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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
7 Cubans from boat receive safe haven
But 12 from same craft sent back
By Elaine De Valle. Edevalle@herald.com.
Seven Cubans -- apparently dissidents and some
relatives -- have won a rare chance to be resettled
in a third country after the Coast Guard intercepted
them at sea last week, but 12 other people on
the same boat were taken back to Cuba on Monday.
Few Cubans taken into custody at sea have avoided
being repatriated since the practice began in
May 1995. The seven, who apparently proved they
had credible fear of government persecution if
returned, now have protected status. They will
be held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo
Bay until they are sent to a country other than
Cuba or the United States.
Twelve others on the same stolen boat were held
on a Coast Guard cutter for five days as authorities
determined their fate, then taken to Bahía
de Cabañas, Cuba, just after noon Monday,
said Coast Guard Petty Officer Ryan Doss.
Cuban-American activists and legislators had
lobbied the White House for all 19 of the Cubans
to be given safe haven because of their ties to
the 24th of February Movement, an island dissident
organization named in honor of Brothers to the
Rescue fliers shot down by Cuban MiGs on Feb.
24, 1996.
The group reportedly included at least 10 members
of the group and at least two members of the Democratic
30th of November Party and the Confederation of
Democratic Cuban Workers.
''The administration says that all 19 were very
carefully interviewed for claims of fear of persecution
and I'm deeply saddened about the repatriation
of the ones that were not spared,'' said U.S.
Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart (R-Miami).
AT GUANTANAMO
Five people, including two children, had already
been taken to Guantánamo, and two others
were taken there Monday after further interviews.
Díaz-Balart said he believes the last two
are a couple, but did not know their names.
The two children were believed to be Juan Manuel
Zayas Peñalver and Yordi Chávez
Cabrera, both 14, said Ninoska Pérez Castellón,
a longtime Castro critic and human rights activist
who is now spokeswoman for the Cuban Liberty Council.
Sergio Pérez Hierro, who became acting
president of the 24th of February Movement when
Leonardo Bruzón Avila was imprisoned last
year, is also believed to be one of the five.
Another was Belsy Avelina Cabrera Herrera, the
mother of Yordi Chávez. Her husband, Adalberto
Chávez, fled the island on a small rowboat
11 months ago. Chávez, who lives in South
Miami-Dade said he had spoken briefly to his wife
by phone Monday and confirmed that she and their
son had been taken to Guantánamo.
'I tried to find out who the others at the base
were, but my wife told me they were separated.
'The boy and I are on one side and the others
somewhere else,' she said,'' Chávez told
The Herald in a telephone interview.
A member of both the 30th of November group and
the confederation, Chávez is in the process
of making himself a U.S. resident and wants his
family to join him.
''But any other country except Cuba is fine with
me,'' he said.
The 1995 migration accords between the U.S. and
Cuba call for the repatriation of most Cubans
who try to enter South Florida illegally. Though
the Coast Guard and Department of Immigration
and Customs Enforcement could not provide exact
numbers Monday, only a couple dozen or so have
apparently convinced authorities they had credible
asylum claims and went to Guantánamo.
The agreement states the Cubans cannot be brought
to the United States directly.
Mariela Ferretti, a spokeswoman with the Cuban
American National Foundation, said foundation
members were trying to find a country to take
the group. "Not just any country, but a place
that is reasonable and truly welcoming for Cuban
refugees.
DIRE REPERCUSSIONS
''And, of course, we are concerned over the well-being
of those who were repatriated,'' Ferretti said.
"We were hoping for all of them to receive
protective status from the United States.''
She and many exiles worry the Cubans could face
dire repercussions upon return.
The U.S. ''wet-foot/dry-foot policy'' -- so named
because Cubans who make it to shore are allowed
to stay -- has long been a thorn in the side of
Cuban Americans. They were recently angered by
a U.S. decision to return 12 Cubans who allegedly
hijacked a boat after the two governments negotiated
a maximum sentence of 10 years.
Although proponents say the deal is critical
to the deterrence of illegal and dangerous migration
of Cubans who flee on unseaworthy or overcrowded
vessels, some say it's inhuman.
