Posted on 04/14/2002 4:36:10 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
This is a LINK to articles since April 21, 2001 about Cuba and the communist threat - CHILDREN'S CODE At this LINK is a LINK to many Elian articles. Below I will post similar articles since the FR format changed and locked posts to this LINK. Please add what you wish to this thread.
Eyes Wide Open--[Excerpts] The Los Angeles kids, chosen for their photographic skills and their ability to work with others, represented the Venice Arts Mecca, a nonprofit organization that brings volunteer artists together with youngsters from low-income families to nurture their creativity in areas ranging from literary arts to photography. They looked. They listened. They photographed. And they took notes for their journals.
…….Before embarking on their adventure, the kids--who were joined by two young people from Washington, D.C., and accompanied by adult mentors--studied the sociopolitical history of South Africa, including apartheid. All were Latino or African American or a mix of the two, and were encouraged to think about their own identity, their own experiences with racism.
……..Before embarking on their adventure, the kids--who were joined by two young people from Washington, D.C., and accompanied by adult mentors--studied the sociopolitical history of South Africa, including apartheid. All were Latino or African American or a mix of the two, and were encouraged to think about their own identity, their own experiences with racism.
…..At the conference exhibit hall, the L.A. kids mounted a photo exhibition showing the underbelly of America. There were bleak images of life on an Indian reservation, of the homeless in Los Angeles. It was an eye-opener to some South Africans, who thought everyone in America was rich. "They were absolutely shocked," said Lynn Warshafsky, executive director of Venice Arts Mecca.
In turn, the L.A. group was surprised at the degree of anti-American sentiment, something they had to process. "They had to ask themselves questions they'd never asked before" about how others see them, Warshafsky said.
……..For Eamon, the highlight was hearing Fidel Castro speak. "I had thought of him as seriously evil. I realized he's not evil, he's doing what he thinks is best. He has this sort of demeanor about him. Whether you like him or not, you respect him. It opened my eyes." [End Excerpts]
EFFORTS FOCUSING ON TRAVEL
Some Congressman still plan to press ahead with anti-embargo legislation. Senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, will introduce a bill to lift travel restrictions, which should have a greater chance of passage than a more ambitious proposal introduced earlier this year that sought to overturn the embargo itself.
A spokeswoman for Baucus said the new travel bill was meant to "get a foot in the door."
Jeff Flake, a Republican congressman from Arizona, plans to introduce his own travel bill soon, arguing through a spokesman that "easing the embargo isn't any kind of reward for Castro. Ultimately it will be the beginning of the end for him."
But even easing the travel ban now stands little chance of passage, analysts say. "Obviously, nobody wants to be seen pandering to a tyrant," said Stephen Johnson, with the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.***
"Having Cuba serve again on the Human Rights Commission is like putting Al Capone in charge of bank security," Fleischer said. "It is an inappropriate action that does not serve the cause of human rights in Cuba or at the United Nations." Cuba's U.N. ambassador, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, accused the United States of executing minors and the mentally retarded people and abusing the rights of Afghan fighters long confined without charges in a U.S. base on Cuban territory.***
The wilful blindness to President Castro's repression has been underlined by the shock at the recent crackdown. The Pope, who insisted on his controversial visit to Havana five years ago that he had won significant human rights concessions, spoke of his "deep sorrow" at the executions and urged Señor Castro to consider a "significant gesture of clemency" toward those convicted.
Perhaps the biggest shock was felt by the writers, poets and artists who have long defended Cuba and its autocratic ruler. The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes called the country "a suffocating dictatorship", the Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago said Fidel Castro "cheated his enemies" and the Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano, who once praised him as a "symbol of national dignity", acknowledged that the crackdown had fuelled opposition claims that he was a dictator. There have been demonstrations in Caracas and Madrid.
The disillusion is as widespread, and almost as fatal, as the Soviet repression of the Hungarian uprising was to European communists. Señor Castro has been stung. Cuban artists have been "persuaded" to criticise the critics. But the damage has been done. In a rambling three-hour television address, the 76-year-old leader defended the executions as necessary to prevent a wave of hijackings that could have provoked a crisis with Washington and served as a pretext for military action against Cuba. The commandeering of the ferry was one of seven actual or attempted hijackings in seven months. No one was injured in the attempt, but Señor Castro insisted that "we had to pull the evil out by the roots".
