Cubans made Chevy a cradle for their hopesBY

Barry Farber Meets Global Exchange
By Barry Farber
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 14, 2003

Those who know me can't quite believe it, but it actually happened.

There came a day when I actually – no joke – felt sorry for the Communists. Now, what do you suppose brought that about?

It wasn't Stalin's purge trials of the 1930s or the deliberate starvation of six million Ukrainians that made me feel sorry for the communists. Neither was it the Soviet pact with the late Adolf Hitler, Moscow's grab of the three Baltic countries – Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia – all in a single day, Russia's invasion of Poland from the east while the Nazis struck from the west, the Soviet enslavement of eastern Europe after victory in World War II, the withdrawal of Allied access to West Berlin necessitating the dangerous and expensive Berlin Air Lift, the unleashing of Kim Il Sung's North Korean forces into South Korea – educated readers can fill in the rest, though it might take a heap of filling with extra-large shovels.

My sudden surge of pity for the Communists had no genesis in any of their deeds of expansion and oppression. It began at a pre-Christmas party in Manhattan in early December of 1990. In walked my first boss in broadcasting, the recently deceased Tex McCrary, with whom I shared many Hemingway moments in Havana immediately after Fidel took Cuba.

"Barry-O," he said. "Cancel whatever plans you have for New Year’s. We're going to Havana again!"

Tex was a Yale graduate. A group of younger Yale graduates had formed a charitable foundation called the Millennium Society. They raised money for scholarships and every year went as a group to welcome the New Year in some unlikely place. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, they were standing on top of what was left of it. That's where the elder McCrary tied up with the younger Yale alums of the Millennium Society. New Year’s Eve entering 2000 found them at the Pyramids in Giza, Egypt. You get the point.

This time, the champagne-popping was going to be in Castro's Cuba. Though not Yale graduates, my daughter Celia and I signed on and booked passage to Miami airport, at which point we entered the care and custody of an organization I'd never heard of called Global Exchange. (McCrary's doctors ultimately refused to let him go. He was already 90 years old and a survivor of four cancer operations. Celia and I went enthusiastically in his place.)

At that point I viewed Global Exchange as nothing more than a kind of motor vehicles bureau. You go to the latter if you want to drive legally. You went to Global Exchange if you wanted to visit Cuba legally. They took all the necessary data and procured a Treasury Department "license" to permit Americans to fly directly from Miami to Havana without sneaking in illegally through Canada or Mexico or elsewhere. I figured Global Exchange might even be somehow connected to the U. S. State Department, or maybe it was a private subcontractor for that kind of detail work.

My education about Global Exchange picked up pace a bit when David Horowitz exposed them as being roughly the closest thing to what the Soviet Cominform was to the world in the late 1940s! Apparantly Global Exchange is currently setting up shop in Iraq to try to persuade U. S. troops to desert or defect. (I don't think even Jane Fonda did anything like that!)

I shouldn't have needed David Horowitz to pin up my diapers regarding Global Exchange. After our trip a young lady called me from their San Francisco headquarters to "debrief" me on my Cuban adventure. By that time I'd seen a brochure or two about their activities in other parts of the world, and when she asked me how I felt about Global Exchange I told her I was grateful for the chance to visit Cuba legally, but I wish they weren't involved in so much far-Left mischief around the world.

I think I could hear her gag. I think she had to take a pill and lie down. She'd probably never met one like me before. All the others were undoubtedly in sync with Global Exchange's views and rhapsodized their many activities accordingly.

Okay; we arrived in Havana and were ushered into sleek modern buses imported from Sweden and taken to the still-luxurious Hotel Nacional. Our first meeting with the Castro welcoming committee was not only non-confrontational, but boring. After stashing our bags in our rooms we were assembled in a ballroom for orientation.

The handlers were a mix of English-speaking Castro government officials and American ex-patriots living in Cuba as Communist followers of Fidel Castro. I don't know the name of the guy in our group who asked the first question, but he couldn't have done a better job of lulling the Castro team into a false sense of security. His first question, after the Welcome-To-Cuba formalities, was "When does the baseball season begin?" The rest of the session dealt with warnings that Cuban water pressure doesn't always let toilets flush according to American expectations, which tickets are available for which entertainment spectaculars, and, above all, don't try to contact the American Interest Section in what used to be the American Embassy, because, explained an American woman married to a Castro official, "They don't care about you."

My pity for the Communists ballooned the next morning at our first "working" session. Understand that all the other Americans Global Exchange and the Castro handling team had worked with and processed into Cuba before us were the expected "delegations" of milky-eyed wives of Unitarian and Congregationalist ministers from the Midwest wearing Che Guevara T-shirts and bleating out their newly learned mantras, like "Viva La Revolucion!"

They'd never counted on real sentient, thinking, aware Americans who knew the difference between slavery and freedom.

