CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Cuba's many prisons may hold 100,000

If accurate, the figure would give the country the highest number of inmates per capita, even ahead of the United States. An estimated 300 are political prisoners.

By Nancy San Martin, nsanmartin@herald.com. Posted on Mon, Sep. 22, 2003.

Cuba's jailing of 75 dissidents six months ago has focused fresh attention on one of the largest per-capita prison systems in the world, with an estimated 100,000 or so inmates in about 200 prisons and labor camps spread around an island slightly smaller than Pennsylvania.

Letters smuggled out by a handful of the imprisoned dissidents describe tight, filthy quarters infested with rodents and bugs; food too disgusting to eat; limited access to medical care; and physical and mental abuse.

But the estimated 300 political prisoners in Cuba make up only a fraction of what may be the world's most extensive per-capita prison gulag -- even larger than the U.S. penitentiary system, which tops the list kept by the London-based International Centre for Prison Studies.

Cuba today has an estimated 100,000 inmates in about 200 prisons and correctional labor camps, including 80 maximum and lesser security penitentiaries, according to the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, an independent organization in Havana. Officials at Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said they have no independent knowledge of the number of prisoners but do not dispute the 100,000 figure. A 1995 U.N. report on Cuba's human rights situation in Cuba estimated there were "between 100,000 and 200,000 prisoners in all categories.''

If accurate, the figure of 100,000 inmates in an island of nearly 11.3 million people would give Cuba 888 inmates per 100,000 people, far ahead of the United States, which, according to the Prison Studies center's latest report, has 701 inmates per 100,000.

The center, considered one of the world's leading authorities on prison systems, uses a 1997 estimate for Cuba of 33,000 prisoners, or 297 prisoners per 100,000 people, putting it in 32nd place on the center's list of 100 nations. Center officials said they obtained the estimate from an academic in Norway and had not updated it since then.

HARD TO ASSESS

Cuba's prison population is difficult to assess because the Cuban government does not officially report figures and does not allow independent human rights monitors to visit prisons. The last foreign visit to Cuba's prison system was in 1989 by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Then the inmate population was about 40,000, said Joanne Mariner, deputy director of the Americas Program for Human Rights Watch.

Cuban officials could not be reached for comment.

But Vladimiro Roca, a human rights activist who served nearly five years in prison, said it's no surprise that Cuba's prison population is so high.

''Here, people get thrown in prison for anything,'' Roca said in a telephone interview from Havana, adding that breaking the law is often a matter of survival in a country where the government's monthly food rations last less than two weeks and the average wage is about $10 per month. ''If you kill a cow to feed your family, you go to jail,'' Roca said. "That's part of the government's method to maintain control over the population.''

Owners of private restaurants known as paladares can land in jail if they sell lobsters -- officially reserved for tourist hotels and government-owned restaurants. So can those who exhibit behavior deemed by authorities as ''dangerous'' or who sell their homes or cars without government approval.

Beyond the high rate of prisoners, harsh conditions, at least as described by inmates, also have raised concern among international organizations, especially because there have been no outside inspections since the Red Cross' 1989 visit.

Annick Bouvier, who covers Latin America for the Geneva-based organization, said the visits stopped because ''our modalities were not accepted by detaining authorities.'' She declined to provide details but said the organization generally seeks complete access and the ability to speak privately with prisoners.

Mariner of Human Rights Watch said it is difficult to assess whether Cuba's prison system is worse than elsewhere in the region "because prison conditions in Latin America tend to be generally very poor.''

''But there are aspects of Cuban prisons that are different and extremely worrisome,'' she added.

A 1999 Human Rights Watch report titled Cuba's Repressive Machinery said the island "confines its sizable prison population under substandard and unhealthy conditions, where prisoners face physical and sexual abuse.

''Most prisoners suffer malnourishment from an insufficient prison diet and languish in overcrowded cells without appropriate medical attention. Some endure physical and sexual abuse, typically by other inmates with the acquiescence of guards, or [spend] long periods in isolation cells,'' the report said. "The inhumane conditions and the punitive measures taken against prisoners have been, in several instances, so cruel as to rise to the level of torture.''

U.S. REPORT

Similar concerns were raised in the State Department's annual Human Rights Practices report released in March. ''Prison conditions continued to be harsh and life threatening,'' it said.

"The government claimed that prisoners had rights such as family visitation, adequate nutrition, pay for work, the right to request parole, and the right to petition the prison director; however, police and prison officials often denied these rights in practice, and beat, neglected, isolated, and denied medical treatment to detainees and prisoners, including those convicted of political crimes or those who persisted in expressing their views.''

Roca, jailed in a maximum security penitentiary and released last year, said such descriptions do not fully capture the horror. His first three years were spent in solitary confinement in a cell so narrow ''there was hardly space to sit down,'' he said.