His speech revealed the real explanation. Cuban Communists have long been unhappy with what they see as "creeping capitalism" on the island. In the desperate attempt to stave off bankruptcy after the withdrawal of Moscow's aid and support, Cuba has tried to woo Western tourists and investment. But this has come at a price: greater access to the outside world, the dollarisation of the economy, a veneer of tolerance of the island's steamy lifestyle and the reluctant authorisation of hundreds of small-scale private businesses and transactions. The hardliners have longed to suppress the growing debate on democracy and silence speculation on post-Castro Cuba. What better time to do so than the build-up to the Iraq war, when world, especially American, attention was elsewhere?
The swift allied victory, however, has provoked considerable alarm. The paranoid Cuban leadership fears that an emboldened Washington may even be contemplating a military assault, avenging the Bay of Pigs. There is little evidence for this, but Señor Castro now sees only threats at home and abroad. His crackdown was intended to cow the opposition. But it has emboldened his many enemies abroad, who insist that this totalitarian regime cannot last. And nowadays there will be fewer in the salons of Europe and Latin America to regret its fall. [End]
(Drug Smuggler Made Clinton Donation in Cuba, Investigators Say By DON VAN NATTA Jr. New York Times April 4, 1997 MIAMI -- Jorge Cabrera, a drug smuggler who has emerged as one of the most notorious supporters of President Clinton's re-election campaign, was asked for a campaign contribution in the unlikely locale of a hotel in Havana by a prominent Democratic fund-raiser, congressional investigators have learned. snip her only strong memory of Cabrera is at the fund-raising dinner on Dec. 3, in Coral Gables, Fla., at the home of Jerome Berlin, a lawyer who was indicted in 1990, and later acquitted, of federal conspiracy charges of bribing public officials.)
U.S. delegates walked out of a U.N. meeting in protest Tuesday when Cuba's re-election was announced. The communist country's election came weeks after Castro's government sentenced 75 dissidents to long prison terms on charges of collaborating with U.S. diplomats to undermine Cuba's socialist regime. It also followed the April 11 execution of three Cubans who hijacked a ferry packed with passengers in an attempt to reach the United States. No one was hurt in the hijacking. Governments and human rights groups worldwide condemned the executions and the crackdown. Cuba argued the executions were necessary to avoid a migration crisis provoked by the United States.
During this year's annual six-week session which ended Friday, the U.N.'s top human rights watchdog narrowly passed a resolution calling on Cuba to accept a visit by a human rights monitor but failed to approve an amendment criticizing Cuba's crackdown. Under U.N. rules, regional groups decide who fills seats on U.N. bodies.Latin America chose Cuba, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras and Peru for six open seats. Cuba said its re-election was a "victory" that "contrasted with the United States' embarrassing defeat in 2001" when the United States lost its place on the panel. The United States recovered its seat in 2002. Cuba has been on the 53-member U.N. rights commission since 1989. [End]
Ties between the US interest section and the dissidents were used as trial evidence, as was the testimony of several Cuban security agents who infiltrated the movement. State-run media then published this testimony to discredit the dissidents as mercenaries bankrolled by the US.