I'm proud to say that at that first working session, my daughter Celia was the one who let them know who was really in town.

The meeting was opened by a Castro loyalist who lambasted the United States government, our president, the nation itself, and practically all Americans alive except the bunch of us in that room, who he hailed as principled and courageous enough to visit Cuba whether the capitalists liked it or not. Celia recalls that opening as beyond poor diplomatic taste. "We were brow-beaten," she said.

And the docility of the American delegations that had preceded us could be inferred from the sloppiness of the Castro man's pitch. He actually said Cuba welcomes "invasions of Americans like you sitting peacefully in this room, and not like the ones who invaded the Bay of Pigs in 1961!"

I mean, were we the first group he'd welcomed aware of the fact that those who landed at the Bay of Pigs were not Americans, but Cubans willing to give their lives to save Cuba from Communism?

His opening greeting closed with a vitriolic denunciation of all the slanderous lies Americans were being told about Cuba and Cuba's "alleged" lack of freedoms. Then it was time for questions.

"How can you explain," Celia asked, "so many reports from so many sources – not just in America, but around the world – of repression and your elimination of opposition and your cruelty to dissidents and your mistreatment of prisoners and the total absence of freedom if none of them are true? I mean," Celia continued, "we hear these things from people who did not lose sugar plantations to the Castro takeover. We hear them from people who have no reason to lie about you."

That's where my pity began. They had all assumed, both blithely and smugly that we were one more contingent in the parade of pro-Castro delegations eager to get sucked up the exhaust pipe of "La Revolucion," open up our hearts and gratefully ingest all the toxic lies attendant thereto. They simply were not ready for plain old Americans who just happened to choose an unusual place to celebrate New Years Eve, 2001.

The whole Castro team of handlers came apart like an Alka-Seltzer tablet under Niagara Falls.

The speaker dissembled before Celia's question like Sid Caesar making nonsense syllables in a language struggling to sound like English. He wasn't ready. He wasn't prepared. The great Houdini died because he invited a group of college students to hit him in the stomach as hard as they could, but one of them did before he had to chance to flex. Celia hit the Castro man in the stomach before he realized who we were.

His pro-Castro rhetoric had the effect upon us of dropping a honeysuckle down the Grand Canyon and waiting for an echo. He was literally booed off the stage, not vocally but with our obvious awareness of his inanity. Looking back, he was good preparation for appreciating Baghdad Bob later on!

He floundered, trying to get the sand out of his gizzard and mount some kind of coherent response. His attempt started out weak and gradually tapered off. Before Castro, Cuba had the third highest standard of living in the hemisphere; right after the United States and Canada. At one point in his meltdown, trying to explain the abysmal life led by Cubans at the moment, he actually said, "Look, for decades we in Cuba looked up to the Soviet Union as the sun. Then the sun set and didn't come up again." His subsequent shrug seemed to say, "So what do you expect?"

The old Nigerian banking scam would have had more of a chance with our crowd.

After he got tired of choking on the question, he said, "Well, that's my short answer." At which point our group leader remarked, "Well, I wish we were going to be in Cuba long enough for your long answer!"

It was satisfying for this Cold Warrior to enjoy the humiliation of a beet-red Communist trying to spray-deodorize the regime of Fidel Castro before an audience of well-educated Americans. Was I being mean? No! We never pretended to be one of those "Viva La Revolucion!" crowds. The Castro people merely inferred what we'd never implied.

There was a terrible moment in the 1960's film The Counterfeit Traitor in which the German woman, played by Lilli Palmer, passed secrets to an American agent about a petroleum refinery in Hamburg. Her information led to a British air raid, which destroyed that facility causing many casualties among German civilians. She felt the need to go to a Catholic church to confess.

During her confession her eyes and the camera dipped down to the feet of the "clergyman," which happened to be encased in Gestapo boots.

She screamed! And she was promptly executed.

That was the bad surprising the good. That was a win for the bad guys.

Celia's innocent and valid question caused a similar surprise-quake in the heart, mind, and especially, the speech of the Castro man. That was the good surprising the bad!

I've never had a child star in Little League, a national spelling bee, or a major science project.

But my Celia shut down the Castro Rosy-Pink Bubble Machine with one honest, earnest, American thunderbolt of truth.

All those right of center, and I suspect a lot of them to the Left will excuse my pride.

It was a nice win for the good guys.

WHAT 10-YEARS IN CASTRO’S DUNGEONS MEAN

By Agustín Blázquez with the
collaboration of Jaums Sutton
La Nueva Cuba
August 10, 2003

On Monday August 11, six of the 12 Cuban refugees that the Bush administration so swiftly returned to Castro were brought for the typical kangaroo trial in Havana. They were charged with “hijacking.” But every Cuban knows that, especially for high-profile cases, the regime carefully chooses the charge that will maximize the intimidation effect for the population. Actually, this group of 11 men and one woman overpowered a crew of three men taking a Cuban mapping and geological research vessel on July 15. The next day the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted their trip to freedom off the Bahamas.

