Cuba, Venezuela pose subtle, but real dangers to United States

Havana Malecon, summer 1994

This bicoastal discussion with a colleague began on Twitter. We are often — to avoid the absolutes — on different sides of most issues. This one exchange over the weekend was no different.

We were tweeting along, disagreeing respectfully, when she came up with a question that was difficult to answer in 140 characters. What danger do Cuba and Venezuela represent to the United States?

This was not a question of human rights, or of democracy, or even of communism. The question was simple and direct. I was stumped, particularly when limited in space. I have to admit that, in that Twitter conversation, I was check-mated.

This is why I resort to a lengthier format; one in which I am more comfortable in responding to my colleague.

Cuba and Venezuela do represent a serious dangers to the United States, but not directly in a militaristic way.

Cuba did at one point represent a very real danger to the United States — during the 1962 Missile Crisis, when armed with Soviet missiles the world came closer than ever to a nuclear war. That, however, was almost five decades ago — it will be 50 years ago in October 2012. Certainly, that is not the case now.

Still both Cuba and Venezuela, each in its own way, present a real and present danger to the United States today. No, the danger is not of a military invasion, or of terrorists attacking this country, or even of invading other countries in the region. Still, they represent a real and present danger to this country in many other ways.

First, let's start with Cuba. The Cuban regime has repeatedly used its people as weapons against the United States. It has done so at least three times, and could do it again at any point as a way of relieving the pressure from its failed economy. South Florida felt the brunt of its fury in the 1960s when Fidel Castro opened the Port of Camarioca in 1965, forcing the United States to adopt an orderly flow of exiles from Cuba that brought 270,000 Cubans to the United States over the next seven years.

Fifteen years later, Castro did it again when he opened the Port of Mariel and allowed 125,000 Cubans to cross the Florida Straits in less than five months. And in the mid-1990s, he allowed more than 33,000 people to flee on rafts in a few short weeks.

Back in the 1980s, then-Ambassador Victor Palmieri, director of Refugee Affairs in the State Department when Jimmy Carter was president, wrote in an unpublished paper that Mariel had been "an act of war." And this is a weapon Cuba can always use on the United States to test the will of a U.S. president.

Venezuela and Hugo Chávez, Castro's most advanced disciple, represent an enormous danger to U.S. diplomacy in the region. In much the same way that Castro tried to oust regimes in Latin America by helping guerrilla movements, Chávez now is the chief financial officer of the movement to elect socialist leaders in countries to set up an anti-American block in Latin America. For starters, we can talk about Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. All have been helped by Chávez, whose petrodollars feed anti-American sentiment in the region.

Cuba and Venezuela still support Iran, as well as Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who is now probably fighting for his life in the city of Serta against Libyans rebelling against his regime. They also back the Palestinian effort to be recognized as a nation, and quietly oppose the state of Israel.

Furthermore, Venezuela's armed forces have billions in new weapons purchased from Russia to please its generals, who are now heavily Involved — albeit secretly — in the drug trade. As Colombian rebels have lost power, it has moved across the border to Venezuela where its own armed forces supervise the drug trafficking to Europe and the United States.

The elected authoritarian regimes rising in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua are not a direct danger to the United States. They do represent, however, represent a danger to the freedoms of people in the hemisphere. Freedom of the press and human rights are constantly violated in these countries. People live in fear of their governments and thousands have been forced to flee their homeland.

But no, none of this represents a clear and direct danger to the United States; just to the type of government we would like our neighbors to our south to have. So point, set and match go to my colleague on the West Coast. Or does it?

By Guillermo I. Martínez

Source: Sun Sentinel 

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Celebrating Life in Union

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Celebrating Life in Union is a 90-minute documentary (in post-production) of human resilience, community, and brotherhood. It follows a group of former Cuban political prisoners through their memory of imprisonment, physical and mental tortures and their half-century fight with the aging Castro regime. Having developed a strong community for themselves that now crosses three generations in Union City, NJ they struggle with the realization that their own mortality may come before they can return to their homeland.

