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By Jay Weaver. Jweaver@gerald.com. Posted on Thu, Mar. 13,
2003 in The
Miami Herald.
The four children of Howard F. Anderson took the witness stand Wednesday in
a Miami courtroom to talk about their father. And they cried, one by one.
''I remember sitting in his lap and he always held me,'' said Lee Anderson,
who was 8 when her father was executed by Fidel Castro's military in 1961. "He
always made me feel very special.''
The Castro regime buried him in a shabby graveyard, then years later dug up
his remains and tossed them out.
After 42 years of grieving, the Andersons say they want justice through a
wrongful-death claim filed against Cuba in Miami-Dade Circuit Court. The Castro
government did not put up a defense during the two-day nonjury trial before
Circuit Judge Ellen Leesfield, who will soon issue a ruling.
The four Anderson children -- Gary, Marc, Lee and Bonnie, along with their
widowed mother, Dorothy -- are asking for $150 million in compensatory damages
from the Castro government. They are also seeking between $100 million and $200
million in punitive damages, according to the family's attorneys, Scott Leeds
and Fernando Zulueta.
Even if the Andersons are awarded such judgments, collecting the money from
the Cuban government would prove difficult. They could go after millions of
dollars in Cuban assets frozen in the United States.
In 2001, the Andersons' attorneys represented Ana Margarita Martinez, the
jilted former wife of Cuban spy Juan Pablo Roque. After a brief trial,
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Alan Postman ordered the Cuban government to pay her
$27 million -- declaring that Cuba orchestrated Roque's sham marriage so he
could infiltrate the Miami exile community. Martinez has not collected any
money.
The Andersons' case is starkly different.
In Havana, their father owned a Jeep distributorship, three gasoline service
stations and a boat manufacturing business. He raised his American family in a
nice home with maids, and the children attended private schools.
After the 1959 Castro takeover, Anderson moved his family to Miami for their
safety, but he stayed behind to look after his businesses.
In March 1961, Cuban military agents charged Anderson with smuggling arms
into Cuba. His family later learned that he was indeed part of the anti-Castro
struggle.
''He was not a paid CIA agent,'' Bonnie Anderson said in a 1991 Herald
story. "He did favors for the CIA. He carried messages back and forth.''
The regime executed Anderson, 41, on April 19, 1961 -- two days after the
Bay of Pigs invasion. Under Cuban law, such an offense usually carried a maximum
of nine years in prison, the suit says.
''My mother told me that my father wouldn't be coming back,'' Marc Anderson
said. "It's kind of hard to fathom that as an 11-year-old. . . . My mom
brought us together and said we have to regroup. We had no savings in the
States. We lost everything.'' | 