As swiftly as Bush returned them, they were tried and sentenced by Castro on August 12 (barely a day later) to 7 to 10 years in jail. This was part of an “agreement” concocted by the Bush administration with the ruler-for-life of a country designated by the U.S. Department of State as a terrorist country. Although the last several Administrations has said they don’t make deals with terrorists ...

The Bush administration’s consistent, inhumane practice of returning Cuban refugees to Cuba is a continuation of a secret agreement former president Clinton made with the terrorist Castro regime. It has received a lot of criticism not only from the Cuban American community (and not only in Miami but throughout the country) who condemned the policy from the beginning, but also from his own brother, Jeb, Florida’s Governor, as well as American columnists.

President Bush seems to have forgotten to whom he owes his small-margin-victory in Florida and he should not be confident on the Cuban American vote for the next presidential election.

The betrayals to the principle of freedom and democracy for Cuba that began with President Kennedy have left a bitter taste and a disappointment in the hearts of the Cuban Americans for ignoring what this country really stands for. Apparently economic greed takes precedence over sound moral principles.

And, if we can escape the politics and finally get to the human side of this, making a deal with a terrorist for a 10-year sentence in Castro’s dungeons for a human being whose “crime” was to try to escape a tyranny to live as a free man is unconscionable. But, that is what this is really about.

Prisons in Cuba are not the picnic, or “country club” they are in the U.S., so below find a few details of the hundreds of thousands of men and women now languishing in that forgotten hellhole. The estimate is that more than one million Cubans have suffered imprisonment under Castro’s regime.

On August 1, 2003, Vladimiro Lugo Leyva, 42, a common prisoner died of tuberculosis in the Prison Center Kilo 8 in the province of Camagüey. Due to overcrowding, total lack of hygiene and medical attention, tuberculosis is prevalent among prisoners in Cuba.

His mother says that he did not receive the proper medical attention for the disease that he contracted while in prison and he just wasted away. She requested a meeting with First Lieutenant Julio Derive Suárez, in charge of the wing where her son was and with the Chief of the Prison, Mayor General Osmani Roca Morales, demanding hospital care and a proper diet for her son to no avail.

Finally, when her son was experiencing labored breathing, fever and malnutrition, he was taken to the hospital where Vladimiro Lugo Leyva died 24 hours later. The refusal to give medical attention and the meager diet is a common practice in Castro’s prison system in order to exterminate prisoners. This information was smuggled out of Cuba and distributed by www.CubaNet.org.

Leonardo Miguel Bruzon Avila, 49, is a political prisoner. He had been President of the human rights movement “24 of February” and was jailed on February 22, 2002, but he has not been taken to trial. Castro’s regime charged him with “public disorder” and “desacato” [saying something bad about Castro or his regime].

He entered prison a healthy man, now a year and a half later, according to Alcira Avila, his mother, he is showing signs of pseudoParkinsons disease with a speech impediment. In a punishment cell at Combinado del Este Prison in Havana, he says he can no longer walk, has lost mobility in an arm and hand and he is loosing his vision. The last time his mother was allowed to see him was on July 14. He told her that he doesn’t have light in his cell, nor a mattress or sheets. He is not receiving needed medication. All in keeping with the technique of wasting away the prisoners to death.

Mrs. Avila has written letters to various government departments and to Castro but has received no response. She is appealing to the International Red Cross but Castro’s regime does not allow visits to prisons by that organization or other human rights organizations. Appealing to the American public opinion is impossible because the U.S. media doesn’t report these violations of human rights in Cuba. This information was received from Cuba and distributed by www.CubaNet.org.

Independent journalist F0abio Prieto, 39, a political prisoner, is serving a 20-year sentence at the Guanajay Prison in Havana. He was recently sentenced in the ongoing crackdown in Cuba. During the week of July 25, 2003, he was transferred to a cellblock housing common prisoners who are serving 30-year sentences for such crimes as drug trafficking, murder and rape. Mixing political with violent common prisoners is another well-documented technique in the study of prisons under Castro’s regime. These situations have resulted in the death of political prisoners by suicide or murder at the hands of the criminal inmates. This information was smuggled out of Cuba and distributed by www.CubaNet.org.

Black political prisoner Omar Pernet Hernández, 58, has, since June 21 been kept half naked in a punishment cell at the Guanajay Prison in Havana. He is also one of the recent victims of Castro’s crackdown that began in April 2003. He was the director of the “20 of May” independent library and also a member of the “National Movement for Human Rights Mario Manuel de la Peña.” He was given a 25-year sentence.

