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The Miami Herald
Cubans say defection was tough decision
By Andrea Elliott. aelliott@herald.com. Posted on Sun, Aug.
04, 2002 in The Miami Herald.
TORONTO - The young Cuban student waited for silence.
When the house was empty, he slipped out the back and jumped onto a bus to
Toronto's Union Station. He was startled to run into another member of his
Catholic tour group -- a doctor who had lodged with the same host family.
''Where are you going?'' the doctor asked.
''No, where are you going?'' replied the student.
"I'm going where you're going.''
The young men were doing what thousands of Cubans have done: risking
everything for a chance to live anywhere but Cuba. They are among the 23 Cubans
who defected more than a week ago in Toronto, where their 200-member Catholic
delegation had traveled to attend a Mass celebrated by Pope John Paul II on July
28. At least 16 have applied for political asylum in Canada.
Their act of defiance was one of the biggest mass defections of Cubans
traveling overseas. Aware of the potential embarrassment to the Cuban
government, they granted interviews to The Herald on condition that neither
their real names nor the location of their interviews be disclosed. They fear
retaliation against the families they left behind.
Most planned their escape in pairs or trios, with the help of friends in
Toronto or relatives in Miami. Several arrived in Canada with phone numbers they
had been given by family and friends in Cuba -- in case they needed to contact
one of the several thousand Cubans living in Canada.
Others carried only the desire to flee Cuba permanently.
YOUTH WANT TO LEAVE
''In Cuba, most of the youth want to leave, to experience all the things
they say about the world,'' said a 24-year-old engineer who defected. "But
to be here, in the reality of this place, is to know that here you can follow
dreams you could not follow in your own country. That made me realize I could do
it.''
Most of the travelers had been placed with Catholic host families in
Toronto. Starting days before the papal Mass, the defectors began to leave these
homes and head for ''safe houses'' before delegation leaders could stop them.
Although the Cuban government reported 23 defectors, local activists have
counted 18. Some may still be in hiding.
The engineer, the student and the doctor are among seven defectors being
housed in a church basement by a Peruvian minister -- six of them friends from
the same eastern region in Cuba. By chance, the delegation had visited the
church several days after it arrived in Toronto.
''In many of their faces, I saw the desire to stay,'' said the 66-year-old
Peruvian minister, who also asked that his name not be disclosed. "I told
them they have God in their hearts and freedom in their humanity.''
KNOCK AT DOOR
On July 28, following the pope's Mass, the minister heard a knock at the
door.
''You are Cubans?'' he asked ''Luis,'' the engineer, and his friend "Pedro.''
"Yes.''
"And you want to stay behind?''
"Yes.''
"Come in.''
Luis and Pedro -- not their real names -- decided separately that they would
defect, and both leave behind families they might not see for years.
''The punishment of separation is three years when one leaves,'' said legal
assistant Andres Perera, who is representing 16 of the defectors, including Luis
and Pedro. "There's a list of people who have been waiting five to seven
years to see their families.''
The hardest part for Pedro was calling his wife of six months to say he
would not return. He hopes she will join him in Toronto one day.
''It's the hardest decision I've made in my life. You pay a great price and
I am paying it,'' he said softly after calling home Thursday afternoon with a $5
calling card.
Pedro was chosen to join the tour in March.
''I always knew that one day I was going to see the world en vivo [live] --
and not through media or maps. And that this day would be marvelous,'' said the
27-year-old former store manager.
He never thought he would defect. But three days into the trip, he made up
his mind. "There are differences in everything. Economically, socially,
religiously . . . Here there is a church every two blocks.''
Pedro and Luis -- close friends for years in Cuba -- stuck together during
the trip and by July 26, Pedro could not contain the news that he planned to
defect. He took Luis into the parking lot outside the host family's home.
'I needed to tell someone. I sat him on the floor and said, 'Look. I am
staying,' '' recalled Pedro. "I risked telling someone without knowing what
he was thinking.''
Luis nodded but said nothing. He later called home and his mother -- he is
an only child -- gave him her blessings, he recalled, his eyes filling with
tears.
By July 28, Pedro and Luis had hatched their plan: After the Mass they would
retrieve their bags from a hiding place and find the church.
''If it wasn't the church, it would have been Union Station or the police or
whatever place. We were ready to sleep on a bench,'' Pedro said.