''Nobody was ever thrown back over the Berlin
Wall,'' Díaz-Balart said.
Pérez Castellón, who has a weekday
radio program on Cuban issues, said it's hard
to predict what criteria officials will use.
''One time, I got a call from Navy intelligence
that they had intercepted three Cubans who had
given my name and said they were dissidents and
had transmitted news from Cuba through my radio
program,'' she said. "I told them they were
all involved in peaceful opposition activities,
and they still repatriated two and took only one
to Guantánamo.''
So far this year, the U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted
at least 1,002 Cubans at sea, compared with 931
in all of 2002. Those numbers include 32 intercepted
over the weekend.
Petty Officer Doss said the Coast Guard found
a group of six Cubans on a homemade raft about
2 p.m. Sunday 21 miles north of Cuba. Another
group of 26 Cubans was intercepted about 3:15
a.m. Saturday, eight miles north of the Marquesas,
he added.
The Associated Press reported that 53 Cuban migrants
who made it to the Florida Keys Thursday were
released from Krome detention center into the
community over the weekend.
Truck lovers mourn the sinking of migrants'
floating Chevy
By Nicholas Spangler. Nspangler@herald.com.
Posted on Mon, Aug. 04, 2003 in The Miami Herald.
In the narrowest sense of automotive history,
the 1951 Chevrolet 3100 Series pickup is insignificant.
''There wasn't a vehicle redesign or even sheet-metal
changes that year,'' said Michigan-based Chevrolet
archivist Jennifer Knight, who identified -- via
photographs that ran nationwide -- the year and
model of the green truck used by 12 Cubans to
flee the island.
But even the dullest vehicle attracts interest
when it is apprehended floating in the middle
of the Florida Straits, as this one was more than
two weeks ago, bearing the 12 Cuban migrants.
And when the U.S. Coast Guard, citing safety
concerns, removes the migrants and then sprays
the vehicle with machine-gun fire, causing it
to blow up and sink, it becomes the topic of office
chat and Internet message board debates.
Should the ingenuity that made a half-ton truck
float be rewarded with a one-way ticket back to
Cuba? How seaworthy is a '51 Chevy? And was it
really necessary for the Coast Guard to blow up
said vehicle?
''Whoever gave the order to scuttle this thing
needs to be court-martialed,'' Terry of Gainesville
wrote on Yahoo's Chevrolet truck message board.
"Ole Chevy and GMC trucks rule!''
''What a shame,'' wrote Nate, no address given.
"I was thinking it needed to go into the
Chevy museum.''
Ira Shapiro, vice president of the Antique Automobile
Club of America, Florida Chapter, agreed. ''At
least they could have towed it back in,'' he said
when reached by phone Friday. "Some collector
would have paid money for it, and the government
would have recouped some money.''
The truck was spotted July 16 by a U.S. government
plane 40 miles south of Key West, in a heavily
traveled shipping lane. It had propellers and
was kept afloat on pontoons made from 55-gallon
drums. The Coast Guard returned the migrants to
Cuba a few days later.
In 1951, Chevrolet rolled out more than 200,000
half-ton pickups; a brand-new 3100 model could
be had for about $1,400. Today that '51 Chevy
pickup in decent condition goes for about $7,775.
This particular truck, had it survived its voyage,
probably wouldn't have fetched that much. It was
well worn and likely drove through this last half-century
with a mishmash of scavenged parts.
''That'll decrease the value,'' said Steve Ferguson,
an appraiser for the National Automobile Dealers
Association, which of late has expanded its province.
(''If it rolls, floats or flies, we value it!''
is the new motto.)
"In a collector's mind, he's looking for
authenticity of the parts, matching numbers, everything
original.''
'THAT'S NEAT'
But the truck lovers were thinking about a different
kind of value in this case. ''It's fantastic,
the equipment they keep running,'' said Frank
Fitzgerald, an automobile club member and an administrator
in the Miami-Dade school system's vocational division.
"And they just basically built an amphibian.
I think that's neat.''