''It's hard to put into words what prison conditions are like here,'' Roca said.

"You have to live it to believe it. In reality, most of the inmates that were in that prison with me should have been dead. That's how bad it was.''

Cuban hijacker sentenced

Freedom is fleeting for man who stole a plane in order to come to the United States. He will spend 20 years in prison.

By Larry Lebowitz. llebowitz@herald.com Posted on Sat, Sep. 20, 2003

An architect who refused to believe U.S. and Cuban officials when they said he would face serious consequences if he hijacked a commercial plane to Key West will have 20 years to ponder his miscalculation.

Adermis Wilson González, who hijacked a Cuban Airlines plane with two ceramic casts hand-painted to resemble grenades, was sentenced Friday by U.S. District Judge Shelby C. Highsmith to the minimum mandatory prison term for air piracy.

The judge recommended that Wilson, 34, be allowed to stay in the United States after his release from prison rather than face automatic deportation.

'HAPPY TO BE HERE'

Wilson denounced Cuban President Fidel Castro, invoked the memory of Elián González's drowned mother and praised the American freedom that he won't experience for two more decades.

''I am very happy to be here in the United States, far away from the clutches of the tyrant Castro,'' Wilson told the judge through a Spanish translator. "I know that God is on my side today, that God is looking at the freedom my wife and child are enjoying.''

Wilson's 19-year-old wife and 3-year-old son were among 51 people on board when he seized control of the AN-24 as it flew from the Isle of Youth to Havana.

Twenty-one passengers were released in Havana and 31 others made the impromptu final leg to Key West under naval jet escort. During the 15-hour layover in Havana, Cuban and U.S. officials unsuccessfully warned Wilson about the penalties for air piracy.

Wilson was barred from telling American jurors that he feared execution if he surrendered control to Cuban agents in Havana. The Key West jury deliberated an hour before finding him guilty. Defense attorney Stewart Abrams plans an appeal.

TIMING OF SEIZURE

The April 1 hijacking came at a tense time in U.S.-Cuban relations. Six Cuban men are facing trial in December for taking another plane in March. The day after Wilson's hijacking, a group of men tried to commandeer a passenger ferry to the United States. Cuba quickly tried and executed three of the ferry hijackers.

Cops do stop white Cubans as well, Alan said, but less frequently than they stop black Cubans.

Cuban officials say such racial profiling is not the norm.

"Black people are not being detained on the streets of Havana or any other city just for being black, said Roberto de Armas, of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "If there is someone being detained by police, it is for a reason. It's not because of a policy.

Meanwhile, Alan would love to get a job in the tourism industry, but for now is relegated to his low-paying job as an electrical technician. The problem he said, is not his qualifications -- he is university educated -- but his skin color.

"The best jobs are all in tourist areas: hotels, restaurants, anywhere that uses dollar, he said.

"All the good jobs in Cuba go to white people.''

According to Alarcón, the U.S. government's embargo on Cuba has serious implications for socioeconomic equity among races.

"For example, Cuban blacks are not in Miami -- that means that those who send remittances to Cubans are white Cuban Americans.

Remittances are received by 30 percent to 40 percent of whites, compared with 5 percent to 10 percent of blacks, according to an article by Cuban independent journalist Claudia Márquez Linares.

The same article states that, according to Cuba's Center for Anthropology, 80 percent of those in the tourism industry are white and 5 percent are black.

Those statistics are indicative of the racial division that exists, said Omar Lopez Montenegro of the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation.

He said things were better for Cuban blacks under the leadership of President Fulgencio Batista because they had the opportunity to move up in society.

But according to Cuba historian Christopher Baker, there were places even Batista was not allowed, simply because he was mulatto.

The Havana Yacht Club, for example, turned out the lights when Batista approached -- to let the Cuban president know he was not welcome, Baker said.

However, Lopez said, there is a difference between Batista not being able to enter an exclusive club and Cuban blacks today not being able to go to hotels.

"Even all the people who were white weren't allowed in, he said.

"It has gone from blacks being unable to go to exclusive clubs to not being able to enter any hotel in Cuba. Things are worse.

Salvat: A quiet, bookish guy with a militant history

The gentle, rotund Calle Ocho publisher is a veteran of the old clandestine war against Fidel Castro.

By Fabiola Santiago. fsantiago@herald.com. Posted on Mon, Sep. 22, 2003

He is a Cuban Miami legend.

Juan Manuel Salvat, owner of Ediciones Universal, a bookstore and Spanish-language publishing company on Calle Ocho, is one of Miami's cultural forces.

His publishing house puts out historical works by figures in the Cuban exile community. His bookstore carries the latest Latin American and Spanish titles, plus rare treasures less widely read, with an emphasis on Cuban-related material.