''Asela'' and ''Yanina'' -- both 25 -- have not left each other's sight
since they defected Sunday afternoon.
''Last night I couldn't sleep thinking someone would break through the
door,'' said Asela, an English teacher and youth leader in her church in Cuba.
She and Yanina especially fear Cuban spies.
''When the phone rings it gives me terror,'' Asela said.
CLOSE QUARTERS
The pair share a twin bed in a boxy room next to the church. Around their
necks they wear matching black plastic satchels carrying their savings --
several hundred dollars.
Their ticket to freedom was a phone number Yanina carried of a Cuban she
knew in Toronto. After Sunday's Mass, the women told their Filipino hosts that
''a friend'' would take them to the delegation meeting place for their return to
Cuba.
Instead, the man housed them for four nights.
They found their friends after they saw Perera on CNN saying he knew some
Cubans were at a church.
For Asela, the hardest part is knowing that she disappointed members of her
church in Cuba. Soon after she defected, she sent her priest an e-mail to say it
was a tough decision.
He began his reply with the word ''mentirosa,'' which means ''liar,'' she
said.
''It made me cry a lot,'' Asela said. "He told me that those were empty
words. That I had left my church, my mother, my husband, my house, my dog, my
country. That I might not have valued those things in Cuba, but I would learn
their meaning here.''
Reports that Cuban church officials criticized the defection in harsh words
have wounded the exiles. Cuban activists in Toronto have reported that two
defectors were either pressured or forced to go back by priests who told them
their defection would "harm the church.''
''Do you know what they're saying about us in Cuba? That we are traitors of
our country and of our church. I didn't betray the country. I don't accept the
way the government runs it,'' Pedro said. "I did not betray the church. We
are leaders. We play an important and strong role in the lives of youths. But no
one has the right to tell us to give up our dreams.''
LEGAL PROCESS
A long journey remains before the young defectors can reach those dreams.
Most say they want to stay in Toronto, but face a 1 ½-year process to
achieve refugee status -- if it's granted.
They can stay at the church for two more weeks before they must move to a
shelter if nothing else comes up.
The Peruvian minister said he would try to place them in a shelter together.
''We'll try to stay together no matter what,'' Yanina said.
''But, in the end, life will separate you,'' the minister said. "I have
migrated. I know what this is about.''
Cuban defectors flee Nicaragua and find jail
By Carol Rosenberg. Crosenberg@herald.com. Posted on Sat,
Aug. 03, 2002
Most of the 20 Cuban men who accepted political asylum in Nicaragua after
spending months -- years, in some cases -- at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba, waiting to find refuge elsewhere have left the Central American
country only to wind up in jail.
Most, if not all, were trying to reach Miami and other U.S. destinations
when they landed in lockups in Mexico and Texas, less than three months after a
painstaking agreement with Nicaragua was worked out.
• Fourteen were detained after crossing into Mexico June 17, according
to a letter U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen sent on July 22 to Mexican Ambassador
José Juan Bremer. She relates their arrest in a plea not to return them
to Cuba.
• Three are being held by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service in Texas after crossing the Rio Grande without proper documents, said
St. Thomas University attorney Maria Dominguez, who is trying to get them
paroled into the United States, which for Cubans is usually a pathway to
permanent U.S. residency. They are Eliecier Claro, 26, whose parents live in
Tampa; Tomás González, who has family in Miami, and Yorkis
Aguilera.
• Three remain in Nicaragua: Ernesto Herrero, Eduardo Quintana and
Eduardo Padrón, each of whom receives a $350-a-month stipend from a
charity as part of a resettlement deal orchestrated by the U.S. Embassy and
Nicaragua.
MARRIES CITIZEN
Herrero, 26, who like the others has a hard-luck story and still wants a new
life in the United States, may turn out to be the most fortunate because he is
now married to an American citizen.
Born and raised in the portion of Guantánamo controlled by Fidel
Castro, he was jailed for 18 months for trying to leave the island for the
United States. He escaped a Cuban jail in 1998 and swam to the nearby U.S. naval
base, where he waited 3 ½ years for political asylum.
His destination was the United States, but the rules of asylum and
immigration wouldn't allow that, so he was flown on May 1 to Nicaragua, along
with the 19 other Cubans.
He lives in a $70-a-month rooming house in Managua, the capital city --
jobless and trying to steer clear of Castro sympathizers, including militants of
the once-ruling Sandinista Party.
