Published Thursday, July 13, 2000, in the Miami Herald .
Cuban Assembly condemns law
Says U.S. causing deaths at sea
By Anita Snow. Associated Press
HAVANA -- Members of the National Assembly unanimously condemned a U.S. law Wednesday that they say encourages Cubans to migrate illegally to the United States, thus putting their lives and those of their children at risk.
The Cuban Adjustment Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1966, allows illegal Cuban immigrants who reach U.S. soil to remain and apply for legal residency after a year.
``It is a perverse policy, deliberately conceived to destabilize and suffocate Cuban society, cynically calculated to provoke death and suffering, shamelessly manipulating the tragedies that this law causes,'' said the proclamation approved by the National Assembly as it opened its two-day
session.
President Fidel Castro presided over the morning session. He noted that in the week after 6-year-old Elián González returned to Cuba, several large groups of illegal Cuban migrants started out on the same dangerous journey that cost the boy's mother her life.
``This is the killer Cuban Adjustment Act,'' Castro said.
Elián's mother and 10 others died in their attempt to reach the United States last November, and Elián was set adrift. Two men on a fishing trip found him floating on an inner tube off the Florida coast.
In a case last week, the U.S. Coast Guard found 36 Cuban migrants, including four children, stranded on a deserted island in the Bahamas without food or water. Four of the migrants -- a pregnant woman, a man complaining of abdominal pain, an unconscious 14-year-old girl and her mother -- were
taken to hospitals in the Florida Keys. The other 32 were turned over to Bahamian authorities for repatriation to Cuba.
Cubans picked up at sea once also were given the chance for legal U.S. residency. But under 1994 and 1995 Cuba-U.S migration accords designed to stem an exodus of boat people, the U.S. Coast Guard now returns them to the island unless they have reached U.S. soil.
Cuban authorities blame the 1966 law for the international custody battle over Elián, who returned to Cuba with his father on June 28 after a seven-month battle with relatives in the United States who fought to keep the boy.
Cuban leaders also says the law gives ammunition to their political enemies in Florida, who describe the migrants as desperate boat people fleeing their communist homeland for freedom.
Havana maintains that the vast majority of Cuban migrants are seeking the same economic opportunities sought in America by Haitians, Dominicans and others from across the Western Hemisphere.
Migrants from those countries who are caught in the United States without visas are not allowed to stay.
``In a colossal operation of falsification of acts and promotion of lies, they have tried to present Cubans as people who want to `escape' to North America, and that the United States as a `generous' nation receives them,'' Wednesday's proclamation said. That argument ``doesn't contain an atom
of truth,'' it said.
Judge's edict formally ends Cuba policy
By David Kidwell. dkidwell@herald.com
The Miami-Dade policy that banned concert promoters from getting county dollars if they did business with Cuban artists breathed its ``last gasp'' Tuesday when U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno -- in accordance with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision -- ordered the practice stopped
permanently.
Moreno's edict was pro forma, since the Supreme Court's June 19 ruling left no wiggle room for county authorities who conceded defeat without argument.
A group of concert promoters, who had been fighting their own lawsuit over the county policy, have already begun planning for a spate of Cuban musicians and performance artists to visit South Florida.
``The Cuba ordinance took its last gasp today,'' said Bruce Rogow, who represented the promoters. ``And we're all hoping there will be a new era of tolerance, that the combination of this Supreme Court ruling and the conclusion of the Elián matter will promote a more positive
atmosphere.''
The Cuba policy, in effect since 1996, forced companies doing business with the county to sign an affidavit attesting that they do not do business with anyone in Cuba or with other companies that do.
Refusal to sign the affidavit meant no county grant money and exclusion from county-subsidized venues like the American Airlines Arena and the Dade County Auditorium.
The controversial policy has had a sweeping effect, causing Miami-Dade to lose the prestigious Latin Grammy Awards to Los Angeles and putting Miami out of contention for the Pan Am games of 2007.
Assistant County Attorney Robert Cuervas, who unsuccessfully argued that county commissioners -- and by extension county taxpayers -- should have a right to decide on whether they want to subsidize companies sympathetic to Cuba's government, agreed Tuesday that Moreno had no choice but to issue
a permanent injunction.
``In fact, your honor, we've already issued a memorandum of law letting all county employees know the policy can no longer be enforced,'' he told Moreno. ``The Supreme Court was clear.''
On June 19, the Supreme Court struck down a Massachusetts law that prohibited state agencies from doing business with Myanmar, also known as Burma, which is known for rights abuses.
The high court ruled unanimously that the federal government has the sole right to dictate foreign policy and that the Massachusett's law was unconstitutional because it conflicted with that policy.
The U.S. embargo against Cuba exempts cultural exchanges. The county policy went further.
Earlier this year, Moreno ordered a temporary halt to the enforcement of the Cuba policy in anticipation of the Supreme Court decision. On Tuesday, he made the prohibition permanent. Beth Boone, executive director of the Miami Light Project, said she is planning a concert by a Haitian-Cuban
group in the fall and other groups said they are planning similar events.
``We've always had Cuban music and Cuban culture here,'' Boone said. ``But now there will be no more discrimination based on what country you live in.''
Four other groups joined the suit against the county, including GableStage and the Cuban Cultural Group.
Flotilla plans to sail off Cuba to highlight family separations
By Marika Lynch. mlynch@herald.com Published Wednesday, July 12, 2000, in the Miami Herald
More than a dozen South Florida boats on Thursday will head to the waters off Havana, close to the spot where the Cuban coast guard rammed a fleeing tugboat on July 13, 1994, killing 41.
But the significance of the flotilla goes beyond the commemoration of that incident, said organizer Ramon Saul Sanchez.
``The purpose is to bring about awareness of the unfortunate and sad process of family division caused by the Cuban government, Sanchez said.
The communist government creates conditions, he said, that force people to risk their lives at sea -- whether they be the people who hijacked the tugboat 13 de Marzo, or Elisabeth Brotons, mother of Elián González. She died in the voyage across the Florida Straits.
Participants in the flotilla plan to stay 12 miles offshore, outside Cuban territorial waters, Sanchez said. Venturing inside would mean risking the U.S. government confiscating the boats, he added.
The voyage will begin at 10 a.m. Thursday, when about six boats from Miami will head to Conch Harbor Marina in Key West. A dozen others will join them there. Then Friday night, the group will start the 12-hour trip to a place they call Point Democracy.
When they arrive at the point, Sanchez and others will lay flowers in the water, use mirrors to reflect light toward the island in a sign of solidarity, and tether a 30-foot blimp to their boat emblazoned with their message -- Democracy.
The U.S. Coast Guard plans to inspect the boats for safety before their departure but hasn't devised special plans to monitor the flotilla, said Petty Officer Scott Carr, U.S. Coast Guard spokesman. The agency's planes and cutters will stay on normal patrols, he said.
In the past, the Coast Guard has monitored the Democracy Movement's flotillas, denied it permits and even confiscated the organization's boat Human Rights in December 1998 because its crew was headed to Cuba without seeking permission, the Coast Guard said. The U.S. government returned the
fishing boat to the Democracy Movement in May 1999 on a temporary basis.
Riding along with the Democracy Movement this time will be three survivors of the tugboat sinking: Gustavo Martínez and brothers Dariel and Iván Prieto Suárez.
It's important to remember the 1994 tragedy, Sanchez said, because there has never been an investigation into the incident, and the dead remain underwater, he said.
``The criminals, the murderers who committed the crime, walk the streets of Havana and are being protected by the government,'' Sanchez said.
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