Published Monday, September 4, 2000, in the Miami Herald
France sends stowaway back to Cuba
By Ana Acle. aacle@herald.com
On a rainy day in Havana early last month, Roberto Viza Egües slipped through security and hid in a container aboard an Air France airliner bound for Europe.
A card-carrying member of the Feb. 24 Movement, a political dissident group on the island, Viza endured 14 hours of freezing temperatures, not enough oxygen and an insufferable nosebleed aboard the plane's storage room. He landed safely in Paris' Roissy Charles de Gaulle Airport Aug. 13.
French journalists dubbed the stowaway's survival a miracle.
But Friday, after French courts rejected his application for asylum citing lack of proof of persecution, Viza was deported back to Cuba where his fate is unknown.
His Miami relatives were frantic when they heard he was sent back and said Sunday that Viza remains at Villa Marista prison. On Saturday, Viza turned 26.
"How can they send him back without listening to him?'' said cousin Mercy Pérez of Miami. "They can kill him or put him in prison for 30 years.''
FRENCH ESCORTS
A friend saw Viza arrive in Havana with French officers as escorts.
"He was beaten up,'' Pérez said. "He had told me that he was not going to get in the plane unless they drugged him or beat him.''
Laurent Muller, president of the Paris-based European Association for a Free Cuba, met Viza Tuesday during Viza's detention in France.
"He was all right, but quite scared about going back to Cuba,'' Muller said in a telephone interview from Paris.
Viza's deportation surprised Muller, whose organization had kept in touch with Viza every hour until they could no longer reach him Thursday or Friday. Muller and Pérez were told Viza had been freed. But on Friday, French journalists confirmed the Cuban had been returned.
SNEAKED ABOARD
According to Muller, Viza said he originally left Cuba after receiving a death threat for his involvement with the Feb. 24 Movement.
Viza went to José Martí Airport, on the outskirts of Havana, on Aug. 12.
He somehow managed to sneak aboard the Air France plane.
In Cuba, he left behind a wife and an 18-month-old girl and told Pérez he wanted to come to Miami where he has relatives.
Muller said that Viza was not represented by an attorney, and thus was not defended in court.
Viza is the son of a political prisoner, also named Roberto Viza, of Miami. The elder Viza came from Cuba in 1980 during the Mariel boatlift, forced to leave behind his wife and three children.
Pérez said the elder Viza is extremely upset about his son's deportation.
"He can't believe it.''
IN FATHER'S FOOTSTEPS
The younger Viza soon began to follow in his father's footsteps, arguing for human rights in Cuba. By 13, he was a member of the Martí Civic League, Muller said.
At 14, he tried to escape the island but was captured by Cuban authorities and thrown in Villa Marista for a week, Muller said.
He recently had participated in hunger strikes with other Cuban dissidents, Muller said.
"The poor guy who seems to be very nice must be under incredible pressure right now,'' Muller said. "I would urge all human rights organizations, Cuban and non-Cuban, to get him out of this hell.''
Havana shows its cemetery with pride
Grand displays, humble graves coexist amid whimsy, reverence
James Anderson. Associated Press
HAVANA -- Laid out along the plan of an ancient Roman city, Havana's Cristóbal Colón Necropolis is one of the globe's great cemeteries, offering a fascinating stroll through architectural treasures and Cuban history.
Since its first recorded burial in 1868, the cemetery's population has grown to an estimated one million. Its grid of numbered and lettered streets contains grandiose family plots of self-indulgence and austere memorials to martyrs of Fidel Castro's revolution.
And there is the fanciful. A sailboat sculpture honors Antonio Balaz, a national sailing champion. A double-three domino marks the final resting place of Juana Marín, a fanatic of the game who suffered a heart attack when she couldn't use a final double-three clutched in her hand. A white
marble chess king adorns the tomb of world champion José Raúl Copablanca.
Galician architect Calixto de Loira won the competition for the cemetery's design with a submission titled "Wan Death Arrives Without Distinction at Hovels and at the Palaces of Kings.'' The results live up to his promise.
Here lie Spanish bishops, revolutionary heroes Máximo Gómez and Marcelo Salado Lastra, and politician Eduardo Chibás, a crusader against corruption who committed suicide during a radio broadcast in 1951. At Chibás' funeral, a young Castro jumped atop the grave to
denounce the government in his public debut.
For a $1 entry fee, an aide will lend a well-worn map ("Our only one,'' she apologizes). You'll need it if you're pressed for time to catch the highlights of the 138 acres.
With a flourish, the arches of the necropolis' Romanesque-Byzantine Gate of Peace open onto Christopher Columbus Avenue, a broad, tree-lined way where you find tombs of the "First Order'' -- mostly honoring pre- and post-colonial Cuban heroes and the privileged.
SPLENDID TRIBUTES
They include an imposing chestnut, gray and beige marble obelisk commemorating independence hero Gómez, who died in 1905. Farther along is the modernistic chapel for Catalina Lasa (1936) designed by Rene Lalique: white marble, black granite and purple crystal in a main facade and vaulted
apse that resembles a space pod from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Neo-Gothic, eclectic, modernist, Art Deco, and neo-Romanesque styles abound. A small pyramid modeled after Egypt's Cheops contrasts with elaborate statuary of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. A hilltop stand of polished metal flags is raised in everlasting tribute to Castro's fallen comrades.
Cherubs that adorn a mausoleum dedicated to eight Cuban medical students executed by Spanish colonial troops in 1871 were sculpted by renowned Cuban artist José Vilalta Saavedra. Pilgrims flock to the shrine of La Milagrosa (the Miraculous One), a woman who died in childbirth in 1901 and
whose remains were said to be intact when she was disinterred years later.
At times, the necropolis' juxtapositions can be staggering.
The stark Pantheon of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, its bearded metal warriors standing guard and tombs marked by number, stands near a modest memorial built by the one-time Anglo-American Association of Cuba.
"There are a lot of gringos here,'' said Jorge Guadalupe, a 55-year-old dentist using chisel and brush to restore a small 1937 marker for a father-in-law.
"This is a beautiful place,'' Guadalupe said, wiping a sweat-stained brow. "It's a national monument, a history not only of Cuba but of many nations.''
In all, there are 420 chapels for families, immigrant groups and charitable and workers associations.
They include memorials for masons, French and Japanese immigrant colonies, telephone workers, merchant sailors, baseball players, umpires and coaches, dockworkers and the Workers Society of La Tropical Brewery.
Not everyone enjoys such recognition in the afterlife. Víctor Domínguez presides over the cemetery's octagonal General Ossuary, leading relatives through a grim maze lined by stacks of concrete urns.
"They say there are 11,000 little boxes here,'' Domínguez shrugs. "For 10 pesos a year families can keep them here.'' With a friendly nod he bids farewell, ready to direct another visiting family to their dead.
Amid it all, the living continue to bury their dead. Tourists pause as funeral processions of taxis and old Chevys pass by.
Mass is celebrated in the 1886 Central Chapel, an octagonal Romanesque-Byzantine structure with a fresco titled Last Judgment, by Cuban artist Miguel Melero.
A visit to the necropolis can appropriately end with a simple marble star marking the grave of revolutionary hero Salado Lastra, who died in 1958. Its inscription -- and his quote for eternity: "One can only be happy when we create a place in history, when we feel that we are fulfilling our
duty.''
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