In late May, he married Ana Ford, 49, who says they met and fell in love
while she was posted at the base as a petty officer. Now she is trying to
navigate Washington's web of immigration bureaucracy to bring him to the United
States -- legally.
''I'm very proud of him. He's very resourceful. He's surviving down there.
And he's trying to come here legally,'' Ford said in a telephone interview from
Concord, N.H., where she lives and works for the state environmental service as
an inspector.
At the Guantánamo base, her stint included work as a Spanish-English
translator, which is how she met Herrero, whom she describes as "the love
of my life.''
'HELL ON EARTH'
While he waits in Nicaragua, however, most of the men who came with him have
already fled.
''We were sent to a country that is truly a hell on earth. It's like we
never left Cuba,'' Padrón, 33, told The Herald in a telephone interview,
complaining of harassment by police loyal to the Sandinistas. "We live in
tremendous fear.''
Since 1995, Navy and Coast Guard vessels have intercepted balseros, or
rafters. Those who cannot make a legitimate claim for asylum are returned to
Cuban authorities. The interdiction effort is supposed to create a legal, safe
immigration flow through applications to the U.S. Embassy in Havana.
Since then, dozens of Cubans have gone to Guantánamo, either by U.S.
escort boat or, in the case of Herrero, by swimming across the bay for INS
interviews on whether their return to Cuba would bring political persecution.
Some have been rejected and returned to their homeland. Many have qualified
for asylum and, through State Department efforts, have started new lives in such
far-flung nations as Australia and Uruguay.
They are people like Eliecier Claro, now at a U.S. immigration detention
center in Los Fresnos, Texas, who swam the Rio Grande from Mexico. His parents
legally immigrated to Tampa a year ago and are trying to get him paroled into
the United States, says attorney Dominguez of the St. Thomas University Human
Rights Institute.
IN MEXICO
Fourteen of the men didn't even make it as far as Texas and are now believed
to be in Mexican jails.
One identified by Padrón is Javier Pérez, who in May played
the role of group spokesman in Managua.
''It's not that it's bad here, but we want to be reunified with our
families,'' Pérez told reporters. "We want the U.S. to give us the
option to go to there.''
He was part of a group captured by Mexican police June 17 after they entered
the country, by bus, without permits or travel documents, according to Padrón
and the letter by Ros-Lehtinen.
U.S. officials, with the intervention of Florida Republican Reps. Lincoln Díaz-Balart
and Ros-Lehtinen, helped secure the Nicaraguan sanctuary sometime after
Ros-Lehtinen met with the men after a Jan. 24 congressional inspection of the
Pentagon's international terrorist detention facilities in southeast Cuba.
But a U.S. diplomat, who did not want to be identified, said many never gave
life in Nicaragua a chance. A day after they received their work permits, which
served as identification documents, about a dozen were intercepted by Nicaraguan
authorities as they tried to board buses leaving the country. They got a stern
warning: Under the terms of their political asylum, they could not go to a third
country -- and that it would be illegal for them to enter the United States.
Ros-Lehtinen's office identified one of the men as Jorge Alfonso, 24, the
nephew of a constituent -- but she does not offer an opinion on whether they
should continue to be held in Mexico, returned to Managua or permitted to enter
the United States.
STILL CONFIDENT
Ford reports from New Hampshire that she is accumulating huge phone bills
calling her husband in Managua, urging him to stay put while, with the help of
Republican Sen. Bob Smith's office, she gets him a visa and travel papers.
She is confident, she says, that she can convince a U.S. immigration service
inspector that their marriage is real, their age difference notwithstanding. She
has the phone bills and photos from their Managua wedding to prove it.
''He's just adorable,'' she said, adding that once he has settled in the
United States they hope to adopt children.
Herald staff writer Daniel A. Grech contributed to this report.
Cuba tapped phone for evidence against Robaina, reports say
By Renato Perez. Rperez@herald.com Posted on Sat, Aug. 03,
2002
Cuban intelligence tapped Roberto Robaina's telephone in the late 1990s to
obtain incriminating evidence against the man, then foreign minister, according
to at least two news reports.
Robaina was dismissed as foreign minister on May 28, 1999. He was expelled
from the Communist Party of Cuba on May 7 of this year, according to a videotape
of the meeting that was shown to lower-ranking party members this week.
