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The Miami Herald,
August 13, 2002.
Cuban defector sees potential for revolt
By George Gedda. Associated Press.
WASHINGTON - A former Cuban ambassador to the United Nations who defected
recently said Monday that widespread economic problems could produce an uprising
against President Fidel Castro and his system.
Alcibiades Hidalgo, who left Cuba on July 21 with 19 others aboard two motor
boats and arrived in South Florida on July 29, said there are many aspects of
life in Cuba that could produce a ''social explosion.'' "There is lot of
concern among the elite that this could occur.''
One element of the unrest is what he called ''skyrocketing unemployment,''
along with severe food shortages.
As for the response of the Cuban military in the event of an uprising,
Hidalgo said, the top brass insist they would use force to preserve the
revolution. He said any high-ranking officer who declined to take such a stand
would be purged.
Hidalgo said virtually all Cubans have access to the country's cost-free
healthcare system but added that many basic medicines have not been available
for years.
To discourage his defection, Hidalgo said he had been trailed virtually
nonstop by security agents after falling into disfavor with the authorities in
1993, when he was abruptly dismissed from his U.N. post.
He flew to Washington on Sunday from Miami and talked to a small group of
other Cuban specialists, arranged by the Center for a Free Cuba, a pro-democracy
group.
Hidalgo, 56, is one of the most important Cuban defectors since Gen. Rafael
del Pino fled the island in May 1987. Del Pino was instrumental in the defeat of
the U.S.-sponsored invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Hidalgo left behind a
daughter, Carolina, who lives with her mother, from whom Hidalgo is divorced.
Speaking in Spanish, Hidalgo said Castro, who turns 76 today, has
differences with his brother Raúl, 71. Raul serves as Defense Minister
and is the second ranking official in the Council of State and the Council of
Ministers.
Hidalgo said Raúl would be less inclined toward one-man rule, would
be more disposed toward economic reform and would show greater flexibility in
relations with the United States. But, according to Hidalgo, Raúl drinks
too much, has health problems and doesn't sleep much. Fidel takes care of
himself, he said.
Hidalgo got to know Raúl Castro well during the 1980s when he served
as his chief of staff. The Cuban military, under Raúl's direction, has
become an economic powerhouse through its involvement in tourism and other
dollar-generating activities, he said.
At the time he fled the island, Hidalgo was the No. 2 official at the
newspaper Trabajadores. He said he was induced to flee by the lack of any
opportunity to espouse views that differ from those of Fidel Castro. ''The first
right is the right to independent thought,'' Hidalgo said.
Castro greets 76th birthday visiting school reconstruction site
By Vivian Sequera. Associated Press Writer.
HAVANA - (AP) -- Keeping up his traditional heavy work schedule, Fidel
Castro greeted his 76th birthday early Tuesday visiting a newly reconstructed
school and declaring that his socialist revolution will survive.
''This birthday is very happy, perhaps the happiest I have known,'' Castro
said in statement carried in the Communist Party daily Granma. "Today, we
are accompanied by the conviction that there exists no force in the world that
is capable of destroying our dreams.''
Sending a message to those ''who thought that the revolution could not
survive,'' Castro spoke of his country's "heroic people determined to
confront, resist and conquer.''
Born on Aug. 13, 1926 in the eastern community of Biran, Castro marked his
birthday amid growing determination by the island's Communist Party leadership
that Cuba's political and economic systems remain unchanged after Castro's
lifetime.
Lawmakers voted unanimously in late June to make socialism an
''irrevocable'' part of the constitution and declare that ''capitalism will
never return again'' to the Caribbean island.
Castro's designated successor is his younger brother, 71-year-old Defense
Minister Raul Castro, the Cuban Communist Party's first vice president.
Known for his all-night work sessions, Castro arrived at the Abel Santamaria
Special School for disabled children shortly after midnight and received a
birthday serenade by workers, teachers, students and parents gathered to greet
him.
Touring the reconstructed school for disabled children, Castro told the
group he was ''the happiest man in the world'' to visit with them.
''None of you have to congratulate me,'' Castro reportedly told them. "I
am the one who should be congratulating you.''
Dressed in his traditional olive green uniform, the bearded revolutionary
has been touring school renovation sites around Havana in the late night and
early morning hours, thanking workers for their labors.
Castro traditionally keeps up his regular work schedule on his birthday.
While he sometimes stops to share a birthday cake with schoolchildren, no other
public celebrations are held.
Backers of Cuba vote not giving up
By Elaine De Valle. Edevalle@herald.com.
In Miami and in Havana, proponents of a petition drive to change the
government in Cuba through a nationwide referendum announced Monday they are not
backing down.
Cuban opposition leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas -- who has
spearheaded the effort, dubbed the Varela Project -- issued a statement to the
press that said dissidents throughout the island would keep working on the civic
campaign that promotes fundamental human rights and freedom for all political
prisoners.
''The Varela Project . . . will continue, no matter the circumstances, by
peaceful means, until we attain those rights for everyone,'' said the communiqué,
titled ``Varela Lives.''
The affirmation comes three months after Payá and other leaders
presented a petition with 11,020 signatures to the country's communist National
Assembly May 10. The document calls for an island-wide referendum that, if
approved by voters, would grant amnesty to political prisoners and give Cubans
freedom of expression and association, free enterprise, electoral reform and
elections within one year.
Despite some international support -- visiting former President Jimmy Carter
said it was a powerful vehicle for change -- it has largely been ignored by the
Cuban government, which has called it a ''foreign'' product ''imported'' from
the United States.
