CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Jailed journalists get the world's attention

By Michael A.W. Ottey, mottey@herald.com. Posted on Wed, Nov. 24, 2004.

Cuban dissident writer Raúl Rivero spends his days in a damp prison writing poems, battling illness, and perhaps toughest of all, trying to keep his spirits high.

Rivero, who turned 59 on Tuesday, is serving a 20-year prison sentence for ''treason.'' He was among 75 dissidents, including about 30 journalists, rounded up last year in Cuba in a government crackdown on dissent.

But Reporters Without Borders, an independent international organization that fights for the protection and rights of journalists, has not forgotten him or the other 127 journalists imprisoned around the globe.

Today, the group is marking its 15th annual 'Jailed Journalists' Support Day,'' a worldwide effort to spotlight imprisoned journalists everywhere.

Lucie Morillon, the organization's representative in Washington, said some jailed journalists have been freed after their cases received international publicity.

''We know that when media decide to support one journalist, it puts pressure on the government,'' she said.

She said the 'Jailed Journalists' Support Day'' is also designed to let the imprisoned journalists know that they are not forgotten.

Rivero's wife, Blanca Reyes, who last visited him on Saturday. told The Herald in a phone interview from Havana that he has been fighting pulmonary problems and lost hearing in his right ear.

She described his prison cell as ''cold and damp'' and said the guards' treatment of her husband has improved recently and is now "professional, as it should be.''

But she wants more. She wants his freedom.

''What they are doing to him is an injustice,'' she said. "He shouldn't be in jail. He should be home.''

American tradition special for reunited Cuban couple

After 10 years of separation, a Cuban rafter was finally reunited with his wife. Today will be their first Thanksgiving together.

By Ana Veciana-Suarez, aveciana@herald.com. Posted on Thu, Nov. 25, 2004.

It's nap time at the Lledes residence, but muffled laughter wafts from the bedroom like festive music from a carnival. Despite their mother's entreaties, the three boys have no intention of turning in. One might think this would upset Rodolfo Lledes, the patriarch of the clan, since he has just arrived, tired and hungry, from his delivery truck job that began in the wee hours of the morning.

But his grandchildren's rambunctiousness only makes him smile. Their noises are proof that everything he has endured in the past decade -- the frantic days at sea, the lonely months at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the long hours of work -- have all been well worth the struggle.

''I don't want them to suffer as I did,'' Lledes said, "and whatever I have to do to make sure of that, I will.''

Lledes, 56, was one of more than 35,000 Cubans who took to the sea in the summer of 1994. Like many rafters, he left his entire family -- wife, son and daughter -- behind in the hope that one day he would be able to send for them.

This year, for the first time, he will celebrate Thanksgiving with his wife, who finally arrived from Cuba. His son arrived in 2000, with his family. This family reunion is enough to make Thanksgiving 2004 extra special. In addition to the typical Miami Cuban-American fare of pavo, black beans and rice and yuca, Lledes says, there will be an extra helping of gratitude served with the meal.

''I feel blessed,'' he said. "I get up every morning and thank God for all that He has given me. My objective has always been to reunite my family in a free land.''

Wife Magaly is not sure what to expect of this, the most American of holidays. Turkey sounds positively exotic. ''I know my daughter-in-law is preparing a complete feast,'' she said, "but I really don't know anything more than that.''

OFTEN ALONE

Like many migrants who come to this land, Lledes has celebrated previous holidays alone -- or working. He didn't mind so much as long as he knew that, one day, there would be a big family reunion.

Now, only his daughter and granddaughter remain in Cuba, but both were recently granted entry into the United States. They may be in Miami by the end of the year. ''Then, that will be some celebration,'' he said. "Then, and only then, will I breathe easy. I will know that it's never late to live free.''

In the nine years since he landed in Miami from Guantánamo, where the rafters were housed temporarily, Lledes has worked at countless jobs, saved his pennies, sent money to his family on the island, become a U.S. citizen, upgraded his form of transportation -- from bike to car -- and bought a modest, three-bedroom house with an attached efficiency.

He shows off the humble homestead in Miami with visible pride. The place is spotless, the flowered slipcovers firmly tucked over the sofa and love seat. In the foyer, framed photographs of his three grandsons hang from the wall, not far from a small statue of La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, Cuba's patron saint. In the backyard, plastic cars, a motorized jeep and a basketball hoop are neatly lined up.

Not once has Lledes regretted leaving his homeland. Not when he had to ride a bicycle to his two jobs, not when he was sleeping four hours a night, not even when loneliness haunted him. He is, by all accounts, deliriously happy with his situation, especially now that he has received word that his daughter will be coming soon.

ARRIVES IN MIAMI

He spent 14 months in Guantánamo, arriving in Miami in 1995. Once here, he got an apartment with his brother-in-law and began a job cleaning at Miami International Airport. Later, he worked various jobs -- "anything to survive.''

The most difficult part of those early years? "Being away from the family. You really, really miss them. I had never felt so alone.''

Lledes visited his family twice on the island, and in 2000, the same year he became a citizen, his daughter-in-law and two grandsons arrived from Cuba, followed by his son a few months later. It would be four more years before his wife would be granted an exit visa.