Party members who watched the tape told the newspapers El País of
Spain and La Jornada of Mexico that it showed Defense Minister Raúl
Castro reading a transcript of a telephone conversation in November 1998 between
Robaina and then-Spanish foreign minister Abel Matutes. The transcript indicated
Robaina was maneuvering himself into a higher-ranking post, perhaps even
president of a post-Castro Cuba.
Spain's support would be valuable in such a development, party members said.
DEMOCRACY PROPOSAL
Matutes visited Havana Nov. 9-12 in 1998 to propose a transition to
democracy similar to the one carried out in Spain by Francisco Franco in the
1970s. He met with Fidel Castro five times during that visit and once with Vice
President Carlos Lage.
In the videotape, Raúl Castro says he summoned Robaina to his office
and confronted him with the transcript of a telephone conversation Robaina
allegedly had with Matutes on Nov. 11, 1998, after Matutes met with Lage.
Part of the exchange, as reported by El País, went as follows:
Robaina: "How did your conversation with Lage go?''
Matutes: "Good, very good conversation.''
Robaina: "I talked to Lage. You looked like a star. You made a very
good impression.''
Matutes: "The conversation I'm going to have with you will also be very
good. You've always been my candidate.''
ROBAINA CONFRONTED
According to the party sources, Raúl Castro then confronts Robaina.
''What the hell candidacy are you talking about, Robaina? What the hell did
you talk about with that man?'' Castro reportedly asks.
Then: "I'm not going to permit people like you [mucking] up this
revolution three months after we old-timers disappear.''
To emphasize his point, Castro reminds Robaina about the ouster in 1992 of
party ideologist Carlos Aldana, who many believed was positioning himself to
succeed Fidel Castro.
''Aldana ambitioned becoming Cuba's Gorbachev,'' Castro told Robaina,
referring to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader. "I knew that, and
one day I told him that if Cuba ever produced a Gorbachev we would hang him from
a guásima [tree].''
Aldana ''turned pale,'' Castro continues. "Later, I called him into my
office and squeezed him. He fell apart. He wept and revealed everything.''
SCOLDING
Castro then blasts Robaina for not having ''assimilated anything'' from that
lesson.
The president's brother also scolds Robaina for telling Matutes how best to
raise the issue of human rights with the Cuban leader.
''Did you maybe receive a message from Fidel to instruct Matutes on how to
broach the subject of the counterrevolutionary groups?'' Castro asks,
sarcastically. "You counseled Matutes on how he should expand on this
subject with Fidel.
''Who did you inform about that? Isn't that disloyalty? One talks to the
enemy, Robaina, but one doesn't advise him,'' Castro reportedly says.
After watching the tape, the central committee members voted to expel
Robaina from the party.
As of Friday, Cuba's state-run media had not reported on the existence of
the videotape or its implications.
Lawyer optimistic on freedom for 2 Cuban defectors in U.S.
By Elaine De Valle. Edevalle@herald.com. Posted on Fri,
Aug. 02, 2002.
An attorney representing two young Cubans who crossed the U.S. border at
Niagara Falls after they defected from a Cuban religious group visiting Canada
predicted Thursday their release from detention by U.S. immigration officials.
Osvaldo Castillo González, 27, and an unnamed young woman -- whom
Buffalo, N.Y., attorney Stephen Tills identified as Castillo's girlfriend and a
doctor -- both had their ''credible fear'' interviews Thursday. The questioning,
required of those asking for political asylum, seeks to determine whether they
have a legitimate fear of persecution in Cuba.
The two Cubans were among an estimated 23 Cubans who defected earlier this
week while visiting Canada to see Pope John Paul II.
''It was a very persuasive case,'' said Tills, who was present during the
interviews. 'There's virtually no doubt in my mind that she'll receive a
'credible fear' determination -- that both of them will.''
He said that in addition to the general police state in Cuba and ''lack of
freedoms,'' the two would likely face reprisals because of their defection
attempt -- which is an embarrassment to the Castro government -- if they were
returned.
He says he did not expect the pair to make any declarations to the news
media because the young woman's family was afraid of reprisals against relatives
on the island.
''They're concerned about making a lot of headlines in the U.S. That kind of
thing can potentially be harmful to the people that they left behind in Cuba,''
Tills said.
The woman's father, reached in Buffalo Wednesday night, also declined to
give his daughter's name. But he said he was elated that she was already in the
United States.
