don't care about anybody.”

    Comment by Michael J. — October 13, 2007 @ 09:05PM

  13. He's 57 years old with white hair and a pot belly, living in the quiet suburbs outside Miami. But Robert Alonso isn't just another retiree contemplating his next tee time; instead, he's plotting the overthrow of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez. What's more, Chavez--the theatrical dictator who compared George Bush to the Devil at the U.N. and is largely funded by Americans who buy Citgo gasoline--knows it. An anti-communist exile who fought the Cubans in Angola and knows his way around a Colt .38, Alonso is dead serious about unseating Chavez. And as Miami New Times staff writer Janine Zeitlin reports, he and his sister--Hollywood actress Maria Conchito Alonso--are well on their way to making Chavez's life miserable.

    Comment by Ronald Lair — October 13, 2007 @ 09:09PM

  14. You call THIS fawning BS journalism? Hugo Chavez is not a dictator, and these people are terrorist SCUM, not underground heroes. The people of Venezuela elected, by overwhelming margins, CHAVEZ, not Alonso & Co. Get it straight, New Slimes!

    Comment by Charles U. Farley — October 16, 2007 @ 10:57PM

  15. Gotta agree with Charles. As soon as I saw the headline at the top of the article calling Chavez a dictator I knew the article was a piece of garbage and vicious propaganda and disinformation. Hugo Chavez is a democratically elected president. He is not above the law and does not have absolute power. Mr Chavez has no control of other branches of government, only the executive branch. Venezuela's constitution, system of government, and system of checks and balances are far superior to that of other countries. Venezuela is the only country where the president can be recalled by the population. Venezuela is the only country where the people have full authority over their government and are directly involved in governing their country.

    Here is a much better website for information on Venezuela.

    http://www.venezuelanalysis.com

    Comment by Ty — December 20, 2007 @ 02:05PM

  16. This soap opera based on a chubby James Bond Latino shows once more that our history, somewhat unreliable, is based on legends, lies and folklore. While promoting the Guarimba in Vzla., and in the first years in exile in the US, I know for sure this man was married to another women whom he has deeply loved. Evidently, his former first wife (since he has 2 former wives now)has pursued a crusade to purge anything related to his relationship with his second beloved wife who, evidently redirected her energies elsewhere when so many fables distorted the reality of her life also in exile...

    Comment by Claire Dupont — January 18, 2008 @ 08:49PM

  17. I have worked with Robert Alonso in many occasions, here and out. I know his family, his wife Siomi and his kids. There are many allegation related to Alonso. He has never loved any other woman but his own. The enemy has his way to disturb the truth and we have seen here the enemy at work. I have heard many love stories regarding Robert Alonso. The truth is that he has lived happily with Siomi for over thirty years and nobody is going to disturb that truth. Yes, he divorced Siomi as it is explained here. It is time to live the Alonso family be.

    Comment by Martin Looman — January 21, 2008 @ 08:06PM

  18. I have the feeling this "Claire Dopont" is Robert "second wife", who feels she was left out by Janine Zeitlin and who really believed she was Robert's "second wife". I wonder who is Robert living with right now, and if he loves his "second wife" deeply, why isn't he living with her?

    Comment by Maria Ramey — January 21, 2008 @ 08:22PM

  19. Robert's second wife? Do you mean Aunt Jemima? Uakatela! Is she still around? Last I've heard she went back to Venezuela. She has nothing to look up here. She should be down there, where she has always belonged.

    Comment by Marlene Gutierrez — January 26, 2008 @ 08:40PM

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