Known as La Universal, the square, gray building on Southwest 31st Avenue is a hangout for the Cuban-exile intelligentsia. Writers gather almost every Saturday around lunchtime for informal tertulias, literary jam sessions that go on for hours.

Quietly behind the scenes is the rotund, gentle-mannered 63-year-old publisher from the central Cuban town of Sagua La Grande.

Many in the old Cuban guard know it, but few outsiders would guess it: Salvat, a man of words, is a former militant, un viejo guerrero, a veteran of the clandestine war against Fidel Castro.

ATTACK ON HOTEL

He was once on a boat that bombarded a Havana hotel where Russians were supposedly gathered with Castro. Another time, he sneaked into the island using an alias and tried to form clandestine cells to attack Castro targets.

''It was another time,'' Salvat says. "We were trying to organize a counterrevolution.''

A student of social sciences and law at the University of Havana in the late 1950s, Salvat was a member of the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil, which fought strongman Fulgencio Batista, and the Agrupación Católica Universitaria, the association of Catholic university students.

Both groups initially supported the Cuban Revolution, ''but as soon as we realized Castro was a communist, we turned against him,'' Salvat says.

In February 1960, Salvat was arrested and briefly detained for participating in a protest against Soviet Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan, who had ''brought the hammer and sickle flag'' to Havana.

For his role in the protest at Havana's Central Park, Salvat was expelled from the university. Knowing he was in trouble with state security, he sought asylum in the Brazilian embassy and fled to Miami.

Months later, he returned on a 30-foot boat to help form anti-Castro action groups. When the Bay of Pigs invasion came in April of 1961, he was in Cuba operating under a different identity. After the failed invasion, he was arrested along with thousands of others suspected of conspiracy, but his real identity was never discovered and he was released.

After months in hiding, he made his way to the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo.

''I jumped the fence. Well, I should say, the family with me helped me jump the fence. Remember, I am heavy, been that way since I was born,'' he jokes about the girth for which he is affectionately known as El Gordo Salvat -- Fats Salvat.

Back in Miami, Salvat joined the group that participated in the 1962 raid upon Hotel Rosita de Hornedo alongside other exiles like José Basulto, president of the rafter-aid group Brothers to the Rescue.

''We were in a fast boat and it was a lightning strike with a small 20-millimeter cannon. We shot and left,'' Salvat says. "We tried many things in those days, but we couldn't reach our objective of having a base outside American territory.''

As time wore on and Castro cemented himself in power, Salvat married and started to think of a career.

''I thought about what I could do that involved Cuba and I turned to books, my passion since I was a kid,'' Salvat says.

He prepared a small catalog of Cuban titles and started selling them to universities and in 1966 opened the bookstore on Calle Ocho and 24th Avenue. Nine years later, he had the current two-story headquarters built.

A VOID'S FILLED

Salvat found a niche by filling a void: Few U.S. or Spanish publishers were willing to take a chance on a book about Cuba or the Cuban exile.

''A book with a political subject and an exile book is very difficult to place in a big publishing house because it will have limited sales,'' Salvat says. "Cuban authors were like orphans.''

He discovered that he could make a healthy living in publishing because his books are widely distributed all over the hemisphere among public and university libraries interested in Cuba.

Although he also carries works by Cuban authors still on the island -- trendy novelists like Abilio Estévez and Leonardo Padura published in Spain -- he doesn't carry Cuba-published titles.

''We don't do business with Cuba,'' he says. "We could legally, but we don't out of conviction.''

Ediciones Universal, which has published 1,050 titles, is an all-in-the family operation, except for son Manolito, who became a dentist. Wife Marta, daughters Marta and María, and son Miguel, all are part of the enterprise.

''Even the grandchildren run around the warehouse,'' Salvat quips.

Has he ever thought of writing his own tale?

''No,'' he says. "But the story of the clandestine [anti-Castro] struggle hasn't been written. There were many movements and many young people died.''

Hard line by U.S. halts some aid trips to Cuba

Supporters of the embargo say the missions are a front for tourism, but humanitarian groups contend they are victims of political pressure.

By Cara Buckley, cbuckley@herald.com. Posted on Sun, Sep. 21, 2003

KEY WEST -- He shipped medicine to Cuba, but in the U.S. government's eyes, he shipped tourists, too.

Whenever John Young was contacted by boaters wanting to go to the island, he supplied the license, and often the goods: aspirin, antibiotics and defibrillators that can shock failed hearts back to life. Young's nonprofit organization, Conchord Cayo Hueso, was federally licensed to run the trips, and over a dozen years, Young estimates, its 600 members shipped 150 tons of supplies.

But when the Bush administration started clamping down on humanitarian and educational trips to Cuba last year, claiming their licenses were being abused, Young knew his organization was in jeopardy.