Magaly's voice quavered when she spoke of the separation. ''You think it will never be over, and even now that I am here, it doesn't end. It's like a chain. You always leave someone behind,'' she said.

Though this is her first Thanksgiving, she's excited. ''The important thing is that we're all together.'' And that little by little her family is making headway.

''I didn't come here to be rich,'' Lledes said. "I came here to be free, to get away from oppression and to give my family a better life.''

Pain of separation never fades

For one Cuban-American man, Thanksgiving is a painful reminder that he is separated from his family still on the island.

By Ana Veciana-Suarez, aveciana@herald.com. Posted on Thu, Nov. 25, 2004.

Today Jose Cohen will celebrate Thanksgiving as a free man in a democratic country. He will bow his head for the blessing, help carve the gleaming turkey and savor his friends' efforts with the black beans and yuca. But today, too, Cohen's thoughts will wander to the people he loves most, the people he has never introduced to this American holiday.

His wife, three children and both parents remain in Cuba, hostages to a capricious government that refuses to grant them permission to leave. Cohen is convinced this is the way Fidel Castro punishes him for leaving a high-powered job as a Cuban intelligence agent and taking to the sea during the 1994 exodus that brought tens of thousands of Cubans to Florida shores.

This will be his 10th Thanksgiving away from his family, but the pain of separation has not eased. In fact, it has only grown more intense. Surrounded by friends, not far from two brothers who also escaped the communist island, the tableaux of clans gathered around the dinner table is simply a reminder of what he doesn't have.

SAD OCCASION

''It's a beautiful tradition, and I admire it greatly,'' said Cohen, 39, "but these holidays are always sad for me. You see the families together, you see them enjoying each other and that's when you think of how long it has been since you've hugged your son and kissed your daughters.''

His daughters -- Yanelis, 20, and Yamila, 17 -- and son Isaac, 13, remain in Havana with their mother, Lazara. They've had U.S. visas since 1996, as have his parents. When he last saw Isaac, the boy did not yet talk. Yanelis and Yamila were little girls, playing with dolls on the front door stoop. Now they're young women, frustrated by a system that does not allow them to continue their education past middle school because they are not revolutionaries, because their father left for the United States.

Such separations are not unusual. Most of the Cubans who fled the island in rafts were young men. Many left families behind. They hoped to work hard and send money home, become citizens, then bring their relatives to the United States.

Cohen abandoned the island with barely enough time to bid farewell to his family because his life was threatened. A University of Havana mathematics graduate with a specialty in cryptology, he had been recruited for the intelligence service as a young man and risen through the ranks. He had a promising future. But the more he saw of the system, the more disenchanted he became.

''There was a lot of corruption and incredible nepotism,'' he said. "The people who govern the islands are unscrupulous gangsters.''

He said he knew he could not remain uninvolved. "What would I tell my children? How could I live with myself?''

He and a small group of agents began to work against the government, but they knew it would only be a matter of time before they were discovered. When Cubans began to leave openly in rafts, Cohen, his brother Isaac and two other agents fled.

''I knew I could not remain in Cuba and that I was worth more to my children alive and in another country than dead on the island,'' he said. "But I never, ever thought a government, with all the eyes of the world watching, could hold three children, a wife and two old people hostages for so many years.''

Though other 1994 rafters have been able to visit the families they left behind, Cohen will never be able to return to his homeland while Castro is in power. In his absence, a tribunal condemned him to death. He says he knows of no other Cuban family that has been denied exit permission for so long.

He has sought help through many channels, including Mexican President Vicente Fox and Gregory Craig, the Washington, D.C., lawyer for Elián González's father during the highly publicized rafter case. All to no avail. In the meantime, the wound of separation runs deep.

He hears of the small torments his family must endure. His wife is not allowed to work -- the family survives on the money he sends them. His son was assigned a homework essay titled My father, Fidel. And when his daughter Yamila refused to attend a public demonstration in support of Elián's father, government agents organized a public act of repudiation against her.

Cohen is able to phone his children at his parents' home, but those calls are taped. He is convinced he knows little of their real lives because they do not feel free to tell him.

WORK DOMINATES

His own life in the United States is uneventful. He spent his first four years in the Washington area, where the U.S. government had taken him for debriefing. He took a painting job at a company owned by a friend and worked at Amway, now known as QuixStart, during the evening, becoming so successful in marketing that he was able to quit his day job. In 1998, he moved his business to Miami because he ''missed the warm weather and Cuban culture, everything that I remembered of my country.'' He joined forces with a Cuban-American chemist to produce beauty and health products to sell on the Internet.

He has his own apartment in Miami Beach, an office in the Doral area, investments in the stock market. ''I learned the capitalist system very quickly,'' he said. And he fills his hours with work. It's what gets him from day to day.

''What my children have of me is this vague recollection of a father, of who I really am,'' he said. "But we don't give up hope. Their dream remains to come here.''

Herald staff writer Elaine de Valle contributed to this report.

PRINTER FRIENDLY