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Another death in Castro's hands

Luis Aguilar Leon. Published Thursday, March 8, 2001, in the Miami Herald

The young woman lay in her casket. She had been 27, married and the mother of a daughter. Her first name stirred my book-fed memories. It was the famous Milady of The Three Musketeers. I had never known the woman or any of her friends or family. It was the impact of her death that brought me to the funeral. I don't know how she died or from what. But I do know the man responsible for her death: Fidel Castro.

This point must be hammered. The culpable entity in the painful Cuban odyssey is not, as Castro repeatedly chants, Yankee imperialism or the embargo. It is not the devalued Cuban people, forced to cheer in the plazas for a now-spectral revolution in whose names they starve for food and freedom. It is not Castro's enemies and ex-comrades, such as the executed general Arnaldo Ochoa and the mysteriously vanished revolutionary minister Roberto Robaina, after whom no one dares inquire.

As I stared at the late Milady, beneath the pall of her loved ones, hard questions shook my spirit. Why, Lord? Why this hemorrhage that has bled my country for 42 years? How long will Cubans die of it at home or abroad, battered by the fist of the Grand Inquisitor?

Long ago, when first rose the banners of his triumphant revolution, Castro institutionalized death and opened the canals of blood. True, blood had flowed before; under Gerardo Machado, under Fulgencio Ba- tista; but only sporadically, amid short periods of fear and political violence. Castro made it permanent. He established revolutionary tribunals and re-established the death penalty, abolished in Cuba since colonial times.

So thundered the firing squads, the revolution's somber voice, while still within its range. Free thought turned criminal, the rotting Marxist-Leninist formula became policy, and Cuba set sail toward disaster. Naturally, at the first opportunity, thousands of desperate Cubans abandoned their homeland. Once the exit windows closed, many of their countrypeople, such as Milady and Elián González's mother, braved the dangers of the sea for a chance to raise their children in freedom.

The dictator's enablers must be singled out, too.

Sadly, Castro is not the only culprit. His enablers, moved by anti-Yankeeism or economic disparity, must be singled out. They include several news organizations, notably CNN and Reuters, that often distort the facts to deflect any negativity around the Cuban dictator. Failing that, they fall back on the rosary of his revolution's baseless blessings: free schooling, free medical service, free houses. The less said about that ugly reality, the better for CNN. They include all those who, in Elián's case, ignored all rules of the game and supported Castro, deploying a relentless barrage against the Cuban exiles. Somehow, we who for years have paid U.S. taxes and obeyed its laws became a delinquent mob, a Mafia worse than the tyrant who imprisons and executes people.

Other voices railed against our disregard for either the rule of law or a father's rights, especially a father whom former Attorney General Janet Reno called a "good father,'' ignoring that Castro is the only father in Cuba. Her "rule of law'' had to be enforced at rifle point on the little boy. Perhaps now that she is retired, she will check up on Elián's communist education.

During that time, I received 11 letters assailing my lack of shame for having been Bill Clinton's professor and having such little respect for "the rule of law.'' In truth, I respect it so much, I voted it back in last November, along with many of my fellow exiles.

Copyright 2001 Miami Herald