Chronicle on Cuba - February 2007

Exile Community

February 1: Several leading opposition figures in Cuba offered their reactions to the news that a Miami city commissioner proposed holding a party at the Orange Bowl when Fidel Castro dies. Most said it's a terrible idea. Oswaldo Payá, the Christian Liberation Movement leader who organized an unprecedented gathering of 25,000 signatures throughout the island to demand a referendum on democratic freedoms in the late '90s, suggested that the proposed celebration would offend many people in Cuba. ''I don't celebrate anybody's death,'' Payá said. “Even though many members of Castro's regime offend, violate human rights and attack the dignity of even the most defenseless people, I think that celebrating anybody's death offends that person's family members, and affects the dignity of whoever does it.'' Oscar Espinosa Chepe, an independent economist who was jailed for his writings in 2003 and released for medical reasons in 2004, told me that holding a party in Miami after Castro's death ``wouldn't make any sense, and would become an international scandal.'' ''I understand the situation in Miami, where many people have suffered a lot, have been humiliated, and have all the right to express their feelings,'' Espinosa Chepe said. ``But the repercussions this would have in Cuba would be very negative.'' ''There's a reality which can't be denied: Castro is an elderly person who has ruled Cuba nearly 50 years, and even if he is leaving behind a very sad legacy, he will always leave behind a sentimental thing of respect among many people,'' he said. ``Don't forget that a majority of the population at one time in history saw Fidel Castro as a god, even if he has lost much of his former popularity.''  Martha Beatriz Roque, another economist who was imprisoned in 2003 and released a year later, was less critical of the idea. ''Fidel Castro has done a lot of harm to the Cuban people: there are many split families, much pain in the Cuban people,'' she said. ``And perhaps there are people who want to get rid of their pain in that way [celebrating]. I think we have to respect people's way of thinking.'' (The Miami Herald, 1/2/07)

February 1: Some thirty US-based Cuban exile groups, assembled under the name of "United Cuban Organizations," announced in Miami a "post-Castro action plan." "As soon as Castro's death is confirmed," a plan of action will be set in motion that will feature "public demonstrations and conferences in memory of our martyrs," Orlando Martínez, coordinator of the new organization told the press. The Cuban exile initiative, to be carried out simultaneously in Miami, New York, New Jersey and Puerto Rico, seeks recognition for the exile groups’ efforts. (EFE, 1/2/07)

February 3: Pedro Knight, husband, musical director and inseparable companion of salsa queen Celia Cruz, died at Methodist Hospital in Arcadia, California. He was 85. The cause of death was not released, but Knight had been in failing health for the past couple of years, suffering complications from diabetes and a series of strokes. The man who began fading as soon as Cruz died in July 2003 and said time and time again that he yearned to join his wife of 41 years in the afterlife is expected to finally rest beside her in a crypt for two at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. (The Miami Herald, 3/2/07)

February 6: Cuban exile organizations in Miami expressed satisfaction for the release of dissident Julio César López Rodríguez, who was incarcerated in Cuba for 18 months, and asked that the rest of the political prisoners also be set free. Tomás Rodríguez, director of Agenda Cuba, said that the political activist should have never been arrested, and that the international community would applaud the release of the rest of the Cuban dissidents. Miguel Saavedra, leader of Vigilia Mambisa, said that it was just a cosmetic gesture if it was not accompanied with freedom for all prisoners of conscience, free elections and freedom of the press. According to Ninoska Pérez Castellón, director of the Council for the Freedom of Cuba, the liberation of López Rodríguez cannot conceal the fact that there is still repression in Cuba, where jails remain full of political prisoners. (OCB, 6/2/07)

February 11: When Fidel Castro dies, Ramon Saul Sanchez, 52, the founder of a Miami group called the Democracy Movement, or Movimiento Democracia, plans to sail for the island with generators, medicine and other supplies — and bring word that "freedom is on its way." Military leaders, law enforcement officials and aid organizations preparing for the Cuban leader's death are hoping for a calm and measured response on both sides of the Florida Straits. Sanchez outlined his group's plans. A businessman has donated the use of 400 feet of dock space on the Miami River, he said, from which Sanchez plans to launch boats toward Cuba, including a ferry that can carry 50 passengers to the island, as well as 20 tons of cargo. He has two cargo planes on call and is amassing supplies at a large storage space, he said. Sanchez believes Cuba's government may collapse after Castro dies. With the communist government in control of so many functions, such as food distribution, that could mean a collapse of civic structure, Sanchez said. Therefore, he said, the only way to avoid a migration from Cuba is to go to the island immediately after Castro's death, against the wishes of both nations' militaries and government leaders, with supplies and a message of hope. "What we intend to do helps the US interest, because it diminishes the chance of a mass exodus to the United States," he said. "We have moral leverage, and we intend to use it." (The New York Times, 11/2/07)

