Chronicle on Cuba - April 2005

Exile Community

April 7: Cuban exiles in Spain accused the Department for Refugees, a branch of the Spanish Ministry of Interior of "negligence" for not responding to a request for asylum by Cuban heart surgeon Milvio Ramírez López. The Vice-president of the Cuban Liberal Union, Antonio Guedes, said the Cuban doctor had been an aide worker in Algeria, where he decided to break ranks with Fidel Castro’s regime. To call attention on his case, according to his account, he “threw himself out a window”. On a stopover on the way to Havana, Ramírez was admitted to a hospital in Madrid due to serious health conditions. The Spanish “Association Cuba in Transition” indicated he was accused by Cuban officials of “being a CIA agent, jeopardizing state interests and slandering Fidel Castro.” (ABC, 7/4/05)

April 7: Miami congressional representatives are prodding the Social Security Administration to change a policy that denies benefits to scores of elderly Cubans who settled in the United States after overstaying their visas. US Representatives Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, both Republicans, fired off letters to SSA Commissioner Jo Anne Barnhart demanding answers. A press article detailed cases in which elderly Cubans said they were struggling without Social Security benefits. Two public-service lawyers who are representing most of the Cubans, Jose Fons and Lizel Gonzalez, said their clients should be eligible -- just like Cubans who arrived without visas. (The Miami Herald, 7/4/05)

April 9: Some 30 Cuban exile organizations in Miami announced the creation of a promotion and support mechanism for [a meeting organized by] the Assembly to Promote Civil Society in Cuba on the island on May 20 th , in Miami, Silvia Iriondo, President of MAR por Cuba, announced the creation of a Support and Information Center for the dissidents’ meeting. The support network includes organizations like Plantados por la Libertad, Brigada 2506, Unidad Cubana, Consejo Nacional del Presidio Político, Movimiento 30 de Noviembre, Agenda Cuba, Comando Martiano, Presidio Político Histórico, Unidad Cubana, Guías Espirituales del Exilio, among others. (El Nuevo Herald, 10/4/05)

April 11: Cubans who fled during the Mariel boatlift tend to have more middle-of-the-road views than Cubans who arrived before or after the 1980 exodus on issues such as invading Cuba or traveling to the island, according to a new poll. About half of Mariel exiles polled feel that US citizens should be allowed to travel to Cuba compared to about 34 percent of exiles who came before 1980 and about 60 percent of those who came after 1980. The poll -- conducted by Coral Gables-based Bendixen & Associates for The Herald's coverage of the boatlift's 25th anniversary -- also found that about half of all Mariel refugees questioned would support a military invasion to depose Fidel Castro compared to 60 percent of exiles who came before 1980 and just 38 percent of those who came after 1980. ''Mariel exiles tend to have an intermediate point of view on most issues that impact Cuba policy,'' Pollster Sergio Bendixen said. "They are likely to be more conservative than those who arrived after 1980 but more progressive than those that came in the 1960s and 1970s.'' (The Miami Herald, 11/4/05)

April 11: As enthusiasts of Latin American cinema prepare for the start of the sixth annual Havana Film Festival in New York, some Cuban-Americans are denouncing the event as propaganda for the Castro regime. They also say the New York Times, as the festival's presenting sponsor, is shilling for a communist strongman yet again. The celebration is a New York City transplant of a festival that takes place in the Cuban capital every December, run by the island country's national film institute, ICAIC. The New York version culls films - particularly award winners - from the Havana festival, adds other motion pictures from Latin America to the screening schedule, and rounds out the program with tributes and discussions. (The New York Sun, 11/4/05)

April 12: A freed Cuban dissident expects more political prisoners to be released soon, but said there can be no real change in Cuba until Fidel Castro dies. "It's a shame that a country has to wait for the death of somebody to become democratic," poet and journalist Raul Rivero told a news conference in Spain, his new home since being released in November from 20 months in jail. Rivero said he expected a group of eight to 10 dissidents to be released soon because the Geneva-based UN Commission on Human Rights was due to conduct its annual vote later this week on a resolution - presented by the United States and backed by the European Union - about Cuba's human rights record. The dissidents - including Ricardo Gonzalez, Hector Palacios, Jose Luis Garcia Paneque and Luis Milan - have been moved to a prison psychiatric ward in a sign of their impending release, he said. "They move them into better conditions when they are about to be released so the sick can be cured and start looking better. Each day, their relatives have the hope that it could be today - maybe before Geneva, maybe after. I, too, think they are going to be freed," Rivero said. (Reuters, 12/4/05)

April 14: Cuban-American congressmen celebrated the passage of a resolution against Cuba by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. Florida Republican Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, one of the party's four Cuban national lawmakers, expressed his gratitude to the governments who voted "in favor of human rights and dignity for the Cuban people." For his part, Pedro Lopez, the director of the Cuban National Coordinator, which groups a dozen exile organizations, told the press that "Cuba has obtained an impressive victory." "The Cuban people will be eternally grateful to the countries who voted against (Havana's) tyranny and will designate as traitors to democracy those who voted at the side of the (island's) regime," he added. In like manner, Luis Zuñiga, the director of the Cuban Liberty Council, hailed the vote on the resolution as "the only moment of justice each year for the Cuban people." (EFE, 14/4/05)

April 19: A group of Cuban exiles -- known to have to vastly divergent political and ideological views -- have set aside their differences to craft an 18-point blueprint of how the island should be governed after Fidel Castro. Representatives from 16 groups, including the Cuban American National Foundation, Agenda Cuba, the Cuba Study Group and members of the clergy, spent months working up the template called "Pillars for a Cuban Consensus.'' Among the ideals set forth by the group: the right of all Cubans -- both on the island and abroad -- to participate in the island's political future; the elimination of the death penalty and the release of all political prisoners; amnesty for political crimes ''within the boundaries established by international law''; and unrestricted travel for Cubans to and from the island. The groups also advocate the signing over of titles of residential properties confiscated by the government to current tenants, and they support allowing former owners or descendants to claim compensation for those properties from the state. While a broad range of political ideals were represented, the most conservative -- and arguably among the most influential -- groups did not participate, including the Cuban Liberty Council, and Cuba Democracy Advocates. (The Miami Herald, 19/4/05)

April 22: Five years ago, more than 150 federal agents stormed a modest Little Havana home, emerging from a cloud of tear gas with a 6-year-old boy. Today, Elián González is 11 years old, living in Cuba with his father and dreaming of a life as a gymnast. But the saga of Elián still lives with those who for 149 days fought to keep him in Miami. Marisleysis González, who emotionally championed keeping Elián in Miami, doesn't like to talk about the times when she was on television with the boy as his attractive and most-outspoken supporter at only 21. But she does say that she never saw or spoke to Elián again after the raid, which she has said at first emotionally destroyed her. (The Miami Herald, 22/4/05)