By Rafael Lorente, Special to the Tribune. Published August
1, 2001. Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON -- The Congressional Black Caucus and the Cuban American National
Foundation have not been best of friends over the years.
After all, Black Caucus members have made frequent visits to Cuba and
offered praise of President Fidel Castro, the foundation's least favorite
person. Some have pushed to end the embargo against Cuba and ease travel
restrictions that prevent Americans from traveling there legally.
But Tuesday, the foundation's Washington office brought a half-dozen black
Cuban dissidents living in the United States to meet with several members of the
Black Caucus and their staffs. The objective was to convince them that Castro's
Cuba is not a paradise for blacks.
"We have to break this myth of Fidel Castro being the savior of blacks
in Cuba," said Omar Lopez Montenegro, who said he moved to the United
States nine years ago after being politically persecuted in Cuba.
Montenegro contends blacks and those of mixed race, who make up about 60
percent of Cuba's population, are overrepresented in the island's political
prisons and underrepresented in powerful positions in the government and
Communist Party.
As evidence, Montenegro and others point to jailed dissidents such as Dr.
Oscar Elias Biscet and Vladimiro Roca.
They think the Black Caucus can help.
"We know there are many members of Congress who can talk to Castro so
that he will free political prisoners," said Magdelivia Hidalgo, who is not
black but who worked with several black dissidents on the island before she was
forced to leave. Hidalgo helped found the movement of independent libraries that
has grown in Cuba.
Reaction from members of the Black Caucus and their staffs was mixed, said
Dennis Hays, who runs the foundation's Washington office.
Selby McCash, a spokesman for Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), said the
congressman could not meet with the foundation but would get a briefing.
"They laid out what they laid out to the others, that there is racial
inequality in Cuba, and asked that the congressman be aware of this,"
McCash said.
McCash and a staff member from another congressional office said some of the
information on discrimination in Cuba was news to their offices.
The foundation's leaders want members of the Black Caucus to intercede on
behalf of political prisoners, to lobby the Cuban government to promote more
blacks into positions of power and to support sending aid to dissidents on the
island.
The Black Caucus has been an irritant to anti-Castro groups for years. This
April, American students arrived to study medicine in Cuba as part of a program
first proposed during a meeting between Castro and several caucus members.
Last year, several members of the Black Caucus said Elian Gonzalez should be
returned to his father in Cuba, angering many Cuban-Americans. Several members
have argued that Cuba has improved the lives of black residents with better
health care and education.
The evidence is not decisive. A study by the Caribbean Project at the Center
of Latin American Studies at Georgetown University found that by 1981 more
blacks and mixed-race Cubans had graduated from high school than whites. But
that study and others also back up Montenegro's argument that blacks make up a
very small proportion of the island's top leaders and a large proportion of its
prisoners.
Rafael Lorente is a staff writer for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, a
Tribune Publishing newspaper.
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