Omar Pernet Hernández refuses to wear the common criminal uniform. He says that he is in jail because he opposes Castro’s regime, which he says is not a crime. He suffers from pulmonary ailments and because of a weakened immune system, often gets pneumonia.

His sister, Mirtha Pernet Reyes says that because of the infrahuman environmental condition of her brother’s cell, the lack of medical attention and meager diet, she expects his ailments to worsen. She and the rest of the family blame the Cuban authorities. This information was received from Cuba and distributed by www.CubaNet.org.

In the article “Dissidents’ Tales of Abuses Begin to Emerge From Cuban Prisons” by Tracey Eaton published on July 7, 2003 by The Dallas Morning News, she says, “In a dog-eared diary smuggled out of prison, journalist Manuel Vázquez, 51, said he sleeps on ‘an old, dirty, hard-stuffed mattress' in a jail infested with rats, scorpions and other creatures. The food is hard to describe, he writes. ‘Meals include soy meal, roasted corn meal and sugar water, and a white paste made from wheat flour and other, unrecognizable substances.

‘The toilet is basically a hole regurgitating its stench 24 hours a day. There are no sheets, no pillows no radio or TV, no newspaper or books, no eating utensils, no cup, no towels.’” And he describes, “his cell, No. 31, measures about 5-by-10 feet.’ It 'floods daily with effluent from the hallway,' he writes, and the pock-marked ceiling leaks freely when it rains. Other inmates complain of beatings, solitary confinement and poor medical care. Conditions are ‘harsh and life threatening,' a U.S. human rights report said in March.”

Eaton talks about “La Pendiente prison near Santa Clara, about 170 miles east of Havana.” She reports that the wife of one of the inmates said that prison is “overrun with bedbugs,” and that the inmates cannot sleep because of the constant bites.

She mentions the case of former National Bank of Cuba economist and independent journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, 62, sentenced to 20 years and who “is suffering from liver disease, gastrointestinal bleeding and other symptoms.” His family “fears he's not getting proper medical care in prison and may die.”

Black political prisoner, Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet, 42, founder of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights, an admirer and follower of Dr. Martin Luther King, was sentenced to 25 years. He has been in “Kilo Cinco y Medio Prison,” a maximum-security facility in the province of Pinar del Rio since April 23, 2003. He also has refused to wear the common prisoner uniform, because dissenting from any regime is not a crime in the civilized world.

In a letter from prison dated June 1, 2003, smuggled out of the Cuba he says that he was confined half naked in a dark and dirty cell. The only ventilation was the smoke and soot from the prison kitchen. He was sharing his cell with two dangerous criminals. He was disoriented in the dark. By his pulse rate and bleeding of his gums he detected that his blood pressure was high. He stayed in that cell for 36 days until May 29 when he was transferred to a 3-by-6 feet solitary confinement cell where he sleeps on the floor with no running water, a hole on the floor for a toilet. He has no access to fresh air or sunlight. He is not allowed to keep any personal belonging (including his Bible) or to receive visits, access to reading or writing materials or receive mail.

Economist Martha Beatriz Roque, 58, political prisoner, who has already served a sentence of 3 ½ years for being part of an study group in Cuba that published a document titled “The Fatherland Belongs to All,” was sentenced again to 20 years in the latest massive crackdown. She is the only woman among 75 pro-democracy activists, independent librarians and journalists, tried and sentenced in summary processes in Castro’s Cuba last April, taking advantage of the international distraction with the war in Iraq.

Held in solitary confinement in the infamous women prison “Black Mantle” in Matanzas province, she shares her small cell with rats and cockroaches. There is no window or running water. A hole on the floor serves as a toilet. She is not allowed any reading material.

Martha Beatriz has not received the medical assistance she needs for her rheumatic and ulcer conditions since last April. In addition, she presently has an uncontrollable arterial hypertension and the left side of her body is numb. She has lost about 40 pounds in less than three months. Due to an international outcry mainly from Europe and other countries (but, not the U.S.), she was transferred to the Military Hospital Carlos J. Finlay.

On August 2, 2003, her niece, María de los Angeles Falcón was able to visit her at the hospital. Although she was unable to see or speak with the doctors, according to the information provided by Martha Beatriz, her diabetes had been confirmed, and the doctors were treating the condition with medication.

She added that she is being given an anti-coagulant. Since her arms are purple and badly bruised, they have begun injecting her in the abdomen. Her blood pressure is now very low (90/60 and 90/40). She is confined to Bed # 17 in a single room, where two women prison guards remain with her 24 hours a day. The room has all its windows covered.

So Mr. Bush, 10 years in a Cuban prison is not a nice proposition to negotiate with anybody, especially when you are locked up for wanting to be free or wanting freedom and democracy for Cuba.

© 2003 ABIP

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