While Mr Cason has expressed no regret for his activities, he has curtailed his public engagements while he and other officials reassess how best to support dissidents without jeopardising them. Mr Leogrande noted that remaining dissidents have developed "some effective models of resistance. The Castro regime has no hope of restoring the ideology of the 1970s and 1980s so, just as in eastern Europe, time is on the dissidents' side." But for now the arrests have thrown the dissident movement into a tailspin. Even when the Castro government was relatively permissive of dissident organising, few Cubans knew about their efforts or got involved. Recruitment is certain to be more difficult now that the movement has been criminalised, deeply infiltrated by state agents, and proved so easily dismantled. Vladimiro Roca, a leading Havana dissident and former political prisoner who has so far been spared in the crackdown, said: "Yes, some people may be afraid to join us and we have to rebuild. But what the government has done only reminds us that the future belongs to the dissidents, and that gives us strength. "The government says that we are insignificant groups, that we are 'minuscule'," Mr Roca said. "But what sort of hunter shoots a sparrow with a cannon?"***
"A better approach is to reach out to the Cuban people. Ending the travel ban is the best way to do this," said Baucus, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. Other senators who are co-sponsoring the legislation include senators Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Larry Craig of Idaho, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, and Mark Dayton of Minnesota. ***
Cheers erupted as Castro, wearing his typical olive green uniform and cap, arrived and took his place alongside other communist leaders. The Cuban president was to speak later Thursday. "Long live May Day! Long live socialism! Long live Fidel!" declared Pedro Ross, secretary-general of the Cuban Workers Confederation, as the event began. Organizers said 1 million people were expected at the Havana rally, including more than 900 union leaders from around the world - 160 of them from the United States. Smaller gatherings were being held in other Cuban cities. ***
"I want to convey a message to the world and the American people: We do not want the blood of Cubans and Americans to be shed in a war," he said. The crowd responded with cries of "Whatever it takes, Fidel!" while waving handheld Cuban flags. One group hoisted an effigy of President Bush that read, "Bush: Don't mess with Cuba." ***
He finished the week executing three men for hijacking a motorboat in Havana harbor. It was no accident, or sheer coincidence. It was the culmination of a deliberately planned operation aimed at setting the stage for Mr. Castro's grand finale, his Goetterdaemmerung: a conflict with the U.S.
Sen. Christopher Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, is disappointed once again by Mr. Castro's antics. In 1996, Sen. Dodd had bottled up a House-Senate conference final approval of the Helms-Burton Law. On Feb. 24 that year, Mr. Castro downed two American civilian planes of the organization Brothers to the Rescue, killing the four crewmen. Three of them were American citizens and Vietnam veterans. Mr. Dodd gave up his blocking of the legislation and the law was enacted. President Clinton signed it.
Why did Mr. Castro ensure approval of Helms-Burton? For two reasons:
(1) That same day, the Cuban dissidents, under the banner of Concilio Cubano, had convoked an assembly of more than 300 organizations.
(2) And he needed to prolong the role of the U.S. as the enemy of his regime, so he could wrap himself in nationalism before Cubans, and anti-Americanism internationally.
Afterward, the Elian Gonzalez crisis offered Mr. Castro a golden opportunity to isolate the Cuban-American community from mainstream America and reawaken the revolutionary appeal of his regime to younger Cubans. This while modest economic reforms, in particular legalization of dollar circulation, and development of tourism, attenuated the economic hardships resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union. But this also required a softening of repression, and the dissidence continued to grow, challenging his monopoly of power.
Mr. Castro's high-ranking spy at the Pentagon, Ana Belen Montes, the top Cuban analyst at the Defense Information Agency, had managed to sell to the Southern Command and the CIA the idea of a succession by his younger brother Raul. This was advanced, and accepted under President Clinton, as the formula most likely to satisfy basic U.S. security needs in a post-Castro Cuba: no mass migration, no civil war requiring a U.S. intervention, and cooperation in drug interdiction. The fact that it ignored completely the interests and possible behavior of the Cuban people, seemed irrelevant to its advocates.
Mr. Castro's wildest dreams of prolonging his regime beyond his departure from Earth all of a sudden became feasible with the cooperation of Gens. John Sheehan, Charles Wilhelm, Edward Atkeson and Barry McCaffrey. Pentagon policy institutes started promoting the rationale for such a solution, and all these retired generals started visiting Cuba and a Cuban military policy institute was even established to organize and facilitate such cooperative efforts. Mr. Castro's charisma overtook American generals as if they were Hollywood stars.
But, three events changed the situation: George W. Bush was elected president, al Qaeda launched the September 11, 2001, attack and the United States shed the passive policy against the third-rate powers and terrorist organizations that emerged during the Cold War. Under the banner of fighting the axis of evil, the U.S. dismantled Taliban rule in Afghanistan, rejected Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization and now has crushed Saddam Hussein and Ba'ath Party rule in Iraq.