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Pedro Pan flight veterans mark 50th anniversary

Some of the Cuban children sent to the US.

The last thing 13-year-old Mercedes Argiz's father told her before she boarded the plane from Cuba to the U.S. was: "I will see you for Christmas."

That was nearly half a century ago, just days before the Cuban Missile Crisis. She never saw him again.

Argiz was one of more than 14,000 Cuban children spirited out of the country between late 1960 and 1962 on the so-called Pedro Pan flights organized by Catholic Church leaders following the Cuban revolution. On Friday, she flew from northern Virginia to join more than 100 other Cuban-Americans in Miami to mark the 50th anniversary of their exodus and tour the South Florida refugee camps they first stayed in.

Operation Pedro Pan effort was organized at the behest of Cuban parents, fearful of the new communist government's efforts to take control of their children. Most of the refugees spent time in one of several Florida refugee camps before they moved into foster homes or orphanages around the country. The effort drew its name from the fictional character Peter Pan and an unaccompanied minor named Pedro who came to the attention of Bryan O. Walsh, a priest who headed the Catholic Welfare Bureau.

The children thought they would be reunited with their parents within a few weeks. But heightened tension between the two countries following the missile crisis — the nuclear standoff over missile sites on the island — meant many had to wait years to see their parents again. Some never did.

On Friday, dozens of Pedro Pan veterans cheered and shouted as they hugged friends they had not seen since childhood. They waved American and Cuban flags and sang the camp songs they learned upon their arrival, Spanish children's tunes exhorting communists to leave Cuba while promising "Americans" they would be friends.

Cuban officials and some researchers have long maintained the effort was a CIA-backed plot to create a brain-drain from the island. The U.S. government denies those accusations.

Argiz, who now goes by her married name Precht-Matuschek, says it was her own experience that prompted her departure. After the government shut down her Catholic school, she was transferred to a communist-run public school where she excelled. Asked to recite a poem at the school year's closing ceremonies, she planned to thank her family, friends and God, she says. A teacher warned her to replace God with the name of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. Precht-Matuschek didn't, and the local dignitaries in attendance were not pleased.

A short time later, her family was informed she was selected to go to Russia to continue her studies.

Precht-Matuschek's family was able to get her a temporary visa, promising she would soon return. After a brief stay in the camps, she ended up with a wealthy family in Cincinnati until she was reunited with her younger brother and mother five years later. She says her father, who had owned a canning company before the revolution, was not allowed to leave.

At Camp Matecumbe in the south Miami suburb of Kendall, the former Pedro Pan children walked the grounds of what were once dorms for the newly arrived teenage boys. Julio A. Martinez, now a Miami-Dade County civil engineer, recalled sleeping in tents as the number of children arriving outpaced dormitory space, unable to fall asleep because he was terrified of the rattle snakes that haunted the nearby pine and palmetto tree woods.

Housing developments and shopping malls have displaced most of the tangled forest. The camp is now an activity center for children with disabilities. But for Martinez and his friend Andres Garcia Fernandez of San Francisco, returning for the first time in 50 years, it was as if time had stood still.

They recalled desperately trying to help their parents leave Cuba as they were bounced from camp to camp.

They were both eventually able to help get their parents out as part of the 1963 prisoner exchanges between the U.S. and Cuba following the failed CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of the island by Cuban exiles. Martinez said he was able to convince a Bay of Pigs veteran to claim his stepfather as family because the two shared a last name.

"We had to survive. We had to figure it out. We were adults at the age of 15," he said, blinking away tears.

Martinez says he is ever grateful to the U.S. for giving him the chance to remake his life and raise his two daughters and grandchildren.

Nearby, Garcia's adult daughter, sporting a video camera and nose ring, watched her father protectively.

"It is so good for my dad to be here with his friends," said Rachel Garcia, 22. "He's always talked about it. And he carries so much sadness and grief from that time, but no one where we live in San Francisco has any idea about it. It's just not history people know about."

