Published Thursday, August 10, 2000, in the Miami Herald
INS awards for Elián raid draw protests
INS: Elián raid ceremony is not a festive occasion
By Carol Rosenberg. crosenberg@herald.com
Community activists responded with outrage -- and plans for a protest -- to Wednesday's revelation that the Immigration and Naturalization Service will hold an awards ceremony for federal agents who evacuated Elián González from Little Havana.
''The INS has maintained a rather arrogant attitude,'' said Democracy Movement leader Ramón Saúl Sánchez, who invited followers to a wreath-laying service next Tuesday evening ''for the death of the soul of the INS.''
''Even though they were successful in getting the child out, the issue is this child should not have been a victory for anyone,'' said Sánchez, who struggled with the agents as they stormed Elián's Miami relatives' home before dawn on April 22.
''He was going to be a loser anyway,'' Sánchez said. ''If he remained here, he would be without his father. If he returned to Cuba, he would have been taken to a dictatorship.''
The immigration service, meanwhile, provided further details of the ceremony, to be held at a federal law-enforcement training facility in Glynco, Ga.:
In all, 114 agents are to be honored Tuesday, about 75 percent of them coming from Miami, said INS spokeswoman Maria Cardona in Washington.
The agency had budgeted $25,000 in travel, housing costs and per diem expenses for the event, in which most agents would be car-pooling or riding buses to arrive the night before, on Monday, she said.
'NOT A PARTY'
''It's not a party we're going up to in Georgia. It's a recognition of the employees who did an outstanding job in a very, very difficult situation,'' said John Shewairy, chief of staff for Miami District Director Robert Wallis. ''There's nothing that's festive about this at all.''
Between agents, support staff and ceremony participants, Shewairy said, 116 INS employees from Florida will attend -- from Miami, the Pembroke Pines Border Patrol station, and offices in Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville.
In addition, Wallis had awarded 93 INS employees in his district an extra week's vacation this year.
They are called ''nonmonetary'' time-off awards, and each employee was granted 40 hours off, Shewairy said, adding that he did not know their dollar value.
The lowest-paid INS employee among those honored is classified as a G-5, Shewairy said. G-5s earn between $23,304 and $27,963, according to published government figures. So, at a minimum, the total value of the 3,720 hours in time-off awards was $41,678.
FEWER PLAQUES
Cardona also corrected her earlier account that each agent would receive a plaque in honor of work in the raid. Agents from three specialized units swept into Little Havana before dawn in Operation Reunion, whisking the 6-year-old boy to his father, a resident of Cuba who was waiting in suburban
Washington, D.C.
Instead, Cardona said, Commissioner Doris Meissner would present three plaques -- one to hang in Miami District offices on Biscayne Boulevard, one for the Miami Border Patrol Sector, and one for the El Paso, Texas, office of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit.
'INSENSITIVE'
Said Sylvia Iriondo of Mothers Against Repression, who was hustled off Lázaro González's front lawn after an attempt to make a human chain and stop the raid:
''It is extremely insensitive for the INS to celebrate this tragic order for unjustified violence. It is extremely insensitive for the INS to celebrate ordering federal agents to storm a house and remove a horrified child by force in the middle of the night.''
Shewairy, speaking for Wallis, also said next week's ceremony would be the first official act recognizing the federal force that carried out the raid.
A festive Miami INS picnic on April 29, which was attended by some of the agents, actually had been scheduled long before the operation and was the third annual districtwide affair, he said.
The Herald disclosed plans for the Georgia ceremony after an anonymous tip. Shewairy, the chief of staff, said Wednesday that the district would ''probably not'' have publicized the event.
''It's something that the commissioner does frequently when someone in the service does an outstanding thing,'' he said. ''We are proud of the fact that some people did an outstanding job in some difficult circumstances.''
For Cuban exiles, blood is thicker than embargo
By Sandra Marquez Garcia. smarquez@herald.com
When the Rojena family of Hialeah showed up at their neighborhood Publix supermarket with a carload of bulging duffel bags, they were tending to a frequently rehearsed drill in the complicated business of person-to-person trade with Cuba.
Hovering over the same supermarket scale where most customers casually check their weight, Antonio Rojena, 48, and Gudelia Rojena, 41, nervously eyed the needle as each bundle -- neatly layered clothes and medicine packed in Ziploc baggies to reduce bulk -- was loaded onto the metal instrument.
The nylon duffel bags are subject to strict weight restrictions on the Havana-bound charter flights. Exceeding the limit by even a few pounds can mean that a relative in Cuba will have to go without tennis shoes, vitamins or blue jeans.