''That's why we are very happy,'' said the woman's father, known only by his
first name, Amador, who traveled to New York state from Miami-Dade County to
greet his daughter and her boyfriend. His wife said they were treating Castillo
like their own son.
The woman's father, who left Cuba in 1988, said he was afraid to give any
more details about his daughter's defection or even his own last name because he
fears it may hurt his relatives who remain in Cuba.
Jury convicts accused torturer for Cuba
By Luisa Yanez and Larry Lebowit. llebowitz@herald.com.
Posted on Fri, Aug. 02, 2002
In a historic decision, a federal jury in Miami Thursday convicted a former
Cuban psychiatric nurse for lying about his role in the alleged electroshock
torture of political dissidents on his application to become an American
citizen.
While foreign torture suspects have been held accountable in civil
proceedings in American courts, experts said Thursday's verdict against Eriberto
Mederos marks the first time an accused torturer has been convicted on criminal
charges in the United States.
''We have now set a legal precedent,'' said Richard Krieger of Boynton
Beach, who hunts foreign torturers who have relocated to the United States. "This
case shows the federal government that they can prosecute modern day war
criminals for immigration fraud if they lie on their immigration papers.''
Once feared as the head nurse at the Havana Psychiatric Hospital commonly
known as Mazorra, the now frail 79-year-old hardly flinched as a clerk read the
verdict.
Mederos' attorney David Rothman doesn't think his client will live long,
much less survive a prison term.
''He's physically, mentally and emotionally devastated,'' Rothman said. "It's
an outrageous situation we find ourselves in.''
Mederos, who will turn 80 in March, has said that he only administered the
electroshock treatment on doctors' orders. He was hospitalized over the weekend
and disobeyed doctors' orders by returning to court on Monday.
Despite Mederos' failing condition, U.S. District Judge Alan S. Gold ordered
him to surrender to federal prison authorities by noon today . Rothman was
hoping Gold would allow Mederos to remain under house arrest until the Oct. 16
sentencing.
Mederos was convicted of obtaining U.S. citizenship illegally by concealing
his past from immigration officials, namely that he had been a member of the
Communist Party in Cuba and denying he had persecuted anyone for political
reasons, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Wilfredo Ferrer.
Mederos faces zero to six months in prison, based on the sentencing
guidelines and his lack of a prior criminal history, Rothman said.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Tamen intends to ask Gold to depart from
the sentencing guidelines based on the volume and severity of the torture
Mederos meted out at Mazorra.
The maximum sentence is five years.
FUTURE UNCLEAR
It is unclear what will happen to Mederos if he survives a prison term.
By law, Gold will automatically strip Mederos of his falsely obtained
citizenship, making him subject to deportation.
Mederos became a U.S. citizen in 1993. INS officials say they granted
Mederos citizenship because they could not corroborate the torture allegations.
Where Mederos could ultimately land if the United States deports him is
another matter.
Even if Mederos were healthy, Rothman said, he couldn't -- and wouldn't --
flee to Cuba.
The Castro government refused to help Mederos' defense, Rothman said.
Cuba has no migration treaty with the United States and won't allow
Washington to send back Cubans deported from the United States.
''There's no place for Eriberto Mederos to turn,'' Rothman added. "When
he passes away, he will pass away as an American.''
'LOYAL MINION'
During the three-week trial, Tamen described Mederos as a ''loyal minion''
of the Castro regime who took sadistic pleasure in torturing patients at the
hospital between 1968 to 1978.
Outside the federal courthouse, the daughter of Eugenio de Sosa Chabau,
praised the verdict as vindication for her father, who died of cancer in January
at age 85.
A one-time prep school classmate of President John F. Kennedy in the 1930s,
de Sosa Chabau is largely credited with launching the case after a chance
meeting with Mederos a decade ago at a Hialeah nursing home.
''Democracy has triumphed today and this jury has sent a message that
America is not a place where torturers can come and hide,'' said Regina de Sosa
Fonts. "I'm going to the cemetery to tell my father we won.''
SHOCK TREATMENT
De Sosa Fonts said her father's life had been colored by the shock treatment
he suffered at Mazorra, where he said he was sent after Cuban officials accused
him of smuggling a warning to Kennedy in 1962 saying Moscow had shipped or was
about to ship nuclear missiles to Cuba.