Precht-Matuschek, a retiree who lives in Spotsylvania, Va. near her two daughters, says her father was forced to work once a week cutting sugar cane after she left as punishment. Years later, she moved to Germany with her husband, and in 1973 became pregnant with their daughter. Her father was finally granted a visa to visit her there.

He died of a heart attack at age 47 before he could make the trip.

From: Sify News 

Escape from Havana 1/5

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2 Cubans rescued at sea might stay

Picture from 1994, behind, center, the building of the former Soviet Embassy, now Russian.

Two of the seven Cuban refugees pulled from a raft in the Atlantic Ocean and brought to Cape Canaveral Hospital this week have a greater chance of staying in the United States than their counterparts who were kept aboard a Coast Guard cutter, officials said.

The two unidentified Cubans were treated at the Brevard County hospital for respiratory problems and dehydration after spending 14 days floating on a makeshift raft that ended up about 45 miles off the coast of Volusia County.

The five others on board the same raft were secured aboard the Coast Guard cutter in Port Canaveral and are expected to be taken back to Cuba within the next week, Coast Guard officials say.

The two who were hospitalized and released have been turned over to U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. The medical tab for the short stay likely will be absorbed by the hospital's charitable service, Health First officials said Thursday.

Immigration authorities say the two probably will benefit from the so-called "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy enacted under President Bill Clinton in 1995. It means that if Cubans literally touch U.S. soil, they can remain rather than be returned to Cuba if they are interdicted at sea. The policy does not apply to other immigrants attempting to get into the United States illegally.

"They will be processed according to our border protection policies," said Migbalia Travis, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Border Patrol. "Under normal circumstances, they should be able to stay, but we cannot discuss their case directly."

The "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy, a change in the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, was designed to stem the flow of refugees after President Fidel Castro allowed more than 100,000 Cubans -- including many from mental hospitals and prisons -- to escape by boat to the United States in 1980. As a result, the number of Cubans interdicted at sea this year stands at 422, compared to 38,500 refugees who attempted to get into the United States in 1994, which was a peak year.

Today, Coast Guard officials said those who make it to shore are sent to immigration centers to be interviewed and processed for criminal background checks.

"They could still end up being treated as "wet foot" by the U.S. government. They'll be taken into custody, but they don't have the right to legal protection during the interview and inspection process," said David Stoller, a Melbourne-based immigration attorney.

After a year and a day, Cuban refugees can apply for permanent residency, he said.

"Basically, if you make it here, you're here. But, you never know what's going to happen. Today, it's a different atmosphere than before. Most of the Cubans today are economic refugees more than anything else."

Other refugees, such as 15 Haitians rescued June 24 at sea by the Coast Guard about 14 miles off Brevard County, do not have the same status under federal law, Stoller pointed out. That group was repatriated to Haiti within a week, Coast Guard officials reported.

"We treat Cubans differently, while others are sent back," Stoller said, citing the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966.

Some Cuban-American residents living in Brevard County -- many of whom came here as political refugees -- say the policy needs to be reviewed.

Roland Guilarte, 52, of Satellite Beach recalls the struggles of learning English and adapting to the fast pace of American culture after he and his family escaped Castro's regime aboard a 1967 freedom flight to Miami.

"We were legal refugees and it took about two to 21/2 years for us to be processed," Guilarte said. "But today, the main difference is that you have Cuban organizations that offer assistance and housing for anyone like the two people in this situation."

Some limited federal assistance is also available. He added that he had sympathy for the five who face repatriation to Cuba, even though they were brought to Port Canaveral yet not allowed to leave the Coast Guard cutter.

"These people are oppressed, and now they're going back to a living hell," he said. "We understand that we don't want to strain the federal government with taking care of these folks. We don't like the 'wet-foot, dry-foot' policy. We want to be able to take care of our own."

A look at Cubans interdicted at sea:
Year -- Number
2005 -- 2,712
2006 -- 2,810
2007 -- 2,868
2008 -- 2,199
2009 -- 799
2010 -- 422
-- U.S. Coast Guard

From: Florida Today

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