The campaign was based on articles in the 1976 Cuban Constitution, which
allow citizens to initiate referendums with 10,000 signatures. The Varela
Project has yet to be addressed, but in late June the National Assembly approved
a counter-referendum -- proposed by Fidel Castro and backed by more than eight
million signatures -- declaring the socialist regime ``irrevocable.''
Also, two legal experts in Cuba have said the National Assembly may ask Payá
to resubmit the petition with notarized statements authenticating each of the
11,020 signatures.
Payá announced that dissidents would continue to collect signatures,
a symbolic gesture since the group already has surpassed the required quota.
''Now there's a growing number of people who want to know about it and sign
it,'' the statement said.
Orlando Gutierrez, national secretary of the Cuban Democratic Directorate in
Miami, and Francisco de Armas -- an exile activist in Puerto Rico who represents
Payá, his cousin, and the project outside Cuba -- said it is an effort to
get the National Assembly to take notice.
''They are demanding that the signatures be taken to the floor and they are
increasing the number of signatures to press that point,'' Gutierrez said.
``What we're telling the Cuban government is that you have to respond to the
people. You can't just sweep aside a citizen initiative. We're not going to
stand for that.''
Payá and his supporters have asked that the Varela Project -- named
for a 19th Century priest active in Cuba's quest for independence from Spain --
be aired in the state-run media. It has only been mentioned in the media twice:
in Carter's live televised speech on the island and in the Communist Party's
daily Granma, which published the speech.
Varela backers on the island and in Miami said the constitutional changes
made by the Castro referendum in June do not necessarily make the dissident
referendum moot.
''Castro says that the revolution is above the sovereignty of the Cuban
people,'' Gutierrez said. ``And what the Varela Project people are saying is
that the sovereignty of the Cuban people is above the constitution.''
Herald translator Renato Pérez contributed to
this report.
Feds: 5 men seized vessel
Hijacked boat belonged to Cuba
BY JENNIFER BABSON. jbabson@herald.com
KEY WEST - Five Cuban men face a federal hijacking charge after they
allegedly stole a fishing boat owned by the Cuban government and landed it
Friday off the Marquesas -- with a fisherman aboard who said he was forced along
for the ride.
One of the masterminds of the hijacking, according to a federal affidavit
released Monday, was Juan Carlos Fuente Ramos, the supervisor of a fishing fleet
owned by the Cuban government agency La Coloma.
The name of the 45-foot boat used in the alleged hijacking: Plastico 216.
Fuente-Ramos and four other alleged hijackers, Luis Fuente-Ramos, Leonel
Fuente-Ramos, Yoel Ramos Calvo, and Juan Manuel Machado-Hano, had their initial
appearances before a federal magistrate in Key West on Monday.
A criminal complaint filed Monday charges the men with conspiring to seize
or exercise control over a ship by force, threat or intimidation.
They are scheduled to be arraigned on Aug. 21. Agents from the Federal
Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Coast Guard are assigned to the case.
The group's 3 ½-day trek took them from Cortés, a fishing town
on the island's southwestern coast, around Cuba's western tip to an island chain
about 40 miles off Key West.
An ''unwitting crew member and a mechanic'' on the vessel who said he was
forced to make the trip never even touched U.S. soil -- even after the group
reached the Marquesas on Friday, according to a federal affidavit.
The man, Modesto Perez-Montano, told authorities he was not involved in the
scheme and didn't want to leave Cuba.
He ''remained on board the [boat], anchored off the Marquesas Keys, because
he did not want to abandon the vessel,'' Anthony Russo, an FBI special agent,
stated in the affidavit.
Under U.S. immigration policy, Cubans who reach the United States are
allowed to stay.
The boat departed from Cortés on Aug. 6, according to Russo.
About 15 to 20 minutes after the boat left shore, Perez was locked in a
cabin by Juan Carlos Fuente when he entered it to stow gear, according to the
affidavit.
Within minutes, Juan Carlos Fuente steered the vessel to a prearranged
location, authorities say, where it was boarded by the other four parties to the
hijacking -- who had rowed in two aluminum boats to meet the Plastico.
After the vessel made it several more miles from shore, Perez was released
from the locked cabin, according to the affidavit, and was informed that the
group was headed to the United States. Perez was told that he would not be
returned to Cuba, nor given a rowboat, for fear that he would notify Cuban
border authorities.
During this conversation, according to Russo's affidavit, Perez noticed that
one of the hijackers was wearing a knife in his belt.
Perez told investigators that the hijackers warned him that ``it was useless
for him to try and resist.''
The affidavit makes no mention of any of the hijackers physically
threatening Perez with a weapon, however.
Later, as the boat made its way toward Cuba's western tip, Luis Fuente used
a machete to sink one of two rowboats that had been tied to the Plastico's
stern. The remaining boat was hoisted aboard the vessel.
U.S. authorities contend the hijacking was the result of an elaborate plot.
According to a plan investigators say was hatched Aug. 4, Juan Carlos Fuente
obtained the necessary Cuban government paperwork for a fishing expedition,
prepared the boat and took it to a meeting place on the water where the other
four defendants rendezvoused with him in the rowboats.
At the Aug. 4 meeting, the five defendants discussed the need to keep up the
trip's cover as a ''normal'' fishing venture, and they decided that any crew
member who happened to be on the boat ''would have to go to the United States
whether or not he wanted to do so,'' according to the affidavit. | 