On Tuesday, federal agents tracked Young down in a laundromat in Key West and handed him a letter saying his license was void and that the trips had to stop.

''We feel that if somebody will go down and put medicines on their boat, they fall in love with the island, and generally speaking, they want to go back, carrying more medicines,'' said Young, 70, who plans to fight the suspension. "It's our moral obligation to help these people.''

While the U.S. embargo against Cuba bans exports and bars U.S. citizens from spending money on the island, licenses from the Treasury and Commerce departments allowed humanitarian shipments and trips by educational groups.

But in the view of the Bush administration and pro-embargo groups, outfits like Young's were thinly veiled fronts that enabled U.S. citizens to visit the island as tourists.

Last year, the Treasury Department cut entire categories of humanitarian and educational licenses and let existing permits expire. Enforcement of current export licenses grew even more stringent after the executions of three men and the imprisonment of 75 dissidents in Cuba earlier this year.

After that, ''the Bush administration sought additional ways to express their condemnation of the government of Cuba,'' said John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a New York-based agency that advises U.S. companies on doing business with Cuba.

SPLIT OPINIONS

The enhanced enforcement cheered pro-embargo groups, who maintain that tourism to Cuba lines Cuban leader Fidel Castro's pockets and that humanitarian donations end up in government-run shops.

''People would take a box of aspirin to Cuba to get around the regulations and hang out in Hemingway Harbor for the weekend,'' said Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation. "Most of the aid is given to the Cuban government, so in essence, they're not really helping Cuban society at all.''

But others contend that the clampdown hurt legitimate nonprofit groups and needy Cubans.

Delvis Fernández Levy, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Cuban American Alliance Education Fund, said the cessation of ''people-to-people'' licenses, which allowed cultural trips to the island, cut off one of his major medical supply conduits.

Fernández's organization began taking supplies to the Cuban Association for the Disabled and other Cuban nongovernmental organizations in 1998 and this year planned to ship $500,000 worth of supplies. Fernández depended on ''people-to-people'' licenses to get most supplies to needy groups, and said the new regulations cut his supply routes by two-thirds.

''We have to scramble to get medical professionals and nurses who are very narrowly working on disability issues,'' said Fernández. "It's a huge handicap.''

Fernández also had difficulty renewing his humanitarian license, which allows doctors and nurses to take medical goods to the island. Fernández finally got a renewal after a three-month lapse, but only after pressing two congressmen.

''We're dealing with people who are not sick just once, but chronic situations in need of constant monitoring,'' Fernández said. "But the program came to a screeching halt. That lifeline was cut for three months.''

Bill Hauf, a San Diego businessman whose group, ''It's Just the Kids,'' donates and builds playgrounds in metropolitan Havana, said renewing his license last year required leaping bigger hurdles. He fears the recent clampdown will endanger future projects. ''We hope we're not affected by the political ramifications,'' he said.

Art Heitzer, a Milwaukee-based lawyer and chair of the National Lawyers' Guild Cuban subcommittee, said ''sister city'' relationships between U.S. and Cuban cities are also no longer permitted, further thinning humanitarian supply lines.

''People would go, bring a lot of medicine and other things to hospitals, clinics and old folks homes,'' Heitzer said. "Those licenses are now being denied.''

But Kavulich and others insist that too many of the educational and humanitarian licenses were being abused, often by businesses seeking to secure a toehold in the island's economy.

''There have been individuals and organizations that have used the guise of humanitarian visits to Cuba for purposes that are minimally humanitarian,'' said Kavulich. "They were two-bit hustlers -- unscrupulous people simply looking at Cuba as a profit center. And sadly, some of the individuals involved in good work are casualties.''

Kavulich did not know of Young's group, and representatives of the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security, the agency that sent the cease-and-desist letter to Young in Key West, refused to comment on Young's case.

RATIONALE

But their letter says Young lacked an export license for his vessels, which are required even though boats linked with his group went to Cuba and came back. Young said he never needed this license before, and that while his Treasury license expired last year, he believed his Commerce license permitted the trips.

Federal agents already pressured boaters affiliated with Young earlier this year. Young put medical supplies aboard some boats participating in third annual Conch Republic Cup race, which runs from Key West to Havana.

The boaters were to be ''fully hosted'' by a Cuban sailing association, thus technically not spending money or violating the embargo. But before the race, the Commerce department warned some boaters that they needed export licenses for their boats. On their return, Young said federal agents stormed the boats and confiscated personal goods.

''They've got me slowly twisting and turning,'' he said. "The bureaucrats have used the tourist excuse for the last three years -- that people are catching city buses and doing tours. But where's the evidence? Where's the proof?

"I maintain that we're really an organization that has vessels drop medicines off. And you meet contacts. It gives you a foothold into that community of Cuba.''

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