Was the drive shaft the primary means of propulsion,
Fitzgerald wondered, and were propellers hooked
to the wheels off the differential? Did the truck
have a conventional dual-spring chassis or a torqued
tube on the rear end? Did the truckers use the
wheels as reverse rudders or hang a piece of plywood
off the back?
Ingenious, maybe, but that's not the point, said
Lt. Tony Russell, a Coast Guard spokesman in Miami.
''People are looking at this in a creative light,''
Russell said. "But this thing is not designed
as a boat. It's a truck.''
Capsizing in the fast-moving Gulf Stream could
have meant disaster for all aboard, he said, and
certainly the thing was too unwieldy to tow into
port.
So the Coast Guard trained a 25mm machine gun
on it and shot it down. The gasoline floated up
to the surface, where it evaporated, Russell said.
Maybe that's the case -- but maybe not, said
Joe Murphy of the Ocean Conservancy. "I don't
think it all would. The oil from the Exxon Valdez
certainly didn't evaporate.''
A FREEDOM ISSUE
The truck lovers did not consider such tit-for-tat
matters; instead, they contemplated human freedom
and potential.
''We have the freedom to sit around and worry
about who's the best vendor for our old trucks,''
Tom Caperton of Whiteville, N.C., said in a posting
on Yahoo. "And these folks risk everything
for the freedom to just say what they think.''
Terry of Gainesville was similarly moved. ''I
don't know which is the biggest tragedy, sinking
the truck boat or sending the guys that are bright
enough to pull this off back,'' he wrote. "I
could choose 12 people right here in the office
that I'd gladly trade for these guys (and the
truckboat of course).''
The Chevy sank down, down, 6,000 feet down, to
stygian depths untouched by light or warmth. Tiny
shrimps and tube worms will nose about its remains.
It will stay there forever, most likely.
Who would want to salvage a beat-up truck?
Fate of 14 held by Coast Guard raises concerns
By Elaine De Valle. Edevalle@herald.com.
Posted on Mon, Aug. 04, 2003.
Cuban exiles worried Sunday about the fate of
14 migrants who remained on a U.S. Coast Guard
cutter after five others in the group were taken
to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay
and avoided repatriation.
The 14, or some among them, may be returned to
Cuba under the current migration accords with
the island.
Prominent Cuban Americans have sought White House
intervention in the matter because some in the
group, they say, are members of a dissident group
whose leader has been jailed since last year.
At least 10 others in the group claimed to be
members of Cuban opposition groups, including
the 24th of February Movement, formed to protest
the deaths of four Brothers to the Rescue pilots
shot down by a Cuban MiG Feb. 24, 1996.
''Their lives are in the president's hands,''
said Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban
American National Foundation.
Members of CANF said they were told the two children
aboard and three adults were taken to Guantánamo.
One of the minors is believed to be 14-year-old
Yordi Chávez Cabrera, said Mariela Ferretti,
a foundation spokeswoman. His father, Adalberto
Chávez, fled the island 11 months ago in
a boat and arrived in South Florida.
Ferretti believes that one of the adults at Guantánamo
is Yordi's mother and Chávez's wife, Belsy
Cabrera, and that another is Sergio Pérez
Hierro, who became president of the 24th of February
group when Leonardo Bruzón Avila was jailed
last year as he planned a memorial for the Brothers
fliers.
Other members of the group may be relatives of
Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, one of three
accused failed hijackers executed by the Cuban
government in April.
Since 1995, most interdicted Cuban migrants have
been returned and only a few have been taken to
Guantánamo for exploration of asylum claims.
Garcia and many other Cuban exiles believe that's
what should have been done with the 12 Cubans
who stole a boat to flee the island last month
-- and were repatriated.
The Herald on Sunday published an ''open letter
to President Bush'' signed by 98 CANF members
questioning the effectiveness of Bush's Cuba policy
and demanding changes.
''When you were a candidate for president and
again in May 2002, we heard words from you that
gave us great expectations that Cuba policy would
soon lead to a free and democratic Cuba,'' the
letter said. "Unfortunately, the administration's
policy has not been significantly different than
that of the prior administration.''
Fifty-three other Cuban migrants -- 32 men, 19
women and two children -- who landed in Key Largo
were released Friday.
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