The Miami Herald.
August 5, 2001.
INS: Man lied about torture
Alleged rights violator could lose citizenship
By Alfonso Chardy. achardy@herald.com. Published Wednesday,
September 5, 2001
Federal immigration agents on Tuesday arrested Miami resident Eriberto
Mederos, an alleged human rights violator, on charges he lied about torturing
Cuban political prisoners with electroshock treatment at the Havana Psychiatric
Hospital years ago.
Aloyma Sanchez, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Miami, said
Mederos, 78, was in federal custody charged with "illegally obtaining U.S.
citizenship'' because he failed to disclose the allegations when he sought that
citizenship in 1992.
Agents from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service arrested Mederos
at his home after a federal grand jury handed down an indictment intended to
strip the Cuban American of his U.S. citizenship, a Justice Department source
said.
"Justice has been done,'' said Eugenio de Sosa Chabau, 85, one of
Mederos' alleged victims, when told about the arrest.
Mederos has acknowledged that while an orderly at the hospital he gave
electroshock treatment to patients, but he denied it amounted to torture. He
said the treatment was ordered by doctors and given as a medical procedure.
Mederos is one of the first high-profile Cuban Americans to face the
possibility of having his U.S. citizenship revoked by federal prosecutors on a
charge stemming from allegations of torture under the Fidel Castro regime.
Justice Department sources said the legal strategy will be similar to cases
federal prosecutors have used since the 1970s to revoke the U.S. citizenship of
Nazi war criminals found living in the United States.
"It's wonderful news,'' said Richard Krieger, head of the Boynton
Beach-based human rights organization International Educational Missions.
Krieger was the first human rights activist to push the INS to arrest and
prosecute Mederos.
He joined forces in April with Miami Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
and Lincoln Díaz-Balart who wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General John
Ashcroft urging Mederos' prosecution.
"We are elated that finally Mederos' day in court will come,''
Ros-Lehtinen said. "We had been working toward this for many years.''
Federal prosecutors at the U.S. attorney's office in Miami began working on
the case in the spring in coordination with INS investigators who had been
tracking Mederos for months. After his arrest late Tuesday afternoon, Mederos
was taken to the Federal Detention Center in Miami.
He's expected to make his initial court appearance this afternoon in front
of U.S. Magistrate Ted Bandstra.
Mederos began working at the Havana Psychiatric Hospital in the 1940s. In
the 1970s, he administered electroshock treatment to several political prisoners
confined at Mazorra, as the psychiatric hospital was known in Cuba. Mederos
arrived in the United States in the mid-1980s.
His alleged role in human rights atrocities was exposed in 1991 in a book
published in Washington and New York titled The Politics of Psychiatry in
Revolutionary Cuba. In 1992, the allegations received further publicity when The
Herald published accounts from his alleged victims who now live in South
Florida.
Also in 1992, Mederos applied for U.S. citizenship. He received it from the
INS in May 1993. When Mederos applied for citizenship, he was asked whether he
ever participated in persecution.
Justice Department sources said prosecutors at trial will try to show
evidence gathered from Mederos' alleged victims that he lied in not revealing
his role in the shock treatment.
Tune up your portfolio of Cuban culture
By Fabiola Santiago. fsantiago@herald.com. Published
Wednesday, September 5, 2001
You may have heard of the famous Wifredo Lam, the master Cuban abstract
painter. Or you may know the elementary steps of the distinguished danzón,
the ballroom dance of yesteryear.
After all, Cuban culture is a hot ticket these days.
But if you want some sophistication to go with your cultural trivia, check
out the University of Miami's whirlwind of lectures on Cuban art, music,
philosophy and economics.
On Thursday, the New York auction house Christie's and the University of
Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies (ICCAS) are hosting a
lecture on Lam's years in Paris at the Lowe Art Museum. Some Lam works will be
on exhibit as well.
A class on Cuban music taught by musicologist and author Cristóbal Díaz
Ayala runs Sept. 10-13, to be followed in October by lectures on Cuban
philosophical thought by former University of Havana professor Emilio Ichikawa.
The flurry of cultural events culminates with the dedication on Oct. 10 of
what will be known as Casa Bacardi, a state-of-the-art, interactive, Cuban
cultural center at UM. The Bush administration's most visible Cuban American,
HUD Secretary Mel Martinez, and UM President Donna Shalala will attend.
Scheduled to open May 20, the 100th anniversary of Cuban independence, Casa
Bacardi will house an exhibition hall, a small cinema, a conference center for
lectures and an interactive learning center featuring an electronic Cuba data
base and a music station where fans can listen to a century's worth of Cuban
tunes.
The project is being launched with a $1 million donation from the Bacardi
Foundation.
ICCAS director Jaime Suchlicki says the center will "highlight the
legacy and leave a place in Miami where people can come and spend an hour
listening to Cuban music or watching a film about Cuba. I want people to come
from New Jersey with their kids and say, 'We are going to take my children to
this building at UM and learn about Cuba.' ''
The university has been hosting Cuban culture and history classes on and off
for two years. Some of the courses are so popular they've drawn journalists and
civic activists, even people already familiar with the culture who still want to
supplement their knowledge.
"Even Leslie Pantín took one of the classes,'' UM spokeswoman
Lourdes C. Cué says of the founder of the popular Calle Ocho festival and
Cuba Nostalgia annual events.
Most of the programmed events this round are anything but pop culture.
Take the lecture on Cuban philosophical thought.
Does it even exist?
"That is one of the issues of debate,'' says Ichikawa, who taught
history of philosophy at the University of Havana from 1985 to 1996.
Ichikawa will lecture on how European and American ideas came to Cuba, "were
incubated'' and eventually came to have a profound effect on society. He'll also
analyze the Cuban university curriculum, which he experienced as both student
and teacher -- courses on "scientific atheism'' and "criticism of
contemporary bourgeois philosophy.''
"Marxist theory has been used to legitimize a political process and as
an instrument in the education system,'' Ichikawa says.
You might not think a course on philosophy would generate much public
interest, but when it comes to Cuban issues, it's a different story in South
Florida. An Ichikawa lecture on Karl Marx at UM's Koubeck Center in Little
Havana last year drew more than 100 people.
And UM is counting on another factor -- that the interest in all things
Cuban cuts across ethnicities and generations.
"It feeds an interest, particularly among second-generation Cuban
Americans who want to know more about their culture and their heritage,'' says
Cué, a Cuban American who has attended the lectures. "In some
Anglos, it's a natural interest because of the community we live in, and in the
case of the older generation of Cubans, the interest is always there.''
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 
