Chronicle on Cuba - November 2006

Exile Community

November 5: Captured during the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, more than 100 men and boys, some bleeding from battle wounds, were stuffed into a sealed semi-trailer bound for a prison in Havana. As they all filed onto the trailer on that scorching hot day, two boys -- Humberto Martinez, 16, and William Muir, 17 -- remember the chilling words of a man they later learned was Osmany Cienfuegos, a Cuban military commander: ``If they die in there, that's fine; that way we'll save on bullets.'' Martinez, Muir and the others spent the next eight hours hunched together, shoulder-to-shoulder, in the dark with little air to breathe. Nine died, their bodies found sprawled on the truck's filthy floor. Today, the little-known story of what happened on April 22, 1961, to a group of men who survived the tragedy is the basis for a lawsuit now being prepared against the Cuban commander who ordered the prisoners into the trailer. ''The time has come for Osmany Cienfuegos to pay for what he did to those men,'' said Mario Martinez Malo, member of the veterans of Brigade 2506, who is helping the legal effort abroad. Martinez Malo said the brigade has hired a Madrid attorney. They recently gathered survivors of the deadly semi-trailer ride to videotape their testimony of their experience that day -- and the role Cienfuegos played. Martinez hopes the lawsuit turns the spotlight on Castro's cruelty to Cubans who opposed his regime. (The Miami Herald 5/11/06)

November 5: While Cuban officials insist that former owners will return to evict residents, a growing number of Cubans in South Florida believe residents should stay in their homes, surveys show. As new generations of Cubans move to Florida motivated more by economics than politics, they're less likely to support calls to dislodge residents still suffering economically under communism. Older émigrés who may have dreamed of recouping their former homes are dying off or have built new lives in Florida, said Fernand Amandi, executive vice president at Coral Gables-based researcher Bendixen & Associates. "You hear a lot of propaganda coming out of Cuba that people in South Florida are going to come back and take away their homes," Amandi said. According to a  poll by Bendixen & Associates in South Florida, 67 % of the people who answered the question “should homes in Cuba be returned to former owners”, said “no”. While 47 % answered “not likely” to the question, would you return to Cuba to live under a democracy? (Sun Sentinel, 5/11/06)

November 8: Actor-director Andy Garcia said that he hoped for a revolution of democracy in Cuba as his movie about the communist-run island opened a film festival in the Dominican Republic. Garcia, who starred in his own directing debut, ``The Lost City,'' was joined by President Leonel Fernandez and Dominican slugger Sammy Sosa at the Dominican Global Film Festival, which is run by the president's think tank, the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development. Asked what he hoped would happen in his native Cuba over the next year, Garcia said, ``I could only have the hope we have all had for 47 years: that the promise of a revolution of democracy will come true. That's what the revolution was about until it was betrayed.'' (AP, 8/11/06)

November 8: In a typically south Florida end to a dispute between a Connecticut sculptor and Miami's often-tempestuous Cuban exiles, a giant head of ailing Fidel Castro was relegated to "the dustbin of history." The clay sculpture of Castro that artist Daniel Edwards originally intended to display in New York's Central Park was dumped in a garbage truck in a mock send-off of the Cuban leader in "Little Havana," the heartland of anti-Castro sentiment. "Fidel Castro is where he belongs," exile and activist Ninoska Perez told about 200 people gathered for the ceremonial trashing of the sculpture, an event promoted on a popular local Spanish-language radio station. "He's gone from the street to the dustbin of history," Perez said. (Reuters, 8/11/06)

November 15: Cuban exile leader Marcelino Miyares was elected first vice-president of the Christian Democrat Organization of America (ODCA), during that organization’s XVIII Congress held in Santiago de Chile. Miyares is the current president of the Christian Democratic Party of Cuba, with headquarters in Miami. The Congress approved the change of status of observer members to permanent members for the Cuban dissident groups Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), Cuban Democratic Project (PRODECU) and the Cuban Democratic Directorate. (EER, 15/11/06)

November 20: Hugo Cancio, President and CEO of Fuego Entertainment, Inc., a public media and entertainment company, announced that he will establish an exploratory group called the US-Cuban Investment Committee for assisting the reconstruction of his native country, Cuba, and in the process, play a key-role in its transformation to a free-economy. "Mixed with the exotic aroma of coffee and tobacco leaves, the Cuban people can almost begin to feel the winds of freedom (…) freedom from its failed political and economic system, and freedom from over 45 years of an economic embargo imposed by the US government," stated Mr. Cancio. "Cuba is already experiencing a soft and passive transition in its government ... one that will have no choice but to open its arms to the world. I want to be there and help Cuba rebuild itself, brick by brick, if necessary. It's not only a genuine desire, it's my obligation." For now, the US-Cuban Investment Committee will have 10 members who are leading professionals in business and finance and convene twice a month. Eventually, the committee will explore the possibility of pooling together its own private investment fund to provide financial capital for Cuba's economic growth. (Business Wire, 20/11/06)

November 27: José Antonio Llama spends much of his retirement stewing in his art-filled Miami home about one incomplete mission: the death of Fidel Castro. But the 75-year-old Cuban exile is haunted by another obsession: Recovering nearly $1.5 million that he says his former allies owe him for his purchase of planes, boats, a helicopter and explosives. Llama, who once owned an air-conditioning business, claims he put up all that money for a secret ''war council'' that consisted of members of a powerful exile lobbying group, the Cuban American National Foundation. He further alleges they reneged on their spoken promise to share the cost of paramilitary activities against the Cuban government and its communist leader. Llama filed a complaint with Miami police in the hope of sparking a criminal investigation. But police said that Llama should pursue a lawsuit if he wants to resolve his financial dispute. “As far as I know, all of Mr. Llamas, allegations are false,'' said Francisco ''Pepe'' Hernández, president of the Cuban American National Foundation. ``Let him present his case in a court of law. That is his right.'' (The Miami Herald, 27/11/06)