Ana Belen Montes was arrested and sentenced to 25 years in prison without parole. Russia withdrew its electronic monitoring base in Lourdes after a meeting between Mr. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Economically, tourism has lost its momentum, low sugar prices continue to make Cuba lose money with that crop, forcing the closing of half of the sugar mills and displacing more than 100,000 workers. Mr. Castro made a bold gamble of diverting $250 million from paying old debts to buy U.S. agricultural products for cash. The goal was to wet the appetite of farm states' congressional delegations to approve amendments allowing private financing of such purchases and allow American tourists to visit Cuba to earn several hundred million dollars. These amendments were blocked by President Bush's threat to veto the appropriations bill where they were inserted.
Mr. Castro's ally Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, who is shipping oil to Cuba without payment, is now in serious trouble and may have his mandate revoked by the end of this year. The European Commission's moves to admit Cuba into the Cotonu Agreement, giving Cuba access to a $13.5 billion pool of financial assistance and preferred markets for certain exports, required an unattainable unanimity.
Meanwhile the Varela Project, proposing a referendum on opening Cuban society, was sneaked into the Cuban legislature and obtained worldwide recognition by the Europeans granting to its promoter, Oswaldo Paya, the Sahjarov Prize. An assembly to promote civil society, gathering several hundred dissident organizations, was started by dissident economist Martha Beatriz Roque. More than 200 independent libraries distributed all classes of unapproved materials.
In addition, the U.S. announced a policy of expanding support for the Cuban dissidents, which is implemented aggressively by the new head of the U.S. Interest Section. And, the firm and determined attitude of President Bush in ignoring the United Nations in the case of Iraq persuaded Mr. Castro that he faces a serious challenge to his political control inside Cuba, including evident disaffection within his repressive apparatus.
The desertion of four members of the Coastal Patrol, who took their boat into Key West last month, must have infuriated Mr. Castro and scared him witless, since it revealed serious cracks in his repressive apparatus.
The repression of the dissidents and the resort to firing squads indicates the desperation of Mr. Castro's predicament. It is the culmination of a response that started last year when, after Jimmy Carter's public appeal for support of the Varela Project, Mr. Castro convoked mass demonstrations in support of his one-party rule and forced through the legislature a constitutional reform making Marxism irrevocable.
He decided to make a last stand. Economic success requires concessions that undermine his political control. No more reforms, no more concessions. Rule by fear and repression.
The pathetic collapse of his friend Saddam Hussein may have convinced Mr. Castro his regime is also unlikely to survive this crisis. He realizes that many around him are willing to accept reforms such as the Varela Project. That is why he purged the legislature, with 60 percent of its 609 members not nominated for re-election.
The possibility of provoking the U.S. to attack him by creating another immigration crisis - which he can claim is out of his hands to prevent - is an idea surfing within his head and occasionally leaking through his mouth. In an article in the Mexican daily Reforma, even a writer sympathetic to him, like Carlos Fuentes, expressed the suspicion that Mr. Castro may be preparing to go down in flames, causing the death of millions of Cubans.
After all, in June 1958, he wrote to his secretary, Celia Sanchez, that "he felt his destiny was to end in a war against the United States." The time may have come. [End]
oErnesto Betancourt represented Fidel Castro in Washington during the insurrection against Fulgencio Batista, was the first director of Radio Marti and is the author of "Revolutionary Strategy: A Handbook for Practitioners."
Castro set the tone Thursday morning in a televised speech he dubbed "Cuba and the Nazi-Fascism" delivered at a huge gathering in Havana's Revolution Square, as smaller rallies and marches unfolded across the Communist-run Caribbean island.
Castro charged the Bush administration was out to assassinate him or invade the country, stating that he was not worried about being killed, but rather about a U.S. attack. "If the solution were to attack Cuba like Iraq, I would suffer greatly because of the cost in lives and enormous destruction it would bring Cuba. But it might turn out to be the last of the (Bush) administration's fascist attacks, because the struggle would last a very long time," he said.