February 16: The Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), one of the most influential groups of the Cuban exile, is ready to talk with those government officials of the island that do not have "blood on their hands," like Vice-president Carlos Lage, said Jorge Fowler, vice-president and member of the organization’s Executive Committee. Fowler’s declarations were made on the TV show “Oppenheimer Presenta.“ According to Fowler, CANF wishes for a peaceful transition in Cuba. "We do not want a single drop of Cuban blood spilled," he said. (EFE, 16/2/07)

February 17: With more than 10,000 white crosses Miami's Cuban exiles commemorated friends and family they say were killed by the Castro regime or disappeared at sea trying to escape Cuba. In a grass field of this American city's Tamiami Park, the crosses kept the memory alive of victims taken by the Cuban government since Fidel Castro took power in 1959 until now, according to the organizers of what they call the "Cuban Memorial: a people united in sorrow." During the event, which was held for the fifth straight year, friends and family of the fallen got together, among them Miriam de la Peña, mother of one of the four pilots of the exile organization Brothers to the Rescue who died when Cuban MiG fighters shot down two of their light aircraft. The planes were shot down on Feb. 24, 1996 in international airspace, according to a United Nations investigation, while Havana claims they had entered Cuban airspace.  Blanca Rojas, the daughter of Lt. Col. Cornelio Rojas, executed by a firing squad in 1959, also attended the event to pay homage to her father. As the ceremony concluded, the organizers lit the "flame of sorrow," which will remain alight for three days in honor of the victims. (EFE, 17/2/07) 

February 26: It was 46 years ago, but the survivors remember all the gruesome details of their ride inside a sealed semi-trailer following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Urine and excrement sloshed on the floor, and men and boys -- more than 100 men captured by Cuban militia -- took turns breathing fresh air out of a small hole someone punched in the truck's side. When the truck stopped eight hours later in Havana, nine of the men inside were dead. Miami-based survivors of the invasion plan to file a lawsuit against Cuban military commander Osmany Cienfuegos, who they say gave the order to pack the men into the truck -- and Fidel Castro. ''We believe we have enough proof that the crime was committed by these two individuals,'' said Juan R. López de la Cruz, a retired US Army colonel and Bay of Pigs veteran who lives in Miami. The invasion veterans want their case heard in a Spanish court, which has asserted jurisdiction for human rights abuses in countries around the world. A similar court indicted former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The group wants the court to hold Castro and Cienfuegos responsible for the deaths of those nine prisoners of war. (The Miami Herald, 26/2/07)  

February 26: Mario Chanes de Armas, the Cuban political prisoner who served the longest sentence in modern times and symbolized the struggle for civic freedom in 20th century Cuba, will be remembered with a funeral service in Miami.  Chanes, 80, who suffered a fatal heart attack, spent his life in prison and in exile, but no adversity convinced him to halt his quest for a democratic future for his homeland. Certainly not during the 30 years he spent in prison for opposing the regime of Fidel Castro, his comrade-in-arms during the failed raid on the Moncada army barracks in Santiago de Cuba in 1953. Captured days later outside Santiago de Cuba, he was tried and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, but he was released in 1955 in a general amnesty to the raiders. Chanes did not hesitate to take up arms again together with Castro and on December 2, 1956, he and 81 other rebels landed on the eastern coast of Cuba. After the failed landing, Chanes managed to reach Havana, where he directed sabotage teams. He was arrested again, and was in prison when the revolution triumphed, on January 1, 1959. Chanes became disenchanted by the shift in the revolutionary process toward communism and tried to pull away from the circles of power. On July 17, 1961, he was arrested on charges of conspiring to assassinate Castro and sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment. He always maintained that the charges were fabricated, pointing out that no weapons or compromising documents were ever found in his possession. Refusing to accept the routine in prison or even wear prison garb, Chanes identified himself as a plantado -- a disobedient inmate -- until July 16, 1991, when he was released. Chanes found exile in Miami in 1993. (El Nuevo Herald, 26/2/07)