The Rojenas spent three months and $400 preparing for their annual trip to their hometown of Holguin, Cuba. As they combed the racks for basic staples at Hialeah discount stores such as Ño! Qué Barato!, Tico's Fashions and La Ideal they were joined by other Cubans on a familiar
circuit that caters to the needs of those still living on the island.
As the debate rages on in post-Elián Miami over whether or not to lift the U.S. trade embargo, Hialeah, the most Cuban-populated city outside the island, has long engaged in a thriving person-to-person trade with Cuba. Regardless of what many in this working class immigrant community
think of Fidel Castro's politics, those passions are often outweighed by the concern that loved ones back in Cuba not go without medicine or underwear.
The homegrown trade with Cuba is perhaps most visible at Ño! Qué Barato! (which loosely translates as Damn, How Cheap!), a cavernous yellow warehouse at 2201 W. Okeechobee Rd. It is one of the most popular mega-discount stores that specialize in basic goods geared for shipping to
the cash-strapped island.
Along its cluttered aisles, shoppers like Celina Negrin, 54, are engaging in a dialogue of their own. Many are now openly expressing their support for an end to the 38-year-old policy, which they say only hurts those who suffer the most.
"My personal opinion is that they end it as soon as possible,'' Negrin said as she sifted through a heap of underwear with her mother, Maria Prado, 84, who is visiting from Cuba. "No matter what, they are taking things to Cuba.''
Negrin, who together with her husband owns a Miami auto shop, said the strict trade rules limit what she can send back to her mother and four siblings who reside in her hometown of Florida in the Camagüey province.
Passengers on the Havana-bound charter flights are limited to 44 pounds of clothing and an additional 22 pounds for medicine.
"I don't want my family to suffer because of the political whims of those who no longer have relatives there,'' Negrin said.
That sentiment appears to be a driving force behind the success of Ño! Qué Barato! Inside, shoppers sort through merchandise as if recovering lost treasures. On display: mosquito nets for $3.99; kids sneakers for $7.99; two men's mesh tank tops for $5; women's underwear for 99
cents each; a dozen toothbrushes for $1.99; and tiny sacks of flint lighter chips for $1.
With every $100 worth of purchases shoppers get a free duffel bag -- dubbed gusanos or worms, a play on Fidel Castro's derogatory term for exiles.
"This is very popular back in Cuba,'' said owner Serafin Blanco, 47, pointing to a rack of body-hugging Lycra dresses and leggings -- known as chicle, or chewing gum, on the island. "They like everything that stretches.''
Blanco said the severe shortages that sent shock waves through Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet Union have been a boon to his business, which opened in 1996.
"They used to allow you to buy one pair of shoes, one shirt and pair of pants each year with the libreta [ration booklet],'' he said.
Although he doesn't support lifting the embargo, Blanco acknowledges that most of the $1.2 million worth of goods he sells annually end up on the communist island. He also owns a second store, El Dollarazo, at 1601 W. Eighth Ave., which he said does about a million in sales annually.
"It's better to buy it here instead of sending dollars to Castro,'' he said.
His criteria for doing business with Cuba: "First you have to have a democracy. Then, you would have people doing business with people.''
Walking around the warehouse floor, with Bee Gees and Spanish pop tunes playing in the background, Blanco stumbled on a subtle irony: "Most of this stuff is made in China.''
Although the embargo does not appear to be on the verge of collapse -- the Republican Party, for example, last week approved a list of preconditions it would require before relaxing sanctions against Cuba -- there have been efforts to reform the policy. Last month, the U.S. House of
Representatives approved two amendments that would restore virtually unlimited travel to Cuba and allow the export of food and medicine to the island.
Mary Gonzalez, 42, an account executive for Fine Air in Miami, said she used to look down on relatives who traveled back to Cuba. But her hard-line political view softened this year after a series of personal setbacks: Her father suffered four heart attacks since April and the stress caused her
to develop a rare skin condition.
After discovering a clinic in Cuba that has developed a unique treatment for the subtle discoloration on her well-manicured hands, Gonzalez decided to venture back to her birthplace. But she said it wasn't until she started shopping side-by-side with Cuban visitors from the island that she began
to question her support of the U.S. trade embargo.
While picking out shoes, tank tops, dresses and hair clips with those from the other side of the Florida Straits, Gonzalez said she gained a new outlook on the birthplace she left 40 years ago.
Cubans on the island lack the most basic goods, enjoy shopping as much as the throngs at Dadeland -- and are going to take merchandise back just the same, she said.
"There are a lot of people taking a lot of things over there,'' Gonzalez said. "I know that a lot of people do not agree, but in my mind I believe it is time to change.''
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