Cuba is smarting from a deluge of international criticism from friends and foes over the sentencing of 75 dissidents to long prison terms, and the execution of three men who hijacked a ferry in a failed bid to reach the United States. Castro insisted the repression came because Cuba was under threat from Washington. The 76-year-old revolutionary icon, in power since his 1959 rebellion toppled a U.S.-backed dictatorship, warned critics, particularly on the left, their words could be used to justify a U.S. invasion.
"We would not want those who have, in our opinion, attacked Cuba unjustly ... to have to suffer the infinite sorrow they will feel if one day our cities are destroyed and our children and mothers, women and men, young and old, are torn apart by the bombs of neo-fascism," said Castro, dressed in his customary military garb.
Castro's words were bound to stoke rising fear among Cubans that the United States, frustrated by more than four decades of failed efforts to topple him and encouraged by success in Iraq, might resort to military force. "In Miami (home to many anti-Castro Cubans) and Washington they are now discussing where, how and when Cuba will be attacked or the problem of the revolution will be solved," Castro said.***
Freedom Advocacy Promoting freedom and human rights around the world, beginning with Cuba.Most see Castro in a clearer light
The group issued a two-paragraph declaration denouncing the war in Iraq and condemning U.S. "harassment" of Cuba, which it calls a "pretext for invasion."
Mexican sociologist Pablo Gonzalez announced the declaration Thursday at a May Day celebration in Havana, Reuters news agency reported.
It was also signed by Latin American Nobel laureates Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rigoberta Menchu, Aldolfo Perez Esquivel and South African writer Nadine Gordimer, also a Nobel prize winner.
The two-paragraph declaration is titled: "To the Conscience of the World."
"A single power is inflicting grave damage to the norms of understanding, debate and mediation among countries," the declaration says, referring to the United States and the war in Iraq.
"At this very moment, a strong campaign of destabilization against a Latin American nation has been unleashed. The harassment against Cuba could serve as a pretext for an invasion."
Mr. Castro's government has come under unprecedented international criticism from friends and foes after sentencing 75 dissidents to prison terms of up to 28 years last month and executing three men who hijacked a ferry in a failed attempt to reach the United States.
Havana has said the crackdown was in response to a U.S. plot to topple the Castro government after more than four decades of failed efforts to do so.
Mr. Belafonte has emerged lately as one of Hollywood's most fervent critics of the Bush administration by attacking its two most senior black officials.
He likened Mr. Powell to a "house slave" who curries favor in the conservative Bush administration "to come into the house of the master."
He has also criticized National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice for working for President Bush.
His defense of Mr. Castro's regime, along with others who signed the declaration, comes at a time when Cuba's government is being criticized by foreign writers and artists.
Portuguese Nobel Prize-winning novelist Jose Saramago, a longtime supporter of Mr. Castro, wrote last month that, "from now on, Cuba can follow its own course, and leave me out," saying Cuba had cheated his illusions.
At the Thursday rally, Mr. Castro told critics, particularly on the left, that their words could be used to justify a U.S. invasion.
The intellectuals who signed the declaration defending Cuba apparently agree, though they did not specifically express support for Mr. Castro's policies.
The declaration concludes with a call to governments and others to "uphold the universal principles of national sovereignty, respect for territorial integrity and self-determination, essential to just and peaceful co-existence among nations."
Mr. Gonzalez did not say who originated the declaration but that it would continue to be circulated among cultural figures around the world.
While Latin America's revered left-wing intellectuals are abandoning Mr. Castro in horror at the recent crackdown on dissidents, Mr. Garcia Marquez continues to stand by the Cuban leader, an old friend.
The 1982 Nobel Prize-winning author, whose novel "Autumn of the Patriarch" has been acclaimed as the classic account of the Caribbean strongman, refuses to join the likes of Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes and Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano in condemning Mr. Castro.
The Colombian writer defended himself in Tuesday's edition of the daily newspaper El Tiempo after U.S. feminist writer Susan Sontag told reporters that it was "unpardonable" for him not to have spoken out over the recent Cuban crackdown.
"I don't answer unnecessary and provocative questions," said the author, whose sympathies for the Cuban revolution go back decades.
