Chronicle on Cuba - August 2005

Exile Community

August 9: A federal appeals court that rejected the criminal convictions and sentences of five men accused of spying for the Cuban government, was decried in Miami. Radio show host Ninoska Pérez Castellón told listeners on Radio Mambi, 710 AM, that it was "a racist decision" against the Cuban-American community. Manny Vázquez, an attorney and director at the Cuban American National Foundation, a powerful Miami exile group, said he was "disgusted" by the ruling. "It's hogwash," Vazquez said. "The court spent a lot of time picking that jury and the jury was devoid of Cubans. It was a totally fair and impartial trial." The FBI seized coded computer disks containing 2,000 messages among the defendants and their handlers in Havana, prosecutors said. Federal agents also found shortwave radio messages from Cuba warning that René Gonzalez and another pilot should not fly with the Brothers around the time of the shoot-down. Defense lawyers essentially conceded that the five were working on behalf of the Cuban government but said they were simply trying to protect their homeland from exile groups and did not try to gather military secrets. The court ruling dismayed especially the relatives of the pilots from Brothers to the Rescue, an organization that flew small planes across the Florida Straits in search of rafters fleeing Cuba. ''We are extremely disappointed,'' said Maggie Alejandre Khuly, whose brother, Armando Alejandre Jr., was one of those shot down on February 24, 1996 while flying a Brothers to the Rescue plane. "I sat at the trial every day, and I don't think I saw any miscarriage of justice. But we firmly believe and respect the American justice system.'' José Baulto, head of Brothers to the Rescue, said he didn't believe there was any undue influence on the jurors, none of whom were Cuban American. ''I'm very disappointed in their decision. They were convicted by a jury of their peers,'' he said. "If they are retried, they will again be found guilty.'' (Sun Sentinel, Chicago Tribune, The Miami Herald, 10/8/05)

August 17: The reconstruction of the island, participation in the first stages of the democratic transition and emergency assistance to a society in a precarious state constitute the goals of Cuba Corps, the latest effort by the Cuban exile community to support civil society in the island. “We have set ourselves the task to assist in the reconstruction of civil society,” said Olga Nodarse, president of the newly created organization. (El Nuevo Herald, 17/8/05)

August 23: Organizers of Miami's book fair defended the event as a universal and tolerant forum, rebutting criticism from some conservative Cuban-exile sectors of the invitation of a Colombian writer who admires Fidel Castro. "The Book Fair is under the umbrella of a US university, which means that it deeply respects freedom of expression. Here, prohibitions are prohibited," said Alejandro Rios, a spokesman for event sponsor Miami Dade College. The controversy arose following the comments of poet Angel Cuadra, president of the Cuban Writers in Exile PEN Centre, an affiliate of London-based International PEN, an international association of writers whose mission includes defending free expression. Cuadra called Restrepo one author "who should never have been invited to Miami." (EFE, 23/8/05)