Like de Sosa Chabau, many of the mental hospital's patients were Cuban
citizens arrested for alleged anti-Castro activities.
Seven former political prisoners described how inmates were shocked on their
temples and testicles while being held down on a concrete floor soaked with
urine, feces and water.
Belkis Ferro, 47, called the former head nurse "a monster.''
Ferro ended up in Mazorra after destroying several tobacco plants on a
government-sponsored work detail.
For two months, she received shock treatment and insulin injections, even
though she is not a diabetic.
'CHAMBER OF TERROR'
''It was a chamber of terror,'' she said of Mazorra. "My life was
ruined behind those walls.''
The decision wasn't easy for the 12-member jury. On Wednesday, the jury told
the judge they were deadlocked -- after less than a full day of deliberations.
Gold sent them back and by midday Thursday, they found Mederos guilty.
One male juror, who did not wish to be identified, declined to discuss
details of the deliberations but said the process was difficult.
''I never want to be a juror again in my life,'' the man said.
Rothman said several of the jury's notes to the judge showed that some were
worried about being singled out over such a highly charged topic in the exile
community.
''Obviously, at least one member of that jury was afraid of what the
reaction might be in this community,'' he said.
U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, who pushed the Justice Department to
prosecute Mederos, exulted at the verdict.
PRECIOUS PRIVILEGE
''U.S. citizenship is a precious privilege which should not be bestowed
lightly or unconditionally and thus depreciated when granted to alleged
torturers,'' Ros-Lehtinen said.
Amnesty International has cited the Mederos case to support its claim that
the United States has become a haven for at least 150 foreign torture suspects.
They include two Salvadoran generals, who, last month, were found
responsible for torturing three citizens and ordered by a West Palm Beach civil
jury to pay $54.6 million in damages.
Pointing at the victims and their families, outgoing U.S. Attorney Guy A.
Lewis said: 'They kept asking us: 'Where is the justice? Well, justice was
rendered here today.' ''
Cuba's Communist Party expels Robaina
Former foreign minister was accused of disloyalty to Castro
From Herald Staff and Wire Reports. Posted on Thu, Aug. 01,
2002.
In a development reminiscent of the 1989 purge of three Cuban ministers and
the execution of four military officers, Roberto Robaina González, Cuba's
foreign minister from 1993 to 1999, was summarily removed from the political
bureau of the Communist Party and expelled from the party for activities "incompatible
with his post.''
The news came in the form of a videotape made at a meeting of the party's
central committee and shown this week to lower-ranking party officials in
Havana.
Party members who watched the undated two-hour tape told foreign news
agencies and the Mexican daily La Jornada that Robaina, 46, was accused of
dishonesty in his relations with foreign officials and business people.
The main charge was ''disloyalty'' to President Fidel Castro and the
revolution, the party members said.
The central committee also instructed the National Assembly to expel
Robaina, the tape reportedly shows.
Robaina also was barred from any kind of leadership role. It was not clear
whether criminal or civil charges were filed against Robaina.
'I KNOW NOTHING'
Outside his Havana home Wednesday morning, Robaina said ''I know nothing''
about the reports. Then he got into his green Lada and drove away.
Robaina served six years as foreign minister before being replaced by Felipe
Pérez Roque, 34, Castro's chief of staff for the previous 10 years.
Robaina then disappeared from public view.
Robaina's removal was never fully explained. The official Communist Party
newspaper Granma attributed it to ''the need for more profound, rigorous,
systematic and demanding work'' in the arena of international affairs.
DANGEROUS LIAISON
One of the charges reportedly made in the videotape was that Robaina
maintained ''a close friendship'' with Mario Villanueva Madrid, former governor
of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo and currently under investigation in Mexico
for alleged links to the Juárez drug cartel.
According to the party members who watched the tape -- and who were
authorized by the party to describe it to others -- Robaina made several trips
through the Caribbean aboard Villanueva's private jet plane and received $25,000
from the governor, presumably to renovate the Cuban Foreign Ministry.
He also accepted cash and checks from two foreign companies doing business
in Cuba, ostensibly to renovate the Foreign Ministry and the Cuban Embassy in
Mexico City, the sources said.
After he was charged with having links to drug trafficking, Villanueva
reportedly asked Robaina to give him political asylum in Cuba. Robaina refused,
but did not mention the request to his superiors, according to the videotape.