Moral support from such respected figures as Mr. Garcia Marquez is highly valued by a Cuban government whose material resources have dwindled since the Soviet collapse.
"I myself could not calculate the number of prisoners, dissidents and conspirators that I have helped, in absolute silence, to emigrate from Cuba over no less than 20 years," Mr. Garcia Marquez, 76, said in his defense.
"As to the death penalty, I don't have anything to add to what I have said in private and publicly for as long as I can remember: I'm against it in any place, for any reason, in any circumstances," said Mr. Garcia Marquez who lives in Mexico and Los Angeles.
Mr. Castro in 2002 wrote a glowing review of Mr. Garcia Marquez's recently published memoirs.
"In my next reincarnation, I would like to be a writer, and, on top of that, I'd like to be one like Gabriel Garcia Marquez," the communist leader wrote in the Colombian magazine Cambio. [End]
`NO SECRET' ''It is no secret to anyone that Fidel Castro hands over some political prisoners to his courtesans once in a while,'' Vargas Llosa said. ``That is how [García Márquez] keeps his conscience clean. To me it sounds more like repugnant cynicism.'' Vargas Llosa challenged García Márquez to ''intellectually'' explain his support of Castro, but added: ``I doubt very much that he will.'' García Márquez recently condemned the death penalty ''anywhere and for any reason,'' in reply to American writer Susan Sontag, who said she was troubled that the writer had not condemned recent executions in Cuba.***
INATODAY.com - INTERNATIONAL NEWS ANALYSIS -- TODAY by Toby Westerman: "FASCIST AMERICA? Russia and Communist Cuba Join In 'Anti-Fascist-Front'" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "At the Moscow meeting, Russia declared that Cuba is its "key partner in Latin America." The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a press statement referring to an "active political dialogue based on mutual trust" between Russia and Cuba. "The two countries have similar or identical stances on a whole number of global political issues. Most importantly…on the construction of a fair and stable world order," the Russian Foreign Ministry declared. The "construction of a fair and stable world order" for Cuba and Russia includes sophisticated intelligence operations against the United States. Cuban operates a sophisticated intelligence program against the U.S. One of its highly placed agents, Ana Belen Montes, worked at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency before her arrest and conviction of espionage in October 2002. The "Wasp Network," a Cuban espionage group spying on U.S. military facilities, was uncovered by the FBI and five of its leaders convicted in 2001. In 2001 the U.S. intelligence community was rocked by the discovery that top FBI intelligence agent Robert Hanssen spied on his country for Moscow for 20 years. On the island of Cuba, Russia still operates the Lourdes spy base, while Russia's close ally, China, is constructing a similar base not far away from Lourdes.") (April 29, 2003) (Read More...)
INATODAY.com - INTERNATIONAL NEWS ANALYSIS -- TODAY by Toby Westerman: "NEW RED TERROR" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "China maintains "high level military contacts" with Cuba, and is constructing an electronic spy base eight to ten miles from Russia's Lourdes intelligence facility, according to Dennis Hays, Executive Vice President of the pro-democracy exile group, the Cuban American National Foundation. The Chinese spy base, which would be capable of intercepting, and possibly jamming, U.S. electronic signals, "should be a security concern" to the U.S., urged Hays in an interview with INA Today. Hays also warned that the communist Chinese are active throughout the South American continent. The Cuban state-run press is openly discussing the "very strong ties with the Cuban military," said Perez, who notes that several Chinese generals have recently visited Cuba. In addition to China, Cuba's traditional friend and supporter, Russia, is still involved in the island.") (April 18, 2003) (Read More...)
Prosecutors want the six held without bond, even though they know the defendants would not go free anyway. The reason: If they were released on bail, immigration officials would swoop in and detain them for entering the U.S. illegally -- a tactic often used by the government, to the dismay of defense attorneys. The skyjacking case represents more than just a criminal prosecution for Jiménez and the U.S. Justice Department. It is driven by decades of friction between Castro and the federal government over hijacking prosecutions and migration policies.***
During the Mariel boatlift in 1980, 125,000 Cubans crossed the Florida Straits. In 1994, amid severe economic crisis, Castro allowed another 30,000 or so rafters to leave the island. Hays said calls for inviting an intense crisis are limited. ''There are very, very few who are advocating a military solution to this situation,'' he said. Any action that might provoke a new boatlift could be a high-stakes gamble -- for both the Castro regime and the Bush administration.
Any exodus of rafters from Cuba could trigger a similar exodus from Haiti, leading to political and economic havoc in the state. Florida, a critical state in the 2000 presidential election, is even more critical in 2004. It has gained two votes -- to 27 -- in the Electoral College system that determines the presidency. ''[Castro would] be quite foolhardy to mess with a resolute George W. Bush,'' said Ana Navarro, an advisor to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. ``The administration has taken care of one tyrant already. I don't think they would vacillate about taking care of another one.''***
Tougher yet for Castro was the ''desertion'' of Eduardo Galeano, a Uruguayan essayist with lighter literary weight who enjoyed a close relationship with the Cuban dictatorship. He was almost a member of the family, someone whose unconditional support was taken for granted.
After 18,000 executed people, 120,000 political prisoners and 44 years of persecuting homosexuals, Jehova's Witnesses, readers of Mario Vargas Llosa and fans of the Beatles, among others, how could Castro anticipate that the deaths of three luckless negritos -- ''black boys,'' as he calls them -- and the imprisonment of merely 75 opposition members would provoke an uprising among his pampered writers and artists?
The problem is grave. Communist dictatorships always require an international choir of support. The choristers have two key functions:
o To lend their prestige to legitimize a political model lacking in freedoms and economic prosperity.
o To silence the victims' voices, conceal the truth and maintain an image of cheer.
How could Castro be an implacable tyrant when Gabriel García Márquez, that talented and charming writer, is his friend? How could it be true that border guards machine gun rafters and jailers kill political prisoners -- as happened to my friend Alfredo Carrión -- when Mario Benedetti, that sensitive Uruguayan poet, supports the revolution?
This corps of docile sycophants is so important that Castro created a powerful branch of the Interior Ministry to empower it: the Cuban Institute for Friendship with Peoples. A political police that uses maracas instead of pistols, its task is painstakingly laid out in the laborious ''Plans for Political Influence'' that are drafted every year and revised every semester. It consists of seducing famous people -- bribing, flattering and training them -- so that they will parrot the speech about a united, generous and anti-imperialistic revolution besieged by the perfidious Yankees and the wicked ``Miami Mafia.''
SHAMELESS SHOW
Why do so many valuable and intelligent people lend themselves to this shameless show? Several reasons and emotions are involved. Of course, ideological coincidence counts for something, but probably less than vanity and economic interests. The dictatorship uses money and fame as rewards. It publishes books and records. There are prizes, media coverage, praise.
To break with the Cuban revolution is to break with all that. Ask Colombian writer Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, to whom Castroites in his country mailed a letter-bomb.
Today, a lot of people are willing to pay that price. Castro and the revolution have lost their charm. Both are very old. Both have caused much harm. They have killed and imprisoned people excessively. They have created too much misery, too many exiles, too many informers. Too many bodies float on the Straits of Florida.
The pretext of Yankee imperialism no longer suffices to imprison the country's leading poet, Raúl Rivero, 25 independent journalists, 14 librarians and 30 other democrats, just because they spoke their truths. Much less to kill three young men who -- without hurting anyone -- tried to hijack a ferryboat to escape from that hell.
A VILE MANIFESTO
Castro and his propagandists have tried to contain the scattering. How? With a vile manifesto signed first by Alicia Alonso and followed by the tremulous signatures of 26 Cuban writers and artists who could be listed by Guinness as the people who have spent the longest time on their knees and heads bowed: Miguel Barnet, Roberto Fernán
dez Retamar, Cintio Vitier, Silvio Rodríguez and a shameful et cetera. What do they say? What have they been forced to say? Don't abandon us because the United States will invade us. Poor folks. Castro has already shot them at dawn, but they don't realize it.
[End] www.firmaspress.com
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