The daily La Jornada reported that a segment of the tape shows Fidel
Castro's brother Raúl saying that there was no special investigation into
Robaina's behavior, but that "the case was built from individual but
successive bits of information.''
The tape also states that Robaina exceeded his ministerial duties by dealing
with foreign entrepreneurs on a private basis, discussing affairs of state with
them, and accepting furniture for his home from one of his foreign contacts.
His close relation with foreign journalists was also a factor in his
dismissal, the sources said.
RESIGNATION REJECTED
When Robaina's activities came to light, he submitted his resignation to the
party, but Raúl Castro rejected it and asked the full central committee
to rule on Robaina's future, party sources said. The committee's decision was to
expel him.
Robaina's career took him from mathematics teacher to president of the
Federation of University Students and the Union of Communist Youths to foreign
minister on March 30, 1993. At 37, he was the youngest person to occupy that
post. He had no previous experience in diplomacy or foreign service.
Robaina replaced Ricardo Alarcón, who was appointed president of the
National Assembly, a post he still holds.
Robaina, a gregarious man who usually wore a ponytail, pastel jackets and
black T-shirt and jeans, was thought to have had an inside track for an even
higher leadership post.
His selection ''represents the justified confidence that the revolution
always has placed on youth and is a guarantee of a proven succession,'' Granma
said days after Robaina's appointment.
NO MENTION OF TAPE
Granma made no mention of the videotape in its Wednesday edition.
Beginning in June 1989, four military officers and 10 Interior Ministry
functionaries were tried on charges of corruption and drug trafficking.
The four officers, including Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa Sánchez, former chief
of the Cuban military mission in Angola, were executed.
The other 10 were cashiered, including Interior Minister José
Abrantes. In a separate trial, Transport Minister Diocles Torralba was found
guilty of corruption and sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment.
Construction Minister Levi Farah Balmaseda was dismissed but not imprisoned.
PREVIOUS SHAKE-UP
A previous major shake-up occurred in 1992, when Carlos Aldana was removed
as the Communist Party's chief of ideology, foreign affairs, science, education
and culture.
Aldana, the third most powerful man in Cuba behind the Castro brothers, was
often mentioned as a possible heir to Fidel.
Robaina, speaking in Mexico on Sept. 25, 1992, confirmed Aldana's ouster,
saying he had "abused the privileges of power in a way that was offensive
to the people.''
Herald staff translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report,
which was supplemented with information from Herald wire services.
Cubans hear upbeat message
By David Sylva. dsylva@herald.com. Posted on Thu, Aug. 01,
2002
The former prime minister of Estonia discussed life after socialism with a
hopeful Cuban crowd Wednesday night.
Speaking to a crowd of 100 at UM's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American
Studies, Mart Laar recalled his years at the helm of an ex-Russian protectorate.
Laar said that when the socialists left power in 1992, "The economy and
environment were totally destroyed, and the human spirit was severely hurt.
''The economy was falling 30 percent, the unemployment prognosis was 30
percent, and inflation was 1,000 percent. Further, the streets were completely
empty since there was no gasoline. Sometimes, when I'm sitting in some terrible
traffic jam, I think those were not so bad days,'' Laar joked.
Since then, Estonia has made a big jump in modern technology. Laar boasted
that it now has the first paperless government in the world. ''The Estonian
government looks like the Starship Enterprise,'' Laar said. The country
computerized its government at a cost of $150,000, even though Microsoft tried
to sell them a similar system for $60 million, he said.
The former prime minister had lots of guidance to offer the largely Cuban
crowd. When socialism falls, he said, newly free citizens will blindly support
the transition government.
''They are willing to live in extraordinary circumstances,'' he said,
''because they have great hope.'' After one or two years, he said, they aren't
so trusting.
Laar tempered his advice with a warning against depending mainly on outside
advice. ''Each country has a different situation,'' he said, "so think with
your own head.''
Though Laar said former exiles played a large role in his government, he
warned against leaders who weren't grounded in the country's current situation.
"If you try to advise the country while living far away, you will fail.''
Outsiders may underestimate ex-socialist countries, he concluded. But these
countries shouldn't let the world tell them what they can't do.
''We all know it is not possible to walk on water,'' he said, showing a
video clip of a tiny lizard skipping lightly across a pond. "But this
lizard doesn't know. So he walks.'' | 
